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_, and _Chevy Chace_, and _The 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
reading _A 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.