The Child From the Sea

by Elizabeth Goudge

  There was a light shining through the bare branches of trees, and below the trees there was silence. He turned towards the silence, away from the street where homeward bound coaches rattled over the cobbles and men were shouting to each other, and found himself in St. Paul’s churchyard. The lantern was shining in the doorway of the church. The constriction of darkness in his mind became a little less intolerable, for he loved London even when the winds were icy. He loved her beauty and variety and the unexpectedness of her odd corners and crannies; hidden gardens and courts and old graveyards that suddenly confronted one with something unlooked for and entirely different, something eerie and frightening perhaps, or magical, or lovely, or peaceful. He had had queer experiences in these places, one of them the flight of Apollo’s swans in the corner of Greece by the herb stall, and made odd friendships with fantastic people. He liked unusual people. He was quick to win affection and to give it and his heart reproached him now that over Christmas he had forgotten his fantastics. He had even forgotten that extraordinary child Lucy; and she had sent him a kerchief for Christmas crookedly hemmed by herself. And after providing him with a few books hidden in a chest in the church he had forgotten Old Sage. He hoped the parson had not forgotten him but had continued to give him sanctuary.

  He wondered if the old man was there now and he went up the steps and tried the door. It yielded and he went in, to be greeted by a glimmer of glow-worm light that came from the recesses of a box pew. He walked to it and looked in. A lantern stood on the hard seat and by it sat Old Sage, his Socratic face illumined by the light and a book open on his knees; it was Robert’s Greek Testament. The old man heard nothing and his absorption was complete. His lantern did nothing to illumine the duskiness all round him but he sat at the heart of the murk profoundly at peace. Robert could not bring himself to disturb him, nor could he presume to stand there watching the old man’s face too closely.

  He went to a bench at the back of the church and sat there, but still he saw the face. How did a man achieve a peace like that? What had happened to Old Sage? What had his life been? There seemed no likelihood that he could ever know, but he wanted to know, for it was in the fact of men like Old Sage that other men found reassurance. From beginnings older than Socrates, and on to Old Sage, and reaching far beyond him, the thin line of them stretched out, a girdle round the green star that alone forbade the final disintegration into evil. One of them, the greatest of them, buckled them together, his life running through them all like the strength that made the links in a gold chain secure. What had Christ looked like? A hundred times he had longed for the vision to shine out against the darkness of closed eyes. It never came. It seemed one could not see it. Was that because it was the face of them all?

  Something made him open his eyes and look up. Old Sage had become aware of his presence, had come out of the pew and was beckoning to him with his forefinger. Robert joined him and they sat down together beside the lantern, Old Sage returning instantly to his reading. He read with intense concentration, his finger passing along the line as he read. He had brought several books with him into the pew and Robert picked up his own Republic and opened it at random.

  “I mean truthfulness, that is, a determination never to admit falsehood in any shape, if it can be helped, but to abhor it, and love the truth. The genuine lover of knowledge must, from his youth up, strive intensely after all truth.”

  He was reading of the Guardians. It seemed important to him that he should know of whom Old Sage was reading. His eyes followed the moving finger.

  “And Jesus said, I have come to bear witness of the truth. And Pilate said, what is truth?”

  His despair, that had lifted, settled on him again, for in his ignorance he was as Pilate, and Old Sage was dumb. Then it struck him, for the first time, that the answer to Pilate’s question had not been withheld but given on the cross. There alone could men see and know the truth about themselves and God. The difference between most men, himself and Pilate for instance, and the Guardians, the links of the chain that held the world together, was that they had seen, understood and accepted the cross, and the rest had not.

  Old Sage had reached the end of his chapter. He turned to the title page and once more his finger moved. The Testament had come to Robert from his grandfather, the Wizard Earl, and his name was written there. Old Sage touched the inscribed name and pointed to himself. Then he turned to Robert, his deep eyes bright with amusement and affection, and the delight of having found some strong link with a friend. The language of his eyes was extraordinary and Robert grasped his meaning.

  “You knew my grandfather?” he asked.

  Old Sage nodded and smiled and returned to his reading, leaving Robert no nearer knowing what had happened to him. He did not believe in the story of the pirates. It had a theatrical touch about it that was not in keeping with Old Sage. Then suddenly he was ashamed of himself. A man must not probe the history of another. If he is not told it he must remain in ignorance. The vastness of the story that Old Sage was reading filled the darkness of the church and he was able to lose his lesser darkness in the greater and be comforted.

  When Old Sage had finished his reading he closed the book and sat in stillness, his large brown hands folded on it and his head on his breast. He was not asleep, merely at peace. They might have sat there all night, Robert thought afterwards, had it not been for the interruption. The door opened and light steps sounded on the stone floor, children’s steps. He got up and went out into the aisle and saw two forlorn little creatures drifting towards him. The girl’s green cloak gleamed in the dim light but the boy’s brown coat was one with the shadows. But not his face, rosy and solemn, with brown eyes beneath a broad and wise forehead. The face seemed to float towards Robert and he loved it. Then he saw that the boy had been crying, not very much, for his face was not blotched, but a little. His lashes were still wet and his eyes bewildered. Though he was the younger of the two he led his sister protectively. “Please, sir,” he asked, “is Old Sage here?”

  “He is in that pew,” said Robert. And because he had recognized the cloak and hood he bent down and said gently, “Lucy?”

  The hood fell back from her face as she lifted her head. She looked blanched and old, no longer a child, but she had not been crying. She tried to tell Robert something and could not. It astonished him that Lucy, of all people, should be bereft of words and needing the help and protection of a younger brother. He spoke for her.

  “Our Nurse has died, sir,” he explained. “She died this afternoon and we are on our way to tell our father. Lucy wants to tell Old Sage too. She thought he might be here. He liked Nan-Nan.”

  Old Sage himself was now beside them and he was without surprise. He held out his hand to Lucy, led her back to the glow-worm light of the box pew and shut the door. Robert had the feeling that Nan-Nan’s death had been known to him for some hours, and that because of it he had chosen today to read St. John’s account of the passion of Christ. He also judged that this was not the first time he had taken care of Lucy in a time of grief that threatened to be too much for her.

  He and Justus sat down together on a bench in the shadows. “You two did not walk?” he asked incredulously. In such disturbed times two children walking together in the dusk was hardly safe, and it was a long way from St. Giles.

  Justus nodded. “We have to tell our father,” he explained. “He loves Nan-Nan and he cannot come to the house because—because—”

  “I know,” said Robert gently. The gossip about the Walters’ matrimonial troubles was known to him. “Do your mother and grandmother know where you are?”

  Justus shook his tousled head. “My grandmother is looking after my mother. But we left a message with the gardener.”

  “When Lucy has finished with Old Sage I will take you both to your father,” he said.

  They sat silently together, Justus with his head bent, for speaking of Nan-Nan had made the te
ars well up again and he was ashamed of them. For the children Nan-Nan’s death had come as a profound shock. She had been as usual all that morning but during her afternoon’s sleep she had died with Lucy sitting beside her. Sitting beside John Shepherd Lucy had known that he was going to die, but no one had realized how near Nan-Nan was to her departure. That any old person could die so suddenly and easily had added a new terror to Lucy’s life. It could happen to their grandmother at any time, and then there would be no firm ground whatever beneath their feet.

  “I go back to school tomorrow,” said Justus forlornly. “I am late going back because I had a great cold. But I go tomorrow.”

  Robert was able to follow his thought. “We will all look after Lucy for you,” he said.

  “You are not me,” Justus said.

  There was no contraverting the truth of that statement and Robert was glad to see Old Sage and Lucy coming towards them hand in hand. Lucy was still without the relief of tears but her face was now the face of a sad child, not a stricken old woman. Old Sage had eased her. He let go of her hand, smiled at the three of them and went straight back to his box pew, shutting the door behind him. Looking back from the church door Robert and the children found the sight of his glow-worm light wonderfully re­assuring. It looked as though it shone out from Old Sage himself.

  2

  William had found lodgings in Charing Cross, at the top of a tall old house tucked in behind the Palace of Whitehall, and from his attic window he could look between two of the Palace towers over a courtyard and see the river and ships going up and down, and hear the gulls calling. Here he was not too unhappy, and not too far from Lucy or from Westminster, where his wife’s appeal for separation was once more being considered. He hoped and believed that he would be given custody of his children. Then he would take Lucy back to Roch. Justus, his heart set on Grays Inn, would have to stay at school but he would come home for the summer holidays. What Richard would choose to do William did not know. He was his mother’s.

  He was sitting at the table before his fire of sea-coal, laboriously writing down what he was going to say to their lordships, when he heard a knock on the door below. The rest of the house was inhabited by the family of one of the Palace servants, hospitable folk who had many visitors, and he took no notice, hearing voices only vaguely through the agonies of literary composition. Then to his surprise he heard steps coming up the last flight of stairs that led to his two rooms, and it sounded like the children. But it was only very occasionally that his brother-in-law Barlow, still in London settling the affairs of a dying relative, was allowed to bring his children to see him, and never at this late hour.

  Then a knock came at his door, he opened it and Lucy was in his arms; but silently, her face hidden against his shoulder. It was Justus who once again had to put it into words, and doing so for the second time was almost more than he could manage. Having spoken he leaned his head against his father’s coat sleeve. William, shocked and bewildered, for Nan-Nan’s steadfastness and loyalty had meant more to him than he had known until this moment, looked across at Robert and wondered who the fellow was, intruding himself upon him at this hour. Why the devil did he not go away? William disliked such men, wearing their distinction as they wore their fine clothes, with an assurance that made other men feel rumpled and fuddled and inferior. And he seemed on intimate terms with the children, damn him. Who was he?

  “I found Lucy and Justus making their way on foot, sir,” said Robert. “I will leave them with you now. My name is Sidney. May I come back later with the coach and take the children home?”

  So this was Robert Sidney, of whom Lucy had told him, the fellow who was presuming to play a father’s part to his daughter in his absence. “I will take my children home myself, sir,” he said stiffly. “I possess a horse. You need not trouble yourself.”

  “Another evening, may I return? Sir, I am very pleased to make your acquaintance. And I am sorry for what has happened.”

  His pleasant voice had exactly the right intonations of courtesy and sympathy. These fellows knew how to turn on the charm, William thought savagely. Yet when his angry miserable eyes met Robert’s he was aware of assuagement. The man was not acting a part. His grey eyes shone with genuine sympathy and kindness. William mumbled something about being honoured and Robert smiled and went away so quietly that they scarcely heard him go. Though the children and their father instantly forgot him he yet remained with them as a breath of coolness in the hot uncomfortable misery of tears. For Lucy, in William’s arms, was able to cry.

  3

  March came with snowdrops in the gardens and the pale gleam of celandines in the hedges, and though the dawns were chill the birds sang for joy of the growing light, and when Lucy opened her window to hear them the air smelt of violets, though as yet she had found none under the dead leaves in the unicorn wood. But she found minute buttons of coral buds on the brambles, and the green of dog’s mercury among the leaves, and when she left the wood and looked back from the far end of the field she saw how the trees in the silvery sunshine were clothing themselves in pale amethyst and paler coral, in faint crimson and dun gold, one colour fading into the other as the colours do on the iridescent breast of a bird. Who would have believed that bare twigs and the outer casings of hard buds could have produced this feather softness. Even when the sun went in, and the light spring rain swept across them like a curtain, their colour was not quite extinguished but remained tangled in the silver shower like a lost rainbow.

  March passed into April and like a rainbow Lucy’s happiness began to reappear through the sorrows of this time. Her longing for Nan-Nan would be with her for ever, and the dilatory reluctance of the law had as yet brought no settlement between William and Elizabeth, only increasing bitterness that shamed their children, but Lucy was learning to live both with the longing and the shame, to love her father as her firstborn and her mother as much as she could, and to pay no attention to what they said about each other. She was like a mother with two quarrelling children confined in different rooms, and went from one to the other with tolerant tenderness.

  The circle of her motherliness was for ever growing larger, widening at the end of April to include the royal family of England. It did not strike her that this was ridiculous for she never considered her feelings, she only had them.

  It began on the day that Uncle Barlow took her to Westminster Hall to watch the trial of the Earl of Strafford. He had only intended taking her to London Bridge to buy a green girdle, a farewell gift from him before he went back to Wales, but driving home they saw the people streaming to Westminster Hall and Uncle Barlow thought that here would be a show that any child would enjoy. In an impulse of great kindness he dismissed the coach and he and Lucy joined the crowd. “Come on, Lucy,” he said, “you will see Prince Charles and the King and the Queen.” And at mention of Charles Lucy was alight with eagerness, though she would have gone anywhere with Uncle Barlow for they were fond of each other. He was a burly man, good-natured, jovial and insensitive. He liked Lucy because she was pretty and lively and she liked him because he was kind, and because he appreciated her father.

  Near the entrance to the Hall they got jammed tightly in the crowd, and there was so much noise and argument that Uncle Barlow stood Lucy on a mounting block, out of harm’s way. The trial, that had been going on for some weeks, was drawing to its close, with the Earl fighting skilfully and with increasing courage as things worsened for him. Black Tom Tyrant was winning admiration and sympathy even from his enemies, and men were saying that there are always two sides to a penny, but the admiration was coming too late and he had been hated for too long for it to make much difference now. The crowd was gay as well as quarrelsome, reflecting the mood of London at this time. Summer would usher in some of the most tragic years of England’s history, and London sensed that and realized that within Westminster Hall the tragedy was already in being, but against that dark background there was
being played out an exquisite little masque of youth and charm and loveliness; tactfully arranged just at this time to distract public opinion from the thundercloud.

  For the Prince of Orange, fifteen years old, was now in England to marry the Princess Mary, who was nine years old. The people round Lucy were talking of the fairytale procession of fifty coaches that had brought the charming young prince and his father through the city to Whitehall. He went every day, they said, to visit his little bride, and they were as happy and loving together as a prince and princess in a fairytale. A charming prince, he was, yet their own Prince Charles, who was four years younger, was nearly as tall. Ah, he was a wonderful boy! They would see him in a moment. He attended the trial every day, sitting on the dais to represent the monarchy. A woman near Lucy cried out that it was a wicked thing to make a child of eleven attend a trial for treason, Prince of Wales though he might be, but indignant voices shouted her down, the crowd began to move again and Uncle Barlow lifted Lucy from the mounting block.

  Westminster Hall, lofty and splendid with its roof of Spanish chestnut, was full. The sun shone down on the rows of the commissioners seated in front of the great west window, on the uniforms of the soldiers standing on guard and on the ranks of ladies and gentlemen who were privileged spectators in the galleries to right and left. The lower end of the Hall was railed off for the citizens of London and the benches were as full as the galleries. Nevertheless Uncle Barlow, softening the impact of physical strength by the charm of personal affability, got himself and his niece to the front. “You can see it all from here, Bud,” he said triumphantly. He had adopted her father’s nickname for her and she let him do it because he was her father’s crony.