Christopher and Columbus (40 page)

She flicked an imaginary grain of dust off the cloth with the
corner of her apron to convey to him that she knew her business,
and hurried away to give the order. Indeed, they both hurried away
to give the order.

"Say--" called out Mr. Ridding, for he thought one
Anna would have been enough for this and he was pining to talk to
them; but the twins weren't to be stopped from both giving the
very first order, and they disappeared together into the
pantry.

Mrs. Bilton sat in the farthest corner at her desk, apparently
absorbed in an enormous ledger. In this ledger she was to keep
accounts and to enter the number of teas, and from this high seat
she was to preside over the activities of the
personnel
. She had retired hastily to it on the unexpected
entrance of Mr. Ridding, and pen in hand was endeavouring to look
as if she were totting up figures. As the pages were blank this was
a little difficult. And it was difficult to sit there quiet. She
wanted to get down and go and chat with the guest; she felt she had
quite a good deal she could say to him; she had a great itch to go
and talk, but Mr. Twist had been particular that to begin with,
till the room was fairly full, he and she should leave the guests
entirely to the Annas.

He himself was going to keep much in the background at all
times, but through the half-open door of his office he could see
and hear; and he couldn't help thinking, as he sat there
watching and observed the effulgence of the beams the old gentleman
just arrived turned on the twins, that the first guest appeared to
be extraordinarily and undesirably affectionate. He thought he had
seen him at the Cosmopolitan, but wasn't sure. He didn't
know that the Annas, after their conversation with him there, felt
towards him as old friends, and he considered their manner was a
little unduly familiar. Perhaps, after all, he thought uneasily,
Mrs. Bilton had better do the waiting and the Annas sit with him in
the office. The ledger could be written up at the end of the day.
Or he could hire somebody....

Mr. Twist felt worried, and pulled at his ear. And why was there
only one guest? It was twenty minutes to five; and this time
yesterday the road had been choked with cars. He felt very much
worried. With every minute this absence of guests grew more and
more remarkable. Perhaps he had better, this beings the opening
day, go in and welcome the solitary one there was. Perhaps it would
be wise to elaborate the idea of the inn for his edification, so
that he could hand on what he had heard to those others who so
unaccountably hadn't come.

He got up and went into the other room; and just as
Anna-Felicitas was reappearing with the teapot followed by
Anna-Rose with a tray of cakes, Mr. Ridding, who was sitting up
expectantly and giving his tie a little pat of adjustment,
perceived bearing down upon him that fellow Teapot Twist.

This was a blow. He hadn't run risks and walked in the
afternoon heat to sit and talk to Twist. Mr. Ridding was a friendly
and amiable old man, and at any other time would have talked to him
with pleasure; but he had made up his mind for the Twinklers as one
makes up one's mind for a certain dish and is ravaged by
strange fury if it isn't produced. Besides, hang it all, he was
going to pay five dollars for his tea, and for that sum he ought to
least to have it under the conditions he preferred.

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Twist," he nevertheless said as
Mr. Twist introduced himself, his eyes, however, roving over the
ministering Annas,--a roving Mr. Twist noticed with fresh
misgivings.

It made him sit down firmly at the table and say, "If you
don't mind, Mr.--"

"Ridding is my name."

"If you don't mind, Mr. Ridding, I'd like to
explain our objects to you."

But he couldn't help wondering what he would do if there
were several tables with roving-eyed guests at them, it being clear
that there wouldn't be enough of him in such a case to go
round.

Mr. Ridding, for his part, couldn't help wondering why the
devil Teapot Twist sat down unasked at his table. Five dollars.
Come now. For that a man had a right to a table to himself.

But anyhow the Annas wouldn't have stayed talking for at
that moment a car stopped in the lane and quite a lot of footsteps
were heard coming up the neatly sanded path. Mr. Ridding pricked up
his ears, for from the things he had heard being said all the
evening before and all that morning in Acapulco, besides most of
the night from the lips of that strange old lady with whom by some
dreadful mistake he was obliged to sleep, he hadn't supposed
there would be exactly a rush.

Four young men came in. Mr. Ridding didn't know them. No
class, he thought, looking them over; and was seized with a feeling
of sulky vexation suitable to twenty when he saw with what
enthusiasm the Twinklers flew to meet them. They behaved, thought
Mr. Ridding crossly, as if they were the oldest and dearest
friends.

"Who are they?" he asked curtly of Mr. Twist, cutting
into the long things he was saying.

"Only the different experts who helped me rebuild the
place," said Mr. Twist a little impatiently; he too had
pricked up his ears in expectation at the sound of all those feet,
and was disappointed.

He continued what Mr. Ridding, watching the group of young
people, called sulkily to himself his rigmarole, but continued more
abstractedly. He also was watching the Annas and the experts. The
young men were evidently in the highest spirits, and were walking
round the Annas admiring their get-up and expressing their
admiration in laughter and exclamations. One would have thought
they had known each other all their lives. The twins were wreathed
in smiles. They looked as pleased, Mr. Twist thought, as cats that
are being stroked. Almost he could hear them purring. He glanced
helplessly across to where Mrs. Bilton sat, as he had told her,
bent pen in hand over the ledger. She didn't move. It was true
he had told her to sit like that, but hadn't the woman any
imagination? What she ought to do now was to bustle forward and
take that laughing group in charge.

"As I was telling you--" resumed Mr. Twist, returning
with an effort to Mr. Ridding, only to find his eyes fixed on the
young people and catch an unmistakably thwarted look in his
face.

In a flash Mr. Twist realized what he had come for,--it was
solely to see and talk to the twins. He must have noticed them at
the Cosmopolitan, and come out just for them. Just for that.
"Unprincipled old scoundrel," said Mr. Twist under his
breath, his ears flaming. Aloud he said, "As I was telling
you--" and went on distractedly with his rigmarole.

Then some more people came in. They had motored, but the noise
the experts were making had drowned the sound of their arrival. Mr.
Ridding and Mr. Twist, both occupied in glowering at the group in
the middle of the room, were made aware of their presence by
Anna-Felicitas suddenly dropping the pencil and tablets she had
been provided with for writing down orders and taking an uncertain
and obviously timid step forward.

They both looked round in the direction of her reluctant step,
and saw a man and two women standing on the threshold. Mr. Twist,
of course, didn't know them; he hardly knew anybody, even by
sight. But Mr. Ridding did. That is, he knew them well by sight and
had carefully avoided knowing them any other way, for they were
Germans.

Mr. Ridding was one of those who didn't like Germans. He was
a man who liked or disliked what his daily paper told him to, and
his daily paper was anti-German. For reasons natural to one who
disliked Germans and yet at the same time had a thirstily
affectionate disposition, he declined to believe the prevailing
theory about the Twinklers. Besides, he didn't believe it
anyhow. At that age people were truthful, and he had heard them
explain they had come from England and had acquired their rolling
r's during a sojourn abroad. Why should he doubt? But he
refrained from declaring his belief in their innocence of the
unpopular nationality, owing to a desire to avoid trouble in that
bedroom he couldn't call his but was obliged so humiliatingly
to speak of as ours. Except, however, for the Twinklers, for all
other persons of whom it was said that they were Germans,
naturalized or not, immediate or remote, he had, instructed by his
newspaper, what his called a healthy instinctive abhorrence.

"And she's got it too," he thought, much gratified
at this bond between them, as he noted Anna-Felicitas's
hesitating and reluctant advance to meet the new guests.
"There's proof that people are wrong."

But what Anna-Felicitas had got was stage-fright; for here were
the first strangers, the first real, proper visitors such as any
shop or hotel might have. Mr. Ridding was a friend. So were the
experts friends. This was trade coming in,--real business being
done. Anna-Felicitas hadn't supposed she would be shy when the
long-expected and prepared-for moment arrived, but she was. And it
was because the guests seemed so disconcertingly pleased to see
her. Even on the threshold the whole three stood smiling broadly at
her. She hadn't been prepared for that, and it unnerved
her.

"Charming, charming," said the newcomers, advancing
towards her and embracing the room and the tables and the Annas in
one immense inclusive smile of appreciation.

"Know those?" asked Mr. Ridding, again cutting into
Mr. Twist's explanations.

"No," said he.

"Wangelbeckers," said Mr. Ridding briefly.

"Indeed," said Mr. Twist, off whose ignorance the name
glanced harmlessly. "Well, as I was telling yous--"

"But this is delicious--this is a conception of
genius," said Mr. Wangelbecker all-embracingly, after he had
picked up Anna-Felicitas's tablets and restored them to her
with a low bow.

"Charming, charming," said Mrs. Wangelbecker, looking
round.

"Real cunning," said Miss Wangelbecker, "as they
say here." And she laughed at Anna-Felicitas with an air of
mutual understanding.

"Will you have tea or coffee?" asked Anna-Felicitas
nervously. "Or perhaps you would prefer frothed chocolate.
Each of these beverages can be--"

"Delicious, delicious," said Mrs. Wangelbecker,
enveloping Anna-Felicitas in her smile.

"The frothed chocolate is very delicious," said
Anna-Felicitas with a kind of grave nervousness.

"Ah--charming, charming," said Mrs. Wangelbecker,
obstinately appreciative.

"And there's ice-cream as well," said
Anna-Felicitas, her eyes on her tablets so as to avoid seeing the
Wangelbecker smile. "And--and a great many kinds of
cakes--"

"Well, hadn't we better sit down first," said Mr.
Wangelbecker genially, "or are all the tables
engaged?"

"Oh I
beg
your pardon," said Anna-Felicitas, blushing and
moving hastily towards a table laid for three.

"Ah--that's better," said Mr. Wangelbecker,
following closely on her heels. "Now we can go into the
serious business of ordering what we shall eat comfortably. But
before I sit down allow me to present myself. My name is
Wangelbecker. An honest German name. And this is my wife. She too
had an honest German name before she honoured mine by accepting
it--she was a Niedermayer. And this is my daughter, with whom I
trust you will soon be friends."

And they all put out their hands to be shaken, and
Anna-Felicitas shook them.

"Look at that now," said Mr. Ridding watching.

"As I was telling you--" said Mr. Twist irritably, for
really why should Anna II. shake hands right off with strangers?
Her business was to wait, not to get shaking hands. He must point
out to her very plainly.

"Pleased to meet you Miss von Twinkler," said Mrs.
Wangelbecker; and at this Anna-Felicitas was so much startled that
she dropped her tablets a second time.

"As they say here," laughed Miss Wangelbecker, again
with that air of mutual comprehension.

"But they don't," said Anna Felicitas hurriedly,
taking her tablets from the restoring hand of Mr. Wangelbecker and
forgetting to thank him.

"What?" said Mrs. Wangelbecker. "When you are
both so charming that for once the phrase must be
sincere?"

"Miss von Twinkler means she finds it wiser not to use her
title," said Mr. Wangelbecker. "Well, perhaps--perhaps.
Wiser perhaps from the point of view of convenience. Is that where
you will sit, Güstchen? Still, we Germans when we are together can
allow ourselves the refreshment of being ourselves, and I hope to
be frequently the means of giving you the relief, you and your
charming sister, of hearing yourselves addressed correctly. It is a
great family, the von Twinklers. A great family. In these sad days
we Germans must hang together--"

Anna-Felicitas stood, tablets in hand, looking helplessly from
one Wangelbecker to the other. The situation was beyond her.

"But--" she began; then stopped. "Shall I bring
you tea or coffee?" she ended by asking again.

"Well now this is amusing," said Mr. Wangelbecker,
sitting down comfortably and leaning his elbows on the table.
"Isn't it, Güstchen. To see a von Twinkler playing at
waiting on us."

"Charming, charming," said his wife.

"It's real sporting," said his daughter, laughing
up at Anna-Felicitas, again with comprehension,--with, almost, a
wink. "You must let me come and help. I'd look nice in
that costume, wouldn't I mother."

"There is also frothed choc--"

"I suppose, now, Mr. Twist--he must be completely
sympathy--" interrupted Mr. Wangelbecker confidentially,
leaning forward and lowering his voice a little.

Anna-Felicitas gazed at him blankly. Some more people were
coming in at the door, and behind them she could see on the path
yet more, and Anna-Rose was in the pantry fetching the tea for the
experts.

"Would you mind telling me what I am to bring you?"
she asked. "Because I'm afraid--"