The Angel of Pain

by E. F. Benson

VELYN woke that morning out of one of those cruel, dreamless sleeps that seem for a little while on waking to have expunged all memory, and he lay a few minutes conscious vaguely of something a little wrong, but for the moment not knowing where he was, and not caring to make the effort to guess. Then suddenly, like the stroke of a black wing across the sky, memory came home for the day. Whenever he woke in the hereafter he would awake to that, to his maimed, ruined life. The knowledge of it was more unbearable to-day than it had been yesterday; to-morrow it would be worse; it would keep growing worse.

Then out of that utter darkness there grew a little light. It might have been even more desperate—how was that? Then he remembered Madge. She had seen, and the worst of all that he had imagined was not true.

This morning he felt within himself a sudden accession of strength; his long sleep-acting with his extraordinary recuperative powers, had set fresh tides of vitality on the flow. Something had happened lately which in spite of all, interested him—ah, yes, the gradual compensating sensitiveness in his hands. He had played a whole partie of picquet with Madge, using those cards with raised indexes. The partie had only taken an hour—not bad for a beginning; to-day perhaps he would be a little quicker. To-day also these bandages that worried him with their close-clinging, sticky feeling would be removed, and with regard to them he could not help half-thinking that when they were gone, some light, however dim, must reach him. Surely the blackness would become a sort of grey. It was unreasonable, he knew well, but he could not help feeling that it must be so. But the fact that he thought about the picquet he had played and the greater celerity with which he was going to play it, even the idea, which he himself knew to be purely imaginary, that he would not feel so terribly alone and in the dark when these bandages were removed, all pointed one way: he looked, or tried to look, forward instead of brooding backwards. And in such matters, as indeed in all others, the will is the deed, provided only that the will be undivided. So for the time the utter blackness of his waking moments was gone, the tiny things of life, as well as life’s ultimate possibilities, still retained their interest, and while he waited for his breakfast, he kept feeling with his nimble, hovering hands at all objects within reach: the woolliness of the blankets, the cool texture of the sheets, a certain slipperiness of counterpane, which eventually he determined to be silk-covered. Then there was wall-paper above his head; there was a pattern on that, and with both hands he traced his way up the slight raising of the design, stopping often, visualising to himself what the picture of the course of his fingers would be like.... There was a spray of some sort; it branched to the left and ended in narrow, slender leaves. On the right it went higher before it branched; there were leaves there, too, and above again there started a stem like the one he had traced a minute before. Yes; it repeated here, for first to the left went out a thinner stem with narrow leaves; then again to the right it branched, and narrow leaves forked out from it. He had seen it, of course, before, on the evening he arrived here, but he could not remember it from that.... Thin stem and narrow leaves—ah, a Morris paper of willow twigs! But the feeling fingers had given it him; without this exploration he could not have known it.

This was an enormous advance, and, without pause, for he instinctively knew the step that came through the dressing-room adjoining, he called out:

“Oh, Madge, such a discovery!” he cried. “Blanket here, sheet here, a coverlet with silk on the top, and the paper—it is a Morris willow paper. I found that out. And I want breakfast.”

Yet somehow Madge’s heart sank at his elation. The Evelyn who spoke was the old Evelyn: it was in such a voice and with such joy of discovery that he had told her at Pangbourne how the purple of the clematis would heighten the value of the pink and butter-haired Jewess who sat in the centre. There was just the same triumphant ring about it. And as such it was unnatural; she feared he was recovering too quickly: for this elation there would be a corresponding depression. It was too sudden to satisfy her. All this was instantaneous and instinctive; she feared really without knowing she feared. But she had come prepared for the further development of his newly-awakened interest in the senses that resided in fingers, and had brought with her some small objects of baffling shape. She had, too, in her hand Philip’s letter.

The first two or three were easy to him. A knife certainly, but a knife with no edge to it. And of this he talked.

“Dessert knife,” he said. “No, not dessert knife, because the blade of a dessert knife would, anyhow, be as cold as the handle, even if both were made of metal. And the blade of this is warmer than the handle. Oh, shade of Sherlock Holmes! Cold handle, warmer blade. Oh, Madge, how easy. Paper-knife of course; silver handle, ivory cutter. Ask another.”

“I haven’t asked how you are yet,” said she.

“Quite well. And I want breakfast. I say, Madge, do you know just for the moment, I don’t mind being blind. You see there’s a new sense to cultivate. I always love experiments. Ah, damn it, there’s no colour left. But there is shape; somehow, I feel there’s a lot to learn in shape. There’s warmth, too; of course I knew that ivory was warmer—less cold than metal, but now I have found it true without help. Give me another.”