AND THE MUTTLE DEEPING PEACHES
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.
[Illustration: “This is different,” she said.]
“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.