Christopher and Columbus | Page 3

all the English books they could lay hands
upon, and they read with their mother and learned by heart most of the
obviously beautiful things; and because she glowed with enthusiasm
they glowed too--Anna-Rose in a flare and a flash, Anna-Felicitas slow
and steadily. They adored their mother. Whatever she loved they loved
blindly. It was a pity she died. She died soon after the war began. They
had been so happy, so dreadfully happy....
"You can't be Christopher," said Anna-Rose, giving herself a shake, for
here she was thinking of her mother, and it didn't do to think of one's
mother, she found; at least, not when one is off to a new life and
everything is all promise because it isn't anything else, and not if one's
mother happened to have been so--well, so fearfully sweet. "You can't
be Christopher, because, you see, I'm the eldest."
Anna-Felicitas didn't see what being the eldest had to do with it, but she
only said, "Very well," in her soft voice, and expressed a hope that
Anna-Rose would see her way not to call her Col for short. "I'm afraid
you will, though," she added, "and then I shall feel so like Onkel
Nicolas."
This was their German uncle, known during his life-time, which had
abruptly left off when the twins were ten, as Onkel Col; a very ancient
person, older by far even than their father, who had seemed so very old.
But Onkel Col had been older than anybody at all, except the pictures
of the liebe Gott in Blake's illustrations to the Book of Job. He came to
a bad end. Neither their father nor their mother told them anything
except that Onkel Col was dead; and their father put a black band round

the left sleeve of his tweed country suit and was more good-tempered
than ever, and their mother, when they questioned her, just said that
poor Onkel Col had gone to heaven, and that in future they would
speak of him as Onkel Nicolas, because it was more respectful.
"But why does mummy call him poor, when he's gone to heaven?"
Anna-Felicitas asked Anna-Rose privately, in the recesses of the
garden.
"First of all," said Anna-Rose, who, being the eldest, as she so often
explained to her sister, naturally knew more about everything, "because
the angels won't like him. Nobody could like Onkel Col. Even if they're
angels. And though they're obliged to have him there because he was
such a very good man, they won't talk to him much or notice him much
when God isn't looking. And second of all, because you are poor when
you get to heaven. Everybody is poor in heaven. Nobody takes their
things with them, and all Onkel Col's money is still on earth. He
couldn't even take his clothes with him."
"Then is he quite--did Onkel Col go there quite--"
Anna-Felicitas stopped. The word seemed too awful in connection with
Onkel Col, that terrifying old gentleman who had roared at them from
the folds of so many wonderful wadded garments whenever they were
led in, trembling, to see him, for he had gout and was very terrible; and
it seemed particularly awful when one thought of Onkel Col going to
heaven, which was surely of all places the most _endimanché_.
"Of course," nodded Anna-Rose; but even she dropped her voice a little.
She peeped about among the bushes a moment, then put her mouth
close to Anna-Felicitas's ear, and whispered, "Stark."
They stared at one another for a space with awe and horror in their
eyes.
"You see," then went on Anna-Rose rather quickly, hurrying away
from the awful vision, "one knows one doesn't have clothes in heaven
because they don't have the moth there. It says so in the Bible. And you

can't have the moth without having anything for it to go into."
"Then they don't have to have naphthalin either," said Anna-Felicitas,
"and don't all have to smell horrid in the autumn when they take their
furs out."
"No. And thieves don't break in and steal either in heaven," continued
Anna-Rose, "and the reason why is that there _isn't_ anything to steal."
"There's angels," suggested Anna-Felicitas after a pause, for she didn't
like to think there was nothing really valuable in heaven.
"Oh, nobody ever steals them," said Anna-Rose.
Anna-Felicitas's slow thoughts revolved round this new uncomfortable
view of heaven. It seemed, if Anna-Rose were right, and she always
was right for she said so herself, that heaven couldn't be such a safe
place after all, nor such a kind place. Thieves could break in and steal if
they wanted to. She had a proper horror of thieves. She was sure the
night would certainly come when they would break into her father's
Schloss, or, as