Christopher and Columbus Part 21

"I a.s.sure you," said Anna-Felicitas, with the earnestness of conviction, "that he'll like it. I think I can undertake to promise he'll show no resentment whatever."

Amanda half shut the door.

"We'll come in please," said Anna-Rose, inserting herself into what was left of the opening. "Will you kindly bear in mind that we're totally unaccustomed to the doorstep?"

Amanda, doubtful, but unpractised in such a situation, permitted herself, in spite of having as she well knew the whole of free and equal America behind her, to be cowed. Well, perhaps not cowed, but taken aback. It was the long words and the awful politeness that did it. She wasn't used to beautiful long words like that, except on Sundays when the clergyman read the prayers in church, and she wasn't used to politeness. That so much of it should come out of objects so young rendered Amanda temporarily dumb.

She wavered with the door. Instantly Anna-Rose slipped through it; instantly Anna-Felicitas followed her.

"Kindly tell your master the Miss Twinklers have arrived," said Anna-Rose, looking every inch a Junker. There weren't many inches of Anna-Rose, but every one of them at that moment, faced by Amanda's want of discipline, was sheer Junker.

Amanda, who had never met a Junker in her happy democratic life, was stirred into bristling emotion by the word master. She was about to fling the insult of it from her by an impetuous and ill-considered a.s.sertion that if he was her master she was his mistress and so there now, when the bell which had rung once already since they had been standing parleying rang again and more impatiently, and the dining-room door opened and a head appeared. The twins didn't know that it was Edith's head, but it was.

"Amanda--" began Edith, in the appealing voice that was the nearest she ever dared get to rebuke without Amanda giving notice; but she stopped on seeing what, in the dusk of the hall, looked like a crowd.

"Oh--" said Edith, taken aback. "Oh--" And was for withdrawing her head and shutting the door.

But the twins advanced towards her and the stream of light s.h.i.+ning behind her and the agreeable smell streaming past her, with outstretched hands.

"How do you do," they both said cordially. "_Don't_ go away again."

Edith, feeling that here was something to protect her quietly feeding mother from, came rather hastily through the door and held it to behind her, while her unresponsive and surprised hand was taken and shaken even as Mr. Sack's had been.

"We've come to see Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose.

"He's our friend," said Anna-Felicitas.

"He's our best friend," said Anna-Rose.

"Is he in there?" asked Anna-Felicitas, appreciatively moving her nose, a particularly delicate instrument, round among the various really heavenly smells that were issuing from the dining-room and sorting them out and guessing what they probably represented, the while water rushed into her mouth.

The sound of a chair being hastily pushed back was heard and Mr. Twist suddenly appeared in the doorway.

"What is it, Edward?" a voice inside said.

Mr. Twist was a pale man, whose skin under no circ.u.mstances changed colour except in his ears. These turned red when he was stirred, and they were red now, and seemed translucent with the bright light behind him s.h.i.+ning through them.

The twins flew to him. It was wonderful how much pleased they were to see him again. It was as if for years they had been separated from their dearest friend. The few hours since the night before had been enough to turn their friends.h.i.+p and esteem for him into a warm proprietary affection. They felt that Mr. Twist belonged to them. Even Anna-Felicitas felt it, and her eyes as she beheld him were bright with pleasure.

"Oh there you are," cried Anna-Rose darting forward, gladness in her voice, and catching hold of his arm.

"We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, beaming and catching hold of his other arm.

"We got into difficulties," said Anna-Rose.

"We got into them at once," said Anna-Felicitas.

"They weren't our difficulties--"

"They were the Sacks'--"

"But they reacted on us--"

"And so here we are."

"Who is it, Edward?" asked the voice inside.

"Mrs. Sack ran away yesterday from Mr. Sack," went on Anna-Rose eagerly.

"Mr. Sack was still quite warm and moist from it when we got there,"

said Anna-Felicitas.

"Aunt Alice said we weren't ever to stay in a house where they did that," said Anna-Rose.

"Where there wasn't a lady," said Anna-Felicitas

"So when we saw that she wasn't there because she'd gone, we turned straight round to you," said Anna. Rose.

"Like flowers turning to the sun," said Anna-Felicitas, even in that moment of excitement not without complacency at her own aptness.

"And left our things at the station," Anna-Rose rushed on.

"And ran practically the whole way," said Anna-Felicitas, "because of perhaps being late for supper and you're having eaten it all, and we so dreadfully hungry--"

"Who is it, Edward?" again called the voice inside, louder and more insistently.

Mr. Twist didn't answer. He was quickly turning over the situation in his mind.

He had not mentioned the twins to his mother, which would have been natural, seeing how very few hours he had of reunion with her, if she hadn't happened to have questioned him particularly as to his fellow-pa.s.sengers on the boat. Her questions had been confined to the first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers, and he had said, truthfully, that he had hardly spoken to one of them, and not at all to any of the women.

Mrs. Twist had been relieved, for she lived in dread of Edward's becoming, as she put it to herself, entangled with ladies. Sin would be bad enough--for Mrs. Twist was obliged reluctantly to know that even with ladies it is possible to sin--but marriage for Edward would be even worse, because it lasted longer. Sin, terrible though it was, had at least this to be said for it, that it could be repented of and done with, and repentance after all was a creditable activity; but there was no repenting of marriage with any credit. It was a holy thing, and you don't repent of holy things,--at least, you oughtn't to. If, as ill-advised young men so often would, Edward wanted as years went on to marry in spite of his already having an affectionate and sympathetic home with feminine society in it, then it seemed to Mrs. Twist most important, most vital to the future comfort of the family, that it should be someone she had chosen herself. She had observed him from infancy, and knew much better than he what was needed for his happiness; and she also knew, if there must be a wife, what was needed for the happiness of his mother and sister. She had not thought to inquire about the second-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers, for it never occurred to her that a son of hers could drift out of his natural first-cla.s.s sphere into the slums of a s.h.i.+p, and Mr. Twist had seen no reason for hurrying the Twinklers into her mental range. Not during those first hours, anyhow. There would be plenty of hours, and he felt that sufficient unto the day would be the Twinklers thereof.

But the part that was really making his ears red was that he had said nothing about the evening with the twins in New York. When his mother asked with the fondness of the occasion what had detained him, he said as many another honest man, pressed by the searching affection of relations, has said before him, that it was business. Now it appeared that he would have to go into the dining-room and say, "No. It wasn't business. It was these."

His ears glowed just to think of it. He hated to lie. Specially he hated to have lied,--at the moment, one plunged in spurred by sudden necessity, and then was left sorrowfully contemplating one's degradation. His own desire was always to be candid; but his mother, he well knew, could not bear the pains candour gave her. She had been so terribly hurt, so grievously wounded when, fresh from praying,--for before he went to Harvard he used to pray--he had on one or two occasions for a few minutes endeavoured not to lie to her that sheer fright at the effect of his unfiliality made him apologize and beg her to forget it and forgive him. Now she was going to be still more wounded by his having lied.

The meticulous tortuousness of family life struck Mr. Twist with a sudden great impatience. After that large life over there in France, to come back to this dreary petticoat lying, this feeling one's way about among tender places ...

"Who is it, Edward?" called the voice inside for the third time.

"There's someone in there seems quite particularly to want to know who we are," said Anna-Felicitas. "Why not tell her?"

"I expect it's your mother," said Anna-Rose, feeling the full satisfaction of having got to a house from which the lady hadn't run anywhere.

"It is," said Mr. Twist briefly.

"Edith!" called the voice, much more peremptorily.

Edith started and half went in, but hesitated and quite stayed out. She was gazing at the Twinklers with the same kind eyes her brother had, but without the disfiguring spectacles. Astonishment and perplexity and anxiety were mixed with the kindness. Amanda also gazed; and if the twins hadn't been so sure of their welcome, even they might gradually have begun to perceive that it wasn't exactly open-armed.