The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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I wondered what he had in his mind.

"Times are changing," he proceeded. "Now, when I was a lad, if a lady had
liked me as well as Evadne likes that boy, I'd have taken advantage of her
preference."

"Not if the lady had been of her stamp," I said drily.

"Well, true for you," he acknowledged. "But it isn't the lady only in this
case. It's that young sybarite himself. He's as particular as she is. He
said the other day at mess--it was a guest night, and there was a big
dinner on, and somebody proposed 'Wine and Women' for a toast, but he
wouldn't drink it: 'Oh, spare me,' he said, in that slow way he has,
something like his father's; 'Wine and women, as you take them, are things
as coarse in the way of pleasure as pork and porter are for food.' We
asked him then to give us his own ideas of pleasure; but he said he didn't
think anybody there was educated up to them, even sufficiently to
understand them!--and he wasn't joking altogether, either," Colonel
Colquhoun concluded.

At that same moment Evadne opened her eyes wide, and looked at us a second
before she spoke, but showed no other sign of surprise.

"I am afraid I have been asleep," she said, rising deliberately, and
shaking hands with me across the prostrate Diavolo. "Do sit down."

She sank back into her own chair as she spoke, and fanned a fly from
Diavolo's face. "I never knew anyone sleep so soundly," she said, looking
down at him lovingly. "He rides out here nearly every day when he is not
on duty, simply for his siesta. Angelica is jealous, I believe, because he
will not go to her. He says there is no repose about Angelica, and that it
is only here with me that he finds the dreamful ease he loves."

There was a sound of talking outside just then, and a few minutes later
Angelica herself came in with her father.

"Oh, you _darling!_ you _are_ a pretty boy!" she exclaimed, when
she saw Diavolo, and then she went down on her knees beside him, put her
arms round his neck, pulled him up, and hugged him roughly, an attention
which he immediately resented. "Ah, I thought it was you!" he said,
opening his eyes. "Good-bye, sweet sleep, good-bye!" Then he sat up, and,
turning his back to Evadne, coolly rested himself against her knee. "I
suppose we can have tea now," he said. "There's always something to look
forward to. Papa, dear, touch the bell, to save the Colonel the trouble."

Colonel Colquhoun laughed, and rang it himself good-naturedly.

"Diavolo!" Evadne exclaimed, pushing him away, "I am not going to nurse a
great boy like you."

"Well, Angelica must, then," he said, changing his position so as to lean
against his sister. Angelica laid her hand on his head, and her face
softened. "Evadne _used_ to like to nurse me," he complained. "She's
not nearly so nice since she married. I say, Angelica, do you remember the
wedding breakfast, when we agreed to drink as much champagne as the
bridegroom? I swore I would never get drunk again, and I never have."

"Faith," said Colonel Colquhoun, "there are some who'd like to be able to
say the same thing."

Some dogs had followed Angelica in, and had now to be turned out, because
Evadne would not have dogs indoors. She said she liked a good dog's
character, but could not bear the smell of him.

"And how are the children?" Mr. Hamilton-Wells asked affably, when this
diversion was over.

"There are no children!" Evadne exclaimed in surprise.

"Are there not, indeed. Now, that is singular," he observed. Then he
looked at me as if he were about to say something interesting, but I
hastily interposed. I was afraid he was going to speculate about the
natural history of the phenomenon which had just struck him as being
singular. He knew perfectly well that Evadne had no children, but he was
subject, or affected to be subject, to moments of obliviousness, in which
he was wont to ask embarrassing questions.

"The weather is quite tropical," was the original observation I made. Mr.
Hamilton-Wells felt if the parting of his smooth, straight hair was
exactly in the middle, patted it on either side, then shook back imaginary
ruffles from his long white hands, and interlaced his jewelled fingers on
his lap.

"You were never in the tropics, I think you told me?" he said to Evadne,
with exaggerated preciseness. "Ah! now, I have been, off and on, several
times. The heat is very trying. I knew a lady, the wife of a Colonial
Governor, who used to be so overcome by it that she was obliged to undo
all her things, let them slip to the ground, and step out of them, leaving
them looking like a great cheese. She told me so herself, I assure you,
and she was an exceedingly stout person."

The Heavenly Twins went into convulsions suddenly.

"Is that tea at last?" Evadne asked.

Colonel Colquhoun and I both gladly moved to make room for the servants
who were bringing it in, and the conversation was not resumed until they
had withdrawn. Then Angelica began: "I came to make a last appeal to you,
Evadne. I want to tell you about a poor girl--"

"Oh, don't break this lovely summer silence with tales of woe!" Evadne
exclaimed, interrupting her. "I cannot do anything. Don't ask me. You
harrow my feelings to no purpose. I will not listen. It is not right that
I should be forced to know."

"Well, I think you are making a mistake, Evadne," Angelica replied. "Don't
you think so?" looking at me. "She is sacrificing herself to save herself.
She imagines she can secure her own peace of mind by refusing to know that
there is a weary world of suffering close at hand which she should be
helping to relieve. Suffering for others strengthens our own powers of
endurance; we lose them if we don't exercise them--and that is the way you
are sacrificing yourself to save yourself, Evadne. When some big trouble
of your own, one of those which cannot be denied, comes upon you, it will
crush you. You will have lost the moral muscle you should be exercising
now to keep it in good working order and develop it well for your own use
when you require it. It would not be worse for you to take a stimulant or
a sedative to wind yourself up to an artificially pleasurable state when
at any time you are not naturally cheerful--and that is what a too great
love of peace occasionally ends in."

Evadne waved her ostrich feather fan backward and forward slowly, and
looked out of the window. She would not even listen to this friendly
counsel, and I felt sure she was making a mistake.

I only saw her once again that summer under Lady Adeline's salutary
influence. It was a few days later, and Evadne was in an expansive mood.
She had been spending the day with Lady Adeline, and the two had been for
a drive together, and had overtaken me on the road and picked me up on
their way back to Hamilton House. I had been for a solitary ramble, and
was then returning to work, but Evadne said I must go back to tea with
them: "For your own sake, because it is a shame to waste a summer day in
work--a glorious summer day so evidently sent for our enjoyment."

"The greatest pleasure in life is to be in perfect condition for the work
one loves," I answered; but I was settling myself comfortably in the
carriage as I spoke, such is the consistency of man. But indeed it was not
very difficult to persuade me to idle that afternoon. I had been inclining
that way for weeks, under the influence of the intoxicating heat doubtless;
and presently, when I found myself comfortably seated on the wide stone
terrace outside the great drawing room at Hamilton House, under a shady
awning, looking down upon lawns vividly green and lovely gardens all aglow
with colour and alive with perfume, which is the soul of the flowers, I
yielded sensuous service to the hour, and gave myself up to the enjoyment
of it unreservedly.

Mr. Hamilton-Wells was there, making tea in the precisest manner, and
looking more puritanical than ever. How to reconcile his coldly formal
exterior with the interior from which emanated his choice of subjects in
conversation is a matter which I have not yet had time to study, although
I am convinced that the solution of the problem would prove to be of great
scientific value and importance. I was not in the habit of thinking of him
as either a man or a woman myself, however, but as a specimen of humanity
broadly, and domestically as a husband whom I always suspected of being a
sharp sword of the law, although I had never obtained the slightest
evidence of the fact.

Lady Adeline was lolling in a low cane chair, fatigued by her drive, and
longing aloud for tea; and Evadne was flitting about with her hat in her
hand, laughing and talking more than any of us. She was wearing an art
gown, very becoming to her, and suitable also for such sultry weather, as
Mr. Hamilton-Wells remarked.

"I suppose you are a strong supporter of the aesthetic dress movement," he
said, doubtless alluding to the graceful freedom of her delicate primrose
draperies.

"Not at all," she answered, seating herself on the arm of a chair near
Lady Adeline, and opening her fan gently as she spoke.

I was inspired to ask for more tea just then. Mr. Hamilton-Wells poured it
out and handed it to me. "You take milk," he informed me, "but no sugar."
Then he folded his hands and recommenced. "To return to the original point
of departure," he began, "which was modern dress, if I remember
rightly"--he smiled round upon us all, knowing quite well that he
remembered rightly--"that brings us by an obvious route to another
question of the day; I mean the position of women. How do you regard their
position at this latter end of the nineteenth century, Evadne?"

"I do not regard it at all, if I can help it," she answered incisively.

Mr. Hamilton-Wells dropped his outspread hands upon his knees.

"If I remember rightly," he said, "you take no interest in politics
either. That is quite a phenomenon at this latter end of the nineteenth
century."

"I have my duties--the duties of my social position, you know," she
answered, "and my own little pursuits as well, neither of which I can
neglect for the affairs of the world."

"But are they enough for you?" Lady Adeline ventured.

Evadne glanced up to see what she meant, and then smiled. "The wisdom of
ages is brought to the training of each little girl," she said; "and to
fit her for our position, she is taught that a woman's one object in life
is to be agreeable."

"You mean that a woman of decided opinions is not an agreeable person?"
Lady Adeline asked.

"Decided opinions must always be offensive to those who don't hold them,"
Evadne rejoined.

"A woman must know that the future welfare of her own sex, and the
progress of the world at large, depends upon the action of women now, and
the success attending it," Angelica observed comprehensively.

"Yes, but she knows also that her own comfort and convenience depend
entirely on her neutrality," Evadne answered. "It is not high-minded to be
neutral, I know, when it is put in that way; but a woman who is so becomes
exactly what the average man, taken at his word, would have her be, and he
is, we are assured, the proper person to legislate."

She looked at us all defiantly as she spoke, and furled her fan; and just
at that moment Colonel Colquhoun joined us. He had come to fetch her, and
his entrance gave a new turn to the conversation.

"It has been oppressively hot all day," he observed.

"Yes," Lady Adeline answered, "and I do so long for the mountains in
weather like this."

"Oh, do you?" said Evadne. "Are you subject to the magnet of the
mountains? I am not. I do not want to feel the nothingness of man; I like
to believe in his greatness, in his infinite possibilities. I like to
think of life as a level plain over which we can gallop to some goal--I
don't know what, but something desirable; and the actual landscape pleases
me best so. The great tumbled mountains make me melancholy, they are
always foreboding something untoward, even at the best of times; but the
open spaces, windswept and evident--I love them. I am at home on them. I
can breathe there--I am free."

This was the natural woman at last, in her aspirations unconsciously
showing herself superior to the artificial creature she was trying to be.

"I hate the melancholy mountains," the ever-ready Angelica burst forth. "I
loathe the inconstant sea. The breezy plain for a gallop! It is there that
one feels free!"

Colonel Colquhoun looked at Evadne meditatively, and slowly twisted each
end of his heavy blond moustache. "I haven't seen you riding for some time
now," he said, "and it's a pity, for you've a fine seat on a horse."

I was obliged to make up that night for the time lost in the afternoon,
and the dawn had broken when at last I put my work away. I opened the
study windows wider to salute it. A lark was singing somewhere out of
sight--

Die Lerche, die im augen nicht,
Doch immer in den ohren ist--

and the ripples of undecipherable sound struck some equally inarticulate
chord of sense, and fell full-fraught with association. The breeze,
murmurous amongst the branches, set the leaves rustling like silk attire.
Did I imagine it, or was there really a faint sweet perfume of yellow
gorse in the air? A thrush on a bough below began to flute softly, trying
its tones before it burst forth, giving full voice to its enthusiasm in
one clear call, eloquent of life and love and longing, and all expressed
in just three notes--crotchet, quaver, crotchet and rest--which shortly
shaped themselves to a word in my heart, a word of just three syllables,
the accent being on the penultimate--"E-vad-ne! E-vad-ne!"

Good Heavens!

I roused myself. Not a proper state of mind certainly for a man of my
years and pursuits. Why, how old was I? Thirty-five--not so old in one
way, yet ten years older at least than--stop--sickly sentimentality. "Life
is real, life is earnest," and there must be no dreams of scented gorse,
of posing in daffodil draperies, for me. Must take a holiday and
rest--take my "agreeable ugliness" off (I was amused when the Heavenly
Twins told me their mother talked of my "agreeable ugliness"; but, now,
did I like it? No. I was cynical when I said it) take my "agreeable
ugliness" off to the mountains--"Turn thine eyes unto the mountains"--the
magnet of the mountains. Yes, I felt it. I delighted to do so. I was not
morbid. To the mountains! to the cold which stays corruption, the snows
which are pure, and the eternal silence! By ten o'clock that night I was
well on my way.

CHAPTER XI

I went abroad that year for my holiday, but spent the last week of it in
London on my way home. All the vapours of sentimentality had disappeared
by that time. My nerves had been braced in the Alps, my mind had been
calmed and refreshed by the warm blue Mediterranean, my sense of
comparison emphasized in Egypt, where I perceived anew the law of
mutability, the inevitable law, by the decree of which the human race is
eternal, while we, its constituent atoms, have but a moment of intensity
to blaze and burn out. Perishable life and permanent matter are we, with a
limit that may be prolonged in idea by such circumstances as we can dwell
on with delight, one love-lit day being longer in the record than whole
monotonous years. It is good to live and love, but if we possess the
burden of life unrelieved by the blessing of love, or the hope of it,
well--why despair? Man is matter animated by a series of emotions, the
majority of which are pleasurable. Disappointment ends like success, and
the futile dust of nations offers itself in evidence of the vanity of all
attributes except wisdom, the wisdom that teaches us to accept the
inevitable silently, and endure our moment with equally undemonstrative
acquiescence, whether it comes full fraught with the luxury of living, or
only brings us that which causes us to contemplate of necessity, and
without shrinking, the crowning dignity of death.

I had come back ready for work, and could have cheerfully dispensed with
that week's delay in London; but I had promised it to an old friend, in
failing health, whom I would not disappoint.

The people at Morne, the Kilroys, the Hamilton-Wellses, the Colquhouns,
all my circle of intimate friends, had fallen into the background of my
recollection during my tour abroad; but, now again, when I found myself so
near them, the old habitual interests began to be dominant. I had sent
notes to apologize for not wishing them good-bye before my sudden
departure, but I had not written to any of them or heard from them during
my absence, and did not know where they might all be at the moment; and I
was just wondering one night as I walked toward Piccadilly from the
direction of the Strand--I was just wondering if they were all as I had
left them, if the civil war, as Angelica called it, was being waged as
actively as ever between herself and Evadne upon the all-important
point--and that made me think of Evadne herself. I had banished her name
from my mind for weeks, but now some inexplicable trick of the brain
suddenly set her before me as I oftenest saw her, sitting at work in the
wide west window overlooking the road, and glancing up brightly at the
sound of my horse's hoofs or carriage wheels as I rode or drove past, to
salute me. A lady might wait and watch so at accustomed hours for her
lover; but he would stop, and she would open the window, and lean out with
a flower in her hand for him, and perhaps she would kiss it before she
tossed it to him, and he would catch it and go on his way rejoicing--a
pretty poetical dream and easy of fulfilment, if only one could find the
lady, suitably circumstanced.

I had arrived at Piccadilly Circus by this time, at the turn into Regent
Street where the omnibuses stop, and was delayed for a moment or two by
the casual crowd of loiterers and people struggling for places, and by
those who were alighting from the various vehicles. Not being in any hurry
myself, it amused me to observe the turmoil, the play of human emotion
which appeared distinctly on the faces of those who approached me and were
lost to sight again as soon as seen in the eddy and whirl of the crowd.
There was temper here, and tenderness there; this person was steadily bent
on business, that on pleasure, and one fussy little man escorting his
family somewhere was making the former of the latter. There were two young
lovers alone with their love so far as any outward consciousness of the
crowd was concerned; and there was a young wife silent and sad beside a
neglectful elderly husband. It was the 'buses from the west end I was
watching. One had just moved off toward the Strand, and another pulled up
in its place, and the people began to alight--a fat man first in a frenzy
of haste, a sallow priest whose soul seemed to sicken at the sight of the
seething mass of humanity amongst which he found himself, for he hesitated
perceptibly on the step, like a child in a bathing machine who shrinks
from the water, before he descended and was engulfed in the crowd. A
musician with his instrument in a case, two fat women talking to each
other, a little Cockney work-girl, and her young man, and then--a lady.
There could be no mistake about her social status. The conductor, standing
by the step, recognized it at once, and held out his arm to assist her.
The gaslight flared full upon her face, the expression of which was
somewhat set. She wore no veil, and if she did not court observation, she
certainly did not shun it. She was quietly but richly dressed, and had one
seen her there on foot in the morning, one would have surmised that she
was out shopping, and looked for the carriage which would probably have
been following her; but a lady, striking in appearance and of
distinguished bearing, alighting composedly from an omnibus at Piccadilly
Circus between nine and ten at night, and calmly taking her way alone up
Regent Street was a sight which would have struck one as being anomalous
even if she had been a stranger. But this lady was no stranger to me. I
should have recognized her figure and carriage had her countenance been
concealed. I had turned hot and cold at the first foreshadowing of her
presence, and would fain have found myself mistaken, but there was no
possibility of a doubt. She passed me without haste, and so close that I
could have laid my hand upon her shoulder. But I let her go in sheer
astonishment. What, in the name of all that is inexplicable, was Evadne
doing there alone at that time of night? Such a proceeding was hardly
decent, whatever her excuse, and it was certainly not safe. This last
reflection aroused me, and I started instantly to follow her, intending to
overtake her, and impose my escort upon her. She was out of sight, because
she had turned the corner, but she could not have gone far, and I hurried
headlong after her, nearly upsetting a man who met me face to face as I
doubled into Regent Street. It was Colonel Colquhoun himself, in a joyful
mood evidently, and for once I could have blessed his blinding potations.
He recognized me, but had apparently passed Evadne.

"Ah, me boy, you here!" he exclaimed, with an assumption of facetious
_bonhomie_ particularly distasteful to me. "All the world lives in
London, I think! It's where you'll always come across anyone you want. Sly
dog! Following a lady, I'll be bound! By Jove! I wouldn't have thought it
of you, Galbraith! But you'll not find anything choice in Regent Street.
Come with me, and I'll introduce you--"

"Excuse me," I interrupted, and hurried away from the brute. How had he
missed Evadne? Perhaps he was looking the other way. But what a position
for her to be in. Supposing he had recognized her, my being so close would
have made it none the better for her. And could I be sure that he had not
seen her? I did not think he was the kind, of man, with all his faults, to
lay a trap even for an enemy whom he suspected; but, still, one never
knows.

Evadne was far ahead by this time, but the places of amusement were still
open, and therefore there were few people in Regent Street. It is not
particularly well lighted, but I was soon near enough to make her out by
her graceful dignified carriage, which contrasted markedly with that of
every other woman and girl I saw. In any other place her bearing would
have struck me as that of a person accustomed to consideration, even if I
had not known her; but here, judging by the confident way she held her
head up, I should have been inclined to set her down either as a most
abandoned person, or as one who was quite unconscious of anything peculiar
in her present proceedings. In another respect, too, she was very unlike
the women and girls who were loitering about the Street, peering up
anxiously into the face of every man they met. Evadne seemed to see no
one, and passed on her way, superbly indifferent to any attention she
might be attracting. The distance between us had lessened considerably,
and I could now have overtaken her easily, but I hesitated. I could not
decide whether it would be better to join her, or merely to keep her in
sight for her own safety. I was inclined to blame her severely for her
recklessness. She had already passed her husband, and might meet half the
depot, or be recognized by Heaven knows who, before she got to the top of
the street; and, as it was, she was attracting considerable attention.
Scarcely a man met her who did not turn when he had passed, and look after
her; and anyone of these might be an acquaintance. My impulse had been to
insist upon her getting into a hansom, and allowing me to see her safe
home; but it had occurred to me, upon reflection, that I might compromise
her more fatally by being seen with her under such circumstances than
could happen if she went alone.

While I hesitated, a tall thin man with a gray beard, whom I thought I
recognized from photographs seen in shop windows, met her, stared hard as
he passed, stood a minute looking after her and then turned and followed
her. If he were the man I took him to be, he would probably know her, and
my first impression was that he did so, and had recognised her, and been,
like myself, too astonished to speak. If so, he quickly recovered himself,
and, as he evidently intended to address her now, I was half inclined to
resign my responsibility to him. Then I thought that if I joined her also
nothing could be said. Two men of known repute may escort a lady anywhere
and at any time. I quickened my steps, but purposely let him speak first.

Coming up with her from behind, he began in a tone which was more
caressing than respectful. "It is a fine night," he said.

Evadne started visibly, looked at him, and shrank two steps away; but she
answered, in a voice which I could hardly recognise as hers, it was so
high and strident; "I should call it a chilly night," she said.

"Well, yes, perhaps," he answered, "for the time of the year. Are you
going for a walk?"

"I--I don't know," she replied, looking doubtfully on ahead.

She was walking at a pretty rapid rate as it was, and her elderly
interlocutor had some difficulty in keeping up with her.