Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  He had been much annoyed, but he too couldn’t resist the extreme pleasure of real exercise on such a lovely evening, nor could he resist the infection of the cheerfulness of the Twinklers. They walked along, talking and laughing, and seeming to walk much faster than he did, especially Anna-Rose who had to break into a run every few steps because of his so much longer legs, his face restored to all its usual kindliness as he listened benevolently to their remarks, and just when they were beginning to feel as if they soon might be tired and hungry a restaurant with lamp-hung gardens appeared as punctually as if they had been in Germany, that land of nicely arranged distances between meals. They had an extremely cheerful little supper out of doors, with things to eat that thrilled the Twinklers in their delicious strangeness; heavenly food, they thought it after the rigours of the second-class cooking on the St. Luke, and the biggest ices they had seen in their lives, — great dollops of pink and yellow divineness.

  Then Mr. Twist took them in a taxi to look at the illuminated advertisements in Broadway, and they forgot everything but the joy of the moment. Whatever the next day held, this evening was sheer happiness. Their eyes shone and their cheeks flushed, and Mr. Twist was quite worried that they were so pretty. People at the other tables at the restaurant had stared at them with frank admiration, and so did the people in the streets whenever the taxi was blocked. On the ship he had only sometimes been aware of it, — there would come a glint of sunshine and settle on Anna-Rose’s little cheek where the dimple was, or he would lift his eyes from the Culture book and suddenly see the dark softness of Anna-Felicitas’s eyelashes as she slept in her chair. But now, dressed properly, and in their dryland condition of cheerful animation, he perceived that they were very pretty indeed, and that Anna-Felicitas was more than very pretty. He couldn’t help thinking they were a most unsuitable couple to be let loose in America with only two hundred pounds to support them. Two hundred pounds was just enough to let them slip about if it should enter their heads to slip about, — go off without explanation, for instance, if they wanted to leave the Clouston Sacks, — but of course ridiculous as a serious background to life. A girl should either have enough money or be completely dependent on her male relations. As a girl was usually young reflected Mr. Twist, his spectacles with the Broadway lights in them blazing on the two specimens opposite him, it was safest for her to be dependent. So were her actions controlled, and kept within the bounds of wisdom.

  And next morning, as he sat waiting for the twins for breakfast at ten o’clock according to arrangement the night before, their grape-fruit in little beds of ice on their plates and every sort of American dish ordered, from griddle cakes and molasses to chicken pie, a page came in with loud cries for Mr. Twist, which made him instantly conspicuous — a thing he particularly disliked — and handed him a letter.

  The twins had gone.

  CHAPTER XIII

  They had left early that morning for Boston, determined, as they wrote, no longer to trespass on his kindness. There had been a discussion in their bedroom the night before when they got back in which Anna-Rose supplied the heat and Anna-Felicitas the arguments, and it ended in Anna-Felicitas succeeding in restoring Anna-Rose to her original standpoint of proud independence, from which, lured by the comfort and security of Mr. Twist’s companionship, she had been inclined to slip.

  It took some time, because of Anna-Rose being the eldest. Anna-Felicitas had had to be as wary, and gentle, and persistently affectionate as a wife whom necessity compels to try and get reason into her husband. Anna-Rose’s feathers, even as the feathers of a husband, bristled at the mere breath of criticism of her superior intelligence and wisdom. She was the leader of the party, the head and guide, the one who had the dollars in her pocket, and being the eldest naturally must know best. Besides, she was secretly nervous about taking Anna-Felicitas about alone. She too had observed the stares of the public, and had never supposed that any of them might be for her. How was she to get to Boston successfully with so enchanting a creature, through all the complications of travel in an unknown country, without the support and counsel of Mr. Twist? Just the dollars and quarters and dimes and cents cowed her. The strangeness of everything, while it delighted her so long as she could peep at it from behind Mr. Twist, appalled her the minute she was left alone with it. America seemed altogether a foreign country, a strange place whose inhabitants by accident didn’t talk in a strange language. They talked English; or rather what sounded like English till you found that it wasn’t really.

  But Anna-Felicitas prevailed. She had all Anna-Rose’s inborn horror of accepting money or other benefits from people who had no natural right to exercise their benevolences upon her, to appeal to. Christopher, after long wrestling restored at last to pride, did sit down and write the letter that so much spoilt Mr. Twist’s breakfast next morning, while Columbus slouched about the room suggesting sentences.

  It was a letter profuse in thanks for all Mr. Twist had done for them, and couched in language that betrayed the particular share Anna-Felicitas had taken in the plan; for though they both loved long words Anna-Felicitas’s were always a little the longer. In rolling sentences that made Mr. Twist laugh in spite of his concern, they pointed out that his first duty was to his mother, and his second was not to squander his possessions in paying the hotel and railway bills of persons who had no sort of claim on him, except those general claims of humanity which he had already on the St. Luke so amply discharged. They would refrain from paying their hotel bill, remembering his words as to the custom of the country, though their instincts were altogether against this course, but they could and would avoid causing him the further expense and trouble and waste of his no doubt valuable time of taking them to Boston, by the simple process of going there without him. They promised to write from the Sacks and let him know of their arrival to the address at Clark he had given them, and they would never forget him as long as they lived and remained his very sincerely, A.-R., and A.-F. Twinkler.

  Mr. Twist hurried out to the office.

  The clerk who had been so confidential in his manner the evening before looked at him curiously. Yes, the young ladies had left on the 8.15 for Boston. They had come downstairs, baggage and all, at seven o’clock, had asked for a taxi, had said they wished to go to Boston, inquired about the station, etc., and had specially requested that Mr. Twist should not be disturbed.

  “They seemed in a slight hurry to be off,” said the clerk, “and didn’t like there being no train before the 8.15. I thought you knew all about it, Mr. Twist,” he added inquisitively.

  “So I did — so I did,” said Mr. Twist, turning away to go back to his breakfast for three.

  “So he did — so he did,” muttered the clerk with a wink to the other clerk; and for a few minutes they whispered, judging from the expressions on their faces, what appeared to be very exciting things to each other.

  Meanwhile the twins, after a brief struggle of extraordinary intensity at the station in getting their tickets, trying to understand the black man who seized and dealt with their luggage, and closely following him wherever he went in case he should disappear, were sitting in a state of relaxation and relief in the Boston express, their troubles over for at least several hours.

  The black porter, whose heart happened not to be black and who had children of his own, perceived the helpless ignorance that lay behind the twins’ assumption a of severe dignity, and took them in hand and got seats for them in the parlour car. As they knew nothing about cars, parlour or otherwise, but had merely and quite uselessly reiterated to the booking-clerk, till their porter intervened, that they wanted third-class tickets, they accepted these seats, thankful in the press and noise round them to get anything so roomy and calm as these dignified arm-chairs; and it wasn’t till they had been in them some time, their feet on green footstools, with attendants offering them fruit and chocolates and magazines at intervals just as if they had been in heaven, as Anna-Felicitas remarked admiringly, that counting their m
oney they discovered what a hole the journey had made in it. But they were too much relieved at having accomplished so much on their own, quite uphelped for the first time since leaving Aunt Alice, to take it particularly to heart; and, as Anna-Felicitas said, there was still the £200, and, as Anna-Rose said, it wasn’t likely they’d go in a train again for ages; and anyhow, as Anna-Felicitas said, whatever it had cost they were bound to get away from being constant drains on Mr. Twist’s purse.

  The train journey delighted them. To sit so comfortably and privately in chairs that twisted round, so that if a passenger should start staring at Anna-Felicitas one could make her turn her back altogether on him; to have one’s feet on footstools when they were the sort of feet that don’t reach the ground; to see the lovely autumn country flying past, hills and woods and fields and gardens golden in the October sun, while the horrible Atlantic was nowhere in sight; to pass through towns so queerly reminiscent of English and German towns shaken up together and yet not a bit like either; to be able to have the window wide open without getting soot in one’s eyes because one of the ministering angels — clad, this one, appropriately to heaven, in white, though otherwise black — pulled up the same sort of wire screen they used to have in the windows at home to keep out the mosquitoes; to imitate about twelve, when they grew bold because they were so hungry, the other passengers and cause the black angel to spread a little table between them and bring clam broth, which they ordered in a spirit of adventure and curiosity and concealed from each other that they didn’t like; to have the young man who passed up and down with the candy, and whose mouth was full of it, grow so friendly that he offered them toffee from his own private supply at last when they had refused regretfully a dozen suggestions to buy— “Have a bit,” he said, thrusting it under their noses. “As a gentleman to ladies — no pecuniary obligations — come on, now;” all this was to the twins too interesting and delightful for words.

  They accepted the toffee in the spirit in which it was offered, and since nobody can eat somebody’s toffee without being pleasant in return, intermittent amenities passed between them and the young man as he journeyed up and down through the cars.

  “First visit to the States?” he inquired, when with some reluctance, for presently it appeared to the twins that the clam broth and the toffee didn’t seem to be liking each other now they had got together inside them, and also for fear of hurting his feelings if they refused, they took some more.

  They nodded and smiled stickily.

  “English, I guess.”

  They hesitated, covering their hesitation with the earnest working of their toffee-filled jaws.

  Then Anna-Felicitas, her cheek distorted, gave him the answer she had given the captain of the St. Luke, and said, “Practically.”

  “Ah,” said the young man, turning this over in his mind, the r in “practically” having rolled as no English or American r ever did; but the conductor appearing in the doorway he continued on his way.

  “It’s evident,” said Anna-Rose, speaking with difficulty, for her jaws clave together because of the toffee, “that we’re going to be asked that the first thing every time a fresh person speaks to us. We’d better decide what we’re going to say, and practise saying it without hesitation.”

  Anna-Felicitas made a sound of assent.

  “That answer of yours about practically,” continued Anna-Rose, swallowing her bit of toffee by accident and for one moment afraid it would stick somewhere and make her die, “causes first surprise, then reflection, and then suspicion.”

  “But,” said Anna-Felicitas after a pause during which she had disentangled her jaws, “it’s going to be difficult to say one is German when America seems to be so very neutral and doesn’t like Germans. Besides, it’s only in the eye of the law that we are. In God’s eye we’re not, and that’s the principal eye after all.”

  Her own eyes grew thoughtful. “I don’t believe,” she said, “that parents when they marry have any idea of all the difficulties they’re going to place their children in.”

  “I don’t believe they think about it at all,” said Anna-Rose. “I mean,” she added quickly, lest she should be supposed to be questioning the perfect love and forethought of their mother, “fathers don’t.”

  They were silent a little after this, each thinking things tinged to sobriety by the effect of the inner conflict going on between the clam broth and the toffee. Also Boston was rushing towards them, and the Clouston Sacks. Quite soon they would have to leave the peaceful security of the train and begin to be active again, and quick and clever. Anna-Felicitas, who was slow, found it difficult ever to be clever till about the week after, and Anna-Rose, who was impetuous, was so impetuous that she entirely outstripped her scanty store of cleverness and landed panting and surprised in situations she hadn’t an idea what to do with. The Clouston Sacks, now — Aunt Alice had said, “You must take care to be very tactful with Mr. and Mrs. Clouston Sack;” and when Anna-Rose, her forehead as much puckered as Mr. Twist’s in her desire to get exactly at what tactful was in order to be able diligently to be it, asked for definitions, Aunt Alice only said it was what gentlewomen were instinctively.

  “Then,” observed Anna-Felicitas, when on nearing Boston Anna-Rose repeated Aunt Alice’s admonishment and at the same time provided Anna-Felicitas for her guidance with the definition, “seeing that we’re supposed to be gentlewomen, all we’ve got to do is to behave according to our instincts.”

  But Anna-Rose wasn’t sure. She doubted their instincts, especially Anna-Felicitas’s. She thought her own were better, being older, but even hers were extraordinarily apt to develop in unexpected directions according to the other person’s behaviour. Her instinct, for instance, when engaged by Uncle Arthur in conversation had usually been to hit him. Was that tact? Yet she knew she was a gentlewoman. She had heard that, since first she had heard words at all, from every servant, teacher, visitor and relation — except her mother — in her Prussian home. Indeed, over there she had been told she was more than a gentlewoman, for she was a noblewoman and therefore her instincts ought positively to drip tact.

  “Mr. Dodson,” Aunt Alice had said one afternoon towards the end, when the twins came in from a walk and found the rector having tea, “says that you can’t be too tactful in America. He’s been there.”

  “Sensitive — sensitive,” said Mr. Dodson, shaking his head at his cup. “Splendidly sensitive, just as they are splendidly whatever else they are. A great country. Everything on a vast scale, including sensitiveness. It has to be met vastly. But quite easy really—” He raised a pedagogic finger at the twins. “You merely add half as much again to the quantity of your tact as the quantity you encounter of their sensitiveness, and it’s all right.”

  “Be sure you remember that now,” said Aunt Alice, pleased.

  As Boston got nearer, Anna-Rose, trying to learn Mr. Dodson’s recipe for social success by heart, became more silent. On the ship, when the meeting with the Sacks was imminent, she had fled in sudden panic to her cabin to hide from them. That couldn’t have been tact. But it was instinct. And she was a gentlewoman. Now once again dread took possession of her and she wanted to hide, not to get there, to stay in the train and go on and on. She said nothing, of course, of her dread to Anna-Felicitas in order not to undermine that young person’s morale, but she did very much wish that principles weren’t such important things and one needn’t have cut oneself off from the protecting figure of Mr. Twist.

  “Now remember what Aunt Alice said,” she whispered severely to Anna-Felicitas, gripping her arm as they stood jammed in the narrow passage to the door waiting to be let out at Boston.

  On the platform, they both thought, would be the Sacks, — certainly one Sack, and they had feverishly made themselves tidy and composed their faces into pleasant smiles preparatory to the meeting. But once again no Sacks were there. The platform emptied itself just as the great hall of the landing-stage had emptied itself, and nobody came to claim the Twinkl
ers.

  “These Sacks,” remarked Anna-Felicitas patiently at last, when it was finally plain that there weren’t any, “don’t seem to have acquired the meeting habit.”

  “No,” said Anna-Rose, vexed but relieved. “They’re like what Aunt Alice used to complain about the housemaids, — neither punctual nor methodical.”

  “But it doesn’t matter,” said Anna-Felicitas. “They shall not escape us. I’m getting quite hungry for the Sacks as a result of not having them. We will now proceed to track them to their lair.”

  For one instant Anna-Rose looked longingly at the train. It was still there. It was going on further and further away from the Sacks. Happy train. One little jump, and they’d be in it again. But she resisted, and engaged a porter.