The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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She sent Edwards to the workhouse, however, to know if the girl had been
found; and when he brought back word that she had not, although the most
careful search for her had been made in the neighbourhood, Mrs. Beale
concluded that she had recovered sufficiently to continue her weary tramp,
and very gladly dismissed the whole matter from her mind.

END OF BOOK I.

BOOK II.

A MALTESE MISCELLANY.

Death itself to the reflecting mind is less serious than marriage. The
elder plant is cut down that the younger may have room to flourish; a few
tears drop into the loosened soil, and buds and blossoms spring over it.
Death is not a blow, is not even a pulsation; it is a pause. But marriage
unrolls the awful lot of numberless generations. Health, genius, honour
are the words inscribed on some; on others are disease, fatuity, and
infamy.--_Walter Savage Landor_.

The great leading idea is quite new to me, viz., that during late ages the
mind will have been modified more than the body; yet I had not got as far
as to see with you, that the struggle between the races of man depended
entirely on intellectual and _moral_ qualities.--_Darwin: Letter to
A.R. Wallace_.

CHAPTER I.

Meanwhile the Colquhouns at Malta had been steadily making each other's
acquaintance.

Colonel Colquhoun had met Evadne on board the steamer on her arrival, and
had found her enchanted by her first glimpse of the place, and too
girlishly glad in the excitement of change, the bustle and movement and
novelty, to give a thought to anything else. The healthy young of the
human race have a large capacity for enjoyment, and they have also the
happy knack of banishing all thought which threatens to be an interruption
to pleasurable sensation. When a thing was once settled it was Evadne's
disposition to have done with it, and since she had come to satisfactory
terms with Colonel Colquhoun and recovered from the immediate effects of
the painful contest, the matter had not troubled her. She had perfect
confidence in his word of honour as a gentleman, and was prepared to find
it no more awkward to live in his house and have him for an occasional
companion, than it would to be a guest of good position in any other
establishment.

His own attitude was that of a kind of pleased curiosity. He considered
their bargain a thing to be carried out to the letter so long as she held
him to it, like a debt of honour, not legally binding but morally, and he
was prepared, with gentlemanly tack, to keep faith without further
discussion of the subject. The arrangement did not trouble him at all. It
was original, and therefore somewhat piquant, and so was Evadne.

They met therefore without more than a momentary embarrassment, and his
first glimpse of her fresh young face, flushed with excitement, and full
of intelligent interest and of unaffected pleasure in everything, was an
unexpected revelation of yet another facet of her manifold nature, and a
bright one too. What a pity she had "views"! But there was always a hope
the determination to live up to them was merely an infantile disease of
which society would soon cure her. Society has views too. It believes all
it hears in the churches without feeling at all bound to practise any
inconvenient precept implied in the faith.

Colonel Colquhoun had gone out on a government steam launch to meet the
mail as soon as she was signalled, and finding Evadne on deck had remained
there with her watching the wonderful panorama of the place gradually
unfolding itself. He showed her the various points of interest as they
came along, and she smiled silent acknowledgments of the courtesy.

The sun was just dispelling the diaphanous mists of early morning, making
them hang luminous a moment and then disperse, like tinted gauze that
flutters slowly upward in a breeze and vanishes. Great white clouds,
foam-like and crisp, piled themselves up fantastically and floated off
also, leaving the deep blue vault to mirror itself in the answering azure
of the sea; the eternal calm above, awful in its intensity of stillness;
the ceaseless movement below, a type of life, throbbing, murmurous,
changeful, more interesting than awe-inspiring, more to be wondered at
than revered.

Colonel Colquhoun pointed out the lighthouses of St. Elmo, patron saint of
sailors, on the right, and Ricasoli on the left. Then they were met by a
rainbow fleet of dghaisas, gorgeous in colour, and propelled by oarsmen
who stood to their work, and were also brightly clad--both boats and
boatmen, clothed by the sun, as it were, having blossomed into colour
unconsciously as the flowers do in genial atmospheres. The boats, carrying
fruits, flowers, tobacco, cheap jewellery, and coarse clothing for
sailors, each cargo adding something of picturesqueness to the scene,
formed a gay flotilla about the steamer and accompanied her, she towering
majestically above them, and appearing to attract them and hold them to
her sides as a great cork in the water does a handful of chopped straw.
The boatman held up their wares, chattering and gesticulating, their
sun-embrowned faces all animation and changeful as children's. One moment
they would be smiling up and speaking in wheedling tones to the
passengers, and the next they would be frowning round at each other, and
resenting some offence with torrents of abuse. So the mail glided into the
Grand Harbour, Evadne wondering at the fortifications, and straining her
eyes to make out somewhat of the symbols, alternate eye and ear, carved on
the old watch tower of St. Angelo; noticing, too, the sharp outline of
everything in the pellucid atmosphere, and feeling herself suddenly aglow
with warmth and colour, a part of the marvellous beauty and brightness,
and uplifted in spirit out of the everyday world above all thought and
care into regions of the purest pleasure.

"What a lovely place!" she exclaimed. "It looks like a great irregular
enchanted palace!"

"It's very jolly," said Colonel Colquhoun, smiling upon the scene
complacently, and looking as important as if he were himself responsible
for the whole arrangement, but was too magnanimous to mention the fact. "I
thought you'd like it. But wait till you see it by moonlight! We'll come
off and dine with one of the naval fellows some night. I'm sure you'll be
delighted. It's just like a photograph."

Evadne found that Colonel Colquhoun had secured a good house for her, and
had bestowed much care upon the arrangement of it. It was the kind of
occupation in which he delighted, and he did it well. He showed Evadne
over the house himself as soon as she arrived, and what struck her as most
delightful were the flowers and foliage plants which decorated every
available corner, and nearly all growing; oranges and oleanders in great
tubs, and palms and ferns in oriental china stands and in Majolica vases.

"One only sees it so for a ball at home," she said; "or some other special
occasion."

He looked at her keenly a moment. Her face was serenely content.

"Well, this is a kind of a special occasion with me," he said rather
gloomily.

He went on as he spoke, Evadne following him from room to room, pleased
with everything, and looking it; which is a much more convincing token of
appreciation than the best chosen words.

But when they came to the rooms which were to be hers, she was quite
overcome. For Colonel Colquhoun had chosen two opening into each other, as
nearly as possible like those she had occupied at Fraylingay, and had
filled them with all the beloved possessions, books, pictures, and
ornaments, which she had left behind her.

"How good you are! How very good you are!" she exclaimed impulsively. "I
hope we shall be friends."

"Oh, we shall be friends," he answered with affected carelessness, but
really well pleased. "I thought you would settle better if you had your
own pet things to begin with. I had a great fight with your father about
the books. He said you'd got all your nonsense out of them, but I
suggested that it might be a case of a little learning being a dangerous
thing, so I captured all the old ones, and I've got a lot more for you;
see, here's Zola and Daudet complete, and George Sand, You'll like them
better, I fancy, when you get into them than Herbert Spencer and Francis
Galton, But I've got you some more of their books as well--all that you
hadn't got,"

"You are really _too_ good," said Evadne.

Getting her the books was like putting butter on the paws of a strange cat
to make it settle. She sat down beside them and began to take off her
gloves at once. Colonel Colquhoun smiled beneath his blond moustache,
then, pleading regimental duty, left her to her treasures, assuring
himself as he went that he really did know women, exceptional or
otherwise.

He had arranged the books himself, placing Zola and Daudet in prominent
positions, and anticipating much entertainment from the observation of
their effect upon her. He expected that she would end by making love to
him; in which case he promised himself the pleasure of paying her off by
acting for a time after the manner proposed by the Barber's Fifth Brother.

When they met again, Evadne had read her mother's letter, and she at once
took him into her confidence about it.

"What would you do if you were me?" she asked.

"I should write to the papers," he answered gravely, as if he meant it.

He did not at all understand the strong, simple, earnest nature, incapable
of flippancy, with which he had to deal, nor appreciate the danger of
playing with it; and he never dreamt that she would seriously consider the
suggestion.

"I cannot understand why my father should continue to feel vexed about
this arrangement of ours," she said seriously. "We do not interfere with
his domestic affairs, why should he meddle with ours? It is not at all his
business; do you think it is?" This taking it for granted that the
arrangement was as satisfactory to him as it was to her, and appealing to
him in good faith against himself and his own interests as it were,
touched Colonel Colquhoun's sense of the ludicrous pleasurably. It was
always the unexpected apparently that was likely to happen with Evadne,
and he appreciated the charm of the unexpected, and began to believe he
should find more entertainment at home than he had thought possible even
at the outset of his matrimonial venture, when all appeared most
promising. He got on very well with her father, but, nevertheless, when it
had at last dawned upon him that she was taking his suggestion about
writing to the papers seriously, it jumped with his peculiar sense of
humour--which had never developed beyond the stage into which it had
blossomed in his subaltern days--to egg her on "to draw" the testy old
gentleman by threats of publicity. It was his masculine mind, therefore,
that was really responsible for her "unnatural" action in that matter. In
bygone days when there was any mischief afoot the principle used to be,
_chercher la femme_, and when she was found the investigation stopped
there; but modern methods of inquiry are unsatisfied with this imperfect
search, and insist upon looking behind the woman, when lo, invariably,
there appears a skulking creature of the opposite sex who is not ashamed
to be concealed by the petticoats generously spread out to screen him.
While the world approves man struts and crows, taking all the credit; but,
when there is blame about, he whines, street-arab fashion: "It wasn't me.
_Cherchez la femme_."

CHAPTER II.

Mrs. Beale and Edith arrived in Malta almost immediately after Evadne
herself, and it so happened that the latter, when she went with Colonel
Colquhoun to call upon them, met for the first time in their drawing room
most of the people to whom she was to become really attached during her
sojourn in Malta. There were Mrs. Sillenger, wife of the colonel of one of
the other regiments stationed on the island; Mrs. Malcomson, also the wife
of a military man; the Rev. Basil St. John, a man of good family,
pronounced refinement, and ultra-ritualistic practices; and Mr. Austin B.
Price, a distinguished American diplomatist and man of letters, to whom
she became specially attached. Mrs. Beale and Edith also were from that
time forward two of her dearest and most valued friends. She looked very
charming on the occasion of that first visit.

Mrs. Beale received her with quite effusive kindliness. She had promised
Mrs. Orton Beg to be a mother to her, and had been building a little
aerial castle wherein she saw herself installed as principal adviser,
comforter, confidential friend, and invaluable help generally under
certain circumstances of peculiar trial and happy interest to which young
wives are subject.

Evadne and Edith looked at each other with a kind of pleased surprise.

"How tall you have grown!" said Evadne.

"And how young you are to be married!" Edith rejoined. "I was so glad when
Mrs. Orton Beg told us you were here. That was one of the reasons which
decided us to come, I think."

"I hope we shall see a good deal of each other," said Evadne.

"That would be delightful," Edith answered. Then suddenly she blushed. She
had recognized someone who had just entered the room, and Evadne,
narrowing her eyes to see who it was, recognized him as Sir Mosley
Menteith, a captain in the Colquhoun Highlanders, whose acquaintance she
had made the day before, when he called upon her for the first time. He
shook hands with Mrs. Beale and stood talking to her, looking down at her
intently, until someone else claimed her attention. Then he turned away,
rested the back of his left hand, in which he was holding his hat, on his
haunch, fixed an eyeglass in his eye, and looked round with an expression
of great gravity, twirling first one end and then the other of his little
light moustache slowly as he did so. He was extremely spic-and-span in
appearance, and wore light-coloured kid gloves. The room was pretty full
by that time, and he seemed to have some little difficulty in finding the
person whom he sought, but at last he made out Edith and Evadne sitting
together, and going over to them, greeted them both, and then took a
vacant chair beside them. He began by inspecting first one and then the
other carefully in turn, as if he were comparing them point by point,
uttering little remarks the while of so thin and weak a nature that Evadne
had to make quite an effort to grasp them. She had thawed under the
influence of Edith's warm frank cordiality, but now she froze again
suddenly, and began to have disagreeable thoughts. She noticed something
repellent about the expression of Sir Mosley's mouth. She acknowleged that
his nose was good, but his eyes were small, peery, and too close together,
and his head shelved backward like an ape's. She could not have kept up a
conversation with him had she wished to, but she preferred to withdraw
herself and let him monopolize Edith.

"I like you best in blue," Sir Mosley was saying. "Will you wear blue at
our dance?"

"Oh, no!" Edith rejoined archly, smiling up at him with lips and eyes. "I
have worn nothing but blue lately. I shall soon be known as the blue girl!
I must have a change, Gray and pink are evidently _your_ colours,
Evadne!"

Evadne looked down at her draperies as a polite intimation that she had
heard. But just then her attention was diverted by the conversation of two
ladies and a gentleman, who were, sitting together in a window on her
right. The gentleman was Mr. St. John, the ritualistic divine, whose
clean-shaven face, with its firm, well-disciplined mouth, finely formed
nose with sensitive nostrils, and deep-set kindly dark eyes, attracted her
at once. He was very fragile in appearance, and had a troublesome cough.

"Ah, Mrs. Malcomson!" he was saying, "I should be very sorry to see the
old exquisite ideal of womanhood disturbed by these new notions. What can
be more admirable, more elevating to contemplate, more powerful as an
example, than her beautiful submission to the hardships of her lot?"

"Or less effectual--seeing that no good, but rather the contrary has come
of it all!" Mrs. Malcomson answered. "That is the poetry of the pulpit;
and the logic too, I may add," she said, leaning back in her chair
luxuriously. "For what could be less effectual for good than the influence
has been of those women, poor wingless creatures of the 'Sphere', whose
ideal of duty rises no higher than silent abject submission to all the
worst vices we know to be inseparable from the unchecked habitual
possession of despotic authority? What do you say, Mrs. Sillenger?"

The other lady smiled agreement. She was older than Mrs. Malcomson, and
otherwise presented a contrast to the latter, being taller, slighter, with
a prettier, sweeter, and altogether more womanly face, as some people
said. A stranger might have thought that she had less character too, but
that was not the case. She suffered neither from weakness nor want of
decision; but her manner was more diffident, and she said less.

Mrs. Malcomson belonged to a somewhat different order of being. She had a
strong and handsome face with regular features; a proud mouth, slightly
sarcastic in expression; and dark gray eyes given to glow with fiery
enthusiasm. Her hair was dark brown, but showed those shades of red in
certain lights which betoken an energetic temperament, and good staying
power. It was crisp, and broke into little natural curls on her forehead
and neck, or wherever it could escape from bondage; but she had not much
of it, and it was usually rather picturesque than tidy. Mrs. Sillenger's,
on the contrary, was straight and luxuriant, and always neat. It had been
light golden-brown in her youth, but was somewhat faded. Mrs. Malcomson
spoke as well as she looked, the resonant tones of her rich contralto
voice pleasing the ear more than her opinions startled the understanding.
She owed half her success in life to the careful management of her voice.
By simple modulations of it she could always differ from an opponent
without giving personal offence, and she seldom provoked bitter opposition
because nothing she said ever sounded aggressive. If she had not been a
good woman she would have been a dangerous one, since she could please eye
and ear at will, a knack which obtains more concessions from the average
man than the best chosen arguments,

"It seems to me that your 'poetry of the pulpit' is very mischievous," she
pursued. "You have pleased our senses with it for ages. You have flattered
us into in action by it, and used it as a means to stimulate our vanity
and indolence by extolling a helpless condition under the pompous title of
'beautiful patient submission.' You have administered soothing sedatives
of 'spiritual consolation,' as you call it, under the baleful influence of
which we have existed with all our highest faculties dulled and drugged.
You have curtailed our grand power to resist evil by narrowing us down to
what you call the 'Woman's Sphere,' wherein you insist that we shall be
unconditional slaves of man, doing always and only such things as shall
suit his pleasure and convenience.

"Ah, but when you remember that the law which man delivers to woman he
receives direct from God, you must confess that that alters the whole
aspect of the argument," Mr. St. John deprecated.

"I confess that it would alter it if it were true," Mrs. Malcomson
replied. "But it is not true. Man does not deliver the law of God to us,
but the law of his own inclinations. And by assuming to himself the right,
among other things, of undisputed authority over us, he has held the best
half of the conscience of the race in abeyance until now, and so checked
the general progress; he has confirmed himself in his own worst vices,
arrogance, egotism, injustice, and greed, and has developed the worst in
us also, among which I class that tendency to sycophantic adulation, which
is an effort of nature to secure the necessaries of life for ourselves."

"But women generally do not think that any change for the better is
necessary in their position. They are satisfied," Mr. St. John observed,
smiling.

"Women generally are fools," Mrs. Malcomson ruefully confessed. "And the
'women generally' to whom you allude as being satisfied are the women well
off in this world's goods themselves, who don't think for others. The
first symptom of deep thought in a woman is dissatisfaction."

"I wonder men like yourself, Mr. St. John," Mrs. Sillenger began in her
quiet diffident way, "continue so prejudiced on this subject. How you
could help on the moral progress of the world, if only you would forget
the sweet soporific 'poetry of the pulpit," as Mrs. Malcomson calls it,
and learn to think of us women, not as angels or beasts of burden--the two
extremes between which you wander--but as human beings--"

"Oh!" he protested, interrupting her, "I hope I have not made you imagine
that I do not recognize certain grave injustices to which women are at
present subject. Those I as earnestly hope to see remedied as you do. But
what I do think objectionable is the way in which women are putting
themselves forward--"

"You are right, there," said Mrs. Sillenger. "I think myself that men
might be allowed to continue to monopolize the right of impudent
self-assertion."

"But do not lend yourself to the silencing system any longer, Mr. St.
John," Mrs. Malcomson implored. "The silent acquiescence of women in an
iniquitous state of things is merely an indication of the sensual apathy
to which your ruinous 'poetry of the pulpit' has reduced the greater
number of us."

"I quite agree with you!" Evadne exclaimed; then stopped, colouring
crimson. She had forgotten in her interest that she was a stranger to
these people; and only remembered it when they all looked at her--rather
blankly, as she imagined. "I beg your pardon," she said, addressing Mrs.
Malcomson. "I could not help overhearing the discussion, and I am deeply
interested. I am--Mrs. Colquhoun," she broke off, covered with confusion.

"Oh, I am very glad to make your acquaintance," Mrs. Malcomson said
warmly. "I called on you to-day on my way here, but you were out."

"And so did I," said Mrs. Sillenger.

"And I hope to have the pleasure very soon," Mr. St. John added, bowing.

Mrs. Beale joined, the group just then.

"You have been talking so merrily in this corner," she said, sitting down
on a high chair as she spoke, "I have been wondering what it was all
about!"

"_Woman's Rights!_" Mrs. Malcomson uttered in deeply tragic tones.

"Woman's Rights! Oh, dear me, how dreadful!" Mrs. Beale exclaimed
comfortably. "I won't hear a word on the subject."

"Not on the subject of cooking?" said Mrs. Malcomson.

"What has cooking to do with it?" Mrs. Beale asked.

"Why, everything!" Mrs. Malcomson answered, smiling. "If only Mr. St. John
and a few other very good men would stand up in their pulpits boldly and
assure those who dread innovation that their food will be the better
cooked, and the 'Sphere' itself will roll along all the more smoothly for
the changes we find necessary; there would be an end of their opposition.
I would not promise women cooks, for I really think myself that the men
are superior, they put so much more feeling into it. And I can never
understand why they do not quarrel with us for the possession of that
department. I am sure we are quite ready to resign it! and really, when
one comes to think of it, it is obvious that the kitchen is much more the
man's sphere than the woman's, for it is there that his heart is!"

"You beguile me, my dear," Mrs. Beale said, smiling; "but I will not
listen to your wicked railleries." She looked at Mrs. Sillenger. "I came
to ask you if you would be so kind as to play us something," she said.

Mrs. Sillinger was a perfect musician; and as Evadne listened, her heart
expanded. When the music ceased, she looked up and about her blankly like
one who is bewildered by the sudden discovery of an unexpected loss; and
with that expression still upon her face she met the bright, penetrating,
kindly eye of a small thin elderly gentleman with refined features, a
wrinkled forehead, and thick gray hair, who was looking at her so fixedly
from the other side of the room that at first her own glance fell; but the
next moment she felt an irresistible impulse to look at him again. The
attraction was mutual. He got up at once from the low ottoman on which he
was sitting, and came across to her; and she welcomed his approach with a
smile.

"Excuse the liberty of an old man who has not been introduced," he said.
"You are Mrs. Colquhoun, I know, and my name is Price. I am an American,
and I came to Europe on official business for my country first of all; but
I am now travelling for my own pleasure."

"I am very glad to make your acquaintance," Evadne answered.

Before they could say another word to each other, however, there was a
general move of guests departing, and Colonel Colquhoun came to carry her
off. She held out her hand to Mr. Price. "We shall meet again?" she said.