The dreadful fright she had suffered did not throw a cloud over the spirit of Erebus for as long as might have been expected. She was as quick as any one to realize that all’s well that ends well; and Wiggins escaped lightly, with a couple of days in bed. The adventure, however, induced a change in her attitude to him; she was far less condescending with him than she had been; indeed she seemed to have acquired something of a proprietary interest in him and was uncommonly solicitous for his welfare. To such a point did this solicitude go that more than once he remonstrated bitterly with her for fussing about him.
During the rest of the winter, the spring and the early summer, their lives followed an even tenor: they did their lessons; they played their games; then tended the inmates of the cats’ home, selling them as they grew big, and replacing the sold with threepenny kittens just able to lap.
In the spring they fished the free water of the Whittle, the little trout-stream that runs through the estate of the Morgans of Muttle Deeping Grange. The free water runs for rather more than half a mile on the Little Deeping side of Muttle Deeping; and the Twins fished it with an assiduity and a skill which set the villagers grumbling that they left no fish for any one else. Also the Twins tried to get leave to fish Sir James Morgan’s preserved water, higher up the stream. But Mr. Hilton, the agent of the estate, was very firm in his refusal to give them leave: for no reason that the Twins could see, since Sir James was absent, shooting big game in Africa. They resented the refusal bitterly; it seemed to them a wanton waste of the stream. It was some consolation to them to make a well-judged raid one early morning on the strawberry-beds in one of the walled gardens of Muttle Deeping Grange.
About the middle of June the Terror went to London on a visit to their Aunt Amelia. Sir Maurice Falconer and Miss Hendersyde saw to it that it was not the unbroken series of visits to cats’ homes Lady Ryehampton had arranged for him; and he enjoyed it very much. On his return he was able to assure the interested Erebus that their aunt’s parrot still said “dam” with a perfectly accurate, but monotonous iteration.
Soon after his return the news was spread abroad that Sir James Morgan had let Muttle Deeping Grange. In the life of the Deeping villages the mere letting of Muttle Deeping Grange was no unimportant event, but the inhabitants of Great Deeping, Muttle Deeping (possibly a corruption of Middle Deeping), and Little Deeping were stirred to the very depths of their being when the news came that it had been let to a German princess. The women, at any rate, awaited her coming with the liveliest interest and curiosity, emotions dashed some way from their fine height when they learned that Princess Elizabeth, of Cassel-Nassau, was only twelve years and seven months old.
The Twins did not share the excited curiosity of their neighbors. Resenting deeply the fact that the tenant of Muttle Deeping was a German princess, they assumed an attitude of cold aloofness in the matter, and refused to be interested or impressed. Erebus was more resentful than the Terror; and it is to be suspected that the high patriotic spirit she displayed in the matter was in some degree owing to the fact that Mrs. Blenkinsop, who came one afternoon to tea, gushing information about the grandfathers, grandmothers, parents, uncles, cousins and aunts of the princess, ended by saying, with meaning, “And what a model she will be to the little girls of the neighborhood!”
Erebus told the Terror that things were indeed come to a pretty pass when it was suggested to an English girl, a Dangerfield, too, that she should model herself on a German.
“I don’t suppose it would really make any difference who you modeled yourself on,” said the Terror, desirous rather of being frank than grammatical.
When presently the princess came to the Grange, the lively curiosity of her neighbors was gratified by but imperfect visions of her. She did not, as they had expected, attend any of the three churches, for she had brought with her her own Lutheran pastor. They only saw her on her afternoon drives, a stiff little figure, thickly veiled against the sun, sitting bolt upright in the victoria beside the crimson baroness (crimson in face; she wore black) in whose charge she had come to England.
They learned presently that the princess had come to Muttle Deeping for her health; that she was delicate and her doctors feared lest she should develop consumption; they hoped that a few weeks in the excellent Deeping air would strengthen her. The news abated a little the cold hostility of Erebus; but the Twins paid but little attention to their young neighbor.
Their mother was finding the summer trying; she was sleeping badly, and her appetite was poor. Doctor Arbuthnot put her on a light diet; and in particular he ordered her to eat plenty of fruit. It was not the best season for fruit: strawberries were over and raspberries were coming to an end. Mrs. Dangerfield made shift to do with bananas. The Twins were annoyed that this was the best that could be done to carry out the doctor’s orders; but there seemed no help for it.
It was in the afternoon, a sweltering afternoon, after the doctor’s visit that, as the Twins, bent on an aimless ride, were lazily wheeling their bicycles out of the cats’ home, a sudden gleam came into the eyes of the Terror; and he said:
“I’ve got an idea!”
An answering light gleamed in the eyes of Erebus; and she cried joyfully; “Thank goodness! I was beginning to get afraid that nothing was ever going to occur to us again. I thought it was the hot weather. What is it?”
“Those Germans,” said the Terror darkly. “Now that they’ve got the Grange, why shouldn’t we make a raid on the peach-garden. They say the Grange peaches are better than any hothouse ones; and Watkins told me they ripen uncommon early. They’re probably ripe now.”
“That’s a splendid idea! It will just teach those Germans!” cried Erebus; and her piquant face was bright with the sterling spirit of the patriot. Then after a pause she added reluctantly: “But if the princess is an invalid, perhaps she ought to have all the peaches herself.”
“She couldn’t want all of them. Why we couldn’t. There are hundreds,” said the Terror quickly. “And they’re the very thing for Mum. Bananas are all very well in their way; but they’re not like real fruit.”
“Of course; Mum must have them,” said Erebus with decision. “But how are we going to get into the peach-garden? The door in the wall only opens on the inside.”
“We’re not. I’ve worked it out. Now you just hurry up and get some big leaves to put the peaches in. Mum will like them ever so much better with the bloom on, though it doesn’t really make any difference to the taste.”
Erebus ran into the kitchen-garden and gathered big soft leaves of different kinds. When she came back she found the Terror tying the landing-net they had borrowed from the vicar for their trout-fishing, to the backbone of his bicycle. She put the leaves into her bicycle basket, and they rode briskly to Muttle Deeping.
The Twins knew all the approaches to Muttle Deeping Grange well since they had spent several days in careful scouting before they had made their raid earlier in the summer on its strawberry beds. A screen of trees runs down from the home wood along the walls of the gardens; and the Twins, after coming from the road in the shelter of the home wood, came down the wall behind that screen of trees.
About the middle of the peach-garden the Terror climbed on to a low bough, raised his head with slow caution above the wall, and surveyed the garden. It was empty and silent, save for a curious snoring sound that disquieted him little, since he ascribed it to some distant pig.
He stepped on to a higher branch, leaned over the wall, and surveyed the golden burden of the tree beneath him. The ready Erebus handed the landing-net up to him. He chose his peach, the ripest he could see; slipped the net under it, flicked it, lifted the peach in it over the wall, and lowered it down to Erebus, who made haste to roll it in a leaf and lay it gently in her bicycle basket. The Terror netted another and another and another.
The garden was not as empty as he believed. On a garden chair in the little lawn in the middle of it sat the Princess Elizabeth hidden from him by the thick wall of a pear tree, and in a chair beside her, sat, or rather sprawled, her guardian, the Baroness Frederica Von Aschersleben, who was following faithfully the doctor’s instructions that her little charge should spend her time in the open air, but was doing her best to bring it about that the practise should do her as little good as possible by choosing the sultriest and most airless spot on the estate because it was so admirably adapted to her own comfortable sleeping.
The baroness added nothing to the old-world charm of the garden. Her eyes were shut, her mouth was open, her face was most painfully crimson, and from her short, but extremely tip-tilted nose, came the sound of snoring which the Terror had ascribed to some distant pig.
The princess was warmly—very warmly—dressed for the sweltering afternoon and sweltering spot; little beads of sweat stood on her brow; the story-book she had been trying to read lay face downward in her lap; and she was looking round the simmering garden with a look of intolerable discomfort and boredom on her pretty pale face.
Then a moving object came into the range of her vision, just beyond the end-of the wall of pear tree—a moving object against the garden wall. She could not see clearly what it was; but it seemed to her that a peach rose and vanished over the top of the wall. She stared at the part of the wall whence it had risen; and in a few seconds another peach seemed to rise and disappear.
This curious behavior of English peaches so roused her curiosity that, in spite of the heat, she rose and walked quietly to the end of the wall of pear-tree. As she came beyond it, she saw, leaning over the wall, a fair-haired boy. Even as she saw him something rose and vanished over the wall far too swiftly for her to see that it was a landing-net.
Surprise did not rob the Terror of his politeness; he smiled amicably, raised his cap and said in his most agreeable tone: “How do you do?”
He did not know how much the princess had seen, and he was not going to make admission of guilt by a hasty and perhaps needless flight, provoke pursuit and risk his peaches.
“How do you do?” said the princess a little haughtily, hesitating. “What are you doing up there?”
“I’m looking at the garden,” said the Terror truthfully, but not quite accurately; for he was looking much more at the princess.
She gazed at him; her brow knitted in a little perplexed frown. She thought that he had been taking the peaches; but she was not sure; and his serene guileless face and limpid blue eyes gave the suspicion the lie. She thought that he looked a nice boy.
He gazed at her with growing interest and approval—as much approval as one could give to a girl. The Princess Elizabeth had beautiful gray eyes; and though her pale cheeks were a little hollow, and the line from the cheek-bone to the corner of the chin was so straight that it made her face almost triangular, it was a pretty face. She looked fragile; and he felt sorry for her.
“This garden’s very hot,” he said. “It’s like holding one’s face over an oven.”
“Oh, it is,” said the princess, with impatient weariness.
“Yet there’s quite a decent little breeze blowing over the top of the walls,” said the Terror.
The princess sighed, and they gazed at each other with curious examining eyes. Certainly he looked a nice boy.
“I tell you what: come out into the wood. I know an awfully cool place. You’d find it very refreshing,” said the Terror in the tone of one who has of a sudden been happily inspired.
The princess looked back along the wall of pear tree irresolutely at the sleeping baroness. The sight of that richly crimson face made the garden feel hotter than ever.
“Do come. My sister’s here, and it will be very jolly in the wood—the three of us,” said the Terror in his most persuasive tone.
The princess hesitated, and again she looked back at the sleeping but unbeautiful baroness; then she said with a truly German frankness:
“Are you well-born?”
The Terror smiled a little haughtily in his turn and said slowly: “Well, from what Mrs. Blenkinsop said, the Dangerfields were barons in the Weald before they were any Hohenzollerns. And they did very well at Crécy and Agincourt, too,” he added pensively.
The princess seemed reassured; but she still hesitated.
“Suppose the baroness were to wake?” she said.
A light of understanding brightened the Terror’s face: “Oh, is that the baroness snoring? I thought it was a pig,” he said frankly. “She won’t wake for another hour. Nobody snoring like that could.”
The assurance seemed to disperse the last doubts of the princess. She cast one more look back at her crimson Argus, and said: “Very goot; I will coom.”
She walked to the door lower down the garden wall. When she came through it, she found the Twins wheeling their bicycles toward it. The Terror, in a very dignified fashion, introduced Erebus to her as Violet Anastasia Dangerfield, and himself as Hyacinth Wolfram Dangerfield. He gave their full and so little-used names because he felt that, in the case of a princess, etiquette demanded it. Then they moved along the screen of trees, up the side of the garden wall toward the wood.
The Twins shortened their strides to suit the pace of the princess, which was uncommonly slow. She kept looking from one to the other with curious, rather timid, pleased eyes. She saw the landing-net that Erebus had fastened to the backbone of the Terror’s bicycle; but she saw no connection between it and the vanishing peaches.
They passed straight from the screen of trees through a gap into the home wood, a gap of a size to let them carry their bicycles through without difficulty, took a narrow, little used path into the depths of the wood, and moved down it in single file.
“I expect you never found this path,” said the Terror to the princess who was following closely on the back wheel of his bicycle.
“No, I haf not found it. I haf never been in this wood till now,” said the princess.
“You haven’t been in this wood! But it’s the home wood—the jolliest part of the estate,” cried the Terror in the liveliest surprise. “And there are two paths straight into it from the gardens.”
“But I stay always in the gardens,” said the princess sedately. “The Baroness Von Aschersleben does not walk mooch; and she will not that I go out of sight of her.”
“But you must get awfully slack, sticking in the gardens all the time,” said Erebus.
“Slack? What is slack?” said the princess.
“She means feeble,” said the Terror. “But all the same those gardens are big enough; there’s plenty of room to run about in them.”
“But I do not run. It is not dignified. The Baroness Von Aschersleben would be shocked,” said the princess with a somewhat prim air.
“No wonder you’re delicate,” said Erebus, politely trying to keep a touch of contempt out of her tone, and failing.
“One can not help being delicate,” said the princess.
“I don’t know,” said the Terror doubtfully. “If you’re in the open air a lot and do run about, you don’t keep delicate. Wiggins used to be delicate, but he isn’t now.”
“Who is Wiggins?” said the princess.
“He’s a friend of ours—not so old as we are—quite a little boy,” said Erebus in a patronizing tone which Wiggins, had he been present, would have resented with extreme bitterness. “Besides, Doctor Arbuthnot told Mrs. Blenkinsop that if you were always in the open air, playing with children of your own age, you’d soon get strong.”
“That’s what I’ve come to England for,” said the princess.
“I don’t think there’s much chance of your getting strong in that peach-garden. It didn’t feel to me like the open air at all,” said the Terror firmly.
“But it is the open air,” said the princess.
They came out of the narrow path they had been following into a broader one, and presently they turned aside from that at the foot of a steep and pathless bank. The Twins started up it as if it were neither here nor there to them; as, indeed, it was not.
But the princess stopped short, and said in a tone of dismay:
“Am I to climb this?”
The Terror stopped, looked at her dismayed face, set his bicycle against the trunk of a tree, and said:
“I’ll help you up.”
With that, dismissing etiquette from his mind, he slipped his arm round the slender waist of the princess, and firmly hauled her to the top of the bank. He relieved her of most of the effort needed to mount it; but none the less she reached the top panting a little.
“You certainly aren’t in very good training,” he said rather sadly.
“Training? What is training?” said the princess.
“It’s being fit,” said Erebus in a faintly superior tone.
“And what is being fit?” said the princess.
“It’s being strong—and well—and able to run miles and miles,” said Erebus raising her voice to make her meaning clearer.
“You needn’t shout at her,” said the Terror.
“I’m trying to make her understand,” said Erebus firmly.
“But I do understand—when it is not the slang you are using. I know English quite well,” said the princess.
“You certainly speak it awfully well,” said the Terror politely.
He went down the bank and hauled up his bicycle. They went a little deeper into the wood and reached their goal, the banks of a small pool.
They sat down in a row, and the princess looked at its cool water, in the cool green shade of the tall trees, with refreshed eyes.
“This is different,” she said with a faint little sigh of pleasure.
“Yes; this is the real open air,” said the Terror.
“But I do get lots of open air,” protested the princess. “Why, I sleep with my window open—at least that much.” She held out her two forefingers some six inches apart. “The baroness did not like it. She said it was very dangerous and would give me the chills. But Doctor Arbuthnot said that it must be open. I think I sleep better.”
“We have our bedroom windows as wide open as they’ll go; and then they’re not wide enough in this hot weather,” said Erebus in the tone of superiority that was beginning to sound galling.
“I think if you took off your hat and jacket, you’d be cooler still,” said the Terror rather quickly.
The princess hesitated a moment; then obediently she took off her hat and jacket, and breathed another soft sigh of pleasure. She had quite lost her air of discomfort and boredom. Her eyes were shining brightly; and her pale cheeks were a little flushed with the excitement of her situation.
It is by no means improbable that the Twins, as well-brought-up children, were aware that it is not etiquette to speak to royal personages unless they first speak to you. If they were, they did not let that knowledge stand in the way of the gratification of their healthy curiosity. It may be they felt that in the free green wood the etiquette of courts was out of place. At any rate they did not let it trammel them; and since their healthy curiosity was of the liveliest kind they submitted the princess to searching, even exhaustive, interrogation about the life of a royal child at a German court.
They questioned her about the hour she rose, the breakfast she ate, the lessons she learned, the walks she took, the lunch she ate, the games she played, her afternoon occupations, her dolls, her pets, her tea, her occupations after tea, her dinner, her occupations after dinner, the hour she went to bed.
There seemed nothing impertinent in their curiosity to the princess; it was only natural that every detail of the life of a person of her importance should be of the greatest interest to less fortunate mortals. She was not even annoyed by their carelessness of etiquette in not waiting to be spoken to before they asked a question. Indeed she enjoyed answering their questions very much, for it was seldom that any one displayed such a genuine interest in her; it was seldom, indeed, that she found herself on intimate human terms with any of her fellow creatures. She had neither brothers nor sisters; and she had never had any really sympathetic playmates. The children of Cassel-Nassau were always awed and stiff in her society; their minds were harassed by the fear lest they should be guilty of some appalling breach of etiquette. The manner of the Twins, therefore, was a pleasant change for her. They were polite, but quite unconstrained; and the obsequious people by whom she had always been surrounded had never displayed that engaging quality, save when, like the baroness, they were safely asleep in her presence.
But her account of her glories did not have the effect on her new friends she looked for. As she exposed more and more of the trammeling net of etiquette in which from her rising to her going to bed she was enmeshed, their faces did not fill with the envy she would have found so natural on them; they grew gloomy.
At the end of the interrogation Erebus heaved a great sigh, and said with heart-felt conviction:
“Well, thank goodness, I’m not a princess! It must be perfectly awful!”
“It must be nearly as bad to be a prince,” said the Terror in the gloomy tone of one who has lost a dear illusion.
The princess could not believe her ears; she stared at the Twins with parted lips and amazed incredulous eyes. Their words had given her the shock of her short lifetime. As far as memory carried her back, she had been assured, frequently and solemnly, that to be a princess, a German princess, a Hohenzollern princess, was the most glorious and delightful lot a female human being could enjoy, only a little less glorious and delightful than the lot of a German prince.
“B-b-but it’s sp-p-plendid to be a princess! Everybody says so!” she stammered.
“They were humbugging you. You’ve just made it quite clear that it’s horrid in every kind of way. Why, you can’t do any single thing you want to. There’s always somebody messing about you to see that you don’t,” said Erebus with cold decision.
“B-b-but one is a p-p-princess,” stammered the princess, with something of the wild look of one beneath whose feet the firm earth has suddenly given way.
The Terror perceived her distress; and he set about soothing it.
“You’re forgetting the food,” he said quickly to Erebus. “I don’t suppose she ever has to eat cold mutton; and I expect she can have all the sweets and ices she wants.”
“Of course,” said the princess; and then she went on quickly: “B-b-but it isn’t what you have to eat that makes it so—so—so important being a princess. It’s—”
“But it’s awfully important what you have to eat!” cried the Terror.
“I should jolly well think so!” cried Erebus.
The princess tried hard to get back to the moral sublimities of her exalted station; but the Twins would not have it. They kept her firmly to the broad human questions of German cookery and sweets. The princess, used to having information poured into her by many elderly but bespectacled gentlemen and ladies, was presently again enjoying her new part of dispenser of information. Her cheeks were faintly flushed; and her eyes were sparkling in an animated face.
In these interrogations and discussions the time had slipped away unheeded by the interested trio. The crimson baroness had awakened, missed her little charge, and waddled off into the house in search of her. A slow search of the house and gardens revealed the fact that she was not in them. As soon as this was clear the baroness fell into a panic and insisted that the whole household should sally forth in search of her.
The princess was earnestly engaged in an effort to make quite dear to the Twins the exact nature of one of the obscure kinds of German tartlet, a kind, indeed, only found in the principality of Cassel-Nassau, where the keen ears of the Terror caught the sound of a distant voice calling out.
He rose sharply to his feet and said: “Listen! There’s some one calling. I expect they’ve missed you and you’ll have to be getting back.”
The princess rose reluctantly. Then her face clouded; and she said in a tone of faint dismay: “Oh, dear! How annoyed the baroness will be!”
“You take a great deal too much notice of that baroness,” said Erebus.
“But I have to; she’s my—my gouvernante,” said the princess.
“I don’t see what good it is being a princess, if you do just what baronesses tell you all the time,” said Erebus coldly.
The princess looked at her rather helplessly; she had never thought of rebelling.
“I don’t think I should tell her that you’ve been with us. She mightn’t think we were good for you. Some people round here don’t seem to understand us,” said the Terror suavely.
The princess looked from one to the other, hesitating with puckered brow; and then, with a touch of appeal in her tone, she said, “Are you coming to-morrow?”
The Twins looked at each other doubtfully. They had no plans for the morrow; but they had hopes that Fortune would find them some more exciting occupation than discussing Germany with one of its inhabitants.
At their hesitation the princess’ face fell woefully; and the appeal in it touched the Terror’s heart.
“We should like to come very much,” he said.
The face of the princess brightened; and her grateful eyes shone on him.
“I don’t think I shall be able to come,” said Erebus with the important air of one burdened with many affairs.
The face of the princess did not fall again; she said: “But if your brother comes?”
“Oh, I’ll come, anyhow,” said the Terror.
The voice called again from the wood below, louder.
“Oh, it isn’t the baroness. It’s Miss Lambart,” said the princess in a tone of relief.
“You take too much notice of that baroness,” said Erebus again firmly. “Who is Miss Lambart?”
“She’s my English lady-in-waiting. I always have one when I’m in England, of course. I like her. She tries to amuse me. But the baroness doesn’t like her,” said the princess, and she sighed.
“Come along, I’ll help you down the bank and take you pretty close to Miss Lambart. It wouldn’t do for her to know of this place. It’s our secret lair,” said the Terror.
“I see,” said the princess.
They walked briskly to the edge of the steep bank; and he half carried her down it; and he led her through the wood toward the drive from which Miss Lambart had called. As they went he adjured her to confine herself to the simple if incomplete statement that she had been walking in the wood. His last words to her, as they stood on the edge of the drive, were:
“Don’t you stand so much nonsense from that baroness.”
Miss Lambart called again; the princess stepped into the drive and found her thirty yards away. The Terror slipped noiselessly away through the undergrowth.
Miss Lambart turned at the sound of the princess’ footsteps, and said: “Oh, here you are, Highness. We’ve all been hunting for you. The baroness thought you were lost.”
“I thought I would walk in the wood,” said the princess demurely.
“It certainly seems to have done you good. You’re looking brighter and fresher than you’ve looked since you’ve been down here.”
“The wood is real open air,” said the princess.
The Terror returned to Erebus and found her stretched at her ease, eating a peach.
“I should have liked one a good deal sooner,” he said, as he took one from the basket. “But I didn’t like to say anything about them. She mightn’t have understood.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered if she hadn’t,” said Erebus somewhat truculently.
She was feeling some slight resentment that their new acquaintance had so plainly preferred the Terror to her.
“She’s not a bad kid,” said the Terror thoughtfully.
“She’s awfully feeble. Why, you had to carry her up this bit of a bank. She’s not any use to us,” said Erebus in a tone of contempt. “In fact, if we were to have much to do with her, I expect we should find her a perfect nuisance.”
“Perhaps. Still we may as well amuse her a bit. She seems to be having a rotten time with that old red baroness and all that etiquette,” said the Terror in a kindly tone.
“She needn’t stand it, if she doesn’t like it. I shouldn’t,” said Erebus coldly; then her face brightened, and she added: “I tell you what though: it would be rather fun to teach her to jump on that old red baroness.”
“Yes,” said the Terror doubtfully. “But I expect she’d take a lot of teaching. I don’t think she’s the kind of kid to do much jumping on people.”
“Oh, you never know. We can always try,” said Erebus cheerfully.
“Yes,” said the Terror.
Warmed by this noble resolve, they moved quietly out of the wood. It was not so difficult a matter as it may sound to move, even encumbered by bicycles, about the home wood, for it was not so carefully preserved as the woods farther away from the Grange; indeed, the keepers paid but little attention to it. The Twins moved out of it safely and returned home with easy minds: it did not occur to either of them that they had been treating a princess with singular firmness. Nor were they at all troubled about the acquisition of the peaches since some curious mental kink prevented them from perceiving that the law of meum and tuum applied to fruit.
Mrs. Dangerfield was presented with only two peaches at tea that afternoon; and she took it that the Twins had ridden into Rowington and bought them for her there. When two more were forthcoming for her dessert after dinner, she reproached them gently for spending so much of their salary for “overseering” on her. The Twins said nothing. It was only when two more peaches came up on her breakfast tray that she began to suspect that they had come by the ways of warfare and not of trade. Then, having already eaten four of them, it was a little late to inquire and protest. Moreover, if there had been a crime, the Twins had admitted her to a full share in it by letting her eat the fruit of it. Plainly it was once more an occasion for saying nothing.
On the next afternoon Erebus set out with the Terror to Muttle Deeping home wood early enough; but owing to the matter of a young rabbit who met them on their way, they kept the princess waiting twenty minutes. This was, indeed, a new experience to her; but she did not complain to them of this unheard-of breach of etiquette. She was doubtful how the complaint would be received at any rate by Erebus.
They betook themselves at once to the cool and shady pool; and since the sensation was no longer new and startling, the princess found it rather pleasant to be hauled up the bank by the Terror. There was something very satisfactory in his strength. Again they settled themselves comfortably on the bank of the pool.
They were in the strongest contrast to one another. Beside the clear golden tan of the Terror and the deeper gipsy-like brown of Erebus the pale face of the princess looked waxen. The blue linen blouse, short serge skirt and bare head and legs of Erebus and the blue linen shirt, serge knickerbockers and bare head and legs of the Terror gave them an air not only of coolness but also of a workmanlike freedom of limb. In her woolen blouse, brown serge jacket and skirt, woolen stockings and heavily-trimmed drooping hat the poor little princess looked a swaddled sweltering doll melting in the heat.
She needed no pressing to take off her jacket and hat; and was pleased by the Terror’s observing that it was just silly to wear a hat at all when one had such thick hair as she. But she was some time acting on Erebus’ suggestion that she should also pull off her stockings and be more comfortable still.
At last she pulled them off, and for once comfortable, she began to tell of the fuss the excited baroness had made the day before about her having gone alone into such a fearful and dangerous place as the home wood.
“I tell you what: you’ve spoilt that baroness,” said the Terror when she came to the end of her tale; and he spoke with firm conviction.
“But she’s my gouvernante. I have to do as she bids,” protested the princess.
“That’s all rubbish. You’re the princess; and other people ought to do what you tell them; and no old baroness should make you do any silly thing you don’t want to. She wouldn’t me,” said Erebus with even greater conviction than the Terror had shown.
“I don’t think she would,” said the princess with a faint sigh; and she looked at Erebus with envious eyes. “But when she starts making a fuss and gets so red and excited, she—she—rather frightens me.”
“It would take a lot more than that to frighten me,” said Erebus with a very cold ferocity.
“I rather like people like that. I think they look so funny when they’re really red and excited,” said the Terror gently. “But what you’ve got to do is to stand up to her.”
“Stand up to her?” said the princess, puzzled by the idiom.
“Tell her that you don’t care what she says,” said the Terror.
“Cheek her,” said Erebus.
“I couldn’t. It would be too difficult,” said the princess, shaking her head.
“Of course it isn’t easy at first; but you’ll be surprised to find how soon you’ll get used to shutting her up,” said the Terror. “But I don’t believe in cheeking her unless she gets very noisy. I believe in being quite polite but not giving way.”
“She is very noisy,” said the princess.
“Oh, then you’ll have to shout at her. It’s the only way. But mind you only have rows when you’re in the right about something,” said the Terror. “Then she’ll soon learn to leave you alone. It’s no good having a row when you’re in the wrong.”
“I think it’s best always to have a row,” said Erebus with an air of wide experience.
“Well, it isn’t—at least it wouldn’t be for the princess—she’s not like you,” said the Terror quickly.
“Oh, no: not always—only when one is in the right. I see that,” said the princess. “But what should I have a row about?”
The Twins puckered their brows as they cudgeled their brains for a pretext for an honest row.
Presently the Terror said: “Why don’t you make them let you have some one to play with? It’s silly being as dull as you are. What’s the good of being a princess, if you haven’t any friends?”
“Oh, yes!” cried the princess; and her cheeks flushed, and her eyes sparkled. “It would be nice! You and Erebus could come to tea with me and sooper and loonch often and again!”
The Twins looked at each other with eyes full of a sudden dismay. It was not in their scheme of things as they should be that they should go to the Grange in the immaculate morning dress of an English boy and girl, and spend stiff hours in the presence of a crimson baroness.
“That wouldn’t do at all,” said the Terror quickly. “You had better not tell them anything at all about us. They wouldn’t let us come to the Grange; and they’d stop you coming here. It’s ever so much nicer meeting secretly like this.”
“But it would be very nice to meet at the Grange as well as here,” said the princess, who felt strongly that she could not have enough of this good thing.
“It couldn’t be done. They wouldn’t have us at the Grange,” said Erebus, supporting the Terror.
“But why not?” said the princess in surprise.
“The people about here don’t understand us,” said the Terror somewhat sadly. “They’d think we should be bad for you.”
“But it is not so! You are ever so good to me!” cried the princess hotly.
“It’s no good. You couldn’t make grown-ups see that—you know what they are. No; you’d much better leave it alone, and sit tight and meet us here,” said the Terror.
The princess sat thoughtful and frowning for a little while; then she sighed and said: “Well, I will do what you say. You know more about it.”
“That’s all right,” said the Terror, greatly relieved.
There was a short silence; then he said thoughtfully: “I tell you what: it would be a good thing if you were to get some muscle on you. Suppose we taught you some exercises. You could practise them at home; and soon you’d be able to do things when you were with us.”
“What things?” said the princess.
“Oh, you’d be able to run—and jump. Why we might even be able to teach you to climb,” said the Terror with a touch of enthusiasm in his tone as the loftier heights of philanthropy loomed upon his inner vision.
“Oh, that would be nice!” cried the princess. Forthwith the Twins set about teaching her some of the exercises which go to the making of muscle; and the princess was a painstaking pupil. In spite of the seeds of revolt they had sown in her heart, she was eager to get back to the peach-garden before the baroness should awake, or at any rate before she should have satisfied herself that her charge was not in the house or about the gardens. The Terror therefore conducted her down the screen of trees to the door in the wall. She had left it unlatched; and he pushed it open gently. There was no sound of snoring: the baroness had awoke and left the garden.
“I expect she is still looking for me in the house,” said the princess calmly. “They’d be shouting if she weren’t.”
“Yes. I say; do you want all these peaches?” said the Terror, looking round the loaded walls.
“Me? No. I have a peach for breakfast and another for lunch. But I don’t care for peaches much. It’s the way the baroness eats them, I think—the juice roonning down, you know. And she eats six or seven always.”
“That woman’s a pig. I thought she looked like one,” said the Terror with conviction. “But if you don’t want them all, may I have some for my mother? The doctor has ordered her fruit; and she’s very fond of peaches.”
“Oh, yes; take some for your mother and yourself and Erebus. Take them all,” said the princess with quick generosity.
“Thank you; but a dozen will be heaps,” said the Terror.
The princess helped him gather them and lay them in a large cabbage-leaf; and then they bade each other good-by at the garden-gate.
The Twins returned home in triumph with the golden spoil. But when she was provided with two peaches for seven meals in succession, Mrs. Dangerfield could no longer eat them with a mind at ease, and she asked the Twins how they came by them. They assured her that they had been given to them by a friend but that the name of the donor must remain a secret. She knew that they would not lie to her; and thinking it likely that they came from either the squire or the vicar, both of whom took an uncommonly lively interest in her, judging from the fact that either of them had asked her to marry him more than once, she went on eating the peaches with a clear conscience.
The next afternoon the Twins devoted themselves to strengthening the princess’ spirit with no less ardor than they devoted themselves to strengthening her body. They adjured her again and again to thrust off the yoke of the baroness. The last pregnant words of Erebus to her were: “You just call her an old red pig, and see.”
Their efforts in the cause of freedom bore fruit no later than that very evening. The princess was dining with the Baroness Von Aschersleben and Miss Lambart; and the baroness, who was exceedingly jealous of Miss Lambart, had interrupted her several times in her talk with the princess; and she had done it rudely. The princess, who wanted to hear Miss Lambart talk, was annoyed. They had reached dessert; and Miss Lambart was congratulating her on the improvement in her appetite since she had just made an excellent meal, and said that it must be the air of Muttle Deeping. The baroness uttered a loud and contemptuous snort, and filled her plate with peaches. The princess looked at her with an expression of great dislike. The baroness gobbled up one peach with a rapidity almost inconceivable in a human being, and very noisily, and was midway through the second when the princess spoke.
“I want some children to play with,” she said.
Briskly and with the sound of a loud unpleasant sob the baroness gulped down the other half of the peach, and briskly she said: “Zere are no children in zis country, your Royal Highness.”
It was the custom for the princess to speak and hear only English in England.
“But I see plenty of children when I drive,” said the princess.
“Zey are nod children; zey are nod ’igh an’ well-born,” said the baroness in rasping tones.
“Then you must find some high and well-born children for me to play with,” said the princess.
“Moost? Moost?” cried the baroness in a high voice. “Bud eed ees whad I know ees goot for you.”
“They’re good for me,” said the princess firmly. “And you must find them.”
The baroness was taken aback by this so sudden and unexpected display of firmness in her little charge; her face darkened to a yet richer crimson; and she cried in a loud blustering voice: “Bud eed ees eembossible whad your royal highness ask! Zere are no ’igh an’ well-born children ’ere. Zey are een Loondon.”
“Well, you must send for some,” said the princess, who, having taken the first step, was finding it pleasant to be firm.
“Moost? Moost? I do nod know whad ees ’appen to you, your Royal Highness. I say eed ees eembossible!” shouted the baroness; and she banged on the table with her fist.
“But surely her highness’ request is a very natural one, Baroness; and there must be some nice children in the neighborhood if we were to look for them. Besides, Doctor Arbuthnot said that she ought to have children of her own age to play with,” said Miss Lambart who had been pitying the lonely child and seized eagerly on this chance of helping her to the companionship she needed.
“Do nod indervere, Englanderin!” bellowed the baroness; and her crimson was enriched with streaks of purple. “I am in ze charge of ’er royal highness; and I zay zat she does not wiz zese children blay.”
The fine gray eyes of the princess were burning with a somber glow. She was angry, and her mind was teeming with the instructions of her young mentors, especially with the more violent instructions of Erebus.
She gazed straight into the sparkling but blood-shot eyes of the raging baroness, and said in a somewhat uncertain voice but clearly enough:
“Old—red—peeg.”
Miss Lambart started in her chair; the baroness uttered a gasping grunt; she blinked; she could not believe her ears.
“But whad—but whad—” she said faintly.
“Old—red—peeg,” said the princess, somewhat pleased with the effect of the words, and desirous of deepening it.
“Bud whad ees eed zat ’appen?” muttered the bewildered baroness.
“If you do not find me children quickly, I shall write to my father that you do not as the English doctor bids; and you were ordered to do everything what the English doctor bids,” said the princess in a sinister tone. “Then you will go back to Cassel-Nassau and the Baroness Hochfelden will be my gouvernante.”
The baroness ground her teeth, but she trembled; it might easily happen, if the letter of the princess found the grand duke of Cassel-Nassau in the wrong mood, that she would lose this comfortable well-paid post, and the hated Baroness Hochfelden take it.
“Bud zere are no ’igh an’ well-born children, your Royal Highness,” she said in a far gentler, apologetic voice.
The princess frowned at her and said: “Mees Lambart will find them. Is it not, Mees Lambart?”
“I shall be charmed to try, Highness,” said Miss Lambart readily.
“Do nod indervere! I veel zose childen vind myzelf!” snapped the baroness.
The princess rose, still quivering a little from the conflict, but glowing with the joy of victory. At the door she paused to say:
“And I want them soon—at once.”
Then, though the baroness had many times forbidden her to tempt the night air, she went firmly out into the garden. The next morning at breakfast she again demanded children to play with.
Accordingly when Doctor Arbuthnot paid his visit that morning, the baroness asked him what children in the neighborhood could be invited to come to play with the princess. She only stipulated that they should be high and well-born.
“Well, of course the proper children to play with her would be the Twins—Mrs. Dangerfield’s boy and girl. They’re high and well-born enough. But I doubt that they could be induced to play with a little girl. They’re independent young people. Besides, I’m not at all sure that they would be quite the playmates for a quiet princess. It would hardly do to expose an impressionable child like the princess to such—er—er ardent spirits. You might have her developing a spirit of freedom; and you wouldn’t like that.”
“Mein Gott, no!” said the baroness with warm conviction.
“Then there’s Wiggins—Rupert Carrington. He’s younger and quieter but active enough. He’d soon teach her to run about.”
“But is he well-born?” said the careful baroness.
“Well-born? He’s a Carrington,” said Doctor Arbuthnot with an impressive air that concealed well his utter ignorance of the ancestry of the higher mathematician.
The baroness accepted Wiggins gloomily. When the princess, who had hoped for the Twins, heard that he had been chosen, she accepted him with resignation. Doctor Arbuthnot undertook to arrange the matter.
The disappointed princess informed the Twins of the election of Wiggins; and they cheered her by reporting favorably on the qualifications of their friend, though Erebus said somewhat sadly:
“Of course, he’ll insist on being an Indian chief and scalping you; he always does. But you mustn’t mind that.”
The princess thought that she would not mind it; it would at any rate be a change from listening monotonously to the snores of the baroness.
The Twins found it much more difficult to comfort and cheer their fair-haired, freckled, but infuriated friend. Not only was his reluctance to don the immaculate morning dress of an English young gentleman for the delectation of foreign princesses every whit as sincere as their own, but he felt the invitation to play with a little girl far more insulting than they would have done. They did their best to soothe him and make things pleasant for the princess, pointing out to him the richness of the teas he would assuredly enjoy, and impressing on him the fact that he would be performing a noble charitable action.
“Yes; that’s all very well,” said Wiggins gloomily. “But I’ve been seeing ever such a little of you lately in the afternoons; and now I shall see less than ever.”
Naturally, he was at first somewhat stiff with the princess; but the stiffness did not last; they became very good active friends; and he scalped her with gratifying frequency. In this way it came about that, in the matter of play, the princess led a double life. She spent the early part of the afternoon in the wood with the Twins; and from tea till the dressing-bell for dinner rang she enjoyed the society of Wiggins. She told no one of her friendship with the Twins; and Wiggins was surprised by her eagerness to hear everything about them he could tell. Between them she was beginning to acquire cheerfulness and muscle; and she was losing her air of delicacy, but not at a rate that satisfied the exigent Terror.
The time had come for the Twins to take their annual change of air. They took that change at but a short distance from their home, since the cost of a visit to the sea was more than their mother could afford. They were allowed to encamp for ten days, if the weather were fine, in the dry sandstone caves of Deeping Knoll, which rises in the middle of Little Deeping wood, the property of Mr. Anstruther.
Kind-hearted as the Twins were, they felt that to make the journey from the knoll to Muttle Deeping home wood was beyond the bounds of philanthropy; and they broke the news to the princess as gently as they could. She was so deeply grieved to learn that she was no longer going to enjoy their society that, in spite of the fact that she had been made well aware that they despised and abhorred tears, she was presently weeping. She was ashamed; but she could not help it. The compassionate Twins compromised; they promised her that they would try to come every third afternoon; and with that she had to be content.
None the less on the eve of their departure she was deploring bitterly the fact that she would not see them on the morrow, when the Terror was magnificently inspired.
“Look here: why shouldn’t you come with us into camp?” he said eagerly. “A week of it would buck you up more than a month at the Grange. You really do get open air camping out at the knoll.”
The face of the princess flushed and brightened at the splendid thought. Then it fell; and she said: “They’d never let me—never.”
“But you’d never ask them,” said the Terror. “You’d just slip away and come with us. We’ve kept our knowing you so dark that they’d never dream you were with us in the knoll caves.”
The princess was charmed, even dazzled, by the glorious prospect. She had come to feel strongly that by far the best part of her life was the afternoons she spent with the Twins in the wood; whole days with them would be beyond the delight of dreams. But to her unadventured soul the difficulties seemed beyond all surmounting. The Twins, however, were used to surmounting difficulties, and at once they began surmounting these.
“The difficult thing is not to get you there, but to keep you there,” said the Terror thoughtfully. “You see, I’ve got to go down every day for milk and things, and they’re sure to ask me if I’ve seen anything of you. Of course, I can’t lie about it; and then they’ll not only take you away, but they’ll probably turn us out of the caves.”
“That’s the drawback,” said Erebus.
The Twins gazed round the wood seeking enlightenment. A deep frown furrowed the Terror’s brow; and he said: “If only you weren’t a princess they wouldn’t make half such a fuss hunting for you, and I might never be asked anything about you.”
“I should have to come to the camp incognita, of course,” said the princess.
The Terror looked puzzled for a moment; then his face cleared into a glorious smile, and he cried:
“By Jove! Of course you would! I never thought of that! Why, you’d be some one else and not the princess at all! We shouldn’t know where the princess was if we were asked.”
“Of course we shouldn’t!” said Erebus, perceiving the advantage of this ignorance.
“I generally am the Baroness von Zwettel when I travel,” said the princess.
The Terror considered the matter, again frowning thoughtfully: “I suppose you have to have a title. But I think an English one would be best here: Lady Rowington now. No one would ever ask us where Lady Rowington is, because there isn’t any Lady Rowington.”
“Oh, yes: Lady Rowington—I would wish an English title,” said the princess readily.
“If we could only think of some way of making them think that she’d been stolen by gipsies, it would be safer still,” said Erebus.
“Gipsies don’t steal children nowadays,” said the Terror; and he paused considering. Then he added, “I tell you what though: Nihilists would—at least they’d steal a princess. Are there any Nihilists in Cassel-Nassau?”
“I never heard of any,” said the princess. “There are thousands of Socialists.”
“Socialists will do,” said the Terror cheerfully.
They were quick in deciding that the princess should not join them till the second night of their stay in camp, to give them time to have everything in order. Then they discussed her needs. She could not bring away with her any clothes, or it would be plain that she had not been stolen. She must share the wardrobe of Erebus.
“But, no. I have money,” said the princess, thrusting her hand into her pocket. “Will you not buy me clothes?”
She drew out a little gold chain purse with five sovereigns in it, and handed it to the Terror. He and Erebus examined it with warm admiration, for it was indeed a pretty purse.
“We should have had to buy you a bathing-dress, anyhow. There’s a pool just under the knoll,” said the Terror. “How much shall we want, Erebus?”
“You’d better have two pounds and be on the safe side,” said Erebus.
The Terror transferred two sovereigns from the purse of the princess to his own. Then he arranged that she should meet him outside the door of the peach-garden at nine o’clock, or thereabouts at night. He would wait half an hour that she might not have to hurry and perhaps arouse the suspicion that she had gone of her own free will. He made several suggestions about the manner of her escape.
When she left them, they rode straight to Rowington and set about purchasing her outfit. They bought a short serge skirt, two linen shirts, a blue jersey against the evening chill, a cap, sandals, stockings, underclothing and a bathing-dress. They carried the parcels home on their bicycles. When she saw them on their arrival Mrs. Dangerfield supposed that they were parts of their own equipment.
That evening the Terror worked hard at his ingenious device for throwing the searchers off the scent. It was:
He went to bed much pleased with his handiwork.
They spent a busy morning carrying their camping outfit to Deeping Knoll. The last two hundred yards of path to it was very narrow so that they transported their belongings to the entrance to it in Tom Cobb’s donkey-cart, and carried them up to the knoll on their backs.
In other years their outfit had been larger, for their mother had encamped with them. This year she had not cared for the effort; and she had also felt that ten days’ holiday out of the strenuous atmosphere which spread itself round the Twins, would be restful and pleasant. She was sure that they might quite safely be trusted to encamp by themselves on Deeping Knoll. Not only were they of approved readiness and resource; but buried in the heart of that wood, they were as safe from the intrusion of evil-doers as on some desert South Sea isle. She was somewhat surprised by the Terror’s readiness to take as many blankets as she suggested. In other years he had been disposed to grumble at the number she thought necessary.
The Twins had carried their outfit to the knoll by lunch-time; and they lunched, or rather dined, with a very good appetite. Then they began to arrange their belongings, which they had piled in a heap as they brought them up, in their proper caves. With a break of an hour for a bath this occupied them till tea-time. After tea they bathed again and then set about collecting fuel from the wood. They were too tired to spend much time on cooking their supper; and soon after it, rolled in their blankets on beds of bracken, they were sleeping like logs. They were up betimes, bathing.
This day was far less strenuous than the day before. They spent most of it in the pool or on its bank. In the afternoon Wiggins came and did not leave them till seven. Soon after eight o’clock the Terror set out to keep his tryst with the princess. He took with him the Socialist manifesto and pinned it to the post of a wicket gate opening from the gardens into the park on the opposite side of the Grange to Deeping Knoll. Then he came round to the door in the peach-garden wall two or three minutes before the clock over the stables struck nine.
He had not long to wait; he heard the gentle footfall of the princess on the garden path, the door opened, and she came through it. He shook hands with her warmly; and as they went up the screen of trees she told him how she had bidden the baroness and Miss Lambart good night, gone to her bedroom, ruffled the bed, locked the door, and slipped, unseen, down the stairs and out of the house. He praised her skill; and she found his praise very grateful.
The path to the knoll lay all the way through the dark woods; and the princess found them daunting. They were full of strange noises, many of them eery-sounding; and in the dimness strange terrifying shapes seemed to move. The Terror was not long discovering her fear, and forthwith put his arm round her waist and kept it there wherever the path was broad enough to allow it. When she quivered to some woodland sound, he told her what it was and eased her mind.
She was not strong enough in spite of her exercises and the active games with Wiggins, to make the whole of the journey over that rough ground at a stretch; and twice when he felt her flagging they sat down and rested. The princess was no longer frightened; she still thrilled to the eeriness of the woods, but she felt quite safe with the Terror. When they rested she snuggled up against him, stared before her into the dark, and thought of all the heroes wandering through the forests of Grimm, with the sense of adventure very strong on her. She was almost sorry when they came at last to the foot of the knoll and saw its top red in the glow of the fire Erebus was keeping bright.
Also Erebus had hot cocoa ready for them; and after her tiring journey the princess found it grateful indeed. They sat for a while in a row before the glowing fire, talking of the Hartz Mountains, which the princess had visited. But soon the yawns which she could not repress showed her hosts how sleepy she was, and the Terror suggested that she should go to bed.
With true courtesy, the Twins had given her the best sleeping-cave to herself, but she displayed such a terrified reluctance to sleep in it alone, that her couch of bracken and her blankets were moved into the cave of Erebus. After the journey and the excitement she was not long falling into a dreamless sleep.
When she awoke next morning, she found the Terror gone to fetch milk. Erebus conducted her down to the pool for her morning bath. The princess did not like it (she had had no experience of cold baths) but under the eye of Erebus she could not shrink; and in she went. She came out shivering, but Erebus helped rub her to a warm glow, and she came to breakfast with such an appetite as she had never before in her life enjoyed.
The knoll was indeed the ideal camping-ground for the romantic; the caves with which it was honeycombed lent themselves to a score of games of adventure; and the princess soon found that she had been called to an active life. It began directly after breakfast with dish-washing; after that she was breathless for an hour in two excited games both of which meant running through the caves and round and over the knoll as hard as you could run and at short intervals yelling as loud as you could yell. After this they put on their bathing-dresses and disported themselves in the pool till it was time to set about the serious business of cooking the dinner, which they took soon after one o’clock.
The Terror kept a careful and protective eye on the princess, helping her, for the most part vigorously, to cover the ground at the required speed. Also he turned her out of the pool, to dry and dress, a full half-hour before he and Erebus left it. After dinner the princess was so sleepy that she could hardly keep her eyes open; and the Terror insisted that she should lie down for an hour. She protested that she did not want to rest, that she did not want to lose a moment of this glorious life; but presently she yielded and was soon asleep.
They were expecting Wiggins in the afternoon. But he could be admitted safely into the secret, since, once he knew that the princess had become Lady Rowington, he would be able with sufficient truthfulness to profess an entire ignorance of her whereabouts. Also he would be very useful, for he could bring them word if suspicion had fallen on them.
At about half past two he arrived, bringing a great tale of the excitement of the countryside at the kidnaping of the princess. So far its simple-minded inhabitants and the suite of the princess were content with the socialist explanation of her disappearance; and three counties round were being searched by active policemen on bicycles for some one who had seen a suspicious motor-car containing Socialists and a princess. It was the general belief that she had been chloroformed and abducted through her bedroom window.
With admirable gravity the Twins discussed with Wiggins the probabilities of their success and of the recovery of the princess, the routes by which the Socialists might have carried her off, and the towns in which the lair to which they had taken her might be. At the end of half an hour of it the princess came out of her cave, her eyes, very bright with sleep, blinking in the sunlight.
Wiggins cried out in surprise; and the Twins laughed joyfully.
Wiggins greeted the princess politely; and then he said reproachfully: “You might have told me that she was coming here.”
“You ought to have known as soon as you heard she was missing,” said Erebus sternly.
“So I should, if I’d known you knew her at all,” said Wiggins.
“That’s what nobody knows,” said Erebus triumphantly.
“And look here: she’s here incognita,” said the Terror. “She’s taken the traveling name of Lady Rowington; and she’s not the princess at all. So if you’re asked if the princess is here, you can truthfully say she isn’t.”
“Of course—I see. This is a go!” said Wiggins cheerfully; and he spurned the earth.
“The only chance of her being found is for somebody to come up when we’re not expecting them and see her,” said the Terror. “So I’m going to block the path with thorn-bushes; and any one who comes up it will shout to us. But there’s no need to do that yet; nobody will think about us for a day or two.”
“No; of course they won’t. I didn’t,” said Wiggins.
The active life persisted throughout that day and the days that followed. It kept the princess always beside the Terror. Always he was using his greater strength to help her lead it at the required speed. Never in the history of the courts of Europe has a princess been so hauled, shoved, dragged, jerked, towed and lugged over rough ground. On the second morning she awoke so stiff that she could hardly move; but by the fifth evening she could give forth an ear-piercing yell that would have done credit to Erebus herself.
All her life the princess had been starved of affection; her mother had died when she was in her cradle; her father had been immersed in his pleasures; no one had been truly fond of her; and she had been truly fond of no one. It is hardly too much to say that she was coming to adore the Terror. Even at their most violent and thrilling moments his care for her never relaxed. He rubbed the ache out of her bruises; he plastered her scratches. He saw to it that she came out of the pool the moment that she looked chill. He picked out for her the tidbits at their meals. He even brushed out her hair, for the thick golden mass was quite beyond the management of the princess; and Erebus firmly refused to play the lady’s-maid. Since the Terror was one of those who enjoy doing most things which they are called upon to do, he presently forgot the unmanliness of the occupation, and began to take pleasure in handling the silken strands.
It was on the fifth day, after a bath, when he was brushing out her hair in the sun on the top of the knoll that he received the severe shock. Heaven knows that the princess was not a demonstrative child; indeed, she had never had the chance. But he had just finished his task and was surveying the shining result with satisfaction, when, of a sudden, without any warning, she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him.
“Oh, you are nice!” she said.
The Terror’s ineffable serenity was for once scattered to the winds. He flushed and gazed round the wood with horror-stricken eyes: if any one should have seen it!
The princess marked his trouble, and said in a tone of distress: “Don’t you like for me to kiss you?”
The Terror swallowed the lump of horror in his throat, and said, faintly but gallantly: “Yes—oh, rather.”
“Then kiss me,” said the princess simply, snuggling closer to him.
The despairing eyes of the Terror swept the woods; then he kissed her gingerly.
“I am fond of you, you know,” said the princess in a frankly proprietary tone.
The Terror’s scattered wits at last worked. He rose to his feet, and said quickly:
“Yes; let’s be getting to the others.”
The princess rose obediently.
But the ice was broken; and the kisses of the princess, if not frequent, were, at any rate, not rare. The Terror at first endured them; then he came rather to like them. But he strictly enjoined discretion on her; it would never do for Erebus to learn that she kissed him. The princess had no desire that Erebus, or any one else for that matter, should learn; but discretion and kisses have no natural affinity; and, without their knowing it, Wiggins became aware of the practise.
He had always observed that the Twins had no secrets from each other; and he never dreamed that he was letting an uncommonly awkward cat out of a bag when during a lull in the strenuous life, he said to Erebus:
“I suppose the Terror’s in love with the princess, kissing her like that. I think it’s awfully silly.” And he spurned the earth.
Erebus grabbed his arm and cried fiercely: “He never does!”
Wiggins looked at her in some surprise; her face was one dusky flush; and her eyes were flashing. He had seen her angry often enough, but never so angry as this; and he saw plainly that he had committed a grievous indiscretion.
“Perhaps she kissed him,” he said quickly.
“He’d never let her!” cried Erebus fiercely.
“Perhaps they didn’t,” said Wiggins readily.
“You know they did!” cried Erebus yet more fiercely.
“I may have made a mistake. It’s quite easy to make a mistake about that kind of thing,” said Wiggins.
Erebus would not have it, and very fiercely she dragged piecemeal from his reluctant lips the story of the surprised idyl. He had seen the princess with an arm round the Terror’s neck, and they had kissed.
With clenched fists and blazing eyes Erebus, taking the line of the least resistance, sought the princess. She found her lying back drowsily against a sunny bank.
Erebus came to an abrupt stop before her and cried fiercely: “Princess or no princess, you shan’t kiss the Terror!”
The drowsiness fled; and the princess sat up. Her gray eyes darkened and sparkled. She had never made a face in her life; it is not improbable, seeing how sheltered a life she had led, that she was ignorant that faces were made; but quite naturally she made a hideous face at Erebus, and said:
“I shall!”
“If you do, I’ll smack you!” cried Erebus; and she ground her teeth.
For all her Hohenzollern blood, the princess was a timid child; but by a gracious provision of nature even the timidest female will fight in the matter of a male. She met Erebus’ blazing eyes squarely and said confidently:
“He won’t let you. And if you do he’ll smack you—much harder!”
Had the princess been standing up, Erebus would have smacked her then and there. But she was sitting safely down; and the Queensberry rules only permit you to strike any one standing up. Erebus forgot them, stooped to strike, remembered them, straightened herself, and with a really pantherous growl dashed away in search of the Terror.
She found him examining and strengthening the barrier of thorns; and she cried:
“I know all about your kissing the princess! I never heard of such silly babyishness!”
It was very seldom, indeed, that the Terror showed himself sensible to the emotions of his sister; but on this occasion he blushed faintly as he said:
“Well, what harm is there in it?”
“It’s babyish! It’s what mollycoddles do! It’s girlish! It’s—”
The Terror of a sudden turned brazen; he said loudly and firmly:
“You mind your own business! It isn’t babyish at all! She’s asked me to marry her; and when we’re grown up I’m going to—so there!”
Erebus knew her brother well; she perceived that she was confronted by what she called his obstinacy; and though his brazen-faced admission had raised her to the very height of amazement and horror, she uttered no protest. She knew that protest would be vain, that against his obstinacy she was helpless. She wrung her hands and turned aside into the wood, overwhelmed by his defection from one of their loftiest ideals.
Then followed a period of strain. She assumed an attitude of very haughty contempt toward the errant pair, devoted herself to Wiggins, and let them coldly alone. From this attitude Wiggins was the chief sufferer: the Terror had the princess and the princess had the Terror; Erebus enjoyed her display of haughty contempt, but Wiggins missed the strenuous life, the rushing games, in which you yelled so heartily. As often as he could he stole away from the haughty Erebus and joined the errant pair. It is to be feared that the princess found the kisses sweeter for the ban Erebus had laid on them.
No one in the Deepings suspected that the missing princess was on Deeping Knoll. There had been sporadic outbursts of suspicion that the Twins had had a hand in her disappearance. But no one had any reason to suppose that they and the princess had even been acquainted. Doctor Arbuthnot, indeed, questioned both Wiggins and the Terror; but they were mindful of the fact that Lady Rowington (they were always very careful to address her as Lady Rowington) and not the princess, was at the knoll, and were thus able to assure him with sufficient truthfulness that they could not tell him where the princess was. The bursts of suspicion therefore were brief.
But there was one man in England in whom suspicion had not died down. Suspicion is, indeed, hardly the word for the feeling of Sir Maurice Falconer in the matter. When he first read in his Morning Post of the disappearance of the Princess Elizabeth of Cassel-Nassau from Muttle Deeping Grange he said confidently to himself: “The Twins again!” and to that conviction his mind clung.
It was greatly strengthened by a study of the reproduction of the Socialist manifesto on the front page of an enterprising halfpenny paper. He told himself that Socialists are an educated, even over-educated folk, and if one of them did set himself to draw a skull and cross-bones, the drawing would be, if not exquisite, at any rate accurate and unsmudged; that it was highly improbable that a Socialist would spell desperate with two “a’s” in an important document without being corrected by a confederate. On the other hand the drawing of the skull and cross-bones seemed to him to display a skill to which the immature genius of the Terror might easily have attained, while he could readily conceive that he would spell desperate with two “a’s” in any document.
But Sir Maurice was not a man to interfere lightly in the pleasures of his relations; and he would not have interfered at all had it not been for the international situation produced by the disappearance of the princess. As it was he was so busy with lunches, race meetings, dinners, theater parties, dances and suppers that he was compelled to postpone intervention till the sixth day, when every Socialist organ and organization from San Francisco eastward to Japan was loudly disavowing any connection with the crime, the newspapers of England and Germany were snarling and howling and roaring and bellowing at one another, and the Foreign Office and the German Chancellery were wiring frequent, carefully coded appeals to each other to invent some plausible excuse for not mobilizing their armies and fleets. Even then Sir Maurice, who knew too well the value of German press opinion, would not have interfered, had not the extremely active wife of a cabinet minister consulted him about the easiest way for her to sell twenty thousand pounds’ worth of consols. He disliked the lady so strongly that after telling her how she could best compass her design, he felt that the time had come to ease the international situation.
With this end in view he went down to Little Deeping. His conviction that the Twins were responsible for the disappearance of the princess became certitude when he learned from Mrs. Dangerfield that they were encamped on Deeping Knoll, and had been there since the day before that disappearance. But he kept that certitude to himself, since it was his habit to do things in the pleasantest way possible.
He forthwith set out across the fields and walked through the home wood and park to Muttle Deeping Grange. He gave his card to the butler and told him to take it straight to Miss Lambart, with whom he was on terms of friendship rather than of acquaintance; and in less than three minutes she came to him in the drawing-room.
She was looking anxious and worried; and as they shook hands he said: “Is this business worrying you?”
“It is rather. You see, though the Baroness Von Aschersleben was in charge of the princess, I am partly responsible. Besides, since I’m English, they keep coming to me to have all the steps that are being taken explained; and they want the same explanation over and over again. Since the archduke came it has been very trying. I think that he is more of an imbecile than any royalty I ever met.”
“I’m sorry to hear that they’ve been worrying you like this. If I’d known, I’d have come down and stopped it earlier,” said Sir Maurice in a tone of lively self-reproach.
“Stop it? Why, what can you do?” cried Miss Lambart, opening her eyes wide in her surprise.
“Well, I have a strong belief that I could lead you to your missing princess. But it’s only a belief, mind. So don’t be too hopeful.”
Miss Lambart’s pretty face flushed with sudden hope:
“Oh, if you could!” she cried.
“Put on your strongest pair of shoes, for I think that it will be rough going part of the way, and order a motor-car, or carriage; if you can, for the easier part; and we’ll put my belief to the test,” said Sir Maurice briskly.
Miss Lambart frowned, and said in a doubtful tone: “I shan’t be able to get a carriage or car without a tiresome fuss. They’re very unpleasant people, you know. Could we take the baroness with us? She’ll have to be carried in something.”
“Is she very fat?”
“Very.”
“Then she’d never get to the place I have in mind,” said Sir Maurice.
“Is it very far? Couldn’t we walk to it?”
“It’s about three miles,” said Sir Maurice.
“Oh, that’s nothing—at least not for me. But you?” said Miss Lambart, who had an utterly erroneous belief that Sir Maurice was something of a weakling.
“I can manage it. Your companionship will stimulate my flagging limbs,” said Sir Maurice. “Indeed, a real country walk on a warm and pleasant afternoon will be an experience I haven’t enjoyed for years.”
Miss Lambart was not long getting ready; and they set out across the park toward the knoll which rose, a rounded green lump, above the surface of the distant wood. Sir Maurice had once walked to it with the Twins; and he thought that his memory of the walk helped by a few inquiries of people they met would take him to it on a fairly straight course. It was certainly very pleasant to be walking with such a charming companion through such a charming country.
As soon as they were free of the gardens Miss Lambart said eagerly: “Where are we going to? Where do you think the princess is?”
“You’ve been here a month. Haven’t you heard of the Dangerfield twins?” said Sir Maurice.
“Oh, yes; we were trying to find children to play with the princess; and Doctor Arbuthnot mentioned them. But he said that they were not the kind of children for her, though they were the only high and well-born ones the baroness was clamoring for, in the neighborhood. He seemed to think that they would make her rebellious.”
“Then the princess didn’t know them?” said Sir Maurice quickly.
“No.”
“I wonder,” said Sir Maurice skeptically.
“We found a little boy called Rupert Carrington to play with her—a very nice little boy,” said Miss Lambart.
“Wiggins! The Twins’ greatest friend! Well, I’ll be shot!” cried Sir Maurice; and he laughed.
“But do you mean to say that you think that these children have something to do with the princess’ disappearance? How old are they?” said Miss Lambart in an incredulous tone, for fixed very firmly in her mind was the belief that the princess had been carried off by the Socialists and foreigners.
“I never know whether they are thirteen or fourteen. But I do know that nothing out of the common happens in the Deepings without their having a hand in it. I have the honor to be their uncle,” said Sir Maurice.
“But they’d never be able to persuade her to run away with them. She’s a timid child; and she has been coddled and cosseted all her life till she is delicate to fragility,” Miss Lambart protested.
“If it came to a matter of persuasion, my nephew would persuade the hind-leg, or perhaps even the fore-leg, off a horse,” said Sir Maurice in a tone of deep conviction. “But it would not necessarily be a matter of persuasion.”
“But what else could it be—children of thirteen or fourteen!” cried Miss Lambart.
“I assure you that it might quite easily have been force,” said Sir Maurice seriously. “My nephew and niece are encamped on Deeping Knoll. It is honeycombed with dry sand-stone caves for the most part communicating with one another. I can conceive of nothing more likely than that the idea of being brigands occurred to one or other of them; and they proceeded to kidnap the princess to hold her for ransom. They might lure her to some distance from the Grange before they had recourse to force.”
“It sounds incredible—children,” said Miss Lambart.
“Well, we shall see,” said Sir Maurice cheerfully. Then he added in a more doubtful tone; “If only we can take them by surprise, which won’t be so easy as it sounds.”
Miss Lambart feared that they were on a wild goose chase. But it was a very pleasant wild goose chase; she was very well content to be walking with him through this pleasant sunny land. When presently he turned the talk to matters more personal to her, she liked it better still. He was very sympathetic: he sympathized with her in her annoyance at having had to waste so much of the summer on this tiresome corvée of acting as lady-in-waiting on the little princess; for, thanks to the domineering jealousy of the baroness, it had been a tiresome corvée indeed, instead of the pleasant occupation it might have been. He sympathized with her in her vexation that she had been prevented by that jealousy from improving the health or spirits of the princess.
He was warmly indignant when she told him of the behavior of the baroness and the archduke during the last few days. The baroness had tried to lay the blame of the disappearance of the princess on her; and the archduke, a vast, sun-shaped, billowy mass of fat, infuriated at having been torn from the summer ease of his Schloss to dash to England, had been very rude indeed. She was much pleased by the warmth of Sir Maurice’s indignation; but she protested against his making any attempt to punish them, for she did not see how he could do it, without harming himself. But she agreed with him that neither the grand duke, nor the baroness deserved any consideration at her hands.
Their unfailing flow of talk shortened the way; and they soon were in the broad aisle of the wood from which the narrow, thorn-blocked path led to the knoll. Sir Maurice recognized the path; but he did not take it. He knew that the Twins were far too capable not to have it guarded, if the princess were indeed with them. He led the way into the wood on the right of it, and slowly, clearing the way for her carefully, seeing to it that she did not get scratched, or her frock get torn, he brought her in a circuit round to the very back of the knoll.
They made the passage in silence, careful not to tread on a twig, Sir Maurice walking a few feet in front, and all the while peering earnestly ahead through the branches. Now and again a loud yell came from the knoll; and once a chorus of yells. Finding that her coldness (the Terror frankly called it sulking) had no effect whatever on her insensible brother or the insensible princess, Erebus had put it aside; and the strenuous life was once more in full swing.
Once after an uncommonly shrill and piercing yell Miss Lambart said in an astonished whisper:
“That was awfully like the princess’ voice.”
“I thought you said she was delicate,” said Sir Maurice.
“So she was,” said Miss Lambart firmly.
Thanks to the careful noiselessness of their approach, they came unseen and unheard to the screen of a clump of hazels at the foot of the knoll, from which they could see the entrance of five caves in its face. They waited, watching it.
It was silent; there was no sign of life; and Sir Maurice was beginning to wonder whether they had, after all, been espied by his keen-eyed kin, when a little girl, with a great plait of very fair hair hanging down her back, came swiftly out of one of the bottom caves and slipped into a clump of bushes to the right of it.
“The princess!” said Miss Lambart; and she was for stepping forward, but Sir Maurice caught her wrist and checked her.
Almost on the instant an amazingly disheveled Wiggins appeared stealing in a crouching attitude toward the entrance to the cave.
“That nice little boy, Rupert Carrington,” said Sir Maurice.
Wiggins had almost gained the entrance to the cave when, with an ear-piercing yell, the princess sprang upon him and locked her arms round his neck; they swayed, yelling in anything but unison, and came to the ground.
“Delicate to fragility,” muttered Sir Maurice.
“Whatever has she been doing to herself?” said Miss Lambart faintly, gazing at her battling yelling charge with amazed eyes.
“You don’t know the Twins,” said Sir Maurice.
On his words Erebus came flying down the face of the knoll at a breakneck pace, yelling as she came, and flung herself upon the battling pair. As far as the spectators could judge she and the princess were rending Wiggins limb from limb; and they all three yelled their shrillest. Then with a yell the Terror leaped upon them from the cave and they were all four rolling on the ground while the aching welkin rang.
Suddenly the tangle of whirling limbs was dissolved as Erebus and Wiggins tore themselves free, gained their feet and fled. The princess and the Terror sat up, panting, flushed and disheveled. The princess wriggled close to the Terror, snuggled against him, and put an arm round his neck.
“It was splendid!” she cried, and kissed him.
Unaware of the watching eyes, he submitted to the embrace with a very good grace.
“Well, I never!” said Miss Lambart.
“These delicate children,” said Sir Maurice. “But it’s certainly a delightful place for lovers. I’m so glad we’ve found it.”
He was looking earnestly at Miss Lambart; and she felt that she was flushing.
“Come along!” she said quickly.
They came out of their clump, about fifteen yards from their quarry.
The quick-eyed Terror saw them first. He did not stir; but a curious, short, sharp cry came from his throat. It seemed to loose a spring in the princess. She shot to her feet and stood prepared to fly, frowning. The Terror rose more slowly.
“Good afternoon, Highness. I’ve come to take you back to the Grange,” said Miss Lambart.
“I’m not going,” said the princess firmly.
“I’m afraid you must. Your father is there; and he wants you,” said Miss Lambart.
“No,” said the princess yet more firmly; and she took a step sidewise toward the mouth of the cave.
The Terror nodded amiably to his uncle and put his hands in his pockets; he wore the detached air of a spectator.
“But if you don’t come of yourself, we shall have to carry you,” said Miss Lambart sternly.
The Terror intervened; he said in his most agreeable tone: “I don’t see how you can. You can’t touch a princess you know. It would be lèse-majesté. She’s told me all about it.”
The perplexity spread from the face of Miss Lambart to the face of Sir Maurice Falconer; he smiled appreciatively. But he said: “Oh, come; this won’t do, Terror, don’t you know! Her highness will have to come.”
“I don’t see how you’re going to get her. The only person who could use force is the prince himself, and I don’t think he could be got up to the knoll. He’s too heavy. I’ve seen him. And if you did get him up, I don’t really think he’d ever find her in these caves,” said the Terror in the dispassionate tone of one discussing an entirely impersonal matter.
“Anyhow, I’m not going,” said the princess with even greater firmness.
Miss Lambart and Sir Maurice gazed at each other in an equal perplexity.
“You see, there isn’t any real reason why she shouldn’t stay here,” said the Terror. “She came to England to improve her health; and she’s improving it ever so much faster here than she did at the Grange. You can see how improved it is. She eats nearly as much as Erebus.”
“She has certainly changed,” said Miss Lambart in a tart tone which showed exactly how little she found it a change for the better.
“The Twins have a transforming effect on the young,” said Sir Maurice in a tone of resignation.
“I am much better,” said the princess. “I’m getting quite strong, and I can run ever so fast.”
She stretched out a tanning leg and surveyed it with an air of satisfaction.
“But it’s nonsense!” said Miss Lambart.
“But what can you do?” said the Terror gently.
“I’ll chance the lèse-majesté!” cried Miss Lambart; and she sprang swiftly forward.
The princess bolted into the cave and up it. Miss Lambart followed swiftly. The cave ended in a dim passage, ten feet down, the passage forked into three dimmer passages. Miss Lambart stopped short and tried to hear from which of them came the sound of the footfalls of the retiring princess. It came from none of the three; the floor of the eaves was covered with sound-deadening sand. Miss Lambart walked back to the entrance of the cave.
“She has escaped,” she said in a tone of resignation.
“Well, I really don’t see any reason for you to put yourself about for the sake of that disagreeable crew at the Grange. You have done more than you were called on to do in finding her. You can leave the catching of her to them. There’s nothing to worry about: it’s quite clear that this camping-out is doing her a world of good,” said Sir Maurice in a comforting tone.
“Yes; there is that,” said Miss Lambart.
“Let me introduce my nephew. Hyacinth Dangerfield—better, much better, known as the Terror—to you,” Said Sir Maurice.
The Terror shook hands with her, and said: “How do you do? I’ve been wanting to know you: the princess—I mean Lady Rowington—likes you ever so much.”
Miss Lambart was appeased.
“Perhaps you could give us some tea? We want it badly,” said Sir Maurice.
“Yes, I can. We only drink milk and cocoa, of course. But we have some tea, for Mum walked up to have tea with us yesterday,” said the Terror.
“I take it that she saw nothing of the princess,” said Sir Maurice.
“Oh, no; she didn’t see Lady Rowington. You must remember that she’s Lady Rowington here, and not the princess at all,” said the Terror.
“Oh? I see now how it was that when you were asked at home, you knew nothing about the princess,” said Sir Maurice quickly.
“Yes; that was how,” said the Terror blandly.
They had not long to wait for their tea, for the Twins had had their kettle on the fire for some time. Sir Maurice and Miss Lambart enjoyed the picnic greatly. On his suggestion an armistice was proclaimed. Miss Lambart agreed to make no further attempt to capture the princess; and she came out of hiding and took her tea with them.
Miss Lambart was, indeed, pleased with, at any rate, the physical change in the princess, induced by her short stay at the knoll: she was a browner, brighter, stronger child. Plainly, too, she was a more determined child; and while, for her own part, Miss Lambart approved of that change also, she was quite sure that it would not be approved by the princess’ kinsfolk and train. But she was somewhat distressed that the legs of the princess should be marred by so many and such deep scratches. She had none of the experienced Twins’ quickness to see and dodge thorns. She took Miss Lambart’s sympathy lightly enough; indeed she seemed to regard those scratches as scars gained in honorable warfare.
Miss Lambart saw plainly that the billowy archduke would have no little difficulty in recovering her from this fastness; and since she was assured that this green wood life was the very thing the princess needed, she was resolved to give him no help herself. She was pleased to learn that she was in no way responsible for the princess’ acquaintance with the Twins; that she had made their acquaintance and cultivated their society while the careless baroness slept in the peach-garden.
At half past five Sir Maurice and Miss Lambart took their leave of their entertainers and set out through the wood. They had not gone a hundred yards before a splendid yelling informed them that the strenuous life had again begun.
Miss Lambart had supposed that they would return straight to Muttle Deeping Grange with the news of their great discovery. But she found that Sir Maurice had formed other plans. They were both agreed that no consideration was owing to the billowy archduke. His manners deprived him of any right to it. Accordingly, he took her to Little Deeping post-office, and with many appeals to her for suggestions and help wrote two long telegrams. The first was to the editor of the Morning Post, the second was to the prime minister. In both he set forth his discovery of the princess happily encamped with young friends in a wood, and her reasons for running away to them. The postmistress despatched them as he wrote them, that they might reach London and ease the international situation at once. Since both the editor and the prime minister were on friendly and familiar terms with him, there was no fear that the telegrams would fail of their effect.
Then he took Miss Lambart to Colet House, to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Dangerfield, and to inform her how nearly the Twins had plunged Europe into Armageddon. Mrs. Dangerfield received the news with unruffled calm. She showed no surprise at all; she only said that she had found it very strange that a princess should vanish at Muttle Deeping and the Twins have no hand in it. She perceived at once that the princess had quite prevented any disclosure by assuming the name of Lady Rowington.
Miss Lambart found her very charming and attractive, and was in no haste to leave such pleasant companionship for the dull and unpleasant atmosphere of Muttle Deeping Grange. It was past seven therefore when the Little Deeping fly brought her to it; and she went to the archduke with her news.
She found him in the condition of nervous excitement into which he always fell before meals, too excited, indeed, to listen to her with sufficient attention to understand her at the first telling of her news. He was some time understanding it, and longer believing it. It annoyed him greatly. He was taking considerable pleasure in standing on a pedestal before the eyes of Europe as the bereaved Hohenzollern sire. His first, and accurate, feeling was that Europe would laugh consumedly when it learned the truth of the matter. His second feeling was that his noble kinsman, who had been saying wonderful, stirring things about the Terror’s manifesto and the stolen princess, would be furiously angry with him.
He began to rave himself, fortunately in his own tongue of which Miss Lambart was ignorant. Then when he grew cooler and paler his oft-repeated phrase was: “Eet must be ’ushed!”
Miss Lambart did not tell him that Sir Maurice had taken every care that the affair should not be hushed up. She did not wish every blow to strike him at once. Then the dinner-bell rang; and in heavy haste he rolled off to the dining-room.
Miss Lambart was betaking herself to her bedroom to dress, when the archduke’s equerry, the young mustached Count Zerbst came running up the stairs, bidding her in the name of his master come to dinner at once, as she was. She took no heed of the command, dressed at her ease, and came down just as the archduke, perspiring freely after his struggle with the hors-d’oeuvres, soup and fish, was plunging upon his first entrée.
He ate it with great emphasis; and as he ate it he questioned her about the place where his daughter was encamped and the friends she was encamped with. Miss Lambart described the knoll and its position as clearly as she could, and of the Twins she said as little as possible. Then he asked her with considerable acerbity why she had not exercised her authority and brought the princess back with her.
Miss Lambart said that she had no authority over the princess; and that if she had had it, the princess would have disregarded it wholly, and that it was impossible to haul a recalcitrant Hohenzollern through miles of wood by force, since the persons of Hohenzollerns were sacrosanct.
The archduke said that the only thing to do was to go himself and summon home his truant child. Miss Lambart objected that it would mean hewing expensively a path through the wood wide enough to permit his passage, and it was improbable that the owner of the wood would allow it. Thereupon the baroness volunteered to go. Miss Lambart with infinite pleasure explained that for her too an expensive path must be hewn, and went on to declare that if they reached the knoll, there was not the slightest chance of their finding the princess in its caves.
The archduke frowned and grunted fiercely in his perplexity. Then he struck the table and cried:
“Count Zerbst shall do eet! To-morrow morning! You shall ’eem lead to ze wood. ’E shall breeng ’er.”
Miss Lambart protested that to wander in the Deeping woods with a German count would hardly be proper.
“Brobare? What ees ‘brobare’?” said the archduke.
“Convenable,” said Miss Lambart.
The archduke protested that such considerations must not be allowed to militate against his being set free to return to Cassel-Nassau at the earliest possible moment. Miss Lambart said that they must. In the end it was decided that a motor-car should be procured from Rowington and that Miss Lambart should guide the archduke and the count to the entrance of the path to the knoll, the count should convey to the princess her father’s command to return to the Grange, and if she should refuse to obey, he should haul her by force to the car.
Miss Lambart made no secret of her strong conviction that he would never set eyes, much less hands, on the princess. Count Zerbst’s smooth pink face flushed rose-pink all round his fierce little mustache, which in some inexplicable, but unfortunate, fashion accentuated the extraordinary insignificance of his nose; his small eyes sparkled; and he muttered fiercely something about “sdradegy.” He looked at Miss Lambart very unamiably. He felt that she was not impressed by him as were the maidens of Cassel-Nassau; and he resented it. He resolved to capture the princess at any cost.
The archduke fumed furiously to find, next morning in the Morning Post the true story of his daughter’s disappearance; and he was fuming still when the car came from Rowington. It was a powerful car and a weight-carrier; Miss Lambart, who had telephoned for it, had been careful to demand a weight-carrier. With immense fuss the archduke disposed himself in the back of the tonneau which he filled with billowy curves. The moment he was settled in it Miss Lambart sprang to the seat beside the driver, and insisted on keeping it that she might the more easily direct his course.
They were not long reaching the wood; and the chauffeur raised no objection to taking the car up the broad turfed aisle from which ran the path to the knoll. At the entrance of it the count stepped out of the car; and the archduke gave him his final instructions with the air of a Roman father; he was to bring the princess in any fashion, but he was to bring her at once.
In a last generous outburst he cried: “Pooll ’er by the ear! Bud breeng ’er.”
The count said that he would, and entered the path with a resolute and martial air. Miss Lambart was not impressed by it. She thought that in his tight-fitting clothes of military cut and his apparently tighter-fitting patent leather boots he looked uncommonly out of place under the green wood trees. She remembered how lightly the Twins and the princess went; and she had the poorest expectation of his getting near any of them. Also, as they had come up the aisle of the woods she had been assailed by a late but serious doubt, whether a weight-carrying motor-car was quite the right kind of vehicle in which to approach the lair of the Twins with hostile intent. Its powerful, loud-throbbing engine had seemed to her to advertise their advent with all the competence of a trumpet.
Her doubt was well-grounded. The quick ears of Erebus were the first to catch its throbbing note, and that while it was still two hundred yards from the entrance of the path to the knoll. Ever since the departure of Miss Lambart and Sir Maurice the Twins had been making ready against invasion, conveying their provisions and belongings to the secret caves.
The secret caves had not been secret before the coming of the Twins to the knoll. They were high up on the outer face of it, airy and well lighted by two inaccessible holes under an overhanging ledge. But the entrance to them was by a narrow shaft which rose sharply from a cave in the heart of the knoll. On this shaft the Twins had spent their best pains for two and a half wet days the year before; and they had reduced some seven or eight feet of it to a passage fifteen inches high and eighteen inches broad. The opening into this passage could, naturally, be closed very easily; and then, in the dim light, it was hard indeed to distinguish it from the wall of the cave. It had been a somewhat difficult task to get their blankets and provisions through so narrow a passage; but it had been finished soon after breakfast.
They were on the alert for invaders; and as soon as they were quite sure that the keen ears of Erebus had made no mistake and that a car was coming up the board aisle, the princess and the Terror squirmed their way up to the secret caves; and Erebus closed the passage behind them, and with small chunks filled in the interstices between the larger pieces of stone so that it looked more than ever a part of the wall of the cave. Then she betook herself to a point of vantage among the bushes on the face of the knoll, from which she could watch the entrance of the path and the coming of the invaders.
The archduke, lying back at his ease in the car, and smoking an excellent cigar, spoke with assurance of catching the one-fifteen train from Rowington to London and the night boat from Dover to Calais. Miss Lambart wasted no breath encouraging him in an expectation based on the efforts of Count Zerbst on the knoll. She stepped out of the car and strolled up and down on the pleasant turf. Presently she saw a figure coming down the aisle from the direction of Little Deeping; when it came nearer, with considerable pleasure she recognized Sir Maurice.
When he came to them she presented him to the archduke as the discoverer of his daughter’s hiding-place. The archduke, mindful of the fact that Sir Maurice had given the true story of the disappearance to the world, received him ungraciously. Miss Lambart at once told Sir Maurice of the errand of Count Zerbst and of her very small expectation that anything would come of it. Sir Maurice agreed with her; and the fuming archduke assured them that the count was the most promising soldier in the army of Cassel-Nassau. Then Sir Maurice suggested that they should go to the knoll and help the count. Miss Lambart assented readily; and they set out at once. They skirted the barriers of thorns in the path and came to the knoll. It was quiet and seemed utterly deserted.
They called loudly to the count several times; but he did not answer. Miss Lambart suggested that he was searching the caves and that they should find him and help him search them; they plunged into the caves and began to hunt for him. They did not find the count; neither did they find the princess nor the Twins. They shouted to him many times as they traversed the caves; but they had no answer.
This was not unnatural, seeing that he left the knoll just before they reached it. He had mounted the side of it, calling loudly to the princess. He had gone through half a dozen caves, calling loudly to the princess. No answer had come to his calling. He had kept coming out of the labyrinth on to the side of the knoll. At one of these exits, to his great joy, he had seen the figure of a little girl, dressed in the short serge skirt and blue jersey he had been told the princess was wearing, slipping through the bushes at the foot of the knoll. With a loud shout he had dashed down it in pursuit and plunged after her into the wood. Her sunbonnet was still in sight ahead among the bushes, and by great good fortune he succeeded in keeping it in sight. Once, indeed, when he thought that he had lost it for good and all, it suddenly reappeared ahead of him; and he was able to take up the chase again. But he did not catch her. Indeed he did not lessen the distance between them to an extent appreciable by the naked eye. For a delicate princess she was running with uncommon speed and endurance. Considering his dress and boots and the roughness of the going, he, too, was running with uncommon speed and endurance. It was true that his face was a very bright red and that his so lately stiff, tall, white collar lay limply gray round his neck. But he was not near enough to his quarry to be mortified by seeing that she was but faintly flushed by her efforts and hardly perspiring at all. All the while he was buoyed up by the assurance that he would catch her in the course of the next hundred yards.
Then his quarry left the wood, by an exceedingly small gap, and ran down a field path toward the village of Little Deeping. By the time the count was through the gap she had a lead of a hundred yards. To his joy, in the open country, on the smoother path, he made up the lost ground quickly. When they reached the common, he was a bare forty yards behind her. He was not surprised when in despair she left the path and bolted into the refuge of an old house that stood beside it.
Mopping his hot wet brow he walked up the garden path with a victorious air, and knocked firmly on the door. Sarah opened it; and he demanded the instant surrender of the princess. Sarah heard him with an exasperating air of blank bewilderment. He repeated his demand more firmly and loudly.
Sarah called to Mrs. Dangerfield: “Please, mum: ’ere’s a furrin gentleman asking for a princess. I expect as it’s that there missing one.”
“Do nod mock! She ’ees ’ere!” cried the count fiercely.
Then Mrs. Dangerfield came out of the dining-room where she had been arranging flowers, and came to the door.
“The princess is not here,” she said gently.
“But I haf zeen ’er! She haf now ad once coom! She ’ides!” cried the count.
At that moment Erebus came down the hall airily swinging her sunbonnet by its strings. The eyes of the count opened wide; so did his mouth.
“I expect he means me. At least he’s run after me all the way from the knoll here,” said Erebus in a clear quiet voice.
The count’s eyes returned to their sockets; and he had a sudden outburst of fluent German. He did not think that any of his hearers could understand that portion of his native tongue he was using; he hoped they could not; he could not help it if they did.
Mrs. Dangerfield looked from him to Erebus thoughtfully. She did not suppose for a moment that it was mere accident that had caused the count to take so much violent exercise on such a hot day. She was sorry for him. He looked so fierce and young and inexperienced to fall foul of the Twins.
Erebus caught her mother’s thoughtful eye. At once she cried resentfully: “How could I possibly tell it was the sunbonnet which made him think I was the princess? He never asked me who I was. He just shouted once and ran after me. I was hurrying home to get some salad oil and get back to the knoll by lunch.”
“Yes, you would run all the way,” said Mrs. Dangerfield patiently.
“Well, you’d have run, too, Mum, with a foreigner running after you! Just look at that mustache! It would frighten anybody!” cried Erebus in the tone of one deeply aggrieved by unjust injurious suspicions.
“Yes, I see,” said her mother with undiminished patience.
She invited the count to come in and rest and get cool; and she allayed his fine thirst with a long and very grateful whisky and soda. He explained to her at length, three times, how he had come to mistake Erebus for the flying princess, for he was exceedingly anxious not to appear foolish in the eyes of such a pretty woman. Erebus left them together; she made a point of taking a small bottle of salad oil to the knoll. They had no use for salad oil indeed; but it had been an after-thought, and she owed it to her conscience to take it. That would be the safe course.
In the meantime the archduke was sitting impatiently in the car, looking frequently at his watch. He had expected the count to return with the princess in, at the longest, a quarter of an hour. Then he had expected Miss Lambart and Sir Maurice to return with the count and the princess in, at the longest, a quarter of an hour. None of them returned. The princess was sitting on a heap of bracken in the highest of the secret caves, and the Terror was taking advantage of this enforced quiet retirement to brush out her hair. The count sat drinking whisky and soda and explained to Mrs. Dangerfield that he had not really been deceived by the sunbonnet and that he was very pleased that he had been deceived by it, since it had given him the pleasure of her acquaintance. Miss Lambart and Sir Maurice sat on a bank and talked seriously about everything and certain other things, but chiefly about themselves and each other.
So the world wagged as the archduke saw the golden minutes which lay between him and the one-fifteen slipping away while his daughter remained uncaught. He chafed and fumed. His vexation grew even more keen when he came to the end of his cigar and found that the thoughtless count had borne away the case. He appealed to the chauffeur for advice; but the chauffeur, a native of Rowington and ignorant of Beaumarchais, could give him none.
At half past twelve the archduke rose to his full height in the car, bellowed: “Zerbst! Zerbst! Zerbst!” and sank down again panting with the effort.
The chauffeur looked at him with compassionate eyes. The archduke’s bellow, for all his huge round bulk, was but a thin and reedy cry. No answer came to it; no one came from the path to the knoll.
“P’raps if I was to give him a call, your Grace,” said the chauffeur, somewhat complacent at displaying his knowledge of the right way to address an archduke.
“Yes, shout!” said the archduke quickly.
The chauffeur rose to his full height in the car and bellowed: “Zerbst! Zerbst! Zerbst!”
No answer came to the call; no one came from the path to the knoll.
In three minutes the archduke was grinding his teeth in a black fury.
Then with an air of inspiration he cried: “I shout—you shout—all ad vonce!”
“Every little ’elps,” said the chauffeur politely.
With that they both rose to their full height in the car and together bellowed: “Zerbst! Zerbst! Zerbst!”
No answer came to it; no one came from the path to the knoll.
On his sunny bank on the side of the knoll Sir Maurice said carelessly: “He seems to be growing impatient.”
“He isn’t calling us. And it’s no use our going back without either the princess or the count,” said Miss Lambart quickly.
“Not the slightest,” said Sir Maurice; and he drew her closer, if that were possible, to him and kissed her.
To this point had their cooperation in the search for the princess and their discussion of everything and certain other things ripened their earlier friendship. They, or rather Sir Maurice, had even been discussing the matter of being married at an early date.
“I don’t think I shall let you go back to the Grange at all. They don’t treat you decently, you know—not even for royalties,” he went on.
“Oh, it wouldn’t do not to go back—at any rate for to-night—though, of course, there’s no point in my staying longer, since the princess isn’t there,” said Miss Lambart.
“You don’t know: perhaps Zerbst has caught her by now and is hauling her to her circular sire,” said Sir Maurice. “The Twins can not be successful all the time.”
“We ought to go and search those caves thoroughly,” said Miss Lambart.
“That wouldn’t be the slightest use,” said Sir Maurice in a tone of complete certainty. “If the princess is in the caves, she is not in an accessible one. But as a matter of fact she is quite as likely, or even likelier, to be at the Grange. The Twins are quite intelligent enough to hide princesses in the last place you would be likely to look for them. It’s no use our worrying ourselves about her; besides, we’re very comfortable here. Why not stay just as we are?”
They stayed there.
But the archduke’s impatience was slowly rising to a fury as the minutes that separated him from the one-fifteen slipped away. At ten minutes to one he was seized by a sudden fresh fear lest the searchers should be so long returning as to make him late for lunch; and at once he despatched the chauffeur to find them and bring them without delay.
The chauffeur made no haste about it. He had heard of the caves on Deeping Knoll and had always been curious to see them. Besides, he made it a point of honor not to smoke on duty; he had not had a pipe in his mouth since eleven o’clock; and he felt now off duty. He explored half a dozen caves thoroughly before he came upon Miss Lambart and Sir Maurice and gave them the archduke’s message. They joined him in his search for Count Zerbst, going through the caves and calling to him loudly.
The one-fifteen had gone; and the hour of lunch was perilously near. The face of the archduke was dark with the dread that he would be late for it. There was a terrifying but sympathetic throbbing not far from his solar plexus.
Every two or three minutes he rose to his full height in the car and bellowed: “Zerbst! Zerbst! Zerbst!”
Still no answer came to the call; no one came from the path to the knoll.
Then at the very moment at which on more fortunate days he was wont to sink heavily, with his mouth watering, into a large chair before a gloriously spread German table, he heard the sound of voices; and the chauffeur, Miss Lambart and Sir Maurice came out of the path to the knoll.
They told the duke that they had neither seen nor heard anything of the princess, her hosts, or Count Zerbst. The archduke cursed his equerry wheezily but in the German tongue, and bade the chauffeur get into the car and drive to the Grange as fast as petrol could take him.
Sir Maurice bade Miss Lambart good-by, saluted the archduke, and the car went bumping down the turfed aisle. Once in the road the chauffeur, anxious to make trial at an early moment of the archducal hospitality, let her rip. But half a mile down the road, they came upon a slow-going, limping wayfarer. It was Count Zerbst. After a long discussion with Mrs. Dangerfield he had decided that since Erebus had slipped away back to the knoll, it would be impossible for him to find his way to it unguided; and he had set out for Muttle Deeping Grange. In the course of his chase of Erebus and his walk back his patent leather boots had found him out with great severity; and he was indeed footsore. He stepped into the grateful car with a deep sigh of relief.
A depressed party gathered round the luncheon table; Miss Lambart alone was cheerful. The archduke had been much shaken by his terrors and disappointments of the morning. Count Zerbst had acquired a deep respect for the intelligence of the young friends of the princess; and he had learned from Mrs. Dangerfield, who had discussed the matter with Sir Maurice, that since her stay at the knoll was doing the princess good, and was certainly better for her than life with the crimson baroness at the Grange, she was not going to annoy and discourage her charitable offspring by interfering in their good work for trivial social reasons. The baroness was bitterly angry at their failure to recover her lost charge.
They discussed the further measures to be taken, the archduke and the baroness with asperity, Count Zerbst gloomily. He made no secret of the fact that he believed that, if he dressed for the chase and took to the woods, he would in the end find and capture the princess, but it might take a week or ten days. The archduke cried shame upon a strategist of his ability that he should be baffled by children for a week or ten days. Count Zerbst said sulkily that it was not the children who would baffle him, but the caves and the woods they were using. At last they began to discuss the measure of summoning to their aid the local police; and for some time debated whether it was worth the risk of the ridicule it might bring upon them.
Miss Lambart had listened to them with distrait ears since she had something more pleasant to give her mind to. But at last she said with some impatience: “Why can’t the princess stay where she is? That open-air life, day and night, is doing her a world of good. She is eating lots of good food and taking ten times as much exercise as ever she took in her life before.”
“Eembossible! Shall I live in a cave?” cried the baroness.
“It doesn’t matter at all where you live. It is the princess we are considering,” said Miss Lambart unkindly, for she had come quite to the end of her patience with the baroness.
“Drue!” said the archduke quickly.
“Shall eet zen be zat ze princess live ze life of a beast in a gave?” cried the baroness.
“She isn’t,” said Miss Lambart shortly. “In fact she’s leading a far better and healthier and more intelligent life than she does here. The doctor’s orders were never properly carried out.”
“Ees zat zo?” said the archduke, frowning at the baroness.
“Eengleesh doctors! What zey know? Modern!” cried the baroness scornfully.
In loud and angry German the archduke fell furiously upon the baroness, upbraiding her for her disobedience of his orders. The baroness defended herself loudly, alleging that the princess would by now be dying of a galloping consumption had she had all the air and water the doctors had ordered her. But the archduke stormed on. At last he had some one on whom he could vent his anger with an excellent show of reason; and he vented it.
Presently, for the sake of Miss Lambart’s counsel in the matter, they returned to the English tongue and discussed seriously the matter of the princess remaining at the knoll. They found many objections to it, and the chief of them was that it was not safe for three children to be encamped by themselves in the heart of a wood.
Miss Lambart grew tired of assuring them that the Twins were more efficient persons than nine Germans out of ten; and at last she said:
“Well, Highness, to set your fears quite at rest, I will go and stay at the knoll myself. Then you can go back to Cassel-Nassau with your mind at ease; and I will undertake that the princess comes to you in better health than if she had stayed on here.”
“Bud ’ow would she be zafer wiz a young woman, ignorant and—” cried the baroness, furious at this attempt to usurp her authority.
“Goot!” cried the archduke cutting her short; and his face beamed at the thought of escaping forthwith to his home. “Eet shall be zo! And ze baroness shall go alzo to Cassel-Nassau zo zoon az I zend a lady who do as ze doctors zay.”
So it was settled; and Miss Lambart was busy for an hour collecting provisions, arranging that fresh provisions should be brought to the path to the knoll every morning and preparing and packing the fewest possible number of garments she would need during her stay.
Then she bade the relieved archduke good-by; and set out in the Rowington car to the knoll. Not far from the park gates she met Sir Maurice strolling toward the Grange, and took him with her. At the entrance of the path to the knoll they took the baskets of provisions and Miss Lambart’s trunk from the car, and dismissed it. Then they went to the knoll.
It was silent; there were no signs of the presence of man about it. But after Sir Maurice had shouted three times that they came in peace-bearing terms, Erebus and Wiggins came out of one of the caves above them and heard the news. She made haste to bear it to the Terror and the princess who received it with joy. They had already been cooped up long enough in the secret caves and were eager to plunge once more into the strenuous life. They welcomed Miss Lambart warmly; and the princess was indeed pleased to have her fears removed and her position at the knoll secure.
They made Miss Lambart one of themselves and admitted her to a full share of the strenuous life. She played her part in it manfully. Even Erebus, who was inclined to carp at female attainments, was forced to admit that as a brigand, an outlaw, or a pirate she often shone.
But Sir Maurice, who was naturally a frequent visitor, never caught her engaged in the strenuous life. Indeed, on his arrival she disappeared; and always spent some minutes after his arrival removing traces of the speed at which she had been living it, and on cooling down to life on the lower place. Both of them found the knoll a delightful place for lovers.
Since the strenuous life was found to be so strengthening to the princess, the Twins stayed in camp a week longer than had been in the beginning arranged. Thrown into such intimate relations with Miss Lambart, it was only natural that they should grow very friendly with her. It was therefore a bitter blow to Erebus to find that she was not only engaged to their Uncle Maurice but also about to be married to him in the course of the next few weeks. She grumbled about it to the Terror and did not hesitate to assert that his bad example in the matter of the princess had put the idea of love-making into these older heads. Then, in a heart to heart talk, she strove earnestly with Miss Lambart, making every effort to convince her that love and marriage were very silly things, quite unworthy of those who led the strenuous life. She failed. Then she tried to persuade Sir Maurice of that plain fact, and failed again. He declared that it was his first duty, as an uncle, to be married before his nephew, and that if he were not quick about it the Terror would certainly anticipate him. Erebus carried his defense to the Terror with an air of bitter triumph; and there was a touch of disgusted misanthropy in her manner for several days. The princess on the other hand found the engagement the most natural and satisfactory thing in the world. Her only complaint was that she and the Terror were not old enough to be married on the same day as Miss Lambart.
Probably Miss Lambart and Sir Maurice enjoyed the life at the knoll even more than the children, for the felicity of lovers is the highest felicity, and the knoll is the ideal place for them. Sir Maurice arrived at it not so very much later, considering his urban habit, than sunrise; and he did not leave it till long after sunset. But the pleasantest days will come to an end; and the camp was broken up, since the archduke’s tenancy of the Grange expired, and the princess must return to Germany. She was bitterly grieved at parting with the Terror, and assured him that she would certainly come to England the next summer, or even earlier, perhaps at Christmas, to see him again. It seemed not unlikely that after her short but impressive association with the Twins she would have her way about it. Nevertheless, in spite of her exhaustive experience of the strenuous life, and of the firm ideals of those who led it, at their parting she cried in the most unaffected fashion.
Soon after her departure from the Grange the Twins learned that Sir James Morgan, its owner, had returned from Africa, where he had for years been hunting big game, and proposed to live at Muttle Deeping, at any rate for a while. It had always been their keen desire to fish the Grange water, for it had been carefully preserved and little fished all the years Sir James had been wandering about the world. But Mr. Hilton, the steward of the Grange estate, had always refused their request. He believed that their presence would be good neither for the stream, the fish, nor the estate.
But now that they were no longer dealing with an underling whom they felt to be prejudiced, but with the owner himself, they thought that they might be able to compass their desire. Also they felt that the sooner they made the attempt to do so the better: Sir James might hear unfavorable accounts of them, if they gave him time to consort freely with his neighbors. Therefore, with the help of their literary mainstay, Wiggins, they composed a honeyed letter to him, asking leave to fish the Grange water. Sir James consulted Mr. Hilton about the letter, received an account of the Twins from him which made him loath indeed to give them leave; and since he had used a pen so little for so many years that it had become distasteful to him to use it at all, he left their honeyed missive unanswered.
The Twins waited patiently for an answer for several days. Then it was slowly borne in upon them that Sir James did not mean to answer their letter at all; and they grew very angry indeed. Their anger was in close proportion to the pains they had spent on the letter. The name of Sir James was added to the list of proscribed persons they carried in their retentive minds.
It did not seem likely that they would get any chance of punishing him for the affront he had put on them. Scorching, in his feverish, Central African way, along the road to Rowington in a very powerful motor-car, he looked well beyond their reach. But Fortune favors the industrious who watch their chances; and one evening Erebus came bicycling swiftly up to the cats’ home, and cried:
“As I came over Long Ridge I saw Sir James Morgan poaching old Glazebrook’s water!”
The Terror did not cease from carefully considering the kitten in his hands, for he was making a selection to send to Rowington market.
“Are you sure?” he said calmly. “It’s a long way from the ridge to the stream.”
“Not for my eyes!” said Erebus with some measure of impatience in her tone. “I’m quite sure that it was Sir James; and I’m quite sure that it was old Glazebrook’s meadow. Lend me your handkerchief.”
The handkerchief that the Terror lent her might have easily been of a less pronounced gray; but Erebus mopped her beaded brow with it in a perfect content. She had ridden home as fast as she could ride with her interesting news.
“I wish I’d seen him too,” said the Terror thoughtfully.
“It’s quite enough for me to have seen him!” said Erebus with some heat.
“It would be better if we’d both seen him,” said the Terror firmly.
“It’s such beastly cheek his poaching himself after taking no notice of our letter!” said Erebus indignantly.
“Yes, it is,” said the Terror.
She went on to set forth the enormity of the conduct of their neighbor at considerable length. The Terror said nothing; he did not look to be listening to her. In truth he was considering what advantage might be drawn from Sir James’ transgression.
At last he said: “The first thing to do is for both of us to catch him poaching.”
Erebus protested; but the Terror carried his point, with the result that two evenings later they were in the wood above the trout-stream, stretched at full length in the bracken, peering through the hedge of the wood at Sir James Morgan so patiently and vainly fishing the stream below.
“He’ll soon be at the boundary fence,” said the Terror in a hushed voice of quiet satisfaction.
“If only he goes on catching nothing on this side of it!” said Erebus who kept wriggling in a nervous impatience.
“It’s on the other side of it they’re rising,” said the Terror in a calmly hopeful tone.
Sir James, unconscious of those eagerly gazing eyes, made vain cast after vain cast. He was a big game hunter; he had given but little time and pains to this milder sport; and he came to the fence at which his water ceased and that of Mr. Glazebrook began, with his basket still empty of trout. He looked longingly at his neighbor’s water; as the Terror had said, the trout in it were rising freely. Then the watchers saw him shrug his shoulders and turn back.
“He’s not going to poach, after all!” cried Erebus in a tone of acute disappointment.
“Look here: are you really quite sure you saw him poaching at all? Long Ridge is a good way off,” said the Terror looking across to it.
“I did. I tell you he was half-way down old Glazebrook’s meadow,” said Erebus firmly.
“It’s very disappointing,” said the Terror, frowning at the disobliging fisherman; then he added with philosophic calm: “Well, it can’t be helped; we’ve got to go on watching him every evening till he does. If he’s poached once, he’ll poach again.”
“Look!” said Erebus, gripping his arm.
Sir James had stopped fishing and was walking back to the boundary fence. He stood for a while beside the gap in it, hesitating, scanning the little valley down which the stream ran, with his keen hunter’s eyes. It is to be feared that he had been too long used to the high-handed methods that prevail in the ends of the earth where big game dwell, to have a proper sense of the sanctity of his neighbor’s fish. Moreover, Mr. Glazebrook was guilty of the practise of netting his water and sending the trout, alive in cans, to a London restaurant. Sir James felt strongly that it was his duty as a sportsman to give them the chance of making a sportsmanlike end.
But Mr. Glazebrook was an uncommonly disagreeable man; and since Glazebrook farm marched with the western meadows of the Morgans, the Morgans and the Glazebrooks had been at loggerheads for at least fifty years. Assuredly the farmer would prosecute Sir James, if he caught him poaching.
Yet the valley and the meadows down the stream were empty of human beings; and as for the wood, there would be no one but his own keeper in the wood. Doubtless that keeper would, from the abstract point of view, regard poaching with abhorrence. But he would perceive that his master was doing a real kindness to the Glazebrook trout by giving them that chance of making a sportsman-like end. At any rate the keeper would hold his tongue.
Sir James climbed through the gap.
The Twins breathed a simultaneous sigh of relief; and Erebus said in a tone of triumph: “Well, he’s gone and done it now.”
“Yes, we’ve got him all right,” said the Terror in a tone of calm thankfulness.
Fortune favored the unscrupulous; and in the next forty minutes Sir James caught three good fish.
He had just landed the third when the keen eyes of Erebus espied a figure coming up the bank of the stream two meadows away.
“Look! There’s old Glazebrook! He’ll catch him! Won’t it be fun?” she cried, wriggling in her joy.
The Terror gazed thoughtfully at the approaching figure; then he said: “Yes: it would be fun. There’d be no end of a row. But it wouldn’t be any use to us. I’m going to warn him.”
With that he sent a clear cry of “Cave!” ringing down the stream.
In ten seconds Sir James was back on his own land.
The Twins crawled through the bracken to a narrow path, went swiftly and noiselessly down it, and through a little gate on to the high road.
As he set foot on it the Terror said with cold vindictiveness: “We’ll teach him not to answer our letters.”
He climbed over a gate into a meadow on the other side of the road, took their bicycles one after the other from behind the hedge, and lifted them over the gate. They reached home in time for dinner.
During the meal Mrs. Dangerfield asked how they had been spending the time since tea; and the Terror said, quite truthfully, that they had been for a bicycle ride. She did not press him to be more particular in his account of their doings, though from Erebus’ air of subdued excitement and expectancy she was aware that some important enterprise was in hand; she had no desire to put any strain on the Terror’s uncommon power of polite evasion.
She was not at all surprised when, at nine o’clock, she went out into the garden and called to them that it was bedtime, to find that they were not within hearing. She told herself that she would be lucky if she got them to bed by ten. But she would have been surprised, indeed, had she seen them, half an hour earlier, slip out of the back door, in a condition of exemplary tidiness, dressed in their Sunday best.
They wheeled their bicycles out of the cats’ home quietly, mounted, rode quickly down the road till they were out of hearing of the house, and then slackened their pace in order to reach their destination cool and tidy. They timed their arrival with such nicety that as they dismounted before the door of Deeping Hall, Sir James Morgan, in the content inspired by an excellent dinner, was settling himself comfortably in an easy chair in his smoking-room.
They mounted the steps of the Court without a tremor: they were not only assured of the justice of their cause, they were assured that it would prevail. A landed proprietor who preserves his pheasants and his fish with the usual strictness, can not allow himself to be prosecuted for poaching.
The Terror rang the bell firmly; and Mawley, the butler, surprised at the coming of visitors at so late an hour, opened the door himself.
“Good evening, Mr. Mawley, we want to see Sir James on important business,” said the Terror with a truly businesslike air.
Mawley had come to the Grange in the train of the Princess Elizabeth; and since he found the Deeping air uncommonly bracing, he had permitted Sir James to keep him on at the Grange after her return to Cassel-Nassau. He had made the acquaintance of the Twins during the last days of her stay, after the camp had been broken up, and had formed a high opinion of their ability and their manners. Moreover, of a very susceptible nature, he had a warm admiration of Mrs. Dangerfield whom he saw every Sunday at Little Deeping church.
None the less he looked at them doubtfully, and said in a reproachful tone: “It’s very late, Master Terror. You can’t expect Sir James to see people at this hour.”
“I know it’s late; but the business is important—very important,” said the Terror firmly.
Mawley hesitated. His admiration of Mrs. Dangerfield made him desirous of obliging her children. Then he said:
“If you’ll sit down a minute, I’ll tell Sir James that you’re here.”
“Thank you,” said the Terror; and he and Erebus came into the great hall, sat down on a couch covered by a large bearskin, and gazed round them at the arms and armor with appreciative eyes.
Mawley found Sir James lighting a big cigar; and told him that Master and Miss Dangerfield wished to see him on business.
“Oh? They’re the two children who wrote and asked me for leave to fish. But Hilton told me that they were the most mischievous little devils in the county, so I took no notice of their letter,” said Sir James.
“Well, being your steward, Sir James, Mr. Hilton would be bound to tell you so. But it’s my belief that, having the name for it, a lot of mischief is put down to them which they never do. And after all they’re Dangerfields, Sir James; and you couldn’t expect them to behave like ordinary children,” said Mawley in the tone and manner of a persuasive diplomat.
“Well, I don’t see myself giving them leave to fish,” said Sir James. “There are none too many fish in the stream as it is; and a couple of noisy children won’t make those easier to catch. But I may as well tell them so myself; so you may bring them here.”
Mawley fetched the Twins and ushered them into the smoking-room. They entered it with the self-possessed air of persons quite sure of themselves, and greeted Sir James politely.
He was somewhat taken aback by their appearance and air, for his steward had somehow given him the impression that they were thick, red-faced and robustious. He felt that these pleasant-looking young gentlefolk could never have really earned their unfortunate reputation. There must be a mistake somewhere.
The Twins were, on their part also, far more favorably impressed by him than they had looked to be; his lean tanned face, with the rather large arched nose, the thin-lipped melancholy mouth, not at all hidden by the small clipped mustache, and his keen eyes, almost as blue as those of the Terror, pleased them. He looked an uncommonly dependable baronet.
“Well, and what is this important matter you wished to see me about?” he said in a more indulgent tone than he had expected to use.
“We saw you in Glazebrook’s meadow this afternoon—poaching,” said the Terror in a gentle, almost deprecatory tone.
Sir James sat rather more upright in his chair, with a sudden sense of discomfort. He had not connected this visit with his transgression.
“And you caught three fish,” said Erebus in a sterner voice.
“Oh? Then it was one of you who called ‘Cave!’ from the wood?” said Sir James.
“Yes; we didn’t want old Glazebrook to catch you,” said the Terror.
“Oh—er—thanks,” said Sir James in a tone of discomfort.
“That wouldn’t have been any use to us,” said the Terror.
“Of use to you?” said Sir James.
“Yes; if he’d caught you, there wouldn’t be any reason why we should fish your water,” said the Terror.
Sir James looked puzzled:
“But is there any reason now?” he said.
“Yes. You see, you were poaching,” said the Terror in a very gentle explanatory voice.
“And you caught three fish,” said Erebus in something of the manner of a chorus in an Athenian tragedy.
Sir James sat bolt upright with a sudden air of astonished enlightenment:
“Well, I’m—hanged if it isn’t blackmail!” he cried.
“Blackmail?” said the Terror in a tone of pleasant animation. “Why, that’s what the Scotch reavers used to do! I never knew exactly what it was.”
“And we’re doing it. That is nice,” said Erebus, almost preening herself.
“But this is disgraceful! If you’d been village children—but gentlefolk!” cried Sir James with considerable heat.
“Well, the Douglases were gentlefolk; and they blackmailed,” said the Terror in a tone of sweet reason.
“Poaching’s a misdemeanor; blackmailing’s a kind of stealing,” said Erebus virtuously, forgetting for the moment her mother’s fur stole.
“Poaching’s a misdemeanor; blackmailing’s a felony,” said Sir James loftily.
The distinction was lost on the Twins; and Erebus said with conviction: “Poaching’s worse.”
Sir James hated to be beaten; and he looked from one to the other with very angry eyes. The Twins wore a cold imperturbable air. Their appearance no longer pleased him.
“It’s your own fault entirely,” said the Terror coldly. “If you’d been civil and answered our letter, even refusing, we shouldn’t have bothered about you. But you didn’t take any notice of it—”
“And it was beastly cheek,” said Erebus.
“You couldn’t expect us to stand that kind of thing. So we kept an eye on you and caught you poaching,” said the Terror.
“Without any excuse for it. You’ve plenty of fishing of your own,” said Erebus severely.
“And if I don’t give you leave to fish my water, you’re going to sneak to the police, are you?” said Sir James in a tone of angry disgust.
The Terror flushed and with a very cold dignity said: “We aren’t going to do anything of the kind; and we don’t want any leave to fish your water at all. We’re just going to fish it; and if you go sneaking to the police and prosecuting us, then after you’ve started it you’ll get prosecuted yourself by old Glazebrook. That’s what we came to say.”
“And that’ll teach you to be polite and answer people next time they write to you,” said Erebus in a tone of cold triumph.
On her words they rose; and while Sir James was struggling furiously to find words suitable to their tender years, they bade him a polite good night, and left the room.
Their departure was a relief; Sir James rose hastily to his feet and expressed his feelings without difficulty. Then he began to laugh. It was rather on the wrong side of his face; and the knowledge that he had been worsted in his own smoking-room, and that by two children, rankled. He was not used to being worsted, even in the heart of Africa, by much more ferocious creatures. But after sleeping on the matter, he perceived yet more clearly that they had him, as he phrased it, in a cleft stick; and he told his head-keeper that the Dangerfield children were allowed to fish his water.
The vindication of their dignity filled the Twins with a cold undated triumph; but they enjoyed the liveliest satisfaction in being able to fish in well-stocked water, because the trout tempted their mother’s faint appetite.
She had grown stronger during the summer. She was not, indeed, definitely ill; she was not even definitely weak. But, a woman of spirit and intelligence, she was suffering from the wearisome emptiness of her life in the country. It was sapping her strength and energy; in it she would grow old long before her time. The Twins had been used to find her livelier and more spirited, keenly interested in their doings; and the change troubled them. Doctor Arbuthnot prescribed a tonic for her; and now and again, as in the matter of the peaches and now of the trout, they set themselves to procure some delicacy for her. But she made no real improvement; and the empty country life was poisoning the springs of her being.
Sir James had expected to be annoyed frequently by the sight and sound of the Twins on the bank of the stream. To his pleased surprise he neither saw nor heard them. For the most part they fished in the early morning and brought their catch home to tempt their mother’s appetite at breakfast. But if they did fish in the evening, one or the other acted as scout, watching Sir James’ movements; and they kept out of his sight. They had gained their end; and their natural delicacy assured them that the sight of them could not be pleasant to Sir James. As the Terror phrased it:
“He must be pretty sick at getting a lesson; and there’s no point in rubbing it in.”
Then one evening (by no fault of theirs) he came upon them. Erebus was playing a big trout; and she had no thought of abandoning it to spare Sir James’ feelings. Besides, if she had had such a thought, it was impracticable, since Mrs. Dangerfield had come with them.
He watched Erebus play her fish for two or three minutes; then it snapped the gut and was gone.
“Evidently you’re no so good at fishing as blackmailing,” said Sir James in a nasty carping tone, for the fact that they had worsted him still rankled in his heart.
“I catch more fish than you do, anyhow!” said Erebus with some heat; and she cast an uneasy glance over his shoulder.
Sir James turned to see what she had glanced at and found himself looking into the deep brown eyes of a very pretty woman.
He had not seen her when he had come out of the bushes on to the scene of the struggle; he had been too deeply interested in it to remove his eyes from it; and she had watched it from behind him.
“This is Sir James Morgan, mother,” said the Terror quickly.
Sir James raised his cap; Mrs. Dangerfield bowed, and said gratefully: “It was very good of you to give my children leave to fish.”
“Oh—ah—yes—n-n-not at all,” stammered Sir James, blushing faintly.
He was unused to women and found her presence confusing.
“Oh, but it was,” said Mrs. Dangerfield. “And I’m seeing that they don’t take an unfair advantage of your kindness, for they told me that, thanks to Mr. Glazebrook’s netting his part of it, there are none too many fish in the stream.”
“It’s very good of you. B-b-but I don’t mind how many they catch,” said Sir James.
He shuffled his feet and gazed rather wildly round him, for he wished to remove himself swiftly from her disturbing presence. Yet he did not wish to; he found her voice as charming as her eyes.
Mrs. Dangerfield laughed gently, and said: “You would, if I let them catch as many as they’d like to.”
“Are they as good fishermen as that?” said Sir James.
“Well, they’ve been fishing ever since they could handle a rod. They are supposed to empty the free water by Little Deeping Village every spring. So I limit them to three fish a day,” said Mrs. Dangerfield; and there was a ring of motherly pride in her voice which pleased him.
“It’s very good of you,” said Sir James. He hesitated, shuffled his feet again, took a step to go; then looking rather earnestly at Mrs. Dangerfield, he added in a rather uncertain voice: “I should like to stay and see how they do it. I might pick up a wrinkle or two.”
“Of course. Why, it’s your stream,” she said.
He stayed, but he paid far more attention to Mrs. Dangerfield than to the fishing. Besides her charming eyes and delightful voice, her air of fragility made a strong appeal to his vigorous robustness. His first discomfort sternly vanquished, its place was taken by the keenest desire to remain in her presence. He not only stayed with them till the Twins had caught their three fish, but he walked nearly to Colet House with them, and at last bade them good-by with an air of the deepest reluctance. It can hardly be doubted that he had been smitten by an emotional lightning-stroke, as the French put it, or, as we more gently phrase it, that he had fallen in love at first sight.
As he walked back to the Grange he was regretting that he had not received the social advances of his neighbors with greater warmth. If, instead of staying firmly at home, he had been moving about among them, he would have met Mrs. Dangerfield earlier and by now be in a fortunate condition of meeting her often. It did not for a moment enter his mind that if he had met her stiffly in a drawing-room he might easily have failed to fall in love with her at all. He cudgeled his brains to find some way of meeting her again and meeting her often. He was to meet her quite soon without any effort on his part.
It is possible that Mrs. Dangerfield had observed that Sir James had been smitten by that emotional coup de foudre, for she was walking with a much brisker step and there was a warmer color in her cheeks.
After he had bidden them good-by and had turned back to the Grange, she said in a really cheerful tone:
“I expect Sir James finds it rather dull at the Grange after the exciting life he had in Africa.”
“Rather!”, said the Twins with one quickly assenting voice.
She had not missed Sir James’ sentence about the superiority of Erebus’ blackmailing to her fishing. But she knew the Twins far too well to ask them for an explanation of it before him. None the less it clung to her mind.
At supper therefore she said: “What did Sir James mean by calling you a blackmailer, Erebus?”
The Terror knew from her tone that she was resolved to have the explanation; and he said suavely:
“Oh, it was about the fishing.”
“How—about the fishing?” said Mrs. Dangerfield quickly.
“Well, he didn’t want to give us leave. In fact he never answered our letter asking for it,” said the Terror.
“And of course we couldn’t stand that; and we had to make him,” said Erebus sternly.
“Make him? How did you make him?” said Mrs. Dangerfield.
The Terror told her.
Mrs. Dangerfield looked surprised and annoyed, but much less surprised and annoyed than the ordinary mother would have looked on learning that her offspring had blackmailed a complete stranger. She felt chiefly annoyed by the fact that the complete stranger they had chosen to blackmail should be Sir James.
“Then you did blackmail him,” she said in a tone of dismay.
“He seemed to think that we were—like the Douglases used to,” said the Terror in an amiable tone.
“But surely you knew that blackmailing is very wrong—very wrong, indeed,” said Mrs. Dangerfield.
“Well, he did seem to think so,” said the Terror. “But we thought he was prejudiced; and we didn’t take much notice of him.”
“And we couldn’t possibly let him take no notice of our letter, Mum—it was such a polite letter—and not take it out of him,” said Erebus.
“And it hasn’t done any harm, you know. We wanted those trout ever so much more than he did,” said the Terror.
Mrs. Dangerfield said nothing for a while; and her frown deepened as she pondered how to deal with the affair. She was still chiefly annoyed that Sir James should have been the victim. The Twins gazed at her with a sympathetic gravity which by no means meant that they were burdened by a sense of wrong-doing. They were merely sorry that she was annoyed.
“Well, there’s nothing for it: you’ll have to apologize to Sir James—both of you,” she said at last.
“Apologize to him! But he never answered our letter!” cried Erebus.
The Terror hesitated a moment, opened his mouth to speak, shut it, opened it again and said in a soothing tone: “All right, Mum; we’ll apologize.”
“I’ll take you to the Grange to-morrow afternoon to do it,” said Mrs. Dangerfield, for she thought that unless she were present the Twins would surely contrive to repeat the offense in the apology and compel Sir James to invite them to continue to fish.
There had been some such intention in the Terror’s mind, for his face fell: an apology in the presence of his mother would have to be a real apology. But he said amiably: “All right; just as you like, Mum.”
Erebus scowled very darkly, and muttered fierce things under her breath. After supper, without moving him at all, she reproached the Terror bitterly for not refusing firmly.
The next afternoon therefore the three of them walked, by a foot-path across the fields, to the Grange. Surprise and extreme pleasure were mingled with the respect with which Mawley ushered them into the drawing-room; and he almost ran to apprise Sir James of their coming.
Sir James was at the moment wondering very anxiously whether he would find Mrs. Dangerfield on the bank of the stream that evening watching her children fish. His night’s rest had trebled his interest in her and his desire to see more, a great deal more, of her. The appeal to him of her frail and delicate beauty was stronger than ever.
At dinner the night before he had questioned Mawley, with a careless enough air, about her, and had learned that Mr. Dangerfield had been dead seven years, that she had a very small income, and was hard put to it to make both ends meet. His compassion had been deeply stirred; she was so plainly a creature who deserved the smoothest path in life. He wished that he could now, at once, see his way to help her to that smoothest path; and he was resolved to find that way as soon as he possibly could.
When Mawley told him that she was in his drawing-room, he could scarcely believe his joyful ears. He had to put a constraint on himself to walk to its door in a decorous fashion fit for Mawley’s eyes, and not dash to it at full speed. He entered the room with his eyes shining very brightly.
Mrs. Dangerfield greeted him coldly, even a little haughtily. She was looking grave and ill at ease.
“I’ve come about a rather unpleasant matter, Sir James,” she said as they shook hands. “I find that these children have been blackmailing you; and I’ve brought them to apologize. I—I’m exceedingly distressed about it.”
“Oh, there’s no need to be—no need at all. It was rather a joke,” Sir James protested quickly.
“But blackmailing isn’t a joke—though of course they didn’t realize what a serious thing it is—”
“It was the Douglases doing it,” broke in the Terror in an explanatory tone.
“I don’t think you ought to have given way to them, Sir James,” said Mrs. Dangerfield severely.
“But I hadn’t any choice, I assure you. They had me in a cleft stick,” protested Sir James.
“Well then you ought to have come straight to me,” said Mrs. Dangerfield.
“Oh, but really—a little fishing—what is a little fishing? I couldn’t come bothering you about a thing like that,” protested Sir James.
“But it isn’t a little thing if you get it like that,” said Mrs. Dangerfield. “Anyhow, it’s going to stop; and they’re going to apologize.”
She turned to them; and as if at a signal the Twins said with one voice:
“I apologize for blackmailing you, Sir James.”
The Terror spoke with an amiable nonchalance; the words came very stiffly from the lips of Erebus, and she wore a lowering air.
“Oh, not at all—not at all—don’t mention it. Besides, I owe you an apology for not answering your letter,” said Sir James in all the discomfort of a man receiving something that is not his due. Then he heaved a sigh of relief and added: “Well, that’s all right. And now I hope you’ll do all the fishing you want to.”
“Certainly not; I can’t allow them to fish your water any more,” said Mrs. Dangerfield sternly.
“Oh, but really,” said Sir James with a harried air.
“No,” said Mrs. Dangerfield; and she held out her hand.
“But you’ll have some tea—after that hot walk!” cried Sir James.
“No, thank you, I must be getting home,” said Mrs. Dangerfield firmly.
Sir James did not press her to stay; he saw that her mind was made up.
He opened the door of the drawing-room, and they filed out. As Erebus passed out, she turned and made a hideous grimace at him. She was desirous that he should not overrate her apology.
Sir James came through the hall with them, carelessly taking his cap from the horn of an antelope on the wall as he passed it. He came down the steps, along the gardens to the side gate, and through it into the park, talking to Mrs. Dangerfield of the changes he had found in the gardens of the Grange after his last five years of big game shooting about the world.
Mrs. Dangerfield had not liked her errand; and she was in no mood for companionship. But she could not drive him from her side on his own land. They walked slowly; the Twins forged ahead. When Sir James and Mrs. Dangerfield came out of the park, the Twins were out of sight. Mere politeness demanded that he should walk the rest of the way with her.
When the Twins were out of the hearing of their mother and Sir James, the Terror said:
“Well, he was quite decent about it. It made him much more uncomfortable than we were. I suppose it was because we’re more used to Mum.”
“What did the silly idiot want to give us away at all for?” said the unappeased Erebus.
“Oh, well; he didn’t mean to. It was an accident, you know,” said the Terror.
His provident mind foresaw advantages to be attained from a closer intimacy with Sir James.
“Accident! People shouldn’t have accidents like that!” said Erebus in a tone of bitter scorn.
When he and Mrs. Dangerfield came out of the park, Sir James diplomatically fell to lauding the Twins to the skies, their beauty, their grace and their intelligence. The diplomacy was not natural (he was no diplomat) but accidental: the Twins were the only subject he could at the moment think of. He could not have found a quicker way to Mrs. Dangerfield’s approval. She had been disposed to dislike him for having been blackmailed by them; his praise of them softened her heart. Discussing them, they came right to the gate of Colet House; and it was only natural that she should invite him to tea. He accepted with alacrity. At tea he changed the subject: they talked about her.
He came home yet more interested in her, resolved yet more firmly to see more of her. With a natural simplicity he used his skill in woodcraft to compass his end, and availed himself of the covert afforded by the common to watch Colet House. Thanks to this simple device he was able to meet or overtake Mrs. Dangerfield, somewhere in the first half-mile of her afternoon walk.
They grew intimate quickly, thanks chiefly to his simple directness; and he found that his first impression that he wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything in his life, more even than he had wanted, in his enthusiastic youth, to shoot a black rhinoceros, was right. He had been making arrangements for another shooting expedition; but he perceived now very clearly, indeed, that it was his immediate duty to settle down in life, provide the Hall with a mistress, and do his duty by his estate and his neighbors.
He had had no experience of women; but his hunting had developed his instinct and he perceived that he must proceed very warily indeed, that to bring Mrs. Dangerfield over the boundary-line of friendship into the land of romance was the most difficult enterprise he had ever dreamed of. But he had a stout heart, the hunter’s pertinacity, and a burning resolve to succeed.
He wanted all the help he could get; and he saw that the Twins would be useful friends in the matter. But did they chance on him walking with their mother, or at tea with her, they held politely but gloomily aloof. He must abate their hostility.
He contrived, therefore, to meet them on the common as they were starting one afternoon on an expedition, greeted them cheerfully, stopped and said: “I’m awfully sorry I gave you away the other day. But I never saw your mother till I’d done it.”
“Don’t mention it,” said the Terror with cold graciousness.
“So you ought to be,” said Erebus.
“It’s a pity you should lose your fishing. If I’d known how good you both were at it, I should have given you leave when I got your letter,” said Sir James hypocritically. “But I was misinformed about you.”
“It’s worse that mother should lose the trout. She does hate butcher’s meat so, and it is so difficult to get her to eat properly,” said Erebus in a somewhat mollified tone.
“It’s like that, is it?” said Sir James quickly; and an expression of deep concern filled his face.
“Yes, and she did eat those trout,” said Erebus plaintively.
Sir James knitted his brow in frowning thought; and the Twins watched him with little hope in their faces. Of a sudden his brow grew smooth; and he said:
“Look here: you mayn’t fish my water; but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t fish Glazebrook’s. I think that a man who nets his water loses all rights.”
“Yes, he does,” said the Terror firmly.
“Well, with one watching while the other fishes, it ought to be safe enough; and I’ll stand the racket if you get prosecuted and fined. I want to take it out of that fellow Glazebrook—he’s not a sportsman.”
The Terror’s face had brightened; but he said: “But how should we account for the fish we took home?”
“You can reckon them presents from me. They would be—practically—if I’m going to pay the fines,” said Sir James.
The eyes of both the Twins danced: this was a fashion of dealing tenderly with exactitude which appealed to them. The Terror himself could not have been more tender with it.
“That’s a ripping idea!” said Erebus in a tone of the warmest approval.
The peace was thus concluded.
Having thus abated their hostility, Sir James spared no pains to win their good will. He gave the Terror a rook-rifle and Erebus boxes of chocolate. If he chanced on them when motoring in the afternoon he would carry them off, bicycles and all, in his car and regale them with sumptuous teas at the Grange; and at Colet House he entertained them with stories of the African forest which thrilled Mrs. Dangerfield even more than they thrilled them. But he won their hearts most by his sympathy with them in the matter of their mother’s appetite, and by joining them in little plots to obtain delicacies for her.
Having discovered how grateful it was to her, he lost no opportunity of taking the short cut to her heart by praising them. He laid himself out to be useful to her, to entertain and amuse her, trying to make for himself as large as possible a place in her life. She was not long discovering that he was in love with her; and the discovery came as a very pleasant shock. None of the neighbors, much less Captain Baster, who, during her stay at Colet House, had asked her to marry them, had attracted her so strongly as did Sir James. Even as her delicacy made the strongest appeal to his vigorous robustness, so his vigorous robustness made the strongest appeal to her delicacy.
But Little Deeping is a censorious place; and its gossips are the keener for having so few chances of plying their active tongues. When no less than four ladies had on four several occasions met Sir James and Mrs. Dangerfield walking together along the lanes, those tongues began to wag.
Then old Mrs. Blenkinsop, the childless widow of a Common Councilman of London, one morning met the Twins in the village. They greeted her politely and made to escape. But she was in the mood, her most constant mood, to babble. She stopped them, and with a knowing air, and even more offensive smile, said:
“So, young people, we’re going to hear the sound of wedding bells very soon in Little Deeping, are we?”
Erebus merely scowled at her, for more than once she had talked about them; but the Terror, in a tone of somewhat perfunctory politeness, said:
“Are we?”
“I should have thought you would have known all about it,” she said with a cackling little giggle. “Mind you tell me as soon as you’re told: I want to be one of the first to congratulate your dear mother.”
“What do you mean?” snapped the Terror with a disconcerting suddenness; and his eyes shone very bright and threatening in a steady glare into her own.
“Oh, nothing—nothing!” cried Mrs. Blenkinsop, flustered by his sternness. “Only seeing Sir James so much with your mother—But there—there’s probably nothing in it—the Morgans always were rovers—one foot at sea and one on shore—I dare say he’ll be in the middle of Africa before the week is out. Good morning—good morning.”
With that she sprang, more lightly than she had sprung for years, into the grocer’s shop.
The Twins looked after her with uneasy eyes, frowning. Then Erebus said: “Silly old idiot!”
The Terror said nothing; he walked on frowning. At last he broke out: “This won’t do! We can’t have these old idiots gossiping about Mum. And it’s a beastly nuisance: Sir James was making things so much more cheerful for her.”
“But you don’t think there’s anything in what the old cat said? It would be perfectly horrid to have a stepfather!” cried Erebus in a panic.
The Terror walked on, frowning in deep thought.
“Do you think there’s anything in it?” cried Erebus.
“I dare say there is. Sir James is always about with Mum; and he’s always very civil to us—people aren’t generally,” said the Terror.
“Oh, but we must stop it! We must stop it at once!” cried Erebus.
“Why must we?”
“It would be perfectly beastly having a step-father, I tell you!” cried Erebus fiercely.
“It isn’t altogether what we like—there’s Mum,” said the Terror. “She does have a rotten time of it—always being hard up and never going anywhere. And, after all, we shouldn’t mind Sir James when we got used to him.”
“But we should! And look how we stopped the Cruncher!”
“Sir James isn’t like the Cruncher—at all,” said the Terror.
“All stepfathers are alike; and they’re beastly!” cried Erebus.
“Now, it’s no good your getting yourself obstinate about it,” said the Terror firmly. “That won’t be of any use at all, if they’ve made up their minds. But what’s bothering me is what that old cat meant by saying that the Morgans were rovers.”
Erebus’ frown deepened as she knitted her brow over the cryptic utterance of Mrs. Blenkinsop. Then she said in a tone of considerable relief:
“She must have meant that he wasn’t really in earnest about marrying Mum.”
“Yes, that’s what she did mean,” growled the Terror. “And she’ll go about telling everybody that he’s only fooling.”
“But I don’t think he is. I don’t think he would,” said Erebus quickly.
“No more do I,” said the Terror.
They walked nearly fifty yards in silence. Then the Terror’s face cleared and brightened; and he said cheerfully:
“I know the thing to do! I’ll go and ask him his intentions. That’s what people said old Hawley ought to have done when the Cut—you know: that fellow from Rowington—was fooling about with Miss Hawley.”
“All right, we’ll go and ask him,” said Erebus with equal cheerfulness.
“No, no, you can’t go. I must go alone,” said the Terror quickly. “It’s the kind of thing the men of the family always do—people said so about Miss Hawley—and I’m the only man of the family about. If Uncle Maurice were in London and not in Vienna, we might send for him to do it.”
Erebus burst into bitter complaint. She alleged that the restrictions which were applied to the ordinary girl should by no means be applied to her, since she was not ordinary; that since they cooperated in everything else they ought to cooperate in this; that he was much more successful in those exploits in which they did cooperate, than in those which he performed alone.
“It’s no good talking like that: it isn’t the thing to do,” said the Terror with very cold severity. “You know what Mrs. Morton said about Miss Hawley and the Cut—that the men of the family did it.”
“You’re only a boy; and I’m as old as you!” snapped Erebus.
“Well, when there isn’t a man to do a thing, a boy does it. So it’s no use you’re making a fuss,” said the Terror in a tone of finality.
Erebus protested that the upshot of his going alone would be that Sir James would presently be their detested stepfather; but he went alone, early in the afternoon.
He was now on such familiar terms at the Grange that Mawley took him straight to the smoking-room, where his master was smoking a cigar over his after-lunch coffee. Sir James welcomed him warmly, for he was beginning to learn that the Terror was quite good company, in the country, and poured him out a cup of coffee.
The Terror put sugar and cream into it and forthwith, since a simple matter of this kind did not seem to him to call for the exercise of his usual diplomacy, said with firm directness: “I’ve come to ask your intentions, sir.”
“My intentions?” said Sir James, not taking him.
“Yes. You see some of the old cats who live about here are saying that you’re only fooling,” said the Terror.
“The deuce they are!” cried Sir James sharply with a sudden and angry comprehension.
“Yes. So of course the thing to do was to ask your intentions,” said the Terror firmly.
“Of course—of course,” said Sir James.
He looked at the Terror; and in spite of his anger his eyes twinkled. Then he added gravely: “My intentions are not only extremely serious but they’re extremely immediate. I’d marry your mother to-morrow if she’d let me.”
“That’s all right,” said the Terror with a faint sigh of relief. “Of course I knew you were all right. Only, it was the thing to do, with these silly old idiots talking.”
“Quite so—quite so,” said Sir James.
There was a pause; and Sir James looked again at the Terror tranquilly drinking his coffee, in a somewhat appealing fashion, for he had been suffering badly from all the doubts and fears of the lover; and the Terror’s serenity was soothing.
Then with a sudden craving for comfort and reassurance, he said: “Do you think your mother would marry me?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea; women are so funny,” said the Terror with a sage air.
Sir James pulled at his mustache. Then the compulsion to have some one’s opinion of his chances, even if it was only a small boy’s, came on him strongly; and he said:
“I wish I knew what to do. As it is we’re very good friends; and if I asked her to marry me, I might spoil that.”
The Terror considered the point for a minute or two; then he said: “I don’t think you would. Mum’s very sensible, though she is so pretty.”
Sir James frowned deeply in his utter perplexity; then he said: “I’ll risk it!”
He rang the bell and ordered his car. He talked to the Terror jerkily and somewhat incoherently till it came; and the Terror observed his perturbation with considerable interest. It seemed to him very curious in a hard-bitten hunter of big game. They started and in the two level miles to Little Deeping Sir James changed his car’s speeds nine times.
As they came very slowly up to Colet House, the Terror said with an air of detachment: “I should think, you know, Mum could be rushed.”
He had definitely made up his mind that it would be a good thing for her.
“If I only could!” said Sir James in a tone of feverish doubt.
Mrs. Dangerfield was mending a rent in a frock of Erebus when he entered the drawing-room; and at the first glance she knew, with a thrill half of pleasure, half of apprehension, why he had come.
At the sight of her Sir James felt his tremulous courage oozing out of him; but with what was left of it he blurted out desperately:
“Look here, Anne, dear, I want you to marry me!”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Dangerfield, rising quickly.
“Yes, I want it more than ever I wanted anything in my life!”
Mrs. Dangerfield’s face was one flush; and she cried: “B-b-but it’s out of the question. I—I’m old enough to be your mother!”
“Now how?—I’m three years and seven months older than you,” said Sir James, taken aback.
“I shall be an old woman while you’re still quite young!” she protested.
“You won’t ever be old! You’re not the kind!” cried Sir James with some heat; and then with sudden understanding: “If that’s your only reason, why, that settles it!”
With that he picked her up and kissed her four times.
When he set her down and held her at arm’s length, gazing at her with devouring eyes, she gasped somewhat faintly: “Oh, James, you are—ever so much more—impetuous—than I thought. You gave me—no time.”
“Thank goodness, I took the Terror’s tip!” said Sir James.