Christopher and Columbus by Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

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

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"You see, mother--" began Mr. Twist again.

He was finding it extraordinarily difficult. What a tremendous hold
one's early training had on one, he reflected, casting about for words;
what a deeply rooted fear there was in one, subconscious, lurking in
one's foundations, of one's mother, of her authority, of her quickly
wounded affection. Those Jesuits, with their conviction that they could
do what they liked with a man if they had had the bringing up of him
till he was seven, were pretty near the truth. It took a lot of shaking
off, the unquestioning awe, the habit of obedience of one's childhood.

Mr. Twist sat endeavouring to shake it off. He also tried to bolster
himself up by thinking he might perhaps be able to assist his mother to
come out from her narrowness, and discover too how warm and glorious the
sun shone outside, where people loved and helped each other. Then he
rejected that as priggish.

"You see, mother," he started again, "I came across them--across these
two girls--they're both called Anna, by the way, which seems confusing
but isn't really--I came across them on the boat----"

He again stopped dead.

Mrs. Twist had turned her dark eyes to him. They had been fixed on
Anna-Felicitas, and on what she was doing with the dish of oyster
patties in front of her. What she was doing was not what Mrs. Twist was
accustomed to see done at her table. Anna-Felicitas was behaving badly
with the patties, and not even attempting to conceal, as the decent do,
how terribly they interested her.

"You came across them on the boat," repeated Mrs. Twist, her eyes on her
son, moved in spite of her resolution to speech. And he had told her
that very afternoon that he had spoken to nobody except men. Another
lie. Well, let that pass too ...

Mr. Twist sat staring back at her through his big gleaming spectacles.
He well knew the weakness of his position from his mother's point of
view; but why should she have such a point of view, such a niggling,
narrow one, determined to stay angry and offended because he had been
stupid enough to continue, under the influence of her presence, the old
system of not being candid with her, of being slavishly anxious to avoid
offending? Let her try for once to understand and forgive. Let her for
once take the chance offered her of doing a big, kind thing. But as he
stared at her it entered his mind that he couldn't very well start
moving her heart on behalf of the twins in their presence. He couldn't
tell her they were orphans, alone in the world, helpless, poor, and so
unfortunately German, with them sitting there. If he did, there would be
trouble. The twins seemed absorbed for the moment in getting fed, but he
had no doubt their ears were attentive, and at the first suggestion of
sympathy being invoked for them they would begin to say a few of those
things he was so much afraid his mother mightn't be able to understand.
Or, if she understood, appreciate.

He decided that he would be quiet until Edith came back, and then ask
his mother to go to the drawing-room with him, and while Edith was
looking after the Annas he would, well out of earshot, explain them to
his mother, describe their situation, commend them to her patience and
her love. He sat silent therefore, wishing extraordinarily hard that
Edith would be quick.

But Anna-Felicitas's eyes were upon him now, as well as his mother's.
"Is it possible," she asked with her own peculiar gentleness, balancing
a piece of patty on her fork, "that you haven't yet mentioned us to your
mother?"

And Anna-Rose, struck in her turn at such an omission, paused too with
food on the way to her mouth, and said, "And we such friends?"

"Almost, as it were, still red-not from being with you?" said
Anna-Felicitas.

Both the twins looked at Mrs. Twist in their surprise.

"I thought the first thing everybody did when they got back to their
mother," said Anna-Rose, addressing her, "was to tell her everything
from the beginning."

Mrs. Twist, after an instant's astonishment at this unexpected support,
bowed her head--it could hardly be called a nod--in her son's direction.
"You see--" the movement seemed to say, "even these ..."

"And ever since the first day at sea," said Anna-Felicitas, also
addressing Mrs. Twist, "up to as recently as eleven o'clock last night,
he has been what I think can be quite accurately described as our
faithful two-footed companion."

"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "As much as that we've been friends. Practically
inseparable."

"So that it really is _very_ surprising," said Anna-Felicitas to Mr.
Twist, "that you didn't tell your mother about us."

Mr. Twist got up. He wouldn't wait for Edith. It was unhealthy in that
room.

He took his mother's arm and helped her to get up. "You're very wise,
you two," he flung at the twins in the voice of the goaded, "but you may
take it from me you don't know everything yet. Mother, come into the
drawing-room, and we'll talk. Edith'll see to these girls. I expect I
ought to have talked sooner," he went on, as he led her to the door,
"but confound it all, I've only been home about a couple of hours."

"Five," said Mrs. Twist.

"Five then. What's five? No time at all."

"Ample," said Mrs Twist; adding icily, "and did I you say confound,
Edward?"

"Well, damn then," said Edward very loud, in a rush of rank rebellion.

CHAPTER XVII

This night was the turning-point in Mr. Twist's life. In it he broke
loose from his mother. He spent a terrible three hours with her in the
drawing-room, and the rest of the night he strode up and down his
bedroom. The autumn morning, creeping round the house in long white
wisps, found him staring out of his window very pale, his mouth pulled
together as tight as it would go.

His mother had failed him. She had not understood. And not only simply
not understood, but she had said things when at last she did speak,
after he had explained and pleaded for at least an hour, of an
incredible bitterness and injustice. She had seemed to hate him. If she
hadn't been his mother Mr. Twist would have been certain she hated him,
but he still believed that mothers couldn't hate their children. It was
stark against nature; and Mr. Twist still believed in the fundamental
rightness of that which is called nature. She had accused him of gross
things--she, his mother, who from her conversation since he could
remember was unaware, he had judged, of the very existence of such
things. Those helpless children ... Mr. Twist stamped as he strode.
Well, he had made her take that back; and indeed she had afterwards
admitted that she said it in her passion of grief and disappointment,
and that it was evident these girls were not like that.

But before they reached that stage, for the first time in his life he
had been saying straight out what he wanted to say to his mother just as
if she had been an ordinary human being. He told her all he knew of the
twins, asked her to take them in for the present and be good to them,
and explained the awkwardness of their position, apart from its tragedy,
as Germans by birth stranded in New England, where opinion at that
moment was so hostile to Germans. Then, continuing in candour, he had
told his mother that here was her chance of doing a fine and beautiful
thing, and it was at this point that Mrs. Twist suddenly began, on her
side, to talk.

She had listened practically in silence to the rest; had only started
when he explained the girls' nationality; but when he came to offering
her these girls as the great opportunity of her life to do something
really good at last, she, who felt she had been doing nothing else but
noble and beautiful things, and doing them with the most single-minded
devotion to duty and the most consistent disregard of inclination, could
keep silence no longer. Had she not borne her great loss without a
murmur? Had she not devoted all her years to bringing up her son to be a
good man? Had she ever considered herself? Had she ever flagged in her
efforts to set an example of patience in grief, of dignity in
misfortune? She began to speak. And just as amazed as she had been at
the things this strange, unknown son had been saying to her and at the
manner of their delivery, so was he amazed at the things this strange,
unknown mother was saying to him, and at the manner of their delivery.

Yet his amazement was not so great after all as hers. Because for years,
away down hidden somewhere inside him, he had doubted his mother; for
years he had, shocked at himself, covered up and trampled on these
unworthy doubts indignantly. He had doubted her unselfishness; he had
doubted her sympathy and kindliness; he had even doubted her honesty,
her ordinary honesty with money and accounts; and lately, before he went
to Europe, he had caught himself thinking she was cruel. Nevertheless
this unexpected naked justification of his doubts was shattering to him.

But Mrs. Twist had never doubted Edward. She thought she knew him inside
out. She had watched him develop. Watched him during the long years of
his unconsciousness. She had been quite secure; and rather disposed,
also somewhere down inside her, to a contempt for him, so easy had he
been to manage, so ready to do everything she wished. Now it appeared
that she no more knew Edward than if he had been a stranger in the
street.

The bursting of the dykes of convention between them was a horrible
thing to them both. Mr. Twist had none of the cruelty of the younger
generation to support him: he couldn't shrug his shoulder and take
comfort in the thought that this break between them was entirely his
mother's fault, for however much he believed it to be her fault the
belief merely made him wretched; he had none of the pitiless black
pleasure to be got from telling himself it served her right. So
naturally kind was he--weak, soft, stupid, his mother shook out at
him--that through all his own shame at this naked vision of what had
been carefully dressed up for years in dignified clothes of wisdom and
affection, he was actually glad, when he had time in his room to think
it over, glad she should be so passionately positive that he, and only
he, was in the wrong. It would save her from humiliation; and of the
painful things of late Mr. Twist could least bear to see a human being
humiliated.

That was, however, towards morning. For hours raged, striding about his
room, sorting out the fragments into which his life as a son had fallen,
trying to fit them into some sort of a pattern, to see clear about the
future. Clearer. Not clear. He couldn't hope for that yet. The future
seemed one confused lump. All he could see really clear of it was that
he was going, next day, and taking the twins. He would take them to the
other people they had a letter to, the people in California, and then
turn his face back to Europe, to the real thing, to the greatness of
life where death is. Not an hour longer than he could help would he or
they stay in that house. He had told his mother he would go away, and
she had said, "I hope never to see you again." Who would have thought
she had so much of passion in her? Who would have thought he had so much
of it in him?

Fury against her injustice shook and shattered Mr. Twist. Not so could
fair and affectionate living together be conducted, on that basis of
suspicion, distrust, jealousy. Through his instinct, though not through
his brain, shot the conviction that his mother was jealous of the
twins,--jealous of the youth of the twins, and of their prettiness, and
goodness, and of the power, unknown to them, that these things gave
them. His brain was impervious to such a conviction, because it was an
innocent brain, and the idea would never have entered it that a woman of
his mother's age, well over sixty, could be jealous in that way; but his
instinct knew it.

The last thing his mother said as he left the drawing-room was, "You
have killed me. You have killed your own mother. And just because of
those girls."

And Mr. Twist, shocked at this parting shot of unfairness, could find,
search as he might, nothing to be said for his mother's point of view.
It simply wasn't true. It simply was delusion.

Nor could she find anything to be said for his, but then she didn't try
to, it was so manifestly unforgivable. All she could do, faced by this
bitter sorrow, was to leave Edward to God. Sternly, as he flung out of
the room at last, unsoftened, untouchable, deaf to her even when she
used the tone he had always obeyed the tone of authority, she said to
herself she must leave her son to God. God knew. God would judge. And
Clark too would know; and Clark too would judge.

Left alone in the drawing-room on this terrible night of her second
great bereavement, Mrs. Twist was yet able, she was thankful to feel, to
resolve she would try to protect her son as long as she could from
Clark. From God she could not, if she would, protect him; but she would
try to protect him even now, as she had always protected him, from
earthly harm and hurt. Clark would, however, surely know in time,
protect as she might, and judge between her and Edward. God knew
already, and was already judging. God and Clark.... Poor Edward.

CHAPTER XVIII

The twins, who had gone to bed at half-past nine, shepherded by Edith,
in the happy conviction that they had settled down comfortably for some
time, were surprised to find at breakfast that they hadn't.

They had taken a great fancy to Edith, in spite of a want of restfulness
on her part that struck them while they were finishing their supper, and
to which at last they drew her attention. She was so kind, and so like
Mr. Twist; but though she looked at them with hospitable eyes and wore
an expression of real benevolence, it didn't escape their notice that
she seemed to be listening to something that wasn't, anyhow, them, and
to be expecting something that didn't, anyhow, happen. She went several
times to the door through which her brother and mother had disappeared,
and out into whatever part of the house lay beyond it, and when she came
back after a minute or two was as wanting in composure as ever.

At last, finding these abrupt and repeated interruptions hindered any
real talk, they pointed out to her that reasoned conversation was
impossible if one of the parties persisted in not being in the room, and
inquired of her whether it were peculiar to her, or typical of the
inhabitants of America, to keep on being somewhere else. Edith smiled
abstractedly at them, said nothing, and went out again.

She was longer away this time, and the twins having eaten, among other
things, a great many meringues, grew weary of sitting with those they
hadn't eaten lying on the dish in front of them reminding them of those
they had. They wanted, having done with meringues, to get away from them
and forget them. They wanted to go into another room now, where there
weren't any. Anna-Felicitas felt, and told Anna-Rose who was staring
listlessly at the left-over meringues, that it was like having committed
murder, and being obliged to go on looking at the body long after you
were thoroughly tired of it. Anna-Rose agreed, and said that she wished
now she hadn't committed meringues,--anyhow so many of them.

Then at last Edith came back, and told them she was sure they were very
tired after their long day, and suggested their going upstairs to their
rooms. The rooms were ready, said Edith, the baggage had come, and she
was sure they would like to have nice hot baths and go to bed.

The twins obeyed her readily, and she checked a desire on their part to
seek out her mother and brother first and bid them good-night, on the
ground that her mother and brother were busy; and while the twins were
expressing polite regret, and requesting her to convey their regret for
them to the proper quarter in a flow of well-chosen words that
astonished Edith, who didn't know how naturally Junkers make speeches,
she hurried them by the drawing-room door through which, shut though it
was, came sounds of people being, as Anna-Felicitas remarked, very busy
indeed; and Anna-Rose, impressed by the quality and volume of Mr.
Twist's voice as it reached her passing ears, told Edith that intimately
as she knew her brother she had never known him as busy as that before.

Edith said nothing, but continued quickly up the stairs.

They found they each had a bedroom, with a door between, and that each
bedroom had a bathroom of its own, which filled them with admiration and
pleasure. There had only been one bathroom at Uncle Arthur's, and at
home in Pomerania there hadn't been any at all. The baths there had been
vessels brought into one's bedroom every night, into which servants next
morning poured water out of buckets, having previously pumped the water
into the bucket from the pump in the backyard. They put Edith in
possession of these facts while she helped them unpack and brushed and
plaited their hair for them, and she was much astonished,--both at the
conditions of discomfort and slavery they revealed as prevalent in other
countries, and at the fact that they, the Twinklers, should hail from
Pomerania.

Pomerania, reflected Edith as she tied up their pigtails with the
ribbons handed to her for that purpose, used to be in Germany when she
went to school, and no doubt still was. She became more thoughtful than
ever, though she still smiled at them, for how could she help it?
Everyone, Edith was certain, must needs smile at the Twinklers even if
they didn't happen to be one's own dear brother's _protegees_. And when
they came out, very clean and with scrubbed pink ears, from their bath,
she not only smiled at them as she tucked them up in bed, but she kissed
them good-night.

Edith, like her brother, was born to be a mother,--one of the
satisfactory sort that keeps you warm and doesn't argue with you.
Germans or no Germans the Twinklers were the cutest little things,
thought Edith; and she kissed them, with the same hunger with which,
being now thirty-eight, she was beginning to kiss puppies.

"You remind me so of Mr. Twist," murmured Anna-Felicitas sleepily, as
Edith tucked her up and kissed her.

"You do all the sorts of things he does," murmured Anna-Rose, also
sleepily, when it was her turn to be tucked up and kissed; and in spite
of a habit now fixed in her of unquestioning acceptance and uncritical
faith. Edith went downstairs to her restless vigil outside the
drawing-room door a little surprised.

At breakfast the twins learnt to their astonishment that, though
appearances all pointed the other way what they were really doing was
not being stationary at all, but merely having a night's lodging and
breakfast between, as it were, two trains.

Mr. Twist, who looked pale and said shortly when the twins remarked
solicitously on it that he felt pale, briefly announced the fact.

"What?" exclaimed Anna-Rose, staring at Mr. Twist and then at
Edith--Mrs. Twist, they were told, was breakfasting in bed--"Why, we've
unpacked."

"You will re-pack," said Mr. Twist.

They found difficulty in believing their ears.

"But we've settled in," remonstrated Anna-Felicitas, after an astonished
pause.

"You will settle out," said Mr. Twist.

He frowned. He didn't look at them, he frowned at his own teapot. He had
made up his mind to be very short with the Annas until they were safely
out of the house, and not permit himself to be entangled by them in
controversy. Also, he didn't want to look at them if he could help it.
He was afraid that if he did he might be unable not to take them both in
his arms and beg their pardon for the whole horridness of the world.

But if he didn't look at them, they looked at him. Four round, blankly
surprised eyes were fixed, he knew, unblinkingly on him.

"We're seeing you in quite a new light," said Anna-Rose at last,
troubled and upset.

"Maybe," said Mr. Twist, frowning at his teapot.

"Perhaps you will be so good," said Anna-Felicitas stiffly, for at all
times she hated being stirred up and uprooted, "as to tell us where you
think we're going to."

"Because," said Anna-Rose, her voice trembling a little, not only at the
thought of fresh responsibilities, but also with a sense of outraged
faith, "our choice of residence, as you may have observed, is strictly
limited."

Mr. Twist, who had spent an hour before breakfast with Edith, whose eyes
were red, informed them that they were _en route_ for California.

"To those other people," said Anna-Rose. "I see."

She held her head up straight.

"Well, I expect they'll be very glad to see us," she said after a
silence; and proceeded, her chin in the air, to look down her nose,
because she didn't want Mr. Twist, or Edith or Anna-Felicitas, to notice
that her eyes had gone and got tears in them. She angrily wished she
hadn't got such damp eyes. They were no better than swamps, she
thought--undrained swamps; and directly fate's foot came down a little
harder than usual, up oozed the lamentable liquid. Not thus should the
leader of an expedition behave. Not thus, she was sure, did the original
Christopher. She pulled herself together; and after a minute's struggle
was able to leave off looking down her nose.

But meanwhile Anna-Felicitas had informed Mr. Twist with gentle dignity
that he was obviously tired of them.

"Not at all," said Mr. Twist.

Anna-Felicitas persisted. "In view of the facts," she said gently, "I'm
afraid your denial carries no weight."

"The facts," said Mr. Twist, taking up his teapot and examining it with
care, "are that I'm coming with you."

"Oh are you," said Anna-Felicitas much more briskly; and it was here
that Anna-Rose's eyes dried up.

"That rather dishes your theory," said Mr. Twist, still turning his
teapot about in his hands. "Or would if it didn't happen that I--well, I
happen to have some business to do in California, and I may as well do
it now as later. Still, I could have gone by a different route or train,
so you see your theory _is_ rather dished, isn't it?"

"A little," admitted Anna-Felicitas. "Not altogether. Because if you
really like our being here, here we are. So why hurry us off somewhere
else so soon?"

Mr. Twist perceived that he was being led into controversy in spite of
his determination not to be. "You're very wise," he said shortly, "but
you don't know everything. Let us avoid conjecture and stick to facts.
I'm going to take you to California, and hand you over to your friends.
That's all you know, and all you need to know."

"As Keats very nearly said," said Anna-Rose

"And if our friends have run away?" suggested Anna-Felicitas.

"Oh Lord," exclaimed Mr. Twist impatiently, putting the teapot down with
a bang, "do you think we're running away all the time in America?"

"Well, I think you seem a little restless," said Anna-Felicitas.

Thus it was that two hours later the twins found themselves at the
Clark station once more, once more starting into the unknown, just as if
they had never done it before, and gradually, as they adapted themselves
to the sudden change, such is the india-rubber-like quality of youth,
almost with the same hopefulness. Yet they couldn't but meditate, left
alone on the platform while Mr. Twist checked the baggage, on the
mutability of life. They seemed to live in a kaleidoscope since the war
began what a series of upheavals and readjustments had been theirs!
Silent, and a little apart on the Clark platform, they reflected
retrospectively; and as they counted up their various starts since the
days, only fourteen months ago, when they were still in their home in
Germany, apparently as safely rooted, as unshakably settled as the pine
trees in their own forests, they couldn't but wonder at the elusiveness
of the unknown, how it wouldn't let itself be caught up with and at the
trouble it was giving them.

They had had so many changes in the last year that they did want now to
have time to become familiar with some one place and people. Already
however, being seventeen, they were telling themselves, and each other
that after all, since the Sacks had failed them, California was their
real objective. Not Clark at all. Clark had never been part of their
plans. Uncle Arthur and Aunt Alice didn't even know it existed. It was a
side-show; just a little thing of their own, an extra excursion slipped
in between the Sacks and the Delloggs. True they had hoped to stay there
some time, perhaps even for months,--anyhow, time to mend their
stockings in, which were giving way at the toes unexpectedly, seeing how
new they were; but ultimately California was the place they had to go
to. It was only that it was a little upsetting to be whisked out of
Clark at a moment's notice.

"I expect you'll explain everything to us when we're in the train and
have lots of time," Anna-Rose had said to Mr. Twist as the car moved
away from the house and Edith, red-eyed, waved her handkerchief from the
doorstep.

Mrs. Twist had not come down to say good-bye, and they had sent her many
messages.

"I expect I will," Mr. Twist had answered.

But it was not till they were the other side of Chicago that he really
began to be himself again. Up to then--all that first day, and the next
morning in New York where he took them to the bank their L200 was in and
saw that they got a cheque-book, and all the day after that waiting in
the Chicago hotel for the train they were to go on in to California--Mr.
Twist was taciturn.

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