Christopher and Columbus

Meanwhile Mr. Twist had driven on towards Acapulco in a state of painful indecision.  Should he or shouldn’t he take a turning he knew of a couple of miles farther that led up an unused and practically undrivable track back by the west side to The Open Arms, and instruct Mrs. Bilton to proceed at once down the lane and salvage Anna-Felicitas?  Should he or shouldn’t he?  For the first mile he decided he would; then, as his anger cooled, he began to think that after all he needn’t worry much.  The Annas were lucidly too young for serious philandering, and even if that Elliott didn’t realize this, owing to Anna-Felicitas’s great length, he couldn’t do much before he, Mr. Twist, was back again along the lane.  In this he under-estimated the enterprise of the British Navy, but it served to calm him; so that when he did reach the turning he had made up his mind to continue on his way to Acapulco.

There he spent some perplexing and harassing hours.

At the bank his reception was distinctly chilly.  He wasn’t used, since his teapot had been on the market, to anything but warmth when he went into a bank.  On this occasion even the clerks were cold; and when after difficulty—­actual difficulty—­he succeeded in seeing the manager, he couldn’t but perceive his unusual reserve.  He then remembered what he had put down to mere accident at the time, that as he drove up Main Street half an hour before, all the people he knew had been looking the other way.

From the bank, where he picked up nothing in the way of explanation of the American avoidance of The Open Arms, the manager going dumb at its mere mention, he went to the solicitors who had arranged the sale of the inn, and again in the street people he knew looked the other way.  The solicitor, it appeared, wouldn’t be back till the afternoon, and the clerk, an elderly person hitherto subservient, was curiously short about it.

By this time Mr. Twist was thoroughly uneasy, and he determined to ask the first acquaintance he met what the matter was.  But he couldn’t find anybody.  Every one, his architect, his various experts—­those genial and frolicsome young men—­were either engaged or away on business somewhere else.  He set his teeth, and drove to the Cosmopolitan to seek out old Ridding—­it wasn’t a place he drove to willingly after his recent undignified departure, but he was determined to get to the bottom of this thing—­and walking into the parlour was instantly aware of a hush falling upon it, a holding of the breath.

In the distance he saw old Ridding,—­distinctly; and distinctly he saw that old Ridding saw him.  He was sitting at the far end of the great parlour, facing the entrance, by the side of something vast and black heaped up in the adjacent chair.  He had the look on his pink and naturally pleasant face of one who has abandoned hope.  On seeing Mr. Twist a ray of interest lit him up, and he half rose.  The formless mass in the next chair which Mr. Twist had taken for inanimate matter, probably cushions and wraps, and now perceived was one of the higher mammals, put out a hand and said something,—­at least, it opened that part of its face which is called a mouth but which to Mr. Twist in the heated and abnormal condition of his brain seemed like the snap-to of some great bag,—­and at that moment a group of people crossed the hall in front of old Ridding, and when the path was again clear the chair that had contained him was empty.  He had disappeared.  Completely.  Only the higher mammal was left, watching Mr. Twist with heavy eyes like two smouldering coals.

He couldn’t face those eyes.  He did try to, and hesitated while he tried, and then he found he couldn’t; so he swerved away to the right, and went out quickly by the side door.

There was now one other person left who would perhaps clear him up as to the meaning of all this, and he was the lawyer he had gone to about the guardianship.  True he had been angry with him at the time, but that was chiefly because he had been angry with himself.  At bottom he had carried away an impression of friendliness.  To this man he would now go as a last resource before turning back home, and once more he raced up Main Street in his Ford, producing by these repeated appearances an effect of agitation and restlessness that wasn’t lost on the beholders.

The lawyer was in his office, and disengaged.  After his morning’s experience Mr. Twist was quite surprised and much relieved by being admitted at once.  He was received neither coldly nor warmly, but with unmistakable interest.

“I’ve come to consult you,” said Mr. Twist.

The lawyer nodded.  He hadn’t supposed he had come not to consult him, but he was used to patience with clients, and he well knew their preference in conversation for the self-evident.

“I want a straight answer to a straight question,” said Mr. Twist, his great spectacles glaring anxiously at the lawyer who again nodded.

“Go on,” he said, as Mr. Twist paused.

“What I want to know is,” burst out Mr. Twist, “what the hell—­”

The lawyer put up a hand.  “One moment, Mr. Twist,” he said.  “Sorry to interrupt—­”

And he got up quickly, and went to a door in the partition between his office and his clerks’ room.

“You may go out to lunch now,” he said, opening it a crack.

He then shut it, and came back to his seat at the table.

“Yes, Mr. Twist?” he said, settling down again.  “You were inquiring what the hell—?”

“Well, I was about to,” said Mr. Twist, suddenly soothed, “but you’re so calm—­”

“Of course I’m calm.  I’m a quietly married man.”

“I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.”

“Everything.  For some dispositions, everything.  Mine is one.  Yours is another.”

“Well, I guess I’ve not come here to talk about marriage.  What I want to know is why—­”

“Quite so,” said the lawyer, as he stopped.  “And I can tell you.  It’s because your inn is suspected of being run in the interests of the German Government.”

A deep silence fell upon the room.  The lawyer watched Mr. Twist with a detached and highly intelligent interest.  Mr. Twist stared at the lawyer, his kind, lavish lips fallen apart.  Anger had left him.  This blow excluded anger.  There was only room in him for blank astonishment.

“You know about my teapot?” he said at last.

“Try me again, Mr. Twist.”

“It’s on every American breakfast table.”

“Including my own.”

“They wouldn’t use it if they thought—­”

“My dear sir, they’re not going to,” said the lawyer.  “They’re proposing, among other little plans for conveying the general sentiment to your notice, to boycott the teapot.  It is to be put on an unofficial black list.  It is to be banished from the hotels.”

Mr. Twist’s stare became frozen.  The teapot boycotted?  The teapot his mother and sister depended on and The Open Arms depended on, and all his happiness, and the twins?  He saw the rumour surging over America in great swift waves, that the proceeds of the Twist Non-Trickler were used for Germany.  He saw—­but what didn’t he see in that moment of submerged horror?  Then he seemed to come to the surface again and resume reason with a gasp.  “Why?” he asked.

“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.”