THE TART THAT WAS NEVER BAKED
Welladay, as Merrylips would herself have said, 'twas passing strange,
the way of wise, grown folk, even of such kind folk as her own dear
godmother!
Merrylips had thought that the bed in the great chamber would be made
ready at once for Rupert. She had thought that she herself should
be allowed to sit by him and tend him, as if he had been indeed her
brother. But instead Lady Sybil, with her usual kindness for the sick
and needy, neither more nor less, bade make a bed for the boy in the
chamber above the ox-house, where some of the farm-servants used to
lodge. And though she went herself to see that he was made comfortable,
she would not let Merrylips go near him.
"But I thought 'twould pleasure you," Merrylips faltered, "to aid one
that was a soldier to the king."
"And so it doth, sweetheart," said Lady Sybil, and bent to kiss her.
"Thou didst well, no doubt, to bring the poor lad hither. But ere I let
thee speak with him further, I must know whether his illness be such
that thou mightst take it, and moreover I must know what manner of lad
is he."
Lady Sybil spoke with her own kind smile, but as she turned away
Merrylips saw that a shadow of trouble was on her face.
A little dashed in spirits, though she could scarcely say why, she ran
to Goody Trot for comfort. Up and down the many stairs of Larkland she
sought in vain for the old woman, till at last, as a most unlikely
place, she looked into her chamber. And there she found Goody Trot, all
in a flutter, busied in sewing a tawdry necklace and three broad pieces
into the covering of her bolster.
"Never do I look to see the light of morn!" cried the poor old soul, as
soon as she saw Merrylips. "We's all be robbed of goods and gear and
slain as well, with two murderous Spanish spies lying beneath our roof."
It was useless for Merrylips to say that Claus and Rupert were neither
spies nor Spaniards.
They were foreign folk, were they not, Goody Trot asked. Go to, then!
All foreigners were Spaniards, and had not the Spaniards, in her
girlhood, sent a great fleet to conquer England? Now that there were
rumors of war in the air, Goody Trot was sure that the Spaniards were
coming again, and that Claus and Rupert were spies, sent before the
general army.
It was almost as sad when Merrylips left the old woman and sought out
Roger, the butler. She found him loading an old snaphance, over which
he cocked his head wisely. These were troublous times, he hinted, and
there were those not a thousand miles away who might be fain to see the
inside of Larkland. Let them but try, and they should see more than
they bargained on, he ended, with a grim chuckle, as he fondled his
snaphance.
"But they are friends unto us, Rupert and Claus," cried Merrylips.
"They are soldiers to the king whom we serve."
"And how know you that, mistress," asked the old man, "save by their
own telling? And how know you that they tell the truth?"
In all her life Merrylips had never thought that any one could really
lie. Wicked people did so, she had been told, but she had never dreamed
that she herself should ever know such people. It hurt her now to
believe that Rupert could have lied to her who had trusted him. Yet if
he had not lied, Roger, her tried old friend, who called him false, was
harsh and cruel.
It was a torn and tossed little heart that Merrylips carried to her
godmother to be quieted, at the hour of twilight when they usually
talked together.
"It is not true," she said stormily. "Oh, dear godmother, now that you
have seen Rupert, you know it is not true--the evil things they all are
saying of him."
"I know that he is ill and weary, poor lad!" said Lady Sybil, but when
Merrylips would have protested further, she hushed her.
"Think not too harshly of thine old friends that they suspect this new
friend thou hast made," she counselled. "Remember these are days when
every man in this poor country doth suspect his fellow--when brother is
arrayed against brother. We know not whence these two strangers come."
"Claus told me--" Merrylips began.
"Ay," said Lady Sybil, "he told thee somewhat, even as thou didst tell
it unto me, but, child, when I questioned him, he unsaid much that he
had said aforetime."
Then, touched by the little girl's sorrowful silence, Lady Sybil made
haste to add:--
"It may be the poor soul was but confused and frightened. He seemeth
none too ready of wit, and hath small skill in our language. In any
case, my dear, time will show whether he be true man or false, and to
time we'll leave the proof."
But at eight years old it is not easy to leave a small matter to time,
let alone so great a matter as the proving of a dear new friend. Lady
Sybil might go comfortably to her bed, but for Merrylips that night
there was no rest. Between dozing and dreaming and waking to doze
again, she thought about Rupert, her little soldier of the king.
So much to heart she took the charge of falseness that all the
household made against him that she felt as if he must somehow know of
that charge and suffer under it. She longed to do something to show him
that she, at least, believed in him. Sleepily she wondered which one of
her treasures she might give him by way of comfort. Should it be her
dear whittle, or her best ball, or her own crossbow?
The light of the summer dawn was just breaking in the chamber when
Merrylips sat up in her bed. She had been struck with a fine idea. She
would give Rupert a cherry tart of her own baking. He would like a
cherry tart, she knew. Any boy would! Besides, she must put herself to
some pains to bake it, and she was glad to sacrifice herself for the
sake of poor Rupert whom every one distrusted.
As soon as Merrylips had made up her mind, she began to wonder why she
should not rise at once and go pluck the cherries for the tart. Then
she decided that that would be a very wise thing to do,--indeed, that
she ought to do it, and by such industry she should greatly please her
godmother.
So up she got, at four o'clock in the morning, and dressed herself
swiftly. She tied a little hood over her flyaway hair, and an apron
round her waist to hold the cherries. Then she slipped out at the
garden door, just as the cocks were crowing, and ran through the dewy
grass to the great tree in the corner of the garden, where the duke
cherries grew.
When once she was seated on high among the branches, Merrylips
could look over the wall of the garden. On her right hand she saw
the ox-house and the wain-house and the stable, all faintly gray
in the morning light. Almost beneath her ran a footpath from these
outbuildings. It skirted the garden wall until it reached the corner
where stood the duke cherry tree, and there it led into the fields.
With her eyes Merrylips followed this path. It made a narrow thread of
darkness among the grasses that were white with dew, until it was lost
in a hazel copse. Beyond the copse the sun was rising, and the sky was
flushed with a strong red that dazzled her eyes, so that she had to
turn them away.
Just at that moment Merrylips heard a sound of cautious footsteps on
the path below, and a hoarse exclamation. She looked down, but she was
so dazzled that for a second she could not see clearly. Then on the
path below she saw Rupert standing. She was surprised, not only to see
him there, but to see him alone, for she had thought that the voice
that she had heard was not his, but Claus's.
Still, she could not stop to wonder about this, for here was Rupert,
looking up at her with a piteous, startled face. She could not bear
that for a single minute he should think her unfriendly, like the rest
of the household.
"Good-morrow, Rupert!" she called gayly. "You're early afoot. Fie! So
ill as you are, you should lie snug abed. My godmother will be vexed
with you."
For a moment Rupert thrummed his battered cap and cast down his eyes.
"I stole forth. I was starved for a sup o' fresh air," he muttered.
"But now--I will go back."
"Best so!" nodded Merrylips. "And oh, Rupert!" she leaned from her
perch to add: "Ere noontime I'll have something rare to show you."
He looked up at her then, and blinked fast with his gray eyes. If he
had been a younger boy, she would have said that he was almost crying.
So sorry did she feel for him that she was very near telling him about
the cherry tart, but she checked herself, and tried another means of
comfort.
"Rupert," said she, "would you like to see my crossbow? Old Roger gave
't me,--ay, and I can hit the white at twenty paces. Would it pleasure
you to see it?"
"Will you go now to fetch it?" Rupert asked in a low voice.
Merrylips nodded, and tossed him a cluster of cherries.
"Do you wait me here," she bade, as she made ready to climb down from
the tree. "You will await me, Rupert?"
He kept his eyes on the ground beneath the garden wall,--the little
strip of ground that Merrylips could not see. After a moment he bowed
his head, and then, as Merrylips swung herself downward from branch to
branch, she lost sight of him.
In breathless haste Merrylips ran to her chamber. There she flung down
the cherries, and bundled into her apron her crossbow and her ball and
her top and all her other treasures.
Then out she posted, in the light that now was broadening, and ran
through the garden gate into the path to the spot where she had left
Rupert. She found footprints in the gravel, and under the wall the
elder bushes were crushed as if a man had crouched there, but she found
no other sign of human creature.
Sadly enough Merrylips trudged back to her chamber and put away the
playthings that Rupert had not cared to see. She felt that she should
have been angry with him, if it were not that she was his only friend
in Larkland and must be faithful to him. And perhaps, she tried to
excuse him, he had been too ill to stay longer out-of-doors. She did
not blame him for going back to his bed, and she would make him the
cherry tart, just the same.
When the rest of the household rose for the day, Merrylips said no word
of Rupert, for at heart she was still a little hurt. But she took the
cherries in a pipkin and sat down to stone them on the shady bench by
the garden door. She was thinking, as she did so, how all would be made
right between her and Rupert, when she carried him the little tart.
Perhaps he would even say that he was sorry that he had broken his
promise to her.
Just then Mawkin came bustling to her side.
"Lackaday, mistress," cried Mawkin, "but you are lessoned fairly, and
mayhap next time you'll hark to the words of them that be older and
wiser than you, a-vexing her sweet Ladyship and a-setting the house
by the ears, as you have done, with fetching in of graceless vagrom
wretches, no whit better than they should be!"
"You have no right so to speak of Rupert!" cried Merrylips, hotly.
"And have I not?" Mawkin took her up. "Look you now, my lady her kind
self hath just been unto the ox-house to minister to that vile boy,
and he and the man are both gone hence--stolen away like thieves under
cover of night. Now what do you say unto that, Mistress Merrylips?"