The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

M >> Madame Sarah Grand >> The Heavenly Twins

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62

Mrs. Orton Beg had gone on board the steamer, and Evadne had been brought
up on deck, supported by one of the ladies and her own maid.

She looked at her aunt, and then she looked beyond her. "Has my mother not
come to meet me?" she asked.

Mrs. Orton Beg looked at her compassionately.

"Is she ill?" Evadne added.

"No, dear," her aunt replied.

Evadne burst into tears. It was a bitter disappointment, and she was very
weak, and had suffered a great deal.

After her arrival her pompous papa continued "firm," as he called it, and
as she was equally "firm" herself, he would not have her at Fraylingay. He
repeated that if there were one human weakness which is more reprehensible
than another, it is obstinacy, and he told Mrs. Frayling that she must
choose between himself and Evadne. If she preferred the latter, she might
go to see her, but she should not return to him. He meant to be master in
his own house--and so on, at the top of his voice, with infinite
bluster--to which it was that Mrs. Frayling submitted. She never could
bear a noise.

Evadne, therefore, saw nothing of her mother or brothers or sisters, and
must have been lonely, indeed, had it not been for Mrs. Orton Beg, who
took charge of her and nursed her and brought her round, and remained with
her until Colonel Colquhoun returned. They spent most of their time in the
Western Highlands, but stayed also in London and Paris.

Colonel Colquhoun was absent a year, and made the most of every
opportunity to distinguish himself. At the end of the war he was made
C.B., and promoted to the rank of colonel; and, his time with his regiment
having expired, he was further honoured by being immediately appointed to
the command of the depot at Morningquest. Evadne was glad to see him
again. She had missed him, and had waited anxiously for his return. She
had no one to care for in his absence, no one, that is to say, who was
specially her charge, to be attended to and made comfortable. He had
narrowed her sphere of usefulness down to that by the promise he had
exacted, and in his absence she had what to her was a useless, purposeless
existence, wandering about from place to place. During this period she
made few notes in the "Commonplace Book," but the few all bore witness to
one thing, viz., her ever increasing horror of unpleasantness in any shape
or form.

END OF BOOK III.

BOOK IV.

THE TENOR AND THE BOY.--AN INTERLUDE.

His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles;
His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate;
His tears pure messengers sent from his heart,
His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth.

--_Two Gentlemen of Verona_.

CHAPTER I.

Morningquest, with the sunset glow upon it, might have made you think of
Arthur's "dim rich city"; but Morningquest had already flourished a
thousand years longer than Caerlyon, and was just as many times more
wicked. And it was known to be so, although not a tithe of the crimes
committed in it were ever brought to light; but even of those which were
known and recorded, no man could have told you the half, so great was
their number. Of course, as the place was wicked, the doctors were well to
the fore, combating the wages of sin gallantly; and the lawyers also,
needless to say, were busy; and so, too, were the clergy in their own way,
ecclesiasticism being well-worked; Christianity, however, was much
neglected, so that, for the most part, the devil went unmolested in
Morningquest, and had a good time.

There were seventy-five churches besides the cathedral within the city
boundary, and a large sprinkling of religious sects of all denominations,
which caused ferment enough to prevent stagnation; and, of course, where
so many churches were the clergy swarmed, and were made the subject of the
usual well-worn pleasantries. If you asked what good they were doing, you
would hear that nobody knew; but you would also be assured that at all
events they were, as a rule, too busy about candles and vestments and what
not of that kind of thing, discussing such questions with heat enough to
convince anyone that the Lord in heaven cares greatly about the use of one
gaud more or less in his service, to do much harm. But, upon the whole,
the attitude of the citizens toward the clergy was friendly and
unexacting. If nobody heeded them much, nobody opposed them much either,
so that, as in any other profession, they enjoyed the liberty of earning
their livelihood in their own way. The people considered them without
reverence as a part of the population merely; their services were accepted
as a necessity in the regular routine of life as bread-and-butter was, and
doubtless they did good in some such way, although the one was as much
forgotten as the other before it was well assimilated. If the citizens
mentioned their teaching at all, it was merely to repeat what they said of
the clergy themselves--that it did no harm.

This was a pleasantry of which they never wearied; but sometimes they
would add to it another article of their faith, "The Lord is gracious,"
they would declare, "and when he sends dull preachers, he mercifully sends
sleep also to comfort his afflicted people." So the preachers preached,
and their congregations slumbered tranquilly, and everbody was satisfied.
If the clergy squabbled amongst themselves, and with their churchwardens,
their fellow-citizens were rather grateful to them than otherwise for
varying the monotony, so that they were encouraged to wage their
internecine combats to their hearts' content; and when these lapsed and
they let each other alone, it was always interesting to see how they
turned upon the bishop. But nobody was disturbed, for in such a sleepy old
place--and the respectable part of it _was_ sleepy!--men habitually
view the vagaries of their friends with smiling tolerance, and if they
comment upon them at all, it is without bitterness.

In general history there are always events, as there are people, that take
prominent places and attract attention long after similar events are
buried and forgotten. They owe their vitality less to their importance,
perhaps, than to some gleam of poetry, pathos, or romance which
distinguishes the actors in them; and most old places have a pet tragedy
amongst their traditions, but Morningquest was an exception to this rule,
for, although it had its particular tragedy, it was quite a new one. From
the first, however, it was easy enough to foresee that this one event of
all the sorrowful things which had happened in that bad old place, having
as it were every desirable requirement of time, setting, and person to
invest it with a proper, permanent and most pathetic interest, was the
likeliest one to be remembered.

Morningquest was a city of singers, and the citizens were proud of their
cathedral choir, which was chiefly recruited from amongst themselves,
there being a succession of exquisite boy-voices constantly forthcoming to
awaken the slumbering echoes in the ancient pile, and the sweet old
sentiments in the people's hearts. Some of the lay clerks had been
choristers themselves, and amongst them was one who had been especially
noted, as a boy for his birdlike treble. It seemed a thousand pities when
it broke; but as he reached maturity, he found himself able to sing again,
and eventually he developed a very true, if not very powerful tenor voice,
and rose in time to be the leading tenor in the choir. People had flocked
to hear him sing in his childhood, and as they still came, it was natural
that he should continue to think himself the attraction, and also natural
that he should be somewhat puffed up in consequence. He wore a moustache,
he wore a ring, he put on airs, he scented his pocket-handkerchiefs, he
ogled the pretty ladies in the canon's pew like an officer; but he was an
orphan, and had a poor old kinswoman depending upon him, and kept her well;
he was harmless, he never did anyone an ill-turn, nor said an evil thing,
and he could sing; so that, taken all round, his good qualities outweighed
his weaknesses, and he was duly allowed the measure of praise and respect
which he earned.

But his rings, and his scents, and his affectations generally, covered a
secret ambition. He wanted to be more than a tenor in the choir; he wanted
to be an opera singer, and he entered into negotiations with a London
_impressario_. He did so secretly, being fearful of discouragement,
and also because he wished to surprise his friends, and when a personal
interview became necessary he did not ask for the means to make the
journey; he had the management of the choir funds, and there being a
surplus in his hands at the moment, he made use of the money, borrowing it
in perfect good faith, and honestly sure that he would be able to repay it
before it was required of him. Had he succeeded, the money would have been
returned at once; but, alas, he did not succeed, the money was spent, his
hopes were shattered, and his honest career was at an end. "If only he had
come to me, the matter might have been put right," the dean said, and he
publicly reproached himself for not knowing the hearts of his people
better, so that he might have entered with sympathy into their lives, and
won their confidence. The tenor ought to have trusted him, but he never
thought of such a thing. He was a poor crushed creature, and had abandoned
hope. But he went back to Morningquest nevertheless. Indeed, where else
could he go? He knew no other place, and had never a friend elsewhere in
the world. So he went back mechanically, and he went to the cathedral, and
there he hid himself. And there three times a day for three days he looked
down from the clerestory, himself unseen, looked into the faces he knew so
well, faces which had been friendly faces, eyes that had watched him
kindly all his life; and, out there in the cold, he followed the services
at which he had been wont to assist, taking a leading part almost so long
as he could remember. And there in the grim solitude by day, and the added
horror of ghostly darkness by night, he lived on thought, and suffered his
agony of remorse, and the minor miseries of cold and hunger and thirst,
till the need of endurance ceased to be felt. And then, amid the misty
morning grayness of the fourth day he hanged himself from a ladder left by
some workmen engaged in repairs, by whom his body was afterward found
desecrating the sacred precincts.

These are the materials out of which Morningquest wove its pet tragedy.
The event happened at the beginning of that important year which the
Heavenly Twins spent with their grandfather at Morne, and doubtless they
heard all about it, but, being very much occupied with a variety of
absorbing interests at the time, it did not make any particular impression
upon them. It was brought home to them eventually, however, when it might
have been considered an old story; but it had not become so then in
anybody's estimation, nor has it since because of the pity of it which
lent the pathetic interest that makes a story deathless and ageless; the
subtle something which influences to better moods, and from which the
years as they pass do not detract, but rather pay it the tribute of an
occasional addition thereto, by which its hope of immortality is greatly
strengthened.

After the tenor's death, the difficulty had been who should succeed him.
There was nobody immediately forthcoming, and this had put the dean and
chapter in a fix, for it happened that there were services of particular
importance going on in the cathedral at the time, to which strangers
flocked from a distance, and it was felt that it would never do to
disapppoint them of their music. So, on the morning of the great day of
all, after the early service, the dean, the precentor, and the organist,
having doffed their surplices, returned to the choir, and stood for some
time beside the brazen lectern, discussing the subject.

While they were so engaged, a gentleman came up to the dean, and, after
making a graceful apology for the intrusion, explained that he had heard
of their difficulty, and begged to be allowed to sing the tenor part, and
a solo, at the afternoon service.

The dean looked doubtful; the precentor, judging by the stranger's
appearance and tone that he might be somebody, was inclined to be
obsequious; the organist struck a neutral attitude, and stood by ready to
agree to anything.

"I can sing," the applicant said modestly, answering the doubt he saw in
the dean's demeanour; "although I confess that I have not been doing so
lately. I think I may venture to promise, however, that I shall not, at
all events, spoil the service."

"Well, sir," the dean replied, "if you _can_ help us, you will really
be putting us under a great obligation, for we are in a most awkward
dilemma. What do you say, Mr. Precentor?"

"I should say, as the organist is here, if this gentleman would try his
part this morning--"

"That is what I was about to suggest," the stranger interposed.

The precentor found the music, the organist retired to his instrument, the
dean took a seat, and the stranger sang. When he paused, the dean arose.

"I thank you, sir," he said with effusion, "and I gratefully accept your
offer."

The stranger bowed to his little audience, returned the music, and left
the building.

He was a young man, tall and striking in appearance; clean shaven, with
delicate features, dark dreamy gray eyes, and a tumbled mop of golden
hair, innocent of parting. He was well-dressed, but his clothes hung upon
him loosely, as if he had grown thinner since they were made; his face was
pale too, and pinched in appearance, and his movements were languid,
giving him altogether the air of a man just recovering from some serious
illness. That he was a gentleman no one would have doubted for a moment,
nor would they have been surprised to hear that he was a great man in the
sense of being a peer or something of that kind, for there was that
indefinable something in his look and bearing which people call
aristocratic, and his manner was calm and assured like that of a well-bred
man of the world accustomed to good society.

The people who flocked to the afternoon service that day regarded him with
much curiosity, and he was certainly unlike anyone whom they had hitherto
seen in the choir. A surplice had been found for him, and the dead white
contrasted well with the brightness of his hair, and made the refined
beauty of his face even more remarkable than it had been in his morning
dress. Sitting with the lay clerks behind the choristers, he looked like
the representative of another and a higher race, and even those of them
whose personal attractions had hitherto been considered more than merely
passable when they appeared beside him were suddenly seen to be hopelessly
commonplace. But, although the interest he excited was evident enough, it
was equally evident that he himself remained quite unaware of it. In his
whole bearing there was not the slightest assumption. He entered with the
choir, and might have been in the habit of doing so all his life, so
perfectly unconscious did he seem of anything new or strange in the
position. As soon as he was seated, without even glancing at the people,
he had taken up his music, and continued lost in the study of it until the
service opened; and then he sang his part with ease and precision, which,
however, attracted less attention at the moment than his appearance. The
rest of the choir, animated by his presence, exerted themselves to the
utmost, but were too delighted with their own performances to think much
of his before the solo began.

Then, however, they awoke. The first note he uttered was a long
_crescendo_ of such rich volume and so sweet, that the people held
their breath and looked up:

This world recedes; it disappears!
Heaven opens my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring:
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy victory?
O Death! where is thy sting?

It was as if a delicious spell had been cast upon the congregation, which
held them bound until the last note of the exquisite voice, even the last
reverberation of the organ accompaniment, had trembled into silence, and
then there was a movement, a flutter, a great sigh of relief heaved, so to
speak, as if the pleasure had been too great, and nerves and senses were
glad to be released from the tension of it.

The Tenor was slightly flushed when he resumed his seat, but otherwise his
face was as serenely impassive as ever.

"It is some great singer from abroad," the people whispered to each other.
"He is used to every kind of success, and does not even trouble himself to
see if we are pleased. He has sung doubtless to gratify some whim of his
own. Such artists are capricious folk." To which the answer was: "Long may
such whims continue!"

After the service, the dean hastened to thank the stranger. He shook his
hand with emotion, and congratulated him upon his marvellous gift. "May I
ask if you are a professional singer?" the old gentleman said.

"Not yet," was the answer; "but I wish to offer myself for the vacant post
of Tenor in the choir, if you are satisfied with my attainments."

The dean stared at him. "Oh--ah--" he stammered in his surprise; and then
he added something apologetically about references, and being obliged to
ask a few questions.

"If you have the time to spare, I think I can satisfy you now," the
stranger answered.

The dean, perceiving that he wished to speak to him alone, bowed
courteously, and requested the applicant to accompany him to the deanery.
The precentor, who had assisted at the interview up to this point, now
watched them depart, and as he did so he pursed up his lips significantly.
The stranger had sunk in his estimation from the possible rank of a
Russian prince to that of a simple singer, a considerable drop; but the
precentor was a musician, and he asserted that the voice was of the finest
quality, and trained to perfection. He wanted to know, however, what could
bring a man with a fortune like that in his throat to bury himself alive
in Morningquest, and he ventured to predict that it must be something
"fishy."

The stranger had a long private interview with the dean, but what
transpired thereat was never made public. It was known, however, that when
he left the deanery the dean himself accompanied him to the door, and
there shook hands with him cordially; and it was immediately afterward
announced that "Mr. Jones" was to be the new tenor.

"Mr. _Jones_, indeed!" said Morningquest sarcastically. "As much
_Jones_ as the bishop!" And the precentor was sure that the dean had
been taken in by a clever impostor, which would not have been the case, he
asserted, if the matter had been referred to him as it ought to have been.
But Morningquest declared that there was no imposition about that voice,
and as to antecedents, why, it was absurd to be too particular when
everything else was so entirely satisfactory.

There happened to be a tiny tenement in the Close vacant when the new lay
clerk began his duties as Tenor in the choir, and this he took. It was a
detached house, one of a row which faced the apse on the south side of the
cathedral. One step led down from the road into the little front garden,
and another from that into the house, which was thus two steps below the
road in front, but was level with the garden at the back. The passage ran
right through the house, the garden door being opposite the front door;
the kitchen was behind a little sitting room on the right as you entered,
and on the left were two other rooms when the Tenor took the house, the
one looking into the back garden, the other into the front; but these two
rooms he immediately turned into one by having the dividing wall removed,
and together they made a long, low, but comfortably proportioned
apartment, with a French window at either end. The Tenor spent all his
spare time when he first arrived in decorating this room, "_making_
work for himself," as the people said; and indeed that was just what he
seemed to be doing, for he worked, as a man does who feels that he ought
to be occupied, but he takes no pleasure and finds no relief in any
occupation. He frescoed the walls and ceiling of his room with admirable
taste and skill, making it look twice the size by cunning divisions of the
pattern on the walls, and by the well-devised proportions of dado and
cornice.

The dean often went to watch him at his work, and sat on a packing case
(the only article which the room contained at the time) by the hour
together talking to him, a circumstance which, taken with the fact that
other gentlemen in the neighbourhood also called upon him and lingered
long on the premises, greatly exercised the inquisitive minds of the
multitude, especially when it was perceived that the Tenor, instead of
being elated by their condescension, accepted it as a matter of course,
and continued always the same--sad, preoccupied, impassive, seldom
smiling, never surprised, taking no healthy interest in anything.

When the painting was finished, furniture began to arrive, and this was
another surprise for the Close, where houses were not adorned with the
designs of any one period, but were filled with a heterogeneous collection
of articles, generally aged and remarkably uncouth. Everything in the
Tenor's long low room, on the contrary, even down to the shape of the
brass coal scuttle and including the case of the grand piano, was in
harmony with the colour and design of the frescoes on the walls and
ceiling; the floor, which was polished, being adorned here and there with
rugs which suggested dim reflections of the tint and tone above. It was a
luxurious apartment, but not effeminate. The luxury was masculine luxury,
refined and significant; there was no meaningless feminine fripperies
about, nor was there any evidence of sensuous self-indulgence. It was the
abode of a cultivated man, but of one who was essentially manly withal.

The fame of this apartment having been noised abroad, the precentor came
one day to inspect it. There is no need to describe this precentor; one
knows exactly what a man must be who calls things "fishy." He was an
ordained clergyman, but not at all benevolent, neither was he a Christian,
for he did not love his neighbour as himself, and his visit on this
occasion was anything but friendly in intention. He was determined to know
something more about the Tenor, he said, and he meant to question him. His
theory was that the Tenor had been a public singer, but had disgraced
himself, and was unable to appear again in consequence; and on this
supposition he intended to proceed.

He found the Tenor with his hat in his hand on the point of leaving the
house; but the precentor was not delicate about detaining him. He walked
into the sitting room without waiting to be asked, pried impertinently
into everything, and then sat down. The Tenor meantime had remained
standing with his hat in his hand patiently waiting, and he still stood,
but the precentor did not take the hint.

"You are an opera singer, I think you said," he remarked as soon as he was
seated.

The Tenor looked at him inquiringly.

"Or was it concerts?" he suggested, a trifle disconcerted.

The Tenor looked gravely amused.

"It was not the music halls, of course?" the precentor persuasively
insinuated.

"Well, hardly," said the Tenor, fixing his steady eyes upon the man in a
way that made him wince. "I have some business to attend to in the town,"
he added. "Pray make yourself at home so long as it pleases you to
remain;" with which he brushed his hand back over his glossy hair, put on
his hat, and sauntered out, leaving his gentle guest to ruminate.

The interest which the Tenor had begun by exciting in the breasts of the
quiet inhabitants of Morningquest did not diminish all at once, as might
have been expected. He was only a lay clerk, to be sure, but then he was
so utterly unlike any other lay clerk. He was always so carefully dressed,
for one thing, and maintained so successfully that suggestion of good
breeding which had been their first impression of him; was altogether so
distinguished in appearance that it was a pleasure to hear strangers
exclaim: "Who _is_ that?" and to be able to surprise them with the
off-hand rejoinder: "Oh, that is only our tenor."

Then he was a stranger from nobody knew where; he went by the name of
"Jones," which was not believed to be his; he had a magnificent voice, and
he remained in Morningquest in an obscure position, making nothing of it.
True, he must have means; but what after all were the means which he
appeared to possess compared with the means which he might be enjoying?
And further--and this was considered the most extraordinary circumstance
of all--there was his attitude in the cathedral. He followed the services
devoutly; and such a thing as attention, let alone devotion, on the part
of a lay clerk had never been heard of in Morningquest. There was not even
a remote tradition in existence to prepare anybody's mind for such a
contingency.