The Angel of Pain

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?

But thought, like the electric current through wires, travels many miles in an interval that is not appreciably greater than that which it takes to go a yard or two, and the rapid brushing of his fingers over his face had been almost as speedy. So when Madge answered (her thought too had gone far) he was not conscious that there had been a pause. She had complete command of her voice now.

“How can anybody be so silly?” she said. “I like you best without spectacles, dear, but as you have to wear them, there’s the end of it. And” – she was embarked on a big lie, and did not mind – “you look so much better than you did when I saw you a week ago when your face was being dressed, that I should scarcely recognise you. At least I feel now as if I should scarcely have recognised you then; now there is no need for recognition. Put them on again, Evelyn; there is a strong light.”

She gave a little gasp at the end of this. Lady Dover heard it, and laid a quick hand of sympathy on her shoulder. But Evelyn did not; for the present he was convinced, and that conviction, like some burst of sudden sound, shut out all other impressions.

“Here we are, then,” he said. “This is the new me; positively the first appearance. A favourable reception was accorded by a sympathetic audience. And now – are you still there, Dr. Inglis? – what manner of reason is there that I should not get up?”

“You want to?” he asked.

“Why, certainly.”

“Then, there is an excellent reason why you should. When my patients want to do a thing it is an indication, generally correct, that it is good for them. Yes, get up by all means.”

Again the boyish delight in the new game took possession of Evelyn; yet that delight, and the pity of it, stabbed Madge like a sword.

“And let me do it myself,” he cried. “Let my clothes be put by my bed, let my bath be put there, and let me be left quite alone. Madge, I bet you I shall be dressed in an hour. And the parting in my hair will be straight,” he added excitedly.

This also was agreed to, with the provision that if he felt faint or tired during these operations he was at once to desist, and lie down again and ring his bell. The nurse busied herself with the preparations for this great event, and the other three went out together.

Dr. Inglis paused in the corridor outside the room.

“Mrs. Dundas,” he said, “you have got to keep that up, you know. You did it well, and I don’t think you ought to have done differently. Come, come, we shall have you fainting next.”

Poor Madge had been utterly overwrought by this scene, and indeed as the doctor spoke she swayed and staggered where she stood. But they got her to a chair, in which she sat silent with closed eyes for a minute or so. Then she looked up at him.

“Shall I get used to it?” she asked. “Please tell me if there is a reasonable chance of that?”

“Certainly there is – we will come down in a minute, Lady Dover, if you will go on – yes, certainly, there is much more than a chance. You will get used to it. I did not know, by the way, that your husband had been told you had seen him before; but that does not matter now. But it is idle to pretend that you will get used to it at once. You won’t, you can’t. You will have to be patient, and all the time you must keep the strictest guard on yourself, to prevent the least suspicion getting to his mind that you are shocked by his appearance. He knows, poor fellow, more or less what he looks like. The curious blind sense of touch is developing in him with extraordinary rapidity. But you convinced him just now – his whole face flushed – that you don’t mind. You must keep that up, otherwise no one can say what may happen.”

“What do you mean?” asked she, still rather faintly.

“Just that. His hold on life is strong enough, quite strong enough, but it comes to him now mainly through one channel. That is you.”

The rather cruel abruptness of this was intentional and well calculated. It did not dismay Madge, but just braced her. She got up from the chair.

“That will be all right, then,” she said.

“I am sure it will. But as I shall go away to-day, I want to say a little more to you. His recovery, his recuperative power, is excellent, but there is one thing which I do not altogether like. His moods vary with great rapidity and great intensity. No doubt that was always so to some extent with him.”

“Yes,” said Madge eagerly, “it is just that which is so like him. Surely that is all for the good, that he should be so like himself?”

“Yes, within limits. But, as I need not tell you, he has been through a frightful shock, not only physical but mental, and quiet is the best restorative of all. Keep him amused and interested in things as much as you can; but also, as far as you can, keep him from feeling extravagantly. His mental barometer is jumping up and down; in proportion as it goes unnaturally high, so it will also go unnaturally low. That is frightfully tiring; it is to the mind what fever, a temperature that jumps about, is to the body.”

He paused a moment.

“Of course I know the difficulties,” he went on. “It is no use saying ‘Be tranquil,’ but you can certainly induce tranquility in him by being tranquil yourself, by surrounding him with tranquility. Keep his spirits level by keeping your own level. It won’t be easy. Now, if you are quite yourself again, shall we join Lady Dover?”

Evelyn spent several hours that afternoon downstairs, but the excitement of coming down for the first time tired him, and before Philip’s arrival he had gone up to bed again. All day, too, to Madge’s great disquietude, his spirits had been jumping up and down; at one time he would go on with the identification game with the most absorbed enthusiasm; then again, even in the middle of it, he would suddenly stop.

“Oh, it’s no use,” he said. “Why, it takes me half an hour to find out what is on that table, and it would take me a week to find out what the room was like. Take me on to the terrace, will you, Madge, and let me walk up and down a bit.”

This had been medically permitted, and with his arm in hers they strolled up and down in the warm sunlight. Evelyn sniffed the fresh air with extraordinary gusto.

“Ah, that’s good,” he said; “it is warm, yet it has got the touch of autumn in it. What sort of a day is it, Madge? Is it a blue day or a yellow day?

“Well, the sky is blue – ” she began.

“Yes, I didn’t suppose it was yellow,” said he. “But what’s the rest? Is the air between us and the hills yellow or blue? Oh, Lord, what would I not give for one more sight of it! I would look so carefully just this once. Tell me about it, dear.”

So Madge, as well as she could, tried to make him see with her eyes. She told him of the brown, foam-flecked stream that wound and crawled in the shadowed gully below them, of the steep hillside opposite, that climbed out of the darkness into the broad, big sunlight of the afternoon, of the feathery birch trees, just beginning to turn yellow, that fringed the moor, of the bracken, a tone deeper in gold, of the warm greyness of the bare hill above, with its corries lying in shadow, and its topmost serrated outline cutting the sky with so clear and well-defined a line that the sky itself looked as if it was applique, fitted on to it. Away to the left was a pine wood, almost black as contrasted with the golden of the bracken, but the red trunks of the trees burned like flames in it. Beyond that again lay the big purple stretches of heather over which ran the riband of the road to Golspie. Then in the immediate foreground there was a clump of rowan trees, covered with red berries; they found but a precarious footing, so steeply did the ground plunge towards the river; but halfway down there was a broad, almost level plateau, across which flowed the burn. It was covered with grass and low bushes, bog-myrtle, she thought, and a big flock of sheep were feeding there. The shepherd had just sent the collie to fetch them up, and the running dog was like a yellow streak across the green.

Evelyn gave a great sigh.

“Thanks, dear,” he said. “Now shall we go in? Somehow, I don’t think I can stand any more just yet. I suppose one will get more used to it. Ah, how unfair, how damnably unfair!” he cried suddenly. “Why should I be robbed like this? I wish to God I had been born blind, so that I could never know how much I miss. But to give me sight, to give me a glimpse of the world, just to take it away again! How can that be just? And I did like it so. It was all so pleasant!”

Never before had Madge so felt the utter uselessness of words. How could words be made to reach him? Yet how, again, could the yearning of her whole soul to console and comfort him fail to reach him? What she said she hardly knew; she was but conscious of the outpourings of herself in pity and love. She held that poor blind head in her hands, she kissed the mouth, she kissed the scars, she pushed up the dark spectacles and kissed the dear, empty eyelids, and all the horror that had involuntarily made her shudder when first she saw his face was gone, melted, vanished. For it had been but a superficial thing, as little her true self, as little to be taken as an index of what her heart felt, as the sudden shudder of goose-flesh, and just now at any rate it was swept away. That she would feel it again, often and often, she did not doubt, but of that she took no heed whatever. This – this pity and love – which had come upon her like a flash of revelation – was her true and her best self, and though again and again she might fall back from it, her flesh wincing and being afraid, yet there would be always the memory of this moment to guide and direct her. There would be difficult times; the whole of the rest of her life would be difficult, but it no longer presented the appearance of impossibility. And how full and dear to her heart was Evelyn’s response.

“Oh, Madge,” he said, “the worst of all was the thought that you would shrink from me. I minded that so much more than anything. I should not have reproached you, I don’t think I should have done that even to myself, after guessing, as I have guessed, what I must be like, for I should have understood. But what I don’t understand is how it is you do not shrink. I don’t want to understand, either; it is quite enough for me that it is so. And when I am cross, as I shall be, and despondent, as I shall be, and odious, try to remember what I have said to you now. I want to be remembered by that.”

So that was his best moment, too.

Philip arrived by the dinner train that night with a couple of other guests, and when the rest of them went up at the usual early hour, to get a good night after the journey of the day in the fresh air, he and Madge lingered behind, for naturally he wanted to learn about Evelyn and also about her. Both also perhaps felt that it was inevitable that they should have one talk together; it could hardly have been otherwise.

It began abruptly enough. As soon as the door was shut behind the last of the outgoers she came towards him with hands outstretched.

“I know you don’t want me to say ‘thank you,’ Philip,” she said, “but I can’t help it. I can’t tell you how deeply I thank you.”

He held her hands for a moment, pressing them closely, and smiling at her.

“It is said, then. You mustn’t say it twice, you know. That is vain repetition, and we have so much to say to each other that we have no time for that. I also must say once that I thank you for letting me do what I can. It would have been easier for you to have refused my help and to have refused to see me. Also it would have been more conventional. Now, about that there is just one word more to be said, and it is this. You told me once you looked upon me as an elder brother. Well, you have got to do it again. I’m going to manage for you. You have got, you and Evelyn, to do as I tell you in practical matters, because I’m practical and you are not.”

A great lump rose in Madge’s throat. These days had tired her so; it was such an unutterable relief to have anything taken off her hands, to feel that the almost intolerable weight of the future was being shared by another. But for the moment she could not speak, and but just nodded to him.

“Now, I am the bearer of a message first of all,” he said, “and the message is from my mother. She wants you both – in fact, she insists on your coming down to Pangbourne for – for a period which she says had better be left indefinite. London, she truly says, is dust and ashes in September. It really would be the best plan, so will you join with me in persuading Evelyn, if persuasion is necessary?”

“Ah, Philip,” she said, “you cut me to the heart. And – and this makes it worse, that I accept your generosity for Evelyn’s sake. It is that which – which is so ruthless.”

Philip’s lip quivered a moment, but he went on bravely.

“Well, as an elder brother I recommend it, too,” he said; “for it is just that I want to be to you, dear. Ah, do you think I don’t guess?”

Madge got up, and drew a chair close to him.

“Tell me about yourself, if it does not hurt you to talk of that,” she said.

“No, I want you to know what has happened to me,” he said; “both because I have to ask your forgiveness for certain things – ”

“Ah, don’t, don’t!” said she.

“Yes, you will see, and because perhaps what I have been through may help you. Well, Madge, I have been through deep waters, and waters as bitter as they were deep. For that month while I was in London I hated you and I hated him with such intensity that I think, but for the very hard work I did, I must have gone mad. And I think the only pleasure I felt was when I was the cause – indirectly anyhow – of his losing a large sum of money. I could have saved him that if I chose, but I did not choose. I must speak of that afterwards. But I loved you all the time I hated you, Madge, if you can understand that. All that was base and hard in me loathed you, because you had made me suffer; but there was something below, a very little thing, like a lump of leaven perhaps which still loved you, my infinitesimal better self. But all the time in London I did not know there was in me anything better than this worst.

“Then one morning I fainted, and they told me to ease off. So I went down into the country and stayed with the Hermit, who, I think, lived the happiest life that was ever lived on this earth. It was the contrast between him and me perhaps that first suggested to me whether it was worth while to hate, as I was hating, for that as far as I know was the beginning of what happened afterwards. It made me also throw away something I had bought in order to kill myself – never mind that. Then one night he talked about pain, on which he had turned his back, and told me that though he could not understand how or why it was necessary, it perhaps might be, and that he was willing himself, if so, to face anything that might be in store for him. And then, I must suppose that little lump of leaven began to work, because that night – we had talked also about free will – I asked myself if I chose, deliberately chose, to be bitter and hating. And I found I did not.

“It was not long after that – a week, I suppose – that the end came. By then I knew but this for certain, that I was not deliberately hard any longer. It was the contemplation of happiness and serenity that had produced that; I had begun also not to stare at a blank wall that had seemed to face me, but to say to myself that there was no wall except that of my own making. Do you know Watts’ picture of Hope? Of course you do. Well, I thought all my strings were broken, but they were not. There was just one left. But that I knew must inevitably break if I continued to be black and bitter. My bitterness had corroded it already.”

Philip paused a moment.

“I am jawing dreadfully about myself,” he said.

“Go on,” said she.

“Tom died in the night. I don’t want to tell you that in detail, but he died because he saw or thought he saw some revelation of the pain and sorrow of the world. Whether he imagined it or not, and whether what I thought I saw was imagination only, I don’t really care. He was sleeping in a hammock out of doors, and suddenly his cry rent the night. He called on God and on Christ. And when I went out I thought I saw a shadow like some dreadful goat skip from him. And he was dead.

“Now, how one learns anything I don’t know. But what I learned was pity for sorrow. And so, dear Madge, I am here.”

Again her hand sought his. “Oh, Philip, Philip,” she said. “What can I say to you? How could I guess what love was till I felt it? Ah, I don’t say that in excuse – you know that.”

“No, dear. It is no question of excuses, of course. And I have only told you all this that you may never need to look for any, and that you may understand that I am sorry for having been so bitter. And if you forgive that” – and the pressure of her hand answered him – “let us leave the past forever behind us, and look forward only. But it was better to have talked of it just once, so that we may dismiss it. Now, tell me about Evelyn.”

To Philip somehow she could pour out her heart in a way she could scarcely have done to anyone else, for the knowledge of what he had been through and of the bitterness from which he had emerged so unembittered threw open the golden gates of sympathy, and she spoke without reserve. She told him of the myriad dangers and difficulties that faced them, of the loss Evelyn had sustained which she could not yet estimate, which he, too, was only just beginning to realise, and which for a long time yet to come must daily grow more real to him. She spoke quite frankly, yet never without the utter sinking of herself, which is love, of his moods and transitions from boyish cheerfulness to a sort of dumb despair. She spoke finally of her first mortal horror when she saw his face, and her dread lest that should suddenly overmaster her, so that she should shrink from him and he should see it.

“But it is he,” she said, “whom I tremble for. He can stand it to-day, he will be able to stand it to-morrow, and for a week perhaps, or a month. But will it get easier for him to bear or more difficult? He can’t stand much more. He will break.”

“Ah, you mustn’t think about that,” said Philip. “It is no use adding up the sorrow and the pain that may be in front of one. One is meant just to bear the burden of the moment, and, God knows, it is heavy enough for you and him. Face difficulties as they arise, Madge, don’t make a sum of them and say the total is intolerable.”

He paused a moment.

“And let me bear all that you can shift on to me,” he said. “Because otherwise, you see, my coming here will be purposeless. And I hate, being a practical person, doing useless things.”

TWENTY-THIRD

IT was a dismally wet afternoon some weeks later, and Evelyn was sitting in one of the deep window-seats in the drawing-room of Philip’s house above Pangbourne, which looked out on to the terrace, where only six months ago the nightingale had sat and sung on Tom Merivale’s finger. Below, communicating with the upper terrace by a flight of stone steps, was the bedless square of grass, below again the rose garden, from which the ground went steeply down to the river. He had occupied himself with closing the shutters of this row of windows, one of which, reaching down to the ground, communicated with the terrace, and, not satisfied with this, he had drawn the curtains over them, leaving the room in darkness. The window-seats were well cushioned, and having arrived at the last, he slipped between the curtains he had drawn and curled himself up in it. During this last month he had made, so everybody said, extraordinary progress; he could already read a little, fast enough, that is to say, to enable him to remember the sentences he spelled out with his fingers in the raised type; he could remember the cards in his hand sufficiently to enable him to play a game of bridge, and with a stick to feel his way he could walk alone. But none, except he, knew the dreadful progress which despair had made in his mind. He had begun to be able once to look forward, to frame the future; but now the future was unframeable, he was only able just to bear the present moment. Soon that might be unbearable, too.

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.