“Christopher—” began Anna-Felicitas, directly he had shut the door.
“I know. She’s mad with you. What can you expect, Anna II.?” he interrupted in a very matter-of-fact voice, leaning against a bookcase. Even a bookcase was better than nothing to lean against.
“Christopher is being unreasonable,” said Anna-Felicitas, her voice softer and gentler than he had yet heard it.
Then she stopped, and considered him a moment with much of the look of one who on a rather cold day considers the sea before diving in — with, that is, a slight but temporary reluctance to proceed.
“Won’t you sit down?” said Mr. Twist.
“Perhaps I’d better,” she said, disposing herself in the big chair. “It’s very strange, but my legs feel funny. You wouldn’t think being in love would make one want to sit down.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Twist.
“I have fallen in love,” said Anna-Felicitas, looking up at him with a kind of pensive radiance. “I did it this morning.”
Mr. Twist stared at her. “I beg your — what did you say?” he asked.
She said, still with that air as she regarded him of pensive radiance, of not seeing him but something beyond him that was very beautiful to her and satisfactory, “I’ve fallen in love, and I can’t tell you how pleased I am because I’ve always been afraid I was going to find it a difficult thing to do. But it wasn’t. Quite the contrary.”
Then, as he only staged at her, she said, “He’s coming round this afternoon on the new footing, and I wanted to prepare your and Christopher’s minds in good time so that you shouldn’t be surprised.”
And having said this she lapsed into what was apparently, judging from her expression, a silent contemplation of her bliss.
“But you’re too young,” burst out Mr. Twist.
“Too young?” repeated Anna-Felicitas, coming out of her contemplation for a moment to smile at him. “We don’t think so.”
Well. This beat everything.
Mr. Twist could only stare down at her.
Conflicting emotions raged in him. He couldn’t tell for a moment what they were, they were so violent and so varied. How dared Elliott. How dared a person they had none of them heard of that time yesterday come making love to a girl he had never seen before. And in such a hurry. So suddenly. So instantly. Here had he himself been with the twins constantly for weeks, and wouldn’t have dreamed of making love to them. They had been sacred to him. And it wasn’t as if he hadn’t wanted to hug them often and often, but he had restrained himself as a gentleman should from the highest motives of delicacy, and consideration, and respect, and propriety, besides a great doubt as to whether they wouldn’t very energetically mind. And then comes along this blundering Britisher, and straight away tumbles right in where Mr. Twist had feared to tread, and within twenty-four hours had persuaded Anna-Felicitas to think she was in love. New footing indeed. There hadn’t been an old footing yet. And who was this Elliott? And how was Mr. Twist going to be able to find out if he were a proper person to be allowed to pay his addresses to one so precious as a Twinkler twin?
Anger, jealousy, anxiety, sense of responsibility and mortification, all tumbled about furiously together inside Mr. Twist as he leaned against the bookcase and gazed down at Anna-Felicitas, who for her part was gazing beatifically into space; but through the anger, and the jealousy, and the anxiety, and the sense of responsibility and mortification one great thought was struggling, and it finally pushed every other aside and got out to the top of the welter: here, in the chair before him, he beheld his sister-in-law. So much at least was cleared up.
He crossed to the bureau and dragged his office-stool over next to her and sat down. “So that’s it, is it?” he said, trying to speak very calmly, but his face pulled all sorts of ways, as it had so often been since the arrival in his life of the twins.
“Yes,” she said, coming out of her contemplation. “It’s love at last.”
“I don’t know about at last. Whichever way you look at it, Anna II., that don’t seem to hit it off as a word. What I meant was, it’s Elliott.”
“Yes,” said Anna-Felicitas. “Which is the same thing. I believe,” she added, “I now have to allude to him as John.”
Mr. Twist made another effort to speak calmly. “You don’t,” he said, “think it at all unusual or undesirable that you should be calling a man John to-day of whom you’d never heard yesterday.”
“I think it’s wonderful,” said Anna-Felicitas beaming.
“It doesn’t strike you in any way as imprudent to be so hasty. It doesn’t strike you as foolish.”
“On the contrary,” said Anna-Felicitas. “I can’t help thinking I’ve been very clever. I shouldn’t have thought it of myself. You see, I’m not naturally quick.” And she beamed with what she evidently regarded as a pardonable pride.
“It doesn’t strike you as even a little — well, a little improper.”
“On the contrary,” said Anna-Felicitas. “Aunt Alice told us that the one man one could never be improper about, even if one tried, was one’s husband.”
“Husband?” Mr. Twist winced. He loved, as we have seen, the word wife, but then that was different.
“It’s not time yet to talk of husbands,” he said, full of a flaming unreasonableness and jealousy and the sore feeling that he who had been toiling so long and so devotedly in the heat of the Twinkler sun had had a most unfair march stolen on him by this eleventh-hour stranger.
He flamed with unreasonableness. Yet he knew this was the solution of half his problem, — and of much the worst half, for it was after all Anna-Felicitas who had produced the uncomfortable feeling of slipperiness, of eels; Anna-Rose had been quite good, sitting in a chair crying and just so sweetly needing comfort. But now that the solution was presented to him he was full of fears. For on what now could he base his proposal to Anna-Rose? Elliott would be the legitimate protector of both the Twinklers. Mr. Twist, who had been so much perturbed by the idea of having to propose to one or other twin, was miserably upset by the realization that now he needn’t propose to either. Elliott had cut the ground from under his feet. He had indeed — what was the expression he used the evening before? — yes, nipped in. There was now no necessity for Anna-Rose to marry him, and Mr. Twist had an icy and forlorn feeling that on no other basis except necessity would she. He was thirty-five. It was all very well for Elliott to get proposing to people of seventeen; he couldn’t be more than twenty-five. And it wasn’t only age. Mr. Twist hadn’t shaved before looking-glasses for nothing, and he was very distinctly aware that Elliott was extremely attractive.
“It’s not time yet to talk of husbands,” he therefore hotly and jealously said.
“On the contrary,” said Anna-Felicitas gently, “it’s not only time but war-time. The war, I have observed, is making people be quick and sudden about all sorts of things.”
“You haven’t observed it. That’s Elliott said that.”
“He may have,” said Anna-Felicitas. “He said so many things—”
And again she lapsed into contemplation; into, thought Mr. Twist as he gazed jealously at her profile, an ineffable, ruminating, reminiscent smugness.
“See here, Anna II.,” he said, finding it impossibly painful to wait while she contemplated, “suppose you don’t at this particular crisis fall into quite so many ecstatic meditations. There isn’t as much time as you seem to think.”
“No — and there’s Christopher,” said Anna-Felicitas, giving herself a shake, and with that slightly troubled look coming into her face again as of having, in spite of being an angel in glory, somehow got her feet wet.
“Precisely,” said Mr. Twist, getting up and walking about the room. “There’s Christopher. Now Christopher, I should say, would be pretty well heart-broken over this.”
“But that’s so unreasonable,” said Anna-Felicitas with gentle deprecation.
“You’re all she has got, and she’ll be under the impressio
n — the remarkably vivid impression — that she’s losing you.”
“But that’s so unreasonable. She isn’t losing me. It’s sheer gain. Without the least effort or bother on her part she’s acquiring a brother-in-law.”
“Oh, I know what Christopher feels,” said Mr. Twist, going up and down the room quickly. “I know right enough, because I feel it all myself.”
“But that’s so unreasonable,” said Anna-Felicitas earnestly. “Why should two of you be feeling things that aren’t?”
“She has always regarded herself as responsible for you, and I shouldn’t be surprised if she were terribly shocked at your conduct.”
“But there has to be conduct,” said Anna-Felicitas, still very gentle, but looking as though her feet were getting wetter. “I don’t see how anybody is ever to fall in love unless there’s been some conduct first.”
“Oh, don’t argue — don’t argue. You can’t expect Anna-Rose not to mind your wanting to marry a perfect stranger, a man she hasn’t even seen.”
“But everybody you marry started by being a perfect stranger and somebody you hadn’t ever seen,” said Anna-Felicitas.
“Oh Lord, if only you wouldn’t argue!” exclaimed Mr. Twist. “And as for your aunt in England, what’s she going to say to this twenty-four-hours, quick-lunch sort of engagement? She’ll be terribly upset. And Anna-Rose knows that, and is I expect nigh worried crazy.”
“But what,” asked Anna-Felicitas, “have aunts to do with love?”
Then she said very earnestly, her face a little flushed, her eyes troubled, “Christopher said all that you’re saying now, and a lot more, down in the garden before I came to you, and I said what I’ve been saying to you, and a lot more, but she wouldn’t listen. And when I found she wouldn’t listen I tried to comfort her, but she wouldn’t be comforted. And then I came to you; for besides wanting to tell you what I’ve done I wanted to ask you to comfort Christopher.”
Mr. Twist paused a moment in his walk. “Yes,” he said, staring at the carpet. “Yes. I can very well imagine she needs it. But I don’t suppose anything I would say—”
“Christopher is very fond of you,” said Anna-Felicitas gently.
“Oh yes. You’re both very fond of me,” said Mr. Twist, pulling his mouth into a crooked and unhappy smile.
“We love you,” said Anna-Felicitas simply.
Mr. Twist looked at her, and a mist came over his spectacles. “You dear children,” he said, “you dear, dear children—”
“I don’t know about children—” began Anna-Felicitas; but was interrupted by a knock at the door.
“It’s only the brandy,” said Mr. Twist, seeing her face assume the expression he had learned to associate with the approach of Mrs. Bilton. “Take it away, please Mrs. Bilton,” he called out, “and put it on the—”
Mrs. Bilton however, didn’t take anything away, but opened the door an inch instead. “There’s someone wants to speak to you, Mr. Twist,” she said in a loud whisper, thrusting in a card. “He says he just must. I found him on the verandah when I took your brandy out, and as I’m not the woman to leave a stranger alone with good brandy I brought him in with me, and he’s right here back of me in the tea-room.”
“It’s John,” remarked Anna-Felicitas placidly. “Come early.”
“I say—” said a voice behind Mrs. Bilton.
“Yes,” nodded Anna-Felicitas, getting up out of the deep chair. “That’s John.”
“I say — may I come in? I’ve got something important—”
Mr. Twist looked at Anna-Felicitas. “Wouldn’t you rather — ?” he began.
“I don’t mind John,” she said softly, her face flooded with a most beautiful light.
Mr. Twist opened the door and went out. “Come in,” he said. “Mrs. Bilton, may I present Mr. Elliott to you — Commander Elliott of the British Navy.”
“Pleased to meet you, Commander Elliott,” said Mrs. Bilton. “Mr. Twist, your brandy is on the verandah. Shall I bring it to you in here?”
“No thank you, Mrs. Bilton. I’ll go out there presently. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind waiting for me there — I don’t suppose Mr. Elliott will want to keep me long. Come in, Mr. Elliott.”
And having disposed of Mrs. Bilton, who was in a particularly willing and obedient and female mood, he motioned Elliott into the office.
There stood Anna-Felicitas.
Elliott stopped dead.
“This isn’t fair,” he said, his eyes twinkling and dancing.
“What isn’t?” inquired Anna-Felicitas gently, beaming at him.
“Your being here. I’ve got to talk business. Look here, sir,” he said, turning to Mr. Twist, “could you talk business with her there?”
“Not if she argued,” said Mr. Twist.
“Argued! I wouldn’t mind her arguing. It’s just her being there. I’ve got to talk business,” he said, turning to Anna-Felicitas,— “business about marrying you. And how can I with you standing there looking like — well, like that?”
“I don’t know,” said Anna-Felicitas placidly, not moving.
“But you’ll interrupt — just your being there will interrupt. I shall see you out of the corner of my eye, and it’ll be impossible not to — I mean I know I’ll want to — I mean, Anna-Felicitas my dear, it isn’t done. I’ve got to explain all sorts of things to your guardian—”
“He isn’t my guardian,” corrected the accurate Anna-Felicitas gently. “He only very nearly once was.”
“Well, anyhow I’ve got to explain a lot of things that’ll take some time, and it isn’t so much explain as persuade — for I expect,” he said, turning to Mr. Twist, “this strikes you as a bit sudden, sir?”
“It would strike anybody,” said Mr. Twist trying to be stern but finding it difficult, for Elliott was so disarmingly engaging and so disarmingly in love. The radiance on Anna-Felicitas’s face might have been almost a reflection caught from his. Mr. Twist had never seen two people look so happy. He had never, of course, before been present at the first wonderful dawning of love. The whole room seemed to glow with the surprise of it.
“There. You see?” said Elliott, again appealing to Anna-Felicitas, who stood smiling beatifically at him without moving. “I’ve got to explain that it isn’t after all as mad as it seems, and that I’m a fearfully decent chap and can give you lots to eat, and that I’ve got a jolly little sister here who’s respectable and well-known besides, and I’m going to produce references to back up these assertions, and proofs that I’m perfectly sound in health except for my silly foot, which isn’t health but just foot and which you don’t seem to mind anyhow, and how — I ask you how, Anna-Felicitas my dear, am I to do any of this with you standing there looking like — well, like that?”
“I don’t know,” said Anna-Felicitas again, still not moving.
“Anna-Felicitas, my dear,” he said, “won’t you go?”
“No, John,” said Anna-Felicitas gently.
His eyes twinkled and danced more than ever. He took a step towards her, then checked himself and looked round beseechingly at Mr. Twist.
“Somebody’s got to go,” he said.
“Yes,” said Mr. Twist. “And I guess it’s me.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII
He went straight in search of Anna-Rose.
He was going to propose to her. He couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t bear the idea of his previous twins, his blessed little Twinklers, both going out of his life at the same time, and he couldn’t bear, after what he had just seen in the office, the loneliness of being left outside love.
All his life he had stood on the door-mat outside the shut door of love. He had had no love; neither at home, where they talked so much about it and there wasn’t any, nor, because of his home and its inhibitions got so thoroughly into his blood, anywhere else. He had never tried to marry, — again because of his home and his mother and the whole only-son-of-a-widow business. He would try now. He would risk it. It was awful to risk it, but it w
as more awful not to. He adored Anna-Rose. How nearly the afternoon before, when she sat crying in his chair, had he taken her in his arms! Why, he would have taken her into them then and there, while she was in that state, while she was in the need of comfort, and never let her go out of them again, if it hadn’t been that he had got the idea so firmly fixed in his head that she was a child. Fool that he was. Elliott had dispelled that idea for him. It wasn’t children who looked as Anna-Felicitas had looked just now in the office. Anna-Rose, it is true, seemed younger than Anna-Felicitas, but that was because she was little and easily cried. He loved her for being little. He loved her because she easily cried. He yearned and hungered to comfort, to pet to take care of. He was, as has been pointed out, a born mother.
Avoiding the verandah and Mrs. Bilton, Mr. Twist filled with recklessness, hurried upstairs and knocked at Anna-Rose’s door. No answer. He listened. Dead silence. He opened it a slit and peeped in. Emptiness. Down he went again and made for the kitchen, because Li Koo, who always knew everything, might know where she was. Li Koo did. He jerked his head towards the window, and Mr. Twist hurried to it and looked out. There in the middle of the yard was the cat, exactly where he had left her an hour before, and kneeling beside her stroking her stomach was Anna-Rose.
She had her back to the house and her face was hidden. The sun streamed down on her bare head and on the pale gold rings of hair that frisked round her neck. She didn’t hear him till he was close to her, so much absorbed was she apparently in the cat; and when she did she didn’t look up, but bent her head lower than before and stroked more assiduously.
“Anna-Rose,” said Mr. Twist.
“Yes.”
“Come and talk to me.”
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 224