The Little White Horse (21 page)

‘Sir Wrolf stole Paradise Hill from God,’ said Maria firmly. ‘And tomorrow Old Parson and all the children and I are going to give it back to God. It won’t be yours any more.’

‘Dear me,’ said Sir Benjamin.

‘You must give me your word, Sir,’ said Maria, ‘that you will not keep the money for yourself any more, but will give it to the poor.’

‘My income will be considerably depleted,’ said Sir Benjamin in rather dry tones.

‘You could eat less,’ suggested Maria helpfully.

‘Maria!’ ejaculated Miss Heliotrope in horror. ‘What a way to speak to your cousin!’

‘I’m speaking to him for his good,’ said Maria.

Sir Benjamin suddenly flung back his head and roared with laughter, the same genial roaring that Robin had
indulged in earlier in the evening. ‘Very well, Maria,’ he said. ‘Your Highness’s commands shall be obeyed.’

Maria went up to bed happy in the knowledge that her curiosity upon many subjects had been completely satisfied that day . . . But she still did not know where Marmaduke Scarlet slept.

L
OVEDAY
M
INETTE
kept her promise and next morning Maria was awakened by a kiss upon her cheek, light as the touch of a butterfly’s wing, and opening her eyes looked up into what she thought for a moment was an angel’s face. Then she saw who it was and smiled.

‘Mother Minette,’ she said.

Loveday laughed. ‘I’ve been called by many names in my life,’ she said, ‘but that’s the best of all. Now get up quickly, Maria! You’ve a lot to do this morning.’

Maria jumped up at once, and Wiggins, who happened to be lying on her feet, was sent catapulting into the air to land flat on his back on the floor in no very good temper. He lay there, growling crossly, all four legs in the air, until Loveday took a sugar biscuit from the tin on the mantelpiece and placed it on his chest. Then he catapulted right way up again, ate the biscuit and was happy.

‘You knew just where to find that biscuit, Mother Minette,’ said Maria, as she washed herself in the silver basin. ‘When you were a girl and slept in this room, did Marmaduke Scarlet make them for you too?’

Loveday Minette, in the middle of lifting Maria’s riding-habit from the chest, paused in astonishment. ‘What makes you think I slept here when I was a girl?’ she demanded.

‘I just guessed,’ said Maria, getting into her petticoats. ‘After all, where else could you have slept? Sir Benjamin and his mother had the rooms in the other tower. Your governess Elspeth would have had the big bedroom in
this one, just as Miss Heliotrope does now. Did you sit here a great deal? Or did you sit mostly in the parlour? Where did you sit when you were making your wedding dress? And Sir Benjamin’s waistcoat?’

‘Maria!’ cried Loveday in consternation. ‘Has anyone been talking to you about me?’

‘No,’ said Maria. ‘I’ve just been putting two and two together.’

‘You are so good at arithmetic, Maria, that you frighten me,’ said Loveday.

‘I’ve sense,’ said Maria, gently taking her habit from Loveday and putting it on. ‘And I shouldn’t wonder if I’m not the first Merryweather to have it. I must have got it from my mother, because my father had none. And I don’t believe you and Sir Benjamin have any, either. If you had you wouldn’t have quarrelled. Why
did
you quarrel?’

‘It’s too long a story to tell you now,’ said Loveday hastily.

‘You’ll have plenty of time to tell me as we go through the park to the village,’ said Maria. ‘Mother Minette, you
must
tell me. Loving mothers and daughters don’t have secrets from each other.’

Loveday Minette made no answer. She handed Maria her feathered hat, flung her own grey shawl round her shoulders, and led the way through the little door that was just the size for Moon Maidens and dwarfs, and down the tower stairs to the hall, Wiggins following after.

In the hall they found Wrolf and Serena waiting for them and — most astonishing — Zachariah also.

‘Is Zachariah coming?’ asked Maria in surprise. ‘I thought he never went anywhere with anybody.’

‘This is a very great occasion in Moonacre history,’ explained Loveday. ‘And so all the animals who take a special interest in you are rallying round you. Periwinkle is outside. I saddled her for you. Robin is at the church with the other children.’

They went out and down the steps, and found Periwinkle waiting patiently by the mounting-block.

‘You ride Periwinkle and I’ll ride Wrolf,’ said Maria. ‘It won’t matter that you have no habit. She goes very quietly.’

‘I know that,’ said Loveday softly, as she mounted expertly from the mounting-block. ‘My darling Periwinkle!’

Periwinkle whinnied softly and affectionately, and then looked lovingly at Maria, lest she should be jealous.

‘The Merryweather animals all seem to live to a very great age, don’t they?’ said Maria, as she mounted upon Wrolf’s back and noticed the grey hairs in his ruff.

‘They know they are needed,’ said Loveday.

‘Yes, they’ve sense,’ said Maria thoughtfully. The guidance and protection of their animals, she was realizing more and more, was absolutely essential to the not-very-sensible Merryweathers.

It was still so early that the moon was hanging like a lamp in the sky above the cedar-tree and the stars twinkled very faintly. But in the east, behind Paradise Hill, the sky was like a rose, and in the west over the sea a bank of pearly clouds was outlined with pure gold. There was plenty of time, and the two Moon Maidens rode slowly along the moss-grown road beneath the trees. Periwinkle’s hoofs made no sound on the moss and Wrolf’s padded feet were always silent. Serena, Zachariah, and Wiggins, coming along behind, were talking to each other, but so quietly that their conversation was not audible. It was just the right sort of still moment for the telling of tales.

‘Tell me now, Mother Minette,’ pleaded Maria.

‘Like you, I was not born at Moonacre Manor,’ said Loveday. ‘I was born in Cornwall, where the sea thunders against the great rocky cliffs and the geraniums are the loveliest in the world. I lived there until I was ten years old, when my parents died, and I came to Moonacre
Manor with my governess Elspeth, to be brought up by Lady Letitia Merryweather, my aunt by marriage and the mother of Sir Benjamin. She had been widowed early in her married life, but she was a capable woman and brought up her son so well and managed the estate so skilfully that Moonacre flourished under her rule. She was strict and severe, and I did not love her, though I am sure now that she must have meant to do her best for the little penniless orphan that I was, arriving at Moonacre possessing nothing in the world but the clothes on my back and ten flower-pots with cuttings of geraniums in them, those glorious salmon-pink geraniums that are the pride of Cornwall.’

‘So that’s why there are so many geraniums in your house,’ murmured Maria.

‘Yes,’ said Loveday. ‘The ones at my house, and Old Parson’s also, are all the descendants of those original ten cuttings. If I brought sorrow to Moonacre, at least I brought geraniums too.’

‘Go on,’ prompted Maria softly.

‘My father and Sir Benjamin’s father and your grandfather were brothers,’ said Loveday. ‘There were only the three of them, and each of them had only one child; Sir Benjamin, myself, your father; and so now the Merryweathers are a very small family, just Sir Benjamin and myself and you.’

‘Well,’ said Maria stoutly, ‘what we lack in quantity we make up in quality. You couldn’t find three nicer people. And how two such nice people as you and Sir Benjamin came to quarrel I cannot imagine . . . Go on about the quarrel, Mother Minette . . . What
did
you quarrel about?’

‘The geraniums,’ said Loveday in a very small voice.

‘The
geraniums
!’ gasped Maria. ‘But how in the world could you have such a dreadful lifelong quarrel just about geraniums?’

‘Looking back, I really don’t know how we could,’ said Loveday, ‘but at the time those geraniums seemed the
most important thing in the world. That’s the way with quarrels, Maria, especially Merryweather quarrels. They begin over some quite little thing, like pink geraniums, and then the little thing seems to grow and grow until it fills the whole world.’

‘Go on,’ said Maria.

‘When I arrived at Moonacre,’ said Loveday, ‘I was a very unhappy little girl. I had loved my parents, and they were dead, and I had loved my Cornish home, and it was gone from me. The only things I had to remind me of my parents and my home were my pink geraniums. I have no words to tell you, Maria, how I adored those pink geraniums. I was given the little tower room for my own as soon as I arrived, and I filled it with geraniums; and then as the geraniums multiplied I stood them in pots all up the tower stairs . . . And then it was that the trouble began . . . For Lady Letitia had two intense dislikes, geraniums and the colour pink — especially salmon-pink. There wasn’t a geranium in the manor-house garden or a scrap of pink inside the house. It was she who furnished the manor-house parlour and worked those chair-seats, and you’ll remember that the roses are red and yellow, but not pink.’

‘I know,’ said Maria. ‘One of the things I like about the parlour is its pinklessness, for I’m like Lady Letitia, Loveday, I don’t like pink either.’

‘What?’ cried Loveday. ‘You ride there beside me, Maria, and dare to tell me that you don’t like pink?’ And Loveday drew herself up, and her eyes flashed cold fire and she seemed to be freezing all over. She looked like a woman who had received some mortal insult; and Maria thought she was being so ridiculous that she too drew herself up, and her eyes flashed, and her mouth opened to make some snappy remark. But before she had time to make it there was a low growl from Wrolf and a warning whinny from Periwinkle, and instead of snapping she laughed.

‘Don’t let’s quarrel,’ she said. ‘You like pink and I
don’t, and we’ll agree to differ.’

Loveday quietened down and smiled. ‘That’s what Lady Letitia and I somehow could not do,’ she said. ‘We quarrelled ceaselessly. She would not let so much as one geranium overflow from my tower into the house, and she would not let me wear so much as a bit of pink ribbon in my hair. And I was terribly bitter, because to me an insult to my geraniums was an insult to my parents. I was very unhappy. I think I should have died of my unhappiness had it not been for my governess, old Elspeth, who was a cross-grained old thing but who always took my part, and for the great kindness of Sir Benjamin. When I was a child of ten he was a splendid young man of twenty-five, and, as I said, he was kind to me and I loved him: even though he shared his mother’s dislike for pink geraniums. For he was not like his mother, always talking about the things he disliked; he just kept his mouth shut and did not mention them. He was always giving me things to make up for his mother’s strictness. He was a skilled carpenter in his young days, and it was he who made for me all the pretty furniture that is in your room now. And he taught me to play chess. We were always playing chess together. I cannot tell you how much I loved him, Maria. And he loved me, too . . . Though he loved his mother more.’

‘That must have made you very jealous of his mother,’ said Maria.

‘Yes, it did,’ said Loveday. ‘I was a horrid girl in those days, Maria; jealous and proud and passionate in a cold sort of way that was quite different from Lady Letitia’s hot anger, and that annoyed her very much. Yet Sir Benjamin loved me, and when I grew up he asked me to marry him, and I said yes.’

‘Was Lady Letitia upset?’ asked Maria.

‘Very upset,’ said Loveday. ‘But she was a just woman. Sir Benjamin was over thirty by that time, and she realized he had every right to marry me if he wanted to. So she made the best of it. But she disliked me very much indeed and she was very unhappy because of our betrothal, and I
think her unhappiness must have weakened her because that winter she caught a cold and died of it before any of us had time to turn round. And Sir Benjamin was heartbroken, because he had adored his mother. I did my best to comfort him, and he seemed to love me more than ever, and we arranged to get married in the spring, and he and I and Elspeth set to work to get the house all shining and polished and ready for the wedding. And I worked hard at my embroidery. I had already made Sir Benjamin a beautiful waistcoat, a pale-blue one embroidered in yellow and crimson because those are the sun colours that he likes; and now I started on another for our wedding. And I made my own trousseau dresses and my wedding dress . . . And then, Maria, one spring evening just before our wedding day, I did a very stupid thing.’

‘I can guess exactly what you did,’ said Maria. ‘By that time the tower was so overflowing with pink geraniums that there was scarcely an inch of space where you could put another pot, and so one day when Sir Benjamin was out riding you brought them all down and filled the house with them.’

‘That’s exactly what I did,’ said Loveday. ‘Especially I filled the parlour with them, for Old Parson was coming to supper and I wanted to make it look as jolly as I could. And I put on one of my trousseau dresses — a pink one. And I decorated the supper table with pink flowers. And then Old Parson arrived. And then, rather late, because he had been delayed out riding, Sir Benjamin arrived, and saw what I had done.’

‘What did he say?’ demanded Maria.

‘He didn’t say anything then,’ said Loveday, ‘because Old Parson was there. He played the courteous host all the evening, but I could see that he was very angry. And I think Old Parson saw it too, because to make things easier after supper he asked me to play and sing to them, and I sang a song that had been written by some Merryweather centuries ago and that Sir Benjamin liked because the girl in the song reminded him of me.’

‘Yes,’ whispered Maria to herself. ‘I know that song.’

‘But he didn’t seem to like it that night,’ said Loveday, ‘and when Old Parson had gone he told me exactly what he thought of me. He has the Merryweather temper, you know, even though he is so sunny and genial, and when he was a young man he could behave like a roaring lion. And he raged and stormed that night until his anger nearly lifted the roof off. He said that I had insulted the memory of his saintly mother and that I was not worthy to follow in her footsteps. And he said other things that made me very angry, so that I said hard things too. Among other things I said that his mother had not been a saint at all, but a very wicked woman to be so severe with a little girl as she had been with me over my love of pink. And no saint hates geraniums, I said. Saints love all the flowers that God has made, especially the salmon-pink geraniums of Cornwall, because God never made lovelier flowers than those . . . And at that Sir Benjamin picked up all the pots of geraniums within reach and flung them out of the window into the rose-garden.’