Christopher and Columbus | Page 9

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
AMERICA
There were other words on its back, but this one alone stood out, and it
had all the effect of a revelation.
There. That was it. Of course. That was the way out. Why the devil
hadn't Alice thought of _that_? He knew some Americans; he didn't
like them, but he knew them; and he would write to them, or Alice
would write to them, and tell them the twins were coming. He would
give the twins £200,--damn it, nobody could say that wasn't handsome,
especially in war-time, and for a couple of girls who had no earthly sort
of claim on him, whatever Alice might choose to think they had on her.
Yet it was such a confounded mixed-up situation that he wasn't at all
sure he wouldn't come under the Defence of the Realm Act, by giving
them money, as aiding the enemy. Well, he would risk that. He would
risk anything to be rid of them. Ship 'em off, that was the thing to do.
They would fall on their feet right enough over there. America still

swallowed Germans without making a face.
Uncle Arthur reflected for a moment with extreme disgust on the
insensibility of the American palate. "Lost their chance, that's what
_they've_ done," he said to himself--for this was 1916, and America
had not yet made her magnificent entry into the war--as he had already
said to himself a hundred times. "Lost their chance of coming in on the
side of civilization, and helping sweep the world up tidy of barbarism.
Shoulder to shoulder with us, that's where they ought to have been.
English-speaking races--duty to the world--" He then damned the
Americans; but was suddenly interrupted by perceiving that if they had
been shoulder to shoulder with him and England he wouldn't have been
able to send them his wife's German nieces to take care of. There was,
he conceded, that advantage resulting from their attitude. He could not,
however, concede any others.
At luncheon he was very nearly gay. It was terrible to see Uncle Arthur
very nearly gay, and both