The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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"And afterward?" the Boy ventured to ask.

"Afterward," the Tenor repeated slowly. "Afterward--for some months--I
wandered about. They were all very kind. They wanted me to stay with them
--they wanted to take me abroad--they would have done anything to help and
comfort me. But all I cared for was to be alone. At first there was a
blank--the faces about me had no meaning for me--the people when they
spoke could scarcely make me understand. I was mad in a way, but not mad
enough to be insensible to sorrow. I felt the fearful calamity that had
fallen upon me, but nothing else. I told myself every hour of the day that
he was dead--dead; cruelly cut off in the midst of his happy life by me
whom he loved--I could not have suffered more had I been guilty," the
Tenor broke off. "This lasted--I hardly know how long; but eventually I
began to fancy that he saw my agony of grief, and that it was a torment to
him not to be able to come and comfort me. Then one day--I was in Cornwall
at the time--sitting on the sea shore--and all at once--it was the
strangest thing in life--I heard the chime! I had not been thinking of it.
I doubt if I had thought of it a dozen times since I heard it first. But
it sounded for me then:

[Illustration: (musical notation); lyrics: He, watch-ing o-ver Is--ra--el,
slumbers not, nor sleeps.]

I heard it quite distinctly, and I got up and looked about me. It was the
first thing outside myself that had arrested my attention since I had seen
him drop on the moor. I went back to the inn I was staying at, and asked
about it: but I could scarcely make them understand what I meant, and
there was certainly no such chime in that neighbourhood. Then I felt it
was a message sent specially to me, and I made my man pack up my things,
and then I dismissed him, and started at once for Morningquest alone. It
was a long journey, and although I travelled with all possible speed, I
did not arrive until nearly forty-eight hours later. It was close on
midnight then, and the first thing I heard, when I found myself alone in
my room at the hotel, was the chime itself. Have you ever noticed--or is
it only my fancy?--that it seems to strike louder at midnight, and with
greater intensity of expression, as we ourselves strike final chords? It
sounded so to me then, and suggested something--I can't tell what, I can't
define it; but something that changed the current of my thoughts, and made
me feel I had done right to come. And from that moment my grief was less
self-centred, and the blessed power to feel for others began to return to
me. Almost immediately after my arrival, I heard of the tragedy in the
cathedral, the suicide of the tenor, and the trouble the dean and chapter
were having to find a substitute; and when I had seen the quiet shady
Close, and the beautiful old cathedral, and my little house with its
high-walled garden at the back, standing, as it were, on holy ground, I
longed to take up my abode there, where no one would know my story but
those to whom the secret would be sacred, and no one would intrude upon my
grief. So I applied for the tenor's place, and I knew as soon as I had
taken the step that it was a wise one. I thought, if any thing could
restore the balance of my mind, it would be the regular employment, the
quiet monotony, the something to do that I must do, the duty and
obligation, which were just sufficient without being any tax on my powers
to take me out of myself. And the being able to shut myself up from the
world in the Close, as I said before, was another inducement, though by
far the greatest were the daily services in the cathedral; while taking
part in them I always feel that I am nearer him. When I applied for the
place, and the dean heard who I was--of course, he knew the story; the
whole world knew it at that time--and heard how I yearned for a life of
devotion, he sympathized with me entirely, gladly acceded to my request,
and agreed to keep my secret. He has told me since that he always hoped
and believed the quiet regular life would restore me, and when it had he
intended to urge me to go away, and make the most of my powers. Dear, kind
old man! he has indeed been a good friend to me, and he is a good man
himself, if ever there were one. But I seem to have known none but good
men," the Tenor concluded thoughtfully.

"But your money, Israfil," the Boy said impatiently; "what did you do with
that?"

The question provoked the ghost of a smile. "Oh, Boy! that is so like
you!" the Tenor answered. "But since you wish to know I will tell you. My
income has all been disposed of for some years to come. It was a great
deal more than I should have required in any case, and a lay clerk with
such means would have been an anomaly not to be tolerated. But he meant
that I should enjoy it, and so I have. I have held it as a sacred trust
left to me for the benefit of those who are worse off than myself. I keep
the principal in my own hands, but I dispose of the interest. It does not
go very far, alas! in my profession, where want is the rule, but it
enables me to do something, and that, till I knew you. Boy, was my
greatest pleasure in life. I have earned my own living almost ever since I
came to Morningquest, and being obliged to do so has been a very good
thing for me."

"And all these pensioners--or whatever you like to call them--of yours, do
they know?"

"As a rule my lawyers manage the business delicately," the Tenor answered,
smiling. He dipped his oars as he spoke, and began to row back with a
will.

The Boy, shivering as if with cold, gathered up the tiller lines and
steered mechanically. They were both subdued, and scarcely spoke till the
boat touched the landing place at the water-gate, and then the Boy begged
the Tenor to get out, saying that he must row himself home.

The Tenor jumped ashore, and then, with a long grip of each other's hands,
and a long look into each other's eyes, they parted in silence.

The moon had set by this time, and the summer dawn was near.

CHAPTER XIV.

The next night the Boy appeared again in his white boating suit, with his
sandy hair tumbled more than usual His restless eyes sparkled and glanced,
and there was a glow beneath his clear skin which answered in his to a
heightened colour in other complexions. He was evidently excited about
something, and the Tenor thought he had never seen him look so well. What
his mood was did not become immediately apparent. The Tenor had learnt
that the sparkle in his eyes either meant some mischievous design, or a
strong desire to "make music." But this evening he was long in coming to
the point. He began by pelting the Tenor with roses through the window,
and then he entered and danced an impromptu breakdown in the middle of the
room; but these preliminaries might have been an introduction to anything,
and it seemed as if his programme were not complete, for he next subsided
into his accustomed seat on the sofa up against the wall opposite the
fireplace, and remained there, with his hands in his pockets, looking at
the Tenor thoughtfully for at least ten minutes.

The Tenor was also in his accustomed seat beside the hearth--or rather
beside the stand of growing flowers and ferns that hid the hearth, with a
book on his knee. He was sitting there when the first rose whizzed in out
of the silence and solitude of night without warning upon him, announcing
the arrival of the Boy. It startled him somewhat, but he did not wince
from the shower that followed, nor did he move when the Boy chose to show
himself, but merely smiled and closed his book and then sat watching the
next part of the proceedings with the gravity of an eastern potentate. He
sat so now, looking up at the great cathedral, seen dimly through the open
window, towering above them, his profile turned to the Boy, and the roses
all about him--on the floor, on the back of his chair, one on his
shoulder, another on his book, and one he held in his hand. There were
dozens of them of every hue, from that deep crimson damask which is almost
black, to the purest white, fresh gathered from the trees apparently, with
the dew still glistening on their perfumed petals and on the polished
surface of the leaves. The Tenor, becoming conscious of the _Gloire de
Dijon_ he held in his hand, looked into its creamy depth with quiet
eyes. The beauty of the flower was a pleasure to him--though, for the
matter of that, everything was a pleasure to him now, He had no words to
tell it, but his face was irradiated by the gladness of the hope which he
cherished, from morning till night.

The Boy had been watching him admiringly. "You will be one of the beauties
when you come out, dear Israfil," he said. "They will photograph you and
put you into the shop windows, cabinet size two-and-sixpence. Sounds
rather vulgar, though, doesn't it? Savours of desecration, to my mind.
But, Israfil, you will certainly be the rage. One so seldom sees a
good-looking man! Good-looking women are common enough and they make
themselves still commoner nowadays," which remark coming from such a
quarter amused the Tenor, whereupon the Boy became irate. "Oh, jeer away!"
he exclaimed; "but when you know Angelica as well as I do you will respect
my knowledge of the subject."

But here the Tenor threw back his head, and groaned aloud.

"Boy, I protest!" he exclaimed. "I can endure your garrulousness, but I do
bar your cynicism. If you can't be agreeable, be still. You're in a horrid
bad temper"--and so saying the Tenor rose in his languid way, got a little
table which he placed beside his chair, spread out his pipes upon it, and
began to clean them with crows' quills, the Boy watching the operation the
while with cheerful intentness.

"Pipes and tobacco and roses!" he said at last. "What a mixture it sounds!
But it doesn't look bad, dear Israfil," he added encouragingly.

The Tenor made no remark; his pipes seemed to be all engrossing. He had
just filled the bowl of one with a number of fuseeheads, cut off short,
and now he popped in a light and corked them up. There was a tiny
explosion on the instant, followed by a rush of smoke through the shank of
the pipe, which swept it clean, and added musk and gunpowder to the
already heavy odour of roses that filled the room.

The Boy, still lolling on the sofa observing the Tenor's proceedings with
interest, drew up one leg, clasping his hands round it below the knee, and
began to sing to himself in a monotonous undertone as was his wont.

"By-the-bye," the Tenor said, like one who suddenly remembers, "I found
some verses after you were here the other night"--and he straightened
himself to feel in his pockets--"I suppose you dropped them. Here they
are." And then he leant back in his chair again and read aloud;

"When the winter storms were howling o'er the ocean,
Leafless trees and sombre landscape cold and drear,
Bitter winds, and driving rains, or white commotion
Of the whirling snow that drifted far and near;
Then my heart, which had been strong, was bowed and broken,
I was crushed with sudden sense of loss and fear,
Dull as silence passed the days and brought no token
Of a light to make the darkness disappear.
Would the grief that wrecked my life forever hold me?
Soon or later winter storms their ravage cease--
With the coming of the green leaves, something told me,
With the coming of the green leaves there is peace.

When the bursting buds proclaim'd the spring time nearing.
Song of birds and scent of flowers everywhere,
Drowsy drone of distant workers, and the cheering
Hum of honey-seeking bees in all the air;
Then my sorrow took swift wings and rose and left me;
And I knew no more the aching of despair;
Came again to me the joy that seemed bereft me,
And for hope I changed the dreary weight of care.
With the winter tempests pass'd the storms of feeling,
Soon and surely did their power to pain me cease,
And the sunshine-lighted summer rose revealing
With the coming of the green leaves there is peace."

The Tenor looked at the Boy when he had finished, shook his head
mournfully, struck a match, set fire to the paper upon which the verses
were written, and watched it burn with the air of a disappointed man.

"Don't make any more rhymes, Boy," he said; "don't write any more, at
least, until you get out of the sickly sentimental stage. I thought I was
prepared for the worst, but I really never imagined anything quite so bad
as that."

The Boy, although he had listened to the lines with a fine affectation of
enjoyment, was in no way discomposed by the Tenor's adverse criticism; he
seemed, on the contrary, to enjoy that too, for he chuckled and hugged
himself ecstatically before he replied.

"I should like to know," he said, with his uncanny grin, "how you found
out those lines were mine, for I certainly never told you that I wrote
them."

The Tenor's mind misgave him.

"Didn't you?" he said, looking at the ashes.

The Boy threw himself back on the sofa.

"They were Angelica's!" he said, with a shout of laughter. "And now you
look as if you would like to have them back again. It will take you months
to get over that!"

The Tenor was certainly disconcerted, but he merely resumed his pipe,
folded his hands, and looked up at the cathedral. He had been blessed all
his life with the precious gift of silence. Outside the night was very
still. There was a fitful little breeze which rustled the leaves, and made
the creepers tap on the window panes, but, beyond this, there was no
sound, no sign of life or movement, nothing to remind them of the "whole
cityful" so close at hand.

The Tenor lay back in his chair, looking somewhat dispirited. The Boy got
up and began to wander about the room; a long pause followed which was
broken by the chime.

"I have been trying to say something all the evening, and now that beastly
chime has gone and made it impossible," the Boy exclaimed, as soon as he
could hear himself speak. "I hate it. I loathe it. It is cruel as eternal
damnation. It is condemnation without appeal. It is a judgment which
acknowledges none of the excuses we make for ourselves. I wish they would
change it. I wish they would make it say 'Lord, have mercy; Christ, have
mercy upon us.'"

The Tenor put down his pipe, rose slowly, and went upstairs. In a few
minutes he returned in flannels.

"You want exercise, Boy," he said. "You must come out. It is a lovely
night for the river, and I have been shut up in the Close all day."

The Boy sprang to his feet. "Yes, yes," he exclaimed with animation, "let
us go, and I'll bring my violin. Where's my hat?"

"You came without one to-night--or perhaps you hung it on the palings."

"No, I didn't," the Boy replied. I must have forgotten it altogether. But
it doesn't matter. I'd rather be without one. I always take it off when I
can."

"So I have seen," said the Tenor, following him out.

As he walked through the Close, still a little behind the Boy, he could
not help noticing, by no means for the first time, but more particularly
than usual, what a graceful creature the latter was. His slender figure
showed to advantage in the light flannels. They made him look broader and
more manly while leaving room for the free play of limb and muscle. He had
knotted a crimson silk scarf round his neck, sailor fashion, and twisted a
voluminous cummerbund of the same round his waist, carelessly, so that one
heavily fringed end of it came loose, and now hung down to his knee,
swaying with his body as he moved. The Tenor remembered that his socks
were also of crimson silk, a detail which had caught his eye as the Boy
lolled on the sofa. It was evident that the costume had cost him a
thought, and, if somewhat theatrical, it was certainly picturesque, and
entirely characteristic. In one respect the Boy's art was perfect:
although he was quite conscious of his good looks, he never had the air of
being so; every movement was natural and spontaneous, like the movements
of a wild creature, and as agile. He seemed to rejoice in his own
strength, to delight in his own suppleness; and he walked on now with
healthy elastic step, his violin held to his shoulder, his clear cut cheek
leant down to it lovingly; his luxuriant light hair all tumbled and
tossed, while he kept time to an imaginary tune with the bow in his right
hand, now flourishing it in the air, and now drawing it across the
instrument, scarcely seeming to touch the strings, yet waking low AEolean
harplike murmurs, or deep thrilling tones, or bright melodious cadences;
making it respond to his touch like a living creature, and glancing back
over his shoulder at the Tenor as they proceeded, with a joyous face as if
sure of his sympathy, but anxious to see if he had it all the same.

"I feel more amiable now," he said, between cadence and cadence. "Kindly
consider that I have cancelled all my former misstatements. Cynicism can't
exist in a healthy sensorium with sounds like these"--and he executed a
magnificent _crescendo_ passage on his violin. "When I want to play I
feel that I must prepare myself. Making music is a religious rite to me,
which can only be performed by one in perfect charity with all men."

They were seated in the boat by this time, the Tenor at the oars.

"Row, brothers, row!"

the Boy played--"and steer yourself," he said. "I can do nothing but
accompany you."

And then he began in earnest, while the Tenor made the boat fly past river
bank and towing-path, and house and wharf; past bridge and tower and town--
it seemed but a flash, and they were out in the open country! flat meadows
on the left, and on their right the green and swelling upland, dotted with
slumbrous cattle and sheep, and shadowy with the heavy summer foliage of
old trees. The Tenor stopped there, exhausted.

"There is madness in your music, Boy," he said. "It puts me beside
myself."

The Boy laughed.

But in the pause that followed he shivered a little, and laid aside his
instrument. It was not such a very fine night on the river as it had
appeared to be in the Close. The moon would rise later, but at present
there was no sign of her, and the sky, though cloudless, was not clear,
the colour being that misty opaque gray which hangs low at the horizon on
summer nights when the light never wholly departs, and is accompanied by a
close and sultry atmosphere, surcharged with electricity, the harbinger of
storms. It was so that night. There were no stars to relieve the murky
heaviness, nor was it dark; a sort of twilight reigned, as comfortless as
tepid water, and there was no breeze now to rustle the leaves into life.
All seemed ghostly still save for the muffled rush of the river, and the
melancholy howling of a dog at some farm out of sight. And even the river
was not its usual merry self, but a sullen heavy body that slipped by
stealthily, making haste to the sea as if anxious to be away from the
spot, without a ripple to break its level surface, and without the musical
lop and gurgle and murmur with which it danced along at brighter times. In
spite of the heat--or perhaps because of it--the air was full of moisture,
and while the Tenor rested, a dead white mist began to appear above the
low-lying meadows. It rose thinly, a mere film at first, which, coming
suddenly, would have made a man brush his hand over his eyes, mistaking
the haze for some defect of vision; but gathering and gaining body
rapidly, and rising a certain height clear from the ground, then seeming
to hover, a thick cloud poised between earth and sky, not touching either,
but drawn horizontally over the fields like a pall with ragged edges
through which the trees showed in blurred outline, their leaves dripping
miserably with an intermittent patter of uncertain drops as the moisture
collected upon them and fell, and then collected again.

The fog was stationary for a time, and did not extend beyond the meadows,
but it rose at intervals, though the clearance was only momentary, and had
scarcely become perceptible before reinforcements of dull white vapour,
tainted with miasma, rolled up from the marshy ground, bringing dank
odours of standing water and weedy vegetation, half decayed, and gradually
encroaching on the river, the smooth surface of which glowed with a greasy
gleam beneath it, making it look like a river of oil.

"Let us go back," said the Boy. "My soul is sick with apprehension, and
the damp will ruin my violin."

"I thought it was making you feel as if something were going to happen,"
the Tenor observed as he got the boat round.

The Boy ruffled his flaxen hair, and laughed uneasily. "Get away quick,"
he said. "If the elements do sympathize with man, there'll be a tragedy
here before morning."

The Tenor pulled on steadily and in silence for some distance. But once
out of sight of the mist and the meadows, the Boy's ever varying spirits
rose again. He took up his violin, and drew soft sounds from it which
seemed to float away far out into the night.

"Sing something," he said at last, playing the prelude to the most
love-sweet song ever written.

"I arise from dreams of thee," the Tenor sang like one inspired.

The Boy uttered a deep sigh when he had finished; he was speechless with
pleasure.

But the Tenor went on. He sang of the sun and the sea, gliding from one
strain to another, and unconsciously keeping time to the measure as he
rowed, now making the little boat leap forward with a fine impulse, now
almost resting on his oars till their progress through the water was
scarcely perceptible, and now stopping altogether while he lingered on a
closing cadence, looking up.

People who chanced to wake, as the windings of the river brought the
singer past their homes that night, sat up in their beds and wondered. The
music made them think of old tales of weird enchantment, in which strains,
incomprehensibly sweet and thrilling like these, coming from nobody could
tell where, had played a part. And one poor creature, who had long been
dying in lingering pain, thought heaven had opened for her, and, smiling,
passed happily away.

It would have been no great stretch of the imagination to have supposed
that nature did sympathize with man in his moods just then, for gradually,
as if to the music, the murky clouds had parted like a curtain at a given
signal, and rolled away, leaving the vault of night high and bare and blue
above them, with here and there a diamond star or two sparsely sprinkled
from horizon to zenith, radiant at first, but presently paling before a
slender shaft of light that shot up in the east, and then, opening
fan-like was quickly followed by the great golden rim of the moon herself.
She rose from behind a hill crested with fir trees, which appeared for a
moment as if photographed on her disc, and then, mounting rapidly, hung
suspended in a clear indigo sky above the quiet woods, the river and the
little boat, which was motionless now--an ideal moon in an ideal world
with ideal music to greet her. But the Boy dropped the violin on his knee
and forgot to play as he watched this beautiful transformation scene, and
the Tenor's song sank to a murmur while he also gazed and waited, dipping
his oars to keep the boat in mid-stream mechanically. Joy and sadness are
near akin in music; they are like pleasure and happiness, the one is the
surface of feeling, the other its depth; and there is solemnity in every
phase of absolute beauty which cannot fail to influence such natures as
the Tenor's and the Boy's. It was the Tenor, though, that felt this moment
most. His nature, if not deeper, was more devout than the Boy's; pleasure
with him was a veritable uplifting of the spirit in praise and
thankfulness; and all the peace and quietness about them, the marvellous
light on hill and wood and vale, and even the nearness of the unseen city,
which he felt without perceiving it, and from which there came to him that
sense of fellowship and of the sacredness of human life in which all the
best qualities of man are rooted; these together sanctified the time.
Although, for the matter of that, to such a nature all times and seasons
are sanctified. For if ever a man's soul was purified on earth, his was;
and if ever a man deserved to see heaven, he did. Humanly speaking there
was no stain on him; in thought, word, and deed he was immaculate and true
as a little child, This moment was therefore peculiarly his own, a moment
of deep happiness, which found expression, as all pleasurable emotion did
with him, in music. He lifted up his voice, that wonderful voice which had
no equal then upon earth, and sang as he had sung once before on that very
spot when the first vague idea of the omnipresent majesty of a God
possessed him, sang with all his heart, and it was the litany of the
Blessed Virgin, the one he had heard in France in days gone by, the one he
had been singing when first he met the Boy, which recurred to him now--why
or wherefore it would be hard to say. He had not thought of it since. But
perhaps the moon, which was shining again as it had shone that night on
the old market-place, had helped to recall it, or perhaps it satisfied him
with a sense of appropriateness. For it was not a dismal, monotonous
product of mercenary dryness to which the words were set, but the
characteristic music of devotion by which the spirit of prayer is made
audible when words fail, as they always do, to express it in all its force
and fervour. The Boy listened a while with parted lips. It was a new
experience for him, and he was deeply moved. Then his musical instinct
awoke, and presently he took up the strain, voice and violin, accompanying
the Tenor, who rowed on once more, while the river banks resounded with,
"Christe audi nos, Christe exaudi nos," and re-echoed "Miserere nobis."