This had greatly perturbed them at the time, for up to then they had been in the easy position of the tipped rather than the tippers, and anyhow they had no idea what one gave stewardesses. Neither, it appeared, had Aunt Alice; for, on being questioned, she said vaguely that as it was an American boat they were going on she supposed it would have to be American money, which was dollars, and she didn’t know much about dollars except that you divided them by four and multiplied them by five, or else it was the other way about; and when, feeling still uninformed, they had begged her to tell them why one did that, she said it was the quickest way of finding out what a dollar really was, and would they mind not talking any more for a little while because her head ached.
The tips they had seen administered during their short lives had all been given at the end of things, not at the beginning; but Americans, Aunt Alice told them, were in some respects, in spite of their talking English, different, and perhaps they were different just on this point and liked to be tipped at both ends. Anna-Rose wanted to crane out her head and call up to Anna-Felicitas and ask her whether she didn’t think that might be so, but was afraid of disturbing the people in the opposite berths.
Anna-Felicitas was in the top berth on their side of the cabin, and Anna-Rose as the elder and accordingly as she explained to Anna-Felicitas, needing more comfort, in the lower one. On the opposite side were two similar berths, each containing as Anna-Felicitas whispered after peeping cautiously through their closed curtains, — for at first on coming in after dinner to go to bed the cabin seemed empty, except for inanimate things, like clothes hanging up and an immense smell, — its human freight. They were awed by this discovery, for the human freight was motionless and speechless, and yet made none of the noises suggesting sleep.
They unpacked and undressed as silently and quickly as possible, but it was very difficult, for there seemed to be no room for anything, not even for themselves. Every now and then they glanced a little uneasily at the closed curtains, which bulged, and sniffed cautiously and delicately, trying to decide what the smell exactly was. It appeared to be a mixture of the sauce one had with plum pudding at Christmas, and German bedrooms in the morning. It was a smell they didn’t like the idea of sleeping with, but they saw no way of getting air. They thought of ringing for the stewardess and asking her to open a window, though they could see no window, but came to the conclusion it was better not to stir her up; not yet, at least, not till they had correctly diagnosed what was the matter with her. They said nothing out loud, for fear of disturbing whatever it was behind the curtains, but they knew what each was thinking, for one isn’t, as they had long ago found out, a twin for nothing.
There was a slight scuffle before Anna-Felicitas was safely hoisted up into her berth, her legs hanging helplessly down for some time after the rest of her was in it, and Anna-Rose, who had already neatly inserted herself into her own berth, after watching these legs in silence and fighting a desire to give them a tug and see what would happen, had to get out at last on hearing Anna-Felicitas begin to make sounds up there as though she were choking, and push them up in after her. Her head was then on a level with Anna-Felicitas’s berth, and she could see how Anna-Felicitas, having got her legs again, didn’t attempt to do anything with them in the way of orderly arrangement beneath the blankets, but lay huddled in an irregular heap, screwing her eyes up very tight and stuffing one of her pigtails into her mouth, and evidently struggling with what appeared to be an attack of immoderate and ill-timed mirth.
Anna-Rose observed her for a moment in silence, then was suddenly seized herself with a dreadful desire to laugh, and with a hasty glance round at the bulging curtains scrambled back into her own berth and pulled the sheet over her mouth.
She was sobering herself by going over her different responsibilities, checking them off on her fingers, — the two five-pound notes under her pillow for extra expenses till they were united in New York to their capital, the tickets, the passports, and Anna-Felicitas, — when two thick fair pigtails appeared dangling over the edge of her berth, followed by Anna-Felicitas’s head.
“You’ve forgotten to turn out the light,” whispered Anna-Felicitas, her eyelashes still wet from her late attack; and stretching her neck still further down till her face was scarlet with the effort and the blood rushing into it, she expressed a conviction to Anna-Rose that the human freight behind the curtains, judging from the suspicious negativeness of its behaviour, had no business in their cabin at all and was really stowaways.
“German stowaways,” added Anna-Felicitas, nodding her head emphatically, which was very skilful of her, thought Anna-Rose, considering that it was upside down. “German stowaways,” whispered Anna-Felicitas, sniffing expressively though cautiously.
Anna-Rose raised herself on her elbows and stared across at the bulging curtains. They certainly were very motionless and much curved. In spite of herself her flesh began to creep a little.
“They’re men,” whispered Anna-Felicitas, now dangerously congested. “Stowaways are.”
There had been no one in the cabin when first they came on board and took their things down, and they hadn’t been in it since till they came to bed.
“German men,” whispered Anna-Felicitas, again with a delicate expressive sniff.
“Nonsense,” whispered Anna-Rose, stoutly. “Men never come into ladies’ cabins. And there’s skirts on the hooks.”
“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.
CHAPTER V
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 aft
erwards 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 A
merican 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.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 193
