Christopher and Columbus (26 page)

"Well, I've thought of a plan too," said Mr. Twist
firmly, feeling sure that the twins' plan would be the sort
that ought to be instantly nipped in the bud.

He was therefore greatly astonished when Anna-Rose said,
"Have you? Is it about schools?"

He stared at her in silence. "Yes," he then said
slowly, for he was very much surprised. "It is."

"So is ours," said Anna-Rose.

"Indeed," said Mr. Twist.

"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "We don't think
much of it, but it will tide us over."

"Exactly," said Mr. Twist, still more astonished at
this perfect harmony of ideas.

"Tide us over till Mrs. Dellogg is---" began Anna-Rose
in her clear little voice that carried like a flute to all the
tables round them.

Mr. Twist got up quickly. "If you've finished let us go
out of doors," he said; for he perceived that silence had
fallen on the other tables, and attentiveness to what Anna-Rose was
going to say next.

"Yes. On the sands," said the twins, getting up
too.

On the sands, however, Mr. Twist soon discovered that the
harmony of ideas was not as complete as he had supposed; indeed,
something very like heated argument began almost as soon as they
were seated on some rocks round the corner of the shore to the west
of the hotel and they became aware, through conversation, of the
vital difference in the two plans.

The Twinkler plan, which they expounded at much length and with
a profusion of optimistic detail, was to search for and find a
school in the neighbourhood for the daughters of gentlemen, and go
to it for three months, or six months, or whatever time Mrs.
Dellogg wanted to recover in.

Up to this point the harmony was complete, and Mr. Twist could
only nod approval. Beyond it all was confusion, for it appeared
that the twins didn't dream of entering a school in any
capacity except as teachers. Professors, they said; professors of
languages and literatures. They could speak German, as they pointed
out, very much better than most people, and had, as Mr. Twist had
sometimes himself remarked, an extensive vocabulary in English.
They would give lessons in English and German literature. They
would be able to teach quite a lot about Heine, for instance, the
whole of whose poetry they knew by heart and whose sad life in
Paris--

"It's no good running on like that," interrupted
Mr. Twist. "You're not old enough."

Not old enough? The Twinklers, from their separate rocks, looked
at each other in surprised indignation.

"Not old enough?" repeated Anna-Rose. "We're
grown up. And I don't see how one can be more than grown up.
One either is or isn't grown up. And there can be no doubt as
to which we are."

And this the very man who so respectfully had been holding their
chairs for them only a few minutes before! As if people did things
like that for children.

"You're not old enough I say," said Mr. Twist
again, bringing his hand down with a slap on the rock to emphasize
his words. "Nobody would take you. Why, you've got
perambulator faces, the pair of you--"

"Perambulator--?"

"And what school is going to want two teachers both
teaching the same thing, anyway?"

And he then quickly got out his plan, and the conversation
became so heated that for a time it was molten.

The Twinklers were shocked by his plan. More; they were
outraged. Go to school? To a place they had never been to even in
their suitable years? They, two independent grown-ups with £200 in
the bank and nobody with any right to stop their doing anything
they wanted to? Go to school now, like a couple of little
suck-a-thumbs?

It was Anna-Rose, very flushed and bright of eye, who flung this
expression at Mr. Twist from her rock. He might think they had
perambulator faces if he liked--they didn't care, but they did
desire him to bear in mind that if it hadn't been for the war
they would be now taking their proper place in society, that they
had already done a course of nursing in a hospital, an activity not
open to any but adults, and that Uncle Arthur had certainly not
given them all that money to fritter away on paying for belated
schooling.

"We would be anachronisms," said Anna-Felicitas,
winding up the discussion with a firmness so unusual in her that it
showed how completely she had been stirred.

"Are you aware that we are marriageable?" inquired
Anna-Rose icily.

"And don't you think it's bad enough for us to be
aliens and undesirables," asked Anna-Felicitas, "without
getting chronologically confused as well?"

Mr. Twist was quiet for a bit. He couldn't compete with the
Twinklers when it came to sheer language. He sat hunched on his
rock, his face supported by his two fists, staring out to sea while
the twins watched him indignantly. School indeed! Then presently he
pushed his hat back and began slowly to rub his ear.

"Well, I'm blest if I know what to do with you,
then," he said, continuing to rub his ear and stare out to
sea.

The twins opened their mouths simultaneously at this to protest
against any necessity for such knowledge on his part, but he
interrupted them. "If you don't mind," he said,
"I'd like to resume this discussion when you're both a
little more composed."

"We're perfectly composed," said
Anna-Felicitas.

"Less ruffled, then."

"We're quite unruffled," said Anna-Rose.

"Well, you don't look it, and you don't sound like
it. But as this is important I'd be glad to resume the
discussion, say, to-morrow. I suggest we spend to-day exploring the
neighbourhood and steadying our minds--"

"Our minds are perfectly steady, thank you."

"--and to-morrow we'll have another go at this
question. I haven't told you all my plan yet"--Mr. Twist
hadn't had time to inform them of his wish to become their
guardian, owing to the swiftness with which he had been engulfed in
their indignation,--"but whether you approve of it or not,
what is quite certain is that we can't stay on at the hotel
much longer."

"Because it's so dear?"

"Oh, it isn't so much
that
,--the proprietor is a friend of mine, or anyhow he
very well might be--"

"It looks very dear," said Anna-Rose, visions of their
splendid bedroom and bathroom rising before her. They too had slept
in silken beds, and the taps in their bathroom they had judged to
be pure gold.

"And it's because we can't afford to be in a dear
place spending money," said Anna-Felicitas, "that
it's so important we should find a salaried position in a
school without loss of time."

"And it's because we can't afford reckless
squandering that we ought to start looking for such a situation at
once" said Anna-Rose.

"Not to-day," said Mr. Twist firmly, for he
wouldn't give up the hope of getting them, once they were used
to it, to come round to his plan. "To-day, this one day,
we'll give ourselves up to enjoyment. It'll do us all good.
Besides, we don't often get to a place like this, do we. And it
has taken some getting to, hasn't it."

He rose from his rock and offered his hand to help them off
theirs.

"To-day enjoyment," he said, "to-morrow business.
I'm crazy," he added artfully, "to see what the
country is like away up in those hills."

And so it was that about five o'clock that afternoon, having
spent the whole day exploring the charming environs of
Acapulco,--having been seen at different periods going over the Old
Mission in tow of a monk who wouldn't look at them but kept his
eyes carefully fixed on the ground, sitting on high stools eating
strange and enchanting ices at the shop in the town that has the
best ices, bathing deliciously in the warm sea at the foot of a
cliff along the top of which a great hedge of rose-coloured
geraniums flared against the sky, lunching under a grove of ilexes
on the contents of a basket produced by Mr. Twist from somewhere in
the car he had hired, wandering afterwards up through eucalyptus
woods across the fields towards the foot of the mountains,--they
came about five o'clock, thirsty and thinking of tea, to a
delightful group of flowery cottages clustering round a restaurant
and forming collectively, as Mr. Twist explained, one of the many
American forms of hotel. "To which," he said,
"people not living in the cottages can come and have meals at
the restaurant, so we'll go right in and have tea."

And it was just because they couldn't get tea--any other
meal, the proprietress said, but no teas were served, owing to the
Domestic Help Eight Hours Bill which obliged her to do without
domestics during the afternoon hours--that Anna-Felicitas came by
her great idea.

But she didn't come by it at once.

They got into the car first, which was waiting for them in the
scented road at the bottom of the field they had walked across, and
they got into it in silence and were driven back to their hotel for
tea, and her brain was still unvisited by inspiration.

They were all tired and thirsty, and were disappointed at being
thwarted in their desire to sit at a little green table under
whispering trees and rest, and drink tea, and had no sort of wish
to have it at the Cosmopolitan. But both Mr. Twist, who had been
corrupted by Europe, and the twins, who had the habits of their
mother, couldn't imagine doing without it in the afternoon, and
they would have it in the hotel sooner than not have it at all. It
was brought to them after a long time of waiting. Nobody else was
having any at that hour, and the waiter, when at last one was
found, had difficulty apparently in believing that they were
serious. When at last he did bring it, it was toast and marmalade
and table-napkins, for all the world as though it had been
breakfast.

Then it was that, contemplating this with discomfort and
distaste, as well as the place they were sitting in and its
rocking-chairs and marble and rugs, Anna-Felicitas was suddenly
smitten by her idea.

It fell upon her like a blow. It struck her fairly, as it were,
between the eyes. She wasn't used to ideas, and she stopped
dead in the middle of a piece of toast and looked at the others.
They stopped too in their eating and looked at her.

"What's the matter?" asked Anna-Rose. "Has
another button come off?"

At this Mr. Twist considered it wisest to turn his head away,
for experience had taught him that Anna-Felicitas easily came
undone.

"I've thought of something," said
Anna-Felicitas.

Mr. Twist turned his head back again. "You don't
say," he said, mildly sarcastic.

"
Ich gratuliere
," said Anna-Rose, also mildly
sarcastic.

"I've got an idea," said Anna-Felicitas. "But
it's so luminous," she said, looking from one to the other
in a kind of surprise. "Of course. That's what we'll
do. Ridiculous to waste time bothering about schools."

There was a new expression on her face that silenced the
comments rising to Anna-Rose's and Mr. Twist's tongues,
both of whom had tired feet and were therefore disposed to
sarcasm.

Anna-Felicitas looked at them, and they looked at her, and her
face continued to become visibly more and more illuminated, just as
if a curtain were being pulled up. Animation and interest shone in
her usually dreamy eyes. Her drooping body sat up quite straight.
She reminded Anna-Rose, who had a biblically well-furnished mind,
of Moses when he came down from receiving the Law on the
mountain.

"Well, tell us," said Anna-Rose. "But not,"
she added, thinking of Moses, "if it's only more
commandments."

Anna-Felicitas dropped the piece of toast she was still holding
in her fingers, and pushed back her cup. "Come out on to the
rocks," she said getting up--"where we sat this
morning." And she marched out, followed by the other two with
the odd submissiveness people show towards any one who is
thoroughly determined.

It was dark and dinner-time before they got back to the hotel.
Throughout the sunset Anna-Felicitas sat on her rock, the same rock
she had sat on so unsatisfactorily eight hours earlier, and
expounded her idea. She couldn't talk fast enough. She, so slow
and listless, for once was shaken into burning activity. She threw
off her hat directly she got on to the sands, climbed up the rock
as if it were a pulpit, and with her hands clasped round her knees
poured out her plan, the long shafts of the setting sun bathing her
in bright flames and making her more like Moses than ever,--if,
that is, one could imagine Moses as beautiful as Anna-F., thought
Anna-Rose, and as felicitously without his nose and beard.

It was wonderful how complete Anna-Felicitas's inspiration
was. It reminded Mr. Twist of his own about the teapot. It was, of
course, a far more complicated matter than that little device of
his, and would have to be thought out very carefully and approached
very judiciously, but the wealth of detail she was already ready
with immensely impressed him. She even had a name for the thing;
and it was when he heard this name, when it flashed into her talk
with the unpremeditatedness of an inspiration, that Mr. Twist
became definitely enthusiastic.

He had an American eye for advertisement. Respect for it was in
his blood. He instantly saw the possibilities contained in the
name. He saw what could be done with it, properly worked. He saw it
on hoarding-on signposts, in a thousand contrivances for catching
the public attention and sticking there.

The idea, of course, was fantastic, unconventional, definitely
outside what his mother and that man Uncle Arthur would consider
proper, but it was outside the standards of such people that life
and fruitfulness and interest and joy began. He had escaped from
the death-like grip of his mother, and Uncle Arthur had himself
forcibly expulsed the Annas from his, and now that they were all so
far away, instead of still timorously trying to go on living up to
those distant sterile ideas why shouldn't they boldly go out
into the light and colour that was waiting everywhere for the free
of spirit?