Christopher and Columbus by Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

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"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."

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 _tete-a-tete_ 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.

CHAPTER VII

There was that about Mr. Twist which, once one had begun them,
encouraged confidences; something kind about his eyes, something not too
determined about his chin. He bore no resemblance to those pictures of
efficient Americans in advertisements with which Europe is
familiar,--eagle-faced gentlemen with intimidatingly firm mouths and
chins, wiry creatures, physically and mentally perfect, offering in
capital letters to make you Just Like Them. Mr. Twist was the reverse of
eagle-faced. He was also the reverse of good-looking; that is, he would
have been very handsome indeed, as Anna-Rose remarked several days later
to Anna-Felicitas, when the friendship had become a settled
thing,--which indeed it did as soon as Mr. Twist had finished wiping
their eyes and noses that first afternoon, it being impossible, they
discovered, to have one's eyes and noses wiped by somebody without being
friends afterwards (for such an activity, said Anna-Felicitas, belonged
to the same order of events as rescue from fire, lions, or drowning,
after which in books you married him; but this having only been wiping,
said Anna-Rose, the case was adequately met by friendship)--he would
have been very handsome indeed if he hadn't had a face.

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