The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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The Tenor groaned. "Didn't you know the risk you were running?" he asked.

"Oh, yes!" she answered coolly. "I knew I was breaking a law of the land.
I knew I should be taken before a police magistrate if I were caught
masquerading, and that added excitement to the pleasure--the charm of
danger. But then you see it was danger without danger for me, because I
knew I should be mistaken for my brother. Our own parents do not know us
apart when we are dressed alike."

"Oh, then there _are_ two of you?" the Tenor said.

"Yes. I told you. They call us the Heavenly Twins," said Angelica.

"Yes, you told me," the Tenor repeated thoughtfully. "But then you told me
so many things."

"Well, I told you nothing that was not absolutely true," Angelica
answered--"from Diavolo's point of view. I assumed his manner and habits
when I put these things on, imitated him in everything, tried to think his
thoughts, and looked at myself from his point of view; in fact my
difficulty was to remember that I was not him. I used to forget sometimes--
and think I was. But I confess that I never was such a gentleman as
Diavolo is always under all circumstances. Poor dear Diavolo!" she added
regretfully; "how he would have enjoyed those fried potatoes!"

The Tenor slightly changed his position. He only glanced at her now and
then when he spoke to her, and for the rest he sat as she did, with his
calm deep eyes fixed on the fire, and an expression of patient sadness
upon his face that wrung her heart. Perhaps it was to stifle the pain of
it that she began to talk garrulously. "Oh, I am sorry for the trick I
have played you!" she exclaimed with real feeling. "I have been sorry all
along since I knew your worth, and I came to-night to tell you, to confess
and to apologize. When I first knew you all my _loving consciousness_
was dormant, if you know what that is; I mean the love in us for our
fellow-creatures which makes it pain to ourselves to injure them. But you
re-aroused that feeling, and strengthened and added to it until it had
become predominant, so that, since I have known you as you are, I have
hated to deceive you. This is the first uncomfortable feeling of that kind
I have ever had. But for the rest I did not care. I was bored. I was
always bored: and I resented the serene unconcern of my friends. Their
indifference to my aspirations, and the way they took it for granted that
I had everything I ought to want, and could therefore be happy if I chose,
exasperated me. To be bored seems a slight thing, but a world of suffering
is contained in the experience; and do you know, Israfil, I think it
dangerous to leave an energetic woman without a single strong interest or
object in life. Trouble is sure to come of it sooner or later--which
sounds like a truism now that I have said it, and truisms are things which
we habitually neglect to act upon. In my case nothing of this kind would
have happened "--and again her glance round the room expressed a
comprehensive view of her present situation--"if I had been allowed to
support a charity hospital with my violin--or something; made to feel
responsible, you know."

"But surely you must recognize the grave responsibility which attaches to
all women--"

"In the abstract," Angelica interposed. "I know if things go wrong they
are blamed for it; if they go right the Church takes the credit. The value
attached to the influence of women is purely fictitious, as individuals
usually find when they come to demand a recognition of their personal
power. I should have been held to have done my duty if I had spent the
rest of my life in dressing well, and saying the proper thing; no one
would consider the waste of power which is involved in such an existence.
You often hear it said of a girl that she should have been a boy, which
being interpreted means that she has superior abilities; but because she
is a woman it is not thought necessary to give her a chance of making a
career for herself. I hope to live, however, to see it allowed that a
woman has no more right to bury her talents than a man has; in which days
the man without brains will be taught to cook and clean, while the clever
woman will be doing the work of the world well which is now being so
shamefully scamped. But I was going to say that I am sure all my vagaries
have arisen out of the dread of having nothing better to do from now until
the day of my death--as I once said to an uncle of mine--but to get up and
go to bed, after spending the interval in the elegant and useless way
ladies do--a ride, a drive, a dinner, a dance, a little music--trifling
all the time to no purpose, not even amusing one's self, for when
amusement begins to be a business, it ceases to be a pleasure. This has
not mended matters, I know," she acknowledged drearily; "but it has been a
distraction, and that was something while it lasted. Monotony, however
luxurious, is not less irksome because it is easy. A hardworking woman
would have rest to look forward to, but I hadn't even that, although I was
always wearied to death--as tired of my idleness or purposeless
occupations as anybody could possibly be by work. I think if you will put
yourself in my place, you will not wonder at me, nor at any woman under
the circumstances who, secure of herself and her position, varies the
monotony of her life with an occasional escapade as one puts sauce into
soup to relieve the insipidity. Deplore it if you will, but don't wonder
at it; it is the natural consequence of an unnatural state of things, and
there will be more of it still, or I am much mistaken."

Again the Tenor changed his position. "I cannot, _cannot_ comprehend
how you could have risked your reputation in such a way," he said, shaking
his head with grave concern.

"No risk to my reputation," she answered with the insolence of rank.
"Everybody knows who I am, and, if I remember rightly, 'That in the
captain's but a choleric word which in the soldier is rank blasphemy.'
What would be an unpardonable offence if committed by another woman less
highly placed than myself is merely an amusing eccentricity in me, so--for
_my_ benefit--conveniently snobbish is society. Since I grew up,
however, I find that I am not one of those who can say flippantly, 'You
can't have everything, and if people have talents they are not to be
expected to have characters as well.' Great talent should be held to be a
guarantee for good character; the loss of the one makes the possession of
the other dangerous. But what I do maintain is that I have done nothing by
which I ought in justice to be held to have jeopardised my character. I
have broken no commandment, nor should I under any circumstances. It is
only the idea of the thing that shocks your prejudices. You cannot bear to
see me decently dressed as a boy, but you would think nothing of it if you
saw me half undressed for a ball, as I often am; yet if the one can be
done with a modest mind, and you must know that it can, so can the other,
I suppose."

The Tenor was sitting sideways on his chair, his elbow resting on the
back, his head on his hand, his legs crossed, half turned from her and
listening without looking at her; and there was something in the way she
made this last remark that set a familiar chord vibrating not
unpleasantly. Perhaps, after the revelation, he had expected her to turn
into a totally different person; at all events he was somewhat surprised,
but not disagreeably, to perceive how like the Boy she was. This was the
Boy again, exactly, in a bad mood, and the Tenor sought at once, as was
his wont, to distract him rather than argue him out of it. This was the
force of habit, and it was also due to the fact that his mind was rapidly
adapting itself to a strange position and becoming easier in the new
attitude. The woman he had been idolizing was lost irretrievably, but the
charm which had been the Boy's remained to him, and he had already begun
to reconcile himself to the idea of a wrong-headed girl who must be helped
and worked for, instead of a wrong-headed boy.

"But why should you have chosen this impossible form of amusement in
particular?" he said. "Why could you not interest yourself in the people
about you--do something for them?"

"I did think of that, I did try," she answered petulantly. "But it is
impossible for a woman to devote herself to people for whom there is
nothing to be done, who don't want her devotion; and, besides, devotion
wasn't my vocation. But, after all," she broke off, defending herself, "I
only arrived at this by slow degrees, and I never should have come so far
at all if Diavolo had stuck to me; but he got into a state of
don't-care-and-can't-be-bothered, and separated his work from mine by
going to Sandhurst. Then I found myself alone, and you cannot think how a
woman, must suffer from the awful loneliness of a life like mine when I
had no one near me in the sense in which Diavolo has always been near, a
life that is full of acquaintances as a cake is full of currants, no two
of which ever touch each other."

The Tenor's habitual quiescence seemed to have deserted him. He changed
his position incessantly, and did so now again; it was the only sign he
made of being disturbed at all; and as he moved he brushed his hand back
over his hair, but did not speak.

"I kept my disguise a long time before I used it," she began again,
another morsel of incident and motive recurring to her. "I don't think I
had any very distinct notion of what I should do with it when I got it.
The pleasure of getting it had been everything for the moment, and having
succeeded in that and tried the dress, I hid it away carefully and
scarcely ever thought of it--never dreamt of wearing it certainly until
one night--it was quite an impulse at last. That night, you know, the
first time we met--it was such a beautiful night! I was by myself and had
nothing to do as usual, and it tempted me sorely, I thought I should like
to see the market-place by moonlight, and then all at once I thought I
_would_ see it by moonlight. That was my first weighty reason for
changing my dress. But having once assumed the character, I began to love
it; it came naturally; and the freedom from restraint, I mean the
restraint of our tight uncomfortable clothing, was delicious. I tell you I
was a genuine boy. I moved like a boy, I felt like a boy; I was my own
brother in very truth. Mentally and morally, I was exactly what you
thought me, and there was little fear of your finding me out, although I
used to like to play with the position and run the risk."

"It was marvellous," the Tenor said.

"Not at all," she answered, "not a bit more marvellous in real life than
it would have been upon the stage--a mere exercise of the actor's faculty
under the most favourable circumstances; and not a bit more marvellous
than to create a character as an author does in a book; the process is
analogous. But the same thing has been done before. George Sand, for
instance; don't you remember how often she went about dressed as a man,
went to the theatres and was introduced to people, and was never found out
by strangers? And there was that woman who was a doctor in the army for so
long--until she was quite old. James Barry, she called herself, and none
of her brother officers, not even her own particular chum in the regiment
she first belonged to, had any suspicion of her sex, and it was not
discovered until after her death, when she had been an Inspector General
of the Army Medical Department for many years. And there have been women
in the ranks too, and at sea. It was really not extraordinary that an
unobservant and unsuspicious creature like yourself should have been
deceived."

This recalled the patronizing manner of the Boy at times, and the Tenor
smiled.

"The meeting with you was an accident, of course," Angelica proceeded with
her disjointed narrative; "but I thought I would turn it to account. I
was, as you used to say, devoured by curiosity, and my mind is always
tentative. I wanted to hear how men talk to each other. I didn't believe
in goodness in a man, and I wanted to see badness from the man's point of
view. I expected to find you corrupt in some particular, to see your hoofs
and your horns sooner or later, and I tried to make you show them: but
that of course you never did, and I soon realized my mistake. I had a
standing quarrel with your sex, however, and at first it pleased me to
deceive you simply because you were a man. That was only at the very
first, for, as soon as I began to appreciate your worth, I felt ashamed of
myself. Don't you see, Israfil, you have been raising me all along. It has
been a very gradual process, though, but still I _did_ wish to
undeceive you. I would have done so at once if you had not been so far
above me. If you had spoken to me when I gave you that chance--in the
cathedral after the service, don't you remember?--it would have been
stepping down from your pedestal; we should have been on the same level
then, and I need not have dreaded your righteous indignation. But as it
was you maintained your high position, and I was afraid--and I could not
give you up. It was delightful to look at myself--an ideal self--from afar
off with your eyes; it made me feel as if I could be all you thought me;
it made me wish to be so; and it also made me more sorry than anything to
have you think so highly of me when I did not deserve it. All these were
signs of awakening which I recognized myself--and I did try over and over
again to undeceive you about my character, but you never would listen to
me. I wish--I wish you had!"

"Do you love me then?" the Tenor asked her, and was startled himself as
soon as he had spoken by the immediate effect of the question upon her. It
was evident that she had received a terrible shock. She changed colour and
countenance, and swayed for a moment as if she were about to faint, and he
sprang up to catch her in his arms, but she recovered herself sufficiently
to check the impulse: "No, no," she exclaimed hoarsely,--"stop! stop! you
don't know--My God! how could I have put myself in such a position?--I
mean--let me tell you--" She shut her eyes and waited, the Tenor looking
at her in pained surprise. He sank again on to the seat from which he had
risen, and waited also, wondering.

Presently she opened her eyes and looked at him: "The charm--the charm,"
she faltered, "has all been in the delight of associating with a man
intimately who did not know I was a woman. I have enjoyed the benefit of
free intercourse with your masculine mind undiluted by your masculine
prejudices and proclivities with regard to my sex. Had you known that I
was a woman--even you--the pleasure of your companionship would have been
spoilt for me, so unwholesomely is the imagination of a man affected by
ideas of sex. The fault is in your training; you are all of you educated
deliberately to think of women chiefly as the opposite sex. Your manner to
me has been quite different from that of any other man I ever knew. Some
have fawned on me, degrading me with the supposition that I exist for the
benefit of man alone, and that it will gratify me above all else to know
that I please him; and some few, such as yourself, have embarrassed me by
putting me on a pedestal, which is, I can assure you, an exceedingly
cramped and uncomfortable position. There is no room to move on a
pedestal. Now, with you alone of all men, not excepting Diavolo, I almost
think I have been on an equal footing; and it has been to me like the free
use of his limbs to a prisoner after long confinement with chains." The
expression which the Tenor's abrupt question had called into her
countenance passed off as she spoke, and with it the impression it had
made upon the Tenor. He mistook the remarks she had just been making for a
natural girlish evasion of the subject, and he did not return to it,
partly because he felt it to be an inopportune time, but also because he
was pretty sure of her feeling for him, and thought that he would have
ample leisure by and by, the leisure of a lifetime, to press the question.
There were other explanations to be asked for too, which it seemed
advisable to him to get over at once and have done with.

"But how have you managed to get out night after night," he asked,
"without being missed?"

"Not night after night," she answered. "If you remember, there were often
long intervals. But I have told you, I was constantly alone. The house is
large, none of the servants sleep near my room, and my husband--"

"Your--_what_?" the Tenor demanded, turning round on his chair to
face her, every vestige of colour gone from his countenance, yet not
convinced. "What did you say?" he repeated, aghast.

"My--husband," she faltered. "Mr. Kilroy, of Ilverthorpe."

Hitherto, he had uttered no reproach, but she knew that this reticence was
due to self-respect rather than to any lingering remnant of deference, and
now when she saw his face ablaze she was prepared for an outburst of
wrath. All he said, however, was, speaking with quiet dignity: "You need
not have allowed that part of the deception to go on. You should have told
me that at once; why did you not?"

For the first time Angelica lost her presence of mind. "I--I forgot," she
stammered.

The Tenor threw back his sunny head and laughed bitterly.

"It is a curious fact," Angelica remarked upon reflection, and as if
speaking to herself, "but I really had forgotten."

The Tenor looked at the fire, and in the little pause that ensued Angelica
suddenly lost her temper.

"If you are deceived in me you have deceived yourself," she burst out,
"for I have tried my utmost to undeceive you. You go and fall in love with
a girl you have never spoken to in your life, you endow her gratuitously
with all the virtues you admire without asking if she cares to possess
them; and when you find she is not the peerless perfection you require her
to be, you blame her! oh! isn't that like a man? You all say the same
thing: 'It wasn't me!'"

"What will your husband say?" the Tenor ejaculated in an undertone.

"Well, you see the bargain was when I asked him to marry me--"

"When you _what?_" said the Tenor.

"Asked him to marry me," Angelica calmly repeated. "The bargain was that
he should let me do as I liked, there being a tacit understanding between
us, of course, that I should do nothing morally wrong. I could not under
any circumstances do anything morally wrong--not, I confess, because I am
particularly high-minded, but because I cannot imagine where the charm and
pleasure of the morally wrong comes in. The best pleasures in life are in
art, not in animalism; and all the benefit of your acquaintance, I repeat,
has consisted in the fact that you were unaware of my sex. I knew that
directly you became aware of it another element would be introduced into
our friendship which would entirely spoil it so far as I am concerned."

It is a noteworthy fact, as showing how hopelessly involved man's moral
perceptions are with his prejudices and faith in custom even when
reprehensible, that the Tenor was if anything more shocked by Angelica's
outspoken objection to grossness than he would have been by a declaration
of passion on her part. The latter lapse is not unprecedented, and
therefore might have been excused as natural; but the unusual nature of
the declaration she had made put it into the category to which all things
out of order are relegated to be taken exception to, irrespective of their
ethical value. But he said nothing, only he turned from her once more, and
gazed sorrowfully into the fire.

Angelica looked at him with a dissatisfied frown on her face. "I wish you
would speak," she said to him under her breath; and then she began again
herself with her accustomed volubility: "Oh, yes, I married. That was what
was expected of me. Now, my brother when he grew up was asked with the
most earnest solicitude what he would like to be or to do; everything was
made easy for him to enter upon any career he might choose, but nobody
thought of giving me a chance. It was taken for granted that I should be
content to marry, and only to marry, and when I expressed my objection to
being so limited nobody believed I was in earnest. So here I am. And I
won't deny," she confessed with her habitual candour, "that it did occur
to me that I might have cared for you as a lover had I not been married.
But of course the thought did not disturb me. It was merely a passing
glimpse of a might-have-been. When one has a husband one must be loyal to
him, even in thought, whatever terms we are on."

The Tenor rose abruptly and walked to the farther end of the room, and
stood there for a little leaning against the window-frame with his back to
her, looking out at the cathedral. He felt sick and faint, and found the
fire and the smell of the roses overpowering. But presently he recovered,
and then he returned to her. His face was set now, white and passionless,
as it had been while he waited to rescue her from the river, and when he
spoke there was no tone in his voice; it was as if he were repeating some
dry fact by rote.

"There is no excuse for you then," he said; and she perceived with
surprise that until he knew she was married he had tried to believe that
there was. "You were playing with me, cheating me, mocking me all the
time."

Angelica looked at him in dismay. "Israfil! Israfil?" she pleaded,
springing to her feet and clasping his arm with both hands, her better
nature thoroughly aroused, "O Israfil! forgive me!" She almost shook him
in her vehemence, then flung him from her, and pressed her hands to her
eyes for an instant. "Mocking you? Oh, no!" she protested. "Believe
me--believe me if you can. I respected you almost from the first; I
reverenced you at last. I used to tease you about myself to begin with, I
repeat, because it did not occur to me that you could care seriously for a
girl to whom you had never spoken. Then I began to perceive my mistake.
Then I felt anxious to get you to go away and return, and be properly
introduced to us."

"And so you schemed--"

"I arranged a future for you that is worthy of you. O Israfil, I have some
conscience. I am not so bad as you think me. Even if I had not dared to
tell you to-night, I should have sent you a full explanation as soon as
you had gone. I thought when once you were engaged upon a new career, you
would forget--all this."

"I am surprised to hear that you did not expect me to enjoy the joke at my
own expense--the trick you have played me."

Angelica changed countenance; it was exactly what she had expected.

"Don't speak bitterly to me," she exclaimed. "It is not natural for you to
do so. Oh! I should know--I know only too well--all your good qualities.
My heart has been wrung a hundred times--by the thought--of all--I
have--lost--by my folly." She raised her hands with a despairing gesture.
"Don't imagine that you suffer--alone--or more than I do. There is hope
for you; there is none for me. But one thing has been a comfort. I knew
you only cared for an ideal creature, not at all like me. I was not afraid
you would break your heart for a phantom that had never existed. And for
me as I am, I knew you could have no regard. I see"--she broke off--"I see
all the contradictions that are involved in what I have said and am
saying, and yet I mean it all. In separate sections of my consciousness
each separate clause exists at this moment, however contradictory, and
there is no reconciling them; but there they are. I can't understand it
myself, and I don't want you to try. All I ask you is to believe me--to
forgive me."

There was an interval of silence after this, and then the Tenor spoke
again.

"It is nearly morning," he said. "I will see you safely home."

The Boy had been allowed to come and go as he liked, but with her it was
different; and the altered position made itself again apparent in this
new-found need for an escort. It was evident, too, from the way the Tenor
had allowed the subject to drop, tacitly agreeing to the assertion: "For
me as I am I knew you could have no regard," that he considered there was
nothing more to be said; but Angelica retained her childish habit of
talking everything out, and this did not satisfy her, it was such a lame
conclusion.

She got up now, however, to accompany him. "My hair!" she exclaimed,
recollecting. "What am I to do with my hair? I suppose my wig is lost."
Then she burst out passionately: "Oh, why did you save my life!" and wrung
her hands--"or why aren't you different now you know? Can't you say
something to restore my self-respect? Won't you forgive me?"

The Tenor's face contracted as with a spasm of pain. He had much to
forgive, and he may be pardoned if he showed no eagerness; but he spoke at
last. "I do forgive you," he said. Then all at once his great tender heart
swelled with pity. "Poor misguided girl!" he faltered with a broken voice;
"may God in heaven forgive you, and help you, and keep you safe, and make
you good and true and pure now and always."