Christopher and Columbus Part 44

"There is also frothed choc--"

"I suppose, now, Mr. Twist--he must be completely sympathy--"

interrupted Mr. w.a.n.gelbecker confidentially, leaning forward and lowering his voice a little.

Anna-Felicitas gazed at him blankly. Some more people were coming in at the door, and behind them she could see on the path yet more, and Anna-Rose was in the pantry fetching the tea for the experts.

"Would you mind telling me what I am to bring you?" she asked. "Because I'm afraid--"

Mr. w.a.n.gelbecker turned his head in the direction she was looking.

"Ah--" he said getting up, "but this is magnificent Gustchen, here are Mrs. Kleinbart and her sister--why, and there come the Diederichs--but splendid, splendid--"

"Say," said Mr. Ridding, turning to Mr. Twist with a congested face, "ever been to Berlin?"

"No," said Mr. Twist, annoyed by a question of such wanton irrelevance flung into the middle of his sentence.

"Well, it's just like this."

"Like this?" repeated Mr. Twist.

"Those there," said Mr. Ridding, jerking his head. "That lot there--see 'em any day in Berlin, or Frankfurt, or any other of their confounded towns."

"I don't follow," said Mr. Twist, very shortly indeed.

"Germans," said Mr. Ridding.

"Germans?"

"All Germans," said Ridding.

"All Germans?"

"w.a.n.gelbeckers are Germans," said Mr. Ridding. "Didn't you know?"

"No," said Mr. Twist.

"So are the ones who've just come in."

"Germans?"

"All Germans. So are those behind, just coming in."

"Germans?"

"All Germans."

There was a pause, during which Mr. Twist stared round the room. It was presenting quite a populous appearance. Then he said slowly, "Well I'm d.a.m.ned."

And Mr. Ridding for the first time looked pleased with Mr. Twist. He considered that at last he was talking sense.

"Mr. Twist," he said heartily, "I'm exceedingly glad you're d.a.m.ned. It was what I was sure at the bottom of my heart you would be. Shake hands, sir."

CHAPTER x.x.xII

That evening depression reigned in The Open Arms.

Mr. Twist paced up and down the tea-room deep in thought that was obviously unpleasant and perplexed; Mrs. Bilton went to bed abruptly, after a short outpour of words to the effect that she had never seen so many Germans at once before, that her psyche was disharmonious to Germans, that they made her go goose-fleshy just as cats in a room made Mr. Bilton go goose-fleshy in the days when he had flesh to go it with, that she hadn't been aware the inn was to be a popular resort and rendezvous for Germans, and that she wished to speak alone with Mr.

Twist in the morning; while the twins, feeling the ominousness of this last sentence,--as did Mr. Twist, who started when he heard it,--and overcome by the la.s.situde that had succeeded the shocks of the afternoon, a la.s.situde much increased by their having tried to finish up the pailsful of left-over ices and the huge piles of cakes slowly soddening in their own souring cream, went out together on to the moonlit verandah and stood looking up in silence at the stars. There they stood in silence, and thought things about the immense distance and indifference of those bright, cold specks, and how infinitely insignificant after all they, the Twinklers were, and how they would both in any case be dead in a hundred years. And this last reflection afforded them somehow a kind of bleak and draughty comfort.

Thus the first evening, that was to have been so happy, was spent by everybody in silence and apart. Li Koo felt the atmosphere of oppression even in his kitchen, and refrained from song. He put away, after dealing with it cunningly so that it should keep until a more propitious hour, a wonderful drink he had prepared for supper in celebration of the opening day--"Me make li'l celebrity," he had said, squeezing together strange essences and fruits--and he moved softly about so as not to disturb the meditations of the master. Li Koo was perfectly aware of what had gone wrong: it was the unexpected arrival to tea of Germans. Being a member of the least blood-thirsty of the nations, he viewed Germans with peculiar disfavour and understood his master's prolonged walking up and down. Also he had noted through a crack in the door the way these people of blood and death crowded round the white-lily girls; and was not that sufficient in itself to cause his master's numerous and rapid steps?

Numerous indeed that evening were Mr. Twist's steps. He felt he must think, and he could think better walking up and down. Why had all those Germans come? Why, except old Ridding and the experts, had none of the Americans come? It was very strange. And what Germans! So cordial, so exuberant to the twins, so openly gathering them to their bosoms, as though they belonged there. And so cordial too to him, approaching him in spite of his withdrawals, conveying to him somehow, his disagreeable impression had been, that he and they perfectly understood each other.

Then Mrs. Bilton; was she going to give trouble? It looked like it. It looked amazingly like it. Was she after all just another edition of his mother, and unable to discriminate between Germans and Germans, between the real thing and mere technicalities like the Twinklers? It is true he hadn't told her the twins were German, but then neither had he told her they weren't. He had been pa.s.sive. In Mrs. Bilton's presence pa.s.sivity came instinctively. Anything else involved such extreme and unusual exertion. He had never had the least objection to her discovering their nationality for herself, and indeed had been surprised she hadn't done so long ago, for he felt sure she would quickly begin to love the Annas, and once she loved them she wouldn't mind what their father had happened to be. He had supposed she did love them. How affectionately she had kissed them that very afternoon and wished them luck. Was all that nothing? Was lovableness nothing, and complete innocence, after all in the matter of being born, when weighed against the one fact of the von?

What he would do if Mrs. Bilton left him he couldn't imagine. What would happen to The Open Arms and the twins in such a case, his worried brain simply couldn't conceive.

Out of the corner of his eye every time he pa.s.sed the open door on to the verandah he could see the two Annas standing motionless on its edge, their up-turned faces, as they gazed at the stars, white in the moonlight and very serious. Pathetic children. Pathetic, solitary, alien children. What were they thinking of? He wouldn't mind betting it was their mother.

Mr. Twist's heart gave a kind of tug at him. His sentimental, maternal side heaved to the top. A great impulse to hurry out and put his arms round them seized him, but he frowned and overcame it. He didn't want to go soft now. Nor was this the moment, his nicely brought up soul told him, his soul still echoing with the voice of Clark, to put his arms round them--this, the very first occasion on which Mrs. Bilton had left them alone with him. Whether it would become proper on the very second occasion was one of those questions that would instantly have suggested itself to the Annas themselves, but didn't occur to Mr. Twist. He merely went on to think of another reason against it, which was the chance of Mrs. Bilton's looking out of her window just as he did it. She might, he felt, easily misjudge the situation, and the situation, he felt, was difficult enough already. So he restrained himself; and the Annas continued to consider infinite s.p.a.ce and to perceive, again with that feeling of dank and unsatisfactory consolation, that nothing really mattered.

Next day immediately after breakfast Mrs. Bilton followed him into his office and gave notice. She called it formally tendering her resignation. She said that all her life she had been an upholder of straight dealing, as much in herself towards others as in others towards herself--

"Mrs. Bilton--" interrupted Mr. Twist, only it didn't interrupt.

She had also all her life been intensely patriotic, and Mr. Twist, she feared, didn't look at patriotism with quite her single eye--

"Mrs. Bilton--"

As her eye saw it, patriotism was among other things a determination to resist the encroachments of foreigners--

"Mrs. Bilton--"

She had no wish to judge him, but she had still less wish to be mixed up with foreigners, and foreigners for her at that moment meant Germans--

"Mrs. Bilton--"

She regretted, but psychically she would never be able to flourish in a soil so largely composed, as the soil of The Open Arms appeared to be, of that nationality--

"Mrs. Bilton--"

And though it was none of her business, still she must say it did seem to her a pity that Mr. Twist with his well-known and respected American name should be mixed up--

"Mrs. Bilton--"

And though she had no wish to be inquisitive, still she must say it did seem to her peculiar that Mr. Twist should be the guardian of two girls who, it was clear from what she had overheard that afternoon, were German--