The Child From the Sea

by Elizabeth Goudge

  “His father was of the same mind,” said Dr. Cosin. “I remember King Jamie talking on the subject to two of the bishops, my Lord of Durham and that good old man Bishop Andrews of Ely. He asked my Lord of Durham, ‘Cannot I take my subjects’ money when I want it without all this formality of Parliament?’ Neile, the wily old diplomat, said to him, ‘God forbid, sir, but you should; you are the very breath of our nostrils.’ Andrews would not reply at first, then he said with that sweet gentleness of his, ‘Sir, I think it is lawful for you to take my brother Neile’s money, because he offers it.’ ” When the reverberations of Dr. Cosin’s laugh had died away Mrs. Gwinne asked him, “Had this saintly Bishop Andrews been alive today which side in this unhappy struggle would have engaged his loyalty?”

  Dr. Cosin’s mood could change very quickly. Amusement vanished and his face looked dark with tragedy as he answered. “Madam, he would have been loyal to Church and King. But in all these questions that today threaten our country’s peace the issues are tangled and confused. There are honest men among our enemies, and would that it were possible to look at the darkening scene out of their eyes, not with an effort of imagination but in very truth. If it were possible wars would cease. How could you kill a man who had lent you his eyes? But it is not possible and all we can do is to try these matters with our own eyes, that see as heart and mind dictate. We can, we must, endeavour to purify our hearts and clarify our minds, but inborn loyalty has a fearful strength and can cloud our thinking more than any other emotion.”

  “Why do you say a fearful strength?” asked Mrs. Gwinne. “Is loyalty not admirable?”

  “Certainly. Do we not suspect turncoats? and rightly. They are not usually good men. But very occasionally they may be. The threads of the web are tangled, madam. That is the tragedy of a world riddled by sin.”

  “And you?” asked Mrs. Gwinne.

  A smile softened Dr. Cosin’s rugged face. “Madam, I have thought deeply about these things, but I am a hot-tempered man and like all such men deeply committed. I love the King, whose chaplain I am, and the Church of England is my firstborn. That last sentence, madam, is one that could be written on my tombstone.”

  It had been a dialogue between the two of them, for Mr. Gwinne’s thoughts had wandered to the book beside his plate, and Lucy could not understand all they said. But she knew about the tangled threads for she had discovered them at home in Wales, and she understood what loyalty was. There was disagreement in her home, forcing her to decision, and day by day for months past her heart had been like a ball tossed backwards and forwards between father and mother. Now, looking at Dr. Cosin’s sternly resolved face, it seemed that her heart was at rest as she thought of her father. “He is my firstborn,” she said to herself.

  After dinner she went back to Nan-Nan, but she was called down later to say goodbye to Dr. Cosin. “When is your birthday, Lucy?” he asked her.

  “April, sir.”

  “I am a month late with my good wishes,” he said, and taking her hand put a silver piece into her palm and folded her fingers over it. “Buy a gift for Lucy,” he commanded her.

  A silver piece! No one had ever given her a silver piece before. She was speechless with joy as she made her curtsey, but her face was irradiated. He laughed and blessed her and went away.

  3

  The next few days were spent by Lucy and her grandmother sewing or reading in the garden, or strolling through the country lanes. A visit to London to shop or visit friends, something they both enjoyed when they were together, must wait until the disturbances had quieted down. Lucy waited with some impatience, for the city of noisy streets and quiet gardens, towers and pealing bells, squalor and splendour all mixed up together like one of those tumbling dreams that come to the overactive mind, had gone to her head like wine. Country child though she was she loved London. It was alive, a person not a place, and she loved it good and bad together because both were an integral part of the personality. Mrs. Gwinne and William both understood her excitement over London and now and then would take her on sight-seeing trips, but she was forbidden to go out alone and she at least tried to be obedient these days, though her efforts were not always successful.

  The waiting was made easier for Lucy because she was endeavouring to read a book that Dr. Cosin had written. He was a distinguished writer and preacher, her grandmother had told her, but when Lucy had enquired, “Could I read anything he has written?” Mrs. Gwinne had looked doubtful. Then her face had brightened. “I think you could understand the book of prayers he compiled for the Queen’s English maids of honour. Her Majesty’s French ladies taunted the English ladies because having no breviaries they merely gossiped in their leisure moments, and His Majesty asked Dr. Cosin to prepare a book of prayers for them. He did so and for a time Her Majesty’s entire entourage, French and English alike, looked very devout indeed.” Mrs. Gwinne’s eyes twinkled. “How much the ladies actually read of their books I cannot tell you, but I am sure your understanding is equal to theirs. Go to the library and ask your grandfather for Doctor Cosin’s Book of Devotions.”

  Lucy knocked on the library door and receiving no answer lifted the latch and walked in. Mr. Gwinne’s library resembled a clearing in a forest, but the open space was by no means uncluttered, having a minor undergrowth of books piled on the floor, like the stumps of felled trees. Around the clearing great bookcases loomed from floor to ceiling, dark but yet alive with a glint of gold or crimson here and there, as though light shone faintly through massed leaves, and ominous with a motionless power. The light in the room was dim and green because of a creeper outside the window. It softly illumined Mr. Gwinne’s bald head, bent over a writing table stacked with books and papers. He would have nothing touched on his table and a pleasing silver lichen of dust grew all over it. His bald head, Lucy thought, looked like a mushroom. She picked her way cautiously towards him, careful not to knock against the tree stumps of books, for some of them were very perilously balanced.

  She placed herself at her relative’s left elbow and spoke. “Grandfather,” she said in a clear voice, but there was no answer. She spoke several times to no avail, then leaned over and closed his book. He sighed, removed his spectacles and saw her beside him. He was a good-tempered man and uttered no reproach, merely consulted his interior clock and murmured vaguely, “It is not dinner time.”

  “No sir,” said Lucy loudly. “But I want to read Doctor Cosin’s Book of Devotions, that he wrote for the English court ladies. Will you lend it to me please?”

  Mr. Gwinne rose instantly to his feet for his heart being in his books it could always be reached and touched by any appreciation of them. He approached one of the felled tree trunks and removed the first six volumes. Though the state of his library seemed to others chaotic he himself always knew exactly where to find any given volume. He took up the seventh and gave it to Lucy.

  “Our friend’s writings should be read with caution, my dear,” he told her. “The admonitions of the learned doctor are excellent, and the prayers, both those derived from ancient sources and those composed by himself, leave nothing to be desired. His rendering of the Veni Creator is most distinguished. But beware his original poems. He is not a poet and it is to be regretted that he should have endeavoured to emulate the poetical works of Doctor Donne, of whose genius he has no spark. Doctor Cosin is a great man of letters but, I repeat, no poet. Do not base any efforts of your own on his verse.” He had forgotten he was speaking to a child, and now he turned from her and went back to his table and in half a second had forgotten her existence. She picked her way carefully to the door and went out to the garden to sit beside her grandmother, the Book of Devotions open upon her lap. But it was very heavy going for a maiden who read with so much difficulty and Mrs. Gwinne took pity on her.

  “Let me read to you, my love,” she said, laying down her needlework and holding out her hand. “I will read you some of Doctor Cosin’s own delightful ver
ses, and perhaps you could learn some of them by heart and repeat them to him when you see him again.”

  Lucy refrained from repeating Mr. Gwinne’s disparaging remarks and handed over the book with gratitude. She could enjoy the melody of spoken words but her eyes could gather no music from black marks hurrying along white paper, and she was sure they never would. It made her feel quite ill to think of her grandfather, and men like him, shut up for a lifetime among billions of black marks. No wonder her grandfather was bald before his time.

  “This is a prayer in verse for His Majesty,” said Mrs. Gwinne. “And one we might pray daily in this time of trouble.

  Great God of Kings,

  Whose gracious hand hath led

  Our sacred Sovereign’s head

  Unto the throne

  From whence our bliss is bred;

  Oh, send Thine Angels

  To his blest side,

  And bid them there abide,

  To be at once

  His guardian and his guide.

  Dear be his life;

  And glorious be his days;

  And prospering all his ways,

  Late add Thy crown

  To his peace and praise.

  And when he hath

  Outlived the world’s long date,

  Let Thy last charge translate

  His earthly throne

  To Thy celestial state.”

  “I will learn that,” Lucy promised her. “I will learn two, but I would like the second one to be very short.”

  Mrs. Gwinne turned the pages and found a short evening admonition which Lucy approved for its brevity and learned on the spot, for she could learn by heart very quickly, and repeated to her grandmother.

  Permit not sluggish sleep

  To close your waking eye,

  Till that with judgment deep

  Your daily deeds you try.

  He that his sins in conscience keeps,

  When he to quiet goes,

  More desperate is than he that sleeps

  Amidst his mortal foes.

  Then Mrs. Gwinne read her the Veni Creator and this time the words filled her with a delight so keen that the tears stood on her eyelashes, and she sprang to the defence of her friend with a passion that surprised Mrs. Gwinne.

  “Doctor Donne could not have written that!” she said. “My grandfather said Doctor Cosin has not Doctor Donne’s genius, but Doctor Donne could not have written that.”

  “Doctor Cosin did not write the Veni Creator,” Mrs. Gwinne explained gently. “It is his translation of a Latin hymn.”

  “Doctor Donne could not have translated it,” said Lucy hotly. “And who,” she asked with contempt, “is Doctor Donne?”

  Mrs. Gwinne laughed. “He was dean of St. Paul’s, Lucy. He has been dead for some years, alas.”

  “Why do you say alas?” asked Lucy. She was delighted to hear the man was dead for it gave Dr. Cosin the ascendancy. He at least was alive.

  “Because he was a great man, a great poet and a great preacher. I was in London once or twice during his lifetime and I heard him preach. I heard his last sermon in St. Paul’s. It was Easter Day sixteen-thirty, the spring that you were born. The experience was unforgettable.”

  Lucy’s quick mind flew off at a fresh tangent. “I have seen St. Paul’s outside,” she said, “but I have not been inside. Will you take me, madam? And oh, madam, afterwards will you take me shopping on the bridge?” She was jumping up and down in her eagerness and Mrs. Gwinne could only yield. “When it is safe we will go,” she said.

  A few days later it was considered safe for gentlewomen properly attended to venture through the London streets. The old coach came out of the coach house, the horses were brought in from the field and the old coachman cum gardener climbed slowly to the box, Abel the garden boy, an added masculine protection, leaping joyously up beside him. Nan-Nan did not come for London so terrified her that she left Covent Garden only to visit Mrs. Gwinne.

  It was a perfect day in June and the scent of the first wild roses came to the lowered coach window as they drove through the meadows, and left them only as the coach bumped over the cobbles of Drury Lane. The Lane was lined with houses now and Mrs. Gwinne deplored it. The pace at which London was spreading was causing a good deal of anxiety at this time. The walled city of London and the city of Westminster were now the body of a growing octopus, with tentacles reaching out to the villages of Stepney, Wapping and Kensington, and even to the fishing village of Putney, and not all the proclamations of King James and King Charles against new buildings had been able to halt the growth. “These foreigners who are here now are to blame for the over-crowding,” lamented Mrs. Gwinne. “The new industries bring them, and of course the sea port and the new docks. They must live somewhere, poor things, one understands that, but where will it all end? How ugly these new houses are! Drury Lane was charming in the old days.”

  They drove on to London Wall and passed through the great gate into the old city that had always been here. The streets were very narrow and the traffic dense, carts and coaches jostling each other with great noise and confusion, for these streets had been made for men on horseback and for street barrows, not for the modern wheeled traffic.

  At Paul’s Cross they got out of the coach, and the old coachman was told to do some errands for Mrs. Gwinne and to fetch them later. Then they walked up the steps to the Cathedral. It was in a bad way just now for the spire had fallen and not been rebuilt, and much of the nave was in a ruinous state, but it was still a fine building. It surprised Lucy to find ladies and gentlemen using the nave as they used the piazza at Covent Garden, as a place for walking about together, and laughing and talking. There were plenty of children there too, playing games in corners, and one or two dog fights were in progress and no sexton came with the tongs to remove the fighters.

  “It is not noisy like this in St. Davids Cathedral,” Lucy said to her grandmother.

  “St. Davids Cathedral is in Wales,” replied Mrs. Gwinne. She needed to say no more. She and her grandchild, two exiles from a better country who lived their lives upon a higher plane, withdrew from the crowd and paced together down a quiet aisle, a place where sunlight touched the tombs of the dead, and their memorials upon the wall were silvery with the same soft dust that had drifted like sand into unswept corners, and like sand took the imprint as they passed of the slender feet of the lady and the child. Behind them the distant sound of the people was a sea surge. In front of them the sea caves of the holy places held only echo.

  “This is like St. Davids,” said Lucy. “Only there is no Chancellor Pritchard here.”

  Her grandmother, searching for something, was not attending. “There is the effigy of Doctor Donne,” she said, and halted.

  Dust could not soften the harsh outlines of the carved face at which they were gazing. It was the face of a dead man seen through the parted folds of the winding sheet, grim and frightening, retaining in death the hard living stamp of the power and passion of a lifetime.

  Lucy’s hand trembled in her grandmother’s. “He is not like Chancellor Pritchard,” she said, “but he looks a little like Doctor Cosin. Do all great men have big noses?”

  “Not invariably,” said Mrs. Gwinne. Then she considered the carving. “You are quite right, Lucy. They are a little alike. Both have fighters’ faces. But the Dean, I think, fought his greatest battles within himself. Most of Doctor Cosin’s enemies are without, and so his face is less tragic.”

  “Is it better to have your enemies outside?” asked Lucy.

  “Not necessarily better but certainly happier, for in exterior warfare you can more easily forget yourself.”

  “Is that good?”

  “It is the only good, my dear.”

  There was a sound of mingled pattering and piping, as though a lot of small birds were singing thr
ough a spring shower beating on broad leaves. They looked round and saw a crocodile of little boys walking briskly up the nave two by two, weaving in and out of the promenade of ladies and gentlemen as expertly as a lizard through grass. They had bright shining faces, and their piping voices, as they chattered together, were sharp and clear. Black gowns lifted back from their shoulders and their thick shoes on the worn paving stones went clackety-clack with a heartening cheerfulness. They disappeared into the shadows and the sound of rain and birdsong died away.

  “The choristers of St. Paul’s,” said Mrs. Gwinne. “When we see them again they will have their surplices on and the service will begin.”

  Already the organ was playing and quietness was falling upon the nave. Some of the ladies and gentlemen were going away and others were finding seats and talking to each other only quietly. Two men in black gowns, whom Lucy took to be a sexton and beadle such as they had at Roch, were shooing out children and dogs. Mrs. Gwinne and Lucy found seats in the nave and sat down and waited.

  Presently they saw the little boys again, coming out of the shadows and filing up to the choir two by two, silent and decorous. The gentlemen singers and the cathedral dignitaries followed them and the service began.

  Lucy had never heard music like this. It rose and fell, sometimes a mere thread of sound, sometimes a swell of glory. Now and then the music ceased altogether and a voice could be heard reading from the word of God, or praying. No words could be distinguished from where they sat, but the voice had a strange far-off beauty as though someone was speaking of glory from beyond the confines of the world. A line of poetry came to Lucy. “Touch God in the Fair Temple.” The Harper had sung that in the Song of London Town. At the end of the service the boys alone sang a hymn. Until now the choir had been singing the music of William Byrd and the voices had sounded like musical instruments weaving their separate threads of sound in and out in a complicated pattern, but this hymn was sad and simple and touched Lucy to uncomprehending pity. She did not hear the final blessing, or see the choir filing out again, but sat with her eyes fixed unseeingly upon her clasped hands, and compassion flowed from her as she remembered the sin-eater. Where was he now, her poor scapegoat? She had not remembered him in a long while but now she saw again his frightened face as he ran away into the night, bearing with him the sins of John Shepherd. Her grandmother was speaking to her and she lifted her head.