The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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"My old brown gown, Elizabeth," she demanded, stamping.

"What's the matter, Miss--"

But Angelica had snatched the gown from the wardrobe, put it on, and was
halfway downstairs, buttoning it as she went, before the maid could finish
the sentence.

When she entered the schoolroom, she threw herself on her knees beside
Diavolo, and hugged him tight, as if she been going to lose him
altogether, or he had just escaped from a great danger.

"I won't wear long dresses if you don't like them," she protested.

"Well, you can't go about like that," he grumbled, recovering himself the
moment he felt her close to him again, and struck by a sense of
impropriety in her short skirt after the grown-up appearance she had
presented in the long one. "You look like a beggar."

"Well, if I _do_ wear a long one," she declared, "it shall only be a
disguise. I promise you I'll be just as bad as ever in it," and she drew a
handkerchief out of her pocket, which had been left there for months and
was frowsy, and wiped her own eyes and Diavolo's abruptly, "Your feelings
are quite boggy, Diavolo," she said, giving a dry sob herself as she
spoke. "You can't touch them at all without coming to water. You cry when
you laugh."

Mr. Ellis had stolen softly out of the room as soon as he could do so
unobserved, and now the twins were sitting together in their favourite
position on the same chair, with their arms around each other, and
Angelica's dark head slanted so as to lean against Diavolo's fair one.

He had rewarded her last remark with a melancholy grin; but the clouds had
broken, and it now only required time for them to roll away.

"You'll get a moustache in time," Angelica proceeded, in her most
matter-of-fact tone. "I can see signs of it now in some lights, only it's
so fair it doesn't show much."

"I'll shave it to make it darker," he suggested.

"No, you mustn't do that," she answered, "because that'll make it coarse,
and I want you to have one like Uncle Dawne's. But when it comes it will
make you look as much grown up as my long dresses do me, and then we'll
study some art and practise it together, and not be separated all our
lives."

"We will," said Diavolo.

"But I think we ought to begin at once," Angelica added thoughtfully.
"Just give me time to consider. And come out into the grounds for a
frolic. I feel smothered in here; and there's a moon!"

CHAPTER V.

Edith Beale had now been married for more than a year to Sir Mosley
Menteith, and the whole of their life together had been to her a painful
period of gradual disillusion--and all the more painful because she was
totally unprepared even for the possibility of any troubles of the kind
which had beset her. Parental opinion and prejudice, ignorance, education,
and custom had combined to deceive her with regard to the transient nature
of her own feeling for her lover; and it was also inevitable that she
should lend herself enthusiastically to the deception; for who would not
believe, if they could, that a state so ecstatic is enduring? Even people
who do know better are apt to persuade themselves that an exception will
be made in their favour, and this being so, it naturally follows that a
girl like Edith, all faith and fondness, is foredoomed by every
circumstance of her life and virtue of her nature, to make the fatal
mistake. But, as Evadne told her, passion stands midway between love and
hate, and is an introduction to either; and there is no doubt that, if
Menteith had been the kind of repentant erring sinner she imagined him,
her first wild desire would have cooled down into the lasting joy of
tranquil love. Menteith, however, was not at all that kind of man, and,
consequently, from the first the marriage had been a miserable example of
the result of uniting the spiritual or better part of human nature with
the essentially animal or most degraded side of it. In that position there
was just one hope of happiness left for Edith, and that was in her
children. If such a woman so situated can be happy anywhere it will be in
her nursery. But Edith's child, which arrived pretty promptly, only proved
to be another whip to scourge her. Although of an unmistakable type, he
was apparently healthy when he was born, but had rapidly degenerated, and
Edith herself was a wreck.

They had been out to Malta for a short time, but had come home, Menteith
being invalided, and were now at a bracing sea-side place, trying what the
air would do for them all.

It was Edith's habit to send the child out with his nurse directly after
breakfast, and having done so as usual one morning, she remained alone
with her husband in the breakfast room, which looked out upon the sands.
She had her hands idly folded on her lap, and was watching Menteith as she
might have watched a stranger about whom she was curious. He sat at some
distance from her reading a paper, and there was no perceptible change in
him; but she had changed very much for the worse. Why was she not
recovering her strength? Why had it pleased Heaven to afflict her? That
was what she was thinking, but at the same time she blamed herself for
repining, and, in order to banish the thought, she rose, and, going over
to her husband, laid her hand gently on his shoulder, courting a caress.
He had been lavish enough of caresses at first, but all that was over now,
and he finished the paragraph he was reading before he noticed Edith at
all. Then he glanced at her, but his eyes were cold and critical.

"You certainly are not looking well," he observed, evidently meaning not
attractive, as if he were injured by the fact. He got up when he had
spoken, so that in the act of rising he dislodged her hand from his
shoulder. Then he yawned and lounged over to the window, which was wide
open, the weather being warm; and stood there with his legs apart, and his
hands in his pockets, looking out.

One little loving caress or kindly word would have changed the whole
direction of Edith's thoughts; but, wanting that, she stood where he had
left her for some moments, lost in pained reflection; and then she
followed him listlessly, seated herself in a low easy-chair, and looked
out also.

There were crowds of people on the sands, and her dull eyes wandered from
group to group, then up to the sky, and down again to the sea and shore.
The sun shone radiantly; sparkles of light from the rippling wavelets
responded to his ardent caress. The sea-sweet air fanned her face. But
neither light, nor air, nor sound availed to move her pleasurably.

"Is this to be my life?" she thought.

The tide was coming in over the sands. Some children with their shoes and
stockings off were playing close to the water's edge. They had made a
castle, and were standing on the top of it, all crowded together, waiting
for a big wave to come and surround them; and when at last it came, it
carried half their fortress away with it, and they all hopped off into the
water, and splashed up through it helter-skelter, with shouts of laughter,
to the dry land.

"I should have enjoyed that once," thought Edith.

A party of grown-up people cantered past upon donkeys, driven by boys with
big sticks. The women were clinging to the pommels of their saddles, and
shrieking as they bumped along, while the men shouted, and beat and kicked
the donkeys with all their might.

"Horrid, common, cruel people!" thought Edith. "How dreadful it would be
to have to know them!"

A girl came riding past alone on a hired horse. She wore a rusty black
skirt over her petticoats. It was gathered in by a drawing string at the
waist, and made her look ludicrously bunchy. Her stirrup was too short;
and she clung desperately with both hands to whip and reins and saddle,
only venturing to guide her horse now and then-in a timid, half apologetic
sort of way, as if she were afraid he would resent it. She must have felt
far from comfortable, but probably the dream of her life had been to ride,
and now that she was riding she admired herself extremely.

Edith involuntarily drew a mental picture of the contrast she herself
presented on horseback. "But that girl is well and happy," she objected,
to her own disadvantage.

She became aware at this moment of another girl who was passing on foot.
She was one of those good-looking girls of the middle class who throng to
fashionable watering-places in the season--young women with senses
rampant, and minds undisciplined, impelled by natural instinct to find a
mate, and practising every little art of dress and manner which they
imagine will help them to that end by making them attractive. Their object
is always evident in their eyes, which rove from man to man pathetically,
pleadingly, anxiously, mischievously, according to their temperaments, but
always with the same inquiry: "Will it be you?"

This girl had made herself by tight-lacing into a notable specimen of the
peg-top figure, bulgy at the bust and shoulders, and tapering off at the
waist. She had also squeezed her feet into boots that were much too small
for them, and fluffed her hair out till her head seemed preposterously
large--by which means she had achieved the appearance known to her set as
"stylish."

When Edith first saw her she was walking along very quickly with a
dissatisfied look on her face; but as she approached the window she
glanced up, and, seeing Menteith, her countenance cleared; and she
slackened her speed, seeming suddenly to become uncertain of the direction
she wished to take. First, she half stopped, and appeared to be thinking;
then she hastily put her hand in her pocket, and looked back the way she
had come, as if she had lost something; then shrugged her shoulders to
signify that it didn't much matter, and with a far-away look in her eyes
walked slowly into the sea; this was in order that she might spring nimbly
out again with a fine pretence of confusion at her affected fit of
absent-mindedness.

Menteith watched these manoeuvres attentively, patiently awaiting the
inevitable moment when she would look at him again. So far, she had
pretended to ignore him, but he understood her tactics, and as he observed
them, he twisted first one end and then the other of his little light
moustache, with a self-complacency not to be concealed. He had been
feeling bored all the morning, but now his interest in life revived. He
had only the one interest in life, and when the girl on the beach had done
all she could to excite it, she glanced at him again, and saw by the look
with which he responded that she had succeeded. Then she sat down on the
sand, placing herself so that she could meet his eyes every time she
looked up, and taking a letter out of her pocket she began to read it,
varying the expression of her countenance the while, to show that she
derived great pleasure from the perusal. This was to pique Menteith into
supposing that he had a rival.

The girl had not troubled herself about Edith's presence, but the latter
had also been watching her wiles--dully enough, however, until all at once
a thought occurred to her, a hateful thought.

It was the emotional rather than the intellectual side of her nature which
had been developed by early associations. She had been accustomed to feel
more than to think, and now, when all food for elevating emotions had been
withdrawn from her daily life, others, mostly of a distressing kind, took
possession of her mind. She had gone through all the phases of acute
misery to which a girl so trained and with such a husband is liable. She
had been weakened into dependence by excess of sympathy, and now was being
demoralised for want of any. Menteith had hung upon her words at first,
had been responsive to her every glance; but latterly he had become
indifferent to both; and she knew it, without, however, comprehending the
why and wherefore of the change, or of the growing sense of something
wanting which was fast becoming her own normal condition. She was still
fighting hard to preserve the spiritual fervour which had been the
predominant characteristic of her girlhood; but, at this period of their
intercourse, she knew better than to attempt to re-arouse in him that
semblance of spirituality which had deluded her in their early
passion-period. But she had from the first cultivated a passive attitude
toward him, and that even when the natural instinct of her womanhood
impelled her to war with him. In any case, however, instinct is not
safeguard enough for creatures living under purely artificial conditions;
they must have knowledge; and Edith had been robbed of all means of
self-defence by the teaching which insisted that her only duty as a wife
consisted in silent submission to her husband's will. Her intellectual
life, such as it was, had stopped short from the time of her intimate
association with Menteith; and her spiritual nature had been starved in
close contact with him; only her senses had been nourished, and these were
now being rendered morbidly active by disease. The shadow of an awful form
of insanity already darkened her days. The mental torture was extreme; but
she fought for her reason with the fearful malady valiantly; and all the
time presented outwardly only the same dull apathy, giving no sign and
speaking no word which could betray the fury of the rage within.

This last thought took her unawares as usual, and followed an accustomed
course. She had entertained it for a moment, turning it over in her mind
with interest before she realized its nature. When she did so, however,
her soul sickened. "What am I coming to?" she mentally ejaculated,
recovering herself with an effort; which resulted also in a sudden
resolution.

"I want to go home," she said. Her voice was very husky.

Menteith, startled from the absorbing occupation of ogling the girl on the
beach, looked at her sharply. Had she noticed what he was up to, and was
she jealous by any chance, as these confounded unreasonable women are apt
to be? No, he concluded, after carefully scrutinizing her face and
attitude; there was not a trace of that kind of thing, and she evidently
only meant what she had said. "And, by Jove!" he thought, "it's an
excellent idea, for she's looking anything but nice at present. Marriage
is certainly a lottery! A fellow chooses a girl for her health and beauty,
and gives her everything she can want in the world, and in less than a
year she's a wreck?" The injury done to himself, implied in this last
reflection, caused a certain amount of irritation, which betrayed itself
in the politely "nagging" tone of his reply:

"What precisely do you mean by 'home'?" he asked.

"I mean Morningquest," she answered.

"Ah!" he ejaculated. "That was what I inferred."

"I hope I have not said anything to annoy you?" she exclaimed.

"Oh, dear, no!" he assured her. "I know your sex too well to be annoyed by
any of its caprices. But still," he added, "a wife does not usually make
her 'home' with her parents."

"But we have no settled home," she remonstrated.

"Do you mean that for a reproach, because my want of means at present
obliges me to keep my houses shut up?" he asked.

"No," she answered with a gleam of spirit, "and you know I do not."

There was a pause after this. It pleased him to make her ask for his
permission to go to her mother, in so many words. He perceived that she
found it difficult to do so, and there was satisfaction in the respect and
fear which he thought were betokened by her hesitation. The sense of power
and possession flattered his self-esteem and enlivened him.

"Do you object?" she ventured at last.

"To what, dear?" he asked, without interrupting an exchange of amorous
glances which was just then going on between himself and the girl on the
beach.

"To my going home?"

"Oh, no!" he exclaimed, smiling. "Only to that way of putting it. By the
way," he added pleasantly, taking up a pair of opera glasses that were
lying on a table beside him, and adjusting the sight, "shall I accompany
you?"

Edith had taken it for granted that he would, as they had never yet been
separated since their marriage; and the question, striking as it did
another note of change, surprised and hurt her. But as it was evident that
he would not have asked it had he wished to go, she answered quietly: "Oh,
no! Why should you trouble yourself?"

"It would be no trouble, I assure you," he answered, confirming her first
impression that he did not wish to go.

"Oh, no!" she repeated. "I could not think of taking you away from
here--if the air is doing you good."

"Ah, well," he answered, catching at the excuse, "I suppose I ought to
forego the pleasure, for I am just beginning at last to feel some benefit
from the change, and I should probably lose the little good it has done me
if I go away now. Morningquest is relaxing. However, I shall join you as
soon as I can, you know!" This was said with a plausible affectation of
being impelled by a sense of duty to act contrary to his inclination,
which did not, however, impose upon Edith; and the thought that the wish
to be with her now was not imperative _although_ she was ill became
another haunting torment during the short remaining time they were
together; but, happily for herself, she never perceived that he did not
care to accompany her principally _because_ she was ill.

She left that afternoon with her servants and child, and he saw to the
preparations for their departure with cheerful alacrity. She was
depressed, and he told her she must keep up her spirits
for--everybody's--sake! and set her a good example by keeping his own up
manfully. He saw her off at the station, and stood smiling and bowing,
with his hat in his hand, until she was out of sight; and then he turned
on his heel and went with a jaunty air to look for the girl on the beach.

Up to the last moment, Edith would have been thankful for any excuse to
change her mind and stay; but when she found herself alone, and the
journey had fairly begun, she experienced a sudden sense of relief.

She had not realized the fact; but latterly her husband's presence had
oppressed her.

CHAPTER VI.

The Beales had not seen their daughter and grandson for some months, and
the appearance of both was a shock to them. They said not a word to each
other at first, but neither of them could help looking at Edith furtively
from time to time on the evening of her arrival. When the bishop came up
to the drawing room after dinner and had settled himself in his accustomed
easy-chair, Edith had crept to his side, and, slipping her hand through
his arm, sat leaning her head against his shoulder, and staring straight
before her, neither speaking nor listening except when directly addressed.
Her father, between whom and herself there had always been a great deal of
sympathy, was inexpressively touched by this silent appeal to his love;
and letting the paper lie on his lap, he sat silent also, and serious,
feeling, without in any way knowing, that all was not well.

Mrs. Beale was also depressed, although she assured herself again and
again that such deep devotion between father and daughter was an elevating
and beautiful sight, which it was a privilege to witness; and tried to
persuade herself that they were all extremely happy in the tranquil joy of
this peaceful evening spent alone together, with the world shut out.

"That child is not right," the Bishop said, when Edith had gone to bed.
"Have you noticed her face? I don't like the look of it at all; not at
all."

"Isn't that rather unkind, dear?" Mrs. Beale replied. "I always recovered
in time."

"You never were as ill as the poor child evidently is," he answered; and
retired to his library, much disturbed.

But Mrs. Beale determined not to worry herself, and managed to dismiss the
subject from her mind until next day, when she was sitting alone with her
daughter in the morning room up stairs. They were both working, but the
conversation flagged, and Mrs. Beale, from wondering why Edith was so
uncommunicative, found herself involuntarily repeating the bishop's
observation: "That child is not right," and the question: "What is the
matter with your face, dearest?" slipped from her unawares.

"I don't know, mother," Edith answered shortly.

She had never before in her life spoken to her mother in that tone, and
the latter was surprised and hurt for a moment; but then persuaded herself
that some irritability was only natural if the child were out of health,
and at once made proper allowances.

Edith got up when she had spoken, and left the room.

She was occupying one of the state departments of the palace then, but on
the way to it she had to pass the room which had been hers as a girl. The
door was open, and she went in. Nothing was changed there; but the moment
she entered she felt that there was a direful difference in herself. The
sad, benignant Christ, with tender, sympathetic eyes, looked down upon her
from the picture on the wall; but she returned the glance indifferently at
first, and then, remembering the rapture with which she had been wont to
kneel at his feet, she looked again. The recollection of the once dear
delight tantalized her now, however, because it did not renew it; and,
turning from the picture impatiently, she went to the window, and there
sank on to the seat from whence she had looked out at the moonlight and
the shadows on the night of the day on which it had been arranged that she
should winter with her mother at Malta. And here again she endeavoured to
recall the glow of sensation which had thrilled her then; but only the
lifeless ashes of that fire remained, and they were burnt out past all
hope of rekindling them. Even the remembrance of what her feelings had
been eluded her, and she could think of nothing but after
experiences--experiences of her married life, and those precisely which it
was not wise to recall. They were not exactly thoughts, however, that
occupied her, but emotions, to which, looking out on the sunlit garden
with rounded eyes and pupils dilated to the uttermost, she had
unconsciously lent herself for some time, as on other occasions, before
she realized what she was doing. Suddenly, however, she came to her
senses, and fled in affright to the morning room, where she threw herself
down on her knees beside her mother impetuously, and buried her face in
her lap.

"Take care, dear child!" Mrs. Beale exclaimed. "You will hurt yourself."

"Mother! Mother!" Edith cried. "I have such terrible, terrible thoughts! I
cannot control them. I cannot keep them away. The torment of my mind is
awful. I could kill myself."

Mrs. Beale turned pale. "Pray, dearest!" she ejaculated.

"I do, I do, mother," Edith wailed; "but they mingle with my prayers. God
is a demon, isn't he?"

Mrs. Beale threw her arms round her daughter, and almost shook her in her
consternation. "Edith, darling, do you know what you are saying?" she
demanded.

Edith looked into her face in a bewildered way. "No, mother, what was it?"
she answered.

Then all outward sign of Mrs. Beale's agitation subsided. Some shocks
stun, and some strengthen and steady us. The piteous appeal in Edith's
eyes, the puzzle and the pain of her face as she made an effort to recall
her words and understand them, had the latter effect upon her mother.

"I am afraid you are very weak, dear child," the poor lady bravely
responded. "Weakness makes people unhealthy-minded. You must see the
doctor, and have a tonic."

"The doctor again!" Edith groaned. "It has been nothing but the doctor and
'tonics' ever since I have been married."

"What does he say is the matter exactly?" Mrs. Beale asked.

"All his endeavour seems to be not to say what is the matter exactly,"
Edith replied.

Mrs. Beale reflected, caressing her daughter the while, and under the
soothing influence of her loving touch, Edith's countenance began to
relax.

"When is Mosley coming?" her mother said at last.

Edith's face contracted again, and she rose to her feet. "I don't know,
mother," she answered coldly.

The chime rang out at this moment, and she frowned as she listened to it.

"I wish those bells could be stopped!" she exclaimed, "They deafen me."

Mrs. Beale had also risen from her chair, smiling mechanically, but with
pain and perplexity at her heart. "I am sure it is the journey," she said.
"It has quite upset you. Your nerves are all jarred. You must really lie
down for a little--see, dearest, here on the couch; and keep quite
quiet." She arranged the cushions.

"Come, dear," she urged, "like a good child, and I will cover you up."

Edith had been accustomed to this kind of gentle compulsion all her life,
and as she yielded to it now she began to feel more like herself. "I knew
I should be better with you, mother," she said sighing; and then she
reached up her arm, and drew her mother's face down to hers. "Kiss me,
mother, and tell me you forgive me for being impatient."

"Dear child, you are not impatient," her mother answered, adding to
herself, as she returned to her seat; "I hope it is only impatience!"

Edith had turned her face to the wall, and soon appeared to be asleep.
Then her mother went down to the library. The bishop rose from his writing
table when she entered. It was a habit of his to be polite to his wife.