Christopher and Columbus (21 page)

"As Mrs. Sack has done from her husband,"
Anna-Felicitas explained, smiling too, benevolently, at the black
lady who actually having got oyster patties on her plate hadn't
bothered to eat them. "But of course you couldn't,"
she went on, remembering in time to be tactful and make a
Sympathetic reference to the lady's weeds; which, indeed,
considering Mr. Twist had told her and Anna-Rose that his father
had died when he was ten, nearly a quarter of a century ago, seemed
to have kept their heads up astonishingly and stayed very fresh.
And true to her German training, and undaunted by the fork, she did
that which Anna-Rose in her contentment had forgotten, and catching
up Mrs. Twist's right hand, fork and all, to her lips gave it
the brief ceremonious kiss of a well brought up Junker.

Like Amanda's, Mrs. Twist's life had been up to this
empty of Junkers. She had never even heard of them till the war,
and pronounced their name, and so did the rest of Clark following
her lead, as if it had been junket, only with an r instead of a t
at the end. She didn't therefore recognize the action; but even
she, outraged as she was, could not but see its grace. And looking
up in sombre hostility at the little head bent over her hand and at
the dark line of eyelashes on the the flushed face, she thought
swiftly, "
She's
the one."

"You see, mother," said Mr. Twist, pulling a chair
vigorously and sitting on it with determination, "it's
like this. (Sit down, you two, and get eating. Start on anything
you see in this show that hits your fancy. Edith'll be fetching
you something hot, I expect--soup, or something--but meanwhile
here's enough stuff to go on with.) You see, mother--" he
resumed, turning squarely to her, while the twins obeyed him with
immense alacrity and sat down and began to eat whatever happened to
be nearest them, "these two girls--well, to start with
they're twins--"

Mr. Twist was stopped again by his mother's face. She
couldn't conceive why he should lie. Twins the world over
matched in size and features; it was notorious that they did. Also,
it was the custom for them to match in age, and the tall one of
these was at least a year older than the other one. But still,
thought Mrs. Twist, let that pass. She would suffer whatever it was
she had to suffer in silence.

The twins too were silent, because they were so busy eating.
Perfectly at home under the wing they knew so well, they behaved
with an easy naturalness that appeared to Mrs. Twist outrageous.
But still--let that too pass. These strangers helped themselves and
helped each other, as if everything belonged to them; and the tall
one actually asked her--her, the mistress of the house--if she
could get
her
anything. Well, let that pass too.

"You see, mother--" began Mr. Twist again.

He was finding it extraordinarily difficult. What a tremendous
hold one's early training had on one, he reflected, casting
about for words; what a deeply rooted fear there was in one,
subconscious, lurking in one's foundations, of one's
mother, of her authority, of her quickly wounded affection. Those
Jesuits, with their conviction that they could do what they liked
with a man if they had had the bringing up of him till he was
seven, were pretty near the truth. It took a lot of shaking off,
the unquestioning awe, the habit of obedience of one's
childhood.

Mr. Twist sat endeavouring to shake it off. He also tried to
bolster himself up by thinking he might perhaps be able to assist
his mother to come out from her narrowness, and discover too how
warm and glorious the sun shone outside, where people loved and
helped each other. Then he rejected that as priggish.

"You see, mother," he started again, "I came
across them--across these two girls--they're both called Anna,
by the way, which seems confusing but isn't really--I came
across them on the boat----"

He again stopped dead.

Mrs. Twist had turned her dark eyes to him. They had been fixed
on Anna-Felicitas, and on what she was doing with the dish of
oyster patties in front of her. What she was doing was not what
Mrs. Twist was accustomed to see done at her table. Anna-Felicitas
was behaving badly with the patties, and not even attempting to
conceal, as the decent do, how terribly they interested her.

"You came across them on the boat," repeated Mrs.
Twist, her eyes on her son, moved in spite of her resolution to
speech. And he had told her that very afternoon that he had spoken
to nobody except men. Another lie. Well, let that pass too ...

Mr. Twist sat staring back at her through his big gleaming
spectacles. He well knew the weakness of his position from his
mother's point of view; but why should she have such a point of
view, such a niggling, narrow one, determined to stay angry and
offended because he had been stupid enough to continue, under the
influence of her presence, the old system of not being candid with
her, of being slavishly anxious to avoid offending? Let her try for
once to understand and forgive. Let her for once take the chance
offered her of doing a big, kind thing. But as he stared at her it
entered his mind that he couldn't very well start moving her
heart on behalf of the twins in their presence. He couldn't
tell her they were orphans, alone in the world, helpless, poor, and
so unfortunately German, with them sitting there. If he did, there
would be trouble. The twins seemed absorbed for the moment in
getting fed, but he had no doubt their ears were attentive, and at
the first suggestion of sympathy being invoked for them they would
begin to say a few of those things he was so much afraid his mother
mightn't be able to understand. Or, if she understood,
appreciate.

He decided that he would be quiet until Edith came back, and
then ask his mother to go to the drawing-room with him, and while
Edith was looking after the Annas he would, well out of earshot,
explain them to his mother, describe their situation, commend them
to her patience and her love. He sat silent therefore, wishing
extraordinarily hard that Edith would be quick.

But Anna-Felicitas's eyes were upon him now, as well as his
mother's. "Is it possible," she asked with her own
peculiar gentleness, balancing a piece of patty on her fork,
"that you haven't yet mentioned us to your
mother?"

And Anna-Rose, struck in her turn at such an omission, paused
too with food on the way to her mouth, and said, "And we such
friends?"

"Almost, as it were, still red-not from being with
you?" said Anna-Felicitas.

Both the twins looked at Mrs. Twist in their surprise.

"I thought the first thing everybody did when they got back
to their mother," said Anna-Rose, addressing her, "was to
tell her everything from the beginning."

Mrs. Twist, after an instant's astonishment at this
unexpected support, bowed her head--it could hardly be called a
nod--in her son's direction. "You see--" the movement
seemed to say, "even these ..."

"And ever since the first day at sea," said
Anna-Felicitas, also addressing Mrs. Twist, "up to as recently
as eleven o'clock last night, he has been what I think can be
quite accurately described as our faithful two-footed
companion."

"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "As much as that we've
been friends. Practically inseparable."

"So that it really is
very
surprising," said Anna-Felicitas to Mr. Twist,
"that you didn't tell your mother about us."

Mr. Twist got up. He wouldn't wait for Edith. It was
unhealthy in that room.

He took his mother's arm and helped her to get up.
"You're very wise, you two," he flung at the twins in
the voice of the goaded, "but you may take it from me you
don't know everything yet. Mother, come into the drawing-room,
and we'll talk. Edith'll see to these girls. I expect I
ought to have talked sooner," he went on, as he led her to the
door, "but confound it all, I've only been home about a
couple of hours."

"Five," said Mrs. Twist.

"Five then. What's five? No time at all."

"Ample," said Mrs Twist; adding icily, "and did I
you say confound, Edward?"

"Well, damn then," said Edward very loud, in a rush of
rank rebellion.

This night was the turning-point in Mr. Twist's life. In it
he broke loose from his mother. He spent a terrible three hours
with her in the drawing-room, and the rest of the night he strode
up and down his bedroom. The autumn morning, creeping round the
house in long white wisps, found him staring out of his window very
pale, his mouth pulled together as tight as it would go.

His mother had failed him. She had not understood. And not only
simply not understood, but she had said things when at last she did
speak, after he had explained and pleaded for at least an hour, of
an incredible bitterness and injustice. She had seemed to hate him.
If she hadn't been his mother Mr. Twist would have been certain
she hated him, but he still believed that mothers couldn't hate
their children. It was stark against nature; and Mr. Twist still
believed in the fundamental rightness of that which is called
nature. She had accused him of gross things--she, his mother, who
from her conversation since he could remember was unaware, he had
judged, of the very existence of such things. Those helpless
children ... Mr. Twist stamped as he strode. Well, he had made her
take that back; and indeed she had afterwards admitted that she
said it in her passion of grief and disappointment, and that it was
evident these girls were not like that.

But before they reached that stage, for the first time in his
life he had been saying straight out what he wanted to say to his
mother just as if she had been an ordinary human being. He told her
all he knew of the twins, asked her to take them in for the present
and be good to them, and explained the awkwardness of their
position, apart from its tragedy, as Germans by birth stranded in
New England, where opinion at that moment was so hostile to
Germans. Then, continuing in candour, he had told his mother that
here was her chance of doing a fine and beautiful thing, and it was
at this point that Mrs. Twist suddenly began, on her side, to
talk.

She had listened practically in silence to the rest; had only
started when he explained the girls' nationality; but when he
came to offering her these girls as the great opportunity of her
life to do something really good at last, she, who felt she had
been doing nothing else but noble and beautiful things, and doing
them with the most single-minded devotion to duty and the most
consistent disregard of inclination, could keep silence no longer.
Had she not borne her great loss without a murmur? Had she not
devoted all her years to bringing up her son to be a good man? Had
she ever considered herself? Had she ever flagged in her efforts to
set an example of patience in grief, of dignity in misfortune? She
began to speak. And just as amazed as she had been at the things
this strange, unknown son had been saying to her and at the manner
of their delivery, so was he amazed at the things this strange,
unknown mother was saying to him, and at the manner of their
delivery.

Yet his amazement was not so great after all as hers. Because
for years, away down hidden somewhere inside him, he had doubted
his mother; for years he had, shocked at himself, covered up and
trampled on these unworthy doubts indignantly. He had doubted her
unselfishness; he had doubted her sympathy and kindliness; he had
even doubted her honesty, her ordinary honesty with money and
accounts; and lately, before he went to Europe, he had caught
himself thinking she was cruel. Nevertheless this unexpected naked
justification of his doubts was shattering to him.

But Mrs. Twist had never doubted Edward. She thought she knew
him inside out. She had watched him develop. Watched him during the
long years of his unconsciousness. She had been quite secure; and
rather disposed, also somewhere down inside her, to a contempt for
him, so easy had he been to manage, so ready to do everything she
wished. Now it appeared that she no more knew Edward than if he had
been a stranger in the street.

The bursting of the dykes of convention between them was a
horrible thing to them both. Mr. Twist had none of the cruelty of
the younger generation to support him: he couldn't shrug his
shoulder and take comfort in the thought that this break between
them was entirely his mother's fault, for however much he
believed it to be her fault the belief merely made him wretched; he
had none of the pitiless black pleasure to be got from telling
himself it served her right. So naturally kind was he--weak, soft,
stupid, his mother shook out at him--that through all his own shame
at this naked vision of what had been carefully dressed up for
years in dignified clothes of wisdom and affection, he was actually
glad, when he had time in his room to think it over, glad she
should be so passionately positive that he, and only he, was in the
wrong. It would save her from humiliation; and of the painful
things of late Mr. Twist could least bear to see a human being
humiliated.

That was, however, towards morning. For hours raged, striding
about his room, sorting out the fragments into which his life as a
son had fallen, trying to fit them into some sort of a pattern, to
see clear about the future. Clearer. Not clear. He couldn't
hope for that yet. The future seemed one confused lump. All he
could see really clear of it was that he was going, next day, and
taking the twins. He would take them to the other people they had a
letter to, the people in California, and then turn his face back to
Europe, to the real thing, to the greatness of life where death is.
Not an hour longer than he could help would he or they stay in that
house. He had told his mother he would go away, and she had said,
"I hope never to see you again." Who would have thought
she had so much of passion in her? Who would have thought he had so
much of it in him?