AND THE LANDED PROPRIETOR
On reaching home the Terror displayed the two shillings and threepence
to Erebus with an unusual air of triumph; as a rule he showed himself
serenely unmoved alike in victory and defeat.
“That’s all right,” said Erebus cheerfully. “That makes—that makes
twenty-eight and eleven-pence. We _are_ getting on.”
“Yes; it’s twenty-eight and eleven-pence now,” said the Terror quickly.
“But you don’t seem to see that when we’ve got the stole for Mum these
pheasants will still be going on.”
“Of course they will!” cried Erebus; and her eyes shone very brightly
indeed at the joyful thought.
The next day the Terror obtained some sandwiches from Sarah after
breakfast; and as soon as his lessons were over he rode hard to the
clump above Great Deeping wood. He reached it at the hour when
gamekeepers are at their dinner, and was able to make a thorough
examination of it. He found it full of pheasant runs, and chose the two
likeliest places for his snares. He did not set them then and there; a
keeper on his afternoon round might see them. He came again in the
evening with Erebus, laid trails of raisins and set them then. Later he
sold a pheasant to the cook of Mrs. Blenkinsop and one to the cook of
Mr. Carrington.
During the next fortnight they sold eight more pheasants and eight more
kittens. They found themselves in the happy position of needing only
six shillings more to make up the price of the fur stole.
But it had been impossible for the Twins to remain content with the
clump of trees above Great Deeping wood. They had laid a trail of
raisins and set a snare in the wood itself, in the nearest corner of it
on the valley road which divides the wood into two nearly equal parts.
On the next afternoon they had ridden into Rowington with Wiggins; and
since the roads were heavy they did not go back the shortest way over
Great Deeping hill, but took the longer level road along the valley.
The afternoon was still young, and for December, uncommonly clear and
bright. But as they rode through the wood, the Terror decided that
instead of returning to it in the favoring dusk he might as well
examine the snare in the corner now, and save himself another journey.
It was a risk no experienced poacher would have taken; but old heads,
alas! do not grow on young shoulders.
He dismounted about the middle of the wood, informed the other two of
his purpose (to the surprise of Wiggins who had not been informed of
his friends’ latest exploits) and made his dispositions. When they came
to the corner of the wood, Erebus rode on up the road to keep a lookout
ahead. The Terror slipped off his bicycle, and so did Wiggins. Wiggins
held the two bicycles. The Terror listened. The wood was very still in
its winter silence. He slipped through the hedge into it, and presently
came back bringing with him a very nice young pheasant indeed. He put
it into the basket of his bicycle, and mounted.
They had barely started when a keeper sprang out of the hedge, thirty
yards ahead, and came running toward them, shouting in a very daunting
fashion as he came. There was neither time nor room to turn. They rode
on; and the keeper made for the Terror. The Terror swerved; and the
keeper swerved. Wiggins ran bang into the keeper; and they came to the
ground together as the Terror shot ahead, pedaling as hard as he could.
He caught up Erebus, and his cry of “Keeper!” set her racing beside
him; but both of them kept looking back for Wiggins; and presently,
when no Wiggins appeared, with one accord they slowed down, stopped and
dismounted.
“The keeper’s got him. This is a mess!” said the Terror, who was
panting a little from their spurt.
“If only it had been one of us!” cried Erebus. “Whatever are we to do?”
“If that beastly keeper hadn’t seen me with the pheasant, I’d get
Wiggins away, somehow,” said the Terror. “But, as it is, it’s me they
really want; and I’d get fined to a dead certainty. Come on, let’s go
back and see what’s happened to him. You scout on ahead. Nobody knows
you’re in it.”
“All right,” said Erebus; and she mounted briskly.
She rode back through the wood slowly, her keen eyes straining for a
sign of an ambush. The Terror followed her at a distance of sixty
yards, ready to jump off, turn his machine, and fly should she give the
alarm. They got no sight of Wiggins till they came, just beyond the end
of the wood, to the lodges of Great Deeping Park; then, half-way up the
drive, they saw the keeper and his prey. The keeper held Wiggins with
his left hand and wheeled the captured bicycle with his right. The
Twins dismounted. Even at that distance they could see the deep
dejection of their friend.
“There’s not really any reason for him to be frightened. He was never
in the wood at all; and he never touched the pheasant,” said the
Terror.
“What does that matter? He _will_ be frightened out of his life; he’s
so young,” cried Erebus in a tone of acute distress, gazing after their
receding friend with very anxious eyes. “He’s not like us; he won’t
cheek the keeper all the way like we should.”
“Oh, Wiggins has plenty of pluck,” said the Terror in a reassuring
tone.
“But he won’t understand he’s all right. He’s only ten. And there’s no
saying how that beastly foreigner who shoots nightingales will bully
him,” cried Erebus with unabated anxiety.
This was her womanly irrational conception of a Pomeranian Briton.
“Well, the sooner we go and fetch his father the sooner he’ll be out of
it,” said the Terror, making as if to mount his bicycle.
“No, no! That won’t do at all!” cried Erebus fiercely. “We’ve got to
rescue him now—at once. We got him into the mess; and we’ve got to get
him out of it. You’ve got to find a way.”
“It’s all very well,” said the Terror, frowning deeply; and he took off
his cap to wrestle more manfully with the problem.
Erebus faced him, frowning even more deeply.
Never had the Twins been so hopelessly at a loss.
Then the Terror said in his gloomiest tone: “I can’t see what we can
do.”
“Oh, I’m going to get him out of it somehow!” cried Erebus in a furious
desperation.
With that she mounted her bicycle and rode swiftly up the drive.
The Terror mounted, started after her, and stopped at the end of fifty
yards. It had occurred to him that, after all, he was the only poacher
of the three, the only one in real danger. As he leaned on his machine,
watching his vanishing sister, he ground his teeth. For all his natural
serenity, inaction was in the highest degree repugnant to him.
Erebus reached Great Deeping Court but a few minutes after Wiggins and
the keeper. She was about to ride on round the house, thinking that the
keeper would, as befitted his station, enter it by the back door, when
she saw Wiggins’ bicycle standing against one of the pillars of the
great porch. In a natural elation at having captured a poacher, and
eager to display his prize without delay, the keeper had gone straight
into the great hall.
Erebus dismounted and stood considering for perhaps half a minute; then
she moved Wiggins’ bicycle so that it was right to his hand if he came
out, set her own bicycle against another of the pillars, but out of
sight lest he should take it by mistake, walked up the steps, hammered
the knocker firmly, and rang the bell. The moment the door opened she
stepped quickly past the footman into the hall. The keeper sat on a
chair facing her, and on a chair beside him sat Wiggins looking white
and woebegone.
Erebus gazed at them with angry sparkling eyes, then she said sharply:
“What are you doing with my little brother?”
She adopted Wiggins with this suddenness in order to strengthen her
position.
The keeper opened his eyes in some surprise at her uncompromising tone,
but he said triumphantly:
“I caught ’im poachin’—”
“Stand up! What do you mean by speaking to me sitting down?” cried
Erebus in her most imperative tone.
The keeper stood up with uncommon quickness and a sudden sheepish air:
“’E was poachin’,” he said sulkily.
“He was not! A little boy like that!” cried Erebus scornfully.
“Anyways, ’e was aidin’ an’ abettin’, an’ I’ve brought ’im to Mr.
D’Arcy Rosynimer an’ it’s for ’im to say,” said the keeper stubbornly.
There came a faint click from the beautiful lips of Erebus, the gentle
click by which the Twins called each other to attention. At the sound
Wiggins, his face faintly flushed with hope, braced himself. Erebus
measured the distance with the eye of an expert, just as there came
into the farther end of the hall that large, flabby, pudding-faced
young Pomeranian Briton, Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer.
“Where’s the boacher?” he roared in an eager, angry voice, reverting in
his emotion to the ancestral “b.”
As the keeper turned to him Erebus sprang to the door and threw it
wide.
“Bolt, Wiggins!” she cried.
Wiggins bolted for the door; the keeper grabbed at him and missed; the
footman grabbed, and grabbed the interposing Erebus. She slammed the
door behind the vanished Wiggins.
Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer dashed heavily down the hall with a thick howl.
Erebus set her back against the door. He caught her by the left arm to
sling her out of the way. It was a silly arm to choose, for she caught
him a slap on his truly Pomeranian expanse of cheek with the full swing
of her right, a slap that rang through the great hall like the crack of
a whip-lash. Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer was large but tender. He howled
again, and thumped at Erebus with big flabby fists. She caught the
first blow on an uncommonly acute elbow. The second never fell, for the
footman caught him by the collar and swung him round.
“It’s not for the likes of you to ’it Henglish young ladies!” he cried
with patriotic indignation.
Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer gasped and gurgled; then he howled furiously,
“Ged out of my house! Now—at once—ged out!”
“And pleased I shall be to go—when I’ve bin paid my wages. It’s a month
to-morrow since I gave notice, anyhow. I’ve had enough of furriners,”
said the footman with cold exultation.
“Go—go—ged oud!” roared Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer.
“When I’ve bin paid my wages,” said the footman coldly.
Erebus waited to hear no more. She turned the latch, slipped through
the door, and slammed it behind her. To her dismay she saw a big
motorcar coming round the corner of the house. She mounted quickly and
raced down the drive. Wiggins was already out of sight.
Just outside the lodge gates she found the Terror waiting for her.
“I’ve sent Wiggins on!” he shouted as she passed.
“Come on! Come on!” she shrieked back. “The beastly foreigner’s got a
motor-car!”
He caught her up in a quarter of a mile; and she told him that the car
had been ready to start. They caught up Wiggins a mile and a half down
the road; and all three of them sat down to ride all they knew. They
were fully eight miles from home, and the car could go three miles to
their one on that good road. The Twins alone would have made a longer
race of it; but the pace was set by the weaker Wiggins. They had gone
little more than three miles when they heard the honk of the car as it
came rapidly round a corner perhaps half a mile behind them.
“Go on, Terror!” cried Erebus. “You’re the one that matters! You did
the poaching! I’ll look after Wiggins! He’ll be all right with me.”
For perhaps fifty yards the Terror hesitated; then the wisdom of the
advice sank in, and he shot ahead. Erebus kept behind Wiggins; and they
rode on. The car was overhauling them rapidly, but not so rapidly as it
would have done had not Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer, who lacked the courage
of his famous grenadier ancestors, been in it. He was howling at his
straining chauffeur to go slower.
Nevertheless at the end of a mile and a half the car was less than
fifty yards behind them; and then a figure came into sight swinging
briskly along.
“It’s your father!” gasped Erebus.
It was, indeed, the higher mathematician.
As they reached him, they flung themselves off their bicycles; and
Erebus cried: “Wiggins hasn’t been poaching at all! It was the Terror!”
“Was it, indeed?” said Mr. Carrington calmly.
On his words the car was on them; and as it came to a dead stop Mr.
D’Arcy Rosenheimer tumbled clumsily out of it.
“I’ve got you, you liddle devil!” he bellowed triumphantly, but quite
incorrectly; and he rushed at Wiggins who stepped discreetly behind his
father.
“What’s the matter?” said Mr. Carrington.
The excited young Pomeranian Briton, taking in his age and size at a
single glance, shoved him aside with splendid violence. Mr. Carrington
seemed to step lightly backward and forward in one movement; his left
arm shot out; and there befell Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer what, in the
technical terms affected by the fancy, is described as “an uppercut on
the point which put him to sleep.” He fell as falls a sack of potatoes,
and lay like a log.
The keeper had just disengaged himself from the car and hurried
forward.
“Do you want some too, my good man?” said Mr. Carrington in his most
agreeable tone, keeping his guard rather low.
The keeper stopped short and looked down, with a satisfaction he made
no effort to hide, at the body of his stricken employer which lay
between them.
“I can’t say as I do, sir,” he said civilly; and he backed away.
“Then perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me the name of this hulking
young blackguard who assaults quiet elderly gentlemen, taking
constitutionals, in this most unprovoked and wanton fashion,” said the
higher mathematician in the same agreeable tone.
“Assaults?—’Im assault?—Yes, sir; it’s Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer, of Great
Deeping Court, sir,” said the keeper respectfully.
“Then tell Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer, when he recovers the few wits he
looks to have, with my compliments, that he will some time this evening
be summoned for assault. Good afternoon,” said Mr. Carrington, and he
turned on his heel.
The keeper and the chauffeur stooped over the body of their young
employer. Mr. Carrington did not so much as turn his head. He put his
walking-stick under his arm, and rubbed the knuckles of his left hand
with rueful tenderness. None the less he looked pleased; it was
gratifying to a slight man of his sedentary habit to have knocked down
such a large, round Pomeranian Briton with such exquisite neatness.
Wheeling their bicycles, Erebus and Wiggins walked beside him with a
proud air. They felt that they shone with his reflected glory. It was a
delightful sensation.
They had gone some forty yards, when Erebus said in a hushed, awed, yet
gratified tone: “Have you killed him, Mr. Carrington?”
“No, my child. I am not a pork-butcher,” said Mr. Carrington amiably.
“He _looked_ as if he was dead,” said Erebus; and there was a faint
ring of disappointment in her tone.
“In a short time the young man will come to himself; and let us hope
that it will be a better and wiser self,” said Mr. Carrington. “But
what was it all about? What did that truculent young ruffian want with
Rupert?”
Erebus paused, looking earnestly round to the horizon for inspiration;
then she dashed at the awkward subject with commendable glibness: “It
was a pheasant in Great Deeping wood,” she said. “The Terror found it,
I suppose. I had gone on, and I didn’t see that part. But it was
Wiggins the keeper caught. Of course—”
“I beg your pardon; but I should like that point a little clearer,”
broke in Mr. Carrington. “Had you ridden on too, Rupert? Or did you see
what happened?”
“Oh, yes; I was there,” said Wiggins readily. “And the Terror found the
pheasant in the wood and put it in his bicycle basket. And we had just
got on our bicycles when the keeper came out of the wood, and I ran
into him; and he collared me and took me up to the Court. I wasn’t
really frightened—at least, not much.”
“The keeper had no right to touch him,” Erebus broke in glibly.
“Wiggins never touched the pheasant; he didn’t even go into the wood;
and when I went into the hall, the hall of the Court, I found him and
the keeper sitting there, and I let Wiggins out, of course, and then
that horrid Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer who shoots nightingales, caught hold
of me by the arm ever so roughly, and I slapped him just once. I should
think that the mark is still there “—her speed of speech slackened to a
slower vengeful gratification and then quickened again—“and he began to
thump me and the footman interfered, and I came away, and they came
after us in the car, and you saw what happened—at least you did it.”
She stopped somewhat breathless.
“Lucidity itself,” said Mr. Carrington. “But let us have the matter of
the pheasant clear. Was the Terror exploring the wood on the chance of
finding a pheasant, or had he reason to expect that a pheasant would be
there ready to be brought home?”
Erebus blushed faintly, looked round the horizon somewhat aimlessly,
and said, “Well, there was a snare, you know.”
Mr. Carrington chuckled and said: “I thought so. I thought we should
come to that snare in time. Did you know there was a snare, Rupert?”
“Oh, no, he didn’t know anything about it!” Erebus broke in quickly.
“We should never have thought of letting him into anything so
dangerous! He’s so young!”
“I shall be eleven in a fortnight!” said Wiggins with some heat.
“You see, we wanted a fur stole at Barker’s in Rowington for a
Christmas present for mother; and pheasants were the only way we could
think of getting it,” said Erebus in a confidential tone.
“Light! Light at last!” cried Mr. Carrington; and he laughed gently.
“Well, every one has been assaulted except the poacher; exquisitely
Pomeranian! But it’s just as well that they have, or that ingenious
brother of yours would be in a fine mess. As it is, I think we can go
on teaching our young Pomeranian not to be so high-spirited.” He
chuckled again.
He walked on briskly; and on the way to Little Deeping, he drew from
Erebus the full story of their poaching. When they reached the village
he did not go to his own house, but stopped at the garden gate of Mr.
Tupping, the lawyer who had sold his practise at Rowington and had
retired to Little Deeping. At his gate Mr. Carrington bade Erebus good
afternoon and told her to tell the Terror not to thrust himself on the
notice of any of Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer’s keepers who might be sent out
to hunt for the real culprit. He would better keep quiet.
Erebus mounted her bicycle and rode quickly home. She found the Terror
in the cats’ home, awaiting her impatiently.
“Well, did Wiggins get away all right?” he cried. “I passed Mr.
Carrington; and I thought he’d see that they didn’t carry him off
again.”
Erebus told him in terms of the warmest admiration how firmly Mr.
Carrington had dealt with the Pomeranian foe.
“By Jove! That was ripping! I do wish I’d been there!” said the Terror.
“He only hit him once, you say?”
“Only once. And he told me to tell you to lie low in case Mr.
Rosenheimer’s keepers are out hunting for you,” said Erebus.
“I am lying low,” said the Terror. “And I’ve got rid of that pheasant.
I sold it to Mr. Carrington’s cook as I came through the village. I
thought it was better out of the way.”
“Then that’s all right. We only want about another half-crown,” said
Erebus.
Mr. Carrington found Mr. Tupping at home; and he could not have gone to
a better man, for though the lawyer had given up active practise, he
still retained the work of a few old clients in whom he took a friendly
interest; and among them was Mrs. Dangerfield.
He was eager to prevent the Terror from being prosecuted for poaching
not only because the scandal would annoy her deeply but also because
she could so ill afford the expense of the case. He readily fell in
with the view of Mr. Carrington that they had better take the
offensive, and that the violent behavior of Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer had
given them the weapons.
The result of their council was that not later than seven o’clock that
evening Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer was served by the constable of Little
Deeping with a summons for an assault on Violet Anastasia Dangerfield,
and with another summons for an assault on Bertram Carrington, F. R.
S.; and in the course of the next twenty minutes his keeper was served
with a summons for an assault on Rupert Carrington.
Though on recovering consciousness he had sent the keeper to scour the
neighborhood for Wiggins and the Terror, Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer was in
a chastened shaken mood, owing to the fact that he had been “put to
sleep by an uppercut on the point.” He made haste to despatch a car
into Rowington to bring the lawyer who managed his local business.
The lawyer knew his client’s unpopularity in the county, and advised
him earnestly to try to hush these matters up. He declared that however
Pomeranian one might be by extraction and in spirit, no bench of
English magistrates would take a favorable view of an assault by a big
young man on a middle-aged higher mathematician of European reputation,
or on Miss Violet Anastasia Dangerfield, aged thirteen, gallantly
rescuing that higher mathematician’s little boy from wrongful arrest
and detention.
Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer held his aching head with both hands, protested
that they had done all the effective assaulting, and protested his
devotion to the sacred bird beloved of the English magistracy. But he
perceived clearly enough that he had let that devotion carry him too
far, and that a Bench which never profited by it, so far as to shoot
the particular sacred birds on which it was lavished, would not be
deeply touched by it. Therefore he instructed the lawyer to use every
effort to settle the matter out of court.
The lawyer dined with him lavishly, and then had, himself driven over
to Little Deeping in the car, to Mr. Carrington’s house. He found Mr.
Carrington uncommonly bitter against his client; and he did his best to
placate him by urging that the assault had been met with a promptitude
which had robbed it of its violence, and that he could well afford to
be generous to a man whom he had so neatly put to sleep with an
uppercut on the point.
Mr. Carrington held out for a while; but in the background, behind the
more prominent figures in the affair, lurked the Terror with a
veritable poached pheasant; and at last he made terms. The summonses
should be withdrawn on condition that nothing more was heard about that
poached pheasant and that Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer contributed fifty
guineas to the funds of the Deeping Cottage Hospital. The lawyer
accepted the terms readily; and his client made no objection to
complying with them.
The matter was at an end by noon of the next day; and Mr. Carrington
sent for the Terror and talked to him very seriously about this
poaching. He did not profess to consider it an enormity; he dwelt at
length on the extreme annoyance his mother would feel if he were caught
and prosecuted. In the end he gave him the choice of giving his word to
snare no more pheasants, or of having his mother informed that he was
poaching. The Terror gave his word to snare no more pheasants the more
readily since if Mrs. Dangerfield were informed of his poaching, she
would forbid him to set another snare for anything. Besides, he had
been somewhat shaken by his narrow escape the day before. Only he
pointed out that he could not be quite sure of never snaring a
pheasant, for pheasants went everywhere. Mr. Carrington admitted this
fact and said that it would be enough if he refrained from setting his
snares on ground sacred to the sacred bird. If pheasants wandered into
them on unpreserved ground, it was their own fault. Thanks therefore to
the firmness of her friends Mrs. Dangerfield never learned of the
Terror’s narrow escape.
The Twins bore the loss of income from the sacred bird with even minds,
since the sum needed for the fur stole was so nearly complete. They
turned their attention to the habits of the hare, and snared one in the
hedge of the farthest meadow of farmer Stubbs. Mrs. Blenkinsop’s cook
paid them half-a-crown for it; and the three guineas were complete.
Though it wanted a full week to Christmas, the Terror lost no time
making the purchase. As he told Erebus, they would get the choice of
more stoles if they bought it before the Christmas rush. Accordingly on
the afternoon after the sale of the hare they rode into Rowington to
buy it.
It was an uncommonly cold afternoon, for a bitter east wind was blowing
hard; and when they dismounted at the door of Barker’s shop, Erebus
gazed wistfully across the road at the appetizing window of Springer,
the confectioner, and said sadly:
“It’s a pity it isn’t Saturday and we had our ‘overseering’ salary. We
might have gone to Springer’s and had a jolly good blow-out for once.”
The Terror gazed at Springer’s window thoughtfully, and said: “Yes, it
is a pity. We ought to have remembered it was Christmas-time and paid
ourselves in advance.”
He followed Erebus into the shop with a thoughtful air, and seemed
somewhat absent-minded during her examination of the stoles. She was
very thorough in it; and both of them were nearly sure that she had
chosen the very best of them. The girl who was serving them made out
the bill; and the Terror drew the little bag which held the three
guineas (since it was all in silver they had been able to find no purse
of a capacity to hold it), emptied its contents on the counter, and
counted them slowly.
He had nearly finished, and the girl had nearly wrapped up the stole
when a flash of inspiration brightened his face; and he said firmly: “I
shall want five per cent. discount for cash.”
“Oh, we don’t do that sort of thing here,” said the girl quickly. “This
is such an old-established establishment.”
“I can’t help that. I must have discount for cash,” said the Terror yet
more firmly.
The girl hesitated; then she called Mr. Barker who, acting as his own
shop-walker, was strolling up and down with great dignity. Mr. Barker
came and she put the matter to him.
“Oh, no, sir; I’m afraid we couldn’t think of it. Barker’s is too old
established a house to connive at these sharp modern ways of doing
business,” said Mr. Barker with a very impressive air.
The Terror looked at him with a cold thoughtful eye: “All right,” he
said. “You can put the stole down to me—Master Hyacinth Dangerfield,
Colet House, Little Deeping.”
He began to shovel the money back into the bag.
An expression of deep pain spread over the mobile face of Mr. Barker as
the coins began to disappear; and he said quickly: “I’m afraid we can’t
do that, sir. Our terms are cash—strictly cash.”
“Oh, no, they’re not. My mother has had an account here for the last
six years,” said the Terror icily; and the last of the coins went into
the bag.
Mr. Barker held out a quivering hand, and with an air and in a tone of
warm geniality he cried: “Oh, that alters the case altogether! In the
case of the son of an old customer like Mrs. Dangerfield we’re
delighted to deduct five per cent. discount for cash—delighted. Make
out the bill for three pounds, Miss Perkins.”
Miss Perkins made out the bill for three pounds; and Erebus bore away
the stole tenderly.
As the triumphant Terror came out of the shop, he jingled the brave
three shillings discount in his pocket and said: “Now for Springer’s!”