Christopher and Columbus (9 page)

Still, a ship is a ship, and it is wonderful what can be managed
in the way of dalliance if one is shut up on one long enough; and
the Misses Twinkler, in spite of their loutishness, their apparent
baldness, and their constant round-eyed solemnity, would no doubt
have been the objects of advances before New York was reached if it
hadn't been for Mr. Twist. There wasn't a girl under forty
in the second class on that voyage, the young men resentfully
pointed out to each other, except these two kids who were too much
under it, and a young lady of thirty who sat manicuring her nails
most of the day with her back supported by a life-boat, and
polishing them with red stuff till they flashed rosily in the sun.
This young lady was avoided for the first two days, while the young
men still remembered their mothers, because of what she looked
like; but was greatly loved for the rest of the voyage precisely
for that reason.

Still, every one couldn't get near her. She was only one;
and there were at least a dozen active, cooped-up young men taking
lithe, imprisoned exercise in long, swift steps up and down the
deck, ready for any sort of enterprise, bursting with energy and
sea-air and spirits. So that at last the left-overs, those of the
young men the lady of the rosy nails was less kind to, actually in
their despair attempted ghastly flirtations with the two German
ladies. They approached them with a kind of angry amorousness. They
tucked them up roughly in rugs. They brought them cushions as
though they were curses. And it was through this
rapprochement
, in the icy warmth of which the German
ladies expanded like bulky flowers and grew at least ten years
younger, the ten years they shed being their most respectable ones,
that the ship became aware of the nationality of the Misses
Twinkler.

The German ladies were not really German, as they explained
directly there were no more submarines about, for a good woman,
they said, becomes automatically merged into her husband, and they,
therefore, were merged into Americans, both of them, and as loyal
as you could find, but the Twinklers were the real thing, they
said,--real, unadulterated, arrogant Junkers, which is why they
wouldn't talk to anybody; for no Junker, said the German
ladies, thinks anybody good enough to be talked to except another
Junker. The German ladies themselves had by sheer luck not been
born Junkers. They had missed it very narrowly, but they had missed
it, for which they were very thankful seeing what believers they
were, under the affectionate manipulation of their husbands, in
democracy; but they came from the part of Germany where Junkers
most abound, and knew the sort of thing well.

It seemed to Mr. Twist, who caught scraps of conversation as he
came and went, that in the cabin the Twinklers must have alienated
sympathy. They had. They had done more; they had got themselves
actively disliked.

From the first moment when Anna-Rose had dared to peep into
their shrouded bunks the ladies had been prejudiced, and this
prejudice had later flared up into a great and justified dislike.
The ladies, to begin with, hadn't known that they were von
Twinklers, but had supposed them mere Twinklers, and the von, as
every German knows, makes all the difference, especially in the
case of Twinklers, who, without it, were a race, the ladies knew,
of small shopkeepers, laundresses and postmen in the Westphalian
district, but with it were one of the oldest families in Prussia;
known to all Germans; possessed of a name ensuring subservience
wherever it went.

In this stage of preliminary ignorance the ladies had treated
the two apparently ordinary Twinklers with the severity their
conduct, age, and obvious want of means deserved; and when, goaded
by their questionings, the smaller and more active Twinkler had let
out her von at them much as one lets loose a dog when one is alone
and weak against the attacks of an enemy, instead of falling in
harmoniously with the natural change of attitude of the ladies,
which became immediately perfectly polite and conciliatory, as well
as motherly in its interest and curiosity, the two young Junkers
went dumb. They would have nothing to do with the most motherly
questioning. And just in proportion as the German ladies found
themselves full of eager milk of kindness, only asking to be
permitted to nourish, so did they find themselves subsequently,
after a day or two of such uncloaked repugnance to it, left with
quantities of it useless on their hands and all going sour.

From first to last the Twinklers annoyed them. As plain
Twinklers they had been tiresome in a hundred ways in the cabin,
and as von Twinklers they were intolerable in their high-nosed
indifference.

It had naturally been expected by the elder ladies at the
beginning of the journey, that two obscure Twinklers of such
manifest youth should rise politely and considerately each morning
very early, and get themselves dressed and out of the way in at the
most ten minutes, leaving the cabin clear for the slow and careful
putting together bit by bit of that which ultimately emerged a
perfect specimen of a lady of riper years, but the weedy Twinkler
insisted on lying in her berth so late that if the ladies wished to
be in time for the best parts of breakfast, which they naturally
and passionately did wish, they were forced to dress in her
presence, which was most annoying and awkward.

It is true she lay with closed eyes, apparently apathetic, but
you never know with persons of that age. Experience teaches not to
trust them. They shut their eyes, and yet seem, later on, to have
seen; they apparently sleep, and afterwards are heard asking their
spectacled American friend what people do on a ship, a place of so
much gustiness, if their hair gets blown off into the sea. Also the
weedy one had a most tiresome trick of being sick instantly every
time Odol was used, or a little brandy was drunk. Odol is most
refreshing; it has a lovely smell, without which no German bedroom
is complete. And the brandy was not common schnaps, but an old
expensive brandy that, regarded as a smell, was a credit to
anybody's cabin.

The German ladies would have persisted, and indeed did persist
in using Odol and drinking a little brandy, indifferent to the
feeble prayer from the upper berth which floated down entreating
them not to, but in their own interests they were forced to give it
up. The objectionable child did not pray a second time; she passed
immediately from prayer to performance. Of two disagreeables wise
women choose the lesser, but they remain resentful.

The other Twinkler, the small active one, did get up early and
take herself off, but she frequently mixed up her own articles of
toilet with those belonging to the ladies, and would pin up her
hair, preparatory to washing her face, with their hairpins.

When they discovered this they hid them, and she, not finding
any, having come to the end of her own, lost no time in
irresolution but picked up their nail-scissors and pinned up her
pigtails with that.

It was a particularly sacred pair of nail-scissors that almost
everything blunted. To use them for anything but nails was an
outrage, but the grossest outrage was to touch them at all. When
they told her sharply that the scissors were very delicate and she
was instantly to take them out of her hair, she tugged them out in
a silence that was itself impertinent, and pinned up her pigtails
with their buttonhook instead.

Then they raised themselves on their elbows in their berths and
asked her what sort of a bringing up she could have had, and they
raised their voices as well, for though they were grateful, as they
later on declared, for not having been born Junkers, they had
nevertheless acquired by practice in imitation some of the more
salient Junker characteristics.

"You are
salop
," said the upper berth lady,--which is
untranslatable, not on grounds of propriety but of idiom. It is
not, however, a term of praise.

"Yes, that is what you are--
salop
," echoed the lower berth lady. "And your
sister is
salop
too--lying in bed till all hours."

"It is shameful for girls to be
salop
," said the upper berth.

"I didn't know it was your buttonhook. I thought it was
ours," said Anna-Rose, pulling this out too with
vehemence.

"That is because you are
salop
," said the lower berth.

"And I didn't know it wasn't our scissors
either."

"
Salop, salop
," said the lower berth, beating her hand
on the wooden edge of her bunk.

"And--and I'm sorry."

Anna-Rose's face was very red. She didn't look sorry,
she looked angry. And so she was; but it was with herself, for
having failed in discernment and grown-upness. She ought to have
noticed that the scissors and buttonhook were not hers. She had
pounced on them with the ill-considered haste of twelve years old.
She hadn't been a lady,--she whose business it was to be an
example and mainstay to Anna-Felicitas, in all things going first,
showing her the way.

She picked up the sponge and plunged it into the water, and was
just going to plunge her annoyed and heated face in after it when
the upper berth lady said: "Your mother should be ashamed of
herself to have brought you up so badly."

"And send you off like this before she has taught you even
the ABC of manners," said the lower berth.

"Evidently," said the upper berth, "she can have
none herself."

"Evidently," said the lower berth, "she is
herself
salop
."

The sponge, dripping with water, came quickly out of the basin
in Anna-Rose's clenched fist. For one awful instant she stood
there in her nightgown, like some bird of judgment poised for
dreadful flight, her eyes flaming, her knotted pigtails bristling
on the top of her head.

The wet sponge twitched in her hand. The ladies did not realize
the significance of that twitching, and continued to offer large
angry faces as a target. One of the faces would certainly have
received the sponge and Anna-Rose have been disgraced for ever, if
it hadn't been for the prompt and skilful intervention of
Anna-Felicitas.

For Anna-Felicitas, roused from her morning languor by the
unusual loudness of the German ladies' voices, and smitten into
attention and opening of her eyes, heard the awful things they were
saying and saw the sponge. Instantly she knew, seeing it was
Anna-Rose who held it, where it would be in another second, and
hastily putting out a shaking little hand from her top berth,
caught hold feebly but obstinately of the upright ends of
Anna-Rose's knotted pigtails.

"I'm going to be sick," she announced with great
presence of mind and entire absence of candour.

She knew, however, that she only had to sit up in order to be
sick, and the excellent child--
das gute Kind
, as her father used to call her because she,
so conveniently from the parental point of view, invariably never
wanted to be or do anything particularly--without hesitation
sacrificed herself in order to save her sister's honour, and
sat up and immediately was.

By the time Anna-Rose had done attending to her, all fury had
died out. She never could see Anna Felicitas lying back pale and
exhausted after one of these attacks without forgiving her and
everybody else everything.

She climbed up on the wooden steps to smoothe her pillow and
tuck her blanket round her, and when Anna-Felicitas, her eyes shut,
murmured, "Christopher--don't mind
them
--" and she suddenly realized, for they never
called each other by those names except in great moments of emotion
when it was necessary to cheer and encourage, what Anna-Felicitas
had saved her from, and that it had been done deliberately, she
could only whisper back, because she was so afraid of crying,
"No, no, Columbus dear--of course--who really cares about
them
--" and came down off the steps with no fight
left in her.

Also the wrath of the ladies was considerably assuaged. They had
retreated behind their curtains until the so terribly unsettled
Twinkler should be quiet again, and when once more they drew them a
crack apart in order to keep an eye on what the other one might be
going to do next and saw her doing nothing except, with meekness,
getting dressed, they merely inquired what part of Westphalia she
came from, and only in the tone they asked it did they convey that
whatever part it was, it was anyhow a contemptible one.

"We don't come from Westphalia," said Anna-Rose,
bristling a little, in spite of herself, at their persistent
baiting.

Anna-Felicitas listened in cold anxiousness. She didn't want
to have to be sick again. She doubted whether she could bear
it.

"You must come from somewhere," said the lower berth,
"and being a Twinkler it must be Westphalia."

"We don't really," said Anna-Rose, mindful of
Anna-Felicitas's words and making a great effort to speak
politely. "We come from England."

"England!" cried the lower berth, annoyed by this
quibbling. "You were born in Westphalia. All Twinklers are
born in Westphalia."

"Invariably they are," said the upper berth. "The
only circumstance that stops them is if their mothers happen to be
temporarily absent."

"But we weren't, really," said Anna-Rose,
continuing her efforts to remain bland.

"Are you pretending--pretending to
us
," said the lower berth lady, again beating her
hand on the edge of her bunk, "that you are not
German?"

"Our father was German," said Anna-Rose, driven into a
corner, "but I don't suppose he is now. I shouldn't
think he'd want to go on being one directly he got to a really
neutral place."

"Has he fled his country?" inquired the lower berth
sternly, scenting what she had from the first suspected, something
sinister in the Twinkler background.