The Angel of Pain

by E. F. Benson

“It is good, it is good to see you,” she said, and the first physical horror began to fade a little as her love, that eternal, abiding principle, slid out from under the paralysis of the other. “All those bandages gone, all the plaster and lint gone. You look yourself, do you know, too—just, just yourself.”

She turned an appealing eye on Lady Dover; that was unnecessary, because she was quite prepared to speak as soon as Madge stopped.

“I must congratulate you too, Mr. Dundas,” she said in her neat, precise tones. “Why, you look, as Madge said, quite natural; does he not, Madge? And really I think dark spectacles are rather becoming. I shall get some myself.”

Evelyn had not spoken yet; but reasonably or not, for he had been quite unreasonably suspicious once before that morning, he thought he detected some insincerity in these protestations. And with one quick movement of his hand he took the spectacles off.

“Are they really becoming?” he asked. “Or do you like me better without, Madge?”

Again she saw, and, with a movement uncontrollable, she hid her own eyes for a moment. But Lady Dover again came to the rescue.

“Ah, Doctor Inglis won’t allow that, Mr. Dundas,” she said.

But Evelyn still held them away from his face. Brutal as it all was, the thing had to be gone through once, and it was on the whole better to do it now.

“Ah, I asked Madge,” he said quietly.

As he spoke, with his other hand he let his fingers dwell with that firm yet fluttering movement over his eyes. That straight, drawn-down lid was visualised by him, that tear in the other eyelid was visualised also. Then the hovering finger-tips traced the course of the pellet through the eyebrow, and felt, like a dog nosing a hot scent, the course of the scar where another had crossed his forehead. To that constructive touch the truth was becoming hideously plain. And deliberately, as he felt and traced, he set himself to believe the worst. He sat as judge to weigh the evidence of his fingers as they bore witness to the state of this wrecked face of his. Again and again, in days past, he had said, and meant also, that he did not wish to go below the surface of things; the eyebrow, the curve of the mouth, the light of the eye itself, as he had said to the Hermit, were enough for him, there was symbol enough there. And since this choice was so instinctive and natural to himself, it was not possible to him to dissociate others from it, and as, with terrible certainty, he framed to himself what he looked like, he put himself into Madge’s place, and seeing with her eyes, framed also the conclusion which he believed to be inevitable. Yet she had seen him before, the nurse had told him so, and after that he had heard with ears that somehow seemed quickened in their sense even as touch was, the authentic ring of love in her voice. Or had he been deceived in that?