The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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"I have done my best already," she said.

"Then you have made your friends enemies for life," he declared. "A girl
like that won't give up a man she loves even for such considerations as
have made you indifferent to my happiness--and welfare."

Evadne perceived the contradiction involved in commending Edith for doing
what he considered it a pity that she _should_ do; but she recognized
her own impotence also, and was silent. It was the system, the horrid
system that was to blame, and neither he, nor she, nor any of them.

Colonel Colquhoun ruminated for a little.

"It is rather curious," he finally observed, "that you should both have
shied at the parsons, seeing how very particular you are."

"Who told you we had both--refused a clergyman?" Evadne asked.

"Everybody in Malta knows that St. John proposed to Miss Beale," he
answered, "and your father told me about the offer you had. He remarked at
the time that girls will only have manly men, and that therefore we
soldiers get the pick of them."

Evadne was silent. She was thinking of something her father had once
remarked in her presence on the same subject: "I have observed," he had
said, in his pompous way, "that the clergy carry off all the nicest girls.
You will see some of the finest, who have money of their own too, marry
quite commonplace parsons. But the reason is obvious. It is their faith in
the superior moral probity of Churchmen which weighs with them."

The Scales went home the following week to prepare for the wedding, which
was to take place immediately. They both wrote to Evadne kindly before
they left, and she replied in the same tone, but she could not persuade
herself to see them again, nor did they wish it.

END OF BOOK II.

BOOK III.

DEVELOPMENT AND ARREST OF DEVELOPMENT.

_Fury_: Blood thou canst see, and fire; and canst hear groans;--
Worse things, unheard, unseen, remain behind.

_Prometheus_: Worse?

_Fury_: In each human heart terror survives
The ravin it has gorged. The loftiest fear
All that they would disdain to think were true:
Hypocrisy and Custom make their minds
The fanes of many a worship now outworn.
They dare not devise good for man's estate,
And yet they know not that they do not dare.
The good want power but to weep barren tears:
The powerful goodness want,--worse need for them:
The wise want love: and those who love want wisdom:
And all best things are thus confused to ill.
Many are strong and rich and would be just,
But live among their suffering fellow-men
As if none felt: they know not what they do.

--_Prometheus Unbound_

CHAPTER I.

Edith was married in the cathedral at Morningquest, and of course the
twins were present at the wedding. From what social gathering were they
ever excluded if they chose to be present? Mrs. Beale had not thought of
asking them at all, but Angelica intimated, in her royal way, that she
wished to be a bridesmaid, and Diavolo must be a page, and Lady Adeline
begged Mrs. Beale for Heaven's sake to arrange it so, lest worse should
come of it.

But the twins did not enjoy the occasion at all, for the truth was that
they were not as they had been. Angelica was rapidly outstripping Diavolo,
as was inevitable at that age. He was still a boy, but she was verging on
womanhood, and already had thoughts which did not appeal to him, and moods
which he could not comprehend, the consequence being continual quarrels
between them,--those quarrels in which people are hottest and bitterest,
not because of their hate, but because of their love for each other. There
is such agony in misunderstanding and blame when all has hitherto been
comprehension, approval, and sympathy. The shadow of approaching maturity,
which would separate them inevitably for the next few years, already
touched Angelica perceptibly; and, although to the onlookers they seemed
to treat each other as usual, both children felt that there was something
wrong, and their discomfort was all the greater because neither of them
could account for the change. Angelica had been for some time in her most
hoydenish, least human stage, during which she had given up hugging
Diavolo, and taken to butting him in the stomach instead. But she was
growing beyond that now, and was in fact just on the borderland, hovering
between two states: in the one of which she was a child, all nonsense and
mischievous tricks; and in the other a girl with tender impulses and
yearning senses seeking some satisfaction.

She and Diavolo had promised themselves some fun at Edith's wedding, but
when the morning came Angelica was moody and irritable, and Diavolo
watched her and waited in vain for a suggestion. When they were in the
cathedral, during the ceremony, she had a strange feeling that there was
something in it ail that specially concerned her, and she looked at Edith
and listened to the service intently, in an involuntary effort to obtain
some clue to her own sensations.

Diavolo, who was all sympathy when there was anything really wrong with
her, became alarmed.

"Does your stomach ache?" he whispered. (They were kneeling side by side.)

"No!" she answered shortly.

"Oh, then, I suppose there is something _morally_ wrong," he
observed, in a satisfied tone, as if he knew from experience that that was
a small thing compared with the other complaint.

They sat together at the wedding breakfast, but Angelica continued
silently observant.

Diavolo had brought a big boiled shrimp in his pocket.

It was black and of great age, and he managed to fasten it adroitly on the
shoulder of the lady who sat next him, so that its long antenna tickled
her neck, and provoked her attention to it.

Glancing down sideways, and catching a glimpse of black eyes and many
legs, she thought it was some horrid creature with a sting, and jumped up,
shrieking wildly, to everybody's consternation.

Angelica declared it was a stupid trick.

"Well, you put me up to it yourself," Diavolo grumbled.

"Did I?" she snapped. "Then I was wrong."

Somebody began to make a speech, which was all in praise of the lovely
bride; and Diavolo, listening to it, and remembering that he had wished to
marry her himself, became intensely sentimental. He recovered his shrimp,
and laying it out on the cloth before him gazed at it in a melancholy way.

"All the nice girls marry," he complained, thinking of Evadne.

"Well, what's that to you?" Angelica demanded, with a jealous flash.

"Only that I suppose you also will marry and leave me some day," he
readily responded. Diavolo was nothing if not courtly.

But Angelica knew him, and resented this attempt to impose upon her.

"I despise you!" she exclaimed; and then she turned to Mr. Kilroy of
Ilverthorpe, who was her neighbour on the right, and made great friends
with him to spite Diavolo; but the latter was engrossed in his breakfast
by that time, and took no notice.

When they got back to Hamilton House, Mr. Ellis asked her how she had
enjoyed the wedding.

"It made me feel _sick_," she said; and then she got a book, and
flinging herself down on a window seat, with her long legs straggling out
behind her and her face to the light, made a pretence of reading.

Diavolo hovered about her with a dismal face, trying to devise some method
of taking her out of herself.

"My ear does bother me," he said at last, sitting down beside her with his
back to the window, and his legs stretched straight out before him close
together. "I feel as if I could tear it off."

"No, don't; you might want it again!" Angelica retorted, and then, the
observation striking her as ludicrous, she looked up at him and grinned,
and so broke the ice.

Mr. Ellis was the first to notice signs of the impending change in
Angelica. Although she was over fifteen, she had no coquettish or womanly
ways, insisted on wearing her dresses up to her knees, expressed the
strongest objection to being grown-up and considered a young lady, and had
never been known to look at herself in the glass; but she began to be less
teasing and more sympathetic, and sometimes now, if the tutor were tired
or worried, she noticed it, and pulled Diavolo up for being a nuisance.

The day after the wedding, in the afternoon, Dr. Galbraith walked over
from Fountain Towers to Hamilton House, through the fields, and
encountered Lord Dawne in the porch. It was lovely summer weather.

"I am looking for the children," Lord Dawne said. "I have come over from
Morne with a message for them from their grandfather. Do you happen to
have seen them anywhere?"

"Yes, I have," Dr. Galbraith answered drily, but with a twinkle in his
eyes. "I discovered them just now in a field of mine--a hayfield--not that
they were making any pretence of hiding themselves, however," he hastened
to add, "for they were each sitting on the top of a separate haycock,
carrying on an animated discussion in tones as elevated as their position,
so that I heard them long before I saw them. They will end the discussion
by demolishing my haycocks, I suppose," he concluded resignedly.

"What was it all about?" Lord Dawne asked.

"Well, I believe they started with the vexed question of primogeniture,"
Dr. Galbraith replied; "but when I came up with them they were quarrelling
because they could not agree as to whether they were more their father's
or their mother's children. Angelica maintained the latter, for reasons
which she gave at the top of her voice with admirable accuracy. When I
appeared they both appealed to me to confirm their opinions, but I fled. I
am not so advanced as the Heavenly Twins."

Lord Dawne looked grave: "What will become of the child, Angelica?" he
said.

"Oh, you needn't be anxious about her," Dr. Galbraith replied, looking
full at him with sympathy and affection in his kind gray eyes. "She has no
vice in her whatever, and not a trace of hysteria. Her talk is mere
exuberance of intellect."

"I don't know," her uncle answered. "_Qui peut tout dire arrive a tout
faire_, you know."

"I find that falsified continually in my profession," Dr. Galbraith
rejoined. "It depends entirely as a rule upon how the thing is said, and
why. If it be a matter of inclination only, controlled by fear of the law
or public opinion which is expressed, the aphorism would hold, probably;
but language which is the outcome of moods or phases that are transient
makes no permanent mark upon the character."

Lord Dawne took Dr. Galbraith to the drawing room, where they found Lady
Adeline with Mr. Hamilton-Wells and the tutor. Mr. Ellis had been a great
comfort to Lady Adeline ever since he came to the house. She felt, she
said, that she should always owe him a deep debt of gratitude for his
patient care of her terrible children.

"You are just in time for tea, George," she said to Dr. Galbraith. "Dawne,
you had better wait here for the children. They won't be late this
afternoon, I am sure, because Mr. Kilroy of Ilverthorpe is here, and
Angelica likes him to talk to."

"Ah, now you do surprise me," said Dr. Galbraith, "for I should have
thought that Mr. Kilroy was the last person in the world to interest
Angelica."

"And so he is," Mr. Hamilton-Wells observed in his precisest way, "and she
does not profess to find him interesting. But what she says is that she
must talk, and he does for a target to talk at."

Lady Adeline looked anxiously at the door while her husband was speaking.
She was in terror lest Mr. Kilroy should come in and hear him, for Mr.
Hamilton-Wells had a habit of threshing his subject out, even when it was
obviously unfortunate, and would not allow himself to be interrupted by
anybody.

He made his favourite gesture with his hands when he had spoken, which
consisted in spreading his long white fingers out as if he wore lace
ruffles which were in the way, and was shaking them back a little. He had
a long cadaverous face, clean shaven; straight hair of suspicious
brownness, parted in the middle and plastered down on either side of his
head; and a general air of being one of his own Puritan ancestors who
should have appeared in black velvet and lace; and his punctilious manners
strengthened this impression. The one trinket he displayed was a ring,
which he wore on the forefinger of his right hand, a handsome intaglio
carved out of crimson coral. It seemed to be the only part of his natural
costume which had survived, and came into play continually.

Mr. Kilroy entered the room in time to hear the concluding remark, but
naturally did not take it to himself, and Lord Dawne, seeing his sister's
trepidation, came to the rescue by diverting the subject into another
channel.

They were all sitting round an open window, and just at that moment the
twins themselves appeared in sight, straggling up the drive in a deep
discourse, with their arms round each other's necks, and Angelica's dark
head resting against Diavolo's fair one.

"Harmony reigns among the heavenly bodies, apparently," said Dr.
Galbraith.

"The powers of darkness plotting evil, more likely," said their uncle
Dawne.

"Naughty children! What have they done with their hats?" Lady Adeline
exclaimed.

"Discovered some ingenious method of doing damage to my hay with them,
most probably," Dr. Galbraith observed.

They all leant forward, watching the children.

"Angelica is growing up," said Lord Dawne.

"She has always been the taller, stronger, and wickeder of the two, and
will remain so, I expect," said Dr. Galbraith.

"But how old is she now exactly?" Mr. Kilroy wished to know.

"Nearly sixteen," Lady Adeline answered. "But a very young sixteen in some
ways, I am thankful to say. And I believe we have you to thank, Mr. Ellis,
for keeping her so."

The tutor's strong but careworn face flushed sensitively; but he only
answered with a deprecating gesture.

"Then how old is Diavolo?" Mr. Kilroy pursued absently.

"About the same age," Mr. Hamilton-Wells replied, without moving a muscle
of his face.

Lady Adeline looked puzzled: "Of course they are the same age," she said,
as if the point could be disputed.

Mr. Kilroy woke up: "Oh, of course, of course!" he exclaimed with some
embarrassment.

The twins had gone round the house by this time, and presently Diavolo
appeared in the drawing room alone. His thick fair hair stood out round
his head like a rumpled mop: his face and hands were not immaculate, and
his clothes were creased; but he entered the room with the same courtly
yet diffident air and high-bred ease which distinguished his uncle Dawne,
whom he imitated as well as resembled in most things.

He took his seat beside him now, and remarked that it was a nice day, and--

But before he could finish the affable phrase, the door burst open from
without, and Angelica entered.

"Hollo! Are you all here?" she said. "How are you, Uncle Dawne?"

"I wish you would not be so impetuous," Diavolo remonstrated gently. "You
quite startle one."

"You _are_ a coon!" said Angelica.

"My dear child--" Lady Angeline began.

"Well, mamma, no matter _what_ I do, Diavolo grumps at me," Angelica
snapped.

"What expressions you use!" sighed Lady Adeline.

Angelica plumped down on the arm of her uncle's chair, and hugged him
round the head with one hand. She smelt overpoweringly strong of hay and
hot weather, but he patiently endured the caress, which was over in a
moment as it happened, for Angelica caught sight of her cat lurking under
a sofa opposite, and bending down double, whistled to it. Then she turned
her attention to a huge slice of bread, butter, and jam she held in her
hand. Diavolo's soul appeared in his face and shone out of his eyes when
she bit it.

"Have some?" said Angelica, going over to him, and edging him half off his
chair so as to make room for herself beside him. She held the bread and
butter to his mouth as she spoke, and they finished it together, bite and
bite about.

"Now I am ready for tea," said Angelica when they had done.

"So am I," said Diavolo, with a sigh of satisfaction.

"Let us have afternoon tea with you here to-day, Mr. Ellis," Angelica
coaxed. "It's so much more sociable. And I want to talk to Mr. Kilroy."

She jumped up in her impetuous way, plumped down again on a low stool in
front of that gentleman, clasped her hands round her knees, and looked up
in his face as she spoke.

"That's a nice place you've got at--" she was beginning, but Mr. Ellis
interrupted her by throwing up his head and ejaculating "Grammar!"

"_Bother_!" Angelica exclaimed testily. "Now you've put me all out.
Oh!--I was going to say _you have_ a nice place at Ilverthorpe. We
were over there the other day and inspected it."

"Very happy--glad, I am sure, you did not stand upon ceremony," Mr. Kilroy
answered.

But this politeness seemed altogether superfluous to Angelica, and she did
not therefore acknowledge it in any way.

"I suppose you will go into Parliament now," she pursued.

Mr. Kilroy looked surprised. The idea had occurred to him lately, but he
was not aware of having mentioned it to anyone.

"I hope you will at all events," she continued, "and let me write your
speeches for you. That is what Diavolo is going to do. You see I shall
want a mouthpiece until I get in myself, and I don't mind having two if
you are clever at learning by heart. You've a pleasant voice and good
address to begin with, and that is all in your favour. Oh, you needn't
exchange glances with papa," she broke off. "He doesn't know how I mean to
order my life in the least."

"But you will allow him some voice in the ordering of it--at least until
you marry, I suppose," Mr. Kilroy observed.

"That depends," Angelica answered decidedly. "You see, a child comes into
the world for purposes of its own, and not in order to carry out any
preconceived ideas its father may have of what it is good for. And as to
marrying--well, that requires consideration."

"Now, I call that a very proper spirit in which to approach the subject,"
Mr. Kilroy declared. "You have every right to expect to make the best
match possible, and the choice for a young lady in your position will be
restricted."

"Not at all," said Angelica bluntly. "Is thy servant a slave of a princess
that she should marry a rickety king? I have quite other views for myself.
In fact, I think the wisest plan for me would be to buy a nice clean
little boy, and bring him up to suit my own ideas. I needn't marry him,
you know, if he doesn't turn out well." She slipped from the footstool on
to the floor as she spoke, and began to make friendly overtures to the
cat.

"I always thought you had designs on Dr. Galbraith!" said Diavolo, meaning
to provoke her.

"Did you?" she answered. "Then you must have thought me of a suicidal
tendency. Why, he would pound me up in a mortar if I disagreed with him.
You have heard him slam a door?"

"He _is_ irascible," Diavolo answered, quite as if Dr. Galbraith were
not present listening to him. "He called me a little brute on one
occasion."

"Which reminds me," said Dr. Galbraith. "What have you done to my decoy?
The birds have forsaken it."

"We never did anything to your decoy," rejoined Angelica in a positive
tone. "You just went down there yourself one day and exploded some long
words at the ducks, and, naturally, they scooted."

"Well, I warn you," said Dr. Galbraith, frowning with decision--"I warn
you that I am going to have keys made for everything about the place that
will lock up; and, all the same, I shall only allow you to come under
escort of the chief constable, and I shall keep a posse of detectives
concealed about the grounds to watch for you carefully."

The twins exploded with delight.

"Didn't I promise you I'd draw him this afternoon?" Diavolo exclaimed.

"You did," Angelica responded, with tears in her eyes.

Lord Dawne got up.

"Won't you stay for tea?" Lady Adeline exclaimed. "It is just coming."

"I don't care for any, thank you," he answered. "And I really ought not to
have stayed so long. I only came to ask if you would let the children
come. Both my father and Fulda have set their hearts upon having them."

"Are we to go to Morne?" cried Angelica.

"For a visit--to stay?" said Diavolo.

"If you behave yourselves," their mother answered.

"Oh, in that case!" said Diavolo, shrugging his shoulders as at an
impossibility.

"It would never do for us to be good there," said Angelica. "Grandpapa
would be so dreadfully disappointed if we were."

"Quite so," said Diavolo.

And then they scampered out together into the hall, and kicked each other
in the exuberance of their spirits, but without ill-will.

CHAPTER II.

As soon as the Heavenly Twins were safely settled at Morne, Mr.
Hamilton-Wells played them a huge trick. He made Lady Adeline pack up and
set off with him for a voyage round the world without them. When their
parents were well on the way, and the news was broken to the children, the
people at Morne expected storm and trouble; but the Heavenly Twins saw the
joke at once, and chuckled immoderately.

"I wonder how long it took him to think it out?" said Diavolo.

"It must have been a brilliant impromptu," Angelica supposed--"because,
you know, our coming here was all arranged in a moment. If you remember,
we came because they looked so sure that we shouldn't. I expect as soon as
we had gone, it was such a relief, that papa said: 'Adeline, my dear, we
must prolong this period of peace.' And he's just about hit on the only
way to do so."

"I should like to have seen him, though, popping in and out of the train
whenever it stopped. He must have been in a perfect fever until they were
safe on board and out at sea, fearing we might have heard that they were
off, and found some means of following them."

"We might do so still," said Angelica thoughtfully.

"No. Too much bother," said Diavolo. "And, besides, there is good deal
going on here, you know," he added significantly. "But, I say," he
demanded, becoming parent-sick suddenly, "do you understand how they could
go off like that without saying good-bye to us? I call it beastly
unnatural."

"Oh, give them their due!" said Angelica. "They did say good-bye to us.
Don't you remember how particularly affectionate they were the last time
they came? And all the good advice they gave us? 'Do attend to Mr. Ellis';
'Don't worry your grandfather,' and that sort of thing. They must have
relieved their own feelings thoroughly."

"Well, then, they didn't consider ours much," Diavolo grumbled; "and they
might have allowed us, poor grass-orphans, the comfort of bidding them
farewell,"

"We'll write them a letter," said Angelica.

Diavolo grinned.

And this was how it happened that the Heavenly Twins, who had only gone to
Morne for a month, remained a year there, and one of the most important
years of their lives, as was afterward evident. It was during this time
that they managed to identify themselves completely with their grandfather
in the estimation of the people of Morningquest. Charming manners were a
family trait, and the Heavenly Twins had always been popular in the city
on their own account; their spontaneity and extreme affability having
usually been held to balance their monkey tricks. Hamilton House, however,
was ten miles distant from Morningquest, and they had hitherto been
thought of as Hamilton-Wells; but after that year at the Castle, they
became identified with the old stock, the alien Hamilton-Wells being
dropped out of sight altogether.

The duke himself had always been popular. He had, like his ancestors,
lived much in his castle on the hill overlooking the city, and had
dominated the latter by his personality as well as by his place, so that
the people, predisposed by the pressure of hereditary habit to recognize
the pre-eminence of one of his family, and being no longer subject to the
authority of their duke as in the old days when he was a ruler who must be
obeyed, looked up to him involuntarily as an example to be followed.

Which was how it came to pass that, for the last half century, there had
been two influences at work in Morningquest: that of the chime, full
fraught with spiritual suggestion; and that of the duke, which was just
the opposite. They were the influences of good and evil, and, needless to
say, the effect of the latter was much the more certain of the two.

A great change, however, came over the duke toward the end of his life. In
his youth he had filled the place with riot and debauchery; in middle age
he had concealed his doings under respectable cloaks of excuse, such as
the County Club and business; but now he was old and superstitious, and
sought to sway the people in another direction altogether. For when his
youngest daughter, the beautiful Lady Fulda, became a Roman Catholic, she
wrought upon him by her earnestness so as to make him fear the flames, and
drove him in that way to seek solace and salvation in the Church as well;
and when he had done so himself, he rather expected, and quite intended,
that everybody else should do likewise. But the people of Morningquest who
had adopted his vices did not fear the flames themselves, and would have
nothing to do with his piety. They were like the children in "Punch," who,
when threatened with the policeman at the corner, exclaimed in derision:
"Why, that's father!" And, besides, the times were changing rapidly, and
the influence which remained to the aristocracy was already only dominant
so long as it went the way of popular feeling and was human; directly it
retrograded to past privileges, ideas, superstitions, and tastes, the
people laughed at it. They knew that the threatened rule of the priest was
a far-fetched anachronism which they need not fear for themselves in the
aggregate, and they therefore gave themselves up with interest to the
observation of such evidences of its effect on the individual as the duke
should betray to them from time to time. Their theory was that, having
grown too old for worldly dissipation, he had entered the Church in search
of new forms of excitement, and to vary the monotony generally, as so many
elderly coquettes do when they can no longer attract attention in any
other way. This, the people maintained, was the nature of such religious
consolation as he enjoyed; and upon that supposition certain lapses of his
were accounted for uncharitably.