Christopher and Columbus Part 9

"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 b.u.t.tonhook. 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 b.u.t.tonhook 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 a.s.suaged. 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 circ.u.mstance 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.

"I suppose one might call it that," said Anna-Rose after a pause of consideration, tying her shoe-laces.

"Do you mean to say," said the ladies with one voice, feeling themselves now on the very edge of a scandal, "he was forced to fly from Westphalia?"

"I suppose one might put it that way," said Anna-Rose, again considering.

She took her cap off its hook and adjusted it over her hair with a deliberation intended to a.s.sure Anna-Felicitas that she was remaining calm. "Except that it wasn't from Westphalia he flew, but Prussia," she said.

"Prussia?" cried the ladies as one woman, again rising themselves on their elbows.

"That's where our father lived," said Anna-Rose, staring at them in her surprise at their surprise. "So of course, as he lived there, when he died he did that there too."

"Prussia?" cried the ladies again. "He died? You said your father fled his country."

"No. _You_ said that," said Anna-Rose.

She gave her cap a final tug down over her ears and turned to the door.

She felt as if she quite soon again in spite of Anna-Felicitas, might not be able to be a lady.

"After all, it _is_ what you do when you go to heaven," she said as she opened the door, unable to resist, according to her custom, having the last word.

"But Prussia?" they still cried, still b.u.t.ton-holing her, as it were, from afar. "Then--you were born in Prussia?"

"Yes, but we couldn't help it," said Anna-Rose; and shut the door quickly behind her.

CHAPTER VIII

Mr. Twist, who was never able to be anything but kind--he had the most amiable mouth and chin in the world, and his name was Edward--took a lively interest in the plans and probable future of the two Annas. He also took a lively and solicitous interest in their present, and a profoundly sympathetic one in their past. In fact, their three tenses interested him to the exclusion of almost everything else, and his chief desire was to see them safely through any shoals there might be waiting them in the shape of Uncle Arthur's friends--he distrusted Uncle Arthur, and therefore his friends--into the safe and pleasant waters of real American hospitality and kindliness.

He knew that such waters abounded for those who could find the tap. He reminded himself of that which he had been taught since childhood, of the mighty heart of America which, once touched, would take persons like the twins right in and never let them out again. But it had to be touched. It had, as it were, to be put in connection with them by means of advertis.e.m.e.nt. America, he reflected, was a little deaf. She had to be shouted to. But once she heard, once she thoroughly grasped ...