Chapter 10

Lost in the contemplation of a distant past Anna-Felicitas sat with her eyes shut long after she needn’t have.

She had forgotten about the German ladies, and America, and the future so instantly pressing on her, and was away on the shores of the Baltic again, where bits of amber where washed up after a storm, and the pale rushes grew in shallow sunny water that was hardly salt, and the air seemed for ever sweet with lilac. All the cottage gardens in the little village that clustered round a clearing in the trees had lilac bushes in them, for there was something in the soil that made lilacs be more wonderful there than anywhere else in the world, and in May the whole forest as far as one could walk was soaked with the smell of it. After rain on a May evening, what a wonder it was; what a wonder, that running down the black, oozing forest paths between wet pine stems, out on to the shore to look at the sun setting below the great sullen clouds of the afternoon over on one’s left where Denmark was, and that lifting of one’s face to the exquisite mingling of the delicate sea smell and the lilac. And then there was home to come back to when the forest began to look too dark and its deep silence made one’s flesh creep—home, and a light in the window where ones mother was. Incredible the security of those days, the safe warmth of them, the careless roominess...

“You know if you could manage to feel a little better, Anna-F.,” said Anna-Rose’s voice entreatingly in her ear, “it’s time we began to get off this ship.”

Anna-Felicitas opened her eyes, and got up all confused and self-reproachful. Everybody had melted away from that part of the deck except herself and Anna-Rose. The ship was lying quiet at last alongside the wharf. She had over-done being ill this time. She was ashamed of herself for having wandered off so easily and comfortably into the past, and left poor Christopher alone in the difficult present.

“I’m so sorry,” she said smiling apologetically, and giving her hat a tug of determination symbolic of her being ready for anything, especially America. “I think I must have gone to sleep. Have you—” she hesitated and dropped her voice. “Are they—are the Clouston Sacks visible yet?”

“I thought I saw them,” said Anna-Rose, dropping her voice too, and looking round uneasily over her shoulder. “I’d have come here sooner to see how you were getting on, but I thought I saw them, and they looked so like what I think they will look like that I went into our cabin again for a few minutes. But it wasn’t them. They’ve found the people they were after, and have gone.”

“There’s a great crowd waiting,” said Mr. Twist, coming up, “and I think we ought to go and look for your friends. As you don’t know what they’re like and they don’t know what you’re like it may be difficult. Heaven forbid,” he continued, “that I should hurry you, but I have to catch a train if I’m to get home to-night, and I don’t intend to catch it until I’ve handed you over safely to the Sacks.”

“Those Sacks—” began Anna-Rose; and then she finished irrelevantly by remarking that it was the details of life that were discouraging, —from which Anna Felicitas knew that Christopher’s heart was once more in her boots.

“Come along,” said Mr. Twist, urging them to wards the gangway. “Anything you’ve got to say about life I shall be glad to hear, but at some time when we’re more at leisure.”

It had never occurred to either of the twins that the Clouston Sacks would not meet them. They had taken it for granted from the beginning that some form of Sack, either male or female, or at least their plenipotentiary, would be on the wharf to take them away to the Sack lair, as Anna-Felicitas alluded to the family mansion. It was, they knew, in Boston, but Boston conveyed nothing to them. Only Mr. Twist knew how far away it was. He had always supposed the Sacks would meet their young charges, stay that night in New York, and continue on to Boston next day. The twins were so certain they would be met that Mr. Twist was certain too. He had concluded, with a growingly empty feeling in his heart as the time of separation drew near, that all that now remained for him to do on behalf of the Twinklers was to hand them over to the Sacks. And then leave them. And then go home to that mother he loved but had for some time known he didn’t like, —go home a bereft and lonely man.