Christopher and Columbus (29 page)

The social column of the Acapulco daily paper hadn't been
able to give any accurate description of the relationship of the
Twinklers to Mr. Twist. Its paragraph announcing his arrival had
been obliged merely to say, while awaiting more detailed
information, that Mr. Edward A. Twist, the well-known Breakfast
Table Benefactor and gifted inventor of the famous Non-Trickler
Teapot, had arrived from New York and was staying at the
Cosmopolitan Hotel with
entourage
; and the day after this the lawyer, who got
about a bit, as everybody else did in that encouraging climate,
happening to look in at the Cosmopolitan to have a talk with a
friend, had seen the
entourage
.

It was in the act of passing through the hall on its way
upstairs, followed by a boy carrying a canary in a cage. Even
without the boy and the canary it was a conspicuous object. The
lawyer asked his friend who the cute little girls were, and was
interested to hear he was beholding Mr. Edward A. Twist's
entourage
. His friend told him that opinion in the hotel
was divided about the precise nature of this
entourage
and its relationship to Mr. Twist, but it
finally came to be generally supposed that the Miss Twinklers had
been placed in his charge by parents living far away in order that
he might safely see them put to one of the young ladies'
finishing schools in that agreeable district. The house Mr. Twist
was taking was not connected in the Cosmopolitan mind with the
Twinklers. Houses were always being taken in that paradise by
wealthy persons from unkinder climates. He would live in it three
months in the year, thought the Cosmopolitan, bring his mother, and
keep in this way an occasional eye on his charges. The hotel guests
regarded the Twinklers at this stage with nothing but benevolence
and goodwill, for they had up to then only been seen and not heard;
and as one of their leading characteristics was a desire to
explain, especially if anybody looked a little surprised, which
everybody usually did quite early in conversation with them, this
was at that moment, the delicate moment before Mrs. Bilton's
arrival, fortunate.

The lawyer, then, who appreciated the young and pretty as much
as other honest men, began the interview with Mr. Twist by warmly
congratulating him, when he heard what he had come for, on his
taste in wards.

Mr. Twist received this a little coldly, and said it was not a
matter of taste but of necessity. The Miss Twinklers were orphans,
and he had been asked--he cleared his throat--asked by their
relatives, by, in fact, their uncle in England, to take over their
guardianship and see that they came to no harm.

The lawyer nodded intelligently, and said that if a man had
wards at all they might as well be cute wards.

Mr. Twist didn't like this either, and said briefly that he
had had no choice.

The lawyer said, "Quite so. Quite so," and continued
to look at him intelligently.

Mr. Twist then explained that he had come to him rather than, as
might have been more natural, to the solicitor who had arranged the
purchase of the cottage because this was a private and personal
matter--

"Quite so. Quite so," interrupted the lawyer, with
really almost too much intelligence.

Mr. Twist felt the excess of it, and tried to look dignified,
but the lawyer was bent on being friendly and frank. Friendliness
was natural to him when visited for the first time by a new client,
and that there should be frankness between lawyers and clients he
considered essential. If, he held, the client wouldn't be
frank, then the lawyer must be; and he must go on being so till the
client came out of his reserve.

Mr. Twist, however, was so obstinate in his reserve that the
lawyer cheerfully and unhesitatingly jumped to the conclusion that
the
entourage
must have some very weak spots about it
somewhere.

"There's another way out of it of course, Mr.
Twist," he said, when he had done rapidly describing the
different steps to be taken. There were not many steps. The process
of turning oneself into a guardian was surprisingly simple and
swift.

"Out of it?" said Mr. Twist, his spectacles looking
very big and astonished. "Out of what?"

"Out of your little difficulty. I wonder it hasn't
occurred to you. Upon my word now, I do wonder."

"But I'm not in any little diff--" began Mr.
Twist.

"The elder of these two girls, now--"

"There isn't an elder," said Mr. Twist.

"Come, come," said the lawyer patiently, waiting for
him to be sensible.

"There isn't an elder," repeated Mr. Twist,
"They're twins."

"Twins, are they? Well I must say we manage to match up our
twins better than that over here. But come now--hasn't it
occurred to you you might marry one of them, and so become quite
naturally related to them both?"

Mr. Twist's spectacles seemed to grow gigantic.

"Marry one of them?" he repeated, his mouth helplessly
opening.

"Yep," said the lawyer, giving him a lead in
free-and-easiness.

"Look here," said Mr. Twist suddenly gathering his
mouth together, "cut that line of joke out. I'm here on
serious business. I haven't come to be facetious. Least of all
about those children--"

"Quite so, quite so," interrupted the lawyer
pleasantly. "Children, you call them. How old are they?
Seventeen? My wife was sixteen when we married. Oh quite so, quite
so. Certainly. By all means. Well then, they're to be your
wards. And you don't want it known how recently they've
become your wards--"

"I didn't say that," said Mr. Twist.

"Quite so, quite so. But it's your wish, isn't it.
The relationship is to look as grass-grown as possible. Well, I
shall be dumb of course, but most things get into the press here.
Let me see--" He pulled a sheet of paper towards him and took
up his fountain pen. "Just oblige me with particulars. Date of
birth. Place of birth. Parentage--"

He looked up ready to write, waiting for the answers.

None came.

"I can't tell you off hand," said Mr. Twist
presently, his forehead puckered.

"Ah," said the lawyer, laying down his pen.
"Quite so. Not known your young friends long enough
yet."

"I've known them quite long enough," said Mr.
Twist stiffly, "but we happen to have found more alive topics
of conversation than dates and parents."

"Ah. Parents not alive."

"Unfortunately they are not. If they were, these poor
children wouldn't be knocking about in a strange
country."

"Where would they be?" asked the lawyer, balancing his
pen across his forefinger.

Mr. Twist looked at him very straight. Vividly he remembered his
mother's peculiar horror when he told her the girls he was
throwing away his home life for and breaking her heart over were
Germans. It had acted upon her like the last straw. And since then
he had felt everywhere, with every one he talked to, in every
newspaper he read, the same strong hostility to Germans, so much
stronger than when he left America the year before.

Mr. Twist began to perceive that he had been impetuous in this
matter of the guardianship. He hadn't considered it enough. He
suddenly saw innumerable difficulties for the twins and for The
Open Arms if it was known it was run by Germans. Better abandon the
guardianship idea than that such difficulties should arise. He
hadn't thought; he hadn't had time properly to think; he
had been so hustled and busy the last few days....

"They come from England," he said, looking at the
lawyer very straight.

"Ah," said the lawyer.

Mr. Twist wasn't going to lie about the twins, but merely,
by evading, he hoped to put off the day when their nationality
would be known. Perhaps it never would be known; or if known, known
later on when everybody, as everybody must who knew them, loved
them for themselves and accordingly wouldn't care.

"Quite so," said the lawyer again, nodding. "I
asked because I overheard them talking the other day as they passed
through the hall of your hotel. They were talking about a canary.
The r in the word seemed a little rough. Not quite English, Mr.
Twist? Not quite American?"

"Not quite," agreed Mr. Twist. "They've been
a good deal abroad."

"Quite so. At school, no doubt."

He was silent a moment, intelligently balancing his pen on his
forefinger.

"Then these particulars," he went on, looking up at
Mr. Twist,--"could you let me have them soon? I tell you what.
You're in a hurry to fix this. I'll call round to-night at
the hotel, and get them direct from your young friends. Save time.
And make me acquainted with a pair of charming girls."

"No," said Mr. Twist. He got on to his feet and held
out his hand. "Not to-night. We're engaged to-night.
To-morrow will be soon enough. I'll send round. I'll let
you know. I believe I'm going to think it over a bit. There
isn't any such terrible hurry, anyhow."

"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 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."

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?