Mr. Twist had often observed how perplexingly much there is to be said for the opposite sides of a question. He was now, but with no perplexity, for Anna-Felicitas had roused his enthusiasm, himself taking the very opposite view as to the proper thing for the twins to do from the one he had taken in the night and on the rocks that morning. School? Nonsense. Absurd to bury these bright shoots of everlastingness — this is what they looked like to him, afire with enthusiasm and the setting sun — in such a place of ink. If the plan, owing to the extreme youth of the Annas, were unconventional, conventionality could be secured by giving a big enough salary to a middle-aged lady to come and preside. He himself would hover beneficently in the background over the undertaking.
Anna-Felicitas’s idea was to use Uncle Arthur’s £200 in renting one of the little wooden cottages that seemed to be plentiful, preferably one about five miles out in the country, make it look inside like an English cottage, all pewter and chintz and valances, make it look outside like the more innocent type of German wayside inn, with green tables and spreading trees, get a cook who would concentrate on cakes, real lovely ones, various, poetic, wonderful cakes, and start an inn for tea alone that should become the fashion. It ought to be so arranged that it became the fashion. She and Anna-Rose would do the waiting. The prices would be very high, indeed exorbitant — this Mr. Twist regarded as another inspiration, — so that it should be a distinction, give people a cachet, to have had tea at their cottage; and in a prominent position in the road in front of it, where every motor-car would be bound to see it, there would be a real wayside inn signboard, such as inns in England always have, with its name on it.
“If people here were really neutral you might have the Imperial arms of Germany and England emblazoned on it,” interrupted Mr. Twist, “just to show your own extreme and peculiar neutrality.”
“We might call it The Christopher and Columbus,” interrupted Anna-Rose, who had been sitting open-mouthed hanging on Anna-Felicitas’s words.
“Or you might call it The Cup and Saucer,” said Mr. Twist, “and have a big cup brimming with tea and cream painted on it—”
“No,” said Anna-Felicitas. “It is The Open Arms. That is its name.”
And Mr. Twist, inclined to smile and criticise up to this, bowed his head in instantaneous recognition and acceptance.
He became definitely enthusiastic. Of course he would see to it that not a shadow of ambiguousness was allowed to rest on such a name. The whole thing as he saw it, his mind working rapidly while Anna-Felicitas still talked, would be a happy joke, a joyous, gay little assault on the purses of millionaires, in whom the district abounded judging from the beautiful houses and gardens he had passed that day, — but a joke and a gay assault that would at the same time employ and support the Annas; solve them, in fact, saw Mr. Twist, who all day long had been regarding them much as one does a difficult mathematical problem.
It was Mr. Twist who added the final inspiration to Anna-Felicitas’s many, when at last she paused for want of breath. The inn, he said, should be run as a war philanthropy. All that was over after the expenses were paid and a proper percentage reserved by the Annas as interest on their invested capital — they listened with eager respect to these business-like expressions — would be handed over to the American Red Cross. “That,” explained Mr. Twist, “would seal the inn as both respectable and fashionable, which is exactly what we would want to make it.”
And he then announced, and they accepted without argument or questioning in the general excitement, that he would have himself appointed their legal guardian.
They didn’t go back to the Cosmopolitan till dinnertime, there was so much to say, and after dinner, a meal at which Mr. Twist had to suppress them a good deal because The Open Arms kept on bursting through into their talk and, as at breakfast, the people at the tables round them were obviously trying to hear, they went out once again on to the sea-front and walked up and down till late continuing the discussion, mostly simultaneously as regards the twins, while Mr. Twist chimed in with practical suggestions whenever they stopped to take breath.
He had to drive them indoors to bed at last, for the lights were going out one by one in the Cosmopolitan bedroom windows, where the virtuous rich, exhausted by their day of virtue, were subsiding, prostrate with boredom and respectability, into their various legitimate lairs, and he stayed alone out by the sea rapidly sketching out his activities for the next day.
There was the guardianship to be arranged, the cottage to be found, and the middle-aged lady to be advertised for. She, indeed, must be secured at once; got to come at once to the Cosmopolitan and preside over the twins until they all proceeded in due season to The Open Arms. She must be a motherly middle-aged lady, decided Mr. Twist, affectionate, skilled in managing a cook, business-like, intellectual, and obedient. Her feminine tact would enable her to appear to preside while she was in reality obeying. She must understand that she was there for the Annas, and that the Annas were not there for her. She must approach the situation in the spirit of the enlightened king of a democratic country, who receives its honours, accepts its respect, but does not lose sight of the fact that he is merely the Chief Servant of the people. Mr. Twist didn’t want a female Uncle Arthur let loose upon those blessed little girls; besides, they would have the dangerous weapon in their hands of being able to give her notice, and it would considerably dim the reputation of The Open Arms if there were a too frequent departure from it of middle-aged ladies.
Mr. Twist felt himself very responsible and full of anxieties as he paced up and down alone, but he was really enjoying himself. That youthful side of him, so usual in the artistic temperament, which leaped about at the least pleasant provocation like a happy lamb when the sunshine tickles it, was feeling that this was great fun; and the business side of him was feeling that it was not only great fun but probably an extraordinarily productive piece of money-making.
The ignorant Annas — bless their little hearts, he thought, he who only the night before on that very spot had been calling them accursed — believed that their £200 was easily going to do everything. This was lucky, for otherwise there would have been some thorny paths of argument and convincing to be got through before they would have allowed him to help finance the undertaking; probably they never would have, in their scrupulous independence. Mr. Twist reflected with satisfaction on the usefulness of his teapot. At last he was going to be able to do something, thanks to it, that gave him real gladness. His ambulance to France — that was duty. His lavishness to his mother — that again was duty. But here was delight, here at last was what his lonely heart had always longed for, — a chance to help and make happy, and be with and watch being made happy, dear women-things, dear soft sweet kind women-things, dear sister-things, dear children-things....
It has been said somewhere before that Mr. Twist was meant by Nature to be a mother; but Nature, when she was half-way through him, forgot and turned him into a man.
CHAPTER XXII
The very next morning they set out house-hunting, and two days later they had found what they wanted. Not exactly what they wanted of course, for the reason, as Anna-Felicitas explained that nothing ever is exactly, but full of possibilities to the eye of imagination, and there were six of this sort of eye gazing at the little house.
It stood at right angles to a road much used by motorists because of its beauty, and hidden from it by trees on the top of a slope of green fields scattered over with live oaks that gently descended down towards the sea. Its back windows, and those parts of it that a house is ashamed of, were close up to a thick grove of eucalyptus which continued to the foot of the mountains. It had an overrun little garden in front, separated from the fields by a riotous hedge of sweetbriar. It had a few orange, and lemon, and peach trees on its west side, the survivors of what had once been intended for an orchard, and a line of pepper trees on the other, between it and the road. Neglected roses and a huge wistaria clambered over its dilapidated face. Someb
ody had once planted syringas, and snowballs, and lilacs along the inside of the line of pepper trees, and they had grown extravagantly and were an impenetrable screen, even without the sweeping pepper trees from the road.
It hadn’t been lived in for years, and it was well on in decay, being made of wood, but the situation was perfect for The Open Arms. Every motorist coming up that road would see the signboard outside the pepper trees, and would certainly want to stop at the neat little gate, and pass through the flowery tunnel that would be cut through the syringas, and see what was inside. Other houses were offered of a far higher class, for this one had never been lived in by gentry, said the house-agent endeavouring to put them off a thing so broken down. A farmer had had it years back, he told them, and instead of confining himself to drinking the milk from his own cows, which was the only appropriate drink for a farmer the agent maintained — he was the president of the local Anti-Vice-In-All-Its-Forms League — he put his money as he earned it into gin, and the gin into himself, and so after a bit was done for.
The other houses the agent pressed on them were superior in every way except situation; but situation being the first consideration, Mr. Twist agreed with the twins, who had fallen in love with the neglected little house whose shabbiness was being so industriously hidden by roses, that this was the place, and a week later it and its garden had been bought — Mr. Twist didn’t tell the twins he had bought it, in order to avoid argument, but it was manifestly the simple thing to do — and over and round and through it swarmed workmen all day long, like so many diligent and determined ants. Also, before the week was out, the middle-aged lady had been found and engaged, and a cook of gifts in the matter of cakes. This is the way you do things in America. You decide what it is that you really want, and you start right away and get it. “And everything so cheap too!” exclaimed the twins gleefully, whose £200 was behaving, it appeared, very like the widow’s cruse.
This belief, however, received a blow when they went without Mr. Twist, who was too busy now for any extra expeditions, to choose and buy chintzes, and it was finally shattered when the various middle-aged ladies who responded to Mr. Twist’s cry for help in the advertising columns of the Acapulco and Los Angeles press one and all demanded as salary more than the whole Twinkler capital.
The twins had a bad moment of chill fear and misgiving, and then once more were saved by an inspiration, — this time Anna-Rose’s.
“I know,” she exclaimed, her face clearing. “We’ll make it Co-operative.”
Mr. Twist, whose brow too had been puckered in the effort to think out a way of persuading the twins to let him help them openly with his money, for in spite of his going to be their guardian they remained difficult on this point, jumped at the idea. He couldn’t, of course, tell what in Anna-Rose’s mind the word co-operative stood for, but felt confident that whatever it stood for he could manipulate it into covering his difficulties.
“What is co-operative?” asked Anna-Felicitas, with a new respect for a sister who could suddenly produce a business word like that and seem to know all about it. She had heard the word herself, but it sat very loosely in her head, at no point touching anything else.
“Haven’t you heard of Co-operative Stores?” inquired Anna-Rose.
“Yes but—”
“Well, then.”
“Yes, but what would a co-operative inn be?” persisted Anna-Felicitas.
“One run on co-operative lines, of course,” said Anna-Rose grandly. “Everybody pays for everything, so that nobody particular pays for anything.”
“Oh,” said Anna-Felicitas.
“I mean,” said Anna-Rose, who felt herself that this might be clearer, “it’s when you pay the servants and the rent and the cakes and things out of what you get.”
“Oh,” said Anna-Felicitas. “And will they wait quite quietly till we’ve got it?”
“Of course, if we’re all co-operative.”
“I see,” said Anna-Felicitas, who saw as little as before, but knew of old that Anna-Rose grew irascible when pressed.
“See here now,” said Mr. Twist weightily, “if that isn’t an idea. Only you’ve got hold of the wrong word. The word you want is profit-sharing. And as this undertaking is going to be a big success there will be big profits, and any amount of cakes and salaries will be paid for as glibly and easily as you can say your ABC.”
And he explained that till they were fairly started he was going to stay in California, and that he intended during this time to be book-keeper, secretary, and treasurer to The Open Arms, besides Advertiser-in-Chief, which was, he said, the most important post of all; and if they would be so good as to leave this side of it unquestioningly to him, who had had a business training, he would undertake that the Red Cross, American or British, whichever they decided to support, should profit handsomely.
Thus did Mr. Twist artfully obtain a free hand as financial backer of The Open Arms. The profit-sharing system seemed to the twins admirable. It cleared away every scruple and every difficulty, they now bought chintzes and pewter pots in the faith of it without a qualm, and even ceased to blench at the salary of the lady engaged to be their background, — indeed her very expensiveness pleased them, for it gave them confidence that she must at such a price be the right one, because nobody, they agreed, who knew herself not to be the right one would have the face to demand so much.
This lady, the widow of Bruce D. Bilton of Chicago of whom of course, she said, the Miss Twinklers had heard — the Miss Twinklers blushed and felt ashamed of themselves because they hadn’t, and indistinctly murmured something about having heard of Cornelius K. Vanderbilt, though, and wouldn’t he do — had a great deal of very beautiful snow-white hair, while at the same time she was only middle-aged. She firmly announced, when she perceived Mr. Twist’s spectacles dwelling on her hair, that she wasn’t yet forty, and her one fear was that she mightn’t be middle-aged enough. The advertisement had particularly mentioned middle-aged; and though she was aware that her brains and fingers and feet couldn’t possibly be described as coming under that heading, she said her hair, on the other hand, might well be regarded as having overshot the mark. But its turning white had nothing to do with age. It had done that when Mr. Bilton passed over. No hair could have stood such grief as hers when Mr. Bilton took that final step. She had been considering the question of age, she informed Mr. Twist, from every aspect before coming to the interview, for she didn’t want to make a mistake herself nor allow the Miss Twinklers to make a mistake; and she had arrived at the conclusion that what with her hair being too old and the rest of her being too young, taken altogether she struck an absolute average and perfectly fulfilled the condition required; and as she wished to live in the country, town life disturbing her psychically too much, she was willing to give up her home and her circle — it was a real sacrifice — and accept the position offered by the Miss Twinklers. She was, she said, very quiet, and yet at the same time she was very active. She liked to fly round among duties, and she liked to retire into her own mentality and think. She was all for equilibrium, for the right balancing of body and mind in a proper alternation of suitable action. Thus she attained poise, — she was one of the most poised women her friends knew, they told her. Also she had a warm heart, and liked both philanthropy and orphans. Especially if they were war ones.
Mrs. Bilton talked so quickly and so profusely that it took quite a long time to engage her. There never seemed to be a pause in which one could do it. It was in Los Angeles, in an hotel to which Mr. Twist had motored the twins, starting at daybreak that morning in order to see this lady, that the personal interview took place, and by lunch-time they had been personally interviewing her for three hours without stopping. It seemed years. The twins longed to engage her, if only to keep her quiet; but Mrs. Bilton’s spirited description of life as she saw it and of the way it affected something she called her psyche, was without punctuation and without even the tiny gap of a comma in it through which one might have dexter
ously slipped a definite offer. She had to be interrupted at last, in spite of the discomfort this gave to the Twinkler and Twist politeness, because a cook was coming to be interviewed directly after lunch, and they were dying for some food.
The moment Mr. Twist saw Mrs. Bilton’s beautiful white hair he knew she was the one. That hair was what The Open Arms wanted and must have; that hair, with a well-made black dress to go with it, would be a shield through which no breath of misunderstanding as to the singleness of purpose with which the inn was run would ever penetrate. He would have settled it with her in five minutes if she could have been got to listen, but Mrs. Bilton couldn’t be got to listen; and when it became clear that no amount of patient waiting would bring him any nearer the end of what she had to say Mr. Twist was forced to take off his coat, as it were, and plunge abruptly into the very middle of her flow of words and convey to her as quickly as possible, as one swimming for his life against the stream, that she was engaged. “Engaged, Mrs. Bilton,” — he called out, raising his voice above the sound of Mrs. Bilton’s rushing words, “engaged.” She would be expected at the Cosmopolitan, swiftly continued Mr. Twist, who was as particularly anxious to have her at the Cosmopolitan as the twins were particularly anxious not to, — for for the life of them they couldn’t see why Mrs. Bilton should be stirred up before they started inhabiting the cottage, — within three days —
“Mr. Twist, it can’t be done,” broke in Mrs. Bilton a fresh and mountainous wave of speech gathering above Mr. Twist’s head. “It absolutely—”
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 209
