Christopher and Columbus (23 page)

Mrs. Twist had not come down to say good-bye, and they had sent
her many messages.

"I expect I will," Mr. Twist had answered.

But it was not till they were the other side of Chicago that he
really began to be himself again. Up to then--all that first day,
and the next morning in New York where he took them to the bank
their £200 was in and saw that they got a cheque-book, and all the
day after that waiting in the Chicago hotel for the train they were
to go on in to California--Mr. Twist was taciturn.

They left Chicago in the evening; a raw, wintery October evening
with cold rain in the air, and the twins, going early to bed in
their compartment, a place that seemed to them so enchanting that
their spirits couldn't fail to rise, saw no more of him till
breakfast next morning. They then noticed that the cloud had lifted
a little; and as the day went on it lifted still more. They were
going to be three days together in that train, and it would be
impossible for Mr. Twist, they were sure, to go on being taciturn
as long as that. It wasn't his nature. His nature was
conversational. And besides, shut up like that in a train, the
sheer getting tired of reading all day would make him want to
talk.

So after lunch, when they were all three on the platform of the
observation car, though there was nothing to observe except
limitless flat stretches of bleak and empty country, the twins
suggested that he should now begin to talk again. They pointed out
that his body was bound to get stiff on that long journey from want
of exercise, but that his mind needn't, and he had better
stretch it by conversing agreeably with them as he used to before
the day, which seemed so curiously long ago, when they landed in
America.

"It does indeed seem long ago," agreed Mr. Twist,
lighting another cigarette. "I have difficulty in realizing it
isn't a week yet."

And he reflected that the Annas had managed to produce pretty
serious havoc in America considering they had only been in it five
days. He and his mother permanently estranged; Edith left alone at
Clark sitting there in the ruins of her loving preparations for his
return, with nothing at all that he could see to look forward to
and live for except the hourly fulfilment of what she regarded as
duty; every plan upset; the lives, indeed, of his mother and of his
sister and of himself completely altered,--it was a pretty big bag
in the time, he thought, flinging the match back towards
Chicago.

Mr. Twist felt sore. He felt like somebody who had had a bad
tumble, and is sore and a little dizzy; but he recognized that
these great ruptures cannot take place without aches and doubts. He
ached, and he doubted and he also knew through his aches and doubts
that he was free at last from what of late years he had so
grievously writhed under--the shame of pretence. And the immediate
cause of his being set free was, precisely, the Annas.

It had been a violent, a painful setting free, but it had
happened; and who knew if, without their sudden appearance at Clark
and the immediate effect they produced on his mother, he
wouldn't have lapsed after all, in spite of the feelings and
determinations he had brought back with him from Europe, into the
old ways again under the old influence, and gone on ignobly
pretending to agree, to approve, to enjoy, to love, when he was
never for an instant doing anything of the sort? He might have
trailed on like that for years--Mr. Twist didn't like the
picture of his own weakness, but he was determined to look at
himself as he was--trailed along languidly when he was at home,
living another life when he was away, getting what he absolutely
must have, the irreducible minimum of personal freedom necessary to
sanity, by means of small and shabby deceits. My goodness, how he
hated deceits, how tired he was of the littleness of them!

He turned his head and looked at the profiles of the Annas
sitting alongside him. His heart suddenly grew warm within him.
They had on the blue caps again which made them look so bald and
cherubic, and their eyes were fixed on the straight narrowing lines
of rails that went back and back to a point in the distance. The
dear little things; the dear, dear little things,--so
straightforward, so blessedly straight and simple, thought Mr.
Twist. Fancy his mother losing a chance like this. Fancy
anybody
, thought the affectionate and kind man, missing an
opportunity of helping such unfortunately placed children.

The twins felt he was looking at them, and together they turned
and looked at him. When they saw his expression they knew the cloud
had lifted still more, and their faces broke into broad smiles of
welcome.

"It's pleasant to see you back again," said
Anna-Felicitas heartily, who was next to him.

"We've missed you very much," said Anna-Rose.

"It hasn't been like the same place, the world
hasn't," said Anna-Felicitas, "since you've been
away."

"Since you walked out of the dining-room that night at
Clark," said Anna-Rose.

"Of course we know you can't always be with us,"
said Anna-Felicitas.

"Which we deeply regret," interjected Anna-Rose.

"But while you are with us," said Anna-Felicitas,
"for these last few days, I would suggest that we should be
happy. As happy as we used to be on the
St. Luke
when we weren't being sea-sick." And she
thought she might even go so far as to enjoy hearing the "Ode
to Dooty," now.

"Yes," said Anna-Rose, leaning forward. "In three
days we shall have disappeared into the maw of the Delloggs. Do let
us be happy while we can. Who knows what their maw will be like?
But whatever it's like," she added firmly, "we're
going to stick in it."

"And perhaps," said Anna-Felicitas, "now that
you're a little restored to your normal condition, you'll
tell us what has been the matter."

"For it's quite clear," said Anna-Rose, "that
something
has
been the matter."

"We've been talking it over," said Anna-Felicitas,
"and putting two and two together, and perhaps you'll tell
us what it was, and then we shall know if we're
right."

"Perhaps I will," said Mr. Twist, cogitating, as he
continued benevolently to gaze at them. "Let's see--"
He hesitated, and pushed his hat off his forehead. "I wonder
if you'd understand--"

"We'll give our minds to it," Anna-Felicitas
assured him.

"These caps make us look more stupid than we are,"
Anna-Rose assured him, deducing her own appearance from that of
Anna-Felicitas.

Encouraged, but doubtful of their capabilities of comprehension
on this particular point, Mr. Twist embarked rather gingerly on his
explanations. He was going to be candid from now on for the rest of
his days, but the preliminary plunges were, he found, after all a
little difficult. Even with the pellucidly candid Annas, all ready
with ears pricked up attentively and benevolently and minds
impartial, he found it difficult. It was because, on the subject of
mothers, he feared he was up against their one prejudice. He felt
rather than knew that their attitude on this one point might be
uncompromising,--mothers were mothers, and there was an end of it;
that sort of attitude, coupled with extreme reprobation of himself
for supposing anything else.

He was surprised and relieved to find he was wrong. Directly
they got wind of the line his explanations were taking, which was
very soon for they were giving their minds to it as they promised
and Mr. Twist's hesitations were illuminating, they
interrupted.

"So we were right," they said to each other.

"But you don't know yet what I'm going to
say," said Mr. Twist. "I've only started on the
preliminaries."

"Yes we do. You fell out with your mother," said
Anna-Rose.

"Quarrelled," said Anna-Felicitas, nodding

"We didn't think so at the time," said
Anna-Rose.

"We just felt there was an atmosphere of strain about
Clark," said Anna-Felicitas.

"But talking it over privately, we concluded that was what
had happened."

Mr. Twist was so much surprised that for a moment he could only
say "Oh." Then he said, "And you're terribly
shocked, I suppose."

"Oh no," they said airily and together.

"No?"

"You see--" began Anna-Felicitas.

"You see--" began Anna-Rose.

"You see, as a general principle," said
Anna-Felicitas, "it's reprehensible to quarrel with
one's mother."

"But we've not been able to escape observing--"
said Anna-Rose.

"In the course of our brief and inglorious career,"
put in Anna-Felicitas.

"--that there are mothers and mothers," said
Anna-Rose.

"Yes," said Mr. Twist; and as they didn't go on he
presently added, "Yes?"

"Oh, that's all," said the twins, once more airily
and together.

After this brief
éclaircissement
the rest of the journey was happy. Indeed,
it is doubtful if any one can journey to California and not be
happy.

Mr. Twist had never been further west than Chicago and break up
or no break up of his home he couldn't but have a pleasant
feeling of adventure. Every now and then the realization of this
feeling gave his conscience a twinge, and wrung out of it a rebuke.
He was having the best of it in this business; he was the party in
the quarrel who went away, who left the dreariness of the scene of
battle with all its corpses of dead illusions, and got off to fresh
places and people who had never heard of him. Just being in a
train, he found, and rushing on to somewhere else was
extraordinarily nerve-soothing. At Clark there would be gloom and
stagnation, the heavy brooding of a storm that has burst but not
moved on, a continued anger on his mother's side, naturally
increasing with her inactivity, with her impotence. He was gone,
and she could say and do nothing more to him. In a quarrel, thought
Mr. Twist, the morning he pushed up his blinds and saw the desert
at sunrise, an exquisite soft thing just being touched into faint
colours,--in a quarrel the one who goes has quite unfairly the best
of it. Beautiful new places come and laugh at him, people who
don't know him and haven't yet judged and condemned him are
ready to be friendly. He must, of course, go far enough; not stay
near at hand in some familiar place and be so lonely that he ends
by being remorseful. Well, he was going far enough. Thanks to the
Annas he was going about as far as he could go. Certainly he was
having the best of it in being the one in the quarrel who went; and
he was shocked to find himself cynically thinking, on top of that,
that one should always, then, take care to be the one who did
go.

But the desert has a peculiarly exhilarating air. It came in
everywhere, and seemed to tickle him out of the uneasy mood proper
to one who has been cutting himself off for good and all from his
early home. For the life of him he couldn't help feeling
extraordinarily light and free. Edith--yes, there was Edith, but
some day he would make up to Edith for everything. There was no
helping her now: she was fast bound in misery and iron, and
didn't even seem to know it. So would he have been, he
supposed, if he had never left home at all. As it was, it was bound
to come, this upheaval. Just the mere fact of inevitable growth
would have burst the bands sooner or later. There oughtn't, of
course, to have been any bands; or, there being bands, he ought
long ago to have burst them.

He pulled his kind slack mouth firmly together and looked
determined. Long ago, repeated Mr. Twist, shaking his head at his
own weak past. Well, it was done at last, and never again--never,
never again, he said to himself, sniffing in through his open
window the cold air of the desert at sunrise.

By that route, the Santa Fé, it is not till two or three hours
before you get to the end of the journey that summer meets you. It
is waiting for you at a place called San Bernardino. There is no
trace of it before. Up to then you are still in October; and then
you get to the top of the pass, and with a burst it is
June,--brilliant, windless, orange-scented.

The twins and Mr. Twist were in the restaurant-car lunching when
the miracle happened. Suddenly the door opened and in came summer,
with a great warm breath of roses. In a moment the car was invaded
by the scent of flowers and fruit and of something else strange and
new and very aromatic. The electric fans were set twirling, the
black waiters began to perspire, the passengers called for cold
things to eat, and the twins pulled off their knitted caps and
jerseys.

From that point on to the end of the line in Los Angeles the
twins could only conclude they were in heaven. It was the light
that did it, the extraordinary glow of radiance. Of course there
were orchards after orchards of orange trees covered with fruit,
white houses smothered in flowers, gardens overrun with roses, tall
groups of eucalyptus trees giving an impression of elegant
nakedness, long lines of pepper trees with frail fern-like
branches, and these things continued for the rest of the way; but
they would have been as nothing without that beautiful, great bland
light. The twins had had their hot summers in Pomerania, and their
July days in England, but had not yet seen anything like this. Here
was summer without sultriness, without gnats, mosquitoes,
threatening thunderstorms, or anything to spoil it; it was summer
as it might be in the Elysian fields, perfectly clear, and calm,
and radiant. When the train stopped they could see how not a breath
of wind stirred the dust on the quiet white roads, and the leaves
of the magnolia trees glistened motionless in the sun. The train
went slowly and stopped often, for there seemed to be one long
succession of gardens and villages. After the empty, wind-driven
plains they had come through, those vast cold expanses without a
house or living creature in sight, what a laughing plenty, what a
gracious fruitfulness, was here. And when they went back to their
compartment it too was full of summer smells,--the smell of fruit,
and roses, and honey.