Christopher and Columbus by Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

C >> Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim >> Christopher and Columbus

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"Now remember what Aunt Alice said," she whispered severely to
Anna-Felicitas, gripping her arm as they stood jammed in the narrow
passage to the door waiting to be let out at Boston.

On the platform, they both thought, would be the Sacks,--certainly one
Sack, and they had feverishly made themselves tidy and composed their
faces into pleasant smiles preparatory to the meeting. But once again no
Sacks were there. The platform emptied itself just as the great hall of
the landing-stage had emptied itself, and nobody came to claim the
Twinklers.

"These Sacks," remarked Anna-Felicitas patiently at last, when it was
finally plain that there weren't any, "don't seem to have acquired the
meeting habit."

"No," said Anna-Rose, vexed but relieved. "They're like what Aunt Alice
used to complain about the housemaids,--neither punctual nor
methodical."

"But it doesn't matter," said Anna-Felicitas. "They shall not escape us.
I'm getting quite hungry for the Sacks as a result of not having them.
We will now proceed to track them to their lair."

For one instant Anna-Rose looked longingly at the train. It was still
there. It was going on further and further away from the Sacks. Happy
train. One little jump, and they'd be in it again. But she resisted, and
engaged a porter.

Even as soon as this the twins were far less helpless than they had been
the day before. The Sack address was in Anna-Rose's hand, and they knew
what an American porter looked like. The porter and a taxi were engaged
with comparative ease and assurance, and on giving the porter, who had
staggered beneath the number of their grips, a dime, and seeing a cloud
on his face, they doubled it instantly sooner than have trouble, and
trebled it equally quickly on his displaying yet further
dissatisfaction, and they departed for the Sacks, their grips piled up
round them in the taxi as far as their chins, congratulating themselves
on how much easier it was to get away from a train than to get into one.

But the minute their activities were over and they had time to think,
silence fell upon them again. They were both nervous. They both composed
their faces to indifference to hide that they were nervous, examining
the streets they passed through with a calm and _blase_ stare worthy of
a lorgnette. It was the tact part of the coming encounter that was
chiefly unnerving Anna-Rose, and Anna-Felicitas was dejected by her
conviction that nobody who was a friend of Uncle Arthur's could possibly
be agreeable. "By their friends ye shall know them," thought
Anna-Felicitas, staring out of the window at the Boston buildings. Also
the persistence of the Sacks in not being on piers and railway stations
was discouraging. There was no eagerness about this persistence; there
wasn't even friendliness. Perhaps they didn't like her and Anna-Rose
being German.

This was always the twins' first thought when anybody wasn't
particularly cordial. Their experiences in England had made them a
little jumpy. They were conscious of this weak spot, and like a hurt
finger it seemed always to be getting in the way and being knocked.
Anna-Felicitas once more pondered on the inscrutable behaviour of
Providence which had led their mother, so safely and admirably English,
to leave that blessed shelter and go and marry somebody who wasn't. Of
course there was this to be said for it, that she wasn't their mother
then. If she had been, Anna-Felicitas felt sure she wouldn't have. Then,
perceiving that her thoughts were getting difficult to follow she gave
them up, and slid her hand through Anna-Rose's arm and gave it a
squeeze.

"Now for the New World, Christopher," she said, pretending to be very
eager and brave and like the real Columbus, as the taxi stopped.

CHAPTER XIV

The taxi had stopped in front of a handsome apartment house, and almost
before it was quiet a boy in buttons darted out across the intervening
wide pavement and thrust his face through the window.

"Who do you want?" he said, or rather jerked out.

He then saw the contents of the taxi, and his mouth fell open; for it
seemed to him that grips and passengers were piled up inside it in a
seething mass.

"We want Mr. and Mrs. Clouston Sack," said Anna-Rose in her most
grown-up voice. "They're expecting us."

"They ain't," said the boy promptly.

"They ain't?" repeated Anna-Rose, echoing his language in her surprise.

"How do you know?" asked Anna-Felicitas.

"That they ain't? Because they ain't," said the boy. "I bet you my
Sunday shirt they ain't."

The twins stared at him. They were not accustomed in their conversations
with the lower classes to be talked to about shirts.

The boy seemed extraordinarily vital. His speech was so quick that it
flew out with the urgency and haste of squibs going off.

"Please open the door," said Anna-Rose recovering herself. "We'll go up
and see for ourselves."

"You won't see," said the boy.

"Kindly open the door," repeated Anna-Rose.

"You won't see," he said, pulling it open, "but you can look. If you do
see Sacks up there I'm a Hun."

The minute the door opened, grips fell out. There were two umbrellas,
two coats, a knapsack of a disreputable bulged appearance repugnant to
American ideas of baggage which run on big simple lines of huge trunks,
an _attache_ case, a suit case, a hold-all, a basket and a hat-box.
Outside beside the driver were two such small and modest trunks that
they might almost as well have been grips themselves.

"Do you mind taking those in?" asked Anna-Rose, getting out with
difficulty over the umbrella that had fallen across the doorway, and
pointing to the gutter in which the other umbrella and the knapsack lay
and into which the basket, now that her body no longer kept it in, was
rolling.

"In where?" crackled the boy.

"In," said Anna-Rose severely. "In to wherever Mr. and Mrs. Clouston
Sack are."

"It's no good your saying they are when they ain't," said the boy,
increasing the loudness of his crackling.

"Do you mean they don't live here?" asked Anna-Felicitas, in her turn
disentangling herself from that which was still inside the taxi, and
immediately followed on to the pavement by the hold-all and the
_attache_ case.

"They did live here till yesterday," said the boy, "but now they don't.
One does. But that's not the same as two. Which is what I meant when you
said they're expecting you and I said they ain't."

"Do you mean to say--" Anna-Rose stopped with a catch of her breath. "Do
you mean," she went on in an awe-struck voice, "that one of them--one of
them is dead?"

"Dead? Bless you, no. Anything but dead. The exact opposite. Gone.
Left. Got," said the boy.

"Oh," said Anna-Rose greatly relieved, passing over his last word, whose
meaning escaped her, "oh--you mean just gone to meet us. And missed us.
You see," she said, turning to Anna-Felicitas, "they did try to after
all."

Anna-Felicitas said nothing, but reflected that whichever Sack had tried
to must have a quite unusual gift for missing people.

"Gone to meet you?" repeated the boy, as one surprised by a new point of
view. "Well, I don't know about that--"

"We'll go up and explain," said Anna-Rose. "Is it Mr. or Mrs. Clouston
Sack who is here?"

"Mr.," said the boy.

"Very well then. Please bring in our things." And Anna-Rose proceeded,
followed by Anna-Felicitas, to walk into the house.

The boy, instead of bringing them in, picked up the articles lying on
the pavement and put them back again into the taxi. "No hurry about
them, I guess," he said to the driver. "Time enough to take them up when
the gurls ask again--" and he darted after the gurls to hand them over
to his colleague who worked what he called the elevator.

"Why do you call it the elevator," inquired Anna-Felicitas, mildly
inquisitive, of this boy, who on hearing that they wished to see Mr.
Sack stared at them with profound and unblinking interest all the way
up, "when it is really a lift?"

"Because it is an elevator," said the boy briefly.

"But we, you see," said Anna-Felicitas, "are equally convinced that it's
a lift."

The boy didn't answer this. He was as silent as the other one wasn't;
but there was a thrill about him too, something electric and tense. He
stared at Anna-Felicitas, then turned quickly and stared at Anna-Rose,
then quickly back to Anna-Felicitas, and so on all the way up. He was
obviously extraordinarily interested. He seemed to have got hold of an
idea that had not struck the squib-like boy downstairs, who was
entertaining the taxi-driver with descriptions of the domestic life of
the Sacks.

The lift stopped at what the twins supposed was going to be the door of
a landing or public corridor, but it was, they discovered, the actual
door of the Sack flat. At any moment the Sacks, if they wished to commit
suicide, could do so simply by stepping out of their own front door.
They would then fall, infinitely far, on to the roof of the lift lurking
at the bottom.

The lift-boy pressed a bell, the door opened, and there, at once exposed
to the twins, was the square hall of the Sack flat with a manservant
standing in it staring at them.

Obsessed by his idea, the lift-boy immediately stepped out of his lift,
approached the servant, introduced his passengers to him by saying,
"Young ladies to see Mr. Sack," took a step closer, and whispered in his
ear, but perfectly audibly to the twins who, however, regarded it as
some expression peculiarly American and were left unmoved by it, "The
co-respondents."

The servant stared uncertainly at them. His mistress had only been gone
a few hours, and the flat was still warm with her presence and
authority. She wouldn't, he well knew, have permitted co-respondents to
be about the place if she had been there, but on the other hand she
wasn't there. Mr. Sack was in sole possession now. Nobody knew where
Mrs. Sack was. Letters and telegrams lay on the table for her unopened,
among them Mr. Twist's announcing the arrival of the Twinklers. In his
heart the servant sided with Mr. Sack, but only in his heart, for the
servant's wife was the cook, and she, as she frequently explained, was
all for strict monogamy. He stared therefore uncertainly at the twins,
his brain revolving round their colossal impudence in coming there
before Mrs. Sack's rooms had so much as had time to get, as it were,
cold.

"We want to see Mr. Clouston Sack," began Anna-Rose in her clear little
voice; and no sooner did she begin to speak than a door was pulled open
and the gentleman himself appeared.

"I heard a noise of arrival--" he said, stopping suddenly when he saw
them. "I heard a noise of arrival, and a woman's voice--"

"It's us," said Anna-Rose, her face covering itself with the bright
conciliatory smiles of the arriving guest. "Are you Mr. Clouston Sack?"

She went up to him and held out her hand. They both went up to him and
held out their hands.

"We're the Twinklers," said Anna-Rose.

"We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, in case he shouldn't have noticed it.

Mr. Sack let his hand be shaken, and it was a moist hand. He looked like
a Gibson young man who has grown elderly. He had the manly profile and
shoulders, but they sagged and stooped. There was a dilapidation about
him, a look of blurred edges. His hair lay on his forehead in disorder,
and his tie had been put on carelessly and had wriggled up to the rim of
his collar.

"The Twinklers," he repeated. "The Twinklers. Do I remember, I wonder?"

"There hasn't been much time to forget," said Anna-Felicitas. "It's
less than two months since there were all those letters."

"Letters?" echoed Mr. Sack. "Letters?"

"So now we've got here," said Anna-Rose, the more brightly that she was
unnerved.

"Yes. We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, also with feverish brightness.

Bewildered, Mr. Sack, who felt that he had had enough to bear the last
few hours, stood staring at them. Then he caught sight of the lift-boy,
lingering and he further saw the expression on his servant's face Even
to his bewilderment it was clear what he was thinking.

Mr. Sack turned round quickly and led the way into the dining-room.
"Come in, come in," he said distractedly.

They went in. He shut the door. The lift-boy and the servant lingered a
moment making faces at each other; then the lift-boy dropped away in his
lift, and the servant retired to the kitchen. "I'm darned," was all he
could articulate. "I'm darned."

"There's our luggage," said Anna-Rose, turning to Mr. Sack on getting
inside the room, her voice gone a little shrill in her determined
cheerfulness. "Can it be brought up?"

"Luggage?" repeated Mr. Sack, putting his hand to his forehead. "Excuse
me, but I've got such a racking headache to-day--it makes me stupid--"

"Oh, I'm _very_ sorry," said Anna-Rose solicitously.

"And so am I--_very_," said Anna-Felicitas, equally solicitous. "Have
you tried aspirin? Sometimes some simple remedy like that--"

"Oh thank you--it's good of you, it's good of you. The effect, you see,
is that I can't think very clearly. But do tell me--why luggage?
Luggage--luggage. You mean, I suppose, baggage."

"Why luggage?" asked Anna-Rose nervously. "Isn't there--isn't there
always luggage in America too when people come to stay with one?"

"You've come to stay with me," said Mr. Sack, putting his hand to his
forehead again.

"You see," said Anna-Felicitas, "we're the Twinklers."

"Yes, yes--I know. You've told me that."

"So naturally we've come."

"But _is_ it natural?" asked Mr. Sack, looking at them distractedly.

"We sent you a telegram," said Anna-Rose, "or rather one to Mrs. Sack,
which is the same thing--"

"It isn't, it isn't," said the distressed Mr. Sack. "I wish it were. It
ought to be. Mrs. Sack isn't here--"

"Yes--we're very sorry to have missed her. Did she go to meet us in New
York, or where?"

"Mrs. Sack didn't go to meet you. She's--gone."

"Gone where?"

"Oh," cried Mr. Sack, "somewhere else, but not to meet you. Oh," he went
on after a moment in which, while the twins gazed at him, he fought with
and overcame emotion, "when I heard you speaking in the hall I
thought--I had a moment's hope--for a minute I believed--she had come
back. So I went out. Else I couldn't have seen you. I'm not fit to see
strangers--"

The things Mr. Sack said, and his fluttering, unhappy voice, were so
much at variance with the stern lines of his Gibson profile that the
twins viewed him with the utmost surprise. They came to no conclusion
and passed no judgment because they didn't know but what if one was an
American one naturally behaved like that.

"I don't think," said Anna-Felicitas gently, "that you can call us
strangers. We're the Twinklers."

"Yes, yes--I know--you keep on telling me that," said Mr. Sack. "But I
can't call to mind--"

"Don't you remember all Uncle Arthur's letters about us? We're the
nieces he asked you to be kind to for a bit--as I'm sure,"
Anna-Felicitas added politely, "you're admirably adapted for being."

Mr. Sack turned his bewildered eyes on to her. "Oh, aren't you a pretty
girl," he said, in the same distressed voice.

"You mustn't make her vain," said Anna-Rose, trying not to smile all
over her face, while Anna-Felicitas remained as manifestly unvain as a
person intent on something else would be.

"We know you got Uncle Arthur's letters about us," she continued,
"because he showed us your answers back. You invited us to come and stay
with you. And, as you perceive, we've done it."

"Then it must have been months ago--months ago," said Mr. Sack, "before
all this--do I remember something about it? I've had such trouble
since--I've been so distracted one way and another--it may have slipped
away out of my memory under the stress--Mrs. Sack--" He paused and
looked round the room helplessly. "Mrs. Sack--well, Mrs. Sack isn't here
now."

"We're _very_ sorry you've had trouble," said Anna-Felicitas
sympathetically. "It's what everybody has, though. Man that is born of
woman is full of misery. That's what the Burial Service says, and it
ought to know."

Mr. Sack again turned bewildered eyes on to her. "Oh, aren't you a
pretty--" he again began.

"When do you think Mrs. Sack will be back?" interrupted Anna-Rose.

"I wish I knew--I wish I could hope--but she's gone for a long while,
I'm afraid--"

"Gone not to come back at all, do you mean?" asked Anna-Felicitas.

Mr. Sack gulped. "I'm afraid that is her intention," he said miserably.

There was a silence, in which they all stood looking at each other.

"Didn't she like you?" then inquired Anna-Felicitas.

Anna-Rose, sure that this wasn't tactful, gave her sleeve a little pull.

"Were you unkind to her?" asked Anna-Felicitas, disregarding the
warning.

Mr. Sack, his fingers clasping and unclasping themselves behind his
back, started walking up and down the room. Anna-Felicitas, forgetful of
what Aunt Alice would have said, sat down on the edge of the table and
began to be interested in Mrs. Sack.

"The wives I've seen," she remarked, watching Mr. Sack with friendly and
interested eyes, "who were chiefly Aunt Alice--that's Uncle Arthur's
wife, the one we're the nieces of--seemed to put up with the utmost
contumely from their husbands and yet didn't budge. You must have been
something awful to yours."

"I worshipped Mrs. Sack," burst out Mr. Sack. "I worshipped her. I do
worship her. She was the handsomest, brightest woman in Boston. I was as
proud of her as any man has ever been of his wife."

"Then why did she go?" asked Anna-Felicitas.

"I don't think that's the sort of thing you should ask," rebuked
Anna-Rose.

"But if I don't ask I won't be told," said Ann Felicitas, "and I'm
interested."

"Mrs. Sack went because I was able--I was so constructed--that I could
be fond of other people as well as of her," said Mr. Sack.

"Well, _that's_ nothing unusual," said Anna-Felicitas.

"No," said Anna-Rose, "I don't see anything in that."

"I think it shows a humane and friendly spirit," said Anna-Felicitas.

"Besides, it's enjoined in the Bible," said Anna-Rose.

"I'm sure when we meet Mrs. Sack," said Anna-Felicitas very politely
indeed, "much as we expect to like her we shall nevertheless continue to
like other people as well. You, for instance. Will she mind that?"

"It wasn't so much that I liked other people," said Mr. Sack, walking
about and thinking tumultuously aloud rather than addressing anybody,
"but that I liked other people so _much_."

"I see," said Anna-Felicitas, nodding. "You overdid it. Like over-eating
whipped cream. Only it wasn't you but Mrs. Sack who got the resulting
ache."

"And aren't I aching? Aren't I suffering?"

"Yes, but you did the over-eating," said Anna-Felicitas.

"The world," said the unhappy Mr. Sack, quickening his pace, "is so full
of charming and delightful people. Is one to shut one's eyes to them?"

"Of course not," said Anna-Felicitas. "One must love them."

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Sack. "Exactly. That's what I did."

"And though I wouldn't wish," said Anna-Felicitas, "to say anything
against somebody who so very nearly was my hostess, yet really, you
know, wasn't Mrs. Sack's attitude rather churlish?"

Mr. Sack gazed at her. "Oh, aren't you a pretty--" he began again,
with a kind of agonized enthusiasm; but he was again cut short by
Anna-Rose, on whom facts of a disturbing nature were beginning to press.

"Aunt Alice," she said, looking and feeling extremely perturbed as the
situation slowly grew clear to her, "told us we were never to stay with
people whose wives are somewhere else. Unless they have a mother or
other female relative living with them. She was most particular about
it, and said whatever else we did we weren't ever to do this. So I'm
afraid," she continued in her politest voice, determined to behave
beautifully under circumstances that were trying, "much as we should
have enjoyed staying with you and Mrs. Sack if she had been here to stay
with, seeing that she isn't we manifestly can't."

"You can't stay with me," murmured Mr. Sack, turning his bewildered eyes
to her. "Were you going to?"

"Of course we were going to. It's what we've come for," said
Anna-Felicitas.

"And I'm afraid," said-Anna-Rose, "disappointed as we are, unless you
can produce a mother--"

"But where on earth are we to go to, Anna-R.?" inquired Anna-Felicitas,
who, being lazy, having got to a place preferred if possible to stay in
it, and who besides was sure that in their forlorn situation a Sack in
the hand was worth two Sacks not in it, any day. Also she liked the look
of Mr. Sack, in spite of his being so obviously out of repair. He badly
wanted doing up she said to herself, but on the other hand he seemed to
her lovable in his distress, with much of the pathetic helplessness her
own dear Irish terrier, left behind in Germany, had had the day he
caught his foot in a rabbit trap. He had looked at Anna-Felicitas, while
she was trying to get him out of it, with just the same expression on
his face that Mr. Sack had on his as he walked about the room twisting
and untwisting his fingers behind his back. Only, her Irish terrier
hadn't had a Gibson profile. Also, he had looked much more efficient.

"Can't you by any chance produce a mother?" she asked.

Mr. Sack stared at her.

"Of course we're very sorry," said Anna-Rose.

Mr. Sack stared at her.

"But you understand, I'm sure, that under the circumstances--"

"Do you say," said Mr. Sack, stopping still after a few more turns in
front of Anna-Rose, and making a great effort to collect his thoughts,
"that I--that we--had arranged to look after you?"

"Arranged with Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Rose. "Uncle Arthur Abinger. Of
course you had. That's why we're here. Why, you wrote bidding us
welcome. He showed us the letter."

"Abinger. Abinger. Oh--_that_ man," said Mr. Sack, his mind clearing.

"We thought you'd probably feel like that about him," said
Anna-Felicitas sympathetically.

"Why, then," said Mr. Sack, his mind getting suddenly quite clear, "you
must be--why, you _are_ the Twinklers."

"We've been drawing your attention to that at frequent intervals since
we got here," said Anna-Felicitas.

"But whether you now remember or still don't realize," said Anna-Rose
with great firmness, "I'm afraid we've got to say good-bye."

"That's all very well, Anna-R.," again protested Anna-Felicitas, "but
where are we to go to?"

"Go?" said Anna-Rose with a dignity very creditable in one of her size,
"Ultimately to California, of course, to Uncle Arthur's other friends.
But now, this afternoon, we get back into a train and go to Clark, to
Mr. Twist. He at least has a mother."

CHAPTER XV

And so it came about that just as the reunited Twists, mother, son and
daughter, were sitting in the drawing-room, a little tired after a long
afternoon of affection, waiting for seven o'clock to strike and, with
the striking, Amanda the head maid to appear and announce supper, but
waiting with lassitude, for they had not yet recovered from an elaborate
welcoming dinner, the Twinklers, in the lovely twilight of a golden day,
were hastening up the winding road from the station towards them.
Silent, and a little exhausted, the unconscious Twists sat in their
drawing-room, a place of marble and antimacassars, while these light
figures, their shoes white with the dust of a country-side that had had
no rain for weeks, sped every moment nearer.

The road wound gently upwards through fields and woods, through quiet,
delicious evening country, and there was one little star twinkling
encouragingly at the twins from over where they supposed Clark would be.
At the station there had been neither porter nor conveyance, nor indeed
anybody or anything at all except themselves, their luggage, and a thin,
kind man who represented authority. Clark is two miles away from its
station, and all the way to it is uninhabited. Just at the station are a
cluster of those hasty buildings America flings down in out-of-the-way
places till she shall have leisure to make a splendid city; but the road
immediately curved away from these up into solitude and the evening sky.

"You can't miss it," encouraged the station-master. "Keep right along
after your noses till they knock up against Mrs. Twist's front gate.
I'll look after the menagerie--" thus did he describe the Twinkler
luggage. "Guess Mrs. Twist'll be sending for it as soon as you get
there. Guess she forgot you. Guess she's shaken up by young Mr. Twist's
arriving this very day. _I_ wouldn't have forgotten you. No, not for a
dozen young Mr. Twists," he added gallantly.

"Why do you call him young Mr. Twist," inquired Anna-Felicitas, "when he
isn't? He must be at least thirty or forty or fifty."

"You see, we know him quite well," said Anna-Rose proudly, as they
walked off. "He's a _great_ friend of ours."

"You don't say," said the station-master, who was chewing gum; and as
the twins had not yet seen this being done they concluded he had been
interrupted in the middle of a meal by the arrival of the train.

"Now mind," he called after them, "you do whatever the road does. Give
yourselves up to it, and however much it winds about stick to it. You'll
meet other roads, but don't you take any notice of them."

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