CHAPTER XVI
BROTHER OFFICERS
When Merrylips next woke, she wondered for a minute where she was. Then she remembered last night. She remembered how Lieutenant Crashaw had led her across the courtyard, and through dim halls and passages, and up a narrow stair. She remembered how he had opened the door of a little chamber and had said:—
"This is thy b-brother's quarters. Thou canst l-lie here for now."
So it was Munn's own room in which she woke. Munn's coats hung on the wall, and on the table, beneath the window, were paper and ink and two bitten apples. Munn must have sat there, writing and eating, before he started on the march from which he had not come back.
At the thought of her lost brother, Merrylips hid her face in the pillow. She was sorry for Munn, who was left a prisoner in the hands of the cruel Roundheads. And she was sorry for herself, too, and sorely afraid of what might happen to her. For if it had seemed hard to be a boy at Monksfield, when Munn was to be there to help her, what did it not seem, now that he was taken from her and she was left to play her part alone?
Still, she never dreamed of telling any one, not even friendly Lieutenant Crashaw, that she was a little girl. She had promised Munn to bear herself as a boy, as long as she stayed at Monksfield. And a gentleman must keep his promise, whatever might happen.
So presently, as a little boy, she should have to meet those brother officers that Munn had told her about. She thought of Captain George Brooke, who would tease, and Lieutenant Miles Digby, who was apt to bully, and Captain Tibbott Norris, from whose path she had been warned to keep herself. She felt that she should never, never have the courage to show her face among them.
But as the morning passed, poor Merrylips grew hungry. And she doubted if there was any one in Monksfield who would bring dinner to a lazy little boy that stayed in bed.
So she got up, and brushed her hair, and smoothed her doublet and breeches, which she had sadly rumpled in her sleep. Then she took from the wall an old red sash and tied it round her waist in a huge bow. It was an officer's sash, and Munn's sash, too. Somehow she felt braver when she had it on.
Like a little soldier and Munn's brother, she marched out of the room and down the stairs into a flagged corridor. Right before her she saw a door that was ajar, and in the room beyond she heard a murmur of men's voices. She shrank back, but just then she smelled the savor of bakemeat. And indeed she was very hungry!
So she sidled through the crack of the door, like a very timid little boy. She found herself in a rude old hall, which was paved with stone and very damp, in spite of the great fire that blazed upon the hearth. Against the wall were benches, and in the middle of the room was an oaken table on which dinner was set out—a chine of beef, and a bakemeat, and leathern jacks full of beer.
Round the table, on forms and stools, were seated five men, who all wore the red sashes of Cavalier officers. At the sound of Merrylips' step on the echoing floor, they looked up, every one of them. In her alarm, she came near dropping them a courtesy like a girl.
"Yonder's l-little Venner, whereof I told you, sir," spoke a voice that Merrylips remembered for Lieutenant Crashaw's.
Then a harsh voice that she did not remember struck in:—
"Come you hither, sirrah!"
A long, long way it seemed to Merrylips she went. She crossed the floor that echoed in a startling manner. She passed the faces that were bent upon her. At last she halted at the head of the table.
The man who sat there was dark, and ill-shaven, and bearded, and his hair was touched with gray. His leathern coat was worn and stained, and his great boots were muddied. Yet Merrylips did not doubt that he was commander in that place. This was the man whom even her big brother feared—the dreaded Captain Tibbott Norris.
For a moment Captain Norris looked at Merrylips, and she looked bravely back at him, for all that she breathed a little faster.
"So you're Venner's brother!" he said at last. "Well, an you grow to be as gallant a lad as Venner, your kinsmen need find no fault in you."
When Merrylips heard Captain Norris, whom Munn had feared, praise him so generously, now that he was gone, she wanted to cry. But she blinked fast and said, with only a little quaver:—
"I thank you—for my brother's sake, sir!"
Captain Norris noticed the struggle that she made. Into his sombre eyes there came a spark of interest.
"How do they call ye, lad?" he asked.
Before she had thought, out popped her own name.
"Merrylips, an't like you, sir."
She heard a chuckle go round the table. She did not realize that Merrylips was a nickname that might be given to a boy as well as to a girl. So she did not dream that the officers were laughing at a little boy who told his pet-name to strangers. Instead she thought that she had told her secret and that they knew her for a girl. At that she was so frightened that she hardly knew what she did.
Captain Norris broke out impatiently:—
"No, no, ye little bufflehead! I asked your given name."
In her fright Merrylips could think of but one name, among all the boys' names in the world. That was the one that had so taken her fancy the day before. She knew that she must not say it. But while she was thinking how dreadful it would be if she did say it, she let it slip off her tongue:—
"Tibbott, sir."
Then indeed she knew that Captain Norris would be angry at her for taking his name. She would have run away, if she had not been too scared to move.
Strangely enough, Captain Norris did not seem angry. He stared at her for a moment. Then he gave a sort of laugh, which the men around him echoed. Indeed, to them it seemed droll, that such a scrap of a lad should bear the very name that Captain Norris had made feared through all the countryside.
"My namesake, are you?" said Captain Norris.
He laid a hand on Merrylips' shoulder, but not unkindly, and drew her to him.
He laid a hand on Merrylips' shoulder and drew her to him.
He laid a hand on Merrylips' shoulder and drew her to him.
He laid a hand on Merrylips' shoulder and drew her to him.
"Sit you down, sir," he bade, "and do me the honor to dine with me, Master Tibbott."
So Merrylips sat beside Captain Norris, on the form at the head of the table, and ate her share of the bakemeat, like a soldier and a gentleman. She meant to be as still as a mouse, for she bore in mind all Munn's warnings. But when she was spoken to, she had to answer, and she was spoken to a great deal.
For those tall officers were very tired of doing and saying the same thing, day after day. They were as pleased with this round-eyed, sober little boy as Merrylips herself would have been with a new plaything. They chaffed her and asked her foolish questions, only to make her talk.
Captain George Brooke, who was tall, with shrewd eyes, asked her if she hoped to win a commission before Christmastide. Nick Slanning, who was hardly older than Merrylips' brother Longkin, wished to know how many rebels she thought she could kill in a day. And when dinner was eaten and the men were lighting their pipes, Miles Digby urged her to take tobacco with him.
Merrylips drew back, a little frightened, but there Captain Norris struck in.
"Let the child be," he ordered sternly. "He's overyoung for such jesting, Digby."
For the first time in hours Merrylips smiled. She moved a little nearer to Captain Norris. Indeed, she would have much liked to say to him, "Thank you!"
But just at that moment the door was pushed open, and a boy came into the mess-room. He did not come timidly, as Merrylips had come. He clanged across the floor, swaggering like a trooper, with his head up. He wore a sleeveless leathern coat, as if he were a truly soldier.
At first Merrylips was so envious of that coat that she did not look at the boy's face. But when he halted at Captain Brooke's side and swung his hand to his forehead in salute, she looked up. Then she saw that he was a handsome boy, brown-haired and gray-eyed, and she knew him for Rupert, Claus Hinkel's little comrade in the far-off times at Larkland.
Now Merrylips might have guessed that if Claus were at Monksfield, Rupert would be there too. But she had not thought about it at all, so now she was taken aback at the sight of him.
She heard Rupert say something to Captain Brooke about what the farrier said of a horse that was sick. She did not much heed the words. Indeed, Rupert himself seemed to make them only an excuse for coming to the mess-room. He lingered, when he had done his errand, as if he waited to be spoken to. But the officers all were busy talking to Merrylips.
They scarcely noticed Rupert till they all rose from table. Then Captain Brooke said:—
"Here, young Venner! Yonder's a playfellow of your own years. Go you with Rupert Hinkel."
So Merrylips was dismissed, with a clap on the shoulder. And presently she found herself outside the house, in a little walled space that once had been a garden.
There she stood and looked at Rupert, and Rupert looked at her. His cheeks were red, and his level brows were knit. She knew that she disliked and feared him, because he had run away from Larkland. And she felt that he disliked her twice as much, but she could not guess why.
"Shall we sit and tell riddles?" drawled Rupert. "Thou art overyoung for me to take thee where the horses are. Thou shouldst not be in garrison, but at home wi' thy mother."
"Thou art not thyself so wonderful old," Merrylips answered hotly.
Rupert laughed.
"Thy sash is knotted unhandily," he said. "Let me put it aright. Thou hast tied it like a girl."
At that word Merrylips grew red and frightened.
"Do not thou touch it!" she cried. "It liketh me as it is."
She spoke so angrily, in her fright, that Rupert grew angry too.
"In any case," he said, "thou hast no right to wear that sash. Thou art no officer."
"Then," said Merrylips, "thou hast no right to wear that soldier's coat. Thou art thyself but a young lad and no soldier."
Surely, there would have been a bitter quarrel, then and there, but just at that moment Slanning and Lieutenant Crashaw sauntered into the garden.
"Hola, young Venner!" Slanning sang out.
"Go to thy friends!" Rupert said, in a low voice. "They'll use thee fairly. I care not, I! 'Tis only little boys like thou are fain to be made much of."
Then Rupert marched away, very stiffly, and Merrylips stood wondering what it was all about. But while she was wondering, Slanning and Crashaw came to the spot where she stood. They set to playing a fine game that Merrylips' brothers had often played at Walsover, a game in which they pitched horseshoes over a crowbar that was driven into the ground some twenty paces away. And part of the time they let Merrylips play too.
So friendly were they all three together that at last Merrylips ventured to ask a question.
"If it like you, Cornet Slanning, may I not wear this sash, even though I be not an officer?"
"Who saith thou art not?" Slanning answered.
Merrylips shook her head. Though she thought Rupert a rude lad, she could not bear tales of him.
"I—I did but wonder," she stammered.
"W-wonder no more!" bade Crashaw. "To be sure, thou art an officer—the youngest one at M-Monksfield, and b-brave as the best, eh, Tibbott?"
"I'll try, sir!" Merrylips answered, and saluted him, just as Rupert had saluted Captain Brooke.
And she did not see why those new brother officers of hers should have laughed aloud!