Elizabeth Goudge - The Little White Horse, PDF
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THE LITTLE WHITE HORSE
BY
ELIZABETH GOUDGE
To Walter Hodges with all my thanks
COPYRIGHT, 1946, BY ELIZABETH GOUDGE
First American Edition, 1947
CONTENTS
I MARIA ARRIVES AT MOONACRE MANOR 1
II MARIA EXPLORES HER NEW HOME 33
III MARIA MEETS OLD PARSON 54
IV THE ADVENTURE WITH THE BLACK MAN 72
V MARMADUKE SCARLET AND ZACHARIAH THE CAT 84
VI THE STORY OF SIR WROLF MERRYWEATHER 101
VII LOVE DAY MINETTE 124
VIII THE ADVENTURE ON PARADISE HILL 146
IX PARADISE HILL IS RETURNED TO GOD 185
1
X THE CASTLE IN THE PINE WOODS 205
XI THE LITTLE WHITE HORSE 239
XII HAPPILY EVER AFTER 263
THE LITTLE WHITE HORSE
It was under the white moon that I saw him., The little white horse, with neck arched high in pride.
Lovely his pride, delicate, no taint of self Staining the unconscious innocence denied Knowledge of
good and evil, burden of days Of shame crouched beneath the flail of memory.
No past for you, little white horse, no regret, No future of fear in this silver forest-Only the perfect
now in the white moon-dappled ride.
A flower-like body fashioned all of light, For the speed of light, yet momently at rest, Balanced on
the sheer knife-edge of perfection; perfection of grass silver upon the crest Of the hill, before the
scythe falls, snow in sun, Of the shaken human spirit when God speaks In His still small voice and
for a breath of time All is hushed; gone in a sigh, that perfection, Leaving the sharp knife-edge
turning slowly in the breast.
The raised hoof, the proud poised head, the flowing mane?
The supreme moment of stillness before the flight, The moment of farewell, of wordless pleading
For remembrance of things lost to earthly sight.
Then the half-turn under the trees, a motion Fluid as the movement of light on water .. .
Stay, oh stay in the forest, little white horse! .. .
He is lost and gone and now I do not know If it was a little white horse that I saw, Or only a
moonbeam astray in the silver night.
2
CHAPTER I
MARIA ARRIVES AT MOONACRE MANOR
The carriage gave another lurch and Maria Merryweather, Miss Heliotrope and Wiggins once more
fell into each other's arms, sighed, gasped, righted themselves and fixed their attention upon those
objects which were for each of them at this trying moment the source of courage and strength.
Maria gazed at her boots, pushing them out from under the
carriage rug for that purpose. Miss Heliotrope restored her spectacles, jolted from her aquiline nose
by the swaying of the carriage, to their proper position, picked up the worn brown volume of French
Essays from the floor, popped a peppermint in her mouth and peered once more in the dim light at
the wiggly black print on the yellowed page. Wiggins meanwhile pursued with his tongue the taste
of the long-since-digested dinner that still lingered among his whiskers. Humanity can be roughly
divided into three sorts of people, those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort
in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food, and Miss Heliotrope, Maria and
Wiggins were typical representatives of their own sort of people.
Maria must be described first because she is the heroine of this story. In this year of grace 1842 she
was thirteen years old and was considered plain, with her queer silvery-grey eyes that were so
disconcertingly penetrating, her straight reddish hair and thin pale face with its distressing freckles.
Yet her little figure, small as that of a fairy's child, with a backbone as straight as a poker, was very
dignified, and she had exquisite tiny feet, of which she was inordinately proud. They were her chief
beauty, she knew, which was why she took, if possible, a more burning interest in her boots than in
her mittens and gowns and bonnets.
And the boots she had on today were calculated to raise the lowest spirits, for they were made of the
softest grey leather, sewn with crystal beads round the tops, and were lined with snow-white lamb's
wool. The crystal beads, as it happened, could not be seen, because Maria's grey silk dress and
warm grey wool pelisse, also trimmed with white lamb's wool, reached to her ankles, but she herself
knew they were there and the thought of them gave her a moral strength that can scarcely be
overestimated. She rested herself against the thought of those beads, just as in a lesser degree she
rested herself against the thought of the piece of purple ribbon that was wound about her slender
3
waist beneath the pelisse, the little bunch of violets that was tucked so far away inside the recesses
of her grey velvet bonnet that it was scarcely visible, and the grey silk mittens adorning the small
hands that were hidden inside the big white muff. For Maria was one of your true aristocrats; the
perfection of the hidden things was even more important to her than
the outward show. Not that she did not like the outward show. She did. She was a showy little thing,
even when dressed in the greys and purples of the bereaved.
For Maria was an orphan. Her mother had died in her babyhood and her father just two months ago,
leaving so many debts that everything he possessed, including the beautiful London house with the
fanlight over the door and the tall windows looking out over the garden of the quiet London Square,
where Maria had lived throughout the whole of her short life, had had to be sold to pay them.
When the lawyers had at last settled everything to their satisfaction it was found that there was only
just enough money left to convey her and Miss Heliotrope and Wiggins by coach to the West
Country, a part of the world that they had never seen, where they were to live with Maria's nearest
living relative, her father's cousin, Sir Benjamin Merryweather, whom they had never seen either, in
his manor house of Moonacre in the village of Silverydew.
But it was not her orphaned state that had depressed Maria and made her turn to the contemplation
of her boots for comfort. Her mother she did not remember; her father, a soldier, who had nearly
always been abroad with his regiment, and who did not care for children anyhow, had never had
much hold upon her affections; not the hold that Miss Heliotrope had, who had come to her when
she was only a few months old, had been first her nurse and then her governess, and had lavished
upon her all the love that she had ever known. If she had lost Miss Heliotrope that would have been
a different story altogether. No, what was depressing Maria was the wretchedness of this journey
and the discomfort of country life that it surely foreboded.
Maria knew nothing about the country. She was a London lady born and bred, and she loved luxury,
and in that beautiful house looking out on the London Square she had had it; even though it had
turned out at her father's death that she really oughtn't to have had it, because there had not been the
money to pay for it.
And now? Judging by this carriage there would not be many comforts at Moonacre Manor. It was
an awful conveyance.
4
It had met them at Exeter, and was even more uncomfortable than the stage coach that had brought
them from London. The cushions on the seat were hard and moth-eaten, and the floor had chickens'
feathers and bits of straw blowing about in the icy draughts that swept in through the ill-fitting
doors. The two piebald horses, though they had shining
coats and were obviously well loved and well-cared for, a fact which Maria noticed at once because
she adored horses, were old and stout and moved slowly. And the coachman was a wizened little
old man who looked more like a gnome than a human creature.
He was clothed in a many-caped greatcoat so patched by pieces of material of all colors of the
rainbow that it was impossible even to guess at its original color, and a huge curly-brimmed hat of
worn beaver that had perhaps once belonged to Sir Benjamin because it was so much too large for
him that it came right down over his face and rested
upon the bridge of his nose, so that one could scarcely see anything of his face except his wide
toothless smile and the grey stubble upon his ill-shaven chin. Yet he seemed amiable and had been
full of conversation when he tucked them up in the carriage, covering their knees tenderly with a
torn and tattered rug, only owing to his lack of teeth they had found it difficult to understand him.
And now in the thick February mist that shrouded the countryside they could scarcely see him
through the small window in the front of the carriage. Nor could they see anything of the country
through which they were passing. The only thing they knew about it was that the road was so full of
ruts and pits that they were jolted from side to side and flung up and down as though the carriage
were playing battledore and shuttlecock with them. And soon it would be dark and there would be
none of the fashionable new gas lamps that nowadays illumined the London streets; only the deep
black awful darkness of the country. And it was bitterly cold, and they had been traveling for what
seemed like a century, and still there seemed no signs of their ever getting there.
Miss Heliotrope raised her book of essays and held it within an inch of her nose, determined to get
to the end of the one about endurance before darkness fell. She would read it many times in the
months to come, she had no doubt, if this dreadful carriage were any indication of the kind of life
that awaited her at Moonacre Manor--together with the one upon the love that never fails. This last
essay, she remembered, she had read for the first time on the evening of the day
when she had arrived to take charge of the motherless little Maria, and had found her charge the
most unattractive specimen of a female infant that she had ever set eyes upon, with her queer silvery
eyes and her air, even in babyhood, of knowing that her blood was blue and thinking a lot of herself
in consequence.
5
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THE LITTLE WHITE HORSE
BY
ELIZABETH GOUDGE
To Walter Hodges with all my thanks
COPYRIGHT, 1946, BY ELIZABETH GOUDGE
First American Edition, 1947
CONTENTS
I MARIA ARRIVES AT MOONACRE MANOR 1
II MARIA EXPLORES HER NEW HOME 33
III MARIA MEETS OLD PARSON 54
IV THE ADVENTURE WITH THE BLACK MAN 72
V MARMADUKE SCARLET AND ZACHARIAH THE CAT 84
VI THE STORY OF SIR WROLF MERRYWEATHER 101
VII LOVE DAY MINETTE 124
VIII THE ADVENTURE ON PARADISE HILL 146
IX PARADISE HILL IS RETURNED TO GOD 185
1
X THE CASTLE IN THE PINE WOODS 205
XI THE LITTLE WHITE HORSE 239
XII HAPPILY EVER AFTER 263
THE LITTLE WHITE HORSE
It was under the white moon that I saw him., The little white horse, with neck arched high in pride.
Lovely his pride, delicate, no taint of self Staining the unconscious innocence denied Knowledge of
good and evil, burden of days Of shame crouched beneath the flail of memory.
No past for you, little white horse, no regret, No future of fear in this silver forest-Only the perfect
now in the white moon-dappled ride.
A flower-like body fashioned all of light, For the speed of light, yet momently at rest, Balanced on
the sheer knife-edge of perfection; perfection of grass silver upon the crest Of the hill, before the
scythe falls, snow in sun, Of the shaken human spirit when God speaks In His still small voice and
for a breath of time All is hushed; gone in a sigh, that perfection, Leaving the sharp knife-edge
turning slowly in the breast.
The raised hoof, the proud poised head, the flowing mane?
The supreme moment of stillness before the flight, The moment of farewell, of wordless pleading
For remembrance of things lost to earthly sight.
Then the half-turn under the trees, a motion Fluid as the movement of light on water .. .
Stay, oh stay in the forest, little white horse! .. .
He is lost and gone and now I do not know If it was a little white horse that I saw, Or only a
moonbeam astray in the silver night.
2
CHAPTER I
MARIA ARRIVES AT MOONACRE MANOR
The carriage gave another lurch and Maria Merryweather, Miss Heliotrope and Wiggins once more
fell into each other's arms, sighed, gasped, righted themselves and fixed their attention upon those
objects which were for each of them at this trying moment the source of courage and strength.
Maria gazed at her boots, pushing them out from under the
carriage rug for that purpose. Miss Heliotrope restored her spectacles, jolted from her aquiline nose
by the swaying of the carriage, to their proper position, picked up the worn brown volume of French
Essays from the floor, popped a peppermint in her mouth and peered once more in the dim light at
the wiggly black print on the yellowed page. Wiggins meanwhile pursued with his tongue the taste
of the long-since-digested dinner that still lingered among his whiskers. Humanity can be roughly
divided into three sorts of people, those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort
in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food, and Miss Heliotrope, Maria and
Wiggins were typical representatives of their own sort of people.
Maria must be described first because she is the heroine of this story. In this year of grace 1842 she
was thirteen years old and was considered plain, with her queer silvery-grey eyes that were so
disconcertingly penetrating, her straight reddish hair and thin pale face with its distressing freckles.
Yet her little figure, small as that of a fairy's child, with a backbone as straight as a poker, was very
dignified, and she had exquisite tiny feet, of which she was inordinately proud. They were her chief
beauty, she knew, which was why she took, if possible, a more burning interest in her boots than in
her mittens and gowns and bonnets.
And the boots she had on today were calculated to raise the lowest spirits, for they were made of the
softest grey leather, sewn with crystal beads round the tops, and were lined with snow-white lamb's
wool. The crystal beads, as it happened, could not be seen, because Maria's grey silk dress and
warm grey wool pelisse, also trimmed with white lamb's wool, reached to her ankles, but she herself
knew they were there and the thought of them gave her a moral strength that can scarcely be
overestimated. She rested herself against the thought of those beads, just as in a lesser degree she
rested herself against the thought of the piece of purple ribbon that was wound about her slender
3
waist beneath the pelisse, the little bunch of violets that was tucked so far away inside the recesses
of her grey velvet bonnet that it was scarcely visible, and the grey silk mittens adorning the small
hands that were hidden inside the big white muff. For Maria was one of your true aristocrats; the
perfection of the hidden things was even more important to her than
the outward show. Not that she did not like the outward show. She did. She was a showy little thing,
even when dressed in the greys and purples of the bereaved.
For Maria was an orphan. Her mother had died in her babyhood and her father just two months ago,
leaving so many debts that everything he possessed, including the beautiful London house with the
fanlight over the door and the tall windows looking out over the garden of the quiet London Square,
where Maria had lived throughout the whole of her short life, had had to be sold to pay them.
When the lawyers had at last settled everything to their satisfaction it was found that there was only
just enough money left to convey her and Miss Heliotrope and Wiggins by coach to the West
Country, a part of the world that they had never seen, where they were to live with Maria's nearest
living relative, her father's cousin, Sir Benjamin Merryweather, whom they had never seen either, in
his manor house of Moonacre in the village of Silverydew.
But it was not her orphaned state that had depressed Maria and made her turn to the contemplation
of her boots for comfort. Her mother she did not remember; her father, a soldier, who had nearly
always been abroad with his regiment, and who did not care for children anyhow, had never had
much hold upon her affections; not the hold that Miss Heliotrope had, who had come to her when
she was only a few months old, had been first her nurse and then her governess, and had lavished
upon her all the love that she had ever known. If she had lost Miss Heliotrope that would have been
a different story altogether. No, what was depressing Maria was the wretchedness of this journey
and the discomfort of country life that it surely foreboded.
Maria knew nothing about the country. She was a London lady born and bred, and she loved luxury,
and in that beautiful house looking out on the London Square she had had it; even though it had
turned out at her father's death that she really oughtn't to have had it, because there had not been the
money to pay for it.
And now? Judging by this carriage there would not be many comforts at Moonacre Manor. It was
an awful conveyance.
4
It had met them at Exeter, and was even more uncomfortable than the stage coach that had brought
them from London. The cushions on the seat were hard and moth-eaten, and the floor had chickens'
feathers and bits of straw blowing about in the icy draughts that swept in through the ill-fitting
doors. The two piebald horses, though they had shining
coats and were obviously well loved and well-cared for, a fact which Maria noticed at once because
she adored horses, were old and stout and moved slowly. And the coachman was a wizened little
old man who looked more like a gnome than a human creature.
He was clothed in a many-caped greatcoat so patched by pieces of material of all colors of the
rainbow that it was impossible even to guess at its original color, and a huge curly-brimmed hat of
worn beaver that had perhaps once belonged to Sir Benjamin because it was so much too large for
him that it came right down over his face and rested
upon the bridge of his nose, so that one could scarcely see anything of his face except his wide
toothless smile and the grey stubble upon his ill-shaven chin. Yet he seemed amiable and had been
full of conversation when he tucked them up in the carriage, covering their knees tenderly with a
torn and tattered rug, only owing to his lack of teeth they had found it difficult to understand him.
And now in the thick February mist that shrouded the countryside they could scarcely see him
through the small window in the front of the carriage. Nor could they see anything of the country
through which they were passing. The only thing they knew about it was that the road was so full of
ruts and pits that they were jolted from side to side and flung up and down as though the carriage
were playing battledore and shuttlecock with them. And soon it would be dark and there would be
none of the fashionable new gas lamps that nowadays illumined the London streets; only the deep
black awful darkness of the country. And it was bitterly cold, and they had been traveling for what
seemed like a century, and still there seemed no signs of their ever getting there.
Miss Heliotrope raised her book of essays and held it within an inch of her nose, determined to get
to the end of the one about endurance before darkness fell. She would read it many times in the
months to come, she had no doubt, if this dreadful carriage were any indication of the kind of life
that awaited her at Moonacre Manor--together with the one upon the love that never fails. This last
essay, she remembered, she had read for the first time on the evening of the day
when she had arrived to take charge of the motherless little Maria, and had found her charge the
most unattractive specimen of a female infant that she had ever set eyes upon, with her queer silvery
eyes and her air, even in babyhood, of knowing that her blood was blue and thinking a lot of herself
in consequence.
5
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