Christopher and Columbus Part 32

"There isn't? I understood--"

"I mean, a day or two more or less don't figure out at much in the long run."

"Quite so, quite so," said the lawyer, getting up too. "Well, I'm always at your service, at any time." And he shook hands heartily with Mr.

Twist and politely opened the door for him.

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 n.o.body 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 hara.s.sed 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 guardians.h.i.+p 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 grat.i.tude."

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 hara.s.sing 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 una.s.sailable. 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 ap.r.o.ns in which they were to wait at tea, and buying the cus.h.i.+ons 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, n.o.body is to know what it's really going to be. They're to think it's just a _pied-a-terre._ It would most ruin my advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 G.o.d and their own discretion.

Discretion, he already amply knew, was not a Twinkler characteristic.

But the week pa.s.sed, 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 acc.u.mulated standing about of the week, altogether unconcernedly.

The att.i.tude 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 s.h.i.+ning 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? _Protegees_? 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 embarra.s.sment 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 _clientele_. 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 relations.h.i.+p theory, and he made a shot at the relations.h.i.+p 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 grat.i.tude.

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."