"I'm afraid I can't. I'm rather busy this morning."

"Really," said Mr. Twist, in a voice of concentrated sarcasm. But it had no effect on Anna-Felicitas. She continued to contemplate him with perfect goodwill.

He hesitated a moment. What could he do? Nothing, that he could see, before the young man; nothing that wouldn't make him ridiculous. He felt a fool already. He oughtn't to have pulled up. He ought to have just waved to them and gone on his way, and afterwards in the seclusion of his office issued very plain directions to Anna-Felicitas as to her future conduct. Sitting by the roadside like that! Openly; before everybody; with a young man she had never seen twenty-four hours ago.

He jammed in the gear and let the clutch out with such a jerk that the car leaped forward. Elliott waved his stick again. Mr. Twist responded by the briefest touch of his cap, and whirred down the road out of sight.

"Does he mind your sitting here?" asked Elliott.

"It would be very unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas gently. "One has to sit somewhere."

And he laughed with delight at this answer as he laughed with delight at everything she said, and he told her for the twentieth time that she was the most wonderful person he had ever met, and she settled down to listen again, after the interruption caused by Mr. Twist, with a ready ear and the utmost complacency to these agreeable statements, and began to wonder whether perhaps after all she mightn't at last be about to fall in love.

In the new interest of this possibility she turned her head to look at him, and he told her tumultuously--for being a sailor-man he went straight ahead on great waves when it came to love-making--that her eyes were as if pansies had married stars.

She turned her head away again at this, for though it sounded lovely it made her feel a little shy and unprovided with an answer; and then he said, again tumultuously, that her ear was the most perfect thing ever stuck on a girl's cheek, and would she mind turning her face to him so that he might see if she had another just like it on the other side.

She blushed at this, because she couldn't remember whether she had washed it lately or not--one so easily forgot one's ears; there were so many different things to wash--and he told her that when she blushed it was like the first wild rose of the first summer morning of the world.

At this Anna-Felicitas was quite overcome, and subsided into a condition of blissful, quiescent waiting for whatever might come next.

Fancy her face reminding him of all those nice things. She had seen it every day for years and years in the looking-gla.s.s, and not noticed anything particular about it. It had seemed to her just a face.

Something you saw out of, and ate with, and had to clean whatever else you didn't when you were late for breakfast, because there it was and couldn't be hidden,--an object remote indeed from pansies, and stars, and beautiful things like that.

She would have liked to explain this to the young man, and point out that she feared his imagination ran ahead of the facts and that perhaps when his leg was well again he would see things more as they were, but to her surprise when she turned to him to tell him this she found she was obliged to look away at once again. She couldn't look at him. Fancy that now, thought Anna-Felicitas, attentively gazing at her toes. And he had such dear eyes; and such a dear, eager sort of face. All the more, then, she reasoned, should her own eyes have dwelt with pleasure on him.

But they couldn't. "Dear me," she murmured, watching her toes as carefully as if they might at any moment go away and leave her there.

"I know," said Elliott. "You think I'm talking fearful flowery stuff.

I'd have said Dear me at myself three years ago if I had ever caught myself thinking in terms of stars and roses. But it's all the beastly blood and muck of the war that does it,--sends one back with a rush to things like that. Makes one shameless. Why, I'd talk to you about G.o.d now without turning a hair. Nothing would have induced me so much as to mention seriously that I'd even heard of him three years ago. Why, I write poetry now. We all write poetry. And n.o.body would mind now being seen saying their prayers. Why, if I were back at school and my mother came to see me I'd hug her before everybody in the middle of the street.

Do you realize what a tremendous change that means, you little girl who's never had brothers? You extraordinary adorable little lovely thing?"

And off he was again.

"When I was small," said Anna-Felicitas after a while, still watching her feet, "I had a governess who urged me to consider, before I said anything, whether it were the sort of thing I would like to say in the hearing of my parents. Would you like to say what you're saying to me in the hearing of your parents?"

"Hate to," said Elliott promptly.

"Well, then," said Anna-Felicitas, gentle but disappointed. She rather wished now she hadn't mentioned it.

"I'd take you out of earshot," said Elliott.

She was much relieved. She had done what she felt might perhaps be regarded by Aunt Alice as her duty as a lady, and could now give herself up with a calm conscience to hearing whatever else he might have to say.

And he had an incredible amount to say, and all of it of the most highly gratifying nature. On the whole, looking at it all round and taking one thing with another, Anna-Felicitas came to the conclusion that this was the most agreeable and profitable morning she had ever spent. She sat there for hours, and they all flew. People pa.s.sed in cars and saw her, and it didn't disturb her in the least. She perfectly remembered she ought to be helping Anna-Rose pick and arrange the flowers for the tea-tables, and she didn't mind. She knew Anna-Rose would be astonished and angry at her absence, and it left her unmoved. By midday she was hopelessly compromised in the eyes of Acapulco, for the people who had motored through the lane told the people who hadn't what they had seen.

Once a great car pa.s.sed with a small widow in it, who looked astonished when she saw the pair but had gone almost before Elliott could call out and wave to her.

"That's my sister," he said. "You and she will love each other."

"Shall we?" said Anna-Felicitas, much pleased by this suggestion of continuity in their relations; and remarked that she looked as if she hadn't got a husband.

"She hasn't. Poor little thing. Rotten luck. Rotten. I hate people to die now. It seems so infernally unnatural of them, when they're not in the fighting. He's only been dead a month. And poor old Dellogg was such a decent chap. She isn't going anywhere yet, or I'd bring her up to tea this afternoon. But it doesn't matter. I'll take you to her."

"Shall you?" said Anna-Felicitas, again much pleased. Dellogg. The name swam through her mind and swam out again. She was too busy enjoying herself to remark it and its coincidences now.

"Of course. It's the first thing one does."

"What first thing?"

"To take the divine girl to see one's relations. Once one has found her.

Once one has had"--his voice fell to a whisper--"the G.o.d-given luck to find her." And he laid his hand very gently on hers, which were clasped together in her lap.

This was a situation to which Anna-Felicitas wasn't accustomed, and she didn't know what to do with it. She looked down at the hand lying on hers, and considered it without moving. Elliott was quite silent now, and she knew he was watching her face. Ought she, perhaps, to be going?

Was this, perhaps, one of the moments in life when the truly judicious went? But what a pity to go just when everything was so pleasant. Still, it must be nearly lunch-time. What would Aunt Alice do in a similar situation? Go home to lunch, she was sure. Yet what was lunch when one was rapidly arriving, as she was sure now that she was, at the condition of being in love? She must be, or she wouldn't like his hand on hers.

And she did like it.

She looked down at it, and found that she wanted to stroke it. But would Aunt Alice stroke it? No; Anna-Felicitas felt fairly clear about that.

Aunt Alice wouldn't stroke it; she would take it up, and shake it, and say good-bye, and walk off home to lunch like a lady. Well, perhaps she ought to do that. Christopher would probably think so too. But what a pity.... Still, behaviour was behaviour; ladies were ladies.

She drew out her right hand with this polite intention, and instead--Anna-Felicitas never knew how it happened--she did nothing of the sort, but quite the contrary: she put it softly on the top of his.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

Meanwhile Mr. Twist had driven on towards Acapulco in a state of painful indecision. Should he or shouldn't he take a turning he knew of a couple of miles farther that led up an unused and practically undrivable track back by the west side to The Open Arms, and instruct Mrs. Bilton to proceed at once down the lane and salvage Anna-Felicitas? Should he or shouldn't he? For the first mile he decided he would; then, as his anger cooled, he began to think that after all he needn't worry much. The Annas were lucidly too young for serious philandering, and even if that Elliott didn't realize this, owing to Anna-Felicitas's great length, he couldn't do much before he, Mr. Twist, was back again along the lane. In this he under-estimated the enterprise of the British Navy, but it served to calm him; so that when he did reach the turning he had made up his mind to continue on his way to Acapulco.

There he spent some perplexing and hara.s.sing hours.

At the bank his reception was distinctly chilly. He wasn't used, since his teapot had been on the market, to anything but warmth when he went into a bank. On this occasion even the clerks were cold; and when after difficulty--actual difficulty--he succeeded in seeing the manager, he couldn't but perceive his unusual reserve. He then remembered what he had put down to mere accident at the time, that as he drove up Main Street half an hour before, all the people he knew had been looking the other way.

From the bank, where he picked up nothing in the way of explanation of the American avoidance of The Open Arms, the manager going dumb at its mere mention, he went to the solicitors who had arranged the sale of the inn, and again in the street people he knew looked the other way. The solicitor, it appeared, wouldn't be back till the afternoon, and the clerk, an elderly person hitherto subservient, was curiously short about it.

By this time Mr. Twist was thoroughly uneasy, and he determined to ask the first acquaintance he met what the matter was. But he couldn't find anybody. Every one, his architect, his various experts--those genial and frolicsome young men--were either engaged or away on business somewhere else. He set his teeth, and drove to the Cosmopolitan to seek out old Ridding--it wasn't a place he drove to willingly after his recent undignified departure, but he was determined to get to the bottom of this thing--and walking into the parlour was instantly aware of a hush falling upon it, a holding of the breath.

In the distance he saw old Ridding,--distinctly; and distinctly he saw that old Ridding saw him. He was sitting at the far end of the great parlour, facing the entrance, by the side of something vast and black heaped up in the adjacent chair. He had the look on his pink and naturally pleasant face of one who has abandoned hope. On seeing Mr.

Twist a ray of interest lit him up, and he half rose. The formless ma.s.s in the next chair which Mr. Twist had taken for inanimate matter, probably cushions and wraps, and now perceived was one of the higher mammals, put out a hand and said something,--at least, it opened that part of its face which is called a mouth but which to Mr. Twist in the heated and abnormal condition of his brain seemed like the snap-to of some great bag,--and at that moment a group of people crossed the hall in front of old Ridding, and when the path was again clear the chair that had contained him was empty. He had disappeared. Completely. Only the higher mammal was left, watching Mr. Twist with heavy eyes like two smouldering coals.

He couldn't face those eyes. He did try to, and hesitated while he tried, and then he found he couldn't; so he swerved away to the right, and went out quickly by the side door.

There was now one other person left who would perhaps clear him up as to the meaning of all this, and he was the lawyer he had gone to about the guardianship. True he had been angry with him at the time, but that was chiefly because he had been angry with himself. At bottom he had carried away an impression of friendliness. To this man he would now go as a last resource before turning back home, and once more he raced up Main Street in his Ford, producing by these repeated appearances an effect of agitation and restlessness that wasn't lost on the beholders.

The lawyer was in his office, and disengaged. After his morning's experience Mr. Twist was quite surprised and much relieved by being admitted at once. He was received neither coldly nor warmly, but with unmistakable interest.

"I've come to consult you," said Mr. Twist.

The lawyer nodded. He hadn't supposed he had come not to consult him, but he was used to patience with clients, and he well knew their preference in conversation for the self-evident.

"I want a straight answer to a straight question," said Mr. Twist, his great spectacles glaring anxiously at the lawyer who again nodded.