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HALF ONE IS ONE.
I am going to give you the whole story, but not this moment; I want to
talk a little first. I need not say that I had twin uncles. They were but
one man to the world; to themselves only were they a veritable two. The
word twin means one of two that once were one. To twin means to
divide, they tell me. The opposite action is, of twain to make one.
To me as well as the world, I believe, but for the close individual
contact of all my life with my uncle Edward, the two would have been but
as one man. I hardly know that I felt any richer at first for having two
uncles; it was long before I should have felt much poorer for the loss of
uncle Edmund. Uncle Edward was to me the substance of which uncle Edmund
was the shadow. But at length I learned to love him dearly through
perceiving how dearly my own uncle loved him. I loved the one because he
was what he was, the other because he was not that one. Creative Love
commonly differentiates that it may unite; in the case of my uncles it
seemed only to have divided that it might unite. I am hardly intelligible
to myself; in my mind at least I have got into a bog of confused
metaphysics, out of which it is time I scrambled. What I would say is
this--that what made the world not care there should be two of them, made
the earth a heaven to those two. By their not being one, they were able
to love, and so were one. Like twin planets they revolved around each
other, and in a common orbit around God their sun. It was a beautiful
thing to see how uncle Edmund revived and expanded in the light of his
brother's presence, until he grew plainly himself. He had suffered more
than my own uncle, and had not had an orphan child to love and be loved
by.
What a drive home that was! Paris, anywhere seemed home now! I had John
and my uncles; John had me and my uncle; my uncles had each other; and I
suspect, if we could have looked into Martha, we should have seen that
she, through her lovely unselfishness, possessed us all more than any one
of us another. Oh the outbursts of gladness on the way!--the talks!--the
silences! The past fell off like an ugly veil from the true face of
things; the present was sunshine; the future a rosy cloud.
When we reached our hotel, it was dinner-time, and John ordered
champagne. He and I were hungry as two happy children; the brothers ate
little, and scarcely drank. They were too full of each other to have room
for any animal need. A strange solemnity crowned and dominated their
gladness. Each was to the other a Lazarus given back from the grave. But
to understand the depth of their rapture, you must know their story. That
of Martha and Mary and Lazarus could not have equalled it but for the
presence of the Master, for neither sisters nor brother had done each
other any wrong. They looked to me like men walking in a luminous mist--a
mist of unspeakable suffering radiant with a joy as unspeakable--the very
stuff to fashion into glorious dreams.
When we drew round the fire, for the evenings were chilly, they laid
their whole history open to us. What a tale it was! and what a telling of
it! My own uncle, Edward, was the principal narrator, but was
occasionally helped out by my newer uncle, Edmund. I had the story
already, my reader will remember, in my uncle's writing, at home: when we
returned I read it--not with the same absorption as if it had come first,
but with as much interest, and certainly with the more thorough
comprehension that I had listened to it before. That same written story I
shall presently give, supplemented by what, necessarily, my uncle Edmund
had to supply, and with some elucidation from the spoken narrative of my
uncle Edward.
As the story proceeded, overcome with the horror of the revelation I
foresaw, I forgot myself, and cried out--
"And that woman is John's mother!"
"Whose mother?" asked uncle Edmund, with scornful curiosity.
"John Day's," I answered.
"It cannot be!" he cried, blazing up. "Are you sure of it?"
"I have always been given so to understand," replied John for me; "but I
am by no means sure of it. I have doubted it a thousand times."
"No wonder! Then we may go on! But, indeed, to believe you her son, would
be to doubt you! I don't believe it."
"You could not help doubting me!" responded John. "--I might be true,
though, even if I were her son!" he added.
"Ed," said Edmund to Edward, "let us lay our heads together!"
"Ready Ed!" said Edward to Edmund.
Thereupon they began comparing memories and recollections,--to find,
however, that they had by no means data enough. One thing was clear to
me--that nothing would be too bad for them to believe of her.
"She would pick out the eye of a corpse if she thought a sovereign lay
behind it!" said uncle Edmund.
"To have the turning over of his rents,--" said uncle Edward, and checked
himself.
"Yes--it would be just one of her devil-tricks!" agreed uncle Edmund.
"I beg your pardon, John," said uncle Edward, as if it were he that had
used the phrase, and uncle Edmund nodded to John, as if he had himself
made the apology.
John said nothing. His eyes looked wild with hope. He felt like one who,
having been taught that he is a child of the devil, begins to know that
God is his father--the one discovery worth making by son of man.
Then, at my request, they went on with their story, which I had
interrupted.
When it was at length all poured out, and the last drops shaken from the
memory of each, there fell a long silence, which my own uncle broke.
"When shall we start, Ed?" he said.
"To-morrow, Ed."
"This business of John's must come first, Ed!"
"It shall, Ed!"
"You know where you were born, John?"
"On my father's estate of Rubworth in Gloucestershire, I believe"
answered John.
"You must be prepared for the worst, you know!"
"I am prepared. As Orba told me once, God is my father, whoever my mother
may be!"
"That's right. Hold by that!" said my uncles, as with one breath.
"Do you know the year you were born?" asked uncle Edmund.
"My mother says I was born in 1820."
"You have not seen the entry?"
"No. One does not naturally doubt such statements."
"Assuredly not--until--" He paused.
How uncle Edmund had regained his wits! And how young the brothers
looked!
"You mean," said John, "until he has known my mother!"
Now for the story of my twin uncles, mainly as written by my uncle
Edward!
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