The Angel of Pain

by E. F. Benson

Sunday took up the tale that was so sweet to her. He would be late for breakfast, as he always was, and very likely she would have finished before he came down. But she never missed hearing his foot on the polished boards of the hall, and if he was very late she would have rung for a fresh teapot before he entered the room, since she had a horror, only equalled by her horror of snakes, of tea that had stood long. Often he was so late that his breakfast really had to be curtailed if they were to get to church before the service began, for they always walked there, and her mind was sometimes painfully divided as to whether it would not be better to be late rather than that he should have an insufficient breakfast. She had heard great things of Plasmon, and a year ago had secretly bought a small tin of that highly nutritious though perhaps slightly insipid powder, of which she meant to urge a tablespoonful on Philip if he seemed to her not to have had enough to eat before he started for church, since apparently this would be the equivalent of several mutton chops. But the tin had remained unopened, and only a few weeks ago she had thrown it away, having read some case of tinned-food poisoning in the papers. How dreadful if she meant to give him the equivalent of several mutton chops, and had succeeded only in supplying him with a fatal dose of ptomaine!

Then after the walk back through the pleasant fields there would be lunch, and after lunch in this July heat, long lounging in some sheltered spot in the garden. Tea followed, and after tea Philip’s invariable refusal to go to church again, and her own invariable yielding to his wish that she should not go either. That again was an old-established affair, uninteresting and unessential no doubt to those who drive four-in-hand through life, but to this quiet old lady, whose nature had grown so fine through long years of speckless life, a part of herself. He would urge the most absurd reasons; she would be going alone, and would probably be waylaid and robbed for the sake of her red-and-gold Church-service; it threatened rain, and she would catch the most dreadful rheumatism; or life was uncertain at the best, and this might easily be the last Sunday that he would spend here, and how when she had buried him about Wednesday would she like the thought that she had refused his ultimate request? This last appeal was generally successful, and it was left for Mrs. Home to explain to their vicar, who always dined with them on Sunday, her unusual absence. This she did very badly, and Philip never helped her out. It was a point of honour that she should not say that it was he who had induced her to stay away, and his grave face watching her from the other side of the table as she invented the most futile of excuses, seemed to her to add insult to the injury he had already done her in obliging her to invent what would not have deceived a sucking child.

Then on Monday morning he would generally have to leave for town very early, but if this was the case, he always came to her room to wish her good-bye. And her good-bye to him meant what it said. “God be with you, my dear,” was it, and she added always, “Come again as soon as you can.”

All these things, the memory of those days and hours which were so inexpressibly dear to her, moved gently and evenly in Mrs. Home’s mind, even as the shadows drew steadily and slowly across the grass as she walked up and down awaiting his arrival. And if sadness was there at all, it was only the wonderful and beautiful sadness that pervaded the evening hour itself, the hour when shadows lengthen, and the coolness of the sunset tells us that the day, the serene and sunlit day, is drawing to a close. That the day should end was inevitable; the preciousness of sunlit hours was valued because night would follow them, for had they been known to be everlasting, the joy of plucking their sweetness would have vanished. And the same shadowed thought was present in Mrs. Home’s mind as she thought how the evening of her particular relationship to Philip was come; all these memories, though dear they would always be, gathered a greater fragrance because in the nature of things they must be temporary and transitory, even as the memory of childish days is dear simply because one is a child no longer. While childhood remained they were uncoloured by romance, the romance the halo of them only begins to glow when it is known that they are soon to be at an end.

Yet Mrs. Home would not have had anything different; that her relation to Philip must fade as the day-star in the light of dawn, she had always known. Even when the day-star was very bright and the dawn not yet hinted in Eastern skies, she knew that, and now when the whole East was suffused with the rosy glow, she would not have delayed the upleap of the resplendent sun by an hour or a minute. For old-age unembittered was her’s, and in the completeness and fulness of Philip’s manhood, not in keeping him undeveloped and unstung by the sunlight, though through it was flung bitter foam of the sea that breaks forever round this life of man, she realised not herself only but him most fully and best. She would not retain him, even if she could; he had got to live his life, and make it as round and perfect as it could be made. It was her part only to watch from the shore as he put out into the breakers, and wish him God-speed. Yet now, as far as she could forecast, no breakers were there, a calm sunny ocean awaited him; there was but the tide which would bear him smoothly out. How far he would go, whether out of sight of the land, where she strained dim eyes after him, or whether, so to speak, he should anchor close to her, she did not know. He had now to put out; once more they—he and she alone—would play together on the sands, but each would know—he very much more than she, that they played together for the last time. After this he must, as he ought, take another for his playmate. And if at the thought her kind blue eyes were a little dim, it was the flesh only that was weak. With all her soul she bade him push out, and if to herself she said: “Oh, Philip! must you go?” all in herself that she wished to be reckoned by, all that was truly herself, said “God-speed” to him.

The gardeners at Pangbourne Court had been startled into dreadful activity that day. “The master,” it was known, would be down for this Sunday, but “the master” by himself was a much more formidable affair than he with a party. As Philip had conjectured at Whitsuntide, there would come a break in the happy life of the garden, and it was quite indubitably here now. The hot and early summer which had produced so glorious an array of blossom in that June week now exacted payment for that; roses which should have flowered into August had exhausted themselves, the blooms of summer were really over, while the autumn plants were still immature. All this was really not the fault of the gardeners, but of the weather; but, as has been said, they were stirred into immense activity by the prospect of Philip’s arrival, since if the beds presented a fair show, he would be more likely to be lenient to other deficiencies. But Mrs. Home, as she went up and down the paths waiting for his arrival, saw but too clearly that things were not quite as they should be. A dryness, an arrest of growth, seemed to have laid hands on the beds; it was as if some catastrophe had stricken the vegetable kingdoms that withered and blighted them. The grass of the lawn, too, lacked the vividness of the velvet that so delighted Philip’s London-wearied eye—there were patches of brown and withered green everywhere, instead of the “excellent emerald.” Yet, perhaps, surely almost, he would not vex himself with that. Three days only intervened between now and the twenty-eighth; he would have no fault to find with anything in the sunlight of life which so streamed on him.

She was passing between two old hedges of yew, compact and thick of growth as a brick wall, and impervious to the vision. Her own path lay over the grass, but on either far side of these hedges was a gravel walk, and half-way up this she heard a footstep sounding crisply. For one moment she thought it was Philip’s, and nearly called to him, the next she smiled at herself for having thought so, for it altogether lacked the brisk decision with which he walked, and she made sure it was one of the gardeners. It went parallel with her, however, in the same direction, and when she got to the end of her own yew-girt avenue, she met the owner of the footstep in the little sunk Alpine garden, which was Philip’s especial delight. It was he. She had not recognised the footstep, and though when they met, her eyes told her that this certainly was her son, it was someone so different from him whom she knew that she scarcely recognised him.

Misery sat in his face, misery and a hardness as of iron. He often looked stern, often looked tired, but now it seemed as if it was of life that he was tired, and his whole face was inflexible and inexorable. It was not the sort of misery that could break down and sob itself into acquiescence, it was the misery of the soul into which the iron has entered. And mother and son looked at each other long without speaking, he with that face and soul of iron, she with a hundred terrors winnowing her. He had not given her any greeting, nor she him. Then she clasped her hands together in speechless entreaty, and held them out to him. But still he said nothing, and it was she who spoke first.

“Philip, what is it?” she said. “Whatever it is, tell me quickly, my dear. I can bear to know anything. I cannot bear not to.”

He looked away from her for a moment, striking the gravel with his stick.