The Heavenly Twins

by Sarah Grand

"Take care, for God's sake!" the Tenor exclaimed.

But too late. His excitable companion, in the middle of cutting a fantastic caper, reeled, lost his balance, plunged head foremost into the water, and sank like a stone.

Without a moment's delay the Tenor dived in after him, the cockleshell of a boat, half capsizing as he went over, took in water enough to sink her to the gunwale, and the whole thing happened so quickly that a spectator on the bank who had seen the boat and its occupants one moment might have looked in vain the next for any trace of either.

The Tenor came to the surface alone. His dive in the uncertain light had been unsuccessful, and now he had the strength of mind to wait—in what agony of suspense Heaven only knows!—till the Boy should rise. It could only have been a few seconds, but it was long enough for the Tenor to lay another man's death at his own door, to realize the loss to himself the Boy would be, and his position when he would have to take the dreadful news to the family, only one member of which in all probability knew of their intimacy. She knew—But, good Heaven! would she not blame him? Oh, he had been to blame, to blame!—It was only a few seconds, yet it was time enough for the unfortunate Tenor to live over again the awful moment when he had seen his best friend drop dead, only there was a double pang, for time and space were confounded, and it was as if both father and brother—as they had been to him—had gone down at once, and both by his hand.

In that brief interval of suffering his face had become rigid and set, a stony mask with no visible sign of emotion upon it; and yet the man's strength and power of endurance were evident in this, that he had the courage to wait.

And presently the Boy rose to the surface within easy reach.

With an exclamation of relief the Tenor grasped him, and struck out for the shore—afraid at first that the Boy, who apparently could not swim, would cling about him in his fright and hamper his movements; and then afraid because the Boy did not cling about him, but suffered himself to be dragged through the water, inert, like a log, helpless, lifeless—no, not lifeless, the Tenor argued with himself. He could not be lifeless, you know. He had not been in the water long enough for that. The Tenor noticed that he had not let go of his violin, and thought: "The ruling passion strong in—no, not in death. How could a dead hand hold on like that? Boy, dear Boy!" But the Boy made no response. The Tenor had struck out for the nearest bank which, as luck would have it, brought him to the landing place at the watergate. His perception seemed singularly quickened; every sense was actively alive to what was passing; nothing escaped him; and he rendered an account to himself of all that occurred, feeling it strange the while that he should be able to do so at such a time. He noticed some detail of the stonework in the arch as he swam toward it; he noticed the poplars, some three or four of different heights, which stood up all stiff and vimineous as seen from below, beside it; he remembered the Boy once saying they looked like hairy caterpillars standing on their heads, and smiled even now at the quaint conceit. When he reached the steps and clutched the handrail, it was with a sensation of joy that nearly paralyzed him. It was curious, though, what odd and trivial phrases rose to his lips, what irrelevant thoughts passed through his mind.

"Mustn't holloa till we're out of the wood," he warned himself, as he drew the Boy from the water with difficulty, and, getting him over his shoulder so that he could hold him with one hand and steady himself on the steep steps with the other began to stagger up. "I wonder what the Boy would say if he could see me now!" was his involuntary thought as he did so.

The Boy was heavier than his slender figure would have led one to suppose, or else the Tenor was not so strong as he thought himself; at all events he swayed under his burden as he carried him through the silent Close, now putting out his hand flat against a wall to steady himself, and now staggering up to the gnarled trunk of one of the old lime trees, and pausing to take breath while he mentally calculated the distance between that and the next support at which he could stop to rest, noticing in the brief interval the blackness of the shadows; noticing also a little shiver of leaves above him caused by a gust of air, the first forerunner of a breeze that was rapidly rising; noticed this last fact particularly, partly because the wind chilled him in his thin wet flannels, and partly because it marked the change and contrast between the warm and happy time just over, the anxious present moment, and the dread of what might be yet to come. The next support was the corner of the wall which surrounded the dean's garden; creeping on by that till it ended, he made an unsteady dash across the road for the wall of the cathedral, and then from that across again, zigzag, to his own little gate, where, gathering his strength for the last effort, he took the Boy, whom he apostrophised as a perfect Old Man of the Sea, in both arms, as a mother does her child, and a moment afterward laid him on the floor of the long low room where they had spent so many happy hours together, and from whence he had gone out a short time before all life and strength and youth and beauty: "Gone to his death!" The Tenor felt the phrase in his mind, but stifled it with a "Thank God!" as he laid him down.

He had been fatigued by the long row when the accident happened, and was now almost exhausted by excitement, terror for the Boy, and this last effort; but still his mind went on with abnormal clearness noting every trifle, and continuing to force him, as it were, to render an account of each to himself. He noticed the perfume of roses, the roses the Boy had showered in upon him—so short a time before—and he found himself measuring the shortness of the interval again as if it would have been easier to bear the catastrophe had it not jostled a happier state of things so closely. He found himself wondering what the Boy would say if he knew he had brought him in by the front door instead of by the window; he was sure he would have insisted on the mode of entrance he so much preferred had he been conscious, and felt as if he had taken a disloyal advantage of the Boy's helpless condition.