Читать книгу Christopher and Columbus - Elizabeth von Arnim - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Uncle Arthur was the husband of Aunt Alice. He didn't like foreigners, and said so. He never had liked them and had always said so. It wasn't the war at all, it was the foreigners. But as the war went on, and these German nieces of his wife became more and more, as he told her, a blighted nuisance, so did he become more and more pointed, and said he didn't mind French foreigners, nor Russian foreigners; and a few weeks later, that it wasn't Italian foreigners either that he minded; and still later, that nor was it foreigners indigenous to the soil of countries called neutral. These things he said aloud at meals in a general way. To his wife when alone he said much more.

Anna-Rose, who was nothing if not intrepid, at first tried to soften his heart by offering to read aloud to him in the evenings when he came home weary from his daily avocations, which were golf. Her own suggestion instantly projected a touching picture on her impressionable imagination of youth, grateful for a roof over its head, in return alleviating the tedium of crabbed age by introducing its uncle, who from his remarks was evidently unacquainted with them, to the best productions of the great masters of English literature.

But Uncle Arthur merely stared at her with a lacklustre eye when she proposed it, from his wide-legged position on the hearthrug, where he was moving money about in trouser-pockets of the best material. And later on she discovered that he had always supposed the "Faery Queen," and "Adonais," and "In Memoriam," names he had heard at intervals during his life, for he was fifty and such things do sometimes get mentioned were well-known racehorses.

Uncle Arthur, like Onkel Col, was a very good man, and though he said things about foreigners he did stick to these unfortunate alien nieces longer than one would have supposed possible if one had overheard what he said to Aunt Alice in the seclusion of their bed. His ordered existence, shaken enough by the war, Heaven knew, was shaken in its innermost parts, in its very marrow, by the arrival of the two Germans. Other people round about had Belgians in their homes, and groaned; but who but he, the most immensely British of anybody, had Germans? And he couldn't groan, because they were, besides being motherless creatures, his own wife's flesh and blood. Not openly at least could he groan; but he could and did do it in bed. Why on earth that silly mother of theirs couldn't have stayed quietly on her Pomeranian sand-heap where she belonged, instead of coming gallivanting over to England, and then when she had got there not even decently staying alive and seeing to her children herself, he at frequent intervals told Aunt Alice in bed that he would like to know.

Aunt Alice, who after twenty years of life with Uncle Arthur was both silent and sleek (for he fed her well), sighed and said nothing. She herself was quietly going through very much on behalf of her nieces. Jessup didn't like handing dishes to Germans. The tradespeople twitted the cook with having to cook for them and were facetious about sausages and asked how one made sauerkraut. Her acquaintances told her they were very sorry for her, and said they supposed she knew what she was doing and that it was all right about spies, but really one heard such strange things, one never could possibly tell even with children; and regularly the local policeman bicycled over to see if the aliens, who were registered at the county-town police-station, were still safe. And then they looked so very German, Aunt Alice felt. There was no mistaking them. And every time they opened their mouths there were all those r's rolling about. She hardly liked callers to find her nieces in her drawing-room at tea-time, they were so difficult to explain; yet they were too old to shut up in a nursery.

After three months of them, Uncle Arthur suggested sending them back to Germany; but their consternation had been so great and their entreaties to be kept where they were so desperate that he said no more about that. Besides, they told him that if they went back there they would be sure to be shot as spies, for over there nobody would believe they were German, just as over here nobody would believe they were English; and besides, this was in those days of the war when England was still regarding Germany as more mistaken than vicious, and was as full as ever of the tradition of great and elaborate indulgence and generosity toward a foe, and Uncle Arthur, whatever he might say, was not going to be behind his country in generosity.

Yet as time passed, and feeling tightened, and the hideous necklace of war grew more and more frightful with each fresh bead of horror strung upon it, Uncle Arthur, though still in principle remaining good, in practice found himself vindictive. He was saddled; that's what he was. Saddled with this monstrous unmerited burden. He, the most patriotic of Britons, looked at askance by his best friends, being given notice by his old servants, having particular attention paid his house at night by the police, getting anonymous letters about lights seen in his upper windows the nights; the Zeppelins came, which were the windows of the floor those blighted twins slept on, and all because he had married Aunt Alice.

At this period Aunt Alice went to bed with reluctance. It was not a place she had ever gone to very willingly since she married Uncle Arthur, for he was the kind of husband who rebukes in bed; but now she was downright reluctant. It was painful to her to be told that she had brought this disturbance into Uncle Arthur's life by having let him marry her. Inquiring backwards into her recollections it appeared to her that she had had no say at all about being married, but that Uncle Arthur had told her she was going to be, and then that she had been. Which was what had indeed happened; for Aunt Alice was a round little woman even in those days, nicely though not obtrusively padded with agreeable fat at the corners, and her skin, just as now, had the moist delicacy that comes from eating a great many chickens. Also she suggested, just as now, most of the things most men want to come home to—slippers, and drawn curtains, and a blazing fire, and peace within one's borders, and even, as Anna-Rose pointed out privately to Anna-Felicitas after they had come across them for the first time, she suggested muffins; and so, being in these varied fashions succulent, she was doomed to make some good man happy. But she did find it real hard work.

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