The Cuckoo Tree (9 page)

"Utchy old besom," Dido thought, taking her key from under a stone, where Mr. Firkin had left it. "Anyone can tell as manners weren't thought much of where
you
was reared!"

Rather more clumsily than usual, she fitted the key into the lock.

And all the time, as she turned it, opened the door, and let herself in, she could feel Mrs. Lubbage's malevolent stare boring into her shoulder blades.

"Consarn it!" exclaimed Dido, as the bucket of chicken food slipped out of her hand, falling heavily on her toe.

"What's to do, darter?" mildly inquired old Mr. Firkin, coming out of the cowshed with his two pails of milk.

"I dunno why it is—my fingers is all thumbs today. I spilt a bowl o' hot water on the Cap'n's bed, and I dropped our breakfast eggs in the fire, and hit my thumb with a hammer when I was a-fixing the leaky window, and caught the other one in the rat trap you lent me, and broke my tortoise-shell comb that a friend in Ameriky gave me, and now I've bin and dropped the hens' grub all over my feet—not that the hens care."

Dido was standing in a sea of chickens, who were vigorously pecking her toes and ankles.

"My hands feel greasy all the time," she grumbled. "I wash and wash, and it don't right 'em."

"Sounds to me like Mrs. Lubbage overlooked ye," Mr. Firkin said gravely. "Have ye got on the mouldywarpses' clawses?"

Dido clapped a hand to her neck and remembered that she had taken off Mr. Firkin's protective charm when she went to bed.

"My stars! Do you really think—"

But she remembered the wise woman's long, angry stare as she sat before her door in the moonlight.

"I'll fetch those claws right away," Dido declared, and did so, before sitting down to breakfast with Mr. Firkin. And whether it was because the claws gave her more confidence, or really had power against bad wishes, her run of ill luck seemed to have ended for the time; she gave the Captain his breakfast, made up his bed, and had the satisfaction of hearing him say that he felt somewhat better and thought his leg was mending.

"I fancy that by tomorrow or the next day I could walk with a crutch, if one could be procured," he said.

Mr. Firkin, when asked, said he could fettle one up, but it would take him two-three days. Or there was a chap in Petworth, Godwit by name, who generally had one or two crutches and such gear in his shop.

"The lame gray coach horse is a-mending, too," Dido said. "Reckon if the doc agrees it's all rug for Cap'n Hughes to walk a bit, I could ride in to Petworth, tomorrow maybe, and see what this Godwit has in stock." Godwit, she thought; I heard that name somewheres just lately; where was it now?

Dr. Subito did not come that day, however, and meanwhile the Captain, really not as strong as he made out, was glad enough to lie and doze, wake for a short time, eat or
drink a little of the invalid fare provided by Gusset, and sleep again.

During the afternoon, when the invalid was in a sound slumber and seemed likely to remain so for some time, Dido, first carefully locking him in, slipped away to the Cuckoo Tree, taking a roundabout route in case anybody was watching. Mr. Firkin was off with his flock at a distance, Mrs. Lubbage nowhere to be seen. There had been no sight or sound, either, of Cris all day, though Dido had once or twice stuck her head through the loft opening and listened intently. She could not help feeling a bit anxious about Cris. Mrs. Lubbage had seemed so very angry about the basket of food—and Cris was the nearest scapegoat at hand, unless you counted the brindled rat.

But when she at length reached the Cuckoo Tree, on its steep slope of grassy hillside, Dido thought at first there was nobody in it.

"Cris? Are you there?" she called softly.

No sound came from the dark, thickly massed foliage above.

"Might as well climb up, though," Dido thought, noticing that the corkscrew with its bit of ribbon had been removed from the trunk. "Looks like someone's been here."

Up she went, quick as a squirrel—and found Cris, lying in a bushy hammock of yew needles.

"Hey, didn't you hear me—" Dido began, and then saw that Cris was fast asleep, curled up, knees to chin, one cheek pillowed on a fold of dirty sheepswool jacket, which he had thrown around him, and clutched like a comforter.
His cheeks were streaked with tears and one had a mark on it, half bruise, half cut.

"Blame it," Dido thought angrily, "that old scrow has been a-larruping of him, and it's my fault, partly; I ought to a waited till she came home, 'stead o' taking the basket. But the Cap'n was
that
hungry—how's a body to act?"

Troubled, uncertain what to do for the best, she sat and watched the sleeping Cris. Time passed, and the pale November sun moved toward a furry shoulder of hill behind which it would soon dip. "Hadn't I best wake him?" Dido wondered. "It'll be right parky soon—and the Cap'll be stirring presently. But Cris does sleep
so
sound."

Presently, though, the sleep began to be broken by little whimpers and twitches; letting go of his sheepswool jacket, Cris started to suck his thumb; a tear trickled from the corner of his closed eye; then the eyes opened, and he was awake, and terrified.

"Easy there; easy!" Dido arrested his first frantic scramble for the trunk. "It's only me—Dido, remember? We was talking here afore. I brought you some vittles. Mr. Gusset fetched some down from the Manor, and I reckoned as how you might be glad of a bite. Here—it's only bread and cheese, but it's good."

She went on talking calmly while she pulled out the packet of food and handed Cris a large slice of brown bread and hunk of cheese. "You get that inside you, you'll feel better. There's apples, too, for afters; I didn't like to carry a bottle o' drink in case old Madam Lubbage was a-looking out her back window."

Cris took one or two cautious bites and then bolted the food down ravenously, eating all the cheese first, and the bread next; his trembling quieted and presently he gave a deep sigh.

"Did the old girl beat you much?" Dido asked quietly.

Cris nodded. "She was in a rage last night when I got home. She asked me where I'd been and I wouldn't say, so she beat me. Being beaten's nothing. But she said she was going to listen to my dreams all night and then she'd know where I'd gone. I don't know what I'd do if she found this place."

"Croopus," muttered Dido. "D'you reckon she
could
listen to your dreams?"

"I don't know," Cris said. "I stayed awake. I stood up all night and pricked my arm with a bramble thorn so I wouldn't fall asleep. That was why I was so tired today. Auntie Daisy went off at noon to physick someone's sick cow, so as soon as she left I came here."

Between sentences Cris was taking bites from the second apple; he finished by chewing and swallowing the core. Then he sighed again.

Dido gulped and said gruffly, "Cris, it was my fault the old girl beat ye, acos I nicked a basket o' groceries outa her nasty dirty kitchen and that riled her. So I feel right bad about it and this is to say I'm sorry. Well, go on, take it: it's for you!"

Cris stared wonderingly at the little object that Dido held out in the palm of her hand. It was a tiny whale, carved from ivory.

"I brought it back from Ameriky," Dido explained. "The sailors make 'em on the whaleboats when they've nowt else to do."

Timidly Cris took it and turned it over and over. "It's pretty."

"You could wear it round your neck on a string—there's a loop on the tail, see? Maybe it'd keep off back luck—like Mr. Firkin's mouldywarpses' claws."

Cris made no answer.

Dido, rather hurt, was beginning to wonder if he didn't think much of her gift—which she had really hated to part with—when he suddenly said,

"It
is
lucky. Aswell says so. It will help me find—something I never knew—that I had lost."

He spoke in a dreamy, listening way, as if he merely passed on the words of someone else, and then lay back, relaxed and peaceful in his thickset hammock, smiling at the twilit sky. "Thank you for coming, Aswell! I was afraid you wouldn't today, I was so tired."

Dido shivered. All at once the place felt unchancy to her.

"Guess I'd best be going," she mumbled.

"Isn't the sky beautiful up there," Cris went on without heeding her. "Look, there's the first star. When I lie here I seem to be looking
down
into the sky, not up—it's like a huge well, don't you think? I feel as if I could jump right into it."

"Cris!" Dido exclaimed. "You hadn't oughta talk that way! It's not sensible."

"What is sensible, then?"

Cris turned his filthy, bruised face inquiringly toward Dido, who found herself at a loss.

"Oh,
I
dunno! Ask me, this is a right spooky part o' the world—
nothing's
sensible round here. Well, don't get downhearted, Cris, anyhows—if the old baggage wallops you any more, holler out, and I'll come and give you a hand—the two of us oughta be a match for her."

With a sad smile, like the wind ripple over a field of long grass, Cris said,

"All right. I'll remember."

Dido slithered down the trunk. "Powerful scent o' honeysuckle or summat round hereabouts," she thought. "Didn't know you got honeysuckle at this time o' year, but there's no telling what you'll get in these cockeyed parts. The mischief is, there's too many wrong 'uns and not enough right 'uns. And what right 'uns there is, is blind, like Mr. Firkin, or in poor twig, like my Cap, or too old to be very spry, like Mr. Gusset. And the
young
'uns is next door to addle-pated, Tobit a-playing with them unnatural peas, and Cris a-talking to somebody in the sky. There's hardly an ounce of sense betwixt the pair of 'em. Pity they couldn't meet, they'd deal together like porridge and cream."

Thinking about them, as she trotted over the hill, she was struck by the similarity between the situations of Tobit and Cris: both of them forced to live so lonesome and mopish, their lives made a burden to them by queer-natured old crones. "And that spooky Tante Sannie is
friends with Mrs. Lubbage—wonder if she knows about Cris? If I hadn't enough to worry about, getting Cap'n Hughes's Dispatch to London," Dido thought, "there's an awful lot wants setting to rights round here."

Mrs. Lubbage had returned from her cow doctoring, and was picking herbs from a tangled, nettle-grown patch under her kitchen window.

"Oh. So you're back, are you?" she said, giving Dido a hard stare with her little sharp eyes. "Well? Do ye want me to have a look at the sick chap or not? 'Tis all one to me."

Dido conquered an impulse to refuse. Best be polite, she thought.

"Yes, please, missus."

"I'll get my things, then."

While Mrs. Lubbage was dressing the Captain's wound, Dido noticed the brindled rat slip through the open door and along the angle of the wall and floor. Without pausing a second, Dido grabbed a heavy beech root from the firewood heap and slung it hard at the rat, which squealed indignantly and scurried out, limping.

"What was that?" exclaimed the Captain, startled.

" Jist an old rat, Cap; if he shows his snout in here again I'll pepper his whiskers," Dido said cheerfully. Mrs. Lubbage darted a black look at her but said nothing.

When she had finished her doctoring—it took less time today, for the wound was better—she said to Dido, "You step outside with me, missie!"

"Back directly!" Dido told the Captain.

Outside it was quite dark. A ray of lantern light from the doorway illuminated Mrs. Lubbage's broad face. Dido did not care for its expression.

"Now, harkee, gal," said the wise woman. "And pay heed, for I don't reckon to say things over. You crossed my path twice already, you went spanneling into my kitchen 'thoughten leave, and you hurted my old Tibbie-rat."

"
Your
rat, missus? How was I to know?"

"Don't aggie at me, gal! I'm warning ee, if I have any more mizmaze from ee, I'll make things right skaddle for ee,
and
for that chap in there. 'Twouldn't take but a pinch o' naughty-man's-plaything to set his wound into a mortification. And as for you—you puny little wind-shaken emmet—I could make you wish you'd never been borned."

Dido was silent. Mrs. Lubbage evidently took her silence for defiance; she went on,

"And I hear you bin upalong to Tegleaze, where you've no right nor business, making a sossabout, upsiding Mas'r Tobit. You leave that boy be! Do he land hisself in trouble before he come of age, then he won't noways inherit his grandpa's luck-piece."

Mrs. Lubbage might have said more, but she was interrupted at this moment by Gusset, in the trap, who came to a halt by them.

"Evening, Missis Lubbage," be greeted the wise woman politely. "Evening, Missie Twido Dight. I brought ye some more stuff for the sick navy gennleman."

With a surly jerk of her head, Mrs. Lubbage retired to her own house.

Dido would have taken the heavy basket from Gusset, but he insisted on carrying it in. As he did so, Dido's quick eye caught sight of Sannie, as on the previous occasion, slipping from the back of the trap and darting off to visit her friend.

"Don't I just wish I was that flea-bitten rat for five minutes to hear what the old crows is a-talking about in there," Dido thought. "I bet it's nothing good."

Gusset, it turned out, was dying to have a word with Captain Hughes.

"I did hear, Cap'n, sir," he quavered politely, "as how your ship was the
Thrush?
"

"You heard right," answered the Captain who, propped against rolled-up sheeps' fleeces, was drinking barley soup.

"I've a nevvy on that vessel," explained Gusset. "Able seaman Noah Gusset. Did ee e'er come across the boy, Cap'n, sir? Do 'e still be live and kicking?"

"Why, certainly! He is a fine fellow—will probably end up as Master Gunner. I have often spoken to him," the Captain said cordially. Old Gusset's face lit up at this news.

"My brother Ed'ard'll be in a rare proud scarrifunge when I tell him!" he said, and could not do too much for the Captain; he bustled about, toasting bits of bread and warming up a mixture of wine and spices which he said would make the Captain "sleep like a juggy."