The Angel of Pain

by E. F. Benson

The day had been hot and sunny when he left London, and promised an exquisite summer afternoon in the country, where the freshness would tone down a heat that in town was rather oppressive. But this pleasant probability, as the train threw the suburbs over its shoulder, did not seem likely to be fulfilled, for the air, instead of getting fresher, seemed to gather sultriness with every mile. Evelyn was himself much of a slave to climatic conditions, and this windless calm, portending thunder, seemed to press down on his head with dreadful weight. Even the draught made by the flying train had no life in it; it was a hot buffet of air as if from a furnace mouth. Then, as he neared his destination, the sky began to be overcast, lumps of dark-coloured cloud, with hard, angry edges of a coppery tinge began to mount in the sky, coming up in some mysterious manner against what wind there was. This, too, when he got out at Brockenhurst, was blowing in fitful, ominous gusts, now raising a pillar of dust along the high road, then dying again to an absolute calm. Directly to the south the clouds were most threatening, and the very leaves of the trees looked pale and milky against the black masses of the imminent storm. Yet it was some vague consolation, though he hated thunder anywhere, to know how much more intolerable this would be in London, and he arrived at the cottage glad that he had come.

It was about four when he got there, and the first thing he saw on entering was a telegram on the table in the hall, still unopened, which he rightly conjectured to be the one he had himself sent. In this case clearly the Hermit was out when it arrived, and had not yet returned; so, leaving his bag at the foot of the stairs, he passed out on to the verandah. There, looking out over the garden, and alone, sat Madge. She turned on the sound of his step, and, whether it was that the dreadful colour of the day played some trick with his eyes or not, Evelyn thought she went suddenly white.

She rose and came towards him with a miserable semblance of a smile, not with that smile with which, in the portrait, she laughed at the worries of the world and all its ups and downs. She was not laughing at them now; her smile did not rise from within. Her voice, too, was a little strange; it faltered. And it was clear that speaking at all was an effort to her. “This is quite unexpected, Mr. Dundas,” she said. “I had no idea, nor, I think, had Mr. Merivale, that you were coming.”

Evelyn said nothing; he did not even hold out his hand in answer to hers; he but looked at her, but looked with an unquenchable thirst. But then he found speech and a sort of manners.

“I did not know either till this morning,” he said; “but then I telegraphed. I fancy Tom has not received it—not opened it anyhow; there is a telegram for him at least on the table inside, which I guess is mine. I did not know you were here either.”

Then his voice rose a little.

“Indeed, I did not,” he said.

The girl passed her hand wearily over her brow, brushing back her hair. She was hatless—her hat lay on the table, where still the platters of their frugal lunch remained, since they had started on their tour of inspection as soon as that meal was over.

“Oh, no, I believe you!” she said. “Why should you assert it like that? But there is a storm coming. I hate thunder. And I was alone.”

Certainly the dreadful tension of the atmosphere had communicated itself to these two. Madge was, at any rate, frightfully aware that her speech was not wise. But wisdom had gone to the vanishing point. This meeting had been so unthinkably unexpected. In a way it stunned her, just as the approaching storm made her unnormal, unlike herself. But she had wits enough left to laugh—the conventional laugh merely, that is like the inverted commas to a written speech.