The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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Presently, Mr. Kilroy appeared, with remonstrance written on every line of
his countenance.

"My dear Angelica," he said, unable to conceal his quite justifiable
annoyance. "I can do nothing if this racket continues. And"--
deprecatingly--"is it--is it quite seemly for you--?"

"I used to do it at home," Angelica answered.

"But you are not at home now"--quick as light she turned and looked at him
with her great grieved eyes. "I mean"--he grew confused in his haste to
correct himself--"of course you are at home--very much so indeed, you
know. But what I want to say is--as the mistress of a large establishment--
dignity--setting an example, and all that sort of thing, don't you see?"

"None of the servants are about at this hour," Angelica answered. "It is
their dinner time. But I apologize for my thoughtlessness if I have
disturbed you." She smiled up at him as she spoke, and poor Mr. Kilroy
retired to the library quite disarmed by her gentleness, and blaming
himself for a selfish brute to have interfered with her innocent
amusement. In future, he determined, he would make more allowance for her
youth.

Angelica, meanwhile, had collected her dogs and disappeared. But presently
she returned, and followed Mr. Kilroy to the library. He was busy writing,
and she went and stood in the window, looking idly out at the rain, and
drumming--absently, as it seemed--on the panes with ten strong fingers,
till he could bear it no longer.

"My dear child!" he exclaimed at last, "can't you get something to do?"

Angelica stopped instantly. If her thoughtlessness was exasperating, her
docility was exemplary. But she seemed disheartened; then she seemed to
consider; then she brightened a little; then she got some letters, sat
down, and began to write--scratch, scratch, scratch, squeak, squeak,
squeak, on rough paper with a quill pen, writing in furious haste at a
table just behind her husband. Why did she choose the library, his own
private _sanctum_, for the purpose, when there were half a dozen
other rooms at least where she might have been quite as comfortable? Mr.
Kilroy fidgeted uneasily, but he bore this new infliction silently, though
with an ever-increasing sense of irritation, for some time. Finally,
however, an exclamation of impatience slipped from him unawares.

"Do I worry you with my scribbling?" Angelica demanded with hypocritical
concern. "I'm sorry. But I've just done,"--and she went away with some
half dozen notes for the post.

When they met again at lunch she told him triumphantly that she had
refused all the invitations which had come for him since his arrival, on
account of his health. She had told everybody that he had come home for
perfect rest and quiet, which he much needed after the strain of his
parliamentary duties; and as one of the notes at least would be read at a
public meeting to explain his absence therefrom, and would afterward
appear in the papers probably, she had made it impossible for him to go
anywhere during his stay. Mr. Kilroy could not complain, however, for had
he not himself said only last night that he was suffering from the effects
of overwork, and so alarmed her? and he would not have complained in any
case when he saw her so joyfully triumphant in the belief that she had
cleverly eased him from an oppressing number of duties; but he determined
to pick his excuses more carefully another time, for the prospect of a
prolonged _tete-a-tete_ with Angelica in her present humour somewhat
appalled his peace-loving soul, and the thought of it did just stir him
sufficiently for the moment to cause him to venture to suggest that in
future it might be as well for her to consult him before she answered for
him in any matter. Angelica replied with an intelligent nod and smile. She
was altogether charming in these days in spite of her perverseness, and
Mr. Kilroy, while groaning inwardly at her irritating tricks, was also
touched and flattered by the anxiety she displayed for his comfort and
welfare.

He hoped to enjoy a quiet cigar and a book after luncheon, but Angelica
had another notion in her head. She went to the drawing room, opened doors
and windows, sat down to the piano, and began to sing--shakes, scales,
intervals, the whole exercise book through apparently from beginning to
end, and with such good will that her voice resounded throughout the
house. She had eaten nothing since breakfast so as to be able to produce
it with the desired effect, and there was no escape from the sound. But
poor Mr. Kilroy did not like to interfere with her industry as he had done
with her idleness. He was afraid he had shown too much impatience already
for one day, so he endured this further trial without exhibiting a sign of
suffering; but after an hour or two of it, he found himself sighing for
the undisturbed repose of his house in town, in a way that would have
satisfied Angelica had she known it. At dinner she looked very nice, but
she did not talk much. Conversation was not Mr. Kilroy's strong point, but
he was good at anecdotes, and now he racked his brains for something new
to tell her. She listened, however, without seeming to see the point of
some, and others caused her to stare at him in wide-eyed astonishment as
if shocked, which made him pause awkwardly to consider, half fearing to
find some impropriety which his coarser masculine mind had hitherto failed
to detect.

This caused the flow of reminiscences to languish, and presently to cease.
Then Angelica began to make bread pills. She set them in a row, and
flipped them off the table one by one deliberately when the servants left
the room. This amusement ended, she pulled flowers to pieces between the
courses, and hummed a little tune. Mr. Kilroy fidgeted. He felt as if he
had been saying "Don't!" ever since he came home, and he would not now
repeat it, but the self-repression disagreed with him, and so did his
dinner, dyspepsia having waited on appetite in lieu of digestion.

After dinner Angelica induced him to go with her to the drawing room, and
when she had got him comfortably seated, and had given him his coffee and
a paper, and just peace enough to let him fall into a pleasurably drowsy
state, accompanied by a strong disinclination to move, she began to pick
out the "Dead March" in "Saul" and kindred melodies with one finger on the
piano. Mr. Kilroy bore this infliction also; but when she brought a
cookery book and insisted on reading the recipes aloud, he went to bed in
self-defence.

CHAPTER II.

If the first and second days at home were failures so far as Mr. Kilroy's
comfort was concerned, the third was as bad, if not worse. It was a
continual case of "Please don't!" from morning till night, and Angelica
herself was touched at last by the kindly nature which could repeat the
remonstrance so often and so patiently; but all the same she did not
forbear. All that day, however, Mr. Kilroy made every allowance for her.
Angelica was thoughtless, very thoughtless; but it was only natural that
she should be so, considering her youth. On the next day, however, it did
occur to him that she was far too exacting, for she would not let him
leave her for a moment if she could help it; and on the next he was
sufficiently depressed to acknowledge that Angelica was trying; and if he
did not actually sigh for solitude, he felt, at all events, that it would
cost him no effort to resign himself to it if she should again prove
refractory and refuse to go back with him--and Angelica knew that he had
arrived at this state just as well as if he had told her; but still she
was far from content. She wanted him to go, and she wanted him to
stay--she did not know what she wanted. She teased him with as much zeal
as at first, but the amusement had ceased to distract her in the least
degree. It had become quite a business now, and she only kept it up
because she could think of nothing else to do. She was conscious of some
change in herself, conscious of a racking spirit of discontent which
tormented her, and of the fact that, in spite of her superabundant
vitality, she had lost all zest for anything. Outwardly, and also as a
matter of habit, when she was with anybody who might have noticed a
change, she maintained the dignity of demeanour which she had begun to
cultivate in society upon her marriage; but inwardly she raged--raged at
herself, at everybody, at everything; and this mood again was varied by
two others, one of unnatural quiescence, the other of feverish
restlessness. In the one she would sit for hours at a time, doing nothing,
not even pretending to occupy herself; in the other, she would wander
aimlessly up and down, would walk about the room, and look at the pictures
without seeing them, or go upstairs for nothing and come down again
without perceiving the folly of it all. And she was forever thinking.
Diavolo was at Sandhurst--if only he had been at Ilverthorpe! She might
have talked to him. She tried the effect of a letter full of allusions
which should have aroused his curiosity if not his sympathetic interest,
but he made no remark about these in his reply, and only wrote about
himself and his pranks, which seemed intolerably childish and stupid to
Angelica in her present mood; and about his objection to early rising and
regular hours, all of which she knew, so that the repetition only
irritated her. She considered Mr. Kilroy obtuse, and thought bitterly that
anyone with a scrap of intelligent interest in her must have noticed that
she had something on her mind, and won her confidence.

This reflection occurred to her in the drawing room one night after
dinner, and immediately afterward she caught him looking at her with a
grave intensity which should have puzzled her if it did not strike her as
significant of some deeper feeling than that to which the carnal
admiration for her person which she expected and despised, would have
given rise; but she was too self-absorbed to be more observant than she
gave him the credit of being.

The result of Mr. Kilroy's observation was an effort to take her out of
herself. He began by asking her to play to him. Not very graciously, she
got out a violin, remarking that she was sorry it was not her best one.

"Where is your best one?" he asked.

"It is not at home," she answered. "I left it with Israfil, my fair-haired
friend, you know." She spoke slowly, holding the end of the violin, and
tightening the strings as she did so, the effort causing her to compress
her lips so that the words were uttered disjointedly; and as she finished
speaking, she raised the instrument to her shoulder and her eyes to Mr.
Kilroy's face, into which she gazed intently as she drew her bow across
the strings, testing them as to whether they were in tune or not, and
seeming rather to listen than to look, as she did so. Mr. Kilroy, still
quietly observing her, noticed that her equanimity had been suddenly
restored; but whether it was the mellow tones of her violin or some happy
thought that had released the tension he could not tell. It was as much
relief, however, to him to see her brighten, as it was to her to feel when
she answered him that a great weight had been lifted from her mind, and
she would now be able "to talk it out," this trouble that oppressed her,
unrestrainedly, as was natural to her.

When Mr. Kilroy accepted the terms upon which she proposed to marry him,
namely, that he should let her do as she liked, she had voluntarily
promised to tell him everything she did, and she had kept her word as was
her wont, telling him the exact truth as on this occasion, but mixing it
up with so many romances that he never knew which was which. He was in
town when she first met the Tenor, but when he returned, she told him all
that had happened, and continued the story from time to time as the
various episodes occurred, making it extremely interesting, and also
almost picturesque. Mr. Kilroy knew the Tenor by reputation, of course,
and was much entertained by what he believed to be the romance which
Angelica was weaving about his interesting personality. He suggested that
she should write it just as she told it. "I have not seen anything like it
anywhere," he said; "nothing half so lifelike."

"Oh, but then, you see, this is all _true_" she gravely insisted.

"Oh, of course," he answered, smiling. And now when she answered that she
had left her best violin with the Tenor, it reminded him: "By the by,
yes," he said. "How does the story progress? I was thinking about it in
the train on my way home, but I forgot to ask you--other things have put
it out of my head since I arrived."

"And out of mine, too," said Angelica thoughtfully--"at least I forgot to
tell you--which is extraordinary, by the way, for matters are now so
complicated between us that I can think of nothing else. It will be quite
a relief to discuss the subject with you."

She drew up a little chair and sat down opposite to him, with her violin
across her knee, and began immediately, and with great earnestness,
looking up at him as she spoke. She described all that had happened on
that last sad occasion minutely--the row down the river, the moonrise, the
music, the accident, the rescue, the discovery, and its effect upon the
Tenor; and all with her accustomed picturesqueness, speaking in the first
person singular, and with such force and fluency that Mr. Kilroy was
completely carried away, and declared, as on previous occasions, that she
set the whole thing before him so vividly he found it impossible not to
believe every word of it.

"And what are you going to do now?" he asked with his indulgent smile,
when she had told him all that there was to tell at present. "You cannot
end it there, you know, it would be such a lame conclusion."

"That was just what I thought," she answered, "and I wanted to ask you. As
a man of the world, what would you advise me to do?"

"Well," he began--then he rose and held out his hand to help her up from
her little chair. "Will you come out and sit on the terrace," he said,
"and allow me to smoke? The night is warm."

Angelica nodded, and preceded him through one of the open windows.

"Well," Mr. Kilroy resumed, when he had lit his cigar, and settled himself
in a cane chair comfortably, with Angelica in another opposite. "What a
lovely night it is after the rain yesterday"--this by way of parenthesis.
"Rather close, though," he observed, and then he returned to the subject.
"I suppose you mean that you do not want it to be all over between you?"

"_Between the Tenor and the Boy_," she corrected. "The whole charm of
the acquaintance, don't you see, for me, consisted in that footing--I
don't know how to express it, but perhaps you can grasp what I mean."

Mr. Kilroy reflected. "I am afraid," he said at last, "that footing cannot
be resumed. The influences of sex, once the difference is recognized, are
involuntary. But, if he has no objection, I do not see why you should not
be friends, and intimate friends too; and with that sort of man you might
make some advance, especially as you are entirely in the wrong. I am not
saying, you know, that this would be the proper thing to do as a rule; but
here are exceptional circumstances, and here is an exceptional man."

"Now, that is significant," said Angelica, jeering. "Society is so
demoralized that if a man is caught conducting himself with decency and
honour on all occasions when a woman is in question, you involuntarily
exclaim that he is an exceptional man!"

Mr. Kilroy smoked on in silence for some time with his eyes fixed on the
quiet stars. His attitude expressed nothing but extreme quiescence, yet
Angelica felt reproved.

"Don't snub me, Daddy," she exclaimed at last. "I came to you in my
difficulty, and you do not seem to care."

Mr. Kilroy looked at his cigar, and flicked the ash from the end of it.

"Tell me how to get out of this horrid dilemma," Angelica pursued. "I
shall never know a moment's peace until we have resumed our acquaintance
on a different footing, and I have been able to make him some reparation."

"Ah--reparation?" said Mr. Kilroy dubiously.

"Do you think it is impossible?" Angelica demanded.

"Not impossible, perhaps, but very difficult," he answered. "Really,
Angelica," he broke off laughingly, "I quite forget every now and again
that we are romancing. You must write this story for me.".

"We are _not_ romancing," she said impatiently, "and I couldn't write
it, it is too painful. Besides, we don't seem to get any further."

"Let me see where we were?" Mr. Kilroy replied, humouring her
good-naturedly. "It is a pity you cannot unmarry yourself. You see, being
married complicates matters to a much greater extent than if you had been
single. A girl might, under certain circumstances, be forgiven for an
escapade of the kind, but when a married woman does such a thing it is
very different. Still, if you can get well out of it, of course the
difficulty will make the _denouement_ all the more interesting."

"But I don't see how I am to get well out of it--unless you will go to him
yourself, and tell him you know the whole story, and do whatever your tact
and goodness suggest to set the matter right." She bent forward with her
arms folded on her lap, looking up at him eagerly as she spoke, and
beating a "devil's tattoo," with her slender feet, on the ground
impatiently the while.

"No," he answered deliberately, "that would not be natural. You see,
either you must be objectionable or your husband must; and upon the whole
I think you had better sacrifice the husband, otherwise you lose your
readers' sympathy."

"Make _you_ objectionable, Daddy!" Angelica exclaimed. "The thing is
not to be done! I could never have asked you to marry me if you had been
objectionable. And I don't see why I should be so either--entirely, you
know. If I had been quite horrid, I should not have appreciated you, and
the Tenor and Uncle Dawne and Dr. Galbraith--oh, dear! Why is it, when
good men are so scarce, that I should know so many, and yet be tormented
with the further knowledge that you are all exceptional, and crime and
misery continue because it is so? What is the use of knowing when one can
do nothing?"

Again Mr. Kilroy looked up at the quiet stars; but Angelica gave him no
time to reflect.

"I don't see why I should be severely consistent," she said. "Let me be a
mixture--not a foul mixture, but one of those which eventually result in
something agreeable, after going through a period of fermentation, during
which they throw up an unpleasant scum that has to be removed."

"That would do," Mr. Kilroy responded gravely.

"But just now," Angelica resumed, "it seems as if I should be obliged to
let matters take their course and do nothing, which is intolerable."

"Oh, but you must do something," Mr. Kilroy decided; "and the first thing
will be to go to him."

"Go to him!" she ejaculated.

"Well, yes," he rejoined. "Naturally you will feel it. Now that you are no
longer _The Boy_ made courageous by his unsuspicious confidence--I
mean the Tenor's--it is quite proper for you to be shy and ashamed of
yourself. As a woman, of course, you are not wanting in modesty. But there
is no help for it; he would never come to you, so you must go to him. I
quite think that you owe him any reparation you can make. And, knowing the
sort of man he is--you have made his character well known in the place,
have you not?"

Angelica nodded. "Well, then, a visit from a lady of your rank will create
no scandal, nor even cause any surprise, I should think, if you go quite
openly; for you are known to be a musician, and might therefore reasonably
be supposed to have business with one of the profession. I wish,
by-the-bye, you had made him an ugly man, with kind eyes, you know; it
would have been more original, I think. But you will find out who he is,
of course?"

"No. I hardly think so." Angelica answered. "But you would advise me to go
to him?"--this by way of bringing him back to the subject.

"Yes"--with a vigorous attempt to draw his cigar to life again, it having
gone all but out--"I should advise you to go to him boldly, by day, of
course; and just make him forgive you. Insist on it; you will find he
cannot resist you. Then you will start afresh on a new footing as you
wish, and the whole thing will end happily."

"You forget though, he did forgive me."

"There are various kinds of forgiveness," Mr. Kilroy replied. "There is
the forgiveness that washes its hands of the culprit and refuses to be
further troubled on his behalf--the least estimable form of forgiveness;
and there is that which proves itself sincere by the effort which is
afterward made to help the penitent, that is the kind of forgiveness you
should try to secure."

"But somehow it still seems unfinished," Angelica grumbled.

"If you had been single now," Mr. Kilroy suggested, "you would, in the
natural course of events, have married the Tenor."

"Oh, no!" Angelica vigorously interposed. "I should never have wanted to
marry him. Can't I make you understand? The side of my nature which I
turned to him as _The Boy_ is the only one he has touched, and I
could never care for him in any other relation."

"Well, I don't know," Mr. Kilroy observed thoughtfully. "It may be so, of
course, but it is unusual."

"And so am I unusual," Angelica answered quickly; "but there will be
plenty more like me by and by. Now don't look 'Heaven forbid!' at me in
that way."

"That was not in the least what I intended to express," he answered with
his kindly smile--indulgent. "And I am inclined to think that your own
idea of loving him without being in love with him is the best; it is so
much less commonplace. But what do you think."--speaking as if struck by a
bright idea--"what do you think of putting him under a great obligation
which will bind him to you in gratitude, and secure his friendship? You
might, with great courage and devotion, and all that sort of thing, you
know, find out all about him, prove him to be a prince or something--the
heir to great estates and hereditary privileges, with congenial duties
attached. The idea is not exactly new, but your treatment of it would be
sure to be original--"

Angelica interrupted him by a decisive shake of her head. "But about going
to him?" she demanded--"you do not think, speaking as a man of the world
yourself, and remembering that he knows the world too although he
_is_ such a saint; you do not think such a proceeding on my part will
lower me still further in his estimation?"

"Well, no," Mr. Kilroy replied. "I feel quite sure it will have just the
opposite effect. As a man of the world he will know what it has cost a
young lady like you to humble herself to that extent; as a saint he will
appreciate the act, looking at it in the light of a penance, which, in
point of fact, it would be; and as a human being he will be touched by
your confidence in him, and the value you set upon his esteem. So that,
altogether, I am convinced it is the proper thing to do."

Angelica made no reply, but got up languidly after a moment's thought,
carefully ruffled his hair with both hands as she passed, called him "Dear
old Daddy!" and retired.

Mr. Kilroy did not like to have his hair ruffled in that way, particularly
as he was apt to forget, and appear in public with it all standing up on
end; but he bore the infliction as it was intended for a caress,
Angelica's caresses always took some such form; she assured him he would
like them in time, and he sincerely hoped he might, but the time had not
yet arrived.

The following evening they were again in the drawing room together. Mr.
Kilroy was reading the papers, Angelica was sitting with her hands before
her doing nothing--not even listening, though she affected to do so, when
he read aloud such news as he thought would interest her. The week was
nearly over, and nothing more had been said about her return to town. She
was just wondering now if Mr. Kilroy had found the week a long one. She
had given him more than enough of her company and made him feel--at least
so she hoped, slipping back to the mood in which he had found her upon his
arrival--made him feel how pleasant a thing it is to dwell alone in your
own house with no one to trouble you; and she quite expected to find, when
it came to the point, that he would cheerfully take no for an answer.

Presently she rose, went to a mirror that was let into the wall, and
looked at herself critically for some seconds.

"Should you think it possible for anybody to fall so hopelessly in love
with my appearance that, when love was found to be out of the question,
friendship would also be impossible?" she demanded in a tone of contempt
for herself, turning half round from the mirror to look at Mr. Kilroy as
she spoke.

Mr. Kilroy glanced at her over his _pince-nez_. That same appearance
which she disliked to be valued for was a never-failing source of pleasure
to him, but he took good care to conceal the fact. On this occasion,
however, he fell into the natural mistake of supposing that she was
coquettishly trying to extricate a compliment from him for once, an
amusing feminine device to which she seldom condescended.