A \ B \ C \ D \ E \ F \ G \ H \ I \ J \ K \ L \ M \ N \ O \ P \ R \ S \ T \ U \ V \ W \Z

Christopher and Columbus by Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

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




Mr. Twist looked at her in silence.

"Not as objects to be protected," continued Anna Felicitas, "but as
co-equals. Of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting."

Mr. Twist continued to look at her in silence.

"We didn't come to America to be on anybody's mind," said Anna-Rose,
supporting Anna-Felicitas.

"We had a good deal of that in England," said Anna-Felicitas. "For
instance, we're quite familiar with Uncle Arthur's mind, we were on it
so heavily and so long."

"It's our fixed determination," said Anna-Rose, "now that we're starting
a new life, to get off any mind we find ourselves on _instantly_."

"We wish to carve out our own destinies," said Anna-Felicitas.

"We more than wish to," corrected Anna-Rose, "we intend to. What were we
made in God's image for if it wasn't to stand upright on our own feet?"

"Anna-Rose and I had given this a good deal of thought," said
Anna-Felicitas, "first and last, and we're prepared to be friends with
everybody, but only as co-equals and of a reasonable soul and human
flesh subsisting."

"I don't know exactly," said Mr. Twist, "what that means, but it seems
to give you a lot of satisfaction."

"It does. It's out of the Athanasian Creed, and suggests such perfect
equality. If you'll regard us as co-equals instead of as objects to be
looked after, you'll see how happy we shall all be."

"Not," said Anna-Rose, growing tender, for indeed in her heart she
loved and clung to Mr. Twist, "that we haven't very much liked all
you've done for us and the way you were so kind to us on the
boat,--we've been _most_ obliged to you, and we shall miss you very much
indeed, I know."

"But we'll get over that of course in time," put in Anna-Felicitas, "and
we've got to start life now in earnest."

"Well then," said Mr. Twist, "will you two Annas kindly tell me what it
is you propose to do next?"

"Next? After tea? Go and look at the sights."

"I mean to-morrow," said Mr. Twist.

"To-morrow," said Anna-Rose, "we proceed to Boston."

"To track the Clouston Sacks to their lair," said Anna-Felicitas.

"Ah. You've made up your minds to do that. They've behaved abominably,"
said Mr. Twist.

"Perhaps they missed the train," said Anna-Felicitas mildly.

"It's the proper course to pursue," said Anna-Rose. "To proceed to
Boston."

"I suppose it is," said Mr. Twist, again thinking that the really proper
and natural course was for him to have been able to take them to his
mother. Pity one's mother wasn't--

He pulled himself up on the brink of an unfiliality. He was on the verge
of thinking it a pity one's mother wasn't a different one.




CHAPTER XII


"Then," said Mr. Twist, "if this is all you're going to see of New York,
this one evening, let us go and look at it."

He beckoned to the waiter who came up with the bill. Anna-Rose pulled
out her purse. Mr. Twist put up his hand with severe determination.

"You're my guest," he said, "as long as I am with you. Useless to
protest, young lady. You'll not get me to belie my American manhood. I
only listened with half an ear to all the things you both said in the
taxi, because I hadn't recovered from the surprise of finding myself
still with you instead of on the train for Clark, and because you both
of you do say so very many things. But understand once and for all that
in this country everything female has to be paid for by some man. I'm
that man till I've left you on the Sack doorstep, and then it'll be
Sack--confound him," finished Mr. Twist suddenly.

And he silenced Anna-Rose's protests, which persisted and were
indignant, by turning on her with, an irascibility she hadn't yet seen
in him, and inquiring of her whether then she really wished to put him
to public shame? "You wouldn't wish to go against an established custom,
surely," he said more gently.

So the twins gave themselves up for that one evening to what
Anna-Felicitas called government by wealth, otherwise plutocracy, while
reserving complete freedom of action in regard to Mr. Sack, who was, in
their ignorance of his circumstances, an unknown quantity. They might
be going to be mothers' helps in the Sack _menage_ for all they
knew,--they might, they said, be going to be anything, from honoured
guests to typists.

"Can you type?" asked Mr. Twist.

"No," said the twins.

He took them in a taxi to Riverside Drive, and then they walked down to
the charming footpath that runs along by the Hudson for three enchanting
miles. The sun had set some time before they got there, and had left a
clear pale yellow sky, and a wonderful light on the river. Lamps were
being lit, and hung like silver globes in the thin air. Steep grass
slopes, and groups of big trees a little deeper yellow than the sky, hid
that there were houses and a street above them on their right. Up and
down the river steamers passed, pierced with light, their delicate smoke
hanging in the air long after they had gone their way. It was so great a
joy to walk in all this after ten days shut up on the _St. Luke_ and to
see such blessed things as grass and leaves again, that the twins felt
suddenly extraordinarily brisked up and cheerful. It was impossible not
to be cheerful, translated from the _St. Luke_ into such a place,
trotting along in the peculiar dry air that made one all tingly.

The world seemed suddenly quite good,--the simplest, easiest of objects
to tackle. All one had to do was not to let it weigh on one, to laugh
rather than cry. They trotted along humming bits of their infancy's
songs, feeling very warm and happy inside, felicitously full of tea and
macaroons and with their feet comfortably on something that kept still
and didn't heave or lurch beneath them. Mr. Twist, too, was gayer than
he had been for some hours. He seemed relieved; and he was. He had sent
a telegram to his mother, expressing proper sorrow at being detained in
New York, but giving no reason for it, and promising he would be with
her rather late the next evening; and he had sent a telegram to the
Clouston Sacks saying the Twinklers, who had so unfortunately missed
them in New York, would arrive in Boston early next afternoon. His mind
was clear again owing to the determination of the twins to go to the
Sacks. He was going to take them there, hand them over, and then go back
to Clark, which fortunately was only three hours' journey from Boston.

If the twins had shown a disinclination to go after the Sacks who, in
Mr. Twist's opinion, had behaved shamefully already, he wouldn't have
had the heart to press them to go; and then what would he have done with
them? Their second and last line of defence, supposing they had
considered the Sacks had failed and were to be ruled out, was in
California, a place they spoke of as if it were next door to Boston and
New York. How could he have let them set out alone on that four days'
journey, with the possibility of once more at its end not being met? No
wonder he had been abstracted at tea. He was relieved to the extent of
his forehead going quite smooth again at their decision to proceed to
the Sacks. For he couldn't have taken them to his mother without
preparation and explanation, and he couldn't have left them in New York
while he went and prepared and explained. Great, reflected Mr. Twist,
the verb dropping into his mind with the _aplomb_ of an inspiration, are
the difficulties that beset a man directly he begins to twinkle. Already
he had earnestly wished to knock the reception clerk in the hotel office
down because of, first, his obvious suspicion of the party before he had
heard Mr. Twist's name, and because of, second, his politeness, his
confidential manner as of an understanding sympathizer with a rich man's
recreations, when he had. The tea, which he, had poured out of one of
his own teapots, had been completely spoilt by the knowledge that it was
only this teapot that had saved him from being treated as a White Slave
Trafficker. He wouldn't have got into that hotel at all with the
Twinklers, or into any other decent one, except for his teapot. What a
country, Mr. Twist had thought, fresh from his work in France, fresh
from where people were profoundly occupied with the great business of
surviving at all. Here he came back from a place where civilization
toppled, where deadly misery, deadly bravery, heroism that couldn't be
uttered, staggered month after month among ruins, and found America
untouched, comfortable, fat, still with time to worry over the suspected
amorousness of the rich, still putting people into uniforms in order to
buttonhole a man on landing and cross-question him as to his private
purities.

He had been much annoyed, but he too couldn't resist the extreme
pleasure of real exercise on such a lovely evening, nor could he resist
the infection of the cheerfulness of the Twinklers. They walked along,
talking and laughing, and seeming to walk much faster than he did,
especially Anna-Rose who had to break into a run every few steps because
of his so much longer legs, his face restored to all its usual
kindliness as he listened benevolently to their remarks, and just when
they were beginning to feel as if they soon might be tired and hungry a
restaurant with lamp-hung gardens appeared as punctually as if they had
been in Germany, that land of nicely arranged distances between meals.
They had an extremely cheerful little supper out of doors, with things
to eat that thrilled the Twinklers in their delicious strangeness;
heavenly food, they thought it after the rigours of the second-class
cooking on the _St. Luke_, and the biggest ices they had seen in their
lives,--great dollops of pink and yellow divineness.

Then Mr. Twist took them in a taxi to look at the illuminated
advertisements in Broadway, and they forgot everything but the joy of
the moment. Whatever the next day held, this evening was sheer
happiness. Their eyes shone and their cheeks flushed, and Mr. Twist was
quite worried that they were so pretty. People at the other tables at
the restaurant had stared at them with frank admiration, and so did the
people in the streets whenever the taxi was blocked. On the ship he had
only sometimes been aware of it,--there would come a glint of sunshine
and settle on Anna-Rose's little cheek where the dimple was, or he would
lift his eyes from the Culture book and suddenly see the dark softness
of Anna-Felicitas's eyelashes as she slept in her chair. But now,
dressed properly, and in their dryland condition of cheerful animation,
he perceived that they were very pretty indeed, and that Anna-Felicitas
was more than very pretty. He couldn't help thinking they were a most
unsuitable couple to be let loose in America with only two hundred
pounds to support them. Two hundred pounds was just enough to let them
slip about if it should enter their heads to slip about,--go off without
explanation, for instance, if they wanted to leave the Clouston
Sacks,--but of course ridiculous as a serious background to life. A girl
should either have enough money or be completely dependent on her male
relations. As a girl was usually young reflected Mr. Twist, his
spectacles with the Broadway lights in them blazing on the two
specimens opposite him, it was safest for her to be dependent. So were
her actions controlled, and kept within the bounds of wisdom.

And next morning, as he sat waiting for the twins for breakfast at ten
o'clock according to arrangement the night before, their grape-fruit in
little beds of ice on their plates and every sort of American dish
ordered, from griddle cakes and molasses to chicken pie, a page came in
with loud cries for Mr. Twist, which made him instantly conspicuous--a
thing he particularly disliked--and handed him a letter.

The twins had gone.




CHAPTER XIII


They had left early that morning for Boston, determined, as they wrote,
no longer to trespass on his kindness. There had been a discussion in
their bedroom the night before when they got back in which Anna-Rose
supplied the heat and Anna-Felicitas the arguments, and it ended in
Anna-Felicitas succeeding in restoring Anna-Rose to her original
standpoint of proud independence, from which, lured by the comfort and
security of Mr. Twist's companionship, she had been inclined to slip.

It took some time, because of Anna-Rose being the eldest. Anna-Felicitas
had had to be as wary, and gentle, and persistently affectionate as a
wife whom necessity compels to try and get reason into her husband.
Anna-Rose's feathers, even as the feathers of a husband, bristled at the
mere breath of criticism of her superior intelligence and wisdom. She
was the leader of the party, the head and guide, the one who had the
dollars in her pocket, and being the eldest naturally must know best.
Besides, she was secretly nervous about taking Anna-Felicitas about
alone. She too had observed the stares of the public, and had never
supposed that any of them might be for her. How was she to get to Boston
successfully with so enchanting a creature, through all the
complications of travel in an unknown country, without the support and
counsel of Mr. Twist? Just the dollars and quarters and dimes and cents
cowed her. The strangeness of everything, while it delighted her so
long as she could peep at it from behind Mr. Twist, appalled her the
minute she was left alone with it. America seemed altogether a foreign
country, a strange place whose inhabitants by accident didn't talk in a
strange language. They talked English; or rather what sounded like
English till you found that it wasn't really.

But Anna-Felicitas prevailed. She had all Anna-Rose's inborn horror of
accepting money or other benefits from people who had no natural right
to exercise their benevolences upon her, to appeal to. Christopher,
after long wrestling restored at last to pride, did sit down and write
the letter that so much spoilt Mr. Twist's breakfast next morning, while
Columbus slouched about the room suggesting sentences.

It was a letter profuse in thanks for all Mr. Twist had done for them,
and couched in language that betrayed the particular share
Anna-Felicitas had taken in the plan; for though they both loved long
words Anna-Felicitas's were always a little the longer. In rolling
sentences that made Mr. Twist laugh in spite of his concern, they
pointed out that his first duty was to his mother, and his second was
not to squander his possessions in paying the hotel and railway bills of
persons who had no sort of claim on him, except those general claims of
humanity which he had already on the _St. Luke_ so amply discharged.
They would refrain from paying their hotel bill, remembering his words
as to the custom of the country, though their instincts were altogether
against this course, but they could and would avoid causing him the
further expense and trouble and waste of his no doubt valuable time of
taking them to Boston, by the simple process of going there without him.
They promised to write from the Sacks and let him know of their arrival
to the address at Clark he had given them, and they would never forget
him as long as they lived and remained his very sincerely, A.-R., and
A.-F. Twinkler.

Mr. Twist hurried out to the office.

The clerk who had been so confidential in his manner the evening before
looked at him curiously. Yes, the young ladies had left on the 8.15 for
Boston. They had come downstairs, baggage and all, at seven o'clock, had
asked for a taxi, had said they wished to go to Boston, inquired about
the station, etc., and had specially requested that Mr. Twist should not
be disturbed.

"They seemed in a slight hurry to be off," said the clerk, "and didn't
like there being no train before the 8.15. I thought you knew all about
it, Mr. Twist," he added inquisitively.

"So I did--so I did," said Mr. Twist, turning away to go back to his
breakfast for three.

"So he did--so he did," muttered the clerk with a wink to the other
clerk; and for a few minutes they whispered, judging from the
expressions on their faces, what appeared to be very exciting things to
each other.

Meanwhile the twins, after a brief struggle of extraordinary intensity
at the station in getting their tickets, trying to understand the black
man who seized and dealt with their luggage, and closely following him
wherever he went in case he should disappear, were sitting in a state of
relaxation and relief in the Boston express, their troubles over for at
least several hours.

The black porter, whose heart happened not to be black and who had
children of his own, perceived the helpless ignorance that lay behind
the twins' assumption a of severe dignity, and took them in hand and
got seats for them in the parlour car. As they knew nothing about cars,
parlour or otherwise, but had merely and quite uselessly reiterated to
the booking-clerk, till their porter intervened, that they wanted
third-class tickets, they accepted these seats, thankful in the press
and noise round them to get anything so roomy and calm as these
dignified arm-chairs; and it wasn't till they had been in them some
time, their feet on green footstools, with attendants offering them
fruit and chocolates and magazines at intervals just as if they had been
in heaven, as Anna-Felicitas remarked admiringly, that counting their
money they discovered what a hole the journey had made in it. But they
were too much relieved at having accomplished so much on their own,
quite uphelped for the first time since leaving Aunt Alice, to take it
particularly to heart; and, as Anna-Felicitas said, there was still the
L200, and, as Anna-Rose said, it wasn't likely they'd go in a train
again for ages; and anyhow, as Anna-Felicitas said, whatever it had cost
they were bound to get away from being constant drains on Mr. Twist's
purse.

The train journey delighted them. To sit so comfortably and privately in
chairs that twisted round, so that if a passenger should start staring
at Anna-Felicitas one could make her turn her back altogether on him; to
have one's feet on footstools when they were the sort of feet that don't
reach the ground; to see the lovely autumn country flying past, hills
and woods and fields and gardens golden in the October sun, while the
horrible Atlantic was nowhere in sight; to pass through towns so queerly
reminiscent of English and German towns shaken up together and yet not a
bit like either; to be able to have the window wide open without
getting soot in one's eyes because one of the ministering angels--clad,
this one, appropriately to heaven, in white, though otherwise
black--pulled up the same sort of wire screen they used to have in the
windows at home to keep out the mosquitoes; to imitate about twelve,
when they grew bold because they were so hungry, the other passengers
and cause the black angel to spread a little table between them and
bring clam broth, which they ordered in a spirit of adventure and
curiosity and concealed from each other that they didn't like; to have
the young man who passed up and down with the candy, and whose mouth was
full of it, grow so friendly that he offered them toffee from his own
private supply at last when they had refused regretfully a dozen
suggestions to buy--"Have a bit," he said, thrusting it under their
noses. "As a gentleman to ladies--no pecuniary obligations--come on,
now;" all this was to the twins too interesting and delightful for
words.

They accepted the toffee in the spirit in which it was offered, and
since nobody can eat somebody's toffee without being pleasant in return,
intermittent amenities passed between them and the young man as he
journeyed up and down through the cars.

"First visit to the States?" he inquired, when with some reluctance, for
presently it appeared to the twins that the clam broth and the toffee
didn't seem to be liking each other now they had got together inside
them, and also for fear of hurting his feelings if they refused, they
took some more.

They nodded and smiled stickily.

"English, I guess."

They hesitated, covering their hesitation with the earnest working of
their toffee-filled jaws.

Then Anna-Felicitas, her cheek distorted, gave him the answer she had
given the captain of the _St. Luke,_ and said, "Practically."

"Ah," said the young man, turning this over in his mind, the r in
"practically" having rolled as no English or American r ever did; but
the conductor appearing in the doorway he continued on his way.

"It's evident," said Anna-Rose, speaking with difficulty, for her jaws
clave together because of the toffee, "that we're going to be asked that
the first thing every time a fresh person speaks to us. We'd better
decide what we're going to say, and practise saying it without
hesitation."

Anna-Felicitas made a sound of assent.

"That answer of yours about practically," continued Anna-Rose,
swallowing her bit of toffee by accident and for one moment afraid it
would stick somewhere and make her die, "causes first surprise, then
reflection, and then suspicion."

"But," said Anna-Felicitas after a pause during which she had
disentangled her jaws, "it's going to be difficult to say one is German
when America seems to be so very neutral and doesn't like Germans.
Besides, it's only in the eye of the law that we are. In God's eye we're
not, and that's the principal eye after all."

Her own eyes grew thoughtful. "I don't believe," she said, "that parents
when they marry have any idea of all the difficulties they're going to
place their children in."

"I don't believe they think about it at all," said Anna-Rose. "I mean,"
she added quickly, lest she should be supposed to be questioning the
perfect love and forethought of their mother, "fathers don't."

They were silent a little after this, each thinking things tinged to
sobriety by the effect of the inner conflict going on between the clam
broth and the toffee. Also Boston was rushing towards them, and the
Clouston Sacks. Quite soon they would have to leave the peaceful
security of the train and begin to be active again, and quick and
clever. Anna-Felicitas, who was slow, found it difficult ever to be
clever till about the week after, and Anna-Rose, who was impetuous, was
so impetuous that she entirely outstripped her scanty store of
cleverness and landed panting and surprised in situations she hadn't an
idea what to do with. The Clouston Sacks, now--Aunt Alice had said, "You
must take care to be very tactful with Mr. and Mrs. Clouston Sack;" and
when Anna-Rose, her forehead as much puckered as Mr. Twist's in her
desire to get exactly at what tactful was in order to be able diligently
to be it, asked for definitions, Aunt Alice only said it was what
gentlewomen were instinctively.

"Then," observed Anna-Felicitas, when on nearing Boston Anna-Rose
repeated Aunt Alice's admonishment and at the same time provided
Anna-Felicitas for her guidance with the definition, "seeing that we're
supposed to be gentlewomen, all we've got to do is to behave according
to our instincts."

But Anna-Rose wasn't sure. She doubted their instincts, especially
Anna-Felicitas's. She thought her own were better, being older, but even
hers were extraordinarily apt to develop in unexpected directions
according to the other person's behaviour. Her instinct, for instance,
when engaged by Uncle Arthur in conversation had usually been to hit
him. Was that tact? Yet she knew she was a gentlewoman. She had heard
that, since first she had heard words at all, from every servant,
teacher, visitor and relation--except her mother--in her Prussian home.
Indeed, over there she had been told she was more than a gentlewoman,
for she was a noblewoman and therefore her instincts ought positively to
drip tact.

"Mr. Dodson," Aunt Alice had said one afternoon towards the end, when
the twins came in from a walk and found the rector having tea, "says
that you can't be too tactful in America. He's been there."

"Sensitive--sensitive," said Mr. Dodson, shaking his head at his cup.
"Splendidly sensitive, just as they are splendidly whatever else they
are. A great country. Everything on a vast scale, including
sensitiveness. It has to be met vastly. But quite easy really---" He
raised a pedagogic finger at the twins. "You merely add half as much
again to the quantity of your tact as the quantity you encounter of
their sensitiveness, and it's all right."

"Be sure you remember that now," said Aunt Alice, pleased.

As Boston got nearer, Anna-Rose, trying to learn Mr. Dodson's recipe for
social success by heart, became more silent. On the ship, when the
meeting with the Sacks was imminent, she had fled in sudden panic to her
cabin to hide from them. That couldn't have been tact. But it was
instinct. And she was a gentlewoman. Now once again dread took
possession of her and she wanted to hide, not to get there, to stay in
the train and go on and on. She said nothing, of course, of her dread to
Anna-Felicitas in order not to undermine that young person's _morale_,
but she did very much wish that principles weren't such important things
and one needn't have cut oneself off from the protecting figure of Mr.
Twist.

Copyright (c) 2007. bestextbooks.com. All rights reserved.

Beatrice Clay - "Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion"

Theodore Dreiser - "Twelve Men"

Samuel McChord Crothers - "Humanly Speaking"

Sarah F. Buckelew and Margaret W. Lewis - "Object Lessons on the Human Body"