Christopher and Columbus (19 page)

"You can't stay with me," murmured Mr. Sack,
turning his bewildered eyes to her. "Were you going
to?"

"Of course we were going to. It's what we've come
for," said Anna-Felicitas.

"And I'm afraid," said-Anna-Rose,
"disappointed as we are, unless you can produce a
mother--"

"But where on earth are we to go to, Anna-R.?"
inquired Anna-Felicitas, who, being lazy, having got to a place
preferred if possible to stay in it, and who besides was sure that
in their forlorn situation a Sack in the hand was worth two Sacks
not in it, any day. Also she liked the look of Mr. Sack, in spite
of his being so obviously out of repair. He badly wanted doing up
she said to herself, but on the other hand he seemed to her lovable
in his distress, with much of the pathetic helplessness her own
dear Irish terrier, left behind in Germany, had had the day he
caught his foot in a rabbit trap. He had looked at Anna-Felicitas,
while she was trying to get him out of it, with just the same
expression on his face that Mr. Sack had on his as he walked about
the room twisting and untwisting his fingers behind his back. Only,
her Irish terrier hadn't had a Gibson profile. Also, he had
looked much more efficient.

"Can't you by any chance produce a mother?" she
asked.

Mr. Sack stared at her.

"Of course we're very sorry," said Anna-Rose.

Mr. Sack stared at her.

"But you understand, I'm sure, that under the
circumstances--"

"Do you say," said Mr. Sack, stopping still after a
few more turns in front of Anna-Rose, and making a great effort to
collect his thoughts, "that I--that we--had arranged to look
after you?"

"Arranged with Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Rose.
"Uncle Arthur Abinger. Of course you had. That's why
we're here. Why, you wrote bidding us welcome. He showed us the
letter."

"Abinger. Abinger. Oh--
that
man," said Mr. Sack, his mind clearing.

"We thought you'd probably feel like that about
him," said Anna-Felicitas sympathetically.

"Why, then," said Mr. Sack, his mind getting suddenly
quite clear, "you must be--why, you
are
the Twinklers."

"We've been drawing your attention to that at frequent
intervals since we got here," said Anna-Felicitas.

"But whether you now remember or still don't
realize," said Anna-Rose with great firmness, "I'm
afraid we've got to say good-bye."

"That's all very well, Anna-R.," again protested
Anna-Felicitas, "but where are we to go to?"

"Go?" said Anna-Rose with a dignity very creditable in
one of her size, "Ultimately to California, of course, to
Uncle Arthur's other friends. But now, this afternoon, we get
back into a train and go to Clark, to Mr. Twist. He at least has a
mother."

And so it came about that just as the reunited Twists, mother,
son and daughter, were sitting in the drawing-room, a little tired
after a long afternoon of affection, waiting for seven o'clock
to strike and, with the striking, Amanda the head maid to appear
and announce supper, but waiting with lassitude, for they had not
yet recovered from an elaborate welcoming dinner, the Twinklers, in
the lovely twilight of a golden day, were hastening up the winding
road from the station towards them. Silent, and a little exhausted,
the unconscious Twists sat in their drawing-room, a place of marble
and antimacassars, while these light figures, their shoes white
with the dust of a country-side that had had no rain for weeks,
sped every moment nearer.

The road wound gently upwards through fields and woods, through
quiet, delicious evening country, and there was one little star
twinkling encouragingly at the twins from over where they supposed
Clark would be. At the station there had been neither porter nor
conveyance, nor indeed anybody or anything at all except
themselves, their luggage, and a thin, kind man who represented
authority. Clark is two miles away from its station, and all the
way to it is uninhabited. Just at the station are a cluster of
those hasty buildings America flings down in out-of-the-way places
till she shall have leisure to make a splendid city; but the road
immediately curved away from these up into solitude and the evening
sky.

"You can't miss it," encouraged the
station-master. "Keep right along after your noses till they
knock up against Mrs. Twist's front gate. I'll look after
the menagerie--" thus did he describe the Twinkler luggage.
"Guess Mrs. Twist'll be sending for it as soon as you get
there. Guess she forgot you. Guess she's shaken up by young Mr.
Twist's arriving this very day.
I
wouldn't have forgotten you. No, not for a dozen
young Mr. Twists," he added gallantly.

"Why do you call him young Mr. Twist," inquired
Anna-Felicitas, "when he isn't? He must be at least thirty
or forty or fifty."

"You see, we know him quite well," said Anna-Rose
proudly, as they walked off. "He's a
great
friend of ours."

"You don't say," said the station-master, who was
chewing gum; and as the twins had not yet seen this being done they
concluded he had been interrupted in the middle of a meal by the
arrival of the train.

"Now mind," he called after them, "you do
whatever the road does. Give yourselves up to it, and however much
it winds about stick to it. You'll meet other roads, but
don't you take any notice of them."

Freed from their luggage, and for a moment from all care, the
twins went up the hill. It was the nicest thing in the world to be
going to see their friend again in quite a few minutes. They had,
ever since the collapse of the Sack arrangements, been missing him
very much. As they hurried on through the scented woods, past quiet
fields, between yellow-leaved hedges, the evening sky growing
duskier and the beckoning star lighter, they remembered Mr.
Twist's extraordinary kindness, his devoted and unfailing care,
with the warmest feelings of gratitude and affection. Even
Anna-Felicitas felt warm. How often had he rearranged her head when
it was hopelessly rolling about; how often had he fed her when she
felt better enough to be hungry. Anna-Felicitas was very hungry.
She still thought highly of pride and independence, but now
considered their proper place was after a good meal. And Anna-Rose,
with all the shameless cheerfulness of one who for a little has got
rid of her pride and is feeling very much more comfortable in
consequence remarked that one mustn't overdo independence.

"Let's hurry," said Anna-Felicitas. "I'm
so dreadfully hungry. I do so terribly want supper. And I'm
sure it's supper-time, and the Twists will have finished and we
mightn't get any."

"As though Mr. Twist wouldn't see to that!"
exclaimed Anna-Rose, proud and confident.

But she did begin to run, for she too was very hungry, and they
raced the rest of the way; which is why they arrived on the Twist
doorstep panting, and couldn't at first answer Amanda the head
maid's surprised and ungarnished inquiry as to what they
wanted, when she opened the door and found them there.

"We want Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose, as soon as she
could speak.

Amanda eyed them. "You from the village?" she asked,
thinking perhaps they might be a deputation of elder school
children sent to recite welcoming poems to Mr. Twist on his safe
return from the seat of war. Yet she knew all the school children
and everybody else in Clark, and none of them were these.

"No--from the station," panted Anna-Rose.

"We didn't see any village," panted
Anna-Felicitas.

"We want Mr. Twist please," said Anna-Rose struggling
with her breath.

Amanda eyed them. "Having supper," she said
curtly.

"Fortunate creature," gasped Anna-Felicitas, "I
hope he isn't eating it all."

"Will you announce us please?" said Anna-Rose putting
on her dignity. "The Miss Twinklers."

"The who?" said Amanda.

"The Miss Twinklers," said Anna-Rose, putting on still
more dignity, for there was that in Amanda's manner which
roused the Junker in her.

"Can't disturb him at supper," said Amanda
briefly.

"I assure you," said Anna-Felicitas, with the
earnestness of conviction, "that he'll like it. I think I
can undertake to promise he'll show no resentment
whatever."

Amanda half shut the door.

"We'll come in please," said Anna-Rose, inserting
herself into what was left of the opening. "Will you kindly
bear in mind that we're totally unaccustomed to the
doorstep?"

Amanda, doubtful, but unpractised in such a situation, permitted
herself, in spite of having as she well knew the whole of free and
equal America behind her, to be cowed. Well, perhaps not cowed, but
taken aback. It was the long words and the awful politeness that
did it. She wasn't used to beautiful long words like that,
except on Sundays when the clergyman read the prayers in church,
and she wasn't used to politeness. That so much of it should
come out of objects so young rendered Amanda temporarily dumb.

She wavered with the door. Instantly Anna-Rose slipped through
it; instantly Anna-Felicitas followed her.

"Kindly tell your master the Miss Twinklers have
arrived," said Anna-Rose, looking every inch a Junker. There
weren't many inches of Anna-Rose, but every one of them at that
moment, faced by Amanda's want of discipline, was sheer
Junker.

Amanda, who had never met a Junker in her happy democratic life,
was stirred into bristling emotion by the word master. She was
about to fling the insult of it from her by an impetuous and
ill-considered assertion that if he was her master she was his
mistress and so there now, when the bell which had rung once
already since they had been standing parleying rang again and more
impatiently, and the dining-room door opened and a head appeared.
The twins didn't know that it was Edith's head, but it
was.

"Amanda--" began Edith, in the appealing voice that
was the nearest she ever dared get to rebuke without Amanda giving
notice; but she stopped on seeing what, in the dusk of the hall,
looked like a crowd. "Oh--" said Edith, taken aback.
"Oh--" And was for withdrawing her head and shutting the
door.

But the twins advanced towards her and the stream of light
shining behind her and the agreeable smell streaming past her, with
outstretched hands.

"How do you do," they both said cordially. "
Don't
go away again."

Edith, feeling that here was something to protect her quietly
feeding mother from, came rather hastily through the door and held
it to behind her, while her unresponsive and surprised hand was
taken and shaken even as Mr. Sack's had been.

"We've come to see Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose.

"He's our friend," said Anna-Felicitas.

"He's our best friend," said Anna-Rose.

"Is he in there?" asked Anna-Felicitas, appreciatively
moving her nose, a particularly delicate instrument, round among
the various really heavenly smells that were issuing from the
dining-room and sorting them out and guessing what they probably
represented, the while water rushed into her mouth.

The sound of a chair being hastily pushed back was heard and Mr.
Twist suddenly appeared in the doorway.

"What is it, Edward?" a voice inside said.

Mr. Twist was a pale man, whose skin under no circumstances
changed colour except in his ears. These turned red when he was
stirred, and they were red now, and seemed translucent with the
bright light behind him shining through them.

The twins flew to him. It was wonderful how much pleased they
were to see him again. It was as if for years they had been
separated from their dearest friend. The few hours since the night
before had been enough to turn their friendship and esteem for him
into a warm proprietary affection. They felt that Mr. Twist
belonged to them. Even Anna-Felicitas felt it, and her eyes as she
beheld him were bright with pleasure.

"Oh there you are," cried Anna-Rose darting forward,
gladness in her voice, and catching hold of his arm.

"We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, beaming and
catching hold of his other arm.

"We got into difficulties," said Anna-Rose.

"We got into them at once," said Anna-Felicitas.

"They weren't our difficulties--"

"They were the Sacks'--"

"But they reacted on us--"

"And so here we are."

"Who is it, Edward?" asked the voice inside.

"Mrs. Sack ran away yesterday from Mr. Sack," went on
Anna-Rose eagerly.

"Mr. Sack was still quite warm and moist from it when we
got there," said Anna-Felicitas.

"Aunt Alice said we weren't ever to stay in a house
where they did that," said Anna-Rose.

"Where there wasn't a lady," said
Anna-Felicitas

"So when we saw that she wasn't there because she'd
gone, we turned straight round to you," said Anna. Rose.

"Like flowers turning to the sun," said
Anna-Felicitas, even in that moment of excitement not without
complacency at her own aptness.

"And left our things at the station," Anna-Rose rushed
on.

"And ran practically the whole way," said
Anna-Felicitas, "because of perhaps being late for supper and
you're having eaten it all, and we so dreadfully
hungry--"

"Who is it, Edward?" again called the voice inside,
louder and more insistently.

Mr. Twist didn't answer. He was quickly turning over the
situation in his mind.

He had not mentioned the twins to his mother, which would have
been natural, seeing how very few hours he had of reunion with her,
if she hadn't happened to have questioned him particularly as
to his fellow-passengers on the boat. Her questions had been
confined to the first-class passengers, and he had said,
truthfully, that he had hardly spoken to one of them, and not at
all to any of the women.