The Angel of Pain

by E. F. Benson

“Ah, my dear—er—Margaret,” said Lady Dover, with a certain intonation of relief, because she was sure that her excellent memory had not played her false, “everything is a question of degree; there is nothing in the world into which circumstances, mitigating or the reverse, do not enter. How beautiful the rowan-berries are, I wish Mr. Dennison could see them. They would work into his foreground so well. I must take him to the end of the terrace to-morrow. Yes; but the mitigating circumstances are here so strong. She threw over Mr. Home, who is charming—I met him twice last year at dinner somewhere, and we asked him to lunch, only he could not come—and has married a man who is charming also, with whom she fell in love. How vivid his portraits are, too; I am going to be painted by him next spring, if he can find time. Almost too vivid, perhaps; they seem to jump out on you. But that is my view about the whole question. Supposing she had married Mr. Home, and had fallen in love afterwards! That sort of tragedy is so dreadful; such extraordinary cleverness is required to avoid all the horror of publicity. I could never survive publicity.”

“But there is publicity as it is,” said Lady Ellington. “Poor Madge! What will people think of her? And of me?”

Lady Dover throughout this conversation had given justification after justification for the importance that Lady Ellington attached to her verdict. She gave more now.

“There is publicity, it is true,” she said; “but no sense of respectability has been offended. Of her, they will think that she fell in love and followed her instincts. Of you, they will think that you tried, like an excellent mother, to secure an excellent match for your daughter, but that your daughter chose for herself.”

Lady Dover’s serene face grew a shade more shrewd.

“You see, she has not married Tom or Dick or James,” she said. “Mr. Dundas, in fact, is a sufficiently important person. Was it that you meant, by the way, by saying it was a question of degree? I don’t know what his income is; it may be precarious. But he has great talent. And talent happens to be rather fashionable. I daresay it is only a phase, but after all one wants, if the sacrifice of no principle is involved, to be abreast with the world.”

Now Lady Ellington could not possibly have been called a conceited woman, and her conviction that she was herself pretty well abreast of the world was founded on sober experience. She was up to most things, in fact; the world, on the whole, did not worst her. Yet when Susan spoke of being abreast of the world, she was conscious that another plane altogether was indicated, a plane to which she had to struggle and aspire, whereas Susan moved quite easily and naturally on it. All the way from Golspie she had been labeling her hostess as conventional, but what if this conventionalism came out on the other side, so to speak, and was really the summit of worldly wisdom, a peak, not a mediocre plateau, where Susan and others walked gently about, as at some place of corrective waters, exchanging commonplaces. For Lady Dover, she was beginning to see, was not in the least conventional because it was the way of the world; she was conventional because she was made like that. It was the world, in fact, which was conventional because it was like Lady Dover, not Lady Dover who was conventional because she was like the world. Indeed she had spoken no more than the truth when she said the opinion of the world did not matter to her—it did not; she never had to take it into consideration, simply because it was quite certain to coincide with her own. And Lady Ellington found herself thinking that when Susan died her portrait ought really to be put in a stained glass window, a figure that should typify for all time the solid, respectable, virtuous aspects of the British aristocracy.

They walked in silence for a few moments, for there was really nothing more to say on the subject. Then Lady Ellington took Susan’s arm and pressed it.

“It is a great, great relief to me to know you feel like that,” she said, “and you have made my line with regard to Madge so clear. Poor Madge, I have been too hard on her, but the disappointment was so great. I could not help feeling for Philip, too.”

“Of course one is always sorry for people in trouble,” said Lady Dover, “particularly if it is not their fault. I will write to Madge this morning. And now, do you know, it is almost time you went off to the river. I insist on your being Lady Salmon by this evening. Mr. Osborne is so quick and clever, is he not?”