CHAPTER XI
THE COMING OF HERBERT LOWRY
There was no singing of carols nor eating of plum-pudding and mince pies at Larkland that Christmas, you may be sure. Mistress Lowry said that to keep Christmas was to bow the knee to Baal.
Merrylips did not know what that meant, though she thought it had a sinful sound. But at least she did know that on Christmas Day she had nothing better than stewed mutton for dinner, and she was given extra tasks that kept her busy till nightfall.
Indeed Merrylips had so many tasks, while she was under Mistress Lowry's care, that she looked back on her life at Walsover as one long holiday. She had to spin, and to knit, and to read aloud from dull books about predestination and election and other deep religious matters. Worst of all, she had to sit quietly for an hour each day and think about the sinful state of her heart and how she might amend it. If she had not been as sunny-tempered and brave a little soul as ever lived, she would surely have grown fretful and morbid, shut up as she was with poor, sickly, fanatical Mistress Lowry.
Strangely enough, in those dull winter days, Merrylips was much comforted by Will Lowry, who came almost every week on a visit from London. He seemed to like her the better, because she had tried to run away.
Once he brought her from London a silken hood. At first he could not get her to wear it, because it was the gift of a rebel. But later, when Mistress Lowry took the silver ring away from Merrylips, saying that it was a vain, worldly gaud, he bade her give it back to the little girl. After that Merrylips was glad to please him by wearing the hood.
Will Lowry called her Merrylips, too, and that was a comfort, for Mistress Lowry and all the household called her Sybil, a name by which she scarcely knew herself. Better still, when he rode about the fields and farms that belonged to Larkland, he would often take her, boy-fashion, on the saddle before him, or when he walked in Cuckstead village, he would have her tramping at his side. He did not scold her for scrambling over walls and climbing trees. Instead he seemed pleased with her strength and fearlessness.
Once, when they had come in from a long walk in the chill winter weather, and were supping alone on bread and cheese, Lowry said, half playfully:—
"Merrylips, wouldst thou not like to have been born my little daughter?"
Merrylips shook her head sternly.
"I'm daddy's daughter," she said, "and I will be none other's."
"Thou canst not help thyself," Will Lowry answered. "One day thou'lt wed, and so become some other man's daughter."
Then he added, and whether he spoke in jest or earnest Merrylips was too young to know:—
"Upon my word, when thou art five years older, I'll wed thee to my boy Herbert, and so I'll have thee for a daughter in thine own despite."
At least Will Lowry was so much in earnest that from that day he stopped promising Merrylips that some time she should go home to Walsover. Also he began to talk to her of his boy Herbert. He was going to bring Herbert to Larkland soon, he said, and so give her a playfellow of her own years. And she must teach Herbert to play at ball and run and leap, and not to be afraid of a horse.
"Thou art a better lad than he in some regards," said Herbert's father, with what sounded like a sigh. "He is overfond of his book, but a good lad, none the less, and you two shall be dear friends."
Merrylips did not feel drawn toward Herbert by this description, nor was she pleased at Lowry's hint that when she was older she should be Herbert's wife. Of course she knew that some day she should marry, and she knew that girls were often wives at fourteen. Still she did not wish to think of marriage yet, and especially of marriage with a boy who was overfond of his book.
But as the springtime passed, Merrylips grew so tired of Mistress Lowry's gloomy company that she began to think that it would be pleasant to have a boy of her own age to play with, even such a boy as Herbert. So she was more glad than sorry when Mistress Lowry told her, one bright day at Whitsuntide, that a sickness had broken out in Herbert's school, and next week Herbert would come home.
A little while after young Herbert came to Larkland. When he and Merrylips stood side by side, any grown person would have understood why poor Will Lowry wanted Merrylips for a daughter, and would have been a little sorry for him.
Herbert was frail and sickly like his mother. He was two years older than Merrylips, but hardly a fraction of an inch the taller. His hair was whity yellow, and lank, while hers was ruddy brown and curly. His eyes were pale blue, while hers were, like her hair, a ruddy brown. He drooped his head and shoulders. She carried her chest and chin bravely uplifted and looked the world in the face.
Not only was Herbert sickly like his mother, but, as Merrylips soon found out, he was, like his mother, peevish and selfish. Besides, he was a coward. He would not even mount a horse, though his father, to shame him, set Merrylips on his own steady cob and let her trot up and down the courtyard. Worse still, once when his father caught him in a lie and struck him with a riding whip, Herbert whimpered aloud, so that Merrylips was ashamed for him.
But Herbert was not whipped a second time. His mother took his part, and said that he must not be beaten, for he was not strong. Then his mother and his father quarrelled,—so Merrylips heard it whispered among the serving-folk,—and Mistress Lowry took to her bed for a week, and Will Lowry went up to London in some temper.
After that Will Lowry came less often to Larkland. Perhaps it was because the Parliament in which he sat was very busy all that summer. Perhaps it was because he felt himself helpless to contend against his ailing wife. In any case, he stayed away from Larkland, and Merrylips, for one, missed him sorely.
Still, though Merrylips did not like Herbert, they were two children in a dull house full of grown folk, so they were much together. When Herbert felt good-natured, he could tell long stories that he had read in books, about the wars of Greece and Rome and the pagan gods and goddesses. Sometimes he sang, too, in a reedy little voice, and he could make sketches with his pencil such as neither Flip nor Munn nor even Longkin could ever hope to make. At such times as these Merrylips was glad of his company and openly admired his cleverness.
But out-of-doors, at boyish sports, Herbert was worse than useless. He could not climb and run and ride and play as Merrylips did, and he was jealous because she could. He mocked at all she did, and said that, if he chose, he could do it far better, because he was a boy, and she but a paltry girl. He would not let her touch his bat and balls, and once, when he found her peeping into one of his Latin books, he ran and told his mother that she was meddling with his things.
Very soon Herbert found a better way to tease Merrylips than by laughing at her or bearing tales to his mother. Whenever he quarrelled with her, and that was often, he delighted to taunt her with the fact that she was a Cavalier. All Cavaliers, he said, were false and cowardly, and the brave and virtuous Parliament men were beating them soundly.
Here Herbert took an unfair advantage. From his parents he knew all that was happening in England, from the Roundhead standpoint. But poor Merrylips was not allowed to read for herself the letters that were sent her from Walsover and get the Cavalier side of the story. So she had no arguments with which to answer him.
One day in October Herbert told her joyfully that the king's army had been driven back from Gloucester and soundly beaten at a place called Newbury.
Merrylips could answer only that she didn't believe it.
Then he told her that the king had made peace with the murderous Irish, and that he was a false and wicked man.
At that Merrylips used the oldest argument in the world. She clenched her little fists, as she had not done since her eighth birthday, two full years before, and she gave Herbert a smack that sent him blubbering to his mother.
To be sure, Merrylips was well punished for that blow. Mistress Lowry whipped her hands, and prayed over her. Then she sent her supperless to her chamber, and bade her pray that her naughty spirit might be broken.
But Merrylips did not pray. Instead she curled up on the window-seat, and from within her gown took the silver ring that Lady Sybil had left with her, and kissed it and stroked it and talked to it.
"I do think long to be at Walsover," she whispered. "But ere I go, I'd fain smack Herbert once again for a tittling talebearer. Ay, and I'd fain fight the wicked Roundheads, for Herbert and his mother be of their party, and O kind Lord! Thou knowest that they have used me much unhandsomely!"
And if, at that point, under cover of the twilight, a tear or two fell on the silver ring, even Merrylips' big brothers could scarcely have blamed that poor little captive maid.