Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  “Well, damn then,” said Edward very loud, in a rush of rank rebellion.

  CHAPTER XVII

  This night was the turning-point in Mr. Twist’s life. In it he broke loose from his mother. He spent a terrible three hours with her in the drawing-room, and the rest of the night he strode up and down his bedroom. The autumn morning, creeping round the house in long white wisps, found him staring out of his window very pale, his mouth pulled together as tight as it would go.

  His mother had failed him. She had not understood. And not only simply not understood, but she had said things when at last she did speak, after he had explained and pleaded for at least an hour, of an incredible bitterness and injustice. She had seemed to hate him. If she hadn’t been his mother Mr. Twist would have been certain she hated him, but he still believed that mothers couldn’t hate their children. It was stark against nature; and Mr. Twist still believed in the fundamental rightness of that which is called nature. She had accused him of gross things — she, his mother, who from her conversation since he could remember was unaware, he had judged, of the very existence of such things. Those helpless children ... Mr. Twist stamped as he strode. Well, he had made her take that back; and indeed she had afterwards admitted that she said it in her passion of grief and disappointment, and that it was evident these girls were not like that.

  But before they reached that stage, for the first time in his life he had been saying straight out what he wanted to say to his mother just as if she had been an ordinary human being. He told her all he knew of the twins, asked her to take them in for the present and be good to them, and explained the awkwardness of their position, apart from its tragedy, as Germans by birth stranded in New England, where opinion at that moment was so hostile to Germans. Then, continuing in candour, he had told his mother that here was her chance of doing a fine and beautiful thing, and it was at this point that Mrs. Twist suddenly began, on her side, to talk.

  She had listened practically in silence to the rest; had only started when he explained the girls’ nationality; but when he came to offering her these girls as the great opportunity of her life to do something really good at last, she, who felt she had been doing nothing else but noble and beautiful things, and doing them with the most single-minded devotion to duty and the most consistent disregard of inclination, could keep silence no longer. Had she not borne her great loss without a murmur? Had she not devoted all her years to bringing up her son to be a good man? Had she ever considered herself? Had she ever flagged in her efforts to set an example of patience in grief, of dignity in misfortune? She began to speak. And just as amazed as she had been at the things this strange, unknown son had been saying to her and at the manner of their delivery, so was he amazed at the things this strange, unknown mother was saying to him, and at the manner of their delivery.

  Yet his amazement was not so great after all as hers. Because for years, away down hidden somewhere inside him, he had doubted his mother; for years he had, shocked at himself, covered up and trampled on these unworthy doubts indignantly. He had doubted her unselfishness; he had doubted her sympathy and kindliness; he had even doubted her honesty, her ordinary honesty with money and accounts; and lately, before he went to Europe, he had caught himself thinking she was cruel. Nevertheless this unexpected naked justification of his doubts was shattering to him.

  But Mrs. Twist had never doubted Edward. She thought she knew him inside out. She had watched him develop. Watched him during the long years of his unconsciousness. She had been quite secure; and rather disposed, also somewhere down inside her, to a contempt for him, so easy had he been to manage, so ready to do everything she wished. Now it appeared that she no more knew Edward than if he had been a stranger in the street.

  The bursting of the dykes of convention between them was a horrible thing to them both. Mr. Twist had none of the cruelty of the younger generation to support him: he couldn’t shrug his shoulder and take comfort in the thought that this break between them was entirely his mother’s fault, for however much he believed it to be her fault the belief merely made him wretched; he had none of the pitiless black pleasure to be got from telling himself it served her right. So naturally kind was he — weak, soft, stupid, his mother shook out at him — that through all his own shame at this naked vision of what had been carefully dressed up for years in dignified clothes of wisdom and affection, he was actually glad, when he had time in his room to think it over, glad she should be so passionately positive that he, and only he, was in the wrong. It would save her from humiliation; and of the painful things of late Mr. Twist could least bear to see a human being humiliated.

  That was, however, towards morning. For hours raged, striding about his room, sorting out the fragments into which his life as a son had fallen, trying to fit them into some sort of a pattern, to see clear about the future. Clearer. Not clear. He couldn’t hope for that yet. The future seemed one confused lump. All he could see really clear of it was that he was going, next day, and taking the twins. He would take them to the other people they had a letter to, the people in California, and then turn his face back to Europe, to the real thing, to the greatness of life where death is. Not an hour longer than he could help would he or they stay in that house. He had told his mother he would go away, and she had said, “I hope never to see you again.” Who would have thought she had so much of passion in her? Who would have thought he had so much of it in him?

  Fury against her injustice shook and shattered Mr. Twist. Not so could fair and affectionate living together be conducted, on that basis of suspicion, distrust, jealousy. Through his instinct, though not through his brain, shot the conviction that his mother was jealous of the twins, — jealous of the youth of the twins, and of their prettiness, and goodness, and of the power, unknown to them, that these things gave them. His brain was impervious to such a conviction, because it was an innocent brain, and the idea would never have entered it that a woman of his mother’s age, well over sixty, could be jealous in that way; but his instinct knew it.

  The last thing his mother said as he left the drawing-room was, “You have killed me. You have killed your own mother. And just because of those girls.”

  And Mr. Twist, shocked at this parting shot of unfairness, could find, search as he might, nothing to be said for his mother’s point of view. It simply wasn’t true. It simply was delusion.

  Nor could she find anything to be said for his, but then she didn’t try to, it was so manifestly unforgivable. All she could do, faced by this bitter sorrow, was to leave Edward to God. Sternly, as he flung out of the room at last, unsoftened, untouchable, deaf to her even when she used the tone he had always obeyed the tone of authority, she said to herself she must leave her son to God. God knew. God would judge. And Clark too would know; and Clark too would judge.

  Left alone in the drawing-room on this terrible night of her second great bereavement, Mrs. Twist was yet able, she was thankful to feel, to resolve she would try to protect her son as long as she could from Clark. From God she could not, if she would, protect him; but she would try to protect him even now, as she had always protected him, from earthly harm and hurt. Clark would, however, surely know in time, protect as she might, and judge between her and Edward. God knew already, and was already judging. God and Clark.... Poor Edward.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  The twins, who had gone to bed at half-past nine, shepherded by Edith, in the happy conviction that they had settled down comfortably for some time, were surprised to find at breakfast that they hadn’t.

  They had taken a great fancy to Edith, in spite of a want of restfulness on her part that struck them while they were finishing their supper, and to which at last they drew her attention. She was so kind, and so like Mr. Twist; but though she looked at them with hospitable eyes and wore an expression of real benevolence, it didn’t escape their notice that she seemed to be listening to something that wasn’t, anyhow, them, and to be expecting something that didn’t, anyhow, happen. She went s
everal times to the door through which her brother and mother had disappeared, and out into whatever part of the house lay beyond it, and when she came back after a minute or two was as wanting in composure as ever.

  At last, finding these abrupt and repeated interruptions hindered any real talk, they pointed out to her that reasoned conversation was impossible if one of the parties persisted in not being in the room, and inquired of her whether it were peculiar to her, or typical of the inhabitants of America, to keep on being somewhere else. Edith smiled abstractedly at them, said nothing, and went out again.

  She was longer away this time, and the twins having eaten, among other things, a great many meringues, grew weary of sitting with those they hadn’t eaten lying on the dish in front of them reminding them of those they had. They wanted, having done with meringues, to get away from them and forget them. They wanted to go into another room now, where there weren’t any. Anna-Felicitas felt, and told Anna-Rose who was staring listlessly at the left-over meringues, that it was like having committed murder, and being obliged to go on looking at the body long after you were thoroughly tired of it. Anna-Rose agreed, and said that she wished now she hadn’t committed meringues, — anyhow so many of them.

  Then at last Edith came back, and told them she was sure they were very tired after their long day, and suggested their going upstairs to their rooms. The rooms were ready, said Edith, the baggage had come, and she was sure they would like to have nice hot baths and go to bed.

  The twins obeyed her readily, and she checked a desire on their part to seek out her mother and brother first and bid them good-night, on the ground that her mother and brother were busy; and while the twins were expressing polite regret, and requesting her to convey their regret for them to the proper quarter in a flow of well-chosen words that astonished Edith, who didn’t know how naturally Junkers make speeches, she hurried them by the drawing-room door through which, shut though it was, came sounds of people being, as Anna-Felicitas remarked, very busy indeed; and Anna-Rose, impressed by the quality and volume of Mr. Twist’s voice as it reached her passing ears, told Edith that intimately as she knew her brother she had never known him as busy as that before.

  Edith said nothing, but continued quickly up the stairs.

  They found they each had a bedroom, with a door between, and that each bedroom had a bathroom of its own, which filled them with admiration and pleasure. There had only been one bathroom at Uncle Arthur’s, and at home in Pomerania there hadn’t been any at all. The baths there had been vessels brought into one’s bedroom every night, into which servants next morning poured water out of buckets, having previously pumped the water into the bucket from the pump in the backyard. They put Edith in possession of these facts while she helped them unpack and brushed and plaited their hair for them, and she was much astonished, — both at the conditions of discomfort and slavery they revealed as prevalent in other countries, and at the fact that they, the Twinklers, should hail from Pomerania.

  Pomerania, reflected Edith as she tied up their pigtails with the ribbons handed to her for that purpose, used to be in Germany when she went to school, and no doubt still was. She became more thoughtful than ever, though she still smiled at them, for how could she help it? Everyone, Edith was certain, must needs smile at the Twinklers even if they didn’t happen to be one’s own dear brother’s protegees. And when they came out, very clean and with scrubbed pink ears, from their bath, she not only smiled at them as she tucked them up in bed, but she kissed them good-night.

  Edith, like her brother, was born to be a mother, — one of the satisfactory sort that keeps you warm and doesn’t argue with you. Germans or no Germans the Twinklers were the cutest little things, thought Edith; and she kissed them, with the same hunger with which, being now thirty-eight, she was beginning to kiss puppies.

  “You remind me so of Mr. Twist,” murmured Anna-Felicitas sleepily, as Edith tucked her up and kissed her.

  “You do all the sorts of things he does,” murmured Anna-Rose, also sleepily, when it was her turn to be tucked up and kissed; and in spite of a habit now fixed in her of unquestioning acceptance and uncritical faith. Edith went downstairs to her restless vigil outside the drawing-room door a little surprised.

  At breakfast the twins learnt to their astonishment that, though appearances all pointed the other way what they were really doing was not being stationary at all, but merely having a night’s lodging and breakfast between, as it were, two trains.

  Mr. Twist, who looked pale and said shortly when the twins remarked solicitously on it that he felt pale, briefly announced the fact.

  “What?” exclaimed Anna-Rose, staring at Mr. Twist and then at Edith — Mrs. Twist, they were told, was breakfasting in bed— “Why, we’ve unpacked.”

  “You will re-pack,” said Mr. Twist.

  They found difficulty in believing their ears.

  “But we’ve settled in,” remonstrated Anna-Felicitas, after an astonished pause.

  “You will settle out,” said Mr. Twist.

  He frowned. He didn’t look at them, he frowned at his own teapot. He had made up his mind to be very short with the Annas until they were safely out of the house, and not permit himself to be entangled by them in controversy. Also, he didn’t want to look at them if he could help it. He was afraid that if he did he might be unable not to take them both in his arms and beg their pardon for the whole horridness of the world.

  But if he didn’t look at them, they looked at him. Four round, blankly surprised eyes were fixed, he knew, unblinkingly on him.

  “We’re seeing you in quite a new light,” said Anna-Rose at last, troubled and upset.

  “Maybe,” said Mr. Twist, frowning at his teapot.

  “Perhaps you will be so good,” said Anna-Felicitas stiffly, for at all times she hated being stirred up and uprooted, “as to tell us where you think we’re going to.”

  “Because,” said Anna-Rose, her voice trembling a little, not only at the thought of fresh responsibilities, but also with a sense of outraged faith, “our choice of residence, as you may have observed, is strictly limited.”

  Mr. Twist, who had spent an hour before breakfast with Edith, whose eyes were red, informed them that they were en route for California.

  “To those other people,” said Anna-Rose. “I see.”

  She held her head up straight.

  “Well, I expect they’ll be very glad to see us,” she said after a silence; and proceeded, her chin in the air, to look down her nose, because she didn’t want Mr. Twist, or Edith or Anna-Felicitas, to notice that her eyes had gone and got tears in them. She angrily wished she hadn’t got such damp eyes. They were no better than swamps, she thought — undrained swamps; and directly fate’s foot came down a little harder than usual, up oozed the lamentable liquid. Not thus should the leader of an expedition behave. Not thus, she was sure, did the original Christopher. She pulled herself together; and after a minute’s struggle was able to leave off looking down her nose.

  But meanwhile Anna-Felicitas had informed Mr. Twist with gentle dignity that he was obviously tired of them.

  “Not at all,” said Mr. Twist.

  Anna-Felicitas persisted. “In view of the facts,” she said gently, “I’m afraid your denial carries no weight.”

  “The facts,” said Mr. Twist, taking up his teapot and examining it with care, “are that I’m coming with you.”

  “Oh are you,” said Anna-Felicitas much more briskly; and it was here that Anna-Rose’s eyes dried up.

  “That rather dishes your theory,” said Mr. Twist, still turning his teapot about in his hands. “Or would if it didn’t happen that I — well, I happen to have some business to do in California, and I may as well do it now as later. Still, I could have gone by a different route or train, so you see your theory is rather dished, isn’t it?”

  “A little,” admitted Anna-Felicitas. “Not altogether. Because if you really like our being here, here we are. So why hurry us off somewhere e
lse so soon?”

  Mr. Twist perceived that he was being led into controversy in spite of his determination not to be. “You’re very wise,” he said shortly, “but you don’t know everything. Let us avoid conjecture and stick to facts. I’m going to take you to California, and hand you over to your friends. That’s all you know, and all you need to know.”

  “As Keats very nearly said,” said Anna-Rose

  “And if our friends have run away?” suggested Anna-Felicitas.

  “Oh Lord,” exclaimed Mr. Twist impatiently, putting the teapot down with a bang, “do you think we’re running away all the time in America?”

  “Well, I think you seem a little restless,” said Anna-Felicitas.

  Thus it was that two hours later the twins found themselves at the Clark station once more, once more starting into the unknown, just as if they had never done it before, and gradually, as they adapted themselves to the sudden change, such is the india-rubber-like quality of youth, almost with the same hopefulness. Yet they couldn’t but meditate, left alone on the platform while Mr. Twist checked the baggage, on the mutability of life. They seemed to live in a kaleidoscope since the war began what a series of upheavals and readjustments had been theirs! Silent, and a little apart on the Clark platform, they reflected retrospectively; and as they counted up their various starts since the days, only fourteen months ago, when they were still in their home in Germany, apparently as safely rooted, as unshakably settled as the pine trees in their own forests, they couldn’t but wonder at the elusiveness of the unknown, how it wouldn’t let itself be caught up with and at the trouble it was giving them.

  They had had so many changes in the last year that they did want now to have time to become familiar with some one place and people. Already however, being seventeen, they were telling themselves, and each other that after all, since the Sacks had failed them, California was their real objective. Not Clark at all. Clark had never been part of their plans. Uncle Arthur and Aunt Alice didn’t even know it existed. It was a side-show; just a little thing of their own, an extra excursion slipped in between the Sacks and the Delloggs. True they had hoped to stay there some time, perhaps even for months, — anyhow, time to mend their stockings in, which were giving way at the toes unexpectedly, seeing how new they were; but ultimately California was the place they had to go to. It was only that it was a little upsetting to be whisked out of Clark at a moment’s notice.