The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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Mr. Price twitched his nose, and looked at Mr. St. John.

"Some signs of the times are hopeful, certainly," the latter said
enigmatically.

"What! talking seriously in these our hours of ease?" Mrs. Guthrie
Brimston broke in. "What is it all about?"

"I was just about to remark that I like a woman to _be_ a woman,"
Captain Belliot rejoined, ogling the lady, and with the general air of
being sure that she at least could have no higher ambition than to attain
to his ideal. "These bold creatures who put themselves forward, as so many
of them do nowadays, are highly antipathetic to me; and if you saw them!
the most awful old harridans--with voices!--'Shrieking sisterhood' doesn't
half come up to it!"

Mrs. Malcomson passed at that moment.

"Should you call _her_ an old harridan?" Mr. St. John asked, smiling
involuntarily.

"No," the naval man was obliged to confess; "she's deuced handsome; but
she presumes on her good looks, and doesn't trouble herself to be
agreeable. I took her in to dinner the other night, and could hardly get a
word out of her--not that she can't talk, mind you; she just wouldn't--to
pique my interest, you know. You may take your oath that was it. There's
no being up to women. But she'll find herself stranded, if she doesn't
take care. _I_ shan't bother myself to pay her any more attention;
and I'm a bad prophet if the other men in the place go out of their way to
be civil to her much longer either. Besides," he said to Mr. Price,
lowering his voice, but not enough to prevent Mr. St. John hearing--"her
husband's jealous!" He turned up his eyes--"Game's not worth--you know!"

Again Mr. Price looked at Mr. St. John. The band struck up; another waltz
began; scarcely anything else had been danced.

"Oh, this eternal one, two, three!" Mr. Price ejaculated; "how it wearies
the mind! Society has sacrificed its most varied, wholesome, and graceful
recreation--dancing--to this monotonous one, two, three!"

He passed on, leaving Mr. St. John to his reflections.

Captain Belliot bent before Mrs. Guthrie Brimston; "Our dance, I think,"
he said, offering her his arm.

She took it, perking and preening herself, and began to say something
about Mrs. Malcomson in agreement with his last remark: "You are quite
right about her," Mr. St. John overheard. "She is always jeering at men.
She abuses you wholesale. I've heard her often."

Captain Belliot's face darkened; but he put his arm round his partner, and
they glided off together slowly.

When next they passed Mr. St. John, their faces wore a similar expression
of drowsy sensuous delight, which gave them for the moment a curious
likeness to each other. They looked incapable of speech or thought, or
anything but the slow measure of their interwoven paces, and inarticulate
emotion.

The scene made a painful impression on Mr. St. John, and he began to feel
as much out place as he looked.

"We churchmen are a failure," he thought. "We have done no good, and are
barely tolerated. Poetry of the pulpit--spiritual anodyne--what is it?
Something I cannot grasp; but something wrong somewhere. Is Mrs. Malcomson
right? Is Mr. Price? Where are they?"

He looked about, but the dancers with parted lips and drowsy dreamy eyes,
intoxicated with music and motion, floated past him in endless, regular
succession, hemming him in, so that he could not move till the music
stopped.

CHAPTER V.

Mrs. Malcomson had made her way over to where Evadne and Mrs. Beale were
sitting. Both welcomed her cordially, and Evadne, in particular,
brightened visibly when she saw her approach. She was wearied by these
vapid men, who had all said the same thing, and looked at her with the
same expression one after the other the whole afternoon. Mrs. Sillenger
and Mr. Price were also of the party, and Mrs. Malcomson, in a merry mood,
was holding forth brightly when Mr. St. John joined them.

"Oh, yes, we have our reward, we Englishwomen," she was saying. "We
religiously obey our men. We do nothing of which they disapprove. We are
the meekest sheep in the world. We scorn your independent, out-spoken
American women, Mr. Price; we think them bold and unwomanly, and do all we
can to be as unlike them as possible. And what happens? Do our men adore
us? Well, they continue to say so. But it is the Americans they marry."

Mr. Price twitched his nose and smiled.

"But, tell me, Mr. Price," Mrs. Malcomson rattled on: "The fate of nations
has hung upon your opinion, and your decisions are matter of history: so
kindly condescend, of your goodness and of your wisdom, to tell us if you
think that '_true_ womanliness' is endangered by our occupations, or
the cut of our clothes--I have it!" she broke off, clasping her hands,
"Make us a speech! _Do_!!"

"Oh, yes, _do_!" the rest exclaimed simultaneously.

Mr. Price's mobile countenance twitched all over. He looked from one to
the other, then, entering good-humouredly into the jest, he struck an
attitude: "If true womanliness has been endangered by occupation or the
fashion of a frock in the past, it will not be so much longer, or the
signs of the times are most misleading," he began, with the ease of an
orator. "The old ideals are changing, and we regret them--not for their
value, for they were often mischievous enough; but as a sign of change, to
which, in itself, mankind has an ineradicable objection--yet these changes
must take place if we are ever to progress. For myself," he continued--"I
should be very sorry to say that anything which honourable women of the
day consider a reform, and propose to adopt, is 'unwomanly' or 'unsexing,'
until it has been thoroughly tried, and proved to be so. It sounds mere
idiotcy, the thing is so obvious, when one reduces it to words, but yet
neither men nor women themselves--for the most part--seem to recognize the
fact that womanliness is a matter of sex, not of circumstances,
occupation, or clothing; and each sex has instincts and proclivities which
are peculiar to it, and do not differ to any remarkable extent even in the
most diverse characters; from which we may be sure that those instincts
are safe whatever happens. And as to the value of cherished 'ideals of
womankind'--well, we have only to look back at many of the old ones, which
had to be abandoned, and have been held up to the laughter and contempt of
succeeding ages--although doubtless they were dear enough to the heart of
man in their own day--to appreciate the, worth of such. That little
incident of Jane Austin, hiding away the precious manuscript she was
engaged upon, under her plain sewing, when visitors arrived, ashamed to be
caught at the 'unwomanly' occupation of writing romances, and shrinking
with positive pain from the remarks which such poor foolish people as
those she feared would have made about her--that little incident alone,
which I remarked very early in life, has saved me from braying with the
rest of the world upon this subject. If those brave women, sure of
themselves and of their message, who have written in the face of all
opposition, had not dared to do so, how much the poorer and meaner and
worse we should all, men and women alike, have been to-day for want of the
nourishment of strength and goodness with which they have kept us
provided. And you will find it so in these questions of our day. Women are
bringing a storm about their ears, but they are prepared for that, and it
will not deter them; for they have an infallible prescience in these
matters which men have not, and they know what they are doing and why, and
could make their motives plain to us if it were not for our own stupid
prejudices and density. Ah! these are critical times, but I believe what a
fellow-countryman of mine has already written--I believe that the women
will save us. I do not fear the fate of the older peoples. I am sure that
we shall not fall into nothingness from the present height of our
civilization, by reason of our sensuality and vice, as all the great
nations have done, heretofore. The women will rebel. The women will not
allow it. But"--he added with his benign smile, dropping into a lighter
tone, as if he felt that he had been more serious than the occasion
warranted, and addressing Mrs. Malcomson specially--"but you must not
despise your personal appearance. Beauty is a great power, and it may be
used for good as well as for evil. Beauty is beneficent as well as malign.
Angels are always allowed to be beautiful, and our highest ideal of
manhood is associated with physical as well as moral perfection. Yes! Be
sure that beauty is a legitimate means of grace; and I will venture to
suggest that you who have it should use it as such." Here he was
interrupted by applause. "True beauty, I mean, of course," he added,
descending from the rostrum, as it were, and speaking colloquially--"not
the fashionable travesty of it."

"Well, that is a piece of servility I have never been so degraded as to
practise," Mrs. Malcomson exclaimed.

"Ah, my dear, it does not do to be singular," Mrs. Beale mildly
remonstrated.

A dance concluded just at this moment, and Edith joined the group,
followed by Sir Mosley Menteith.

The ladies looked at her as she approached with affectionate interest and
admiration.

"I am always conscious of their presence," she was saying.

"Whose presence, dear?" her mother asked.

"The presence of those who love us, mother, in the other life," she said,
looking out into space with great serious eyes, as if she saw something
grand and beautiful, and also love-inspiring. The words and her presence
changed the whole mental attitude of the group. The intellectual element
subsided, the spiritual, which trenches on sensation and is warm, began to
glow in their breasts. Edith was the actor now, and Mrs. Malcomson became
a mere spectator. Mr. St. John was the first to appreciate the change.
Edith's presence, more than her words, was enough in itself to relax the
tension of pained reflection which had possessed him the whole afternoon.
It was as if a draught of the sacred anodyne to which he had been so long
accustomed were being held out to him, and he had drained it eagerly, to
excite feeling, and to drown thought.

"Mosley does not think they are so near us as I know them to be," Edith
pursued; "but I tell him, if only he would allow himself, he would
perceive their presence just as I do. He says this scene is so worldly it
would frighten them; but I answer that they cannot be frightened; they are
incorruptible, so that there is nothing for them to fear for
themselves--but they may fear for us, and when they do, we know that it is
then that they are nearest to us. They come to guard us."

Menteith's glance wandered over her person as she spoke, and returned
again to meet her eyes. He quite enjoyed a thrill of superstitious awe; it
was an excellent _sauce piquante_ to what he called his "sentiments"--
by which he meant the state of his senses at the moment. He recognized in
Edith no higher quality than that of innocence, which is so appetizing.

But a gentle thrill, as of an electric shock, had passed through them all,
silencing them. Mrs. Beale, with a sigh, released herself from the uneasy
impression Mrs. Malcomson's words had made upon her, and felt the peace of
mind, which she managed to preserve by refusing to know of anything that
might disturb it and rouse her soul from its apathetic calm to the
harassing point of action, restored. Mrs. Sillenger gave herself up for
the moment also. Her fine nature, although highly tempered and exceedingly
sensitive, was too broad to, allow her to delude herself by imagining that
it is right to countenance evil by ignoring it. She shrank from knowledge,
but still she had the courage to possess herself of it; and, fortunately,
her very sensitiveness enabled her to turn with ease from the
consideration of terrible facts to the enjoyment of a fine idea.

Mrs. Malcomson and Mr. Austin Price looked at each other involuntarily.
The new element was not congenial to either of them. But Mr. St. John was
satisfied. His heart had expanded to the full: "Mr. Price is wrong, Mrs.
Malcomson is wrong," was the new measure to which he set his thoughts.
"They exaggerated the evil; they have never perceived in what the good
consists. And what do they do with all their wondrous clever talk? They
withdraw our attention from the contemplation of holy things only to pain
and excite us; for sin must continue, and suffering must continue, and we
can do no more than we have done. Example--a good example! We have only
each to set one, and say nothing. Talk, talk, talk; I will listen no more
to such tattle! It is mere pride of intellect, which is put to shame by
the first gentle innocent girl who comes, strong in purity and faith, and
simply bids us all look up! Did not our heart burn within us? Was not the
worst among us and the most worldly moved to repent?" He looked across at
Menteith, but suddenly the exaltation ceased, and his soul shot with a
pang to another extreme. "He is not worthy of her--he is not worthy of
her--no! no! Heaven help me to save her from such a fate!" His mind had
been nourished upon inconsistencies, and he was as unconscious of any now
as he was when he preached--as he had been taught--that God orders all
things for the best, and at the same time prayed him to avert some special
catastrophe.

Menteith was bending over Edith.

"I want to lunch with you to-morrow," he said. "Do let me. I love to hear
you talk. Just to be near you makes a better man of me. But you can make
anything you like of me; you know you can. May I come?"

Edith glanced tip at him and smiled, and the young man, taking this for
acquiescence, bowed and withdrew in triumph, making way for Colonel
Colquhoun.

Evadne looked up at the latter and smiled too. "Shall we go?" she said.

"I came to see if you were ready," he answered, and then she rose, took
leave of the friends about her, crossed the deck to where Captain Belliot,
her host, was standing, shook hands with him, and left the ship. Many eyes
had followed her with curiosity and interest; and many tongues made
remarks about her when she was gone, expressing positive opinions with the
confident conceit of mediocrity, although she had not at that time made
any sign of what manner of person she really was. She had only been a week
amongst them, and her mind had been in a state of passive receptivity the
whole time, subject to the impressions which might be made upon it, but
not itself producing any. It was her appearance that they presumed to
judge her by. But her intellect had been both nourished and stimulated
that afternoon, and when she went to her room at night she hunted up a
manuscript book suitable for the purpose, and resumed her old habit of
noting everything of interest which she had seen and heard. There were
blank pages still in the old "Commonplace Book," and she had it with her,
but she never dreamt of making another note in it. She had written her
last there once for all the night before her wedding, expecting to enter
upon a new phase of existence; and she had indeed entered upon a new
phase, although not at all in the way she had expected; and now she felt
that only a new volume would be appropriate to contain the record of it.

She ended her notes that night with a maxim which probably contained all
the wisdom she had been able to extract from her late experiences:--"Just
do a thing, and don't talk about it," she wrote, expressing herself
colloquially. "This is the great secret of success in all enterprises.
Talk means discussion, discussion means irritation, irritation means
opposition; and opposition means hindrance always, whether you are right
or wrong."

CHAPTER VI.

Evadne settled down into her new position at once. She took charge of the
household and managed it well. Colonel Colquhoun was scrupulous in matters
of etiquette, and Evadne's love of order and exactitude made her
punctilious too, so that there was one subject which they agreed upon
perfectly, and it very soon came to be said of them that they always did
the right thing. They appeared together everywhere, at the Palace
receptions, the opera, entertainments on naval vessels, dinners and
dances, polo and picnics, and at church. If there was one thing that
Colquhoun was more particular about than another it was, in the language
of his own profession, church parade. Watching Evadne to detect the first
symptom of new tactics on her part, became one of the interests of his
life. It wouldn't have been good form to take another man into his
confidence for betting purposes, seeing that the lady was "Mrs. Colquhoun";
but a wager laid upon the chances of change in her "views" was the only
zest lacking to the pleasure he took in the study of this new specimen of
her sex. He used to dance a good deal himself, and danced well too, but
after Evadne joined him he gave it up to a great extent, and might often
have been seen leaning against a pillar in a ball room gravely observing
her. It was a kind of curiosity he suffered from, a sort of rage to make
her out. He was very attentive to her at that period, treating her always
with the deference due to a young lady, and for that reason she accepted
his attentions gratefully, because they were delicately paid and he was
really kind, but also as a matter of course. They had begun well together
from the very first day, and she was soon satisfied that her position at
Malta was the happiest possible. The beautiful place, the bright clear
atmosphere, the lively society, all suited her. She had none of the trials
peculiar to married life to injure her health and break her spirit, none
of the restrictions imposed upon a girl to limit her pleasures, and she
enjoyed her independence thoroughly. But of course there were drawbacks,
and the thing of all others she disliked most was being toadied. There was
one pair of inveterate toadies in the garrison, Major and Mrs. Guthrie
Brimston. They belonged to a species well-known in the service, and
tolerated on the principle of _Damne-toi, pourvu que tu nous amuse_.
Major Guthrie Brimston claimed to be one of the Morningquest family, and
he had a portrait of the duke, as the head of the house, in his dressing
room. It was balanced on the right by _Ecce Homo_, and on the left by
the _Sistine Madonna_, but it was popularly supposed that he
worshipped the duke. The pair acted the role of devoted husband and wife
successfully, being in fact sincere in their habit of playing into each
other's hands for their own selfish purposes; and people who wished for an
excuse to tolerate them because they were amusing, might say of them quite
truly: "Well, whatever their faults, they are certainly devoted to each
other." But it was a partnership of self-interest, enhanced by a little
sentimentality, and they understood it themselves, for Mrs. Guthrie
Brimston confessed in a moment of expansion that she knew "Bobbie" would
marry again directly if she died, and certainly she would do the same if
she lost him; why shouldn't she?

Mrs. Guthrie Brimston was a nasty-minded woman, of extremely coarse
conversation, and, without compromising herself, she was a fecund source
of corruption in others. No younger woman of undecided character could
come under her influence without being tainted in mind if not in manners.
She delighted in objectionable stories, and her husband fed her fancy from
the clubs liberally. Her stock-in-trade consisted for the most part of
these stories, which she would retail to her lady friends at afternoon
teas. She told them remarkably well too, and knew exactly how to suit them
to palates which were only just beginning to acquire a taste for such
fare, and were still fastidious. Wherever she came there was laughter
among the ladies, of the high hysteric bacchante kind, not true mirth, but
a loud laxity, into which they were beguiled for the moment, and which was
the cause of self-distrust, disgust, and regret, upon reflection, to the
better kind. If the question of motive is to be taken into account in
considering the words and deeds of people, it may be confidently asserted
that the Guthrie Brimstons never said a good-natured thing nor did a kind
one. "I say, Minnie, if I give that sergeant of mine a goose at Christmas,
I think I'll get more work out of the fellow next year," Major Brimston
said to his wife at breakfast one morning.

"Yes, do," his wife answered sympathetically. "And I say, Bobbie, I'm
going to work Captain Askew a bedspread. He's an awfully useful little
man."

One form of pleasantry the Guthrie Brimstons greatly affected was
nicknaming. They nicknamed everybody, always opprobriously, often happily
in the way of hitting off a salient peculiarity; but they were not in the
least aware that they were themselves the best nicknamed people in the
service. And they would not have liked it had they known it, for they were
both exceedingly touchy. They held no feelings of another sacred, but
their own supreme. Mrs. Guthrie Brimston was known as "The Brimston
Woman."

Her conversation bristled with vain repetitions. She was always "a worm"
when asked after her health, and everything that pleased her was "pucka."
She knew no language but her own, and that she spoke indifferently, her
command of it being limited for the most part to slang expressions, which
are the scum of language; and a few stock phrases of polite quality for
special occasions. But she used the latter awkwardly, as workmen wear
their Sunday clothes.

Of the Guthrie Brimston morals it is safe to say that they would neither
of them have broken either the sixth, seventh, or eighth commandments; but
they bore false witness freely--not in open assertion, however, for that
could be easily refuted, and fair fight was not at all in their line. But
when false witness could be meanly conveyed by implication and innuendo,
it formed the staple of their conversation.

"Those Guthrie Brimstons should be public prosecutors," Evadne said to
Colonel Colquhoun at breakfast one morning, commenting upon some story of
theirs which he had just retailed to her. "I notice when anyone's
character is brought forward to be judged by society they are always
Counsel for the Prosecution."

These were the people whom Colonel Colquhoun first introduced to Evadne.
They amused him, and therefore he encouraged them to come to the house.
Mrs. Guthrie Brimston suited him exactly. To use their own choice
language, he would have given her away at any time, and she him; but that
did not prevent them enjoying each other's society thoroughly.

True to her determination to make things pleasant for Colonel Colquhoun if
possible, and seeing that he found these people congenial, Evadne did her
best to cultivate their acquaintance for his sake. Never successfully,
however. A mere tolerance was as far as she got; but even that was
intermittent; and the undercurrent of criticism which streamed through her
mind in their presence could never be checked.

But she was slow to read character. Her impulse was always to believe in
people, and to like them; and she had to acquire a knowledge of their
faults painfully, bit by bit. But Colonel Colquhoun helped her here. He
was an inveterate gossip, very much in the manner of Mrs. Guthrie Brimston
herself, only that he was more refined when he talked to Evadne; and at
breakfast, their one _tete-a-tete_ meal in the day, it was his habit
to tell her such club stories as were sufficiently decent, and what "he
said" and what "she said" of each other, upon which he would strike an
average to arrive at the probable truth.

"Do you happen to know what is at the bottom of the feud between Mrs.
Guthrie Brimston and Mrs. Malcomson?" he asked her one morning at
breakfast.

"Mrs. Guthrie Brimston's defects of character obviously," said Evadne
sententiously.

"Then you prefer Mrs. Malcomson?" he suggested. "Now, _I_ can't get
on with her a bit. She always appears to me so cold and censorious."

"Does she?" said Evadne thoughtfully. "But she is not really so at all.
She is judicial though, and sincere, which gives one a sense of security
in her presence."

"But she is deadly dull," said Colonel Colquhoun.

"Oh, no!" Evadne exclaimed, smiling. "You mistake her entirely. She made
me laugh immoderately only yesterday."

"I should like to see you laugh immoderately," said Colonel Colquhoun.

Major Guthrie Brimston surprised Evadne more, perhaps, than his wife did.
She began by overlooking the little man somehow without the least
intending it, and as he seemed to himself to fill the horizon when in
society and block out all view of anybody else, he could only believe that
she did it on purpose.

He was by way of being an amateur actor, a low comedy man; but he was not
sincere enough to personate any character, or be anything either on the
stage or off it but his own small inartistic self; and no amount of
bawling could make him an actor, though he bawled himself hoarse as a
rule, mistaking sound for the science of expression. Still, it was the
fashion to consider him funny. People called him "Grigsby" and
"Kickleberry Brown," and laughed when he twiddled his thumbs. He was
forever buffooning, and if he sat on a high stool with his toes just
touching the floor, his head on one side, a sad expression of countenance,
and the tips of his fingers touching, he was supposed to be doing
something amusing, and the effort would be rewarded with laughter, in
which, however, Evadne could not join. These performances outraged her
sense of the dignity of poor human nature, which it is easy enough to
discount, but very difficult to maintain; and made her sorry for him.