The Little White Horse (29 page)

This letter Maria folded and gave to Marmaduke. Then she got up and curtsied and thanked him for the delicious little meal.

‘I trust it has not spoilt your appetite for breakfast?’ he asked anxiously.

‘Not in the least, thank you,’ Maria assured him.

She went down the stairs and through the stable-yard and the formal garden to the house. She found as she looked at them that she was no longer afraid of the yew-tree men and cocks. It was as though some living evil in them had been withdrawn, and now they were not presences any more but just yew-trees clipped into amusing shapes.

In the hall she met Sir Benjamin, just coming down. He gazed at her in astonishment, for with her white tired face, and the pine-needles sticking to her skirt, it was obvious that she had been having a night out, and he opened his mouth to ask her where in the world she had been. Then, looking at her with love and trust, he shut his mouth and held his peace, as though he knew.

‘I’m too sleepy to tell you today, Sir,’ she said. ‘But I’ll tell you some time soon . . . Please, Sir, may I have a small tea-party tomorrow? I want to ask Old Parson to tea. And will you come too? Dressed in your best?’

‘It’s my day for the Bench,’ said Sir Benjamin.

‘But if you come straight home, and don’t go to the inn, you’ll be in time for my tea-party,’ said Maria. ‘And there’ll be lots to eat and lots to drink at my tea-party. Please,
please
, dear Sir!’

He could not refuse her white pleading face. ‘Have
it your own way,’ he said. ‘But if your “lots to drink” is tea, I don’t want it. Of all the wishy-washy, insipid beverages —’

‘It isn’t,’ Maria hastened to reassure him, ‘it’s mulled claret.’

Sir Benjamin’s face brightened. ‘You can rely on me,’ he assured Maria. ‘And I’ll come dressed in my best.’

‘And may I have floral decorations at my party?’ asked Maria.

‘God bless the child!’ he ejaculated. ‘Of course you may if you want to, though it seems to me you’re making a great to-do about entertaining Old Parson to tea.’

‘And will you give me your solemn word that if you don’t happen to like my floral decorations you won’t throw them out of the window?’ said Maria.

Sir Benjamin’s eyes popped slightly, but he only replied gravely, ‘My solemn word.’

‘That’s all right, then,’ said Maria with satisfaction. ‘Now I’m going to get tidy for breakfast, and after breakfast I’m going to sleep and sleep and sleep.’

‘You look as though you needed it,’ her relative assured her. ‘I never saw a clearer case of the morning after the night before.’

M
ARIA
spent most of that day, and the whole of the next night, fast asleep, and the whole of the next morning finding it exceedingly difficult to concentrate upon her lessons. She found it difficult, also, to pacify Miss Heliotrope, who was full of anxiety about the peculiarity of her behaviour. ‘It’s quite all right, Miss Heliotrope,’ she kept saying. ‘Once the tea-party this afternoon is safely over, I will explain everything.’

‘But who is coming to this mysterious tea-party?’ asked Miss Heliotrope.

‘Apart from us, and Old Parson, a very unhappy lady, a very wicked man, and that little boy I used to play with in the Square garden in London,’ said Maria.

‘But, my dear Maria, I’ve told you time and again that there’s no such person!’ ejaculated poor Miss Heliotrope.

‘You won’t say so any more after this afternoon,’ said Maria.

‘And an unhappy lady and a wicked man!’ said Miss Heliotrope. ‘It all sounds most unsuitable.’

‘But after this afternoon she’ll be happy and he’ll be good,’ said Maria. ‘And Marmaduke Scarlet knows all about my party.’

‘Ah well, if Marmaduke Scarlet knows,’ said Miss Heliotrope, and cheered up. She now had the very highest opinion of Marmaduke, owing to the excellence of his house-keeping and the fact that he was graciously allowing her to attend to all the neglected household mending.

After dinner Maria dispatched Miss Heliotrope to her room to rest, with orders to stay there until fetched, and Digweed to intercept Sir Benjamin at the gatehouse and bring him quietly through without ringing the bell. Digweed also had instructions to conduct Sir Benjamin to his room with his eyes shut, and tell him, too, to stay there until fetched. Then she and Marmaduke collected together all the beloved animals that they might help in the preparations for the happy ending that they had laboured so hard to bring about — Wrolf, Wiggins, Zachariah, Serena, and Perwinkle. Marmaduke demurred about bringing Periwinkle actually into the house, but she was led up the steps and stood at the open front door where she could watch all that went on. It might have been argued that the part taken by Wiggins in the animals’ labour had not been worth mentioning, but Wiggins today was looking so wonderfully beautiful that everyone forgot that perhaps his behaviour did not always match his looks.

At this point Robin appeared, his russet clothes beautifully brushed, his shoes polished till they shone like glass, the green feather in his hat waving merrily, and his round rosy face shining with soap and water, happiness and excitement.

‘Old Parson is coming, and Mother will be at the far end of the rose-garden at half past four,’ he assured Maria. ‘She promised. I’d hard work to make her promise, but she did.’

‘Thank you, Robin,’ said Maria. ‘And you didn’t mind that I had to finish things without you?’

‘Not in the least,’ Robin assured her cheerfully. ‘Not provided you tell me all about it.’

‘I’ll tell you all about it while we get ready for the party we’re going to have,’ said Maria. ‘All my life, Robin, I’ll always tell you all about everything.’

‘And I’ll tell you,’ said Robin. ‘If I didn’t you’d ask so many questions that life would not be worth living.’

Then they set to work. Wrolf, a large basket held in his
mouth, helped Maria and Robin carry all the geraniums from Marmaduke’s little room to the house. There were many more than Maria had realized. She and Robin filled the parlour with them, putting them all along the window-seat so that from outside in the rose-garden the window should look a blaze of pink, and they filled the great hall with them, and the windows of Maria’s tower room as well. And then after that they helped Marmaduke Scarlet set out the tea on the hall table. It looked wonderful when it was all put ready, with lighted candles all down the centre of the table, flanked by vases of the choicest geranium blooms, the best Crown Derby cups and saucers and crystal goblets, and all the eatables in silver dishes. The tea in a silver urn and the great jugs of mulled claret would be brought in by Marmaduke later.

And then Maria went up to her tower room to put on her very best dress, her London party frock that she had not worn yet at Moonacre Manor; a dress of primrose silk with blue forget-me-nots embroidered all over it. It had a large hanging pocket, and into this she slipped the little book with the heliotrope cover that she had borrowed from Old Parson on the day she had first visited him, and the green-covered book of French verse that Louis de Fontenelle had given to Jane Heliotrope. While she was dressing she saw Sir Benjamin and Digweed come back, and Sir Benjamin was led up the steps with his eyes shut. Maria knew she could trust him not to peep when he got inside the hall. He was a thoroughly trustworthy man.

Punctually at ten minutes past four Maria fetched Miss Heliotrope and led her downstairs, dressed in her purple bombasine with one of Loveday’s lovely mobcaps on her head, and one of the fichus.

‘Now, Miss Heliotrope,’ she said, throwing open the parlour door and disclosing Robin bowing hat in hand in the middle of the room, ‘this is Robin. I have known him nearly all my life, and I am going to marry him, so that there won’t ever be a time when I shan’t know him. I love him very much, and I love you very much, so you
must love each other.’

‘Dear me!’ said Miss Heliotrope, gazing at Robin in utter astonishment over the top of her spectacles. ‘Dear me! What a very unusual, brightly coloured boy.’

‘Isn’t he just as I described him to you in London?’ asked Maria.

‘Yes, he is,’ said Miss Heliotrope. ‘Only larger.’

‘Madam, I have grown since then,’ said Robin, and he bowed again, very politely, his hat with its peacock’s feather flourished in his right hand and his left hand on his heart, in the gallant manner that had been in fashion when Miss Heliotrope was young. And it was obvious that now that she was recovering from her first shock of surprise, Miss Heliotrope’s heart was warming towards him.

‘Dear me!’ she said again, but she said it very cordially.

Robin came to her and took her hand and kissed it. ‘Your servant, Madam,’ he said, ‘until my life’s end.’

And at that Miss Heliotrope’s heart melted entirely and she bent and kissed him. ‘You’re a nice boy,’ she said. ‘Whether or not you are the boy Maria imagined in London — well — I shouldn’t like to say. But you’re a nice boy, and if you’re good to Maria you’ll have no more faithful friend than Jane Heliotrope.’

A step sounded and there was Old Parson, with a pink geranium stuck in one of the buttonholes of his cassock.

‘Oh, Sir!’ Maria cried to him, ‘will you please take Miss Heliotrope for a little stroll in the kitchen garden? It’s nice and warm there in the sun, and the fruit blossom is very pretty. And there’s a nice bench under the mulberry-tree. Would you like to sit there and read aloud to Miss Heliotrope for a little? She likes being read aloud to — especially poetry. She’d like this book of English verse you lent me, and the French one too.’ And Maria took the two little books from her pocket and handed them to him. ‘Tea is at five,’ she finished.

Old Parson, a twinkle in his eyes, took the books, bowed to Miss Heliotrope and offered her his arm. ‘Madam,
may I have the honour?’ he said to her. And to Maria he said, ‘Your Royal Highness, the deep-laid schemes of managing women have never until now commended themselves to me. But in yours I willingly entangle myself. For the witchery of the moon is in them, and so brave is the moon, confronting so great a darkness with so small a face, that a man who does not count himself her willing slave is a born fool.’

And with this handsome tribute Old Parson led Miss Heliotrope from the room, and Maria and Robin were alone together. ‘Robin,’ she said, ‘I want you to go up to Sir Benjamin’s room and fetch him down. Bring him here to the parlour window, looking out on the rose-garden, and engage him in conversation.’

‘And how long for?’ asked Robin. ‘And what about?’

‘Until I come back,’ said Maria. ‘I won’t be long. Talk about sheep. Sir Benjamin would stand for hours in one position talking about sheep.’

Then she climbed out of the parlour window and ran across the rose-garden to the farthest hidden end. Loveday had not failed her. She was there, in her grey dress, sprigged with pink, her proud little head bare to the spring sunshine. She was standing very upright, and she looked very regal in spite of her tiny stature, and the briars of the roses were flaunting their new fresh green.

‘Mother Minette,’ cried Maria, flinging her arms round her, ‘the Man from the Dark Woods is coming to afternoon tea.’

Loveday gave a cry of joy and hugged Maria hard. ‘Then you’ve done it, Maria?’ she asked. ‘Oh, you lovely brave little Moon Maiden! But how did you do it, Maria?’

‘It’ll take me hours and hours to tell you everything,’ said Maria. ‘So I’ll have to tell you later. Now, please, Loveday, I want you to take a look through the parlour window at my floral decorations.’

‘Have you made me walk all this way just to look at floral decorations?’ asked Loveday. But she was not
annoyed, only amused.

‘What you’ll see in the parlour window will be worth the walk,’ Maria assured her. ‘Now shut your eyes, please.’

Loveday shut them, and being, like Sir Benjamin, an utterly trustworthy person, she did not even peep through her eyelashes as Maria led her towards the house. The two looked very beautiful coming through the rose-garden hand in hand in their flowered dresses, with the sunshine lighting their fair hair to silvery gold, and a cloud of little birds accompanying them with their bright wings fluttering and their cascading song like showers of light in the blue air. The man and the boy standing in the parlour window stopped talking about sheep and caught their breath in wonder.

‘Now!’ said Maria, and Loveday opened her eyes.

And what she saw was a mass of salmon-pink geraniums, those geraniums that are the pride of Cornwall. They filled the window and the parlour beyond, just as they had done on that evening years ago, before her lover lost his temper and flung them out of the window. And he was standing there in the middle of them dressed in his best cauliflower wig, his Sunday coat and the waistcoat that she had made for him long ago, and gazing at her as though she were the sun and the moon and the stars all rolled into one.

‘Loveday!’ he cried with a great roar of delight, ‘forgive me, for the love of heaven, for having thrown those darned geraniums out of the window, and come in here at once and never go away again!’

And Loveday stepped in through the open window on to the window-seat, and was lifted up into his arms like a child, and Maria ran away like the wind through the formal garden and up the steps to the hall.

‘That’s all right,’ she cried to Robin, who had also fled like the wind from the parlour. ‘That’s one good job done. Shall you mind Sir Benjamin marrying your mother, Robin?’

‘He can if he likes,’ said Robin. ‘I don’t care who marries who so long as
you
marry
me
.’

And he suddenly bellowed with joy in much the same way as Sir Benjamin had done, and flinging his arms round Maria enveloped her in a great bear hug that nearly took her breath away. And all the animals, Wrolf, Zachariah, Serena, Wiggins and Periwinkle (who had now come right into the hall), gathered round them in a circle and roared and miaowed and squeaked and barked and whinnied with joy, while Marmaduke Scarlet stood in the kitchen door with arms akimbo and smiled the very broadest of his smiles, the one when the ends of it ran into his ears and disappeared.