The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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Evadne was proud of the boy, but she missed the baby, and complained that
her arms were empty. It was not long, however, happily,--and _a
propos_ of the number of my responsibilities, I was taken to task
severely one day, and discovered that I had in my son a staunch supporter
and a counsellor whose astuteness was not to be despised.

I was finishing my letters one afternoon in the library when Evadne came
in with her daughter in her arms, and Donino clinging to her skirt. I
expected the usual "Don, I am sure you have done enough. Come and have
some tea," and turned to meet it with the accustomed protest; "Just five
minutes more, my sweetheart." But Evadne began in quite another tone.

"I have just heard such a _disgraceful_ thing about you," she said.

"A disgraceful thing about me!" I exclaimed.

"Yes. I hear you were asked the other day how many children you had, and
you answered '_Two or three!_' Now, will you kindly count your
children, and when you are quite sure you know the number off by heart,
repeat it aloud to me, so that I may have some hope that you will not
commit yourself in that way again."

"Oh," I answered, "I know how many _babies_ there are; my difficulty
is about you. I am never quite sure whether to count you as a child or
not."

"Now, I call that a mean little score," she said, carrying her baby off
with an affectation of indignation which deceived Donino.

He had been standing with his back to the writing table and his feet
firmly planted before him, gravely watching us, and now when his mother
left the room he came to my knee and looked up at me confidentially.

"Ou bin naughty, dad?" he asked.

"It looks like it," I answered.

"Ou say ou sorry," he advised.

"What will happen then?" I wanted to know.

"Den de missus 'ill kiss ou," he explained. "Den _dat_ all right."

"Truly 'a wise son maketh a glad father,'" I observed.

Donino knitted his brows, and grumbled a puzzled but polite assent. I saw
signs of reflection afterward, however, which warned me not to be too sure
that I knew exactly where the limits of the little understanding were. But
one thing was evident. The boy was being educated on the principle of
repent and have done with it. Old accounts are not cast up in this
establishment.

Donino watched me putting my writing things away; he was waiting to see me
through my trouble. When I was ready, he took as much of my hand as he
could hold in his, protectingly, and led me to the drawing room with a
dignified air of importance. Sir Shadwell Rock was staying with us at the
time, and my daughter was creeping from her mother to him as we entered
the room, and receiving a large share of his attention. Donino glanced at
him, fearing, perhaps, that his presence as audience would make matters
more unpleasant for me.

"Mumme," he said, "dad's turn."

Evadne looked up inquiringly.

"I've come to say I am sorry," I exclaimed.

"Oh," said Evadne, a little puzzled, "that's right."

Donino looked from one to the other expectantly; but as his mother made no
move, he edged up to her side, and repeated with emphasis: "Dad's sorry."

"That's right," his mother answered, putting her arm round him, and
caressing him fondly.

He drew away from her dissatisfied, and walked to the window, where he
stood, with his thumbs in his belt, and his chin on his chest.

"O Don," Evadne whispered, "do look at yourself in miniature! But what is
the matter? What have I done to disturb him? or left undone?"

"I said I was sorry, and you haven't kissed me," I replied.

Evadne grasped the situation at last, and got up.

"I suppose I must kiss you," she said. "I hope you won't be naughty
again."

The boy made no sign at the moment, but presently he sauntered back to the
tea-table as if he were satisfied.

When the children were gone Sir Shadwell asked for an explanation.

"It is beautiful to watch the mind of a young child unfold," he observed;
"to notice its wonderful grasp, on the one hand, of ideas one would have
thought quite beyond its comprehension, and, on the other, its curious
limitations. Now, that boy of yours reasons already from what he
observes."

"Clearly," I answered. "He observes that my position in this house is
quite secondary, and therefore, although he sees his mother 'naughty'
every day, he never thinks for a moment of suggesting that she should 'own
up' to me."

"Don, you are horrid!" Evadne exclaimed.

The next day she went out early in the afternoon to pay calls.

Sir Shadwell and I accompanied her to the door to see her into her
carriage, and she drove off smiling, and kissing her hand to us.

"Now," I said, as we lingered on the doorstep, watching the carriage glint
between the trees: "what do you think about the wisdom of my marriage?"

"Oh," he answered, his eyes twinkling. "You didn't explain, you know, so I
naturally concluded that you were merely marrying for your own
gratification, in which case you would have been, disappointed when you
found what I foresaw, that, under the circumstances, the pleasure would
not be unmixed. You should have explained that your sole purpose was to
make a very charming young lady healthy-minded again and happy, if you
wanted to know what I thought of your chances of success."

"You're a confounded old cynic," I said, turning into the house.

Sir Shadwell went out into the grounds, and there I found him later,
patiently instructing Donino in the difficult art of stringing a bow, his
white head bowed beside the boy's dark one, and his benign face wrought
into wrinkles of intentness.

I was busy during the afternoon, but I fancied I heard the carriage
return. Evadne did not come to report herself to me, however, as was her
wont after an expedition, and I therefore thought that I must have been
mistaken, and more especially so when she did not appear at tea-time.
After tea, Sir Shadwell settled himself with a book, and I left him. In
the hall I met the footman who had gone out with Evadne.

"When did you return?" I asked.

"I can't say rightly, Sir George," the man replied. "We only paid one call
this afternoon, and then came straight back. Her ladyship seemed to be
poorly."

I ran upstairs to my wife's sitting room. She was lying on a couch asleep,
her face gray, her eyelids swollen and purple with weeping, her hair
disordered. As I stood looking down at her, she opened her eyes and held
up her arms to me. She looked ten years older, a mere wreck of the
healthy, happy, smiling woman who had driven off kissing her hand to us
only a few hours before.

"Tell me the trouble, my sweetheart," I said, kneeling down beside her.
"Where did you go to-day?"

"Only to Mrs. Guthrie Brimston," she answered. "But Mrs. Beale was there
with Edith's boy, and we talked--O Don!" she broke off. "I wish my
children had never been born! The suffering! the awful needless suffering!
How do I know that they will escape?"

Alas! alas! that terrible cry again, and just after we had allowed
ourselves to be sure that it had been silenced at last forever.

I did not reason with her this time. I could only pet her, and talk for
the purpose of distracting her attention, as one does with a child. So
far, I had never for a moment lost heart and hope. I could not believe
that the balance of her fine intelligence had been too rudely shaken ever
to be perfectly restored; but now at last it seemed as if her confidence
in her fellow-creatures, the source of all mental health, had been
destroyed forever, and with that confidence her sense of the value of life
and of her own obligations had been also injured or distorted to a degree
which could not fail to be dangerous on occasion. There are injuries which
set up carcinoma of the mind, we know, cancer spots confined to a small
area at first, but gradually extending with infinite pain until all the
surrounding healthy tissue is more or less involved, and the whole
beautiful fabric is absorbed in the morbid growth, for which there is no
certain palliative in time, and no possible prospect of cure except in
eternity. Was this to be Evadne's case? Alas! alas! But, still, doctors
sometimes mistake the symptoms, and find happily that they have erred when
they arrived at an unfavourable diagnosis. So I said to myself, but the
assurance in no way affected the despair which had settled upon my heart,
and was crushing it.

Late that night I was sitting alone in my study. I had been reading
Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the temple, and the book still lay
open before me. It was a habit of mine to read the Bible when I was much
perturbed. The solemn majestic march of the measured words seldom failed
to restore my tranquillity in a wonderful way, and it had done so now. I
felt resigned. "Hearken therefore unto the supplication of Thy servant"--I
was repeating to myself, in fragments, as the lines occurred to me--"that
Thine eyes may be upon this house day and night ... hear Thou from Thy
dwelling place, even from heaven; and when Thou hearest forgive."

I must have dozed a moment, I think, when I had pronounced the words, for
I had heard no rustle of trailing garments in the library beyond, yet the
next thing I was conscious of was Evadne kneeling beside me. She put her
arms round my neck, and drew my face down to her.

"Don," she said, with a great dry sob, "I am sorry. I have annoyed you
somehow--"

"Not annoyed me, my wife."

"Hurt you then, which is worse. I have taken all the heart out of
you--somehow--I can see that. But I cannot--cannot tell what it is I have
done." She looked into my face piteously, and then hid her own on my
shoulder, and burst into a paroxysm of sobs and tears.

If only I could have made her comprehend what the trouble was! But there!
I _had_ tried, and I had failed.

One little white foot peeped out from beneath her dressing gown, the pink
sole showing. She had got out of bed and slipped on her _pantoufles_
only, and the night was cold. I might have thought that she would lie
awake fretting if she were left alone on a night when her mind was so
disturbed, and here had I been seeking solace myself and forgetting that
great as my own trouble was hers must surpass it even as the infinite does
the finite.

But that error I could repair, I hoped, and it should never be repeated.

"Come, my sweetheart," I said, gathering her up close in my arms. "So long
as you will let me be a comfort to you, you will not be able to hurt me
again; but if at any time you will not listen to my words, if nothing I
can do or say strengthens or helps you, if I cannot keep you from the evil
that it may not grieve you, then I shall know that I have lost all that
makes life worth having, and I shall not care how soon this lamp of mine
goes out."

She looked up at me in a strange startled way, and then she clung closer;
and I thought she meant that, if she could help it, I should not lose the
little all I ask for now--the power to make her life endurable.

THE END.