The Angel of Pain

by E. F. Benson

For a week now this dull weight, starting from a definite moment, had been gaining on him, for a week ago he had gone with Philip to the lodge, and the four-year-old child of the lodge-keeper had come out with his father. Evelyn, sitting down and waiting while Philip spoke to him, had called the child, who toddled up to him, and then, when he got close, burst into shrieks of frightened dismay. Evelyn had understood, and he said nothing about it to anyone. But he put the fact away in his mind, and when he was alone he took it out and looked at it.

At this moment he was alone in the house. Mrs. Home was spending a few days in London, Philip would soon be due by the evening train, and Madge was out, doing some small businesses in Pangbourne. She had been unwilling to leave him, but he had made it unmistakably and ill-temperedly clear he would sooner be left. He thought with a dull wonder at himself of the fact that he could have been cross with her. It had happened often before, and in spite of its recurrence he never got used to it. It always seemed strange to him. And with a wonder that was almost incredulous, he thought how he had behaved to her to-day. For she had come to him with a word which a man can only hear once, to whisper which a woman nestles close to him, pouring out her very soul in the joy of knowing that she will some day put into his arms her first-born child. That Madge had told him, but he felt nothing; it did not reach him, neither joy for her nor for himself seemed any longer capable of being felt, and he had said only, “I shall never see it.” He was thinking about that now, if this leaden contemplation of facts could be called thought, of that and of the child that had cried when it saw his face. Over that face he passed his sensitive fingers.

“I’m sure I don’t wonder,” he said to himself.

The door opened once as he lay in this window-seat, and correctly and mechanically he pictured what was going on. Only one person entered; that he could tell by the footfalls, and that one person whistled gently to himself. He paused by the table, then went to the door again, and again re-entered and paused by another. Then he poked the fire and swept up the grate. Clearly the footman making the room ready, and he banged the door as he went out.

Now if that child had cried at the sight of his face, what must it be to others? Surely they would cry too if they obeyed their natural impulse, either cry or turn away, in pity, no doubt, but also in repulsion. It must be an effort to everybody to look at him, to be with him. And Madge was with him so much; she kissed him, she let him kiss her; she was his wife, the wife of this man with the nightmare face at which a child cried out as if it saw bogey. Philip had been quick and ready on that occasion, had said the child was teething, and wrung corroboration from the father. But he had answered, “Yes, it teethes when it sees me,” and Philip was not ready enough for that.

The crying child explained other things too; for Mrs. Home had cried when she saw him; he could hear from her voice that she was crying, there were sobs in it. He had thought then that it was from pity merely and sympathy, but he told himself now that it was not so; she cried from horror at him. All his life he had hated ugly things, and now it would be hard to match himself in that abhorred category.

The very kindness, too, and pity which he knew surrounded him were scarcely more bearable. He did not want to be pitied, he would sooner be left to drag out a lonely, shunned life than to be surrounded with pity; while with regard to kindness, the knowledge that he and Madge were frankly living on Philip became harder every day to swallow. Philip certainly had done all he could to minimise the burden of that; he had, soi-disant, bought the unfinished picture of himself, declaring that no finished picture could possibly be so like him; he had bought, too, after argument, the picture of Madge. The proceeds he had invested for Evelyn, promising since he had advised him so ill before to take greater care this time, and twice during this last month he had reported substantial profits from the investments he had made for him, so that if he insisted, as he did insist, on paying the bills for his nurse and doctor, he still could run up to London whenever he pleased if Pangbourne bored him. With luck, too, and care his investments would grow fatter yet.

On this occasion Evelyn had broken out.

“Ah, I can’t stand it,” he cried. “I can’t go on living here, Madge and I, indefinitely. Yes, I know how kind you are, both you and your mother, and how you would be pleased—really pleased—for us to stop forever, but can’t you see how impossible it is for me to accept your hospitality like that? I must, I simply must, pay my way, earn something, work and get tired, if only for the distraction of it. A barrel-organ, now. ‘Totally blind. Ky-ind Gentleman!’ That would be more self-respecting than to sit here and do nothing. It’s better to beg in the streets than to accept alms without begging for them. That’s why the poor have such a horror of the workhouse. They would sooner be cold and hungry, and so would I.”

He was silent a moment after this.