Dido and Pa (12 page)

All the doors were locked, though there seemed little purpose in this, as many of the cold, high-ceilinged rooms were unfurnished. One was piled high with clothes, very gorgeous clothes—Mrs. Bloodvessel's, perhaps, from some earlier period of her life. One of the three attics, as Dido had
expected, was the room she had been shut up in. The attics were approached by a ladder.

Pa and Mrs. B. must have had the dickens of a job hoisting me up there, thought Dido with a grin.

The stairs to the upper floors were so steep that a ship's rope ran up beside them instead of a rail.

In a room on the third floor Dido found some articles that she recognized as belonging to her father: several hoboys, a dusty spinnet with one key missing, some shoes, some books, lying on the floor; and a bundle of music. There was also a rather nice bag of her own, with blue flowers on it, which a fagott-playing friend of her father's had once given her; it had vanished long ago, when she was seven or eight. It held a comb and a razor. Fancy it being here all that time, Dido thought; wonder how many years Pa has been coming to this house?

If Pa had to pick a lady friend, she thought, walking into another room and inspecting it with her candle, wouldn't you think he'd pick one with a bit better looks and better temper? Mrs. B. seems just as disagreeable as Ma, there's naught to choose between 'em.

Of course it's true Mrs. B. has a house of her own—leastways one she rents from the margrave, thought Dido, descending the stairs to the first floor.

The rooms here were even higher. What a lot o' locked rooms, thought Dido, going from one to another. What a lot o' keys. Suppose I were to collect all the keys from all the houses in the street; suppose I were to pile up all the keys in
London. What a pile that 'ud be. High as a church tower, very likely. All made so folk can keep themselves private. Wonder who first made a key and stuck it in a lock? Pa ought to write a bit o' music about keys and locks.... You'd have one part for the lock—with a kind of space in it, a-waiting—and then the other part for the key, long and thin...

Blimey, I ain't
half
tired, thought Dido.

She was now in a room that contained a four-poster bed, a three-legged stool, and a sailor's chest; it was the most fully furnished chamber she had yet discovered, and she decided that it would have to do for the bandaged gentleman. There were no sheets or blankets, but she recalled piles of such coverings in the all-purpose room where her father and Mrs. Bloodvessel spent their time. Slipping back there, she helped herself to an armful of bedding, also some other comforts: a candle, lucifer matches, a plate and mug, and a tin basin.

"That's the dandy, my serviceable sprite," murmured her father, who neither helped nor hindered these activities but drowsily reclined on the bed by Mrs. Bloodvessel, occasionally picking out a pattern of notes on his hoboy.

"
Dido Twite, a serviceable sprite,
" he warbled, and as Dido climbed the stairs a second time with her load she heard him begin to set those words to a slippery, catchy little tune which he repeated in several different keys.

Just fancy! thought Dido, Pa's gone and made up a tune about me! and she could not help feeling rather proud, with
part of her mind, though the other half wished impatiently that her father would do something more helpful about the bandaged guest.

When the upstairs room had been rendered as comfortable as seemed possible, she returned to the hall and laid her hand upon the bandaged man's arm.

"Will you please to follow me up the stairs, mister?" she said, and took his hand to lead him. He came after her bid-dably, and appeared quite content with the room—what he could see of it through his eyeholes; though, thought Dido, it must seem poor and bare compared with any chamber in the margrave's establishment.

"D'you want any supper, mister?" inquired Dido, wondering what she would do if he said yes. But luckily he shook his head. Maybe he can't eat, with his mouth all bandaged up, she thought; but then, to her great surprise, he carefully unwound the bandage from around the upper and lower parts of his face and head, leaving only the portion covering his nose. There seemed nothing wrong with the expanse of skin thus uncovered.

"Croopus! What was the point of all them bandages then?" Dido exclaimed.

"His excellency thought it best—" said the man, after clearing his throat. "So that I should not be recognized in the street; or tempted to speak, you know..."

Dido stared at him, really puzzled now, studying what she could see of his face.

"Great fish, sir, ain't you the king?" He shook his head.
"Well you're as like him as one pin to another. Did you know that? Are you his brother?"

He shook his head again.

"No, there is no kinship. And I was not so like him before. My nose was a different shape from his, but his excellency's doctor has changed that"—he touched the bandaged nose delicately; "and now
you,
it seems, have to teach me to speak exactly like his majesty."

"Yus; and I can see I'm a-going to have my work cut out," said Dido bluntly. "You ain't even English, are you?"

"No, I am Dutch. But I speak the English very well. My name is Henk van Doon."

"But what's the point? Why should the king have a ringer?"

"?"

"A double, a look-alike."

"Oh, it is not at all uncommon. To take the king's place if he feels ill; or for boring business—you know, opening hospitals, cutting ribbons, talking to burgomasters—"

"Mayors," corrected Dido. "And you should say it bur-gomasster—that's the way the king does—short, like that."

"Mayors, I thank you.
Masster.
Many royal persons have such a double-goer to save them trouble. I am—I am to be a gift from his excellency the margrave to his cousin the king."

"Well,
I
think it's right rum. And you must have to keep it mighty dark. Once folk got to know, they'd everlastingly be a-wondering whether they'd got the real 'un—the real king—or only the ringer."

"Oh, yes, I shall have to live very private. People must not know."

"But do you
want
to do it?" Dido stared at him. "Ain't you got anything else you'd
rather
be doing? Seems a shravey kind of life. What did you do before?"

"I am an actor—a comic actor, a clown."

"Well?" demanded Dido. "Ain't
that
better than letting on to be a king, allus cutting ribbons? What's the point? Making jokes, making folk laugh, is better. I know which
I'd
rather!"

Henk van Doon suddenly looked desperately sad.

"My child, you do not understand. The jokes left me. They flew away."

"Why?"

"I had a hard loss. My dear wife, my little daughter of six years—they caught the cholera. They died. How can I make jokes then?"

"Send your voice
up,
at the end," absently corrected Dido. "'Make jokes
then?'
"

"
Then.
I thank you. How can I make jokes
then?
"

"So what did you do?"

"The heart went out of me. I was starving in the streets of Leyden. And a man from his excellency's household saw me; I was brought to him at his house in Bad Wald; he said he would pay me well to play this part of king, all I need is a new nose, and to learn to speak like King Richard—"

"If you could go and live with the king, in his house, that would be best—and study the way he talks—"

"But then too many people would know that there are two of us."

"Humph. No, it ain't easy, I see," pondered Dido.

A flight of joyful notes rose from below, like birds circling upward on an evening wind, and steps were heard on the stairs.

"Here comes Pa. Have you all you want, mister?"

"Yes, I thank you, my good child."

"See you in the morning, then, mister, and we'll talk some more."

"
Oh, tooral eye ooral eye agony,
" sang Mr. Twite ascending the stairs:

"
Oh, pickle a pocket of rye.
If a man can't find cheer in a flagon, he
Might as well lie down and die.

That's well, that's good, my fairy Time you betook yourself to the downy. Time all juvenile females was abed.
I'll
take care of the visitor," said Mr. Twite loftily. And he lurched past his daughter, who began climbing the ladder toward her own attic, greatly relieved at the prospect of being able, at last, to lie down and sleep. Halfway up, though, she remembered her promise to take down some bedding to the Slut. Poor little devil, huddling alone there in that damp cellar hole without a scrap of cloth to cover her; it's not to be borne, thought Dido angrily; and she turned round and went downstairs again. Her father, in the Dutchman's room,
seemed to be singing the visitor to sleep. Dido wondered if van Doon was glad of this attention.

Mrs. Bloodvessel still snored in the lower room by the last glow of the fire. Taking a tattered but ample quilt, Dido made off with it to the basement, past the locked door of the lollpoops' room (inside which she could hear a faint murmuring and shuffling like a flock of starlings settling to sleep). There's
another
lot of poor devils, but croopus, I can't find quilts for all of 'em, and anyways, I reckon they must all keep each other warm, packed together like pickles in a jar; and anyhow, Pa's got the key...

Thinking about keys, she slipped into the Slut's room and heard a faint gasp of fright.

"It's all rug—it's only me, Dido. I brung you a comforter, like I said. Don't make a row or Pa'll hear."

Mr. Twite's music had returned to the ground floor; apparently the Dutch gentleman had not welcomed his lullabies.

"Ain't that a rip-smashing tune, though," sighed Dido, as the notes of the hoboy scribbled a silvery pattern above their heads.

"It makes me want to spew!" croaked the Slut suddenly from her dark corner. "Gives me a pain in me belly. Makes me want to lob me groats."

"
Pa's music
does? My blessed stars! Why?" demanded Dido, really amazed; though after a moment she thought she began to guess the answer.

"I
hates
that cove. She treated me a bit better before he come to live here. I just wisht he was dead."

It was astonishing that such a tiny, bony creature, crouched in such a damp, dark cellar, could speak with such ferocious force.

"Well—dunno as I blame you," murmured Dido. "Still—you know—it don't do no
good
to think that way. Here. Have a warm-up"—and she felt her way across the room and wrapped a capacious fold of the quilt around the Slut, who, however, shook it off fiercely.

"I don't want his mucky quilt. Or hers!
They
don't give me one. She don't! He don't! You swiped it."

"Well, blister me, girl," remonstrated Dido. "You'll freeze to
death
down here, one o' these nights. You wants to stay alive, don't you?"

"Yus," agreed the Slut, after some thought about this. "And give 'im and Mrs. B. a taste o' their own!"

"Well, then. Wrap up."

"
No,
I tell-ee. I don't
want
her slummocky quilt."

The Slut was crying with rage now. Dido's gift of half a fagot seemed to have fortified her with a fiery spirit and sense of her wrongs.

"All right; suit yourself," said Dido crossly, and started for the door. But she trod in a puddle on the way, and heard something scuttle along beside the wall. She stopped again.

"I can't leave you in this nook-shotten place with nowt—Was that a rat?"

"There's plenty rats," sobbed the Slut indifferently. "Ten rats for every 'uman, they say. Rats don't bother me. I got a cat. Hain't I, Figgin?"

A sound between a waul and a snarl answered her.

"Figgin had a bite o' fagot too," said the Slut with pride. "We looks arter each other."

"I reckon Figgin wouldn't say no to a bit of quilt to curl up in," suggested Dido shrewdly. "You oughta think of him as well as yourself."

There was a silence. Then—

"Would you stay too?"

Dido's mind filled with longing for the attic.

Shut up in it, this morning, she had found little in its favor. But now how peaceful, airy, and clean it seemed—far cleaner, at least, than this dank den.

"Guess I will, if you want me," she said reluctantly.

"If 'e finds you here in the morning, mebbe 'e won't give me the stick. Or not so much. 'E thinks a deal o' you."

"How do you know that?" said Dido doubtfully.

"'Eard 'em talk. 'That Dido'll make all our fortunes yet,' he say to 'er."

"What the pize could he mean by that?" wondered Dido, arranging herself and the Slut in the driest corner—which she could by now make out, tolerably well, by the light of passing barges. It was much harder to see Figgin, who seemed to be pure black; but by the feel of him he must be the scrawniest, boniest cat in Wapping, with a coat as bristly as a doormat and a tendency to bite. "You keep Figgin on your side," Dido recommended.

"Now: tell me summat," said Is.

"What? Tell you what?" yawned Dido, who was dying to go to sleep.

"
I
don't care. Anything! You musta seens lotsa things. I never had no one to keep me company afore."

"How long have you been here?"

"Dunno. Since I can remember."

"Is Mrs. B. your ma?"

"Dunno. She never say. Tell me summat!"

In her mind's eye Dido could dimly see all the adventures of her life, like a huge tapestry covered with tangled pictures: trees and rivers; ships and horses; people, good, bad, or wicked; mountains bursting into flames; St. Paul's Cathedral sliding into the Thames; rough seas filled with whales; men firing guns; cats carrying messages in the collars round their necks. There seemed far too much to put into words.

Instead, she remembered the pile of keys she had imagined as she climbed the stairs.

"Once there was a king as lost the key to his money-box," began Dido dreamily. "So he made a law that everyone in the whole country hadda bring all their keys and lay 'em in a heap in front of St. Jim's Palace. So he could find if any of 'em fitted. All the folk brought their keys: church keys, stable keys, desk keys, strongbox keys, door keys, watch keys, clock keys—"