Christopher and Columbus by Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

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

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Thus the first evening, that was to have been so happy, was spent by
everybody in silence and apart. Li Koo felt the atmosphere of oppression
even in his kitchen, and refrained from song. He put away, after dealing
with it cunningly so that it should keep until a more propitious hour, a
wonderful drink he had prepared for supper in celebration of the opening
day--"Me make li'l celebrity," he had said, squeezing together strange
essences and fruits--and he moved softly about so as not to disturb the
meditations of the master. Li Koo was perfectly aware of what had gone
wrong: it was the unexpected arrival to tea of Germans. Being a member
of the least blood-thirsty of the nations, he viewed Germans with
peculiar disfavour and understood his master's prolonged walking up and
down. Also he had noted through a crack in the door the way these people
of blood and death crowded round the white-lily girls; and was not that
sufficient in itself to cause his master's numerous and rapid steps?

Numerous indeed that evening were Mr. Twist's steps. He felt he must
think, and he could think better walking up and down. Why had all those
Germans come? Why, except old Ridding and the experts, had none of the
Americans come? It was very strange. And what Germans! So cordial, so
exuberant to the twins, so openly gathering them to their bosoms, as
though they belonged there. And so cordial too to him, approaching him
in spite of his withdrawals, conveying to him somehow, his disagreeable
impression had been, that he and they perfectly understood each other.
Then Mrs. Bilton; was she going to give trouble? It looked like it. It
looked amazingly like it. Was she after all just another edition of his
mother, and unable to discriminate between Germans and Germans, between
the real thing and mere technicalities like the Twinklers? It is true he
hadn't told her the twins were German, but then neither had he told her
they weren't. He had been passive. In Mrs. Bilton's presence passivity
came instinctively. Anything else involved such extreme and unusual
exertion. He had never had the least objection to her discovering their
nationality for herself, and indeed had been surprised she hadn't done
so long ago, for he felt sure she would quickly begin to love the Annas,
and once she loved them she wouldn't mind what their father had happened
to be. He had supposed she did love them. How affectionately she had
kissed them that very afternoon and wished them luck. Was all that
nothing? Was lovableness nothing, and complete innocence, after all in
the matter of being born, when weighed against the one fact of the von?
What he would do if Mrs. Bilton left him he couldn't imagine. What would
happen to The Open Arms and the twins in such a case, his worried brain
simply couldn't conceive.

Out of the corner of his eye every time he passed the open door on to
the verandah he could see the two Annas standing motionless on its edge,
their up-turned faces, as they gazed at the stars, white in the
moonlight and very serious. Pathetic children. Pathetic, solitary, alien
children. What were they thinking of? He wouldn't mind betting it was
their mother.

Mr. Twist's heart gave a kind of tug at him. His sentimental, maternal
side heaved to the top. A great impulse to hurry out and put his arms
round them seized him, but he frowned and overcame it. He didn't want to
go soft now. Nor was this the moment, his nicely brought up soul told
him, his soul still echoing with the voice of Clark, to put his arms
round them--this, the very first occasion on which Mrs. Bilton had left
them alone with him. Whether it would become proper on the very second
occasion was one of those questions that would instantly have suggested
itself to the Annas themselves, but didn't occur to Mr. Twist. He merely
went on to think of another reason against it, which was the chance of
Mrs. Bilton's looking out of her window just as he did it. She might, he
felt, easily misjudge the situation, and the situation, he felt, was
difficult enough already. So he restrained himself; and the Annas
continued to consider infinite space and to perceive, again with that
feeling of dank and unsatisfactory consolation, that nothing really
mattered.

Next day immediately after breakfast Mrs. Bilton followed him into his
office and gave notice. She called it formally tendering her
resignation. She said that all her life she had been an upholder of
straight dealing, as much in herself towards others as in others towards
herself--

"Mrs. Bilton--" interrupted Mr. Twist, only it didn't interrupt.

She had also all her life been intensely patriotic, and Mr. Twist, she
feared, didn't look at patriotism with quite her single eye--

"Mrs. Bilton--"

As her eye saw it, patriotism was among other things a determination to
resist the encroachments of foreigners--

"Mrs. Bilton--"

She had no wish to judge him, but she had still less wish to be mixed up
with foreigners, and foreigners for her at that moment meant Germans--

"Mrs. Bilton--"

She regretted, but psychically she would never be able to flourish in a
soil so largely composed, as the soil of The Open Arms appeared to be,
of that nationality--

"Mrs. Bilton--"

And though it was none of her business, still she must say it did seem
to her a pity that Mr. Twist with his well-known and respected American
name should be mixed up--

"Mrs. Bilton--"

And though she had no wish to be inquisitive, still she must say it did
seem to her peculiar that Mr. Twist should be the guardian of two girls
who, it was clear from what she had overheard that afternoon, were
German--

Here Mr. Twist raised his voice and shouted. "Mrs. Bilton," he shouted,
so loud that she couldn't but stop, "if you'll guarantee to keep quiet
for just five minutes--sit down right here at this table and not say one
single thing, not one single thing for just five minutes," he said,
banging the table, "I'll tell you all about it. Oh yes, I'll accept your
resignation at the end of that time if you're still set on leaving, but
just for this once it's me that's going to do the talking."

And this must be imagined as said so loud that only capital letters
would properly represent the noise Mr. Twist made.

Mrs. Bilton did sit down, her face flushed by the knowledge of how good
her intentions had been when she took the post, and how deceitful--she
was forced to think it--Mr. Twist's were when he offered it. She was
prepared, however, to give him a hearing. It was only fair. But Mr.
Twist had to burst into capitals several times before he had done, so
difficult was it for Mrs. Bilton, even when she had agreed, even when
she herself wished, not to say anything.

It wasn't five minutes but twenty before Mrs. Bilton came out of the
office again. She went straight into the garden, where the Annas, aware
of the interview going on with Mr. Twist, had been lingering anxiously,
unable at so crucial a moment to settle to anything, and with solemnity
kissed them. Her eyes were very bright. Her face, ordinarily colourless
as parchment, was red. Positively she kissed them without saying a
single word; and they kissed her back with such enthusiasm, with a
relief that made them hug her so tight and cling to her so close, that
the brightness in her eyes brimmed over and she had to get out her
handkerchief and wipe it away.

"Gurls," said Mrs. Bilton, "I had a shock yesterday, but I'm through
with it. You're motherless. I'm daughterless. We'll weld."

And with this unusual brevity did Mrs. Bilton sum up the situation.

She was much moved. Her heart was touched; and once that happened
nothing could exceed her capacity for sticking through what she called
thick and thin to her guns. For years Mr. Bilton had occupied the
position of the guns; now it would be these poor orphans. No Germans
could frighten her away, once she knew their story; no harsh judgments
and misconceptions of her patriotic friends. Mr. Twist had told her
everything, from the beginning on the _St. Luke_, harking back to Uncle
Arthur and the attitude of England, describing what he knew of their
mother and her death, not even concealing the part his own mother had
played or that he wasn't their guardian at all. He made the most of Mrs.
Bilton's silence; and as she listened her heart melted within her, and
the immense store of grit which was her peculiar pride came to the top
and once and for all overwhelmed her prejudices. But she couldn't think,
and at last she burst out and told Mr. Twist she couldn't think, why he
hadn't imparted all this to her long ago.

"Ah," murmured Mr. Twist, bowing his head as a reed in the wind before
the outburst of her released volubility.

Hope once more filled The Open Arms, and the Twist party looked forward
to the afternoon with renewed cheerfulness. It had just happened so the
first day, that only Germans came. It was just accident. Mr. Twist, with
the very large part of him that wasn't his head, found himself feeling
like this too and declining to take any notice of his intelligence,
which continued to try to worry him.

Yet the hope they all felt was not realized, and the second afternoon
was almost exactly like the first. Germans came and clustered round the
Annas, and made friendly though cautious advances to Mr. Twist. The ones
who had been there the first day came again and brought others with them
worse than themselves, and they seemed more at home than ever, and the
air was full of rolling r's--among them, Mr. Twist was unable to deny,
being the r's of his blessed Annas. But theirs were such little r's, he
told himself. They rolled, it is true, but with how sweet a rolling.
While as for these other people--confound it all, the place might really
have been, from the sounds that were filling it, a _Conditorei_ Unter
den Linden.

All his doubts and anxieties flocked back on him as time passed and no
Americans appeared. Americans. How precious. How clean, and straight,
and admirable. Actually he had sometimes, he remembered, thought they
weren't. What an aberration. Actually he had been, he remembered,
impatient with them when first he came back from France. What folly.
Americans. The very word was refreshing, was like clear water on a
thirsty day. One American, even one, coming in that afternoon would have
seemed to Mr. Twist a godsend, a purifier, an emollient--like some
blessed unction dropped from above.

But none appeared; not even Mr. Ridding.

At six o'clock it was quite dark, and obviously too late to go on
hoping. The days in California end abruptly. The sun goes down, and
close on its heels comes night. In the tea-room the charmingly shaded
lights had been turned on some time, and Mr. Twist, watching from the
partly open door of his office, waited impatiently for the guests to
begin to thin out. But they didn't. They took no notice of the signals
of lateness, the lights turned on, the stars outside growing bright in
the surrounding blackness.

Mr. Twist watched angrily. He had been driven into his office by the
disconcerting and incomprehensible overtures of Mr. Wangelbecker, and
had sat there watching in growing exasperation ever since. When six
struck and nobody showed the least sign of going away he could bear it
no longer, and touched the little muffled electric bell that connected
him to Mrs. Bilton in what Anna-Felicitas called a mystical union--Anna
II. was really excessively tactless; she had said this to Mrs. Bilton in
his presence, and then enlarged on unions, mystical and otherwise, with
an embarrassing abundance of imagery--by buzzing gently against her knee
from the leg of the desk.

She laid down her pen, as though she had just finished adding up a
column, and went to him.

"Now don't talk," said Mr. Twist, putting up an irritable hand directly
she came in.

Mrs. Bilton looked at him in much surprise. "Talk, Mr. Twist?" she
repeated. "Why now, as though--"

"Don't _talk_ I say, Mrs. Bilton, but listen. Listen now. I can't stand
seeing those children in there. It sheer makes my gorge rise. I want you
to fetch them in here--now don't talk--you and me'll do the confounded
waiting--no, no, don't talk--they're to stay quiet in here till the last
of those Germans have gone. Just go and fetch them, please Mrs. Bilton.
No, no, we'll talk afterwards. I'll stay here till they come." And he
urged her out into the tea-room again.

The guests had finished their tea long ago, but still sat on, for they
were very comfortable. Obviously they were thoroughly enjoying
themselves, and all were growing, as time passed, more manifestly at
home. They were now having a kind of supper of ices and fruit-salads.
Five dollars, thought the sensible Germans, was after all a great deal
to pay for afternoon tea, however good the cause might be and however
important one's own ulterior motives; and since one had in any case to
pay, one should eat what one could. So they kept the Annas very busy.
There seemed to be no end, thought the Annas as they ran hither and
thither, to what a German will hold.

Mrs. Bilton waylaid the heated and harried Anna-Rose as she was carrying
a tray of ices to a party she felt she had been carrying ices to
innumerable times already. The little curls beneath her cap clung damply
to her forehead. Her face was flushed and distressed. What with having
to carry so many trays, and remember so many orders, and try at the same
time to escape from the orderers and their questions and admiration,
she was in a condition not very far from tears.

Mrs. Bilton took the tray out of her hands, and told her Mr. Twist
wanted to speak to her; and Anna-Rose was in such a general bewilderment
that she felt quite scared, and thought he must be going to scold her.
She went towards the office reluctantly. If Mr. Twist were to be severe,
she was sure she wouldn't be able not to cry. She made her way very
slowly to the office, and Mrs. Bilton looked round the room for the
other one. There was no sign of her. Perhaps, thought Mrs. Bilton, she
was fetching something in the kitchen, and would appear in a minute; and
seeing a group over by the entrance door, for whom the tray she held was
evidently destined, gesticulating to her, she felt she had better keep
them quiet first and then go and look for Anna-Felicitas.

Mrs. Bilton set her teeth and plunged into her strange new duties. Never
would she have dreamed it possible that she should have to carry trays
to Germans. If Mr. Bilton could see her now he would certainly turn in
his grave. Well, she was a woman of grit, of adhesiveness to her guns;
if Mr. Bilton did see her and did turn in his grave, let him; he would,
she dared say, be more comfortable on his other side after all these
years.

For the next few minutes she hurried hither and thither, and waited
single-handed. She seemed to be swallowed up in activity. No wonder that
child had looked so hot and bewildered. Mr. Twist didn't come and help,
as he had promised, and nowhere was there any sign of Anna-Felicitas;
and the guests not only wanted things to eat, they wanted to talk,--talk
and ask questions. Well, she would wait on them, but she wouldn't talk.
She turned a dry, parchment-like face to their conversational
blandishments, and responded only by adding up their bills. Wonderful
are the workings of patriotism. For the first time in her life, Mrs.
Bilton was grumbled at for not talking.

CHAPTER XXXIII

In the office Anna-Rose found Mr. Twist walking up and down.

"See here," he said, turning on her when she came in, "I'm about tired
of looking on at all this twittering round that lot in there. You're
through with that for to-day, and maybe for to-morrow and the day after
as well."

He waved his arm at the deep chair that had been provided for his
business meditations. "You'll sit down in that chair now," he said
severely, "and stay put."

Anna-Rose looked at him with a quivering lip. She went rather unsteadily
to the chair and tumbled into it. "I don't know if you're angry or being
kind," she said tremulously, "but whichever it is I--I wish you
wouldn't. I--I wish you'd manage to be something that isn't either."
And, as she had feared, she began to cry.

"Anna-Rose," said Mr. Twist, staring down at her in concern mixed with
irritation--out there all those Germans, in here the weeping child; what
a day he was having--"for heaven's sake don't do that."

"I know," sobbed Anna-Rose. "I don't want to. It's awful being so
natu--natu--naturally liquid."

"But what's the matter?" asked Mr. Twist helplessly.

"Nothing," sobbed Anna-Rose.

He stood over her in silence for a minute, his hands in his pockets. If
he took them out he was afraid he might start stroking her, and she
seemed to him to be exactly between the ages when such a form of comfort
would be legitimate. If she were younger ... but she was a great girl
now; if she were older ... ah, if she were older, Mr. Twist could
imagine....

"You're overtired," he said aloofly. "That's what you are."

"No," sobbed Anna-Rose.

"And the Germans have been too much for you."

"They haven't," sobbed Anna-Rose, her pride up at the suggestion that
anybody could ever be that.

"But they're not going to get the chance again," said Mr. Twist, setting
his teeth as much as they would set, which wasn't, owing to his natural
kindliness, anything particular. "Mrs. Bilton and me--" Then he
remembered Anna-Felicitas. "Why doesn't she come?" he asked.

"Who?" choked Anna-Rose.

"The other one. Anna II. Columbus."

"I haven't seen her for ages," sobbed Anna-Rose, who had been much upset
by Anna-Felicitas's prolonged disappearance and had suspected her,
though she couldn't understand it after last night's finishings up, of
secret unworthy conduct in a corner with ice-cream.

Mr. Twist went to the door quickly and looked through. "I can't see her
either," he said. "Confound them--what have they done to her? Worn her
out too, I daresay. I shouldn't wonder if she'd crawled off somewhere
and were crying too."

"Anna-F.--doesn't crawl," sobbed Anna-Rose, "and she--doesn't cry but--I
wish you'd find--her."

"Well, will you stay where you are while I'm away, then?" he said,
looking at her from the door uncertainly.

And she seemed so extra small over there in the enormous chair, and
somehow so extra motherless as she obediently gurgled and choked a
promise not to move, that he found himself unable to resist going back
to her for a minute in order to pat her head. "There, there," said Mr.
Twist, very gently patting her head, his heart yearning over her; and it
yearned the more that, the minute he patted, her sobs got worse; and
also the more because of the feel of her dear little head.

"You little bit of blessedness," murmured Mr. Twist before he knew what
he was saying; at which her sobs grew louder than ever,--grew, indeed,
almost into small howls, so long was it since anybody had said things
like that to her. It was her mother who used to say things like that;
things almost exactly like that.

"Hush," said Mr. Twist in much distress, and with one anxious eye on the
half-open door, for Anna-Rose's sobs were threatening to outdo the noise
of teacups and ice-cream plates, "hush, hush--here's a clean
handkerchief--you just wipe up your eyes while I fetch Anna II. She'll
worry, you know, if she sees you like this,--hush now, hush--there,
there--and I expect she's being miserable enough already, hiding away in
some corner. You wouldn't like to make her more miserable, would you--"

And he pressed the handkerchief into Anna-Rose's hands, and feeling much
flurried went away to search for the other one who was somewhere, he was
sure, in a state of equal distress.

He hadn't however to search. He found her immediately. As he came out of
the door of his office into the tea-room he saw her come into the
tea-room from the door of the verandah, and proceed across it towards
the pantry. Why the verandah? wondered Mr. Twist. He hurried to
intercept her. Anyhow she wasn't either about to cry or getting over
having done it. He saw that at once with relief. Nor was she, it would
seem, in any sort of distress. On the contrary, Anna-Felicitas looked
particularly smug. He saw that once too, with surprise,--why smug?
wondered Mr. Twist. She had a pleased look of complete satisfaction on
her face. She was oblivious, he noticed, as she passed between the
tables, of the guests who tried in vain to attract her attention and
detain her with orders. She wasn't at all hot, as Anna-Rose had been,
nor rattled, nor in any way discomposed; she was just smug. And also she
was unusually, extraordinarily pretty. How dared they all stare up at
her like that as she passed? And try to stop her. And want to talk to
her. And Wangelbecker actually laying his hand--no, his paw; in his
annoyance Mr. Twist wouldn't admit that the object at the end of Mr.
Wangelbecker's arm was anything but a paw--on her wrist to get her to
listen to some confounded order or other. She took no notice of that
either, but walked on towards the pantry. Placidly. Steadily. Obvious.
Smug.

"You're to come into the office," said Mr. Twist when he reached her.

She turned her head and considered him with abstracted eyes. Then she
appeared to remember him. "Oh, it's you," she said amiably.

"Yes. It's me all right. And you're to come into the office."

"I can't. I'm busy."

"Now Anna II.," said Mr. Twist, walking beside her towards the pantry
since she didn't stop but continued steadily on her way, "that's
trifling with the facts. You've been in the garden. I saw you come in.
Perhaps you'll tell me the exact line of business you've been engaged
in."

"Waiting," said Anna-Felicitas placidly.

"Waiting? In the garden? Where it's pitch dark, and there's nobody to
wait on?"

They had reached the pantry, and Anna-Felicitas gave an order to Li Koo
through the serving window before answering; the order was tea and hot
cinnamon toast for one.

"He's having his tea on the verandah," she said, picking out the most
delicious of the little cakes from the trays standing ready, and
carefully arranging them on a dish. "It isn't pitch dark at all there.
There's floods of light coming through the windows. He won't come in."

"And why pray won't he come in?" asked Mr. Twist.

"Because he doesn't like Germans."

"And who pray is he?"

"I don't know."

"Well I do," burst out Mr. Twist. "It's old Ridding, of course. His name
is Ridding. The old man who was here yesterday. Now listen: I won't
have--"

But Anna-Felicitas was laughing, and her eyes had disappeared into two
funny little screwed-up eyelashy slits.

Mr. Twist stopped abruptly and glared at her. These Twinklers. That one
in there shaken with sobs, this one in here shaken with what she would
no doubt call quite the contrary. His conviction became suddenly final
that the office was the place for both the Annas. He and Mrs. Bilton
would do the waiting.

"I'll take this," he said, laying hold of the dish of cakes. "I'll send
Mrs. Bilton for the tea. Go into the office, Anna-Felicitas. Your sister
is there and wants you badly. I don't know," he added, as Li Koo pushed
the tea-tray through the serving window, "how it strikes you about
laughter, but it strikes me as sheer silly to laugh except at
something."

"Well, I was," said Anna-Felicitas, unscrewing her eyes and with gentle
firmness taking the plate of cakes from him and putting it on the tray.
"I was laughing at your swift conviction that the man out there is Mr.
Ridding. I don't know who he is but I know heaps of people he isn't, and
one of the principal ones is Mr. Ridding."

"I'm going to wait on him," said Mr. Twist, taking the tray.

"It would be most unsuitable," said Anna-Felicitas, taking it too.

"Let go," said Mr. Twist, pulling.

"Is this to be an unseemly wrangle?" inquired Anna-Felicitas mildly; and
her eyes began to screw up again.

"If you'll oblige me by going into the office," he said, having got the
tray, for Anna-Felicitas was never one to struggle, "Mrs. Bilton and me
will do the rest of the waiting for to-day."

He went out grasping the tray, and made for the verandah. His appearance
in this new role was greeted by the Germans with subdued
applause--subdued, because they felt Mr. Twist wasn't quite as cordial
to them as they had supposed he would be, and they were accordingly
being a little more cautious in their methods with him than they had
been at the beginning of the afternoon. He took no notice of them,
except that his ears turned red when he knocked against a chair and the
tray nearly fell out of his hands and they all cried out _Houp la_.
Damn them, thought Mr. Twist. _Houp la_ indeed.

In the farthest corner of the otherwise empty and very chilly verandah,
sitting alone and staring out at the stars, was a man. He was a young
man. He was also an attractive young man, with a thin brown face and
very bright blue twinkling eyes. The light from the window behind him
shone on him as he turned his head when he heard the swing doors open,
and Mr. Twist saw these things distinctly and at once. He also saw how
the young man's face fell on his, Mr. Twist's, appearance with the tray,
and he also saw with some surprise how before he had reached him it
suddenly cleared again. And the young man got up too, just as Mr. Twist
arrived at the table--got up with some little difficulty, for he had to
lean hard on a thick stick, but yet obviously with _empressement._

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