Then he went back to his writing-table more convinced than ever that there was something very weak somewhere about the entourage.
As for Mr. Twist, he perceived he had been a fool. Why had he gone to the lawyer at all? Why not simply have announced to the world that he was the Twinkler guardian? The twins themselves would have believed it if he had come in one day and said it was settled, and nobody outside would ever have dreamed of questioning it. After all, you couldn’t see if a man was a guardian or not just by looking at him. Well, he would do no more about it, it was much too difficult. Bother it. Let Mrs. Bilton go on supposing he was the legal guardian of her charges. Anyway he had all the intentions of a guardian. What a fool he had been to go to the lawyer. Curse that lawyer. Now he knew, however distinctly and frequently he, Mr. Twist, might say he was the Twinkler guardian, that he wasn’t.
It harassed Mr. Twist to perceive, as he did perceive with clearness, that he had been a fool; but the twins, when he told them that evening that owing to technical difficulties, with the details of which he wouldn’t trouble them, the guardianship was off, were pleased.
“We want to be bound to you,” said Anna-Felicitas her eyes very soft and her voice very gentle, “only by ties of affection and gratitude.”
And Anna-Rose, turning red, opened her mouth as though she were going to say something handsome like that too, but seemed unable after all to get it out, and only said, rather inaudibly, “Yes.”
CHAPTER XXIV
Yet another harassing experience awaited Mr. Twist before the end of that week.
It had been from the first his anxious concern that nothing should occur at the Cosmopolitan to get his party under a cloud; yet it did get under a cloud, and on the very last afternoon, too, before Mrs. Bilton’s arrival. Only twenty-four hours more and her snowy-haired respectability would have spread over the twins like a white whig. They would have been safe. His party would have been unassailable. But no; those Twinklers, in spite of his exhortation whenever he had a minute left to exhort in, couldn’t, it seemed, refrain from twinkling, — the word in Mr. Twist’s mind covered the whole of their easy friendliness, their flow of language, their affable desire to explain.
He had kept them with him as much as he could, and luckily the excited interest they took in the progress of the inn made them happy to hang about it most of the time of the delicate and dangerous week before Mrs. Bilton came; but they too had things to do, — shopping in Acapulco choosing the sea-blue linen frocks and muslin caps and aprons in which they were to wait at tea, and buying the cushions and flower-pots and canary that came under the general heading, in Anna-Rose’s speech, of feminine touches. So they sometimes left him; and he never saw them go without a qualm.
“Mind and not say anything to anybody about this, won’t you,” he would say hastily, making a comprehensive gesture towards the cottage as they went.
“Of course we won’t.”
“I meant, nobody is to know what it’s really going to be. They’re to think it’s just a pied-à-terre. It would most ruin my advertisement scheme if they—”
“But of course we won’t. Have we ever?” the twins would answer, looking very smug and sure of themselves.
“No. Not yet. But—”
And the hustled man would plunge again into technicalities with whichever expert was at that moment with him, leaving the twins, as he needs must, to God and their own discretion.
Discretion, he already amply knew, was not a Twinkler characteristic. But the week passed, Mrs. Bilton’s arrival grew near, and nothing had happened. It was plain to the watchful Mr. Twist, from the pleasant looks of the other guests when the twins went in and out of the restaurant to meals, that nothing had happened. His heart grew lighter. On the last afternoon, when Mrs. Bilton was actually due next day, his heart was quite light, and he saw them leave him to go back and rest at the hotel, because they were tired by the accumulated standing about of the week, altogether unconcernedly.
The attitude of the Cosmopolitan guests towards the twins was, indeed, one of complete benevolence. They didn’t even mind the canary. Who would not be indulgent towards two such sweet little girls and their pet bird, even if it did sing all day and most of the night without stopping? The Twinkler girls were like two little bits of snapped-off sunlight, or bits of white blossom blowing in and out of the hotel in their shining youth and it was impossible not to regard them indulgently. But if the guests were indulgent, they were also inquisitive. Everybody knew who Mr. Twist was; who, however, were the Twinklers? Were they relations of his? Protégées? Charges?
The social column of the Acapulco daily paper, from which information as to new arrivals was usually got, had, as we know, in its embarrassment at being ignorant to take refuge in French, because French may so easily be supposed to mean something. The paper had little knowledge of, but much confidence in, French. Entourage had seemed to it as good a word as any other, as indeed did clientèle. It had hesitated between the two, but finally chose entourage because there happened to be no accent in its stock of type. The Cosmopolitan guests were amused at the word, and though inquisitive were altogether amiable; and, until the last afternoon, only the manager didn’t like the Twinklers. He didn’t like them because of the canary. His sympathies had been alienated from the Miss Twinklers the moment he heard through the chambermaid that they had tied the heavy canary cage on to the hanging electric light in their bedroom. He said nothing, of course. One doesn’t say anything if one is an hotel manager, until the unique and final moment when one says everything.
On the last afternoon before Mrs. Bilton’s advent the twins, tired of standing about for days at the cottage and in shops, appeared in the hall of the hotel and sat down to rest. They didn’t go to their room to rest because they didn’t feel inclined for the canary, and they sat down very happily in the comfortable rocking-chairs with which the big hall abounded, and, propping their dusty feet on the lower bar of a small table, with friendly and interested eyes they observed the other guests.
The other guests also observed them.
It was the first time the entourage had appeared without its companion, and the other guests were dying to know details about it. It hadn’t been sitting in the hall five minutes before a genial old gentleman caught Anna-Felicitas’s friendly eye and instantly drew up his chair.
“Uncle gone off by himself to-day?” he asked; for he was of the party in the hotel which inclined, in spite of the marked difference in profiles, to the relationship theory, and he made a shot at the relationship being that of uncle.
“We haven’t got an uncle nearer than England,” said Anna-Felicitas affably.
“And we only got him by accident,” said Anna-Rose, equally affably.
“It was an unfortunate accident,” said Anna-Felicitas, considering her memories.
“Indeed,” said the old gentleman. “Indeed. How was that?”
“By the usual method, if an uncle isn’t a blood uncle,” said Anna-Rose. “We happened to have a marriageable aunt, and he married her. So we have to have him.”
“It was sheer bad luck,” said Anna-Felicitas, again brooding on that distant image.
“Yes,” said Anna-Rose. “Just bad luck. He might so easily have married some one else’s aunt. But no. His roving glance must needs go and fall on ours.”
“Indeed,” said the old gentleman. “Indeed.” And he ruminated on this, with an affectionate eye — he was affectionate — resting in turn on each Anna.
“Then Mr. Twist,” he went on presently— “we all know him of course — a public benefactor—”
“Yes, isn’t he,” said Anna-Rose radiantly.
“A boon to the breakfast-table—”
“Yes, isn’t he,” said Anna-Rose again, all asparkle. “He is so pleasant at breakfast.”
“Then he — Mr. Twist — Teapot Twist we call him where I live—”
“Teapot Twist?” said Anna-Rose. “I think that’s irreverent.”
�
�Not at all. It’s a pet name. A sign of our affection and gratitude. Then he isn’t your uncle?”
“We haven’t got a real uncle nearer than heaven,” said Anna-Felicitas, her cheek on her hand, dreamily reconstructing the image of Onkel Col.
“Indeed,” said the old gentleman. “Indeed.” And he ruminated, on this too, his thirsty heart — he had a thirsty heart, and found difficulty in slaking it because of his wife — very indulgent toward the twins.
Then he said: “That’s a long way off.”
“What is?” asked Anna-Rose.
“The place your uncle’s in.”
“Not too far really,” said Anna-Felicitas softly. “He’s safe there. He was very old, and was difficult to look after. Why, he got there at last through his own carelessness.”
“Indeed,” said the old gentleman.
“Sheer carelessness,” said Anna-Rose.
“Indeed,” said the old gentleman. “How was that?”
“Well, you see where we lived they didn’t have electric light,” began Anna-Rose, “and one night — the the night he went to heaven — he put the petroleum lamp—”
And she was about to relate that dreadful story of Onkle Col’s end which has already been described in these pages as unfit for anywhere but an appendix for time had blunted her feelings, when Anna-Felicitas put out a beseeching hand and stopped her. Even after all these years Anna-Felicitas couldn’t bear to remember Onkle Col’s end. It had haunted her childhood. It had licked about her dreams in leaping tongues of flame. And it wasn’t only tongues of flame. There were circumstances connected with it.... Only quite recently, since the war had damped down lesser horrors, had she got rid of it. She could at least now talk of him calmly, and also speculate with pleasure on the probable aspect of Onkle Col in glory, but she still couldn’t bear to hear the details of his end.
At this point an elderly lady of the spare and active type, very upright and much wrinkled, that America seems so freely to produce, came down the stairs; and seeing the twins talking to the old gentleman, crossed straight over and sat down briskly next to them smiling benevolently.
“Well, if Mr. Ridding can talk to you I guess so can I,” she said, pulling her knitting out of a brocaded bag and nodding and smiling at the group.
She was knitting socks for the Allied armies in France the next winter, but it being warm just then in California they were cotton socks because wool made her hands too hot.
The twins were all polite, reciprocal smiles.
“I’m just crazy to hear about you,” said the brisk lady, knitting with incredible energy, while her smiles flicked over everybody. “You’re fresh from Europe, aren’t you? What say? Quite fresh? My, aren’t you cute little things. Thinking of making a long stay in the States? What say? For the rest of your lives? Why now, I call that just splendid. Parents coming out West soon too? What say? Prevented? Well, I guess they won’t let themselves be prevented long. Mr. Twist looking after you meanwhile? What say? There isn’t any meanwhile? Well, I don’t quite — Mr. Twist your uncle, or cousin? What say? No relation at all? H’m, h’m. No relation at all, is he. Well, I guess he’s an old friend of your parents, then. What say? They didn’t know him? H’m, h’m. They didn’t know him, didn’t they. Well, I don’t quite — What say? But you know him? Yes, yes, so I see. H’m, h’m. I don’t quite—” Her needles flew in and out, and her ball of cotton rolled on to the floor in her surprise.
Anna-Rose got up and fetched it for her before the old gentleman, who was gazing with thirsty appreciation at Anna-Felicitas, could struggle out of his chair.
“You see,” explained Anna-Felicitas, taking advantage of the silence that had fallen on the lady, “Mr. Twist, regarded as a man, is old, but regarded as a friend he is new.”
“Brand new,” said Anna-Rose.
“H’m, h’m,” said the lady, knitting faster than ever, and looking first at one twin and then at the other. “H’m, h’m, h’m. Brand new, is he. Well, I don’t quite—” Her smiles had now to struggle with the uncertainty and doubt, and were weakening visibly.
“Say now, where did you meet Teapot Twist?” asked the old gentleman, who was surprised too, but remained quite benevolent owing to his affectionate heart and his not being a lady.
“We met Mr. Twist,” said Anna-Rose, who objected to this way of alluding to him, “on the steamer.”
“Not before? You didn’t meet Mr. Twist before the steamer?” exclaimed the lady, the last of her smiles flickering out. “Not before the steamer, didn’t you. Just a steamship acquaintance. Parents never seen him. H’m, h’m, h’m.”
“We would have met him before if we could,” said Anna-Felicitas earnestly.
“I should think so,” said Anna-Rose. “It has been the great retrospective loss of our lives meeting him so late in them.”
“Why now,” said the old gentleman smiling, “I shouldn’t call it so particularly late in them.”
But the knitting lady didn’t smile at all, and sat up very straight and said “H’m, h’m, h’m” to her flashing needles as they flew in and out; for not only was she in doubt now about the cute little things, but she also regretted, on behalf of the old gentleman’s wife who was a friend of hers, the alert interest of his manner. He sat there so very much awake. With his wife he never seemed awake at all. Up to now she had not seen him except with his wife.
“You mustn’t run away with the idea that we’re younger than we really are,” Anna-Rose said to the old gentleman.
“Why no, I won’t,” he answered with a liveliness that deepened the knitting lady’s regret on behalf of his wife. “When I run away you bet it won’t be with an idea.”
And he chuckled. He was quite rosy in the face, and chuckled; he whom she knew only as a quiet man with no chuckle in him. And wasn’t what he had just said very like what the French call a double entendre? She hadn’t a husband herself, but if she had she would wish him to be at least as quiet when away from her as when with her, and at least as free from double entendres. At least. Really more. “H’m, h’m, h’m,” she said, clicking her needles and looking first at the twins and then at the old gentleman.
“Do you mean to say you crossed the Atlantic quite alone, you two?” she asked, in order to prevent his continuing on these remarkable and unusual lines of badinage.
“Quite,” said Anna-Felicitas.
“That is to say, we had Mr. Twist of course,” said Anna-Rose.
“Once we had got him,” amended Anna-Felicitas.
“Yes, yes,” said the knitting lady, “so you say. H’m, h’m, h’m. Once you had got him. I don’t quite—”
“Well, I call you a pair of fine high-spirited girls,” said the old gentleman heartily, interrupting in his turn, “and all I can say is I wish I had been on that boat.”
“Here’s Mrs. Ridding,” said the knitting lady quickly, relief in her voice; whereupon he suddenly grew quiet. “My, Mrs. Ridding,” she added when the lady drew within speaking distance, “you do look as though you needed a rest.”
Mrs. Ridding, the wife of the old gentleman, Mr. Ridding, had been approaching slowly for some time from behind. She had been out on the verandah since lunch, trying to recover from it. That was the one drawback to meals, she considered, that they required so much recovering from; and the nicer they were the longer it took. The meals at the Cosmopolitan were particularly nice, and really all one’s time was taken up getting over them.
She was a lady whose figure seemed to be all meals. The old gentleman had married her in her youth, when she hadn’t had time to have had so many. He and she were then the same age, and unfortunately hadn’t gone on being the same age since. It had wrecked his life this inability of his wife to stay as young and new as himself. He wanted a young wife, and the older he got in years — his heart very awkwardly retained its early freshness — the younger he wanted her; and, instead, the older he got the older his wife got too. Also the less new. The old gentleman felt the whole thing was a dread
ful mistake. Why should he have to be married to this old lady? Never in his life had he wanted to marry old ladies; and he thought it very hard that at an age when he most appreciated bright youth he should be forced to spend his precious years, his crowning years when his mind had attained wisdom while his heart retained freshness, stranded with an old lady of costly habits and inordinate bulk just because years ago he had fallen in love with a chance pretty girl.
He struggled politely out of his chair on seeing her. The twins, impressed by such venerable abundance, got up too.
“Albert, if you try to move too quick you’ll crick your back again,” said Mrs. Ridding in a monotonous voice, letting herself down carefully and a little breathlessly on to the edge of a chair that didn’t rock, and fanning herself with a small fan she carried on the end of a massive gold chain. Her fatigued eyes explored the twins while she spoke.
“I can’t get Mr. Ridding to remember that we’re neither of us as young as we were,” she went on, addressing the knitting lady but with her eyes continuing to explore the twins.
They naturally thought she was speaking to them, and Anna-Felicitas said politely, “Really?” and Anna-Rose, feeling she too ought to make some comment, said, “Isn’t that very unusual?”
Aunt Alice always said, “Isn’t that very unusual?” when she didn’t know what else to say, and it worked beautifully, because then the other person launched into affirmations or denials with the reasons for them, and was quite happy.
But Mrs. Ridding only stared at the twins heavily and in silence.
“Because,” explained Anna-Rose, who thought the old lady didn’t quite follow, “nobody ever is. So that it must be difficult not to remember it.”
Mr. Ridding too was silent, but that was because of his wife. It was quite untrue to say that he forgot, seeing that she was constantly reminding him. “Old stranger,” he thought resentfully, as he carefully arranged a cushion behind her back. He didn’t like her back. Why should he have to pay bills for putting expensive clothes on it? He didn’t want to. It was all a dreadful mistake.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 211
