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The Heavenly Twins

by Sarah Grand · English · Gutenberg #8676 · 1,585,570 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Heavenly Twins

Author: Sarah Grand


        
Release date: August 1, 2005 [eBook #8676]
                Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEAVENLY TWINS ***




Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Andy Schmitt and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team



THE HEAVENLY TWINS

BY MADAME SARAH GRAND
AUTHOR OF "IDEALA," ETC. ETC.


"They call us the Heavenly Twins."
"What, signs of the Zodiac?" said the Tenor.
"No; signs of the times," said the Boy.


  The time is racked with birth-pangs; every hour
  Brings forth some gasping truth, and truth new-born
  Looks a misshapen and untimely growth,
  The terror of the household and its shame,
  A monster coiling in its nurse's lap
  That some would strangle, some would starve;
  But still it breathes, and passed from hand to hand,
  And suckled at a hundred half-clad breasts
  Comes slowly to its stature and its form,
  Calms the rough ridges of its dragon scales,
  Changes to shining locks its snaky hair,
  And moves transfigured into Angel guise,
  Welcomed by all that cursed its hour of birth,
  And folded in the same encircling arms
  That cast it like a serpent from their hold!

--_Oliver Wendell Holmes_.




PROEM.


_Mendelssohn's "Elijah."_
[Illustration: (musical notation); lyrics: He, watch-ing o-ver Is--ra--el,
slumbers not, nor sleeps.]

From the high Cathedral tower the solemn assurance floated forth to be a
warning, or a promise, according to the mental state of those whose ears
it filled; and the mind, familiar with the phrase, continued it
involuntarily, carrying the running accompaniment, as well as the words
and the melody, on to the end. After the last reverberation of the last
stroke of every hour had died away, and just when expectation had been
succeeded by the sense of silence, they rang it out by day and night--the
bells--and the four winds of heaven by day and night spread it abroad over
the great wicked city, and over the fair flat country, by many a tiny
township and peaceful farmstead and scattered hamlet, on, on, it was said,
to the sea--to the sea, which was twenty miles away!

But there were many who doubted this; though good men and true, who knew
the music well, declared they had heard it, every note distinct, on summer
evenings when they sat alone on the beach and the waves were still; and it
sounded then, they said, like the voice of a tenor who sings to himself
softly in murmurous monotones. And some thought this must be true, because
those who said it knew the music well, but others maintained that it could
not be true just for that very reason; while others again, although they
confessed that they knew nothing of the distance sound may travel under
special circumstances, ventured, nevertheless, to assert that the chime
the people heard on those occasions was ringing in their own hearts; and,
indeed, it would have been strange if those in whose mother's ears it had
rung before they were born, who knew it for one of their first sensations,
and felt it to be, like a blood relation, a part of themselves, though
having a separate existence, had not carried the memory of it with them
wherever they went, ready to respond at any moment, like sensitive chords
vibrating to a touch.

But everything in the world that is worth a thought becomes food for
controversy sooner or later, and the chime was no exception to the rule.
Differences of opinion regarding it had always been numerous and extreme,
and it was amusing to listen to the wordy warfare which was continually
being waged upon the subject.

There were people living immediately beneath it who wished it far enough,
they said, but they used to boast about it nevertheless when they went to
other places--just as they did about their troublesome children, whom they
declared, in like manner, that they expected to be the death of them when
they and their worrying ways were within range of criticism. It was a
flagrant instance of the narrowness of small humanity which judges people
and things, not on their own merits, but with regard to their effect upon
itself; a circumstance being praised to-day because importance is to be
derived from _its_ importance, and blamed to-morrow because a bilious
attack makes thought on any subject irritating.

Other people liked the idea of the chime, but were not content with its
arrangement; if it had been set in another way, you know, it would have be
so different, they asserted, with as much emphasis as if there were wisdom
in the words. And some said it would have been more effective if it had
not rung so regularly, and some maintained that it owed its power to that
same regularity which suggested something permanent in this weary world of
change. Among the minor details of the discussion there was one point in
particular which exercised the more active minds, but did not seem likely
ever to be settled. It was as to whether the expression given to the
announcement by the bells did not vary at different hours of the day and
night, or at different seasons of the year at all events; and opinion
differed as widely upon this point as we are told they did on one occasion
in some other place with regard to the question whether a fish weighed
heavier when it was dead than when it was alive--a question that would
certainly never have been settled either, had it not happened, after a
long time and much discussion, that someone accidentally weighed a fish,
when it was found there was no difference. The question of expression,
however, could not be decided in that way, expression being imponderable;
and it was pretty generally acknowledged that the truth could not be
ascertained and must therefore remain a matter of opinion. But that did
not stop the talk. Once, indeed, someone declared positively that the
state of a man's feelings at the moment would influence his perceptions,
and make the chimes sound glad when he was glad, and mournful when he was
melancholy; but nobody liked the solution.

Let them wrangle as they might, however, the citizens were proud of their
chime, and for a really good reason. It meant something! It was not a mere
jingle of bells, as most chimes are, but a phrase with a distinct idea in
it which they understood as we understand a foreign language when we can
read it without translating it. It might have puzzled them to put the
phrase into other words, but they had it off pat enough as it stood, and
they held it sacred, which is why they quarrelled about it, it being usual
for men to quarrel about what they hold sacred, as if the thing could only
be maintained by hot insistence--the things they hold sacred, that
is--although they cannot be sure of them, like the forms of a religion
which admit of controversy, as distinguished from the God they desire to
worship about whom they have no doubt, and therefore never dispute.

In this latter respect, however, the case of the people of Morningquest
was just the reverse of that which obtains in most other places, for in
consequence of the hourly insistence of the chime, their most impressive
monitor, they talked much more of Him whom they should worship than of
various ways to worship him; and the most persistent of all the questions
which occupied their attention arose out of the involuntary but continuous
effort of one generation after another to define with scientific accuracy
and to everybody's satisfaction his exact nature and attributes; in
consequence of which efforts there had come to be several most distinct
but quite contradictory ideas upon the subject. There were some
simple-minded folk to whom the chime typified a God essentially masculine,
and like a man, hugely exaggerated, but somewhat amorphous, because they
could not see exactly in what the exaggeration consisted except in the
size of him. They pictured him sitting alone on a throne of ivory and gold
inlaid with precious stones; and recited the catalogue of those mentioned
in the Book of the Revelation by preference as imparting a fine scriptural
flavor to the dea. And he sat upon the throne day and night, looking down
upon the earth, and never did anything else nor felt it monotonous. Buddha
himself, in Nirvana, could not have attained to a greater perfection of
contemplation than that with which they credited this curious divinity,
who served solely for a finish to their mental range as the sky was to
their visual; a useful point at which to aim their rudimentary faculty of
reverence.

But others, again, of a different order of intelligence, had passed beyond
this stage and saw in him more

  of a creature
  Moving about in worlds not realized;

very like Jove, but unmarried. He was both beneficent and jealous, and had
to be propitiated by regular attendance at church; but further than that
he was not exacting; and therefore they ventured to take his name in vain
when they were angry, and also to call upon him for help, with many
apologies, when there was nobody else to whom they could apply; although,
so long as the current of their lives ran smoothly on, they seldom
troubled their heads about him at all.

There were deeper natures than those, however, who were not content with
this small advance, and these last had by degrees, as suited their
convenience but without perceiving it, gradually discovered in him every
attribute, good, bad, or indifferent, which they found in themselves, thus
ascribing to him a nature of a highly complex and most extraordinarily
inconsistent kind, less that of a God than of a demon. To them he was
still a great shape like a man, but a shape to be loved as well as feared;
a God of peace who patronized war; a gentle lamb who looked on at carnage
complacently; a just God who condemned the innocent to suffer; an
omnipotent God who was powerless to make his law supreme; and they
reserved to themselves the right of constantly adding to or slightly
altering this picture; but having completed it so far, they were
thoroughly well satisfied with it, and, incongruous as it was, they
managed to make it the most popular of all the presentments, partly
because, being so flexible, it could be adjusted to every state of mind;
but also because there was money in it. Numbers of people lived by it, and
made name and fame besides; and these kept it going by damaging anybody
who ventured to question its beauty. For there is no faith that a man
upholds so forcibly as the one by which he earns his livelihood, whether
it be faith in the fetish he has helped to make, or in a particular kind
of leather that sells quickest because it wears out so fast.

In these latter days, however, it began to appear as if the supremacy of
the great masculine idea was at last being seriously threatened, for even
in Morningquest a new voice of extraordinary sweetness had already been
heard, not _his_, the voice of man; but _theirs_, the collective
voice of humanity, which declared that "He, watching," was the
all-pervading good, the great moral law, the spirit of pure love, Elohim,
mistranslated in the book of Genesis as "He" only, but signifying the
union to which all nature testifies, the male and female principles which
together created the universe, the infinite father and mother, without
whom, in perfect accord and exact equality, the best government of nations
has always been crippled and abortive.

Those who heard this final voice were they who loved the chime most truly,
and reverenced it; but they did not speak about it much: only, when the
message sounded, they listened with that full-hearted pleasure which is
the best praise and thanks. Mendelssohn must have felt it when the melody
first occurred to him, and the words had wedded themselves to the music in
his soul!

[Illustration: (musical notation); lyrics: He, watch-ing o-ver Is--ra--el,
slumbers not, nor sleeps.]

And the chime certainly had power to move the hearts of many; but it would
be hard to say when it had most power, or upon whom. Doubtless, the
majority of those who had ears to hear in the big old fashioned city heard
not, use having dulled their faculties; or if, perchance, the music
reached them it conveyed no idea to their minds, and passed unheeded. It
was but an accustomed measure, one more added to the myriad other sounds
that make up the buzz of life, and help, like each separate note of a
chord, to complete the varied murmur which is the voice of "a whole city
full."

But of course there were times when it was specially apt to strike
home--in the early morning, for instance, when the mind was fresh and hope
was strong enough to interpret the assurance into a promise of joy; and
again at noon, when fatigue was growing and the mind perceived a
sympathetic melancholy in the tones which was altogether restful; but it
was at midnight it had most power. It seemed to rise then to the last
pitch of enthusiasm, sounding triumphant, like the special effort that
finishes a strain, as if to speed the departing interval of time; but when
it rang again, after the first hour of the new day, its voice had dropped,
as it were, to that tone of indifference which expresses the accustomed
doing of some monotonous duty which has become too much of a habit to
excite either pleasure or pain. To the tired watcher then, for whom the
notes were mere tones conveying no idea, the soft melancholy cadence,
dulled by distance, was like the half-stifled echo of her own last stifled
sigh.

It is likely, however, that the chime failed less of its effect outside
the city than it did within; but there again it depended upon the hearer.
When the mellow tones floated above the heath where the gipsies camped,
only one, perchance, might listen, lifting her bright eyes with pleasure
and longing in them, dumbly, as a child might, yet showing for a moment
some glimmering promise of a soul. But to many in the village close at
hand the chime brought comfort. It seemed to assure the sick, counting the
slow hours, that they were not forsaken, and helped them to bear their
pain with patience; it seemed to utter to the wayworn a word which told
them their trouble was not in vain; it seemed to invite all those who
waited and were anxious to trust their care to Him and seek repose. It was
all this, and much more, to many people: and yet, when it spread in
another direction over the fields, it meant nothing to the yawning
ploughman, either musical or poetical, had no significance whatever for
him if it were not of the time of day, gathered, however, with the help of
sundry other sensations of which hunger and fatigue were chief. It
probably conveyed as much, and neither more nor less, to the team he
drove.

But perhaps of all the affairs of life with which the chime had mingled,
the most remarkable, could they be collected and recorded, would be the
occasions on which the hearing of the message had marked a turning point
in the career of some one person, as happened, once on a summer afternoon,
when it was heard by a Lancashire collier--a young lad with an unkempt mop
of golden hair, delicate features, and limbs which were too refined for
his calling, who was coming up the River Morne on a barge.

The river winds for a time through a fertile undulating bit of country,
and nothing of the city can be seen until you are almost in it, except the
castle of the Duke of Morningquest, high perched on a hill on the farther
side, and the spire of the cathedral, which might not attract your
attention, however, if it were not pointed out to you above the trees.
When the chime floated over this sparsely peopled tract, filling the air
with music, but coming from no one could tell whence, there was something
mysterious in the sound of it to an imaginative listener in so apparently
remote a place; and once, twice, as the long hours passed, the young
collier heard it ring, and wondered. He had nothing to do but listen, and
watch the man on the bank who led the horse that was towing the barge; or
address a rare remark to his solitary companion--an old sailor, dressed in
a sou'-wester, blue jersey, and the invariable drab trowsers,
tar-besprent, and long boots, of his calling, who steered automatically,
facing the meadows in beautiful abstraction. He would have faced an
Atlantic gale, however, with that same look.

When the chime rang out for the third time, the young collier spoke:

"It's the varse of a song, maybe?" he suggested.

"Aye, lad," was the laconic rejoinder.

The barge moved on--passed a little farmhouse close to the water's edge;
passed some lazy cattle standing in a field flicking off flies with their
tails; passed a patient fisherman, who had not caught a thing that day,
and scarcely expected to, but still fished on. The sun sparkled down on
the water; the weary man and horse plodded along the bank; far away, a
sweet bird sang; and the collier spoke again.

"Dost tha' know the varse?" he said.

The old man had been brought up in those parts; he knew it well; and
slowly repeated it to the lad, who listened without a sign, sitting with
his dreamy eyes fixed on the water:

"He, watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor sleeps."

There was another long silence, and then the lad spoke once more, with
apathetic gravity, asking: "Who's _He?_"

The old man kept his eyes fixed on a distant reach of the river, and moved
no muscle of his face.

"I guess it's Christ," he said at last.

"Ah niver 'eerd tell on 'im," the collier answered slowly.

"Hast 'niver 'eerd tell on Christ?" the old man asked in measured
machine-like tones. "I thowt ivery one know'd on 'im. Why, what religion
are you?"

"Well, me feyther's a Liberal--leastways 'im as brought me up," was the
passionless rejoinder, slowly spoken; "but ah doan't know no one o' the
name o' Christ, an', what's more, ah's sure 'e doan't work down our way,"--
with which he sauntered forward with his hands in his trowser pockets, and
sat in the bow; and the old man steered on as before.

How like a mind is to a river! both may be pure and transparent and
lovable, and strong to support and admirable; each may mirror the beauties
of earth and sky, and still have a wonderful beauty of its own to delight
us; both are always moving onward, bound irresistibly to be absorbed in a
great ocean mystery, to be swept away irreclaimably, without hope of
return, but leaving memories of themselves in good or evil wrought by them;
and both are pure at the outset, but can be contaminated, when they in
turn contaminate; and, being perverted in their use, become accursed, and
curse again with all the more effect because the province of each was to
bless.

The collier lad in the bow of the barge felt something of the fascination
of the river that day. He saw it sparkle in the sunshine, he heard it
ripple along its banks, he felt the slow and dreamy motion of the boat it
bore; and his mind was filled with unaccustomed thought, and a strange
yearning which he did not understand. There was something singularly
attractive about the lad, although his clothes were tattered, his golden
hair and delicate skin were begrimed, his great bright eyes had no
intelligent expression in them, and there was that discontented
undisciplined look about his mouth which is common to uneducated men. He
had no human knowledge, but he had capacity, and he had music, the divine
gift, in his soul, and the voice of an angel to utter it.

What passed through his dim consciousness in the interval which followed
his last remark, no one will ever know; but the chime had once more
sounded; and, suddenly, as he sat there, he took up the strain, and sang
it--and the labourers in the fields, and the loiterers by the river, and
the ladies in their gardens, even the very cattle in the meadows, looked
up and listened, wondering, while he varied the simple melody, as singers
can, finding new meaning in the message, and filling the summer silence
with perfect raptures of ecstatic sound.

It was a voice to gladden the hearts of men, and one who heard it knew
this, and followed the barge, and took the lad and had him taught, so that
in after days the world was ready to fall at his feet and worship the
gift.

And so time passed. Change followed change, but the chime was immutable.
And always, whatever came, it rang out calmly over the beautiful old city
of Morningquest, and entered into it, and was part of the life of it,
mixing itself impartially with the good and evil; with all the sin and
suffering, the pitiful pettiness, the indifference, the cruelty, and every
form of misery-begetting vice, as much as with the purity above reproach,
the charity, the self-sacrifice, the unswerving truth, the patient
endurance, and courage not to be daunted, which are in every city--mixing
itself with these as the light and air of heaven do, and with effects
doubtless as unexpected and as fine; and ready also to be a help to the
helpless, a guide to the rash and straying, a comfort to the comfortless,
a reproach to the reckless, and a warning to the wicked. Perhaps an
ambitious stranger, passing through the city, would hear the chime, and
pause to listen, and in the pause a flash of recollection would show him
the weary way he had gone, the disappointments which were the inevitable
accompaniments of even his most brilliant successes in the years of toil
that had been his since he made the world his idol and swerved from the
Higher Life; and then he would ask himself the good of it all, and finding
that there was no good, he would go his way, cherishing the new
impression, and asking of all things,

"Is it too late now?"

And perhaps at the same moment a lady rolling past in her carriage would
say, "How sweet!" or the beauty of the bells might win some other
thoughtless tribute from her, if she heard the chime at all; but probably
she never heard it, because the accustomed tones were as familiar as the
striking of the hour--the striking of an hour that bore no special
significance for her, and therefore set no chord vibrating in her soul.
The thoughts of her mind deafened her heart to it as completely as the
thunder of a waggon had at the same time deafened the waggoner's ears
while the bells uttered their message above him. And so it was with the
doctor, overworked and anxious, hurrying on his rounds; the grasping
lawyer, absorbed in calculation, and all the other money-grubbers; the
indolent woman, the pleasure-seeker, and the hard-pressed toiler for daily
bread: if they heard they heeded not because their hour had not yet come.
At least this is what some thought, who believed that for every one a
special hour would come, when they would be called, and then left to
decide, as it were, between life and death-in-life; if they accepted life,
the next message would be fraught with strength and help and blessing; but
if they rejected it, the bells would utter their condemnation, and leave
them to their fate.




CONTENTS.

I. CHILDHOODS AND GIRLHOODS

II. A MALTESE MISCELLANY

III. DEVELOPMENT AND ARREST OF DEVELOPMENT

IV. THE TENOR AND THE BOY--AN INTERLUDE

V. MRS. KILROY OF ILVERTHORPE

VI. THE IMPRESSIONS OF DR. GALBRAITH




BOOK I.

CHILDHOODS AND GIRLHOODS.


The spring is the pleasantest of the seasons; and the young of most
animals, though far from being completely fashioned, afford a more
agreeable sensation than the full grown; because the imagination is
entertained with the promise of something more, and does not acquiesce in
the present object of the sense.--_Burke on the Sublime_.


I am inclined to agree with Francis Galton in believing that education and
environment produce only a small effect on the mind of anyone, and that
most of our qualities are innate.--_Darwin_.




THE HEAVENLY TWINS.

CHAPTER I.


At nineteen Evadne looked out of narrow eyes at an untried world
inquiringly. She wanted to know. She found herself forced to put prejudice
aside in order to see beneath it, deep down into the sacred heart of
things, where the truth is, and the bewildering clash of human precept
with human practice ceases to vex. And this not of design, but of
necessity. It was a need of her nature to know. When she came across
something she did not understand, a word, a phrase, or an allusion to a
phase of life, the thing became a haunting demon only to be exorcised by
positive knowledge on the subject. Ages of education, ages of hereditary
preparation had probably gone to the making of such a mind, and rendered
its action inevitable. For generations knowledge is acquired, or, rather,
instilled by force in families, but, once in a way, there comes a child
who demands instruction as a right; and in her own family Evadne appears
to have been that child. Not that she often asked for information. Her
faculty was sufficient to enable her to acquire it without troubling
herself or anybody else, a word being enough on some subjects to make
whole regions of thought intelligible to her. It was as if she only
required to be reminded of things she had learnt before. Her mother said
she was her most satisfactory child. She had been easy of education in the
schoolroom. She had listened to instruction with interest and
intelligence, and had apparently accepted every article of faith in God
and man which had been offered for her guidance through life with
unquestioning confidence; at least she had never been heard to object to
any time-honoured axiom. And she did, in fact, accept them all, but only
provisionally. She wanted to know. Silent, sociable, sober, and sincere,
she had walked over the course of her early education and gone on far
beyond it with such ease that those in authority over her never suspected
the extent to which she had outstripped them.

It was her father who struck the keynote to which the tune of her early
intellectual life was set. She was about twelve years old at the time, and
they were sitting out on the lawn at Fraylingay one day after dinner, as
was their wont in the summer--he, on this occasion, under the influence of
a good cigar, mellow in mind and moral in sentiment, but inclining to be
didactic for the moment because the coffee was late; she in a receptive
mood, ready to gather silently, and store with care, in her capacious
memory any precept that might fall from his lips, to be taken out and
tried as opportunity offered.

"Where is your mother?" he asked.

"I don't know, father," Evadne answered. "I think she is in the drawing
room."

"Never say you _think_, my dear, about matters of fact," he said.
"When it is possible to _know_ it is your business to find out, and
if you cannot find out you must say you don't know. It is moral cowardice,
injurious to yourself, not to own your ignorance; and you may also be
misleading, or unintentionally deceiving, someone else."

"How might the moral cowardice of not owning my ignorance be injurious to
myself, father?" she asked.

"Why, don't you see," he answered, "you would suffer in two ways? If the
habit of inaccuracy became confirmed, your own character would deteriorate;
and by leading people to suppose that you are as wise as themselves, you
lose opportunities of obtaining useful information. They won't tell you
things they think you know already."

Evadne bent her brows upon this lesson and reflected; and doubtless it was
the origin of the verbal accuracy for which she afterward became notable.
Patient investigation had always been a pleasure, but from that time
forward it became a principle also. She understood from what her father
had said that to know the facts of life exactly is a positive duty; which,
in a limited sense, was what he had intended to teach her; but the extent
to which she carried the precept would have surprised him.

Her mind was prone to experiment with every item of information it
gathered, in order to test its practical value; if she could turn it to
account she treasured it; if not, she rejected it, from whatever source it
came. But she was not herself aware of any reservation in her manner of
accepting instruction. The trick was innate, and in no way interfered with
her faith in her friends, which was profound. She might have justified it,
however, upon her father's authority, for she once heard him say to one of
her brothers: "Find out for yourself, and form your own opinions," a
lesson which she had laid to heart also. Not that her father would have
approved of her putting it into practice. He was one of those men who
believe emphatically that a woman should hold no opinion which is not of
masculine origin, and the maxims he had for his boys differed materially
in many respects from those which he gave to his girls. But these precepts
of his were, after all, only matches to Evadne which fired whole trains of
reflection, and lighted her to conclusions quite other than those at which
he had arrived himself. In this way, however, he became her principal
instructor. She had attached herself to him from the time that she could
toddle, and had acquired from his conversation a proper appreciation of
masculine precision of thought. If his own statements were not always
accurate it was from no want of respect for the value of facts; for he was
great on the subject, and often insisted that a lesson or principle of
action is contained in the commonest fact; but he snubbed Evadne promptly
all the same on one occasion when she mentioned a fact of life, and drew a
principle of action therefrom for herself. "Only confusion comes of women
thinking for themselves on social subjects," he said, "You must let me
decide all such matters for you, or you must refer them to your husband
when you come under his control."

Evadne did not pay much attention to this, however, because she remembered
another remark of his with which she could not make it agree. The remark
was that women never had thought for themselves, and that therefore it was
evident that they could not think, and that they should not try. Now, as
it is obvious that confusion cannot come of a thing that has never been
done, the inaccuracy in one or other of these statements was glaring
enough to put both out of the argument. But what Evadne did note was the
use of the word control.

As she grew up she became her father's constant companion in his walks,
and, flattered by her close attention, he fell into the way of talking a
good deal to her. He enjoyed the fine flavour of his own phrase-making,
and so did she, but in such a silent way that nothing ever led him to
suspect it was having any but the most desirable effect upon her mind. She
never attempted to argue, and only spoke in order to ask a question on
some point which was not clear to her, or to make some small comment when
he seemed to expect her to do so. He often contradicted himself, and the
fact never escaped her attention, but she loved him with a beautiful
confidence, and her respect remained unshaken.

When she had to set herself right between his discrepancies she did not
dwell on the latter as faults in him, but only thought of how wise he was
when he warned her to be accurate, and felt grateful. And in this way she
formed her mind upon his sayings; and as a direct result of the long,
informal, generally peripatetic lectures to which she listened without
prejudice, and upon which she brought unsuspected powers of discrimination
to bear, he had unconsciously made her a more logical, reasoning,
reasonable being than he believed it possible for a woman to be. Poor
papa! All that he really knew of his most interesting daughter was that
she was growing up a good child, physically strong and active, morally
well educated, with a fortunately equable temper; and that she owed a
great deal to him. What, precisely, was never defined. But when the
thought of his kindness recurred to him it always suffused him with
happiness.

He was a portly man, with a place in the country, and a house in town; not
rich for his position, but well off; a magistrate, and much respected;
well educated in the ideas of the ancients, with whom his own ideas on
many subjects stopped short, and hardly to be called intellectual; a
moderate Churchman, a bigoted Conservative, narrow and strongly prejudiced
rather than highly principled. He was quite ignorant of the moral progress
of the world at the present time, and ready to resent even the upward
tendency of evolution when it presented itself to him in the form of any
change, including, of course, changes for the better, and more especially
so if such change threatened to bring about an improvement in the position
of women, or increase the weight of their influence for good in the world.
The mere mention of the subject made him rabid, and he grew apoplectic
whenever he reflected upon the monstrous pretensions of the sex at the
present time. But the thing that roused his scorn and indignation most was
when a woman ventured to enter any protest against the established order
of iniquity. He allowed that a certain number of women must of necessity
be abandoned, and raised no objection to that; but what he did consider
intolerable was that any one woman should make a stand against the
degradation of her own sex. He thought that immoral.

He was well enough to live with, however, this obstinate English country
gentleman, although without sympathetic insight, and liable to become a
petty domestic tyrant at any moment. "Sound" was what he would have called
himself. And he was a man to be envied upon the whole, for his family
loved him, and his friends knew no ill of him.




CHAPTER II.


Evadne, like the Vicar of Wakefield, was by nature a lover of happy human
faces, and she could be playful herself on occasion; but she had little if
any of the saving sense of humor.

Her habit was to take everything _au grand serieux_, and to consider
it. When other people were laughing she would be gravely observant, as if
she were solving a problem; and she would sooner have thought of trying to
discover what combination of molecules resulted in a joke, with a view to
benefiting her species by teaching them how to produce jokes at will, than
of trying to be witty herself. She had, too, a quite irritating trick of
remaining, to all outward seeming, stolidly unmoved by events which were
causing an otherwise general commotion; but in cases of danger or
emergency she was essentially swift to act--as on one occasion, for
instance, when the Hamilton House twins were at Fraylingay.

The twins had arrived somewhat late in the married lives of their parents,
and had been welcomed as angel visitants, under which fond delusion they
were christened respectively Angelica and Theodore. Before they were well
out of their nurse's arms, however, society, with discernment, had changed
Theodore's name to Diavolo, but "Angelica" was sanctioned, the irony being
obvious.

The twins were alike in appearance, but not nearly so much so as twins
usually are. It would have been quite easy to distinguish them apart, even
if one had not been dark and the other fair, and for this mercy everybody
connected with them had reason to be thankful, for as soon as they reached
the age of active indiscretion they would certainly have got themselves
mixed if they could. Angelica was the dark one, and she was also the
elder, taller, stronger, and wickeder of the two, the organizer and
commander of every expedition. Before they were five years old everybody
about the place was upon the alert, both in self-defence and also to see
that the twins did not kill themselves. Bars of iron had to be put on the
upstairs windows to prevent them making ladders of the traveller's joy and
wisteria, modes of egress which they very much preferred to commonplace
doors; and Mr. Hamilton-Wells had been reluctantly obliged to have the
moat, which was deep and full of fish, and had been the glory of Hamilton
House for generations, drained for fear of accidents. Argument was
unavailing with the twins as a means of repression, but they were always
prepared to argue out any question of privilege with their father and
mother cheerfully. Punishment, too, had an effect quite other than that
intended. They were interested at the moment, but they would slap each
other's hands and put each other in the corner for fun five minutes after
they had received similar chastisement in solemn earnest.

They would have lived out of doors altogether by choice, and they managed
to make their escape in all weathers. If the vigilant watch that was kept
upon them were relaxed for a moment, they disappeared as if by magic, and
would probably only be recovered at the farthest limit of their father's
property, or in the kitchen of some neighbouring country gentleman, where
they were sure to be popular. They were always busy about something, and
when every usual occupation failed, they fought each other. After a battle
they counted scars and scratches for the honour of having most, and if
there were not bruises enough to satisfy one of them, the other was always
obligingly ready to fight again until there were.

Mr. Hamilton-Wells had great faith in the discipline of the Church service
for them, and was anxious that they should be early accustomed to go
there. They behaved pretty well while the solemnity was strange enough to
awe them, and one Sunday when Lady Adeline--their mother--could not
accompany him, Mr. Hamilton-Wells ventured to go alone with them. He took
the precaution to place them on either side of him so as to separate them
and interpose a solid body between them and any signals they might make to
each other; but in the quietest part of the service, when everybody was
kneeling, some movement of Diavolo's attracted his attention for a moment
from Angelica, and when he looked again the latter had disappeared. She
had discovered that it was possible to creep from pew to pew beneath the
seats, and had started to explore the church. On her way, however, she
observed a pair of stout legs belonging to a respectable elderly woman who
was too deep in her devotion to be aware of the intruder, and, being
somewhat astonished by their size, she proceeded to test their quality
with a pin, the consequence being an appalling shriek from the woman,
which started a shrill treble cry from herself. The service was suspended,
and Mr. Hamilton-Wells, the most precise of men, hastened down the aisle,
and fished his daughter out, an awful spectacle of dust, from under the
seat, incontinently.

When Mr. and Lady Adeline Hamilton-Wells went from home for any length of
time they were obliged to take their children with them, as servants who
knew the latter would rather leave than be left in charge of them, and
this was how it happened that Evadne made their acquaintance at an early
age.

It was during their first visit to Fraylingay, while they were still quite
tiny, and she was hardly in her teens, that the event referred to in
illustration of one of Evadne's characteristics occurred.

The twins had arrived late in the afternoon, and were taken into the
dining room, where the table was already decorated for dinner. It
evidently attracted a good deal of their attention, but they said nothing.
At dessert, however, to which Evadne had come down with the elder
children, the dining room door was seen to open with portentous slowness,
and there appeared in the aperture two little figures in long nightgowns,
their forefingers in their mouths, their inquisitive noses tilted in the
air, and their bright eyes round with astonishment. It was like the middle
of the night to them, and they had expected to find the room empty.

"Oh, you naughty children!" Lady Adeline exclaimed.

"The _darlings!_" cried Mrs. Frayling, Evadne's mother. "_Do_
let them come in," and she picked up Angelica, and held her on her knee,
one of the other ladies at the opposite end of the long table taking
Diavolo up at the same time. But the moment the children found themselves
on a level with the table they made a dart for the centre piece
simultaneously on their hands and knees, regardless of the smash of
dessert plates, decanters, wineglasses, and fruit dishes, which they upset
by the way.

"It _is!_" shrieked Angelica, thumping the flat mirror which was part
of the table decorations triumphantly.

"It is _what?_" cried Lady Adeline, endeavoring to reach the child.

"It's looking-glass, mamma. Diavolo said it was water."

There was much amusement at the words, and at the quaint spectacle of the
two little creatures sitting amid the wreckage in the middle of the table
not a bit abashed by the novelty of their conspicuous position. Only
Evadne, who was standing behind her mother's chair, remained grave. She
seemed to be considering the situation severely, and, acting on her own
responsibility, she picked Diavolo up in the midst of the general
hilarity, and carried him out of the room with her hand pressed tight on
his thigh. The child had come down armed with an open penknife, with which
to defend Angelica should they encounter any ogres or giants on the
stairs, and in scrambling up the table he had managed to strike himself in
the thigh with it, and had severed the femoral artery; but, with the
curious shame which makes some children dislike to own that they are hurt,
he had contrived to conceal the accident for a moment with his nightgown
under cover of the flowers, and it was only Evadne's observant eye and
presence of mind that had saved his life. No one in the house could make a
tourniquet, and she sat with the child on her knee while a doctor was
being fetched, keeping him quiet as by a miracle, and, stopping the
hemorrhage with the pressure of her thumb, not even his parents daring to
relieve her, since Diavolo had never been known to be still so long in his
life with anybody else. She held him till the operation of tying the
artery was safely accomplished, by which time Mr. Diavolo was sufficiently
exhausted to be good and go to sleep; and then she quietly fainted. But
she was about again in time to catch him when he woke, and keep him quiet,
and so by unwearied watching she prevented accidents until all danger was
over.

Diavolo afterward heard his parents praise her in unmeasured terms to
_her_ parents one day in her absence. She happened to return while
they were still in the room, and, being doubtless wide awake to the
advantages of such a connection, he took the opportunity of promising
solemnly, in the presence of such respectable witnesses, to marry her as
soon as he was able.

She had added the word "tourniquet" to her vocabulary during this time,
and having looked it up in the dictionary, she requested the doctor to be
so good as to teach her to make one. While doing so the doctor became
interested in his silent, intelligent pupil, and it ended in his teaching
her all that a young lady could learn of bandaging, of antidotes to
poisons, of what to do in case of many possible accidents, and also of
nursing, theoretically.

But this was not a solitary instance of the quiet power of the girl which
already compelled even elderly gentlemen much overworked and
self-absorbed, to sacrifice themselves in her service.




CHAPTER III.


It is a notable thing that in almost every instance it was her father's
influence which forced Evadne to draw conclusions in regard to life quite
unlike any of his own, and very distasteful to him. He was the most
conservative of men, and yet he was continually setting her mind off at a
tangent in search of premises upon which to found ultra-liberal
conclusions.

His primitive theories about women and "all that they are good for," for
one thing, which differed so materially from the facts as she observed
them every day, formed a constant mental stimulus to which her busy brain
was greatly indebted. "Women should confine their attention to
housekeeping," he remarked once when the talk about the higher education
of women first began to irritate elderly gentlemen. "It is all they are
fit for."

"Is it?" said Evadne.

"Yes. And they don't know arithmetic enough to do that properly."

"Don't they? why?" she asked.

"Because they have no brains," he answered.

"But some women have been clever," she ventured seriously.

"Yes, of course; exceptional women. But you can't argue from exceptional
women."

"Then ordinary women have no brains, and cannot learn arithmetic?" she
concluded.

"Precisely," he answered irritably. Such signs of intelligence always did
irritate him, somehow.

Evadne found food for reflection in these remarks. She had done a certain
amount of arithmetic herself in the schoolroom, and had never found it
difficult, but then she had not gone far enough, perhaps. And she went at
once to get a Colenso or a Barnard Smith to see. She found them more
fascinating when she attacked them of her own free will and with all her
intelligence than she had done when necessity, in the shape of her
governess, forced her to pay them some attention, and she went through
them both in a few weeks at odd times, and then asked her father's advice
about a book on advanced mathematics.

"Advanced mathematics!" he exclaimed. "Can you keep accounts?"

"I don't know," she answered doubtfully.

"Then what is this nonsense about advanced mathematics?"

"Oh, I have finished Barnard Smith, and I thought I should like to go on,"
she explained.

"Now, isn't that like your sex?" he observed, smiling at his own
superiority. "You pick things up with a parrot-like sharpness, but haven't
intelligence enough to make any practical application of them. A woman
closely resembles a parrot in her mental processes, and in the use she
makes of fine phrases which she does not understand to produce an effect
of cleverness--such as 'advanced mathematics!'"

Evadne bent her brow, and let him ruminate a little in infinite
self-content, then asked abruptly: "Can men keep accounts who have never
seen accounts kept?"

"No, of course not," he answered, seeing in this a new instance of
feminine imbecility, and laughing.

"Ah," she observed, then added thoughtfully as she moved away: "I should
like to see how accounts are kept."

She never had any more conversation with her father upon this subject, but
from that time forward mathematics, which had before been only an incident
in the way of lessons, became an interest in life, and a solid part of her
education. But, although she found she could do arithmetic without any
great difficulty, it never occurred to her either that her father could be
wrong or that there might be in herself the making of an exceptional
woman. The habit of love and respect kept her attention from any point
which would have led to a judgment upon her father, and she was too
unconscious of herself as a separate unit to make personal application of
anything as yet. Her mind at this time, like the hold of a ship with a
general cargo, was merely being stored with the raw materials which were
to be distributed over her whole life, and turned by degrees to many
purposes, useful, beautiful--not impossibly detestable.

But that remark of her father's about "all that women are fit for," which
he kept well watered from time to time with other conventional expressions
of a contemptuous kind, was undoubtedly the seed of much more than a
knowledge of the higher mathematics. It was that which set her mind off on
a long and patient inquiry into the condition and capacity of women, and
made her, in the end of the nineteenth century, essentially herself. But
she did not begin her inquiry of set purpose; she was not even conscious
of the particular attention she paid to the subject. She had no foregone
conclusion to arrive at, no wish to find evidence in favour of the woman
which would prove the man wrong. Only, coming across so many sneers at the
incapacity of women, she fell insensibly into the habit of asking why. The
question to begin with was always: "Why are women such inferior beings?"
But, by degrees, as her reading extended, it changed its form, and then
she asked herself doubtfully: "Are women such inferior beings?" a position
which carried her in front of her father at once by a hundred years, and
led her rapidly on to the final conclusion that women had originally no
congenital defect of inferiority, and that, although they have still much
way to make up, it now rests with themselves to be inferior or not, as
they choose.

She had an industrious habit of writing what she thought about the works
she studied, and there is an interesting record still in existence of her
course of reading between the ages of twelve and nineteen. It consists of
one thick volume, on the title page of which she had written roundly, but
without a flourish, "Commonplace Book," and the date. The first entries
are made in a careful, unformed, childish hand, and with diffidence
evidently; but they became rapidly decided both in caligraphy and tone as
she advanced. The handwriting is small and cramped, but the latter
probably with a view to economy of space, and it is always clear and neat.
There are few erasures or mistakes of grammar or spelling, even from the
first, and little tautology; but she makes no attempt at literary style or
elegance of expression. Still, all that she says is impressive, and
probably on that account. She chooses the words best calculated to express
her meaning clearly and concisely, and undoubtedly her meaning is always
either a settled conviction or an honest endeavour to arrive at one. It is
the honesty, in fact, that is so impressive. She never thinks of trying to
shine in the composition of words; there was no idea of budding authorship
in her mind; she had no more consciousness of purpose in her writing than
she had in her pinging, when she sang about the place. The one was as
involuntary as the other, and the outcome of similar sensations. It
pleased her to write, and it pleased her to sing, and she did both when
the impulse came upon her. She must, however, have had considerable
natural facility of expression. Writing seems always to have been her best
mode of communication. She was shy from the first in conversation, but
bold to a fault with her pen. Some of the criticisms she wrote in her
"Commonplace Book" are quite exhaustive; most of them are temperate,
although she does give way occasionally to bursts of fiery indignation at
things which outrage her sense of justice; but the general characteristic
is a marked originality, not only in her point of view, but also in the
use she makes of quite unpromising materials. In fact, the most notable
part of the record is the proof it contains that all the arguments upon
which she formed her opinions were found in the enemy's works alone. She
had drawn her own conclusions; but after having done so, as it happened,
she had the satisfaction of finding confirmation strong in John Stuart
Mill on "The Subjection of Women," which she came across by accident--an
accident, by the way, for which Lady Adeline Hamilton-Wells was
responsible. She brought the book to Fraylingay, and forgot it when she
went home, and Evadne, happening to find it throwing about, took charge of
it, read it with avidity, and found for herself a world of thought in
which she could breathe freely.

"The Vicar of Wakefield" was one of her early favourites. She read it
several times, and makes mention of it twice in her "Commonplace Book."
Her first notice of it is a childish little synopsis, very quaint in its
unconscious irony; but interesting, principally from the fact that she was
struck even then by the point upon which she afterward became so strong.

"The vicar," she says, "was a good man, and very fond of his wife and
family, and they were very fond of him, but his wife was queer, and could
only read a little. _And he never taught her to improve herself,
although_ he had books and was learned. [Footnote: This is the point
alluded to.] He had two daughters, who were spiteful and did not like
other girls to be pretty. They had bad taste, too, and wanted to go to
church overdressed, and thought it finer to ride a plough-horse than walk.
It does not say that they ever read anything, either. If they had they
would have known better. There is a very nasty man in the book called
Squire Thornhill, and a nice one called Sir William Thornhill, who was his
uncle. Sir William marries Sophia, and Squire Thornhill marries Olivia,
although he does not intend to. Olivia was a horrid deceitful girl, and it
served her right to get such a husband. They have a brother called Moses,
who used to talk philosophy with his father at dinner, and once sold a cow
for a gross of green spectacles. A gross is twelve dozen. Of course they
were all annoyed, but the vicar himself was cheated by the same man when
he went to sell the horse. He seemed to think a great deal of knowing
Latin and Greek, but it was not much use to him then. It was funny that he
should be conceited about what he knew himself, and not want his wife to
know anything. He said to her once: 'I never dispute your abilities to
make a goose pie, and I beg you'll leave argument to me'; which she might
have thought rude, but perhaps she was not a lady, as ladies do not make
goose pies. I forgot, though, they had lost all their money. They had
great troubles, and the vicar was put in prison. He was very ill, but
preached to the prisoners, and everybody loved him. I like 'The Vicar of
Wakefield' very much, and if I cannot find another book as nice I shall
read it again. 'Turn, Gentle Hermit' is silly. I suppose _Punch_ took
Edwin and Angelina out of it to laugh at them."

Quite three years must have elapsed before she again mentions "The Vicar
of Wakefield," and in the meantime she had been reading a fair variety of
books, but for the most part under schoolroom supervision, carefully
selected for her. Some, however, she had chosen for herself--during the
holidays when discipline was relaxed; but it was a fault which she had to
confess, and she does so always, honestly. Lewes' "Life of Goethe" was one
of these. She wrote a glowing description of it, at the end of which she
says:

"I found the book on a sofa in the drawing room, and began it without
thinking, and read and read until I had nearly finished it, quite
forgetting to ask leave. But of course I went at once to tell father as
soon as I thought of it. Mother was there too, and inclined to scold, but
father frowned, and said: 'Let her alone. It will do her no harm; she
won't understand it.' I asked if I might finish it, and he said, 'Oh,
yes,' impatiently. I think he wanted to get rid of me, and I am sorry I
interrupted him at an inconvenient time. Mother often does not agree with
father, but she always gives in. Very often she is right, however, and he
is wrong. Last week she did not want us to go out one day because she was
sure it would rain, but he did not think so, and said we had better go It
did rain--poured--and we got wet through and have had colds ever since,
but when we came in mother scolded me for saying, 'You see, you were
right,' She said I should be saying 'I told yon so!' next, in a nasty
jeering way as the boys do, which really means rejoicing because somebody
else is wrong, and is not generous. I hope I shall never come to that; but
I know if I am ever sure of a thing being right which somebody else thinks
is wrong, it won't matter what it is or who it is, I shall not give in. I
don't see how I could."

Her pen seldom ran away with her into personal matters like these, in the
early part of the book; but from the first she was apt to be beguiled
occasionally by the pleasure of perceiving a powerful stimulant under the
influence of which everything is lost sight of but the point perceived.
She had never to fight a daily and exhausting battle for her private
opinions as talkative people have, simply because she rarely if ever
expressed an opinion; but her father stood ready always, a post of
resistance to innovation, upon which she could sharpen the claws of her
conclusion silently whenever they required it.

When next she mentions "The Vicar of Wakefield," she says expressly:

"I do not remember what I wrote about it the first time I read it, and I
will not look to see until I have written what I think now, because I
should like to know if I still agree with myself as I was then."

And it is interesting to note how very much she does agree with herself as
she "was then"; the feeling, in fact, is the same, but it has passed from
her heart to her head, and been resolved by the process into positive
opinion, held with conscious knowledge, and delivered with greatly
improved power of expression.

"'The Vicar of Wakefield' makes me think a good deal," she continues, "but
there is no order in my thoughts. There is, however, one thing in the book
that strikes me first and foremost and above all others, which is that the
men were educated and the women were ignorant. It is not to be supposed
that the women preferred to be ignorant, and therefore I presume they were
not allowed the educational advantages upon which the men prided
themselves. The men must accordingly have withheld these advantages by
main force, yet they do not scorn to sneer at the consequences of their
injustice. There is a sneer implied in the vicar's remark about his own
wife: 'She could read any English book without much spelling.' That her
ignorance was not the consequence of incapacity is proved by the evidence
which follows of her intelligence in other matters. Had Mrs. Primrose been
educated she might have continued less lovable than the vicar, but she
would probably have been wiser. The vicar must always have been conscious
of her defects, but had never apparently thought of a remedy, nor does he
dream of preventing a repetition of the same defects in his daughters by
providing them with a better education. He takes their unteachableness for
granted, remarking complacently that an hour of recreation 'was taken up
in innocent mirth between my wife and daughters, and in philosophical
arguments between my son and me,' as if 'innocent mirth' were as much as
he could reasonably expect from such inferior beings as a wife and
daughters must necessarily be. The average school girl of to-day is a
child of light on the subject of her own sex compared with the gentle
vicar, and incapable, even before her education is half over, of the envy
and meanness which the latter thinks it kindest to take a humourous view
of, and of the disingenuousness at which he also smiles as the inevitable
outcome of feminine inferiority--at least _I_ never met a girl in my
position who would not have admired Miss Wilmot's beauty, nor do I know
one who would not answer her father frankly, however embarrassing the
question might be, if he asked her opinion of a possible lover."

The next entry in the book is on the subject of "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain
Lectures," and, like most of the others, it merits attention from the
unexpected view she takes of the position. It does not strike her as being
humourous, but pathetic. She feels the misery of it, and she had already
begun to hold that human misery is either a thing to be remedied or a
sacred subject to be dwelt on in silence; and she considers Mrs. Caudle
entirely with a view to finding a cure for her case.

"The Caudles were petty tradespeople," she says, "respectable in their own
position, but hardly lovable according to our ideas. Mr. Caudle, with meek
persistency, goes out to amuse himself alone when his day's work is done.
Mrs. Caudle's day's work never is done. She has the wearing charge of a
large family, and the anxiety of making both ends meet on a paltry income,
which entails much self denial and sordid parsimony, but is
conscientiously done, if not cheerfully, nevertheless. It is Mr. Caudle,
however, who grumbles, making no allowance for extra pressure of work on
washing days, when she is too busy to hash the cold mutton. The rule of
her life is weariness and worry from morning till night, and for
relaxation in the evening she must sit down and mend the children's
clothes; and even when that is done she goes to bed with the certainty of
being roused from her hard-earned rest by a husband who brings a sickening
odour of bad tobacco and spirits home with him, and naturally her temper
suffers. She knows nothing of love and sympathy; she has no pleasurable
interest in life. Fatigue and worry are succeeded by profound
disheartenment. One can imagine that while she was young, the worn
garments she was wont to mend during those long lonely evenings were often
wet with tears. The dulness must have been deadly, and dulness added to
fatigue time after time ended at last not in tears, but in peevish
irritation, ebullitions of spleen, and ineffectual resistance. The woman
was thoroughly embittered, and the man had to pay the penalty. Whatever
pleasure there might have been in their joint lives he had secured for
himself, leaving her to stagnate for want of a little variety to keep her
feelings flowing wholesomely; and she did stagnate dutifully, but she was
to blame for it. Had she gone out and amused herself with other wives
similarly situated, and had tobacco and beer, if she liked them, every
evening, it would have been better for herself and her husband."

There must have been some system in Evadne's reading, for "The Naggletons"
came immediately after "Mrs. Caudle," and are dismissed curtly enough:

"Vulgar, ill-bred, lower class people," she calls them. "Objectionable to
contemplate from every point of view. But a book which should enlighten
the class whom it describes on the subject of their own bad manners.
_We_ don't nag."

She owed her acquaintance with the next two books she mentions to the
indirect instigation of her father, and she must have read them when she
was about eighteen, and emancipated from schoolroom supervision, but not
yet fairly entered upon the next chapter of her existence; for they are
among the last she notices before she came out.

The date is fixed by an entry which appears on a subsequent page with the
note: "I was presented at court to-day by my mother." After this entry
life becomes more interesting than literature, evidently, for the book
ceases to be a record of reading and thought with an occasional note on
people and circumstances, and becomes just the opposite, viz., a diary of
events interspersed with sketches of character and only a rare allusion to
literature. But, judging by the number and variety and the careful record
kept of the works she read, the six months or so immediately preceding her
presentation must have been a time of the greatest intellectual activity,
her father's influence being, as usual, often apparent as primary
instigator. Once, when they were having coffee out on the lawn after
dinner, he began a discussion in her hearing about books with another
gentleman who was staying in the house, and in the course of it he
happened to praise "Roderick Random" and "Tom Jones" eloquently. He said
they were superior in their own line to anything which the present day has
produced. "They are true to life in every particular," he maintained, "and
not only to the life of those times, but of all time. In fact, you feel as
you read that it is not fiction, but human nature itself that you are
studying; and there is an education in moral philosophy on every page."

Evadne was much impressed, and being anxious to know what an education in
moral philosophy might be, she got "Roderick Random" and "Tom Jones" out
of the library, when she went in that evening, and took them to her own
room to study. They were the two books already referred to as being among
the last she read just before she came out. They did not please her, but
she waded through them from beginning to end conscientiously,
nevertheless, and then she made her remarks.

Of "Roderick Random" she wrote:

"The hero is a kind of king-can-do-no-wrong young man; if a thing were not
right in itself he acted as if the pleasure of doing it sanctified it to
his use sufficiently. After a career of vice, in which he revels without
any sense of personal degradation, he marries an amiable girl named
Narcissa, and everyone seems to expect that such a union of vice and
virtue would be productive of the happiest consequences. In point of fact
he should have married Miss Williams, for whom he was in every respect a
suitable mate. If anything, Miss Williams was the better of the two, for
Roderick sinned in weak wantonness, while she only did so of necessity.
They repent together, but she is married to an unsavoury manservant named
Strap as a reward; while Roderick considers himself entitled to the
peerless Narcissa. Miss Williams, moreover, becomes Narcissa's
confidential friend, and the whole disgraceful arrangement is made
possible by Narcissa herself, who calmly accepts these two precious
associates at their own valuation, and admits them to the closest intimacy
without any knowledge of their true characters and early lives. The fine
flavour of real life in the book seems to me to be of the putrid kind
which some palates relish, perhaps; but it cannot be wholesome, and it may
be poisonous. The moral is: Be as vicious as you please, but prate of
virtue."

"Tom Jones" she dismissed with greater contempt, if possible:

"Another young man," she wrote, "steeped in vice, although acquainted with
virtue. He also marries a spotless heroine. Such men marrying are a danger
to the community at large. The two books taken together show well the
self-interest and injustice of men, the fatal ignorance and slavish apathy
of women; and it may be good to know these things, but it is not
agreeable."

The ventilation of free discussion would doubtless have been an advantage
to Evadne at this impressionable period, when she was still, as it were,
more an intellectual than a human being, travelling upon her head rather
than upon her heart--so to speak--and one cannot help speculating about
the probable modification it would have wrought in some of her opinions.
Unfortunately, however, her family was one of those in which the
_clôture_ is rigorously applied when any attempt is made to introduce
ideas which are not already old and accustomed. It was as if her people
were satisfied that by enforcing silence they could prevent thought.




CHAPTER IV.


It is interesting to trace the steps by which Evadne advanced: one item of
knowledge accidentally acquired compelling her to seek another, as in the
case of some disease mentioned in a story-book, the nature of which she
could not comprehend without studying the construction of the organ it
affected. But haphazard seems to have determined her pursuits much more
than design as a rule. Some people in after life, who liked her views,
said they saw the guiding hand of Providence directing her course from the
first; but those who opposed her said it was the devil; and others again,
in idleness or charity, or the calm neutrality of indifference, set it all
down to the Inevitable, a fashionable first cause at this time, which is
both comprehensive, convenient, and inoffensive, since it may mean
anything, and so suits itself to everybody's prejudices.

But she certainly made her first acquaintance with anatomy and physiology
without design of her own. Her mother sent her up to a lumber room one day
to hunt through an old box of books for a story she wanted her to read to
the children, and the box happened to contain some medical works, which
Evadne peeped into during her search. A plate first attracted her
attention, and then she read a little to see what the plate meant, and
then she read a little more because the subject fascinated her, and the
lucid language of a great scientific man, certain of his facts, satisfied
her, and carried her on insensibly. She continued standing until one leg
tired, then she rested on the other; then she sat on the hard edge of the
box, and finally she subsided on to the floor, in the dust, where she was
found hours later, still reading.

"My dear child, where _have_ you been?" her mother exclaimed
irritably, when at last she appeared. "I sent you to get a book to read to
the children."

"There it is, mother--'The Gold Thread'" Evadne answered. "But I cannot
read to the children until after their tea. They were at their lessons
this morning, and we are all going out this afternoon." She had neither
forgotten the children nor the time they wanted their book, which was
eminently characteristic. She never did forget other people's interests,
however much she might be absorbed by the pleasure of her own pursuits.

"And I found three other books, mother, that I should like to have; may
I?" she continued. "They are all about our bones and brains, and the
circulation of the blood, and digestion. It says in one of them that
muriatic acid, the chemical agent by which the stomach dissolves the food,
is probably obtained from muriate of soda, which is common salt contained
in the blood. Isn't that interesting? And it says that pleasure--not
excitement, you know--is the result of the action of living organs, and it
goes on to explain it. Shall I read it to you?"

"My dear child, what nonsense have you got hold of now?" Mrs. Frayling
exclaimed, laughing.

"It is all here, mother," Evadne remonstrated, tapping her books. "Do look
at them."

Mrs. Frayling turned over a few pages with dainty fingers: "Tracing from
without inward, the various coverings of the brain are," she read in one.
"The superior extremity consists of the shoulder, the arm, the forearm,
and the hand," she saw in another. "Dr. Harley also confirms the opinion
of M. Chaveau that the sugar is not destroyed in any appreciable quantity,
during its passage through the tissues," she learned from the third. "Oh,
how nasty!" she ejaculated, alluding to the dust on the cover. "And what a
state you are in yourself! You seem to have a perfect mania for grubbing
up old books. What do you want with them? You cannot possibly understand
them. Why, _I_ can't! It is all vanity, you know. Here, take them
away."

"But, mother, I want to keep them. They can't do me any harm if I don't
understand them."

"You really _are_ tiresome, Evadne," her mother rejoined. "It is
quite bad taste to be so persistent."

"I am sorry, mother; I apologize. But I can read them, I suppose, as you
don't see anything objectionable in them."

"Don't _you_ see, dear child, that I am trying to write a letter? How
do you suppose I can do so while you stand chattering there at my elbow!
You won't understand the books, but you are too obstinate for anything,
and you had better take them and try. I don't expect to hear anything more
about them," she added complacently, as she resumed her letter. Nor did
she, but she felt the effect of them strongly in after years.

When Evadne went out for a ride with three of her sisters that afternoon
her mind was full to overflowing of her morning studies, and she would
liked to have shared such interesting information with them, but they
discouraged her.

"Isn't it curious," she began, "our skulls are not all in one piece when
we're born--"

"I call it simply _nasty_" said Julia. She was the one who screamed
at a mouse.

"You'll be a bore if you don't mind," cried Evelyn, who monopolized the
conversation, as a rule.

Barbara politely requested her to "Shurrup!" a word of the boys which she
permitted herself to borrow in the exuberance of her spirits and the
sanctity of private life whenever Evadne threatened, as on the present
occasion, to be "_too_ kind."

Evadne turned back then and left them, not because they vexed her, but
because she wanted to have her head to the wind and her thick brown hair
blown back out of her eyes, and full leisure to reflect upon her last
acquisition as she cantered home happily.




CHAPTER V.


Evadne was never a great reader in the sense of being omnivorous in her
choice of books, but she became a very good one. She always had a solid
book in hand, and some standard work of fiction also; but she read both
with the utmost deliberation, and with intellect clear and senses
unaffected by anything. After studying anatomy and physiology, she took up
pathology as a matter of course, and naturally went on from thence to
prophylactics and therapeutics, but was quite unharmed, because she made
no personal application of her knowledge as the coarser mind masculine of
the ordinary medical student is apt to do. She read of all the diseases to
which the heart is subject, and thought of them familiarly as "cardiac
affections," without fancying she had one of them; and she obtained an
extraordinary knowledge of the digestive processes and their ailments
without realizing, that her own might ever be affected. She possessed, in
fact, a mind of exceptional purity as well as of exceptional strength, one
to be enlightened by knowledge, not corrupted; but had it been otherwise
she must certainly have suffered in consequence of the effect of the
curiously foolish limitations imposed upon her by those who had charge of
her conventional education. Subjects were surrounded by mystery which
should have been explained. An impossible ignorance was the object aimed
at, and so long as no word was spoken on either side it was supposed to be
attained. The risk of making mysteries for an active intellect to feed
upon was never even considered, nor did anyone perceive the folly of
withholding positive knowledge, which, when properly conveyed, is the true
source of healthy-mindedness, from a child whose intelligent perception
was already sufficiently keen to require it. Principles were dealt out to
her, for one thing, with a generous want of definition which must have
made them fatal to all progress had she been able to take them intact. Her
mother's favourite and most inclusive dictum alone, that "everything is
for the best, and all things work together for good," should have forced
her to a matter of fact acceptance of wickedness as a thing inevitable
which it would be waste of time to oppose, since it was bound to resolve
itself into something satisfactory in the end, like the objectionable
refuse which can be converted by ingenious processes into an excellent
substitute for butter. But she was saved from the stultification of such a
position by finding it impossible to reconcile it practically with the
constant opposition which she found herself at the same time enjoined to
oppose to so many things. If everything is for the best, it appeared to
her, clearly we cannot logically oppose ourselves to anything, and there
must accordingly be two trinities in ethics, good, better, best, and bad,
worse, worst, which it is impossible to condense into one comprehensive
axiom.

But most noticeably prominent, to her credit, through all this period are
the same desirable characteristics, viz., that provisional acceptance
already noticed of what she was taught by those whom she delighted to
honor and obey, and the large-minded absence of prejudice which enabled
her to differ from them, when she saw good cause, without antagonism.
"Drop the subject when you do not agree: there is no need to be bitter
because you know you are right," was the maxim she used in ordinary social
intercourse; but she was at the same time forming principles to be acted
upon in opposition to everybody when occasion called for action. Another
noticeable point, too, was the way in which her mind returned from every
excursion into no matter what abstruse region of research, to the position
of women, her original point of departure. "Withholding education from
women was the original sin of man," she concludes.

Mind as creator appealed to her less than mind as recorder, reasoner, and
ruler; and for one gem of poetry or other beauty of purely literary value
which she quotes, there are fifty records of principles of action. The
acquisition of knowledge was her favourite pastime, her principal pleasure
in life, and there were no doubts of her own ability to disturb her so
long as there was no self-consciousness. Unfortunately, however, for her
tranquillity, the self-consciousness had to come. She approached the verge
of womanhood. She was made to do up her hair. She was encouraged to think
of being presented, coming out, and having a home of her own eventually.
Her liberty of action was sensibly curtailed, but all supervision in the
matter of her mental pursuits was withdrawn. She had received the
accustomed education for a girl in her position, which her parents held,
without knowing it themselves, perhaps, to consist for the most part in
being taught to know better than to read anything which they would have
considered objectionable. But the end of the supervision, which should
have been a joy to her, brought the first sudden sense of immensity, and
was chilling. She perceived that the world is large and strong, and that
she was small and weak; that knowledge is infinite, capacity indifferent,
life short--and then came the inevitable moment. She does not say what
caused the first overwhelming sense of self in her own case; but the
change it wrought is evident, and the disheartening doubts with which it
was accompanied are expressed. She picks her

  Flower in the crannied wall,

and realizes her own limitations:

  ...but if I could understand
  What you are, root and all, and all in all,
  I should know what God and man is.

And from this time forward there is less literature and more life in the
"Commonplace Book."




CHAPTER VI.


Mr. and Lady Adeline Hamilton-Wells, with the inevitable twins, came
constantly to Fraylingay while Evadne was in the schoolroom, and generally
during the holidays, that she might be at liberty to look after the twins,
whose moral obliquities she was supposed to be able to control better than
anybody else. They once told their mother that they liked Evadne, "because
she was so good"; and Lady Adeline had a delicious moment of hope. If the
twins had begun to appreciate goodness they would be better themselves
directly, she was thinking, when Diavolo exclaimed: "We can shock her
easier than anybody," and hope died prematurely. They had been a source of
interest, and also of some concern to Evadne from the first. She took a
grave view of their vagaries, and entertained doubts on the subject of
their salvation should an "all-wise Providence" catch them peering into a
sewer, resolve itself into a poisonous gas, and cut them off suddenly--a
fate which had actually overtaken a small brother of her own who was not a
good little boy either--a fact which was the cause of much painful
reflection to Evadne. She understood all about the drain and the poisonous
gas, but she could not fit in the "all-wise Providence acting only for the
best," which was introduced as primary agent in the sad affair by "their
dear Mr. Campbell," as her mother called him, in "a most touching and
strengthening" discourse he delivered from the pulpit on the subject. If
Binny were naughty--and Binny _was_ naughty beyond all hope of
redemption, according to the books; there could be no doubt about that,
for he not only committed one, but each and every sin sufficient in itself
for condemnation, all in one day, too, when he could, and twice over if
there were time. He disobeyed orders. He fought cads. He stole apples. He
told lies--in fact, he preferred to tell lies; truth had no charm for him.
And all these things he was in the habit of doing regularly to the best of
his ability when he was "cut off"; and how such an end could be all for
the best, if the wicked must perish, and it is not good to perish, was the
puzzle. There was something she could not grasp of a contradictory nature
in it all that tormented her. The doctrine of Purgatory might have been a
help, but she had not heard of it.

She told the twins the story of Binny's sad end once in the orthodox way,
as a warning, but the warning was the only part of it which failed to
impress them. "And do you know," she said solemnly, "there were some green
apples found in his pockets after he was dead, actually!"

"What a pity!" Diavolo exclaimed. If they had been found in his stomach it
would have been so much more satisfactory. "How did he get the apples? Off
the tree or out of the storeroom?"

"I don't know," said Evadne.

"They wouldn't have green apples in the storeroom," Angelica thought.

"Oh, yes, they might," Diavolo considered. "Those big cooking fellows, you
know--they're green enough."

"But they're not nice," said Angelica.

"No, but you don't think of that till you've got them," was the outcome of
Diavolo's experience. "Is your storeroom on the ground floor?" he asked
Evadne.

"No," she answered.

"Is there a creeper outside the window?" he pursued.

"No, creepers won't grow because a big lime tree hangs it."

The children exchanged glances.

"I shouldn't have made that room a storeroom," said Angelica. "Lime trees
bring flies. There's something flies like on the leaves."

"But any tree will bring flies if you smear the leaves with sweet stuff,"
said Diavolo. "You remember that copper-beech outside papa's dressing room
window, Angelica?"

"Yes," she said thoughtfully. "He had to turn out of his dressing room
this summer; he couldn't stand them."

"But was Binny often caught, Evadne?" Diavolo asked.

"Often," she said.

"And punished?"

"_Always_."

"But I suppose he had generally eaten the apples?" Angelica suggested
anxiously.

"It's better to eat them at once," sighed Diavolo. "Did you say he did
everything he was told not to do?"

"Yes."

"I expect when he was told not to do a thing he could not think of
anything else until he _had_ done it," said Angelica.

"And now he's in heaven," Diavolo speculated, looking up through the
window with big bright eyes pathetically.

The twins thought a good deal about heaven in their own way. Lady Adeline
did not like them to be talked to on the subject. They were indefatigable
explorers, and it was popularly supposed that only the difficulty of being
present at an inquest on their own bodies, which they would have
thoroughly enjoyed, had kept them so far from trying to obtain a glimpse
of the next world. They discovered the storeroom at Fraylingay half an
hour after they had discussed the improving details of Binny's exciting
career, and had found it quite easy of access by means of the available
lime tree. They both suffered a good deal that night, and they thought of
Binny. "But there's nothing in _our_ pockets, that's one comfort,"
Diavolo exclaimed suddenly, to the astonishment of his mother, who was
sitting up with him. Angelica heaved a sigh of satisfaction.

Evadne's patience with the twins was wonderful. She always took charge of
them cheerfully on wet days and in other times of trouble, and managed
them with infinite tact.

"How do you do it, my dear?" Lady Adeline asked. "Do you talk to them and
tell them stories?"

"No," said Evadne, "I don't talk much; I--just don't lose sight of
them--or interfere--if I can possibly help it."

The twins had no reverence for anything or anybody. One day they were in
Evadne's little sitting room which overlooked the courtyard. It was an
antechamber to her bedroom, and peculiarly her own by right of
primogeniture. Nobody ever thought of going there without her special
permission--except, of course, the twins; but even they assumed
hypocritical airs of innocent apology for accidental intrusion when they
wanted to make things pleasant for themselves.

On this particular occasion Evadne was sitting beside her little
work-table busy with her needle, and the twins were standing together
looking out of the window.

"There's papa," said Diavolo.

"He's going for a ride," said Angelica.

"Doesn't he mount queerly?" Diavolo observed. "He'd be safer in a bath
chair."

"Not if we were wheeling him," Angelica suggested, with a chuckle.

"What shall we do?" yawned Diavolo. "Shall we fight?"

"Yes; let's," said Angelica.

"You must do no such thing," Evadne interfered.

"Not fight! Why?" Angelica demanded.

"We _must_ fight, you know," Diavolo asserted.

"I don't see that," said Evadne. "Why should you fight?"

"It's good for the circulation of the blood," said Angelica. "Warms a
body, you know."

"And there's the property, too!" said Diavolo. "We've got to fight for
that."

Evadne did not understand, so Angelica kindly explained: "You see, I'm the
eldest, but Diavolo's a boy, so he gets the property because of the
entail, and we neither of us think it fair; so we fight for it, and
whichever wins is to have it. I won the last battle, so it's mine just now;
but Diavolo may win it back if we fight again before papa dies. That's
why he wants to fight now, I expect."

"Yes," Diavolo candidly confessed. "But we generally fight when we see
papa go out for a ride."

"Because you are afraid he will catch you and punish you as you deserve,
if he's at home, I suppose, you bad children."

"Not at all," said Angelica. "It's because he looks so unsafe on a horse;
you never know what'll happen."

"It's a kind of a last chance," said Diavolo, "and that makes it
exciting."

"But wouldn't you be very sorry if your father died?" Evadne asked.

The twins looked at each other doubtfully.

"Should we?" Diavolo said to Angelica.

"I wonder?" said Angelica.

One wet day they chose to paint in Evadne's room because they could not go
out. She found pictures, and got everything ready for them good-naturedly,
and then they sat themselves down at a little table opposite each other;
but the weather affected their spirits, and made them both fractious. They
wanted the same picture to begin with, and only settled the question by
demolishing it in their attempts to snatch it from each other. Then there
was only one left between them, but happily they remembered that artists
sometimes work at the same picture, and it further occurred to them that
it would be an original method--or "funny," as they phrased it--for one of
them to work at it wrong side up. So Angelica daubed the sky blue on her
side of the table, and Diavolo flung green on the fields from his. They
had large genial mouths at that time, indefinite noses, threatening to
turn up a little, and bright dark eyes, quick glancing, but with no
particular expression in them--no symptom either of love or hate, nothing
but living interest. It was pretty to see Diavolo's fair head touching
Angelica's dark one across the little table; but when it came too close
Angelica would dunt it sharply out of the way with her own, which was
apparently the harder of the two, and Diavolo would put up his hand and
rub the spot absently. He was too thoroughly accustomed to such sisterly
attentions to be altogether conscious of them.

The weather darkened down.

"I wish I could see," he grumbled.

"Get out of your own light," said Angelica.

"How can I get out of my own light when there isn't any light to get out
of?"

Angelica put her paint brush in her mouth, and looked up at the window
thoughtfully.

"Let's make it into a song," she said.

"Let's," said Diavolo, intent upon making blue and yellow into green.

  "No light have we, and that we do resent,
  And, learning, this the weather will relent,
  Repent! Relent! Ah-men,"

Angelica sang. Diavolo paused with his brush halfway to his mouth, and
nodded intelligently.

"Now!" said Angelica, and they repeated the parody together, Angelica
making a perfect second to Diavolo's exquisite treble.

Evadne looked up from her work surprised. Her own voice was contralto, but
it would have taken her a week to learn to sing a second from the notes,
and she had never dreamt of making one.

"I didn't know you could sing," she said.

"Oh, yes, we can sing," Angelica answered cheerfully. "We've a decided
talent for music."

"Angelica can make a song in a moment," said Diavolo. "Let me paint your
nose green, Evadne."

"You can paint mine if you like," said Angelica.

"No, I shan't. I shall paint my own."

"No, you paint mine, and I'll paint yours," Angelica suggested.

"Well, both together, then," Diavolo answered.

"Honest Injin," Angelica agreed, and they set to work.

Evadne sat with her embroidery in her lap and watched them. Their faces
would have to be washed in any case, and they might as well be washed for
an acre as for an inch of paint. She never nagged with, "Don't do this,"
and "Don't do that" about everything, if their offences could be summed
up, and wiped out in some such way all at once.

"We'll sing you an anthem some day," Angelica presently promised.

"Why not now?" said Evadne.

"The spirit does not move us," Diavolo answered.

"But you may forget," said Evadne.

"We never forget our promises," Angelica protested as proudly as was
possible with a green nose.

Nor did they, curiously enough. They made a point of keeping their word,
but in their own way, and this one was kept in due course. The time they
chose was when a certain Grand Duke was staying in the house. They had
quite captivated him, and he expressed a wish to hear them sing.

"Shall we?" said Diavolo,

"We will," said Angelica, "Not because he's a prince, but because we
promised Evadne an anthem, and we might as well do it now," she added with
true British independence.

The prince chuckled.

"What shall it be?" said Diavolo, settling himself at the piano. He always
played the accompaniments.

"_Papa_, I think," said Angelica.

"What is '_Papa_'?" Lady Adeline asked anxiously.

"Very nice, or you wouldn't have married him," answered Angelica. "Go on,
Diavolo. If you sing flat, I'll slap you."

"If you're impertinent, miss, I'll put you out," Diavolo retorted.

"Go on," said Evadne sharply, fearing a fight.

But to everybody's intense relief the prince laughed, and then the twins'
distinguished manners appeared in a new and agreeable light.

"_Papa--Papa--Papa_,"--they sang--"_Papa says--that we--that
we--that we are little devils! and so we are--we are--we are and ever
shall be--world without end_."

"_I am a chip_," Diavolo trilled exquisitely; "_I am a chip_."

"_Thou art a chip--Thou art a chip_," Angelica responded.

"_We are both chips_," they concluded harmoniously--"_chips of the
old--old block! And as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen!_"

"You sang that last phrase flat you--_pulp!_" cried Angelica.

"I can't both sing and play," Diavolo protested.

"You'll say you can't eat and breathe next," she retorted, giving his hair
a tug.

"What did you do that for?" he demanded.

"Just to waken you up," she answered.

"Are they always like this?" the prince asked, much edified.

"This is nothing," groaned Mr. Hamilton-Wells.

"Nothing if it is not genius," the prince suggested gracefully.

"The ineffectual genius of the nineteenth century I fancy, which betrays
itself by strange incongruities and contrasts of a violent kind, but is
otherwise unproductive," Mrs. Orton Beg whispered to Mr. Frayling
incautiously.

Lady Adeline looked up: "I could not help hearing," she said.

"Oh, Adeline, I am sorry!" Mrs. Orton Beg exclaimed.

"_I_ thank you," said Lady Adeline, sighing. "Courtly phrases are
pleasant plums, even to latter-day palates which are losing all taste for
such dainties; but they are not nourishing. I would rather know my
children to be merely naughty, and spend my time in trying to make them
good, than falsely flatter myself that there is anything great in them,
and indulge them on that plea, until I had thoroughly confirmed them in
faults which I ought to have been rigorously repressing."

"You're right there," said Mr. Frayling; "but all the same, you'll be able
to make a good deal of that boy, or I'm much mistaken. And as for
Angelica, why, when she is at the head of an establishment of her own she
will require all her smartness. But teach her housekeeping, Lady Adeline;
that is the thing for _her_."

Evadne was sitting near her father, not taking part in the conversation,
but attending to it; and Lady Adeline, happening to look at her at this
moment, saw something which gave her "pause to ponder." Evadne's face
recalled somewhat the type of old Egypt, Egypt with an intellect added.
Her eyes were long and apparently narrow, but not so in reality--a trick
she had of holding them half shut habitually gave a false impression of
their size, and veiled the penetration of their glance also, which was
exceptionally keen. In moments of emotion, however, she would open them to
the full unexpectedly, and then the effect was startling and peculiar; and
it was one of these transient flashes which surprised Lady Adeline when
Mr. Frayling made that last remark. It was a mere gleam, but it revealed
Evadne to Lady Adeline as a flash of lightning might have revealed a
familiar landscape on a dark night. She saw what she expected to see, but
all transformed, and she saw something beyond, which she did not expect,
and could neither comprehend nor forget. So far she had only thought of
Evadne as a nice, quiet little thing with nothing particular in her; from
that evening, however, she suspended her opinion, suspecting something,
but waiting to know more. Evadne was then in her eighteenth year, but not
yet out.




CHAPTER VII.


Mrs. Orton Beg was a sister of Mrs. Frayling's and an oracle to Evadne.
Mrs. Frayling was fair, plump, sweet, yielding, commonplace, prolific;
Mrs. Orton Beg was a barren widow, slender, sincere, silent, firm, and
tender. Mrs. Frayling, for lack of insight, was unsympathetic, Mrs. Orton
Beg was just the opposite; and she and Evadne understood each other, and
were silent together in the most companionable way in the world.

When Evadne went to her own room on the evening made memorable by the
twins' famous anthem, she was haunted by that word "ineffectual," which
Mrs. Orton Beg had used. "Ineffectual genius"--there was something
familiar as well as high sounding in the epithet; it recalled an idea with
which she was already acquainted; what was it? She opened her "Commonplace
Book," and sat with her pen in her hand, cogitating comfortably. She had
no need to weary her fresh young brain with an irritating pursuit of what
she wanted; she had only to wait, and it would recur to her. And presently
it came. Her countenance brightened. She bent over the book and wrote a
few lines, read them when she had blotted them, and was satisfied.

"I have it," she wrote. "Shelley = genius of the nineteenth
century--'Beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his
luminous wings in vain.'--_Matthew Arnold_."

When she had done this she took up a book, went to the fire, settled
herself in an easy-chair, and began to read. The book was "Ruth," by Mrs.
Gaskell, and she was just finishing it. When she had done so she went back
to the table, and copied out the following paragraph:

"The daily life into which people are born, and into which they are
absorbed before they are aware, forms chains which only one in a hundred
has moral strength enough to despise, and to break when the right time
comes--when an inward necessity for independent action arises, which is
superior to all outward conventionalities."

She stopped here, and pushed the volume away from her. It was the only
passage in it which she cared to remember.

She had lost the confidence of the child by this time, and become humbly
doubtful of her own opinion; and instead of summing up "Ruth" boldly, as
she would have done the year before, she paused now a moment to reflect
before she wrote with diffidence:

"The principal impression this book has made upon me is that Mrs. Gaskell
must have been a very lovable woman."

[Footnote: George Eliot thought so too, years before Evadne was born, and
expressed the thought in a letter in which she also prophesied that "Ruth"
would not live through a generation. The impression the book made upon
Evadne is another proof of prescience in the great writer.]

"The story seems to me long drawn out, and of small significance. It is
full of food for the heart, but the head goes empty away, and both should
be satisfied by a work of fiction, I think. But perhaps it is my own mood
that is at fault. At another time I might have found gems in it which now
in my dulness I have failed to perceive."

Somebody knocked at the door as she blotted the words.

"Come in, auntie," she said, as if in answer to an accustomed signal; and
Mrs. Orton Beg entered in a long, loose, voluminously draped white
wrapper.

Evadne drew an easy-chair to the fire for her.

"Sit down, auntie," she said, "and be cosey. You are late to-night. I was
afraid you were not coming."

Mrs. Orton Beg was in the habit of coming to Evadne's room every evening
when she was at Fraylingay, to chat, or sit silently sociable over the
fire with her before saying goodnight.

"Do I ever fail you?" she asked, smiling.

"No. But I have been afraid of the fatal fascination of that great fat
foreign prince. He singled you out for special attention, and I have been
jealous."

"Well, you need not have been, for he singled me out in order to talk
about you. He thinks you are a nice child. You interest him."

"Defend me!" said Evadne. "But you mistake me, dear aunt. It was not of
him I was jealous, but of you. The fat prince is nothing to me, and you
are a very great deal."

Mrs. Orton Beg's face brightened at the words, but she continued to look
into the fire silently for some seconds after Evadne had spoken, and made
no other visible sign of having heard them.

"I don't think I ought to encourage you to sit up so late," she said
presently. "Lady Adeline has just been asking me who it is that burns the
midnight oil up here so regularly."

"Lady Adeline must be up very late herself to see it," said Evadne. "I
suppose those precious twins disturb her. I wish she would let me take
entire charge of them when she is here. It would be a relief, I should
think!"

"It would be an imposition," said Mrs. Orton Beg. "But you are a brave
girl, Evadne. _I_ would not venture."

"Oh, they delight me," Evadne answered. "And I know them well enough now
to forestall them."

"When I told Lady Adeline that these were your rooms," her aunt pursued,
"she said something about a lily maid high in her chamber up a tower to
the east guarding the sacred shield of Lancelot."

"Singularly inappropriate," said Evadne. "For my tower is south and west,
thank Heaven."

"And there isn't a symptom of Lancelot," her aunt concluded.

"Young ladies don't guard sacred shields nowadays," said Evadne.

"No," answered her aunt, glancing over her shoulder at the open book on
the table. "They have substituted the sacred 'Commonplace Book'--full of
thought, I fancy."

"You speak regretfully, auntie; but isn't it better to think and be happy,
than to die of atrophy for a sentiment?"

"I don't think it better to extinguish all sentiment. Life without
sentiment would be so bald."

"But life with that kind of sentiment doesn't last, it seems, and nobody
is benefited by it. It is extreme misery to the girl herself, and she dies
young, leaving a legacy of lifelong regret and bitterness to her friends.
I should think it small comfort to become the subject for a poem or a
picture at such a price. And surely, auntie, sentiments which are silly or
dangerous would be better extinguished?"

Mrs. Orton Beg smiled at the fire enigmatically.

"But the poem or the picture may become a lasting benefit to mankind," she
suggested presently.

"Humph!" said Evadne.

"You doubt it?"

"Well, you see, auntie, there are two ways of looking at it. When you
first come across the poem or the picture which perpetuates the sentiment
that slew the girl, and beautifies it, you feel a glow all over, and fancy
you would like to imitate her, and think that you would deserve great
credit for it if you did. But when you come to consider, there is nothing
very noble, after all, in a hopeless passion for an elderly man of the
world who is past being benefited by it, even if he could reciprocate it.
Elaine should have married a man of her own age, and made him happy. She
would have done some good in her time so, and been saved from setting us a
bad example. I think it a sin to make unwholesome sentiments attractive."

"Then Lancelot does not charm you?"

"No," said Evadne thoughtfully. "I should have preferred the king."

"Ah, yes. Because he was the nobler, the more ideal man?"

"No, not exactly," Evadne answered. "But because he was the more
wholesome."

"My dear child, are you speaking literally?"

"Yes, auntie."

"Good Heavens!" Mrs. Orton Beg ejaculated softly. "The times _have_
changed."

"Yes, we know more now," Evadne answered tranquilly.

"You are fulfilling the promise of your youth, Evadne," her aunt remarked
after a thoughtful pause. "I remember reading a fairy tale of Jean
Ingelow's aloud to you children in the nursery long ago. I forget the name
of it, but it was the one into which 'One morning, oh, so early,' comes;
and you started a controversy as to whether, speaking of the dove, when
the lark said 'Give us glory,' she should have made answer, 'Give us
peace' or 'peas.' The latter, you maintained, as being the more natural,
and the most sensible."

"I must have been a horrid little prig in those days," said Evadne,
smiling. "But, auntie, there can be no peace without plenty. And I think I
would rather be a sensible realist than a foolish idealist. You mean that
you think me too much of a utilitarian, do you not?"

"You are in danger, I think."

"Utilitarianism is Bentham's _greatest happiness principle_, is it
not?" Evadne asked.

"Yes--greatest human happiness," her aunt replied.

"Well, I don't know how that can be dangerous in principle. But, of
course, I know nothing of such questions practically. Only I do seem to
perceive that you must rest on a solid basis of real advantages before you
can reach up to ideal perfection with any chance of success."

"You seem to be very wide awake to-night, Evadne," Mrs. Orton Beg
rejoined. "This is the first I have heard of your peculiar views."

"Oh, I am a kind of owl, I think, auntie," Evadne answered apologetically.
"You see, I never had anything to do in the schoolroom that I could not
manage when I was half asleep, and so I formed a habit of dozing over my
lessons by day, and waking up when I came to bed at night. Having a room
of my own always has been a great advantage. I have been secure all along
of a quiet time at night for reading and thought--and that is real life,
auntie, isn't it? I don't care to talk much, as a rule, do you? I like to
listen and watch people. But I always wake up at this time of the night,
and I feel as if I could be quite garrulous now when everybody else is
going to sleep. But, auntie, don't use such an ominous expression as
'peculiar views' about anything I say, _please_; 'views' are always
in ill odour, and peculiarities, even peculiar perfections, would isolate
one, and that I _do_ dread. It would be awful to be out of sympathy
with one's fellow-creatures, and have them look suspiciously at one; and
it would be no comfort to me to know that want of sympathy is the proof of
a narrow nature, and that suspicion is the inevitable outcome of ignorance
and stupidity. I don't want to despise my fellow-creatures. I would rather
share their ignorance and conceit and be sociable than find myself
isolated even by a very real superiority. The one would be pleasant
enough, I should think; the other pain beyond all bearing of it."

Mrs. Orton Beg's heart contracted with a momentary fear for her niece, but
she dismissed it promptly.

"The room to yourself has been a doubtful advantage, I fancy," she said.
"It has made you theoretical. But you will lose all that by and by. And in
the meantime, you must remember that in such matters we have small choice.
We are born with superior or inferior faculties, and must make use of
them, such as they are, to become inferior cooks or countesses or superior
ditto, as the case may be. But there are always plenty of one's own kind,
whichever it is, to consort with. Birds of a feather, you know. You need
not be afraid of being isolated."

"You are thinking of ordinary faculties, auntie. I was thinking of
extraordinary. But even with ordinary ones we are hampered. Birds of a
feather would flock together if they could, of course, but then they can't
always; and suppose, being superior, you find yourself forced to associate
with inferior cooks of your kind, what then?"

"Be their queen."

"Which, unless you were a queen of hearts, would really amount to being an
object of envy and dislike, and that brings us back to the point from
which we started."

"Evadne, you talk like a book; go to bed!" Mrs. Orton Beg exclaimed,
laughing.

"It is you who have made me talk, then," Evadne rejoined promptly, "and I
feel inclined to ask now, with all proper respect, what has come to you?
It must be the prince!"

"Yes, it must be the prince!" Mrs. Orton Beg responded, raising her
slender white hand to smother a yawn. "And it must be good-night, too--or
rather, good-morning! Just look at the clock. It is nearly three."




CHAPTER VIII.


The next morning all the guests left Fraylingay, and the family there
settled into their accustomed grooves. Evadne and her father walked and
rode, conversing together as usual, he enjoying the roll and rumble and
fine flavour of his own phrase-making amazingly, and she also impressed by
the roll and rumble. But when it was all over, and he had marched off in
triumph, she would collect the mutilated remains of the argument and
examine them at her leisure, and in nine cases out of ten it proved to be
quartz that he had crushed and contemned, overlooking the gold it
contained, but releasing it for her to find and add exultingly to her own
collection. In this way, therefore, she continued to obtain her wealth of
ore from him, and both were satisfied--he because he was sure that, thanks
to him, she was "a thoroughly sensible girl with no nonsense of
new-fangled notions about her"; and she because, being his daughter, she
had not altogether escaped the form of mental myopia from which he
suffered, and was in the habit of seeing only what she hoped and wished to
see in those she loved. Man, the unjust and iniquitous, was to her always
the outside, vague, theoretical man of the world, never the dear undoubted
papa at home.

Evadne was the eldest of six girls, and their mother had a comfortable
as-it-was-in-the-beginning-is-now-and-ever-shall-be feeling about them all;
but she prided herself most upon Evadne as answering in every particular
to the conventional idea of what a young lady should be.

"The dear child," she wrote to Lady Adeline, "is _all_ and
_more_ than we dared to hope to have her become. I can assure you she
has never caused me a moment's anxiety in her life, except, of course,
such anxiety for her health and happiness as every mother must feel. I
have had her educated with the utmost care, and her father has, I may say,
_devoted_ himself to the task of influencing her in the right
direction in matters of opinion, and has ably seconded all my endeavours
in other respects. She speaks French and German _well_, and knows a
little Italian; in fact, I may say that she has a special aptitude for
languages. She does not draw, but is a fair musician, and is still having
lessons, being most anxious to improve herself; and she sings very
sweetly. But, best of all, as I am sure you will agree with me, I notice
in her a deeply religious disposition. She is _really_ devout, and
beautifully reverential in her manner both in church and to us, her
parents, and, indeed, to all who are older and wiser than herself. She is
very clever too, they tell me; but of course I am no judge of that. I do
know, however, that she is perfectly innocent, and I am indeed thankful to
think that at eighteen she knows nothing of the world and its wickedness,
and is therefore eminently qualified to make somebody an excellent wife;
and all I am afraid of is that the destined somebody will come for her all
too soon, for I cannot bear to think of parting with her. She is not
_quite_ like other girls in _some_ things, I am afraid--mere
trifles, however--as, for instance, about her presentation. I know
_I_ was in quite a flutter of excitement for days before _I_ was
presented, and was quite bewildered with agitation at the time; but Evadne
displayed no emotion whatever. I never knew _anyone_ so equable as
she is; in fact, _nothing_ seems to ruffle her wonderful calm; it is
almost provoking sometimes! On the way home she would not have made a
remark, I think, if I had not spoken to her. 'Don't you think it was a
very pretty sight?' I said at last. 'Yes,' she answered doubtfully; and
then she added with genuine feeling: '_Mais il y a des longuers!_ Oh,
mother, the hours we have spent hanging about draughty corridors, half
dressed and shivering with cold; and the crowding and crushing, and
unlovely faces, all looking so miserable and showing the discomfort and
fatigue they were enduring so plainly! I call it positive suffering, and I
never want to see another Drawing Room. My soul desires nothing now but
decent clothing and hot tea.' And that is all she has ever said about the
Drawing Room in my hearing. But wasn't it a very curious view for a girl
to take? Of course the arrangements are detestable, and one does suffer a
great deal from cold and fatigue, and for want of refreshments; but still
_I_ never thought of those things when _I_ was a girl; did you?
I never thought of anything, in fact, but whether I was looking my best or
not. Don't let me make you imagine, however, that Evadne was whining and
querulous. She never is, you know; and I should call her tone sorrowful if
it were not so absurd for a girl to be saddened by the sight of other
people in distress--well, not quite in distress--that is an
exaggeration--but at all events not quite comfortably situated--on what
was really one of the greatest occasions of her own life. I am half
inclined to fear that she may not be quite so strong as we have always
thought her, and that she was depressed by the long fasting and fatigue,
which would account for a momentary morbidness.

"But excuse my garrulity. I always have so much to say to _you!_ I
will spare you any more for the present, however; only do tell me all
about yourself and your own lovely children. And how is Mr.
Hamilton-Wells? Remember that you are to come to us, twins and all, on
your way home as usual this year. We are anxiously expecting you, and I
hope your next letter will fix the day.

"Ever, dear Adeline, your loving friend,

"ELIZABETH FRAYLING.

"P. S.--We return to Fraylingay to-morrow, so please write to me there."

The following is Lady Adeline's reply to Mrs. Frayling's letter:

"HAMILTON HOUSE, MORNINGQUEST, 30th July,

"MY DEAR ELIZABETH:

"I am afraid you will have been wondering what has become of us, but I
know you will acquit me of all blame for the long delay in answering your
letter when I tell you that I have only just received it! We had left
Paris before it arrived for (what is always to me) a tiresome tour about
the continent, and it has been following us from pillar to post, finally
reaching me here at home, where we have been settled a fortnight. I had
not forgotten your kind invitation, but I am afraid I must give up all
idea of going to you this year. We hurried back because Mr. Hamilton-Wells
became homesick suddenly while we were abroad, and I don't think it will
be possible to get him to move again for some time. But won't you come to
us? Do, dear, and bring your just-come-out, and, I am sure, most charming,
Evadne for our autumn gayeties. If Mr. Frayling would come too we should
be delighted, but I know he has a poor opinion of _our_ coverts, and
I despair of being able to tempt him from his own shooting; and therefore
I ask _you_ first and foremost, in the hope that you will be able to
come whether he does or not.

"I have been thinking much of all you have told me about Evadne. She had
already struck me as being a most interesting child and full of promise,
and I do hope that now she is out of the schoolroom I shall see more of
her. I know you will trust her to me--although I do think that in parts of
her education you have been acting by the half light of a past time, and
following a method now out of date. I cannot agree, for instance, that it
is either right or wise to keep a girl in ignorance of the laws of her own
being, and of the state of the community in which she will have to pass
her existence. While she is at an age to be influenced in the right way
she should be fully instructed, by those she loves, and not left to obtain
her knowledge of the world haphazard from anyone with whom accident may
bring her acquainted--people, perhaps, whose point of view may not only
differ materially from her parents', but be extremely offensive to them.
The first impression in these matters, you know, is all important, and my
experience is that what you call 'beautiful innocence,' and what I
consider _dangerous ignorance_, is not a safe state in which to begin
the battle of life. In the matter of marriage especially an ignorant girl
may be fatally deceived, and indeed I know cases in which the man who was
liked well enough as a companion was found to be objectionable in an
unendurable degree as soon as he became a husband.

"You will think I am tainted with new notions, and I do hope I am in so
far as these notions are juster and better than the old ones. For, surely,
the elder ages did not discover all that is wisdom; and certainly there is
still room for 'nobler modes of life' and 'sweeter manners, purer laws.'
If this were not allowed moral progress must come to a standstill. So I
say, 'instruct! instruct!' The knowledge must come sooner or later; let it
come wholesomely. A girl must find out for herself if she is not taught,
and she may, in these plain-spoken times, obtain a wholly erroneous theory
of life and morality from a newspaper report which she reads without
intention in an idle moment while enjoying her afternoon tea. We are in a
state of transition, we women, and the air is so full of ideas that it
would be strange if an active mind did not catch some of them; and I find
myself that stray theories swallowed whole without due consideration are
of uncertain application, difficult in the working, if not impracticable,
and apt to disagree. Theories should be absorbed in detail as dinner is if
they are to become an addition to our strength, and not an indigestible
item of inconvenience, seriously affecting our mental temper.

"But you ask me about my twins. In health they continue splendid, in
spirits they are tremendous, but their tricks are simply terrible. We
never know what mischief they will devise next, and Angelica is much the
worst of the two. If we had taken them to Fraylingay it would have been in
fear and trembling; but we should have been obliged to take them had we
gone ourselves, for they somehow found out that you had asked them, and
they insisted upon going, and threatened to burn down Hamilton House in
our absence if we did not take them, a feat which we doubt not they would
have accomplished had they had a mind to. Indeed, I cannot tell you what
these children are! Imagine their last device to extort concessions from
their father. You know how nervous he is; well, if he will not do all that
they require of him they blow him up literally and actually! They put
little trains of gunpowder about in unexpected places, with lucifer
matches that go off when they are trodden upon, and you can imagine the
consequence! I told him what it would be when he would spoil them so, but
it was no use, and now they rule him instead of him them, so that he has
to enter into solemn compacts with them about not infringing what they
call their rights; and, only fancy, he is so fond to foolishness as to be
less annoyed by their naughtiness than pleased because, when they promise
not to do anything again 'honest Injun,' as they phrase it, they keep
their word. Dr. Galbraith calls them in derision 'The Heavenly Twins.'

"But have I told you about Dr. Galbraith? He is the new master of Fountain
Towers, and a charming as well as remarkable man, quite young, being in
fact only nine-and-twenty, but already distinguished as a medical man. He
became a professional man of necessity, having no expectation at that time
of ever inheriting property, but now that he is comparatively speaking a
rich man he continues to practice for the love of science, and also from
philanthropic motives. He is a fine looking young man physically, with a
strong face of most attractive plainness, only redeemed from positive
ugliness, in fact, by good gray eyes, white teeth, and an expression which
makes you trust him at once. After the first five minutes' conversation
with him I have heard people say that they not only could but would
positively have enjoyed telling him all the things that ever they did, so
great is the confidence he inspires. He, and Sir Daniel Galbraith's
adopted son--Sir Daniel is Dr. Galbraith's uncle--were my brother Dawne's
great friends at Oxford, where the three of them were known as Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego, because they passed unscathed through the burning
fiery furnace of temptation to which young men of position at the
universities are exposed. Dr. Galbraith is somewhat abrupt in manner, and
quick of temper, but most good-naturedly long-suffering with my terrible
children nevertheless. Of course they impose upon his good nature. And
they are always being punished; but that they do not mind. In fact, I
heard Angelica say once: 'It is all in the day's work,' when she had a
long imposition to do for something outrageous; and Diavolo called to her
over the stairs only yesterday, 'Wait for me a minute in the hall till
I've been thrashed for letting the horses and dogs loose, and then we'll
go and snare pheasants in the far plantation!' They explained to me once
that being found out and punished added the same zest to their pleasures
that cayenne pepper does to their diet; a little too much of it stings,
but just the right quantity relieves the insipidity and adds to the
interest; and then there is the element of uncertainty, which has a charm
of its own: they never know whether they will 'catch it hot' or not! When
they _are_ found out they always confess everything with a frankness
which is quite provoking, because they so evidently enjoy the recital of
their own misdeeds; and they defend themselves by quoting various
anecdotes of the naughty doings of children which have been written for
our amusement. And it is in vain that I explain to them that parents who
are hurt and made anxious by their children's disobedience cannot see
anything to laugh at in their pranks--at least not for a very long time
afterward. They pondered this for some time, and then arrived at the
conclusion that when they were grown up and no longer a nuisance to me, I
should be a 'very jolly old lady,' because I should have such a lot of
funny stories all my own to tell people.

"But I shall weary you with this inexhaustible subject. You must forgive
me if I do, for I am terribly anxious about my young Turks. If they are
equal to such enormities in the green leaf, I am always asking myself,
what will they do in the dry? I own that my sense of humour is tickled
sometimes, but never enough to make me forget the sense of danger, present
and to come, which all this keeps forever alive. Come and comfort me, and
tell me how you have made your own children so charming.

"Ever lovingly yours,

"ADELINE HAMILTON-WELLS."

Mrs, Frayling wrote a full account of Evadne's presentation at court to
her sister, Mrs. Orton Beg--who was wandering about Norway by herself at
the time--and concluded her description of the dear child's gown, very
charming appearance, and dignified self-possession with some remarks about
her character to the same effect as those which she had addressed to Lady
Adeline. It was natural, perhaps, that the last conversation Mrs. Orton
Beg had had with Evadne at Fraylingay, which was in fact the first
articulate outcome of Evadne's self-training, coming as it did at the end
of a day of pleasurable interest and excitement, should have made no
immediate impression upon her tired faculties; but she recollected it now
and smiled as she read her sister's letter. "If that is all you know of
your daughter, my dear Elizabeth," was her mental comment, "I fancy there
will be surprises at Fraylingay!" But in reply she merely observed that
she was glad Evadne was so satisfactory. She was too wise a woman to waste
words on her sister Elizabeth, who, in consequence of having had them in
abundance to squander all her life long, had lost all sense of their
value, and would have failed to appreciate the force which they collect in
the careful keeping of such silent folk as Mrs. Orton Beg.

Mrs. Frayling was not able to accept Lady Adeline's invitation that year.




CHAPTER IX.


This was the period when Evadne looked out of narrow eyes at an untried
world inquiringly, and was warmed to the heart by what she saw of it.
Theoretically, people are cruel and unjust, but practically, to an
attractive young lady of good social position and just out, their manners
are most agreeable; and when Evadne returned to Fraylingay after her first
season in town, she thought less and sang more.

  "A little bird in the air,
  Is singing of Thyri the fair,
  The sister of Svend the Dane;
  And the song of the garrulous bird
  In the streets of the town is heard,
  And repeated again and again."

she carolled about the house, while the dust collected upon her books. She
took up one old favourite after another when she first returned, but her
attention wandered from her best beloved, and all that were solid came
somehow to be set aside and replaced, the nourishing fact by inflated
fiction, reason and logic by rhyme and rhythm, and sense by
sentimentality, so far had her strong, simple, earnest mind deteriorated
in the unwholesome atmosphere of London drawing rooms. It was only a
phase, of course, and she could have been set right at once had there been
anybody there to prescribe a strengthening tonic; but failing that, she
tried sweet stimulants that soothed and excited, but did not nourish:
tales that caused chords of pleasurable emotion to vibrate while they
fanned the higher faculties into inaction--vampire things inducing that
fatal repose which enables them to drain the soul of its life blood and
compass its destruction. But Evadne escaped without permanent injury, for,
fortunately for herself, among much that was far too sweet to be wholesome
she discovered Oliver Wendell Holmes' "The Breakfast Table Series," "Elsie
Venner," and "The Guardian Angel" and was insensibly fixed in her rightful
place and sustained by them.

The sun streaming into her room one morning at this time awoke her early
and tempted her up and out. There was a sandy space beyond the grounds, a
long level of her father's land extending to the eastern cliffs, and
considered barren by him, but rich with a certain beauty of its own, the
beauty of open spaces which rest and relieve the mind; and of immensity in
the shining sea-line beyond the cliffs, and the arching vault of the sky
overhead dipping down to encircle the earth; and of colour for all moods,
from the vividest green of grass and yellow of gorse to the amethyst ling,
and the browns with which the waning year tipped every bush and
bramble--things which, when properly appreciated, make life worth living.
It was in this direction that Evadne walked, taking it without design, but
drawn insensibly as by a magnet to the sea.

She had thought herself early up, but the whole wild world of the heath
was before her, and she began to feel belated as she went. There was a
suspicion of frost in the air which made it deliciously fresh and
exhilarating. The early morning mists still hung about, but the sun was
brightly busy dispelling them. The rabbits were tripping hither and
thither, too intent on their own business to pay much heed to Evadne. A
bird sprang up from her feet, and soared out of sight, and she paused a
moment with upturned face, dilated eyes, and lips apart, to watch him. But
a glimpse of the gorse recalled her, and she picked some yellow blooms
with delicate finger tips, and carried them in her bare hand savouring the
scent, and at the same time looking and listening with an involuntary
straining to enjoy the perception of each separate delicate delight at
once, till presently the enthusiasm of nature called forth some further
faculty, and she found herself sensible of every tint and tone, sight and
sound, distinguishing, deciphering, but yet perceiving all together as the
trained ear of a musician does the parts played by every instrument in an
orchestra, and takes cognizance of the whole effect as well.

At the end of the waste there was a little church overlooking the sea. She
saw that the door was open as she approached it, and she paused to look
in. The early weekday service was in progress. A few quiet figures sat
apart in the pews. The light was subdued. Something was being read aloud
by a voice of caressing quality and musical. She did not attend to the
words, but the tone satisfied. It seemed to her that the peace of God
invited, and she slipped into the nearest pew. She found a Bible on the
seat beside her, and opening it haphazard her eyes fell upon the words:

"They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters;
these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep."

The lap of the little waves on the beach below was distinctly audible, the
bird calls, and their twitterings, intermittent, incessant, persistent,
came close and departed; and the fragrance of the blossoms, crushed in her
hand, rose to remind her they were there.

"They that go down to the sea in ships."

It was a passage to be felt at the moment with the sea itself so near, and
as she paused to ponder it her mind attuned itself involuntarily to the
habit of holy thought associated with the place, while the scents and
sounds of nature streamed in upon her, forming now a soft undercurrent,
now a delicious accompaniment which filled the interval between what she
knew of this world and all that she dreamt of the next. The cycle of
sensation was complete, and in a moment her whole being blossomed into
gladness. Her intellectual activity was suspended--her senses awoke. It
was the morning of life with her, and she sank upon her knees, and lifted
up her heart to express the joy of it in one ecstatic note: "O blessed
Lord!"

Lord of the happy earth! Lord of the sun and our senses. He who comes to
us first in Love's name, and bids us rejoice and be glad; not he who would
have us mourn.




CHAPTER X.


After the experiences of that early morning's walk Evadne did not go to
bed so late; she got up early and went to church. The agreeable working of
her intellectual faculties during the early part of her absorbing
self-education had kept her senses in abeyance; but when the discipline of
all regular routine was relaxed, they were set free to get the upper hand
if they would, and now they had begun to have their way--a delicate,
dreamy way, of a surety, but it was a sensuous way nevertheless, and not
at all a spiritual way, as her mother maintained it to be, because of the
church-going. Sometimes sense, sometimes intellect, is the first to awake
in us--supposing we are dowered with an intellect; but pain, which is the
perfecting of our nature, must precede the soul's awakening and for Evadne
at that age, with her limited personal knowledge of life and scant
experience of every form of human emotion which involves suffering, such
an awakening was impossible. The first feeling of a girl as happily
situated, healthy-minded, and physically strong as she was is bound to be
pleasurable; and had she been a young man at this time she would not
improbably have sought to heighten and vary her sensations by adding
greater quantities of alcohol to her daily diet; she would have grown
coarse of skin by eating more than she could assimilate; she would have
smelt strongly enough of tobacco, as a rule, to try the endurance of a
barmaid; she would have been anxious about the fit of coats, fastidious as
to the choice of ties, quite impossible in the matter of trousers, and
prone to regard her own image in the glass caressingly. She would have
considered that every petticoat held a divinity, or every woman had her
price according to the direction in which nature had limited her powers of
perception with a view to the final making of her into a sentimental or a
vicious fool. When she should have been hard at work she would have stayed
in bed in the morning flattering her imagination with visions of the
peerless beauties who would all adore her, and the proud place she would
conquer in the world; and she would have gone girl-stalking in
earnest--_probably_--had she been a young man. But being as she was,
she got up early and went to church. It was the one way she had of
expressing the silent joy of her being, and of intensifying it. She
practised an extreme ritual at this time, and found in it the most
complete form of expression for her mood possible. And in those early
morning walks when she brushed the dew-bespangled cobwebs from the gorse,
and startled the twittering birds from their morning meal--in the
caressing of healthy odours, the uplifting of all sweet natural sounds,
the soothing of the great sea-voice, the sense of infinity in the level
landscape, of beauty in form and colour, of rest and peace in the grateful
shadow of the little church on the cliff, but, above all, in the release
from mental tension, and the ease of feeling after the strain of thought,
she found the highest form of pleasure she had tasted, the most rarefied,
the most intense. The St. Valentine's Day of her development was
approaching, and her heart had begun already to practise the notes of the
song-significant into which she would burst when it came.

It is a nice question that, as to where the sensuous ends, and the
spiritual begins. The dovetail is so exact just at the junction that it is
impossible to determine, and it is there that "spirit and flesh grow one
with delight" on occasion; but the test of the spiritual lies in its
continuity. Pleasures of the senses pall upon repetition, but pleasures of
the soul continue and increase. A delicate dish soon wearies the palate,
but the power to appreciate a poem or a picture grows greater the more we
study them--illustrations as trite, by the way, as those of the average
divine in his weekly sermon, but calculated to comfort to the same extent
in that they possess the charm of familiarity which satisfies self-love by
proving that we know quite as much of some subjects as those who profess
to teach them. Still, a happy condition of the senses may easily be
mistaken for a great outpouring of spiritual enthusiasm, and many an
inspiring soul unconsciously stimulates them in ways less pardonable
perhaps than the legitimate joy of a good dinner to a hungry man, or the
more subtle pleasure which a refined woman experiences while sharing the
communion of well-dressed saints on a cushioned seat, listening to
exquisite music in a fashionable church. Sensations of gladness send some
people to church whom grief of any kind would drive from thence
effectually. It is a matter of temperament. There are those who are by
nature grateful for every good gift, who even bow their heads and suffer
meekly if they perceive that they will have their reward, but are ready to
rebel with rage against any form of ineffectual pain. This was likely to
be Evadne's case. Yet her mother had been right about her having a deeply
religious disposition.

The vicar in charge of the church on the cliff--he of the musical voice,
Mr. Borthwick by name--became aware at once of Evadne's regular
attendance. He was a young man, very earnest, very devout, worn thin with
hard work, but happy in that he had it to do, and with that serene
expression of countenance which comes of the habit of conscientious
endeavour. As a matter of course, with such men at the present time, he
sought solace in ritual. His whole nature thrilled to the roll of the
organ, to the notes of a grateful anthem, to the sight and scent of his
beautiful flowers on the altar, and to the harmony of colour and
conventional design on the walls of his little church. He spent his life
and his substance upon it, doing what he could to beautify it himself, in
the name of the Lord, and finding in the act of worship a refinement of
pleasure difficult of attainment, but possible and precious. And while all
that sufficed for him, he honestly entertained the idea of celibacy as a
condition necessary for the perfect purification of his own soul, and
desirable as giving him a place apart which would help to maintain and
strengthen his influence with his people. A layman may remain a bachelor
without attracting attention, but a priest who abjures matrimony insists
that he makes a sacrifice, and deserves credit for the same. He says that
the laws of nature are the laws of God, yet arranges his own life in
direct opposition to the greatest of them. He can give no unanswerable
reason for maintaining that the legitimate exercise of one set of natural
functions is less holy than the exercise of the others, but that is what
he believes, and curiously inconsistent as the conclusion is, the Rev.
Henry Borthwick had adopted this view emphatically at the outset of his
clerical career, and had announced his intention of adhering to it for the
rest of his life. But, just as the snow under the cool and quiet stars at
dusk might feel full force in itself to vow to the rising moon that it
will not melt, and find nevertheless of necessity when the sun appears
that it cannot keep its vow, so did the idea of celibacy pass from the
mind of the Rev. Henry Borthwick when Evadne began to attend his morning
services. Insensibly his first view of the subject vanished altogether,
and was immediately replaced, first by an uplifting vision of the
advantages of having a wife's help in the parish, then by a glimpse of the
tender pleasure of a wife's presence in the house; and--extraordinary as
it may seem, this final thought occurred to him while the Psalms were
being sung in church one morning, so uncertain is the direction of man's
mind at any time--he even had a vision of the joy of a wife's kiss when
the sweet red lips that gave it were curved like those of the girl before
him. He felt a great outpouring of spiritual grace during that service;
his powers of devotion were intensified. But the moment it was over he
hurried to the vestry, tore off his surplice and threw it on the floor,
met Evadne as she left the church, and lingered long on the cliffs with
her in earnest conversation.

She was late for breakfast that morning, and her mother asked her what had
detained her.

"Mr. Borthwick was talking to me about the sacraments of the Church,
mother," she answered, her calm true eyes meeting her mother's without
confusion; "and about the necessity for, and the advantage of, frequent
communions."

"And what do you think about it, dear?"

"I think I should like it."

Her mother said no more. Young Borthwick was a cadet of good family with
expectations in the way of money, influence enough to procure him a
deanery at least, and with a reputation for ability which, with his other
advantages, gave him as fair a prospect as anybody she knew of a bishopric
eventually--just the thing for Evadne, she reflected, so she did not
interfere.

This was really a happy time for Evadne. The young priest frequently met
her after the early service, and she liked his devotion. She liked his
clean-featured, close-shaven face too, and his musical voice. He was her
perfection of a priest, and when he did not meet her she missed him. She
did not care for him so much when he called at the house, however. She
associated him somehow with her morning moods, with religious discourses,
and the Church service; but when he ventured beyond these limits, they
lost touch, and so she held him down to them rigorously. He tried to
resist. He even conceived a distaste for ecclesiastical subjects, and
endeavoured to float her attention from these on little boats of fancy
phrases made out of the first freshness of new days, the beauty of the sun
on the sea, the jade-green of grass on the cliffs, the pleasure he took in
the songs of birds, and other more mundane matters; but he lost her
sympathetic interest when he did so, receiving her polite attention
instead, which was cold in comparison, and therefore did not satisfy him,
so he determined to try and come to a perfect understanding, and during
one of their morning walks, he startled her by making her a solemn and
abrupt offer of marriage.

She considered the proposition in silence for some time. Then she looked
at him as if she had never seen him before. Then she said, not knowing she
was cruel, and only desiring to be frank: "I have never thought of you as
a man, you know--only as a priest; and in that character I think you
perfect. I respect and reverence you. I even love you, but--"

"But what?" he asked eagerly, his delicate face flushing, his whole being
held in suspense.

"But I could not marry a priest. It would seem to be a sort of sacrilege."

She was very pale when she went in that morning, and her mother noticed
it, and questioned her.

"Mr. Borthwick asked me to marry him, mother," she answered straight to
the point, as was her wont. "He surprised me."

"I am not surprised, dear," her mother rejoined, smiling.

"Did you suppose he would, mother?'

"Yes. I was sure of it."

"Oh, I wish you had warned me!"

"Then you haven't accepted him, Evadne?"

"No. I have always understood that it is not right for a priest to marry,
and the idea of marrying one repels me. He has lowered himself in my
estimation by thinking of such a thing. I could not think of him as I do
of other men. I cannot dissociate him from his office. I expect him
somehow to be always about his reading-desk and pulpit."

Mrs. Frayling's face had fallen, but she only said: "I wish you could have
felt otherwise, dear."

Evadne went up to her room, and stood leaning against the frame of the
open window, looking out over the level landscape. The poor priest had
shown deep feeling, and it was the first she had seen of such suffering.
It pained her terribly.

She got up early next morning, and went out as usual; but the scent of the
gorse was obtrusive, the bird-voices had lost their charm, the far-off
sound of the sea had a new and melancholy note in it, and the little
church on the cliff looked lonely against the sky. She could not go there
again to be reminded of what she would fain have forgotten. No; that phase
was over. The revulsion of feeling was complete, and to banish all
recollection of it she tried with a will to revive the suspended animation
of her interest in her books.




CHAPTER XI.


"All excitements run to love in women of a certain--let us not say age,
but youth," says the professor. "An electrical current passing through a
coil of wire makes a magnet of a bar of iron lying within it, but not
touching it. So a woman is turned into a love-magnet, by a tingling
current of life running round her. I should like to see one of them
balanced on a pivot properly adjusted, and watch if she did not turn so as
to point north and south, as she would if the love-currents are like those
of the earth, our mother."

This passage indicates exactly the point at which Evadne had now arrived,
and where she was pausing.

The attempt to return to her books had been far from successful. Her eye
would traverse page after page without transferring a single record to her
brain, and she would sit with one open in her lap by the hour together,
not absorbed in thought, but lost in feeling. She was both glad and sad at
the same time, glad in her youth and strength, and sad in the sense of
something wanting; what was it?

  If she had--Well! She longed, and knew not wherefore.
  Had the world nothing she might live to care for?
  No second self to say her evening prayer for?

The poor little bird loved the old nest, but she had unconsciously
outgrown it, and was perplexed to find no ease or comfort in it any more.

She certainly entertained the idea of marriage at this time. She had
acquired a sort of notion from her friends that it was good to marry, and
her own inclinations seconded the suggestion. She meant to marry when she
should find the right man, but the difficulty of choice disturbed her. She
had still much of the spirit which made her at twelve see nothing but
nonsense in the "Turn, Gentle Hermit of the Dale" drivel, and she was
quite prepared to decide with her mind. She never took her heart into
consideration, or the possibility of being overcome by a feeling which is
stronger than reason.

She made her future husband a subject of prayer, however. She prayed that
he might be an upright man, that he might come to her soon; she even asked
for some sign by which she should know him. This was during the morning
service in church one Sunday--not the little one on the cliff, which was
only a chapel-of-ease; but the parish church to which the whole family
went regularly. Her thoughts had wandered away, from the lesson that was
being read, to this subject of private devotion, and as she formulated the
desire for a sign, for some certainty by which she might know the man whom
the dear Lord intended to be her husband, she looked up, and from the
other side of the aisle she met a glance that abashed her. She looked
away, but her eyes were drawn back inevitably, and this time the glance of
those other eyes enlightened her. Her heart bounded--her face flushed.
This was the sign, she was sure of it. She had felt nothing like it
before, and although she never raised her eyes again, she thrilled through
the rest of the service to the consciousness that there, not many yards
away, her future husband sat and sighed for her.

After the service, the subject of her thoughts claimed her father's
acquaintance; and was introduced by him to her as Major Colquhoun. He
looked about thirty-eight, and was a big blond man, with a heavy
moustache, and a delicate skin that flushed easily. His hair was thin on
the forehead; in a few more years he would be bald there.

Mr. Frayling asked him to lunch, and Evadne sat beside him. She scarcely
spoke a word the whole time, or looked at him; but she knew that he looked
at her; and she glowed and was glad. The little church on the cliff seemed
a long way off, and out in the cold now. She was sorry for Mr. Borthwick.
She had full faith in the sign. Was not the fact that Major Colquhoun,
whom she had never even heard of in her life before, was sitting beside
her at that moment, confirmation strong, if any were wanting? But she
asked no more.

After lunch her father carried his guest off to smoke, and she went up to
her own room to be alone, and sat in the sun by the open window, with her
head resting on the back of her chair, looking up at the sky; and sighed,
and smiled, and clasped her hands to her breast, and revelled in
sensations.

Major Colquhoun had been staying with a neighbouring county gentleman, but
she found when she met him again at afternoon tea that her father had
persuaded him to come to Fraylingay for some shooting. He was to go back
that night, and return to them the following Tuesday. Evadne heard of the
arrangement in silence, and unsurprised. Had he gone and _not_
returned, she would have wondered; but this sudden admission of a stranger
to the family circle, although unusual, was not unprecedented at
Fraylingay, where, after it was certain that you knew the right people,
pleasant manners were the only passport necessary to secure a footing of
easy intimacy; and, besides, it was inevitable--that the sign might be
fulfilled. So Evadne folded her hands as it were, and calmly awaited the
course of events, not doubting for a moment that she knew exactly what
that course was to be.

She did not actually _see_ much of Major Colquhoun in the days that
followed, although, when he was not out shooting, he was always beside her;
but such timid glances as she stole satisfied her. And she heard her
mother say what a fine-looking man he was, and her father emphatically
pronounced him to be "a very good fellow." He was Irish by his mother's
side, Scotch by his father's, but much more Irish than Scotch by
predilection, and it was his mother tongue he spoke, exaggerating the
accent slightly to heighten the effect of a tender speech or a good story.
With the latter he kept Mr. Frayling well entertained, and Evadne he plied
with the former on every possible occasion.

His visit was to have been for a few days only, but it extended itself to
some weeks, at the end of which time Evadne had accepted him, the
engagement had been announced in the proper papers, Mrs. Frayling was
radiant, congratulations poured in, and everybody concerned was in a state
of pleasurable excitement from morning till night.

Mrs. Frayling was an affectionate woman, and it was touching to see her
writing fluent letters of announcement to her many friends, the smiles on
her lips broken by ominous quiverings now and then, and a handkerchief
held crumpled in her left hand, and growing gradually damper, as she
proceeded, with the happy tears that threatened her neat epistle with
blots and blisters.

"It has been the prettiest idyl to us onlookers," she wrote to Lady
Adeline. "Love at first sight with both of them, and their first glimpse
of each other was in church, which we all take to be the happiest omen
that God's blessing is upon them, and will sanctify their union. Evadne
says little, but there is such a delicate tinge of colour in her cheeks
always, and such a happy light in her eyes, that I cannot help looking at
her. George is senior major, and will command the regiment in a very short
time, and his means are quite ample enough for them to begin upon. There
is twenty years difference in their ages, which sounds too much
theoretically, but practically, when you see them together, you never
think of it. He is very handsome, every inch a soldier, and an Irishman,
with all an Irishman's brightness and wit, and altogether the most taking
manners. I tell Evadne I am quite in love with him myself! He is a
thoroughly good Churchman too, which is a great blessing--never misses a
service, and it is a beautiful sight to see him kneeling beside Evadne as
rapt and intent as she is. He was rather wild as a young man, I am sorry
to say, but he has been quite frank about all, that to Mr. Frayling, and
there is nothing now that we can object to. In fact, we think he is
exactly suited to Evadne, and we are thoroughly satisfied in every way.
You can imagine that I find it hard to part with her, but I always knew
that it would be the case as soon as she came out, and so was prepared in
a way; still, that will not lessen the wrench when it comes. But of course
I must not consider my own feelings when the dear child's happiness is in
question, and I think that long engagements are a mistake; and as there is
really no reason why they should wait, they are to be married at the end
of next month, which gives us only six weeks to get the trousseau. We are
going to town at once to see about it, and I think that probably the
ceremony will take place there too. It would be such a business at
Fraylingay, with all the tenants and everything, and altogether one has to
consider expense. But do write at once and promise me that we may expect
you, and Mr. Hamilton-Wells, and the _dear_ twins, wherever it is. In
fact, I believe Evadne is writing to Theodore at this moment to ask him to
be her page, and Angelica will, of course, be a bridesmaid."

During the first days of her absorbing passion Evadne's devotion to God
was intensified. "Sing to the Lord a new song" was forever upon her lips.

When the question of her engagement came to be mooted she had had a long
talk with her father, following upon a still longer talk which he had with
Major Colquhoun.

"And you are satisfied with my choice, father?" she said. "You consider
George in every respect a suitable husband for me?"

"In all respects, my dear," he answered heartily. "He is a very fine,
manly fellow."

"There was nothing in his past life to which I should object?" she
ventured timidly.

"Oh, nothing, nothing," he assured her. "He has been perfectly
straightforward about himself, and I am satisfied that he will make you an
excellent husband."

It was all the assurance she required, and after she had received it she
gave herself up to her happiness without a doubt, and unreservedly.

The time flew. Major Colquhoun's leave expired, and he was obliged to
return to his regiment at Shorncliffe; but they wrote to each other every
day, and this constant communion was a new source of delight to Evadne.
Just before they left Fraylingay she went to see her aunt, Mrs. Orton Beg.
The latter had sprained her ankle severely, and would therefore not be
able to go to Evadne's wedding. She lived in Morningquest, and had a
little house in the Close there. Morningquest was only twenty miles from
Fraylingay, but the trains were tiresomely slow, and did not run in
connection, so that it took as long to get there as it did to go to
London, and people might live their lives in Fraylingay, and know nothing
of Morningquest.

Mrs. Orton Beg's husband was buried in the old cathedral city, and she
lived there to be near his grave. She could never tear herself away from
it for long together. The light of her life had gone out when he died, and
was buried with him; but the light of her love, fed upon the blessed hope
of immortality, burnt brighter every day.

Her existence in the quiet Close was a very peaceful, dreamy one, soothed
by the chime, uplifted by the sight of the beautiful old cathedral, and
regulated by its service.

Evadne found her lying on a couch beside an open window in the drawing
room, which was a long, low room, running the full width of the house, and
with a window at either end, one looking up the Close to the north, the
other to the south, into a high-walled, old-fashioned flower garden; and
this was the one near which Mrs. Orton Beg was lying.

"I think I should turn to the cathedral, Aunt Olive," Evadne said.

"I do," her aunt answered; "but not at this time of day. I travel round
with the sun."

"It would fill my mind with beautiful thoughts to live here," Evadne said,
looking up at the lonely spire reverently.

"I have no doubt that your mind is always full of beautiful thoughts," her
aunt rejoined, smiling. "But I know what you mean. There are thoughts
carved on those dumb gray stones which can only come to us from such a
source of inspiration. The sincerity of the old workmen, their love and
their reverence, were wrought into all they produced, and if only we hold
our own minds in the right attitude, we receive something of their grace.
Do you remember that passage of Longfellow's?--

  "Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain,
  What exultations trampling on despair,
  What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong,
  What passionate outcry of a soul in pain,
  Uprose this poem of the earth and air,
  This medieval miracle,...!

"Sitting here alone, sometimes I seem to feel it all--all the capacity for
loving sacrifice and all the energy of human passion which wrought itself
into that beautiful offering of its devotion, and made it acceptable. But,
tell me, Evadne--are you very happy?"

"I am _too_ happy, I think, auntie. But I can't talk about it. I must
keep the consciousness of it close in my own heart, and guard it
jealously, lest I dissipate any atom of it by attempting to describe it."

"Do you think, then, that love is such a delicate thing that the slightest
exposure will destroy it?"

"I don't know what I think. But the feeling is so fresh now, auntie, I am
afraid to run the risk of uttering a word, or hearing one, that might
tarnish it."

She strolled out into the garden during the afternoon, and sat on a
high-backed chair in the shade of the old brick wall, with eyes half
closed and a smile hovering about her lips. The wall was curtained with
canaryensis, virginia creeper rich in autumn tints, ivy, and giant
nasturtiums. Great sunflowers grew up against it, and a row of single
dahlias of every possible hue crowded up close to the sunflowers. They
made a background to the girl's slender figure.

She sat there a long time, happily absorbed, and Mrs. Orton Beg's memory,
as she watched her, slipped back inevitably to her own love days, till
tears came of the inward supplication that Evadne's future might never
know the terrible blight which had fallen upon her own life.

Evadne walked through the village on her way back to Fraylingay. A young
woman with her baby in her arms was standing at the door of her cottage
looking out as she passed, and she stopped to speak to her. The child held
out his little arms, and kicked and crowed to be taken, and when his
mother had intrusted him to Evadne, he clasped her tight round the neck,
and nibbled her cheek with his warm, moist mouth, sending a delicious
thrill through every fibre of her body, a first foretaste of maternity.

She hurried on to hide her emotion.

But all the way home there was a singing at her heart, a certainty of joys
undreamt of hitherto, the tenderest, sweetest, most womanly joys--her own
house, her own husband, her own children--perhaps; it all lay in that, her
_own_!




CHAPTER XII


The next few weeks were decked with the richness of autumn tints, the
glory of autumn skies; but Evadne was unaware of either. She had no
consciousness of distinct days and nights, and indeed they were pretty
well mingled after she went to town, for she often danced till daylight
and slept till dusk. And it was all a golden haze, this time, with
impressions of endless shops; of silks, satins, and lovely laces; of
costly trinkets; of little notes flying between London and Shorncliffe;
and of everybody so happy that it was impossible to help sitting down and
having a good cry occasionally.

The whirl in which she lived during this period was entered upon without
thought, her own inclinations agreeing at the time to every usage
sanctioned by custom; but in after years she said that those days of
dissipation and excitement appeared to her to be a curious preparation for
the solemn duties she was about to enter upon.

Evadne felt the time fly, and she felt also that the days were never
ending. It was six weeks at first; and then all at once, as it seemed,
there was only one week; and then it was "tomorrow!" All that last day
there was a terrible racket in the house, and she was hardly left alone a
single moment, and was therefore thankful when finally, late at night, she
managed to escape to her own room--not that she was left long in peace
even then, however, for two of her bridesmaids were staying in the house,
and they and her sisters stormed her chamber in their dressing-gowns, and
had a pillow fight to begin with, and then sat down and cackled for an
hour, speculating as to whether they should like to be married or not.
They decided that they should, because of the presents, you know, and the
position, and the delight of having such a lot of new gowns, and being
your own mistress, with your own house and servants; they thought of
everything, in fact, but the inevitable husband, the possession of whom
certainly constituted no part of the advantages which they expected to
secure by marriage. Evadne sat silent, and smiled at their chatter with
the air of one who has solved the problem and knows. But she was glad to
be rid of them, and when they had gone, she got her sacred "Commonplace
Book," and glanced through it dreamily. Then, rousing herself a little,
she went to her writing table, and sat down and wrote: "This is the close
of the happiest girlhood that girl ever had. I cannot recall a single
thing that I would have had otherwise."

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.

Mrs. Orton Beg had sat idle an hour looking out of the window, her mind in
the mood for music, but bare of thought.

A gale was blowing without. The old elms in the Close were tossing their
stiff, bare arms about, the ground was strewed with branches and leaves
from the limes, and a watery wintry sun made the misery of the muddy
ground apparent, and accentuated the blight of the flowers and torn
untidiness of the creepers, and all the items which make autumn gardens so
desolate. The equinoctial gales had set in early that year. They began on
Evadne's wedding day with a fearful storm which raged all over the
country, and burst with especial violence upon Morningquest, and the wind
continued high, and showed no sign of abating. It was depressing weather,
and Mrs. Orton Beg sighed more than once unconsciously.

But presently the cathedral clock began to strike, and she raised her head
to listen. One, two, three, four, the round notes fell; then there was a
pause; and then the chime rolled out over the storm-stained city:

[Illustration: (musical notation); lyrics: He, watch-ing o-ver Is--ra--el,
slumbers not, nor sleeps.]

Mechanically Mrs. Orton Beg repeated the phrase with each note as it
floated forth, filling the silent spaces; and then she awoke with a start
to thought once more, and knew that she had been a long, long time alone.

She was going to ring, but at that moment a servant entered and announced:
"Mrs. and Miss Beale."

They were the wife and daughter of the Bishop of Morningquest, the one a
very pleasant, attractive elderly lady, the other a girl of seventeen,
like her mother, but with more character in her face.

"Ah, how glad I am to see you!" Mrs. Orton Beg exclaimed, trying to rise,
"and what a delicious breath of fresh air you have brought in with you!"

"My dear Olive, don't move," Mrs. Beale rejoined, preventing her. "We have
been nearly blown away walking this short distance. Just look at Edith's
hair."

"I feel quite tempest tossed," said Edith, getting up and going to a glass
before which she removed her hat, and let down her hair, which was the
colour of burnished brass, and fell to her knees in one straight heavy
coil without a wave.

"You remind me of some Saxon Edith I have seen in a picture," said Mrs.
Orton Beg, looking at her admiringly. "But, dear child," her mother
deprecated, "should you make a dressing room of the drawing room?"

"I know Mrs. Orton Beg will pardon me," said Edith, rolling her hair up
deftly and neatly as she spoke, with the air of a privileged person quite
at home.

Mrs. Orton Beg smiled at her affectionately; but before she could speak
the door opened once more, and the servant announced: "Lord Dawne."

And there entered a grave, distinguished looking man between thirty and
forty years of age, apparently, with black hair, and deep blue eyes at
once penetrating and winning in expression.

Mrs. Orton Beg greeted him with pleasure, Mrs. Beale with pleasure also,
but with more ceremony, Edith quite simply and naturally, and then he sat
down. He was in riding dress, with his whip and hat in his hand.

"This is an unexpected pleasure. I did not know you were at Morne," said
Mrs. Orton Beg. "Is Claudia with you?"

"No, I have only come for a few days," Lord Dawne replied, "I came to see
Adeline specially, but they don't return from town till to-morrow. They
have all been assisting at the marriage of a niece of yours, I hear, and
the Heavenly Twins have been prolonging the festivities on their own
account. Adeline wrote to me in despair, and I have come to see if I can
be of any use. My sister," he added, turning to Mrs. Beale with his
bright, almost boyish smile, which was like his nephew Diavolo's, and made
them both irresistible--"my sister flatters herself that I have some
influence with the children, and as it is quite certain that nobody else
has, I am careful not to dispel the illusion. It is a comfort to her. But
the twins will not allow me to deceive myself upon that head. They put me
in my place every time I see them. The last time we had a serious talk
together I noticed that Diavolo was thinking deeply, and hoped for a
moment that it was about what I was saying; but that, apparently, had not
interested him at all, for I had the curiosity to ask, just to see if I
had, perchance, made any impression, and discovered that he had had
something else in his mind the whole time. 'I was just wondering,' he
answered, 'if you care much about being Duke of Morningquest.' 'No, not
very much,' I assured him; 'why?' 'Well, I was pretty certain you didn't,'
he replied; 'and, you see, _I_ do; so I was just thinking couldn't
you remain as you are when grandpapa dies, and let me walk into the title?
Then I'd give Angelica the Hamilton House property, and it would be very
jolly for all of us.' 'But, look here,' Angelica broke in, in her
energetic way, 'if you're going to be a duke I won't be left plain Miss
Hamilton-Wells.' 'You couldn't be "plain" Miss anything,' Diavolo
gallantly assured her, bowing in the most courtly way. But Angelica said,
with more force than refinement, that that was all rot, and then Diavolo
lost his temper and pulled her hair, and she got hold of his and dragged
him out of the room by his--my presence of course counted for nothing. And
the next I saw of them they were on their ponies in a secluded grassy
glade of the forest, tilting at each other with long poles for the
dukedom. Angelica says she means to beat Demosthenes hollow--I use her own
phraseology to give character to the quotation; that delivering orations
with a natural inclination, to stammering was nothing to get over compared
to the disabilities which being a girl imposes upon her; but she means to
get over them all by hook, which she explains as being the proper
development of her muscles and physique generally, and by crook, which she
defines as circumventing the slave drivers of her sex, a task which she
seems to think can easily be accomplished by finessing."

"And what was the last thing?" Mrs. Orton Beg inquired, smiling
indulgently.

"Oh, that was very simple," Lord Dawne rejoined. "Diavolo, dressed in
velvet, was caught and taken up by a policeman for recklessly driving a
hansom in Oxford Street, Angelica being inside the same disguised in
something of her mother's."

"I wonder it was Angelica who went inside!" Mrs. Orton Beg exclaimed.

"Well, that was what her mother said," Lord Dawne replied; "and both her
parents seem to think the matter was not nearly so bad as it might have
been in consequence. Mr. Hamilton-Wells had to pay a fine for the furious
driving, and use all his influence with the Press to keep the thing out of
the papers."

"But where did the children get the hansom?" Mrs. Beale begged to be
informed.

"I regret to say that they hailed it through the dining room window, and
plied the driver with raw brandy until his venal nature gave in to their
earnestly persuasive eloquence and the contents of their purses, and he
consented to let Diavolo 'just try what it was like to sit up on that high
box,' Angelica having previously got inside, and, of course, the moment
the young scamp had the reins in his hands he drove off full tilt."

"Oh, dear, _poor_ Lady Adeline!" Mrs. Beale exclaimed.

Lord Dawne smiled again, and changed the subject. "Did you feel the storm
much here?" he asked. "My trees have suffered a great deal, I am sorry to
say."

"Ah, that reminds me," Mrs. Beale began. "A very strange and solemn thing
happened on the day of the storm; have you heard of it, Olive?"

"No," Mrs. Orton Beg answered with interest. "What was it?"

"Well, you know the dean's brother has a large family of daughters," Mrs.
Beale replied, "and they had a very charming governess, Miss Winstanley, a
lady by birth, and an accomplished person, and extremely
_spirituelle_. Well, on the morning of the storm she was sitting at
work with one of her pupils in the schoolroom, when another came in from
the garden, and uttered an exclamation of surprise when she saw Miss
Winstanley, 'How did you get in, and take your things off so quickly?' she
said. 'I have not been out,' Miss Winstanley answered. 'Why, I saw you--I
ran past you over by the duck pond!' 'Dear child, you must be mistaken. I
haven't been out to-day,' the governess answered, smiling. Well, that
child got out her work and sat down, but she had hardly done so when
another came in, and also exclaimed: 'Oh, Miss Winstanley! How _did_
you get here? I saw you standing looking out of the window at the bottom
of the picture gallery as I ran past this minute.' 'I must have a double,'
said Miss Winstanley lightly. 'But it _was_ you,' the child insisted;
'I saw you quite well, flowers and all.' The governess was wearing some
scarlet geranium. 'You know what they say if people are seen like that
where they have never been in the body?' she said jokingly. 'They say it
is a sign that that person is going to die.' In the afternoon," Mrs. Beale
continued, lowering her voice and glancing round involuntarily--and in the
momentary pause the rush of the gale without sounded obtrusively--"in the
afternoon of that same day she went out alone for a walk, and did not
return, and they became alarmed at last, and sent some men to search for
her when the storm was at its height, and they found her lying across a
stile. She had been killed by the branch of a tree falling on her."

"How do you explain that?" Mrs. Orton Beg said softly to Lord Dawne.

"I should not attempt to explain it," he answered, rising.

"Must you go?"

"Yes, I am sorry to say. Claudia and Ideala charged me with many messages
for you."

"They are together as usual, and well, I trust?"

"Yes," he answered, "and most anxious to hear a better account of your
foot."

"Ah, I hope to be able to walk soon," she said, holding out her hand to
him.

"What a charming man he is," Mrs. Beale remarked when he had gone. "There
is no hope of his marrying, I suppose," she added, trying not to look at
her daughter.

"Oh, no!" Mrs. Orton Beg exclaimed in an almost horrified tone.

Lord Dawne's friends made no secret of his grand and chivalrous devotion
to the distinguished woman known to them all as Ideala. Every one of them
was aware, although he had never let fall a word on the subject, that he
had remained single on her account--every one but Ideala herself. She
never suspected it, or thought of love at all in connection with Lord
Dawne--and, besides, she was married.

When her friends had gone that day Mrs. Orton Beg sat long in the
gathering dusk, watching the newly lighted fire burn up, and thinking. She
was thinking of Evadne chiefly, wondering why she had had no news of her,
why her sister Elizabeth did not write, and tell her all about the wedding;
and she was just on the verge of anxiety--in that state when various
possibilities of trouble that might have occurred to account for delays
begin to present themselves to the mind, when all at once, without hearing
anything, she became conscious of a presence near her, and looking up she
was startled to see Evadne herself.

"My dear child!" she gasped, "what has happened? Why are you here?"

"Nothing has happened, auntie; don't be alarmed," Evadne answered. "I am
here because I have been a fool."

She spoke quietly but with concentrated bitterness, then sat down and
began to take off her gloves with that exaggerated show of composure which
is a sign in some people of suppressed emotion.

Her face was pale, but her eyes were bright, and the pupils were dilated.

"I have come to claim your hospitality, auntie," she pursued, "to ask you
for shelter from the world for a few days, _because_ I have been a
fool. May I stay?"

"Surely, dear child," Mrs. Orton Beg replied, and then she waited,
mastering the nervous tremor into which the shock of Evadne's sudden
appearance had thrown her with admirable self-control. And here again the
family likeness between aunt and niece was curiously apparent. Both masked
their agitation because both by temperament were shy, and ashamed to show
strong feeling.

Evadne looked into the fire for a little, trying to collect herself. "I
knew what was right," she began at last in a low voice, "I knew we should
take nothing for granted, we should never be content merely to feel and
suppose and hope for the best in matters about which we should know
exactly. And yet I took no trouble to ascertain. I fell in love, and liked
the sensation, and gave myself up to it unreservedly. Certainly, I was a
fool--there is no other word for it."

"But are you married, Evadne?" Mrs. Orton Beg asked in a voice rendered
unnatural by the rapid beating of her heart.

"Let me tell you, auntie, all about it," Evadne answered hoarsely. She
drew her chair a little closer to the fire, and spread her hands out to
the blaze. There was no other light in the room by this time. The wind
without howled dismally still, but at intervals, as if with an effort.
During one of its noisiest bursts the cathedral clock began to strike, and
hushed it, as it were, suddenly. It seemed to be listening, to be waiting,
and Evadne waited and listened too, raising her head. There was a
perceptible, momentary pause, then came the chime, full, round, mournful,
melodious, yet glad too, in the strength of its solemn assurance, filling
the desolate regions of sorrow and silence with something of hope whereon
the weary mind might repose:

[Illustration: (musical notation); lyrics: He, watch-ing o-ver Is--ra--el,
slumbers not, nor sleeps.]

When the last reverberation of the last note had melted out of hearing,
Evadne sighed; then she straightened herself, as if collecting her energy,
and began to speak.

"Yes, I am married," she said, "but when I went to change my dress after
the ceremony I found this letter. It was intended, you see, to reach me
some days before it did, but unfortunately it was addressed to Fraylingay,
and time was lost in forwarding it." She handed it to her aunt, who raised
her eyebrows when she saw the writing, as if she recognized it, hastily
drew the letter from its envelope, and held it so that the blaze fell upon
it while she read. Evadne knelt on the hearthrug, and stirred the fire,
making it burn up brightly.

Mrs. Orton Beg returned the letter to the envelope when she had read it.
"What did you do?" she said.

"I read it before I went downstairs, and at first I could not think what
to do, so we drove off together, but on the way to the station it suddenly
flashed upon me that the proper thing to do would be to go at once and
hear all that there was to tell, and fortunately Major Colquhoun gave me
an opportunity of getting away without any dispute. He went to see about
something, leaving me in the carriage, and I just got out, walked round
the station, took a hansom, and drove off to the General Post Office to
telegraph to my people."

"But why didn't you go home?"

"For several reasons," Evadne answered, "the best being that I never
thought of going home. I wanted to be alone and think. I fancied that at
home they either could not or would not tell me anything of Major
Colquhoun's past life, and I was determined to know the truth exactly. And
I can't tell you how many sayings of my father's recurred to me all at
once with a new significance, and made me fear that there was some
difference between his point of view and mine on the subject of a suitable
husband. He told me himself that Major Colquhoun had been quite frank
about his past career, and then, when I came to think, it appeared to me
clearly that it was the frankness which had satisfied my father; the
career itself was nothing. You heard how pleased they were about my
engagement?"

"Yes," Mrs. Orton Beg answered slowly, "and I confess I was a little
surprised when I heard from your mother that your _fiancé_ had been
'wild' in his youth, for I remembered some remarks you made last year
about the kind of man you would object to marry, and it seemed to me from
the description that Major Colquhoun was very much that kind of man."

"Then why didn't you warn me?" Evadne exclaimed.

"I don't know whether I quite thought it was a subject for warning," Mrs.
Orton Beg answered, "and at any rate, girls _do_ talk in that way
sometimes, not really meaning it. I thought it was mere _youngness_
on our part, and theory; and I don't know now whether I quite approve of
your having been told--of this new departure, she added, indicating the
letter.

"_I_ do," said Evadne decidedly. "I would stop the imposition,
approved of custom, connived at by parents, made possible by the state of
ignorance in which we are carefully kept--the imposition upon a girl's
innocence and inexperience of a disreputable man for a husband."

Mrs. Orton Beg was startled by this bold assertion, which was so
unprecedented in her experience that for a moment she could not utter a
word; and when she did speak she avoided a direct reply, because she
thought any discussion on the subject of marriage, except from the
sentimental point of view, was indelicate.

"But tell me your position exactly," she begged--"what you did next: why
you are here!"

"I went by the night mail North," Evadne answered, "and

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