The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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The road beneath her was one I had to traverse regularly, and it became a
habit to look up as I drove past. If she were in her accustomed seat she
usually raised her eyes from her work for a moment to smile me a greeting.
Once she was standing up, leaning languidly against the window frame,
twirling a rose in her fingers, but she straightened herself into
momentary energy when she recognized me, and threw the rose at me with
accurate aim. It was the youngest and most familiar thing I had known her
do--an impulse of pure mischief, I thought, for the rose was _La
France_, and the sentiment, as I translated it, was: "You will value it
more than I do!" For she hated the French.

There often occurs and recurs to the mind incessantly a verse or an apt
quotation in connection with some act or event, a haunting definition of
the impression it makes upon us, and Evadne in the wide west window,
bending busily over her work, set my mind on one occasion to a borrowed
measure of words which never failed me from that time forward when I saw
her so engaged:

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web of colour gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The lady of Shalott.

But where was Camelot? Fountain Towers, just appearing above the tree-tops
to the north, was the only human habitation in sight. I had a powerful
telescope on the highest tower, and one day, in an idle mood, I happened
to be looking through it with no definite purpose, just sweeping it slowly
from point to point of the landscape, when all at once Evadne came into
the field of vision with such startling distinctness that I stepped back
from the glass. She was sitting in her accustomed place, with her work on
her lap, her hands clasped before her, leaning forward looking up in my
direction with an expression in her whole attitude that appealed to me
like a cry for help. The impression was so strong that I ordered my
dogcart out and drove over to As-You-Like-It at once. But I found her
perfectly tranquil when I arrived, with no trace of recent emotion either
in her manner or appearance.

When I went home I had the telescope removed. I had forgotten that we
overlooked that corner of As-You-Like-It.

CHAPTER VIII.

The idea that Evadne was naturally unsociable was pretty general, and
Colonel Colquhoun believed it as much as anybody. I remember being at
As-You-Like-It one afternoon when he rallied her on the subject. He had
stopped me as I was driving past to ask me to look at a horse he was
thinking of buying. The animal was being trotted up and down the approach
by a groom for our inspection when Evadne returned from somewhere, driving
herself.

She pulled up beside us and got out.

"I never see you driving any of your friends about," Colonel Colquhoun
remarked. "You're very unsociable, Evadne."

"Oh, well, you see," she answered slowly, "I like to be alone and think
when I am driving. It worries me to have to talk to people--as a rule."

"Well," he said, glancing at the reeking pony, "if your thoughts went as
fast as Blue Mick seems to have done to-day, you must have got through a
good deal of thinking in the time."

Evadne looked at the pony. "Take him round," she said to the groom; and
then she remarked that it must be tea-time, and asked us both to go in,
and have some.

The air had brought a delicate tinge of colour to her usually pale cheeks,
and she looked bright and bonny as she sat beside the tea-table, taking
off her gloves and chatting, with her hat pushed slightly up from her
forehead. It was an expansive moment with her, one of the rare ones when
she unconsciously revealed something of herself in her conversation.

There were some flowers on the tea-table which I admired.

"Ah!" she said, with a sigh of satisfaction in their beauty; "I derive all
my pleasure in life from things inanimate. An arrangement of deep-toned
marigolds with brown centres in a glass like these, all aglow beneath the
maiden-hair, gives me more pleasure than anything else I can think of at
this moment."

"Not more pleasure than your friends do," I ventured.

"I don't know," she replied. "In the matter of love _surgit amari
aliquid_. Friends disappoint us. But in the contemplation of flowers
all our finer feelings are stimulated and blended, and yet there is no
excess of feeling to end in regrets, or a painful reaction. When the
flowers fade, we cheerfully gather fresh ones. But I hope I do not
undervalue my friends," she broke off. "I only mean to say--when you think
of all the uncertainties of life, of sickness and death, and other things
more dreadful, which overtake our dearest, do what we will to protect them;
and then that worst thing whether it be in ourselves or others: I mean
change--when you think of it all, surely it is well to turn to some
delicate source of delight, like this, for relief--and to forget," and she
curved her slender hand round the flowers caressingly, looking up at me at
the same time as if she were pleading to be allowed to have her own way.

I did not remonstrate with her. I hardly knew the danger then myself of
refusing to suffer.

It was some weeks before I saw her again after that. I had been busy. But
one day, as I was driving into Morningquest, I overtook her on the road,
walking in the same direction. I was in a close carriage, but I pulled the
checkstring as soon as I recognized her, and got out. She turned when she
heard the carriage stop, and seeing me alight came forward and shook
hands. She looked wan and weary.

"Those are fine horses of yours," was her smileless greeting. "How are
you?"

"Have you been having a 'burst'?" I said--she was quite five miles from
home. She looked up and down the road for answer, and affected to laugh,
but I could see that she was not at all in a laughing mood, and also that
she was already over-fatigued. I thought of begging to be allowed to drive
her back, but then it occurred to me that, even if she consented, which
was not likely, as she had a perfect horror of giving trouble, and would
never have been persuaded that I was not going out of my way at the
greatest personal inconvenience merely to pay her a polite attention; but
even if she had consented, she would probably have had to spend the rest
of the day alone in that great west window, with nothing to take her out
of herself, and nothing more enlivening to look at than dreary winter
fields under a sombre sky, and that would not do at all. A better idea,
however, occurred to me.

"I am going to see Mrs. Orton Beg," I said. "She is not very well."

Evadne had been staring blandly at the level landscape, but she turned to
me when I spoke, and some interest came into her eyes.

"Have you seen her lately," I continued.

"N-no," she answered, as if she were considering; "not for some time."

"Come now," I boldly suggested. "It will do her good. I won't talk if you
want to think," I added.

Her face melted into a smile at this, and on seeing her stiffness relax, I
wasted no more time in persuasion, but returned to the carriage and held
the door open for her. She followed me slowly, although she looked as if
she had not quite made up her mind, and got in; but still as if she were
hesitating. Once she was seated, however, I could see that she was not
sorry she had yielded; and presently she acknowledged as much herself.

"I believe I was tired," she said,

"Rest now, then," I answered, taking a paper out of my pocket. She settled
herself more luxuriously in her corner, put her arm in the strap, and
looked out through the open window. The day was mild though murky, the sky
was leaden gray. We rolled through the wintry landscape rapidly--brown
hedgerows, leafless trees, ploughed fields, a crow, two crows, a whole
flock home-returning from their feeding ground; scattered cottages, a
woman at a door looking out with a child in her arms, three boys swinging
on a gate, a man trudging along with a bundle, a labourer trimming a bank;
mist rising in the low-lying meadows; grazing cattle, nibbling sheep;--but
she did not see these things at first, any of them; she was thinking. Then
she began to see, and forgot to think. Then her fatigue wore off, and a
sense of relief, of ease, and of well-being generally, took gradual
possession of her. I could see the change come into her countenance, and
before we had arrived in Morningquest, she had begun to talk to me
cheerfully of her own accord. We had to skirt the old gray walls which
surrounded the palace gardens, and as we did so, she looked up at
them--indifferently at first, but immediately afterward with a sudden
flash of recognition. She said nothing, but I could see she drew herself
together as if she had been hurt.

"Do you go there often?" I asked her.

"No--Edith died there; and then that child," she answered, looking at me
as if she were surprised that I should have thought it likely.

"She shrinks from sorrowful associations and painful sights," I thought.
But I did not know, when I asked the question, that our poor Edith had
been a particular friend of hers.

We stopped the next moment at Mrs. Orton Beg's, and she leant forward to
look at the windows, smiling and brightening again.

I helped her out and followed her to the door, which she opened as if she
were at home there. She waited for me for a moment in the hall till I put
my hat down, and then we went to the drawing room together, and walked in
in the same familiar way.

Mrs. Orton Beg was there with another lady, a stout but very comely
person, handsomely dressed, who seemed to have just risen to take her
leave.

The moment Evadne saw this lady she sprang forward. "_Oh, Mother!_"
she cried, throwing her arms round her neck.

"Evadne--my dear, dear child!" the lady exclaimed, clasping her close and
kissing her, and then, holding her off to look at her. "Why, my child, how
thin you are, and pale, and weak--"

"Oh, mother--I _am_ so glad! I _am_ so glad!" Evadne cried
again, nestling close up to her, and kissing her neck; and then she laid
her head on her bosom and burst into hysterical sobs.

I instantly left the room, and Mrs. Orton Beg followed me.

"They have not met since--just after Evadne's marriage," she explained to
me. "Evadne offended her father, and there still seems to be no hope of a
reconciliation."

"But surely it is cruel to separate mother and child," I exclaimed
indignantly. "He has no right to do that."

"No, and he would not be able to do it with one of us," she answered
bitterly; "but my sister is of a yielding disposition. She is like Mrs.
Beale, one of the old-fashioned 'womanly women,' who thought it their duty
to submit to everything, and make the best of everything, including
injustice, and any other vice it pleased their lords to practise. But for
this weakness of good women the world would be a brighter and better place
by this time. We see the disastrous folly of submitting our reason to the
rule of self-indulgence and self-interest now, however; and, please God,
we shall change all that before I die. He will be a bold man soon who will
dare to have the impertinence to dictate to us as to what we should or
should not do, or think, or say. No one can pretend that the old system of
husband and master has answered well, and it has had a fair trial. Let us
hope that the new method of partnership will be more successful."

"Yes, indeed!" I answered earnestly.

Mrs. Orton Beg looked up in my face, and her own countenance cleared.

"You and Evadne seem to be very good friends," she said. "I am so glad."
Then she looked up at me again, with a curious little smile which I could
not interpret. "Does she remind you of anybody--of anything, ever?" she
asked.

"Why--surely she is like you," I said, seeing a likeness for the first
time.

"Yes," she answered, in a more indifferent tone. "There is a likeness, I
am told."

I tried afterward to think that this explained the haunting half
recollection I seemed to have of something about Evadne; but it did not.
On the contrary, it re-awakened and confirmed the feeling that I had seen
Evadne before I knew who she was, under circumstances which I now failed
to recall.

Thinking she would like to be alone after that interview with her mother,
I left the carriage for her, and walked back to Fountain Towers; and the
state I was in after doing the ten miles warned me that I had been
luxuriating too much in carriages lately, and must begin to practise what
I preached again in the way of exercise, if I did not wish to lay up a fat
and flabby old age for myself.

I made a point of not seeing Evadne for some little time after that event,
so that she might not feel bound to refer to it in case she should shrink
from doing so. But the next time we met, as it happened, I had another
glimpse of her feeling for her friends, which showed me how very much
mistaken I had been in my estimate of the depth of her affections. It was
at As-You-Like-It. I had walked over from Fountain Towers, and dropped in
casually to ask for some tea, and, Colonel Colquhoun arriving at the same
moment from barracks, we went up to the drawing room together, and found
Evadne in her accustomed place, busy with her embroidery as usual. She
shook hands, but said nothing to show that she was aware of the interval
there had been since she saw me last. When she sat down again, however,
she went on with her work, and there was a certain satisfied look in her
face, as if some little wish had been gratified and she was content. I
knew when she took up her work that she liked me to be there, and wanted
me to stay, for she always put it down when visitors she did not care for
called, and made a business of entertaining them. But we had scarcely
settled ourselves to talk when the butler opened the door, and announced
"Mr. Bertram Frayling," and a tall, slender, remarkably handsome young
fellow, with a strong family likeness to Evadne herself, entered with
boyish diffidence, smiling nervously, but looking important, too. Evadne
jumped up impetuously.

"_Bertram_!" she exclaimed, holding out her arms to him. "Why, what a
big fellow you have grown!" she cried, finding she could hardly reach to
his neck to hug him. "And how handsome you are!"

"They say I am just like you," he answered, looking down at her lovingly,
with his arm around her waist. Neither of them took any notice of us.

"This is your birthday, dear," Evadne said. "I have been thinking of you
the whole day long. I always keep all the birthdays. Did you remember
mine?"

"I--don't think I did," he answered honestly. "But this is my twenty-first
birthday, Evadne, and that's how it is I am here. I am my own master from
to-day."

"And the first thing you do with your liberty is to come and see your
sister," said Colonel Colquhoun. "You're made of the right stuff, my boy,"
and he shook hands with him heartily.

Evadne clung with one hand to his shoulder, and pressed her handkerchief
first to this eye and then to that alternately with the other, looking so
glad, however, at the same time, that it was impossible to say whether she
was going to laugh or cry for joy.

"But aren't there rejoicings?" she asked.

"Oh, yes!" he answered. "But I told my father if you were not asked I
should not stay for them. I was determined to see you to-day." He flushed
boyishly as he spoke, and smiled round upon us all again.

"But wasn't he very angry?" Evadne said.

"Yes," her brother answered, twinkling. "The girls got round him, and
tried to persuade him, but they only made him worse, especially when they
all declared that when they came of age they meant to do _something_,
too! He said that he was afflicted with the most obstinate,
ill-conditioned family in the county, and began to row mother as if it
were her fault. But I wouldn't stand that!"

"You were right, Bertram," Evadne exclaimed, clenching her hands. "Now
that you are a man, never let mother be made miserable. Did she know you
were coming?"

"Yes, and was very glad," he answered, "and sent you messages."

But here Colonel Colquhoun and I managed to slip from the room. Evadne
sent her brother back that day to grace the close of the festivities in
his honour, but he returned the following week, and stayed at
As-You-Like-It, and also with me, when he confirmed my first exceedingly
good impression of him. Evadne quite wakened up under his influence, but,
unfortunately for her, he went abroad in a few weeks for a two years' trip
round the world, and, I think, losing him again so soon made it almost
worse for her than if they had never been reunited, especially as another
and irreparable loss came upon her immediately after his departure. This
was the sudden death of her mother, the news of which arrived one day in a
curt note written by her father to Colonel Colquhoun, no previous
intimation of illness having been sent to break the shock of the
announcement. I can never be thankful enough for the happy chance which
brought about that last accidental meeting of Evadne with her mother. But
for that, they would not have seen each other again; and I had the
pleasure of learning eventually that the perfect understanding which they
arrived at during the few hours they spent together on that occasion,
afterward became one of the most comforting recollections of Evadne's
life--"A hallowed memory," as she herself expressed it, "such as it is
very good for us to cherish. Thank Heaven for the opportunity which
renewed and intensified my appreciation of my mother's love and goodness,
so as to make my last impression of her one which must stand out
distinctly forever from the rest, and be always a joyful sorrow to recall.
Do you know what a _joyful_ sorrow is? Ah! something that makes one
feel warm and forgiving in the midst of one's regrets, a delicious feeling;
when it takes possession of you, you cease to be hard and cold and
fierce, and want to do good."

Mrs. Frayling died of a disease for which we have a remedy nowadays--or,
to speak plainly, she died for want of proper treatment. Her husband
gloried in what he called "a rooted objection to new-fangled notions," and
would not send for a modern practitioner even when the case became
serious, preferring to confide it entirely to a very worthy old gentleman
of his own way of thinking, with one qualification, who had attended his
household successfully for twenty-four years, during which time only one
other member of his family had ever been seriously ill, and he also had
died. But I hope and believe that my poor little lady never knew the truth
about her mother's last illness. She was overwhelmed with grief as it was,
and it cut one to the quick to see her, day after day, in her black dress,
sitting alone, pale and still and uncomplaining, her invariable attitude
when she was deeply distressed, and not to be able to say a word or do a
thing to relieve her. As usual at that time of the year, everybody whom
she cared to see at all was away except myself, so that during the
dreariest of the winter months she was shut up with her grief in the most
unwholesome isolation. As the spring returned, however, she began to
revive, and then, suddenly, it appeared to me that she entered upon a new
phase altogether.

CHAPTER IX.

During the first days of our acquaintance Evadne's attitude, whatever
happened, surprised me. I could anticipate her action up to a certain
point, but just the precise thing she would do was the last thing I had
expected; I knew her feeling, in fact, but I was ignorant of the material
it had to work upon, and by means of which it found expression. I had
begun by believing her to be cold and self-sufficing, but even before her
illness I had perceived in her a strange desire for sympathy, and foreseen
that on occasion she would exact it in large measure from anyone she cared
about. It was making much of a cut finger one day that she had led me to
expect she would be exacting in illness, languishing as ladies do, to
excite sympathy; and when the illness came I found I had been right in so
far as I had believed that she would appreciate sympathy, but entirely
wrong about the means she would employ to obtain it. Instead of
languishing, when she found herself really suffering, she pulled herself
together, and bore the trial with heroic calm. As I have said, she never
uttered a complaint; and she had the strength of mind to ignore annoyances
which few people in perfect health could have borne with fortitude.
Certainly her attitude then had excited sympathy, and respect as well. It
was as admirable as it was unexpected.

I had also perceived that she could not bear anything disagreeable. She
seldom showed the least irritability herself, nor would she tolerate it
for a moment in anyone else. Servants who were not always cheerful had to
go, and the kind of people who snap at each other in the bosom of their
families she carefully avoided, turning from them instinctively as she
would have done from any perception revolting to the physical senses; and
that she would fly disgusted from sickening sights or sounds or odours I
never doubted. But here again I was wrong--or rather the evidence was
utterly misleading. I found her one day sitting on the bridge of a little
river that crossed a quiet lane near their house, and got down from my
horse to talk to her, and as we stood looking over the parapet looking
into the stream, the bloated carcase of a dead dog came floating by. She
could only have caught a glimpse of it, for she drew back instantly, but
she looked so pale and nauseated that I had to take her to the house, and
insist upon her having some wine. And I once took her, at her own earnest
request, to visit a children's hospital; but before we had seen a dozen of
the little patients she cried so piteously I was obliged to take her away;
and she could never bear to speak of the place afterward. And lastly, I
had seen how she shrank from going to the palace because of the
association with Edith's terrible death, and the chance of seeing her
poor, repulsive looking little boy there.

Yet when it came to be a question of facing absolute horrors in the
interests of the sufferers, she was the first to volunteer, and she did so
with a quiet determination there was no resisting, and every trace of
inward emotion so carefully obliterated that one might have been forgiven
for supposing her to be altogether callous.

This happened after her mother's death, In the spring, when she had
already begun to revive, and was the first startling symptom she showed of
the new phase of interest and energy upon which I suspected she was
entering. I hoped at the time that the great grief had carried off the
minor ailments of the mind as the great illness did of the body, and that
the change would prove to be for the better eventually, although the first
outcome of it was not the kind of thing I liked at all--for her.

I had not seen her for a week or so when she was ushered one morning into
my consulting room. She had not asked for an appointment, and had been
waiting to take her turn with the other patients.

"Well, what can I do for _you?_" I said. I was somewhat surprised to
see her. "You don't look very ill."

"No, thank goodness," she answered cheerfully; "and I don't mean to be
ill. I have come to be vaccinated."

"Ah. that is wise," I said.

"You have heard, I suppose, that small-pox has broken out in the
barracks?" she said when she was going. "There are fifteen cases, four of
them women, and one a child, and they are going to put them under canvas
on the common, and I shall be obliged to go and see that they are properly
nursed. That is why I am in such a hurry. Military nursing is of the most
primitive kind in times of peace. Our doctor is all that he should be, but
what can he do but prescribe? It takes all his time just to go round and
get through his ordinary duties."

"Did I understand you to say that you are going to look after the
small-pox patients?" I asked politely.

"Yes," she answered defiantly. "I am going to be isolated with them out on
the common. My tent is already pitched. I shall not take small-pox, I
assure you."

"I don't see how you can be so sure," I said.

She gave me one of her most puzzling answers, one of those in which I felt
there was an indication of the something about her which I did not
understand.

"Oh, because it is such a relief!" she said.

"How a relief?" I questioned.

"Oh--I shall not take the disease," she repeated, "and I shall enjoy the
occupation."

But this, I knew, was an evasion. However, I had no time to argue the
point with her just then, so I waited until my consultations were over,
and then went to see Colonel Colquhoun. I thought if he would not forbid
he might at all events persuade her to abandon her rash design. I found
him at his own place, walking about the garden with his hands in his
pockets, and a cigar in his mouth. He was in a facetious mood, the one of
his I most disliked.