The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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Mrs. Orton Beg ventured to express her opinion to Mr. Frayling on the
subject seriously. She often said more to him in her quiet way than most
people would have dared to.

"I think you are making a mistake," she said.

"What!" he exclaimed, ready to bluster; "Would you have me countenance
such conduct? Why, it is perfectly revolutionary. If other women follow
her example, not one man in ten will be able to get a wife when he wants
to marry."

"It is very terrible," she answered in her even way, "to hear that so
large a majority will be condemned to celibacy; but I have no doubt you
have good grounds for making the assertion. That is not the point,
however. What I was thinking of was the risk you run of bringing more
serious trouble on yourself by cutting Evadne adrift from every influence
of her happy childhood, and casting her lot among strangers, and into a
world of intrigue alone."

"She will come to her senses when she finds herself so situated, perhaps,"
he retorted testily; "and if she does not, it will just show that she is
incorrigible."

Evadne answered this last letter of her mother's with dignity.

"Of course I regret my father's decision [she wrote], and I consider it
neither right nor wise. But I shall take the liberty of writing to you
regularly every mail nevertheless. I know my letters will be a pleasure to
you although you cannot answer them. But where is the reason and right,
mother, in this decision of my father's? We both know, you and I, that it
is merely the outcome of irritation caused by a difference of opinion, and
no more binding in reason upon you than upon me."

When Mrs. Frayling received this letter, she wrote a hurried note to
Evadne, saying that she did think her husband unreasonable, and also that
he had no right to separate her from any of her children, and that
therefore she should write to Evadne as often as she liked, but without
letting him know it. She thought his injustice quite justified such
tactics; but Evadne answered, "No!"

"There has been too much of that kind of cowardice among women already
[she wrote]. Whatever we do we should do openly and fearlessly. We are not
the property of our husbands; they do not buy us. We are perfectly free
agents to write to whomsoever we please, and so long as we order our lives
in all honour and decency, they have no more right to interfere with us
than we with them. Tell him once for all that you see no reason in his
request, and write openly. What can he do? Storm, I suppose. But storming
is no proof of his right to interfere between you and me. Once on a time
the ignorant were taught to believe that the Lord spoke in the thunder,
and they could be influenced through their terror and respect to do
anything while an opportune storm was raging; and when women were weak and
ignorant men used their wrath in much the same way to convince them of
error. To us, educated as we are, however, an outburst of rage is about as
effectual an argument as a clap of thunder would be. Both are startling I
grant, but what do they prove? I have seen my father in a rage. His face
swells and gets very red, he prances up and down the room, he shouts at
the top of his voice, and presents altogether a very disagreeable
spectacle which one never quite forgets. But he cannot go like that
forever, mother. So tell him gently you have been thinking about his
proposition, and are sorry that you find you must differ from him, but you
consider that it is clearly your duty to correspond with me. Then sit
still, and say nothing, and let him storm till he is tired; and when he
goes out and bangs the door, finish your letter, and put it in a
conspicuous position on the hall table to be posted. He will scarcely tear
it up, but if he does, write another, send it to the post yourself, and
tell him you have done so, and shall continue to do so. Be open before
everything, and stand upon your dignity. Things have come to a pretty
pass, indeed, when an honourable woman only dares to write to her own
daughter surreptitiously, as if she were doing something she should be
ashamed of."

Poor Mrs. Frayling was not equal to such opposition. She would rather have
faced a thunderstorm than her husband in his wrath, so she concealed
Evadne's letter from him, and wrote to her again surreptitiously in order
to reproach her for seeming to insinuate that she, her mother, would stoop
to do anything underhand. Evadne sighed when she received this letter, and
thought of letting the matter drop. Why should she dislike to see her
father in the position unreasonable husbands and fathers usually occupy,
that of being ostensibly obeyed while in reality they are carefully kept
in the dark as to what is going on about them? And why should she object
to allow her mother to act as so many other worthy but weak women daily do
in self-defence and for the love of peace and quietness? There seemed to
be no great good to be gained by persisting, and she might perhaps have
ended by acquiescing under protest if her mother had not added by way of
postscript: "I doubt very much if I shall be allowed to receive your
letters. Your father will probably send any he may capture straight back
to you; and, at any rate, he will insist upon seeing them, so do not, my
dear child, allude to having heard from me. I earnestly entreat you to
remember this."

But the request only made Evadne's blood boil again. She did not belong to
the old corrupt state of things herself, and she would not submit to
anything savouring of deceit. If her mother were too weak to assert her
own independence she felt herself forced to do it for her, so she wrote to
her father sharply:

"My mother tells me that you intend to stop all communication between her
and myself. I consider that you have no right to do anything of the kind,
and unless I hear from her regularly in answer to my letters, I shall be
reluctantly compelled to send a detailed statement of my case to every
paper in the kingdom in order to find out from my fellow countrywomen what
their opinion of your action in the matter is, and also what they would
advise us to do. You know my mother's affection for you. You have never
had any reason to complain of want of devotion on her part, and when you
make your disagreement with me a whip to scourge her with, you are guilty
of an unjustifiable act of oppression."

This letter arrived at Fraylingay late one afternoon, and was handed to
Mr. Frayling on his return from a pleasant country ride. He read it
standing in the hall, and lost his equanimity at once.

"Where is Mrs. Frayling?" he asked a servant who happened to be passing,
speaking in a way which caused the man to remark afterward that "Mrs.
Frayling was going to catch it about somethin'; and 'e seemed to think I'd
made away with 'er."

Mrs. Frayling was in the drawing room, writing one of her pleasant chatty
letters to a friend in India, with a cheerful expression on her comely
countenance, and all recollections of her domestic difficulties banished
for the moment.

When Mr. Frayling entered in his riding dress, with his whip in his hand
and his hat on his head (he was one of those men who are most punctilious
with strange ladies, but do not feel it necessary to behave like gentlemen
in the presence of their own wives, making it appear as if the latter had
lost cast and forfeited all claim to their respect by marrying them) Mrs.
Frayling looked round from her writing and smiled.

"Have you had a nice ride, dear?" she said.

"Read that!" he exclaimed, slapping Evadne's letter with his whip, and
then throwing it down on the table before her rudely: "Read that, and tell
me what you think of your daughter now!" Mrs. Frayling's fair face clouded
on the instant, and her affectionate heart, which had been so happily
expanded the moment before by the kind thoughts about her absent friend
that came crowding as she wrote to her, contracted now with a painful
spasm of nervous apprehension.

She read the letter through, and then put it down on the table beside her
without a word. She did not look at her husband, but at some miniatures
which hung on the wall before her. They were portraits of her own people,
father, mother, grandmother, a great aunt and uncle, and other near
relations, together with a brother and sister much older than herself, and
both dead, and forgotten as a rule: but at that moment all that she had
ever known of them, details of merry games together, and childish
naughtinesses which got them into trouble at the time but made them appear
to have been only amusingly mischievous now, recurred to her in one great
flash of memory, which showed her also some lost illusions of her early
girlhood about a husband's love and tenderness, his constant friendship,
the careful, patient teaching of the more powerful mind which was to
strengthen her mind and enlarge it too, and the constant companionship
which would banish for ever the indefinite gnawing sense of loneliness
from which all healthy, young, unmated creatures suffer. She had actually
expected at one time to be more to her husband than the mere docile female
of his own kind which was all he wanted his wife to be. She had had
aspirations which had caused her to yearn for help to develop something
beyond the animal side of her, proving the possession in embryo of
faculties other than those which had survived Mr. Frayling's rule; but her
nature was plastic; one of those which requires the strong and delicate
hand of a master to mould it into distinct and lovely form. Motherhood, as
it had appeared to her in the delicate dreams of those young days, had
promised to be a beautiful and blessed privilege, but then the children of
her happy imaginings had been less her own than those of the shadowy
perfection who was to have been her husband. She had little sense of
humour, but yet she could have smiled when, in this moment of absolute
insight, she saw the ideal compared with the real husband, this great fat
country gentleman. The folly of having expected even motherhood with such
a father for her children to be anything but unsatisfactory and
disappointing at the best, dawned upon her for an instant with
disheartening effect. But, fortunately, the outlook was so hopeless there
seemed nothing more to sigh for, and so she sat for once, looking up at
the miniatures without washing out with tears the little mental strength
she had left.

Mr. Frayling waited impatiently for her to make some remark when she had
read Evadne's letter. Almost anything she could have said must have given
him some further food for provocation, and there is nothing more
gratifying to an angry man than fresh fuel for his wrath. However, silence
sometimes fans the flame as effectually as words, and it did so on this
occasion, for, having waited till he could contain himself no longer, he
burst out so suddenly that Mrs. Frayling raised her large soft white hand
to the heavy braids which it was then the fashion to pile high on the head
and have hanging down in two rows to the nape of the neck behind, as if
she expected them to be disarranged by the concussion.

"May I ask if you approve of that letter?" he demanded.

But she only set her lips.

Mr. Frayling took a turn about the room with his hands behind his back,
holding his riding whip upright, and flicking himself between the
shoulders with it as he went.

"Let her write to the papers!" he exclaimed, addressing the pictures on
the walls as if he were sure of their sympathy. "Let her write to the
papers. I don't care what she does. I cast her off forever. This comes of
the higher education of women; a promising specimen! Woman's rights,
indeed! Woman's shamelessness and want of common decency once she is let
loose from proper control. She'll make the matter public, will she? A girl
of nineteen! and take the opinion of her fellow countrywomen on the
subject, egad! because I won't let her mother write to her: and my not
doing so is an unjustifiable act of oppression, is it? What do you
consider it yourself?" he demanded of his wife, striding up to her, and
standing over her in a way which, with a flourish of the whip, was
unpleasantly suggestive of an impulse to visit her daughter's offence upon
her shoulders actually as well as figuratively.

Mrs. Frayling did not shrink, but her comely pink and white face, usually
so lineless in its healthy matronly plumpness, suddenly took on a look of
age and hardness, the one moment of horrid repulsion marking it more
deeply than years of those household cares which write themselves on the
mind without contracting the heart had done.

"Do you consider," he repeated, "that I have been guilty of an unmanly act
of oppression?"

"I think you have been very unkind," she answered, meaning the same thing.
"Her conduct was bad enough to begin with, but now it will be ten times
worse. She will write to the papers, if she says she will. Evadne is as
brave--! You can't understand her courage. She will do anything she thinks
right. And now there will be a public scandal after all we have done to
prevent it, and you will never be able to show your face again anywhere,
for there isn't a mother in the country from her Majesty downward, who
will not take my part and say you have no right to separate me from my
daughter."

"I know what the end of it will be." he roared. "I know what happens when
women leave the beaten track. They go to the bad altogether. That's what
will happen, you'll see. She'll write a volume next to prove that she has
a right to be an immoral woman if she chooses. She'll be a common hussey
yet, I promise you."

"_Sir!_" said Mrs. Frayling, stung into dignity for a moment, and
rising to her feet in order to confront him boldly while she spoke. "Sir,
I have been a good and loyal wife to you, as my daughter says, and it
seems she was right too, when she declared that you are capable of making
your disapproval of her opinions a whip to scourge me with; but I warn
you, if you do not instantly retract that cowardly insult, I shall walk
straight out of your house, and make the matter public myself."

Mr. Frayling stared at her. "I--I beg your pardon, Elizabeth," he faltered
in sheer astonishment. "What with you and your daughter, I am provoked
past endurance. I don't know what I am saying."

"No amount of provocation justifies such an attack upon your daughter's
reputation," Mrs. Frayling rejoined, following up her advantage. "If she
had been that kind of girl she would not have objected to Colonel
Colquhoun; and at any rate she has every right to as much of your charity
as you give him."

"Women are different," Mr. Frayling ventured feebly.

"Are they?" said Mrs. Frayling, some of Evadne's wisdom occurring to her
with the old worn axiom upon which for untold ages the masculine excuse
for self-indulgence at the expense of the woman has rested. "I believe
Evadne is right after all. I shall get out her letters, and read them
again. And what is more, I shall write to her just as often as I please."

Mr. Frayling stared again in his amazement, and then he walked out of the
room without uttering another word. He had not foreseen the possibility of
such spirited conduct on the part of his wife; but since she had ventured
to revolt, the question of a public scandal was disposed of, and that
being a consummation devoutly to be wished, he said no more, salving his
lust of power with the reflection that, by deciding the question for
herself, she had removed all responsibility from his shoulders, and proved
herself to be a contumacious woman and blameworthy. So long as there is no
risk of publicity the domestic tyrannies of respectable elderly gentlemen
of irascible disposition may be carried to any length, but once there is a
threat of scandal they coil up.

By that one act of overt rebellion, Mrs. Frayling secured some comfort in
her life for a few months at least, and taught her husband a little lesson
which she ought to have endeavoured to inculcate long before. It was too
late then, however, to do him any permanent good; the habit of the
slave-driver was formed. When a woman sacrifices her individuality and the
right of private judgment at the outset of her married life, and limits
herself to "What thou biddest, unargued I obey," taking it for granted
that "God is thy law," without making any inquiries, and accepting the
assertion that "To know no more is woman's happiest knowledge, and her
praise," as confidently as if the wisdom of it had been proved beyond a
doubt, and its truth had never been known to fail in a single instance,
she withdraws from her poor husband all the help of her keener spiritual
perceptions, which she should have used with authority to hold his grosser
nature in check, and leaves him to drift about on his own conceit,
prejudices, and inclinations, until he is past praying for.

There was a temporary lull at Fraylingay after that last battle, during
which Mrs. Frayling wrote to her daughter freely and frequently. She
described the fight she had had for her rights, and concluded: "Now the
whole difficulty has blown over, and I have no more opposition to contend
against"--to which Evadne had replied in a few words judiciously, adding:

"Before the curing of a strong disease,
Even in the instant of repair and health,
The fit is strongest; evils that take leave,
On their departure most of all show evil."

CHAPTER XIX.

It came to be pretty generally known that all had not gone well with the
Colquhouns immediately after their marriage. Something of the story had of
necessity leaked out through the servants; but, as the Fraylings had the
precaution, common to their class, to keep their private troubles to
themselves, nobody knew precisely what the difficulty had been, and their
intimate friends, whom delicacy debarred from making inquiries, least of
all. Lady Adeline just mentioned the matter to Mrs. Orton Beg, and asked,
"Is it a difficulty that may be discussed?"

"No, better not, I think," the latter answered, and of course the subject
dropped.

But poor Lady Adeline was too much occupied with domestic anxieties of her
own at that time to feel more than a passing gleam of sympathetic interest
in other people's. As Lord Dawne had hinted to Mrs. Orton Beg, it was now
a question of how best to educate the twins. Their parents had made what
they considered suitable arrangements for their instruction; but the
children, unfortunately, were not satisfied with these. They had had a
governess in common while they were still quite small; but Mr.
Hamilton-Wells had old-fashioned ideas about the superior education of
boys, and consequently, when the children had outgrown their nursery
governess, he decided that Angelica should have another, more advanced;
and had at the same time engaged a tutor for Diavolo, sending him to
school being out of the question because of the fear of further trouble
from the artery he had severed. When this arrangement became known, the
children were seen to put their heads together.

"Do we like having different teachers?" Diavolo inquired tentatively.

"No, we don't," said Angelica.

Lady Adeline had tried to prepare the governess, but the latter brought no
experience of anything like Angelica to help her to understand that young
lady, and so the warning went for nothing. "A little affection goes a long
way with a child." she said to Lady Adeline, "and I always endeavour to
make my pupils understand that I care for them, and do not wish to make
their lessons a task, but a pleasure to them."

"It is a good system, I should think," Lady Adeline observed, speaking
dubiously, however.

"Can you do long division, my dear," the governess asked Angelica when
they sat down to lessons for the first time.

"No, Miss Apsley," Angelica answered sweetly.

"Then I will show you how. But you must attend, you know,"--this last was
said with playful authority.

So Angelica attended.

"How did you get on this morning?" Lady Adeline asked Miss Apsley
anxiously afterward.

"Oh, perfectly!" the latter answered. "The dear child was all interest and
endeavour."

Lady Adeline said no more; but such docility was unnatural, and she did
not like the look of it at all.

Next day Angelica, with an innocent air, gave Miss Apsley a long division
sum which she had completed during the night. It was done by an immense
number of figures, and covered four sheets of foolscap gummed together.
Miss Apsley worked at it for an hour to verify it, and, finding it quite
correct, she decided that Angelica knew long division enough, and must go
on to something else. Her first impression was that she had secured a
singularly apt pupil, and she was much surprised, when she began to teach
Angelica the next rule in arithmetic, to find that she could _not_
make the dear child see it. Angelica listened, and tried, with every
appearance of honest intention, getting red and hot with the effort; and
she would not put the slate down; she would go on trying till her head
ached, she was so eager to learn; but work as she might, she could do
nothing but long division. Miss Apsley said she had never known anything
so singular. Lady Adeline sighed.

For about a week, the twins "lay low."

The tutor had found it absolutely impossible to teach Diavolo anything.
The boy was perfectly docile. He would sit with his bright eyes riveted on
his master's face, listening with might and main apparently; but at the
end of every explanation the tutor found the same thing. Diavolo never had
the faintest idea of what he had been talking about.

At the end of a week, however, the children changed their tactics. When
lessons ought to have begun one morning Diavolo went to Miss Apsley, and
sat himself down beside her in Angelica's place, with a smiling
countenance and without a word of explanation; while Angelica presented
herself to the tutor with all Diavolo's books under her arm.

"Please, sir," she said, "there must have been some mistake. Diavolo and I
find that we were mixed somehow wrong, and I got his mind and he got mine.
I can do his lessons quite easily, but I can't do my own; and he can do
mine, but he can't do these"--holding up the books. "It's like this, you
see. I can't learn from a lady, and he can't learn from a man. So I'm
going to be your pupil, and he's going to be Miss Apsley's. You don't
understand twins, I expect. It's always awkward about them; there's so
often something wrong. With us, you know, the fact of the matter is that
_I_ am Diavolo and _he_ is me."

The tutor and governess appealed to Mr. Hamilton-Wells, and Mr.
Hamilton-Wells sent for the twins and lectured them, Lady Adeline sitting
by, seriously perplexed. The children stood to attention together, and
listened respectfully; and then went back to their lessons with
undeviating cheerfulness; but Diavolo did Angelica's, and Angelica did his
diligently, and none other would they do.

But this state of things could not continue, and in order to end it, Mr.
Hamilton-Wells had recourse to a weak expedient which he had more than
once successfully employed unknown to Lady Adeline. He sent for the twins,
and consulted their wishes privately.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"Well, sir," Diavolo answered, "we don't think it's fair for Angelica only
to have a beastly governess to teach her when she knows as much as I do,
and is a precious sight sharper."

"I taught you all you know, Diavolo, didn't I?" Angelica broke in.

"Yes," said Diavolo, with a wise nod.

"And it is beastly unfair," she continued, "to put me off with a squeaking
governess and long division, when I ought to be doing mathematics and
Latin and Greek."

"My dear child, what use would mathematics and Latin and Greek be to you?"
Mr. Hamilton-Wells protested.

"Just as much use as they will to Diavolo," she answered decidedly. "He
doesn't know half as much about the good of education as I do. Just ask
him." She whisked round on her brother as she spoke, and demanded: "Tell
papa, Diavolo, what _is_ the use of being educated?"

"I am sure I don't know," Diavolo answered impressively.

"My dear boy, mathematics are an education in themselves." Mr.
Hamilton-Wells began didactically, moving his long white hands in a way
that always suggested lace ruffles. "They will teach you to reason."

"Then they'll teach me to reason too," said Angelica, setting herself down
on the arm of a chair as if she had made up her mind, and intended to let
them know it. All her movements were quick, all Diavolo's deliberate. "Men
are always jeering at women in books for not being able to reason, and I'm
going to learn, if there's any help in mathematics," she continued. "I
found something the other day--where is it now?" She was down on her knees
in a moment, emptying the contents of her pocket on to the floor, and
sifting them. There were two pocket-handkerchiefs of fine texture, and
exceedingly dirty, as if they had been there for months (the one she used
she carried in the bosom of her dress or up her sleeve), a ball of string,
a catapult and some swan shot, a silver pen, a pencil holder, part of an
old song book, a pocket book, some tin tacks, a knife with several blades
and scissors, etc.; also a silver fruit knife, two coloured pencils,
indiarubber, and a scrap of dirty paper wrapped round a piece of almond
toffee. This was apparently what she wanted, for she took it off the
toffee, threw the latter into the grate--whither Diavolo's eyes followed
it regretfully--and spread the paper out on her lap, whence it was seen to
be covered with cabalistic-looking figures.