Nothing more was seen of the submarine.
The German ladies were certain the captain had somehow let them know he
had them on board, and were as full of the credit of having saved the
ship as if it had been Sodom and Gomorrah instead of a ship, and they
the one just man whose presence would have saved those cities if he had
been in them; and the American passengers were equally sure that the
submarine, on thinking it over, had decided that President Wilson was
not a man to be trifled with, and had gone in search of some prey which
would not have the might and majesty of America at its back.
As the day went on, and the _St. Luke_ left off zig-zagging, the relief
of those on board was the relief of a reprieve from death. Almost
everybody was cured of sea-sickness, and quite everybody was ready to
overwhelm his neighbour with cordiality and benevolence. Rich people
didn't mind poor people, and came along from the first class and talked
to them just as if they had been the same flesh and blood as themselves.
A billionairess native to Chicago, who had crossed the Atlantic forty
times without speaking to a soul, an achievement she was as justly proud
of as an artist is of his best creations, actually asked somebody in a
dingy mackintosh, whose little boy still looked pale, if he had been
frightened; and an exclusive young man from Boston talked quite a long
while to an English lady without first having made sure that she was
well-connected. What could have been more like heaven? The tone on the
_St. Luke_ that day was very like what the tone in the kingdom of heaven
must be in its simple politeness. "And so you see," said Anna-Rose, who
was fond of philosophizing in season and out of season, and particularly
out of season, "how good comes out of evil."
She made this observation about four o'clock in the afternoon to
Anna-Felicitas in an interval of absence on the part of Mr. Twist--such,
the amiable stranger had told them, was his name--who had gone to see
about tea being brought up to them; and Anna-Felicitas, able by now to
sit up and take notice, the hours of fresh air having done their work,
smiled the ready, watery, foolishly happy smile of the convalescent. It
was so nice not to feel ill; it was so nice not to have to be saved. If
she had been able to talk much, she would have philosophized too, about
the number and size of one's negative blessings--all the things one
hasn't got, all the very horrid things; why, there's no end to them once
you begin to count up, she thought, waterily happy, and yet people
grumble.
Anna-Felicitas was in that cleaned-out, beatific, convalescent mood in
which one is sure one will never grumble again. She smiled at anybody
who happened to pass by and catch her eye. She would have smiled just
like that, with just that friendly, boneless familiarity at the devil if
he had appeared, or even at Uncle Arthur himself.
The twins, as a result of the submarine's activities, were having the
pleasantest day they had had for months. It was the realization of this
that caused Anna-Rose's remark about good coming out of evil. The
background, she could not but perceive, was a very odd one for their
pleasantest day for months--a rolling steamer and a cold wind flicking
at them round the corner; but backgrounds, she pointed out to
Anna-Felicitas, who smiled her agreement broadly and instantly, are
negligible things: it is what goes on in front of them that matters. Of
what earthly use, for instance, had been those splendid summer
afternoons in the perfect woods and gardens that so beautifully framed
in Uncle Arthur?
No use, agreed Anna-Felicitas, smiling fatuously.
In the middle of them was Uncle Arthur. You always got to him in the
end.
Anna-Felicitas nodded and shook her head and was all feeble agreement.
She and Anna-Felicitas had been more hopelessly miserable, Anna-Rose
remarked, wandering about the loveliness that belonged to him than they
could ever have dreamed was possible. She reminded Anna-Felicitas how
they used to rub their eyes to try and see more clearly, for surely
these means of happiness, these elaborate arrangements for it all round
them, couldn't be for nothing? There must be some of it somewhere, if
only they could discover where? And there was none. Not a trace of it.
Not even the faintest little swish of its skirts.
Anna-Rose left off talking, and became lost in memories. For a long
time, she remembered, she had told herself it was her mother's death
blotting the light out of life, but one day Anna-Felicitas said aloud
that it was Uncle Arthur, and Anna-Rose knew it was true. Their mother's
death was something so tender, so beautiful, that terrible as it was to
them to be left without her they yet felt raised up by it somehow,
raised on to a higher level than where they had been before, closer in
their hearts to real things, to real values. But Uncle Arthur came into
possession of their lives as a consequence of that death, and he had
towered up between them and every glimpse of the sun. Suddenly there was
no such thing as freedom and laughter. Suddenly everything one said and
did was wrong. "And you needn't think," Anna-Felicitas had said wisely,
"that he's like that because we're Germans--or _seem_ to be Germans,"
she amended. "It's because he's Uncle Arthur. Look at Aunt Alice.
_She's_ not a German. And yet look at her."
And Anna-Rose had looked at Aunt Alice, though only in her mind's eye,
for at that moment the twins were three miles away in a wood picnicking,
and Aunt Alice was at home recovering from a _tête-à-tête_ luncheon with
Uncle Arthur who hadn't said a word from start to finish; and though she
didn't like most of his words when he did say them, she liked them still
less when he didn't say them, for then she imagined them, and what she
imagined was simply awful,--Anna-Rose had, I say, looked at Aunt Alice
in her mind's eye, and knew that this too was true.
Mr. Twist reappeared, followed by the brisk steward with a tray of tea
and cake, and their corner became very like a cheerful picnic.
Mr. Twist was most pleasant and polite. Anna-Rose had told him quite
soon after he began to talk to her, in order, as she said, to clear his
mind of misconceptions, that she and Anna-Felicitas, though their
clothes at that moment, and the pigtails in which their flair was done,
might be misleading, were no longer children, but quite the contrary;
that they were, in fact, persons who were almost ripe for going to
dances, and certainly in another year would be perfectly ripe for dances
supposing there were any.
Mr. Twist listened attentively, and begged her to tell him any other
little thing she might think of as useful to him in his capacity of
friend and attendant,--both of which, said Mr. Twist, he intended to be
till he had seen them safely landed in New York.
"I hope you don't think we _need_ anybody," said Anna-Rose. "We shall
like being friends with you very much, but only on terms of perfect
equality."
"Sure," said Mr. Twist, who was an American.
"I thought--"
She hesitated a moment.
"You thought?" encouraged Mr. Twist politely.
"I thought at Liverpool you looked as if you were being sorry for us."
"Sorry?" said Mr. Twist, in the tone of one who repudiates.
"Yes. When we were waving good-bye to--to our friends."
"Sorry?" repeated Mr. Twist.
"Which was great waste of your time."
"I should think so," said Mr. Twist with heartiness.
Anna-Rose, having cleared the ground of misunderstandings, an activity
in which at all times she took pleasure, accepted Mr. Twist's attentions
in the spirit in which they were offered, which was, as he said, one of
mutual friendliness and esteem. As he was never sea-sick, he could move
about and do things for them that might be difficult to do for
themselves; as he knew a great deal about stewardesses, he could tell
them what sort of tip theirs expected; as he was American, he could
illuminate them about that country. He had been doing Red Cross work
with an American ambulance in France for ten months, and was going home
for a short visit to see how his mother, who, Anna-Rose gathered, was
ancient and widowed, was getting on. His mother, he said, lived in
seclusion in a New England village with his sister, who had not married.
"Then she's got it all before her," said Anna-Rose.
"Like us," said Anna-Felicitas.
"I shouldn't think she'd got as much of it before her as you," said Mr.
Twist, "because she's considerably more grown up--I mean," he added
hastily, as Anna-Rose's mouth opened, "she's less--well, less completely
young."
"We're not completely young," said Anna-Rose with dignity. "People are
completely young the day they're born, and ever after that they spend
their time becoming less so."
"Exactly. And my sister has been becoming less so longer than you have.
I assure you that's all I meant. She's less so even than I am."
"Then," said Anna-Rose, glancing at that part of Mr. Twist's head where
it appeared to be coming through his hair, "she must have got to the
stage when one is called a maiden lady."
"And if she were a German," said Anna-Felicitas suddenly, who hadn't
till then said anything to Mr. Twist but only smiled widely at him
whenever he happened to look her way, "she wouldn't be either a lady or
a maiden, but just an It. It's very rude of Germans, I think," went on
Anna-Felicitas, abstractedly smiling at the cake Mr. Twist was offering
her, "never to let us be anything but Its till we've taken on some men."
Mr. Twist expressed surprise at this way of describing marriage, and
inquired of Anna-Felicitas what she knew about Germans.
"The moment you leave off being sea-sick, Anna-F.," said Anna-Rose,
turning to her severely, "you start being indiscreet. Well, I suppose,"
she added with a sigh to Mr. Twist, "you'd have had to know sooner or
later. Our name is Twinkler."
She watched him to see the effect of this, and Mr. Twist, perceiving he
was expected to say something, said that he didn't mind that anyhow, and
that he could bear something worse in the way of revelations.
"Does it convey nothing to you?" asked Anna-Rose, astonished, for in
Germany the name of Twinkler was a mighty name, and even in England it
was well known.
Mr. Twist shook his head. "Only that it sounds cheerful," he said.
Anna-Rose watched his face. "It isn't only Twinkler," she said, speaking
very distinctly. "It's _von_ Twinkler."
"That's German," said Mr. Twist; but his face remained serene.
"Yes. And so are we. That is, we would be if it didn't happen that we
weren't."
"I don't think I quite follow," said Mr. Twist.
"It _is_ very difficult," agreed Anna-Rose. "You see, we used to have a
German father."
"But only because our mother married him," explained Anna-Felicitas.
"Else we wouldn't have."
"And though she only did it once," said Anna-Rose, "ages ago, it has
dogged our footsteps ever since."
"It's very surprising," mused Anna-Felicitas, "what marrying anybody
does. You go into a church, and before you know where you are, you're
all tangled up with posterity."
"And much worse than that," said Anna-Rose, staring wide-eyed at her own
past experiences, "posterity's all tangled up with you. It's really
simply awful sometimes for posterity. Look at us."
"If there hadn't been a war we'd have been all right," said
Anna-Felicitas. "But directly there's a war, whoever it is you've
married, if it isn't one of your own countrymen, rises up against you,
just as if he were too many meringues you'd had for dinner."
"Living or dead," said Anna-Rose, nodding, "he rises up against you."
"Till the war we never thought at all about it," said Anna-Felicitas.
"Either one way or the other," said Anna-Rose.
"We never used to bother about what we were," said Anna-Felicitas. "We
were just human beings, and so was everybody else just human beings."
"We didn't mind a bit about being Germans, or about other people not
being Germans."
"But you mustn't think we mind now either," said Anna-Felicitas,
"because, you see, we're not."
Mr. Twist looked at them in turn. His ears were a little prominent and
pointed, and they gave him rather the air, when he put his head on one
side and looked at them, of an attentive fox-terrier. "I don't think I
quite follow," he said again.
"It _is_ very difficult," agreed Anna-Rose.
"It's because you've got into your head that we're German because of our
father," said Anna-Felicitas. "But what's a father, when all's said and
done?"
"Well," said Mr. Twist, "one has to have him."
"But having got him he isn't anything like as important as a mother,"
said Anna-Rose.
"One hardly sees one's father," said Anna-Felicitas. "He's always busy.
He's always thinking of something else."
"Except when he looks at one and tells one to sit up straight," said
Anna-Rose pointedly to Anna-Felicitas, whose habit of drooping still
persisted in spite of her father's admonishments.
"Of course he's very kind and benevolent when he happens to remember
that one is there," said Anna-Felicitas, sitting up beautifully for a
moment, "but that's about everything."
"And of course," said Anna-Rose, "one's father's intentions are
perfectly sound and good, but his attention seems to wander. Whereas
one's mother--"
"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas, "one's mother--"
They broke off and looked straight in front of them. It didn't bear
speaking of. It didn't bear thinking of.
Suddenly Anna-Felicitas, weak from excessive sea-sickness, began to cry.
The tears just slopped over as though no resistance of any sort were
possible.
Anna-Rose stared at her a moment horror-struck. "Look here, Anna-F.,"
she exclaimed, wrath in her voice, "I won't _have_ you be sentimental--I
won't _have_ you be sentimental...."
And then she too began to cry.
Well, once having hopelessly disgraced and exposed themselves, there was
nothing for it but to take Mr. Twist into their uttermost confidence. It
was dreadful. It was awful. Before that strange man. A person they
hardly knew. Other strangers passing. Exposing their feelings. Showing
their innermost miserable places.
They writhed and struggled in their efforts to stop, to pretend they
weren't crying, that it was really nothing but just tears,--odd ones
left over from last time, which was years and years ago,--"But _really_
years and years ago," sobbed Anna-Rose, anxiously explaining,--"the
years one falls down on garden paths in, and cuts one's knees, and
one's mother--one's mother--c-c-c-comforts one--"
"See here," said Mr. Twist, interrupting these incoherences, and pulling
out a beautiful clean pocket-handkerchief which hadn't even been
unfolded yet, "you've got to tell me all about it right away."
And he shook out the handkerchief, and with the first-aid promptness his
Red Cross experience had taught him, started competently wiping up their
faces.