The Cuckoo Tree (8 page)

Mention of the coronation reminded Dido of her own worries. "If Gusset isn't here I guess
I'll
be going, back to Dog kennel," she said. "Please to thank your gran for the prog."

"The what?"

"The grub—the basket o' vittles."

"Oh,
she
won't have sent anything—far too mean. No, if some food came, I daresay Gusset sent it. Hush—there they are!"

He dragged Dido into an alcove in the yew hedge, where they lurked in the shadow.

Low voices gradually became audible as the two men paced across the immense lawn.

"Oh,
I
won't expose your little g-games—don't think it, my dear f-fellow. It's n-nothing to
me,
believe me, if you've pocketed a rent roll as long as the M-Mississippi River. Money is of s-small interest to me."

The speaker's voice had a curiously deep, grating quality, broken by his occasional stammer.

"What is, then?"

"That's old Colonel FitzP," whispered Tobit in Dido's ear. "But I'm blest if I know who the other one is."

"The name! The place! You d-don't understand what it means—when one has s-spent all one's life in a lumber
camp as n-nobody—Miles Tuggles—pah! To change that I'd commit any c—any crime. As to your peccadilloes—what's the old lady to me? Or the b-brat either? I give you my word, my research into your d-dealings was solely to effect an introduction so that we could meet on equal t-terms—"

"I wonder?" Colonel FitzPickwick's soft mutter was overheard only by the two eavesdroppers.

"But harkee now," the first man went on. "I hold you in a cleft stick. I know so much, I promise you I could c-cook your goose with six words, dropped in the right quarter. S-so it is in your interest to help me. I n-need a pretext for remaining in the neighborhood—"

The two men moved away. The word "puppets" was all that Dido could catch of the next remark.

"Puppets!" muttered Tobit discontentedly. "Old FitzPickwick's mad about puppets; they're his hobby. He's always boring on about them."

"—be a first-rate cover," FitzPickwick was saying, when the two men next strolled in the direction of the watchers.

"That will do. Now tell me the rest—you have n-no choice. This Godwit you mention—"

They turned and paced away again.

"Let's go after them!" breathed Tobit, and tweaked Dido's hand; the two listeners slipped from their hiding place and crossed to the shadow of a pair of yews.

"—rollers," they heard Colonel FitzPickwick say. "They are fixed already. And the diamond will pay for
half. But the rest of the money—" The two men passed behind a tree and their words were lost. "—still to come," the Colonel was saying when they reappeared. "If Lady Tegleaze—" another pair of trees cut off his words—"certain His Highness Prince George would lend a favorable ear to your claim."

"Rot it, so I should hope! But as to these rollers—" the stammering man was beginning, when Dido heard a soft hiss beside her, a phtt! and Colonel FitzPickwick raised a hand to his cheek.

"Strange! I could have sworn I felt a hailstone. Yet there's not a cloud in the sky."

"Oh, famous!" Tobit breathed in Dido's ear. "I got him fair and square."

"'Twas a m-mosquito, I daresay. Rollers, now: rollers are all very fine. But where's your motive power?"

"A mosquito? You forget you are in England in November, my dear sir. If the weather's breaking I must be off. My mare's a thoroughbred—she has an aversion to hail."

"You shoot now!" whispered Tobit. "'Go on—I dare you!"

"I druther listen," Dido muttered crossly. "Hush! I've a notion—"

"Motive power yet remains to be found. Godwit thinks a system of levers. Now, if humans were as easily moved as my mannikins—Devil take it! That was certainly a hailstone. It hit me on the ear."

Tobit was suffocating with suppressed laughter.

"Got the old windbag again. Him and his mannikins!"

Colonel FitzPickwick turned and walked off decisively, his companion following with reluctance, turning back for many glances at the house.

The shadows of the two men followed them like long black-velvet trains.

"Now we ain't sure what it was all about," Dido complained when they were out of earshot.

"Oh, pho, what does it matter? Just old Pickwick's usual hocus-pocus about puppets."

"But it seemed to be about your grandmother and this place."

"What do I care about this place? As soon as I'm of age I shall run off to sea and turn pirate. Yo, ho, ho, and the jolly black flag," said Sir Tobit, and aimed a broadside of peas into the yew tree. "Come on, we'll spy on old Wilfred and the sawbones." He tugged Dido at a run along the yew hedge, up the steps, and around the end of the house. They looked through a window into a small room where, by the light of one dim candle, two men were crouched over a tiddlywinks board. Dido recognized the doctor; the other was a little tiny gray-haired old fellow like a water rat in a velvet robe and nightcap.

"Pity the window's shut," Tobit muttered. "I'd like to give old Wilfred a fright, in return for all the games of tiddlywinks he's bored me with. D'you dare me to break the window?"

"O' course not! What a mutton-headed notion."

Dido, becoming more and more impatient, was about to
take her leave, when a sudden fierce whisper from behind startled them both.

"Bad, bad boy! What you doing, what you about?"

Like a black, angry dragonfly the tiny figure of Tante Sannie darted from a patch of shadow, hissing reproaches at To bit.

"You not allowed out after darkfall, you know that! Spose a memory bird hear you, spose the Night Lady catch you in her claws?"

"Oh, stuff. Don't talk such nonsense, Sannie," Tobit said, but he glanced behind him uneasily, then put a couple of peas in his mouth. "Anyway, I'll be of age next week and can do as I please!"

"Also, who is
this?
" Sannie peered up at Dido. Over the black-and-white draperies muffling the lower part of the old woman's face, her tiny eyes glittered like the points of nails. "Hah! I know you! You little bad sickness girl, Sir Tobit not allowed to play with you. Lady Tegleaze be very angry when she hear."

"We weren't playing," Sir Tobit said sulkily. "I was showing her the grounds by moonlight."

"Don't you false-talk me, boy! What this?" Sannie twitched the peashooter from his hand. "Ho! You be of age next week, be you? You got no more sense than baby picknie. Out after darkfall, shooting Joobie nuts! Spose hit somebody in him eye, sent to prison? Then you never come of age, you know that!"

"Oh, fiddle. Nobody gets sent to prison for shooting with a peashooter. I shall shoot as many as I like."
Rebelliously he snatched back the tube and blew a pea at the window. It bounced off the glass with an audible ping, but the two men inside, absorbed in their game, never even lifted their heads.

"Oh, so brave little feller!" Sannie's tone became silky as syrup. "So brave to shoot Joobie nuts. But don't you dare swallow nut!"

"I'll do that too, if I want!" He swallowed the two nuts he was sucking, eying the old woman with defiance. But almost at once a curious change came over his face. He glanced behind him again, twice, and gave a violent shiver.

"Is cold, my little thingling? Is hearing some noise in bushes, memory bird, maybe?"

Tobit shivered again, glancing about with dread.

"Come along then, come in quick before the Night Lady fly over. Come along, little thingling. Old Sannie make you cup of thistle tea."

She took his hand and led him off; Tobit followed meekly.

"Croopus!" muttered Dido, when they were out of sight.

She was so startled by the change in Tobit that she remained where she was for several minutes, pondering. "It was those peas—Joobie nuts, or whatever she called them. What the blazes can they be?"

She pulled a handful of the heavy little dry things from her duffel pocket and eyed them suspiciously. In the moonlight they looked gray, wrinkled, harmless enough; about the size of nasturtium seeds; they felt faintly gritty, as if they had been dusted with salt. Warily Dido tried one
with the tip of her tongue. It did taste salty. She spat, and glanced behind her, suddenly overcome with an almost irresistible urge to duck: it seemed as if she could hear the whizz of giant wings overhead. Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw a huge shadow flit over the moonlit grass. But when she turned and looked there was nothing.

"Shiver my timbers!" She stared again at the peas in her hand; was about to throw them on the ground; but in the end, tipped them back into her pocket and ran fast and quietly away from the house. Suddenly the night seemed full of noises: a cold, liquid call, some bird maybe; a soft drumming tick; a rattle—or was it a chuckle?—coming from the yew hedge. Dido darted across the tilting-lawn, where the pairs of yew trees seemed to be shifting just a little, changing their positions after she passed them; she did not look back but had the notion that they were moving together behind her, perhaps coming after her, as in the game Grandmother's Footsteps.

"Rabbit me if I ever taste another o' them perishing Joobie nuts," Dido muttered. "No wonder Tobit and his granny both seem a bit totty-headed, if they keep a-chawing o' the nasty little things."

Ahead of her now lay the beech avenue, with its bands of moonlight and shade. She felt some reluctance to go down it, but shook herself angrily and ran on at top speed. Then, coming toward her, she saw a black figure. It seemed to vary in size—wavered—grew tall—shrank again.

Dido gulped.

"This here's nothing but a load o' foolishness," she told herself, and went on firmly. The figure seemed now to have no head and three legs. But of course when she came closer she saw that it was merely old Gusset, hobbling back from his evening off, wearing a sack over his head, helping himself along with a stick.

"Hey there, Mister Gusset!" Dido greeted him warmly when they were within speaking distance. "I'm tickled I didn't miss you—wanted to say thanks again for the basket o' vittles—Tobit said as how likely you'd sent 'em your own self."

"Oh, no trouble, missie." The butler seemed embarrassed. "Glad to do it for the poor sick gennleman—I heeard tell as how he's a naval captain? And you've been a - visiting Mas'r Tobit, have you, missie? That's good, that is—he can do with a bit o' young company."

"That he can," Dido agreed. "Ask me, he has his head in the clouds most o' the time, he's got some right corkbrained notions. And that old witch as sees arter him—Sannie or whatever she calls herself—it's a plaguy shame she couldn't be shipped back to Thingummy Island, her and her Joobie nuts."

Gusset glanced around him warily. "You're right there, missie," he said, sinking his voice.

"What are those Joobie nuts, anyways?"

"Summat she brought with her from Tiburon, Missie Twido. She grows 'em from seed, up where the old asparagus bed used to be. She alius has a plenty of 'em. Don't you go a-swallowing they hampery things, missie—they'll
give you the hot chills, don't they give you wuss."

"What happens when Tobit comes of age next week?"

"Why, nothing much, missie. I reckon things'll goo on pretty much as usual."

"He doesn't come into any cash, so's he could go off to school?"

"No, missie. Only the heirloom."

"What's the heirloom?" Gusset had spoken as if everyone would know of it.

"It be a liddle painting, Missie Dwite. Only small, smaller than the palm of your liddle hand, but it be painted on ivory, and I've heeard tell as it be worth thousands and thousands—enough to put everything to rights round here."

"Fancy! What's it of?" Dido asked curiously.

"'Tis a picture o' the Tower of Babel, missie. 'Tis painted by a famous painter, I've heeard tell. Anybody can see it—they keeps it at Perrorth, at the lawyers', a-set in a glass case in the wall."

Mention of Petworth recalled Dido to her own problems.

"Mister Gusset, I've got to get a message to London, urgent. How can I send it? I gave a letter to that Jem, but he don't look reliable to me."

"Jem Mugridge, missie? No, he ain't noways reliable."

"Well, then, what'd I best do? The message has to get to London before the—before the end o' next week."

"Best to goo yourself, missie."

"But I didn't oughta leave Cap'n Hughes while he's sick."

Gusset pushed back the sack in order to scratch his white head. He reflected.

"Well, missie," he said at length. "There's some chaps I know as gooes up and down to London regular. Trading chaps they be. Some mightn't say as how they was reliable, but I speak as I find, and I've alius found 'em trustable."

"D'you reckon they'd help me, mister?"

"I'd hatta ask," Gusset said cautiously. "I couldn't promise, see?"

"When will you see them?"

Gusset seemed unwilling to commit himself, but said he'd see them by Friday, maybe, and would try to let Dido know on that day.

"Now I'd best be getting in, missie. 'Tis turble late."

"Good night, then, Mister Gusset, and thanks."

The old man hobbled off, and Dido ran on down the avenue toward Dogkennel Cottages. Her talk with Gusset had cheered her and the queer visions and sounds that had troubled her before seemed to have died away; she whistled as she ran, and jumped over patches of shadow in the chalk cartway. But just this side of the cottages she came to an abrupt stop. Something—
surely
it was a dragon?—lay on the weedy grass in front of the little row of houses. Its eyes glittered. When it saw Dido it stretched slightly, and spread out its wings.

Dido bit her thumb, hard. Then she stooped, picked up a sizable chunk of flint from the track, and hurled it at the monster, which broke into about seven different sections. Three of them were sheep, which trotted nervously away.
Two or three more were chickens, flapping and flustered. One, which might have been a rat, scurried into the shadow of Mrs. Lubbage's cottage.

Mrs. Lubbage herself was sitting by her door on a broken-backed chair, gazing, apparently, into a pail of water.

"Evening, missus," Dido said civilly as she passed.

The wise woman lifted her head and gave Dido a long, expressionless stare. But she said nothing.