The taxi had stopped in front of a handsome apartment house, and almost
before it was quiet a boy in buttons darted out across the intervening
wide pavement and thrust his face through the window.
"Who do you want?" he said, or rather jerked out.
He then saw the contents of the taxi, and his mouth fell open; for it
seemed to him that grips and passengers were piled up inside it in a
seething mass.
"We want Mr. and Mrs. Clouston Sack," said Anna-Rose in her most
grown-up voice. "They're expecting us."
"They ain't," said the boy promptly.
"They ain't?" repeated Anna-Rose, echoing his language in her surprise.
"How do you know?" asked Anna-Felicitas.
"That they ain't? Because they ain't," said the boy. "I bet you my
Sunday shirt they ain't."
The twins stared at him. They were not accustomed in their conversations
with the lower classes to be talked to about shirts.
The boy seemed extraordinarily vital. His speech was so quick that it
flew out with the urgency and haste of squibs going off.
"Please open the door," said Anna-Rose recovering herself. "We'll go up
and see for ourselves."
"You won't see," said the boy.
"Kindly open the door," repeated Anna-Rose.
"You won't see," he said, pulling it open, "but you can look. If you do
see Sacks up there I'm a Hun."
The minute the door opened, grips fell out. There were two umbrellas,
two coats, a knapsack of a disreputable bulged appearance repugnant to
American ideas of baggage which run on big simple lines of huge trunks,
an _attaché_ case, a suit case, a hold-all, a basket and a hat-box.
Outside beside the driver were two such small and modest trunks that
they might almost as well have been grips themselves.
"Do you mind taking those in?" asked Anna-Rose, getting out with
difficulty over the umbrella that had fallen across the doorway, and
pointing to the gutter in which the other umbrella and the knapsack lay
and into which the basket, now that her body no longer kept it in, was
rolling.
"In where?" crackled the boy.
"In," said Anna-Rose severely. "In to wherever Mr. and Mrs. Clouston
Sack are."
"It's no good your saying they are when they ain't," said the boy,
increasing the loudness of his crackling.
"Do you mean they don't live here?" asked Anna-Felicitas, in her turn
disentangling herself from that which was still inside the taxi, and
immediately followed on to the pavement by the hold-all and the
_attaché_ case.
"They did live here till yesterday," said the boy, "but now they don't.
One does. But that's not the same as two. Which is what I meant when you
said they're expecting you and I said they ain't."
"Do you mean to say--" Anna-Rose stopped with a catch of her breath. "Do
you mean," she went on in an awe-struck voice, "that one of them--one of
them is dead?"
"Dead? Bless you, no. Anything but dead. The exact opposite. Gone.
Left. Got," said the boy.
"Oh," said Anna-Rose greatly relieved, passing over his last word, whose
meaning escaped her, "oh--you mean just gone to meet us. And missed us.
You see," she said, turning to Anna-Felicitas, "they did try to after
all."
Anna-Felicitas said nothing, but reflected that whichever Sack had tried
to must have a quite unusual gift for missing people.
"Gone to meet you?" repeated the boy, as one surprised by a new point of
view. "Well, I don't know about that--"
"We'll go up and explain," said Anna-Rose. "Is it Mr. or Mrs. Clouston
Sack who is here?"
"Mr.," said the boy.
"Very well then. Please bring in our things." And Anna-Rose proceeded,
followed by Anna-Felicitas, to walk into the house.
The boy, instead of bringing them in, picked up the articles lying on
the pavement and put them back again into the taxi. "No hurry about
them, I guess," he said to the driver. "Time enough to take them up when
the gurls ask again--" and he darted after the gurls to hand them over
to his colleague who worked what he called the elevator.
"Why do you call it the elevator," inquired Anna-Felicitas, mildly
inquisitive, of this boy, who on hearing that they wished to see Mr.
Sack stared at them with profound and unblinking interest all the way
up, "when it is really a lift?"
"Because it is an elevator," said the boy briefly.
"But we, you see," said Anna-Felicitas, "are equally convinced that it's
a lift."
The boy didn't answer this. He was as silent as the other one wasn't;
but there was a thrill about him too, something electric and tense. He
stared at Anna-Felicitas, then turned quickly and stared at Anna-Rose,
then quickly back to Anna-Felicitas, and so on all the way up. He was
obviously extraordinarily interested. He seemed to have got hold of an
idea that had not struck the squib-like boy downstairs, who was
entertaining the taxi-driver with descriptions of the domestic life of
the Sacks.
The lift stopped at what the twins supposed was going to be the door of
a landing or public corridor, but it was, they discovered, the actual
door of the Sack flat. At any moment the Sacks, if they wished to commit
suicide, could do so simply by stepping out of their own front door.
They would then fall, infinitely far, on to the roof of the lift lurking
at the bottom.
The lift-boy pressed a bell, the door opened, and there, at once exposed
to the twins, was the square hall of the Sack flat with a manservant
standing in it staring at them.
Obsessed by his idea, the lift-boy immediately stepped out of his lift,
approached the servant, introduced his passengers to him by saying,
"Young ladies to see Mr. Sack," took a step closer, and whispered in his
ear, but perfectly audibly to the twins who, however, regarded it as
some expression peculiarly American and were left unmoved by it, "The
co-respondents."
The servant stared uncertainly at them. His mistress had only been gone
a few hours, and the flat was still warm with her presence and
authority. She wouldn't, he well knew, have permitted co-respondents to
be about the place if she had been there, but on the other hand she
wasn't there. Mr. Sack was in sole possession now. Nobody knew where
Mrs. Sack was. Letters and telegrams lay on the table for her unopened,
among them Mr. Twist's announcing the arrival of the Twinklers. In his
heart the servant sided with Mr. Sack, but only in his heart, for the
servant's wife was the cook, and she, as she frequently explained, was
all for strict monogamy. He stared therefore uncertainly at the twins,
his brain revolving round their colossal impudence in coming there
before Mrs. Sack's rooms had so much as had time to get, as it were,
cold.
"We want to see Mr. Clouston Sack," began Anna-Rose in her clear little
voice; and no sooner did she begin to speak than a door was pulled open
and the gentleman himself appeared.
"I heard a noise of arrival--" he said, stopping suddenly when he saw
them. "I heard a noise of arrival, and a woman's voice--"
"It's us," said Anna-Rose, her face covering itself with the bright
conciliatory smiles of the arriving guest. "Are you Mr. Clouston Sack?"
She went up to him and held out her hand. They both went up to him and
held out their hands.
"We're the Twinklers," said Anna-Rose.
"We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, in case he shouldn't have noticed it.
Mr. Sack let his hand be shaken, and it was a moist hand. He looked like
a Gibson young man who has grown elderly. He had the manly profile and
shoulders, but they sagged and stooped. There was a dilapidation about
him, a look of blurred edges. His hair lay on his forehead in disorder,
and his tie had been put on carelessly and had wriggled up to the rim of
his collar.
"The Twinklers," he repeated. "The Twinklers. Do I remember, I wonder?"
"There hasn't been much time to forget," said Anna-Felicitas. "It's
less than two months since there were all those letters."
"Letters?" echoed Mr. Sack. "Letters?"
"So now we've got here," said Anna-Rose, the more brightly that she was
unnerved.
"Yes. We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, also with feverish brightness.
Bewildered, Mr. Sack, who felt that he had had enough to bear the last
few hours, stood staring at them. Then he caught sight of the lift-boy,
lingering and he further saw the expression on his servant's face Even
to his bewilderment it was clear what he was thinking.
Mr. Sack turned round quickly and led the way into the dining-room.
"Come in, come in," he said distractedly.
They went in. He shut the door. The lift-boy and the servant lingered a
moment making faces at each other; then the lift-boy dropped away in his
lift, and the servant retired to the kitchen. "I'm darned," was all he
could articulate. "I'm darned."
"There's our luggage," said Anna-Rose, turning to Mr. Sack on getting
inside the room, her voice gone a little shrill in her determined
cheerfulness. "Can it be brought up?"
"Luggage?" repeated Mr. Sack, putting his hand to his forehead. "Excuse
me, but I've got such a racking headache to-day--it makes me stupid--"
"Oh, I'm _very_ sorry," said Anna-Rose solicitously.
"And so am I--_very_," said Anna-Felicitas, equally solicitous. "Have
you tried aspirin? Sometimes some simple remedy like that--"
"Oh thank you--it's good of you, it's good of you. The effect, you see,
is that I can't think very clearly. But do tell me--why luggage?
Luggage--luggage. You mean, I suppose, baggage."
"Why luggage?" asked Anna-Rose nervously. "Isn't there--isn't there
always luggage in America too when people come to stay with one?"
"You've come to stay with me," said Mr. Sack, putting his hand to his
forehead again.
"You see," said Anna-Felicitas, "we're the Twinklers."
"Yes, yes--I know. You've told me that."
"So naturally we've come."
"But _is_ it natural?" asked Mr. Sack, looking at them distractedly.
"We sent you a telegram," said Anna-Rose, "or rather one to Mrs. Sack,
which is the same thing--"
"It isn't, it isn't," said the distressed Mr. Sack. "I wish it were. It
ought to be. Mrs. Sack isn't here--"
"Yes--we're very sorry to have missed her. Did she go to meet us in New
York, or where?"
"Mrs. Sack didn't go to meet you. She's--gone."
"Gone where?"
"Oh," cried Mr. Sack, "somewhere else, but not to meet you. Oh," he went
on after a moment in which, while the twins gazed at him, he fought with
and overcame emotion, "when I heard you speaking in the hall I
thought--I had a moment's hope--for a minute I believed--she had come
back. So I went out. Else I couldn't have seen you. I'm not fit to see
strangers--"
The things Mr. Sack said, and his fluttering, unhappy voice, were so
much at variance with the stern lines of his Gibson profile that the
twins viewed him with the utmost surprise. They came to no conclusion
and passed no judgment because they didn't know but what if one was an
American one naturally behaved like that.
"I don't think," said Anna-Felicitas gently, "that you can call us
strangers. We're the Twinklers."
"Yes, yes--I know--you keep on telling me that," said Mr. Sack. "But I
can't call to mind--"
"Don't you remember all Uncle Arthur's letters about us? We're the
nieces he asked you to be kind to for a bit--as I'm sure,"
Anna-Felicitas added politely, "you're admirably adapted for being."
Mr. Sack turned his bewildered eyes on to her. "Oh, aren't you a pretty
girl," he said, in the same distressed voice.
"You mustn't make her vain," said Anna-Rose, trying not to smile all
over her face, while Anna-Felicitas remained as manifestly unvain as a
person intent on something else would be.
"We know you got Uncle Arthur's letters about us," she continued,
"because he showed us your answers back. You invited us to come and stay
with you. And, as you perceive, we've done it."
"Then it must have been months ago--months ago," said Mr. Sack, "before
all this--do I remember something about it? I've had such trouble
since--I've been so distracted one way and another--it may have slipped
away out of my memory under the stress--Mrs. Sack--" He paused and
looked round the room helplessly. "Mrs. Sack--well, Mrs. Sack isn't here
now."
"We're _very_ sorry you've had trouble," said Anna-Felicitas
sympathetically. "It's what everybody has, though. Man that is born of
woman is full of misery. That's what the Burial Service says, and it
ought to know."
Mr. Sack again turned bewildered eyes on to her. "Oh, aren't you a
pretty--" he again began.
"When do you think Mrs. Sack will be back?" interrupted Anna-Rose.
"I wish I knew--I wish I could hope--but she's gone for a long while,
I'm afraid--"
"Gone not to come back at all, do you mean?" asked Anna-Felicitas.
Mr. Sack gulped. "I'm afraid that is her intention," he said miserably.
There was a silence, in which they all stood looking at each other.
"Didn't she like you?" then inquired Anna-Felicitas.
Anna-Rose, sure that this wasn't tactful, gave her sleeve a little pull.
"Were you unkind to her?" asked Anna-Felicitas, disregarding the
warning.
Mr. Sack, his fingers clasping and unclasping themselves behind his
back, started walking up and down the room. Anna-Felicitas, forgetful of
what Aunt Alice would have said, sat down on the edge of the table and
began to be interested in Mrs. Sack.
"The wives I've seen," she remarked, watching Mr. Sack with friendly and
interested eyes, "who were chiefly Aunt Alice--that's Uncle Arthur's
wife, the one we're the nieces of--seemed to put up with the utmost
contumely from their husbands and yet didn't budge. You must have been
something awful to yours."
"I worshipped Mrs. Sack," burst out Mr. Sack. "I worshipped her. I do
worship her. She was the handsomest, brightest woman in Boston. I was as
proud of her as any man has ever been of his wife."
"Then why did she go?" asked Anna-Felicitas.
"I don't think that's the sort of thing you should ask," rebuked
Anna-Rose.
"But if I don't ask I won't be told," said Ann Felicitas, "and I'm
interested."
"Mrs. Sack went because I was able--I was so constructed--that I could
be fond of other people as well as of her," said Mr. Sack.
"Well, _that's_ nothing unusual," said Anna-Felicitas.
"No," said Anna-Rose, "I don't see anything in that."
"I think it shows a humane and friendly spirit," said Anna-Felicitas.
"Besides, it's enjoined in the Bible," said Anna-Rose.
"I'm sure when we meet Mrs. Sack," said Anna-Felicitas very politely
indeed, "much as we expect to like her we shall nevertheless continue to
like other people as well. You, for instance. Will she mind that?"
"It wasn't so much that I liked other people," said Mr. Sack, walking
about and thinking tumultuously aloud rather than addressing anybody,
"but that I liked other people so _much_."
"I see," said Anna-Felicitas, nodding. "You overdid it. Like over-eating
whipped cream. Only it wasn't you but Mrs. Sack who got the resulting
ache."
"And aren't I aching? Aren't I suffering?"
"Yes, but you did the over-eating," said Anna-Felicitas.
"The world," said the unhappy Mr. Sack, quickening his pace, "is so full
of charming and delightful people. Is one to shut one's eyes to them?"
"Of course not," said Anna-Felicitas. "One must love them."
"Yes, yes," said Mr. Sack. "Exactly. That's what I did."
"And though I wouldn't wish," said Anna-Felicitas, "to say anything
against somebody who so very nearly was my hostess, yet really, you
know, wasn't Mrs. Sack's attitude rather churlish?"
Mr. Sack gazed at her. "Oh, aren't you a pretty--" he began again,
with a kind of agonized enthusiasm; but he was again cut short by
Anna-Rose, on whom facts of a disturbing nature were beginning to press.
"Aunt Alice," she said, looking and feeling extremely perturbed as the
situation slowly grew clear to her, "told us we were never to stay with
people whose wives are somewhere else. Unless they have a mother or
other female relative living with them. She was most particular about
it, and said whatever else we did we weren't ever to do this. So I'm
afraid," she continued in her politest voice, determined to behave
beautifully under circumstances that were trying, "much as we should
have enjoyed staying with you and Mrs. Sack if she had been here to stay
with, seeing that she isn't we manifestly can't."
"You can't stay with me," murmured Mr. Sack, turning his bewildered eyes
to her. "Were you going to?"
"Of course we were going to. It's what we've come for," said
Anna-Felicitas.
"And I'm afraid," said-Anna-Rose, "disappointed as we are, unless you
can produce a mother--"
"But where on earth are we to go to, Anna-R.?" inquired Anna-Felicitas,
who, being lazy, having got to a place preferred if possible to stay in
it, and who besides was sure that in their forlorn situation a Sack in
the hand was worth two Sacks not in it, any day. Also she liked the look
of Mr. Sack, in spite of his being so obviously out of repair. He badly
wanted doing up she said to herself, but on the other hand he seemed to
her lovable in his distress, with much of the pathetic helplessness her
own dear Irish terrier, left behind in Germany, had had the day he
caught his foot in a rabbit trap. He had looked at Anna-Felicitas, while
she was trying to get him out of it, with just the same expression on
his face that Mr. Sack had on his as he walked about the room twisting
and untwisting his fingers behind his back. Only, her Irish terrier
hadn't had a Gibson profile. Also, he had looked much more efficient.
"Can't you by any chance produce a mother?" she asked.
Mr. Sack stared at her.
"Of course we're very sorry," said Anna-Rose.
Mr. Sack stared at her.
"But you understand, I'm sure, that under the circumstances--"
"Do you say," said Mr. Sack, stopping still after a few more turns in
front of Anna-Rose, and making a great effort to collect his thoughts,
"that I--that we--had arranged to look after you?"
"Arranged with Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Rose. "Uncle Arthur Abinger. Of
course you had. That's why we're here. Why, you wrote bidding us
welcome. He showed us the letter."
"Abinger. Abinger. Oh--_that_ man," said Mr. Sack, his mind clearing.
"We thought you'd probably feel like that about him," said
Anna-Felicitas sympathetically.
"Why, then," said Mr. Sack, his mind getting suddenly quite clear, "you
must be--why, you _are_ the Twinklers."
"We've been drawing your attention to that at frequent intervals since
we got here," said Anna-Felicitas.
"But whether you now remember or still don't realize," said Anna-Rose
with great firmness, "I'm afraid we've got to say good-bye."
"That's all very well, Anna-R.," again protested Anna-Felicitas, "but
where are we to go to?"
"Go?" said Anna-Rose with a dignity very creditable in one of her size,
"Ultimately to California, of course, to Uncle Arthur's other friends.
But now, this afternoon, we get back into a train and go to Clark, to
Mr. Twist. He at least has a mother."