1
A wild westerly gale was blowing over the south downs one November evening when a chaise-and-pair, having slowly ascended the long, gradual hill on the London road some five miles north of the Port of Chichester, came to a halt at the top.
A girl put her head out of the carriage window.
"Why've we stopped here?" she inquired.
"Why d'you think?" growled the driver bad-temperedly, without turning his head. "So's to give the nags a layoff, o' course! I spose in the furrin parts overseas where you was raised, horses goes on for weeks together without a bait or dram?"
It seemed to be his own needs he was consulting rather than those of his horses, however, for he pulled a black bottle out of his pocket and took a swig from it.
"I was raised in London if you want to know," retorted his passenger, "and where I come from, nags don't need a rest half an hour after they start off! It'll be a month o' Mondays afore we gets to London at this rate! Where are we now?"
She looked with disfavor at the dark wooded hillsides that surrounded them. Volleys of leaves rattled against the carriage windows and swept the rutted road; fitful bursts of rain made the horses stamp and shiver. A faint green strip of light still showed in the west, but elsewhere the sky was piled with cloud, and in fifteen minutes it would be true night.
"Where? Top o' Benges, that's where—if that means owt to you." He took another long swallow, upending the bottle.
"Not a thing! All I knows is, we must still be a perishing long way from London. Hey! Steady on wi' that tipple, mister! Don't forget we've a sick passenger aboard."
"Shick—hup—passenger be blowed," grunted the driver. "It's the gray I'm worried about—if he don't go lame afore we gets to Petworth, I'm sucked in! Why was I ever such a maggot as to say I'd drive ee to Lunnon tonight? Gee woot, you!" Angrily he shook up the reins, almost shaking himself off the box in the process. The chaise started again, and gathered speed on the downhill slope.
"Oh croopus," muttered the girl, withdrawing her head from the window. "I jist hope we gets to London this side o' Turpentine Sunday, and all in one piece."
"What's amiss, my child?"
The other passenger appeared to have been dozing. It was dark inside the chaise and little could be seen of him, save that he was a tall man, muffled in numerous capes and rugs. Except for an eye slit, left so that be could see out, his head was entirely wrapped in bandages, over which he wore an enormous fur hat. He spoke weakly, but with an air of authority.
"It's our driver," returned the girl in a low voice. "I suspicioned he was a bit bosky at the start, and now I reckon he's just about half-seas over. Trouble was, none o' the drivers would leave for London at five o'clock in the evening."
"I cannot imagine why not! They might ask what fee they liked, since we are traveling on government business, with dispatches for the Admiralty. Did you not tell them they should be handsomely rewarded?"
"Didn't make a mite o' difference. None of them'd stir—said as how we might meet with Gentlemen on the road." The girl glanced doubtfully at the black trees on either side.
"Gentlemen!" her companion exclaimed weakly but testily. "Pish! What moonshine!"
The driver had evidently caught some part of their conversation, for he suddenly burst into raucous song:
"Captain Hughes and young Miss Twite
Went for a drive—hie!—one shiny night
If they don't end in the Cuckoo Tree
Pickle my brains in eau-de-vie!"
"Attend to your business, my man!" snapped the bandaged passenger, for the horses were now dashing faster and faster down a long, winding hill, and the carriage was beginning to sway alarmingly.
But the driver only replied, "Tooral-eye-ooral, fiddle-eye-ay!" and cracked his whip in a very carefree manner.
"Put your arm through the strap, Cap'n!" young Miss Twite exclaimed anxiously, and since, blinkered as he was by his bandages, her companion was unable to find the arm hold, she scrambled across the rocking vehicle and slid the heavy leather loop over his elbow.
"Ah! Thanks, my child!"
She had secured him only just in time. Next instant the coach gave a particularly violent lurch and overturned completely. Young Miss Twite still had hold of the strap; she clung to it tenaciously as she and her companion were flung backward against the padded seat, and then down on to the door of the carriage, which had come to rest lying on its side.
"Cap'n! Cap'n Hughes! Are you all right?"
No answer. Anxiously, Miss Twite felt his chest and discovered that he still breathed.
"Fry that coachman!" she exclaimed, attempting to disentangle herself from her companion.
"Who are you? What's happened?" he muttered confusedly.
"It's Dido, Cap'n—Dido Twite. We've had a turnup, but don't fret; I'll see to everything. Mussy knows how," she added to herself, "seeing I don't even know how I'm a-going to get out of here—and the driver's about as much use as a herring in a hockey match. Maybe he's dead. Anyways, thank goodness the Cap'n isn't."
By stretching up to her full height (which was not great) she was just able to reach the arm strap dangling from the upper door; she pulled herself up by this, digging her toes into the indentations in the upholstery. Luckily one of the windows had fallen open, and she was able to edge her way through and climb on to the hedge bank. Searching about, she found the coachman, dead or unconscious, in a patch of long grass and thistles; he had apparently been thrown off his box at the first jolt. One of the horses stood with hanging head, very lame; the other was plunging about nervously; it had kicked its way clear of the shafts but was still held by its traces.
"Easy now, mate," the girl said, approaching it warily. "You and me has got to get better acquainted. Here, have a slab o' Sussex pudden; it's a bit squashed, but the landlady at the Dolphin said it would do for supper and breakfast too; you're welcome to the soggy stuff if it'll settle your spirits. It's better inside you than in my pocket, anyways."
The large, damp, sweet lump of suet pudding did prove soothing to the horse, and Dido was presently able to unhitch it, and lead it around to the side of the overturned coach.
"Cap'n!" she called. "Can you hear me, Cap'n Hughes? I can't get you out by myself, and I can't right the coach, so I'm a-going for help. All rug? Shan't be long—I hope," she added to herself.
No reply came from inside; it seemed likely that the unfortunate captain had fainted again. Dido led the horse alongside the hedge bank, which was about three feet high, and from the top, managed to scramble on to the animal. Unused to being ridden, it started affrightedly, threw up its head, and set off at a canter; clinging like a monkey to its mane, Dido was jounced in a most uncomfortable manner from side to side of its broad back. By now her eyes were accustomed to the darkness and she was able to make out that they were in a narrow muddy lane with wooded hills sloping away on either side; no lights or houses were to be seen anywhere.
"Of all the God-forsaken spots to get tippled up in! Don't pull so, what's-your-name, Dobbin, my arms is weaker than seaweed already with all that scrabbling about in the coach."
Fairly soon the horse slowed to a steady trot better suited to its solid build; this was even more bone-shaking for Dido but she did not feel in such imminent danger of being tossed off and having to continue her quest on foot.
"How much o' this nook-shotten wilderness is there?" she wondered. "It seems to go on forever—not a house, nor an inn, nor a bakery shop anywheres! Downright wasteful it is, if you ask me."
After about ten minutes' riding she came to a crossroads—or to be more accurate, a spot where four or five tracks met.
"Now where?" Dido wondered, dragging on the traces to bring her steed to a halt. "Choose the wrong path and I reckon I'll be wandering for hours—and never find my way back to the carriage, which is worse; and if I don't get back with help pretty nippily, poor Cap'n Hughes is liable to die, I shouldn't wonder, with all this hugger-mugger on top o' that head wound he's got."
She bit her lip in anxiety and indecision, but at this moment a dark shape emerged in complete silence from the trees over to her left, stepped up beside her, and whispered,
"Tarry diddle?"
"I'll say it's tarrydiddle," Dido replied. "Likewise hocus-pocus and how-de-do! Who the blazes are you, hoppiting about in the woods like a poltergeist?"
At this reply, evidently not what the newcomer expected, he put his fingers to his mouth and let out a soft whistle; in an instant seven more figures darted out from the trees; somebody took hold of the horse's bridle. Dido felt cold metal pressing against her leg, and saw a gleam of light move up and down something that looked extremely like the barrel of a blunderbuss. She also smelt, rather surprisingly, a strong, sweet scent, roses and cloves, mixed with ambergris and orange blossom.
"Who are you?" somebody hissed in her ear.
"Who'm I? I'm Dido Twite," she replied with spirit. "Our coach tippled over along there, acos the coachman was drunk as a wheelbarrow, and there's a hurt man inside, and I'm a-going for help. So I'll take it kind if you gentlemen will step back along with me and turn the coach topsides, and tell me where there's a house or a barn or summat where I can take poor Cap'n Hughes for the night."
As she spoke, the word gentlemen reminded her of the landlady's warning: "You'll not find a driver at this time o' day, love, they're all too scared o' the Gentlemen. All except Bosky Dick that is, and I wouldn't call him reliable."
"'Tis a child," somebody whispered. "Do ee reckon that be a true tale?"
"The nag be Ben Noakes's gray from the Dolphin, sure enough. I did hear tell as how Bosky Dick was hired to drive a party to Lunnon town."
"Who else be in the coach, maidy?"
"Cap'n Hughes, I tell you, and he's hurt bad."
"What like of a cap'n is he?" someone asked suspiciously. "Be he one o' they Preventive Men, Bush officers?"
"What's they? No, he's a navy cap'n, and he was wounded at sea, in a battle—oh, please come and help me with him!"
"Us can't do that, my duck. Us has to goo t'other way to meet some friends, see? That's one reason, and another is, we dassn't, do we might meet some niffy chaps as we don't fancy."
"Well, then, can you tell me where I can get some help?" said Dido impatiently.
"Arr! Ee wants to goo upalong to the Manor House. Owd Lady Tegleaze'll help ee surelye. She'll send some o' the chaps from the estate, sartin sure."
"Which way to the Manor House, then?"
One of the men holding the bridle turned Noakes's gray and led it into the track on Dido's left.
"Up yonder, my liddle maid. Through the big gates and on up the dene till ee see the lights. They'll help ee, up at the Manor. But don't ee goo speaking arter now, about who ee've seen here, eh? 'Twouldn't be wise, see?"
"How can I?" said Dido tartly. "I haven't seen you. Who are you anyways?"
She heard soft chuckles in the darkness. "Wouldn't ee like to know? Well, then, listen: we're Yan, Tan, Tethera, Methera, Pip—"
"Sethera, Wineberry," the other voices took it up, "Wagtail, Tarrydiddle, and Den! Now ee knows all that's good for ee."
"And a mighty big help you've been I'm sure," Dido muttered—rather ungratefully, since they had, at least, set her on the right way—as her horse cantered up the loamy ride, under an avenue of tall trees whose branches creaked mournfully in the wind overhead.
Just before she left them she heard one phrase not meant for her ears:
"Quick yourselves a bit, then, lads, or us'll be late at the Cuckoo Tree!"
This reminded her of the coachman's rhyme,
"If they don't end in the Cuckoo Tree
Pickle my brains in eau-de-vie!"
She wondered vaguely what it meant, but almost at once anxiety about Captain Hughes drove out all other considerations. Luckily she soon came to a pair of massive stone pillars, evidently the gates the man calling himself Yan had alluded to; when she passed between them the path took a sharp bend to the left around a hummock of ground, and beyond this she could distinguish a cluster of lights not far ahead. Five minutes more, and Noakes's gray drew up in front of what was plainly a very large mansion, set in a fold of the hillside, with a dark mass of trees behind it and a broad sweep of grass in front. Little else was visible in the dark rainy night. Considering that the time could not yet be much after eight o'clock, Dido was somewhat surprised not to see more windows lit—there seemed to be but half a dozen, and these with wide spaces between them, as if the inhabitants of this great place were so unsociably inclined that they preferred to keep as separate from one another as possible.
There was a portico with white marble pillars, and some iron staples, roughly driven into these, were evidently meant for tethering horses.
Dido slid off the gray's back with relief. "Though dear knows how I'll ever get back on," she thought, seeing no mounting block. Ignoring a slight palpitation of the heart at the grandeur of this place—the double doors, under the portico, were so huge that a medium-sized whale could easily have passed between them, given enough water to swim in—she tugged briskly at a brass bellpull.
The house had seemed so silent, as if all its inmates were elsewhere or asleep, that she was a little startled when the doors flew open at once; they had been pulled back, she discovered, by a pair of liveried footmen in powdered wigs, and directly in front of her a butler stood bowing.
"Can you help me—" Dido began. He interrupted her with raised hand.
"This way, my lady. Please to follow me."
"Poor old fellow," Dido thought, following. "I suppose in a place as grand as this he ain't allowed to give orders for help on his own, but has to ask the lord or duke or whoever lives here."
They crossed a wide hall, decorated with a great many pairs of deer's antlers, ascended several flights of marble stairs—very slowly; the butler was a very aged man—and proceeded along several wide passageways until, it seemed to Dido, they must have reached the very end of the house.
"Coo, it's a big place, ennit?" she remarked. "Must take a deal o' sweeping. I'm right sorry for the housemaid."
The aged butler, in the act of knocking at a door, turned and surveyed her with some surprise. The sight of her clothes, which he had not observed in the darkness of the portico, appeared to surprise him still more.
"I'd take it kind if you'd ask someone to keep an eye on my nag while I'm up here," Dido added. "If I'd a known we'd have to come sich a perishing way I'd a tied him up a mite tighter."
"But—did your ladyship not come in a carriage?"
"That's just what I'd a told you if you'd waited—" Dido was beginning impatiently, when an equally impatient voice inside the door shouted,
"How the deuce many times do I have to say, come in?"
Flustered, the butler threw open the door, bowed, stood aside, and announced, as Dido entered,
"There! I might a known there was some mux-up," Dido said. "Bless your socks, I ain't Lady Rowena Thingummy."
"Never mind, I daresay you'll do just as well," said the room's occupant. "Come in and sit down. Can you play tiddlywinks? Gusset, there's a draft; don't stand there, go out and shut the door behind you."
"I beg your pardon, Sir Tobit. But if the young lady isn't who she said she was—"
"I didn't say I is, I said I isn't!" Dido put in. "My stars! I was told I'd get help here, not a lot of argufication—"
"I had better inform her ladyship," the butler muttered worriedly. "She won't be best pleased, I'm afraid. What name did you say, missie?"
"I didn't say any name, but it's Dido Twite."
"Dido Twite. Dwido Tite. Twido Dite. Twito Died. Dwighto Tied," the butler repeated, and left the room, closing the door.
"Oh, bother! Now Grandmother will come along and there'll be a lot of fuss. Why did you have to say you weren't Rowena Palindrome? What does it matter who you are? Sit down, anyway, and amuse me till the old girl comes—it'll take her a while to get up."
"I haven't got a while," said Dido crossly. "There's a chap out there, dying, maybe, in an overset carriage, and the driver's knocked silly—not that he was much at the start—and I'd be obliged if you'd kindly send out those two coves as has nothing better to do than open and shut doors to fetch the poor souls here and see arter 'em a bit."
"An overset carriage? How do you know?"
"How do I know? Acos I was in it—that's how."
"You were in a carriage that overturned? Aren't you lucky!"
"Rummy notion o' luck you has," Dido said, studying her companion with curiosity. And certainly he was an unusual figure—a boy of twelve or thirteen, tall and thin, with a pale face and a mop of black hair. More singular still, he was dressed in clothes at least two hundred years out of date—the sort of clothes worn by gentry in Charles the First's day: a frilled shirt with long lace cuffs, a long-skirted embroidered waistcoat, a sword, velvet breeches, and buckled shoes. His hair was tied back with a velvet ribbon. A huge furry white dog lay at his feet; it had a pointed nose, like a bear, and the tongue lolling from its jaws was blue.
Her host, for his part, studied Dido with almost equal astonishment; he saw a sun-tanned girl, her brown hair cut untidily short; she wore long, wide trousers of dark-blue duffel, a white shirt with a sailor collar, and a tight-fitting pea jacket with brass buttons.
"Why do you wear such peculiar clothes?" he said.
"These? They're a midshipman's rig; mighty comfortable too. I jist got back from sea, that's why. Going up to London with dispatches for the Fust Lord o' the Admiralty, and our numbskull of a driver has to overturn us afore we've gone twenty miles, and poor Cap'n Hughes wounded in the Chinese wars and weak as a snail—"
"You've been at sea—you, a girl?" Sir Tobit stared at her round-eyed. "Why?"
"That'd be a long tale. That'd be several long tales. What about those hurt men?"
"Oh, we can do nothing for them till my grandmother has given permission," he said carelessly. "So you may as well sit down and tell me your stories till she comes. Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat?"
He pushed toward her a tray carved from some silvery foreign wood. On it were several plates, wooden likewise, containing a few wrinkled apples, some nuts, and a large lump of cheese.
"We never eat anything but fruit and cheese; my grandmother thinks it best. Cowslip wine?"
The cowslip wine, pale yellow in color, was served in an earthenware pitcher. Sir Tobit poured some into a wooden mug.
"Thankee." Dido rejected the nuts—which were wizened, strange-looking little things—but helped herself to an apple and a lump of cheese. There had been no time for supper at the Port of Chichester, so she was glad of them. The dog snarled a little as she moved, and Sir Tobit, cuffing him lightly, said,
"Quiet, Lion!"
Glancing around the room as she ate, Dido was struck by the oddity of the contents. In a mansion this size she would have expected richness and grandeur; gold doorknobs, maybe, and crystal chandeliers, such as her friend Simon once told her were to be seen at the duke's castle in Battersea. But here everything looked dusty and worn, and seemed to be made of the plainest materials—wooden chests, straw matting, loosely woven curtains in queer, bright colors, looking as if they had been sewn by people living in grass huts on some distant foreign isle. The lights were the commonest kind of tallow candles and not too plentiful. There were strangely shaped, strangely colored clay pots, and numerous little statues and images in wood and pottery. And books were piled everywhere, higgledy-piggledy—on the chests, the floor, the chairs, and on a curious little round table which looked as if it had been carved with a toothpick from the trunk of a tree. It was rather a nasty little table, Dido thought, looking at it more closely—the top and bottom were solid disks of wood, connected by a crisscross wooden network; at every join a little wooden face grinned maliciously with white-painted teeth and eyes. The room was a large one and the farther end was almost in darkness, but Dido had an uneasy feeling that somebody was there in the shadows watching—occasionally the corner of her eye caught a movement. Perhaps it was another dog?
"Tell about the carriage accident," Sir Tobit demanded. "What happened? Were you waylaid? Was there a fight?"
"No, no, it was just an accident—nothing out o' the common."
"But how did it come about?"
"Land sakes, hain't you never seen a carriage turn topsy-turvy? The driver was a bit tossicated, that's all; I reckon he runned one o' the wheels against the bank. So over we went. And Cap'n Hughes was stuck inside. I managed to scramble out."
"Where did it happen?" Sir Tobit was asking, when the door was opened by Gusset the butler and a lady swept into the room.
Although Lady Tegleaze was plainly very old, her age was not her most striking feature. What most impressed Dido about her was a feeling of queerness—as if her very bright eyes were set most of the time on things that nobody else could see, as if she were listening to sounds or voices that nobody else could catch. Like her grandson, she was tall and thin, she limped slightly and walked with a stick, she wore what must surely be a wig of flowing gray curls, and had carelessly flung around her a lavender-colored satin overdress, trimmed with point lace. It was faded and slightly torn. As she came in, Dido heard a door close softly in the shadows at the far end of the room.
"Not so close!" Lady Tegleaze exclaimed, limping swiftly toward Dido and tapping her with the stick. "Not so close to Sir Tobit—remove yourself, pray!"
The dog Lion growled softly to himself.
Rather taken aback, Dido scrambled to her feet and stepped back, ducking her head in a mixture between a bow and a curtsy. What in tarnation does the old girl think I'm a-going to do—bite him? she wondered, but the very oddness of Lady Tegleaze commanded respect.
"Now then," she continued, fixing Dido with those curiously bright, curiously distant eyes, "what is all this about? Who is this young person? Why is she here and where is Lady Rowena Palindrome?"
"Please, your ladyship, the young lady is Miss Twido Dite; and Frill just gave me this; he said a messenger brought it not ten minutes since." The butler handed Lady Tegleaze a note.
"Humph," she said, unfolding and reading it: "From the duchess—too late—too far—too rainy for the horses—cried off. Pish! When I was a gel horses were horses and could stand a bit of rain."
"They always cry off," Sir Tobit languidly observed. "No one wishes to come here. Why should they? You won't let me go to them."
"So who are you?" The old lady's gaze returned to Dido. Absently she took a handful of nuts from the dish and munched them.
"She had an accident to her carriage," Sir Tobit explained. "On the London road. There are two hurt men and she wants our help to fetch them. One of them's a sea captain, carrying dispatches."
"A sea captain? You have come off a ship?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"From what country? What ship?"
"A navy ship, ma'am, the Thrush; she was a-coming home from the China wars and stepped from her course to chase a Hanoverian schooner, and picked me up off'n the isle of Nantucket."
"China! Nantucket!" Lady Tegleaze could not have been more horrified if Dido had said Devil's Island. "And you come here—from such places—reeking of typhus, yellow fever, and every kind of infection! Pray stand over by the door!"
"I don't wish to stand anywhere, ma'am, if you'll only send someone to help right our coach and tend to those hurt chaps," Dido said rather aggrievedly, removing herself to the desired location.
"Gusset, have two of the men go back with this young person. But the injured people certainly cannot come here; that is quite out of the question. Suppose Sir Tobit caught some noxious illness from them, and it so near to his coming of age!"
"Where should they be taken then, marm?" Gusset inquired doubtfully.
"Someone on the estate can take them in!"
"There hain't many left on the estate now, your ladyship."
"There are some tenants in Dogkennel Cottages still, are there not? Old Mr. Firkin—Mrs. Lubbage? Very well—take them there."
Gusset looked even more doubtful, and Dido was not too happy at the sound of Dogkennel Cottages. Still, it's only for a night, she thought; tomorrow I can stop the mail coach or summat. "Maybe your ladyship could tell me where I can get hold of a doctor?" she asked politely.
"A doctor?" Lady Tegleaze seemed vaguely surprised.
"Dr. Subito is here, playing tiddlywinks with Mr. Wilfred," the butler reminded her. "I could ask him to step along to the cottages."
"Why, yes, I suppose he could do so, if the child absolutely demands it; though I would not wish him to pick up any infection. But come, child, come along; every minute you are here increases the risk to my grandson."
Lady Tegleaze limped to the door.
"There, I said how it would be," muttered Sir Tobit sulkily. "Just when I had the chance to hear some new tales, instead of having to make up my own."
But Dido was eager to be off. "Thanks for the wine and cheese," she called back, and followed Lady Tegleaze.
At the top of the stairs, Lady Tegleaze came to a halt.
"Where is Tante Sannie?" she asked Gusset.
The butler paused a moment before answering. Then he said, in a peculiarly expressionless voice,
"She was in Mas'r Tobit's room. I reckon she be in your ladyship's room now. Would you wish for me to search?"
"No—no. I will go myself. Follow me, child."
Oh crumpet it, Dido thought; now what?
However she followed along another series of passages. Lady Tegleaze halted outside a door.
"Wait here," she commanded Dido. She opened the door and called, "Sannie?"
Through this door Dido could see another large dimly lit chamber filled with a clutter of foreign-looking furniture, draperies, and scattered clothing. A faint, sickly waft of aromatic smoke drifted out. This is a rum house and no mistake, Dido thought.
Next moment the skin on the back of her neck prickled as something small and dark scuttled from the shadows inside the room out through the door. It was too small for a person, surely? Could it be a large dog? Or an enormous spider?
Then she saw that it was in fact a tiny, bent old woman, wrapped in a kind of embroidered blanket, black and white, which covered her entirely except for two very bright eyes which peered up at Dido from under her head swathings.
"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.