The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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"With your permission, I will call," he answered.

CHAPTER III.

Mr. St. John and Mr. Price were staying at the same hotel, and they walked
back to it together. They had only just made each other's acquaintance,
and were feeling the attraction which there is in a common object pursued
by the most dissimilar means. They were both humanitarians, Mr. Price by
choice and of set purpose, Mr. St. John of necessity--seeing that he was a
good man, but unconsciously, the consequence being much confusion of mind
on the subject, and a wide difference between his words and his deeds. He
preached, for instance, the degrading doctrine that we ought to be
miserable in this world, that all our wonderful powers of enjoyment were
only given to us to be suppressed; and further blasphemed our sacred
humanity by maintaining that we are born in sin, and sinners we must
remain, fight as we will to release ourselves from that bondage; but yet
his whole life was spent in trying to make his fellow-creatures better,
and the world itself a pleasanter place to live in. The means which he
employed, however, was the old anodyne: "Believe the best"--that is to
say, "Cultivate agreeable feelings." Mr. Price's motto, on the other hand,
was: "Know the worst." The foe must be known, must be recognized, must be
met and fought in the open if he is to be subdued at all.

This was the difference which drew the two together; each, felt the
deepest interest in the point where the other diverged, and yearned to
convert him to his own way of thought. Mr. Price would have had the
clergyman know the world; Mr. St. John would have taught Mr. Price to
ignore it, "to look up!" as he called it, or, in other words, to sit and
sigh for heaven while the heathen raged, and the wicked went their way
here undisturbed--although he had not realized up to the present that that
was practically what his system amounted to. He belonged by birth to the
caste which is vowed to the policy of ignoring, and was as sensitive as a
woman about delicate matters. Nationally, Mr. Price was the Englishman's
son, and had advanced a generation. Men are what women choose to make
them. Mr. St. John's mother was the best kind of woman of the old order,
Mr. Price was the product of the new; and the two were typical
representatives of the chivalry of the past, high-minded, ill-informed,
unforeseeing--and the chivalry of the present, which reaches on always
into futurity with the long arm of knowledge, not deceiving itself with
romantic misrepresentations of things by the way, but fully recognizing
what is wrong from the outset, and making direct for the root of the evil
instead of contenting itself by lopping a branch here and there.

"I think you said you were going to winter here?" Mr. Price remarked, as
they stepped into the street.

"Yes--if the place suits me," Mr. St. John answered; "and so far,--that is
to say for the last month,--it has done so very well. Are you a resident?"

"Well, no, not exactly," the old gentleman answered; "but I have been in
the habit of coming here for years."

"It is an interesting place," said Mr. St. John, "teeming with historical
associations."

"Yes, it is an interesting place," Mr. Price agreed, making a little pause
before he added--"full of food for reflection. Life at large is
represented at Malta during the winter season, and in a little place like
this humanity is under the microscope as it were, which makes it a happy
hunting ground for those who have to know the world."

"Ah!" Mr. St. John ejaculated deliberately. "I should think there are some
very nice people here."

"Yes--and some very nasty ones," Mr. Price rejoined. "But, of course, one
must know both."

"Oh, I differ from you there!" Mr. St. John answered, smiling. "Walk not
in sinners' way, you know!"

"On the contrary, I should say," Mr. Price rejoined, smiling responsively,
and twitching his nose as if a gnat had tickled it; "but I allow you have
got to have a good excuse when you do."

Mr. St. John smiled again slightly, but said nothing.

"There were elephants once in Malta, I am told," he began after a little
pause, changing the subject adroitly, "but they dwindled down from the
size which makes them so useful by way of comparison, till they were no
bigger than Shetland ponies, before they finally became extinct."

"And there is a set in society on the island now," Mr. Price pursued,
"formed of representatives of old English houses that once brought men of
notable size and virile into the world, but are now only equal to the
production of curious survivals, tending surely to extinction like the
elephant, and by an analogous process."

"Here we are," said Mr. St. John, as they arrived at their place of abode.
"Will you come to my room and smoke a cigarette with me?"

"Thank you, I don't smoke, but I'll go to your room, and see you smoke
one, with pleasure," Mr. Price responded.

When they got to Mr. St. John's room, the latter took off his clerical
coat and waistcoat, and put on a coloured smoking jacket, which had the
curious effect of transforming him from an ascetic looking High Churchman
into what, from his refined, intellectual, clean-shaven face, and rather
long straight hair, most people would have mistaken for an actor suffering
from overwork.

Having provided Mr. Price with a comfortable seat in the window, which was
open, he lighted a cigarette, drew up another easy-chair, and stretched
himself out in it luxuriously. He was easily fatigued at that time, and
the rest and quiet were grateful after the talk and crowd at Mrs. Beale's.
There was a little wooden balcony outside his window, full of flowers and
foliage plants; and from where he sat he saw the people passing on the
opposite side of the street below, and could also obtain a glimpse of the
Mediterranean, appearing between the yellow houses at the end of the
street, intensely blue, and sparkling in the rays of the afternoon sun. It
was altogether a soothing scene; and had he been alone he would have sunk
into that state of intellectual apathy which is so often miscalled
contemplative. The homely duties of hospitality, however, compelled him to
exert himself for the entertainment of his guest. Several of the people
they had just met at Mrs. Beale's went past together, laughing and
talking, and _a propos_ of this he remarked, "It's a bright little
world."

"Yes, on the smoothly smiling surface of society, I allow it's bright,"
Mr. Price rejoined. "The surface, however, is but a small part of it."

Mr. St. John took a whiff of his cigarette.

"Do you see that man?" Mr. Price pursued, indicating a man below the
middle height, with broad shoulders, a black beard and moustache streaked
with brown, a ruddy complexion, and obtrusively blue eyes, who was passing
at the moment.

"Captain Belliot, of H.M.S. _Abomination_," Mr. St. John answered,
using the ship's nickname, and holding out his cigarette between his
finger and thumb as he spoke, his fluent patrician English losing in
significance what it gained in melody compared with the slow dry
_staccato_ intonation of the American.

"Yes, sir," Mr. Price rejoined. "Now, he is one of the survivals I just
now mentioned--a typical specimen."

"I rather like the man," Mr. St. John answered. "He isn't a friend of
mine, but he's pleasant enough to meet."

"Just so," Mr. Price rejoined. "The manners of the kind are agreeable--on
the surface. One must give the devil his due. But on closer acquaintance
you won't find that their general characteristics are exactly pleasant.
Their minds are hopelessly tainted with exhalations from the literary
sewer which streams from France throughout the world, and their habits are
not nicer than their books.

"Ah, well," said Mr. St. John, whose sensitive lip had curled in dislike
of the subject, "it is never too late to mend. I believe, too, that the
evil is exaggerated. But at all events they repent and marry, and become
respectable men eventually."

"Well, yes, sir, they marry as a rule," Mr. Price rejoined; "and that's
the worst of it."

Mr. St. John held his cigarette poised in the air on the way to his mouth,
and looked at him interrogatively.

"Will what you call repentance restore a rotten constitution?" Mr. Price
responded. "Will it prevent a drunkard's children from being weakly
vicious? or the daughters of a licentious man from being foredoomed to
destruction by an inherited appetite for the vices which you seem to
flatter yourself end in effect when they are repented of? You do not take
into consideration the fact that the once vicious man becomes the father
of vicious children and the grandfather of criminals. You persuade women
to marry these men. The arrangement is perfect. Man's safety, and man's
pleasure; if there is any sin in it, _damn the woman_. She's weak;
she can't retaliate."

Mr. St. John's cigarette went out. He had begun to think.

"These are horrors!" he ejaculated. "But I know, thank Heaven, that the
right feeling of the community is against the perpetration of them."

"That's so," said the American. "Unfortunately, it is not with the right
feeling of the community, but with the wrong feeling of individuals, that
women have to deal."

"Heaven forbid that women should ever know anything about it!"

"I say so too," said Mr. Price. "At present, however, Heaven permits them
by the thousand to make painful personal acquaintance with the subject.
And I assure you, sir, that the indignation which has long been simmering
in whispers over tea tables in the seclusion of scented boudoirs, amongst
those same delicate dames whom you have it in your mind to keep in
ignorance of the source of most of their sufferings, mental and physical,
is fast approaching the boiling point of rebellion."

"Do you know this for a fact?"

"I do. And the time is at hand, I think, for a thorough ventilation of the
subject. It is the question of all others which must either be ignored
until society is disintegrated by the licence that attitude allows, or
considered openly and seriously. That is why I mentioned it. I see in you
every inclination to help and defend the suffering sex, and every quality
except the habit of handling facts. The subject's repulsive enough, I
allow. Right-minded people shrink in disgust even from what is their
obvious duty in the matter, and shirk it upon various pretexts, visiting
their own pain--like _Betsey Trotwood_, when she boxed the ears of
the doctor's boy--upon the most boxable person they can reach, and that is
generally the one who has forced their attention to it."

There was a pause after this, then the clergyman observed: "One knows that
there are sores which must be exposed to view if they are to be prescribed
for at all or treated with any chance of success."

"Yes, yes, that is just it," Mr. Price exclaimed. "You will perceive, if
you reflect for a moment, that there must have been a good deal that was
disagreeable in the cleansing of the Augean stables to which people in the
neighbourhood would certainly and very naturally object at the time; but
it has since been pretty generally conceded that the undertaking was a
very good sanitary measure nevertheless; and had Hercules lived in our
day, and survived the shower of stones with which he was sure to have been
encouraged during his conduct of the business, we should doubtless have
given him a dinner, or in the other case, an epitaph at least. But there
is work for the strong man still. The Augean stable of our modern
civilization must be cleansed, and it is a more difficult task than the
other was, and one to put him on his mettle and win him great renown
because it is held to be impossible."

He rose as he spoke, and looked at Mr. St. John with concern, as the
latter struggled with a bad fit of coughing.

"I am afraid I have talked too much for your strength," he added.

"Oh, no," Mr. St. John answered as soon as he could speak. "On the
contrary, I assure you. You have taken me out of myself, and that is
always good. Must you go?"

"I must, thank you. Don't rise."

But Mr. St. John had risen, and was surprised to find himself towering
over the little gentleman as they shook hands--a feeling which recurred to
him always afterward when they met, there being about Mr. Price the
something that makes the impression of size and strength and courage which
is usually only associated with physical force.

CHAPTER IV.

Next day there was an afternoon dance on board Captain Belliot's ship,
H.M.S. _Abomination_--facetiously so-called for no particular reason;
and Evadne was there with Colonel Colquhoun. She was dressed in white,
heavily trimmed with gold, and, being a bride, was an object of special
attention and interest. It was the first entertainment of the kind she had
appeared at since her arrival, and, not having a scrap of morbid sentiment
about her, she was prepared to enjoy it thoroughly, but in her own way, of
course, which, as she was new to the place and the people, would naturally
be a very quiet observant way.

Captain Belliot received her when she came on board, and they shook hands.

She was taller than he was, and looking down at him while in the act,
noticed the streaks of brown in his black beard, his brick-red skin, tight
as a gooseberry's, and his obtrusively blue eyes.

"Queen's weather!" he remarked.

"Yes," she answered, looking out at the sparkling water.

"It's a pretty place," he continued.

"Yes," she agreed, glancing toward the shore, but seeing only with the
mind's eye. Her pupils dilated, however, as she recalled the way she had
come, the narrow picturesque steep streets, almost all stone-steps, well
worn; with high irregular houses on either side, yellow, with green wooden
verandas jutting out; the wharf on which they had waited a moment for the
man-of-war's boat to take them off, and the Maltese ruffians with their
brown faces and brightly coloured clothing, lying idly about in the sun,
or chattering together at the top of their voices in little groups. They
had seemed to look at her, too, with friendly eyes. And she saw the
sapphire sea which parted in dazzling white foam from the prow of the boat
as they came along, saw the steady sweep of the oars rising and falling
rhythmically, the flash of the blades in the sunshine, the
well-disciplined faces of the men who looked at her shyly, but with the
same look which she took to be friendly; and their smart uniforms. She
would liked to have shaken hands with them all. And there was more still
in her mind when Captain Belliot asked her if she thought the place
"pretty," yet all she found for answer was the one word, "Yes"; and he,
being no physiognomist, rashly concluded that was all she had in her.

"Do you dance?" he proceeded, making one more effort to induce her to
entertain him.

"Not in the afternoon," she said.

Sir Mosley Menteith tried next.

"You come from Morningquest, do you not?" he asked, looking into her eyes.

"My people live near Morningquest," she answered.

"Ah, then I suppose you know everybody there," he observed, looking hard
at her brooch.

She reflected a moment, then answered deliberately: "Not by any means, I
should think. It is a large neighbourhood."

He twisted each side of his little light moustache, and changed the
subject, inspecting her figure as he did so.

"Do you ride?" he asked.

"Yes," she said.

There was a pause, during which she noticed a suspicion of powder on his
face, and he felt dissatisfied because she didn't seem to be going to
entertain him.

The band struck up a waltz.

"Do you dance?" he said, looking down from her face to her feet.

"Not in the afternoon," she answered.

The dance had begun, and a pair came whirling down toward them.

Evadne moved back to be out of the way, and Menteith, looking round for a
partner, saw Mrs. Guthrie Brimston opposite smiling at him.

He went over to her.

"Well, what do you make of the bride?" she asked.

"Her conversation is not exactly animated," he answered, looking into Mrs.
Guthrie Brimston's face intently.

She was a round, flat-faced, high-hipped, high-shouldered woman, short in
the body, and tight-laced; and she had a trick of wagging her skirts and
perking at a man when talking to him.

She did so now, nodding and smiling in a way that made her speech piquant
with the suggestion that she thought or knew a great deal more than she
meant to say.

"You have made her acquaintance, I suppose?" Menteith added.

"Oh, yes," she answered. "Her husband is an old friend of ours, you know,
so Bobbie thought we ought to call at once."

The tone in which she spoke suggested that she and "Bobbie" merely meant
to tolerate Mrs. Colquhoun for her husband's sake. "Bobbie" was Major
Guthrie Brimston, a very useful little man to his wife by way of
reference. When she wanted to say a smart thing which might or might not
be considered objectionable, according to the taste of the person she
addressed--and she very often did--she always presented it as a quotation
from him. "Bobbie thinks," she added now, "that if there were an Order of
the Silent Sewing Machine, Mrs. Colquhoun would be sure to be a
distinguished member of it."

A Royal personage whom Evadne had met at home recognized her at this
moment, and shook hands with her with somewhat effusive cordiality, making
a remark to which she responded quietly.

"She seems to be a pretty self-possessed young woman, too," Menteith
observed. "Her composure is perfect."

"Ah!" Mrs. Guthrie Brimston ejaculated; "those stupid people have no
nerves! Now, _I_ should shake all over in such a position!"

The band played the next few bars hard and fast, the dancers whirled like
teetotums, then stopped with the final crash of the instruments, and
separated, scattering the groups of onlookers, who re-arranged themselves
into new combinations immediately. Mrs. Guthrie Brimston leaned against
the bulwarks. Colonel Beston, of the Artillery, and Colonel Colquhoun
joined her, also her Bobbie, and Menteith remained. The conversation was
animated. Evadne, having moved, could now hear every word of it, and
thought it extremely stupid. It was all what "he said" and "she said";
what they ought to have said, and what they really meant. Mrs. Guthrie
Brimston made some cutting remarks. She talked to all the men at once, and
they appeared to appreciate her sallies; but their own replies were vapid.
She seemed to be the only one of the party with any wit. Mrs. Beston
joined her. She was a little dark woman with a patient anxious face, and
eyes that wandered incessantly till she discovered her husband with Mrs.
Guthrie Brimston. Evadne surprised the glance--entreating, reproachful,
loving, helpless--what was it? The look of a woman who finds it a relief
to know the worst. Evadne's heart began to contract; the girlish gladness
went out of her eyes.

Mrs. Beale and Edith arrived and joined her, and Menteith came and
attached himself to them at once.

"You _have_ put on the blue frock," he said softly to Edith, looking
down at her with animal eyes and a flush partly of gratified vanity on his
face.

Edith smiled and blushed. She could not reason about him. Her wits had
forsaken her.

"That's a case, I think," said Mrs. Guthrie Brimston. Several more men had
joined her by this time, and they all looked across at Edith and Menteith.
Half the men on the island took their opinions, especially of the women,
from Mrs. Guthrie Brimston. She was forever lowering her own sex in their
estimation, and they, with sheep-like docility, bowed to her dictates, and
never dreamt of judging for themselves.

Mr. Price persuaded Mr. St. John to come and look on at the dance. They
were leaning now against the bulwarks beside Mrs. Guthrie Brimston, who
tried to absorb them into her circle, but found them heavy. Mr. Price
despised her, and Mr. St. John was occupied with his own thoughts. He had
passed the night in painful reflection, and when he arose in the morning
he was more than half convinced that Mr. Price had not exaggerated; but
now, with the smiling surface of society under observation, and his senses
both soothed and exhilarated by the animated scene and the lively music,
he could not believe it. He had thought for the moment that the old
American minister was a strong and disinterested philanthropist, but now
he saw in him only the victim of a diseased imagination. The habit of
seeing society through a haze of feeling as it should be was older than
the American's entreaties that he should learn to know it as it is, and he
deliberately chose to be unconvinced.

"The person is casting covetous eyes at the bishop's pretty ewe lamb,"
Colonel Beston observed to Mrs. Guthrie Brimston _sotto voce_.

A kind of bower had been made of the stern sheets by screening them off
from the main deck with an awning, and from out of this a lady, a young
widow, stepped just at this moment, followed by a young man. They had been
out of sight together, innocently occupied leaning over, watching the fish
darting about down in the depths of the transparent water. The moment they
appeared, however, the men about Mrs. Guthrie Brimston exchanged glances
of unmistakable significance, and the young widow, perceiving this,
flushed crimson with indignation.

"Guilty conscience!" Major Guthrie Brimston remarked upon this, with a
chuckle.

Mr. St. John had witnessed the incident and overheard the remark, and the
import of both forced itself upon his attention, Mr. Price's words
recurred to him: "You are right," he remarked. "They are gross of nature,
these people. The animal in them predominates--at present. But the
spiritual, the immortal part, is there too. It must be. It has not been
cultivated, and therefore it is undeveloped. We should direct our whole
energies to the cultivation of it. It is a serious subject for thought and
prayer."

Mr. Price twitched his nose, and studied the physiognomies about him: "I
doubt myself if the spiritual nature has been as generally diffused as you
seem to imagine," he remarked in his crisp, dry way. "But if the germ of
it is anywhere it is in the women. Help them out of their difficulties,
and you will help the world at large. Now, there is one"--indicating
Evadne, who was sitting in the same place still, quietly observant.

"I was looking at her," Mr. St. John broke in. "She seems to me to be one
of those sensitive creatures, affected by sun and wind and rain, and all
atmospheric influences, to their joy or sorrow, who will suffer a
martyrdom in secret with beautiful womanly endurance."

"And be very much to blame for it!" Mr. Price interrupted. "That is your
idea of her character? Now mine is different. I should say that she is a
being so nicely balanced, so human, that either senses or intellect might
be tipped up by the fraction of an ounce. Which is right, surely; since
the senses are, instrumental in sustaining nature, while the intellect
helps it to perfection. And as to her beautiful womanly endurance"--he
shrugged his shoulders, and turned the palms of his hands upward--"I don't
know, of course; but I am no judge of character if she does not prove to
be one of the new women, who are just appearing among us, with a higher
ideal of duty than any which men have constructed for women. I expect she
will be ready to resent as an insult every attempt to impose unnecessary
suffering either upon herself or her sex at large."

"Well, I hope she will not become a contentious woman," Mr. St. John said.
"The way in which women are putting themselves forward just now on any
subject which happens to attract their attention is quite deplorable, I
think; and pushing themselves into the professions, too, and entering into
rivalry with men generally; you must confess that all that is unwomanly."

"It seems to me to depend entirely upon how it is done," Mr. Price
answered judicially. "And I deny the rivalry. All that women ask is to be
allowed to earn their bread honestly; but there is no doubt that the
majority of men would rather see them on the streets." The old gentleman
stopped, and compressed his lips into a sort of smile. "I can see," he
said, "that you are dissenting from every word I say; but I am not
disheartened. I feel sure that the scales will fall from your eyes some
day, and then you will look back, and see clearly for yourself the way in
which all moral progress has been checked for ages by the criminal
repression of women."

"Repression of women!" exclaimed Captain Belliot, who caught the words
just as the band stopped--"Good Lord! I beg your pardon, St. John--but
it's a subject I feel very strongly upon. It's impossible to tell what the
devil women will be at next. Why, I went into a hotel in Devonport for a
brandy and soda just before I sailed, and I happened to remark to a fellow
that was with me that something was 'a damned nuisance'; and the barmaid
leant over the counter: 'A shilling, sir,' she said, with the coolest
cheek in the world. 'What for?' I demanded. 'A fine, sir, for swearing,'
she answered, with the most perfect assurance. 'Now, look here, young
woman,' I said, 'you just shut up, for I'm not going to stand any of your
damned nonsense.' 'Two shillings, sir,' she said, in just the same tone. I
wanted to argue the question, but she wouldn't say a word more. She just
sent for the proprietor, and he said it was his wife's orders. She
wouldn't have any female in her service insulted by bad language, and that
fellow, the proprietor, actually supported his wife. What do you think of
that for petticoat government? He made me pay up too, by Jove! I was
obliged to do it to save a row. Now, what do you think of that for a sign
of the times?"