Christopher and Columbus (42 page)

Mr. Twist watched angrily. He had been driven into his office by
the disconcerting and incomprehensible overtures of Mr.
Wangelbecker, and had sat there watching in growing exasperation
ever since. When six struck and nobody showed the least sign of
going away he could bear it no longer, and touched the little
muffled electric bell that connected him to Mrs. Bilton in what
Anna-Felicitas called a mystical union--Anna II. was really
excessively tactless; she had said this to Mrs. Bilton in his
presence, and then enlarged on unions, mystical and otherwise, with
an embarrassing abundance of imagery--by buzzing gently against her
knee from the leg of the desk.

She laid down her pen, as though she had just finished adding up
a column, and went to him.

"Now don't talk," said Mr. Twist, putting up an
irritable hand directly she came in.

Mrs. Bilton looked at him in much surprise. "Talk, Mr.
Twist?" she repeated. "Why now, as though--"

"Don't
talk
I say, Mrs. Bilton, but listen. Listen now. I
can't stand seeing those children in there. It sheer makes my
gorge rise. I want you to fetch them in here--now don't
talk--you and me'll do the confounded waiting--no, no,
don't talk--they're to stay quiet in here till the last of
those Germans have gone. Just go and fetch them, please Mrs.
Bilton. No, no, we'll talk afterwards. I'll stay here till
they come." And he urged her out into the tea-room again.

The guests had finished their tea long ago, but still sat on,
for they were very comfortable. Obviously they were thoroughly
enjoying themselves, and all were growing, as time passed, more
manifestly at home. They were now having a kind of supper of ices
and fruit-salads. Five dollars, thought the sensible Germans, was
after all a great deal to pay for afternoon tea, however good the
cause might be and however important one's own ulterior
motives; and since one had in any case to pay, one should eat what
one could. So they kept the Annas very busy. There seemed to be no
end, thought the Annas as they ran hither and thither, to what a
German will hold.

Mrs. Bilton waylaid the heated and harried Anna-Rose as she was
carrying a tray of ices to a party she felt she had been carrying
ices to innumerable times already. The little curls beneath her cap
clung damply to her forehead. Her face was flushed and distressed.
What with having to carry so many trays, and remember so many
orders, and try at the same time to escape from the orderers and
their questions and admiration, she was in a condition not very far
from tears.

Mrs. Bilton took the tray out of her hands, and told her Mr.
Twist wanted to speak to her; and Anna-Rose was in such a general
bewilderment that she felt quite scared, and thought he must be
going to scold her. She went towards the office reluctantly. If Mr.
Twist were to be severe, she was sure she wouldn't be able not
to cry. She made her way very slowly to the office, and Mrs. Bilton
looked round the room for the other one. There was no sign of her.
Perhaps, thought Mrs. Bilton, she was fetching something in the
kitchen, and would appear in a minute; and seeing a group over by
the entrance door, for whom the tray she held was evidently
destined, gesticulating to her, she felt she had better keep them
quiet first and then go and look for Anna-Felicitas.

Mrs. Bilton set her teeth and plunged into her strange new
duties. Never would she have dreamed it possible that she should
have to carry trays to Germans. If Mr. Bilton could see her now he
would certainly turn in his grave. Well, she was a woman of grit,
of adhesiveness to her guns; if Mr. Bilton did see her and did turn
in his grave, let him; he would, she dared say, be more comfortable
on his other side after all these years.

For the next few minutes she hurried hither and thither, and
waited single-handed. She seemed to be swallowed up in activity. No
wonder that child had looked so hot and bewildered. Mr. Twist
didn't come and help, as he had promised, and nowhere was there
any sign of Anna-Felicitas; and the guests not only wanted things
to eat, they wanted to talk,--talk and ask questions. Well, she
would wait on them, but she wouldn't talk. She turned a dry,
parchment-like face to their conversational blandishments, and
responded only by adding up their bills. Wonderful are the workings
of patriotism. For the first time in her life, Mrs. Bilton was
grumbled at for not talking.

In the office Anna-Rose found Mr. Twist walking up and down.

"See here," he said, turning on her when she came in,
"I'm about tired of looking on at all this twittering
round that lot in there. You're through with that for to-day,
and maybe for to-morrow and the day after as well."

He waved his arm at the deep chair that had been provided for
his business meditations. "You'll sit down in that chair
now," he said severely, "and stay put."

Anna-Rose looked at him with a quivering lip. She went rather
unsteadily to the chair and tumbled into it. "I don't know
if you're angry or being kind," she said tremulously,
"but whichever it is I--I wish you wouldn't. I--I wish
you'd manage to be something that isn't either." And,
as she had feared, she began to cry.

"Anna-Rose," said Mr. Twist, staring down at her in
concern mixed with irritation--out there all those Germans, in here
the weeping child; what a day he was having--"for heaven's
sake don't do that."

"I know," sobbed Anna-Rose. "I don't want to.
It's awful being so natu--natu--naturally liquid."

"But what's the matter?" asked Mr. Twist
helplessly.

"Nothing," sobbed Anna-Rose.

He stood over her in silence for a minute, his hands in his
pockets. If he took them out he was afraid he might start stroking
her, and she seemed to him to be exactly between the ages when such
a form of comfort would be legitimate. If she were younger ... but
she was a great girl now; if she were older ... ah, if she were
older, Mr. Twist could imagine....

"You're overtired," he said aloofly.
"That's what you are."

"No," sobbed Anna-Rose.

"And the Germans have been too much for you."

"They haven't," sobbed Anna-Rose, her pride up at
the suggestion that anybody could ever be that.

"But they're not going to get the chance again,"
said Mr. Twist, setting his teeth as much as they would set, which
wasn't, owing to his natural kindliness, anything particular.
"Mrs. Bilton and me--" Then he remembered Anna-Felicitas.
"Why doesn't she come?" he asked.

"Who?" choked Anna-Rose.

"The other one. Anna II. Columbus."

"I haven't seen her for ages," sobbed Anna-Rose,
who had been much upset by Anna-Felicitas's prolonged
disappearance and had suspected her, though she couldn't
understand it after last night's finishings up, of secret
unworthy conduct in a corner with ice-cream.

Mr. Twist went to the door quickly and looked through. "I
can't see her either," he said. "Confound them--what
have they done to her? Worn her out too, I daresay. I shouldn't
wonder if she'd crawled off somewhere and were crying
too."

"Anna-F.--doesn't crawl," sobbed Anna-Rose,
"and she--doesn't cry but--I wish you'd
find--her."

"Well, will you stay where you are while I'm away,
then?" he said, looking at her from the door uncertainly.

And she seemed so extra small over there in the enormous chair,
and somehow so extra motherless as she obediently gurgled and
choked a promise not to move, that he found himself unable to
resist going back to her for a minute in order to pat her head.
"There, there," said Mr. Twist, very gently patting her
head, his heart yearning over her; and it yearned the more that,
the minute he patted, her sobs got worse; and also the more because
of the feel of her dear little head.

"You little bit of blessedness," murmured Mr. Twist
before he knew what he was saying; at which her sobs grew louder
than ever,--grew, indeed, almost into small howls, so long was it
since anybody had said things like that to her. It was her mother
who used to say things like that; things almost exactly like
that.

"Hush," said Mr. Twist in much distress, and with one
anxious eye on the half-open door, for Anna-Rose's sobs were
threatening to outdo the noise of teacups and ice-cream plates,
"hush, hush--here's a clean handkerchief--you just wipe up
your eyes while I fetch Anna II. She'll worry, you know, if she
sees you like this,--hush now, hush--there, there--and I expect
she's being miserable enough already, hiding away in some
corner. You wouldn't like to make her more miserable, would
you--"

And he pressed the handkerchief into Anna-Rose's hands, and
feeling much flurried went away to search for the other one who was
somewhere, he was sure, in a state of equal distress.

He hadn't however to search. He found her immediately. As he
came out of the door of his office into the tea-room he saw her
come into the tea-room from the door of the verandah, and proceed
across it towards the pantry. Why the verandah? wondered Mr. Twist.
He hurried to intercept her. Anyhow she wasn't either about to
cry or getting over having done it. He saw that at once with
relief. Nor was she, it would seem, in any sort of distress. On the
contrary, Anna-Felicitas looked particularly smug. He saw that once
too, with surprise,--why smug? wondered Mr. Twist. She had a
pleased look of complete satisfaction on her face. She was
oblivious, he noticed, as she passed between the tables, of the
guests who tried in vain to attract her attention and detain her
with orders. She wasn't at all hot, as Anna-Rose had been, nor
rattled, nor in any way discomposed; she was just smug. And also
she was unusually, extraordinarily pretty. How dared they all stare
up at her like that as she passed? And try to stop her. And want to
talk to her. And Wangelbecker actually laying his hand--no, his
paw; in his annoyance Mr. Twist wouldn't admit that the object
at the end of Mr. Wangelbecker's arm was anything but a paw--on
her wrist to get her to listen to some confounded order or other.
She took no notice of that either, but walked on towards the
pantry. Placidly. Steadily. Obvious. Smug.

"You're to come into the office," said Mr. Twist
when he reached her.

She turned her head and considered him with abstracted eyes.
Then she appeared to remember him. "Oh, it's you,"
she said amiably.

"Yes. It's me all right. And you're to come into
the office."

"I can't. I'm busy."

"Now Anna II.," said Mr. Twist, walking beside her
towards the pantry since she didn't stop but continued steadily
on her way, "that's trifling with the facts. You've
been in the garden. I saw you come in. Perhaps you'll tell me
the exact line of business you've been engaged in."

"Waiting," said Anna-Felicitas placidly.

"Waiting? In the garden? Where it's pitch dark, and
there's nobody to wait on?"

They had reached the pantry, and Anna-Felicitas gave an order to
Li Koo through the serving window before answering; the order was
tea and hot cinnamon toast for one.

"He's having his tea on the verandah," she said,
picking out the most delicious of the little cakes from the trays
standing ready, and carefully arranging them on a dish. "It
isn't pitch dark at all there. There's floods of light
coming through the windows. He won't come in."

"And why pray won't he come in?" asked Mr.
Twist.

"Because he doesn't like Germans."

"And who pray is he?"

"I don't know."

"Well I do," burst out Mr. Twist. "It's old
Ridding, of course. His name is Ridding. The old man who was here
yesterday. Now listen: I won't have--"

But Anna-Felicitas was laughing, and her eyes had disappeared
into two funny little screwed-up eyelashy slits.

Mr. Twist stopped abruptly and glared at her. These Twinklers.
That one in there shaken with sobs, this one in here shaken with
what she would no doubt call quite the contrary. His conviction
became suddenly final that the office was the place for both the
Annas. He and Mrs. Bilton would do the waiting.

"I'll take this," he said, laying hold of the dish
of cakes. "I'll send Mrs. Bilton for the tea. Go into the
office, Anna-Felicitas. Your sister is there and wants you badly. I
don't know," he added, as Li Koo pushed the tea-tray
through the serving window, "how it strikes you about
laughter, but it strikes me as sheer silly to laugh except at
something."

"Well, I was," said Anna-Felicitas, unscrewing her
eyes and with gentle firmness taking the plate of cakes from him
and putting it on the tray. "I was laughing at your swift
conviction that the man out there is Mr. Ridding. I don't know
who he is but I know heaps of people he isn't, and one of the
principal ones is Mr. Ridding."

"I'm going to wait on him," said Mr. Twist, taking
the tray.

"It would be most unsuitable," said Anna-Felicitas,
taking it too.

"Let go," said Mr. Twist, pulling.

"Is this to be an unseemly wrangle?" inquired
Anna-Felicitas mildly; and her eyes began to screw up again.

"If you'll oblige me by going into the office," he
said, having got the tray, for Anna-Felicitas was never one to
struggle, "Mrs. Bilton and me will do the rest of the waiting
for to-day."

He went out grasping the tray, and made for the verandah. His
appearance in this new rôle was greeted by the Germans with subdued
applause--subdued, because they felt Mr. Twist wasn't quite as
cordial to them as they had supposed he would be, and they were
accordingly being a little more cautious in their methods with him
than they had been at the beginning of the afternoon. He took no
notice of them, except that his ears turned red when he knocked
against a chair and the tray nearly fell out of his hands and they
all cried out
Houp là
. Damn them, thought Mr. Twist.
Houp là
indeed.