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Mr. Wicker's Window

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<h2>CHAPTER 9</h2> <div class="figleft"><ANTIMG src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width-obs="87" height-obs="75" /></div> n the kitchen, Chris leaned against the corner of the passage and kitchen wall to watch Becky at her tasks. How different from the compact white kitchen they had at home! And yet there was a cosy feeling about the huge room in front of him with its ruddy copper utensils, tub-size wicker basket of vegetables, steaming pots hung over the fire, and the browning row of four chickens on a revolving spit, that gave out a friendliness and welcome modern kitchens did not have. Becky finally paused in her work long enough to glance out from under her hat at Chris. "Now then, me lad! 'Tis not yet time to eat. That young belly of yours takes a bit of filling, and no mistake! Be off now, and do you not go a-bothering Becky for a bit. I will soon call you when all's done." Chris would have liked to go outside and put his hand on the handle of the back door, when a momentary confusion overtook him. He wondered if in going out he would step back into his own time before he had completed the work Mr. Wicker wanted him to do, and suddenly unsure, turned away regretfully. Not knowing where else to go, he climbed the stairs to his bedroom. Becky had made his bed, and the little room looked spruce. Chris walked into one of the niches made by the projecting windows, pushed up the sash, and leaned perilously out. This was to be the first of many such times that Chris was to lean out so, king of this new world spread out below him as far as the eye could reach. A vast and absorbing panorama lay beneath and beyond him. Immediately below turned Water Street, narrow and muddy, while the broad wharves and wooden storehouses spaced themselves at intervals along the shore. Beyond, the sailing ships of all kinds that he had admired that morning pointed their bowsprits along the docks or swung at anchor along the river. Chris looked down at the many vessels. He could not tell one from another, but names began to drift into his mind from some forgotten trip to a museum, or from the pages of a book read long ago. Frigate, schooner, brigantine. Good ships all. The creak of rigging sounded in the names, the harsh whip of salty winds, and the heart-lifting sight of white sails cutting across blue water. Chris leaned on his arms, his eyes shining. If he should ever go to sea in a sailing ship, what a day that would be! And then he remembered that he must do so if he were ever to obtain the fabulous Jewel Tree. All at once the dangers of such a quest were terrifying, and Chris turned his thoughts away from them to look at the view. Where the city of Washington lay in his time were only woods and marshlands. No Monument, no Lincoln Memorial, no houses. Lying in the river like a great green ship, he could see the island which had once belonged to his ancestor, George Mason. Once? Now it probably still did. He could make out figures moving at the bank of it, and a ferry pushing off from the shore. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/image_070.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="604" alt="Illustration" /></div> What fun this was! Chris gave a chuckle out loud. What a chance—to see what once had been! He was enjoying himself increasingly as he glanced down at the activity along the riverbanks. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/image_071.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="561" alt="Illustration" /></div> So close to noon, the sailors and stevedores had vanished to eat their meal, and passers-by were few. The street was nearly deserted when along the hardened muddy ruts of Water Street Chris heard a wailing cry: "Pity the blind! Pity the pore blind!" The boy looked down, and the drop below him to the road made his head swim, until he refused to think of it. He saw below him a grotesque figure making its way, turning its head toward the houses as it made its cry. It was a hunchbacked man with a wooden peg leg and a crutch. Tied crisscross over his snarled hair were two black eye patches. He was unshaven and in a rare state of filth, his coat green with age and speckled with greasy stains, the stocking on his one good leg wrinkling down into his shoe, and his hands gnarled with long-nailed fingers. Chris gave an involuntary shudder, but the sight of the man held his gaze, for he had never seen anyone quite like him before. As the cripple advanced slowly past the few houses of Water Street, here and there a window was opened and a coin tossed out, which the cripple held his cap for, or grubbed with his filthy hands where he heard it fall. Watching his progress, Chris became fascinated with the accuracy with which the blind man caught the coins or found them in the road. After a passing gentleman on horseback had tossed a silver piece in his direction, the hunchback made off around the corner of the stables beyond Mr. Wicker's garden. The boy hung out even farther and craned his neck to see what the blind man would do, for from his determined gait he seemed to have a purpose. Feeling along the side of the barn to guide himself, when he came to the back of it the cripple darted around, and then, to Chris's amazement, lifted the corner of one black eye patch and peered out from under it! Seeing no one, and thinking himself unobserved, the cripple nonchalantly pushed both eye patches onto his forehead, fished in his pocket, and began examining the silver piece he had just retrieved. It appeared to satisfy his scrutiny, turn it over and over though he did, but to be quite sure of its value he bit tentatively on it with his back teeth. This seemed to be the final test, for the cripple grinned from ear to ear, disclosing even fewer teeth than Master Cilley. Next, the hunchback sat down upon a heap of straw, laying his crutch beside him, and with a quick movement, wriggled himself out of not only his jacket but his humpback too! Chris could scarcely believe his eyes, but he now saw that a false hump had been cleverly sewn into the jacket from inside. The cripple untied a patch that formed a trap door in the hump, and putting his hand inside the hollow, drew from its hiding place in the false hump a small bag tied at the neck with a string. Then, as Chris watched, he counted the contents of the bag, pieces of money that winked in the sun, and added to his horde those pieces he had begged that morning. The bag was then retied, replaced, and the jacket and hump put back on its wearer with evident satisfaction. But the cripple had not yet completed his work. Holding the silver piece between the blackened stubs of his front teeth, with difficulty he managed to hoist his peg leg over his good knee. Then, after darting many a sly look all about him, he unstrapped the wooden peg off the stump of his leg. First, from the interior of the stump he pulled out an assortment of rags used for stuffing, and to cushion the weight of his stump. Then, after spreading a torn bandanna handkerchief near him, he tipped up the stump and from its hollow peg, out rained a shower of coins! Chris looked, and looked again. Gold and silver money flashed on the crumpled handkerchief, and adding to it the last silver piece he had held in his teeth, the loathsome cripple stirred the heap around and around with one dirty forefinger, his mouth stretched in a cackle of greed. After a while he caught up the coins, counting them over not once but many times, and at last let them fall slowly one by one into the hollow peg of his stump, strapping it back securely. Finally, after looking about with his face close to the ground to make sure that no smallest coin had escaped him, the cripple replaced his eye patches and heaved himself up with his crutch under his arm, turning to make his way once more toward the docks and the ships. His wailing cry lagged behind him like a cur dog: "Pity the blind! Pity the pore crippled blind!" Yet Chris now noticed that his head was tilted back to enable him to see under the patches as he went. The boy was straining to see him out of sight when a resounding bellow from Becky Boozer let him know that dinner was ready. Hastily shutting the window and running downstairs, Chris could think of only one thing. "Becky!" he cried, bursting out at the bottom of the stairs, "Who is the blind man that just went by—the hunchback?" Becky never even turned from the plate she was preparing. "Oh, him? That would be Simon Gosler, one of Claggett Chew's men. How he can be a sailor beats me, but Claggett Chew has hired him for years, plague take him! Now," and she came toward the sunny table with a beaming smile, "eat up, young man, or I shall think my cooking does not please you!" Chris hurriedly set about proving his appreciation. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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