The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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"Do you mean to say you row yourself down the river, every time you come?"

"I do," said the Boy complacently.

"I didn't think you could!" was the Tenor's naive ejaculation.

The Boy was delighted. "It never struck you, I suppose," he chuckled,
"that my fragile appearance might be delusive? Haven't you noticed I never
tire?"

"Yes," said the Tenor. "But I thought that you probably paid for these
nights of dissipation by days of languor."

The Boy laughed again. "Don't know the sensation," he declared. "Days of
laziness would be nearer the mark. I have plenty of them."

It was a lovely night, all pervaded by the fragrance of the flowers in the
gardens round about the Close.

They sauntered out, turning to the left from the Tenor's cottage, the
cathedral being on their right, the cloisters in front. The Boy walked up
to the latter and peeped in, "Come here, dear Israfil," he said
obligingly, "and I will show you the beauties of the place. These are the
cloisters, and, as you see, they form a hollow square, nearly two hundred
feet long, and twelve feet wide, Yon slowly rising moon shows the bare
quadrangle In the centre, and the tracery of the windows opposite; but the
exquisite groining of the roof, and the quaintly sculptured bosses, are
still hidden in deep darkness. The light, however, brightens in the
northeast corner, and--if you weren't in such a _hem_ hurry, Israfil--"
The Tenor had walked on, but the Boy stayed where he was, and now began
to improve the occasion at the top of his voice.

The Tenor returned hurriedly. "For Heaven's sake hold your tongue!" he
expostulated, "You'll wake the whole Close."

"I was calling your attention to the details of the architecture," the Boy
rejoined politely; and, as usual, for the sake of peace and quietness the
unfortunate Tenor was obliged to hear him out.

When he stopped, the Tenor exclaimed "Thank Heaven!" devoutly, then added,
"No fear for your exams, Boy, if you can cram like that. But I did not
know you were a cultivated archaeologist."

"Nor am I," said the Boy with a shiver. "I hate architecture, and I don't
want to know about it, but I can't help picking it up. It is horrid to
remember that that arch yonder was built in the time of William the
Conqueror. I never look at it without feeling the oppression of the ages
come upon me. And when I get into this bigoted Close and think of the
heathenish way the people live in it, shutting themselves in from the rest
of the citizens with unchristian ideas of their own superiority, I am
confirmed in my unbelief. I feel if there were any truth in that religion,
those who profess it would have begun to practise its precepts by this
time; they would not be content to teach it for ever without trying it
themselves. And oh!"--shaking his fist at the cathedral--"I loathe the
deeds of darkness that are done there in the name of the Lord."

"What unhappy experience are you alluding to, Boy?" said the Tenor,
concerned.

"I was thinking of Edith--poor Edith Beale," the Boy replied, "But don't
ask me to tell you that story if you have not heard it. It makes my blood
boil with indignation."

"I have heard it," the Tenor answered sadly. "But, Boy, dear, every honest
man deplores such circumstances as much as you do."

"Then why do they occur?" the Boy asked hotly. "If the honest men were in
earnest, such blackguardism would not go unpunished. But don't let us talk
about it."

They went through the arm of the Close in the centre of which the lime
trees grew round a grassy space enclosed from the road by a light iron
railing. "This is grateful!" the Boy exclaimed, as they passed under the
old trees, lingering a while to listen to the rustle and murmur of the
leaves. Then they emerged once more into the moonlight, and took their way
down the little lane that led to the water-gate. Here they found an
elegant cockle-shell of a boat tied up, "a most ladylike craft," said the
Tenor.

"I'll steer," said the Boy, fixing the rudder, and then arranging the
cushions for himself, while the Tenor meekly took the oars.

With one strong stroke he brought the boat into mid-stream, then headed
her down the river toward the sea, and settled to his oars with a long
steady pull that roused the admiration of the Boy.

"You row like a 'Varsity man," he said.

"So I should," was the laconic rejoinder.

"_Are_ you a 'Varsity man?"

"I am."

"Oxford, then, I'll bet. And did you take your degree?"

The Tenor nodded.

"Well, you _are_ a queer chap!" said the Boy. "Were you expelled?"
The Tenor shook his head. "Did you do _anything_ disgraceful?" The
Tenor again made a sign of negation. "Then why on earth did you come and
bury yourself alive in Morningquest?"

"That I might have the pleasure of rowing you down the river by moonlight,
apparently," the Tenor answered, but without a smile.

"I'd give my ears to know!" the Boy ejaculated.

"I quite believe you would!" said the Tenor, pausing to speak; after which
he bent to his oars with a will, and the banks became a moving panorama to
their vision as they passed. Now they swept under a light iron bridge that
crossed the river with one bold span, and connected a busy thoroughfare of
the city with a pleasant shady suburb beyond. Then they wound round a
curve, and on their left was a broad towing-path, and beautiful old trees,
and a high paling made of sleepers shutting out the view; while on the
right, those crowded dwellings of the poor which add so much to a picture,
especially by moonlight, and so little to the loveliness of life, rose
from the water's edge and straggled up the rising ground, tumbling over
each other in every sort of picturesque irregularity. Ahead of them, the
river was landlocked by a wooded hill; and, also facing them, was an old
round tower on the towing-path, above which the round moon shown in an
empty indigo sky.

"Stop a minute, Israfil," said the Boy, "and turn your head, Who does it
make you think of?"

"Old Chrome," the Tenor answered, looking over his shoulder. "It is
perfect."

The river was quite narrow here, and on either side were long lines of
pleasure-boats moored to the bank, and an occasional flat tied-up for the
night, with its big brown sails, looking like webbed wings, hoisted to
dry. Further on they met a barge coming up the river, and the Boy wished
the man who was steering a polite good-night, and hoped he'd have a
pleasant passage and no bad weather; to which piece of facetiousness the
bargee replied good-humouredly, having mistaken the boy's contralto for a
woman's voice, an error of judgment at which the latter affected to rage,
much to the amusement of the Tenor.

But they were out of the city by this time. On their right was a
gentleman's park, well-wooded, and sloping up from the river to a gentle
eminence crowned by a crest of trees; on their left, across some fields,
the villas of that pleasant suburb before mentioned studded the rising
ground, appearing also among old trees, beneath which they and their quiet
gardens nestled peacefully. There were trees everywhere--beech and
laburnum and larch, horsechestnut and lime and poplar, as far as the eye
could reach, and the latter, standing straight up in the barer spots, were
a notable feature in the landscape, as were also the alder-cars and
occasional osier beds dotted about in marshy places.

The pleasant suburb straggled out to an ancient village, past which a
reach of the river wound, but the Boy kept the boat to the main stream.
They could see the village street, however, with the quaint church on the
level; and light warm airs brought them odours of roses and mignonette
from the gardens. It had been a long pull for a hot night, and the Tenor
shipped his oars here, and threw himself back in the bow to rest. He lay
looking up at the sky while they drifted back little by little with the
tide. The balmy air, the lop-lop of the water against the boat, the rock
and sway and sense of dreamy movement, and ever and anon the nightingales,
made a time of soft excitement, such as the Boy loved.

"O Israfil!" he burst out; "isn't it delicious just to be alive?"

He was lolling in the stern with his hat off, his legs stretched, out
before him, and a tiller rope in each hand, the image of indolent ease.
"Yes, this is perfect," he added; "it is paradise."

"Not for you, I should think," said the Tenor, "without an Eve."

"Now, there you mistake me," the Boy replied. "If there be one thing I
deprecate more than another it is the impertinent intrusion of _sex_
into everything."

"You surprise me," the Tenor answered idly. "When I first had the pleasure
of meeting you, love was a favourite topic of yours."

"Ah! at that time, yes," said the Boy. "You see I was merely pandering
then to what I supposed to be your taste, in order to ingratiate myself
with you; but you may have noticed that since I knew you better I have
allowed the subject to drop--except, of course, when I wanted to draw
you."

"That is true," said the Tenor upon reflection. "And yet you are the most
sensuous little brute I know."

"Sensuous, yes; not sensual," said the Boy. "I take my pleasures daintily,
and this scene satisfies me heart and soul; balmy air; moonlight with its
myriad associations; a murmurous multitude of sounds like sighs, all
soothing; the silent drift and gentle rocking of the boat; and the calm
human fellowship, the brotherly love undisturbed by a single violent
emotion, which is the perfection of social intercourse to me. I say the
scene is hallowed, and I'll have no sex in my paradise." The last words
were uttered irritably, and he sat up as he spoke, thrust his hands into
his pockets, and frowned at the silvery surface of the river. "Love!" he
ejaculated. "Rot! It is not love they mean. But don't let us desecrate a
night like this with any idea that lowers us to the level of a beastly
French novel reeking with sensuality."

"Amen, with all my heart," said the Tenor lazily. "But don't introduce the
disturbing element of violence either, dear Boy. Your sentiments may be
refined, but the same cannot be said for the expressions in which you
clothe them. In fact, to describe the latter, I don't think _coarse_
would be too strong a word."

"No, not coarse," said the Boy, with his uncanny grin. "Vigorous, you
mean, dear. But now shut up. I want to think."

"You don't. You want to feel," said the Tenor.

The Boy threw his cap at him.

Then they resettled themselves, lolling luxuriously, the one in the bows,
the other in the stern; and the Tenor's soul was uplifted, as was the case
with him in every pause of life, to the heaven of heavens which only could
contain it; while the Boy's roamed away to realms of poesy where it
revelled amid blossoming rhymes, or rested satisfied on full blown verses,
some of which he presently began to chant to himself monotonously.

"I like that," he broke off at last. "There is quite an idea in it--well
worked out too; don't you think so?"

"What is the thing?" the Tenor asked. "Who wrote it?"

"I wrote it myself," said the Boy.

The Tenor roused himself, and got out the oars, but sat resting on them
with a far-away look in his dreamy eyes. He was bareheaded, and the moon
played on his yellow hair, making it shine; a detail which did not escape
the Boy, whose pleasure in the Tenor's beauty never tired.

"I didn't know you were a poet as well as a musician," the latter said at
last.

"Ah! you have much to learn," the Boy answered complacently, then
added--"I am extremely versatile."

"Jack of all trades," said the Tenor.

"Now, don't be coarse," said the Boy.

"Well, I hope that is not the best specimen of your powers in that line,"
the Tenor drily pursued.

"By no means," was the candid rejoinder; "but the most appropriate, seeing
that I just made it for the occasion, which is not a great occasion, don't
you know."

"I've heard something very like it before," said the Tenor,

"Yes," said the Boy, with a gratified smile, "'that is the beauty of it.
There is no new-fangled nonsense about me. My verses always tremble with
agreeable reminiscences. They set the sensitive sympathetic chords of
memory vibrating pleasurably. You can hardly read anything I write without
being reminded of some one or other of your best friends in the language.
I have written some verses which I can assure you were a triumph of this
art." He made an artistic pause here, shook his head, and then ejaculated
solemnly: "But, Lord! how I did rage when the fact was first pointed out
to me!"

The Tenor got the boat round, and, with an occasional dip of the oars to
keep it in mid-stream, allowed it to drift slowly back toward
Morningquest.

"I am afraid you are precocious, Boy," he said at last. "Don't be so if
you can help it. The thing is detestable."

"I really think I shall be obliged to avoid you, Israfil," the Boy
rejoined. "If I let you be intimate, you will be giving me good advice.
Look there!"

The Tenor turned hastily. But there was nothing wrong. It was only that
they had reached a point from which they could obtain a view that pleased
the Boy's excitable fancy; a bend of the river, a glimpse of upland
meadows, woods with the cathedral spire above them, and the square outline
of the castle overhanging the city from its dominant site on the hill, and
seeming to guard it as it slept.

The Tenor looked a little, then dipped his oars and rowed a stroke or two.
The Boy's mood had changed. He was keenly susceptible to the refining
influences of beautiful scenes. His countenance cleared and softened as he
gazed, and the Tenor knew that he would jeer no more that night.

Presently they heard the city clocks striking the hour. Both listened,
waiting for the chime. The Tenor rested on his oars, and after it had
sounded, muffled by distance, but quite distinct, he still sat so, gazing
thoughtfully into the water.

"Boy, shall I tell you something?" he said at last.

The Boy gravely responded with a nod.

"It was not far from where we are now," the Tenor continued, "that I first
heard the chime--oh, ever so many years ago!" and he brushed his hand back
over his hair.

"You were a boy then?"

"Yes, a lad like you--perhaps younger: I had been working in a colliery.
The work was too hard for me, and I was coming up the Morne on a barge, to
try and get something lighter to do in one of the towns. We came up very
slowly, and it was a hot day, and I idled about for hours, looking at the
water over the side, and at the banks of the river as we passed, but
without thinking of anything. What I saw made me feel. I was conscious of
various sensations--pleasure, wonder, amusement, and, above all, of a
dreamful ease; but I could not translate sensations into words at that
time; they suggested no ideas. There had been nothing in my life so far to
rouse my mental faculties, and I was conscious without being intelligent,
as I suppose the beasts of the field are. I must have been happy then, but
I did not know it. As we approached Morningquest I heard the chime. It was
very faint at first, for we were still a long way off; but the next time
it sounded we were nearer; and the next it was quite distinct. And it
seemed to me to mean something, so I asked the old bargee who was
steering, and he told me. I could neither read nor write at that time, and
I had never heard of Christ, but I loved music, and the idea of a great
beneficent being who slumbered not nor slept, but watched over us all
forever, took possession of my imagination, and I caught up the notes and
words and sang them with all my heart. And when we got to the outskirts of
the city, a gentleman who had been sitting on the towing-path, sketching
the old houses on the opposite side of the river, heard me, and hailed the
barge, and came on board. 'Which is your sweet singer?' he asked, and the
old fellow who was steering nodded toward me, and answered: 'The lad
there.' And the gentleman said if I would go away with him he would have
me taught music and make a great singer of me."

"And you went?"

"Yes," said the Tenor, with his habitual gesture.

"The gentleman was a bachelor," he resumed, "with few near relations. He
was very rich, very liberal, and passionately fond of art in all its
branches. That was why he took me at first, but by and by he began to like
me for myself. He had me educated as his own son might have been, and I
loved him as if he had been my father. Oh, Boy, he was a good man! You
never would have scoffed at religion and truth had you been brought up by
him. I rested on his affection as securely as you rely on the obligation
of your nearest of kin. I knew that, even if I had lost my voice or
otherwise disappointed him, it would have made no difference. Once my
friend he would always have been my friend. But I did not lose my voice,
nor did I otherwise disappoint him, I trust." The Tenor paused a moment.
"He was always sure that I was gentle by birth," he resumed, "and all my
tutors said I must have come of an educated race because I was so
teachable. Everything in the new life came to me naturally. I never had
any trouble. My friend tried hard to find my parents, but all that was
known of me in the place I came from was that a collier, who lived alone
in a little cottage, went home late one night and found me asleep on his
bed. They thought I was only a few days old then, and had kept my clothes,
which were such as a gentleman's child would have worn, but there was no
mark on any of them, nor any clue by which I could be identified, except
the name, David Julian Vanetemple, scrawled on a scrap of paper in a
woman's hand, an educated hand. The collier brought me up somehow, though
Heaven alone knows how, considering my age and his own occupation. Do you
know, Boy, one of the most weary things in life is the sense of an
obligation you can never repay. If I could only have done something to
prove my gratitude to my first foster father! But there! I must not think
of it. It is better to hope that all he did for me was a pleasure to
himself at the time, though there must have been much more trouble than
pleasure at first. But he was very kind, and I was very happy with him."
Here the Tenor, paused again for a while, and then resumed. "When I was
old enough he took me down to the pit occasionally, but he would not let
me work until I was much past the age at which the other boys began. He
said I was not one of them; my build was different, and I was quite unfit
for such rough labour; and so it proved, but I persevered as long as he
lived. It was not very long, however, for he was killed one day by an
explosion of gas down in the mine while trying to rescue some other poor
fellows who had been blocked up in a gallery for days by a fall. His dog
was killed at the same time. He liked to have his family with him, he
said, and we were generally both beside him when he was at work. But he
sent me off on an impossible errand to a neighbouring town that day. I did
not suspect it at the time, but I know now that it was to keep me out of
harm's way. And so I was left quite alone in the world, and I thought the
place where I had had a friend was more desolate than strange places with
which I had no such tender associations would be; and so I wandered away,
and wandered about until I was found by my next friend on the barge, and
the new life began for me."

"Then he never found out who you were?" the Boy exclaimed.

"No, never."

"And why did you leave him?"

The Tenor shipped his oars. "He had a place in Scotland to which we went
every autumn for shooting," he began to answer indirectly, and then
stopped.

The Boy was leaning forward, with his eyes riveted on the Tenor's face;
his delicate features were pale and drawn with excitement and interest;
his lips were parted; he scarcely seemed to breathe. There was a long
pause. The moonlight still streamed down upon them. The water lapped
against the sides of the boat, and sparkled and rippled all around them,
its murmurs mingling with the rustle of leaves, the sighing of sleeping
cattle, the manifold "inarticulate voices of the night," above which a
nightingale in a copse hard by sang out at intervals divinely.

"My friend was not conventional in anything," the Tenor began again at
last. "When he went out shooting, for instance, he liked to find his own
game as he would have had to do in the wilds. All the sport of the thing
lay in that, he said; it was just the difference between nature and
artifice. We were therefore in the habit of going out alone--that is to
say, with a keeper or two and the dogs, but never with a party." Here
again the Tenor paused, and all the minor murmurs of the water and from
the land sounded aggressively, with that sort of sound which fills the
ears but seems nevertheless to emphasize the silence and solitude at
night.

The Boy moved restlessly once or twice, making the little boat rock, and
the Tenor, yielding to the eager expectancy he saw in his eyes, resumed
his story.

"Toward the end of the season of which I have been speaking," he said, "we
had arranged an expedition for one particular morning; but just as we were
about to start my friend got a telegram from a man he knew, begging him as
a favour to be at home that day to receive a yachting party who were
anxious to come up and see the place, and had only a few hours to do it
in. I wanted to stay and help him to entertain them, but he would not hear
of it. My day's shooting was of more consequence to him than the
entertainment of many guests, and he made me go alone. But I went
reluctantly. I had been out alone often enough before, and had enjoyed it
thoroughly, but that day, somehow, I hated to leave him, and only went to
please him, he made such a point of it. Once fairly started, however, I
began, as was natural, to enjoy the tramp over the moors. We intended to
send back for any game we might shoot, so only one old gillie accompanied
me. I carried out the plans we had made the night before, going the way we
had intended to go. It was deer I was after, and as luck would have it I
had some splendid sport, and had begun to enter into it thoroughly before
we halted to refresh ourselves at noon. After a long rest we set off again
up a wooded glen. The keeper had noticed a herd of deer only the day
before feeding at the other side, and it seemed more than probable that we
should get a shot when we reached the brow of the hill, or we might
perhaps meet some of them coming down the glen to drink. The afternoon was
waning then, and we had turned our faces homeward. When we got to the head
of the glen the luck seemed still to be favouring us, for there, on our
right, was a splendid fellow lording it alone on the very crest of the
hill within range. I did not stop to consider, but raised my gun to my
shoulder and fired instantly. But just as I pulled the trigger, someone
sprang up from the heather between me and the stag--sprang up, uttered a
cry, and reeled and fell"--the last words were spoken with a gasp, and the
Tenor stopped for an instant, and then continued in a hoarse broken
whisper to which his companion had to listen intently, leaning forward to
do so, with his great eyes dilated, and his pale lips quivering. "'Lord,
sir,' the gillie exclaimed, 'you've shot the master!'"

"And you had?"

"I had. Yes, I had shot him," the Tenor repeated.

"O Israfil!" cried the Boy, flinging himself down impetuously before him,
and grasping his hands.

"When his guests had gone," the latter continued in a broken voice, "he
strolled out to meet me. He had not said anything about coming, but he
knew I meant to return by that glen. He did not, however, know on which
side I should be, and he had therefore taken up his position on the brow
of the hill from whence he could see every point at which I was likely to
appear. Probably he never saw the stag--it was behind him; and we--the
gillie and I--neither of us saw anything else. And, indeed, had there been
no game, we could hardly have distinguished him at that time of the day
from the hillside till he moved, for the suit he wore was just the colour
of the rocks and heather. We carried him home--but he was
dead--dead--quite dead," and the Tenor moaned, covering his face with his
hands.

"I remember now," the Boy said softly. "I heard all about it at the time,
and read the case in the papers, but I never thought of associating it
with you. Yet--how could I have been so dull? There was an inquest, and
they tried--" he hesitated.

"They tried to make out that I had some motive--something to gain by his
death," the Tenor went on; "but everyone, and most of all his nearest of
kin, his heir, came forward to exonerate me. He had provided for me in his
will by settling the allowance he always made me on me and my heirs
forever. But he always said that my voice was my fortune, and he had no
need to make enemies for me by giving me that which belonged by right to
others. He was a just man, singularly open in all his dealings, and it was
not hard to clear me, but still--oh!"--he broke off--"it was awful!
awful!"