In the farthest corner of the otherwise empty and very chilly verandah, sitting alone and staring out at the stars, was a man. He was a young man. He was also an attractive young man, with a thin brown face and very bright blue twinkling eyes. The light from the window behind him shone on him as he turned his head when he heard the swing doors open, and Mr. Twist saw these things distinctly and at once. He also saw how the young man’s face fell on his, Mr. Twist’s, appearance with the tray, and he also saw with some surprise how before he had reached him it suddenly cleared again. And the young man got up too, just as Mr. Twist arrived at the table — got up with some little difficulty, for he had to lean hard on a thick stick, but yet obviously with empressement.
“You’ve forgotten the sugar,” said Anna-Felicitas’s gentle voice behind Mr. Twist as he was putting down the tray; and there she was, sure enough, looking smugger than ever.
“This is Mr. Twist,” said Anna-Felicitas with an amiable gesture. “That I was telling you about,” she explained to the young man.
“When?” asked Mr. Twist, surprised.
“Before,” said Anna-Felicitas. “We were talking for some time before I went in to order the tea, weren’t we?” she said to the young man, angelically smiling at him.
“Rather,” he said; and since he didn’t on this introduction remark to Mr. Twist that he was pleased to meet him, it was plain he couldn’t be an American. Therefore he must be English. Unless, suddenly suspected Mr. Twist who had Germans badly on his nerves that day and was ready to suspect anything, he was German cleverly got up for evil purposes to appear English. But the young man dispersed these suspicions by saying that he was over from England on six months’ leave, and that his name was Elliott.
“Like us,” said Anna-Felicitas.
The young man looked at her with what would have been a greater interest than ever if a greater interest had been possible, only it wasn’t.
“What, are you an Elliott too?” he asked eagerly.
Anna-Felicitas shook her head. “On the contrary,” she said, “I’m a Twinkler. And so is my sister. What I meant was, you’re like us about coming from England. We’ve done that. Only our leave is for ever and ever. Or the duration of the war.”
Mr. Twist waved her aside. “Anna-Felicitas,” he said, “your sister is waiting for you in the office and wants you badly. I’ll see to Mr. Elliott.”
“Why not bring your sister here?” said the young man, who, being in the navy, was fertile in resourcefulness. And he smiled at Anna-Felicitas, who smiled back; indeed, they did nothing but smile at each other.
“I think that’s a brilliant idea,” she said; and turned to Mr. Twist. “You go,” she said gently, thereby proving herself, the young man considered, at least his equal in resourcefulness. “It’s much more likely,” she continued, as Mr. Twist gazed at her without moving, “that she’ll come for you than for me. My sister,” she explained to the young man, “is older than I am.”
“Then certainly I should say Mr. Twist is more likely—”
“But only about twenty minutes older.”
“What? A twin? I say, how extraordinarily jolly. Two of you?”
“Anna-Felicitas,” interrupted Mr. Twist, “you will go to your sister immediately. She needs you. She’s upset. I don’t wish to draw Mr. Elliott behind the scenes of family life, but as nothing seems to get you into the office you force me to tell you that she is very, much upset indeed, and is crying.”
“Crying?” echoed Anna-Felicitas. “Christopher?” And she turned and departed in such haste that the young man, who luckily was alert as well as resourceful, had only just time to lean over and grab at a chair in her way and pull it aside, and so avert a deplorable catastrophe.
“I hope it’s nothing serious?” he inquired of Mr. Twist.
“Oh no. Children will cry.”
“Children?”
Mr. Twist sat down at the table and lit a cigarette. “Tell me about England,” he said. “You’ve been wounded, I see.”
“Leg,” said the young man, still standing leaning on his stick and looking after Anna-Felicitas.
“But that didn’t get you six months’ leave.”
“Lungs,” said the young man, looking down impatiently at Mr. Twist.
Then the swing doors swung to, and he sat down and poured out his tea.
He had been in the battle of Jutland, and was rescued after hours in the water. For months he was struggling to recover, but finally tuberculosis had developed and he was sent to California, to his sister who had married an American and lived in the neighbourhood of Acapulco. This Mr. Twist extracted out of him by diligent questioning. He had to question very diligently. What the young man wanted to talk about was Anna-Felicitas; but every time he tried to, Mr. Twist headed him off.
And she didn’t come back. He waited and waited, and drank and drank. When the teapot was empty he started on the hot water. Also he ate all the cakes, more and more deliberately, eking them out at last with slowly smoked cigarettes. He heard all about France and Mr. Twist’s activities there; he had time to listen to the whole story of the ambulance from start to finish; and still she didn’t come back. In vain he tried at least to get Mr. Twist off those distant fields, nearer home — to the point, in fact, where the Twinklers were. Mr. Twist wouldn’t budge. He stuck firmly. And the swing doors remained shut. And the cakes were all eaten. And there was nothing for it at last but to go.
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. D
o 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.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 221
