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Twin-Love
by
It was a happy day for him when, propped against his breast and gently held by his warm, strong arm, the twin boys were first brought to be laid upon her lap. Two staring, dark-faced creatures, with restless fists and feet, they were alike in every least feature of their grotesque animality. Phebe placed a hand under the head of each, and looked at them for a long time in silence.
“Why is this?” she said, at last, taking hold of a narrow pink ribbon, which was tied around the wrist of one.
“He’s the oldest, sure,” the nurse answered. “Only by fifteen minutes or so, but it generally makes a difference when twins come to be named; and you may see with your own eyes that there’s no telling of ’em apart otherways.”
“Take off the ribbon, then,” said Phebe quietly; “I know them.”
“Why, ma’am, it’s always done, where they’re so like! And I’ll never be able to tell which is which; for they sleep and wake and feed by the same clock. And you might mistake, after all, in giving ’em names–“
“There is no oldest or youngest, John; they are two and yet one: this is mine, and this is yours.”
“I see no difference at all, Phebe,” said John; “and how can we divide them?”
“We will not divide,” she answered; “I only meant it as a sign.”
She smiled, for the first time in many days. He was glad of heart, but did not understand her. “What shall we call them?” he asked. “Elias and Reuben, after our fathers?”
“No, John; their names must be David and Jonathan.”
And so they were called. And they grew, not less, but more alike, in passing through the stages of babyhood. The ribbon of the older one had been removed, and the nurse would have been distracted, but for Phebe’s almost miraculous instinct. The former comforted herself with the hope that teething would bring a variation to the two identical mouths; but no! they teethed as one child. John, after desperate attempts, which always failed in spite of the headaches they gave him, postponed the idea of distinguishing one from the other, until they should be old enough to develop some dissimilarity of speech, or gait, or habit. All trouble might have been avoided, had Phebe consented to the least variation in their dresses; but herein she was mildly immovable.
“Not yet,” was her set reply to her husband; and one day, when he manifested a little annoyance at her persistence, she turned to him, holding a child on each knee, and said with a gravity which silenced him thenceforth: “John, can you not see that our burden has passed into them? Is there no meaning in this–that two children who are one in body and face and nature, should be given to us at our time of life, after such long disappointment and trouble? Our lives were held apart; theirs were united before they were born, and I dare not turn them in different directions. Perhaps I do not know all that the Lord intended to say to us, in sending them; but His hand is here!”
“I was only thinking of their good,” John meekly answered. “If they are spared to grow up, there must be some way of knowing one from the other.”
“THEY will not need it, and I, too, think only of them. They have taken the cross from my heart, and I will lay none on theirs. I am reconciled to my life through them, John; you have been very patient and good with me, and I will yield to you in all things but in this. I do not think I shall live to see them as men grown; yet, while we are together, I feel clearly what it is right to do. Can you not, just once, have a little faith without knowledge, John?”