The Terrible Twins.

by Edgar Jepson.

CHAPTER I

AND CAPTAIN BASTER

For all that their voices rang high and hot, the Twins were really discussing the question who had hit Stubb's bull-terrier with the greatest number of stones, in the most amicable spirit. It was indeed a nice question and hard to decide since both of them could throw stones quicker, straighter and harder than any one of their size and weight for miles and miles round; and they had thrown some fifty at the bull-terrier before they had convinced that dense, but irritated, quadruped that his master's interests did not really demand his presence in the orchard; and of these some thirty had hit him. Violet Anastasia Dangerfield, who always took the most favorable view of her experience, claimed twenty hits out of a possible thirty; Hyacinth Wolfram Dangerfield, in a very proper spirit, had at once claimed the same number; and both of them were defending their claims with loud vehemence, because if you were not loudly vehement, your claim lapsed.

Suddenly Hyacinth Wolfram, as usual, closed the discussion; he said firmly, "I tell you what: we both hit that dog the same number of times."

So saying, he swung round the rude calico bag, bulging with booty, which hung from his shoulders, and took from it two Ribston pippins.

"Perhaps we did," said Anastasia amiably. They went swiftly down the road, munching in a peaceful silence.

It had been an odd whim of nature to make the Twins so utterly unlike.

No stranger ever took Violet Anastasia Dangerfield, so dark-eyed, dark-haired, dark-skinned, of so rich a coloring, so changeful and piquant a face, for the cousin, much less for the twin-sister, of Hyacinth Wolfram Dangerfield, so fair-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed, on whose firmly chiseled features rested so perpetual, so contrasting a serenity. But it was a whim of man, of their wicked uncle Sir Maurice Falconer, that had robbed them of their pretty names. He had named Violet "Erebus" because, he said,

She walks in beauty like the night Of cloudless climes and starry spheres:

and he had forthwith named Hyacinth the "Terror" because, he said, the ill-fated Sir John Franklin had made the Terror the eternal companion of Erebus.

Erebus and the Terror they became. Even their mother never called them by their proper pretty names save in moments of the severest displeasure.

"They're good apples," said the Terror presently, as he threw away the core of his third and took two more from the bag.

"They are," said Erebus in a grateful tone--"worth all the trouble we had with that dog."

"We'd have cleared him out of the orchard in half the time, if we'd had our catapults and bullets. It was hard luck being made to promise never to use catapults again," said the Terror sadly.

"All that fuss about a little lead from the silly old belfry gutter!"

said Erebus bitterly.

"As if belfries wanted lead gutters. They could easily have put slates in the place of the sheet of lead we took," said the Terror with equal bitterness.

"Why can't they leave us alone? It quite spoils the country not to have catapults," said Erebus, gazing with mournful eyes on the rich autumn scene through which they moved.

The Twins had several grievances against their elders; but the loss of their catapults was the bitterest. They had used those weapons to enrich the simple diet which was all their mother's slender means allowed them; on fortunate days they had enriched it in defiance of the game laws. Keepers and farmers had made no secret of their suspicions that this was the case: but the careful Twins never afforded them the pleasure of adducing evidence in support of those suspicions. Then a heavy thunderstorm revealed the fact that they had removed a sheet of lead, which they had regarded as otiose, from the belfry gutter, to cast it into bullets for their catapults; a consensus of the public opinion of Little Deeping had demanded that they should be deprived of them; and their mother, yielding to the demand, had forbidden them to use them any longer.

The Twins always obeyed their mother; but they resented bitterly the action of Little Deeping. It was, indeed, an ungrateful place, since their exploits afforded its old ladies much of the carping conversation they loved. In a bitter and vindictive spirit the Twins set themselves to become the finest stone-throwers who ever graced a countryside; and since they had every natural apt.i.tude in the way of muscle and keenness of eye, they were well on their way to realize their ambition. There may, indeed, have been northern boys of thirteen who could outthrow the Terror, but not a girl in England could throw a stone straighter or harder than Erebus.

They came to a gate opening on to Little Deeping common; Erebus vaulted it gracefully; the Terror, hampered by the bag of booty, climbed over it (for the Twins it was always simpler to vault or climb over a gate than to unlatch it and walk through) and took their way along a narrow path through the gorse and bracken. They had gone some fifty yards, when from among the bracken on their right a voice cried: "Bang-g-g!

Bang-g-g!"

The Twins fell to the earth and lay still; and Wiggins came out of the gorse, his wooden rifle on his shoulder, a smile of proud triumph on his richly freckled face. He stood over the fallen Twins; and his smile of triumph changed to a scowl of fiendish ferocity.

"Ha! Ha! Shot through the heads!" he cried. "Their bones will bleach in the pathless forest while their scalps hang in the wigwam of Red Bear the terror of the Cherokees!"

Then he scalped the Twins with a formidable but wooden knife. Then he took from his knickerbockers pocket a tattered and dirty note-book, an inconceivable note-book (it was the only thing to curb the exuberant imagination of Erebus) made an entry in it, and said in a tone of lively satisfaction: "You're only one game ahead."

"I thought we were three," said Erebus, rising.

"They're down in the book," said Wiggins; firmly; and his bright blue eyes were very stern.

"Well, we shall have to spend a whole afternoon getting well ahead of you again," said Erebus, shaking out her dark curls.

Wiggins waged a deadly war with the Twins. He ambushed and scalped them; they ambushed and scalped him. Seeing that they had already pa.s.sed their thirteenth birthday, it was a great condescension on their part to play with a boy of ten; and they felt it. But Wiggins was a favored friend; and the game filled intervals between sterner deeds.

The Terror handed Wiggins an apple; and the three of them moved swiftly on across the common. Wiggins was one of those who spurn the earth.

Now and again, for obscure but profound reasons, he would suddenly spring into the air and proceed by leaps and bounds.

Once when he slowed down to let them overtake him, he said, "The game isn't really fair; you're two to one."

"You keep very level," said the Terror politely.

"Yes; it's my superior astuteness," said Wiggins sedately.

"Goodness! What words you use!" said Erebus in a somewhat jealous tone.

"It's being so much with my father; you see, he has a European reputation," Wiggins explained.

"Yes, everybody says that. But what is a European reputation?" said Erebus in a captious tone.

"Everybody in Europe knows him," said Wiggins; and he spurned the earth.

They called him Wiggins because his name was Rupert. It seemed to them a name both affected and ostentatious. Besides, crop it as you might, his hair _would_ a.s.sume the appearance of a mop.

They came out of the narrow path into a broader rutted cart-track to see two figures coming toward them, eighty yards away.

"It's Mum," said Erebus.

Quick as thought the Terror dropped behind her, slipped off the bag of booty, and thrust it into a gorse-bush.

"And--and--it's the Cruncher with her!" cried Erebus in a tone in which disgust outrang surprise.

"Of all the sickening things! The Cruncher!" cried the Terror, echoing her disgust. "What's he come down again for?"

They paused; then went on their way with gloomy faces to meet the approaching pair.

The gentleman whom they called the "Cruncher," and who from their tones of disgust had so plainly failed to win their young hearts was Captain Baster of the Twenty-fourth Hussars; and they called him the Cruncher on account of the vigor with which he plied his large, white, prominent teeth.

They had not gone five yards when Wiggins said in a tone of superiority: "_I_ know why he's come down."

"Why?" said the Terror quickly.

"He's come down to marry your mother," said Wiggins.

"What?" cried the Twins with one voice, one look of blank consternation; and they stopped short.