So after half-an-hour of solid sitting he began slowly to get up, still spreading out the moments, with one eye on the swing doors. It was both late and cold. The Germans had departed, and Li Koo had lit the usual evening wood fire in the big fireplace. It blazed most beautifully, and the young man looked at it through the window and hesitated.
"How jolly," he said.
"Firelight is very pleasant," agreed Mr. Twist, who had got up too.
"I oughtn't to have stayed so long out here," said the young man with a little shiver.
"I was thinking it was unwise," said Mr. Twist.
"Perhaps I'd better go in and warm myself a bit before leaving."
"I should say your best plan is to get back quickly to your sister and have a hot bath before dinner," said Mr. Twist.
"Yes. But I think I might just go in there and have a cup of hot coffee first."
"There is no hot coffee at this hour," said Mr. Twist, looking at his watch. "We close at half-past six, and it is now ten minutes after."
"Then there seems nothing for it but to pay my bill and go," said the young man, with an air of cheerful adaptation to what couldn't be helped. "I'll just nip in there and do that."
"Luckily there's no need for you to nip anywhere," said Mr. Twist, "for surely that's a type of movement unsuited to your sick leg. You can pay me right here."
And he took the young man's five dollars, and went with him as far as the green gate, and would have helped him into the waiting car, seeing his leg wasn't as other legs and Mr. Twist was, after all, humane, but the chauffeur was there to do that; so he just watched from the gate till the car had actually started, and then went back to the house.
He went back slowly, perturbed and anxious, his eyes on the ground. This second day had been worse than the first. And besides the continued and remarkable absence of Americans and the continued and remarkable presence of Germans, there was a slipperiness suddenly developed in the Annas. He felt insecure; as though he didn't understand, and hadn't got hold. They seemed to him very like eels. And this Elliott—what did he think he was after, anyway?
For the second time that afternoon Mr. Twist set his teeth. He defied Elliott. He defied the Germans. He would see this thing successful, this Open Arms business, or his name wasn't Twist. And he stuck out his jaw—or would have stuck it out if he hadn't been prevented by the amiable weakness of that feature. But spiritually and morally, when he got back into the house he was all jaw.
CHAPTER XXXIV
That night he determined he would go into Acapulco next morning and drop in at his bank and at his lawyer's and other places, and see if he could pick up anything that would explain why Americans wouldn't come and have tea at The Open Arms. He even thought he might look up old Ridding. He didn't sleep. He lay all night thinking.
The evening had been spent tête-à-tête with Anna-Felicitas. Anna-Rose was in bed, sleeping off her tears; Mrs. Bilton had another headache, and disappeared early; so he was left with Anna-Felicitas, who slouched about abstractedly eating up the remains of ice-cream. She didn't talk, except once to remark a little pensively that her inside was dreadfully full of cold stuff, and that she knew now what it must feel like to be a mausoleum; but, eyeing her sideways as he sat before the fire, Mr. Twist could see that she was still smug. He didn't talk either. He felt he had nothing at present to say to Anna-Felicitas that would serve a useful purpose, and was, besides, reluctant to hear any counter-observations she might make. Watchfulness was what was required. Silent watchfulness. And wariness. And firmness. In fact all the things that were most foreign to his nature, thought Mr. Twist, resentful and fatigued.
Next morning he had a cup of coffee in his room, brought by Li Koo, and then drove himself into Acapulco in his Ford without seeing the others. It was another of the perfect days which he was now beginning to take as a matter of course, so many had there been since his arrival. People talked of the wet days and of their desolate abundance once they started, but there had been as yet no sign of them. The mornings succeeded each other, radiant and calm. November was merging into December in placid loveliness. "Oh yes," said Mr. Twist to himself sardonically, as he drove down the sun-flecked lane in the gracious light, and crickets chirped at him, and warm scents drifted across his face, and the flowers in the grass, standing so bright and unruffled that they seemed almost as profoundly pleased as Anna-Felicitas, nodded at him, and everything was obviously perfectly contented and happy, "Oh yes—I daresay." And he repeated this remark several times as he looked round him,—he couldn't but look, it was all so beautiful. These things hadn't to deal with Twinklers. No wonder they could be calm and bright. So could he, if—
He turned a corner in the lane and saw some way down it two figures, a man and a girl, sitting in the grass by the wayside. Lovers, of course. "Oh yes—I daresay," said Mr. Twist again, grimly. They hadn't to deal with Twinklers either. No wonder they could sit happily in the grass. So could he, if—
At the noise of the approaching car, with the smile of the last thing they had been saying still on their faces, the two turned their heads, and it was that man Elliott and Anna-Felicitas.
"Hello," called out Mr. Twist, putting on the brakes so hard that the Ford skidded sideways along the road towards them.
"Hello," said the young man cheerfully, waving his stick.
"Hello," said Anna-Felicitas mildly, watching his sidelong approach with complacent interest.
She had no hat on, and had evidently escaped from Mrs. Bilton just as she was. Escaped, however, was far too violent a word Mr. Twist felt; sauntered from Mrs. Bilton better described her effect of natural and comfortable arrival at the place where she was.
"I didn't know you were here," said Mr. Twist addressing her when the car had stopped. He felt it was a lame remark. He had torrents of things he wanted to say, and this was all that came out.
Anna-Felicitas considered it placidly for a moment, and came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth answering, so she didn't.
"Going into the town?" inquired Elliott pleasantly.
"Yes. I'll give you a lift."
"No thanks. I've just come from there."
"I see. Then you'd better come with me," said Mr. Twist to Anna-Felicitas.
"I'm afraid I can't. I'm rather busy this morning."
"Really," said Mr. Twist, in a voice of concentrated sarcasm. But it had no effect on Anna-Felicitas. She continued to contemplate him with perfect goodwill.
He hesitated a moment. What could he do? Nothing, that he could see, before the young man; nothing that wouldn't make him ridiculous. He felt a fool already. He oughtn't to have pulled up. He ought to have just waved to them and gone on his way, and afterwards in the seclusion of his office issued very plain directions to Anna-Felicitas as to her future conduct. Sitting by the roadside like that! Openly; before everybody; with a young man she had never seen twenty-four hours ago.
He jammed in the gear and let the clutch out with such a jerk that the car leaped forward. Elliott waved his stick again. Mr. Twist responded by the briefest touch of his cap, and whirred down the road out of sight.
"Does he mind your sitting here?" asked Elliott.
"It would be very unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas gently. "One has to sit somewhere."
And he laughed with delight at this answer as he laughed with delight at everything she said, and he told her for the twentieth time that she was the most wonderful person he had ever met, and she settled down to listen again, after the interruption caused by Mr. Twist, with a ready ear and the utmost complacency to these agreeable statements, and began to wonder whether perhaps after all she mightn't at last be about to fall in love.
In the new interest of this possibility she turned her head to look at him, and he told her tumultuously—for being a sailor-man he went straight ahead on great waves when it came to love-making—that her eyes were as if pansies had married stars.
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.
CHAPTER XXXV
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.
"Why they're wanting to boycott the teapot?"
"No. Why do they think the inn—"
"The Miss Twinklers are German."
"Half."
"The half that matters—begging my absent wife's pardon. I know all about that, you see. You started me off thinking them over by that ward notion of yours. It didn't take me long. It was pretty transparent. So transparent that my opinion of the intelligence of my fellow-townsfolk has considerably lowered. But we live in unbalanced times. I guess it's women at the bottom of this. Women got on to it first, and the others caught the idea as they'd catch scarlet fever. It's a kind of scarlet fever, this spy scare that's about. Mind you, I admit the germs are certainly present among us." And the lawyer smiled. He thought he saw he had made a little joke in that last remark.
Mr. Twist was not in the condition to see jokes, and didn't smile. "Do you mean to say those children—" he began.
"They're not regarded as children by any one except you."
"Well, if they're not," said Mr. Twist, remembering the grass by the wayside in the lane and what he had so recently met in it, "I guess I'd best be making tracks. But I know better. And so would you if you'd seen them on the boat. Why, twelve was putting their age too high on that boat."
"No doubt. No doubt. Then all I can say is they've matured pretty considerably since. Now do you really want me to tell you what is being believed?"
"Of course. It's what I've come for."
"You mayn't find it precisely exhilarating, Mr. Twist."
"Go ahead."
"What Acapulco says—and Los Angeles, I'm told, too, and probably by this time the whole coast—is that you threw over your widowed mother, of whom you're the only son, and came off here with two German girls who got hold of you on the boat—now, Mr. Twist, don't interrupt—on the boat crossing from England, that England had turned them out as undesirable aliens—quite so, Mr. Twist, but let me finish—that they're in the pay of the German Government—no doubt, no doubt, Mr. Twist—and that you're their cat's-paw. It is known that the inn each afternoon has been crowded with Germans, among them Germans already suspected, I can't say how rightly or how wrongly, of spying, and that these people are so familiar with the Miss von Twinklers as to warrant the belief in a complete secret understanding."
For a moment Mr. Twist continued both his silence and his stare. Then he took off his spectacles and wiped them. His hand shook. The lawyer was startled. Was there going to be emotion? One never knew with that sort of lips. "You're not—" he began.
Then he saw that Mr. Twist was trying not to laugh.
"I'm glad you take it that way," he said, relieved but surprised.
"It's so darned funny," said Mr. Twist, endeavouring to compose his features. "To anybody who knows those twins it's so darned funny. Cat's-paw. Yes—rather feel that myself. Cat's-paw. That does seem a bit of a bull's eye—" And for a second or two his features flatly refused to compose.
The lawyer watched him. "Yes," he said. "Yes. But the effect of these beliefs may be awkward."
"Oh, damned," agreed Mr. Twist, going solemn again.
And there came over him in a flood the clear perception of what it would mean,—the sheer disaster of it, the horrible situation those helpless Annas would be in. What a limitless fool he must have been in his conduct of the whole thing. His absorption in the material side of it had done the trick. He hadn't been clever enough, not imaginative enough, nor, failing that, worldly enough to work the other side properly. When he found there was no Dellogg he ought to have insisted on seeing Mrs. Dellogg, intrusion or no intrusion, and handing over the twins; and then gone away and left them. A woman was what was wanted. Fool that he was to suppose that he, a man, an unmarried man, could get them into anything but a scrape. But he was so fond of them. He just couldn't leave them. And now here they all were, in this ridiculous and terrible situation.
"There are two things you can do," said the lawyer.
"Two?" said Mr. Twist, looking at him with anxious eyes. "For the life of me I can't see even one. Except running amoke in slander actions—"
"Tut, tut," said the lawyer, waving that aside. "No. There are two courses to pursue. And they're not alternative, but simultaneous. You shut down the inn—at once, to-morrow—that's Saturday. Close on Saturday, and give notice you don't re-open—now pray let me finish—close the inn as an inn, and use it simply as a private residence. Then, as quick as may be, marry those girls."
"Marry what girls?"
"The Miss von Twinklers."
Mr. Twist stared at him. "Marry them?" he said helplessly. "Marry them who to?"
"You for one."
Mr. Twist stared at him in silence. Then he said, "You've said that to me before."
"Yep. And I'll say it again. I'll go on saying it till you've done it."
"'Well, if that's all you've got to offer as a suggestion for a way out—"
But Mr. Twist wasn't angry this time; he was too much battered by events; he hadn't the spirits to be angry.
"You've—got to—marry—one—of—those—girls," said the lawyer, at each word smiting the table with his open palm. "Turn her into an American. Get her out of this being a German business. And be able at the same time to protect the one who'll be your sister in-law. Why, even if you didn't want to, which is sheer nonsense, for of course any man would want to—I know what I'm talking about because I've seen them—it's your plain duty, having got them into this mess."
"But—marry which?" asked Mr. Twist, with increased helplessness and yet a manifest profound anxiety for further advice.
For the first time the lawyer showed impatience "Oh—either or both," he said. "For God's sake don't be such a—"
He pulled up short.
"I didn't quite mean that," he resumed, again calm. "The end of that sentence was, as no doubt you guess, fool. I withdraw it, and will substitute something milder. Have you any objection to ninny?"
No, Mr. Twist didn't mind ninny, or any other word the lawyer might choose, he was in such a condition of mental groping about. He took out his handkerchief and wiped away the beads on his forehead and round his mouth.
"I'm thirty-five," he said, looking terribly worried.
Propose to an Anna? The lawyer may have seen them, but he hadn't heard them; and the probable nature of their comments if Mr. Twist proposed to them—to one, he meant of course, but both would comment, the one he proposed to and the one he didn't—caused his imagination to reel. He hadn't much imagination; he knew that now, after his conduct of this whole affair, but all there was of it reeled.
"I'm thirty-five," he said helplessly.
"Pooh," said the lawyer, indicating the negligibleness of this by a movement of his shoulder.
"They're seventeen," said Mr. Twist.
"Pooh," said the lawyer again, again indicating negligibleness. "My wife was—"
"I know. You told me that last time. Oh, I know all that" said Mr. Twist with sudden passion. "But these are children. I tell you they're children—"
"Pooh," said the lawyer a third time, a third time indicating negligibleness.
Then he got up and held out his hand. "Well, I've told you," he said. "You wanted to know, and I've told you. And I'll tell you one thing more, Mr. Twist. Whichever of those girls takes you, you'll have the sweetest, prettiest wife of any man in the world except one, and that's the man who has the luck to get the other one. Why, sweetest and prettiest are poor words. She'll be the most delectable, the most—"
Mr. Twist rose from his chair in such haste that he pushed the table crooked. His ears flamed.
"See here," he said very loud. "I won't have you talk familiarly like that about my wife."
CHAPTER XXXVI
Wife. The word had a remarkable effect on him. It churned him all up. His thoughts were a chaotic jumble, and his driving on the way home matched them. He had at least three narrow shaves at cross streets before he got out of the town and for an entire mile afterwards he was on the wrong side of the road. During this period, deep as he was in confused thought, he couldn't but vaguely notice the anger on the faces of the other drivers and the variety and fury of their gesticulations, and it roused a dim wonder in him.
Wife. How arid existence had been for him up to then in regard to the affections, how knobbly the sort of kisses he had received in Clark. They weren't kisses; they were disapproving pecks. Always disapproving. Always as if he hadn't done enough, or been enough, or was suspected of not going to do or be enough.
His wife. Mr. Twist dreadfully longed to kiss somebody,—somebody kind and soft, who would let herself be adored. She needn't even love him,—he knew he wasn't the sort of man to set passion alight; she need only be kind, and a little fond of him, and let him love her, and be his very own.
His own little wife. How sweet. How almost painfully sweet. Yes. But the Annas....
When he thought of the Annas, Mr. Twist went damp. He might propose—indeed, everything pointed to his simply having got to—but wouldn't they very quickly dispose? And then what? That lawyer seemed to think all he had to do was to marry them right away; not them, of course,—one; but they were so very plural in his mind. Funny man, thought Mr. Twist; funny man,—yet otherwise so sagacious. It is true he need only propose to one of them, for which he thanked God, but he could imagine what that one, and what the other one too, who would be sure to be somewhere quite near would ... no, he couldn't imagine; he preferred not to imagine.
Mr. Twist's dampness increased, and a passing car got his mud-guard. It was a big car which crackled with language as it whizzed on its way, and Mr. Twist, slewed by the impact half across the road, then perceived on which side he had been driving.
The lane up to the inn was in its middle-day emptiness and somnolence. Where Anna-Felicitas and Elliott had been sitting cool and shaded when he passed before, there was only the pressed-down grass and crushed flowers in a glare of sun. She had gone home long ago of course. She said she was going to be very busy. Secretly he wished she hadn't gone home, and that little Christopher too might for a bit be somewhere else, so that when he arrived he wouldn't immediately have to face everybody at once. He wanted to think; he wanted to have time to think; time before four o'clock came, and with four o'clock, if he hadn't come to any conclusion about shutting up the inn—and how could he if nobody gave him time to think?—those accursed, swarming Germans. It was they who had done all this. Mr. Twist blazed into sudden fury. They and their blasted war....
At the gate stood Anna-Rose. Her face looked quite pale in the green shade of the tunnelled-out syringa bushes. She as peering out down the lane watching him approach. This was awful, thought Mr. Twist. At the very gate one of them. Confronted at once. No time, not a minute's time given him to think.
"Oh," cried out Anna-Rose the instant he pulled up, for she had waved to him to stop when he tried to drive straight on round to the stable, "she isn't with you?"
"Who isn't?" asked Mr. Twist.
Anna-Rose became paler than ever. "She has been kidnapped," she said.
"How's that?" said Mr. Twist, staring at her from the car.
"Kidnapped," repeated Anna-Rose, with wide-open horror-stricken eyes; for from her nursery she carried with her at the bottom of her mind, half-forgotten but ready to fly up to the top at any moment of panic, an impression that the chief activities and recreations of all those Americans who weren't really good were two: they lynched, and they kidnapped. They lynched you if they didn't like you enough, and if they liked you too much they kidnapped you. Anna-Felicitas, exquisite and unsuspecting, had been kidnapped. Some American's concupiscent eye had alighted on her, observed her beauty, and marked her down. No other explanation was possible of a whole morning's absence from duties of one so conscientious and painstaking as Anna-Felicitas. She never shirked; that is, she never had been base enough to shirk alone. If there was any shirking to be done they had always done it together. As the hours passed and she didn't appear, Anna-Rose had tried to persuade herself that she must have motored into Acapulco with Mr. Twist, strange and unnatural and reprehensible and ignoble as such arch shirking would have been; and now that the car had come back empty except for Mr. Twist she was convinced the worst had happened—her beautiful, her precious Columbus had been kidnapped.
"Kidnapped," she said again, wringing her hands.
Mr. Twist was horror-struck too, for he thought she was announcing the kidnapping of Mrs. Bilton. Somehow he didn't think of Anna-Felicitas; he had seen her too recently. But that Mrs. Bilton should be kidnapped seemed to him to touch the lowest depths of American criminal enterprise and depravity. At the same time though he recoiled before this fresh blow a thought did fan through his mind with a wonderful effect of coolness and silence,—"Then they'll gag her," he said.
"What?" cried Anna-Rose, as though a whip had lashed her. "Gag her?" And pulling open the gate and running out to him as one possessed she cried again, "Gag Columbus?"
"Oh that's it, is it," said Mr. Twist, with relief but also with disappointment, "Well, if it's that way I can tell you—"
He stopped; there was no need to tell her; for round the bend of the lane, walking bare-headed in the chequered light and shade as leisurely as if such things as tours of absence didn't exist, or a distracted household, or an anguished Christopher, with indeed, a complete, an extraordinary serenity, advanced Anna-Felicitas.
Always placid, her placidity at this moment had a shining quality. Still smug, she was now of a glorified smugness. If one could imagine a lily turned into a god, or a young god turned into a lily and walking down the middle of a sun-flecked Californian lane, it wouldn't be far out, thought Mr. Twist, as an image of the advancing Twinkler. The god would be so young that he was still a boy, and he wouldn't be worrying much about anything in the past or in the future, and he'd just be coming along like that with the corners of his mouth a little turned up, and his fair hair a little ruffled, and his charming young face full of a sober and abstracted radiance.
"Not much kidnapping there, I guess," said Mr. Twist with a jerk of his thumb. "And you take it from me, Anna I.," he added quickly, leaning over towards her, determined to get off to the garage before he found himself faced by both twins together, "that when next your imagination gets the jumps the best thing you can do is to hold on to it hard till it settles down again, instead of wasting your time and ruining your constitution going pale."
And he started the Ford with a bound, and got away round the corner into the yard.
Here, in the yard, was peace; at least for the moment. The only living thing in it was a cat the twins had acquired, through the services of one of the experts, as an indispensable object in a really homey home. The first thing this cat had done had been to eat the canary, which gave the twins much unacknowledged relief. It was, they thought secretly, quite a good plan to have one's pets inside each other,—it kept them so quiet. She now sat unmoved in the middle of the yard, carefully cleaning her whiskers while Mr. Twist did some difficult fancy driving in order to get into the stable without inconveniencing her.
Admirable picture of peace, thought Mr. Twist with a sigh of envy.
He might have got out and picked her up, but he was glad to manoeuvre about, reversing and making intricate figures in the dust, because it kept him longer away from the luncheon-table. The cat took no notice of him, but continued to deal with her whiskers even when his front wheel was within two inches of her tail, for though she hadn't been long at The Open Arms she had already sized up Mr. Twist and was aware that he wouldn't hurt a fly.
Thanks to her he had a lot of trouble getting the Ford into the stable, all of which he liked because of that luncheon-table; and having got it in he still lingered fiddling about with it, examining its engine and wiping its bonnet; and then when he couldn't do that any longer he went out and lingered in the yard, looking down at the cat with his hands in his pockets. "I must think," he kept on saying to himself.
"Lunchee," said Li Koo, putting his head out of the kitchen window.
"All right," said Mr. Twist.
He stooped down as though to examine the cat's ear. The cat, who didn't like her ears touched but was prepared to humour him, got out of it by lying down on her back and showing him her beautiful white stomach. She was a black cat, with a particularly beautiful white stomach, and she had discovered that nobody could see it without wanting to stroke it. Whenever she found herself in a situation that threatened to become disagreeable she just lay down and showed her stomach. Human beings in similar predicaments can only show their tact.
"Nice pussy—nice, nice pussy," said Mr. Twist aloud, stroking this irresistible object slowly, and forgetting her ear as she had intended he should.
"Lunchee get cold," said Li Koo, again putting his head out of the kitchen window. "Mis' Bilton say, Come in."
"All right," said Mr. Twist.
He straightened himself and looked round the yard. A rake that should have been propped up against the tool-shed with some other gardening tools had fallen down. He crossed over and picked it up and stood it up carefully again.
Li Koo watched him impassively from the window.
"Mis' Bilton come out," he said; and there she was in the yard door.
"Mr. Twist," she called shrilly, "if you don't come in right away and have your food before it gets all mushed up with cold I guess you'll be sorry."
"All right—coming," he called back very loud and cheerfully, striding towards her as one strides who knows there is nothing for it now but courage. "All right, Mrs. Bilton—sorry if I've kept you waiting. You shouldn't have bothered about me—"
And saying things like this in a loud voice, for to hear himself being loud made him feel more supported, he strode into the house, through the house, and out on to the verandah.
They always lunched on the verandah. The golden coloured awning was down, and the place was full of a golden shade. Beyond it blazed the garden. Beneath it was the flower-adorned table set as usual ready for four, and he went out to it, strung up to finding the Annas at the table, Anna-Felicitas in her usual seat with her back to the garden, her little fair head outlined against the glowing light as he had seen it every day since they had lived in the inn, Anna-Rose opposite, probably volubly and passionately addressing her.
"Why—" he said, stopping short.
"Yes. It's real silly of them not to come and eat before everything is spoilt," said Mrs. Bilton bustling up, who had stayed behind to give an order to Li Koo. And she went to the edge of the verandah and shaded her eyes and called, "Gurls! Gurls! I guess you can do all that talking better after lunch."
He then saw that down at the bottom of the garden, in the most private place as regards being overheard, partly concealed by some arum lilies that grew immensely there like splendid weeds, stood the twins facing each other.
"Better leave them alone," he said quickly. "They'll come when they're ready. There's nothing like getting through with one's talking right away, Mrs. Bilton. Besides," he went on still more quickly for she plainly didn't agree with him and was preparing to sally out into the sun and fetch them in, "you and I don't often get a chance of a quiet chat together—"
And this, combined with the resolute way he was holding her chair ready for her, brought Mrs. Bilton back under the awning again.
She was flattered. Mr. Twist had not yet spoken to her in quite that tone. He had always been the gentleman, but never yet the eager gentleman. Now he was unmistakably both.
She came back and sat down, and so with a sigh of thankfulness immediately did he, for here was an unexpected respite,—while Mrs. Bilton talked he could think. Fortunately she never noticed if one wasn't listening. For the first time since he had known her he gave himself up willingly to the great broad stream that at once started flowing over him, on this occasion with something of the comfort of warm water, and he was very glad indeed that anyhow that day she wasn't gagged.
While he ate, he kept on furtively looking down the garden at the two figures facing each other by the arum lilies. Whenever Mrs. Bilton remembered them and wanted to call them in, as she did at the different stages, of the meal,—at the salad, at the pudding—he stopped her. She became more and more pleased by his evident determination to lunch alone with her, for after all one remains female to the end, and her conversation took on a gradual tinge of Mr. Bilton's views about second marriages. They had been liberal views; for Mr. Bilton, she said, had had no post-mortem pettiness about him, but they were lost on Mr. Twist, whose thoughts were so painfully preoccupied by first marriage.
The conclusions he came to during that trying meal while Mrs. Bilton talked, were that he would propose first to Anna-Rose, she being the eldest and such a course being accordingly natural, and, if she refused, proceed at once to propose to Anna-Felicitas. But before proceeding to Anna-Felicitas, a course he regarded with peculiar misgiving, he would very earnestly explain to Anna-Rose the seriousness of the situation and the necessity, the urgency, the sanity of her marrying him. These proposals would be kept on the cool level of strict business. Every trace of the affection with which he was so overflowing would be sternly excluded. For instance, he wasn't going to let himself remember the feel of Christopher's little head the afternoon before when he patted it to comfort her. Such remembrances would be bound to bring a warmth into his remarks which wouldn't be fair. The situation demanded the most scrupulous fairness and delicacy in its treatment, the most careful avoidance of taking any advantage of it. But how difficult, thought Mr. Twist, his hand shaking as he poured himself out a glass of iced water, how difficult when he loved the Annas so inconveniently much.
Mrs. Bilton observed the shaking of his hand, and felt more female than ever.
Still, there it was, this situation forced upon them all by the war. Nobody could help it, and it had to be faced with calmness, steadfastness and tact. Calmness, steadfastness and tact, repeated Mr. Twist, raising the water to his mouth and spilling some of it.
Mrs. Bilton observed this too, and felt still more female.
Marriage was the quickest, and really the only, way out of it. He saw that now. The lawyer had been quite right. And marriage, he would explain to the Annas, would be a mere formal ceremony which after the war they—he meant, of course, she—could easily in that land of facile and honourable divorce get rid of. Meanwhile, he would point out, they—she, of course; bother these twins—would be safely American, and he would undertake never to intrude love on them—her—unless by some wonderful chance, it was wanted. Some wonderful chance ... Mr. Twist's spectacles suddenly went dim, and he gulped down more water.
Yes. That was the line to take: the austere line of self-mortification for the Twinkler good. One Twinkler would be his wife—again at the dear word he had to gulp down water—and one his sister-in-law. They would just have to agree to this plan. The position was too serious for shilly-shallying. Yes. That was the line to take; and by the time he had got to the coffee it was perfectly clear and plain to him.
But he felt dreadfully damp. He longed for a liqueur, for anything that would support him....
"Is there any brandy in the house?" he suddenly flung across the web of Mrs. Bilton's words.
"Brandy, Mr. Twist?" she repeated, at this feeling altogether female, for what an unusual thing for him to ask for,—"You're not sick?"
"With my coffee," murmured Mr. Twist, his mouth very slack, his head drooping. "It's nice...."
"I'll go and see," said Mrs. Bilton, getting up briskly and going away rattling a bunch of keys.
At once he looked down the garden. Anna-Felicitas was in the act of putting her arm round Anna-Rose's shoulder, and Anna-Rose was passionately disengaging herself. Yes. There was trouble there. He knew there would be.
He gulped down more water.
Anna-Felicitas couldn't expect to go off like that for a whole morning and give Anna-Rose a horrible fright without hearing about it. Besides, the expression on her face wanted explaining,—a lot of explaining. Mr. Twist didn't like to think so, but Anna-Felicitas's recent conduct seemed to him almost artful. It seemed to him older than her years. It seemed to justify the lawyer's scepticism when he described the twins to him as children. That young man Elliott—
But here Mr. Twist started and lost his thread of thought, for looking once more down the garden he saw that Anna-Felicitas was coming towards the verandah, and that she was alone. Anna-Rose had vanished. Why had he bothered about brandy, and let Mrs. Bilton go? He had counted, somehow, on beginning with Anna-Rose....
He seized a cigarette and lit it. He tried vainly to keep his hand steady. Before the cigarette was fairly plight there was Anna-Felicitas, walking in beneath the awning.
"I'm glad you're alone," she said, "for I want to speak to you."
And Mr. Twist felt that his hour had come.
CHAPTER XXXVII
"Hadn't you better have lunch first?" he asked, though he knew from the look on her face that she wouldn't. It was a very remarkable look. It was as though an angel, dwelling in perfect bliss, had unaccountably got its feet wet. Not more troubled than that; a little troubled, but not more than that.
"No thank you," she said politely. "But if you've finished yours, do you mind coming into the office? Because otherwise Mrs. Bilton—"
"She's fetching me some brandy," said Mr. Twist.
"I didn't know you drank," said Anna-Felicitas, even at this moment interested. "But do you mind having it afterwards? Because otherwise Mrs. Bilton—"
"I guess the idea was to have it first," said Mr. Twist.
She was however already making for the tea-room, proceeding towards it without hurry, and with a single-mindedness that would certainly get her there.
He could only follow.
In the office she said, "Do you mind shutting the door?"
"Not at all," said Mr. Twist; but he did mind. His hour had come, and he wasn't liking it. He wanted to begin with Anna-Rose. He wanted to get things clear with her first before dealing with this one. There was less of Anna-Rose. And her dear little head yesterday when he patted it.... And she needed comforting.... Anna-Rose cried, and let herself be comforted.... And it was so sweet to Mr. Twist to comfort....
"Christopher—" began Anna-Felicitas, directly he had shut the door.
"I know. She's mad with you. What can you expect, Anna II.?" he interrupted in a very matter-of-fact voice, leaning against a bookcase. Even a bookcase was better than nothing to lean against.
"Christopher is being unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas, her voice softer and gentler than he had yet heard it.
Then she stopped, and considered him a moment with much of the look of one who on a rather cold day considers the sea before diving in—with, that is, a slight but temporary reluctance to proceed.
"Won't you sit down?" said Mr. Twist.
"Perhaps I'd better," she said, disposing herself in the big chair. "It's very strange, but my legs feel funny. You wouldn't think being in love would make one want to sit down."
"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Twist.
"I have fallen in love," said Anna-Felicitas, looking up at him with a kind of pensive radiance. "I did it this morning."
Mr. Twist stared at her. "I beg your—what did you say?" he asked.
She said, still with that air as she regarded him of pensive radiance, of not seeing him but something beyond him that was very beautiful to her and satisfactory, "I've fallen in love, and I can't tell you how pleased I am because I've always been afraid I was going to find it a difficult thing to do. But it wasn't. Quite the contrary."
Then, as he only staged at her, she said, "He's coming round this afternoon on the new footing, and I wanted to prepare your and Christopher's minds in good time so that you shouldn't be surprised."
And having said this she lapsed into what was apparently, judging from her expression, a silent contemplation of her bliss.
"But you're too young," burst out Mr. Twist.
"Too young?" repeated Anna-Felicitas, coming out of her contemplation for a moment to smile at him. "We don't think so."
Well. This beat everything.
Mr. Twist could only stare down at her.
Conflicting emotions raged in him. He couldn't tell for a moment what they were, they were so violent and so varied. How dared Elliott. How dared a person they had none of them heard of that time yesterday come making love to a girl he had never seen before. And in such a hurry. So suddenly. So instantly. Here had he himself been with the twins constantly for weeks, and wouldn't have dreamed of making love to them. They had been sacred to him. And it wasn't as if he hadn't wanted to hug them often and often, but he had restrained himself as a gentleman should from the highest motives of delicacy, and consideration, and respect, and propriety, besides a great doubt as to whether they wouldn't very energetically mind. And then comes along this blundering Britisher, and straight away tumbles right in where Mr. Twist had feared to tread, and within twenty-four hours had persuaded Anna-Felicitas to think she was in love. New footing indeed. There hadn't been an old footing yet. And who was this Elliott? And how was Mr. Twist going to be able to find out if he were a proper person to be allowed to pay his addresses to one so precious as a Twinkler twin?
Anger, jealousy, anxiety, sense of responsibility and mortification, all tumbled about furiously together inside Mr. Twist as he leaned against the bookcase and gazed down at Anna-Felicitas, who for her part was gazing beatifically into space; but through the anger, and the jealousy, and the anxiety, and the sense of responsibility and mortification one great thought was struggling, and it finally pushed every other aside and got out to the top of the welter: here, in the chair before him, he beheld his sister-in-law. So much at least was cleared up.
He crossed to the bureau and dragged his office-stool over next to her and sat down. "So that's it, is it?" he said, trying to speak very calmly, but his face pulled all sorts of ways, as it had so often been since the arrival in his life of the twins.
"Yes," she said, coming out of her contemplation. "It's love at last."
"I don't know about at last. Whichever way you look at it, Anna II., that don't seem to hit it off as a word. What I meant was, it's Elliott."
"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Which is the same thing. I believe," she added, "I now have to allude to him as John."
Mr. Twist made another effort to speak calmly. "You don't," he said, "think it at all unusual or undesirable that you should be calling a man John to-day of whom you'd never heard yesterday."
"I think it's wonderful," said Anna-Felicitas beaming.
"It doesn't strike you in any way as imprudent to be so hasty. It doesn't strike you as foolish."
"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas. "I can't help thinking I've been very clever. I shouldn't have thought it of myself. You see, I'm not naturally quick." And she beamed with what she evidently regarded as a pardonable pride.
"It doesn't strike you as even a little—well, a little improper."
"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas. "Aunt Alice told us that the one man one could never be improper about, even if one tried, was one's husband."
"Husband?" Mr. Twist winced. He loved, as we have seen, the word wife, but then that was different.
"It's not time yet to talk of husbands," he said, full of a flaming unreasonableness and jealousy and the sore feeling that he who had been toiling so long and so devotedly in the heat of the Twinkler sun had had a most unfair march stolen on him by this eleventh-hour stranger.
He flamed with unreasonableness. Yet he knew this was the solution of half his problem,—and of much the worst half, for it was after all Anna-Felicitas who had produced the uncomfortable feeling of slipperiness, of eels; Anna-Rose had been quite good, sitting in a chair crying and just so sweetly needing comfort. But now that the solution was presented to him he was full of fears. For on what now could he base his proposal to Anna-Rose? Elliott would be the legitimate protector of both the Twinklers. Mr. Twist, who had been so much perturbed by the idea of having to propose to one or other twin, was miserably upset by the realization that now he needn't propose to either. Elliott had cut the ground from under his feet. He had indeed—what was the expression he used the evening before?—yes, nipped in. There was now no necessity for Anna-Rose to marry him, and Mr. Twist had an icy and forlorn feeling that on no other basis except necessity would she. He was thirty-five. It was all very well for Elliott to get proposing to people of seventeen; he couldn't be more than twenty-five. And it wasn't only age. Mr. Twist hadn't shaved before looking-glasses for nothing, and he was very distinctly aware that Elliott was extremely attractive.
"It's not time yet to talk of husbands," he therefore hotly and jealously said.
"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas gently, "it's not only time but war-time. The war, I have observed, is making people be quick and sudden about all sorts of things."
"You haven't observed it. That's Elliott said that."
"He may have," said Anna-Felicitas. "He said so many things—"
And again she lapsed into contemplation; into, thought Mr. Twist as he gazed jealously at her profile, an ineffable, ruminating, reminiscent smugness.
"See here, Anna II.," he said, finding it impossibly painful to wait while she contemplated, "suppose you don't at this particular crisis fall into quite so many ecstatic meditations. There isn't as much time as you seem to think."
"No—and there's Christopher," said Anna-Felicitas, giving herself a shake, and with that slightly troubled look coming into her face again as of having, in spite of being an angel in glory, somehow got her feet wet.
"Precisely," said Mr. Twist, getting up and walking about the room. "There's Christopher. Now Christopher, I should say, would be pretty well heart-broken over this."
"But that's so unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas with gentle deprecation.
"You're all she has got, and she'll be under the impression—the remarkably vivid impression—that she's losing you."
"But that's so unreasonable. She isn't losing me. It's sheer gain. Without the least effort or bother on her part she's acquiring a brother-in-law."
"Oh, I know what Christopher feels," said Mr. Twist, going up and down the room quickly. "I know right enough, because I feel it all myself."
"But that's so unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas earnestly. "Why should two of you be feeling things that aren't?"
"She has always regarded herself as responsible for you, and I shouldn't be surprised if she were terribly shocked at your conduct."
"But there has to be conduct," said Anna-Felicitas, still very gentle, but looking as though her feet were getting wetter. "I don't see how anybody is ever to fall in love unless there's been some conduct first."
"Oh, don't argue—don't argue. You can't expect Anna-Rose not to mind your wanting to marry a perfect stranger, a man she hasn't even seen."
"But everybody you marry started by being a perfect stranger and somebody you hadn't ever seen," said Anna-Felicitas.
"Oh Lord, if only you wouldn't argue!" exclaimed Mr. Twist. "And as for your aunt in England, what's she going to say to this twenty-four-hours, quick-lunch sort of engagement? She'll be terribly upset. And Anna-Rose knows that, and is I expect nigh worried crazy."
"But what," asked Anna-Felicitas, "have aunts to do with love?"
Then she said very earnestly, her face a little flushed, her eyes troubled, "Christopher said all that you're saying now, and a lot more, down in the garden before I came to you, and I said what I've been saying to you, and a lot more, but she wouldn't listen. And when I found she wouldn't listen I tried to comfort her, but she wouldn't be comforted. And then I came to you; for besides wanting to tell you what I've done I wanted to ask you to comfort Christopher."
Mr. Twist paused a moment in his walk. "Yes," he said, staring at the carpet. "Yes. I can very well imagine she needs it. But I don't suppose anything I would say—"
"Christopher is very fond of you," said Anna-Felicitas gently.
"Oh yes. You're both very fond of me," said Mr. Twist, pulling his mouth into a crooked and unhappy smile.
"We love you," said Anna-Felicitas simply.
Mr. Twist looked at her, and a mist came over his spectacles. "You dear children," he said, "you dear, dear children—"
"I don't know about children—" began Anna-Felicitas; but was interrupted by a knock at the door.
"It's only the brandy," said Mr. Twist, seeing her face assume the expression he had learned to associate with the approach of Mrs. Bilton. "Take it away, please Mrs. Bilton," he called out, "and put it on the—"
Mrs. Bilton however, didn't take anything away, but opened the door an inch instead. "There's someone wants to speak to you, Mr. Twist," she said in a loud whisper, thrusting in a card. "He says he just must. I found him on the verandah when I took your brandy out, and as I'm not the woman to leave a stranger alone with good brandy I brought him in with me, and he's right here back of me in the tea-room."
"It's John," remarked Anna-Felicitas placidly. "Come early."
"I say—" said a voice behind Mrs. Bilton.
"Yes," nodded Anna-Felicitas, getting up out of the deep chair. "That's John."
"I say—may I come in? I've got something important—"
Mr. Twist looked at Anna-Felicitas. "Wouldn't you rather—?" he began.
"I don't mind John," she said softly, her face flooded with a most beautiful light.
Mr. Twist opened the door and went out. "Come in," he said. "Mrs. Bilton, may I present Mr. Elliott to you—Commander Elliott of the British Navy."
"Pleased to meet you, Commander Elliott," said Mrs. Bilton. "Mr. Twist, your brandy is on the verandah. Shall I bring it to you in here?"
"No thank you, Mrs. Bilton. I'll go out there presently. Perhaps you wouldn't mind waiting for me there—I don't suppose Mr. Elliott will want to keep me long. Come in, Mr. Elliott."
And having disposed of Mrs. Bilton, who was in a particularly willing and obedient and female mood, he motioned Elliott into the office.
There stood Anna-Felicitas.
Elliott stopped dead.
"This isn't fair," he said, his eyes twinkling and dancing.
"What isn't?" inquired Anna-Felicitas gently, beaming at him.
"Your being here. I've got to talk business. Look here, sir," he said, turning to Mr. Twist, "could you talk business with her there?"
"Not if she argued," said Mr. Twist.
"Argued! I wouldn't mind her arguing. It's just her being there. I've got to talk business," he said, turning to Anna-Felicitas,—"business about marrying you. And how can I with you standing there looking like—well, like that?"
"I don't know," said Anna-Felicitas placidly, not moving.
"But you'll interrupt—just your being there will interrupt. I shall see you out of the corner of my eye, and it'll be impossible not to—I mean I know I'll want to—I mean, Anna-Felicitas my dear, it isn't done. I've got to explain all sorts of things to your guardian—"
"He isn't my guardian," corrected the accurate Anna-Felicitas gently. "He only very nearly once was."
"Well, anyhow I've got to explain a lot of things that'll take some time, and it isn't so much explain as persuade—for I expect," he said, turning to Mr. Twist, "this strikes you as a bit sudden, sir?"
"It would strike anybody," said Mr. Twist trying to be stern but finding it difficult, for Elliott was so disarmingly engaging and so disarmingly in love. The radiance on Anna-Felicitas's face might have been almost a reflection caught from his. Mr. Twist had never seen two people look so happy. He had never, of course, before been present at the first wonderful dawning of love. The whole room seemed to glow with the surprise of it.
"There. You see?" said Elliott, again appealing to Anna-Felicitas, who stood smiling beatifically at him without moving. "I've got to explain that it isn't after all as mad as it seems, and that I'm a fearfully decent chap and can give you lots to eat, and that I've got a jolly little sister here who's respectable and well-known besides, and I'm going to produce references to back up these assertions, and proofs that I'm perfectly sound in health except for my silly foot, which isn't health but just foot and which you don't seem to mind anyhow, and how—I ask you how, Anna-Felicitas my dear, am I to do any of this with you standing there looking like—well, like that?"
"I don't know," said Anna-Felicitas again, still not moving.
"Anna-Felicitas, my dear," he said, "won't you go?"
"No, John," said Anna-Felicitas gently.
His eyes twinkled and danced more than ever. He took a step towards her, then checked himself and looked round beseechingly at Mr. Twist.
"Somebody's got to go," he said.
"Yes," said Mr. Twist. "And I guess it's me."