Christopher and Columbus (44 page)

She turned her head away again at this, for though it sounded
lovely it made her feel a little shy and unprovided with an answer;
and then he said, again tumultuously, that her ear was the most
perfect thing ever stuck on a girl's cheek, and would she mind
turning her face to him so that he might see if she had another
just like it on the other side.

She blushed at this, because she couldn't remember whether
she had washed it lately or not--one so easily forgot one's
ears; there were so many different things to wash--and he told her
that when she blushed it was like the first wild rose of the first
summer morning of the world.

At this Anna-Felicitas was quite overcome, and subsided into a
condition of blissful, quiescent waiting for whatever might come
next. Fancy her face reminding him of all those nice things. She
had seen it every day for years and years in the looking-glass, and
not noticed anything particular about it. It had seemed to her just
a face. Something you saw out of, and ate with, and had to clean
whatever else you didn't when you were late for breakfast,
because there it was and couldn't be hidden,--an object remote
indeed from pansies, and stars, and beautiful things like that.

She would have liked to explain this to the young man, and point
out that she feared his imagination ran ahead of the facts and that
perhaps when his leg was well again he would see things more as
they were, but to her surprise when she turned to him to tell him
this she found she was obliged to look away at once again. She
couldn't look at him. Fancy that now, thought Anna-Felicitas,
attentively gazing at her toes. And he had such dear eyes; and such
a dear, eager sort of face. All the more, then, she reasoned,
should her own eyes have dwelt with pleasure on him. But they
couldn't. "Dear me," she murmured, watching her toes
as carefully as if they might at any moment go away and leave her
there.

"I know," said Elliott. "You think I'm
talking fearful flowery stuff. I'd have said Dear me at myself
three years ago if I had ever caught myself thinking in terms of
stars and roses. But it's all the beastly blood and muck of the
war that does it,--sends one back with a rush to things like that.
Makes one shameless. Why, I'd talk to you about God now without
turning a hair. Nothing would have induced me so much as to mention
seriously that I'd even heard of him three years ago. Why, I
write poetry now. We all write poetry. And nobody would mind now
being seen saying their prayers. Why, if I were back at school and
my mother came to see me I'd hug her before everybody in the
middle of the street. Do you realize what a tremendous change that
means, you little girl who's never had brothers? You
extraordinary adorable little lovely thing?"

And off he was again.

"When I was small," said Anna-Felicitas after a while,
still watching her feet, "I had a governess who urged me to
consider, before I said anything, whether it were the sort of thing
I would like to say in the hearing of my parents. Would you like to
say what you're saying to me in the hearing of your
parents?"

"Hate to," said Elliott promptly.

"Well, then," said Anna-Felicitas, gentle but
disappointed. She rather wished now she hadn't mentioned
it.

"I'd take you out of earshot," said Elliott.

She was much relieved. She had done what she felt might perhaps
be regarded by Aunt Alice as her duty as a lady, and could now give
herself up with a calm conscience to hearing whatever else he might
have to say.

And he had an incredible amount to say, and all of it of the
most highly gratifying nature. On the whole, looking at it all
round and taking one thing with another, Anna-Felicitas came to the
conclusion that this was the most agreeable and profitable morning
she had ever spent. She sat there for hours, and they all flew.
People passed in cars and saw her, and it didn't disturb her in
the least. She perfectly remembered she ought to be helping
Anna-Rose pick and arrange the flowers for the tea-tables, and she
didn't mind. She knew Anna-Rose would be astonished and angry
at her absence, and it left her unmoved. By midday she was
hopelessly compromised in the eyes of Acapulco, for the people who
had motored through the lane told the people who hadn't what
they had seen. Once a great car passed with a small widow in it,
who looked astonished when she saw the pair but had gone almost
before Elliott could call out and wave to her.

"That's my sister," he said. "You and she
will love each other."

"Shall we?" said Anna-Felicitas, much pleased by this
suggestion of continuity in their relations; and remarked that she
looked as if she hadn't got a husband.

"She hasn't. Poor little thing. Rotten luck. Rotten. I
hate people to die now. It seems so infernally unnatural of them,
when they're not in the fighting. He's only been dead a
month. And poor old Dellogg was such a decent chap. She isn't
going anywhere yet, or I'd bring her up to tea this afternoon.
But it doesn't matter. I'll take you to her."

"Shall you?" said Anna-Felicitas, again much pleased.
Dellogg. The name swam through her mind and swam out again. She was
too busy enjoying herself to remark it and its coincidences
now.

"Of course. It's the first thing one does."

"What first thing?"

"To take the divine girl to see one's relations. Once
one has found her. Once one has had"--his voice fell to a
whisper--"the God-given luck to find her." And he laid
his hand very gently on hers, which were clasped together in her
lap.

This was a situation to which Anna-Felicitas wasn't
accustomed, and she didn't know what to do with it. She looked
down at the hand lying on hers, and considered it without moving.
Elliott was quite silent now, and she knew he was watching her
face. Ought she, perhaps, to be going? Was this, perhaps, one of
the moments in life when the truly judicious went? But what a pity
to go just when everything was so pleasant. Still, it must be
nearly lunch-time. What would Aunt Alice do in a similar situation?
Go home to lunch, she was sure. Yet what was lunch when one was
rapidly arriving, as she was sure now that she was, at the
condition of being in love? She must be, or she wouldn't like
his hand on hers. And she did like it.

She looked down at it, and found that she wanted to stroke it.
But would Aunt Alice stroke it? No; Anna-Felicitas felt fairly
clear about that. Aunt Alice wouldn't stroke it; she would take
it up, and shake it, and say good-bye, and walk off home to lunch
like a lady. Well, perhaps she ought to do that. Christopher would
probably think so too. But what a pity.... Still, behaviour was
behaviour; ladies were ladies.

She drew out her right hand with this polite intention, and
instead--Anna-Felicitas never knew how it happened--she did nothing
of the sort, but quite the contrary: she put it softly on the top
of his.

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.