"It's perfect," said the twins, looking round the tea-room.
This was next day, at a quarter to four. They had been looking round saying it was perfect at intervals since the morning. Each time they finished getting another of the little tables ready, each time they brought in and set down another bowl of flowers they stood back and gazed a moment in silence, and then said with one voice, "It's perfect."
Mr. Twist, though the house was not, as we have seen, quite as sober, quite as restrained in its effect as he had intended, was obliged to admit that it did look very pretty. And so did the Annas. Especially the Annas. They looked so pretty in the sea-blue frocks and little Dutch caps and big muslin aprons that he took off his spectacles and cleaned them carefully so as to have a thoroughly uninterrupted view; and as they stood at a quarter to four gazing round the room, he stood gazing at them, and when they said "It's perfect," he said, indicating them with his thumb, "Same here," and then they all laughed for they were all very happy, and Mrs. Bilton, arrayed exactly as Mr. Twist had pictured her when he engaged her in handsome black, her white hair beautifully brushed and neat, crossed over to the Annas and gave each of them a hearty kiss--for luck, she said--which Mr. Twist watched with an odd feeling of jealousy.
"I'd like to do that," he thought, filled with a sudden desire to hug. Then he said it out loud. "I'd like to do that," he said boldly. And added, "As it's the opening day."
"I don't think it would afford you any permanent satisfaction," said Anna-Felicitas placidly. "There's nothing really to be gained, we think, by kissing. Of course," she added politely to Mrs. Bilton, "we like it very much as an expression of esteem."
"Then why not in that spirit--" began Mr. Twist.
"We don't hold with kissing," said Anna-Rose quickly, turning very red. Intolerable to be kissed en famille. If it had to be done at all, kissing should be done quietly, she thought. But she and Anna-Felicitas didn't hold with it anyhow. Never. Never. To her amazement she found tears in her eyes. Well, of all the liquid idiots.... It must be that she was so happy. She had never been so happy. Where on earth had her handkerchief got to....
"Hello," said Mr. Twist, staring at her.
Anna-Felicitas looked at her quickly.
"It's merely bliss," she said, taking the corner of her beautiful new muslin apron to Christopher's eyes. "Excess of it. We are, you know," she said, smiling over her shoulder at Mr. Twist, so that the corner of her apron, being undirected, began dabbing at Christopher's perfectly tearless ears, "quite extraordinarily happy, and all through you. Nevertheless Anna-R." she continued, addressing her with firmness while she finished her eyes and began her nose, "You may like to be reminded that there's only ten minutes left now before all those cars that were here yesterday come again, and you wouldn't wish to embark on your career as a waitress hampered by an ugly face, would you?"
But half an hour later no cars had come. Pepper Lane was still empty. The long shadows lay across it in a beautiful quiet, and the crickets in the grass chirruped undisturbed. Twice sounds were heard as if something was coming up it, and everybody flew to their posts--Li Koo to the boiling water, Mrs. Bilton to her raised desk at the end of the room, and the twins to the door--but the sounds passed on along the road and died away round the next corner.
At half-past four the personnel of The Open Arms was sitting about silently in a state of increasing uneasiness, when Mr. Ridding walked in.
There had been no noise of a car to announce him; he just walked in mopping his forehead, for he had come in the jitney omnibus to the nearest point and had done the last mile on his own out-of-condition feet. Mrs. Ridding thought he was writing letters in the smoking-room. She herself was in a big chair on the verandah, and with Miss Heap and most of the other guests was discussing The Open Arms in all its probable significance. He hadn't been able to get away sooner because of the nap. He had gone through with the nap from start to finish so as not to rouse suspicion. He arrived very hot, but with a feeling of dare-devil running of risks that gave him great satisfaction. He knew that he would cool down again presently and that then the consequences of his behaviour would be unpleasant to reflect upon, but meanwhile his blood was up.
He walked in feeling not a day older than thirty,--most gratifying sensation. The personnel, after a moment's open-mouthed surprise, rushed to greet him. Never was a man more welcome. Never had Mr. Ridding been so warmly welcomed anywhere in his life.
"Now isn't this real homey," he said, beaming at Anna-Rose who took his stick. "Wish I'd known you were going to do it, for then I'd have had something to look forward to."
"Will you have tea or coffee?" asked Anna-Felicitas, trying to look very solemn and like a family butler but her voice quivering with eagerness. "Or perhaps you would prefer frothed chocolate? Each of these beverages can be provided either hot or iced--"
"There's ice-cream as well," said Anna-Rose, tumultuously in spite of also trying to look like a family butler. "I'd have ice-cream if I were you. There's more body in it. Cold, delicious body. And you look so hot. Hot things should always as soon as possible be united to cold things, so as to restore the proper balance--"
"And there's some heavenly stuff called cinnamon-toast--hot, you know, but if you have ice-cream at the same time it won't matter," said Anna-Felicitas, hanging up his hat for him. "I don't know whether you've studied the leaflets," she continued, "but in case you haven't I feel I oughtn't to conceal from you that the price is five dollars whatever you have."
"So that," said Anna-Rose, "you needn't bother about trying to save, for you can't."
"Then I'll have tea to start with and see how I get on," said Mr. Ridding, sitting down in the chair Anna-Felicitas held for him and beaming up at her.
She flicked an imaginary grain of dust off the cloth with the corner of her apron to convey to him that she knew her business, and hurried away to give the order. Indeed, they both hurried away to give the order.
"Say--" called out Mr. Ridding, for he thought one Anna would have been enough for this and he was pining to talk to them; but the twins weren't to be stopped from both giving the very first order, and they disappeared together into the pantry.
Mrs. Bilton sat in the farthest corner at her desk, apparently absorbed in an enormous ledger. In this ledger she was to keep accounts and to enter the number of teas, and from this high seat she was to preside over the activities of the personnel. She had retired hastily to it on the unexpected entrance of Mr. Ridding, and pen in hand was endeavouring to look as if she were totting up figures. As the pages were blank this was a little difficult. And it was difficult to sit there quiet. She wanted to get down and go and chat with the guest; she felt she had quite a good deal she could say to him; she had a great itch to go and talk, but Mr. Twist had been particular that to begin with, till the room was fairly full, he and she should leave the guests entirely to the Annas.
He himself was going to keep much in the background at all times, but through the half-open door of his office he could see and hear; and he couldn't help thinking, as he sat there watching and observed the effulgence of the beams the old gentleman just arrived turned on the twins, that the first guest appeared to be extraordinarily and undesirably affectionate. He thought he had seen him at the Cosmopolitan, but wasn't sure. He didn't know that the Annas, after their conversation with him there, felt towards him as old friends, and he considered their manner was a little unduly familiar. Perhaps, after all, he thought uneasily, Mrs. Bilton had better do the waiting and the Annas sit with him in the office. The ledger could be written up at the end of the day. Or he could hire somebody....
Mr. Twist felt worried, and pulled at his ear. And why was there only one guest? It was twenty minutes to five; and this time yesterday the road had been choked with cars. He felt very much worried. With every minute this absence of guests grew more and more remarkable. Perhaps he had better, this beings the opening day, go in and welcome the solitary one there was. Perhaps it would be wise to elaborate the idea of the inn for his edification, so that he could hand on what he had heard to those others who so unaccountably hadn't come.
He got up and went into the other room; and just as Anna-Felicitas was reappearing with the teapot followed by Anna-Rose with a tray of cakes, Mr. Ridding, who was sitting up expectantly and giving his tie a little pat of adjustment, perceived bearing down upon him that fellow Teapot Twist.
This was a blow. He hadn't run risks and walked in the afternoon heat to sit and talk to Twist. Mr. Ridding was a friendly and amiable old man, and at any other time would have talked to him with pleasure; but he had made up his mind for the Twinklers as one makes up one's mind for a certain dish and is ravaged by strange fury if it isn't produced. Besides, hang it all, he was going to pay five dollars for his tea, and for that sum he ought to least to have it under the conditions he preferred.
"Glad to meet you, Mr. Twist," he nevertheless said as Mr. Twist introduced himself, his eyes, however, roving over the ministering Annas,--a roving Mr. Twist noticed with fresh misgivings.
It made him sit down firmly at the table and say, "If you don't mind, Mr.--"
"Ridding is my name."
"If you don't mind, Mr. Ridding, I'd like to explain our objects to you."
But he couldn't help wondering what he would do if there were several tables with roving-eyed guests at them, it being clear that there wouldn't be enough of him in such a case to go round.
Mr. Ridding, for his part, couldn't help wondering why the devil Teapot Twist sat down unasked at his table. Five dollars. Come now. For that a man had a right to a table to himself.
But anyhow the Annas wouldn't have stayed talking for at that moment a car stopped in the lane and quite a lot of footsteps were heard coming up the neatly sanded path. Mr. Ridding pricked up his ears, for from the things he had heard being said all the evening before and all that morning in Acapulco, besides most of the night from the lips of that strange old lady with whom by some dreadful mistake he was obliged to sleep, he hadn't supposed there would be exactly a rush.
Four young men came in. Mr. Ridding didn't know them. No class, he thought, looking them over; and was seized with a feeling of sulky vexation suitable to twenty when he saw with what enthusiasm the Twinklers flew to meet them. They behaved, thought Mr. Ridding crossly, as if they were the oldest and dearest friends.
"Who are they?" he asked curtly of Mr. Twist, cutting into the long things he was saying.
"Only the different experts who helped me rebuild the place," said Mr. Twist a little impatiently; he too had pricked up his ears in expectation at the sound of all those feet, and was disappointed.
He continued what Mr. Ridding, watching the group of young people, called sulkily to himself his rigmarole, but continued more abstractedly. He also was watching the Annas and the experts. The young men were evidently in the highest spirits, and were walking round the Annas admiring their get-up and expressing their admiration in laughter and exclamations. One would have thought they had known each other all their lives. The twins were wreathed in smiles. They looked as pleased, Mr. Twist thought, as cats that are being stroked. Almost he could hear them purring. He glanced helplessly across to where Mrs. Bilton sat, as he had told her, bent pen in hand over the ledger. She didn't move. It was true he had told her to sit like that, but hadn't the woman any imagination? What she ought to do now was to bustle forward and take that laughing group in charge.
"As I was telling you--" resumed Mr. Twist, returning with an effort to Mr. Ridding, only to find his eyes fixed on the young people and catch an unmistakably thwarted look in his face.
In a flash Mr. Twist realized what he had come for,--it was solely to see and talk to the twins. He must have noticed them at the Cosmopolitan, and come out just for them. Just for that. "Unprincipled old scoundrel," said Mr. Twist under his breath, his ears flaming. Aloud he said, "As I was telling you--" and went on distractedly with his rigmarole.
Then some more people came in. They had motored, but the noise the experts were making had drowned the sound of their arrival. Mr. Ridding and Mr. Twist, both occupied in glowering at the group in the middle of the room, were made aware of their presence by Anna-Felicitas suddenly dropping the pencil and tablets she had been provided with for writing down orders and taking an uncertain and obviously timid step forward.
They both looked round in the direction of her reluctant step, and saw a man and two women standing on the threshold. Mr. Twist, of course, didn't know them; he hardly knew anybody, even by sight. But Mr. Ridding did. That is, he knew them well by sight and had carefully avoided knowing them any other way, for they were Germans.
Mr. Ridding was one of those who didn't like Germans. He was a man who liked or disliked what his daily paper told him to, and his daily paper was anti-German. For reasons natural to one who disliked Germans and yet at the same time had a thirstily affectionate disposition, he declined to believe the prevailing theory about the Twinklers. Besides, he didn't believe it anyhow. At that age people were truthful, and he had heard them explain they had come from England and had acquired their rolling r's during a sojourn abroad. Why should he doubt? But he refrained from declaring his belief in their innocence of the unpopular nationality, owing to a desire to avoid trouble in that bedroom he couldn't call his but was obliged so humiliatingly to speak of as ours. Except, however, for the Twinklers, for all other persons of whom it was said that they were Germans, naturalized or not, immediate or remote, he had, instructed by his newspaper, what his called a healthy instinctive abhorrence.
"And she's got it too," he thought, much gratified at this bond between them, as he noted Anna-Felicitas's hesitating and reluctant advance to meet the new guests. "There's proof that people are wrong."
But what Anna-Felicitas had got was stage-fright; for here were the first strangers, the first real, proper visitors such as any shop or hotel might have. Mr. Ridding was a friend. So were the experts friends. This was trade coming in,--real business being done. Anna-Felicitas hadn't supposed she would be shy when the long-expected and prepared-for moment arrived, but she was. And it was because the guests seemed so disconcertingly pleased to see her. Even on the threshold the whole three stood smiling broadly at her. She hadn't been prepared for that, and it unnerved her.
"Charming, charming," said the newcomers, advancing towards her and embracing the room and the tables and the Annas in one immense inclusive smile of appreciation.
"Know those?" asked Mr. Ridding, again cutting into Mr. Twist's explanations.
"No," said he.
"Wangelbeckers," said Mr. Ridding briefly.
"Indeed," said Mr. Twist, off whose ignorance the name glanced harmlessly. "Well, as I was telling yous--"
"But this is delicious--this is a conception of genius," said Mr. Wangelbecker all-embracingly, after he had picked up Anna-Felicitas's tablets and restored them to her with a low bow.
"Charming, charming," said Mrs. Wangelbecker, looking round.
"Real cunning," said Miss Wangelbecker, "as they say here." And she laughed at Anna-Felicitas with an air of mutual understanding.
"Will you have tea or coffee?" asked Anna-Felicitas nervously. "Or perhaps you would prefer frothed chocolate. Each of these beverages can be--"
"Delicious, delicious," said Mrs. Wangelbecker, enveloping Anna-Felicitas in her smile.
"The frothed chocolate is very delicious," said Anna-Felicitas with a kind of grave nervousness.
"Ah--charming, charming," said Mrs. Wangelbecker, obstinately appreciative.
"And there's ice-cream as well," said Anna-Felicitas, her eyes on her tablets so as to avoid seeing the Wangelbecker smile. "And--and a great many kinds of cakes--"
"Well, hadn't we better sit down first," said Mr. Wangelbecker genially, "or are all the tables engaged?"
"Oh I beg your pardon," said Anna-Felicitas, blushing and moving hastily towards a table laid for three.
"Ah--that's better," said Mr. Wangelbecker, following closely on her heels. "Now we can go into the serious business of ordering what we shall eat comfortably. But before I sit down allow me to present myself. My name is Wangelbecker. An honest German name. And this is my wife. She too had an honest German name before she honoured mine by accepting it--she was a Niedermayer. And this is my daughter, with whom I trust you will soon be friends."
And they all put out their hands to be shaken, and Anna-Felicitas shook them.
"Look at that now," said Mr. Ridding watching.
"As I was telling you--" said Mr. Twist irritably, for really why should Anna II. shake hands right off with strangers? Her business was to wait, not to get shaking hands. He must point out to her very plainly.
"Pleased to meet you Miss von Twinkler," said Mrs. Wangelbecker; and at this Anna-Felicitas was so much startled that she dropped her tablets a second time.
"As they say here," laughed Miss Wangelbecker, again with that air of mutual comprehension.
"But they don't," said Anna Felicitas hurriedly, taking her tablets from the restoring hand of Mr. Wangelbecker and forgetting to thank him.
"What?" said Mrs. Wangelbecker. "When you are both so charming that for once the phrase must be sincere?"
"Miss von Twinkler means she finds it wiser not to use her title," said Mr. Wangelbecker. "Well, perhaps--perhaps. Wiser perhaps from the point of view of convenience. Is that where you will sit, G黶tchen? Still, we Germans when we are together can allow ourselves the refreshment of being ourselves, and I hope to be frequently the means of giving you the relief, you and your charming sister, of hearing yourselves addressed correctly. It is a great family, the von Twinklers. A great family. In these sad days we Germans must hang together--"
Anna-Felicitas stood, tablets in hand, looking helplessly from one Wangelbecker to the other. The situation was beyond her.
"But--" she began; then stopped. "Shall I bring you tea or coffee?" she ended by asking again.
"Well now this is amusing," said Mr. Wangelbecker, sitting down comfortably and leaning his elbows on the table. "Isn't it, G黶tchen. To see a von Twinkler playing at waiting on us."
"Charming, charming," said his wife.
"It's real sporting," said his daughter, laughing up at Anna-Felicitas, again with comprehension,--with, almost, a wink. "You must let me come and help. I'd look nice in that costume, wouldn't I mother."
"There is also frothed choc--"
"I suppose, now, Mr. Twist--he must be completely sympathy--" interrupted Mr. Wangelbecker confidentially, leaning forward and lowering his voice a little.
Anna-Felicitas gazed at him blankly. Some more people were coming in at the door, and behind them she could see on the path yet more, and Anna-Rose was in the pantry fetching the tea for the experts.
"Would you mind telling me what I am to bring you?" she asked. "Because I'm afraid--"
Mr. Wangelbecker turned his head in the direction she was looking.
"Ah--" he said getting up, "but this is magnificent G黶tchen, here are Mrs. Kleinbart and her sister--why, and there come the Diederichs--but splendid, splendid--"
"Say," said Mr. Ridding, turning to Mr. Twist with a congested face, "ever been to Berlin?"
"No," said Mr. Twist, annoyed by a question of such wanton irrelevance flung into the middle of his sentence.
"Well, it's just like this."
"Like this?" repeated Mr. Twist.
"Those there," said Mr. Ridding, jerking his head. "That lot there--see 'em any day in Berlin, or Frankfurt, or any other of their confounded towns."
"I don't follow," said Mr. Twist, very shortly indeed.
"Germans," said Mr. Ridding.
"Germans?"
"All Germans," said Ridding.
"All Germans?"
"Wangelbeckers are Germans," said Mr. Ridding. "Didn't you know?"
"No," said Mr. Twist.
"So are the ones who've just come in."
"Germans?"
"All Germans. So are those behind, just coming in."
"Germans?"
"All Germans."
There was a pause, during which Mr. Twist stared round the room. It was presenting quite a populous appearance. Then he said slowly, "Well I'm damned."
And Mr. Ridding for the first time looked pleased with Mr. Twist. He considered that at last he was talking sense.
"Mr. Twist," he said heartily, "I'm exceedingly glad you're damned. It was what I was sure at the bottom of my heart you would be. Shake hands, sir."