The Heavenly Twins (Victorian Feminist Novel). Grand Sarah
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