Dido and Pa (3 page)

And then it seemed to Dido that she
could
hear the tune, very faintly and hauntingly played—surely on a hoboy?—and coming from somewhere not too far off, out on the green, perhaps, beyond the inn yard entrance.

I must be dreaming—mustn't I? she told herself. But she could not resist standing up and walking a little way toward the gate, to see if the music grew louder as she moved that way. Yes, it did! I'm not dreaming, Dido said to herself. Some cove out there really is a-playing Pa's own tune.

Could it be Pa hisself, a-playing his hoboy? It just might be. After all, he was in Petworth not so very long ago. Wouldn't Pa be fair pussy-struck to hear as how, on this
very selfsame day, I carried King Dick's gold and furry train, in his crowning procession, in St. Paul's church! Wouldn't Pa just stare to hear that! It'd be a rare joke to tell him about it, thought Dido—after he and his cullies tried so hard to stop the crowning....

Mindful of Simon, Dido turned back at this point, picked a charcoaly twig out of the edge of the bonfire, wiped her plate clean with a handful of grass, and with the charcoal wrote on it in big black letters:

DERE SIMON BAK IN 1 MINIT, DIDO

Then she walked out of the yard gate.

Beyond the entrance, on the shadowy green, people were dancing in circles. Another bonfire had been lit in the middle of the large open space, and carts were parked round the edge; some boys were letting off fireworks, and several different groups of musicians were playing.

But the hoboy music came from quite close at hand, from the big gnarled chestnut tree that grew on the hither side of the green, its high knuckled roots outlined against the light of the distant bonfire. A thin man was perched astride of one of the roots, and was playing on a musical instrument; Dido could not see his face, but the closer she approached him, the more certain she became that he was her father.

"Pa!" she called softly. "Is that you? It's me—Dido!"

The musician turned slowly toward her, lowering his instrument.

"I beg your pardon?" he said. "I fear you are laboring
under a misapprehension. I am nobody's pa (thank heaven for that); my name is Boris Bredalbane, and I am a paid-up member of the National Union of Flint Chippers—"

"Oh come off it, Pa, I can see you plain as plain; let alone I'd know your music if I heard it in Pernambuco. You ain't what's-his-name Bredalbane, you're Abednego Twite—"

"
Hush!
" the thin man whispered imperatively, grasping her wrist and glancing warily around them. "Grass has eyes, bushes have noses, and trees have ears, my chickadee! And the name of
Twite
is just a touch unhealthy since the constables picked up Godwit and Pelmet and Wily and some of my erstwhile colleagues..."

Indeed, Mr. Twite, Dido now observed, was wearing a ginger-colored wig and mustaches, which looked incongruous on top of his tall thinness; and from somewhere he had managed to procure a gaudy Scottish kilt and sporran, in which he did not look at ease; the kilt's hem dipped at the front, and the sporran had a tendency to slip round to the back.

Mr. Twite finished the contents of a large pewter mug which sat beside him on the root—it smelled like organ grinder's oil. Then, grasping Dido's wrist even more tightly, he stooped to pick up a set of bagpipes with his other hand.

"Gracious snakes, Pa, you taken to snake charming, then?" she inquired, observing the bagpipes.

"Protec-
hic
-tive coloring, my jonquil," he whispered, and began to draw Dido farther away from the tavern, toward a high hedge that bordered the green.

"Not that I amn't overjoyed to see you again, my sarsaparilla," he went on in a low tone as they drew farther off
into the shade. "Welcome as jewels to jackdaws, you be! In fact—to tell the truth—I was hoping for a sight of ye—"

"Hoping for a sight of
me?
Why, Pa?" Though naturally pleased, Dido could not help being surprised and suspicious. When had her father ever wanted to see her? And she remembered him well enough to know that when he spoke about
truth,
it was time to watch out for the biggest lie of all.

"Why, my duckling, for the sake of your poor suffering sister. Penelope."

"Penny-lope?" gasped Dido, now really startled. "Why, what in the world's amiss with Penny? And if she does want me—which I can't hardly believe—it's the first time since Blue Moon Sunday.—'Sides, I thought she run off with a buttonhook salesman?"

"Ah, me, ah, me!" Shaking his head, Mr. Twite continued to draw his daughter farther into the shadows. "These buttonhook salesmen—heartless scoundrels, to a man—naught but a nest of adders! She should have known better than to listen to his wiles. And now your poor sibling lies at the point of dissolution—gasping in mortal agony—only struggling to keep alive in hopes of a sight of her sweet sis—and there's not a hand else in the wide world to tend her—"

"Hey, hold hard, Pa—Penny never tended
me,
that I recollect..."

"Calling out for her little Dido with every rattling breath," continued Mr. Twite—he was beginning to put considerable dramatic fervor into his account—"with
never a soul to give the poor wretch a sip through a straw, or to change her bandages—"

"
Bandages?
"

"Or to pick up her—
hic
—crutches if she drops 'em. 'Only fetch me Dido, fetch Dido,' she whispers, 'if it's the last thing you do, fetch me Dido!' and I responded, 'My angel, I will fetch your dear sister if it means dragging her between serried ranks of saber-toothed tigers.' Which is hardly more than the case, I'm that bothered and beset by ill-wishers and enemies—"

"But where
is
Penny, Pa?" demanded Dido, for Mr. Twite had by now reached a closed carriage, quite a grand one, with a coat of arms on its door, which waited, with horses ready harnessed, in the shade of the hedge.

"Why, not too far from here, my dove; if we travel at the best speed our horses can command, I daresay you may just arrive before she breathes her pitiful last..." And Mr. Twite opened the carriage door. In the light of a silvery rocket which just then ascended, Dido saw that the coat of arms depicted an iron fist, holding a hammer, on a gold background.

Dido stood still, tugging back against her father's insistent arm, and said,

"Here, wait a mo, Pa, I ain't said yet that I'm a-coming with you—for one thing, my pal Simon's back there at the pub, and he'll be wondering where the blazes I've spooked off to—"

"Simon? Simon?" said Mr. Twite vaguely. "Ah, yes, your young painter acquaintance; a fine, upstanding lad.... A sight
too
upstanding by half, as I recall," Mr. Twite muttered to himself under his drooping ginger mustaches. "Never trouble about your friend Simon, my larkspur; time presses too much for such considerations. I will instruct Ned here to give Simon your kindest regards and explain that you were called away on an errand of life and death—you'll see to that, Ned—
hic
—will you not?" he continued, addressing a villainous-looking lad who stood at the horses' heads. "Make very sure that you find the correct person: a handsome stripling named Simon, who used to lodge with me in my house at Rose Alley in Southwark. Be sure to give him the message, as well as my own very kindest regards."

"Aye, aye, I'll be sartin sure, guvnor," replied the lad, emphasizing his intentions with an evil grin, screwing up his unpleasing face and laying one finger alongside his nose.

"Do so. That's my good boy."

"But Pa—I don't
wish
to leave Simon—I haven't even said good-bye—I only just
met
him again—" protested Dido, struggling in vain against her father's grip.

"No matter for that, my dilly; idle politeness must always give way when Necessity calls." And Mr. Twite picked up his daughter bodily and thrust her into the carriage. "You will have
ample
time to see Simon hereafter, have no fear—perhaps"—and he sprang into the vehicle after her, slamming the door. "Give 'em their heads, then, Morel," he called to the driver through the trap, and the coach started off with such a jolt that Dido was thrown to the floor.

"Saints save us, Pa, you sure are in a rush," she gasped,
picking herself up from among the rushes with which the floor was strewn, and thankful for the thickness of her new jacket, which had protected her bones from bruising.

"Never mind it, my sugar-knob; the sight of your sister's joy will repay any such slight vexation," replied Mr. Twite, pulling out a pipe and a pouch of Vosper's Nautical Cut tobacco.

Dido said nothing. She was beginning to be more than a little aggrieved at this summary treatment. Pa's got no right to hale me off thisaway, she thought. Still, I'll make sure he don't keep me under his thumb once I've seen Penny. Soon as I see how she really is—probly not so bad as Pa makes out—I can cut and run. But what riles me most is that poor Simon will be so put about; he'll be wondering where in herring's name I've got to. And he'll think it downright rude and capsy of me to light off like this without a by-your-leave.

That shravey-looking boy won't give him no message, I'll lay.

In this guess Dido was quite right.

She was so displeased with her father that she said nothing to him about having carried the king's train during the coronation ceremony.

When Simon returned to the stable yard, followed this time by his aged groom, Matthew Mogg, he found the table cleared, the plates removed, and a drunken carter sitting on

***

the bench where Dido had been, with his head resting on the table beside a mug of mountain dew.

"Where's the young lass who was sitting here?" asked Simon.

"Lass? Lass? I never see no lass," replied the man blearily.

"A skinny young girl in a sheepskin coat? Dressed as a boy?"

"Sheepskin coat? I hain't seen so much as a moleskin coat," yawned the carter, and, making a pillow from his smock, he laid his head on the table once more and began to snore.

"Rackon thee's lost her, Mester Simon," gloomily pronounced old Mogg. "And dang me if I fathom why that lad yonder told thee the gray mare was lame, when 'er be fit and flighty as a flea."

"Curse it! I hope no mischief has come to Dido!" worried Simon looking vainly about the stable yard for her. "Do you go that way, Matthew, and ask everybody you pass, and I'll try this way. Perhaps she just strolled out to look at the dancing."

But, ask as they might, no word or trace of Dido was to be found. She seemed to have vanished like a bubble, like a drop of dew, as if she had never been there.

And, in the carriage beside her father, Dido, fairly tired out by her long day's adventures and somewhat stifled by the copious, heavy fumes of Vosper's Nautical Cut, gradually slid down sideways against the lumpy horsehair upholstery of the carriage and drifted off into uneasy slumber.

When Dido next opened her eyes, she was startled to see that the night was nearly over; the squares of black sky outside the carriage windows were now paling into a stormy gray. A high wind buffeted the coach as it rolled along, and rain slapped at the windowpanes.

Sitting up straight and peering out to her right, Dido could see, far away, a band of lemon-yellow light where the sun was halfheartedly trying to rise under a threatening pile of lumpy black cloud. The landscape faintly shown by the yellow light was also a surprise to Dido—and not a pleasant one: she had expected to see fields or woods, but what met her eyes in place of these was a desolate region of brick railway viaducts, small market gardens crisscrossed by black ditches and half-made roads; there were tall sheds, factory chimneys, and clumps of houses that seemed to have escaped briefly from the city and now be waiting for it to catch up with them.

In the light of a rainy dawn this no-man's-land, neither city nor country, looked wholly dreary and forlorn.

"Bless us, Pa," said Dido, "where in the world are you taking us? Where's Penny? I thought you said we hadn't far to go? But at this pace we must 'a' come forty mile and more?"

"Humph—awrrrk—aaargh—beg pardon? Whazzat you say, my chaffinch?" croaked her father.

Mr. Twite, in the harsh morning light, presented almost as dismal a spectacle as the glum landscape outside the carriage window. His red wig hung awry, the mustache dangled sideways from his stubbly lip, his cheeks were drawn and gray, his eyes bloodshot and gummy.

"I said, Pa, that it's a plaguy long way you're taking me to Penny's place. I thought you said it was only a mile or so?"

He stared at her for a moment or two, working his face about as if getting it into order for the day while he collected his thoughts and put them in position.

"Ar, humph—yr sister Penny—yes, quite so. That is to say—well. I must acknowledge, my eucalyptus—Deuce take it, how I do
long
for a mug of organ grinder's oil—"

"You must acknowledge
what,
Pa?"

Mr. Twite said rapidly. "'N speakingof—yrsister-Penny—beenguiltyof—very slight diggle-gression from fact."

"You told a lie, Pa."

"Not a
lie,
" said Mr. Twite. "No, not a lie. Different person, is all. Different deathbed. Arrrh hum. Oh, pisky bless us; how I do need a little something."

"
Whose
deathbed?" queried Dido, now really cross and very puzzled.

"One o' myoldestfriends—dear, poor fellow—told him fetch m'daughter t'tend ailing brow—anyhow, not far now," added Mr. Twite gladly, looking out of the window, where the rain was showing a disagreeable tendency to turn to snow.

After another half hour's drive Dido exclaimed, "Croopus, Pa, we're a-crossing
London Bridge!
You never said as you was bringing me to London?"

"Did I not, my seraph? Ah dear me, what an absent-minded old fellow I am becoming. It is the power of music—the penalty of music."

"Of music, Pa?"

"When I am engulfed in themes for a new serenade, a new suite, a new symphony—why, don't you see, that drives all other considerations out of my poor head.
Turn, turn, terum, titherum, tarum, tarum, tiddle-I-dee!
" And Mr. Twite suddenly burst into vigorous song, the violence of which almost seemed as if it might shake him to pieces. He looked like an aged molting thrush.