Christopher and Columbus | Page 6

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