CHAPTER XVII
"WHO CAN SING AND WON'T SING—"
As soon as Merrylips found that her secret was safe and that she seemed to every one a little boy, she enjoyed her days at Monksfield very much. Indeed, she would have been more than human, if she had not been pleased with all the notice that she won. She was the only child in a garrison of men, and from the horseboys in the stables to the officers in the mess-room, she was petted by all.
The saddlers made her more leathern hand-balls than she could ever use. The smiths let her tug at the wheezy bellows in their sooty forge. The horseboys set her on the bare-backed horses when they led them to water. Even the cross men-cooks in the fiery kitchen made her sometimes little pasties for herself alone.
As for the troopers, they were all her friends. They let her help them, when they cleaned their bright swords or scoured their carabines. They told her endless stories of battles and sieges and of wicked Roundheads that dined on little babies. So terrible were these stories that Merrylips quite shook in her shoes to hear them, yet she could not help asking for more.
Best of all, the officers, whom she had so feared, were almost as kind as if they had been her own big brothers. They laughed at her and chaffed her, to be sure, as a little boy who had been reared too long among women, but on the whole, they all, even rough Miles Digby, were very gentle with her.
Sometimes Merrylips wondered why they were so kind. But it was not until she was much older that she realized that she owed some thanks to Captain Tibbott Norris. By some strange impulse that big, harsh man was moved toward the bit of a lad that bore his own name of Tibbott, and silently he stood his friend.
It was Captain Norris that gave Merrylips her brother's room for her very own. It was Captain Norris that promised to send her, by the first safe convoy, to her kinsfolk at Walsover. Above all, it was Captain Norris that from the very first made all his followers, both officers and men, understand that little Tibbott Venner was under his special care. After that it would have been a very bold man that would have harmed little Tibbott by word or deed.
So Merrylips passed her days at Monksfield, safe and unafraid. Indeed she would have been quite happy, if she had not had two causes for grief that never let her be.
The first was, of course, the loss of her brother Munn. At night, when she lay in his bed, she would think of all the stories that she had heard from the troopers of the cruel way in which the Roundheads used their prisoners. Then she would seem to see her brother, haggard and pale and hungry, shivering half-clad in some dismal prison, and perhaps even struck and abused by his jailers. Often, when she called up that sorrowful picture, she would have cried, if she had not promised Munn that she would bear herself as became a boy.
The second trouble, not so deep as the loss of Munn, but always present, was the unfriendliness that Rupert showed her. He seemed the only soul in the Monksfield garrison that disliked her, and all the time she was so eager to be friends with him!
At the outset, to be sure, Merrylips had been shy of Claus and Rupert, for she remembered how her godmother had suspected them for spies. But when she found that Claus was trusted as a good soldier by all the officers, who were her friends, she dared to think that her godmother perhaps had been mistaken.
So now there was nothing to keep her from being Rupert's playfellow, as she had planned to be, long ago at Larkland. At least, there was nothing except their squabble on her first day at Monksfield. And that she was ready to forgive and forget.
She tried to show Rupert that she was willing to meet him halfway, if he wished to make up. She put herself into his path, but he only scowled at her and so passed by. She hung about, smiling and trying to catch his eye, but he would not even look at her. She could not guess why he should hate her so.
But one day she heard a horseboy jeer at Rupert.
"Thou mayst carry thy crest lower now, young Hinkel," the horseboy laughed. "Thou art level wi' the rest of us, my lad, now that some one else is white-boy, yonder 'mongst the gentry coves."
Very slowly Merrylips began to see what she had done to Rupert. From a word here and a sentence there she gathered that before she came to Monksfield he had been by several years the youngest lad in the garrison, and, as such, a favorite with the officers. They had had him into the mess-room to sing for them, when they were idle, and had laughed and jested with him as a towardly lad. But now that she was there, a younger child and a newer plaything, Rupert was forgotten by his patrons.
When Merrylips found that she had taken Rupert's place, she remembered how she herself had felt when Herbert Lowry came to Larkland, where for such a long time she had been the only child. With all her heart she was sorry for Rupert, and she wondered how she could make up to him for the wrong that innocently she had done him.
While Merrylips was wondering, something happened so dreadful that she feared it could never be put right.
Late one afternoon she was trudging across the great court at Lieutenant Digby's side. She was good friends with Lieutenant Digby, for all that Munn had thought him apt to bully. He had been teaching her to handle a quarter-staff, and had given her some hard knocks, too. But a little boy must not mind hard knocks! Merrylips quite swaggered at the lieutenant's side, and as she went whistled—or thought that she whistled!—most boyishly.
But, to her surprise, the lieutenant cried:—
"Name o' Heaven, what tune is it thou dost so mangle, lad? Is itThe Buff-coat hath no Fellowthou dost hit at? Yonder's a knave can sing it like a blackbird, and shall put thee right."
Then, before Merrylips had guessed what he meant to do, he shouted:—
"Rupert! Ay, thou, young Hinkel! Come hither!"
Rupert was at the well in the middle of the courtyard, where he was drawing a bucket of water for the cooks. He must have heard the lieutenant, for he looked up; but when he saw that Merrylips was with him, he dropped his eyes and did not stir.
Then Lieutenant Digby called a second time, and now his face was stern. So Rupert came unwillingly. He slouched across the court, coatless, with his sleeves turned up, and halted by the porch where the lieutenant and Merrylips were standing.
"Quicken thy steps next time," said Lieutenant Digby, "else they'll be quickened for thee. And now thou'rt here, off with these sullens and singThe Buff-coatfor Master Venner."
Rupert's straight brows met in a scowl.
"I winna sing for him," he said.
As he spoke, Rupert caught his breath. Suddenly Merrylips realized that over against the big lieutenant he was but a little, helpless boy, scarcely older than herself. She knew how shamed she should have been, if she had been made to sing for Herbert Lowry's pleasure. She felt her face burn with pity for Rupert and anger at Lieutenant Digby.
"I do not wish it!" she cried. "He shall not sing the song for me, I tell you!"
But Lieutenant Digby did not heed her in the least. While she was still speaking, he took Rupert by the neck and struck him a sounding buffet.
"Thou wilt not, eh?" he said. "Then we'll find means to make thee."
Merrylips gave one glance at the lieutenant's set face. Then she took to her heels and never stopped running till she had shut the door behind her in Munn's chamber. She knew that Lieutenant Digby meant to beat Rupert till he was willing to sing the song for her, as he was bidden. But perhaps, if she were not there, he would give over his purpose. And if not—oh! in any case she could not bear to stay and see Rupert hurt.
For some time Merrylips waited in the chamber, while she wondered what was happening in the court below. She was standing by the window, which looked into an orchard, and beyond the orchard was a great rampart of earth that had been flung up to defend the house from attack upon that side.
As Merrylips looked out, she saw Rupert steal across the orchard and clamber up this rampart. For a moment she hesitated. Then she mustered courage. She slipped down the stairs, ran out of the house, and followed him.
She found him seated on the top of the rampart. He was resting his chin in his two hands, and he had fixed his gaze on the open country that spread away below him in the gathering twilight. He would not look round, even at her step.
"Rupert," she faltered, as she halted beside him. "I—I am right sorry."
"Get thee away!" he answered between his teeth. "I'm a gentleman's son, I, as well as thou. I'll not buffoon for thee—not for all Miles Digby can do!"
He looked up at her, and tried to speak stoutly, but his face was quivering.
"Get thee hence!" he cried again, and turned away his head. "I'll not be made a gazing-stock, I tell thee! Get thee away, Tibbott Venner, thou little milksop! Truth, I do hate the very sight of thee!"
So Merrylips clambered sadly down the rampart in the twilight, and after that put herself no more in Rupert's way. But she thought of him often, and whenever she thought of him, she was sorry for him, and sorry for herself, as if she had lost a friend.