Christopher and Columbus (18 page)

"Do you mean to say--" Anna-Rose stopped with a catch
of her breath. "Do you mean," she went on in an
awe-struck voice, "that one of them--one of them is
dead?"

"Dead? Bless you, no. Anything but dead. The exact
opposite. Gone. Left. Got," said the boy.

"Oh," said Anna-Rose greatly relieved, passing over
his last word, whose meaning escaped her, "oh--you mean just
gone to meet us. And missed us. You see," she said, turning to
Anna-Felicitas, "they did try to after all."

Anna-Felicitas said nothing, but reflected that whichever Sack
had tried to must have a quite unusual gift for missing people.

"Gone to meet you?" repeated the boy, as one surprised
by a new point of view. "Well, I don't know about
that--"

"We'll go up and explain," said Anna-Rose.
"Is it Mr. or Mrs. Clouston Sack who is here?"

"Mr.," said the boy.

"Very well then. Please bring in our things." And
Anna-Rose proceeded, followed by Anna-Felicitas, to walk into the
house.

The boy, instead of bringing them in, picked up the articles
lying on the pavement and put them back again into the taxi.
"No hurry about them, I guess," he said to the driver.
"Time enough to take them up when the gurls ask again--"
and he darted after the gurls to hand them over to his colleague
who worked what he called the elevator.

"Why do you call it the elevator," inquired
Anna-Felicitas, mildly inquisitive, of this boy, who on hearing
that they wished to see Mr. Sack stared at them with profound and
unblinking interest all the way up, "when it is really a
lift?"

"Because it is an elevator," said the boy briefly.

"But we, you see," said Anna-Felicitas, "are
equally convinced that it's a lift."

The boy didn't answer this. He was as silent as the other
one wasn't; but there was a thrill about him too, something
electric and tense. He stared at Anna-Felicitas, then turned
quickly and stared at Anna-Rose, then quickly back to
Anna-Felicitas, and so on all the way up. He was obviously
extraordinarily interested. He seemed to have got hold of an idea
that had not struck the squib-like boy downstairs, who was
entertaining the taxi-driver with descriptions of the domestic life
of the Sacks.

The lift stopped at what the twins supposed was going to be the
door of a landing or public corridor, but it was, they discovered,
the actual door of the Sack flat. At any moment the Sacks, if they
wished to commit suicide, could do so simply by stepping out of
their own front door. They would then fall, infinitely far, on to
the roof of the lift lurking at the bottom.

The lift-boy pressed a bell, the door opened, and there, at once
exposed to the twins, was the square hall of the Sack flat with a
manservant standing in it staring at them.

Obsessed by his idea, the lift-boy immediately stepped out of
his lift, approached the servant, introduced his passengers to him
by saying, "Young ladies to see Mr. Sack," took a step
closer, and whispered in his ear, but perfectly audibly to the
twins who, however, regarded it as some expression peculiarly
American and were left unmoved by it, "The
co-respondents."

The servant stared uncertainly at them. His mistress had only
been gone a few hours, and the flat was still warm with her
presence and authority. She wouldn't, he well knew, have
permitted co-respondents to be about the place if she had been
there, but on the other hand she wasn't there. Mr. Sack was in
sole possession now. Nobody knew where Mrs. Sack was. Letters and
telegrams lay on the table for her unopened, among them Mr.
Twist's announcing the arrival of the Twinklers. In his heart
the servant sided with Mr. Sack, but only in his heart, for the
servant's wife was the cook, and she, as she frequently
explained, was all for strict monogamy. He stared therefore
uncertainly at the twins, his brain revolving round their colossal
impudence in coming there before Mrs. Sack's rooms had so much
as had time to get, as it were, cold.

"We want to see Mr. Clouston Sack," began Anna-Rose in
her clear little voice; and no sooner did she begin to speak than a
door was pulled open and the gentleman himself appeared.

"I heard a noise of arrival--" he said, stopping
suddenly when he saw them. "I heard a noise of arrival, and a
woman's voice--"

"It's us," said Anna-Rose, her face covering
itself with the bright conciliatory smiles of the arriving guest.
"Are you Mr. Clouston Sack?"

She went up to him and held out her hand. They both went up to
him and held out their hands.

"We're the Twinklers," said Anna-Rose.

"We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, in case he
shouldn't have noticed it.

Mr. Sack let his hand be shaken, and it was a moist hand. He
looked like a Gibson young man who has grown elderly. He had the
manly profile and shoulders, but they sagged and stooped. There was
a dilapidation about him, a look of blurred edges. His hair lay on
his forehead in disorder, and his tie had been put on carelessly
and had wriggled up to the rim of his collar.

"The Twinklers," he repeated. "The Twinklers. Do
I remember, I wonder?"

"There hasn't been much time to forget," said
Anna-Felicitas. "It's less than two months since there
were all those letters."

"Letters?" echoed Mr. Sack. "Letters?"

"So now we've got here," said Anna-Rose, the more
brightly that she was unnerved.

"Yes. We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, also with
feverish brightness.

Bewildered, Mr. Sack, who felt that he had had enough to bear
the last few hours, stood staring at them. Then he caught sight of
the lift-boy, lingering and he further saw the expression on his
servant's face Even to his bewilderment it was clear what he
was thinking.

Mr. Sack turned round quickly and led the way into the
dining-room. "Come in, come in," he said
distractedly.

They went in. He shut the door. The lift-boy and the servant
lingered a moment making faces at each other; then the lift-boy
dropped away in his lift, and the servant retired to the kitchen.
"I'm darned," was all he could articulate.
"I'm darned."

"There's our luggage," said Anna-Rose, turning to
Mr. Sack on getting inside the room, her voice gone a little shrill
in her determined cheerfulness. "Can it be brought
up?"

"Luggage?" repeated Mr. Sack, putting his hand to his
forehead. "Excuse me, but I've got such a racking headache
to-day--it makes me stupid--"

"Oh, I'm
very
sorry," said Anna-Rose solicitously.

"And so am I--
very
," said Anna-Felicitas, equally solicitous.
"Have you tried aspirin? Sometimes some simple remedy like
that--"

"Oh thank you--it's good of you, it's good of you.
The effect, you see, is that I can't think very clearly. But do
tell me--why luggage? Luggage--luggage. You mean, I suppose,
baggage."

"Why luggage?" asked Anna-Rose nervously.
"Isn't there--isn't there always luggage in America
too when people come to stay with one?"

"You've come to stay with me," said Mr. Sack,
putting his hand to his forehead again.

"You see," said Anna-Felicitas, "we're the
Twinklers."

"Yes, yes--I know. You've told me that."

"So naturally we've come."

"But
is
it natural?" asked Mr. Sack, looking at them
distractedly.

"We sent you a telegram," said Anna-Rose, "or
rather one to Mrs. Sack, which is the same thing--"

"It isn't, it isn't," said the distressed Mr.
Sack. "I wish it were. It ought to be. Mrs. Sack isn't
here--"

"Yes--we're very sorry to have missed her. Did she go
to meet us in New York, or where?"

"Mrs. Sack didn't go to meet you.
She's--gone."

"Gone where?"

"Oh," cried Mr. Sack, "somewhere else, but not to
meet you. Oh," he went on after a moment in which, while the
twins gazed at him, he fought with and overcame emotion, "when
I heard you speaking in the hall I thought--I had a moment's
hope--for a minute I believed--she had come back. So I went out.
Else I couldn't have seen you. I'm not fit to see
strangers--"

The things Mr. Sack said, and his fluttering, unhappy voice,
were so much at variance with the stern lines of his Gibson profile
that the twins viewed him with the utmost surprise. They came to no
conclusion and passed no judgment because they didn't know but
what if one was an American one naturally behaved like that.

"I don't think," said Anna-Felicitas gently,
"that you can call us strangers. We're the
Twinklers."

"Yes, yes--I know--you keep on telling me that," said
Mr. Sack. "But I can't call to mind--"

"Don't you remember all Uncle Arthur's letters
about us? We're the nieces he asked you to be kind to for a
bit--as I'm sure," Anna-Felicitas added politely,
"you're admirably adapted for being."

Mr. Sack turned his bewildered eyes on to her. "Oh,
aren't you a pretty girl," he said, in the same distressed
voice.

"You mustn't make her vain," said Anna-Rose,
trying not to smile all over her face, while Anna-Felicitas
remained as manifestly unvain as a person intent on something else
would be.

"We know you got Uncle Arthur's letters about us,"
she continued, "because he showed us your answers back. You
invited us to come and stay with you. And, as you perceive,
we've done it."

"Then it must have been months ago--months ago," said
Mr. Sack, "before all this--do I remember something about it?
I've had such trouble since--I've been so distracted one
way and another--it may have slipped away out of my memory under
the stress--Mrs. Sack--" He paused and looked round the room
helplessly. "Mrs. Sack--well, Mrs. Sack isn't here
now."

"We're
very
sorry you've had trouble," said
Anna-Felicitas sympathetically. "It's what everybody has,
though. Man that is born of woman is full of misery. That's
what the Burial Service says, and it ought to know."

Mr. Sack again turned bewildered eyes on to her. "Oh,
aren't you a pretty--" he again began.

"When do you think Mrs. Sack will be back?"
interrupted Anna-Rose.

"I wish I knew--I wish I could hope--but she's gone for
a long while, I'm afraid--"

"Gone not to come back at all, do you mean?" asked
Anna-Felicitas.

Mr. Sack gulped. "I'm afraid that is her
intention," he said miserably.

There was a silence, in which they all stood looking at each
other.

"Didn't she like you?" then inquired
Anna-Felicitas.

Anna-Rose, sure that this wasn't tactful, gave her sleeve a
little pull.

"Were you unkind to her?" asked Anna-Felicitas,
disregarding the warning.

Mr. Sack, his fingers clasping and unclasping themselves behind
his back, started walking up and down the room. Anna-Felicitas,
forgetful of what Aunt Alice would have said, sat down on the edge
of the table and began to be interested in Mrs. Sack.

"The wives I've seen," she remarked, watching Mr.
Sack with friendly and interested eyes, "who were chiefly Aunt
Alice--that's Uncle Arthur's wife, the one we're the
nieces of--seemed to put up with the utmost contumely from their
husbands and yet didn't budge. You must have been something
awful to yours."

"I worshipped Mrs. Sack," burst out Mr. Sack. "I
worshipped her. I do worship her. She was the handsomest, brightest
woman in Boston. I was as proud of her as any man has ever been of
his wife."

"Then why did she go?" asked Anna-Felicitas.

"I don't think that's the sort of thing you should
ask," rebuked Anna-Rose.

"But if I don't ask I won't be told," said Ann
Felicitas, "and I'm interested."

"Mrs. Sack went because I was able--I was so
constructed--that I could be fond of other people as well as of
her," said Mr. Sack.

"Well,
that's
nothing unusual," said Anna-Felicitas.

"No," said Anna-Rose, "I don't see anything
in that."

"I think it shows a humane and friendly spirit," said
Anna-Felicitas.

"Besides, it's enjoined in the Bible," said
Anna-Rose.

"I'm sure when we meet Mrs. Sack," said
Anna-Felicitas very politely indeed, "much as we expect to
like her we shall nevertheless continue to like other people as
well. You, for instance. Will she mind that?"

"It wasn't so much that I liked other people,"
said Mr. Sack, walking about and thinking tumultuously aloud rather
than addressing anybody, "but that I liked other people so
much
."

"I see," said Anna-Felicitas, nodding. "You
overdid it. Like over-eating whipped cream. Only it wasn't you
but Mrs. Sack who got the resulting ache."

"And aren't I aching? Aren't I suffering?"

"Yes, but you did the over-eating," said
Anna-Felicitas.

"The world," said the unhappy Mr. Sack, quickening his
pace, "is so full of charming and delightful people. Is one to
shut one's eyes to them?"

"Of course not," said Anna-Felicitas. "One must
love them."

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Sack. "Exactly. That's
what I did."

"And though I wouldn't wish," said Anna-Felicitas,
"to say anything against somebody who so very nearly was my
hostess, yet really, you know, wasn't Mrs. Sack's attitude
rather churlish?"

Mr. Sack gazed at her. "Oh, aren't you a pretty--"
he began again, with a kind of agonized enthusiasm; but he was
again cut short by Anna-Rose, on whom facts of a disturbing nature
were beginning to press.

"Aunt Alice," she said, looking and feeling extremely
perturbed as the situation slowly grew clear to her, "told us
we were never to stay with people whose wives are somewhere else.
Unless they have a mother or other female relative living with
them. She was most particular about it, and said whatever else we
did we weren't ever to do this. So I'm afraid," she
continued in her politest voice, determined to behave beautifully
under circumstances that were trying, "much as we should have
enjoyed staying with you and Mrs. Sack if she had been here to stay
with, seeing that she isn't we manifestly can't."