The Angel of Pain

by E. F. Benson

Madge felt herself suddenly turn white and cold. He had felt the little scar on her finger with absolute accuracy, tracing it from where it started to where it finished. And if he could do this with so little a scar, what of other scars that would be within reach of his hands always? He would find them out, too; he would guess; all their attempts at concealment from him of what his injuries really were would be futile. He must come to know.

But he was busy just now on the exploration of his powers of touch. It was a new game; already touch was beginning to be a new thing to him, and whereas he had regarded his hands hitherto as holders to grasp other things, prehensile endings to the arms merely, he was now beginning to find out new powers in the soft-tipped fingers. He was like a child which has hitherto regarded its legs merely as agreeable though silent play-fellows, who begins to see that a hitherto undreamed-of power of locomotion resides in them.

This was fascinating to Evelyn; for the moment there was a sudden hope springing up. It was like a message of relief coming to a beleagured garrison.

“Why, if I can do this already,” he said, “who knows what it may not grow to? Madge, I am sure I could not have felt so much before—before it happened. Quick, give me something, and I will tell you what it is. What if the form and the shape of things has not been annihilated for me?”

And so this game, for so it was, began to interest him. For him, since some measure of the excitement, the chance, the experimentalism of life, had begun to come back, the Angel of Pain relaxed the screws a little, yet her hands did not altogether leave them. But poor Madge! The Angel of the relentless hands and tender face looked gravely on her. She had to bear very much, and bear it with a smiling face and cheerful voice, fetching books for Evelyn to identify, and small objects from his dressing-case and what-not. The screws were turned rather smartly for her; it was inevitable that he should before very long identify his own face, identify the damage there. She herself had not done so yet, but awfully as she had feared that for herself, she now feared it more for him. He was building so much, she knew that, on a place where no foundation was possible. It would all sink into the mire and clay. He would learn, as she would have to learn, how dreadful that was: his sensitive, hovering fingers with their light touch and constructive imagination would build up and realise by degrees. He would know that the worst fear of all was fulfilled.

That view of his, which Madge knew so well he would take when he learned, one way or another, of the wreck that had come to his face, might or might not be a shallow view, but that view he would assuredly take, and construe her love for him into mere pity and forbearance. She did not love him for his face—he would not say that—but his face was part of him, and if that was spoiled, so surely was part of her love spoiled. Body and soul she had loved him, but how could a woman love a sightless, scarred thing? He would grant, no doubt, that her love for him went further than that which was now hideous, but would she, to put it from her own point of view, have scarred and hacked and blinded her own face, and gone back to him who saw, in perfect confidence that his love for her would be undiminished and undeterred, knowing that it lay too deep for any such superficial maiming to injure? She knew well she would not, for love, however spiritual, includes the body as well as the spirit, and however fine, cannot but take the body as the outward and visible sign of the beloved soul, its expression and aura. And how could he to whom the surface of beauty and loveliness had been by profession such a study and worship, still think, whatever her asseverations to the contrary, that her love for him was as complete as it had been? And, to get nearer the truth, would not he be right? She did not know about that yet; she had not seen. At present she could not think of his face as other than it had been; all she knew was that, in spite of herself, she dreaded with her whole soul the removal of those bandages. What if she shrank and winced at the sight? Those slim, delicate fingers of the Angel of Pain tightened the screw, and the kind eyes looked at her, seeing how she bore it. If there was a terrible moment coming for Evelyn when his fingers, which were now to be to him his eyes, told him what he looked like, there was a moment, a double moment, coming for her. She had first to control herself, to make him believe, whatever she saw, that she saw no difference; nothing that made her love one jot less urgent and insistent; she had also, with a feigned conviction that had got to convince him, to assure him that his fingers were at fault, that there was no scar where he said there was a scar, that there was no empty hole.... That she knew. What she did not know was how to face it all.

At present, anyhow, by a great effort, she put off the moment which she foresaw must come. He could not remain indefinitely ignorant, his own hands must some day inform him. But just now he was eager and interested in this new game. By a splendid effort of vitality and will, he had pushed into the background the fact of his blindness: he had put it for the time being, anyhow, among the inevitable and accepted facts of life, while he had filled his foreground with the fact that he had eyes in his fingers. How glorious that bit of bravery was she knew well, for he was so brave that just now he was not even acting; he genuinely looked forward to the future, not without hope. At her bidding he had left the grinding difficulties of the future alone, he had left the question of the stark fact as to how they were to live, he had left also the fact of his own supreme deprivation, and with a splendid effort he looked on the possibilities that might lie in front of them, not on the limitations, cramping and binding, that certainly lay there.

“Yes, all those things are easy,” he said; “of course I can tell a toothpick and a sovereign-case, that is a mere effort of memory. But let’s go on, if you are not tired of it. You see, dear, you’ve got to educate me now; I am just a child again, learning a new set of letters. Now give me really new letters.”

Now Lady Dover a day before, in her quiet way, had telegraphed to London for a couple of packs of blind cards. They had the index in raised cardboard in the corner, and had arrived this morning. She had put them in the dressing-room adjoining his bedroom, and had just mentioned it to Madge, in the way that, had she been a stranger in the house, she might have mentioned where the bath-room was.

“Mr. Dundas is so eager and alive,” she had said, “that I thought, dear Madge, that he might like to begin any moment to accustom himself a little, poor fellow, to his new circumstances. So you will find a couple of packs of raised cards, I think they call them, in the dressing-room. I thought he might perhaps feel inclined to experiment with them.”