Christopher and Columbus (45 page)

"Why they're wanting to boycott the teapot?"

"No. Why do they think the inn--"

"The Miss Twinklers are German."

"Half."

"The half that matters--begging my absent wife's
pardon. I know all about that, you see. You started me off thinking
them over by that ward notion of yours. It didn't take me long.
It was pretty transparent. So transparent that my opinion of the
intelligence of my fellow-townsfolk has considerably lowered. But
we live in unbalanced times. I guess it's women at the bottom
of this. Women got on to it first, and the others caught the idea
as they'd catch scarlet fever. It's a kind of scarlet
fever, this spy scare that's about. Mind you, I admit the germs
are certainly present among us." And the lawyer smiled. He
thought he saw he had made a little joke in that last remark.

Mr. Twist was not in the condition to see jokes, and didn't
smile. "Do you mean to say those children--" he
began.

"They're not regarded as children by any one except
you."

"Well, if they're not," said Mr. Twist,
remembering the grass by the wayside in the lane and what he had so
recently met in it, "I guess I'd best be making tracks.
But I know better. And so would you if you'd seen them on the
boat. Why, twelve was putting their age too high on that
boat."

"No doubt. No doubt. Then all I can say is they've
matured pretty considerably since. Now do you really want me to
tell you what is being believed?"

"Of course. It's what I've come for."

"You mayn't find it precisely exhilarating, Mr.
Twist."

"Go ahead."

"What Acapulco says--and Los Angeles, I'm told, too,
and probably by this time the whole coast--is that you threw over
your widowed mother, of whom you're the only son, and came off
here with two German girls who got hold of you on the boat--now,
Mr. Twist, don't interrupt--on the boat crossing from England,
that England had turned them out as undesirable aliens--quite so,
Mr. Twist, but let me finish--that they're in the pay of the
German Government--no doubt, no doubt, Mr. Twist--and that
you're their cat's-paw. It is known that the inn each
afternoon has been crowded with Germans, among them Germans already
suspected, I can't say how rightly or how wrongly, of spying,
and that these people are so familiar with the Miss von Twinklers
as to warrant the belief in a complete secret
understanding."

For a moment Mr. Twist continued both his silence and his stare.
Then he took off his spectacles and wiped them. His hand shook. The
lawyer was startled. Was there going to be emotion? One never knew
with that sort of lips. "You're not--" he began.

Then he saw that Mr. Twist was trying not to laugh.

"I'm glad you take it that way," he said, relieved
but surprised.

"It's so darned funny," said Mr. Twist,
endeavouring to compose his features. "To anybody who knows
those twins it's so darned funny. Cat's-paw. Yes--rather
feel that myself. Cat's-paw. That does seem a bit of a
bull's eye--" And for a second or two his features flatly
refused to compose.

The lawyer watched him. "Yes," he said. "Yes. But
the effect of these beliefs may be awkward."

"Oh, damned," agreed Mr. Twist, going solemn
again.

And there came over him in a flood the clear perception of what
it would mean,--the sheer disaster of it, the horrible situation
those helpless Annas would be in. What a limitless fool he must
have been in his conduct of the whole thing. His absorption in the
material side of it had done the trick. He hadn't been clever
enough, not imaginative enough, nor, failing that, worldly enough
to work the other side properly. When he found there was no Dellogg
he ought to have insisted on seeing Mrs. Dellogg, intrusion or no
intrusion, and handing over the twins; and then gone away and left
them. A woman was what was wanted. Fool that he was to suppose that
he, a man, an unmarried man, could get them into anything but a
scrape. But he was so fond of them. He just couldn't leave
them. And now here they all were, in this ridiculous and terrible
situation.

"There are two things you can do," said the
lawyer.

"Two?" said Mr. Twist, looking at him with anxious
eyes. "For the life of me I can't see even one. Except
running amoke in slander actions--"

"Tut, tut," said the lawyer, waving that aside.
"No. There are two courses to pursue. And they're not
alternative, but simultaneous. You shut down the inn--at once,
to-morrow--that's Saturday. Close on Saturday, and give notice
you don't re-open--now pray let me finish--close the inn as an
inn, and use it simply as a private residence. Then, as quick as
may be, marry those girls."

"Marry what girls?"

"The Miss von Twinklers."

Mr. Twist stared at him. "Marry them?" he said
helplessly. "Marry them who to?"

"You for one."

Mr. Twist stared at him in silence. Then he said,
"You've said that to me before."

"Yep. And I'll say it again. I'll go on saying it
till you've done it."

"'Well, if that's all you've got to offer as a
suggestion for a way out--"

But Mr. Twist wasn't angry this time; he was too much
battered by events; he hadn't the spirits to be angry.

"You've--got to--marry--one--of--those--girls,"
said the lawyer, at each word smiting the table with his open palm.
"Turn her into an American. Get her out of this being a German
business. And be able at the same time to protect the one
who'll be your sister in-law. Why, even if you didn't want
to, which is sheer nonsense, for of course any man would want to--I
know what I'm talking about because I've seen
them--it's your plain duty, having got them into this
mess."

"But--marry which?" asked Mr. Twist, with increased
helplessness and yet a manifest profound anxiety for further
advice.

For the first time the lawyer showed impatience "Oh--either
or both," he said. "For God's sake don't be such
a--"

He pulled up short.

"I didn't quite mean that," he resumed, again
calm. "The end of that sentence was, as no doubt you guess,
fool. I withdraw it, and will substitute something milder. Have you
any objection to ninny?"

No, Mr. Twist didn't mind ninny, or any other word the
lawyer might choose, he was in such a condition of mental groping
about. He took out his handkerchief and wiped away the beads on his
forehead and round his mouth.

"I'm thirty-five," he said, looking terribly
worried.

Propose to an Anna? The lawyer may have seen them, but he
hadn't heard them; and the probable nature of their comments if
Mr. Twist proposed to them--to one, he meant of course, but both
would comment, the one he proposed to and the one he
didn't--caused his imagination to reel. He hadn't much
imagination; he knew that now, after his conduct of this whole
affair, but all there was of it reeled.

"I'm thirty-five," he said helplessly.

"Pooh," said the lawyer, indicating the negligibleness
of this by a movement of his shoulder.

"They're seventeen," said Mr. Twist.

"Pooh," said the lawyer again, again indicating
negligibleness. "My wife was--"

"I know. You told me that last time. Oh, I know all
that
" said Mr. Twist with sudden passion. "But
these are children. I tell you they're
children
--"

"Pooh," said the lawyer a third time, a third time
indicating negligibleness.

Then he got up and held out his hand. "Well, I've told
you," he said. "You wanted to know, and I've told
you. And I'll tell you one thing more, Mr. Twist. Whichever of
those girls takes you, you'll have the sweetest, prettiest wife
of any man in the world except one, and that's the man who has
the luck to get the other one. Why, sweetest and prettiest are poor
words. She'll be the most delectable, the most--"

Mr. Twist rose from his chair in such haste that he pushed the
table crooked. His ears flamed.

"See here," he said very loud. "I won't have
you talk familiarly like that about my wife."

Wife. The word had a remarkable effect on him. It churned him
all up. His thoughts were a chaotic jumble, and his driving on the
way home matched them. He had at least three narrow shaves at cross
streets before he got out of the town and for an entire mile
afterwards he was on the wrong side of the road. During this
period, deep as he was in confused thought, he couldn't but
vaguely notice the anger on the faces of the other drivers and the
variety and fury of their gesticulations, and it roused a dim
wonder in him.

Wife. How arid existence had been for him up to then in regard
to the affections, how knobbly the sort of kisses he had received
in Clark. They weren't kisses; they were disapproving pecks.
Always disapproving. Always as if he hadn't done enough, or
been enough, or was suspected of not going to do or be enough.

His wife. Mr. Twist dreadfully longed to kiss
somebody,--somebody kind and soft, who would let herself be adored.
She needn't even love him,--he knew he wasn't the sort of
man to set passion alight; she need only be kind, and a little fond
of him, and let him love her, and be his very own.

His own little wife. How sweet. How almost painfully sweet. Yes.
But the Annas....

When he thought of the Annas, Mr. Twist went damp. He might
propose--indeed, everything pointed to his simply having got
to--but wouldn't they very quickly dispose? And then what? That
lawyer seemed to think all he had to do was to marry them right
away; not them, of course,--one; but they were so very plural in
his mind. Funny man, thought Mr. Twist; funny man,--yet otherwise
so sagacious. It is true he need only propose to one of them, for
which he thanked God, but he could imagine what that one, and what
the other one too, who would be sure to be somewhere quite near
would ... no, he couldn't imagine; he preferred not to
imagine.

Mr. Twist's dampness increased, and a passing car got his
mud-guard. It was a big car which crackled with language as it
whizzed on its way, and Mr. Twist, slewed by the impact half across
the road, then perceived on which side he had been driving.

The lane up to the inn was in its middle-day emptiness and
somnolence. Where Anna-Felicitas and Elliott had been sitting cool
and shaded when he passed before, there was only the pressed-down
grass and crushed flowers in a glare of sun. She had gone home long
ago of course. She said she was going to be very busy. Secretly he
wished she hadn't gone home, and that little Christopher too
might for a bit be somewhere else, so that when he arrived he
wouldn't immediately have to face everybody at once. He wanted
to think; he wanted to have time to think; time before four
o'clock came, and with four o'clock, if he hadn't come
to any conclusion about shutting up the inn--and how could he if
nobody gave him time to think?--those accursed, swarming Germans.
It was they who had done all this. Mr. Twist blazed into sudden
fury. They and their blasted war....

At the gate stood Anna-Rose. Her face looked quite pale in the
green shade of the tunnelled-out syringa bushes. She as peering out
down the lane watching him approach. This was awful, thought Mr.
Twist. At the very gate one of them. Confronted at once. No time,
not a minute's time given him to think.

"Oh," cried out Anna-Rose the instant he pulled up,
for she had waved to him to stop when he tried to drive straight on
round to the stable, "she isn't with you?"

"Who isn't?" asked Mr. Twist.

Anna-Rose became paler than ever. "She has been
kidnapped," she said.

"How's that?" said Mr. Twist, staring at her from
the car.

"Kidnapped," repeated Anna-Rose, with wide-open
horror-stricken eyes; for from her nursery she carried with her at
the bottom of her mind, half-forgotten but ready to fly up to the
top at any moment of panic, an impression that the chief activities
and recreations of all those Americans who weren't really good
were two: they lynched, and they kidnapped. They lynched you if
they didn't like you enough, and if they liked you too much
they kidnapped you. Anna-Felicitas, exquisite and unsuspecting, had
been kidnapped. Some American's concupiscent eye had alighted
on her, observed her beauty, and marked her down. No other
explanation was possible of a whole morning's absence from
duties of one so conscientious and painstaking as Anna-Felicitas.
She never shirked; that is, she never had been base enough to shirk
alone. If there was any shirking to be done they had always done it
together. As the hours passed and she didn't appear, Anna-Rose
had tried to persuade herself that she must have motored into
Acapulco with Mr. Twist, strange and unnatural and reprehensible
and ignoble as such arch shirking would have been; and now that the
car had come back empty except for Mr. Twist she was convinced the
worst had happened--her beautiful, her precious Columbus had been
kidnapped.

"Kidnapped," she said again, wringing her hands.

Mr. Twist was horror-struck too, for he thought she was
announcing the kidnapping of Mrs. Bilton. Somehow he didn't
think of Anna-Felicitas; he had seen her too recently. But that
Mrs. Bilton should be kidnapped seemed to him to touch the lowest
depths of American criminal enterprise and depravity. At the same
time though he recoiled before this fresh blow a thought did fan
through his mind with a wonderful effect of coolness and
silence,--"Then they'll gag her," he said.

"What?" cried Anna-Rose, as though a whip had lashed
her. "Gag her?" And pulling open the gate and running out
to him as one possessed she cried again, "Gag
Columbus?"

"Oh that's it, is it," said Mr. Twist, with relief
but also with disappointment, "Well, if it's that way I
can tell you--"

He stopped; there was no need to tell her; for round the bend of
the lane, walking bare-headed in the chequered light and shade as
leisurely as if such things as tours of absence didn't exist,
or a distracted household, or an anguished Christopher, with
indeed, a complete, an extraordinary serenity, advanced
Anna-Felicitas.