The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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"I think you were right last night about Edith," she said. "She is not as
she should be. Write to Dr. Galbraith. Ask him to come here to-morrow. Ask
him to dine and stay the night, as if it were only an ordinary visit--not
to alarm her, you know. But tell him why we want him to come. I am nervous
about her."

Mrs. Beale's face quivered, and she burst into tears as she spoke.

"Oh, my dear! I am sure there is no need to agitate yourself," the bishop
exclaimed. "Now do--now don't, really! See! I will write at once."

He sat down, and began, "My dear George," and then looked up at his wife
to see if she were not already relieved.

Mrs. Beale could not speak, but she stroked his head once or twice in
acknowledgment of his great kindness. Then more tears came because he
_was_ so very kind; and finally she was obliged to go to her own room
to recover herself.

As the day wore on, however, she became reassured. Edith seemed much
refreshed by her sleep, and, in the afternoon when the three ladies came
from the castle to call upon her, bringing Angelica with them, she quite
roused up.

"What, Angelica a grown up young lady in a long dress!" she exclaimed.
"But where is Diavolo?"

"We had a slight difference of opinion this morning," Angelica answered
stiffly.

"Dear me! that is a new thing!" Mrs. Beale commented.

"No, it is not," Angelica contradicted, bridling visibly. "Only, when we
were younger we used to--settle our differences--at once, and have done
with them. But now that I am in long dresses Diavolo won't do that, so we
have to sulk like married people."

"But, my dear child, I don't see why you should quarrel at all," Mrs.
Beale remonstrated.

"You would if you were with us, I expect," Angelica answered, and then she
turned her attention to Edith, but not by a sign did she betray, the
slightest consciousness of the latter's disfigurement--unless making
herself unusually agreeable was a symptom of commiseration; and in this
she succeeded so thoroughly that when the others rose to go Edith did not
feel inclined to part with her.

"Won't you stay with me here a few days?" she entreated.

Angelica reflected. "It would do him good, I should think," she said at
last.

"I should think it would!" Edith agreed, laughing.

"Did I speak?" said Angelica.

"Yes," Edith answered. "You informed me that you are going to stay here in
order to punish Diavolo by depriving him of your society for a time."

"I am sure I did not say all that!" Angelica exclaimed.

"Well, not exactly, perhaps," Edith confessed; "but you led me to infer
it."

"Well, I will stay," Angelica decided. "Aunt Fulda, I'm going to stay here
for a few days with Edith," she answered.

"Very well, dear," her aunt meekly rejoined. "Are you going to stay now?"

"Yes. Tell Elizabeth to bring me some wearing apparel."

As they drove back to Morne, Lady Claudia scolded Lady Fulda for so weakly
allowing Angelica to have her own way in everything.

"I thought you would agree with me that the sweet womanly influence at the
palace would do her good," Lady Fulda answered, in an injured tone.

"'Sweet womanly' _nonsense_!" said Lady Claude. "She will twist them
all round her little finger, and turn the whole place upside down before
she leaves, or I am much mistaken."

"Well, dear, If you would only make Angelica do what _you_ wish while
you are here to influence her I should be thankful," Lady Fulda rejoined
with gentle dignity.

Lady Claudia said no more.

Things went merrily at the palace for the rest of the day. Mrs. Orton Beg
called, and Mr. Kilroy of Ilverthorpe, between whom and Angelica there was
always an excellent understanding; and she entertained him now with
observations and anecdotes which so amused Edith that, as Mrs. Beale said
to the bishop afterward: "The dear, naughty child quite took her out of
herself."

Angelica had never been in the same house with a baby before, and she was
all interest. Whatever defects of character the new women may eventually
acquire, lack of maternal affection will not be one of them.

"Have you seen the baby?" she asked Elizabeth, when the latter was
brushing her hair for dinner. He had not been visible during the
afternoon, but Angelica had thought of him incessantly.

"Yes, Miss," Elizabeth answered.

"Is he a pretty baby?" Angelica wanted to know.

Elizabeth pursed up her lips with an air of reserve.

"You don't think so?" Angelica said--she had seen the maid's face in the
mirror before her. "What is he like?"

"He's exactly like the bishop, Miss."

Angelica broke into a broad smile at herself in the glass. "What! a little
old man baby!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, Miss--with a cold in his head," the maid said seriously.

When she was dressed, Angelica went to make his acquaintance. On the way
she discovered her particular friend, the bishop, going furtively in the
same direction, and slipped her hand through his arm.

"We'll go together," she said confidentially, taking it for granted that
his errand was the same as her own.

The nurse was undressing the child when they entered, and Edith sat
watching her. She was already dressed for the evening, and looked worse in
an elaborate toilet than she had done in her morning dress. A stranger
would have found it hard to believe that only the year before she had been
radiantly healthy and beautiful. The puzzled, pathetic expression again in
her eyes as she watched the child. She had no smile for him, and uttered
no baby words to him--nor had he a smile for her. He was old, old already,
and exhausted with suffering, and as his gaze wandered from one to the
other it was easy to believe that he was asking each dumbly why had he
ever been born?

"Is _that_ Edith's baby?" Angelica exclaimed in her astonishment and
horror under her breath, slipping her hand from the bishop's arm.

She had seen enough in one momentary glance, and she fled from the room.
The bishop followed her. Mrs. Beale was there when they entered, standing
behind her daughter's chair, but she did not look at her husband, nor he
at her. For the first time in their married life, poor souls, they were
afraid to meet each other's eyes.

CHAPTER VII.

Next day, in the afternoon, Mrs. Beale being otherwise engaged, Edith
proposed that she and Angelica should go for a drive together. Edith was
feeling better, and Angelica had recovered her equanimity. She suggested
that they should drive toward Fountain Towers. Edith had not been on that
road since her marriage, and when they passed the place where she and her
mother had seen the young French girl lying insensible on the pathway with
her baby beside her she was reminded of the incident, and described it to
Angelica, adding: "I have so often longed to know what became of her."

"I can tell you," said Angelica. "I know her quite well by sight. She is
living with Nurse Griffiths, in Honeysuckle Cottage, on Dr. Galbraith's
estate. Nurse Griffiths told us he brought her there one day in his
carriage very ill, and she has been there ever since. He always gets angry
and snaps at you if he's bothered about anybody who's ill or unfortunate,
and Diavolo and I met him that day coming away from the cottage, and he
spoke to us so shortly we were sure there was something bad the matter, so
we went to see what it was, and Nurse Griffiths said she was French. I've
not been there since, but I expect it's the same girl. Shall we stop and
see? We pass the end of the lane where the cottage is."

Edith agreed eagerly. She said it would be a relief to her mind to know
that the girl was well cared for and happy.

"Oh, everybody is well cared for and happy on Dr. Galbraith's estate,"
said Angelica. "His tenants worship him. And they would rather be abused
by him than complimented by anybody else."

The cottage, covered with the honeysuckle from which it took its name,
stood in a large old-fashioned garden, at the edge of a fir plantation,
which sheltered it from the northeast wind at the back, and filled the air
about it with balsamic fragrance.

Edith and Angelica left the carriage at the end of the lane and walked up.

"What a lovely spot!" Edith exclaimed. "On a still bright day like this it
makes one realize what the Saints meant by 'holy calm,' I think I should
like to live in such a place, and never hear another echo from the outside
world."

"I suppose you would just like to add dear Mosley to the establishment,"
Angelica suggested.

Edith's heart contracted. She had not thought of her husband, and now when
she did it was with a pang, because she could not include him in her idea
of Eden.

The French girl was standing at the door of the cottage with a child in
her arms.

"Is Nurse Griffiths in?" Angelica asked.

Edith looked at the child. It should have been running about by that time,
but it was small and rickety, with bones that bent beneath its weight,
slight as it was. Edith had looked at it first with some interest, but its
unhealthy appearance repelled her. She managed, however, to speak to the
girl about it kindly.

"What is your baby's name?" she asked.

"Mosley Menteith," was the answer.

For a moment it seemed to Edith as if all the world were blotted out, and
then again the hum of bees, the chirrup of birds, the fall of a fir-cone,
the call of the cock-pheasant in the wood sounded obtrusively, making the
girl's voice as she continued speaking appear far off and indistinct.

"I called him after his father, then, didn't I?" she was saying to the
baby in good English, but with a French accent. "And he's to grow up, and
be a big strong fellow and beat his father, isn't he, for he's a bad, bad
man!"

Nurse Griffiths hearing voices in the porch came out.

"Hush, Louise," she said to the girl. "You've no call to talk in that way
now. You must excuse her," she added to the ladies. "She's had a bad
bringing up."

"I can't--believe you," Edith faltered. "Tell me--exactly."

"Well, it was in this way," the girl rejoined, speaking in the prosaic
tone in which her countrywomen are accustomed to discuss matters that
inspire ours with too much disgust to be mentioned. "Menteith came after
me, and my sister wanted money, so she made me believe that he couldn't
marry me because there was a law, to prevent it. She said he loved me, and
if I loved him well enough, it would be a noble thing to disregard the
law, and he gave her seventy-five pounds for that. I found her letter to
Menteith about it, and I've got it here," tapping the bosom of her gown.
"He took me abroad when he wanted to get rid of me, and left me in Paris
with five pounds in my pocket; but it was enough to bring me back. I was
sick when I landed at Dover, and they sent me to the workhouse; and when I
got well again I told them I had friends in Morningquest, and they gave me
a little help to get there; but I had to tramp most of the way, and I was
weak--I couldn't have got as far as I did if I hadn't wanted to kill them
both."

"Now, hush!" said Nurse Griffiths. "The Lord saved you from such a sin."

"The Lord!" said the girl derisively. "If the Lord had been inclined to
help me, he wouldn't have waited till I came to murder. It wasn't the Lord
saved _me_."

"She will say that, and I can't cure her," Nurse Griffiths declared. "But
I'm afraid you're feeling the heat, ma'am, and you are not very strong,"
she added, addressing Edith, who was clinging to the porch for support,
looking strangely haggard. "Won't you come in and sit down a bit?"

"No, thank you, it is nothing," Edith answered steadily, recovering
herself.

"Will you come and sit down with me on that seat?" she said to Louise,
indicating a rustic bench under an old pear tree at the end of the garden.
"I want to talk to you."

Nurse Griffiths and Angelica remained in the porch.

"Who is that lady, Miss?" the nurse asked when Edith was out of hearing.

"Lady Menteith," Angelica answered.

The woman threw up her hands. "O Lord! have mercy upon her--and upon us!
What a cruel, cruel shame! She's showing her the letter. Eh! it's enough
to kill her. You generally know all the mischief that's going, Miss! Why
did you bring her here?"

"I wish I had known this, then," said Angelica, whose heart was thumping
painfully. "If any harm comes of it, I shall always think it was my
fault."

"Well, there's no call to do that if you didn't know," the woman answered.
"I see she was a great lady myself, but I never thought it was _her_.
Eh! but it's the dirty men makes the misery."

On the way back, Edith stopped the carriage at the telegraph office, and
despatched a message to her husband to come to her, "Come at once."

They only arrived in time to dress hurriedly for dinner, and when they
went down to the drawing room they found Dr. Galbraith there with the
bishop and Mrs. Beale.

"Where have you two been the whole afternoon?" the latter asked.

"We had tea in the library at Fountain Towers," Angelica answered easily,
"and obtained some useful knowledge from your books."

Dr. Galbraith looked hard at her: "I wonder what devilment you've been up
to now?" he thought.

But Angelica's manner was as unconcerned as possible. Edith's was not,
however. Her face was flushed, her eyes unnaturally glittering, and she
became excited about trifles, and talked loudly at table; and in the
drawing room after dinner she could not keep still. Mrs. Beale asked
Angelica to play, and Angelica tried something soothing at first, but
Edith complained impatiently that those things always made her melancholy.
Then Angelica played some bars of patriotic music, stirring in the
extreme, but Edith stopped her again.

"That wearies my brain," she said, and began to pace about the room, up
and down, up and down. Her mother watched her anxiously. Angelica closed
the piano. Dr. Galbraith and the bishop came in from the dining room, and
then Edith declared that driving in the open air had made her so sleepy
she must go to bed.

Angelica noticed that Dr. Galbraith scrutinized her face sharply as he
shook hands with her.

"God bless you, my dear child," the bishop said when she kissed him, and
his lips moved afterward for some seconds as if he were in prayer. Her
mother followed her out of the room; and then silence settled on the three
who were left. The bishop was obviously uneasy. Dr. Galbraith's
good-looking plainness was softened by a serious expression which added
much to the attractiveness of his strong kind face. Angelica shivered, and
was about to break the spell of silence boldly in her energetic way, when
suddenly, and apparently overhead, a heavy bell tolled once.

It was only the cathedral clock striking the hour, but it sounded
portentously through the solemn stillness of the night, and with quickened
attention they all looked up and listened.

Slowly the big bell boomed forth ten strokes. Then came a pause; and then
the chime rolled through the room, a deafening volume of sound, in long
reverberations, from amidst which the constant message disentangled itself
as it were, but distinctly, although to each listener with a different
effect:

[Illustration: (musical notation); lyrics: He, watch-ing o-ver Is--ra--el,
slumbers not, nor sleeps.]

It awoke Dr. Galbraith from a train of painful reflections; it reassured
the bishop; and it made Angelica fret for Diavolo remorsefully.

CHAPTER VIII.

Angelica must have fallen asleep the moment she got into bed that night,
and just as instantly she began to dream. She had never hitherto felt a
throb of passion. She had given the best love of her life to her brother,
and had made no personal application of anything she had heard, or seen,
or read of lovers, so that the possibility of ever having one of her own
had never cost her a serious thought. But the excitement of that day and
the occupations had so wrought upon her imagination that when she slept
she dreamt, and in her dream she saw a semblance, the semblance of a man,
a changing semblance, the features of which she could not discern,
although she tried with frenzied effort, because she knew that when she
saw him fully face to face he would be hers. They were not in this world,
nor in the next. They were not eyen in the universe. They were simply each
the centre of a great light which formed a sphere about them, and
separated them from one another; and heaven and hell, and earth and sky,
and night and day, and life and death were, all added to the glory of
those spheres of light. And she knew _how_; but there is no word of
human speech to express it. She lay on light, she stood on light, she sat
on light, she swam in light; and wallowed, and walked, and ran, and
leaped, and soared, rolling along in her own sphere until the monotony
made her giddy; and all her endeavour was to reach her lover, not for
himself so much as because she knew that if their two lights could be
added in equal parts to each other and mingled into one, their combined
effulgence would make a pathway to heaven. But try as she would she could
not attain her object, and finally she became so exhausted by the struggle
that she was obliged to desist. The moment she did so, however, the other
sphere tamed of its own accord, and rolled up to her. "Dear me!" said
Angelica. "How easily things are done when the right time comes!" The
semblance now took shape, and kissed her. "How nice!" thought Angelica,
returning the kiss. "This is love. Love is life. I am his. He is mine.
Most of all, he is _mine!_" "No, we can't allow that!" said a chorus
of men from the earth. "You're beginning to know too much. You'll want to
be paid for your labour next just as well as we are, and that is
_unwomanly!_" But Angelica only laughed and kissed her lover. "Talk
does no good," she said; "this is the one thing the great man-boy-booby
understands at present!" So she kissed him again, and every time she
kissed him, he changed. He was Samson, Abraham, Lot, Antony, Caesar, Pan,
Achilles, Hercules, Jove; he was Lancelot and Arthur, Percival, Galahad
and Gawaine. He was Henry VIII., Richelieu, Robespierre, Luther, and
several Popes. He was David the Psalmist, beloved of the man-god of the
Hebrews. He was golden-haired Absalom, and St. Paul in his unregenerate
days. But he never was Solomon. She saw hundreds of women dividing Solomon
among them, and cherishing the little bits in the Woman's Sphere of their
day, and they offered her a portion, but she refused to take it. She said
she would have the whole of him or none at all, and they were horribly
shocked. They said: "Fie! you are no true woman! A woman is satisfied with
very little, and silently submits." But Angelica answered: "Rubbish! What
do you know of womanhood and truth? you talk like a bishop!" And the
clergy were dreadfully offended at this. They said she was all wrong. They
said it mildly. They shouted it rudely. They whispered it persuasively,
and then they blustered. "We are right, and you are wrong!" they
maintained. "Well, I have only your word for that," said Angelica, which
provoked them again. "We speak in the name of the Lord!" they answered.

"Oh, anybody could do that," said Angelica, "but it wouldn't prove that
they have the Lord's permission to use his name." Then they reminded her
that the true spirit of God had been bestowed upon them for transmission,
and she answered: "Yes, but it was taken from you again for your sins, and
confided to us; and wherever a virtuous woman is, there is the spirit of
God, and the will of God, and there only!" Then they drew off a little and
consulted, and when they spoke again they had lowered their tone
considerably. "But you will allow, I suppose, that we have done some good
in the world?" they said collectively. "Oh, yes," she answered, "you have
done your duty here and there to the best of your ability, but your
ability was considerably impaired by vice. However, you have brought the
world up out of the dark ages of physical force at our instigation, and
helped to prepare it for us; now step down gracefully, take your pensions
and perquisites, and hold your tongues. Men are the muscle, the hard
working material of the nation; women are the soul and spirit, the
directing intelligence." They were about to reply, but before they could
do so, a stentorian voice proclaimed:

"HOME IS THE WOMAN'S SPHERE!"

"Who are you?" said Angelica coolly. "I am the Pope of Rome," he answered,
strutting up to her with dignity. "And what do _you_ know about the
Woman's Sphere?" she said laughing. "I am informed of God!" he declared.
But she answered that she had much later information, and slammed the
doors of the Sphere in his face. Then she peeped through the keyhole, and
saw that the pope was in consultation with the Archbishops of Canterbury
and York, and two popular cardinals. They were very quiet at first, but
presently they began to quarrel. "Don't make such a noise," she shrieked
through the keyhole: "go away and be good, will you? We're very busy in
here, and you disturb us. We're revising the moral laws." The shock of
this intelligence electrified them, and while they stared at each other
helplessly, not knowing what to do, she armed herself with the vulgar
vernacular, which was the best weapon, she understood, to level at cant.
"Lord," she said to herself, "how Diavolo would enjoy this! I wish he was
here!" She found the work of the Sphere very heavy, and she tried to
remember the name of some saint, but for the life of her she couldn't
think of any, so she called upon Ouida and Rhoda Broughton. Then she
peeped through the keyhole again, and finding that the pope was listening,
she squirted water into his ear. The other Ecclesiastical Commissioners
remained in the background, looking anxious. "We're attending to man the
iniquitous now," she called to them kindly to relieve their minds. "He's
been too much for you, it seems, but we'll soon settle him." "You're a
nasty-minded woman," said the pope. "Always abusive, old candles and
vestments," Angelica retorted. "Candles and vestments--_in excess_"
said the Archbishop of York hurriedly. "Where?" And he went off to see
about them. "To the pure all things are pure," a powerful voice proclaimed
at that moment. "Ah, that is St. Paul!" said Angelica, surprised and
delighted, and then she shook hands with him. "The sacred duties of wife
and mother," one of the cardinals began to pipe--"There you are meddling
again," Angelica interrupted him rudely; "will you go away, and let us
mind our own business?" "This is all your fault," the pope said to the
Archbishop of Canterbury. The archbishop defended himself courteously, but
another quarrel seemed inevitable nevertheless. Before it could come off,
however, it suddenly appeared that if it were anything it was UNWOMANLY!
About that they were quite in accord; and having made the discovery they
went their several ways, shaking their several heads impressively. "Now I
shall have time to consider the state of the Sphere," said Angelica. "Just
wait till I can come and teach you your duty," she called to the women
there. "I am not Esther, most decidedly! But I am Judith. I am Jael. I am
Vashti. I am Godiva. I am all the heroic women of all the ages rolled into
one, not for the shedding of blood, but for the saving of suffering." They
did not understand her a bit, however, they were so dazed, and they all
looked askance at her. "I see," she said; "I shall have to save you in
spite of yourselves." But when she had looked a little longer, and seen
men, women, and children crowding like loathsome maggots together, she was
disheartened. "All this filth will breed a pestilence," she said, "and I
shouldn't be surprised if that pestilence were ME!" But just at that
moment the light went out, someone uttered a cry, and Angelica awoke. The
room was flooded with moonlight. "I am awake now," she said to herself,
"and that was a real cry. It was 'murder!' I think"--and she rose
intrepidly to rush to the rescue. She was going off at once, just as she
was, in her nightdress; but the house was so still at the moment that she
thought she might be mistaken. She was determined to go and see for
herself, however, in order to make sure; and having pinned up her hair,
she put on her shoes and stockings and a dressing gown, and opened the
door, her heart beating wildly all the time. It was a sickening sensation.
But as she listened she became aware of voices speaking naturally, and
people moving to and fro, which somewhat reassured her. She left the room,
however, and ran down the corridor.

At the farther end a bright shaft of light streamed across it from a
half-open door, and she heard Edith speaking wildly.

"My poor child! my poor child," Mrs. Beale answered with tears in her
voice. "Do try and calm yourself. Won't you tell us this story that is
troubling you now? You will feel better if you tell us."

"No, no," Edith answered quickly. "I will not tell you until he comes, any
of you. But _when_ he comes!" There was a pause, then she asked
feebly: "Doctor, what is the matter with my head?" But before he could
answer, she broke out into a stream of horrid imprecations.