CHAPTER IV
AT LARKLAND
Next day, when the storm was over and the sky was a windy blue, Merrylips rode in her godmother's coach to her godmother's house of Larkland. And there at Larkland, with the godmother that she had so feared to meet, Merrylips lived for almost a year and was very happy.
Larkland, to be sure, was a tiny house beside great Walsover. There were no lads to play with, and there were no dogs, except one fat old spaniel. There was no great company of serving-men and maids to watch at their tasks and be friends with. Neither was there a going and coming of guests and kinsfolk to keep the house in a stir.
Yet Merrylips found much to please her. Though the house was little, it was very old. It was said to have a hidden chamber in the wall, such as great Walsover could not boast. And with her own eyes Merrylips could see that there was a moat, half choked with water-weeds, and a pond full of carp that came sluggishly to the surface when crumbs were flung to them.
Though there were not many servants, there was among them an old butler, who all his life had served Lady Sybil's father, the Duke of Barrisden. He taught Merrylips to shoot at the butts with a crossbow, and while he taught her, told her tales of how, as a young man, he had gone with his Grace, the duke, to fight the Spaniards at Cadiz and to serve against the Irish kerns in Connaught.
There was too an old, old woman who had been nurse to Lady Sybil's mother. She sat knitting all day in a warm corner by the kitchen hearth or on a sunny bench against the garden wall. This old woman, in her old, cracked voice, would sing to Merrylips long ballads—The Lord of Lorn and the False Steward, andChevy Chace, andThe Fair Flower of Northumberland. At such times Merrylips listened with round eyes and forgot to miss her brothers.
But dearer to Merrylips even than Roger, the butler, or Goody Trot, the old nurse, or even Mawkin, her own kind maid from Walsover, was her godmother, Lady Sybil. For Lady Sybil, dwelling in that forgotten corner of Sussex, with only her few servants, was, as she had said, a lonely woman. She had a heartful of love to give to Merrylips, and it was a love that had wisdom to find the way to lead the little maid to what was for her good. So Merrylips, to her own surprise, found herself presently sewing seams and making tarts and toiling over lessons. In short, she did all the tasks that she had hated to do at Walsover, yet now she did them happily.
This was partly because she felt that she should do the bidding of her godmother, who so plainly loved her, and partly because the tasks were put before her in so pleasant a way. When she sewed seams, she was learning to make shirts and handkerchiefs for Longkin and Munn and Flip. When she baked a burnt and heavy little pasty, she was learning to cook—a knowledge that in camp might prove most useful to a gentleman. When she struggled with inky pothooks, she was learning to write long letters to her dear, big brothers.
There were other lessons, too, that Merrylips had not had at Walsover. Lady Sybil taught her Latin, in which she was herself an apt scholar, and Merrylips set herself eagerly to learn this tongue, because it was what her brothers studied.
Lady Sybil gave her easy lessons in surgery and the use of simples. Sometimes she even let her be present when she herself dressed the hurts or prescribed for the ills of the poor folk of Cuckstead, the little hamlet that lay hard by the walls of Larkland. This art Merrylips was glad to be taught, and she spoke often of the use it would be to her when she was a grown lad and went to the wars.
Somehow, when once she had put this secret hope into words and her godmother had not laughed, Merrylips began herself to feel that such a thought was babyish. In those quiet days at Larkland she began to grow up and to realize, with bitter disappointment, that she was likely to grow up a girl. She talked of this sometimes at twilight with her godmother, and was much comforted.
"For thou mayst have all the true virtues of a lad, dear little heart," Lady Sybil would say. "Thou canst be brave and truthful as any of thy brothers, not fearing to bear hard knocks, but fearing to bestow them on any that be weaker than thyself. I do not chide thee that thou wouldst be a man, my Merrylips, but I would have thee more than that—a gentleman."
So Merrylips tried to be a gentleman. She tried not to show a naughty temper, nor speak rudely to the serving-folk, but to be courteous and considerate always of those about her. And at times she found this a far harder task than sewing seams or reading Latin.
But life at Larkland was far from being all tasks. There were hours when Lady Sybil played to Merrylips upon the lute or the virginals and sang sweet old songs. There were other hours, while they sat together at their sewing, when Lady Sybil told wondrous tales of what she had done when she lived with her father in Paris and at the Hague and in great London town.
"I had no brothers as thou hast, Merrylips," said Lady Sybil, "but I had one dear sister, Venetia, and a sad madcap she was! By times thou dost mind me of her, honey."
One wintry afternoon, when she had talked for a long time of the Lady Venetia's pranks and plays in their girlhood together, Lady Sybil fetched a miniature from a cabinet in her chamber and showed it to Merrylips. It was the portrait of a girl of much the same age as sister Puss, Merrylips thought—a beautiful girl, with soft brown hair parted from a white forehead, and eyes that laughed, and a finger laid upon her rosy lips. On the upraised finger, Merrylips noticed, was an odd ring of two hearts entwined, wrought in what seemed dull silver.
"This is my sister Venetia," said Lady Sybil. "So she looked at eighteen, save that she was fairer than any picture."
"She is not so fair as you, godmother mine!" Merrylips declared.
Lady Sybil smiled in answer, but faintly. Indeed, as she looked upon the picture, she sighed.
"And is she dead, this sister you did love?" Merrylips hushed her voice to ask.
"Ay, long years dead," Lady Sybil answered. "'Tis a piteous tale that some day thou shalt hear, but not till thou art older."
She put away the miniature and spoke no more of the Lady Venetia. But all the rest of the day she seemed burdened with heavy thoughts.
But at most times Lady Sybil, although she seemed to Merrylips so very old, was a gay companion. At evening, when the fire danced on the hearth and the reflected glow danced on the oak panels of the parlor wainscot, she would dance too, and she taught Merrylips to dance. Sometimes even she would play at games of hunt and hide, all up and down the dim corridors and shadowy chambers of the old house. When they were tired, Lady Sybil and Merrylips would sit by the hearth and roast crabs or crack nuts, and Merrylips, like a little gentleman, would pick out the nut-meats for Lady Sybil.
By day, in the pale sunlight, they would walk in the garden and scatter crumbs for the birds that found it hard to live in the rimy days of winter. Or they would stroll through tiny Cuckstead village, where Lady Sybil would talk with the cottage women, and Merrylips would talk with the rosy village lads of lark-traps and badger hunts and the best way in which to cover a hand-ball.
So the days trod on one another's heels. Merrylips heard the waits sing beneath her chamber window on a Christmas eve of frosty stars. Almost the next week, it seemed, Candlemas had come, and she had found a pale snowdrop in a sheltered corner of the garden and run to lay it in Lady Sybil's hand. Then each week, almost each day, she found a new flower by the moist brookside, or heard a new bird-note in the budding hedgerows, till spring had come in earnest, and it was Whitsunday, and in good Sussex fashion Lady Sybil and Merrylips dined on roast veal and gooseberry pudding.
From time to time, through these happy months, Merrylips had had letters, all her own, from her kindred. Her mother had written to bid her remember her duty to her godmother, and Pug to say that she was readingA Garland of Virtuous Dames. Munn had written twice, and each time had said he hoped that there would soon be war in England, for 'twas time that the king's men schooled the rebel Roundheads to their duty. Then Merrylips remembered the two lads that she had seen at fisticuffs in the London street, and wondered if it were true that outside of peaceful Larkland grown men were making ready to fly at one another's throats, and found it hard to believe.
But soon after Whitsuntide Merrylips had a letter from Flip, which Lady Sybil read aloud to her. Flip wrote boastfully that he too was soon to see London, as well as Merrylips, only he, being a lad, was to ride thither as a soldier. Father was raising a troop to fight for the king, and he and Longkin and Munn were going to the wars. Maybe, he added loftily, he would send Merrylips a pretty fairing from London, when he had entered the town as a conqueror.
"Oh," cried Merrylips, most dismally. "I would I were a lad! Here'll be brave fighting, and Flip will have a hand therein while I must sit at home. I do so envy him!"
There Lady Sybil hushed her, laying an arm about her neck.
"Little one," she said, "thou knowest not what thou dost say. War in the land meaneth burned houses and wasted fields and slain men—men dear unto their daughters and their sisters, even as thy father and thy brothers are dear unto thee. Oh, little heart, instead of wishing to look on the sorry work of war, pray rather that peace, even at this late hour, be granted to our poor England."
Now Merrylips understood little of this, except that she grieved her godmother when she wished for war. So she did not speak again in that strain, but in her heart she hoped, if war must come, that she might somehow have a share in the fighting, as well as Flip. She even at night, when she had prayed for peace as Lady Sybil bade, added a prayer of her own:—
"But if there be any tall soldiers must needs come into these parts, grant that I may be brought to have a sight of 'em!"
Once, in a roundabout way, she asked Mawkin if this prayer were likely to be granted.
"Lawk, no!" cried Mawkin. "There's be no soldiery come into this nook-shotten corner. Put aside that whimsey, mistress."
But Merrylips still said her little prayer, and, in spite of Mawkin, it was answered, for before the month was out two of the king's soldiers had indeed come to Larkland.