Christopher and Columbus by Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

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

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Yes. That was the line to take: the austere line of self-mortification
for the Twinkler good. One Twinkler would be his wife--again at the dear
word he had to gulp down water--and one his sister-in-law. They would
just have to agree to this plan. The position was too serious for
shilly-shallying. Yes. That was the line to take; and by the time he
had got to the coffee it was perfectly clear and plain to him.

But he felt dreadfully damp. He longed for a liqueur, for anything that
would support him....

"Is there any brandy in the house?" he suddenly flung across the web of
Mrs. Bilton's words.

"Brandy, Mr. Twist?" she repeated, at this feeling altogether female,
for what an unusual thing for him to ask for,--"You're not sick?"

"With my coffee," murmured Mr. Twist, his mouth very slack, his head
drooping. "It's nice...."

"I'll go and see," said Mrs. Bilton, getting up briskly and going away
rattling a bunch of keys.

At once he looked down the garden. Anna-Felicitas was in the act of
putting her arm round Anna-Rose's shoulder, and Anna-Rose was
passionately disengaging herself. Yes. There was trouble there. He knew
there would be.

He gulped down more water.

Anna-Felicitas couldn't expect to go off like that for a whole morning
and give Anna-Rose a horrible fright without hearing about it. Besides,
the expression on her face wanted explaining,--a lot of explaining. Mr.
Twist didn't like to think so, but Anna-Felicitas's recent conduct
seemed to him almost artful. It seemed to him older than her years. It
seemed to justify the lawyer's scepticism when he described the twins to
him as children. That young man Elliott--

But here Mr. Twist started and lost his thread of thought, for looking
once more down the garden he saw that Anna-Felicitas was coming towards
the verandah, and that she was alone. Anna-Rose had vanished. Why had he
bothered about brandy, and let Mrs. Bilton go? He had counted, somehow,
on beginning with Anna-Rose....

He seized a cigarette and lit it. He tried vainly to keep his hand
steady. Before the cigarette was fairly plight there was Anna-Felicitas,
walking in beneath the awning.

"I'm glad you're alone," she said, "for I want to speak to you."

And Mr. Twist felt that his hour had come.

CHAPTER XXXVII

"Hadn't you better have lunch first?" he asked, though he knew from the
look on her face that she wouldn't. It was a very remarkable look. It
was as though an angel, dwelling in perfect bliss, had unaccountably got
its feet wet. Not more troubled than that; a little troubled, but not
more than that.

"No thank you," she said politely. "But if you've finished yours, do you
mind coming into the office? Because otherwise Mrs. Bilton--"

"She's fetching me some brandy," said Mr. Twist.

"I didn't know you drank," said Anna-Felicitas, even at this moment
interested. "But do you mind having it afterwards? Because otherwise
Mrs. Bilton--"

"I guess the idea was to have it first," said Mr. Twist.

She was however already making for the tea-room, proceeding towards it
without hurry, and with a single-mindedness that would certainly get her
there.

He could only follow.

In the office she said, "Do you mind shutting the door?"

"Not at all," said Mr. Twist; but he did mind. His hour had come, and he
wasn't liking it. He wanted to begin with Anna-Rose. He wanted to get
things clear with her first before dealing with this one. There was less
of Anna-Rose. And her dear little head yesterday when he patted it....
And she needed comforting.... Anna-Rose cried, and let herself be
comforted.... And it was so sweet to Mr. Twist to comfort....

"Christopher--" began Anna-Felicitas, directly he had shut the door.

"I know. She's mad with you. What can you expect, Anna II.?" he
interrupted in a very matter-of-fact voice, leaning against a bookcase.
Even a bookcase was better than nothing to lean against.

"Christopher is being unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas, her voice
softer and gentler than he had yet heard it.

Then she stopped, and considered him a moment with much of the look of
one who on a rather cold day considers the sea before diving in--with,
that is, a slight but temporary reluctance to proceed.

"Won't you sit down?" said Mr. Twist.

"Perhaps I'd better," she said, disposing herself in the big chair.
"It's very strange, but my legs feel funny. You wouldn't think being in
love would make one want to sit down."

"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Twist.

"I have fallen in love," said Anna-Felicitas, looking up at him with a
kind of pensive radiance. "I did it this morning."

Mr. Twist stared at her. "I beg your--what did you say?" he asked.

She said, still with that air as she regarded him of pensive radiance,
of not seeing him but something beyond him that was very beautiful to
her and satisfactory, "I've fallen in love, and I can't tell you how
pleased I am because I've always been afraid I was going to find it a
difficult thing to do. But it wasn't. Quite the contrary."

Then, as he only staged at her, she said, "He's coming round this
afternoon on the new footing, and I wanted to prepare your and
Christopher's minds in good time so that you shouldn't be surprised."

And having said this she lapsed into what was apparently, judging from
her expression, a silent contemplation of her bliss.

"But you're too young," burst out Mr. Twist.

"Too young?" repeated Anna-Felicitas, coming out of her contemplation
for a moment to smile at him. "We don't think so."

Well. This beat everything.

Mr. Twist could only stare down at her.

Conflicting emotions raged in him. He couldn't tell for a moment what
they were, they were so violent and so varied. How dared Elliott. How
dared a person they had none of them heard of that time yesterday come
making love to a girl he had never seen before. And in such a hurry. So
suddenly. So instantly. Here had he himself been with the twins
constantly for weeks, and wouldn't have dreamed of making love to them.
They had been sacred to him. And it wasn't as if he hadn't wanted to hug
them often and often, but he had restrained himself as a gentleman
should from the highest motives of delicacy, and consideration, and
respect, and propriety, besides a great doubt as to whether they
wouldn't very energetically mind. And then comes along this blundering
Britisher, and straight away tumbles right in where Mr. Twist had feared
to tread, and within twenty-four hours had persuaded Anna-Felicitas to
think she was in love. New footing indeed. There hadn't been an old
footing yet. And who was this Elliott? And how was Mr. Twist going to be
able to find out if he were a proper person to be allowed to pay his
addresses to one so precious as a Twinkler twin?

Anger, jealousy, anxiety, sense of responsibility and mortification, all
tumbled about furiously together inside Mr. Twist as he leaned against
the bookcase and gazed down at Anna-Felicitas, who for her part was
gazing beatifically into space; but through the anger, and the jealousy,
and the anxiety, and the sense of responsibility and mortification one
great thought was struggling, and it finally pushed every other aside
and got out to the top of the welter: here, in the chair before him, he
beheld his sister-in-law. So much at least was cleared up.

He crossed to the bureau and dragged his office-stool over next to her
and sat down. "So that's it, is it?" he said, trying to speak very
calmly, but his face pulled all sorts of ways, as it had so often been
since the arrival in his life of the twins.

"Yes," she said, coming out of her contemplation. "It's love at last."

"I don't know about at last. Whichever way you look at it, Anna II.,
that don't seem to hit it off as a word. What I meant was, it's
Elliott."

"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Which is the same thing. I believe," she
added, "I now have to allude to him as John."

Mr. Twist made another effort to speak calmly. "You don't," he said,
"think it at all unusual or undesirable that you should be calling a man
John to-day of whom you'd never heard yesterday."

"I think it's wonderful," said Anna-Felicitas beaming.

"It doesn't strike you in any way as imprudent to be so hasty. It
doesn't strike you as foolish."

"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas. "I can't help thinking I've
been very clever. I shouldn't have thought it of myself. You see, I'm
not _naturally_ quick." And she beamed with what she evidently regarded
as a pardonable pride.

"It doesn't strike you as even a little--well, a little improper."

"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas. "Aunt Alice told us that the one
man one could never be improper about, even if one tried, was one's
husband."

"Husband?" Mr. Twist winced. He loved, as we have seen, the word wife,
but then that was different.

"It's not time yet to talk of husbands," he said, full of a flaming
unreasonableness and jealousy and the sore feeling that he who had been
toiling so long and so devotedly in the heat of the Twinkler sun had had
a most unfair march stolen on him by this eleventh-hour stranger.

He flamed with unreasonableness. Yet he knew this was the solution of
half his problem,--and of much the worst half, for it was after all
Anna-Felicitas who had produced the uncomfortable feeling of
slipperiness, of eels; Anna-Rose had been quite good, sitting in a chair
crying and just so sweetly needing comfort. But now that the solution
was presented to him he was full of fears. For on what now could he base
his proposal to Anna-Rose? Elliott would be the legitimate protector of
both the Twinklers. Mr. Twist, who had been so much perturbed by the
idea of having to propose to one or other twin, was miserably upset by
the realization that now he needn't propose to either. Elliott had cut
the ground from under his feet. He had indeed--what was the expression
he used the evening before?--yes, nipped in. There was now no necessity
for Anna-Rose to marry him, and Mr. Twist had an icy and forlorn
feeling that on no other basis except necessity would she. He was
thirty-five. It was all very well for Elliott to get proposing to people
of seventeen; he couldn't be more than twenty-five. And it wasn't only
age. Mr. Twist hadn't shaved before looking-glasses for nothing, and he
was very distinctly aware that Elliott was extremely attractive.

"It's not time yet to talk of husbands," he therefore hotly and
jealously said.

"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas gently, "it's not only time but
war-time. The war, I have observed, is making people be quick and sudden
about all sorts of things."

"You haven't observed it. That's Elliott said that."

"He may have," said Anna-Felicitas. "He said so many things--"

And again she lapsed into contemplation; into, thought Mr. Twist as he
gazed jealously at her profile, an ineffable, ruminating, reminiscent
smugness.

"See here, Anna II.," he said, finding it impossibly painful to wait
while she contemplated, "suppose you don't at this particular crisis
fall into quite so many ecstatic meditations. There isn't as much time
as you seem to think."

"No--and there's Christopher," said Anna-Felicitas, giving herself a
shake, and with that slightly troubled look coming into her face again
as of having, in spite of being an angel in glory, somehow got her feet
wet.

"Precisely," said Mr. Twist, getting up and walking about the room.
"There's Christopher. Now Christopher, I should say, would be pretty
well heart-broken over this."

"But that's so unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas with gentle
deprecation.

"You're all she has got, and she'll be under the impression--the
remarkably vivid impression--that she's losing you."

"But _that's_ so unreasonable. She isn't losing me. It's sheer gain.
Without the least effort or bother on her part she's acquiring a
brother-in-law."

"Oh, I know what Christopher feels," said Mr. Twist, going up and down
the room quickly. "I know right enough, because I feel it all myself."

"But _that's_ so unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas earnestly. "Why
should two of you be feeling things that aren't?"

"She has always regarded herself as responsible for you, and I shouldn't
be surprised if she were terribly shocked at your conduct."

"But there has to _be_ conduct," said Anna-Felicitas, still very gentle,
but looking as though her feet were getting wetter. "I don't see how
anybody is ever to fall in love unless there's been some conduct first."

"Oh, don't argue--don't argue. You can't expect Anna-Rose not to mind
your wanting to marry a perfect stranger, a man she hasn't even seen."

"But everybody you marry started by being a perfect stranger and
somebody you hadn't ever seen," said Anna-Felicitas.

"Oh Lord, if only you wouldn't _argue_!" exclaimed Mr. Twist. "And as
for your aunt in England, what's she going to say to this
twenty-four-hours, quick-lunch sort of engagement? She'll be terribly
upset. And Anna-Rose knows that, and is I expect nigh worried crazy."

"But what," asked Anna-Felicitas, "have aunts to do with love?"

Then she said very earnestly, her face a little flushed, her eyes
troubled, "Christopher said all that you're saying now, and a lot more,
down in the garden before I came to you, and I said what I've been
saying to you, and a lot more, but she wouldn't listen. And when I found
she wouldn't listen I tried to comfort her, but she wouldn't be
comforted. And then I came to you; for besides wanting to tell you what
I've done I wanted to ask you to comfort Christopher."

Mr. Twist paused a moment in his walk. "Yes," he said, staring at the
carpet. "Yes. I can very well imagine she needs it. But I don't suppose
anything I would say--"

"Christopher is very fond of you," said Anna-Felicitas gently.

"Oh yes. You're both very fond of me," said Mr. Twist, pulling his mouth
into a crooked and unhappy smile.

"We love you," said Anna-Felicitas simply.

Mr. Twist looked at her, and a mist came over his spectacles. "You dear
children," he said, "you dear, dear children--"

"I don't know about children--" began Anna-Felicitas; but was
interrupted by a knock at the door.

"It's only the brandy," said Mr. Twist, seeing her face assume the
expression he had learned to associate with the approach of Mrs. Bilton.
"Take it away, please Mrs. Bilton," he called out, "and put it on the--"

Mrs. Bilton however, didn't take anything away, but opened the door an
inch instead. "There's someone wants to speak to you, Mr. Twist," she
said in a loud whisper, thrusting in a card. "He says he just must. I
found him on the verandah when I took your brandy out, and as I'm not
the woman to leave a stranger alone with good brandy I brought him in
with me, and he's right here back of me in the tea-room."

"It's John," remarked Anna-Felicitas placidly. "Come early."

"I say--" said a voice behind Mrs. Bilton.

"Yes," nodded Anna-Felicitas, getting up out of the deep chair. "That's
John."

"I say--may I come in? I've got something important--"

Mr. Twist looked at Anna-Felicitas. "Wouldn't you rather--?" he began.

"I don't mind John," she said softly, her face flooded with a most
beautiful light.

Mr. Twist opened the door and went out. "Come in," he said. "Mrs.
Bilton, may I present Mr. Elliott to you--Commander Elliott of the
British Navy."

"Pleased to meet you, Commander Elliott," said Mrs. Bilton. "Mr. Twist,
your brandy is on the verandah. Shall I bring it to you in here?"

"No thank you, Mrs. Bilton. I'll go out there presently. Perhaps you
wouldn't mind waiting for me there--I don't suppose Mr. Elliott will
want to keep me long. Come in, Mr. Elliott."

And having disposed of Mrs. Bilton, who was in a particularly willing
and obedient and female mood, he motioned Elliott into the office.

There stood Anna-Felicitas.

Elliott stopped dead.

"This isn't fair," he said, his eyes twinkling and dancing.

"What isn't?" inquired Anna-Felicitas gently, beaming at him.

"Your being here. I've got to talk business. Look here, sir," he said,
turning to Mr. Twist, "could _you_ talk business with her there?"

"Not if she argued," said Mr. Twist.

"Argued! I wouldn't mind her arguing. It's just her being there. I've
got to talk business," he said, turning to Anna-Felicitas,--"business
about marrying you. And how can I with you standing there looking
like--well, like that?"

"I don't know," said Anna-Felicitas placidly, not moving.

"But you'll interrupt--just your being there will interrupt. I shall see
you out of the corner of my eye, and it'll be impossible not to--I mean
I know I'll want to--I mean, Anna-Felicitas my dear, it isn't done. I've
got to explain all sorts of things to your guardian--"

"He isn't my guardian," corrected the accurate Anna-Felicitas gently.
"He only very nearly once was."

"Well, anyhow I've got to explain a lot of things that'll take some
time, and it isn't so much explain as persuade--for I expect," he said,
turning to Mr. Twist, "this strikes you as a bit sudden, sir?"

"It would strike anybody," said Mr. Twist trying to be stern but finding
it difficult, for Elliott was so disarmingly engaging and so disarmingly
in love. The radiance on Anna-Felicitas's face might have been almost a
reflection caught from his. Mr. Twist had never seen two people look so
happy. He had never, of course, before been present at the first
wonderful dawning of love. The whole room seemed to glow with the
surprise of it.

"There. You see?" said Elliott, again appealing to Anna-Felicitas, who
stood smiling beatifically at him without moving. "I've got to explain
that it isn't after all as mad as it seems, and that I'm a fearfully
decent chap and can give you lots to eat, and that I've got a jolly
little sister here who's respectable and well-known besides, and I'm
going to produce references to back up these assertions, and proofs that
I'm perfectly sound in health except for my silly foot, which isn't
health but just foot and which you don't seem to mind anyhow, and how--I
ask you _how_, Anna-Felicitas my dear, am I to do any of this with you
standing there looking like--well, like that?"

"I don't know," said Anna-Felicitas again, still not moving.

"Anna-Felicitas, my dear," he said, "won't you go?"

"No, John," said Anna-Felicitas gently.

His eyes twinkled and danced more than ever. He took a step towards her,
then checked himself and looked round beseechingly at Mr. Twist.

"_Somebody's_ got to go," he said.

"Yes," said Mr. Twist. "And I guess it's me."

CHAPTER XXXVIII

He went straight in search of Anna-Rose.

He was going to propose to her. He couldn't bear it. He couldn't bear
the idea of his previous twins, his blessed little Twinklers, both going
out of his life at the same time, and he couldn't bear, after what he
had just seen in the office, the loneliness of being left outside love.

All his life he had stood on the door-mat outside the shut door of love.
He had had no love; neither at home, where they talked so much about it
and there wasn't any, nor, because of his home and its inhibitions got
so thoroughly into his blood, anywhere else. He had never tried to
marry,--again because of his home and his mother and the whole
only-son-of-a-widow business. He would try now. He would risk it. It was
awful to risk it, but it was more awful not to. He adored Anna-Rose. How
nearly the afternoon before, when she sat crying in his chair, had he
taken her in his arms! Why, he would have taken her into them then and
there, while she was in that state, while she was in the need of
comfort, and never let her go out of them again, if it hadn't been that
he had got the idea so firmly fixed in his head that she was a child.
Fool that he was. Elliott had dispelled that idea for him. It wasn't
children who looked as Anna-Felicitas had looked just now in the office.
Anna-Rose, it is true, seemed younger than Anna-Felicitas, but that was
because she was little and easily cried. He loved her for being little.
He loved her because she easily cried. He yearned and hungered to
comfort, to pet to take care of. He was, as has been pointed out, a born
mother.

Avoiding the verandah and Mrs. Bilton, Mr. Twist filled with
recklessness, hurried upstairs and knocked at Anna-Rose's door. No
answer. He listened. Dead silence. He opened it a slit and peeped in.
Emptiness. Down he went again and made for the kitchen, because Li Koo,
who always knew everything, might know where she was. Li Koo did. He
jerked his head towards the window, and Mr. Twist hurried to it and
looked out. There in the middle of the yard was the cat, exactly where
he had left her an hour before, and kneeling beside her stroking her
stomach was Anna-Rose.

She had her back to the house and her face was hidden. The sun streamed
down on her bare head and on the pale gold rings of hair that frisked
round her neck. She didn't hear him till he was close to her, so much
absorbed was she apparently in the cat; and when she did she didn't look
up, but bent her head lower than before and stroked more assiduously.

"Anna-Rose," said Mr. Twist.

"Yes."

"Come and talk to me."

"I'm thinking."

"Don't think. Come and talk to me, little--little dear one."

She bent her head lower still. "I'm thinking," she said again.

"Come and tell me what you're thinking."

"I'm thinking about cats."

"About cats?" said Mr. Twist, uncertainly.

"Yes," said Anna-Rose, stroking the cat's stomach faster and carefully
keeping her face hidden from him. "About how wise and wonderful they
are."

"Well then if that's all, you can go on with that presently and come and
talk to me now."

"You see," said Anna-Rose, not heeding this, "they're invariably twins,
and more than twins, for they're often fours and sometimes sixes, but
still they sit in the sun quietly all their lives and don't mind a bit
what their--what their twins do--"

"Ah," said Mr. Twist. "Now I'm getting there."

"They don't mind a bit about anything. They just clean their whiskers
and they purr. Perhaps it's that that comforts them. Perhaps if I--if I
had whiskers and a--and a purr--"

The cat leaped suddenly to her feet and shook herself violently.
Something hot and wet had fallen on her beautiful stomach.

Anna-Rose made a little sound strangers might have taken for a laugh as
she put out her arms and caught her again, but it was a sound so
wretched, so piteous in the attempt to hide away from him, that Mr.
Twist's heart stood still. "Oh, don't go," she said, catching at the cat
and hugging her tight, "I can't let _you_ go--" And she buried her face
in her fur, so that Mr. Twist still couldn't see it.

"Now that's enough about the cat," he said, speaking very firmly.
"You're coming with me." And he stooped and picked her up, cat and all,
and set her on her feet.

Then he saw her face.

"Good God, Anna-Rose!" he exclaimed.

"I did try not to show you," she said; and she added, taking shelter
behind her pride and looking at him as defiantly as she could out of
eyes almost closed up, "but you mustn't suppose just because I happen
to--to seem as if I'd been crying that I--that I'm minding anything."

"Oh no," said Mr. Twist, who at sight of her face had straightway
forgotten about himself and his longings and his proposals, and only
knew that he must comfort Christopher. "Oh no," he said, looking at her
aghast, "I'm not supposing we're minding anything, either of us."

He took her by the arm. Comfort Christopher; that's what he had got to
do. Get rid as quickly as possible of that look of agony--yes, it was
downright agony--on her face.

He thought he guessed what she was thinking and feeling; he thought--he
was pretty sure--she was thinking and feeling that her beloved Columbus
had gone from her, and gone to a stranger, in a day, in a few hours, to
a stranger she had never even seen, never even heard of; that her
Columbus had had secrets from her, had been doing things behind her
back; that she had had perfect faith and trust in her twin, and now was
tasting the dreadful desolation of betrayal; and he also guessed that
she must be sick with fears,--for he knew how responsible she felt, how
seriously she took the charge of her beautiful twin--sick with fear
about this unknown man, sick with the feeling of helplessness, of
looking on while Columbus rushed into what might well be, for all any
one knew, a deadly mess-up of her happiness.

Well, he could reason her out of most of this, he felt. Certainly he
could reassure her about Elliott, who did inspire one with confidence,
who did seem, anyhow outwardly, a very fitting mate for Anna-Felicitas.
But he was aghast at the agony on her face. All that he guessed she was
thinking and feeling didn't justify it. It was unreasonable to suffer so
violently on account of what was, after all, a natural happening. But
however unreasonable it was, she was suffering.

He took her by the arm. "You come right along with me," he said; and led
her out of the yard, away from Li Koo and the kitchen window, towards
the eucalyptus grove behind the house. "You come right along with me,"
he repeated, holding her firmly for she was very wobbly on her feet,
"and we'll tell each other all about the things we're not minding. Do
you remember when the _St. Luke_ left Liverpool? You thought I thought
you were minding things then, and were very angry with me. We've made
friends since, haven't we, and we aren't going to mind anything ever
again except each other."

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