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

Flower in the crannied wall,

and realizes her own limitations:

...but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

And from this time forward there is less literature and more life in the
"Commonplace Book."

CHAPTER VI.

Mr. and Lady Adeline Hamilton-Wells, with the inevitable twins, came
constantly to Fraylingay while Evadne was in the schoolroom, and generally
during the holidays, that she might be at liberty to look after the twins,
whose moral obliquities she was supposed to be able to control better than
anybody else. They once told their mother that they liked Evadne, "because
she was so good"; and Lady Adeline had a delicious moment of hope. If the
twins had begun to appreciate goodness they would be better themselves
directly, she was thinking, when Diavolo exclaimed: "We can shock her
easier than anybody," and hope died prematurely. They had been a source of
interest, and also of some concern to Evadne from the first. She took a
grave view of their vagaries, and entertained doubts on the subject of
their salvation should an "all-wise Providence" catch them peering into a
sewer, resolve itself into a poisonous gas, and cut them off suddenly--a
fate which had actually overtaken a small brother of her own who was not a
good little boy either--a fact which was the cause of much painful
reflection to Evadne. She understood all about the drain and the poisonous
gas, but she could not fit in the "all-wise Providence acting only for the
best," which was introduced as primary agent in the sad affair by "their
dear Mr. Campbell," as her mother called him, in "a most touching and
strengthening" discourse he delivered from the pulpit on the subject. If
Binny were naughty--and Binny _was_ naughty beyond all hope of
redemption, according to the books; there could be no doubt about that,
for he not only committed one, but each and every sin sufficient in itself
for condemnation, all in one day, too, when he could, and twice over if
there were time. He disobeyed orders. He fought cads. He stole apples. He
told lies--in fact, he preferred to tell lies; truth had no charm for him.
And all these things he was in the habit of doing regularly to the best of
his ability when he was "cut off"; and how such an end could be all for
the best, if the wicked must perish, and it is not good to perish, was the
puzzle. There was something she could not grasp of a contradictory nature
in it all that tormented her. The doctrine of Purgatory might have been a
help, but she had not heard of it.

She told the twins the story of Binny's sad end once in the orthodox way,
as a warning, but the warning was the only part of it which failed to
impress them. "And do you know," she said solemnly, "there were some green
apples found in his pockets after he was dead, actually!"

"What a pity!" Diavolo exclaimed. If they had been found in his stomach it
would have been so much more satisfactory. "How did he get the apples? Off
the tree or out of the storeroom?"

"I don't know," said Evadne.

"They wouldn't have green apples in the storeroom," Angelica thought.

"Oh, yes, they might," Diavolo considered. "Those big cooking fellows, you
know--they're green enough."

"But they're not nice," said Angelica.

"No, but you don't think of that till you've got them," was the outcome of
Diavolo's experience. "Is your storeroom on the ground floor?" he asked
Evadne.

"No," she answered.

"Is there a creeper outside the window?" he pursued.

"No, creepers won't grow because a big lime tree hangs it."

The children exchanged glances.

"I shouldn't have made that room a storeroom," said Angelica. "Lime trees
bring flies. There's something flies like on the leaves."

"But any tree will bring flies if you smear the leaves with sweet stuff,"
said Diavolo. "You remember that copper-beech outside papa's dressing room
window, Angelica?"

"Yes," she said thoughtfully. "He had to turn out of his dressing room
this summer; he couldn't stand them."

"But was Binny often caught, Evadne?" Diavolo asked.

"Often," she said.

"And punished?"

"_Always_."

"But I suppose he had generally eaten the apples?" Angelica suggested
anxiously.

"It's better to eat them at once," sighed Diavolo. "Did you say he did
everything he was told not to do?"

"Yes."

"I expect when he was told not to do a thing he could not think of
anything else until he _had_ done it," said Angelica.

"And now he's in heaven," Diavolo speculated, looking up through the
window with big bright eyes pathetically.

The twins thought a good deal about heaven in their own way. Lady Adeline
did not like them to be talked to on the subject. They were indefatigable
explorers, and it was popularly supposed that only the difficulty of being
present at an inquest on their own bodies, which they would have
thoroughly enjoyed, had kept them so far from trying to obtain a glimpse
of the next world. They discovered the storeroom at Fraylingay half an
hour after they had discussed the improving details of Binny's exciting
career, and had found it quite easy of access by means of the available
lime tree. They both suffered a good deal that night, and they thought of
Binny. "But there's nothing in _our_ pockets, that's one comfort,"
Diavolo exclaimed suddenly, to the astonishment of his mother, who was
sitting up with him. Angelica heaved a sigh of satisfaction.

Evadne's patience with the twins was wonderful. She always took charge of
them cheerfully on wet days and in other times of trouble, and managed
them with infinite tact.

"How do you do it, my dear?" Lady Adeline asked. "Do you talk to them and
tell them stories?"

"No," said Evadne, "I don't talk much; I--just don't lose sight of
them--or interfere--if I can possibly help it."

The twins had no reverence for anything or anybody. One day they were in
Evadne's little sitting room which overlooked the courtyard. It was an
antechamber to her bedroom, and peculiarly her own by right of
primogeniture. Nobody ever thought of going there without her special
permission--except, of course, the twins; but even they assumed
hypocritical airs of innocent apology for accidental intrusion when they
wanted to make things pleasant for themselves.

On this particular occasion Evadne was sitting beside her little
work-table busy with her needle, and the twins were standing together
looking out of the window.

"There's papa," said Diavolo.

"He's going for a ride," said Angelica.

"Doesn't he mount queerly?" Diavolo observed. "He'd be safer in a bath
chair."

"Not if we were wheeling him," Angelica suggested, with a chuckle.

"What shall we do?" yawned Diavolo. "Shall we fight?"

"Yes; let's," said Angelica.

"You must do no such thing," Evadne interfered.

"Not fight! Why?" Angelica demanded.

"We _must_ fight, you know," Diavolo asserted.

"I don't see that," said Evadne. "Why should you fight?"

"It's good for the circulation of the blood," said Angelica. "Warms a
body, you know."

"And there's the property, too!" said Diavolo. "We've got to fight for
that."

Evadne did not understand, so Angelica kindly explained: "You see, I'm the
eldest, but Diavolo's a boy, so he gets the property because of the
entail, and we neither of us think it fair; so we fight for it, and
whichever wins is to have it. I won the last battle, so it's mine just now;
but Diavolo may win it back if we fight again before papa dies. That's
why he wants to fight now, I expect."

"Yes," Diavolo candidly confessed. "But we generally fight when we see
papa go out for a ride."

"Because you are afraid he will catch you and punish you as you deserve,
if he's at home, I suppose, you bad children."

"Not at all," said Angelica. "It's because he looks so unsafe on a horse;
you never know what'll happen."

"It's a kind of a last chance," said Diavolo, "and that makes it
exciting."

"But wouldn't you be very sorry if your father died?" Evadne asked.

The twins looked at each other doubtfully.

"Should we?" Diavolo said to Angelica.

"I wonder?" said Angelica.

One wet day they chose to paint in Evadne's room because they could not go
out. She found pictures, and got everything ready for them good-naturedly,
and then they sat themselves down at a little table opposite each other;
but the weather affected their spirits, and made them both fractious. They
wanted the same picture to begin with, and only settled the question by
demolishing it in their attempts to snatch it from each other. Then there
was only one left between them, but happily they remembered that artists
sometimes work at the same picture, and it further occurred to them that
it would be an original method--or "funny," as they phrased it--for one of
them to work at it wrong side up. So Angelica daubed the sky blue on her
side of the table, and Diavolo flung green on the fields from his. They
had large genial mouths at that time, indefinite noses, threatening to
turn up a little, and bright dark eyes, quick glancing, but with no
particular expression in them--no symptom either of love or hate, nothing
but living interest. It was pretty to see Diavolo's fair head touching
Angelica's dark one across the little table; but when it came too close
Angelica would dunt it sharply out of the way with her own, which was
apparently the harder of the two, and Diavolo would put up his hand and
rub the spot absently. He was too thoroughly accustomed to such sisterly
attentions to be altogether conscious of them.

The weather darkened down.

"I wish I could see," he grumbled.

"Get out of your own light," said Angelica.

"How can I get out of my own light when there isn't any light to get out
of?"

Angelica put her paint brush in her mouth, and looked up at the window
thoughtfully.

"Let's make it into a song," she said.

"Let's," said Diavolo, intent upon making blue and yellow into green.

"No light have we, and that we do resent,
And, learning, this the weather will relent,
Repent! Relent! Ah-men,"

Angelica sang. Diavolo paused with his brush halfway to his mouth, and
nodded intelligently.

"Now!" said Angelica, and they repeated the parody together, Angelica
making a perfect second to Diavolo's exquisite treble.

Evadne looked up from her work surprised. Her own voice was contralto, but
it would have taken her a week to learn to sing a second from the notes,
and she had never dreamt of making one.

"I didn't know you could sing," she said.

"Oh, yes, we can sing," Angelica answered cheerfully. "We've a decided
talent for music."

"Angelica can make a song in a moment," said Diavolo. "Let me paint your
nose green, Evadne."

"You can paint mine if you like," said Angelica.

"No, I shan't. I shall paint my own."

"No, you paint mine, and I'll paint yours," Angelica suggested.

"Well, both together, then," Diavolo answered.

"Honest Injin," Angelica agreed, and they set to work.

Evadne sat with her embroidery in her lap and watched them. Their faces
would have to be washed in any case, and they might as well be washed for
an acre as for an inch of paint. She never nagged with, "Don't do this,"
and "Don't do that" about everything, if their offences could be summed
up, and wiped out in some such way all at once.

"We'll sing you an anthem some day," Angelica presently promised.

"Why not now?" said Evadne.

"The spirit does not move us," Diavolo answered.

"But you may forget," said Evadne.

"We never forget our promises," Angelica protested as proudly as was
possible with a green nose.

Nor did they, curiously enough. They made a point of keeping their word,
but in their own way, and this one was kept in due course. The time they
chose was when a certain Grand Duke was staying in the house. They had
quite captivated him, and he expressed a wish to hear them sing.

"Shall we?" said Diavolo,

"We will," said Angelica, "Not because he's a prince, but because we
promised Evadne an anthem, and we might as well do it now," she added with
true British independence.

The prince chuckled.

"What shall it be?" said Diavolo, settling himself at the piano. He always
played the accompaniments.

"_Papa_, I think," said Angelica.

"What is '_Papa_'?" Lady Adeline asked anxiously.

"Very nice, or you wouldn't have married him," answered Angelica. "Go on,
Diavolo. If you sing flat, I'll slap you."

"If you're impertinent, miss, I'll put you out," Diavolo retorted.

"Go on," said Evadne sharply, fearing a fight.

But to everybody's intense relief the prince laughed, and then the twins'
distinguished manners appeared in a new and agreeable light.

"_Papa--Papa--Papa_,"--they sang--"_Papa says--that we--that
we--that we are little devils! and so we are--we are--we are and ever
shall be--world without end_."

"_I am a chip_," Diavolo trilled exquisitely; "_I am a chip_."

"_Thou art a chip--Thou art a chip_," Angelica responded.

"_We are both chips_," they concluded harmoniously--"_chips of the
old--old block! And as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen!_"

"You sang that last phrase flat you--_pulp!_" cried Angelica.

"I can't both sing and play," Diavolo protested.

"You'll say you can't eat and breathe next," she retorted, giving his hair
a tug.

"What did you do that for?" he demanded.

"Just to waken you up," she answered.

"Are they always like this?" the prince asked, much edified.

"This is nothing," groaned Mr. Hamilton-Wells.

"Nothing if it is not genius," the prince suggested gracefully.

"The ineffectual genius of the nineteenth century I fancy, which betrays
itself by strange incongruities and contrasts of a violent kind, but is
otherwise unproductive," Mrs. Orton Beg whispered to Mr. Frayling
incautiously.

Lady Adeline looked up: "I could not help hearing," she said.

"Oh, Adeline, I am sorry!" Mrs. Orton Beg exclaimed.

"_I_ thank you," said Lady Adeline, sighing. "Courtly phrases are
pleasant plums, even to latter-day palates which are losing all taste for
such dainties; but they are not nourishing. I would rather know my
children to be merely naughty, and spend my time in trying to make them
good, than falsely flatter myself that there is anything great in them,
and indulge them on that plea, until I had thoroughly confirmed them in
faults which I ought to have been rigorously repressing."

"You're right there," said Mr. Frayling; "but all the same, you'll be able
to make a good deal of that boy, or I'm much mistaken. And as for
Angelica, why, when she is at the head of an establishment of her own she
will require all her smartness. But teach her housekeeping, Lady Adeline;
that is the thing for _her_."

Evadne was sitting near her father, not taking part in the conversation,
but attending to it; and Lady Adeline, happening to look at her at this
moment, saw something which gave her "pause to ponder." Evadne's face
recalled somewhat the type of old Egypt, Egypt with an intellect added.
Her eyes were long and apparently narrow, but not so in reality--a trick
she had of holding them half shut habitually gave a false impression of
their size, and veiled the penetration of their glance also, which was
exceptionally keen. In moments of emotion, however, she would open them to
the full unexpectedly, and then the effect was startling and peculiar; and
it was one of these transient flashes which surprised Lady Adeline when
Mr. Frayling made that last remark. It was a mere gleam, but it revealed
Evadne to Lady Adeline as a flash of lightning might have revealed a
familiar landscape on a dark night. She saw what she expected to see, but
all transformed, and she saw something beyond, which she did not expect,
and could neither comprehend nor forget. So far she had only thought of
Evadne as a nice, quiet little thing with nothing particular in her; from
that evening, however, she suspended her opinion, suspecting something,
but waiting to know more. Evadne was then in her eighteenth year, but not
yet out.

CHAPTER VII.

Mrs. Orton Beg was a sister of Mrs. Frayling's and an oracle to Evadne.
Mrs. Frayling was fair, plump, sweet, yielding, commonplace, prolific;
Mrs. Orton Beg was a barren widow, slender, sincere, silent, firm, and
tender. Mrs. Frayling, for lack of insight, was unsympathetic, Mrs. Orton
Beg was just the opposite; and she and Evadne understood each other, and
were silent together in the most companionable way in the world.

When Evadne went to her own room on the evening made memorable by the
twins' famous anthem, she was haunted by that word "ineffectual," which
Mrs. Orton Beg had used. "Ineffectual genius"--there was something
familiar as well as high sounding in the epithet; it recalled an idea with
which she was already acquainted; what was it? She opened her "Commonplace
Book," and sat with her pen in her hand, cogitating comfortably. She had
no need to weary her fresh young brain with an irritating pursuit of what
she wanted; she had only to wait, and it would recur to her. And presently
it came. Her countenance brightened. She bent over the book and wrote a
few lines, read them when she had blotted them, and was satisfied.

"I have it," she wrote. "Shelley = genius of the nineteenth
century--'Beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his
luminous wings in vain.'--_Matthew Arnold_."

When she had done this she took up a book, went to the fire, settled
herself in an easy-chair, and began to read. The book was "Ruth," by Mrs.
Gaskell, and she was just finishing it. When she had done so she went back
to the table, and copied out the following paragraph:

"The daily life into which people are born, and into which they are
absorbed before they are aware, forms chains which only one in a hundred
has moral strength enough to despise, and to break when the right time
comes--when an inward necessity for independent action arises, which is
superior to all outward conventionalities."

She stopped here, and pushed the volume away from her. It was the only
passage in it which she cared to remember.

She had lost the confidence of the child by this time, and become humbly
doubtful of her own opinion; and instead of summing up "Ruth" boldly, as
she would have done the year before, she paused now a moment to reflect
before she wrote with diffidence:

"The principal impression this book has made upon me is that Mrs. Gaskell
must have been a very lovable woman."

[Footnote: George Eliot thought so too, years before Evadne was born, and
expressed the thought in a letter in which she also prophesied that "Ruth"
would not live through a generation. The impression the book made upon
Evadne is another proof of prescience in the great writer.]

"The story seems to me long drawn out, and of small significance. It is
full of food for the heart, but the head goes empty away, and both should
be satisfied by a work of fiction, I think. But perhaps it is my own mood
that is at fault. At another time I might have found gems in it which now
in my dulness I have failed to perceive."

Somebody knocked at the door as she blotted the words.

"Come in, auntie," she said, as if in answer to an accustomed signal; and
Mrs. Orton Beg entered in a long, loose, voluminously draped white
wrapper.

Evadne drew an easy-chair to the fire for her.

"Sit down, auntie," she said, "and be cosey. You are late to-night. I was
afraid you were not coming."

Mrs. Orton Beg was in the habit of coming to Evadne's room every evening
when she was at Fraylingay, to chat, or sit silently sociable over the
fire with her before saying goodnight.

"Do I ever fail you?" she asked, smiling.

"No. But I have been afraid of the fatal fascination of that great fat
foreign prince. He singled you out for special attention, and I have been
jealous."

"Well, you need not have been, for he singled me out in order to talk
about you. He thinks you are a nice child. You interest him."

"Defend me!" said Evadne. "But you mistake me, dear aunt. It was not of
him I was jealous, but of you. The fat prince is nothing to me, and you
are a very great deal."

Mrs. Orton Beg's face brightened at the words, but she continued to look
into the fire silently for some seconds after Evadne had spoken, and made
no other visible sign of having heard them.

"I don't think I ought to encourage you to sit up so late," she said
presently. "Lady Adeline has just been asking me who it is that burns the
midnight oil up here so regularly."

"Lady Adeline must be up very late herself to see it," said Evadne. "I
suppose those precious twins disturb her. I wish she would let me take
entire charge of them when she is here. It would be a relief, I should
think!"

"It would be an imposition," said Mrs. Orton Beg. "But you are a brave
girl, Evadne. _I_ would not venture."

"Oh, they delight me," Evadne answered. "And I know them well enough now
to forestall them."

"When I told Lady Adeline that these were your rooms," her aunt pursued,
"she said something about a lily maid high in her chamber up a tower to
the east guarding the sacred shield of Lancelot."

"Singularly inappropriate," said Evadne. "For my tower is south and west,
thank Heaven."

"And there isn't a symptom of Lancelot," her aunt concluded.

"Young ladies don't guard sacred shields nowadays," said Evadne.

"No," answered her aunt, glancing over her shoulder at the open book on
the table. "They have substituted the sacred 'Commonplace Book'--full of
thought, I fancy."

"You speak regretfully, auntie; but isn't it better to think and be happy,
than to die of atrophy for a sentiment?"

"I don't think it better to extinguish all sentiment. Life without
sentiment would be so bald."

"But life with that kind of sentiment doesn't last, it seems, and nobody
is benefited by it. It is extreme misery to the girl herself, and she dies
young, leaving a legacy of lifelong regret and bitterness to her friends.
I should think it small comfort to become the subject for a poem or a
picture at such a price. And surely, auntie, sentiments which are silly or
dangerous would be better extinguished?"

Mrs. Orton Beg smiled at the fire enigmatically.

"But the poem or the picture may become a lasting benefit to mankind," she
suggested presently.

"Humph!" said Evadne.

"You doubt it?"

"Well, you see, auntie, there are two ways of looking at it. When you
first come across the poem or the picture which perpetuates the sentiment
that slew the girl, and beautifies it, you feel a glow all over, and fancy
you would like to imitate her, and think that you would deserve great
credit for it if you did. But when you come to consider, there is nothing
very noble, after all, in a hopeless passion for an elderly man of the
world who is past being benefited by it, even if he could reciprocate it.
Elaine should have married a man of her own age, and made him happy. She
would have done some good in her time so, and been saved from setting us a
bad example. I think it a sin to make unwholesome sentiments attractive."

"Then Lancelot does not charm you?"

"No," said Evadne thoughtfully. "I should have preferred the king."

"Ah, yes. Because he was the nobler, the more ideal man?"

"No, not exactly," Evadne answered. "But because he was the more
wholesome."

"My dear child, are you speaking literally?"

"Yes, auntie."

"Good Heavens!" Mrs. Orton Beg ejaculated softly. "The times _have_
changed."

"Yes, we know more now," Evadne answered tranquilly.

"You are fulfilling the promise of your youth, Evadne," her aunt remarked
after a thoughtful pause. "I remember reading a fairy tale of Jean
Ingelow's aloud to you children in the nursery long ago. I forget the name
of it, but it was the one into which 'One morning, oh, so early,' comes;
and you started a controversy as to whether, speaking of the dove, when
the lark said 'Give us glory,' she should have made answer, 'Give us
peace' or 'peas.' The latter, you maintained, as being the more natural,
and the most sensible."

"I must have been a horrid little prig in those days," said Evadne,
smiling. "But, auntie, there can be no peace without plenty. And I think I
would rather be a sensible realist than a foolish idealist. You mean that
you think me too much of a utilitarian, do you not?"

"You are in danger, I think."

"Utilitarianism is Bentham's _greatest happiness principle_, is it
not?" Evadne asked.

"Yes--greatest human happiness," her aunt replied.

"Well, I don't know how that can be dangerous in principle. But, of
course, I know nothing of such questions practically. Only I do seem to
perceive that you must rest on a solid basis of real advantages before you
can reach up to ideal perfection with any chance of success."

"You seem to be very wide awake to-night, Evadne," Mrs. Orton Beg
rejoined. "This is the first I have heard of your peculiar views."

"Oh, I am a kind of owl, I think, auntie," Evadne answered apologetically.
"You see, I never had anything to do in the schoolroom that I could not
manage when I was half asleep, and so I formed a habit of dozing over my
lessons by day, and waking up when I came to bed at night. Having a room
of my own always has been a great advantage. I have been secure all along
of a quiet time at night for reading and thought--and that is real life,
auntie, isn't it? I don't care to talk much, as a rule, do you? I like to
listen and watch people. But I always wake up at this time of the night,
and I feel as if I could be quite garrulous now when everybody else is
going to sleep. But, auntie, don't use such an ominous expression as
'peculiar views' about anything I say, _please_; 'views' are always
in ill odour, and peculiarities, even peculiar perfections, would isolate
one, and that I _do_ dread. It would be awful to be out of sympathy
with one's fellow-creatures, and have them look suspiciously at one; and
it would be no comfort to me to know that want of sympathy is the proof of
a narrow nature, and that suspicion is the inevitable outcome of ignorance
and stupidity. I don't want to despise my fellow-creatures. I would rather
share their ignorance and conceit and be sociable than find myself
isolated even by a very real superiority. The one would be pleasant
enough, I should think; the other pain beyond all bearing of it."