The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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"I don't think I'll go, Don," she said, shivering. "Good-bye and safe home
to you!"

As I drove along, I cast about in my own mind for a suitable companion for
Evadne, someone who would vary the monotony for her when I had to be out.
She had no ladyloves, as so many women have. Mrs. Orton Beg was at
Fraylingay again, and Lady Adeline was the only other friend I knew of who
would be congenial just then; but she had multifarious duties of her own
to attend to, and it would not have been fair to ask her, especially as
she was sure to come if she knew she was wanted, however great the
inconvenience to herself. I knew nothing at that time of two other friends
of Evadne's, Mrs. Sillinger and Mrs. Malcomson, to whom I afterward learnt
that she was much attached. Owing, I think, to the unnatural habit of
reticence which had been forced upon her, she had not mentioned them to
me, although she continued to correspond with them. It took her some time
to realize that every interest of hers was matter of moment to me. A
certain colonel and Mrs. Guthrie Brimston had recently settled in the
neighbourhood, in order, as they gave out, to be near the Morningquest
family, with whom they claimed relationship, on the ground, I believe,
that they also were Guthries. Colonel Guthrie Brimston led people to
suppose that he had left the service entirely on the duke's account, his
disinterested intention being to vary the monotony for the poor old
gentleman during his declining years. They had claimed Evadne's
acquaintance with effusion, but she had not responded very cordially.

"Let them have a carriage and horses whenever they like, Don," she said,
"and give them plenty to eat; but don't otherwise encourage them to come
here."

Recollecting which, I now inferred that Mrs. Guthrie Brimston would not
answer my present purpose at all.

This was the first time Evadne had shown any objection to being left
alone. She used to insist upon my going away sometimes, because, she said,
I should be so very glad to come back to her! But she was never exacting
in any way, and never out of temper. And she had such pretty ways as a
wife! little endearing womanly ways which one felt to be the spontaneous
outcome of tenderness untold, and inexpressible. It was strange how her
presence pervaded the house; strange to me that one little body could make
such a difference.

Foolishly fond if you like. But if every man could care as much for a
woman, hallowed would be her name, and the strife-begetting uncertainties
of heaven and hell would be allowed to lapse in order to make room for
healthy human happiness. Our hearts have been starved upon fables long
enough; we demand some certainty; and as knowledge increases, waging its
inexorable war of extermination against evil, our beautiful old earth will
be allowed to be lovable, and life a blessing, and death itself only a
last sweet sleep, neither to be sought nor shunned--"The soothing sinking
down on hard-earned holy rest," from which, if we arise again, it shall
not be to suffer. No life could be fuller of promise than mine at this
moment. Nothing was wanting but the patter of little feet about the house,
and they were coming. Doubts and fears were latent for once. My hopes were
limitless, my content was extreme.

"May you have quiet rest to-night, my darling; may your heart grow strong,
and your faith in man revive at last."

About halfway to my destination, I met the gentleman who had asked me out
in consultation, returning. He was on his way to my house to tell me that
the patient was dead. My presence could therefore be of no avail, and I
turned back also. I had not been absent more than an hour, but I found, on
entering the house, that Evadne had already retired. It was a good sign, I
thought, as she had been rather fidgety the whole day. I had some letters
to write, and went at once to my study for the purpose, taking a candle
with me from the hall. The servants, not expecting me back until late, had
turned out most of the lights downstairs. The lamp in my study, however,
was still burning. It stood on the writing table, and the first thing I
saw, on entering the room, was a letter lying conspicuously on the
blotting pad. It was from Evadne to me.

She had evidently intended me to get it in the morning, for a tray was
always left for me in the dining room in case I should be hungry when I
came in late, and my chances were all against my going to the study again
that night. I put my candle down, and tore the note open with trembling
hands. The first few lines were enough. "I am haunted by a terrible fear,"
she wrote. "I have tried again and again to tell you, but I never could.
You would not see that it is prophetic, as I do--in case of our
death--nothing to save my daughter from Edith's fate--better both die at
once." So I gathered the contents. No time to read. I crumpled the note
into my pocket. My labouring breath impeded my progress a moment, but,
thank Heaven! I was not paralyzed. Involuntarily I glanced at my
laboratory. It was an inner room, kept locked as a rule, but the door was
open now--as I knew I had expected it to be. I seized the candle and went
to the shelf where I kept the bottles with the ominous red labels. One was
missing.

"Evadne!" I shouted, running back through the study and library into the
hall, and calling her again and again as I went. If it were not already
too late, and she had heard my voice, I knew she would hesitate. I tore up
the stairs, and I must have flown, although it seemed a century before I
reached her room. I flung open the door.

She _had_ heard me.

She was standing beside a dressing table in a listening attitude, with a
glass half raised to her lips, and her eyes met mine as I entered.

My first cry of distress had reached her, and the shock of it had been
sufficient. Had that note fallen into my hands but one moment later--but I
cannot bear to think of it. Even at this distance of time the recollection
utterly unmans me. The moment I saw her, however, I could command myself.
I took the glass from her hand, and threw it into the fireplace with as
little show of haste as possible.

"To bed now, my sweetheart," I said; "and no more nonsense of this kind,
you know."

She looked at the fragments of the broken glass, and then at me, in a half
wondering, half regretful, half inquiring way that was pitiful to see.
Shaken as I was, I could not bear it. While the danger lasted, it was no
effort to be calm; but now I broke down, and, throwing myself into a
chair, covered my face with my hands, thoroughly overcome.

In a moment she was kneeling beside me.

"O Don!" she exclaimed, "what is it? Why are you so terribly upset?"

Poor little innocent sinner! The one idea had possessed her to the
exclusion of every other consideration. I said nothing to her, of course,
in the way of blame. It would have been useless. She was bitterly sorry to
see me grieved; but her moral consciousness was suspended, and she felt no
remorse whatever for her intention, except in so far as it had given me
pain. The impulse had passed for the moment, however, and I was so sure of
it that I did not even take the fatal phial away with me when I went to my
dressing room; but for forty-six days and nights I never left her an hour
alone. The one great hope, however, that the cruel obliquity would be
cured by the mother's love when it awoke amply sustained me.

She was well and cheerful for the rest of the time, greatly owing, I am
sure, to the influence of Sir Shadwell Rock, who came at once, like the
kind and generous friend he was, without waiting to be asked, when he
heard what had happened; and announced himself prepared to stay until the
danger was over. I heard Evadne laugh very soon after his arrival, and
could see that "the worry in her head," as she described it, had gone
again, and was forgotten. The impulse, which would have robbed me of all
my happiness and hopes had she succeeded in carrying it out, never cost
her a thought. The saving suffering of an agony of remorse was what we
should like to have seen, for in that there would have been good assurance
of healthy moral consciousness restored.

It seemed to be only the power to endure mental misery which had been
injured by those weary days of enforced seclusion and unnatural
inactivity, for I never knew anyone braver about physical pain. It was the
strength to contemplate the sufferings of others, which grows in action
and is best developed by turning the knowledge to account for their
benefit, that had been sapped by ineffectual brooding, until at last,
before the moral shock of indignation which the view of preventable human
evils gave her, her right mind simply went out, and a disordered faculty
filled the void with projects which only a perverted imagination could
contemplate as being of any avail.

Whatever doubts we may have had about her feeling for the child when it
came were instantly set at rest. Nothing could have been healthier or more
natural than her pride and delight in him. When she saw him for the first
time, after he was dressed, I brought him to her myself with his little
cheek against my face.

"O Don!" she exclaimed, her eyes opening wide with joy. "I love to see you
like that! But what is she like, Don? Give her to me!"

"_She_, indeed!" I answered. "Don't insult my son. He would reproach
you himself, but he is speechless with indignation."

"O Don, don't be ridiculous!" she cried, stretching up her arms for him.
"Is it really a boy? Do give him to me! I want to see him so!" When I had
put him in her arms, she gathered him up jealously, and covered him with
kisses, then held him off a little way to look at him, and then kissed him
again and again.

"Did you ever see a baby before?" I asked her.

"No, never! never!" she answered emphatically; "never such a darling as
this, at all events! His little cheek is just like velvet; and, see! he
can curl up his hands! Isn't it wonderful, Don? He's like you, too. I'm
sure he is. He's quite dark."

"He's just the colour of that last sunset you were raving about. I told
you to be careful."

"O Don, how can you!" she exclaimed. It was beautiful to see her raptures.
She was like a child herself, so unaffectedly glad in her precious little
treasure, and so surprised! The fact that he would move independently and
have ideas of his own seemed never to have occurred to her.

So far so good, as Sir Shadwell said; and we soon had her about again; but
the first time she sat up, after her cushions had been arranged for her,
and her baby laid on her lap, when I stooped to give them both a kiss of
hearty congratulation, she burst into tears.

"It is nothing, Don, don't be concerned," she said, trying bravely to
smile again. "I was thinking of my mother. This would have been such a
happy day for her."

This made me think of the breach with her father. I had forgotten that she
had a father, but it occurred to me now that a reconciliation might add to
her happiness, and I wrote to him accordingly to that effect, making the
little grandson my excuse. Mr. Frayling replied that he had heard
indirectly of his daughter's second marriage, but was not surprised to
receive no communication from herself on the subject, because her whole
conduct for many years past had really been most extraordinary. If,
however, she had become a dutiful wife at last, as I had intimated, he was
willing to forgive her, and let bygones be bygones: whereupon I asked him
to Fountain Towers, and he came.

He was extremely cordial. I had a long talk with him before he saw Evadne,
during which I discovered from whence she took her trick of phrase-making.
He expressed himself as satisfied with me, and my position, my reputation,
and my place. He also shook his watch chain at my son, which denoted great
approval, I inferred; and made many improving remarks, interspersed with
much good advice on the subject of babies and the management of estates.

Evadne had been very nervous about meeting him again, but the baby broke
the ice, and she was unfeignedly glad to make friends. Upon the whole,
however, the reconciliation was not the success that I had anticipated.
Father and daughter had lost touch, and, after the first few hours, there
was neither pleasure nor pain in their intercourse; nothing, in fact, but
politeness. The flow of affection had been too long interrupted. It was
diverted to other channels now, and was too deeply imbedded in them to be
coaxed back in the old direction. Love is a sacred stream which withdraws
itself from the sacrilegious who have offered it outrage.

It was an unmitigated happiness, however, to Evadne to have her brothers
and sisters with her again, and from that time forward we bad generally
some of them at Fountain Towers.

Mrs. Kilroy of Ilverthorpe, otherwise known to her friends as Angelica,
was one of the first people privileged to see the baby.

"Oh, you queer little thing!" she exclaimed, pointing her finger at it by
way of caress. "I've been thinking all this time that babies were always
Speckled Toads. And you are all rosy, and dimpled, and plump, you pretty
thing! I wish I had just a dozen like you!"

Poor erratic Angelica, with all her waywardness, "but yet a woman!" There
was only the one man that I have ever known who could have developed the
best that was in Angelica, and him she had just missed, as so often
happens in this world of contraries. I am thinking of our poor Julian,
known to her as the Tenor, whom she had met when it was too late, and in
an evil hour for us and for herself apparently, the consequences having
been his death and her own desolation. Yet I don't know. Those were the
first consequences certainly, but others followed and are following. The
memory of one good man is a light which sheds the brightest rays that fall
on the lives of thousands--as Mr. Kilroy has reason to know; with whom,
after the Tenor, Angelica is happier than she could have been with any
other man. And then, again, she has Diavolo. The close friendship between
them, which had been interrupted for some years, was renewed again in some
inexplicable way by the effect of my marriage on Diavolo, and since then
they have been as inseparable as their respective duties to husband and
grandfather allow. And so the web of life is woven, the puzzling strands
resolving themselves out of what has seemed to be a hopeless tangle into
the most beautiful designs.

Some of Evadne's ideas of life were considerably enlarged in view of the
boy's future.

"I am so glad you are a rich man," she said to me one day, "and have a
title and all that. It doesn't matter for you, you know, Don, because you
_are_ you. But it will give the baby such a start in life."

She summoned me at a very early period of his existence to choose a name
for him, and having decided upon George Shadwell Beton, she had him
christened with all orthodox ceremony by the Bishop of Morningquest as
soon as possible. That duty once accomplished must have relieved her mind
satisfactorily with regard to a _Christian_ name for him, for she has
insisted on calling him by the heathen appellation of Donino ever since,
for the flattering reason that his temper when thwarted is exactly like
mine.

"I am sure when you were his age you used to kick and scream just as he
does when his wishes are not carried out on the instant," she said. "You
don't kick and scream now when you are vexed; you look like thunder, and
walk out of the room."

"Baby seems to afford you infinite satisfaction when he kicks and screams.
You laugh and hug him more, if anything, in his tantrums than when he is
good," I remarked.

"I take his tantrums for a sign of strength," she answered. "He is merely
standing on his dignity, and demanding his rights as a rule. It was the
same thing with his father when he frowned and walked out of the room. He
wouldn't be sat upon either, and I used to see in that a sign of
self-respect also. It is a long time now since I saw you frown and walk
out of the room, Don."

"It is a long time since you attempted to sit upon me," I said.

"I am afraid I neglect you," she answered apologetically; "you see, Donino
requires so much of my time."

She continued to be cheerful for months after the birth of the boy, and we
waited patiently for some sign which should be an assurance of her
complete restoration to mental health; or, so far as I was concerned, for
an opportunity of testing her present feeling about the subject that
distressed her. I had given up expecting a miraculous cure in a moment,
and now only hoped for a gradual change for the better.

The opportunity I was waiting for came one winter's afternoon when she was
playing with the baby. It was a moment of leisure with me, the afternoon
tea-time, which I always arranged to spend with her if possible, and
especially if she would otherwise have been alone, as was the case on this
occasion.

I had been responding for half an hour, as well as I could, to incessant
appeals for sympathy and admiration--not that I found it difficult to
admire the boy, who was certainly a splendid specimen of the human race,
although perhaps I ought not to say so; but my command of language never
answered his mother's expectations, somehow, when it came to expressing my
feelings.

"Do you think you care as much for him as I do, Don?" she burst out at
last.

"More," I answered seriously.

"Why? How?" she demanded, surprised by my tone.

"Because I never could have hurt him."

"Hurt him!" she exclaimed, gathering him up in her arms. "Do you mean that
I could hurt him! hurt my baby! Oh!" She got up and stood looking at me
indignantly for a few seconds with the child's face hidden against her
neck; and then she rang the bell sharply, and sent him away.

"What do you mean, Don?" she said, when we were alone together again.
"Tell me? You would not say a cruel thing like that for nothing."

"I am referring to that night before he was born," I said, taking the
little bottle from my pocket. This seems to me to have been the cruellest
operation that I have ever had to perform.

"O Don!" she cried, greatly distressed. "I understand I should have killed
him. But why, why do you remind me of that now?"

"I want to be quite sure that you have learnt what a mistaken notion that
was, and that you regret the impulse."

She sat down on a low chair before the fire, with her elbows on her knees
and her face buried in her hands, and remained so for some time. She
wanted to think it out, and tell me exactly.

"I do not feel any regret," she said at last. "I would not do the same
thing now, but it is only because I am not now occupied with the same
thoughts. They have fallen into the background of my consciousness, and I
no longer perceive the utility of self-sacrifice."

"But do you not perceive the sin of suicide?"

"Not of that kind of suicide," she answered. "You see, we have the divine
example. Christ committed suicide to all intents and purposes by
deliberately putting himself into the hands of his executioners; but his
motive makes _them_ responsible for the crime; and my motive would
place society in a similar position."

"Your view of the great sacrifice would startle theologians, I imagine,"
was my answer. "But, even allowing that Christ was morally responsible for
his own death, and thereby set the example you would have followed to save
others from suffering; tell me, do you really see any comparison between
an act which had the redemption of the world for its object and the only
result that could follow from, the sacrifice of one little mother and
child?"

"What result, Don?"

"Breaking your husband's heart, spoiling his life, and leaving him lonely
forever."

She started up and threw herself on her knees beside me, clasping her
hands about my neck.

"O Don, don't say that again!" she cried, "Don't say anything like that
again--ever--will you?"

"You know I should never think of it again if I could be sure--"

She hid her head upon my shoulder, but did not answer immediately.

"I am seeking for some assurance in myself to give you," she said at last;
"but I feel none. The same train of thought would provoke me again--no,
not to the same act, but to something desperate; I can't tell what. But I
suffer so, Don, when such thoughts come, from grief, and rage, and horror,
I would do almost anything for relief."

"But just think--" I began,

"No, don't ask me to think!" she interrupted. "All my endeavour is not to
think. Let me live on the surface of life, as most women do. I will do
nothing but attend to my household duties and the social duties of my
position. I will read nothing that is not first weeded by you of every
painful thought that might remind me. I will play with my baby by day, and
curl up comfortably beside you at night, infinitely grateful and content
to be so happily circumstanced myself--Don, help me to that kind of life,
will you? And burn the books. Let me deserve my name and be 'well pleasing
one' to you first of all the world, and then to any with whom I may come
in contact. Let me live while you live, and die when you die. But do not
ask me to think. I can be the most docile, the most obedient, the most
loving of women as long as I forget my knowledge of life; but the moment I
remember I become a raging fury; I have no patience with slow processes;
'Revolution' would be my cry, and I could preside with an awful joy at the
execution of those who are making the misery now for succeeding
generations."

"But, my dear child, it would surely be happier for you to try to
alleviate--"

"No, no," she again interrupted. "I know all you can say on that score;
but I cannot bear to be brought into contact with certain forms of
suffering. I cannot bear the contradictions of life; they make me rage."

"What I want to say is that you should act, and not think," I ventured.

"How can I act without thinking?" she asked.

"You see, if you don't act you must think," I pursued; "and if you do
think without acting, you become morbid. The conditions of an educated
woman's life now force her to know the world. She is too intelligent not
to reason about what she knows. She sees what is wrong; and if she is
high-minded she feels forced to use her influence to combat it. If she
resists the impulse her conscience cannot acquit her, and she suffers
herself for her cowardice."

"I know," she answered. "But don't let us discuss the subject any more."

We were silent for some time after that, and then I made a move as if to
speak, but checked myself.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I was going to ask you to do something to oblige me; but now I do not
like to."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, much hurt; "do you really think there is anything I
would not do for you, if I could?"

"Well, this is mere trifle," I answered. "I want you to take that sturdy
much be-ribboned darling of yours to see my poor sick souls in the
hospital. A sight of his small face would cheer them. Will you?"

"Why, _surely_," she said. "How _could_ you doubt it? I shall be
delighted."

"And there was another thing--"

"Oh, don't hesitate like that," she exclaimed. "You can't think how you
hurt me."

"I very much wish you would take charge of the flowers in the hospital for
me, that was what I was going to say, I should be so pleased if you should
make them your special care. If you would cut them yourself, and take them
and arrange them whenever fresh ones are wanted, you would be giving me as
much pleasure as the patients. And you might say something kind to them as
you pass through the wards. Even a word makes all the difference in their
day."

"Why didn't you ask me to do this before?" she said, reproachfully.

"I was a little afraid of asking you now," I answered.

"I shall begin to-morrow," she said. "Tell me the best time for me to go?"

There is a great deal in the way a thing is put, was my trite reflection
afterward. If I had given Evadne my reason for particularly wishing her to
visit the hospital, she would have turned it inside out to show me that it
was lined with objections; but, now, because I had asked her to oblige me
simply, she was ready to go; and would have gone if had cost her half her
comfort in life. This was a great step in advance. As in the small-pox
epidemic, so now at the hospital, she had no horror of anything she
_saw_. It was always what she imagined that made her morbid.

CHAPTER XIX.

Following these days there came a time of perfect peace for both of us,
Evadne's health was satisfactory; she led the life she had planned for
herself; and so long as she shut out all thought of the wicked world and
nothing occurred to remind her of the "awful needless suffering" with
which she had become acquainted in the past, she was tranquilly happy.

Donino rapidly grew out of arms. He was an independent young rascal from
the first, and would never be carried if he could walk, or driven from the
moment he could sit a pony--grip is the word, I know, but his legs were
not long enough to grip when he began, and his rides were therefore
conducted all over the pony's back at first. His object was to keep on,
and in order to do so without the assistance he scorned, he rode like a
monkey.