Part 6 (1/2)

That the submarine must be mad, as the official remarked, to fire on an American s.h.i.+p, didn't console anybody, and his further a.s.surance 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 s.h.i.+p left the landing-stage by looking as though he were soon going to be sorry for her, came across from the first cla.s.s, 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 n.o.body 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 d.a.m.ned.'”

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 d.a.m.n so as to make it clearer for him and said ”You poor d.a.m.ned 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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?”