Christopher and Columbus (6 page)

"Disguise," whispered Anna-Felicitas, nodding again.
"Spies' disguise." She seemed quite to be enjoying
her own horrible suggestions.

"Take your head back into the berth," ordered
Anna-Rose quickly, for Anna-Felicitas seemed to be on the very
brink of an apoplectic fit.

Anna-Felicitas, who was herself beginning to feel a little
inconvenienced, obeyed, and was thrilled to see Anna-Rose presently
very cautiously emerge from underneath her and on her bare feet
creep across to the opposite side. She knew her to be valiant to
recklessness. She sat up to watch, her eyes round with
interest.

Anna-Rose didn't go straight across, but proceeded slowly,
with several pauses, to direct her steps toward the pillow-end of
the berths. Having got there she stood still a moment listening,
and then putting a careful finger between the curtain of the lower
berth and its frame, drew it the smallest crack aside and peeped
in.

Instantly she started back, letting go the curtain. "I beg
your pardon," she said out loud, turning very red. "I--I
thought--"

Anna-Felicitas, attentive in her berth, felt a cold thrill rush
down her back. No sound came from the berth on the other side any
more than before the raid on it, and Anna-Rose returned quicker
than she had gone. She just stopped on the way to switch off the
light, and then felt along the edge of Anna-Felicitas's berth
till she got to her head, and pulling it near her by its left
pigtail whispered with her mouth close to its left ear, "Wide
awake. Watching me all the time. Not a man. Fat."

And she crawled into her berth feeling unnerved.

The lady in the opposite berth was German, and so was the lady
in the berth above her. Their husbands were American, but that
didn't make them less German. Nothing ever makes a German less
German, Anna-Rose explained to Anna-Felicitas.

"Except," replied Anna-Felicitas, "a judicious
dilution of their blood by the right kind of mother."

"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "Only to be found in
England."

This conversation didn't take place till the afternoon of
the next day, by which time Anna-Felicitas already knew about the
human freight being Germans, for one of their own submarines came
after the
St. Luke
and no one was quite so loud in expression of
terror and dislike as the two Germans.

They demanded to be saved first, on the ground that they were
Germans. They repudiated their husbands, and said marriage was
nothing compared to how one had been born. The curtains of their
berths, till then so carefully closed, suddenly yawned open, and
the berths gave up their contents just as if, Anna-Felicitas
remarked afterwards to Anna-Rose, it was the resurrection and the
berths were riven sepulchres chucking up their dead.

This happened at ten o'clock the next morning when the
St. Luke
was pitching about off the southwest coast of
Ireland. The twins, waking about seven, found with a pained
surprise that they were not where they had been dreaming they were,
in the sunlit garden at home playing tennis happily if a little
violently, but in a chilly yet stuffy place that kept on tilting
itself upside down. They lay listening to the groans coming from
the opposite berths, and uneasily wondering how long it would be
before they too began to groan. Anna-Rose raised her head once with
the intention of asking if she could help at all, but dropped it
back again on to the pillow and shut her eyes tight and lay as
quiet as the ship would let her. Anna-Felicitas didn't even
raise her head, she felt so very uncomfortable.

At eight o'clock the stewardess looked in--the same
stewardess, they languidly noted, with whom already they had had
two encounters, for it happened that this was one of the cabins she
attended to--and said that if anybody wanted breakfast they had
better be quick or it would be over.

"Breakfast!" cried the top berth opposite in a
heart-rending tone; and instantly was sick.

The stewardess withdrew her head and banged the door to, and the
twins, in their uneasy berths, carefully keeping their eyes shut so
as not to witness the behaviour of the sides and ceiling of the
cabin, feebly marvelled at the stewardess for suggesting being
quick to persons who were being constantly stood on their heads.
And breakfast,--they shuddered and thought of other things; of
fresh, sweet air, and of the scent of pinks and apricots warm with
the sun.

At ten o'clock the stewardess came in again, this time right
in, and with determination in every gesture.

"Come, come," she said, addressing the twins, and
through them talking at the heaving and groaning occupants of the
other side, "you mustn't give way like this. What you want
is to be out of bed. You must get up and go on deck. And how's
the cabin to get done if you stay in it all the time?"

Anna-Felicitas, the one particularly addressed, because she was
more on the right level for conversation than Anna-Rose, who could
only see the stewardess's apron, turned her head away and
murmured that she didn't care.

"Come, come," said the stewardess. "Besides,
there's life-boat drill at mid-day, and you've got to be
present."

Anna-Felicitas, her eyes shut, again murmured that she
didn't care.

"Come, come," said the stewardess. "Orders are
orders. Every soul on the ship, sick or not, has got to be present
at life-boat drill."

"Oh, I'm not a soul," murmured Anna-Felicitas, who
felt at that moment how particularly she was a body, while the
opposite berths redoubled their groans.

"Come, come--" said the stewardess.

Then the
St. Luke
whistled five times, and the stewardess turned
pale. For a brief space, before they understood what had happened,
the twins supposed she was going to be sick. But it wasn't that
that was the matter with her, for after a moment's staring at
nothing with horror on her face she pounced on them and pulled them
bodily out of their berths, regardless by which end, and threw them
on the floor anyhow. Then she plunged about and produced
life-jackets; then she rushed down the passage flinging open the
doors of the other cabins; then she whirled back again and tried to
tie the twins into their life-jackets, but with hands that shook so
that the strings immediately came undone again; and all the time
she was calling out "Quick--quick--quick--" There was a
great tramping of feet on deck and cries and shouting.

The curtains of the opposite berths yawned asunder and out came
the Germans, astonishingly cured of their sea-sickness, and
struggled vigorously into their life-jackets and then into fur
coats, and had the fur coats instantly pulled off again by a very
energetic steward who ran in and said fur coats in the water were
death-traps,--a steward so much bent on saving people that he began
to pull off the other things the German ladies had on as well,
saying while he pulled, disregarding their protests, that in the
water Mother Nature was the best. "Mother Nature--Mother
Nature," said the steward, pulling; and he was only stopped
just in the nick of time by the stewardess rushing in again and
seeing what was happening to the helpless Germans.

Anna-Rose, even at that moment explanatory, pointed out to
Anna-Felicitas, who had already grasped the fact, that no doubt
there was a submarine somewhere about. The German ladies, seizing
their valuables from beneath their pillows, in spite of the steward
assuring them they wouldn't want them in the water, demanded to
be taken up and somehow signalled to the submarine, which would
never dare do anything to a ship containing its own flesh and
blood--and an American ship, too--there must be some awful
mistake--but anyhow they must be saved--there would be terrible
trouble, that they could assure the steward and the twins and the
scurrying passers-by down the passage, if America allowed two
Germans to be destroyed--and anyhow they would insist on having
their passage money refunded....

The German ladies departed down the passage, very incoherent and
very unhappy but no longer sick, and Anna-Felicitas, clinging to
the edge of her berth, feeling too miserable to mind about the
submarine, feebly wondered, while the steward tied her properly
into her life-jacket, at the cure effected in them. Anna-Rose
seemed cured too, for she was buttoning a coat round
Anna-Felicitas's shoulders, and generally seemed busy and
brisk, ending by not even forgetting their precious little bag of
money and tickets and passports, and fastening it round her neck in
spite of the steward's assuring her that it would drag her down
in the water like a stone tied to a kitten.

"You're a
very
cheerful man, aren't you," Anna-Rose said,
as he pushed them out of the cabin and along the corridor, holding
up Anna-Felicitas on her feet, who seemed quite unable to run
alone.

The steward didn't answer, but caught hold of Anna-Felicitas
at the foot of the stairs and carried her up them, and then having
got her on deck propped her in a corner near the life-boat allotted
to the set of cabins they were in, and darted away and in a minute
was back again with a big coat which he wrapped round her.

"May as well be comfortable till you do begin to
drown," he said briskly, "but mind you don't forget
to throw it off, Missie, the minute you feel the water."

Anna-Felicitas slid down on to the deck, her head leaning
against the wall, her eyes shut, a picture of complete indifference
to whatever might be going to happen next. Her face was now as
white as the frill of the night-gown that straggled out from
beneath her coat, for the journey from the cabin to the deck had
altogether finished her. Anna-Rose was thankful that she felt too
ill to be afraid. Her own heart was black with despair,--despair
that Anna-Felicitas, the dear and beautiful one, should presently,
at any moment, be thrown into that awful heaving water, and
certainly be hurt and frightened before she was choked out of
life.

She sat down beside her, getting as close as possible to keep
her warm. Her own twin. Her own beloved twin. She took her cold
hands and put them away beneath the coat the steward had brought.
She slid an arm round her and laid her cheek against her sleeve, so
that she should know somebody was there, somebody who loved her.
"What's the
good
of it all--
why
were we born--" she wondered, staring at the
hideous gray waves as they swept up into sight over the side of the
ship and away again as the ship rose up, and at the wet deck and
the torn sky, and the miserable-looking passengers in their
life-jackets collected together round the life-boat.

Nobody said anything except the German ladies. They, indeed,
kept up a constant wail. The others were silent, the men mostly
smoking cigarettes, the women holding their fluttering wraps about
them, all of them staring out to sea, watching for the track of the
torpedo to appear. One shot had been fired already and had missed.
The ship was zig-zagging under every ounce of steam she could lay
on. An official stood by the life-boat, which was ready with water
in it and provisions. That the submarine must be mad, as the
official remarked, to fire on an American ship, didn't console
anybody, and his further assurance that the matter would not be
allowed to rest there left them cold. They felt too sure that in
all probability they themselves were going to rest there, down
underneath that repulsive icy water, after a struggle that was
going to be unpleasant.

The man who had roused Anna-Rose's indignation as the ship
left the landing-stage by looking as though he were soon going to
be sorry for her, came across from the first class, where his
life-boat was, to watch for the track of the expected torpedo, and
caught sight of the twins huddled in their corner.

Anna-Rose didn't see him, for she was staring with wide eyes
out at the desolate welter of water and cloud, and thinking of
home: the home that was, that used to be till such a little while
ago, the home that now seemed to have been so amazingly, so
unbelievably beautiful and blest, with its daily life of love and
laughter and of easy confidence that to-morrow was going to be just
as good. Happiness had been the ordinary condition there, a simple
matter of course. Its place was taken now by courage. Anna-Rose
felt sick at all this courage there was about. There should be no
occasion for it. There should be no horrors to face, no cruelties
to endure. Why couldn't brotherly love continue? Why must
people get killing each other? She, for her part, would be behind
nobody in courage and in the defying of a Fate that could behave,
as she felt, so very unlike her idea of anything even remotely
decent; but it oughtn't to be necessary, this constant
condition of screwed-upness; it was waste of effort, waste of time,
waste of life,--oh the
stupidity
of it all, she thought, rebellious and
bewildered.

"Have some brandy," said the man, pouring out a little
into a small cup.

Anna-Rose turned her eyes on him without moving the rest of her.
She recognized him. He was going to be sorry for them again. He had
much better be sorry for himself now, she thought, because he, just
as much as they were, was bound for a watery bier.

"Thank you," she said distantly, for not only did she
hate the smell of brandy but Aunt Alice had enjoined her with
peculiar strictness on no account to talk to strange men, "I
don't drink."

"Then I'll give the other one some," said the
man.

"She too," said Anna-Rose, not changing her position
but keeping a drearily watchful eye on him, "is a total
abstainer."

"Well, I'll go and fetch some of your warm things for
you. Tell me where your cabin is. You haven't got enough
on."

"Thank you," said Anna-Rose distantly, "we have
quite enough on, considering the occasion. We're dressed for
drowning."