The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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"Well, I should think it extremely probable," he replied--"if he were not
already in love with another woman."

"Or an idea?" Angelica suggested with a yawn; and Mr. Kilroy, perceiving
that he had somehow missed the point, took up his paper, and finished the
paragraph he had been reading. Then he said, looking up at her again with
admiring eyes: "I do not think I quite like that red frock of yours. It
seems to me that it is making you look alarmingly pale."

Angelica returned to the mirror, and once more looked at herself
deliberately. "Perhaps it does," she answered; "but at any rate you shall
not see it again." And having spoken she sauntered out on to the terrace
with a listless step, and from thence she wandered off into the gardens,
where the scent of roses set her thinking, thinking, thinking. She sought
to change the direction of her thoughts, but vainly; they would go on in
spite of her, and they were always busy with the same subject, always
working at the one idea. Israfil! Israfil! There was nobody like him, and
how badly she had treated him, and how good he had always been to her, and
how could she go on day after day like this with no hope of ever seeing
him again in the old delightful intimate way? and oh! if she had not done
this! and oh! if she had not done that! It might all have been so
different if only _she_ had been different; but now how could it come
right? A hopeless, hopeless, hopeless, case. She had lost his respect
forever. And not to be respected! A woman and not respected!

She went down to the lodge gate where they had parted, and remembered the
chill misery of the moment, the gray morning light, the pelting rain.
Ah--with a sudden pang--she only thought of it now. How wet he must have
been! He had lent her his one umbrella, and she had kept it; she had it
still; she had allowed him to walk back in the rain without wrap or
protection, of any kind.

And now she came to think of it, he had never changed his things after he
had rescued her. He never did think of himself--the most selfless man
alive; and she, alas! had never thought of him--never considered his
comfort in anything. Oh, remorse! If only she could have those times all
over again, or even one of those times so recklessly misspent! He might
have lost his life through that wetting. Or what if he lost his voice?
Singers have notoriously delicate throats. But happily nothing so untoward
had resulted; she was saved the blame of a crowning disaster--she knew,
because she had heard of him going to the cathedral as usual; she had
taken the trouble to inquire, not daring to go herself, and she had seen
in that day's paper that he would sing the anthem to-morrow, so evidently
he had not suffered, which was some comfort--and yet--how could he go to
the cathedral every day and sing as usual, just as if nothing had
happened? It might be fortitude, but, considering the circumstances, it
was far more likely to be indifference. And so she continued to torment
herself; thinking, always thinking, without any power to stop.

The next day Mr. Kilroy returned to town alone. He had only once again
alluded to his wish that she should accompany him, and that he did quite
casually, for she had succeeded in making him content that she should
refuse. She had convinced him that her exuberant spirits were altogether
too much for him. He had not had an hour's peace since his arrival, though
the place would have held a regiment comfortably; and what would it be if
he shut her up in London, in a confined space comparatively speaking, and
against her will too? He left by an early afternoon train, and she drove
to the station with him to see him off. She had enjoyed his visit very
much--so she said--especially the last part of it, when she had surpassed
herself in ingenious devices to exact attention. All that, while it
lasted, really had distracted her; but the occupation was not
happiness--far from it! It was a sort of intoxicant rather, which made her
oblivious for the moment of her discontent. At every pause, however,
remorse possessed her, remorse for the past; yet it never occurred to her
that her present misdemeanours would be past in time, and might also
entail consequences which would in turn come to be causes of regret.

But, now, when she had succeeded in getting rid of Mr. Kilroy, she was
sorry. She stood on the platform watching the train until it was out of
sight, and then she returned to her carriage with a distinct feeling of
loss and pain. What should she do with the rest of the day? She even
thought of the next, and the next, and the next; a long vista of weary
days, through which she must live alone and to no purpose, a waste of
life, a waste of life--a barren waste, a land of sand and thorns. She
wished she was a child again playing pranks with Diavolo; and she also
wished that she had never played pranks, since it was so hard to break
herself of the habit; yet she enjoyed them still, and assured herself that
she was only discontented now because she had absolutely nobody left to
torment. Then she tried to imagine what it would be to have Diavolo with
her in her present mood, and instantly a squall of conflicting emotions
burst in her breast, angry emotions for the most part, because he was no
longer with her in either sense of the word, because he was indifferent to
all that concerned her inmost soul, and was content to live like a lady
himself, a trivial idle life, the chief business of which was pleasure,
unremunerative pleasure, upon which he would have had her expend her
highest faculties in return for what? Admiring glances at herself--and her
gowns _perhaps_!

"But what should she do with the rest of the day?" Her handsome horses
were prancing through Morningquest as she asked herself the question; and
there was a little milliner on the footway looking up with kindly envy at
the lady no older than herself, sitting alone in her splendid carriage
with her coachman and footman and _everything_--nothing to do
included, very much included, being, in fact, the principal item.

"I should be helping her," thought Angelica. "She is ill-fed, overworked,
and weakly, while I am pampered and strong; but there is no rational way
for me to do it. If I took her home with me and kept her in luxurious
idleness for the rest of her days, as I could very well afford to do, I
should only have dragged her down from the dignity of her own honest
exertions into the slough of self-indulgence in which I find myself, and
made bad worse. _She_ should have more and _I_ should have less;
but how to arrive at that? Isolated efforts seem to be abortive--yet--"
she stopped the carriage, and looked back. The girl had disappeared. She
desired the coachman to return, and kept him driving up and down some time
in the hope of finding her, but the girl was nowhere to be seen, nor could
they trace her upon inquiry. "Another opportunity lost," thought Angelica.
"A few pounds in her pocket would have been a few weeks' rest for her, a
few good meals, a few innocent pleasures--she would have been strengthened
and refreshed; and I should have been the better too for the recollection
of a good deed done."

The carriage had pulled up close to the curb, and the footman stood at the
door waiting for orders.

"What is there to do?" thought Angelica. "Where shall I go? Not home. The
house is empty. Calls? I might as well waste time in that way as any
other." She gave the order, and passed the next two hours in making calls.

Toward the end of the afternoon, she found herself within about a mile of
Hamilton House, and determined to go and see her mother. There was no real
confidence between them, but Lady Adeline's presence was soothing, and
Angelica thought she would just like to go and sit in the same room with
her, have tea there, and not be worried to talk. These peaceful intentions
were frustrated, however, by the presence of some visitors who were there
when she arrived, and of others who came pouring in afterward in such
numbers, that it seemed as if the whole neighbourhood meant to call that
afternoon. Mr. Hamilton-Wells was making tea, and talking as usual with
extreme precision. Angelica found him seated at a small but solid black
ebony table, with a massive silver tea-service before him. He folded his
hands when she entered, and, without rising, awaited the erratic kiss
which it was her habit to deposit somewhere about his head when she met
him; which ceremony concluded, he gravely poured her out a cup of tea,
with sugar _and_ milk, but _no_ cream, as he observed; and then
he peeped into the teapot, and proceeded to fill it up from the great urn
which was bubbling and boiling in front of him. He always made tea in his
own house; it was a fad of his, and the more people he had to make it for
the better pleased he was. A servant was stationed at his elbow, whose
duty it was to place the cups as his master filled them on a silver salver
held by another servant, who took them to offer to the visitors who were
seated about the room. Angelica knew the ceremony well, and slipped away
into a corner, as soon as she could escape from her father's punctilious
inquiries about her own health and her husband's; and there she became
wedged by degrees, as the room grew gradually crowded. Beside her was a
mirror, in which she could see all who arrived and all that happened, and
involuntarily she became a silent spectator, the medium of the mirror
imparting a curious unreality to the scene, which invested it with all the
charm of a dream; and, as in a dream, she looked and listened, while
clearly, beneath the main current of conversation, and unbroken by the
restless change and motion of the people, her own thoughts flowed on
consciously and continuously. Half turned from the rest of the room, she
sat at a table, listlessly turning the leaves of an album, at which she
glanced when she was not looking into the mirror.

She saw the party from Morne enter the room--Aunt Fulda and her eternal
calm! She looked just the same in the market-place at Morningquest, that
unlucky night when the Tenor met the Boy. She was always the same. Is it
human to be always the same?

"Who is that lady?" Angelica heard a girl ask of a benevolent looking
elderly clergyman who was standing with his back to her. "Oh, that is Lady
Fulda Guthrie, the youngest daughter of the Duke of Morningquest," he
replied. 'She is a Roman Catholic, a pervert as we say, but still a very
noble woman. Religious, too, in spite of the errors of Rome, one must
confess it. A pity she ever left us, a great pity--but of course
_her_ loss as well as ours. We require such women now, though; but
somehow we do not keep them. And I cannot think why."

"Too cold," Angelica's thoughts ran on. "Hollow, shallow,
inconsistent--loveless. Catholicism equals a modern refinement of pagan
principles with all the old deities on their best behaviour thrown in;
while Protestantism is an ecclesiastical system founded on fetish--"

"You are a stranger in the neighbourhood?" the benevolent old clergyman
was saying. "Only on a visit? Ah! then of course you don't know. They are
a remarkable family, somewhat eccentric. Ideala, as they call her, is no
relation, only an intimate friend of Lady Claudia Beaumont's, and of the
Marquis of Dawne. The three are usually together. The New Order is an
outcome of their ideas, a sort of feminine _vehmgericht_ so well as I
can make out. But no good can come out of that kind of thing, and I trust
as you are a very young lady--"

"Not so young--I am twenty-two."

"Indeed!" with a smile and a bow--"I should not have thought you more than
nineteen. But twenty-two is not a great age either! and I do hope you will
not be drawn into that set. They are sadly misguided. The ladies scoff at
the wisdom of men, look for inconsistencies, and _laugh_ at
them--actually! It is very bad taste, you know; and they call it an
impertinence for us to presume to legislate exclusively in matters which
specially concern their sex, and also object to the interference of the
Church, as being a distinctly masculine organization, in the regulation of
their lives. Men, they declare, have always said that they do not
understand women, and it is of course the height of folly for them to
presume to express opinions upon a subject they do not understand. Now,
can anything be more absurd? And it is dangerous besides--absolutely
dangerous."

"Yet I hear that they are very good women," the girl ventured, and
Angelica thought that she detected a note of derision, levelled at the
clerical exponent of these reprehensible ideas, beneath the demure remark.

"Oh, saintlike!" he answered cordially; "but still to blame. Misguided,
you know, so I venture to warn you. How can they presume to reject proper
direction? Their pride is excessive, but the Church will receive them, and
extend her benefits to them still if only they will humble themselves--"
Conversation over the room entered upon a _crescendo_ passage at this
moment, and Angelica lost the rest of the sentence in the general
outburst.

A new voice presently claimed her attention. The speaker was a young man
addressing another young man, and both had their backs turned to her, and
were looking hard at a portrait of herself hung so low on the wall that
they had to stoop to look into it.

"Painted by a good man," were the first words she heard.

"Rather fine face; who is it?"

"Daughter of the house, don't you know? Old duke's granddaughter. Married
old Kilroy of Ilverthorpe."

"Ah! Then that was done some time ago, I expect."

"Oh, dear, no! Only last year. It was exhibited in the last Academy."

"Then she's still young?" He peered into the portrait once more with an
evident increase of interest. "She looks as if she might be larky."

"Can't make her out, on my word," was the response, delivered in a tone of
strong disapproval. "Married to an elderly chap--not old exactly, but a
good twenty years older than herself; who gives her her head to an
unlimited extent, yet she says she doesn't care to have a lot of men
bothering about, and, by Jove! she acts as if she meant it. It's beastly
unnatural, you know."

"Well, I must say I like a woman to be a woman," the other rejoined,
surveying the portrait from this new point of view. "But that's the way
with all that Guthrie lot--and you know Dawne himself is _pi_!"--so
what can you expect of the rest? the tone implied.

Suddenly Angelica felt her face flush. One of her ungovernable fits of
fury was upon her. She sprang to her feet, upsetting her chair with a
crash, and turned upon the two young men, who, recognizing her, changed
colour and countenance, and shrank back apologetically.

Her uncle, seeing something wrong, had hurried across the room to her with
anxious eyes.

"Who are those people?" she asked him, indicating the two young men.

Lord Dawne, always all courtesy and consideration himself, was shocked by
her tone.

"I think you have met Captain Leicester before," he gravely reminded her.
"Let me introduce--"

"No, for Heaven's sake!" Angelica broke forth, glaring angrily at the
offenders.

She walked away abruptly with the words on her lips, leaving Lord Dawne to
settle with the delinquents as he thought fit. Her mother, who was seated
at the farther end of the room talking to a charming-looking old lady
Angelica did not know, stretched out a hand to her as she approached, and
drew her to a seat beside her; and instantly Angelica felt herself in
another moral atmosphere.

"This is my daughter, Mrs. Kilroy of Ilverthorpe," Lady Adeline said to
the old lady, then added smiling: "There are so many Mrs. Kilroys in this
neighbourhood, one is obliged to specify. Angelica, dear, Mrs. Power."

Angelica bowed, and then leaned back in her chair so that she might not
have to join in the conversation, but she listened in an absent sort of
way, feeling soothed the while by the tone of refinement, of earnestness
and sincerity, in which every word was uttered: "No, I am sure," Lady
Adeline was saying, "I am sure no one who can judge would mistake that
lineless calm for a device to cover all emotion."

"I never have done so myself," Mrs. Power rejoined, "although I do not
know her history. But I should say, judging merely from observation, that
the fineness of her countenance, which consists more in the expression of
it than in either form or feature, though both are good, is the result of
long self-repression, self-denial, and stern discipline, the evidence of a
true and beautiful soul, and of a noble mind at rest after some heavy
sorrow, or some great temptation, which, being resisted, has proved a
blessing and a source of strength."

Angelica wondered of whom they were speaking, and, following the
direction, of their eyes, met those of Ideala fixed a little sadly, a
little wistfully, upon herself. Young people, as they grow up, find their
own life's history so absorbingly interesting that they think little of
what may have happened, or may be happening, to those whom they have
always known as "grown up"; and it had never occurred to Angelica that any
one of the placid, gentle-mannered women among whom she had always lived,
in contrast to them herself as a comet is to the fixed stars, had ever
experienced any extremes of emotion. Now, however, she felt as if her eyes
had been suddenly opened, and she looked with a new interest at her old
familiar friends, and wondered, her mind busy for the moment with what she
had just heard. She could not keep it there, however; involuntarily it
slipped away--back--back to that first attempt of hers to see the hidden
wheels of life go round--the market-place, the Tenor.

Suddenly she felt as if she must suffocate if she did not get out into the
air, and rising quickly she stole from the room, and out of the house
unobserved. But the babble of voices seemed to pursue her. She stood for a
moment on the steps and felt as if the people were all preparing to stream
out of the drawing room after her, to surround her, and keep up the
distracting buzz in her ears by their idle inconsequent talk. Their horses
were prancing about the drive; their empty carriages, with cushions awry
and wraps flung untidily down on the seats, or even hanging over the doors
and grazing the dusty wheels, gave her a sense of disorder and discomfort
from which she felt she must fly.

"Where to, ma'am, please?" the footman asked, touching his hat when he had
closed the door.

"Fountain Towers," Angelica answered. She would go and see Dr. Galbraith.

When the carriage drew up under the porch at Fountain Towers, she sat some
time as if unaware of the fact; but the footman's patient face as he
waited with his hand on the handle of the door, ready to help her to
descend, recalled her.

She walked into the house as she had always been accustomed to do, and
instantly thoughts of Diavolo came crowding. Why had Diavolo ceased to be
all in all to her? She asked herself the question through a mist of tears
which gathered in her eyes, but did not fall, and at the same moment her
busy mind took note of the singular appearance of a statue on the
staircase as she beheld it in blurred outline through her bedimmed vision.

She found Dr. Galbraith in the library sitting at his writing table. The
door was half open, so she entered without knocking, and walked up to him.

He turned at the sound of her step, rose smiling, and held out his hand
when he saw who it was.

"I have been thinking about you this afternoon," he remarked. "Sit down."
But before she had settled herself his practised eyes had detected
something wrong. "What is it?" he asked.

"Nerves," she answered. "Give me something."

He went to an inner room, and returned presently with a colourless draught
in a medicine glass. She took it from him and drank it mechanically, and
then he placed a cushion for her, and she leant back in the deep armchair,
and closed her eyes. Dr. Galbraith looked at her for a few seconds
seriously, and then returned to his writing. Presently Lord Dawne came in,
and raised his eyebrows inquiringly when he saw Angelica, who seemed to be
asleep.

"Overwrought," Dr. Galbraith replied to the silent inquiry.

"There was a _fracas_ at Hamilton House just now," her uncle
observed. "But how is all this going to end?"

"Well, of course; but you had better leave her to me."

Lord Dawne quietly withdrew.

"Oh, the blessed rest and peace of this place!" Angelica exclaimed shortly
afterward.

Dr. Galbraith, who had resumed his writing, put down his pen again, and
turned to her.

"Talk to me," she said. "I've lost my self-respect. I've lost heart. I'm a
good-for-nothing worthless person. How am I to get out of this dreadful
groove?"

"Live for others. Live openly," he answered slowly, looking up beyond her--
into futurity--with a kindly light in his deep gray eyes, a something of
hope, of confidence, of encouragement expressed in his strong plain face.

Angelica bowed her head. The familiar phrases had a new significance now,
and diverted the stream of her reflections into another channel. She
folded her hands on her lap and sat motionless once more, with her eyes
fixed on the ground.

Dr. Galbraith was a specialist in mental maladies. He knew exactly how
much to say, and when to say it. If a text were as much as the patient
required or could bear, he never made the mistake of preaching a sermon
upon it in addition; and so for the third time he took up his pen and
returned to his work, leaving Angelica engaged in sober thought, and
happily quiescent.

CHAPTER III.

It was late when at last she went home, but the drive of many miles in the
fresh evening air helped to revive her. She had dreaded the return. The
place seemed empty to her imagination, and strange and chill, as a south
room in which we have sat and been glad with friends all the bright
morning does, if by chance we return alone when the sun has departed.

And the place was dismal. There was no one to welcome her. Even her
well-trained servants were out of the way for once, and she felt her heart
sink as she crossed the deserted hall to go upstairs, and saw long lines
of doors, shut for the most part, or, if open, showing big rooms beyond
silent and tenantless. As she passed the library she had noticed her
husband's chair half turned from his writing table, just as he had left
it, probably, that very morning. It seemed a long time since then. He must
have come to his journey's end--ages ago. She wondered if he had felt it
as dreary on arriving as she did now, and an unaccustomed wish to be with
him, in order to make things pleasanter for him, here obtruded itself. It
was one of the least selfish thoughts she had had lately, and this was
also one of the very few occasions on which his leaving her had not
occasioned her a sense of liberty restored, which was the one unmixed
delight she had hitherto experienced.

Her mind was racked by inconsistencies, but she did not perceive it
herself, otherwise she must also have observed that she was running up the
whole gamut of her past moods and experiences, only to find how
unsatisfactory in its unstableness and futility was each. And she might
still further have perceived how fatal the habit of living from day to day
without any settled purpose, a mere cork of a creature on the waters of
life at the mercy of every current of impulse, is to that permanent
content to which a steady effort to do right at all events whatever else
we may not do, and right only whatever happens, alone gives rise, making
thereof a sure foundation of quiet happiness out of which countless
pleasures, known only to those who possess it, spring perceptibly--or to
which they come like butterflies to summer flowers, enriching them with
their beauty and vitality while they stay, and leaving them none the
poorer when they depart, but rather, it may be, gainers, by the
fertilizing memories which remain.

Angelica had gone to her room to dress for the evening as usual. She had
no idea of shirking the ordinary routine of daily life because her mind
was perturbed. But that duty over, she descended to the drawing room to
wait until dinner should be announced, and so found herself alone with her
own thoughts once more. She went to one of the fireplaces, and stood with
her hands folded on the edge of the mantelpiece, and her forehead resting
on them, looking down at the flowers and foliage plants which concealed
the grate.

"You cannot go on like this, you know," she mentally ejaculated,
apostrophising herself.

Then she became conscious of a great sense of loneliness, the kind of
loneliness of the heart from which there is no escape except in the
presence of one who knows what the trouble is and can sympathize. She had
been half inclined to confide in Dr. Galbraith, and now she regretted she
had not, but presently, passing into a contrary mood, she was glad; what
good could he have done? And as for her husband, an empty house was better
than a bad tenant. This was before dinner was announced; but afterward, at
dinner, sitting in solitary state with the servants behind her, and a book
to keep her in countenance, she made a grievance of his absence, and then
sighed for such company as the seven more who were entertained in that
house which was swept and garnished for another purpose, she fancied, but
she could not recollect what, and it was too much trouble to try--so her
thoughts rambled on uncontrolled--only she believed they were merry, and
that was what she was not; but she would be very soon in spite of
everything--in pursuance of which resolve she wrote several notes after
dinner, asking people she knew well enough to kindly dispense with the
ceremony of a long invitation and come and lunch with her to-morrow; and
she dispatched a groom on horseback with the notes that there might be no
delay. She even thought of making up a house party, but here her interest
and energy flagged, and she left the execution of that project till next
day.