“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.”
The man laughed, and said there would be no drowning, and that they had a splendid captain, and were outdistancing the submarine hand over fist. Anna-Rose didn’t believe him, and suspected him of supposing her to be in need of cheering, but a gleam of comfort did in spite of herself steal into her heart.
He went away, and presently came back with a blanket and some pillows.
“If you will sit on the floor,” he said, stuffing the pillows behind their backs, during which Anna-Felicitas didn’t open her eyes, and her head hung about so limply that it looked as if it might at any moment roll off, “you may at least be as comfortable as you can.”
Anna-Rose pointed out, while she helped him arrange Anna-Felicitas’s indifferent head on the pillow, that she saw little use in being comfortable just a minute or two before drowning. “Drowning be hanged,” said the man.
“That’s how Uncle Arthur used to talk,” said Anna-Rose, feeling suddenly quite at home, “except that he would have said ‘Drowning be damned.’”
The man laughed. “Is he dead?” he asked, busy with Anna-Felicitas’s head, which defied their united efforts to make it hold itself up.
“Dead?” echoed Anna-Rose, to whom the idea of Uncle Arthur’s ever being anything so quiet as dead and not able to say any swear words for such a long time as eternity seemed very odd.
“You said he used to talk like that.”
“Oh, no he’s not dead at all. Quite the contrary.”
The man laughed again, and having got Anna-Felicitas’s head arranged in a position that at least, as Anna-Rose pointed out, had some sort of self-respect in it, he asked who they were with.
Anna-Rose looked at him with as much defiant independence as she could manage to somebody who was putting a pillow behind her back. He was going to be sorry for them. She saw it coming. He was going to say “You poor things,” or words to that effect. That’s what the people round Uncle Arthur’s had said to them. That’s what everybody had said to them since the war began, and Aunt Alice’s friends had said it to her too, because she had to have her nieces live with her, and no doubt Uncle Arthur’s friends who played golf with him had said it to him as well, except that probably they put in a damn so as to make it clearer for him and said “You poor damned thing,” or something like that, and she was sick of the very words poor things. Poor things, indeed! “We’re with each other,” she said briefly, lifting her chin.
“Well, I don’t think that’s enough,” said the man. “Not half enough. You ought to have a mother or something.”
“Everybody can’t have mothers,” said Anna-Rose very defiantly indeed, tears rushing into her eyes.
The man tucked the blanket round their resistless legs. “There now,” he said. “That’s better. What’s the good of catching your deaths?”
Anna-Rose, glad that he hadn’t gone on about mothers, said that with so much death imminent, catching any of it no longer seemed to her particularly to matter, and the man laughed and pulled over a chair and sat down beside her.
She didn’t know what he saw anywhere in that dreadful situation to laugh at, but just the sound of a laugh was extraordinarily comforting. It made one feel quite different. Wholesome again. Like waking up to sunshine and one’s morning bath and breakfast after a nightmare. He seemed altogether a very comforting man. She liked him to sit near them. She hoped he was a good man. Aunt Alice had said there were very few good men, hardly any in fact except one’s husband, but this one did seem one of the few exceptions. And she thought that by now, he having brought them all those pillows, he could no longer come under the heading of strange men. When he wasn’t looking she put out her hand secretly and touched his coat where he wouldn’t feel it. It comforted her to touch his coat. She hoped Aunt Alice wouldn’t have disapproved of seeing her sitting side by side with him and liking it.
Aunt Alice had been, as her custom was, vague, when Anna-Rose, having given her the desired promise not to talk or let Anna-Felicitas talk to strange men, and desiring to collect any available information for her guidance in her new responsible position had asked, “But when are men not strange?”
“When you’ve married them,” said Aunt Alice. “After that, of course, you love them.”
And she sighed heavily, for it was bed-time.
CHAPTER VI
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.”
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 194
