Christopher and Columbus (5 page)

"I'm not minding leaving England," said Anna-Rose
quickly. "At least, not more than's just proper."

"Oh, no more am I, of course," said Anna-Felicitas
airily. "Except what's proper."

"And even if we were feeling it
dreadfully
," said Anna-Rose, with a little catch in
her voice, "which, of course, we're not, dinner
wouldn't make any difference. Dinner doesn't alter
fundamentals."

"But it helps one to bear them," said
Anna-Felicitas.

"Bear!" repeated Anna-Rose, her chin in the air.
"We haven't got much to bear. Don't let me hear you
talk of bearing things, Anna-F."

"I won't after dinner," promised
Anna-Felicitas.

They thought perhaps they had better ask somebody whether there
wouldn't soon be something to eat, but the other passengers had
all disappeared. They were by themselves on the gloomy deck, and
there were no lights. The row of cabin windows along the wall were
closely shuttered, and the door they had come through when first
they came on deck was shut too, and they couldn't find it in
the dark. It seemed so odd to be feeling along a wall for a door
they knew was there and not be able to find it, that they began to
laugh; and the undiscoverable door cheered them up more than
anything that had happened since seeing the last of Uncle
Arthur.

"It's like a game," said Anna-Rose, patting her
hands softly and vainly along the wall beneath the shuttered
windows.

"It's like something in 'Alice in
Wonderland,'" said Anna-Felicitas, following in her
tracks.

A figure loomed through the mist and came toward them. They left
off patting, and stiffened into straight and motionless dignity
against the wall till it should have passed. But it didn't
pass. It was a male figure in a peaked cap, probably a steward,
they thought, and it stopped in front of them and said in an
American voice, "Hello."

Anna-Rose cast rapidly about in her mind for the proper form of
reply to Hello.

Anna-Felicitas, instinctively responsive to example murmured
"Hello" back again.

Anna-Rose, feeling sure that nobody ought to say just Hello to
people they had never seen before, and that Aunt Alice would think
they had brought it on themselves by being conspicuous, decided
that perhaps "Good-evening" would regulate the situation,
and said it.

"You ought to be at dinner," said the man, taking no
notice of this.

"That's what
we
think," agreed Anna-Felicitas earnestly.

"Can you please tell us how to get there?" asked
Anna-Rose, still distant, but polite, for she too very much wanted
to know.

"But
don't
tell us to ask the Captain," said
Anna-Felicitas, even more earnestly.

"No," said Anna-Rose, "because we
won't."

The man laughed. "Come right along with me," he said,
striding on; and they followed him as obediently as though such
persons as possible
böse Buben
didn't exist.

"First voyage I guess," said the man over his
shoulder.

"Yes," said the twins a little breathlessly, for the
man's legs were long and they could hardly keep up with
him.

"English?" said the man.

"Ye--es," said Anna-Rose.

"That's to say, practically," panted the
conscientious Anna-Felicitas.

"What say?" said the man, still striding on. "I
said," Anna-Felicitas endeavoured to explain, hurrying
breathlessly after him so as to keep within reach of his ear,
"practically."

"Ah," said the man; and after a silence, broken only
by the pantings for breath of the twins, he added: "Mother
with you?"

They didn't say anything to that, it seemed such a dreadful
question to have to answer, and luckily he didn't repeat it,
but, having got to the door they had been searching for, opened it
and stepped into the bright light inside, and putting out his arm
behind him pulled them in one after the other over the high wooden
door-frame.

Inside was the same stewardess they had seen earlier in the
afternoon, engaged in heatedly describing what sounded like
grievances to an official in buttons, who seemed indifferent. She
stopped suddenly when the man appeared, and the official took his
hands out of his pockets and became alert and attentive, and the
stewardess hastily picked up a tray she had set down and began to
move away along a passage.

The man, however, briefly called "Hi," and she turned
round and came back even more quickly than she had tried to go.

"You see," explained Anna-Rose in a pleased whisper to
Anna-Felicitas, "it's Hi she answers to."

"Yes," agreed Anna-Felicitas. "It's waste of
good circumlocutions to throw them away on her."

"Show these young ladies the dining-room," said the
man.

"Yes, sir," said the stewardess, as polite as you
please.

He nodded to them with a smile that developed for some reason
into a laugh, and turned away and beckoned to the official to
follow him, and went out again into the night.

"Who was that nice man?" inquired Anna-Rose, following
the stewardess down a broad flight of stairs that smelt of
india-rubber and machine-oil and cooking all mixed up together.

"And please," said Anna-Felicitas with mild severity,
"don't tell us to ask the Captain, because we really do
know better than that."

"I thought you must be relations," said the
stewardess.

"We are," said Anna-Rose. "We're
twins."

The stewardess stared. "Twins what of?" she asked.

"What of?" echoed Anna-Rose. "Why, of each other,
of course."

"I meant relations of the Captain's," said the
stewardess shortly, eyeing them with more disfavour than ever.

"You seem to have the Captain greatly on your mind,"
said Anna-Felicitas. "He is no relation of ours."

"You're not even friends, then?" asked the
stewardess, pausing to stare round at them at a turn in the stairs
as they followed her down arm-in-arm.

"Of course we're friends," said Anna-Rose with
some heat. "Do you suppose we quarrel?"

"No, I didn't suppose you quarrelled with the
Captain," said the stewardess tartly. "Not on board this
ship anyway."

She didn't know which of the two she disliked most, the
short girl or the long girl.

"You seem to be greatly obsessed by the Captain," said
Anna-Felicitas gently. "Obsessed!" repeated the
stewardess, tossing her head. She was unacquainted with the word,
but instantly suspected it of containing a reflection on her
respectability. "I've been a widow off and on for ten
years now," she said angrily, "and I guess it would take
more than even the Captain to obsess
me
."

They had reached the glass doors leading into the dining-room,
and the stewardess, having carried out her orders, paused before
indignantly leaving them and going upstairs again to say, "If
you're friends, what do you want to know his name for,
then?"

"Whose name?" asked Anna-Felicitas.

"The Captain's," said the stewardess.

"We don't want to know the Captain's name,"
said Anna-Felicitas patiently. "We don't want to know
anything about the Captain."

"Then--" began the stewardess. She restrained herself,
however, and merely bitterly remarking: "That gentleman
was
the Captain," went upstairs and left them.

Anna-Rose was the first to recover. "You see we took your
advice," she called up after her, trying to soften her heart,
for it was evident that for some reason her heart was hardened, by
flattery. "You
told
us to ask the Captain."

In their berths that night before they went to sleep, it
occurred to them that perhaps what was the matter with the
stewardess was that she needed a tip. At first, with their recent
experiences fresh in their minds, they thought that she was
probably passionately pro-Ally, and had already detected all those
Junkers in their past and accordingly couldn't endure them.
Then they remembered how Aunt Alice had said, "You will have
to give your stewardess a little something."

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."