The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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"What score?"

"The score of obesity. You are just nicely proportioned at present for a
man of your age and height. _I_, of course, am far too slender. But
if you were to get any stouter by and by, it would be such a dreadful
thing! I hope flesh is not in your family on both sides. On one I know it
is. Now, my people are all slender. There is a great deal in that, I
notice."

He was doing up the documents now with much neatness and dexterity.

"These had better go to my lawyer," he remarked.

"Why not to mine?" I suggested.

"Oh, allow me," he said, with great suavity--"as the older man. Of course,
as a question of right, we neither of us have any claim to the privilege
of being allowed to help this lady. Eventually, however, one of us may
secure the right; but there is many a slip, you know, and perhaps it would
be less awkward afterward if a person whose disinterestedness is quite
above suspicion had had the direction of affairs from the first."

There could be no doubt of what he meant by this time, and the argument
was unanswerable.

"Do you feel inclined to return with me to Mentone?" he asked.

"I am afraid I cannot get away just now."

"Ah! I suppose it _is_ too soon. Well, she is quite safe with us, and
we will bring her back to Hamilton House in the spring.". Mr.
Hamilton-Wells smiled complacently as he took his seat in his carriage. I
almost expected him to thank me for the sport I had been giving him, he
looked so like a man who had been enjoying himself thoroughly. I thought
about that last remark of his after he had gone, and pitied Lady Adeline.
It must be trying to be liable at any moment to have words, which one
deliberately chooses to hide one's thoughts, set aside as of no
consequence, and the thoughts themselves answered naively. However, there
was no real reason for hiding my thoughts any longer on that subject. I
had done my best manfully, I hope, while the necessity lasted, to mask my
feeling for her, even from myself; but there was now no further need for
self-restraint. I might live for her and love her honestly, and openly at
last; and, accordingly, when Sir Shadwell Rock came to me for a few days
at Christmas, I did not attempt to conceal my intention from him.

"It is a great risk," he said gravely, "a very great risk. Of course, now
that the first cause of all the trouble is removed, the mental health may
be thoroughly restored. So long as there is no organic brain lesion there
is hope in all such cases. But I tell you frankly that the first call upon
her physical strength may set up a recurrence of the moral malady, and you
cannot foresee the consequences. However, you know as much about that as I
do, and I can see it's no use warning you. You have made up your mind."

"Yes," I answered. "I shall be able to take good care of her if only I am
fortunate enough to win her."

"Well, well, she seems to be a loyal little body," the old gentleman
replied; "and I wish you success with all my heart. She will have much in
her favour as your wife, and since you are determined to run the risk, let
us hope for the best."

And that was just what I did while I waited for the spring, and to such
good purpose that I became light-hearted as a schoolboy. I watched the
birds building; I noticed the first faint green shadow on the hedges, and
the yellowing of the gorse; I listened in the freshness of the dawn to the
thrush that sang "Evadne." And when at last Mr. Hamilton-Wells walked in
one day unexpectedly, and explained, somewhat superfluously, that he had
come, I could have thrown up my hat and cheered!

"But without the ladies," he added.

"Have you left them behind you?" I demanded, trying not to look blank.

"Yes," he answered very slowly, then added: "At Hamilton House." I suppose
nobody ever thought of kicking anything so "slender" as Mr,
Hamilton-Wells, or associated such a vulgar idea as would have been
involved in the suspicion of a deliberate intention to "sell" you with a
person of such courteous and distinguished manners. But one did
occasionally wonder what he was like at school, and if blessings and abuse
were often showered on him then at one and the same time, as had come to
be the case in later life.

He had come to ask me to dinner that evening, and when I arrived he was
standing on the hearthrug, gracefully, with a palm-leaf fan in his hand,
Evadne greeted me quietly, Lady Adeline with affectionate cordiality, and
Diavolo, who was the only other member of the party, with a grave yet
bright demeanour which made him more like his Uncle Dawne in miniature
than ever.

"'In the spring,'" Mr. Hamilton-Wells observed precisely, waving his fan
to emphasise each word, and addressing a remote angle of the cornice, "'In
the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.'"

Diavolo flushed crimson, Lady Adeline looked annoyed, but Evadne sat pale
and still, as if she had not heard.

I was right about her not being likely to leave her affairs in anybody's
hands. Very soon after her arrival she insisted upon having an accurate
statement of accounts, and begged me to go over to Hamilton House one
morning to render it, as she found Mr. Hamilton-Wells quite unapproachable
on the subject.

She received me in the morning room alone, and began at once in the most
business-like way, "Mr. Hamilton-Wells' reticence convinces me that I am a
beggar," she said cheerfully. "Tell me the exact sum I have to depend
upon?"

I named it.

"Oh, then," she proceeded, "the question is, What shall I do? I cannot
possibly live in the world, you know, on such a sum as that."

"What do you propose to do?" I asked, her tone having suggested some
definite plan already formed.

"Go into a sisterhood, I think,' she answered.

"Nonsense!" I exclaimed.

She raised her eyebrows.

"I beg your pardon," I said. "But you are not fit for such a life. Why, in
a month you would be seeing visions and dreaming dreams."

"But I am afraid I shall do that now in any case, wherever I am," she
sighed; and then she added, smiling at her own cynicism; "and I think I
had better go where such things can be turned to good account. I have had
no horrid thoughts, by the way, since I left As-You-Like-It, but of course
I shall relapse."

"No, you will not," I blurted out, "if you marry happily."

Her face flushed all over at the word.

"Will you, Evadne," I proceeded--"or rather could you--be happy with me?"
She rose, and made me a deep courtesy. "Thank you," she answered
scornfully, "for your kind consideration, Sir George Galbraith! I always
thought you the most disinterested person I ever knew, but I had no idea
that even you could go so far as that!"

And then she left me alone with my consternation.

How in the name of all that is perplexing had I offended her?

Lady Adeline came in at that moment, and I put the question to her,
telling her exactly what I had said. She burst out laughing.

"My dear George!" she exclaimed, "forgive me! I can't help it! But don't
you think yourself you were a little bit abrupt? You do not seem to have
mentioned the fact that you feel any special affection for Evadne. It did
not occur to you to protest that you loved her, for instance?"

"No, it did not," I answered; "I should think that the fact is patent
enough without protestations."

"She may have overlooked it, all the same," Lady Adeline suggested, still
laughing at me. "I would advise you to find out the next time you have a
chance."

"Where is she?" I demanded, going toward the door.

"Oh, you won't see her again to-day, you may be sure," she rejoined; "and
it is just as well, you bear, if you mean to make love to her with that
kind of countenance!"

But I would not be advised.

I strode straight up to her room, which I happened to know, and knocked at
the door.

She answered "Come in!" evidently not expecting me, and when she saw who
it was she was furious.

"I cannot understand what you mean by such conduct!" she exclaimed.

"Well, then, I'll make you understand!" I retorted.

Mr. Hamilton-Wells insinuated afterward that Evadne only accepted me to
save her life. But I protested against the libel. I have never, to my
certain knowledge, uttered a rough word either to or before my little lady
in the whole course of our acquaintance. But why, when she loved me, she
should have gone off in that ridiculous tantrum simply because I did not
begin by expressing my love for her, I shall never be able to understand.
She might have been sure that I should have enough to say on that subject
as soon as I was accepted.

The day after the engagement was announced Diavolo called upon me.
Needless to say he found me in the seventh heaven. I had been walking
about the house, unable to settle to anything, and when I heard he had
come I thought it was to congratulate me, and I hurried down; but the
first glimpse of his face caused my heart to contract ominously.

"Well, you have played me a nice trick," he said, with concentrated
bitterness, "both of you. You knew what _my_ intentions were and you
gave me no hint of your own. You preferred to steal a march on me. I could
not have imagined such a thing possible from you. I should have supposed
that you would have thought such underhand conduct low."

"Diavolo!" I gasped, "are you in earnest?"

"Am I in earnest!" he ejaculated. "Look at me! I suppose you think I am
incapable of deep feeling."

"If only I had known!" I exclaimed. "Yet--how could I guess? The
difference of age--and, Diavolo, my dear boy, believe me, I do sympathise
with you most sincerely. This is a bitter drop in the cup for me.
But--but--even if I had known--will it make it worse for you if I say it?--
it is me she loves. She would not have accepted anyone but me. Even if I
_had_ withdrawn in your favour--"

He waved his hand to stop me. "Don't distress yourself," he said. "It is
fate. We are to be punished with extinction as a family for the sins of
our forefathers. My case will be the same as Uncle Dawne's--only," he
added suddenly, and clenched his fists, "only, if you treat her badly,
I'll blow your brains out."

"I hope you will," I answered.

He looked hard at me with a pained expression in his eyes. "Ah, I'm a
fool," he said; "forgive me! I don't know what I'm saying. I'm mad with
disappointment, and grief, and rage. Of course, if she loves you, I never
had a chance. Yet the possibility of giving me one, had you known,
occurred to you. Well, I will show you that I can be as generous as you
are." He held out his hand. "I--I congratulate you," he faltered; "Only,
make her happy. But I know you will."

He felt about for his hat, and, having found it, walked with an uncertain
step toward the door, blinded with tears.

I stood long as he had left me.

Ah, brother! have you not full oft
Found, even as the Roman did,
That in life's most delicious draught
_Surgit amari aliquid?_

Lady Adeline met me sadly the next time I went to Hamilton House.

"Do you blame me?" I faltered.

"No, oh, no!" she generously responded. "None of us--not one of us--not
even Angelica, suspected for a moment that he was in earnest. It had been
his wolf-cry, you know, all his life. Evadne herself has no inkling of the
truth."

"I hope she never will," I said.

"If it rests with Diavolo, she will not," his mother answered, proud of
him, and with good cause.

It is a salient feature of the Morningquest family history that not one of
them ever had a great grief which they did not make in the long run a
source of joy to other people. Diavolo's first impulse was to go and see
service abroad; but he soon abandoned that idea, although it would have
afforded him the distraction he so sorely needed, and resigned his
commission instead; and then took up his abode at Morne, in order to
devote himself to his grandfather entirely, and it was in Diavolo's
companionship that the latter found the one great pleasure and solace of
his declining years. The old duke had been wont to say of Diavolo at his
worst: "That lad is a gentleman at heart, and, mark my words, he will
prove himself so yet!"

And so he has.

His was the first and loveliest present Evadne received. He did not come
to her second wedding, but, then, nobody else did except his father and
mother, for it pleased us all to keep the ceremony as quiet and private as
possible; so that his absence was not significant; and, afterward, he
rather made a point, if anything, of not avoiding us in any way. In fact,
the only change I noticed in him was that he never again made any of those
laughing protestations of love and devotion to Evadne with which he used
to amuse us all in the dark days of her captivity.

CHAPTER XVIII.

We were married in London, and when the final arrangements were being
discussed, I asked her where she would like to go after the ceremony.

"Oh, let us go home, Don," she said--she insisted on calling me "Don." I
told her the name conveyed no idea to me, but she answered that I was
obtuse, and she was sure I should grow to love it in time, even if I did
not understand it, if it were only because it was _fetish_, and
nobody could use it but herself; to which extent, by the way, I was very
soon able to endorse her opinion. "Don't let us go to nasty foreign
hotels. I hate travelling, and I hate sight-seeing--the kind of
sight-seeing one does for the sake of seeing. We will go home and be
happy. No place could be half so beautiful to me as yours is now."

That she should call it "home" at once, and long to be settled there, was
a good omen, I thought. But she was happy, beyond all possibility of a
doubt, in the anticipation of her life with me.

Soon after our return I took her into Morningquest, and left her to lunch
with her aunt, Mrs. Orton Beg. I had business on the other side of the
city which detained me for some hours, and when at last I could get away,
I hurried back, being naturally impatient to rejoin her. Mrs, Orton Beg
was alone in the drawing room, and I suppose something in the expression
of my face amused her, for she laughed, and answered a question I had not
asked.

"Out there," she said, meaning in the garden.

I turned and looked through the open French window, and instantly that
haunting ghost of an indefinite recollection was laid. Evadne was sleeping
in a high-backed chair, with the creeper-curtained old brick wall for a
background, and half her face concealed by a large summer hat which she
held in her hand.

"I thought you would remember when you saw her so," said Mrs. Orton Beg.
"It was just after that unhappy marriage fiasco. She had run away, and
sought an asylum here, and when you were so struck by her appearance, I
could not help thinking it was a thousand pities that you had not met
before it was too late."

"And then you asked me to use the Scottish gift of second sight--I was
thinking at the moment that she was the kind of girlie I should choose for
a wife, and so I said she should marry a man called George--"

"Which made it doubly a Delphic oracle for vagueness to me," said Mrs.
Orton Beg, "because Colonel Colquhoun's name was also George."

"Now, this is a singular coincidence!" I exclaimed.

"Ah!" she ejaculated. "But I do not talk of 'coincidences'--there is a
special providence, you know."

"Which deserts Edith and protects Evadne?"

"You are incorrigible!"

"You are a demon worshipper! The Infinite Good gives us the knowledge and
power if we will use it. _Evadne_ was a Seventh Wave!"

"'The Seventh Waves of humanity must suffer,' you said." We looked at each
other. "The oracle was ominous. But surely she has suffered enough? Heaven
grant her happiness at last!"

"Amen," I answered fervently.

As soon as we were settled, I tried to order her life so as to take her
mind completely out of the old groove. I kept her constantly out of doors,
and never let her sit and sew alone, for one thing, or lounge in easy
chairs, or do anything else that is enervating.

I made her ride, too, and rise regularly in the morning; not too early,
for that is as injurious in one way as too late is in another; the latter
enervates, but the former exhausts. Regularity is the best discipline. I
taught her also to shoot at a mark, and took her into the coverts in the
autumn; but she could not bear the sight of suffering creatures, and
unfortunately she wounded a bird the first time we were out, and I was
never able to persuade her to shoot at another. However, there was active
exercise enough for her without that, so long as she was able to take it,
and when it became necessary to curtail the amount, she drove both morning
and afternoon, and took short walks and pottered about the grounds in
between times.

I had bought As-You-Like-It while she was abroad with the
Hamilton-Wellses, and had had the whole place pulled down, and the site
converted into a plantation, so that no trace was left of that episode to
vex her. In fact, I had done all that I could think of as likely in any
way to help to re-establish her health, and certainly she was very happy.
Everything I wished her to do seemed to be a pleasure to her; and mind and
body grew rapidly so vigorous that I lost all fear for her. She said she
was a new creature, and she looked it.

When we had been married about a year, Sir Shadwell Rock came to pay us a
visit. Evadne was quite at her best then, and I introduced her to him
triumphantly.

He asked about her progress with kindly interest when we were alone
together, and declared heartily that she was certainly to all appearance
thoroughly restored, that he was quite in love with her himself, and hoped
to see her in the van of the new movement yet.

She took to the dear old man, and told him his great reputation did not
frighten her one bit; and she would lean on his arm familiarly out in the
grounds, pelt him with gorse blossom, fill his pockets with rose leaves
surreptitiously, till they bulged out like bags behind, and keep him
smiling perpetually at her pretty ways. He had been going abroad for a
holiday, but we persuaded him to stay with us instead, and when we parted
with him at last reluctantly, he declared that Evadne had made him young
again, and the wrinkles were all smoothed out.

His last words to me were: "So far so good, Galbraith," and I knew he
meant to warn as well as to congratulate. "Don't keep her in cotton wool
too much. Make her face sickness and suffering while she is well herself.
Take warning by the small-pox epidemic. She has no morbid horror of that
subject, because she knows practically how much can be done for the
sufferers. If she devote herself to good works, she will be sanguine
because so much is being accomplished, instead of dwelling despondently on
the hopeless amount there is still to do."

Soon after this, however, I began to hope that a new interest in life was
coming to cure her of all morbid moods for ever. I was anxious at first,
but she was so quietly happy in the prospect herself, and she continued so
well in spite of the drain upon her strength, that I soon took heart
again.

"You have got to be very young, Don, since I was so good as to marry you,"
she said to me one day.

She had come in with some flowers for me, and had caught me whistling
instead of working.

Sir Shadwell had consented, in his usual kind and generous way, to share
the responsibility of this time with me. He came down to us for an
occasional "week-end," just to see how she progressed, and his
observations, like my own, continued to be satisfactory. It was a crucial
test, we knew. If we could carry her safely through this trying time, she
would be able to take her proper place with the best of her sex in the
battle of life, to fight with them and for them, which was what we both
ardently desired to see her do.

There had been never a word of the mental malady since Colquhoun's death.
I had judged it well to let her forget she had ever suffered so if she
could, and I had no reason to suspect that she ever thought of it. She had
had hours, and even days, of depression since our marriage, but had always
been able to account for them satisfactorily; and now, although of course
she got down at times, she was less often so than is usually the case
under the circumstances, and was always easily consoled.

She paid me a visit in my study one day. She had a habit of coming
occasionally when I was at work, a habit that happily emphasized the
difference between my solitary bachelor days and these. She was shy of her
caresses as a rule, but would occasionally make my knee her seat, if it
happened to suit her convenience, while she filled the flower vases on my
table; or she would stand behind me with her hands clasped round my neck,
and lean her cheek against my hair. She did so now.

"You love your work, Don, don't you?" she said.

"Yes, sweetheart," I answered; "next to you, it is the great delight of my
life."

"But, Don, you find it all-absorbing; don't you?"

"No, not _all_-absorbing, _now_."

"But sufficiently so to be a comfort to you if you ever had any great
grief? After the first shock, you would return to your old pursuits, would
you not? And, by and by, you would find solace in them?"

I unclasped her hands from my neck, and drew her round to me. There was a
new note in her voice that sounded ominous.

"What is the trouble, little woman!" I whispered, when I had her safe in
my arms.

"I don't think I could die and leave you, Don, if I thought you would be
miserable."

"Well, then, don't allow yourself to entertain any doubt on the subject,"
I answered; "for I should be more than 'miserable.' I should never care
for anything in the world again."

"But if I should have to die--"

"There is no need to distress either yourself or me by such an idle
supposition, Evadne," I answered. "There is not the slightest occasion for
alarm."

"I am not _alarmed_," she said, and then she was silent.

A few days later, I found her sitting on the floor in the library, reading
a book she had taken from one of the lower shelves. It was a book of Sir
Shadwell Rock's on the heredity of vice. I took it from her gently,
remarking as I did so: "I would rather you did not read these things just
now, Evadne."

"I suppose you agree with Sir Shadwell Rock," she said.

"Let me help you up," I answered.

"Do you?" she persisted.

"Of course. He is our chief authority," I answered. "But promise me,
Evadne, not to look at any of those books again without consulting me. I
shall be having you like the medical students who imagine they have
symptoms of every disease they study."

"It would mark a strange change in my mind," she answered; "for I used to
be able to study any subject of the kind without being affected in that
way."

That her mind had changed, alas! or rather, that it had been injured by
friction and pressure of the restrictions imposed upon it, was the
suspicion which necessitated my present precaution, but I could not say
so.

She held out her hands for me to help her to rise. "Why are women kept in
the dark about these things?" she said, pointing to the books on heredity.
"Why are we never taught as you are? We are the people to be informed."

"You are quite right," I said. "It is criminal to vithhold knowledge from
any woman who has the capacity to acquire it. But there is a time for
everything, you know, my sweetheart."

"Now, that poor Colonel Colquhoun," she went on as if I had not spoken.
"He for one should never have been born. With his ancestry, he must have
come into the world foredoomed to a life of dissipation and disease. It is
awful to think we may any of us become the parents of people who can't be
moral without upsetting the whole natural order of the universe. O Don! it
is dreadful to know it, but it is sinful to be ignorant of the fact."

"But there is no fear for our children, Evadne," I said. "Ah! that is what
I want to know!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands round my arm.

"Come out into the grounds then, sweetheart," I answered, affecting a
cheerfulness I was far from feeling; "and I will tell you the whole family
history."

I had to go out that evening to see a serious case in consultation with a
brother practitioner. I had ordered the dogcart for ten o'clock, and
Evadne came out into the hall with me from the drawing room, where I had
been reading to her since dinner, when it was brought round.

"_Must_ you go?" she said listlessly.

"I am afraid I must," I answered; "it is a matter of life and death. But
why shouldn't you come too! It will be much better than staying here
alone. I ought to have thought of it sooner. Do come! I will send the
dogcart back, and have the brougham."

"It would delay you," she said, hesitating.

"Oh, no! Two horses in the brougham will get over the ground faster than
one in the dogcart. Come! Let me get you some wraps."

"But when we arrive, my presence will be an inconvenience," she objected.

"In no way," I answered. "It will not be a long business, and you can wait
very well in the carriage with a book and a lamp."

She came out and looked at the night, still undecided. The weather was
damp and uninviting.