Christopher and Columbus (22 page)

Fury against her injustice shook and shattered Mr. Twist. Not so
could fair and affectionate living together be conducted, on that
basis of suspicion, distrust, jealousy. Through his instinct,
though not through his brain, shot the conviction that his mother
was jealous of the twins,--jealous of the youth of the twins, and
of their prettiness, and goodness, and of the power, unknown to
them, that these things gave them. His brain was impervious to such
a conviction, because it was an innocent brain, and the idea would
never have entered it that a woman of his mother's age, well
over sixty, could be jealous in that way; but his instinct knew
it.

The last thing his mother said as he left the drawing-room was,
"You have killed me. You have killed your own mother. And just
because of those girls."

And Mr. Twist, shocked at this parting shot of unfairness, could
find, search as he might, nothing to be said for his mother's
point of view. It simply wasn't true. It simply was
delusion.

Nor could she find anything to be said for his, but then she
didn't try to, it was so manifestly unforgivable. All she could
do, faced by this bitter sorrow, was to leave Edward to God.
Sternly, as he flung out of the room at last, unsoftened,
untouchable, deaf to her even when she used the tone he had always
obeyed the tone of authority, she said to herself she must leave
her son to God. God knew. God would judge. And Clark too would
know; and Clark too would judge.

Left alone in the drawing-room on this terrible night of her
second great bereavement, Mrs. Twist was yet able, she was thankful
to feel, to resolve she would try to protect her son as long as she
could from Clark. From God she could not, if she would, protect
him; but she would try to protect him even now, as she had always
protected him, from earthly harm and hurt. Clark would, however,
surely know in time, protect as she might, and judge between her
and Edward. God knew already, and was already judging. God and
Clark.... Poor Edward.

The twins, who had gone to bed at half-past nine, shepherded by
Edith, in the happy conviction that they had settled down
comfortably for some time, were surprised to find at breakfast that
they hadn't.

They had taken a great fancy to Edith, in spite of a want of
restfulness on her part that struck them while they were finishing
their supper, and to which at last they drew her attention. She was
so kind, and so like Mr. Twist; but though she looked at them with
hospitable eyes and wore an expression of real benevolence, it
didn't escape their notice that she seemed to be listening to
something that wasn't, anyhow, them, and to be expecting
something that didn't, anyhow, happen. She went several times
to the door through which her brother and mother had disappeared,
and out into whatever part of the house lay beyond it, and when she
came back after a minute or two was as wanting in composure as
ever.

At last, finding these abrupt and repeated interruptions
hindered any real talk, they pointed out to her that reasoned
conversation was impossible if one of the parties persisted in not
being in the room, and inquired of her whether it were peculiar to
her, or typical of the inhabitants of America, to keep on being
somewhere else. Edith smiled abstractedly at them, said nothing,
and went out again.

She was longer away this time, and the twins having eaten, among
other things, a great many meringues, grew weary of sitting with
those they hadn't eaten lying on the dish in front of them
reminding them of those they had. They wanted, having done with
meringues, to get away from them and forget them. They wanted to go
into another room now, where there weren't any. Anna-Felicitas
felt, and told Anna-Rose who was staring listlessly at the
left-over meringues, that it was like having committed murder, and
being obliged to go on looking at the body long after you were
thoroughly tired of it. Anna-Rose agreed, and said that she wished
now she hadn't committed meringues,--anyhow so many of
them.

Then at last Edith came back, and told them she was sure they
were very tired after their long day, and suggested their going
upstairs to their rooms. The rooms were ready, said Edith, the
baggage had come, and she was sure they would like to have nice hot
baths and go to bed.

The twins obeyed her readily, and she checked a desire on their
part to seek out her mother and brother first and bid them
good-night, on the ground that her mother and brother were busy;
and while the twins were expressing polite regret, and requesting
her to convey their regret for them to the proper quarter in a flow
of well-chosen words that astonished Edith, who didn't know how
naturally Junkers make speeches, she hurried them by the
drawing-room door through which, shut though it was, came sounds of
people being, as Anna-Felicitas remarked, very busy indeed; and
Anna-Rose, impressed by the quality and volume of Mr. Twist's
voice as it reached her passing ears, told Edith that intimately as
she knew her brother she had never known him as busy as that
before.

Edith said nothing, but continued quickly up the stairs.

They found they each had a bedroom, with a door between, and
that each bedroom had a bathroom of its own, which filled them with
admiration and pleasure. There had only been one bathroom at Uncle
Arthur's, and at home in Pomerania there hadn't been any at
all. The baths there had been vessels brought into one's
bedroom every night, into which servants next morning poured water
out of buckets, having previously pumped the water into the bucket
from the pump in the backyard. They put Edith in possession of
these facts while she helped them unpack and brushed and plaited
their hair for them, and she was much astonished,--both at the
conditions of discomfort and slavery they revealed as prevalent in
other countries, and at the fact that they, the Twinklers, should
hail from Pomerania.

Pomerania, reflected Edith as she tied up their pigtails with
the ribbons handed to her for that purpose, used to be in Germany
when she went to school, and no doubt still was. She became more
thoughtful than ever, though she still smiled at them, for how
could she help it? Everyone, Edith was certain, must needs smile at
the Twinklers even if they didn't happen to be one's own
dear brother's
protegees
. And when they came out, very clean and with
scrubbed pink ears, from their bath, she not only smiled at them as
she tucked them up in bed, but she kissed them good-night.

Edith, like her brother, was born to be a mother,--one of the
satisfactory sort that keeps you warm and doesn't argue with
you. Germans or no Germans the Twinklers were the cutest little
things, thought Edith; and she kissed them, with the same hunger
with which, being now thirty-eight, she was beginning to kiss
puppies.

"You remind me so of Mr. Twist," murmured
Anna-Felicitas sleepily, as Edith tucked her up and kissed her.

"You do all the sorts of things he does," murmured
Anna-Rose, also sleepily, when it was her turn to be tucked up and
kissed; and in spite of a habit now fixed in her of unquestioning
acceptance and uncritical faith. Edith went downstairs to her
restless vigil outside the drawing-room door a little
surprised.

At breakfast the twins learnt to their astonishment that, though
appearances all pointed the other way what they were really doing
was not being stationary at all, but merely having a night's
lodging and breakfast between, as it were, two trains.

Mr. Twist, who looked pale and said shortly when the twins
remarked solicitously on it that he felt pale, briefly announced
the fact.

"What?" exclaimed Anna-Rose, staring at Mr. Twist and
then at Edith--Mrs. Twist, they were told, was breakfasting in
bed--"Why, we've unpacked."

"You will re-pack," said Mr. Twist.

They found difficulty in believing their ears.

"But we've settled in," remonstrated
Anna-Felicitas, after an astonished pause.

"You will settle out," said Mr. Twist.

He frowned. He didn't look at them, he frowned at his own
teapot. He had made up his mind to be very short with the Annas
until they were safely out of the house, and not permit himself to
be entangled by them in controversy. Also, he didn't want to
look at them if he could help it. He was afraid that if he did he
might be unable not to take them both in his arms and beg their
pardon for the whole horridness of the world.

But if he didn't look at them, they looked at him. Four
round, blankly surprised eyes were fixed, he knew, unblinkingly on
him.

"We're seeing you in quite a new light," said
Anna-Rose at last, troubled and upset.

"Maybe," said Mr. Twist, frowning at his teapot.

"Perhaps you will be so good," said Anna-Felicitas
stiffly, for at all times she hated being stirred up and uprooted,
"as to tell us where you think we're going to."

"Because," said Anna-Rose, her voice trembling a
little, not only at the thought of fresh responsibilities, but also
with a sense of outraged faith, "our choice of residence, as
you may have observed, is strictly limited."

Mr. Twist, who had spent an hour before breakfast with Edith,
whose eyes were red, informed them that they were
en route
for California.

"To those other people," said Anna-Rose. "I
see."

She held her head up straight.

"Well, I expect they'll be very glad to see us,"
she said after a silence; and proceeded, her chin in the air, to
look down her nose, because she didn't want Mr. Twist, or Edith
or Anna-Felicitas, to notice that her eyes had gone and got tears
in them. She angrily wished she hadn't got such damp eyes. They
were no better than swamps, she thought--undrained swamps; and
directly fate's foot came down a little harder than usual, up
oozed the lamentable liquid. Not thus should the leader of an
expedition behave. Not thus, she was sure, did the original
Christopher. She pulled herself together; and after a minute's
struggle was able to leave off looking down her nose.

But meanwhile Anna-Felicitas had informed Mr. Twist with gentle
dignity that he was obviously tired of them.

"Not at all," said Mr. Twist.

Anna-Felicitas persisted. "In view of the facts," she
said gently, "I'm afraid your denial carries no
weight."

"The facts," said Mr. Twist, taking up his teapot and
examining it with care, "are that I'm coming with
you."

"Oh are you," said Anna-Felicitas much more briskly;
and it was here that Anna-Rose's eyes dried up.

"That rather dishes your theory," said Mr. Twist,
still turning his teapot about in his hands. "Or would if it
didn't happen that I--well, I happen to have some business to
do in California, and I may as well do it now as later. Still, I
could have gone by a different route or train, so you see your
theory
is
rather dished, isn't it?"

"A little," admitted Anna-Felicitas. "Not
altogether. Because if you really like our being here, here we are.
So why hurry us off somewhere else so soon?"

Mr. Twist perceived that he was being led into controversy in
spite of his determination not to be. "You're very
wise," he said shortly, "but you don't know
everything. Let us avoid conjecture and stick to facts. I'm
going to take you to California, and hand you over to your friends.
That's all you know, and all you need to know."

"As Keats very nearly said," said Anna-Rose

"And if our friends have run away?" suggested
Anna-Felicitas.

"Oh Lord," exclaimed Mr. Twist impatiently, putting
the teapot down with a bang, "do you think we're running
away all the time in America?"

"Well, I think you seem a little restless," said
Anna-Felicitas.

Thus it was that two hours later the twins found themselves at
the Clark station once more, once more starting into the unknown,
just as if they had never done it before, and gradually, as they
adapted themselves to the sudden change, such is the
india-rubber-like quality of youth, almost with the same
hopefulness. Yet they couldn't but meditate, left alone on the
platform while Mr. Twist checked the baggage, on the mutability of
life. They seemed to live in a kaleidoscope since the war began
what a series of upheavals and readjustments had been theirs!
Silent, and a little apart on the Clark platform, they reflected
retrospectively; and as they counted up their various starts since
the days, only fourteen months ago, when they were still in their
home in Germany, apparently as safely rooted, as unshakably settled
as the pine trees in their own forests, they couldn't but
wonder at the elusiveness of the unknown, how it wouldn't let
itself be caught up with and at the trouble it was giving them.

They had had so many changes in the last year that they did want
now to have time to become familiar with some one place and people.
Already however, being seventeen, they were telling themselves, and
each other that after all, since the Sacks had failed them,
California was their real objective. Not Clark at all. Clark had
never been part of their plans. Uncle Arthur and Aunt Alice
didn't even know it existed. It was a side-show; just a little
thing of their own, an extra excursion slipped in between the Sacks
and the Delloggs. True they had hoped to stay there some time,
perhaps even for months,--anyhow, time to mend their stockings in,
which were giving way at the toes unexpectedly, seeing how new they
were; but ultimately California was the place they had to go to. It
was only that it was a little upsetting to be whisked out of Clark
at a moment's notice.

"I expect you'll explain everything to us when
we're in the train and have lots of time," Anna-Rose had
said to Mr. Twist as the car moved away from the house and Edith,
red-eyed, waved her handkerchief from the doorstep.