The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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"I see what you mean!" Angelica burst out. "And you wouldn't say either
'convert' or 'pervert' yourself, would you?"

"Well, no," Ideala acknowledged, "I always adopt a little pleonasm myself
to avoid Christian controversy, and say 'when So-and-so became' a Roman or
Anglican Catholic, a Protestant, Positivist, or whatever else it might be;
and I let them say 'convert' or 'pervert,' whichever they like, to me,
because I know that it really cannot matter, so long as they are
agreeable--not that anybody ever expects them to be, poor little people!
although they know quite well that they should never let their angry
passions rise. They have no sense of humour at all! But just fancy, how
silly it must seem to the angels when Miss Protestant throws down a book
she is reading and shrieks, '_Convert_, indeed!' while Miss Catholic
at the same moment groans,'_Pervert_,' indignantly! Must be
'something rotten in the state of Denmark,' surely, or one or other of
them would have proved their point by this time. Or do you suppose," she
added, looking at Lord Dawne, "that the opposition is mercifully
preordained by nature to generate the right amount of heat by friction to
keep things going so that we do not come to a standstill on the way to
human perfection? It is very wonderful any way," she added--"to the looker
on; wonderfully funny!"

"I did not know that Lady Adeline had definitely left the Church of
England," Mr. Kilroy observed, "and I am surprised to hear it."

"Are you?" said Ideala. "Now, we were not. Adeline has always been of a
deeply religious disposition; but it was not bound to be, and it was never
likely to be, the religion of any church which would secure her lasting
reverence."

"I wonder what the religion of the future will be?" Mr. Kilroy remarked.

"It will consist in the deepest reverence for moral worth, the tenderest
pity for the frailties of human nature, the most profound faith in its
ultimate perfectibility," Ideala answered. "The religion of the future
must be a thing about which there can be no doubt, and consequently no
dispute. It will be for the peace and perfecting of man, not for the
exercise of his power to outwit an antagonist in an argument; and there
are only the great moral truths, perceived since the beginning of thought,
but hard to hold as principles of action because the higher faculties to
which they appeal are of slower growth than the lower ones which they
should control, and the delights they offer are of a nature too delicate
to be appreciated by uncultured palates; but it is in these, the infinite
truths, known to Buddha, reflected by Plato, preached by Christ,
undoubted, undisputed even by the spirit of evil, that religion must
consist, and is steadily growing to consist, while the questionable
man-made gauds of sensuous service are gradually being set aside. The
religion of the future will neither be a political institution, nor a
means of livelihood, but an expression of the highest moral attribute,
human or divine--disinterested love."

She sat for some time, looking down at the floor, and lost in thought when
she had said this; and then, rousing herself, she turned to Father
Ricardo, "I had a fit of Roman Catholicism once myself," she said to him,
pleasantly, "I enjoyed it very much while it lasted. But you do a great
deal of harm, you clergy! In the first place you begin by setting up
Christ as an ideal of perfect manhood, and then you proceed to demolish
him as a possible example, by maintaining that he was not a man, but a
God, and therefore a being whom it is beyond the power of man to imitate!
Oh, you terrible, terrible clergy! You preach the parable of the buried
talents, and side by side with that you have always insisted that women
should put theirs away; and you have soothed their sensitive consciences
with the dreadful cant of obedience--not obedience to the moral law, but
obedience to the will of man; for what moral law could be affected by the
higher education of women?"

"The Anglican Church is rather countenancing the higher education of
women, is it not?" said Mr. Kilroy.

"You don't put it properly," Ideala answered. "Women, after a hard battle,
secured for themselves their own higher education, and now that it is
being found to answer, the churches are coming in to claim the credit.
Dear, how rapidly reforms are carried out when we take them in hand
ourselves!" she exclaimed. "All the spiritual power is ours, and while we
refuse to know, it must be wasted for want of direction."

"But that is what you reject," said Father Ricardo. "The Church is ever
ready to direct her children."

"For her own advantage, and very badly," Ideala answered. "Does her
direction ever benefit the human race generally, or anybody but herself in
particular? Every great reform has been forced on the Church from outside.
Just consider the state of degradation, and the dense ignorance of the
people of every country upon which the curse of Catholicism rests!
'Wherever churches and monasteries abound the people are backward' it is
written. Just lately, there has been a little revival of Catholicism, a
flash in the pan, here in England, due to Cardinal Newman and Cardinal
Manning, who introduced some good old Protestant virtues into your
teaching; but that cannot last. You carry the instrument of your own
destruction along with you in the degrading exercises with which you seek
to debase our beautiful, wonderful, perfectible human nature."

"But the Church has done all that is possible for the people," Father
Ricardo began lamely. "The Church has always taught, for one thing, that
the labourer is worthy of his hire."

"But the Church never used its influence to make the hire worthy of the
labourer; instead of that, it has always sought to grind the last penny
out of the people, and then it pauperized them with alms," said Ideala.

"Why have the priests done so little good, Uncle Dawne?" Diavolo asked.

"Because they are no better than other people," was the answer, "and when
they get money they use it just as everybody else does, to strengthen
their own position, and make a display with."

"Ah, the terrible mistake it has been, this making a paid profession of
the doing of good!" Ideala exclaimed.

Angelica, who had put her arm round Diavolo again, and was sitting with
her head against his, listening gravely, now looked at Ideala: "I want to
know where the true spirit of God is," she said.

"I can tell you," Ideala answered fearlessly. "It is in us _women_.
_We_ have preserved it, and handed it down from one generation to
another of our own sex unsullied; and very soon we shall be called upon to
prove the possession of it, for already"--she turned to Father Ricardo
here, and specially addressed him, speaking always in gentle tones,
without emphasis--"already I--that is to say Woman--am a power in the
land, while you--that is to say Priest--retain ever less and less even of
the semblance of power.

"Pardon me, dear lady," the priest replied; "but it shocks me to hear you
assume such an arrogant tone."

"I don't think the tone was in the least arrogant," Angelica put in
briskly; "and, at any rate, it's your own tone exactly, for I've heard you
say as much and more, speaking of the priesthood."

"Not exactly," Diavolo corrected her. "Father Ricardo always says:
'Heaven, for some great inscrutable purpose, has mercifully vouchsafed
this wondrous power to us, poor'--or humble or unworthy; the first
adjective of that kind he can catch--'priests.' I like the short way of
putting it myself."

"But why do you always try to make out that it is our duty to be
_miserable_ sinners?" Angelica asked.

"If we taught ourselves to be happy in this world, we should grow to love
it too much, and then we should not strive to win the next."

"And that would impoverish the Church?" Diavolo suggested.

"But why not let _us_ be happy, and you raise money in some other
way?" Angelica wanted to know. "Miracles--now I should try some miracles;
a miracle must be much better than a bazaar to raise the funds."

"Oh, but you forget the nunneries Father Ricardo was telling us about the
other day," Diavolo said; "the austere orders where they only live a few
years, you know."

"I had forgotten for the moment, but I read up the subject at the time,
and found out that when the nuns die all their money remains in the Church;
is that what you mean?" said the practical Angelica.

"Yes," said Diavolo. "You see, it would hardly cost ten shillings a week
to keep a nun, and of course," he said to Father Ricardo, "the more
fasting you counsel the less outlay there would be; so I don't wonder you
promise them more goodies in the next world, the more austerities they
practise in this."

"It must really work like a provision of nature for the enrichment of Holy
Church--so many nuns worked off on the prayer and fasting mill per annum,
so many unencumbered fortunes added to the establishment," Angelica
observed.

_"Jerusalem!_" said Diavolo. "How easy it is to gull the public!"

The Heavenly Twins had been speaking in a confidential tone, as if they
were behind the scenes with Father Ricardo, and now they watched him,
seeming to wait for him to wink--at least, that was how Dr. Galbraith
afterward interpreted the look. Nothing of this kind coming to pass,
however, they, both got up, and both together strolled out of the room,
yawning undisguisedly.

"That child, Angelica, will be one of us," Ideala whispered to Lord Dawne.

"Yes," he answered gravely; "They will both be of us eventually; only we
must make no move, but wait in patience 'Until the day break, and the
shadows flee away.'"

CHAPTER IV.

There was much high talk of doing good and living for others at Morne in
these days, to which the twins listened attentively. It is evident from
the thoughts they expressed at this time that the minds of both were in a
state of fermentation, and that the more active pursuits in which they
still indulged occasionally were the mere outcome of habit. When the
conversation was interesting, they would sit beside Father Ricardo (whom
they insisted on classing with themselves as an inferior being) and watch
the speakers by the hour together, and Father Ricardo too, gauging his
moral temperature, and noting every sigh of pity or shiver of
disapprobation that shook his sensitive frame.

"Where does it hurt you, _dear?_" Diavolo asked him once. "I know you
are a bad, bad man, because you say so yourself--"

"I never said so!" Father Ricardo exclaimed with a puzzled air.

"Well, you said you were a miserable sinner, not worthy, _et cetera_,
and it comes to the same thing," Diavolo rejoined; "and I don't wonder you
are disheartened when you see how impossible it is for you to be as
disinterestedly good as Uncle Dawne and Dr. Galbraith. I feel so myself
sometimes."

"Oh, I hope I am disinterested," Father Ricardo protested.

"I can't make it out if you are," said Diavolo, shaking his head. "You
don't seem to love goodness for its own sake, but for the reward here and
hereafter. The whole system you preach is one of reward and punishment."

Father Ricardo had an innocent hobby. He was fond of old china, and had
made a beautiful collection, with the help of such friends as Lord Dawne,
Dr. Galbraith, and Lady Adeline Hamilton-Wells, who never failed to bring
him back any good specimen they might find in the course of their travels.

One day at this time, after the talk had been running, as usual, upon
self-sacrifice and living for others, he invited the whole party to
inspect his collection; and they all went, with the exception of the
Heavenly Twins, who were not to be found at the moment. When the others
reached the room in which Father Ricardo kept his treasures, however, they
were surprised to find the cabinets comparatively speaking bare, and with
great gaps on the shelves as if someone had been weeding them
indiscriminately. The good Father looked very blank at first; but the
windows were wide open, and before he could think what had happened, a
noise on the lawn below attracted everybody's attention, and on looking
out to see what was the matter, they beheld the Heavenly Twins apparently
intent upon organizing a revel. They were very busy at the moment, and had
been for some hours evidently, for they had collected an organ man with a
monkey; a wandering musician with a harp; a man with a hammer who had been
engaged in breaking stones; a Punch and Judy party, consisting of a man,
woman, and boy, with their Toby-dog; five christy minstrels in their war
paint; a respectable looking mechanic with his wife and three children who
were tramping from one place to another in search of work; and a blind
beggar; and all these were seated in more or less awkward and constrained
attitudes on easy-chairs, covered with satin, velvet, or brocade, about
the lawn, with little tables before them on which was spread all the
cooked food, apparently, that the castle contained. When their admiring
relatives first caught sight of the twins, Angelica--who had coiled up her
hair, and wore a long black dress, borrowed from her Aunt Fulda's wardrobe;
a white apron with a bib, and a white cap like a nurse's, the property of
one of the lady's maids--was pouring tea out of a silver urn, and Diavolo,
in his shirt sleeves, with a serviette under his arm like a waiter in a
restaurant, was standing beside her with a salver in his hand, waiting to
carry it to the mechanic's lady.

"What on earth are you children doing?" Lord Dawne exclaimed.

"Feeding the hungry, sir," Diavolo drawled cheerfully.

"Well," groaned the poor priest, "you needn't have taken all my best china
for that purpose."

"We did that, sir," Diavolo replied with dignity, "in order that you, all
unworthy as you are, might have the pleasure of participating in this good
work. But, there!" he said to Angelica, "I told you he wouldn't appreciate
it!"

To the credit of the Heavenly Twins and their guests, it must be recorded
that no harm happened either to the china or the plate.

The next day was a Saint's day, and the children announced at breakfast
that they intended to keep it. They said they were going to compose a
religion for themselves out of all the most agreeable practices enjoined
by other religions, and they proposed to begin by making that day a
holiday.

Mr. Ellis would have remonstrated at the waste of time, and Father Ricardo
at the absence of proper intention, but the way the twins had put the
proposition happened to amuse the duke, and therefore they gained their
point. But, having gained it, they did not know very well what to do with
themselves. Angelica wouldn't make plans. She was thinking of the long
dress she had worn the day before, and feeling a vague desire to have her
own lengthened; and she wanted also to take that mysterious packet known
as her "work" to her Aunt Fulda's sitting room, where the ladies usually
spent the morning, so as to be with them, but she knew that Diavolo would
scorn her if she did; and the outcome of all this vagueness of intention
was a fit of excessive irritability. She wanted sympathy, but without
being aware of the fact herself, and the way she set about obtaining it
was by being excessively disagreeable to everybody. There was a rose in a
glass beside her plate, and she took it out, and began to twiddle it
between her fingers and thumb impatiently, till she managed to prick
herself with the thorns, and then she complained of the pain.

"Oh, that sort of thing doesn't hurt much," Diavolo declared.

"It _does_ hurt," she maintained aggressively; "and pain is pain,
whether the seat of it be your head, heart, or hind-quarters."

"_Angelica!_" Lady Fulda exclaimed with tragic emphasis. "Someone
must really talk to you _seriously!_ you are positively
_vulgar!_"

"Thank Heaven!" Angelica ejaculated fervently. "I knew I was going to be
something!"

She get up as she spoke, and walked out of the room with her head in the
air, affecting a proud consciousness of having had greatness suddenly
thrust upon her.

Lady Fulda looked helplessly, first at Father Ricardo, then at Mr. Ellis.

"Can't you do something?" she said to the latter.

Mr. Ellis replied by an almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders. "We
know better than to interfere when she's in one of her bad-language
tantrums," Diavolo explained.

When his grandfather left the table, he followed him uninvited on a tour
of inspection around the castle and grounds, and, finally, retiring with
him to the library, whither the old duke usually went to rest, read, or
meditate sometime during the morning, he coiled himself up in an armchair,
took a small book out of his pocket, and began to study it dilligently.

His grandfather glanced at him affectionately and with interest, from time
to time. He was lonely in his old age, and liked to have the boy about. He
had nobody left to him now who could touch his heart or take him out of
himself as Diavolo did, for nobody else attached themselves to him in the
same way, or showed such an unaffected preference for having him all to
themselves,

"What are you reading, sir?" he asked him at last.

"'Euripides,' sir," Diavolo answered, glancing over the top of his book
for a moment as he spoke. "I'm just where Hippolytus exclaims: 'O Jove!
wherefore indeed didst thou place in the light of the sun that specious
evil to men--woman?'"

"Are you reading 'Euripides' with a 'Key'?" his grandfather asked sternly.

"No, I am reading a key to 'Euripides,'" Diavolo answered,

"Don't you know your Greek, sir?" his grandfather demanded.

"I'm just looking to see, sir," Diavolo rejoined, returning to his book.

When he had finished the page, he looked up at his grandfather, who was
sitting with his hands folded upon a large volume he held open on his
knee, meditating, apparently.

"Beastly bad tone about women in the Classics," Diavolo remarked; "don't
you think so, sir?"

"Ah, my boy, you don't know women yet!" the old duke responded.

"Then I've not made the most of my opportunities," Diavolo said with a
grin, "for we meet with a fine variety in the houses about here! But what
I object to in these classical chaps," he resumed, "is the way they
sneaked and snivelled about women's faults, as if they had none of their
own! and then their mean trick of going back upon the women, and
reproaching them with their misfortunes."

"What do you mean by that?" his grandfather asked.

"Well, sir, I suppose you would call old age a misfortune to a pretty
woman?" Diavolo answered. "And just look at the language in which that
fellow Horace taunts Lydia and Lyce when they grow old, and after the
sickening way he fawned upon them when they were young, too! And here
again," he said, holding up his book, "is that fellow Hippolytus. Just
because one woman has shocked him, he says '... Never shall I be satisfied
in my hatred against women.... For in some way or other they are always
bad.' And a little further back, too"--he scuffed the leaves over--"he
says that woman is a great evil _because_ men squander away the
wealth of their houses upon them. If the men were such superior beings,
why don't they show it somehow? Horace was as spiteful himself as any old
woman; we should have called him a cad nowadays. And all this abuse"--he
shook his 'Euripides'--"is beastly bad form whichever way you look at it."
He ruffled his thick tow-hair as he spoke, and yawned in conclusion.

"Then you are coming out as a champion of women?" said the duke.

"Oh, by Jove, no!" Diavolo exclaimed, straightening himself. "I haven't
the conceit to suppose they would accept such a champion, and besides, I
think it's the other way on now; _we_ shall want champions soon. You
see, in the old days, women were so ignorant and subdued, they couldn't
retaliate or fight for themselves in any way; they never thought of such a
thing. But, now, if you hit a woman, she'll give you one back promptly,"
he asseverated, rubbing a bump on his head suspiciously. "She'll put you
in _Punch_, or revile you in the Dailies; Magazine you; write you
down an ass in a novel; blackguard you in choice language from a public
platform; or paint a picture of you which will make you wish you had never
been born. Ridicule!" he ejaculated, lowering his voice. "They ridicule
you. That's the worst of it. Now, there's Ideala, she can make a fellow
ridiculous without a word. When old Lord Groome came back from Malta the
other day, he called, and began to jeer at Mrs. Churston's feet for being
big and ugly. Ideala let him finish; and then she just looked down at his
own feet, and you could see in a minute that he wished himself an Eastern
potentate with petticoats to hide them under; for they were ugly enough to
be indecent."

The duke stretched out one of his own miniature models of feet upon this,
and glanced at it complacently.

"Where do you get all these ideas?" he asked. "At your age I never had any;
and if I had, I should have been ashamed to own it. You'll be a prig,
sir, if you don't mind."

"_I_ don't mind," Diavolo rejoined. "I've heard you say that ladies
dearly love a prig, and therefore I rather think of cultivating that
tone."

"You should have been sent to a public school," his grandfather said. "It
would have made a man of you."

"Oh, time will do that just as well," Diavolo answered encouragingly.

At that moment the door opened, and Lady Fulda entered.

"Papa, may I speak to you now?" she asked, and Diavolo got up politely and
lounged off to look for Angelica. He did not succeed in finding her,
however, because she had driven into Morningquest to do some shopping with
her Aunt Claudia and Ideala. She hated shopping as a rule, and could
seldom be persuaded to do any; but that morning, after breakfast, she had
gone to Lady Fulda's room, where the three ladies were sitting, and after
fidgeting them to death by wandering up and down, doing nothing, with a
scowl on her face, and an ugly look of discontent in her fine dark eyes,
she had burst out suddenly: "Aunt Fulda! I want some long dresses." Lady
Fulda looked up at her in blank amazement; but Lady Claudia, who was all
energy, rolled up her work on the instant, rang the bell, ordered the
carriage, and answered: "Come, then, and get what you like."

And ten minutes afterward they had started.

Several unsuccessful attempts had been made to persuade Angelica to wear
long dresses, and Lady Claudia felt that now, when she proposed it
herself, it would never do to check the impulse; and accordingly, in less
than a week from that day, Angelica, the tom-boy, was to all appearance no
more, and Miss Hamilton-Wells astonished the neighbourhood.

She came down to the drawing room quite shyly in her first long dinner
dress, with her dark hair coiled neatly high on her head. She had met Mr.
Kilroy on the stairs, and he had looked at her in a strange, startled way,
but he said nothing; and neither did anybody else when she entered the
room. Her grandfather, however, opened his eyes wide when he saw her, and
smiled as if he were gratified. Lord Dawne gave her a second glance, and
seemed a little sad; and Ideala went up to her and kissed her, and then
looked into her face for a moment very gravely, making her feel as if she
were on the eve of something momentous. But Diavolo would not look at her
a second time. One glimpse had been enough for him, and during the whole
of dinner he never raised his eyes.

His uncle Dawne saw what was wrong with the boy, and glanced at him from
time to time sympathetically. He meant to talk to him when the ladies had
left the table, but Diavolo escaped unobserved before he could carry out
his intention.

Mr. Ellis, however, had seen him go, and followed him. He found him in the
schoolroom, crying as if his heart would break, his slender frame all
shaken with great convulsive sobs, and the old books and playthings which
had suddenly assumed for him the bitterly pathetic interest that attaches
to once loved things when they are carelessly cast aside and forgotten,
scattered about him. Mr. Ellis sat down beside, him, and touched his hand,
and tried to comfort him, but the tutor was sad at heart himself.

Before very long, however, Angelica burst in upon them, with her hair
down, and in the shortest and oldest dress she possessed. Her passionate
love for her brother had always been the great hopeful and redeeming point
of her character, and if she did show it principally by banging his head,
she never meant to hurt him. Almost any other sister would have owed him a
grudge for not admiring her in her first fine gown, and so spoiling her
pleasure; but Angelica saw that he was thinking that the old days were
over, and there had come a change now which would divide them, and she
thought only of the pain he was suffering on that account. So, when she
found that he was not going to join the ladies in the drawing room, she
rushed upstairs to her own room, which her maid was arranging for the
night, and relieved her feelings by tearing off her dinner dress, rolling
it in a whisp, and throwing it at the woman. Her petticoats followed it,
and then she kicked off her white satin shoes, one of which lit on the
mantelpiece, the other on the dressing table; and, tearing out her
hairpins, flung them about the floor in all directions.