Christopher and Columbus

Christopher and Columbus

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Christopher and Columbus, by Countess
Elizabeth Von Arnim, Illustrated by Arthur Litle
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Title: Christopher and Columbus
Author: Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
Release Date: January 10, 2005 [eBook #14646]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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CHRISTOPHER AND COLUMBUS***
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CHRISTOPHER AND COLUMBUS
By the Author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden Frontispiece by
Arthur Litle
Garden City New York Doubleday, Page & Company

1919

[Illustration: "Oh, yes. You're both very fond of me," said Mr. Twist,
pulling his mouth into a crooked and unhappy smile.
"We love you." said Anna-Felicitas simply.]
CHAPTER I
Their names were really Anna-Rose and Anna-Felicitas; but they
decided, as they sat huddled together in a corner of the second-class
deck of the American liner _St. Luke_, and watched the dirty water of
the Mersey slipping past and the Liverpool landing-stage disappearing
into mist, and felt that it was comfortless and cold, and knew they
hadn't got a father or a mother, and remembered that they were aliens,
and realized that in front of them lay a great deal of gray, uneasy,
dreadfully wet sea, endless stretches of it, days and days of it, with
waves on top of it to make them sick and submarines beneath it to kill
them if they could, and knew that they hadn't the remotest idea, not the
very remotest, what was before them when and if they did get across to
the other side, and knew that they were refugees, castaways, derelicts,
two wretched little Germans who were neither really Germans nor
really English because they so unfortunately, so complicatedly were
both,--they decided, looking very calm and determined and sitting very
close together beneath the rug their English aunt had given them to put
round their miserable alien legs, that what they really were, were
Christopher and Columbus, because they were setting out to discover a
New World.
"It's very pleasant," said Anna-Rose. "It's very pleasant to go and
discover America. All for ourselves."
It was Anna-Rosa who suggested their being Christopher and
Columbus. She was the elder by twenty minutes. Both had had their
seventeenth birthday--and what a birthday: no cake, no candles, no
kisses and wreaths and home-made poems; but then, as Anna-Felicitas

pointed out, to comfort Anna-Rose who was taking it hard, you can't
get blood out of an aunt--only a month before. Both were very German
outside and very English inside. Both had fair hair, and the sorts of
chins Germans have, and eyes the colour of the sky in August along the
shores of the Baltic. Their noses were brief, and had been objected to in
Germany, where, if you are a Junker's daughter, you are expected to
show it in your nose. Anna-Rose had a tight little body, inclined to the
round. Anna-Felicitas, in spite of being a twin, seemed to have made
the most of her twenty extra minutes to grow more in; anyhow she was
tall and thin, and she drooped; and having perhaps grown quicker made
her eyes more dreamy, and her thoughts more slow. And both held their
heads up with a great air of calm whenever anybody on the ship looked
at them, as who should say serenely, "We're thoroughly happy, and
having the time of our lives."
For worlds they wouldn't have admitted to each other that they were
even aware of such a thing as being anxious or wanting to cry. Like
other persons of English blood, they never were so cheerful nor
pretended to be so much amused as when they were right down on the
very bottom of their luck. Like other persons of German blood, they
had the squashiest corners deep in their hearts, where they secretly
clung to cakes and Christmas trees, and fought a tendency to celebrate
every possible anniversary, both dead and alive.
The gulls, circling white against the gloomy sky over the rubbish that
floated on the Mersey, made them feel extraordinarily forlorn. Empty
boxes, bits of straw, orange-peel, a variety of dismal dirtiness lay about
on the sullen water; England was slipping away, England, their
mother's country, the country of their dreams ever since they could
remember--and the _St. Luke_ with a loud screech had suddenly
stopped.
Neither of them could help jumping a little at that and getting an inch
closer together beneath the rug. Surely it wasn't a submarine already?
"We're Christopher and Columbus," said Anna-Rose