Christopher and Columbus (12 page)

"Perhaps we ought to be getting ready too," said
Anna-Felicitas.

"Yes. I wish Mr. Twist would come--"

"Perhaps we'd better begin and practise not having Mr.
Twist," said Anna-Felicitas, as one who addresses nobody
specially and means nothing in particular.

"If anybody's got to practise that, it'll be
you," said Anna-Rose. "There'll be no one to roll you
up in rugs now, remember. I won't."

"But I don't want to be rolled up in rugs," said
Anna-Felicitas mildly. "I shall be walking about New
York."

"Oh,
you'll
see," said Anna-Rose irritably.

She was worried about the dollars. She was worried about the
tipping, and the luggage, and the arrival, and Uncle Arthur's
friends, whose names were Mr. and Mrs. Clouston K. Sack; so
naturally she was irritable. One is. And nobody knew and understood
this better than Anna-Felicitas.

"Let's go and put on our hats and get ready," she
said, after a moment's pause during which she wondered whether,
in the interests of Anna-Rose's restoration to calm, she
mightn't have to be sick again. She did hope she wouldn't
have to. She had supposed she had done with that. It is true there
were now no waves, but she knew she had only to go near the engines
and smell the oil. "Let's go and put on our hats,"
she suggested, slipping her hand through Anna-Rose's arm.

Anna-Rose let herself be led away, and they went to their cabin;
and when they came out of it half an hour later, no longer with
that bald look their caps had given them, the sun catching the
little rings of pale gold hair that showed for the first time, and
clad, instead of in the disreputable jerseys that they loved, in
neat black coats and skirts--for they still wore mourning when
properly dressed--with everything exactly as Aunt Alice had
directed for their arrival, the young men of the second class could
hardly believe their eyes.

"You'll excuse me saying so," said one of them to
Anna-Felicitas as she passed him, "but you're looking very
well to-day."

"I expect that's because I
am
well," said Anna-Felicitas amiably.

Mr. Twist, when he saw them, threw up his hands and ejaculated
"My!"

"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas, who was herself puzzled by
the difference the clothes had made in Anna-Rose after ten solid
days of cap and jersey, "I think it's our hats. They do
somehow seem very splendid."

"Splendid?" echoed Mr. Twist. "Why, they'd
make the very angels jealous, and get pulling off their haloes and
kicking them over the edge of heaven."

"What is so wonderful is that Aunt Alice should ever have
squeezed them out of Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Rose, gazing
lost in admiration at Anna-Felicitas. "He didn't disgorge
nice hats easily at all."

And one of the German ladies muttered to the other, as her eye
fell on Anna-Felicitas, "
Ja, ja, die hat Rasse.
"

And it was only because it was the other German lady's hair
that spent the night in a different part of the cabin from her head
and had been seen doing it by Anna-Felicitas, that she cavilled and
was grudging. "
Gewiss
," she muttered back, "
bis auf der Nase. Die Nase aber entfremdet mich. Die ist keine
echte Junkernase
."

So that the Twinklers had quite a success, and their hearts came
a little way out of their boots; only a little way, though, for
there were the Clouston K. Sacks looming bigger into their lives
every minute now.

Really it was a beautiful day, and, as Aunt Alice used to say,
that does make such a difference. A clear pale loveliness of light
lay over New York, and there was a funny sprightliness in the air,
a delicate dry crispness. The trees on the shore, when they got
close, were delicate too--delicate pale gold, and green, and brown,
and they seemed so composed and calm, the twins thought, standing
there quietly after the upheavals and fidgetiness of the Atlantic.
New York was well into the Fall, the time of year when it gets
nearest to beauty. The beauty was entirely in the atmosphere, and
the lights and shadows it made. It was like an exquisite veil flung
over an ugly woman, hiding, softening, encouraging hopes.

Everybody on the ship was crowding eagerly to the sides.
Everybody was exhilarated, and excited, and ready to be friendly
and talkative. They all waved whenever another boat passed. Those
who knew America pointed out the landmarks to those who didn't.
Mr. Twist pointed them out to the twins, and so did the young man
who had remarked favourably on Anna-Felicitas's looks, and as
they did it simultaneously and there was so much to look at and so
many boats to wave to, it wasn't till they had actually got to
the statue of Liberty that Anna-Rose remembered her £10 and the
dollars.

The young man was saying how much the statue of Liberty had
cost, and the word dollars made Anna-Rose turn with a jump to Mr.
Twist.

"Oh," she exclaimed, clutching at her chamois leather
bag where it very visibly bulged out beneath her waistband, "I
forgot--I must get change. And how much do you think we ought to
tip the stewardess? I've never tipped anybody yet ever, and I
wish--I wish I hadn't to."

She got quite red. It seemed to her dreadful to offer money to
someone so much older than herself and who till almost that very
morning had treated her and Anna-Felicitas like the naughtiest of
tiresome children. Surely she would be most offended at being
tipped by people such years younger than herself?

Mr. Twist thought not.

"A dollar," said the young man. "One dollar.
That's the figure. Not a cent more, or you girls'll get
inflating prices and Wall Street'll bust up."

Anna-Rose, not heeding him and clutching nervously the place
where her bag was, told Mr. Twist that the stewardess hadn't
seemed to mind them quite so much last night, and still less that
morning, and perhaps some little memento--something that wasn't
money--

"Give her those caps of yours," said the young man,
bursting into hilarity; but indeed it wasn't his fault that he
was a low young man.

Mr. Twist, shutting him out of the conversation by interposing a
shoulder, told Anna-Rose he had noticed stewardesses, and also
stewards, softened when journeys drew near their end, but that it
didn't mean they wanted mementos. They wanted money; and he
would do the tipping for her if she liked.

Anna-Rose jumped at it. This tipping of the stewardess had
haunted her at intervals throughout the journey whenever she woke
up at night. She felt that, not having yet in her life tipped
anybody, it was very hard that she couldn't begin with somebody
more her own size.

"Then if you don't mind coming behind the funnel,"
she said, "I can give you my £5 notes, and perhaps you would
get them changed for me and deduct what you think the stewardess
ought to have."

Mr. Twist, and also Anna-Felicitas, who wasn't allowed to
stay behind with the exuberant young man though she was quite
unconscious of his presence, went with Anna-Rose behind the funnel,
where after a great deal of private fumbling, her back turned to
them, she produced the two much-crumpled £5 notes.

"The steward ought to have something too," said Mr.
Twist.

"Oh, I'd be glad if you'd do him as well,"
said Anna-Rose eagerly. "I don't think I
could
offer him a tip. He has been so fatherly to us. And
imagine offering to tip one's father."

Mr. Twist laughed, and said she would get over this feeling in
time. He promised to do what was right, and to make it clear that
the tips he bestowed were Twinkler tips; and presently he came back
with messages of thanks from the tipped--such polite ones from the
stewardess that the twins were astonished--and gave Anna-Rose a
packet of very dirty-looking slices of green paper, which were
dollar bills, he said, besides a variety of strange coins which he
spread out on a ledge and explained to her.

"The exchange was favourable to you to-day," said Mr.
Twist, counting out the money.

"How nice of it," said Anna-Rose politely. "Did
you keep your eye on its variations?" she added a little
loudly, with a view to rousing respect in Anna-Felicitas who was
lounging against a seat and showing a total absence of every kind
of appropriate emotion.

"Certainly," said Mr. Twist after a slight pause.
"I kept both my eyes on all of them."

Mr. Twist had, it appeared, presented the steward and stewardess
each with a dollar on behalf of the Misses Twinkler, but because
the exchange was so favourable this had made no difference to the
£5 notes. Reducing each £5 note into German marks, which was the
way the Twinklers, in spite of a year in England, still dealt in
their heads with money before they could get a clear idea of it,
there would have been two hundred marks; and as it took, roughly,
four marks to make a dollar, the two hundred marks would have to be
divided by four; which, leaving aside that extra complication of
variations in the exchange, and regarding the exchange for a moment
and for purposes of simplification as keeping quiet for a bit and
resting, should produce, also roughly, said Anna-Rose a little out
of breath as she got to the end of her calculation, fifty
dollars.

"Correct," said Mr. Twist, who had listened with
respectful attention. "Here they are."

"I said roughly," said Anna-Rose. "It can't
be
exactly
fifty dollars. The tips anyhow would alter
that."

"Yes, but you forget the exchange."

Anna-Rose was silent. She didn't want to go into that before
Anna-Felicitas. Of the two, she was supposed to be the least bad at
sums. Their mother had put it that way, refusing to say, as
Anna-Rose industriously tried to trap her into saying, that she was
the better of the two. But even so, the difference entitled her to
authority on the subject with Anna-Felicitas, and by dint of doing
all her calculations roughly, as she was careful to describe her
method, she allowed room for withdrawal and escape where otherwise
the inflexibility of figures might have caught her tight and held
her down while Anna-Felicitas looked on and was unable to respect
her.

Evidently the exchange was something beneficent. She decided to
rejoice in it in silence, accept whatever it did, and refrain from
asking questions.

"So I did. Of course. The exchange," she said, after a
little.

She gathered up the dollar bills and began packing them into her
bag. They wouldn't all go in, and she had to put the rest into
her pocket, for which also there were too many; but she refused
Anna-Felicitas's offer to put some of them in hers on the
ground that sooner or later she would be sure to forget they
weren't her handkerchief and would blow her nose with them.

"Thank you very much for being so kind," she said to
Mr. Twist, as she stuffed her pocket full and tried by vigorous
patting to get it to look inconspicuous. "We're never
going to forget you, Anna-F. and me. We'll write to you often,
and we'll come and see you as often as you like."

"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas dreamily, as she watched
the shore of Long Island sliding past. "Of course you've
got your relations, but relations soon pall, and you may be quite
glad after a while of a little fresh blood."

Mr. Twist thought this very likely, and agreed with several
other things Anna-Felicitas, generalizing from Uncle Arthur, said
about relations, again with that air of addressing nobody specially
and meaning nothing in particular, while Anna-Rose wrestled with
the obesity of her pocket.

"Whether you come to see me or not," said Mr. Twist,
whose misgivings as to the effect of the Twinklers on his mother
grew rather than subsided, "I shall certainly come to see
you."

"Perhaps Mr. Sack won't allow followers," said
Anna-Felicitas, her eyes far away. "Uncle Arthur didn't.
He wouldn't let the maids have any, so they had to go out and
do the following themselves. We had a follower once, didn't we,
Anna-R.?" she continued her voice pensive and reminiscent.
"He was a friend of Uncle Arthur's. Quite old. At least
thirty or forty. I shouldn't have thought he
could
follow. But he did. And he used to come home to tea
with Uncle Arthur and produce boxes of chocolate for us out of his
pockets when Uncle Arthur wasn't looking. We ate them and felt
perfectly well disposed toward him till one day he tried to kiss
one of us--I forget which. And that, combined with the chocolates,
revealed him in his true colours as a follower, and we told him
they weren't allowed in that house and urged him to go to some
place where they were, or he would certainly be overtaken by Uncle
Arthur's vengeance, and we said how surprised we were, because
he was so old and we didn't know followers were as old as that
ever."

"It seemed a very shady thing," said Anna-Rose, having
subdued the swollenness of her pocket, "to eat his chocolates
and then not want to kiss him, but we don't hold with kissing,
Anna-F. and me. Still, we were full of his chocolates; there was no
getting away from that. So we talked it over after he had gone, and
decided that next day when he came we'd tell him he might kiss
one of us if he still wanted to, and we drew lots which it was to
be, and it was me, and I filled myself to the brim with chocolates
so as to feel grateful enough to bear it, but he didn't
come."

"No," said Anna-Felicitas. "He didn't come
again for a long while, and when he did there was no follow left in
him. Quite the contrary."

Mr. Twist listened with the more interest to this story because
it was the first time Anna-Felicitas had talked since he knew her.
He was used to the inspiriting and voluble conversation of
Anna-Rose who had looked upon him as her best friend since the day
he had wiped up her tears; but Anna-Felicitas had been too unwell
to talk. She had uttered languid and brief observations from time
to time with her eyes shut and her head lolling loosely on her
neck, but this was the first time she had been, as it were, an
ordinary human being, standing upright on her feet, walking about,
looking intelligently if pensively at the scenery, and in a
condition of affable readiness, it appeared, to converse.