The Terrible Twins | Page 7

qualities. She assured herself that she had the power to draw
them out; once he was her husband, she would change him. But still

she was ill at ease. Perhaps, in her heart of hearts, she was doubtful of
her power to make a silk purse out of rhinoceros hide.
When at last a note came from The Plough to say that he was
unfortunately prevented from coming that evening, but would come
next morning to take her for a walk, she was filled with so extravagant
a relief that it frightened her. She sat down and wrote out a telegram to
her brother, rang for old Sarah, their trusty hard-working maid, and
bade her tell the Terror, who had slipped quietly upstairs to bed at one
minute to nine, to send it off in the morning. She did not wish to take
the chance of not waking and despatching it as early as possible. She
must have advice; and Sir Maurice Falconer was not only a shrewd
man of the world, but he would also advise her with the keenest regard
for her interests. She tried not to hope that he would find marriage with
Captain Baster incompatible with them.
Captain Baster awoke in less than his usual cheerfulness. He thought
for a while of the Terror and boots and mud with a gloomy
unamiability. Then he rose and betook himself to his toilet. In the
middle of it he missed his shaving-brush. He hunted for it furiously; he
could have sworn that he had taken it out of his portmanteau. He did
swear, but not to any definite fact. There was nothing for it: he must
expose his tender chin to the cruel razor of a village barber.
Then he disliked the look of his tweed suit; all traces of mud had not
vanished from it. In one short night it had lost its pristine freshness.
This and the ordeal before his chin made his breakfast gloomy; and
soon after it he entered the barber's shop with the air of one who has
abandoned hope. Later he came out of it with his roving black eye full
of tears of genuine feeling; his scraped chin was smarting cruelly and
unattractive in patches--red patches. At the door the breathless, excited
and triumphant maid of the inn accosted him with the news that she had
just found his keys and his shaving-brush under the mattress of his bed.
He looked round the village of Little Deeping blankly; it suddenly
seemed to him a squalid place.
None the less it was a comforting thought that he would not be put to
the expense of having his portmanteau broken open and fitted with a

new lock, for his great wealth had never weakened the essential
thriftiness of his soul. Half an hour later, in changed tweeds but with
unchanged chin, he took his way to Colet House, thinking with great
unkindness of his future stepson. As he drew near it he saw that that
stepson was awaiting him at the garden gate; nearer still he saw that he
was awaiting him with an air of ineffable serenity.
The Terror politely opened the gate for him, and with a kind smile
asked him if he had slept well.
The red blood of the Basters boiled in the captain's veins, and he said
somewhat thickly: "Look here, my lad, I don't want any more of your
tricks! You play another on me, and I'll give you the soundest licking
you ever had in your life!"
The serenity on the Terror's face broke up into an expression of the
deepest pain: "Whatever's the matter?" he said in a tone of amazement.
"I thought you loved a joke. You said you did--yesterday--at tea."
"You try it on again!" said Captain Baster.
"Now, whatever has put your back up?" said the Terror in a tone of
even greater amazement. "Was it the apple-pie bed, or the lost keys, or
the water in the boot, or the clothes-line across the road?"
It was well that the Terror could spring with a cat's swiftness: Captain
Baster's boot missed him by a hair's breadth.
The Terror ran round the house, in at the back door and up to the
bedroom of Erebus.
"Waxy?" he cried joyously. "He's black in the face! I told him he said
he loved a joke."
Erebus only growled deep down in her throat. She was bitterly
aggrieved that she had not had a hand in Captain Baster's downfall the
night before. The Terror had awakened her to tell her joyfully of his
glorious exploit and of the shuddering welkin.

He paid no heed to the rumbling of her discontent; he said: "Now, you
quite understand. You'll stick to them like a leech. You won't give him
any chance