The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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"It is what might have been that I regret," she answered; "but that does
not change what has been--and is."

"I suppose you consider that I have spoilt your life?" he said.

"Oh, no!" she exclaimed. "Don't think that. Don't blame yourself. I have
never blamed you since I was cool enough to reflect. It is the system that
is at fault, the laxity which permits anyone, however unfit, to enter upon
the most sacred of all human relations. Saints should find a reward for
sanctity in marriage; but the Church, with that curious want of foresight
for which it is peculiar, induced the saints to put themselves away in
barren celibacy so that their saintliness could not spread, while it
encouraged sinners satiated with vice to transmit their misery-making
propensities from generation to generation. I believe firmly that
marriage, when those who marry are of such character as to make the
contract _holy_ matrimony, is a perfect state, fulfilling every law
of our human nature, and making earth with all its drawbacks a heaven of
happiness; but such marriages as we see contracted every day are simply a
degradation of all the higher attributes which distinguish men from
beasts. For there is no contract more carelessly made, more ridiculed,
more lightly broken; no sacred subject that is oftener blasphemed; and
nothing else in life affecting the dignity and welfare of man which is
oftener attacked with vulgar ribaldry in public, or outraged in private by
the secret conduct of it. No. You are not to blame, nor am I. It is not
our fault that we form the junction of the old abuses and the new modes of
thought. Some two people must have met as we have for the benefit of
others. But it has been much better with us than it might have
been--thanks to your kindness. I have been quite happy here with you--much
happier than I should have been at Fraylingay, I think, all this time. You
have never interfered with my pursuits or endeavoured to restrict my
liberty in any way, and consequently my occupations and interests have
been more varied, and my content greater than it would have been at home
after my father had discovered how very widely we differ in opinion. I am
grateful to you, George, and I do hope that it has been as well with you
as it has been with me since I came to Malta."

"Oh, yes. I have been all right," he answered--in a quite dissatisfied
tone, however. But presently that passed, and then he slid into a better
frame of mind, "You are a good woman, Evadne," he said. "You have played
me a--ah--_very_ nasty trick, and I don't agree with you--and I don't
believe there are a dozen men in the world at the present moment who would
agree with you. But, apart from your peculiar opinions, you are about one
of the nicest girls I ever knew. Everything you do is well done. You're
never out of temper. You don't speak much, as a rule, but you're always
ready to respond cheerfully when you're spoken to--and you don't
interfere. I wish from the bottom of my soul you had never been taught to
read and write, and then you would have had no views to come between us.
But since you think you cannot care for me, I shall not persecute you. I
gave you my word of honour that I never would, and I hope I have kept it."

"Yes--_indeed_. You have been goodness itself," she answered.

"I wrote and told your father how very well we get on," he continued, "and
tried to persuade him to make it up with you, but the old gentleman is
obstinate. He has his own notion of a wife's duty, and he sticks to it.
But I did my best, because I know you feel the separation from your own
family, although you never complain. He can't get over your wanting a
'Christlike' man for a husband. He says he laughs every time he thinks of
it. The first time he laughed at that idea of yours I was there, and
a--eh--_very_ unpleasant laugh it was. It got my back up somehow, and
made me feel ready to take your part against him. It isn't a compliment,
you know, to have your father-in-law laugh outright at the notion of your
ever being able to come up to your wife's idea of what a man should be.
And when he came down raging about your books, it was the recollection of
that laugh, I believe, that made me determine to get them for you, I asked
your mother to show me your old rooms, and I just took all the books I
could find; and then I thought it would be a good idea to make your new
rooms look as much like the old ones as possible."

"It was a very kind thought," Evadne answered.

"I don't pretend to have been a saint; very much the contrary," Colonel
Colquhoun proceeded with that assumption of humility often apparent in the
repentant sinner who expects to derive both credit and importance from his
past when he frankly confesses it was wicked, "but I hope I have always
been a gentleman,"--with her "saint" and "gentleman" were synonymous
terms,--"and what I want to say is," he continued--"I don't quite see how
to put it; but you have just expressed yourself satisfied with the
arrangements I have made for you so far. Well, if you really think that I
have done all I can to make your life endurable, will you do something for
me? I am a good deal older than you are. In all human probability you will
outlive me. Will you promise me that during my lifetime you will not mix
yourself up publicly--will not join societies, make speeches, or publish
books, which people would know you had written, on the social subjects you
are so fond of."

"_Fond_ of!" she ejaculated.

"Well, perhaps that is not the right expression," he conceded.

"No, very far from the right expression," she answered gently. "Social
subjects seem to be forcing themselves on the attention of every
thoughtful and right-minded person just now, and it would be culpable
cowardice to shun them while there is the shadow of a hope that some means
may be devised to put right what is so very wrong. Ignoring an evil is
tantamount to giving it full licence to spread. But I am thankful to say I
have never known anyone who found the knowledge of evil anything but
distressing--except Mrs. Guthrie Brimston, and she only delights in it so
long as it is made a jest of. But they are all alike in that set she
belongs to. Their ideas of propriety are bounded by their sense of
pleasure. So long as you talk flippantly, they will listen and laugh; but
if you talk seriously on the same subject, you make the matter
disagreeable, and then they call it 'improper.'"

Colonel Colquhoun was standing with his arms folded on the parapet of the
veranda looking down a vista of yellow houses at a glimpse there was of
the sea, dotted with boats, hazy with heat, intensely blue, and sparkling
back reflections of the glaring sun. From where Evadne sat she saw the
same scene through the open balustrade over the tops of the oleanders
growing in the garden below, and gradually the heat, and stillness, and
beauty, stole over her, melting her mood to tenderness, and filling her
mind with sadly sweet memories of the days of delight which preceded "all
this." She thought of the yellow gorse on the common, recalling its
peculiar fragrance; of the misty cobwebs stretched from bush to bush, and
decked with dazzling drops of dew; of the healthy happy heath creatures
peeping out at her shyly, here a rabbit and there a hare; of a lark that
sprang up singing and was lost to sight in a moment, of a thrush that
paused to reflect as she passed. She thought of the little church on the
high cliffs, the bourne of her morning walks, of the long stretch of sand;
and of the sea; and she felt the fresh free air of those open spaces rouse
her again to a gladness in life not often known to ladies idling on
languid afternoons in the sickly heat essential to the wellbeing of
citron, orange, and myrtle; beloved of the mythical faun, but fatal to the
best energies of the human race. And by a very natural transition, her
mind leaped on to that morning in church when the sense of loneliness
which comes to all young creatures that have no mate resolved itself into
that silent supplication, the petition which it is a part of the joy of
life in youth to present to a heaven which is willing enough to hear; and
she recalled the thrill of delight that trembled through every nerve of
her body when she looked up, and found her answer, when she saw and
recognized what she sought in the glance which, flashing between them, was
the spark that first fired the train of her blind passion for Colonel
Colquhoun. She thought then that her prayer was answered at that moment;
and she believed still that it had been answered so; but for a special
purpose which she had not then perceived. Colonel Colquhoun was not the
husband of her heart, but the rod of chastisement for her rash presumption;
he had not been given to her for her own happiness, but that she might
act as she had done to set an example by which she should have the double
privilege of expiating a fault of her own, and at the same time securing
the peace in life of others. It was in this way there hummed in her brain
on that hot afternoon results of the faith which had been held by her
ancestors; of the teaching which she had herself received directly; with a
curious glimmering of truths that were already half apparent to her own
acute faculties; an incongruous jumble all leavened by the natural
instincts of a being rich in vitality, and wholesome physical force. With
the recollection of the old days came back the shadow of the old
sensation. The interval was forgotten for the moment. She saw before her
the man whose every glance and word had thrilled her with pleasurable
emotion, whom it had been a joy just to be with and see. It was the same
man leaning there, fine of form and feature, with a dreamy look in his
blue eyes softening the glitter which was apt to be hard and stony. If
only--At that moment Colonel Colquhoun looked round at her, hesitated,
although his face flushed, and then exclaimed: "Evadne, you _do_ love
me!"

"I _did_ love you," she answered.

He sat down beside her, close to her: "Will you forget all this?" he said.
"Will you forget my past; will you make me a different man? Will you? You
can." He half stretched out his hand to take hers, but then drew back, a
gentleman always in that he would not force her inclinations in any way.
"If I do not change, we can be again as we are now, and there would be no
harm done. Will you consent, Evadne, will you--my wife--will you?"

He leant forward so close that her senses were troubled--too close, for
she pushed her chair back to relieve herself of the oppression, and the
act irritated him. Another moment, a little more persuasion and caressing
of the voice, which he could use so well to that effect, and she might
have given in to the kind of fascination which she had felt in his
presence from the first; but when she moved he drew back too, his
countenance clouded, and her own momentary yearning to be held close,
close; to be kissed till she could not think; to live the intoxicating
life of the senses only, and not care, was over.

"We could never be again as we are now," she answered. "There would be no
return for me. A wife cannot feel as I do. And you--you would not change.
Or at least you would only change your habits; the consequences of them
you will carry to your grave with you, and I doubt if you could ever
change your habits once for all. You were a different man for a while when
I first came out, but you soon relapsed. No. I can never regret my present
attitude; but I have seen several times already how much reason I should
have to regret--a different arrangement."

"You make light of love," he said. "Many a girl has died of a
disappointment."

"Many a girl is a fool," she answered placidly. "And what can love offer
me in exchange for the calm content of my life just now? for my perfect
health? for my freedom from care?"

"A reconciliation with your family," he suggested.

She sighed, and sat silent a little, lost in thought.

"I do not live with my family now," she answered at last. "They have all
their own interests, their own loves, apart from mine; would a letter or
two a year from them make up after all for the risk of misery I should be
running--for the terrible, helpless, hopeless, incurable misery of an
unhappily married woman, if I should become one?"

He rose and returned to his old position, leaning over the veranda,
looking down to the sea.

"You are cold-blooded, I think, Evadne," he reiterated.

She said nothing, but rested her head on the back of her chair and smiled.
She was not cold-blooded, and he knew it as well as she did. She was only
a nineteenth century woman of the higher order with senses so refined that
if her moral as well as her physical being were not satisfied in love,
both would revolt. They were silent some time after that, and then he
turned to her once more.

"Will you promise me that one thing, Evadne?" he asked. "Promise me that
during my lifetime you will never mix yourself up--never take part
publicly in any question of the day. It would be too deuced ridiculous for
me, you know, to have my name appearing in the papers in connection with
measures of reform, and all that sort of thing."

"I promise to spare you that kind of annoyance at all events," she
answered without hesitation, making the promise, not because she was
infirm of purpose, but because she was indefinite; she had no impulse at
the time to do anything, and no notion that she would ever feel impelled
to act in opposition to this wish of his.

"Thank you," he said, and there was another little pause, which he was
again the first to break.

"You would have loved me, then, if I had lived a different life," he said.

"Yes," she answered simply, "I should have loved you. No other man has
made me feel for a moment what I felt for you, while I believed that you
were all that a man should be who proposes to marry; and I don't think any
other man ever will, You were born for me. Why, oh, why! did you not live
for me?"

"I wish to God I had," he answered.

She rose impulsively, and stretched out her hands to him. Its was a
movement of pain and pity, sorrow and sympathy, and he understood it.

"You meant to marry always," she said, "You treasured in your heart your
ideal of a woman; why could you not have lived so that you would have been
_her_ ideal too, when at last you met?"

He took her two little outstretched hands and held them a moment in his,
looking down at them, "I wish to God I had," he repeated.

"Did it never occur to you that a woman has her ideal as well as a man?"
she said: "that she loves purity and truth, and loathes degradation and
vice more than a man does?"

"Theoretically, yes," he answered; "but you find practically that women
will marry anyone. If they were more particular, we should be more
particular too."

"Ah, that is our curse," said Evadne--"yours and mine. If women had been
'more particular' in the past, you would have been a good man, and I
should have been a happy wife to-day."

He raised her hands, which he was still holding, placing them palm to
palm, took them in one of his, and clasped them to his chest, bringing her
very close to him; and then he looked into her upturned face, considering
it, with that curious set expression on his own, which always came at a
crisis. Her lips were parted, her cheeks were pale, she still panted from
the passion of her last utterance, and her eyes, as he looked down into
them, were pained in expression and fixed. He let her hands drop, and once
more returned to his old position, leaning upon the balustrade with his
back to her, looking out over the sea. If it had been possible to have
obtained the mastery he had dreamed of over her, mere animal mastery, the
thought would have repelled him now. He might have dominated her senses,
but her soul would only have been the more confirmed in its loathing of
his life. He knew the strength of her convictions, knew that, so long as
they were a few yards apart, she could always have ruled both herself and
him; and life is lived a few yards apart. It was the best side of his
nature that was under Evadne's influence and he had now some saving grace
of manhood in him, which enabled him to appreciate the esteem with which
she had begun to repay his consideration for her, and to admire the
consistent self-respect which had brought her triumphantly out of all her
difficulties, and won her a distinguished position in the place. He felt
that he ought to be satisfied, and knew that he would have to be.

She remained standing as he had left her, and presently he turned to her
again. "Forgive me," he said, "for provoking a discussion which has pained
you needlessly. If repentance and remorse could wipe out the past, I
should be worthy to claim you this minute. But I know you are right. There
might have been hours of intoxication, but there would have been years of
misery also--for you--as my wife. Your decision was best for both of us.
It was our only chance of peace." He looked at her wistfully, and
approached a step.

She met him more than halfway. She put her hands on his shoulders, and
looked up at him. "But we are friends, George," she said with emotion. "I
seem to have nobody now but you belonging to me, and I should be lonely
indeed if--" She suddenly burst into tears.

"Yes, yes," he said huskily. "Of course we are friends; the best friends.
We shall always be friends. I have never let anyone say a word against
you, and I never will. I am proud to think that you are known by my name.
I only wish that I could make it worthy of you--and, perhaps, some day--in
the field--"

Poor fellow! The highest proof of moral worth he knew of was to be able to
take a prominent part in some great butchery of his fellow-men, without
exhibiting a symptom of fear.

Evadne had recovered herself, and now smiled up at him with wet eyelashes.

"Not there, I hope!" she answered. "Going to war and getting killed is not
a proof of affection and respect which we modern women care about. I would
rather keep you safe at home, and quarrel with you."

Colonel Colquhoun smiled. "Here is tea," he said, seeing a servant enter
the room behind them. "Shall we have it out here? We shall be cooler."

"Yes, by all means," she answered.

And then they began to talk of things indifferent, but with a new and
happy consciousness of an excellent understanding between them.

CHAPTER XV.

The following day, as Colonel Colquhoun went out in the afternoon, he met
Evadne coming in with Mrs. Malcomson and Mrs. Sillenger. Evadne was
leaning on Mrs. Malcomson's arm. She looked haggard and pale, and the
other two ladies were evidently also much distressed.

"Has anything happened?" Colquhoun asked with concern, "Are you ill,
Evadne?"

"I am sick at heart," she answered bitterly.

"We have had bad news," Mrs. Malcomson said significantly.

Colonel Colquhoun stood aside, and let them pass in. Then he went on to
the club, wondering very much what the news could be.

There he found Captain Belliot, Colonel Beston, and a few more of his
particular friends, all discussing something in tones of righteous
indignation. Mr. Price and Mr. St. John were there also. A mail had just
arrived bringing the details of Edith's illness from Morningquest.

Mr. St. John turned from the group, and as he did so Colonel Colquhoun
noticed that his gait was uncertain, and his face was white and distorted
as if with physical pain. His impulse was to offer him a restorative and
see him to his rooms, but Mr. Price anticipated the kind intention.

It was Mrs. Orton Beg who had written to Evadne, and she had brought Mrs.
Sillenger and Mrs. Malcomson in to hear the letter read.

"Edith is quite, quite mad," she said, unconsciously choosing the poor
girl's own expression; "and the most horrible part of it is, she knows it
herself. She wants to do the most dreadful things, and all the time she
feels as much horror of such deeds as we should. My aunt says her
sufferings are too terrible to describe. But she was growing gradually
weaker when the letter left."

"How _awful!_" Mrs. Sillenger ejaculated. "To think of her as we knew
her, so beautiful, and so sweet and good and true in every way; and with
her magnificent physique! and now not a soul that loves her, when they
hear that she is 'growing gradually weaker,' would wish it otherwise."

"My aunt concludes her letter by saying: 'I am telling you the state of
the case exactly,'" Evadne continued, "'because I did not agree with you
when you were here. I had been, so shielded from evil myself that I could
not believe in the danger to which all women in their weakness are
exposed. But I agree with you now, perfectly. We must alter all this, and
we can. Put me into communication with your friends--'"

"And you will join us yourself, Evadne?" Mrs. Malcomson exclaimed.

"Certainly I shall!" she answered emphatically. Then all at once something
flashed through her mind.

"Heaven!" she exclaimed. "I had forgotten! I cannot--I cannot join you. I
have given my word--to do nothing--so long as Colonel Colquhoun is alive."

Up to this time, Evadne in her home life had been serene and healthy
minded. But now suddenly there came a change. She began to ask: Why should
she trouble herself? Nobody who had a claim upon her wished her to do
anything but dress well and make herself agreeable, and that was what most
of the people about her were doing to the best of their ability. The
Church enjoined that she should do her duty. What was her duty? Clearly to
acquiesce as everybody else was doing, to refuse to know of anything that
might distress her, to be pleased and to give pleasure. That was all that
heaven itself had to offer her, and if she could make heaven upon earth
now, with a fan and a book, and a few congenial friends, she would.

This was the first consequence of her promise to Colonel Colquhoun. It had
cramped her into a narrow groove wherein to struggle would only have been
to injure herself ineffectually. There comes a time when every
intellectual being is forced to choose some definite pursuits. Evadne had
been formed for a life of active usefulness; but now she found herself
reduced to an existence of objectless contemplation, and she suffered
acutely until she had recourse to St. Paul and the pulpit, from which
barren fields she succeeded at last in collecting samples enough to make
up a dose of the time-honoured anodyne sacred to her sex. It is a
delicious opiate which gives immediate relief, but it soothes without
healing and is in the long run deleterious. And this was the influence
under which Evadne entered upon a new phase of life altogether. She gave
up reading; and by degrees there grew upon her a perfect horror of
disturbing emotions. She burnt any books she had with repulsive incidents
in them. She would not have them about even, lest they should remind her.
There were some pictures also in her rooms which depicted scenes of human
suffering--a battle piece, a storm at sea, a caravan lost in the desert,
and a prison scene; and those she had removed. She would have ended all
such horrors if she could, but as that was impossible, she would not even
think of them; and accordingly, she had those pictures replaced by
soothing subjects--moonlit spaces, sun-bright seas, clear brown rivulets,
lakes that mirrored the placid mountains, and flowers and birds and trees.
She would look at nothing that was other than restful; she would read
nothing that harrowed her feelings; she would listen to nothing that might
move her to indignation and reawaken the futile impulse to resist; and she
banished all thought or reflection that was not absolutely tranquillizing
in effect or otherwise enjoyable.

But all this was extremely enervating. She had owed her force of character
to her incessant intellectual activity, which had also kept her mind pure,
and her body in excellent condition. Had she not found an outlet for her
superfluous vitality as a girl in the cultivation of her mind, she must
have become morbid and hysterical, as is the case with both sexes when
they remain in the unnatural state of celibacy with mental energy
unapplied. We are like running water, bright and sparkling so long as the
course is clear; but divert us into unprogressive shallows, where we lie
motionless, and very soon we stagnate, and every particle of life within
us becomes offence. This was the fate which threatened Evadne. As her mind
grew sluggish, her bodily health decreased, and the climate began to tell
upon her. Malta has a pet fever of its own, of a dangerous kind, from
which she had hitherto escaped, but now, quite suddenly, she went down
with a bad attack, and hovered for weeks between life and death. Colonel
Colquhoun made arrangements to take her home as soon as she was
sufficiently strong to be moved; but just at that time a small war broke
out, and his regiment was one of the first to be ordered to the front. He
was able to see her off, however, with other ladies of the regiment, and
he telegraphed to her friends begging them to meet her at Southampton. The
hope of seeing them sustained Evadne during the voyage, but when she
arrived only Mrs. Orton Beg appeared. The latter was shocked by the change
in Evadne. Her hair had been cut short, her eyes were sunken, her cheeks
were hollow; she was skin and bone, and the colour of death.