"She"s fetching me some brandy," said Mr. Twist.
"I didn"t know you drank," said Anna-Felicitas, even at this moment interested. "But do you mind having it afterwards? Because otherwise Mrs. Bilton--"
"I guess the idea was to have it first," said Mr. Twist.
She was however already making for the tea-room, proceeding towards it without hurry, and with a single-mindedness that would certainly get her there.
He could only follow.
In the office she said, "Do you mind shutting the door?"
"Not at all," said Mr. Twist; but he did mind. His hour had come, and he wasn"t liking it. He wanted to begin with Anna-Rose. He wanted to get things clear with her first before dealing with this one. There was less of Anna-Rose. And her dear little head yesterday when he patted it....
And she needed comforting.... Anna-Rose cried, and let herself be comforted.... And it was so sweet to Mr. Twist to comfort....
"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 s.p.a.ce; 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-gla.s.ses 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.