Christopher and Columbus

People were so much preoccupied by the Twinkler problem that they were less interested than they otherwise would have been in the sea-blue advertisements, and when the one appeared announcing that The Open Arms would open wide on the 29th of the month and exhorting the public to watch the signposts, they merely remarked that it wasn’t, then, the title of a book after all.  Mr. Twist would have been surprised and nettled if he had known how little curiosity his advertisements were exciting; he would have been horrified if he had known the reason.  As it was, he didn’t know anything.  He was too busy, too deeply absorbed, to be vulnerable to rumour; he, and the twins, and Mrs. Bilton were safe from it inside their magic circle of Arbeit und Liebe.

Sometimes he was seen in Main Street, that street in Acapulco through which everybody passes at certain hours of the morning, looking as though he had a great deal to do and very little time to do it in; and once or twice the Twinklers were seen there, also apparently very busy, but they didn’t now come alone.  Mrs. Bilton, the lady from Los Angeles—­Acapulco knew all about her and admitted she was a lady of strictest integrity and unimpeachable character, but this only made the Twinkler problem more obscure—­came too, and seemed, judging from the animation of her talk, to be on the best of terms with her charges.

But once an idea has got into people’s heads, remarked the lawyer, who was nudged by the friend he was walking with as the attractive trio were seen approaching,—­Mrs. Bilton with her black dress and her snowy hair setting off, as they in their turn set her off, the twins in their clean white frocks and shining youth,—­once an idea has got into people’s heads it sticks.  It is slow to get in, and impossible to get out.  Yet on the face of it, was it likely that Mrs. Bilton—­

“Say,” interrupted his friend, “since when have you joined up with the water-blooded believe-nothing-but-good-ites?”

And only his personal affection for the lawyer restrained him from using the terrible word pro-German; but it had been in his mind.

The day before the opening, Miss Heap heard from an acquaintance in the East to whom she had written in her uneasiness, and who was staying with some people living in Clark.  Miss Heap wrote soon after the departure—­she didn’t see why she shouldn’t call it by its proper name and say right out expulsion—­of the Twist party from the Cosmopolitan, but letters take a long time to get East and answers take the same long time to come back in, and messages are sometimes slow in being delivered if the other person doesn’t realize, as one does oneself, the tremendous interests that are at stake.  What could be a more tremendous interest, and one more adapted to the American genius, than safe-guarding public morals?  Miss Heap wrote before the sinister rumours of German machinations had got about; she was still merely at the stage of uneasiness in regard to the morals of the Twist party; she couldn’t sleep at night for thinking of them.  Of course if it were true that his mother was coming out … but was she?  Miss Heap somehow felt unable to believe it.  “Do tell your friends in Clark,” she wrote, “how delighted we all are to hear that Mrs. Twist is going to be one of us in our sunny refuge here this winter.  A real warm welcome awaits her.  Her son is working day and night getting the house ready for her, helped indefatigably by the two Miss Twinklers.”

She had to wait over a fortnight for the answer, and by the time she got it those other more terrible doubts had arisen, the doubts as to the exact position occupied by the Twinklers and Mr. Twist in the German secret plans for, first, the pervasion, and, second, the invasion of America; and on reading the opening lines of the letter Miss Heap found she had to sit down, for her legs gave way beneath her.

It appeared that Mrs. Twist hadn’t known where her son was till Miss Heap’s letter came.  He had left Clark in company of the two girls mentioned, and about whom his mother knew nothing, the very morning after his arrival home from his long absence in Europe.  That was all his mother knew.  She was quite broken.  Coming on the top of all her other sorrow her only son’s behaviour had been a fearful, perhaps a finishing blow, but she was such a good woman that she still prayed for him.  Clark was horrified.  His mother had decided at first she would try to shield him and say nothing, but when she found that nobody had the least idea of what he had done she felt she owed it to her friends to be open and have no secrets from them.  Whatever it cost her in suffering and humiliation she would be frank.  Anything was better than keeping up false appearances to friends who believed in you.  She was a brave woman, a splendid woman.  The girls—­poor Mrs. Twist—­were Germans.

On reading this Miss Heap was all of a tingle.  Her worst suspicions hadn’t been half bad enough.  Here was everything just about as black as it could be; and Mr Twist, a well-known and universally respected American citizen, had been turned, by means of those girls playing upon weaknesses she shuddered to think of but that she had reason to believe, from books she had studied and conversations she had reluctantly taken part in, were not altogether uncommon, into a cat’s-paw of the German Government.

What should she do?  What should she say?  To whom should she go?  Which was the proper line of warning for her to take?  It seemed to her that the presence of these people on the Pacific coast was a real menace to its safety, moral and physical; but how get rid of them?  And if they were got rid of wouldn’t it only be exposing some other part of America, less watchful, less perhaps able to take care of itself, to the ripening and furtherance of their schemes, whatever their schemes might be?  Even at that moment Miss Heap unconsciously felt that to let the Twinklers go would be to lose thrills.  And she was really thrilled.  She prickled with excitement and horror.  Her circulation hadn’t been so good for years.  She wasn’t one to dissect her feelings, so she had no idea of how thoroughly she was enjoying herself.  And it was while she sat alone in her bedroom, her fingers clasping and unclasping the arms of her chair, her feet nervously nibbing up and down on the thick soft carpet, hesitating as to the best course for her to take, holding her knowledge meanwhile tight, hugging it for a little altogether to herself, her very own, shared as yet by no one,—­it was while she sat there, that people out of doors in Acapulco itself, along the main roads, out in the country towards Zamora on the north and San Blas on the south, became suddenly aware of new signposts.

They hadn’t been there the day before.  They all turned towards the spot at the foot of the mountains where Pepper Lane was.  They all pointed, with a long white finger, in that direction.  And on them all was written in plain, sea-blue letters, beneath which the distance in miles or fractions of a mile was clearly marked, To The Open Arms.

Curiosity was roused at last.  People meeting each other in Main Street stopped to talk about these Arms wondered where and what they were, and decided to follow the signposts that afternoon in their cars and track them down.  They made up parties to go and track together.  It would be a relief to have something a little different to do.  What on earth could The Open Arms be?  Hopes were expressed that they weren’t something religious.  Awful to follow signposts out into the country only to find they landed you in a meeting-house.

At lunch in the hotels, and everywhere where people were together, the signposts were discussed.  Miss Heap heard them being discussed from her solitary table, but was so much taken up with her own exciting thoughts that she hardly noticed.  After lunch, however, as she was passing out of the restaurant, still full of her unshared news and still uncertain as to whom she should tell it first, Mr. Ridding called out from his table and said he supposed she was going too.

They had been a little chilly to each other since the afternoon of the conversation with the Twinklers, but he would have called out to any one at that moment.  He was sitting waiting while Mrs. Ridding finished her lunch, his own lunch finished long ago, and was in the condition of muffled but extreme exasperation which the unoccupied watching of Mrs. Ridding at meals produced.  Every day three times this happened, that Mr. Ridding got through his meal first by at least twenty minutes and then sat trying not to mind Mrs. Ridding.  She wasn’t aware of these efforts.  They would greatly have shocked her; for to try not to mind one’s wife surely isn’t what decent, loving husbands ever have to do.

“Going where?” asked Miss Heap, stopping by the table; whereupon Mr. Ridding had the slight relief of getting up.

Mrs. Ridding continued to eat impassively.

“Following these new signposts that are all over the place,” said Mr. Ridding.  “Sort of paper-chase business.”

“Yes.  I’d like to.  Were you thinking of going, Mrs. Ridding?”

“After our nap,” said Mrs. Ridding, steadily eating.  “I’ll take you.  Car at four o’clock, Albert.”

She didn’t raise her eyes from her plate, and as Miss Heap well knew that Mrs. Ridding was not open to conversation during meals and as she had nothing to say to Mr. Ridding, she expressed her thanks and pleasure, and temporarily left them.

This was a day of shocks and thrills.  When the big limousine—­symbol of Mrs. Ridding’s power, for Mr. Ridding couldn’t for the life of him see why he should have to provide a strange old lady with cars, and yet did so on an increasing scale of splendour—­arrived at the turn on the main road to San Blas which leads into Pepper Lane and was confronted by the final signpost pointing up it, for the first time The Open Arms and the Twist and Twinkler party entered Miss Heap’s mind in company.  So too did they enter Mr. Ridding’s mind; and they only remained outside Mrs. Ridding’s because of her profound uninterest.  Her thoughts were merged in aspic.  That was the worst of aspic when it was as good as it was at the Cosmopolitan; one wasn’t able to leave off eating it quite in time, and then, unfortunately, had to go on thinking of it afterwards.

The Twist house, remembered her companions simultaneously, was in Pepper Lane.  Odd that this other thing, whatever it was, should happen to be there too.  Miss Heap said nothing, but sat very straight and alert, her eyes everywhere.  Mr. Ridding of course said nothing either.  Not for worlds would he have mentioned the word Twist, which so instantly and inevitably suggested that other and highly controversial word Twinkler.  But he too sat all eyes; for anyhow he might in passing get a glimpse of the place containing those cunning little bits of youngness, the Twinkler sisters, and even with any luck a glimpse of their very selves.

Up the lane went the limousine, slowly because of the cars in front of it.  It was one of a string of cars, for the day was lovely, there was no polo, and nobody happened to be giving a party.  All the way out from Acapulco they had only had to follow other cars.  Cars were going, and cars were coming back.  The cars going were full of solemn people, pathetically anxious to be interested.  The cars coming back were full of animated people who evidently had achieved interest.

Miss Heap became more and more alert as they approached the bend in the lane round which the Twist house was situated.  She had been there before, making a point of getting a friend to motor her past it in order to see what she could for herself, but Mr. Ridding, in spite of his desire to go and have a look too, had always, each time he tried to, found Mrs. Ridding barring the way.  So that he didn’t exactly know where it was; and when on turning the corner the car suddenly stopped, and putting his head out—­he was sitting backwards—–­ he saw a great, old-fashioned signboard, such as he was accustomed to in pictures of ancient English village greens, with

     The Open Arms

in medieval letters painted on it, all he said was, “Guess we’ve run it to earth.”

Miss Heap sat with her hands in her lap, staring.  Mrs. Ridding, her mind blocked by aspic, wasn’t receiving impressions.  She gazed with heavy eyes straight in front of her.  There she saw cars.  Many cars.  All stopped at this particular spot.  With a dull sensation of fathomless fatigue she dimly wondered at them.

“Looks as though it’s a hostelry,” said Mr. Ridding, who remembered his Dickens; and he blinked up, craning his head out, at the signboard, on which through a gap in the branches of the pepper trees a shaft of brilliant late afternoon sun was striking.  “Don’t see one, though.”

He jerked his thumb.  “Up back of the trees there, I reckon,” he said.

Then he prepared to open the door and go and have a look.

A hand shot out of Miss Heap’s lap at him.  “Don’t,” she said quickly. 
“Don’t, Mr. Ridding.”

There was a little green gate in the thick hedge that grew behind the pepper trees, and some people he knew, who had been in the car in front, were walking up to it.  Some other people he knew had already got to it, and were standing talking together with what looked like leaflets in their hands.  These leaflets came out of a green wooden box fastened on to one of the gate-posts, with the words Won’t you take one? painted on it.

Mr. Ridding naturally wanted to go and take one, and here was Miss Heap laying hold of him and saying “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” he asked looking down at her, his hand on the door.

“Hello Ridding,” called out one of the people he knew.  “No good getting out.  Show doesn’t open till to-morrow at four.  Can’t get in to-day.  Gate’s bolted.  Nothing doing.”

And then the man detached himself from the group at the gate and came over to the car with a leaflet in his hand.

“Say—­” he said,—­“how are you to-day, Miss Heap?  Mrs. Ridding, your humble servant—­say, look at this.  Teapot Twist wasn’t born yesterday when it comes to keeping things dark.  No mention of his name on this book of words, but it’s the house he was doing up all right, and it is to be used as an inn.  Afternoon-tea inn.  Profits to go to the American Red Cross.  Price per head five dollars.  Bit stiff, five dollars for tea.  Wonder where those Twinkler girls come in.  Here—­you have this, Ridding, and study it.  I’ll get another.”  And taking off his hat a second time to the ladies he went back to his friends.

In great agitation Miss Heap turned to Mrs. Ridding, whose mind, galvanized by the magic words Twist and Twinkler, was slowly heaving itself free of aspic.  “Perhaps we had best go back to the hotel, Mrs Ridding,” said Miss Heap, her voice shaking.  “There’s something I wish particularly to tell you.  I ought to have done so this morning, directly I knew, but I had no idea of course that this….”  She waved a hand at the signboard, and collapsed into speechlessness.

“Albert—­hotel,” directed Mrs. Ridding.

And Mr. Ridding, clutching the leaflet, his face congested with suppressed emotions, obediently handed on the order through the speaking-tube to the chauffeur.