LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

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."

Скачать книгу