Spiderweb for Two - A Melendy Maze (11 page)

“I just was going by—” said Oliver.

“For heaven's sake, whatever for?
This
time of day? It's just about suppertime.”

He followed her into the kitchen where Mrs. Addison was busy preparing the meal, weaving her way between the blocks and toy cars with which Alexander, the four-year-old, had littered the floor, and speaking encouragingly from time to time to Mitchell, the newest Addison, who was standing in his playpen, morosely sucking the railing. All around the pen lay toys and cooking utensils of which he had wearied.

“Look who I found at the front door, Mama!”

“Hello, Oliver; stay and have some supper with us. I'll phone Cuffy.”

“Well, thanks, I guess I better not. I've been gone all day.”

“Where've you been?” inquired Daphne.

“Just walking around, I guess you'd call it,” said Oliver uneasily.

“Walking around? All day? You?” Daphne was astounded. “Whatever for?”

“Oh, just for a change,” said Oliver rather airily.

“I never heard of such a thing!”

“So then I came across your mailbox without knowing I was going to, so I just decided to, you know, drop in and see how you all were. How are you, Mrs. Addison?”

“Why just fine thanks, Oliver.”

“How are you, Daphne?”

“Well, gee,
I'm
all right.”

“How are you, Alexander?”

“Hunh? I'm okay.”

“How's Mitchell?”

“Teething,” said Mrs. Addison. “He's getting a tooth with four corners and it hurts him.”

At that moment Dave came bursting in. He was the eldest of the Addison children and Rush's good friend. He had been milking, and smelled of cows.

“How are you, Dave?”

“Able to take nourishment, thanks, Oliver. Anxious to take it in fact. How are you, Oliver? Boy, are you ever a wreck! What have you been doing, throwing ink at yourself?”

“I got into a bunch of pokeweed,” Oliver said.

Dave lifted Mitchell out of the pen.

“Hi, Bottle Boy, what's the news at the front?”

Mitchell, in his little red overalls, changed at once from a small somber onlooker to a loud, jovial baby, leaping like a salmon in Dave's arms.

“Well, I better be going,” Oliver said reluctantly. (The Addisons were having homemade biscuits with their supper.) “Cuffy will be wondering—”

Daphne and Dave, still carrying Mitchell, accompanied him to the front gate.

The sun had set, leaving a stain of crimson and yellow at the horizon; above, the sky was apple green, darkening at the zenith to a powerful blue and set with a few large early stars. The two great maples, stripped of leaves, made complicated silhouettes against the pale green sky; and from the end of one long swooping branch something hung and swung, like an empty sock.

“What's that?” said Oliver, pointing.

“An old oriole's nest,” said Dave carelessly.

A pocketful of gold, thought Oliver, stopping dead in his tracks. He remembered the orange-yellow flash of orioles in June. He turned to Daphne solemnly.

“Is Daphne the name of a nymp?” he asked.

“An imp? It certainly is not!”

“No, a
nymp.
You know, with wings and all. Grecian.”

By this time, in his frantic need to know, he had begun to leap up and down on the garden path like a demented brownie. The Addisons thought he had gone crazy. He saw the total bewilderment in their faces and ran back to the farmhouse and stormed into the kitchen.

“Mrs. Addison,
is
Daphne the name of a nymp?”

“A nym—oh, a
nymph.
Why, yes, Oliver. It is—or was. The nymph who was turned into a laurel tree. In Greek mythology, remember? Why?”

But Oliver, his manners thrown to the four winds, was whooping his way out of the house.

“Dave! Dave! Can you get me that nest? Please can you?
Please?
I just have to have it!”

“First tell me why?” demanded Dave, not unreasonably, and Oliver was forced to launch into the same lame explanations that he and Randy had given to Cuffy and Mr. Titus and the others.

“Oh, so
that's
why they were so interested in that nest that day—” Dave stopped short.

“Who?
Who
was interested in it?” Oliver implored, but Dave just shook his head.

“Listen, brother, if it's a secret
I'm
not going to spoil it. Here Daphne, you hold Mitch. We'll have to get up to that thing somehow, and a ladder won't do; there's nothing to lean it against; the branch stretches out from the trunk too far. We'll try a table.”

Oliver helped him locate and carry out a small table; still not high enough. In the end they had to put a chair on the table and a box on top of that.

“If I break my neck the treasure's
mine,
” said Dave. Balanced on the wobbly structure he reached up, cut the twig from which the nest depended and dropped it down to Oliver.

“You're certainly acting queer,” said Daphne. “All excited about nymps and old bird nests and walking around all day like this. What's the matter with you, anyway?”

Oliver hardly heard her; he was searching the nest, and at the bottom of it, sure enough, he found the fifth clue wrapped in a piece of wax paper.

“What is it? What have you found?” demanded Daphne, but Oliver could not tell her. “Later on I will, though, honest. Gee, thanks an
awful
lot, you kids, I never could have done it by myself.”

“Well, I certainly think it's all terribly queer,” said Daphne, somewhat crossly. She liked to be on the receiving end of secrets, and who doesn't? But Dave clapped Oliver on the back and said, “You'll do the same for us someday; help us along the path to fame and fortune.” He and Oliver moved the furniture back into the house where they could hear Daphne questioning her mother: “What's a nymp, Mama? Why was I named for one?”

It was really late, now, really dark. Oliver jogtrotted down the hill clutching the oriole's nest; he was singing a song called “The British Grenadiers,” and the black woods beside the road seemed friendly, not mysterious and threatening as they sometimes do at night.

In Miss Bishop's little house the window lights glimmered through a filigree of plant leaves; there was a smell of woodsmoke. It made Oliver happy to think that he had found a new friend as well as a clue.

When, at last, he burst open the front door of home, he felt that he had been away for days. Willy Sloper, on his way out with a bucket of paint merely said “Hi,” and Oliver was surprised that Isaac—who had returned in his own good time, as usual—did not spring up to greet him; he only rolled an eye at him and moved his tail slightly, not even a real wag. John Doe did not even do that; he was in the kitchen, glaring at Cuffy who was basting a roast; from time to time he whimpered with greed, and drooled on the linoleum. As for Cuffy, she merely clanked the oven door shut and smiled at Oliver.

“My soul! Go take a bath! Guess you had a good time all right, didn't you?”

“Yup, I did,” said Oliver, feeling slightly nettled at so much indifference toward a returned adventurer. “Where's Randy?”

“Upstairs in bed where she belongs. I don't want you going near her till we know if she's catching.”

But that was too much. Allowing Cuffy to assume that he was on his way to take a bath, Oliver sneaked up to Randy's room. Nothing indifferent about her, at least.

“Tell me! Tell me!” she croaked, bouncing in bed, wild with impatience.

He held up the silvery, knitted nest.

“The pocketful of gold! Hooray! But who was the nymph?” she said.

“Daphne Addison, no kidding.”

“Daphne! Oh,
Daphne!
Of course, of course. Gosh. I knew there was a nymph named Daphne. I knew there was an emperor named Titus. I knew those things, but I didn't connect them. Oh, it's just a waste of money to try and educate me. I ought to tell Father—”

“Here, read the clue,” said Oliver. “Read it out loud.”

“I'll have to whisper it. Come here. Listen:

‘I guard a secret or a prayer

    
With equal silence. I am old.

Peace is the jewel that I wear.

    
Compassion is the wand I hold.

Land of the dragon and the cloud

    
Gave birth to me; I left that soil

And came away, serene and proud,

    
To watch a good man at his toil.'”

“They get fancier, too,” said Oliver. “Whoever it is, it's nobody in our family. We haven't any poetry writers.”

“Poets. Don't be too sure,” said—or rather whispered—Randy. “I used to think you could tell a poet like a policeman—just by looking at him. But after David Harthstone came to school and lectured—and he's a famous poet, Oliver—I changed my mind. He looked just like anybody; somebody's father or a man in a bank or anybody.”

“I don't see anyone in our family writing stuff like peace is the jewel, and all that—”

“I know. It's hard to imagine. We talk mostly in slang and shouts, all of us. Of course, Mona does quote Shakespeare a lot; she knows miles of it by heart; maybe it's sort of gotten stuck to her, do you suppose? So that she's able to write poetry on account of the amount she's learned, or something?”

“I know the names of every plane this country is flying; I can tell you just about all the parts of a plane and I make lots of models, but that doesn't teach me how to fly,” said Oliver.

“No, I guess it's—”

Randy never finished what she was whispering, for at that instant Cuffy struck the door open.

“Oliver!”

“I just came in for a second, Cuff, to bring Randy this nest. See? It's a oriole's.”

“They always look like they're just darned together, don't they? Real pretty. Real clever. No, but Oliver, I don't want you getting ahold of this germ of Randy's. Downstairs to supper with you, now, this minute; the bath'll have to wait till later.”

Oliver was glad to go to bed early for once. He was really dead tired and felt as though he had covered vast distances that day. Cuffy tucked him in. She was an expert tucker-in, too; she knew how to pull a sheet smooth with a single twitch, how to pummel comfort into an uncooperative pillow, and when she stroked one's forehead with her warm, sure hand and said with certainty, “Now you'll get a fine night's sleep,” she made one feel comfortable and easy. Oliver settled down in his cozy bed and watched contentedly as Cuffy opened the window wide, picked up a few items from the floor (socks, a book on moths, a roll of Scotch tape, and some walnuts), and then looked at him searchingly, as she always did, with one hand on the light switch.

“You all okay now?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Good night, dear.”

“Good night, Cuff.”

The door closed. The room was dark. Wind rattled at the shutters and stars looked into the room. Oliver smiled and snuggled down, and slowly, calmly, went to sleep.

CHAPTER VI

Peace Is the Jewel

I guard a secret or a prayer

    
With equal silence. I am old.

Peace is the jewel that I wear.

    
Compassion is the wand I hold.

Land of the dragon and the cloud

    
Gave birth to me; I left that soil

And came away, serene and proud,

    
To watch a good man at his toil.

Randy did not feel sleepy at all. She had slept most of the day, dosed with aspirin and cough syrup, and now she was wide awake. Turning on her light quietly, she reached for the clue and studied it again.

In a flash she understood it!

About time they gave us an easy one, she thought, and, putting on her robe and slippers, she went to her door and opened it. She stood there, listening. All that could be heard was Isaac, snoring on the landing. From Cuffy's room there was no sound, no crack of light under the door. She ventured forth on tiptoe, and each creaky board sounded like a firecracker to her anxious ears. When she walked bang into the hall chest of drawers there was a thunderous clatter, and she held her breath, expecting the worst. But nothing happened, thank goodness! Isaac rolled over, audibly, and began snoring on a different level. Randy went on, inch by inch, to Oliver's door.

The moon was shining into his room, and he was fast asleep, a smallish hummock in the bed.

“Oliver!” whispered Randy. “Wake up!”

“N-n-n-h,” said Oliver.

“Wake up, wake up!”

Oliver put his head under the pillow.

“No,” he said.

“Yes!” insisted Randy. This time she shook him and suddenly he sat bolt upright, staring at her.