Christopher and Columbus Read Free Page B

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.