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.
