The Cuckoo Tree (3 page)

"Sannie," said Lady Tegleaze. "You see this girl?"

"I see her, princessie-ma'am!"

"Look at her hand for me, Sannie!"

Dido was disconcerted when a minute, skinny brown claw shot out of the black-and-white draperies and grabbed her hand, turning it over so that the palm came uppermost. The old woman bent over it, mumbling to herself.

"This girl strong girl—much temper, much willful. Can be angry to push over a house. Can kindly love too. I see her holding gold crown in this hand—she picking it up from ground, she putting it on someone head. I see great pink fish too—"

"Is this in the past or the future?" interrupted Lady Tegleaze.

"Past, future, princessie-ma'am—all one."

"Well, has she any sickness? Is she infectious? Will she harm my grandson?"

Tante Sannie bent over the hand once more.

"For mussy's
sake,
" thought Dido, "what a potheration! All over five minutes' chat with a boy that I'll likely never see again."

"Not sick—no. Strong girl. But something strange here—tree, tree growing. Can't see clear—tree growing, spreading branches over hand. Voices talking in tree—two voices, t'ree voices? Can't see who, tree too thick, too dark. Can't see, can't see, princessie-ma'am!"

The old woman flung down Dido's hand angrily, as if it burnt her, and hobbled away, muttering to herself in a foreign language that sounded like the resentful snarling of cats before they attack one another.

Lady Tegleaze gazed after her rather blankly and stood a moment as if undecided. Then, saying to Dido, "That will do—you may go," she limped into her chamber and shut the door.

Ho, I may, may I? Dido thought crossly. There's gentry for you; full of notions and fancies one minute; then drops you like a bit of orange peel in the midst o' nowhere and leaves you to chart your own course for home.

She darted back the way they had come. Born and bred in the alleys of Battersea, she had no difficulty in retracing her steps through the maze of passages; she found the marble stairs and ran down them.

Gusset was waiting at the foot.

"Frill and Pelmett have set out already, Missie Dwight," he told Dido. "I reckoned you'd rather they started. Be you able to find your way back to the carriage or shall I step along wi' you?"

"Thanks, mister—that's mighty kind of you. But I guess I can manage," Dido said gruffly, touched by the frail old man's thoughtfulness.

"Might I ask summat, Missie Twide?"

"O' course—what is it?"

"I heeard you say as how you were
told
you'd get help here. Might I ax
who
told you?"

"Why—" Dido began. Then she recollected the caution that had been administered by Yan, Tan, Tethera, and the others.

"It was a chap I met along the road, mister. I don't know who he was. He couldn't stop—was a-going the other way, and all in a pucker acos he was going to meet someone."

"You don't know where he was a-going, missie?"

"Why yes, matter o' fact, I do." Dido wondered why the butler was so inquisitive. "I heeard him say he was a-going to a tree—the Cuckoo Tree."

The old man paled slightly. Dido, glancing about the large, bare hall, did not notice this.

"Excuse me," she said civilly, "but would there be a chair somewheres in this here barracks, Mister Gusset?"

"A chair, missie? I'll see if I can find one for you." Puzzled, worried, but anxious to oblige, he hobbled off, murmuring to himself.

"She couldn't have heard wrong, could she? The Cuckoo Tree, she said plain enough. Butter my wig, I wish I weren't so pumple-footed."

In a little while—evidently chairs were not too plentiful on the ground floor of Tegleaze Manor—he came slowly back, carrying a rush-bottomed ladderback with a burst seat.

"Here you be, then, missie; was you wishful to sit down?"

"Thankee, mister; no, it's to get back on my nag," Dido explained. She carried the chair out to the portico, planted it down beside Noakes's gray, and climbed aboard.

"Giddap, Dobbin; you musta had a good rest by now, let's get back quick, eh? Good night, Mister Gusset, and thanks for all you done."

"Good night, Missie Dite." Gusset untied the traces and watched her trot off into the rainy dark. For a few minutes after that he stood indecisively, scratching his white whiskers; then he picked up a sack from a heap lying out in the portico, muffled it about his head and shoulders, closed the great doors behind him, and set off in his turn down the pitch-black avenue.

By the time that Dido arrived back at the overturned carriage a dank and dripping moon was groping out from behind the rain clouds and giving a little light; she saw that the two footmen, Frill and Pelmett, had fastened a rope to the driver's box and were trying to pull the carriage up on to its wheels again.

"That's a cack-handed way o' going on," Dido muttered as, after some unavailing struggles, they stopped and blew their noses.

"What would
you
suggest, then?" Pelmett inquired sourly.

"Why, pass the rope over a tree branch, o' course!"

This was such obvious sense that the two men received it in silence; Frill, without more ado, climbed up on to the bank and tossed the free end of the rope over a stout beech bough that extended some fifteen feet above the road. With the extra purchase thus obtained, it was not difficult to right the chaise. Its only damage proved to be a snapped shaft.

"Will it go?" asked Dido.

"Reckon so. The gray nag looks a bit swymy, though. Best unharness him and put-to the bay again."

While they were doing this Dido climbed into the carriage and found that the unfortunate Captain Hughes was still unconscious.

"Hey, Mister Frill!" she called softly. "Could you help me set the poor chap back on the seat?"

As he assisted her to do so the moon came out fully and Dido was astonished to discover that the upholstery of the chaise had been violently slashed and ripped; the horsehair stuffing lay tossed in thick mounds and masses all over seats and floor.

"How in mussy's name did that come about?" she exclaimed, brushing a handful of horsehair from the Captain's cravat.

"Cushions split in the upset, o' course," Frill said rather scornfully.

Dido thought this improbable, but she made no further comment. Discovering, with relief that Captain Hughes was still breathing, she spread rugs over him and then, while the two footmen searched for Bosky Dick, she went around to the luggage compartment of the chaise, opened the lid, and found, as she had expected, that their two portmanteaux and the Captain's dispatch box were gaping open, and the contents strewn about. She pressed her lips together and nodded to herself.

"Hey, miss! Where did you say the driver was a-lying?" Frill asked. "He don't seem to be noways hereabouts."

"He was in a patch of thistle just there by the road."

Dido walked up the track, now chalk white in the moonlight, to where the two men were standing. But the crushed thistle patch was empty; the driver lay there no longer.

"Musta come to hisself and wandered off," Pelmett said.

"Ah, that'll be it, I'll lay," Frill agreed, nodding wisely. "Bosky Dick alius had a larmentable hard head. Reckon he be halfway back to Chichester by now."

"Well, if you think he'll be all right," Dido said doubtfully, "there's no sense hanging about for him. He warn't no shakes as a driver, anyhows, and I want to get the poor Cap'n bedded and tended as quick as possible. Let's be off."

Pelmett went to the bay's head and they started at a cautious pace, Dido walking beside the carriage, Frill leading the lame gray horse. Captain Hughes stirred and moaned a little.

"Can you go a bit faster, Mister Pelmett?" Dido urged anxiously.

"Just so long's the wheels don't come off," Pelmett agreed, and increased the pace. They had by now reached the spot where Dido met her mysterious guides.

"How far is it to this Dogkennel Cottages?"

"Dogkennel Cottages? Jigger it, is that where we've got to take him?" Pelmett was plainly startled and not too happy at this news.

"That's what the old lady said. She said someone called Mr. Firkin or—or Mrs.—some name like Libbege—'ud look arter him."

"Mrs. Lubbage." Pelmett pronounced the name with distaste. "Well, I dessay she would if she'd a mind to; she'm a wise woman. But I ain't so unaccountable keen to have dealings wi' the old besom. Frill, you can do the talking."

"Not I," Frill said uneasily. "Let the lass talk for herself."

Both men quickened their pace, as if anxious to get the meeting with Mrs. Lubbage over as soon as possible. The white track, now winding between gentle grassy slopes, led into a long shallow valley at the far end of which, under a hill round and bare as a bald head, Dido could see a little row of cottages with one or two outbuildings and a couple of haystacks.

"Them's Dogkennels," Pelmett said with relief.

As they drew near, Dido saw that the cottages were flint built and looked very poverty-stricken. Some of the windows were broken; a few cabbage stalks grew in the derelict garden patches. A dim glimmer of light showed in one window; the rest of the cottages, some three or four in all, were dark.

"I'm skeered," Frill said shivering. "This is an unket place—fair gives me the twets. Can't we stop here?"

"We'd best carry the chap in," Pelmett said. "Old Mis' is sure to ax if we did. 'Sides, there's the doctor's cob; while he's about she 'on't do anything twort."

A stout gray cob was tethered by the door of the cottage with the light in its window. Pelmett looked about him, picked up a rock, and as if reluctant even to touch the door, used the rock to hammer on it.

The door shot open. Plainly they were expected.

"My daffy-down-dilly!" exclaimed the man who
opened to them. "What in the world kept you so long, my dear souls? Have you brought my patient? How is the sad sufferer? Let us fetch him in,
molto, molto allegro!
"

Pelmett and Frill lifted the unconscious man out of the carriage.

"Where'll we set him, gaffer?" Pelmett asked, plainly reluctant to set foot inside the cottage.

"In here, where elsewise?"

But Dido had stepped inside the open door.

"This don't smell right to set a sick man in—it smells downright horrible," she said bluntly. The little room she had entered was slightly below ground level, dimly lit by a rush dip, and it had indeed an evil smell—a damp, warm, sickly, fusty, rotten smell, of old filthy rags, and food gone bad, and burning rubbish, and a queer faint choking sweetness over all. "Ask me," Dido went on, "the air in this place is enough to
make
a body ill."

"Oh, it is, is it? And who asked your opinion, Miss Prussy?" inquired a voice at her elbow. She turned around sharply.

Beside her, studying her with hostility, stood an enormously fat woman, who wore a grubby print dress, and a grubby print apron, and trodden-down slippers. She had her arms folded across the front of the apron. Her face, with tiers of double chins, and small twinkling eyes set in folds of fat, and curly gray hair atop, should have been friendly and jolly, but although the mouth pretended to smile, the unwinking stare of the sharp little eyes made Dido feel very uncomfortable.

"N-no offense, missus," she said politely, "b-but the Cap'n there, being a sailor, is used to lots o' fresh air, and he can't abide being cooped up anywhere stuffy. Reckon he'd be better in a barn or hayloft, if you has one? 'Sides, if this is your kitchen, you won't want a sick person cluttering about in it."

He can't stay here, that's for sure, she thought, her eyes, now used to the dimness, taking in the horrible squalor of the little kitchen, the piles of soiled rags and rotting vegetables, greasy puddles on the uneven brick floor, and peeling, blackened walls.

"Eh! High-up, flarsky, and hoity-toity we are," Mrs. Lubbage said sourly. "Still, there's empty housen a-plenty; if my kitchen's not good enough for you you can take yourself next door. I ain't pitickler where you sleeps, it's all one to
me.
Her ladyship sends a message for me to have an eye to the poor sick gentleman; that's all
I
knows."

"Perchance it would be better to take the patient next door," Dr. Subito agreed with ill-concealed relief. "Can you carry the poor languisher there, my good fellows?"

Not at all reluctant, Pelmett and Frill carried Captain Hughes to another of the empty cottages. The first they tried had been used for keeping chickens in, and was not much better than Mrs. Lubbage's kitchen. But the next was empty and clean enough; it even had a rickety old bedstead which Pelmett stacked with hay while Frill fetched sticks and kindled a fire in the little hearth. By the light of this, and some tapers which the men had brought with them, Dr. Subito was able to examine the Captain.

"A leg is broken, alas, which I will set," he announced, and proceeded to do so, swiftly and deftly. "Otherwise he suffers only from fever and inflammation of his head wound, that is all. The wound received at sea, I understand? Since how long? Two months? And he is recovering
con brio,
up to now?"

"Chirpy as a cricket," Dido said. "The surgeon on board his ship—that's the
Thrush
—told him how when he got to London the doctors there'd likely say he could have his bandages off. It's a plaguy shame this had to happen now. How long'll he be poorly again, mister doctor?"

"He should not be moved for two weeks—three, if this fever does not slip down very quickly. I will come back tomorrow—
subito
—meantime you will find that the large lady—Mrs. Lubbage—is a famous nurse."

"She don't look it—I'd as lief not trouble her," Dido said, wrinkling her nose at the thought of that kitchen.

"
Senti,
young lady, she has the gift of healing, she knows about herbs and charms,
molto, molto,
" Dr. Subito said earnestly. He was a small, spare man, with a sallow complexion and an anxious expression; his large black mustaches were his most lively and vigorous feature. When he spoke about Mrs. Lubbage he glanced somewhat nervously behind him and made an odd, jerky sign with two fingers. "If it were not for the intervention of Mrs. Lubbage, many, many of my patients would not have recovered!" Under his breath he muttered, "And many, many of them would not have fallen ill,
presto alia tedesca!
"