Christopher and Columbus (3 page)

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
£200,--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.