The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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Angelica put her hands to her ears, and flew back past her own room to the
top of the stairs. There she encountered the bishop. He was trembling. He
was at a loss. Nothing he had ever studied either in theology or
metaphysics had in the slightest degree prepared him for the state of
things in society which he was now being forced to consider.

"My dear child!" he exclaimed, "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, I'm frightened! I'm frightened!" Angelica cried, thumping him hard on
the chest with both fists. "Let us go away and hide ourselves!" She seized
his hand impetuously, and dragged him downstairs after her sideways, a
mode of descent which was more rapid than either safe or graceful for a
little fat bishop in evening dress.

"Come, come, come to the library with me, and talk about God and good
angels, and that kind of thing," she cried.

"But this is the middle of the night," the bishop objected.

"Well, and is there any time like the present?" Angelica exclaimed. "Come
at once--come and say nice soothing things from the psalms."

As she spoke, she dragged him across the hall and into the library from
whence he had just issued, and then slammed the door. The bishop reproved
her for this, and wanted her to go to bed, but she refused. "Go to bed,
and lie awake in the dark with horrid words about, how can you expect it?"
she demanded. "I shall not go to bed unless you come and sit beside me all
night long."

Poor Angelica! impetuous, imperious, but in that she was her father's
daughter, not saved by her wonderful intelligence from being fantastical.
There must inevitably have been an element of broad farce in the veriest
tragedy into which she might have been brought at that time, an element
which was rendered all the more conspicuous by her own inability to
perceive at the moment that she was behaving ridiculously, and making
others ridiculous. But the bishop himself was not conscious of any
absurdity or loss of dignity. It was only the inconvenience that he felt
just then. For he was fresh from a painful interview with Dr. Galbraith,
and every nerve was jarring in response to the horror that had come upon
him. His heart was wrung, and his conscience did not acquit him. He did
recognize now, however, that Angelica was in no fit state of mind to be
left alone, and sitting down beside a little table on which stood his
constant companion and friend for many years, a large quarto copy of the
Bible, he folded his hands upon it, seeming to pray, while he waited
patiently until she should have calmed herself.

Her indignation had driven her to seek a more popular form of relief than
the bishop had chosen. As she paced up and down the room in evident
agitation, every now and then stopping short to wring her hands when
terrible thoughts came crowding, she became in her own mind exceedingly
abusive.

She revised and enlarged her reply to that cardinal who had piped to her
earlier in the night about the sacred duties of wife and mother. "What do
_you_ know about 'the Sacred Duties of Wife and Mother'?" she jeered,
increasing her pace as her passion waxed. "Wait until you're a wife and
mother yourself, and then perhaps you'll be able to give an opinion; and,
meanwhile, attend to your own 'Sacred Duties.' You _will_ come poking
your nose into the Sphere where it's not wanted"--she shook her fist at
him--"with your theories." She exclaimed: "You meddling priest! What
you're afraid of is that there won't be slaves enough in the world to make
money for you; or poor enough to bear witness to your Christian charity!
You needn't be afraid, though. So long as we have _you_ there'll be
poverty in plenty!" Here she became conscious of the attitude of her
companion. The bishop blotted out the cardinal. His wrinkled hands, meekly
folded; his white head bowed; his benign face expressive of intense mental
suffering heroically borne, impressed her. "Resignation? No, not
resignation exactly," her thoughts ran on. "To be resigned is to
acquiesce. Resistance? Yes. To resist--but not to resist with rage. Be
firm, but be gentle." She sat down at last in an easy-chair and leaned
back, looking up at the ceiling. In a few minutes she was fast asleep.
When she awoke the room was empty, but outside she heard receding
footsteps, and springing up with characteristic impetuosity she followed
after "to see for herself."

The shutters were still closed in the library, and the lamps were burning;
but it was broad daylight in the hall, and a heavy squall of rain was
beating against the windows with mournful effect. Angelica saw a
manservant standing beside some baggage as she passed, and wondered who
had arrived.

At the foot of the stairs she overtook Dr. Galbraith, and caught his arm.

"Is Edith better?" she exclaimed.

Dr. Galbraith looked down at her, clasped both her hands in one of his as
they rested on his arm, and led her upstairs. Before they reached the top,
his firm, cool touch had steadied her nerves, and calmed her.

"This is your room, I think," he said, stopping when they reached it.

Angelica took the hint, and went in, but she did not shut the door. "You
might have told me, you pig, and then perhaps I should have been
satisfied," she reflected, standing just inside her room, holding her head
very high, and straining her ears to listen. She heard Dr. Galbraith go to
the end of the corridor, and then, as the sound of his footsteps ceased,
she knew that he must have gone into Edith's room. The house was
oppressively still. "I suppose I am to be tortured with suspense because I
am young," she thought, and then she followed Dr. Galbraith.

The shutters were still closed in Edith's room, and the gas was burning.
Nobody had thought of letting the daylight in. The door was open, and a
screen was drawn across it, but Angelica could see past the screen. She
saw Edith first. She was lying on her bed, still dressed, and sensible
now, but exhausted. Her yellow hair, all in disorder, fell over the pillow
to one side, and on the same side her mother sat facing her, rocking
herself to and fro, and holding Edith's hand, which she patted from time
to time in a helpless, piteous sort of way.

Edith was lying on her back, with her face turned toward Angelica. There
were deep lines of suffering marked upon it, and her eyes glittered
feverishly, but otherwise she was gray and ghastly, and old. It was the
horrible look of age that impressed Angelica. There were three gentlemen
present, the bishop, Dr. Galbraith, and Sir Mosley Menteith.

Edith was looking at her father. "That is why I sent for you all," she was
saying feebly--"to tell you, you who reprersent the arrangement of society
which has made it possible for me and my child to be sacrificed in this
way. I have nothing more to say to any of you--except"--she sat up in bed
suddenly, and addressed her husband in scathing tones--"except to you. And
what I want to say to you is--Go! go! Father! turn him out of the house.
Don't let me ever see that dreadful man again!"

She fell back on her pillow, white and still, and shut her eyes.

"My darling, you will kill yourself!" her mother exclaimed.

Dr. Galbraith stepped to the side of the bed hurriedly, and bent over her.
The bishop stood at the foot, holding on to the rail with both hands, his
whole face quivering with suppressed emotion. Menteith gave them a
vindictive glance, and then stole quietly away. Angelica had made her
escape, and was standing at the head of the stairs, wringing her hands.
She was trembling with rage and excitement. "I am Jael--I am Judith--No! I
am Cassandra," she was saying to herself. "I must speak!"

"I wish to God I hadn't answered that telegram so promptly--coming to be
made an exhibition of by a sick woman in her tantrums," Menteith reflected
as he walked down the corridor. "I'm surprised at Edith. But it is so like
a woman; you never can count upon them." Here he caught sight of Angelica,
and quite started with interest. "That's a deuced fine girl," he thought,
and followed her to the library instinctively.

A servant had just opened the shutters. Angelica went to one of the
windows and, throwing it up to the top, inhaled a deep breath of the fresh
morning air. The rain had stopped. The servant put out the lamps and
withdrew, after standing aside for a moment respectfully to allow Sir
Mosley Menteith to enter. The latter glanced round the room, but Angelica
was hidden by the curtain in the deep embrasure of the window. Menteith
bit his nails and stood still for some time. Then the bishop came,
followed by Dr. Galbraith, and walked straight up to him. It was a bad
moment for Sir Mosley Menteith. He tried to inspect his father-in-law
coolly, but his hand was somewhat tremulous as he raised it to twist the
ends of his little light moustache.

"My daughter wishes you to leave the house," the bishop said sternly;
"and--eh--I may say that I--that _we_--eh--her father and mother,
also wish you to go--eh--now, at once."

Angelica sprang from her hiding place. "And take that," she cried, "for a
present, you father of a speckled toad!" And seizing the heavy quarto
Bible from the table, she flung it with all her might full in his face. It
happened to hit him on the bridge of his nose, which it broke.

CHAPTER IX.

Later in the day Lord Dawne, who had ridden in, saw Dr. Galbraith's
carriage waiting before Mrs. Orton Beg's little house in the Close. He
reined in his horse, which was fidgety, and at the same moment Dr.
Galbraith came out.

"Nothing wrong here, I hope?" Lord Dawne inquired.

"No," was the curt response, "it is that poor child at the palace. I have
been up with her all night."

"What is the matter now?" Lord Dawne inquired.

"Now--it is her brain," the doctor answered; then stepped into his
carriage and was driven away.

Lord Dawne dismounted and met Mrs. Orton Beg, who was coming out with her
bonnet on.

"No hope, I suppose!" he said in a tone of deep commiseration.

"Oh, it is worse than death!" she answered. "I am going there now. Dr.
Galbraith says I shall be of use."

The bishop and Angelica spent some time in the library together that
morning. The bishop had sent for Angelica to talk to her, and she had come
to talk to the bishop; and, being quicker of speech than he, she had taken
the initiative.

"Did you ever feel like a horse with a bearing rein, champing his bit?"
she began the moment she burst into the room.

"No, I never did," said the bishop severely.

"Ah! then I can never make you understand how I feel now!" she said,
throwing herself on to a chair opposite to him, sideways, so that she
could clasp the back. "You look very unsympathetic," she remarked.

"It seems to me," the bishop began with increased severity, "that you have
no respect for anybody."

"No, I have not," she answered decidedly--"at least not for bishops and
doctors who let Menteith miscreants loose in society to marry whom they
please."

The bishop winced.

"I am sorry to have to reprove you seriously," he recommenced, shaking his
head. "But I feel that I should not be doing my duty if I neglected to
point out to you the extremely reprehensible nature of your conduct, first
in causing grievous distress of mind to Edith, in consequence of which
partly she is now lying dangerously ill upstairs--"

Angelica stopped him by suddenly assuming a dignified position on her
chair. She looked hard at him, and as she did so great tears came into her
eyes, and ran down her cheeks. "If I have done Edith any injury," she
exclaimed, "I shall never forgive myself."

"Well, well," said the bishop kindly--

"But do you think I was so much to blame?" Angelica demanded, interrupting
him. "I only did what you and Mrs. Beale and everybody else did--took it
for granted that she had married a decent man. But go on," said Angelica,
throwing herself back in her chair, and folding her arms. "What else have
I done?"

"You have grievously injured a fellow-creature."

"Oh,'fellow' if you like, and 'creature' too," said Angelica; "but the
injury I did him was a piece of luck for which I expect to be
congratulated."

"You took the sacred word of God," the bishop began--

"Because of the weight of it," Angelica interrupted again, "figuratively,
too, it was most appropriate. I call it poetical justice, whichever way
you look at it, and"--she burst into a sudden squall of rage--"if you nag
me any more I'll throw Bibles about until there isn't a whole one in the
house!"

The bishop looked at her steadily. "I shall say no more," he observed very
gently; "but I beg of you to reflect." Then he opened the quarto Bible and
began to read to himself. Angelica remained sitting opposite to him,
looking moodily at the floor; but now and then they stole furtive glances
at each other, and every time the bishop looked at Angelica he shook his
head.

"Things have gone wrong in the Sphere," slipped from Angelica at last.

"'The Sphere'?" said the bishop looking up. "What Sphere?"

"_The Woman's Sphere!_" Angelica answered solemnly, and then she told
him her dream. It took her exactly an hour to relate it with such comments
and elucidations as she deemed necessary, and the bishop heard her out.
When she finished he was somewhat exhausted; but he said that he thought
it a very remarkable dream.

"If you had been able to manage the Sphere, you see," Angelica concluded,
"and to regulate the extent of it, you would have been able to make it a
proper place for us to live in by this time."

"My dear child, you are talking nonsense!" the bishop exclaimed.

"Well, it may sound so to you at present," Angelica answered temperately;
"but there is a small idea in my mind which won't be nonsense when it
grows up." She was silent for a little after that, and then she ejaculated:
"I shouldn't be surprised if that pestilence were Me!"

"Eh?" said the bishop.

"Did I speak?" said Angelica.

"Yes."

"Ah, then, that is because I am tired out. I shall go to bed. Don't, for
the life of you, let anybody disturb me."

She got up and left the room, yawning desperately; and very soon afterward
her aunts came to take her back to Morne; but the bishop obeyed her last
injunction implicitly, and they were obliged to return without her.

The news that Edith had returned to the palace, bringing her little son
for the first time, was soon known in the neighbourhood. The arrival of
the boy was one of those events of life, originally destined to be a great
joy, which soften the heart and make it tender. And very soon carriages
came rolling up with ladies leaning forward in them all in a flutter of
sympathy and interest, eager to offer their congratulations to the young
mother, and to be introduced to the child. And meanwhile Mrs. Beale sat
beside her daughter's bed, patting her slender white hand from time to
time as it lay upon the coverlet, with that little gesture which had
struck Angelica as being so piteous. Edith had not spoken for hours; but
suddenly she exclaimed: "Evadne was right!"

Mrs. Beale rocked herself to and fro, and the tears gathered in her eyes
and slowly trickled down her cheeks, "Edith, darling," she said at last
with a great effort, "do you blame me?"

"Oh, no, mother! oh, no!" Edith cried, pressing her hand, and looking at
her with a last flash of loving recognition. "The same thing may happen
now to any mother--to any daughter--and _will_ happen so long as we
refuse to know and resist." A spasm of pain contracted her face. She
pressed her mother's hand again gently, and closed her eyes.

Presently she laughed. "I am quite, quite mad!" she said. "Do you know
what I have been doing? I've been murdering him! I've been creeping,
creeping, with bare feet, to surprise him in his sleep; and I had a tiny
knife--very sharp--and I felt for the artery"--she touched her neck--"and
then stabbed quickly! and he awoke, and knew he must die--and cowered! and
it was all a pleasure to me. Oh, yes! I am quite, quite mad!"

She did not notice the coming and going of people now, or anything that
was done in her room that day. Only once when she heard a servant outside
the door whisper: "For her ladyship," she asked what it was, and a silver
salver was brought to her covered with visiting cards. She looked at one
or two. "Kind messages," she said, "great names! and I am a great lady
too, I suppose! I made a splendid match. And now I have a lovely little
boy--the one thing wanting to complete my happiness. What numbers of girls
must envy me! Ah! they don't know! But tell them--tell them that I'm
quite, quite mad!"

Mrs. Beale was at last persuaded to go and rest, and Mrs. Orton Beg
replaced her.

"I am glad you have come," said Edith. "I want to show you my lovely
little son. Naturally I want to show him to everyone!" and she laughed.

Late in the evening, when the room was lighted up, Edith noticed her
father and mother and Dr. Galbraith. Angelica was there too, but in the
background.

"Oh-h!" Edith exclaimed with a sudden shriek, starting up in bed--"I want
to kill--I want to kill _him_. I want to kill that monstrous child!"

Dr. Galbraith was in time to prevent her springing out of bed.

"I know I am mad," she moaned in a broken voice. "I am quite, quite mad! I
never hurt a creature in my life--never thought an evil thought of anyone;
why must I suffer so? Father, my head." Again she started up. "Can't
you--can't you save me?" she shrieked. "Father, my head! my head!"

Angelica stole away to her own room, put on her things, and walked back to
Morne alone.

CHAPTER X.

Angelica had been baptized into the world of anguish. She had assisted at
horrid mysteries of life and death, and the experience was likely to be
warping.

She had fled from the palace, first, because she could not bear the place
any longer, and secondly, because she felt imperatively that she must see
Diavolo. He had been in bed and asleep for some time when she went to his
room that night, and awoke him by flashing a light in his face. He was
startled at first, but when he saw who it was, he remembered their last
quarrel and the base way she had deserted him by going to stay at the
palace, and he thought it due to his wounded heart to snap at her.

"What _do_ you mean by disturbing me so late at night?" he drawled
plaintively; "bringing in such a beastly lot of fresh air with you too.
You make me shiver."

"Don't be a fool, Diavolo," Angelica answered. "You know you're delighted
to see me. How nice you look with your hair all tousled! I wish my hair
was fair like yours. Oh! I have such a lot to tell you."

"Get on then," he said, lying back on his broad white pillows resignedly;
"or go away, and keep your confidences till to-morrow. If you would be so
good as to kindly consult my inclinations, that is what I should ask," he
added politely.

Angelica curled herself up on the end of his bed, and leant against the
foot-rail. The room was large and lofty, and the only light in it was that
of the candle which she still held in her hand. She had a walking jacket
on over an evening dress, and a hat, but this she took off and threw on
the floor.

"I've run away," she said. "I walked home all alone."

"What, up all that long dark hill!" he exclaimed, with interest, but
without incredulity. The Heavenly Twins never lied to each other.

"Yes," she answered impressively, "and I cut across the pine woods, and
the big black shadows fluttered about me like butterfly bogies, and I
wasn't afraid. I threw my arms about, and ran, and jumped, and
_breathed!_ Oh!" she exclaimed, "after holding your breath for
twenty-four hours, in a house full of gaslight and groans, you learn what
it is to be able to breathe freely out under the stars in the blessed
dark. And there was a little crescent moon above the trees," she added.

Diavolo had opened his great gray eyes, and looked out over her head
through the wall opposite, watching her with enthusiasm as she "cut across
the pine woods." "And how did you get in?" he asked.

"At the back," she answered. They looked into each other's intelligent
faces, and grinned. "Everybody is in bed," she added, "and I'm half
inclined to return to the palace, and come back to-morrow in the carriage
properly."

"I shouldn't do that," said Diavolo, feeling that such a proceeding would
be an inartistic anticlimax. "And it's to-morrow now, I should think." He
raised himself on his elbow, and peered at the clock on the mantelpiece.

Angelica held up the candle. "It's two," she said. "What do you do when
you first wake up in the morning?"

"Turn round and go to sleep again," Diavolo grunted.

"_I_ always look at the clock," said Angelica. "But I want to tell
you. You know after you said I was a cyclone in petticoats?"

Diavolo nodded. "So you are," he remarked.

"Well, I _am_, then," Angelica retorted. "Have it so, only don't
interrupt me. I can't think why I cared," she added upon reflection; "it
seems so little now, and such a long way off."

"Is it as far from the point as you are?" Diavolo courteously inquired.

"Ah, I'm coming to that!" she resumed, and then she graphically recounted
her late painful experiences, including the bishop's charge to Sir Mosley
Menteith, and poor Edith's last piteous appeal to heaven and earth for the
relief which she was not to receive.

"And did she die?" Diavolo asked in an awestruck whisper.

Being less sturdy and more sensitive than Angelica, he was quite shaken by
the bare recital of such suffering.

"Not while I was there," Angelica answered. "I heard her as I came out.
She was calling on God then."

They were both silent for some moments after this, Angelica fixed her eyes
on the candle, and Diavolo looked up to the unanswering heaven, full of
the vague wonderment which asks Why? Why? Why?

"There is no law, you see," Angelica, resumed, "either to protect us or
avenge us. That is because men made the law for themselves, and that is
why women are fighting for the right to make laws too."

"I'll help them!" Diavolo exclaimed.

"Will you?" said Angelica. "That's right! Shake hands!"

Having solemnly ratified the compact, Angelica boldly asserted that all
the manly men were helping women now, including Uncle Dawne and Dr.
Galbraith.

Then she thought she would go to bed. Of course she had flung the door
wide open when she entered, and left it so, and happening to glance toward
it now, it seemed to her that there was a horrible peculiar kind of pitchy
black darkness streaming in.

"O Diavolo!" she exclaimed, "I'm frightened! I daren't go alone!"

"_You_ frightened!" he jeered, "after dancing home alone in tip dark,
through the pine woods too!"

"There were only birds, beasts, and bogies there--pleasant creatures," she
said. "But here, behind those rows and rows of closed doors, there will be
ghosts of tortured women, and I shall hear them shriek!"

Her terror communicated itself to Diavolo's quick imagination, and he
glanced toward the door apprehensively. Then he deliberately arose, put on
his dressing gown and slippers, and lit a candle, by which time his face
was steadily set. "Come," he said. "I'll see you safely to your room."

"Diavolo, you're a real gentleman!" Angelica protested, "for I know you're
in as big a fright as I am."

Diavolo drew himself up and led the way.

Their rooms were far apart, it having been deemed advisable to separate
them when they first came to the castle, at which time there had been a
curious delusion that distance would do this. The first part of their
progress that night was nervous work, but they had not gone far before the
new aspect which familiar things took on by the light of their candles
arrested their attention.

"The light makes great-grandpapa wink," said Angelica looking up at a
portrait. "And Venus has put on a cloak."

"She's _wrapt in shadow_," said Diavolo poetically.

They were talking quite unconcernedly by this time, and in, their usual
somewhat loud tone of voice, fear of discovery not being one of their
characteristics. They were bound to have awakened any light sleeper, but
it so happened that they passed no occupied rooms but their Uncle Dawne's.
He, however, being up, heard them, and opened his door on them suddenly.
They both jumped.

"What are you two doing?" he said; "and why are you here at all,
Angelica?"

"I didn't think it delicate to stay at the palace any longer under the
circumstances," she answered glibly.

Lord Dawne was struck by the extreme propriety of this reply, "And may I
ask _when_ you returned?" he said.

"Yesterday," she answered, "and I've had nothing to eat since."

"Oh!" he observed. "And you've not had time to remove your walking jacket
either?" He looked hard at her. "I should like very much to know how you
got in," he said, shaking his head.

The Heavenly Twins looked at him affably.

"Well," he concluded, knowing better than to question them--"I suppose you
know where to find food, if that is your object!"

They both grinned.

"Come along, Uncle Dawne, and we'll show you!" Angelica burst out
sociably.

"Yes, _do!_" Diavolo entreated. "Come and revel!"