The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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When she had locked the book away, with some other possessions in a box
that was to be sent to await her arrival at her new home, she took up a
photograph of her lover and gazed at it rapturously for a moment, then
pressed it to her lips and breast, and placed it where her eyes might
light on it as soon as she awoke.

She was aroused by a kiss on her lips and a warm tear on her cheek next
morning. "Wake, darling," her mother said. "This is your wedding day."

"Oh, mother," she cried, flinging her arms round her neck; "how good of
you to come yourself! I _am_ so happy!"

Mr. Hamilton-Wells, Lady Adeline, and the Heavenly Twins had been at the
Fraylings' since breakfast, and nothing had happened.

Lady Adeline, having seen the children safely and beautifully dressed for
the ceremony, Angelica as a bridesmaid, Diavolo as page, left them
sitting, with a picture-book between them, like model twins.

"Really," she said to Mr. Hamilton-Wells, "I think the occasion is too
interesting for them to have anything else in their heads."

But the moment she left them alone those same heads went up, and set
themselves in a listening attitude.

"_Now_, Diavolo; _quick_!" said Angelica, as soon as the sound
of her mother's departing footsteps had died away.

Diavolo dashed the picture-book to the opposite side of the room, sprang
up, and followed Angelica swiftly but stealthily to the very top of the
house.

When the wedding party assembled in the drawing room the twins were
nowhere to be found, Mr. Hamilton-Wells went peering through his eyeglass
into every corner, removed the glass and looked without it, then dusted
it, and looked once more to make sure, while Lady Adeline grew rigid with
nervous anxiety.

The search had to be abandoned, however; but when the party went down to
the carriages, it was discovered, to everybody's great relief, that the
children had already modestly taken their seats in one of them with their
backs to the horses. Each was carefully covered with an elegant wrap, and
sitting bolt upright, the picture of primness. The wraps were superfluous,
and Mr. Hamilton-Wells was about to remonstrate, but Lady Adeline
exclaimed: "For Heaven's sake, _don't_ interfere! It is such a
_trifle_. If you irritate them, goodness knows _what_ will
happen."

But, manlike, he could not let things be.

"Where have you been, you naughty children?" he demanded in his precisest
way. "You have really given a great deal of trouble."

"Well, papa," Angelica retorted hotly, at the top of her voice through the
carriage window for the edification of the crowd, "you said we were to be
good children, and not get into everybody's way, and here we have been
sitting an hour as good as possible, and quite out of the way, and you
aren't satisfied! It's quite unreasonable; isn't it, Diavolo? Papa can't
get on, I believe, _without_ finding fault with us. It's just a bad
habit he's got, and when we give him no excuse he invents one."

Mr. Hamilton-Wells beat a hasty retreat, and the party arrived at the
church without mishap, but when the procession was formed there was a
momentary delay. They were waiting for the bride's page, who descended
with the youngest bridesmaid from the last carriage, and the two came into
the church demurely, hand in hand, "What darlings!" "Aren't they pretty?"
"What a sweet little boy, with his lovely dark curls!" was heard from all
sides; but there was also an audible titter. Lady Adeline turned pale,
Mrs. Frayling's fan dropped. Evadne lost her countenance. The twins had
changed clothes.

There was nothing to be done then, however; so Angelica obtained the
coveted pleasure of acting as page to Evadne, and Diavolo escaped the
trouble of having to hold up her train, and managed besides to have some
fun with a small but amorous boy who was to have been Angelica's pair, and
who, knowing nothing of the fraud which had been perpetrated, insisted on
kissing the fair Diavolo, to that young gentleman's lasting delight.

It was a misty morning, with only fitful glimpses of sunshine.

Mrs. Frayling was not a bit superstitious (nobody is), but she had been
watching the omens (most people do), and she would have been better
satisfied had the day been bright; but still she felt no shadow of a
foreboding until the twins appeared. Then, however, there arose in her
heart a horrified exclamation: "It is unnatural! It will bring bad luck."

There was no fun for the Heavenly Twins apart, so they decided to sit
together at the wedding breakfast, and nobody dared to separate them, lest
worse should come of it.

Diavolo bet he would drink as much champagne as Major Colquhoun, and
having secured a seat opposite to an uncorked bottle, he proceeded
conscientiously to do his best to win the wager. Toward the end of
breakfast, however, he lost count, and then he lost his head, and showed
signs of falling off his chair.

"You must go to sleep under the table now," said Angelica. "It's the
proper thing to do when you're drunk. _I'm_ going to. But I'm not far
enough gone yet. My legs are queer, but my head is steady. Get under, will
you? I'll be down directly." And she cautiously but rapidly dislodged him,
and landed him at her feet, everybody's attention being occupied at the
moment by the gentleman who was gracefully returning thanks for the
ladies. When the speech was over Lady Adeline remembered the twins with a
start, and at once missed Diavolo.

"Where is he?" she asked anxiously.

"He is just doing something for me, mamma," Angelica answered.

He was acting at that moment as her footstool under the table. She did not
join him there as she had promised, however, because when the wine made
her begin to feel giddy she took no more. She said afterward she saw no
fun in feeling nasty, and she thought a person must be a fool to think
there was, and Diavolo, who was suffering badly at the moment from
headache and nausea, the effect of his potations, agreed. That was on the
evening of the eventful day at their own town house, their father and
mother having hurried them off there as soon after Diavolo was discovered
in a helpless condition as they could conveniently make their escape. The
twins had been promptly put to bed in their respective rooms, and told to
stay there, but, of course, it did not in the least follow that they would
obey, and locking them up had not been found to answer. Angelica did
remain quiet, however, an hour or so, resting after all the excitement of
the morning; but she got up eventually, put on her dressing gown, and went
to Diavolo; and it was then they discussed the drink question. Discussion,
however, was never enough for the twins; they always wanted to _do_
something; so now they went down to the library together, erected an altar
of valuable books, and arrayed themselves in white sheets, which they tore
from the parental couch for the purpose, considerably disarranging the
same; and the sheets they covered with crimson curtains, taken down at
imminent risk of injuring themselves from one of the dining room windows,
with the help of a ladder, abstracted from the area by way of the front
door, although they _were_ in their dressing-gowns, the time chosen
for this revel being when their parents were in the drawing room after
dinner, and all the servants were having their supper and safe out of the
way. The ladder was used to go down to the coal cellar, and never, of
course, replaced, the consequence being that the next person who went for
coal fell in in the dark, and broke her leg, an accident which cost Mr.
Hamilton-Wells from first to last a considerable sum, he being a generous
man, and unwilling to let anyone suffer in pocket in his service; he
thought the risks to life and limb were sufficient without that.

Having completed these solemn preparations the twins swore a ghastly oath
on the altar never to touch drink again, and might they be found out in
everything they did on earth if they broke it, and never see heaven when
they died!

The wedding breakfast went off merrily enough, and when the bride and
bridesmaids left the table, and the dining room door was safely shut,
there was much girlish laughter in the hall, and an undignified scamper up
the stairs, also a tussle as to who should take the first pin from the
bride's veil and be married next, and much amusement when Mrs, Frayling's
elderly maid unconsciously appropriated it herself in the way of business.

Evadne hugged her, exclaiming: "You dear old Jenny! You _shall_ be
married next, and I'll be your bridesmaid!"

"Oh, no you won't!" cried one of the girls. "You'll never be a bridesmaid
again."

Then suddenly there was silence. "Never again" is chilling in effect; it
is such a very long time.

As Evadne was leaving the room in her travelling dress she noticed some
letters lying on her dressing table, which she had forgotten, and turned
back to get them. They had come by the morning's post, but she had not
opened any of them, and now she began to put them into her pocket one by
one to read at her leisure, glancing at the superscriptions as she did so.
One was from Aunt Olive: dear Aunt Olive, how kind of her! Two were
letters of congratulation from friends of the family. A fourth was from
the old housekeeper at Fraylingay; she kissed that. The fifth was in a
strange and peculiar hand which she did not recognize, and she opened it
first to see who her correspondent might be. The letter was from the
North, and had been addressed to Fraylingay, and she should have received
it some days before. As she drew it from its envelope she glanced at the
signature and at the last few words, which were uppermost, and seemed
surprised. She knew the writer by name and reputation very well, although
they had never met, and, feeling sure that the communication must be
something of importance, she unfolded the letter, and read it at once
deliberately from beginning to end.

When she appeared among the guests again she was pale, her lips were set,
and she held her head high. Her mother said the dear child was quite
overwrought, but she saw only what she expected to see through her own
tear-bedimmed eyes, and other people were differently impressed. They
thought Evadne was cold and preoccupied when it came to the parting, and
did not seem to feel leaving her friends at all. She went out dry-eyed
after kissing her mother, took her seat in the carriage, bowed polite but
unsmiling acknowledgments to her friends, and drove off with Major
Colquhoun with as little show of emotion, and much the same air as if she
had merely been going somewhere on business, and expected to return
directly.

"Thank goodness, all that is over!" Major Colquhoun exclaimed. She looked
at him coolly and critically.

He was sitting with his hat In his hand, and she noticed that his hair was
thin on his forehead, and there was nothing of youth in his eyes.

"I expect you are tired," he further observed.

"No, I am not tired, thank you," Evadne answered.

Then she set her lips once more, leant back, and looked out of the
carriage window at the street all sloppy with mud, and the poor people
seeming so miserable in the rain which had been falling steadily for the
last hour.

"Poor weary creatures!" she thought. "We have so much, and they so
little!" But she did not speak again till the carriage pulled up at the
station, when she leant forward with anxious eyes, and said something
confusedly about the crowd.

Major Colquhoun thought she was afraid of being stared at. He took out his
watch.

"You will only have to cross the platform to the carriage," he said, "and
the train ought to be up by this time. But if you don't mind being left
alone a moment, I'll just go myself and see if it is, and where they are
going to put us, and then I can take you there straight, and you won't
feel the crowd at all."

He was not gone many minutes, but when he returned the carriage was empty.

"Where is Mrs. Colquhoun?" he said.

"She followed you, sir," the coachman answered, touching his hat.

"Confound--" He pulled himself up. "She'll be back in a moment, I
suppose," he muttered.

"Dover express! Take your seats!" bawled a porter. "Are you for the Dover
express?"

"Yes," said Major Colquhoun.

"Engaged carriage, sir?"

"Yes--oh, by the way, perhaps she's gone to the carriage," and he started
to see, the porter following him. "Did you notice a young lady in a gray
dress pass this way?" he asked the man as they went.

"With a pink feather in 'er 'at, sir?"

"Yes."

"Not pass up this way, sir," the man rejoined. "She got into a 'ansom over
there, and drove off--if it was the same young lady." Major Colquhoun
stopped short. The compartment reserved for them was empty also.

"Dover express! Dover express!" the guard shouted as he came along banging
the carriage doors to.

"For Dover, sir?" he said in his ordinary voice to Major Colquhoun.

"No. It seems not," that gentleman answered deliberately.

The guard went on: "Dover express! Dover express! All right, Bill!" This
was to someone in front as he popped into his own van, and shut the door.

Then the whistle shrieked derisively, the crank turned, and the next
moment the train slid out serpent-like into the mist. Major Colquhoun had
watched it off like any ordinary spectator, and when it had gone he looked
at the porter, and the porter looked at him.

"Was your luggage in the train, sir?" the man asked him.

"Yes, but only booked to Dover," Major Colquhoun answered carelessly,
taking out a cigarette case and choosing a cigarette with exaggerated
precision. When he had lighted it he tipped the porter, and strolled back
to the entrance, on the chance of finding the carriage still there, but it
had gone, and he called a hansom, paused a moment with his foot on the
step, then finally directed the man to drive to the Fraylings'.

"Swell's bin sold some'ow," commented the porter. "And if I was a swell I
wouldn't take on neither."

CHAPTER XIII.

The Fraylings had decided to postpone all further festivities till the
bride and bridegroom's return, so that the wedding guests had gone, and
the house looked as drearily commonplace as any other in the street when
the hansom pulled up a little short of the door for Major Colquhoun to
alight.

The servant who answered his ring made no pretense of concealing his
astonishment when he saw who it was, but Major Colquhoun's manner
effectually checked any expression of it. He was not the kind of a man
whom a servant would ever have dared to express any sympathy with, however
obviously things might have gone wrong. But there was nothing in Major
Colquhoun's appearance at that moment to show that anything had gone
wrong, except his return when he should have been off on his wedding
journey. There was probably a certain amount of assumption in his apparent
indifference. He had always cultivated an inscrutable bearing, as being
"the thing" in his set, so that it was easy for him now to appear to be
cooler and more collected than he was. His attitude, however, was largely
due to a want of proper healthy feeling, for he was a vice-worn man, with
small capacity left for any great emotion.

He walked into the hall and hung up his hat.

"Is Mr. Frayling alone?" he said.

"Yes, sir--with Mrs. Frayling--and the family--upstairs in the drawing
room," the man stammered.

"Ask him to see me down here, please. Say a gentleman." He stepped to a
mirror as he spoke and carefully twisted the ends of his blond moustache.

"Very good, sir," said the servant.

Major Colquhoun walked into the library in the same deliberate way, and
turned up the gas. Mr. Frayling came hurrying down, fat and fussy, and
puffing a little, but cheerfully rubicund upon the success of the day's
proceedings, and apprehending nothing untoward. When he saw his son-in-law
he opened his eyes, stopped short, turned pale, and gasped.

"Is Evadne here?" Major Colquhoun asked quietly.

"Here? No! What should she be doing here? What has happened?" Mr. Frayling
exclaimed aghast.

"That is just what I don't rightly know myself if she is not here," Major
Colquhoun replied, the quiet demeanour he had assumed contrasting
favourably with his father-in-law's fuss and fume.

"Why have you left her? What are you doing here? Explain," Mr. Frayling
demanded almost angrily.

Major Colquhoun related the little he knew, and Mr. Frayling plumped down
into a chair to listen, and bounced up again, when all was said, to speak.

"Let me send for her mother," he began, showing at once where, in an
emergency, he felt that his strength lay. "No, though, I'd better go
myself and prepare her," he added on second thought. "We mustn't make a
fuss--with all the servants about too. They would talk." And then he
fussed off himself, with agitation evident in every step.

Something like a smile disturbed Major Colquhoun's calm countenance for a
moment, and then he stood, twisting the ends of his fair moustache slowly
with his left hand, and gazing into the fire, which shone reflected in his
steely blue eyes, making them glitter like pale sapphires, coldly, while
he waited.

Mr. Frayling returned with his wife almost immediately. The latter had had
her handkerchief in her hand all day, but she put it in her pocket now.

Major Colquhoun had to repeat his story.

"Did you look for her in the waiting rooms?" Mrs. Frayling asked.

"No."

"She may be there waiting for you at this very moment."

It was a practical suggestion.

"But the porter said he saw her get into a hansom," Major Colquhoun
objected.

"He said he saw a young lady in gray get into a hansom, I understood you
to say," Mrs. Frayling corrected him. "A young lady in gray is not
necessarily Evadne. There might be a dozen young ladies in gray in such a
crowd."

"There might, yes," Mr. Frayling agreed.

"And the proof that it was not Evadne is that she is not here," her mother
proceeded. "If she had been seen getting into a hansom it could only have
been to come here."

"A hansom might break down on the way," said Major Colquhoun, entertaining
the idea for a moment.

"That is not impossible," Mr. Frayling decided.

"But why should she come here?" Major Colquhoun slowly pursued, looking
hard at his parents-in-law. "Had she any objection to marrying me? Was she
overpersuaded into it?"

"Oh, _no_!" Mrs. Frayling exclaimed emphatically. "How _can_ you
suppose such a thing? We should never have _dreamed_ of influencing
the dear child in such a matter. If there were ever a case of love at
first sight it was one. Why, her first words on awaking this morning, were:
'Oh, mother! I _am_ so happy!' and that doesn't sound like being
overpersuaded!"

"Then what, in God's name, is the explanation of all this?" Major
Colquhoun exclaimed, showing some natural emotion for the first time.

"That is it," said Mr. Frayling energetically. "There must be some
explanation."

"Heaven grant that the dear child has not been entrapped in some way and
carried off, and robbed, and murdered, or something _dreadful_," Mrs.
Frayling cried, giving way to the strain all at once, and wringing her
hands.

Then they looked at each other, and the period of speculation was followed
by a momentary interregnum of silence, which would in due course be
succeeded by a desire to act, to do something, if nothing happened in the
meantime. Something did happen, however. The door bell rang violently.
They looked up and listened. The hall door was opened. Footsteps
approached, paused outside the library, and then the butler entered, and
handed Mr. Frayling a telegram on a silver salver.

"Is there any answer, sir?" he asked.

Mr. Frayling opened it with trembling hands and read it. "No; no answer,"
he said.

The butler looked at them all as if they interested him, and withdrew.

"Well," cried Mrs. Frayling, her patience exhausted. "Is it from her?"

"Yes," Mr. Frayling replied, "It was handed in at the General Post Office
at--"

"The General Post Office!" Major Colquhoun ejaculated. "What on earth took
her there?"

"The hansom, you know," said Mrs. Frayling. "Oh, dear"--to her
husband--"_do_ read it."

"Well, I'm going to, if you'll let me," he answered irritably, but
delaying, nevertheless, to mutter something irrelevant about women's
tongues. Then he read: "'Don't be anxious about me. Have received
information about Major C.'s character and past life which does not
satisfy me at all, and am going now to make further inquiries. Will
write.'"

"Information about my character and past life!" exclaimed Major Colquhoun.
"Why, what is wrong with my character? What have I done?"

"Oh, the child is mad! she must be mad!" Mrs. Frayling ejaculated.

Mr. Frayling fumed up and down the room in evident perturbation. He had
not a single phrase ready for such an occasion, nor the power to form one,
and was consequently compelled to employ quite simple language.

"You had better make inquiries at the post office," he said to Major
Colquhoun, "and try and trace her. You must follow her and bring her back
at once, if possible."

"Not I, indeed," was Major Colquhoun's most unexpected rejoinder; "I shall
not give myself any trouble on her account; she may go."

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, don't say that, George!" Mrs. Frayling exclaimed.
"You _do_ love her, and she loves _you_; I _know_ she does. Some
_dreadful_ mischief-making person has come between you. But wait, _do_
wait, until you know more. It will all come right in the end. I am _sure_
it will."

Major Colquhoun compressed his lips and looked sullenly into the fire.

CHAPTER XIV.

On the third day after Evadne's wedding, in the afternoon, Mrs. Orton Beg
was sitting alone in her long, low drawing room by the window which looked
out into the high-walled garden. She had found it difficult to occupy
herself with books and work that day. Her sprained ankle had been
troublesome during the night, and she had risen late, and when her maid
had helped her to dress, and she had limped downstairs on her crutches,
and settled herself in her long chair, she found herself disinclined for
any further exertion, and just sat, reclining upon pale pink satin
cushions, her slender hands folded upon her lap, her large, dark luminous
eyes and delicate, refined features all set in a wistful sadness.

There was a singular likeness between herself and Evadne in some things, a
vague, haunting family likeness which continually obtruded itself but
could not be defined. It had been more distinct when Evadne was a child,
and would doubtless have grown greater had she lived with her aunt, but
the very different mental attitude which she gradually acquired had melted
the resemblance, as it were, so that at nineteen, although her slender
figure, and air, and carriage continually recalled Mrs. Orton Beg, who was
then in her thirty-fifth year, the expression of her face was so different
that they were really less alike than they had been when Evadne was four
years younger. Evadne's disposition, it must be remembered, was
essentially swift to act. She would, as a human being, have her periods of
strong feeling, but that was merely a physical condition in no way
affecting her character; and the only healthy minded happy state for her
was the one in which thought instantly translated itself into action.

With Mrs. Orton Beg it was different. Her spiritual nature predominated,
her habits of mind were dreamy. She lived for the life to come entirely,
and held herself in constant communion with another world. She felt it
near her, she said. She believed that its inhabitants visit the earth, and
take cognizance of all we do and suffer; and she cherished the certainty
of one day assuming a wondrous form, and entering upon a new life, as
vivid and varied and as real as this, but far more perfect. Her friends
were chiefly of her own way of thinking; but her faith was so profound,
and the charm of her conversation so entrancing, that the hardest headed
materialists were apt to feel strange delicious thrills in her presence,
forebodings of possibilities beyond the test of reason and knowledge; and
they would return time after time to dispute her conclusions and argue
themselves out of the impression she had produced, but only to relapse
into their former state of blissful sensation so soon as they once more
found themselves within range of her influence. Opinions are germs in the
moral atmosphere which fasten themselves upon us if we are predisposed to
entertain them; but some states of feeling are a perfume which every
sentient being must perceive with emotions that vary from extreme
repugnance to positive pleasure through diverse intermediate strata of
lively interest or mere passive perception; and the feeling which emanated
from Mrs. Orton Beg is one that is especially contagious. For, in the
first place, the beauty of goodness appeals pleasurably to the most
depraved; to be elevated above themselves for a moment is a rare delight
to them; and, in the second, there is a deeply implanted leaning in the
heart of man toward the something beyond everything, the impalpable,
impossible, imperceptible, which he cannot know and will not credit, but
is nevertheless compelled to feel in some of his moods, or in certain
presences, and having once felt, finds himself fascinated by it, and so
returns to the subject for the sake of the sensation. In that long, low
drawing room of Mrs. Orton Beg's, with the window at either end, in view
of the gray old cathedral towering above the gnarled elms of the Lower
Close, itself the scene of every form of human endeavour, every expression
of human passion, in surroundings so heavy with memories of the past, and
listening to the quiet tone of conviction in which Mrs. Orton Beg spoke,
with the double charm of extreme polish and simplicity combined--in that
same room even the worldliest had found themselves rise into the ecstasy
of the higher life, spiritually freed for the moment, and with the desire
to go forth and do great deeds of love.