Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  “You’re the Twinkler girls,” said the old lady abruptly.

  They made polite gestures of agreement.

  The knitting lady knitted vigorously, sitting up very straight and saying nothing, with a look on her face of disclaiming every responsibility.

  “Where does your family come from?” was the next question.

  This was unexpected. The twins had no desire to talk of Pomerania. They hadn’t wanted to talk about Pomerania once since the war began; and they felt very distinctly in their bones that America, though she was a neutral, didn’t like Germany any more than the belligerents did. It had been their intention to arrange together the line they would take if asked questions of this sort, but life had been so full and so exciting since their arrival that they had forgotten to.

  Anna-Rose found herself unable to say anything at all. Anna-Felicitas, therefore, observing that Christopher was unnerved, plunged in.

  “Our family,” she said gently, “can hardly be said to come so much as to have been.”

  The old lady thought this over, her lustreless eyes on Anna-Felicitas’s face.

  The knitting lady clicked away very fast, content to leave the management of the Twinklers in more competent hands.

  “How’s that?” asked the old lady, finally deciding that she hadn’t understood.

  “It’s extinct,” said Anna-Felicitas. “Except us. That is, in the direct line.”

  The old lady was a little impressed by this, direct lines not being so numerous or so clear in America as in some other countries.

  “You mean you two are the only Twinklers left?” she asked.

  “The only ones left that matter,” said Anna-Felicitas. “There are branches of Twinklers still existing, I believe, but they’re so unimportant that we don’t know them.”

  “Mere twigs,” said Anna-Rose, recovering her nerves on seeing Anna-Felicitas handle the situation so skilfully; and her nose unconsciously gave a slight Junker lift.

  “Haven’t you got any parents?” asked the old lady.

  “We used to have,” said Anna-Felicitas flushing, afraid that her darling mother was going to be asked about.

  The old gentleman gave a sudden chuckle. “Why yes,” he said, forgetting his wife’s presence for an instant, “I guess you had them once, or I don’t see how—”

  “Albert,” said his wife.

  “We are the sole surviving examples of the direct line of Twinklers,” said Anna-Rose, now quite herself and ready to give Columbus a hand. “There’s just us. And we—” she paused a moment, and then plunged— “we come from England.”

  “Do you?” said the old lady. “Now I shouldn’t have said that. I can’t say just why, but I shouldn’t. Should you, Miss Heap?”

  “I shouldn’t say a good many things, Mrs. Ridding,” said Miss Heap enigmatically, her needles flying.

  “It’s because we’ve been abroad a great deal with our parents, I expect,” said Anna-Rose rather quickly. “I daresay it has left its mark on us.”

  “Everything leaves its mark on one,” observed Anna-Felicitas pleasantly.

  “Ah,” said the old lady. “I know what it is now. It’s the foreign r. You’ve picked it up. Haven’t they, Miss Heap.”

  “I shouldn’t like to say what they haven’t picked up, Mrs. Ridding,” said Miss Heap, again enigmatically.

  “I’m afraid we have,” said Anna-Rose, turning red. “We’ve been told that before. It seems to stick, once one has picked it up.”

  And the old gentleman muttered that everything stuck once one had picked it up, and looked resentfully at his wife.

  She moved her slow eyes round, and let them rest on him a moment.

  “Albert, if you talk so much you won’t be able to sleep to-night,” she said. “I can’t get Mr. Ridding to remember we’ve got to be careful at our age,” she added to the knitting lady.

  “You seem to be bothered by your memory,” said Anna-Rose politely, addressing the old gentleman “Have you ever tried making notes on little bits of paper of the things you have to remember? I think you would probably be all right then. Uncle Arthur used to do that. Or rather he made Aunt Alice do it for him, and put them where he would see them.”

  “Uncle Arthur,” explained Anna-Felicitas to the old lady, “is an uncle of ours. The one,” she said turning to the old gentleman, “we were just telling you about, who so unfortunately insisted on marrying our aunt. Uncle, that is, by courtesy,” she added, turning to the old lady, “not by blood.”

  The old lady’s eyes moved from one twin to the other as each one spoke, but she said nothing.

  “But Aunt Alice,” said Anna-Rose, “is our genuine aunt. Well, I was going to tell you,” she continued briskly, addressing the old gentleman. “There used to be things Uncle Arthur had to do every day and every week, but still he had to be reminded of them each time, and Aunt Alice had a whole set of the regular ones written out on bits of cardboard, and brought them out in turn. The Monday morning one was: Wind the Clock, and the Sunday morning one was: Take your Hot Bath, and the Saturday evening one was: Remember your Pill. And there was one brought in regularly every morning with his shaving water and stuck in his looking-glass: Put on your Abdominable Belt.”

  The knitting needles paused an instant.

  “Yes,” Anna-Felicitas joined in, interested by these recollections, her long limbs sunk in her chair in a position of great ease and comfort, “and it seemed to us so funny for him to have to be reminded to put on what was really a part of his clothes every day, that once we wrote a slip of our own for him and left it on his dressing-table: Don’t forget your Trousers.”

  The knitting needles paused again.

  “But the results of that were dreadful,” added Anna-Felicitas, her face sobering at the thought of them.

  “Yes,” said Anna-Rose. “You see, he supposed Aunt Alice had done it, in a fit of high spirits, though she never had high spirits—”

  “And wouldn’t have been allowed to if she had,” explained Anna-Felicitas.

  “And he thought she was laughing at him,” said Anna-Rose, “though we have never seen her laugh—”

  “And I don’t believe he has either,” said Anna-Felicitas.

  “So there was trouble, because he couldn’t bear the idea of her laughing at him, and we had to confess.”

  “But that didn’t make it any better for Aunt Alice.”

  “No, because then he said it was her fault anyhow for not keeping us stricter.”

  “So,” said Anna-Felicitas, “after the house had been steeped in a sulphurous gloom for over a week, and we all felt as though we were being slowly and steadily gassed, we tried to make it up by writing a final one — a nice one — and leaving it on his plate at breakfast: Kiss your Wife. But instead of kissing her he—” She broke off, and then finished a little vaguely: “Oh well, he didn’t.”

  “Still,” remarked Anna-Rose, “it must be pleasant not to be kissed by a husband. Aunt Alice always wanted him to, strange to say, which is why we reminded him of it. He used to forget that more regularly than almost anything. And the people who lived in the house nearest us were just the opposite — the husband was for ever trying to kiss the person who was his wife, and she was for ever dodging him.”

  “Yes,” said Anna-Felicitas. “Like the people on Keats’s Grecian Urn.”

  “Yes,” said Anna-Rose. “And that sort of husband, must be even worse.

  “Oh, much worse,” agreed Anna-Felicitas.

  She looked round amiably at the three quiet figures in the chairs. “I shall refrain altogether from husbands,” she said placidly. “I shall take something that doesn’t kiss.”

  And she fell into an abstraction, wondering, with her cheek resting on her hand, what he, or it, would look like.

  There was a pause. Anna-Rose was wondering too what sort of a creature Columbus had in her mind, and how many, if any, legs it would have; and the other three were, as before, silent.

  Then the old l
ady said, “Albert,” and put out her hand to be helped on to her feet.

  The old gentleman struggled out of his chair, and helped her up. His face had a congested look, as if he were with difficulty keeping back things he wanted to say.

  Miss Heap got up too, stuffing her knitting as she did so into her brocaded bag.

  “Go on ahead and ring the elevator bell, Albert,” said the old lady. “It’s time we went and had our nap.”

  “I ain’t going to,” said the old gentleman suddenly.

  “What say? What ain’t you going to, Albert?” said the old lady, turning her slow eyes round to him.

  “Nap,” said the old gentleman, his face very red.

  It was intolerable to have to go and nap. He wished to stay where he was and talk to the twins. Why should he have to nap because somebody else wanted to? Why should he have to nap with an old lady, anyway? Never in his life had he wanted to nap with old ladies. It was all a dreadful mistake.

  “Albert,” said his wife looking at him.

  He went on ahead and rang the lift-bell.

  “You’re quite right to see that he rests, Mrs. Ridding,” said Miss Heap, walking away with her and slowing her steps to suit hers. “I should say it was essential that he should be kept quiet in the afternoons. You should see that Mr. Ridding rests more than he does. Much more,” she added significantly.

  “I can’t get Mr. Ridding to remember that we’re neither of us—”

  This was the last the twins heard.

  They too had politely got out of their chairs when the old lady began to heave into activity, and they stood watching the three departing figures. They were a little surprised. Surely they had all been in the middle of an interesting conversation?

  “Perhaps it’s American to go away in the middle,” remarked Anna-Rose, following the group with her eyes as it moved toward the lift.

  “Perhaps it is,” said Anna-Felicitas, also gazing after it.

  The old gentleman, in the brief moment during which the two ladies had their backs to him while preceding him into the lift, turned quickly round on his heels and waved his hand before he himself went in.

  The twins laughed, and waved back; and they waved with such goodwill that the old gentleman couldn’t resist giving one more wave. He was seen doing it by the two ladies as they faced round, and his wife, as she let herself down on to the edge of the seat, remarked that he mustn’t exert himself like that or he would have to begin taking his drops again.

  That was all she said in the lift; but in their room, when she had got her breath again, she said, “Albert, there’s just one thing in the world I hate worse than a fool, and that’s an old fool.”

  CHAPTER XXV

  That evening, while the twins were undressing, a message came up from the office that the manager would be obliged if the Miss Twinklers’ canary wouldn’t sing.

  “But it can’t help it,” said Anna-Felicitas through the crack of door she held open; she was already in her nightgown. “You wouldn’t either if you were a canary,” she added, reasoning with the messenger.

  “It’s just got to help it,” said he.

  “But why shouldn’t it sing?”

  “Complaints.”

  “But it always has sung.”

  “That is so. And it has sung once too often. It’s unpopular in this hotel, that canary of yours. It’s just got to rest a while. Take it easy. Sit quiet on its perch and think.”

  “But it won’t sit quiet and think.”

  “Well, I’ve told you,” he said, going away.

  This was the bird that had been seen arriving at the Cosmopolitan about a week before by the lawyer, and it had piercingly sung ever since. It sang, that is, as long as there was any light, real or artificial, to sing by. The boy who carried it from the shop for the twins said its cage was to be hung in a window in the sun, or it couldn’t do itself justice. But electric light also enabled it to do itself justice, the twins discovered, and if they sat up late the canary sat up late too, singing as loudly and as mechanically as if it hadn’t been a real canary at all, but something clever and American with a machine inside it.

  Secretly the twins didn’t like it. Shocked at its loud behaviour, they had very soon agreed that it was no lady, but Anna-Rose was determined to have it at The Open Arms because of her conviction that no house showing the trail of a woman’s hand was without a canary. That, and a workbag. She bought them both the same day. The workbag didn’t matter, because it kept quiet; but the canary was a very big, very yellow bird, much bigger and yellower than the frailer canaries of a more exhausted civilization, and quite incapable, unless it was pitch dark, of keeping quiet for a minute. Evidently, as Anna-Felicitas said, it had a great many lungs. Her idea of lungs, in spite of her time among them and similar objects at a hospital, was what it had always been: that they were things like pink macaroni strung across a frame of bones on the principle of a lyre or harp, and producing noises. She thought the canary had unusual numbers of these pink strings, and all of them of the biggest and dearest kind of macaroni.

  The other guests at the Cosmopolitan had been rather restive from the first on account of this bird, but felt so indulgent toward its owners, those cute little relations or charges or whatever they were of Teapot Twist’s, that they bore its singing without complaint. But on the evening of the day the Annas had the interesting conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Ridding and Miss Heap, two definite complaints were lodged in the office, and one was from Mrs. Ridding and the other was from Miss Heap.

  The manager, as has been said, was already sensitive about the canary. Its cage was straining his electric light cord, and its food, assiduously administered in quantities exceeding its capacity, littered the expensive pink pile carpet. He therefore lent a ready ear and sent up a peremptory message; and while the message was going up, Miss Heap, who had come herself with her complaint, stayed on discussing the Twist and Twinkler party.

  She said nothing really; she merely asked questions; and not one of the questions, now they were put to him, did the manager find he could answer. No doubt everything was all right. Everybody knew about Mr. Twist, and it wasn’t likely he would choose an hotel of so high a class to stay in if his relations to the Miss Twinklers were anything but regular. And a lady companion, he understood, was joining the party shortly; and besides, there was the house being got ready, a permanent place of residence he gathered, in which the party would settle down, and experience had taught him that genuine illicitness was never permanent. Still, the manager himself hadn’t really cared about the Twinklers since the canary came. He could fill the hotel very easily, and there was no need to accommodate people who spoilt carpets. Also, the moment the least doubt or question arose among his guests, all of whom he knew and most of whom came back regularly every year, as to the social or moral status of any new arrivals, then those arrivals must go. Miss Heap evidently had doubts. Her standard, it is true, was the almost impossibly high one of the unmarried lady of riper years, but Mrs. Ridding, he understood, had doubts too; and once doubts started in an hotel he knew from experience that they ran through it like measles. The time had come for him to act.

  Next morning, therefore, he briskly appeared in Mr. Twist’s room as he was pulling on his boots, and cheerfully hoped he was bearing in mind what he had been told the day he took the rooms, that they were engaged for the date of the month now arrived at.

  Mr. Twist paused with a boot half on. “I’m not bearing it in mind,” he said, “because you didn’t tell me.”

  “Oh yes I did, Mr. Twist,” said the manager briskly. “It isn’t likely I’d make a mistake about that. The rooms are taken every year for this date by the same people. Mrs. Hart of Boston has this one, and Mr. and Mrs.—”

  Mr. Twist heard no more. He finished lacing his boots in silence. What he had been so much afraid of had happened: he and the twins had got under a cloud.

  The twins had been saying things. Last night they told him they had made some frien
ds. He had been uneasy at that, and questioned them. But it appeared they had talked chiefly of their Uncle Arthur. Well, damnable as Uncle Arthur was as a man he was safe enough as a topic of conversation. He was English. He was known to people in America like the Delloggs and the Sacks. But it was now clear they must have said things besides that. Probably they had expatiated on Uncle Arthur from some point of view undesirable to American ears. The American ear was very susceptible. He hadn’t been born in New England without becoming aware of that.

  Mr. Twist tied his bootlaces with such annoyance that he got them into knots. He ought never to have come with the Annas to a big hotel. Yet lodgings would have been worse. Why hadn’t that white-haired gasbag, Mrs. Bilton — Mr. Twist’s thoughts were sometimes unjust — joined them sooner? Why had that shirker Dellogg died? He got his bootlaces hopelessly into knots.

  “I’d like to start right in getting the rooms fixed up, Mr. Twist,” said the manager pleasantly. “Mrs. Hart of Boston is very—”

  “See here,” said Mr. Twist, straightening himself and turning the full light of his big spectacles on to him, “I don’t care a curse for Mrs. Hart of Boston.”

  The manager expressed regret that Mr. Twist should connect a curse with a lady. It wasn’t American to do that. Mrs. Hart —

  “Damn Mrs. Hart,” said Mr. Twist, who had become full-bodied of speech while in France, and when he was goaded let it all out.

  The manager went away. And so, two hours later, did Mr. Twist and the twins.

  “I don’t know what you’ve been saying,” he said in an extremely exasperated voice, as he sat opposite them in the taxi with their grips, considerably added to and crowned by the canary who was singing, piled up round him.

  “Saying?” echoed the twins, their eyes very round.

  “But whatever it was you’d have done better to say something else. Confound that bird. Doesn’t it ever stop screeching?”

  It was the twins, however, who were confounded. So much confounded by what they considered his unjust severity that they didn’t attempt to defend themselves, but sat looking at him with proud hurt eyes.