Christopher and Columbus

The very next morning they set out house-hunting, and two days later they had found what they wanted.  Not exactly what they wanted of course, for the reason, as Anna-Felicitas explained that nothing ever is exactly, but full of possibilities to the eye of imagination, and there were six of this sort of eye gazing at the little house.

It stood at right angles to a road much used by motorists because of its beauty, and hidden from it by trees on the top of a slope of green fields scattered over with live oaks that gently descended down towards the sea.  Its back windows, and those parts of it that a house is ashamed of, were close up to a thick grove of eucalyptus which continued to the foot of the mountains.  It had an overrun little garden in front, separated from the fields by a riotous hedge of sweetbriar.  It had a few orange, and lemon, and peach trees on its west side, the survivors of what had once been intended for an orchard, and a line of pepper trees on the other, between it and the road.  Neglected roses and a huge wistaria clambered over its dilapidated face.  Somebody had once planted syringas, and snowballs, and lilacs along the inside of the line of pepper trees, and they had grown extravagantly and were an impenetrable screen, even without the sweeping pepper trees from the road.

It hadn’t been lived in for years, and it was well on in decay, being made of wood, but the situation was perfect for The Open Arms.  Every motorist coming up that road would see the signboard outside the pepper trees, and would certainly want to stop at the neat little gate, and pass through the flowery tunnel that would be cut through the syringas, and see what was inside.  Other houses were offered of a far higher class, for this one had never been lived in by gentry, said the house-agent endeavouring to put them off a thing so broken down.  A farmer had had it years back, he told them, and instead of confining himself to drinking the milk from his own cows, which was the only appropriate drink for a farmer the agent maintained—­he was the president of the local Anti-Vice-In-All-Its-Forms League—­he put his money as he earned it into gin, and the gin into himself, and so after a bit was done for.

The other houses the agent pressed on them were superior in every way except situation; but situation being the first consideration, Mr. Twist agreed with the twins, who had fallen in love with the neglected little house whose shabbiness was being so industriously hidden by roses, that this was the place, and a week later it and its garden had been bought—­Mr. Twist didn’t tell the twins he had bought it, in order to avoid argument, but it was manifestly the simple thing to do—­and over and round and through it swarmed workmen all day long, like so many diligent and determined ants.  Also, before the week was out, the middle-aged lady had been found and engaged, and a cook of gifts in the matter of cakes.  This is the way you do things in America.  You decide what it is that you really want, and you start right away and get it.  “And everything so cheap too!” exclaimed the twins gleefully, whose £200 was behaving, it appeared, very like the widow’s cruse.

This belief, however, received a blow when they went without Mr. Twist, who was too busy now for any extra expeditions, to choose and buy chintzes, and it was finally shattered when the various middle-aged ladies who responded to Mr. Twist’s cry for help in the advertising columns of the Acapulco and Los Angeles press one and all demanded as salary more than the whole Twinkler capital.

The twins had a bad moment of chill fear and misgiving, and then once more were saved by an inspiration,—­this time Anna-Rose’s.

“I know,” she exclaimed, her face clearing.  “We’ll make it Co-operative.”

Mr. Twist, whose brow too had been puckered in the effort to think out a way of persuading the twins to let him help them openly with his money, for in spite of his going to be their guardian they remained difficult on this point, jumped at the idea.  He couldn’t, of course, tell what in Anna-Rose’s mind the word co-operative stood for, but felt confident that whatever it stood for he could manipulate it into covering his difficulties.

“What is co-operative?” asked Anna-Felicitas, with a new respect for a sister who could suddenly produce a business word like that and seem to know all about it.  She had heard the word herself, but it sat very loosely in her head, at no point touching anything else.

“Haven’t you heard of Co-operative Stores?” inquired Anna-Rose.

“Yes but—­”

“Well, then.”

“Yes, but what would a co-operative inn be?” persisted Anna-Felicitas.

“One run on co-operative lines, of course,” said Anna-Rose grandly.  “Everybody pays for everything, so that nobody particular pays for anything.”

“Oh,” said Anna-Felicitas.

“I mean,” said Anna-Rose, who felt herself that this might be clearer, “it’s when you pay the servants and the rent and the cakes and things out of what you get.”

“Oh,” said Anna-Felicitas.  “And will they wait quite quietly till we’ve got it?”

“Of course, if we’re all co-operative.”

“I see,” said Anna-Felicitas, who saw as little as before, but knew of old that Anna-Rose grew irascible when pressed.

“See here now,” said Mr. Twist weightily, “if that isn’t an idea.  Only you’ve got hold of the wrong word.  The word you want is profit-sharing.  And as this undertaking is going to be a big success there will be big profits, and any amount of cakes and salaries will be paid for as glibly and easily as you can say your ABC.”

And he explained that till they were fairly started he was going to stay in California, and that he intended during this time to be book-keeper, secretary, and treasurer to The Open Arms, besides Advertiser-in-Chief, which was, he said, the most important post of all; and if they would be so good as to leave this side of it unquestioningly to him, who had had a business training, he would undertake that the Red Cross, American or British, whichever they decided to support, should profit handsomely.

Thus did Mr. Twist artfully obtain a free hand as financial backer of The Open Arms.  The profit-sharing system seemed to the twins admirable.  It cleared away every scruple and every difficulty, they now bought chintzes and pewter pots in the faith of it without a qualm, and even ceased to blench at the salary of the lady engaged to be their background,—­indeed her very expensiveness pleased them, for it gave them confidence that she must at such a price be the right one, because nobody, they agreed, who knew herself not to be the right one would have the face to demand so much.

This lady, the widow of Bruce D. Bilton of Chicago of whom of course, she said, the Miss Twinklers had heard—­the Miss Twinklers blushed and felt ashamed of themselves because they hadn’t, and indistinctly murmured something about having heard of Cornelius K. Vanderbilt, though, and wouldn’t he do—­had a great deal of very beautiful snow-white hair, while at the same time she was only middle-aged.  She firmly announced, when she perceived Mr. Twist’s spectacles dwelling on her hair, that she wasn’t yet forty, and her one fear was that she mightn’t be middle-aged enough.  The advertisement had particularly mentioned middle-aged; and though she was aware that her brains and fingers and feet couldn’t possibly be described as coming under that heading, she said her hair, on the other hand, might well be regarded as having overshot the mark.  But its turning white had nothing to do with age.  It had done that when Mr. Bilton passed over.  No hair could have stood such grief as hers when Mr. Bilton took that final step.  She had been considering the question of age, she informed Mr. Twist, from every aspect before coming to the interview, for she didn’t want to make a mistake herself nor allow the Miss Twinklers to make a mistake; and she had arrived at the conclusion that what with her hair being too old and the rest of her being too young, taken altogether she struck an absolute average and perfectly fulfilled the condition required; and as she wished to live in the country, town life disturbing her psychically too much, she was willing to give up her home and her circle—­it was a real sacrifice—­and accept the position offered by the Miss Twinklers.  She was, she said, very quiet, and yet at the same time she was very active.  She liked to fly round among duties, and she liked to retire into her own mentality and think.  She was all for equilibrium, for the right balancing of body and mind in a proper alternation of suitable action.  Thus she attained poise,—­she was one of the most poised women her friends knew, they told her.  Also she had a warm heart, and liked both philanthropy and orphans.  Especially if they were war ones.

Mrs. Bilton talked so quickly and so profusely that it took quite a long time to engage her.  There never seemed to be a pause in which one could do it.  It was in Los Angeles, in an hotel to which Mr. Twist had motored the twins, starting at daybreak that morning in order to see this lady, that the personal interview took place, and by lunch-time they had been personally interviewing her for three hours without stopping.  It seemed years.  The twins longed to engage her, if only to keep her quiet; but Mrs. Bilton’s spirited description of life as she saw it and of the way it affected something she called her psyche, was without punctuation and without even the tiny gap of a comma in it through which one might have dexterously slipped a definite offer.  She had to be interrupted at last, in spite of the discomfort this gave to the Twinkler and Twist politeness, because a cook was coming to be interviewed directly after lunch, and they were dying for some food.

The moment Mr. Twist saw Mrs. Bilton’s beautiful white hair he knew she was the one.  That hair was what The Open Arms wanted and must have; that hair, with a well-made black dress to go with it, would be a shield through which no breath of misunderstanding as to the singleness of purpose with which the inn was run would ever penetrate.  He would have settled it with her in five minutes if she could have been got to listen, but Mrs. Bilton couldn’t be got to listen; and when it became clear that no amount of patient waiting would bring him any nearer the end of what she had to say Mr. Twist was forced to take off his coat, as it were, and plunge abruptly into the very middle of her flow of words and convey to her as quickly as possible, as one swimming for his life against the stream, that she was engaged.  “Engaged, Mrs. Bilton,”—­he called out, raising his voice above the sound of Mrs. Bilton’s rushing words, “engaged.”  She would be expected at the Cosmopolitan, swiftly continued Mr. Twist, who was as particularly anxious to have her at the Cosmopolitan as the twins were particularly anxious not to,—­for for the life of them they couldn’t see why Mrs. Bilton should be stirred up before they started inhabiting the cottage,—­within three days—­

“Mr. Twist, it can’t be done,” broke in Mrs. Bilton a fresh and mountainous wave of speech gathering above Mr. Twist’s head.  “It absolutely—­”

“Within a week, then,” he called out quickly, holding up the breaking of the wave for an instant while he hastened to and opened the door.  “And goodmorning Mrs. Bilton—­my apologies, my sincere apologies, but we have to hurry away—­”

The cook was engaged that afternoon.  Mr. Twist appeared to have mixed up the answers to his advertisement, for when, after paying the luncheon-bill, he went to join the twins in the sitting-room, he found them waiting for him in the passage outside the door looking excited.

“The cook’s come,” whispered Anna-Rose, jerking her head towards the shut door.  “She’s a man.”

“She’s a Chinaman,” whispered Anna-Felicitas.

Mr. Twist was surprised.  He thought he had an appointment with a woman,—­a coloured lady from South Carolina who was a specialist in pastries and had immaculate references, but the Chinaman assured him that he hadn’t, and that his appointment was with him alone, with him, Li Koo.  In proof of it, he said, spreading out his hands, here he was.  “We make cakies—­li’l cakies—­many, lovely li’l cakies,” said Li Koo, observing doubt on the gentleman’s face; and from somewhere on his person he whipped out a paper bag of them as a conjurer whips a rabbit out of a hat, and offered them to the twins.

They ate.  He was engaged.  It took five minutes.

After he had gone, and punctually to the minute of her appointment, an over-flowing Negress appeared and announced that she was the coloured lady from South Carolina to whom the gentleman had written.

Mr. Twist uncomfortably felt that Li Koo had somehow been clever.  Impossible, however, to go back on him, having eaten his cakes.  Besides, they were perfect cakes, blown together apparently out of flowers and honey and cream,—­cakes which, combined with Mrs. Bilton’s hair, would make the fortune of The Open Arms.

The coloured lady, therefore, was sent away, disappointed in spite of the douceur and fair words Mr. Twist gave her; and she was so much disappointed that they could hear her being it out loud all the way along the passage and down the stairs, and the nature of her expression of her disappointment was such that Mr. Twist, as he tried by animated conversation to prevent it reaching the twins’ ears, could only be thankful after all that Li Koo had been so clever.  It did, however, reach the twins’ ears, but they didn’t turn a hair because of Uncle Arthur.  They merely expressed surprise at its redness, seeing that it came out of somebody so black.

Directly after this trip to Los Angeles advertisements began to creep over the countryside.  They crept along the roads where motorists were frequent and peeped at passing cars round corners and over hedges.  They were taciturn advertisements, and just said three words in big, straight, plain white letters on a sea-blue ground: 

THE OPEN ARMS

People passing in their cars saw them, and vaguely thought it must be the name of a book.  They had better get it.  Other people would have got it.  It couldn’t be a medicine nor anything to eat, and was probably a religious novel.  Novels about feet or arms were usually religious.  A few considered it sounded a little improper, and as though the book, far from being religious, would not be altogether nice; but only very proper people who distrusted everything, even arms took this view.

After a week the same advertisements appeared with three lines added: 

THE OPEN ARMS
    YES
    BUT
WHY?  WHERE?  WHAT?

and then ten days after that came fresh ones: 

THE OPEN ARMS
  WILL OPEN
    WIDE

On November 20th at Four P.M.

N.B.  WATCH THE SIGNPOSTS.

And while the countryside—­an idle countryside, engaged almost wholly in holiday-making and glad of any new distraction—­began to be interested and asked questions, Mr. Twist was working day and night at getting the thing ready.

All day long he was in Acapulco or out at the cottage, urging, hurrying, criticizing, encouraging, praising and admonishing.  His heart and soul and brain was in this, his business instincts and his soft domestic side.  His brain, after working at top speed during the day with the architect, the painter and decorator, the furnisher, the garden expert, the plumbing expert, the electric-light expert, the lawyer, the estate agent, and numberless other persons, during the night meditated and evolved advertisements.  There was to be a continual stream week by week after the inn was opened of ingenious advertisements.  Altogether Mr. Twist had his hands full.

The inn was to look artless and simple and small, while actually being the last word in roomy and sophisticated comfort.  It was to be as like an old English inn to look at as it could possibly be got to be going on his own and the twins’ recollections and the sensationally coloured Elizabethan pictures in the architect’s portfolio.  It didn’t disturb Mr. Twist’s unprejudiced American mind that an English inn embowered in heliotrope and arum lilies and eucalyptus trees would be odd and unnatural, and it wouldn’t disturb anybody else there either.  Were not Swiss mountain chalets to be found in the fertile plains along the Pacific, complete with fir trees specially imported and uprooted in their maturity and brought down with tons of their own earth attached to their roots and replanted among carefully disposed, apparently Swiss rocks, so that what one day had been a place smiling with orange-groves was the next a bit of frowning northern landscape?  And were there not Italian villas dotted about also?  But these looked happier and more at home than the chalets.  And there were buildings too, like small Gothic cathedrals, looking as uncomfortable and depressed as a woman who has come to a party in the wrong clothes.  But no matter.  Nobody minded.  So that an English inn added to this company, with a little German beer-garden—­only there wasn’t to be any beer—­wouldn’t cause the least surprise or discomfort to anybody.

In the end, the sole resemblance the cottage had to an English inn was the signboard out in the road.  With the best will in the world, and the liveliest financial encouragement from Mr. Twist, the architect couldn’t in three weeks turn a wooden Californian cottage into an ancient red-brick Elizabethan pothouse.  He got a thatched roof on to it by a miracle of hustle, but the wooden walls remained; he also found a real antique heavy oak front door studded with big rusty nailheads in a San Francisco curiosity shop, that would serve, he said, as a basis for any wished-for hark-back later on when there was more time to the old girl’s epoch—­thus did he refer to Great Eliza and her spacious days—­and meanwhile it gave the building, he alleged, a considerable air; but as this door in that fine climate was hooked open all day long it didn’t disturb the gay, the almost jocose appearance of the place when everything was finished.

Houses have their expressions, their distinctive faces, very much as people have, meditated Mr. Twist the morning of the opening, as he sat astride a green chair at the bottom of the little garden, where a hedge of sweetbriar beautifully separated the Twinkler domain from the rolling fields that lay between it and the Pacific, and stared at his handiwork; and the conclusion was forced upon him—­reluctantly, for it was the last thing he had wanted The Open Arms to do—­that the thing looked as if it were winking at him.

Positively, thought Mr. Twist, his hat on the back of his head, staring, that was what it seemed to be doing.  How was that?  He studied it profoundly, his head on one side.  Was it that it was so very gay?  He hadn’t meant it to be gay like that.  He had intended a restrained and disciplined simplicity, a Puritan unpretentiousness, with those sweet maidens, the Twinkler twins, flitting like modest doves in and out among its tea-tables; but one small thing had been added to another small thing at their suggestion, each small thing taken separately apparently not mattering at all and here it was almost—­he hoped it was only his imagination—­winking at him.  It looked a familiar little house; jocular; very open indeed about the arms.