The Angel of Pain

He paused a moment to brush his dripping hair back from his face, wondering in a sort of vague, uninterested manner whether something had actually cracked in his brain, whether he had gone mad, or so the world could call it. But whatever had cracked, it had been the tension of it which all these weeks had caused his misery, and in this exquisite moment of peace that had suddenly come to him he almost laughed aloud for the unspeakable relief which the cessation of pain had brought. He felt that up till now his mental eyes had been as blind as his physical ones, that the blows that had been dealt him had been dealt from the dark, so that he could not guess who wielded the whip. But now they had ceased, and the clouds of darkness were rolled away, and there sat there One with a face full of infinite compassion, and since none but He was there, it must have been He, or some ministering angel of pain, who at his bidding had chastised him thus. Then Evelyn felt as if he had asked permission of Him to go on, for the river – or Tom’s voice – still hailed him joyously; and since it was allowed, still without intention, without definite thought of any kind, he went on his way, with shuffling steps indeed that stumbled over the gravel of the path, but with a great, serene light shining on him.

He had by now come close to the edge of the river, and the rain for the moment had ceased, so that he could hear the suck and gurgle of the hurrying flood-water, which whispered and chuckled to itself. But this rapturous noise of swift-flowing water sounded but faintly, for a hundred yards below was the weir. All the sluices were raised, and tons of water momently plunged through the openings, bellowing with a great hoarse laugh of ecstasy as they fell into the pool below. It was to that place, somewhere in the middle of the narrow pathway of planks that he was called; it was from there, where he would be surrounded on all sides with the noise of waters, that the voice of Tom, that faithful lover of water, called him. That somehow, and he did not question how or why, was his goal, nor did he know whether life or death awaited him there; only there was going to be reconcilement in some manner.

He had been there many times before; he had been there, indeed, only yesterday to listen to the splendid tumult of water. But to-day its voice was redoubled, and he could feel the mist from the plunging stream wet on his face as he went slowly and cautiously out over the wet planks. Louder and more triumphantly every moment the voice of the river – or was it Tom laughing with open mouth, as he used to laugh when he swam in the garden pool below his cottage? – called to him. On both sides, before and behind, he was surrounded by the joyous riot of waters, that filled and possessed his brain till his whole consciousness was flooded with it till his voice too had to join in it. So he raised his arms, spreading them out to the night, and threw back his head with a great shout of ecstatic rapture. And as he did this his foot slipped on the wet planks, and he fell into the roaring, rushing pool below. So the great Mother took him back to herself.

EPILOGUE

IT was just a year later, a warm, mellow afternoon of mid-October. For the last few nights there had been an early autumn frost, though the days were almost like a return of summer, and the beech-wood below Philip’s house at Pangbourne was just beginning to don its russet livery. The frost, too, had made its mark on blackened dahlias, but the chrysanthemums were still gorgeous. And on the terrace were walking two figures, both dressed in black, one tall, who strolled beside the other, Madge and Mrs. Home. The latter was still as like a Dresden shepherdess as ever in the pretty china delicacy of her face, but Madge had changed somewhat. Trouble had written its unmistakable signs on her face, but tenderness had been at work there, too, and though her eyes were sad, yet with the sadness was mingled something so sweet and gentle that no one who loved her would have wished that the sadness should not be there, if the other had come hand-in-hand with it. And it was hand-in-hand that they had come during the last eighteen months of her life, which had been to her of such infinitely greater import than all the years that had gone before.

“Yes, it is even as I tell you,” she was saying. “I never think of Evelyn as blind. I think of him – well, a good deal, but he always comes back to me, not as he was in those last weeks, but in those first few weeks before, bright-eyed – you know how bright his eyes were – and full of a sort of boyish joy at this jolly world. No, I scarcely feel sad when I think of him. He was fragile; he would have broken if he had had to bear more. And I think God knew that, and spared him by letting him die.”

She walked on a little without speaking. Mrs. Home’s hand on her arm pressed its sympathy, but she said nothing.

“I have been allowed to forget, too,” Madge went on, “or to remember it only as a nightmare from which I awoke, the way I shrank from him, and I only wonder now whether, if he had lived, I should have got used to it. Ah, surely it must have been in a dream only that I shrank from him.”

“Yes, dear, it was only that,” said Mrs. Home. “At least, no one knew. You behaved so that no one guessed.”

“Philip knew. If it had not been for him during those months I think I should have gone mad. And for the second time he kept me – it is hardly an exaggeration – kept me sane when baby died.”

Mrs. Home, when she had anything important and difficult to say, often gave out little twittering, mouse-like noises before she could manage to speak. Madge knew this, and thus, hearing them now, waited for her to overcome her embarrassment.

“And is there no hope for Philip, dear?” she asked at length.

Madge had rather expected this was coming, but her answer gave her less embarrassment than the question had caused his mother.

“I owe Philip everything,” she said, “and though I don’t suppose I can ever love again in the way that I have loved, still – you know once I told him quite truthfully that I would give him all that I was capable of. You see, I did not know then what love meant. That was a niggardly gift to offer him. And now again I can give him – oh, so gratefully – all I am capable of. It is, I hope, not quite such a mean thing as it was. I think – ”

Madge paused a moment.

“I think sorrow has made me a little more worthy of him,” she went on. “It has made me a little more like a woman. So if he cares still – ”

“Ah, my dear, you say ‘still.’ Why, day by day he loves you more.”

Madge looked at Mrs. Home a moment in silence, and the sadness of her eyes was melted into pure tenderness.

“You are sure?” she said.

“He will tell you better than I.”

Madge gave a long sigh, then let her gaze wander down the steep path to the river, which crossed the weir and formed a short cut through the fields of Pangbourne. The sun, which was near to its setting, dazzled her a little, and she put up her hand to shade her eyes.

“Ah, that is he coming up the path,” she said. “He must have caught the earlier train. Shall we go to meet him?”

“You go, dear,” said Mrs. Home. “I will wait for you here.”