Christopher and Columbus

“Then,” said Mr. Twist, “if this is all you’re going to see of New York, this one evening, let us go and look at it.”

He beckoned to the waiter who came up with the bill.  Anna-Rose pulled out her purse.  Mr. Twist put up his hand with severe determination.

“You’re my guest,” he said, “as long as I am with you.  Useless to protest, young lady.  You’ll not get me to belie my American manhood.  I only listened with half an ear to all the things you both said in the taxi, because I hadn’t recovered from the surprise of finding myself still with you instead of on the train for Clark, and because you both of you do say so very many things.  But understand once and for all that in this country everything female has to be paid for by some man.  I’m that man till I’ve left you on the Sack doorstep, and then it’ll be Sack—­confound him,” finished Mr. Twist suddenly.

And he silenced Anna-Rose’s protests, which persisted and were indignant, by turning on her with, an irascibility she hadn’t yet seen in him, and inquiring of her whether then she really wished to put him to public shame?  “You wouldn’t wish to go against an established custom, surely,” he said more gently.

So the twins gave themselves up for that one evening to what Anna-Felicitas called government by wealth, otherwise plutocracy, while reserving complete freedom of action in regard to Mr. Sack, who was, in their ignorance of his circumstances, an unknown quantity.  They might be going to be mothers’ helps in the Sack ménage for all they knew,—­they might, they said, be going to be anything, from honoured guests to typists.

“Can you type?” asked Mr. Twist.

“No,” said the twins.

He took them in a taxi to Riverside Drive, and then they walked down to the charming footpath that runs along by the Hudson for three enchanting miles.  The sun had set some time before they got there, and had left a clear pale yellow sky, and a wonderful light on the river.  Lamps were being lit, and hung like silver globes in the thin air.  Steep grass slopes, and groups of big trees a little deeper yellow than the sky, hid that there were houses and a street above them on their right.  Up and down the river steamers passed, pierced with light, their delicate smoke hanging in the air long after they had gone their way.  It was so great a joy to walk in all this after ten days shut up on the St. Luke and to see such blessed things as grass and leaves again, that the twins felt suddenly extraordinarily brisked up and cheerful.  It was impossible not to be cheerful, translated from the St. Luke into such a place, trotting along in the peculiar dry air that made one all tingly.

The world seemed suddenly quite good,—­the simplest, easiest of objects to tackle.  All one had to do was not to let it weigh on one, to laugh rather than cry.  They trotted along humming bits of their infancy’s songs, feeling very warm and happy inside, felicitously full of tea and macaroons and with their feet comfortably on something that kept still and didn’t heave or lurch beneath them.  Mr. Twist, too, was gayer than he had been for some hours.  He seemed relieved; and he was.  He had sent a telegram to his mother, expressing proper sorrow at being detained in New York, but giving no reason for it, and promising he would be with her rather late the next evening; and he had sent a telegram to the Clouston Sacks saying the Twinklers, who had so unfortunately missed them in New York, would arrive in Boston early next afternoon.  His mind was clear again owing to the determination of the twins to go to the Sacks.  He was going to take them there, hand them over, and then go back to Clark, which fortunately was only three hours’ journey from Boston.

If the twins had shown a disinclination to go after the Sacks who, in Mr. Twist’s opinion, had behaved shamefully already, he wouldn’t have had the heart to press them to go; and then what would he have done with them?  Their second and last line of defence, supposing they had considered the Sacks had failed and were to be ruled out, was in California, a place they spoke of as if it were next door to Boston and New York.  How could he have let them set out alone on that four days’ journey, with the possibility of once more at its end not being met?  No wonder he had been abstracted at tea.  He was relieved to the extent of his forehead going quite smooth again at their decision to proceed to the Sacks.  For he couldn’t have taken them to his mother without preparation and explanation, and he couldn’t have left them in New York while he went and prepared and explained.  Great, reflected Mr. Twist, the verb dropping into his mind with the aplomb of an inspiration, are the difficulties that beset a man directly he begins to twinkle.  Already he had earnestly wished to knock the reception clerk in the hotel office down because of, first, his obvious suspicion of the party before he had heard Mr. Twist’s name, and because of, second, his politeness, his confidential manner as of an understanding sympathizer with a rich man’s recreations, when he had.  The tea, which he, had poured out of one of his own teapots, had been completely spoilt by the knowledge that it was only this teapot that had saved him from being treated as a White Slave Trafficker.  He wouldn’t have got into that hotel at all with the Twinklers, or into any other decent one, except for his teapot.  What a country, Mr. Twist had thought, fresh from his work in France, fresh from where people were profoundly occupied with the great business of surviving at all.  Here he came back from a place where civilization toppled, where deadly misery, deadly bravery, heroism that couldn’t be uttered, staggered month after month among ruins, and found America untouched, comfortable, fat, still with time to worry over the suspected amorousness of the rich, still putting people into uniforms in order to buttonhole a man on landing and cross-question him as to his private purities.

He had been much annoyed, but he too couldn’t resist the extreme pleasure of real exercise on such a lovely evening, nor could he resist the infection of the cheerfulness of the Twinklers.  They walked along, talking and laughing, and seeming to walk much faster than he did, especially Anna-Rose who had to break into a run every few steps because of his so much longer legs, his face restored to all its usual kindliness as he listened benevolently to their remarks, and just when they were beginning to feel as if they soon might be tired and hungry a restaurant with lamp-hung gardens appeared as punctually as if they had been in Germany, that land of nicely arranged distances between meals.  They had an extremely cheerful little supper out of doors, with things to eat that thrilled the Twinklers in their delicious strangeness; heavenly food, they thought it after the rigours of the second-class cooking on the St. Luke, and the biggest ices they had seen in their lives,—­great dollops of pink and yellow divineness.

Then Mr. Twist took them in a taxi to look at the illuminated advertisements in Broadway, and they forgot everything but the joy of the moment.  Whatever the next day held, this evening was sheer happiness.  Their eyes shone and their cheeks flushed, and Mr. Twist was quite worried that they were so pretty.  People at the other tables at the restaurant had stared at them with frank admiration, and so did the people in the streets whenever the taxi was blocked.  On the ship he had only sometimes been aware of it,—­there would come a glint of sunshine and settle on Anna-Rose’s little cheek where the dimple was, or he would lift his eyes from the Culture book and suddenly see the dark softness of Anna-Felicitas’s eyelashes as she slept in her chair.  But now, dressed properly, and in their dryland condition of cheerful animation, he perceived that they were very pretty indeed, and that Anna-Felicitas was more than very pretty.  He couldn’t help thinking they were a most unsuitable couple to be let loose in America with only two hundred pounds to support them.  Two hundred pounds was just enough to let them slip about if it should enter their heads to slip about,—­go off without explanation, for instance, if they wanted to leave the Clouston Sacks,—­but of course ridiculous as a serious background to life.  A girl should either have enough money or be completely dependent on her male relations.  As a girl was usually young reflected Mr. Twist, his spectacles with the Broadway lights in them blazing on the two specimens opposite him, it was safest for her to be dependent.  So were her actions controlled, and kept within the bounds of wisdom.

And next morning, as he sat waiting for the twins for breakfast at ten o’clock according to arrangement the night before, their grape-fruit in little beds of ice on their plates and every sort of American dish ordered, from griddle cakes and molasses to chicken pie, a page came in with loud cries for Mr. Twist, which made him instantly conspicuous—­a thing he particularly disliked—­and handed him a letter.

The twins had gone.