The Angel of Pain

by E. F. Benson

Evelyn had eaten by this time all the crust off a Hovis loaf.

“More crust,” he said. “There isn’t any. Very good; marmalade in a spoon. But I won’t distend my—my vie intérieure with crumb. About the ticket man. You are wrong if we are generous to Lady Dover with regard to the length of our visit. Why mince matters? Can we afford it? I say ‘Yes.’ Board wages for our enormous establishment here. Tickets for ourselves, third class—I wish there was a fourth or fifth—and what’s the dem’d total, as Mr. Mantalini said. Besides these”—Evelyn waved his hand like a man commanding millions—“these are temporary economies. The pink and butter-coloured is going to visit these classic abodes in October, and if orders don’t pour in like our own leaky roof, I’ll eat all the gamboge in my paintbox. I can’t say fairer. And as I don’t possess gamboge,” he added, “the bet finds no takers. I give you that information, for though I am poor, I am honest.”

Evelyn proceeded to eat marmalade with a spoon.

“It will be very chic, if you come to think of it,” he said. “Probably several ladies’ maids and valets will arrive with their respective owners by the same train. You, Madge, will flirt with one or two of the valets, and I with several of the ladies’ maids. The scene then is shifted to Golspie station. You squeeze the hands of the valets on the platform, and I gaze into the eyes of the ladies’ maids. The sumptuous motor has come for Lady Dover’s guests. We strive to subdue—quite ineffectually—our air of conscious superiority, and squeeze the hands of Dukes and Duchesses. Then they will know us in our true colours. Triumphal explosion of the motor-car. The valets and ladies’ maids are saved. Hurrah for the lower classes! Another cup of tea, please. Right up to the top. And the point is the fare to Golspie. Arrived there, we shall have no more food and drink to buy.”

The reasoning was inevitable; given that domestic economy could manage it, there was no reason that could reasonably indicate King’s Road instead. Yet, even after the A.B.C. had added its voice to the overmastering argument, Madge hesitated. She could not quite see her husband among the surroundings that awaited her there. She had been there before, and knew. How would he and that particular milieu suit each other? All this was secondary to her original desire to go; her private, incommunicable feeling that such a visit would poser them—for she could not have been Lady Ellington’s daughter so long without that point of view having soaked into her—was paramount, but the other was there, and the complication in her mind was that though she wished, taking the reasons all round, to leave this hot house which still was intertwined with exquisite and undying memories, she could not see how Evelyn should wish to leave this, not having her own worldly reasons for going to Golspie, without a pang. But since the question of whether economy would allow had been decided in favour of going, there was certainly no more to be said, and, so she told herself, no more to be thought.

But, since the logical conclusion is the one conclusion in the world that is absolutely without effect as regards results, she continued to think. For the ordinary mind is not in the least reasonable; it would cease to be reasonable the moment it was, and take its place among fixed stars and other unattainable objects. Logic, reason, are perhaps the most ineffective of human motives; they may be appealed to as a last resort; but if there is any impulse still alive, it, and not logic, will be seized on as a ground for action. Hence the divine uncertainty of human affairs. If the world was ruled by reason it would become duller than a week-old newspaper. But it is the fact that every human soul is so impredicable that lends the zest to existence. Finding out, in fact, not knowledge, is the spring that makes life fascinating. Whenever the element of certainty enters, it is the death’s head at the feast. Nobody cares for the feast any more. The champagne is flat.

So to Golspie they went, and Evelyn’s prophecy as regards the journey was sufficiently fulfilled to make anybody believe that there must have been something in it. He, at any rate, before they arrived at even Inverness, was engaged in conversation with an agreeable female opposite, a conversation which was not, however, so engrossing but that he could observe with secret glee the fact that Madge was reading the Scotsman, provided for her by an equally agreeable young man, who sat opposite, and hoped that his cigarette would not be disagreeable. Then, luck was really on his side that day, important people stepped out of first-class carriages at Golspie, and, by the usages of this cruel world, these acquaintances so pleasantly begun were rudely interrupted. A cart waited for their travelling companions, and the swift motor received them and the strangers, before whom their own travelling acquaintances were but dust and ashes.

It was, in fact, but a short week after Lady Ellington’s arrival at Glen Callan that her daughter and son-in-law got there, and though she would, as previously arranged, have gone on to her next house the day before their arrival, she put off her departure for two days in order to have the pleasure of seeing them. The party, in fact, was unaltered, and so was their way of life; Mr. Osborne’s flow of humour showed no signs of running dry, nor was the blank amazement with which Lord Ellington regarded him in the least abated. Mr. Dennison was getting steadily on towards the completion of his panorama of Sutherland, and Lady Dover found fresh lights and shadows on the purple heather every day.

Lady Ellington had carefully considered what her exact attitude towards Madge and her husband should be, and had come to the most sensible conclusion about it. Since the world had made up its mind to welcome them, and to draw a wet sponge over the past, it was clear that unless she wished to make an exception of herself, and not do in Rome what Rome did, she must extend to them not merely the welcome of the world, but the welcome of a mother also. And it was decidedly the best plan to make this thorough; astonished as Madge might be, it was better to astonish her than the world, and neither in public nor in private should she hear one word of reproach nor an uncordial accent. Lady Ellington had no desire to see private talks with her daughter; in fact, she meant rather to avoid them; but her whole policy was to accept what had happened, and welcome Madge in the flesh with the same unreservedness as she had shown in the letter she had written her a week ago, urging her to accept Lady Dover’s invitation. She was determined, in fact (now that Lady Dover had shown the way), to make the best of it, and, instead of bitterly counting up (and mentally sending the bill in to Madge) all that would have been at her command, had not the speculation with regard to Madge’s marriage failed, to make the most of the assets that remained to her. And the more she thought of them, unattractive as they had seemed at first, the more they seemed to her to have a promising air. Philip was immensely wealthy, and Evelyn was poor, that was unfortunately undeniable; but Evelyn—regarding him as a property—had certainly prospects which Philip had not, and though nothing could quite make up, to her mind, for the loss of much tangible wealth, yet Evelyn with his brilliant gifts might easily be a rich man, while even now he was a much more rising figure socially than the other. People talked about him, admired his cleverness and charm, asked to be introduced to him. All these merits, it is true, she had not seen in those days at Pangbourne, when she looked upon him merely as an impossible young artist, but since that impossible young artist had become an inevitable son-in-law, it was wise to take him into account. So her welcome to both was going to be unreserved.

They arrived, just as Lady Ellington had arrived, after the rest of the party had gone in to dinner, and their host and hostess came out into the hall as usual to meet them. Madge, it must be confessed, had gone through a bad quarter of an hour of anticipatory shyness as they got near; but this on arrival she found to have been a superfluous piece of self-inflicted discomfort, for Lady Dover was absolutely natural, and all that was required of her was that she should be natural too.