The Angel of Pain

by E. F. Benson

“And what has he done?” he asked. “He has fallen in love with her. I’m sure I don’t wonder. And what has she done? She has fallen in love with him. And I don’t wonder at that either.”

Now the minutes were passing, and if there was the slightest chance of saving the situation, it had to be taken now. In a few hours even it might easily be too late.

“Just go there,” she said. “I know well how this thing has shattered you, so that you can hardly feel it yet; but perhaps the sight of them together may rouse you. Perhaps the sight of you may stir in Madge some sense of her monstrous behaviour. I would sooner she had died on her very wedding-day than that she should have done this. It is indecent. It is, perhaps, too, only a passing fancy, she——”

But here she stopped, for she could not say to him the rest of her thought, which was the expression of the hope that Madge might return to her quiet, genuine liking for Philip. But she need scarcely have been afraid, for in his mind now, almost with the vividness of a hallucination, was that scene on the terrace of the house at Pangbourne, when she had promised him esteem, affection and respect, all, in fact, that she knew were hers to give. But now she had more to give, only she did not give it to him.

“I am bound to do anything you think can be of use,” he said, “and, therefore, if you think it can be of use that I should go there, I will go. I do not myself see of what use it can be.”

“It may,” said Lady Ellington. “There is a chance, what, I can’t tell you. But there is certainly no chance any other way.”

Then his brain and his heart began to stir and move again a little, the constriction of the paralysis was passing off.

“But if she only takes me out of pity,” he said, “I will not take her on those terms. She shall not be my wife if she knows what love is and knows it for another.”

Then the true Lady Ellington, the one who had been a little obscured for the last ten minutes by her pity for Philip, came to the light again.

“Ah, take her on any terms,” she cried. “It will be all right. She will love you. I am a woman, and I know what women are. No woman has ever yet made the absolute ideal marriage unless she was a fool. Women marry more or less happily; if Madge marries you, she will marry extremely happily. Take my word for that. Now go.”