Christopher and Columbus

Mr. Twist, his mind at ease, was in the charming room that was to be the tea-room.  It was full of scattered fittings and the noise of hammering, but even so anybody could see what a delightful place it would presently turn into.

The Open Arms was to make a specialty of wet days.  Those were the days, those consecutive days of downpour that came in the winter and lasted without interruption for a fortnight at a time, when visitors in the hotels were bored beyond expression and ready to welcome anything that could distract them for an hour from the dripping of the rain on the windows.  Bridge was their one solace, and they played it from after breakfast till bedtime; but on the fourth or fifth day of doing this, just the mere steady sitting became grievous to them.  They ached with weariness.  They wilted with boredom.  All their natural kindness got damped out of them, and they were cross.  Even when they won they were cross, and when they lost it was really distressing.  They wouldn’t, of course, have been in California at all at such a time if it were possible to know beforehand when the rains would begin, but one never did know, and often it was glorious weather right up to and beyond Christmas.  And then how glorious!  What a golden place of light and warmth to be in, while in the East one’s friends were being battered by blizzards.

Mr. Twist intended to provide a break in the day each afternoon for these victims of the rain.  He would come to their rescue.  He made up his mind, clear and firm on such matters, that it should become the habit of these unhappy people during the bad weather to motor out to The Open Arms for tea; and, full of forethought, he had had a covered way made, by which one could get out of a car and into the house without being touched by a drop of rain, and he had had a huge open fireplace made across the end of the tea-room, which would crackle and blaze a welcome that would cheer the most dispirited arrival.  The cakes, at all times wonderful were on wet days to be more than wonderful.  Li Koo had a secret receipt, given him, he said, by his mother for cakes of a quite peculiar and original charm, and these were to be reserved for the rainy season only, and be made its specialty.  They were to become known and endeared to the public under the brief designation of Wet Day Cakes.  Mr. Twist felt there was something thoroughly American about this name—­plain and business-like, and attractively in contrast to the subtle, the almost immoral exquisiteness of the article itself.  This cake had been one of those produced by Li Koo from the folds of his garments the day in Los Angeles, and Mr. Twist had happened to be the one of his party who ate it.  He therefore knew what he was doing when he decided to call it and its like simply Wet Day Cakes.

The twins found him experimenting with a fire in the fireplace so as to be sure it didn’t smoke, and the architect and he were in their shirt sleeves, deftly manipulating wood shavings and logs.  There was such a hammering being made by the workmen fixing in the latticed windows, and such a crackling being made by the logs Mr. Twist and the architect kept on throwing on the fire, that only from the sudden broad smile on the architect’s face as he turned to pick up another log did Mr. Twist realize that something that hadn’t to do with work was happening behind his back.

He looked round and saw the Annas picking their way toward him.  They seemed in a hurry.

“Hello,” he called out.

They made no reply to this, but continued hurriedly to pick their way among the obstacles in their path.  They appeared to be much perturbed.  What, he wondered, had they done with Mrs. Bilton?  He soon knew.

“We’ve given Mrs. Bilton notice,” panted Anna-Rose as soon as she got near enough to his ear for him to hear her in the prevailing noise.

Her face, as usual when she was moved and excited, was scarlet, her eyes looking bluer and brighter than ever by contrast.

“We simply can’t stand it any longer,” she went on as Mr. Twist only stared at her.

“And you wouldn’t either if you were us,” she continued, the more passionately as he still didn’t say anything.

“Of course,” said Anna-Felicitas, taking a high line, though her heart was full of doubt, “it’s your fault really.  We could have borne it if we hadn’t had to have her at night.”

“Come outside,” said Mr. Twist, walking toward the door that led on to the verandah.

They followed him, Anna-Rose shaking with excitement, Anna-Felicitas trying to persuade herself that they had acted in the only way consistent with real wisdom.

The architect stood with a log in each hand looking after them and smiling all by himself.  There was something about the Twinklers that lightened his heart whenever he caught sight of them.  He and his fellow experts had deplored the absence of opportunities since Mrs. Bilton came of developing the friendship begun the first day, and talked of them on their way home in the afternoons with affectionate and respectful familiarity as The Cutes.

“Now,” said Mr. Twist, having passed through the verandah and led the twins to the bottom of the garden where he turned and faced them, “perhaps you’ll tell me exactly what you’ve done.”

“You should rather inquire what Mrs. Bilton has done,” said Anna-Felicitas, pulling herself up as straight and tall as she would go.  She couldn’t but perceive that the excess of Christopher’s emotion was putting her at a disadvantage in the matter of dignity.

“I can guess pretty much what she has done,” said Mr. Twist.

“You can’t—­you can’t,” burst out Anna-Rose.  “Nobody could—­nobody ever could—­who hadn’t been with her day and night.”

“She’s just been Mrs. Bilton,” said Mr. Twist, lighting a cigarette to give himself an appearance of calm.

“Exactly,” said Anna-Felicitas.  “So you won’t be surprised at our having just been Twinklers.”

“Oh Lord,” groaned Mr. Twist, in spite of his cigarette, “oh, Lord.”

“We’ve given Mrs. Bilton notice,” continued Anna-Felicitas, making a gesture of great dignity with her hand, “because we find with regret that she and we are incompatible.”

“Was she aware that you were giving it her?” asked Mr. Twist, endeavouring to keep calm.

“We wrote it.”

“Has she read it?”

“We put it into her hand, and then came away so that she should have an opportunity of quietly considering it.”

“You shouldn’t have left us alone with her like this,” burst out Anna-Rose again, “you shouldn’t really.  It was cruel, it was wrong, leaving us high and dry—­never seeing you—­leaving us to be talked to day and night—­to be read to—­would you like to be read to while you’re undressing by somebody still in all their clothes?  We’ve never been able to open our mouths.  We’ve been taken into the field for our airing and brought in again as if we were newborns, or people in prams, or flocks and herds, or prisoners suspected of wanting to escape.  We haven’t had a minute to ourselves day or night.  There hasn’t been a single exchange of ideas, not a shred of recognition that we’re grown up.  We’ve been followed, watched, talked to—­oh, oh, how awful it has been!  Oh, oh, how awful!  Forced to be dumb for days—­losing our power of speech—­”

“Anna-Rose Twinkler,” interrupted Mr. Twist sternly, “you haven’t lost it.  And you not only haven’t, but that power of yours has increased tenfold during its days of rest.”

He spoke with the exasperation in his voice that they had already heard several times since they landed in America.  Each time it took them aback, for Mr. Twist was firmly fixed in their minds as the kindest and gentlest of creatures, and these sudden kickings of his each time astonished them.

On this occasion, however, only Anna-Rose was astonished.  Anna-Felicitas all along had had an uncomfortable conviction in the depth of her heart that Mr. Twist wouldn’t like what they had done.  He would be upset, she felt, as her reluctant feet followed Anna-Rose in search of him.  He would be, she was afraid very much upset.  And so he was.  He was appalled by what had happened.  Lose Mrs. Bilton?  Lose the very foundation of the party’s respectability?  And how could he find somebody else at the eleventh hour and where and how could the twins and he live, unchaperoned as they would be, till he had?  What a peculiar talent these Annas had for getting themselves and him into impossible situations!  Of course at their age they ought to be safe under the wing of a wise and unusually determined mother.  Well, poor little wretches, they couldn’t help not being under it; but that aunt of theirs ought to have stuck to them—­faced up to her husband, and stuck to them.

“I suppose,” he said angrily, “being you and not being able to see farther than the ends of your noses, you haven’t got any sort of an idea of what you’ve done.”

“We—­”

“She—­”

“And I don’t suppose it’s much use my trying to explain, either.  Hasn’t it ever occurred to you, though I’d be real grateful if you’d give me information on this point—­that maybe you don’t know everything?”

“She—­”

“We—­”

“And that till you do know everything, which I take it won’t be for some time yet, judging from the samples I’ve had of your perspicacity, you’d do well not to act without first asking some one’s advice?  Mine, for instance?”

“She—­” began Anna-Rose again; but her voice was trembling, for she couldn’t bear Mr. Twist’s anger.  She was too fond of him.  When he looked at her like that her own anger was blown out as if by an icy draught and she could only look back at him piteously.

But Anna-Felicitas, being free from the weaknesses inherent in adoration, besides continuing to perceive how Christopher’s feelings put her at a disadvantage, drew Mr. Twist’s attention from her by saying with gentleness, “But why add to the general discomfort by being bitter?”

“Bitter!” cried Mr. Twist, still glaring at Anna-Rose.

“Do you dispute that God made us?” inquired Anna-Felicitas, placing herself as it were like a shield between Mr. Twist’s wrathful concentration on Christopher and that unfortunate young person’s emotion.

“See here,” said Mr. Twist turning on her, “I’m not going to argue with you—­not about anything.  Least of all about God.”

“I only wanted to point out to you,” said Anna-Felicitas mildly, “that that being so, and we not able to help it, there seems little use in being bitter with us because we’re not different.  In regard to anything fundamental about us that you deplore I’m afraid we must refer you to Providence.”

“Say,” said Mr. Twist, not in the least appeased by this reasoning but, as Anna-Felicitas couldn’t but notice, quite the contrary, “used you to talk like this to that Uncle Arthur of yours?  Because if you did, upon my word I don’t wonder—­”

But what Mr. Twist didn’t wonder was fortunately concealed from the twins by the appearance at that moment of Mrs. Bilton, who, emerging from the shades of the verandah and looking about her, caught sight of them and came rapidly down the garden.

There was no escape.

They watched her bearing down on them without a word.  It was a most unpleasant moment.  Mr. Twist re-lit his cigarette to give himself a countenance, but the thought of all that Mrs. Bilton would probably say was dreadful to him, and his hand couldn’t help shaking a little.  Anna-Rose showed a guilty tendency to slink behind him.  Anna-Felicitas stood motionless, awaiting the deluge.  All Mr. Twist’s sympathies were with Mrs. Bilton, and he was ashamed that she should have been treated so.  He felt that nothing she could say would be severe enough, and he was extraordinarily angry with the Annas.  Yet when he saw the injured lady bearing down on them, if he only could he would have picked up an Anna under each arm, guilty as they were, and run and run; so much did he prefer them to Mrs. Bilton and so terribly did he want, at this moment, to be somewhere where that lady wasn’t.

There they stood then, anxiously watching the approaching figure, and the letter in Mrs. Bilton’s hand bobbed up and down as she walked, white and conspicuous in the sun against her black dress.  What was their amazement to see as she drew nearer that she was looking just as pleasant as ever.  They stared at her with mouths falling open.  Was it possible, thought the twins, that she was longing to leave but hadn’t liked to say so, and the letter had come as a release?  Was it possible, thought Mr. Twist with a leap of hope in his heart, that she was taking the letter from a non-serious point of view?

And Mr. Twist, to his infinite relief, was right.  For Mrs. Bilton, woman of grit and tenacity, was not in the habit of allowing herself to be dislodged or even discouraged.  This was the opening sentence of her remarks when she had arrived, smiling, in their midst.  Had she not explained the first night that she was one who, having put her hand to the plough, held on to it however lively the movements of the plough might be?  She would not conceal from them, she said, that even Mr. Bilton had not, especially, at first, been entirely without such movements.  He had settled down, however on finding he could trust her to know better than he did what he wanted.  Don’t wise wives always? she inquired.  And the result had been that no man ever had a more devoted wife while he was alive, or a more devoted widow after he wasn’t.  She had told him one day, when he was drawing near the latter condition and she was conversing with him, as was only right, on the subject of wills, and he said that his affairs had gone wrong and as far as he could see she would be left a widow and that was about all she would be left—­she had told him that if it was any comfort to him to know it, he might rely on it that he would have the most devoted widow any man had ever had, and he said—­Mr. Bilton had odd fancies, especially toward the end—­that a widow was the one thing a man never could have because he wasn’t there by the time he had got her.  Yes, Mr. Bilton had odd fancies.  And if she had managed, as she did manage, to steer successfully among them, he being a man of ripe parts and character, was it likely that encountering odd fancies in two very young and unformed girls—­oh, it wasn’t their fault that they were unformed, it was merely because they hadn’t had time enough yet—­she would be unable, experienced as she was, to steer among them too?  Besides, she had a heart for orphans; orphans and dumb animals always had had a special appeal for her.  “No, no, Mr. Twist,” Mrs. Bilton wound up, putting a hand affectionately on Anna-Rose’s shoulder as a more convenient one than Anna-Felicitas’s, “my young charges aren’t going to be left in the lurch, you may rely on that.  I don’t undertake a duty without carrying it out.  Why, I feel a lasting affection for them already.  We’ve made real progress these few days in intimacy.  And I just love to sit and listen to all their fresh young chatter.”