Half-Past Bedtime Part 14

Roman, Briton, Saxon, Dane, Tod the Gipsy hears them plain.

Faint beneath the noonday chalk, Tod can overhear them talk.

Fiercer than the stars at night, Chin to chin, he sees them fight.

ST UNCUS

[Ill.u.s.tration: Doris and St Uncus]

IX

ST UNCUS

It was now November, and even in the country the last of the leaves had fallen from the trees, and the bushy hollows between the roots of the downs were grey with old man's beard. Some people like November, because it is the quietest month of the year--as quiet as somebody tired, who has just fallen asleep--and they love to see the fields lying dark and still, and the empty branches against the sky. But some people hate it, especially people who live in towns, because of its fogs and falling rains, and they turn up their coat-collars, and blow their noses, and call it the worst month of the year.

Doris hated it too, and she hated this particular November more than any other that she could recall, because it had rained and rained and rained, and because her mummy was so ill that she had had to go to hospital. She was also angry with Cuthbert, because she thought that it wasn't fair for him to have taken Edward to see Tod the Gipsy, and never even have offered to take her, although she had asked him to over and over again.

So she hadn't spoken to him for nearly a month, not even after her mummy had been taken to the hospital; and she hated Auntie Kate, who had come to look after the home, because she kept asking her how her little boy-friend was. Auntie Kate had a face like a hen's, with a beaky nose and bobbly eyes, and she always counted people's pieces of bread and b.u.t.ter, and wondered what income their father and mother had. Her husband was a clergyman, so she went to church a lot, on week-days as well as on Sundays; and now she had gone to a bazaar at St Peter's Church, just when Doris had meant to go to tea with Gwendolen.

So Doris was very angry, because she had to stay at home and take care of her five brothers; and the only happy thing that she had to think about was that Mummy would be home next week. But at half-past three on a wet Sat.u.r.day afternoon next week seems a horribly long way off, and Jimmy and Jocko were being as naughty as ever they knew how. Jimmy was six and Jocko was five, and they were playing water games in the bathroom; and Doris knew that they would be soaking their clothes and making an awful mess, but she didn't care.

"At any rate they're quiet," she thought to herself, "and I don't see why I should fight with them any more," and then she pressed her nose against the front-door gla.s.s and looked dismally into the street.

But there was nothing to see except the falling rain, and the dirty brown fronts of the opposite houses, and a strip of mud-coloured sky, and the milkman's cart with its yellow pony. Behind her, in a dark cupboard under the stairs, Teddy and George, the twins, were playing at h.e.l.l; and every now and then she could hear a faint clicking sound, as they practised gnashing their teeth. As for Christopher Mark, who was three and a half, she had forgotten all about him; and by now, if it hadn't been for Auntie Kate, she might have been playing in Gwendolen's big barn. Then she thought of Cuthbert again and of his exciting adventure on the top of Caesar's Camp, and she breathed on the gla.s.s, and drew a picture of Cuthbert, making him as ugly as she could.

"I hate him," she thought, "and I hate Auntie Kate, and I hate the twins, and I hate everybody," and then she turned round, and her heart stood still--or at least she felt as if it did--and her cheeks became white. For there was Christopher Mark at the top of the stairs, with a rabbit under one arm and an engine under the other; and she suddenly saw him slip and begin to pitch head-long down, with a sickening thud, thud, thud.

For a moment she was so frightened that she could hardly breathe, but just as she sprang forward an odd thing happened, for he stopped short, almost as if somebody had caught him, and didn't even begin to cry.

"My goodness!" she said, and then she stopped short too, for squatting down on the topmost stair was the strangest little man that she had ever seen, hanging on to Christopher Mark. He was a little man with a bald head and a big mouth and a crooked back; and his right arm was only a stump, with a very long hook at the end of it. His left arm was odd too, almost as crooked as his back, and he had curled it round one of the banisters, while he hooked Christopher Mark up with the other.

"Good afternoon," he said. "I see you have recognized me. That's very clever of you. Most people don't."

Doris was too surprised at first to be able to answer him. But he didn't seem to mind, and went on smiling; while as for Christopher Mark, he climbed upstairs again, just as if the little man hadn't been there.

"I'm afraid I don't recognize you," said Doris at last; "but I'm frightfully obliged to you for saving Christopher Mark."

"Not at all," he said. "That's what I'm for. I'm St Uncus."

Doris frowned a little.

"St Uncus?" she asked.

"Latin for hook," he said. "Excuse me half a moment."

For a flicker of an eyelid he disappeared.

"Just been to China," he said, "to hook another one."

Doris opened her eyes.

"But are you a _real_ saint?" she asked.

The little man flushed.

"Why, of course I am. I'm a patron saint. I'm the patron saint of staircases."

"But I didn't know," said Doris, "that staircases had patron saints."

"They don't," he said. "They have only one."

"I mean," said Doris--"it's frightfully rude, I'm afraid--but I didn't know that they had even one."

He smiled again.

"Very likely not," he said. "Lots of people don't. But they have."

He disappeared once more.

"Baby in Jamaica," he said, "just beginning to fall from the top landing."

Then he stroked his chin and looked at her thoughtfully.

"I suppose you've been left here," he said, "to look after the children."

Doris nodded.

"Well, then, you ought to know," he said, "that there are two things that children love more than anything else. One of them's water and the other's staircases. And they're both a bit dangerous. So they each have a patron saint."

"I see," said Doris. "And who's the patron saint of water?"

"Fellow called Fat Bill," he said. "He's my younger brother."

"That seems a queer name," said Doris, "for a saint."

"Well, he's a queer fellow," said St Uncus, "but we've both been lucky."

Doris couldn't help looking at his crooked back, and his deformed left arm, and his right stump.