Christopher and Columbus (16 page)

"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
ménage
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.

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 £200, 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.