Christopher and Columbus (11 page)

He had not been definitely aware that he was inventive till he
came into daily contact with Uncle Charles's teapot. In his
boyhood he had often fixed up little things for Edith,--she was
three years older than he, and was even then canning and preserving
and ironing,--little simplifications and alleviations of her
labour; but they had been just toys, things that had amused him to
put together and that he forgot as soon as they were done. But the
teapot revealed to him clearly what his forehead was there for. He
would not and could not continue, being the soul of
considerateness, to spill tea on Uncle Charles's table-cloth at
every meal--they had tea at breakfast, and at luncheon, and at
supper--and if he were thirsty he spilled it several times at every
meal. For a long time he coaxed the teapot. He was thoughtful with
it. He handled it with the most delicate precision. He gave it
time. He never hurried it. He never filled it more than half full.
And yet at the end of every pouring, out came the same devastating
dribble on to the cloth.

Then he went out and bought another teapot, one of a different
pattern, with a curved spout instead of a straight one.

The same thing happened.

Then he went to Wanamaker's, and spent an hour in the teapot
section trying one pattern after the other, patiently pouring
water, provided by a tipped but languid and supercilious assistant,
out of each different make of teapot into cups.

They all dribbled.

Then Mr. Twist went home and sat down and thought. He thought
and thought, with his dome-like forehead resting on his long thin
hand; and what came out of his forehead at last, sprang out of it
as complete in every detail as Pallas Athene when she very
similarly sprang, was that now well-known object on every breakfast
table, Twist's Non-Trickler Teapot.

In five years Mr. Twist made a fortune out of the teapot. His
mother passed from her straitened circumstances to what she still
would only call a modest competence, but what in England would have
been regarded as wallowing in money. She left off being
middle-class, and was received into the lower upper-class, the
upper part of this upper-class being reserved for great names like
Astor, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. With these Mrs. Twist could not
compete. She would no doubt some day, for Edward was only thirty
and there were still coffee-pots; but what he was able to add to
the family income helped her for a time to bear the loss of the
elder Twist with less of bleakness in her resignation. It was as
though an east wind veered round for a brief space a little to the
south.

Being naturally, however, inclined to deprecation, when every
other reason for it was finally removed by her assiduous son she
once more sought out and firmly laid hold of the departed Twist,
and hung her cherished unhappiness up on him again as if he were a
peg. When the novelty of having a great many bedrooms instead of
six, and a great deal of food not to eat but to throw away, and ten
times of everything else instead of only once, began to wear off,
Mrs. Twist drooped again, and pulled the departed Twist out of the
decent forgetfulness of the past, and he once more came to dinner
in the form of his favourite dishes, and assisted in the family
conversations by means of copious quotations from his alleged
utterances.

Mr. Twist's income was anything between sixty and seventy
thousand pounds a year by the time the war broke out. Having
invented and patented the simple device that kept the table-cloths
of America, and indeed of Europe, spotless, all he had to do was to
receive his percentages; sit still, in fact, and grow richer. But
so much had he changed since his adolescence that he preferred to
stick to his engineering and his office in New York rather than go
home and be happy with his mother.

She could not understand this behaviour in Edward. She
understood his behaviour still less when he went off to France in
1915, himself equipping and giving the ambulance he drove.

For a year his absence, and the dangers he was running, divided
Mrs. Twist's sorrows into halves. Her position as a widow with
an only son in danger touched the imagination of Clark, and she was
never so much called upon as during this year. Now Edward was
coming home for a rest, and there was a subdued flutter about her,
rather like the stirring of the funeral plumes on the heads of
hearse-horses.

While he was crossing the Atlantic and Red-Crossing the
Twinklers--this was one of Anna-Felicitas's epigrams and she
tried Anna-Rose's patience severely by asking her not once but
several times whether she didn't think it funny, whereas
Anna-Rose disliked it from the first because of the suggestion it
contained that Mr. Twist regarded what he did for them as works of
mercy--while Mr. Twist was engaged in these activities, at his home
in Clark all the things Edith could think of that he used most to
like to eat were being got ready. There was an immense slaughtering
of chickens, and baking and churning. Edith, who being now the head
servant of many instead of three was more than double as
hard-worked as she used to be, was on her feet those last few days
without stopping. And she had to go and meet Edward in New York as
well. Whether Mrs. Twist feared that he might not come straight
home or whether it was what she said it was, that dear Edward must
not be the only person on the boat who had no one to meet him, is
not certain; what is certain is that when it came to the point, and
Edith had to start, Mrs. Twist had difficulty in maintaining her
usual brightness.

Edith would be a whole day away, and perhaps a night if the
St. Luke
got in late, for Clark is five hours' train
journey from New York, and during all that time Mrs. Twist would be
uncared for. She thought Edith surprisingly thoughtless to be so
much pleased to go. She examined her flat and sinewy form with
disapproval when she came in hatted and booted to say good-bye. No
wonder nobody married Edith. And the money wouldn't help her
either now--she was too old. She had missed her chances, poor
thing.

Mrs. Twist forgot the young man there had been once, years
before, when Edward was still in the school room, who had almost
married Edith. He was a lusty and enterprising young man, who had
come to Clark to stay with a neighbour, and he had had nothing to
do through a long vacation, and had taken to dropping in at all
hours and interrupting Edith in her housekeeping; and Edith, even
then completely flat but of a healthy young uprightness and bright
of eyes and hair, had gone silly and forgotten how to cook, and had
given her mother, who surely had enough sorrows already, an attack
of indigestion.

Mrs. Twist, however, had headed the young man off. Edith was too
necessary to her at that time. She could not possibly lose Edith.
And besides, the only way to avoid being a widow is not to marry.
She told herself that she could not bear the thought of poor
Edith's running the risk of an affliction similar to her own.
If one hasn't a husband one cannot lose him, Mrs. Twist clearly
saw. If Edith married she would certainly lose him unless he lost
her. Marriage had only two solutions, she explained to her silent
daughter,--she would not, of course, discuss with her that third
one which America has so often flown to for solace and
relief,--only two, said Mrs. Twist, and they were that either one
died oneself, which wasn't exactly a happy thing, or the other
one did. It was only a question of time before one of the married
was left alone to mourn. Marriage began rosily no doubt, but it
always ended black. "And think of my having to see you like
this
" she said, with a gesture indicating her sad
dress.

Edith was intimidated; and the young man presently went away
whistling. He was the only one. Mrs. Twist had no more trouble. He
passed entirely from her mind; and as she looked at Edith dressed
for going to meet Edward in the clothes she went to church in on
Sundays, she unconsciously felt a faint contempt for a woman who
had had so much time to get married in and yet had never achieved
it. She herself had been married at twenty; and her hair even now,
after all she had gone through, was hardly more gray than
Edith's.

"Your hat's crooked," she said, when Edith
straightened herself after bending down to kiss her good-bye; and
then, after all unable to bear the idea of being left alone while
Edith, with that pleased face, went off to New York to see Edward
before she did, she asked her, if she still had a minute to spare,
to help her to the sofa, because she felt faint.

"I expect the excitement has been too much for me,"
she murmured, lying down and shutting her eyes; and Edith,
disciplined in affection and attentiveness, immediately took off
her hat and settled down to getting her mother well again in time
for Edward.

Which is why nobody met Mr. Twist on his arrival in New York,
and he accordingly did things, as will be seen, which he
mightn't otherwise have done.

When the
St. Luke
was so near its journey's end that people
were packing up, and the word Nantucket was frequent in the scraps
of talk the twins heard, they woke up from the unworried condition
of mind Mr. Twist's kindness and the dreamy monotony of the
days had produced in them, and began to consider their prospects
with more attention. This attention soon resulted in anxiety.
Anna-Rose showed hers by being irritable. Anna-Felicitas didn't
show hers at all.

It was all very well, so long as they were far away from America
and never quite sure that a submarine mightn't settle their
future for them once and for all, to feel big, vague, heroic things
about a new life and a new world and they two Twinklers going to
conquer it; but when the new world was really upon them, and the
new life, with all the multitudinous details that would have to be
tackled, going to begin in a few hours, their hearts became uneasy
and sank within them. England hadn't liked them. Suppose
America didn't like them either? Uncle Arthur hadn't liked
them. Suppose Uncle Arthur's friends didn't like them
either? Their hearts sank to, and remained in, their boots.

Round Anna-Rose's waist, safely concealed beneath her skirt
from what Anna-Felicitas called the predatory instincts of their
fellow-passengers, was a chamois-leather bag containing their
passports, a letter to the bank where their £200 was, a letter to
those friends of Uncle Arthur's who were to be tried first, a
letter to those other friends of his who were to be the second line
of defence supposing the first one failed, and ten pounds in two £5
notes.

Uncle Arthur, grievously grumbling, and having previously used
in bed most of those vulgar words that made Aunt Alice so
miserable, had given Anna-Rose one of the £5 notes for the extra
expenses of the journey till, in New York, she should be able to
draw on the £200, though what expenses there could be for a couple
of girls whose passage was paid Uncle Arthur was damned, he
alleged, if he knew; and Aunt Alice had secretly added the other.
This was all Anna-Rose's ready money, and it would have to be
changed into dollars before reaching New York so as to be ready for
emergencies on arrival. She judged from the growing restlessness of
the passengers that it would soon be time to go and change it. How
many dollars ought she to get?

Mr. Twist was absent, packing his things. She ought to have
asked him long ago, but they seemed so suddenly to have reached the
end of their journey. Only yesterday there was the same old
limitless sea everywhere, the same old feeling that they were never
going to arrive. Now the waves had all gone, and one could actually
see land. The New World. The place all their happiness or
unhappiness would depend on.

She laid hold of Anna-Felicitas, who was walking about just as
if she had never been prostrate on a deck-chair in her life, and
was going to say something appropriate and encouraging on the
Christopher and Columbus lines; but Anna-Felicitas, who had been
pondering the £5 notes problem, wouldn't listen.

"A dollar," said Anna-Felicitas, worrying it out,
"isn't like a shilling or a mark, but on the other hand
neither is it like a pound."

"No," said Anna-Rose, brought back to her immediate
business.

"It's four times more than one, and five times less
than the other," said Anna-Felicitas. "That's how
you've got to count. That's what Aunt Alice said."

"Yes. And then there's the exchange," said
Anna-Rose, frowning. "As if it wasn't complicated enough
already, there's the exchange. Uncle Arthur said we weren't
to forget that."

Anna-Felicitas wanted to know what was meant by the exchange,
and Anna-Rose, unwilling to admit ignorance to Anna-Felicitas, who
had to be kept in her proper place, especially when one was just
getting to America and she might easily become above herself, said
that it was something that varied. ("The exchange, you know,
varies," Uncle Arthur had said when he gave her the £5 note.
"You must keep your eye on the variations." Anna-Rose was
all eagerness to keep her eye on them, if only she had known what
and where they were. But one never asked questions of Uncle Arthur.
His answers, if one did, were confined to expressions of anger and
amazement that one didn't, at one's age, already know.)

"Oh," said Anna-Felicitas, for a moment glancing at
Anna-Rose out of the corner of her eye, considerately not pressing
her further.

"I wish Mr. Twist would come," said Anna-Rose
uneasily, looking in the direction he usually appeared from.

"We won't always have
him
" remarked Anna-Felicitas.

"I never said we would," said Anna-Rose shortly.

The young lady of the nails appeared at that moment in a hat so
gorgeous that the twins stopped dead to stare. She had a veil on
and white gloves, and looked as if she were going for a walk in
Fifth Avenue the very next minute.