Christopher and Columbus by Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

C >> Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim >> Christopher and Columbus

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It grew plain to Aunt Alice after another month of them that Uncle
Arthur would not much longer endure his nieces, and that even if he did
she would not be able to endure Uncle Arthur. The thought was very
dreadful to her that she was being forced to choose between two duties,
and that she could not fulfil both. It came to this at last, that she
must either stand by her nieces, her dead sister's fatherless children,
and face all the difficulties and discomforts of such a standing by, go
away with them, take care of them, till the war was over; or she must
stand by Arthur.

She chose Arthur.

How could she, for nieces she had hardly seen, abandon her husband?
Besides, he had scolded her so steadily during the whole of their
married life that she was now unalterably attached to him. Sometimes a
wild thought did for a moment illuminate the soothing dusk of her mind,
the thought of doing the heroic thing, leaving him for them, and helping
and protecting the two poor aliens till happier days should return. If
there were any good stuff in Arthur would he not recognize, however
angry he might be, that she was doing at least a Christian thing? But
this illumination would soon die out. Her comforts choked it. She was
too well-fed. After twenty years of it, she no longer had the figure for
lean and dangerous enterprises.

And having definitely chosen Arthur, she concentrated what she had of
determination in finding an employment for her nieces that would remove
them beyond the range of his growing wrath. She found it in a children's
hospital as far away as Worcestershire, a hospital subscribed to very
largely by Arthur, for being a good man he subscribed to hospitals. The
matron objected, but Aunt Alice overrode the matron; and from January to
April Uncle Arthur's house was pure from Germans.

Then they came back again.

It had been impossible to keep them. The nurses wouldn't work with them.
The sick children had relapses when they discovered who it was who
brought them their food, and cried for their mothers. It had been
arranged between Aunt Alice and the matron that the unfortunate
nationality of her nieces should not be mentioned. They were just to be
Aunt Alice's nieces, the Miss Twinklers,--("We will leave out the von,"
said Aunt Alice, full of unnatural cunning. "They have a von, you know,
poor things--such a very labelling thing to have. But Twinkler without
it might quite well be English. Who can possibly tell? It isn't as
though they had had some shocking name like Bismarck.")

Nothing, however, availed against the damning evidence of the rolled
r's. Combined with the silvery fair hair and the determined little
mouths and chins, it was irresistible. Clearly they were foreigners, and
equally clearly they were not Italians, or Russians, or French. Within a
week the nurses spoke of them in private as Fritz and Franz. Within a
fortnight a deputation of staff sisters went to the matron and asked, on
patriotic grounds, for the removal of the Misses Twinkler. The matron,
with the fear of Uncle Arthur in her heart, for he was altogether the
biggest subscriber, sharply sent the deputation about its business; and
being a matron of great competence and courage she would probably have
continued to be able to force the new probationers upon the nurses if it
had not been for the inability, which was conspicuous, of the younger
Miss Twinkler to acquire efficiency.

In vain did Anna-Rose try to make up for Anna-Felicitas's shortcomings
by a double zeal, a double willingness and cheerfulness. Anna-Felicitas
was a born dreamer, a born bungler with her hands and feet. She not only
never from first to last succeeded in filling the thirty hot-water
bottles, which were her care, in thirty minutes, which was her duty, but
every time she met a pail standing about she knocked against it and it
fell over. Patients and nurses watched her approach with apprehension.
Her ward was in a constant condition of flood.

"It's because she's thinking of something else," Anna-Rose tried eagerly
to explain to the indignant sister-in-charge.

"Thinking of something else!" echoed the sister.

"She reads, you see, a lot--whenever she gets the chance she reads--"

"Reads!" echoed the sister.

"And then, you see, she gets thinking--"

"Thinking! Reading doesn't make _me_ think."

"With much regret," wrote the matron to Aunt Alice, "I am obliged to
dismiss your younger niece, Nurse Twinkler II. She has no vocation for
nursing. On the other hand, your elder niece is shaping well and I shall
be pleased to keep her on."

"But I can't stop on," Anna-Rose said to the matron when she announced
these decisions to her. "I can't be separated from my sister. I'd like
very much to know what would become of that poor child without me to
look after her. You forget I'm the eldest."

The matron put down her pen,--she was a woman who made many notes--and
stared at Nurse Twinkler. Not in this fashion did her nurses speak to
her. But Anna-Rose, having been brought up in a spot remote from
everything except love and laughter, had all the fearlessness of
ignorance; and in her extreme youth and smallness, with her eyes shining
and her face heated she appeared to the matron rather like an indignant
kitten.

"Very well," said the matron gravely, suppressing a smile. "One should
always do what one considers one's first duty."

So the Twinklers went back to Uncle Arthur, and the matron was greatly
relieved, for she certainly didn't want them, and Uncle Arthur said
Damn.

"Arthur," gently reproved his wife.

"I say Damn and I mean Damn," said Uncle Arthur. "What the hell can
we--"

"Arthur," said his wife.

"I say, what the hell can we do with a couple of Germans? If people
wouldn't swallow them last winter are they going to swallow them any
better now? God, what troubles a man lets himself in for when he
marries!"

"I do beg you, Arthur, not to use those coarse words," said Aunt Alice,
tears in her gentle eyes.

There followed a period of desperate exertion on the part of Aunt Alice.
She answered advertisements and offered the twins as nursery
governesses, as cheerful companions, as mothers' helps, even as orphans
willing to be adopted. She relinquished every claim on salaries, she
offered them for nothing, and at last she offered them accompanied by a
bonus. "Their mother was English. They are quite English," wrote Aunt
Alice innumerable times in innumerable letters. "I feel bound, however,
to tell you that they once had a German father, but of course it was
through no fault of their own," etc., etc. Aunt Alice's hand ached with
writing letters; and any solution of the problem that might possibly
have been arrived at came to nothing because Anna-Rose would not be
separated from Anna-Felicitas, and if it was difficult to find anybody
who would take on one German nobody at all could be found to take on
two.

Meanwhile Uncle Arthur grew nightly more dreadful in bed. Aunt Alice was
at her wits' end, and took to crying helplessly. The twins racked their
brains to find a way out, quite as anxious to relieve Uncle Arthur of
their presence as he was to be relieved. If only they could be
independent, do something, work, go as housemaids,--anything.

They concocted an anonymous-advertisement and secretly sent it to _The
Times_, clubbing their pocket-money together to pay for it. The
advertisement was:

Energetic Sisters of belligerent ancestry but unimpeachable
Sympathies wish for any sort of work consistent with respectability.
No objection to being demeaned.

Anna-Felicitas inquired what that last word meant for it was Anna-Rose's
word, and Anna-Rose explained that it meant not minding things like
being housemaids. "Which we don't," said Anna-Rose. "Upper and Under.
I'll be Upper, of course, because I'm the eldest."

Anna-Felicitas suggested putting in what it meant then, for she regarded
it with some doubt, but Anna-Rose, it being her word, liked it, and
explained that it Put a whole sentence into a nut-shell, and wouldn't
change it.

No one answered this advertisement except a society in London for
helping alien enemies in distress.

"Charity," said Anna-Rose, turning up her nose.

"And fancy thinking _us_ enemies," said Anna-Felicitas, "Us. While
mummy--" Her eyes filled with tears. She kept them back, however,
behind convenient long eye-lashes.

Then they saw an advertisement in the front page of _The Times_ that
they instantly answered without saying a word to Aunt Alice. The
advertisement was:

Slightly wounded Officer would be glad to find intelligent and
interesting companion who can drive a 14 h.p. Humber. Emoluments by
arrangement.

"We'll _tell_ him we're intelligent and interesting," said Anna-Rose,
eagerly.

"Yes--who knows if we wouldn't be really, if we were given a chance?"
said Anna-Felicitas, quite flushed with excitement.

"And if he engages us we'll take him on in turns, so that the emoluments
won't have to be doubled."

"Yes--because he mightn't like paying twice over."

"Yes--and while the preliminaries are being settled we could be learning
to drive Uncle Arthur's car."

"Yes--except that it's a Daimler, and aren't they different?"

"Yes--but only about the same difference as there is between a man and a
woman. A man and a woman are both human beings, you know. And Daimlers
and Humbers are both cars."

"I see," said Anna-Felicitas; but she didn't.

They wrote an enthusiastic answer that very day.

The only thing they were in doubt about, they explained toward the end
of the fourth sheet, when they had got to politenesses and were
requesting the slightly wounded officer to allow them to express their
sympathy with his wounds, was that they had not yet had an opportunity
of driving a Humber car, but that this opportunity, of course, would be
instantly provided by his engaging them. Also, would he kindly tell them
if it was a male companion he desired to have, because if so it was very
unfortunate, for neither of them were males, but quite the contrary.

They got no answer to this for three weeks, and had given up all hope
and come to the depressing conclusion that they must have betrayed their
want of intelligence and interestingness right away, when one day a
letter came from General Headquarters in France, addressed _To Both the
Miss Twinklers_, and it was a long letter, pages long, from the slightly
wounded officer, telling them he had been patched up again and sent back
to the front, and their answer to his advertisement had been forwarded
to him there, and that he had had heaps of other answers to it, and that
the one he had liked best of all was theirs; and that some day he hoped
when he was back again, and able to drive himself, to show them how
glorious motoring was, if their mother would bring them,--quick motoring
in his racing car, sixty miles an hour motoring, flashing through the
wonders of the New Forest, where he lived. And then there was a long bit
about what the New Forest must be looking like just then, all quiet in
the spring sunshine, with lovely dappled bits of shade underneath the
big beeches, and the heather just coming alive, and all the winding
solitary roads so full of peace, so empty of noise.

"Write to me, you two children," said the letter at the end. "You've no
idea what it's like getting letters from home out here. Write and tell
me what you do and what the garden is like these fine afternoons. The
lilacs must be nearly done, but I'm sure there's the smell of them
still about, and I'm sure you have a beautiful green close-cut lawn, and
tea is brought out on to it, and there's no sound, no sort of sound,
except birds, and you two laughing, and I daresay a jolly dog barking
somewhere just for fun and not because he's angry."

The letter was signed (Captain) John Desmond, and there was a scrawl in
the corner at the end: "It's for jolly little English kids like you that
we're fighting, God bless you. Write to me again soon."

"English kids like us!"

They looked at each other. They had not mentioned their belligerent
ancestry in their letter. They felt uncomfortable, and as if Captain
Desmond were fighting for them, as it were, under false pretences. They
also wondered why he should conclude they were kids.

They wrote to him again, explaining that they were not exactly what
could be described as English, but on the other hand neither were they
exactly what could be described as German. "We would be very glad indeed
if we were really _something_," they added.

But after their letter had been gone only a few days they saw in the
list of casualties in _The Times_ that Captain John Desmond had been
killed.

And then one day the real solution was revealed, and it was revealed to
Uncle Arthur as he sat in his library on a wet Sunday morning
considering his troubles in detail.

Like most great ideas it sprang full-fledged into being,--obvious,
unquestionable, splendidly simple,--out of a trifle. For, chancing to
raise his heavy and disgusted eyes to the bookshelves in front of him,
they rested on one particular book, and on the back of this book stood
out in big gilt letters the word

AMERICA

There were other words on its back, but this one alone stood out, and it
had all the effect of a revelation.

There. That was it. Of course. That was the way out. Why the devil
hadn't Alice thought of _that_? He knew some Americans; he didn't like
them, but he knew them; and he would write to them, or Alice would write
to them, and tell them the twins were coming. He would give the twins
L200,--damn it, nobody could say that wasn't handsome, especially in
war-time, and for a couple of girls who had no earthly sort of claim on
him, whatever Alice might choose to think they had on her. Yet it was
such a confounded mixed-up situation that he wasn't at all sure he
wouldn't come under the Defence of the Realm Act, by giving them money,
as aiding the enemy. Well, he would risk that. He would risk anything to
be rid of them. Ship 'em off, that was the thing to do. They would fall
on their feet right enough over there. America still swallowed Germans
without making a face.

Uncle Arthur reflected for a moment with extreme disgust on the
insensibility of the American palate. "Lost their chance, that's what
_they've_ done," he said to himself--for this was 1916, and America had
not yet made her magnificent entry into the war--as he had already said
to himself a hundred times. "Lost their chance of coming in on the side
of civilization, and helping sweep the world up tidy of barbarism.
Shoulder to shoulder with us, that's where _they_ ought to have been.
English-speaking races--duty to the world--" He then damned the
Americans; but was suddenly interrupted by perceiving that if they had
been shoulder to shoulder with him and England he wouldn't have been
able to send them his wife's German nieces to take care of. There was,
he conceded, that advantage resulting from their attitude. He could not,
however, concede any others.

At luncheon he was very nearly gay. It was terrible to see Uncle
Arthur very nearly gay, and both his wife and the twins were most
uncomfortable. "I wonder what's the matter now," sighed Aunt Alice
to herself, as she nervously crumbled her toast.

It could mean nothing good, Arthur in such spirits on a wet Sunday, when
he hadn't been able to get his golf and the cook had overdone the joint.

CHAPTER III

And so, on a late September afternoon, the _St. Luke_, sliding away from
her moorings, relieved Uncle Arthur of his burden.

It was final this time, for the two alien enemies once out of it would
not be let into England again till after the war. The enemies themselves
knew it was final; and the same knowledge that made Uncle Arthur feel so
pleasant as he walked home across his park from golf to tea that for a
moment he was actually of a mind to kiss Aunt Alice when he got in, and
perhaps even address her in the language of resuscitated passion, which
in Uncle Arthur's mouth was Old Girl,--an idea he abandoned, however, in
case it should make her self-satisfied and tiresome--the same knowledge
that produced these amiable effects in Uncle Arthur, made his alien
nieces cling very close together as they leaned over the side of the
_St. Luke_ hungrily watching the people on the wharf.

For they loved England. They loved it with the love of youth whose
enthusiasms have been led by an adored teacher always in one direction.
And they were leaving that adored teacher, their mother, in England. It
seemed like losing her a second time to go away, so far away, and leave
her there. It was nonsense, they knew, to feel like that. She was with
them just the same; wherever they went now she would be with them, and
they could hear her saying at that very moment, "Little darlings,
_don't_ cry...." But it was a gloomy, drizzling afternoon, the sort of
afternoon anybody might be expected to cry on, and not one of the people
waving handkerchiefs were waving handkerchiefs to them.

"We ought to have hired somebody," thought Anna-Rose, eyeing the
handkerchiefs with miserable little eyes.

"I believe I've gone and caught a cold," remarked Anna-Felicitas in her
gentle, staid voice, for she was having a good deal of bother with her
eyes and her nose, and could no longer conceal the fact that she was
sniffing.

Anna-Rose discreetly didn't look at her. Then she suddenly whipped out
her handkerchief and waved it violently.

Anna-Felicitas forgot her eyes and nose and craned her head forward.
"Who are you waving to?" she asked, astonished.

"Good-bye!" cried Anna-Rose, waving, "Good-bye! Good-bye!"

"Who? Where? Who are you talking to?" asked Anna-Felicitas. "Has any one
come to see us off?"

"Good-bye! Good-bye!" cried Anna-Rose.

The figures on the wharf were getting smaller, but not until they had
faded into a blur did Anna-Rose leave off waving. Then she turned round
and put her arm through Anna-Felicitas's and held on to her very tight
for a minute.

"There wasn't anybody," she said. "Of course there wasn't. But do you
suppose I was going to have us _looking_ like people who aren't seen
off?"

And she drew Anna-Felicitas away to the chairs, and when they were
safely in them and rolled up to their chins in the rug, she added, "That
man--" and then stopped. "What man?"

"Standing just behind us--"

"Was there a man?" asked Anna-Felicitas, who never saw men any more than
she, in her brief career at the hospital, had seen pails.

"Yes. Looking as if in another moment he'd be sorry for us," said
Anna-Rose.

"Sorry for us!" repeated Anna-Felicitas, roused to indignation.

"Yes. Did you ever?"

Anna-Felicitas said, with a great deal of energy while she put her
handkerchief finally and sternly away, that she didn't ever; and after a
pause Anna-Rose, remembering one of her many new responsibilities and
anxieties--she had so many that sometimes for a time she didn't remember
some of them--turned her head to Anna-Felicitas, and fixing a worried
eye on her said, "You won't go forgetting your Bible, will you, Anna
F.?"

"My Bible?" repeated Anna-Felicitas, looking blank.

"Your German Bible. The bit about _wenn die boesen Buben locken, so folge
sie nicht_."

Anna-Felicitas continued to look blank, but Anna-Rose with a troubled
brow said again, "You won't go and forget that, will you, Anna F.?"

For Anna-Felicitas was very pretty. In most people's eyes she was very
pretty, but in Anna-Rose's she was the most exquisite creature God had
yet succeeded in turning out. Anna-Rose concealed this conviction from
her. She wouldn't have told her for worlds. She considered it wouldn't
have been at all good for her; and she had, up to this, and ever since
they could both remember, jeered in a thoroughly sisterly fashion at her
defects, concentrating particularly on her nose, on her leanness, and
on the way, unless constantly reminded not to, she drooped.

But Anna-Rose secretly considered that the same nose that on her own
face made no sort of a show at all, directly it got on to
Anna-Felicitas's somehow was the dearest nose; and that her leanness was
lovely,--the same sort of slender grace her mother had had in the days
before the heart-breaking emaciation that was its last phase; and that
her head was set so charmingly on her neck that when she drooped and
forgot her father's constant injunction to sit up,--"For," had said her
father at monotonously regular intervals, "a maiden should be as
straight as a fir-tree,"--she only seemed to fall into even more
attractive lines than when she didn't. And now that Anna-Rose alone had
the charge of looking after this abstracted and so charming younger
sister, she felt it her duty somehow to convey to her while tactfully
avoiding putting ideas into the poor child's head which might make her
conceited, that it behoved her to conduct herself with discretion.

But she found tact a ticklish thing, the most difficult thing of all to
handle successfully; and on this occasion hers was so elaborate, and so
carefully wrapped up in Scriptural language, and German Scripture at
that, that Anna-Felicitas's slow mind didn't succeed in disentangling
her meaning, and after a space of staring at her with a mild inquiry in
her eyes, she decided that perhaps she hadn't got one. She was much too
polite though, to say so, and they sat in silence under the rug till the
_St. Luke_ whistled and stopped, and Anna-Rose began hastily to make
conversation about Christopher and Columbus.

She was ashamed of having shown so much of her woe at leaving England.
She hoped Anna-Felicitas hadn't noticed. She certainly wasn't going on
like that. When the _St. Luke_ whistled, she was ashamed that it wasn't
only Anna-Felicitas who jumped. And the amount of brightness she put
into her voice when she told Anna-Felicitas it was pleasant to go and
discover America was such that that young lady, who if slow was sure,
said to herself, "Poor little Anna-R., she's really taking it dreadfully
to heart."

The _St. Luke_ was only dropping anchor for the night in the Mersey, and
would go on at daybreak. They gathered this from the talk of passengers
walking up and down the deck in twos and threes and passing and
repassing the chairs containing the silent figures with the round heads
that might be either the heads of boys or of girls, and they were
greatly relieved to think they wouldn't have to begin and be sea-sick
for some hours yet. "So couldn't we walk about a little?" suggested
Anna-Felicitas, who was already stiff from sitting on the hard cane
chair.

But Aunt Alice had told them that the thing to do on board a ship if
they wished, as she was sure they did, not only to avoid being sick but
also conspicuous, was to sit down in chairs the moment the ship got
under way, and not move out of them till it stopped again. "Or, at
least, as rarely as possible," amended Aunt Alice, who had never herself
been further on a ship than to Calais, but recognized that it might be
difficult to avoid moving sooner or later if it was New York you were
going to. "Two such young girls travelling alone should be seen as
seldom as ever you can manage. Your Uncle is sending you second-class
for that very reason, because it is so much less conspicuous."

It was also very much less expensive, and Uncle Arthur's generosities
were of the kind that suddenly grow impatient and leave off. Just as in
eating he was as he said, for plain roast and boiled, and messes be
damned, so in benefactions he was for lump sums and done with it; and
the extras, the driblets, the here a little and there a little that were
necessary, or were alleged by Aunt Alice to be necessary, before he
finally got rid of those blasted twins, annoyed him so profoundly that
when it came to taking their passage he could hardly be got not to send
them in the steerage. This was too much, however, for Aunt Alice, whose
maid was going with them as far as Euston and therefore would know what
sort of tickets they had, and she insisted with such quiet obstinacy
that they should be sent first-class that Uncle Arthur at last split the
difference and consented to make it second. To her maid Aunt Alice also
explained that second-class was less conspicuous.

Anna-Rose, mindful of Aunt Alice's words, hesitated as to the wisdom of
walking about and beginning to be conspicuous already, but she too was
stiff, and anything the matter with one's body has a wonderful effect,
as she had already in her brief career had numerous occasions to
observe, in doing away with prudent determinations. So, after cautiously
looking round the corners to see if the man who was on the verge of
being sorry for them were nowhere in sight, they walked up and down the
damp, dark deck; and the motionlessness, and silence, and mist gave them
a sensation of being hung mid-air in some strange empty Hades between
two worlds.

Far down below there was a faint splash every now and then against the
side of the _St. Luke_ when some other steamer, invisible in the mist,
felt her way slowly by. Out ahead lay the sea, the immense uneasy sea
that was to last ten days and nights before they got to the other side,
hour after hour of it, hour after hour of tossing across it further and
further away; and forlorn and ghostly as the ship felt, it yet, because
on either side of it were still the shores of England, didn't seem as
forlorn and ghostly as the unknown land they were bound for. For
suppose, Anna-Felicitas inquired of Anna-Rose, who had been privately
asking herself the same thing, America didn't like them? Suppose the
same sort of difficulties were waiting for them over there that had
dogged their footsteps in England?

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