The Child From the Sea

by Elizabeth Goudge

  Mrs. Moore had always been nervous of Dr. Cosin. It was one of the trials of life in exile that homely people, accustomed in their own country to their own humble parish priest and a congregation of their own sort, could find themselves sharing a chapel with dukes and princes, and ministered to by some eminent divine whose great mind had some difficulty in getting to grips with their simple problems.

  That the situation could be equally difficult for the eminent divine was not known to Mrs. Moore when some days later she found herself, after the Sunday service, penned in a corner of the chapel of the Louvre by the black towering figure of Dr. Cosin. He had grown more alarming with the years, more emaciated, sterner, sadder. He lacked the gentle humility and sweetness of a man like Bishop Ken. He was not that kind of saint. Perhaps, with his temper and the remnants of a stubborn pride still hanging in tatters about him, he was not a saint at all. It is possible to be a hero without being a saint. And it is possible, thought poor Mrs. Moore, for a tall thin holy man to look exactly like a vulture of the desert, Elijah or John the Baptist, dessicated and terrible. Dr. Cosin was doing his best to speak with gentleness but he was extremely angry and boomed above Mrs. Moore’s head like doom.

  “Madam, I commend your compassion in sheltering this young woman and her child in their hour of need. It was a Christian act and worthy of you. But why was I not informed? Am I not by appointment of God and the King the shepherd in charge of our congregation in Paris? To what am I to attribute your failure in this respect?”

  Mrs. Moore was too confused to know. “A woman of her sort, Dr. Cosin,” she murmured. “I scarcely thought you would wish to associate with her now.”

  She could have said nothing worse and she knew it in the awful silence that followed. Dr. Cosin strove to control his temper and she waited with shaking limbs for the earthquake and the fire. But the voice that came at last was quiet. “The fault is mine. I have not visited you lately. I have been ill and my pastoral duty has been sadly neglected. Had I visited you I should have found Mrs. Barlow in your kind care. Later today I will hope to wait upon you both. I think it might be wise if you did not tell her of my intended visit.”

  He bowed, the dark looming presence was withdrawn, daylight flowed in and Mrs. Moore could breathe again. He came, as he had promised, in the pale lemon sunshine of a November afternoon. He sat for a few moments with Mrs. Moore and her husband and then went upstairs to see Lucy. She was always in bed now and Anne had moved her bed to the window so that she could see the last of the leaves leaving the lime trees, and the reappearing tracery of bare branches against the sky. Birds came and went in the branches and were a delight, and so was Mary, sitting beside her mother and sewing her sampler; a far more professional affair than her mother’s had been at more than her age.

  At sight of Dr. Cosin Lucy’s face flooded with joy but not surprise. She had been thinking of him so constantly that it was hardly surprising to see him standing beside her bed. At first she thought he was a vision of her own creation, for this was happening to her now. She would think of her father and see him standing at the foot of her bed smiling at her, and hear the rustle of Nan-Nan’s skirts across the floor. But when Dr. Cosin sat down beside her and took her hand she felt the rough ageing skin against the smoothness of her own, and when she put out her other hand and felt the fold of his cassock it was harsh between her fingers. She smiled at him and said briefly, turning her head towards her daughter, “This is Mary.” The little girl made her curtsey, looked fearlessly at the old man on the other side of her mother’s bed and smiled. He smiled back. She curtseyed again and left the room.

  Lucy laughed softly. “She approves of you,” she said. “She will not now leave me alone with anyone of whom she does not approve.”

  But Dr. Cosin could not as yet focus his mind upon Mary. “Why did you not send for me?” he asked.

  “I did not answer your letters. I cut myself off from you. I did not know what your thoughts of me might be.”

  “It is never understood,” said Dr. Cosin sadly. “The love of a priest for the souls delivered to his care is never understood. As a child you must often have watched the shepherd at his work. Did you never realize the greatness of his love?”

  Lucy was silent, remembering John Shepherd at Roch. Dr. Cosin was right. There were so many ways of loving and one could not know them all. “I am sorry,” she said. “I ask you to forgive me.”

  “The forgiveness is granted. And now that we are together again you will let me help you. You wondered what was I thinking? That there had been gross exaggeration. Human beings delight to exaggerate the moral failings of others, since to do so increases their own sense of righteousness. I also reminded myself that if you had in any way fallen to temptation do I not myself know its fearful power? For the rest, I could only pray for you, asking God that if it should be his will you would return to me.”

  Lucy could only cry and Dr. Cosin reproached himself. “I am distressing you. We will say no more now about the great matters that will presently concern us. But I must tell you, Lucy, how much I admired you for yielding Jackie to his father. He is well and happy at his school.”

  Lucy’s tears ceased as she demanded to be told about Jackie. There was not much he could say for Jackie’s stay in Paris had been brief and Dr. Cosin had himself been ill and not allowed to see the boy. But he enquired about him often and all the reports were reassuring. Then there was a silence and he sighed heavily.

  “There is one thing, Lucy, which I must tell you that will grieve you. Perhaps it will help you if I say that I have myself suffered the same sorrow that I must now ask you to accept.” Lucy looked at him anxiously. Jackie was well and happy. What could it be? Dr. Cosin sighed again and continued. “I may have spoken to you of my beloved eldest son. Some while back, in England and away from my care, he secretly became a Catholic. He is now of course in great danger. I admire his courage but my grief is great.”

  Lucy held his hand tighter to express her sympathy, and presently she said placidly, “So Jackie is a Catholic now.”

  “That woman!” exploded Dr. Cosin suddenly. The veins stood out upon his forehead but with a mighty effort he controlled himself. “While I was laid upon my bed, extremely ill, the Queen Dowager without a word to me, and without even applying for permission to his father or to you, captured the child.”

  Lucy tried to comfort him. “Do not be so distressed, sir. What could you do? And there is a happy side to what has happened. The Queen and Minette will love him all the more because of this. He is theirs now and they will love him.” But Dr. Cosin did not seem comforted and she tried again. “When Charles is restored to his throne, and I know that he will be, and sends for Jackie to be with him, as I know that he will, then all Jackie has to do is change over again.”

  Dr. Cosin had a certain grim sense of humour and it came to his rescue. For the first time in many months he laughed. “How do you know these things?” he asked Lucy.

  “I do not sleep well and so at night I pray for my husband and children and I find that I know these happy things. I expect God is so good to me because he knows I am dying.”

  So she knew. “About that, my child, we will talk tomorrow,” he said. “Now I am going to leave you for you are tired.”

  He got up. Now, she thought, she must say it, for tomorrow would come the turning over of the stones of her life. “Dr. Cosin, there is not anything about my past life that I shall be able to tell you. It is secret and belongs to myself alone.”

  Shocked, he looked at her and saw in her eyes that old obstinacy that he knew only too well. But he also saw her tiredness and all he said was, “I will come back when you are more rested.” Then he gave her his blessing and left the room.

  At the top of the stairs he nearly fell over Mary sitting there sewing her sampler and waiting to go back to her mother. She got up politely to let him pass. He looked at the child. The face upturned
to him was hardly that of a child at all. He had never seen such wisdom in young eyes. But wisdom could lead to happiness. He gave her his blessing too and passed on. The stairs had a twist to them and round the bend he nearly fell over Anne, sitting at the bottom of the flight to intercept him.

  She got up. “Sir, I must speak to you, but this house is so small that Mrs. Barlow will hear our voices in the parlour below her and Mrs. Moore will listen at the door. It is only a few steps to the church across the road. It is quiet there. Come with me, please. At once.”

  It was not a request but a command and she was putting her cloak round her shoulders as she spoke. Her urgency was a wave that lifted and carried them out into the chill autumn evening and across the road. As he went down the steps into the small church, so dark, stony and strong, Dr. Cosin’s first impression was of some ancient fortress upon a frontier, a defence against the enemy. Then he became aware of points of light here and there in the darkness, and gleams of colour that came and went in the flicker of candleflames in the draught. Then Anne shut the door and the small flames steadied. Peace filled the place and he knelt to pray.

  Anne waited beside him, her hands clenched and her fingernails biting into the palms of her hands. When she had first seen Dr. Cosin, on the day when Lucy took her to the chapel at the Louvre, he had seemed a grim figure, reminding her of her father. She had hated him and been afraid of him and that it should be him of all men to whom she must uncover the horror of herself was hardly to be borne. The sweat ran down her back and her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth. If only the man would stop praying and let her get it over. Did he suppose she had brought him here simply to say his tedious prayers?

  He supposed nothing of the sort and in a few moments turned to her and asked, “What is your trouble, my daughter?” He could hardly have made a worse beginning, presenting himself to her as a father figure at the very start. She trembled and was speechless. “Is it something to do with Mrs. Barlow?” he encouraged.

  She nodded and gasped, “Yes.” And then the fear eased and speech came, but in a spirit of bitterness. “I know what you have come to do, sir. You want to torment my mistress about her sins, turning them over and worrying over them and trying to make her repent of things she never did. She never did anything wrong except my Lord Taaffe and that was only nature. It was I who did it all. It is I who am foul as a stinking kennel, and she will not be able to tell you one thing about herself because she cannot without telling you what I did. And that she will never do. I know her. She will never tell you one word of what I did to her. Why must you come here tormenting her? Why can you not let her die in peace?”

  “I hope and believe that she will do so,” said Dr. Cosin. “When you have told me what I am waiting to hear she will be free to speak to me openly of all that is in her heart, and then she will have peace. Forget my presence. In the silence of this place is divine mercy. You have only to speak quietly to the silence. Words will be given you.”

  Something dreaded, perhaps a comparatively small thing, can block the whole future like a black mountain set upon the path. It cannot be surmounted, yet it seems there is nowhere to go now except on. Then the first impossible steps are irretrievably taken, the first words spoken past recall, and the thing grinds on its way almost by its own impetus. Then unbelievably it is over. The agony, whatever it was, is over. The dark hill is behind, the sunlit landscape is in front. But at first it is seen only through a mist of exhaustion. Anne heard nothing of the words of forgiveness and counsel spoken to her. But what they represented was in her possession. She had tasted the divine mercy in the cell at the Tower. Now she drank of it as though it were a stream flowing out of the black mountain she had just surmounted.

  They went out into the street and Dr. Cosin said to her, “You must tell Mrs. Barlow tonight that you have put into words what she herself could not tell me. Tell her I will be with her tomorrow.” Anne heard this and nodded and they parted. There was nothing further to say. Dr. Cosin was overwhelmed by the thought of Lucy the scapegoat lost in a desert of loneliness. Anne was too happy and too tired to have any thoughts at all.

  3

  When Dr. Cosin came next day to Lucy he said, “When you did not answer my letters, when you withdrew yourself, it was as though I received a wound. I prayed that you might be returned to my care but the answer has been long in coming. Now my prayer has been answered and the wound is healed. For this I thank God.”

  Lucy smiled. She had slept all night like a child. There was nothing now that she had to hide from Dr. Cosin, nothing that she could not say to him. She had come to the end of the evasions, the half-lies, the uncertainties and confusions of human life. The way before her was short and straight and where she was going, Jacob had told her, there was a great simplicity.

  Dr. Cosin turned over the stones gently and carefully. They had a little trouble over Tom. Her heart had softened towards him but she was not sure she had entirely forgiven him for his treachery to Charles. “You make it harder for the King to forgive,” said Dr. Cosin. “You hold him back. We are so united to those we love that our every attitude affects them. Forgive for him as well as for yourself. If he returns to his throne his first difficult task will be to forgive his enemies. If he can do it he will be a good king. If he cannot may God help him and England. Help him now to forgive.” So she forgave and was so serene that Dr. Cosin was astonished. Were they to get through this without the bitterness of death? Did she not realize that she was leaving her children? In her happiness at being with him had she in fact faced what death really is?

  “Your jewels, my love?” Anne said to her next morning. “Who do you want to have them? And your clothes?”

  Lucy lifted her hand and looked at the ruby ring which was still on her finger. The blue gown that Charles had given her was hanging on the door. She had worn it so often that it seemed moulded to her figure. But in a few weeks from now her body that had worn jewels and clothes, told stories to her children and played with them in the sunshine, putting arms round them and kissing them, would not exist any more. The instrument of her loving would be lost, for there were no physical bodies where she was going.

  The pages of her Book of Hours, her dreams of heaven, had been shown her in terms of earthly imaginings and she was going to a mode of existence that could be neither imagined nor known in such terms. All she knew now, at this moment, was that she would never again hold her children in her arms. Her body that was the ground of her motherhood was ceasing to be and the realization brought terror. Fear, she knew, must be met by action. Anne had not known she could still sit up, she had not known it herself, but she did so now, trying to assert her old dominion over her body that she might be a mother a little longer.

  “Bring paper and pen and write down what I tell you,” she said. She found she could think quite clearly. Jackie must have the ruby ring and the diamond brooch, her writing desk, the sea-shell and the book in which she had written down the prayers he and she had prayed together. Dr. Cosin would take charge of them. Her pearls, the Queen of Bohemia’s jewels and the signet ring Lord Taaffe had given her were for Mary. Her father’s miniature for Justus, her mirror and her clothes for Anne. That was all. She had nothing else.

  When Anne had written down her instructions she lay flat on her back and closed her eyes. Anne thought she was asleep but she was not. She was simply hiding her fear. Anne and Mary must not see it lest when their turn came to die they should remember and be afraid too. The fear did not pass and she remained as she was until Dr. Cosin came to see her. Then she opened her eyes and looked at him and he saw in them the bitterness of death. He had had an intuition that it would be today and he had come prepared.

  He bent over her saying clearly, “Motherhood is never lost. Remember that death is also a mother. For a little while you must be a child again, go back to the womb and be born to a new life, a new mode of loving and a new spring. Now I am going to give you t
he sacrament that God himself may make you fearless for your journey.” The fear went out of her eyes. He gave her the sacrament and sat by her till she fell asleep.

  After that her mind began to wander and she thought she was at Roch. Aunt Anne Byshfield arrived and the unexpected comfort and relief that this gave to Anne, and the bewildered little Mary, must have reached Lucy for though she hardly recognized Aunt Anne she seemed to share the comfort.

  Only Dr. Cosin was with her when she died. A little while before she had murmured a few words and he could tell that she was back in her childhood, passing back through it to reach the new birth. Then she was silent for a time and then seemed to come back again for she held up her left hand and said, “My wedding ring!”

  She had already given him the ruby ring to keep safely for Jackie and her hand was bare. “You have already given it to me, my dear,” he reassured her.

  “A little bird,” she murmured with delight. “Holding to my wedding finger. Now I am united to all wild things, I am married to the beauty of the world.”

  She smiled and her hand dropped. Then she drifted away and a short time later she quietly died.

  She was buried in the Protestant cemetery at Paris, followed to her grave by a small group of mourners. She was twenty-eight years old. It was a sad grey day, a wet mist dripping from the trees, and Dr. Cosin saying the last prayers beside the grave was plunged in that desolation that seizes the old when they must face the death of the young. A life that might have been long and happy ending after twenty-eight years in the mud of a foreign cemetery. He had stood by many such graves as this during the last grievous years; young men and women overwhelmed by war and grief, by loss of hope, by their own moral degradation under the pressure of exile and hardship. Perhaps Lucy, if she was remembered at all, would go down to history as one of the latter. He himself knew better.