Edward Benson - The Angel of Pain

Evelyn shrugged his shoulders.

“Then there will be no portrait at all,” he said shortly. “I tell you I won’t paint it as an order.”

Philip held out his hand.

“I appreciate it tremendously,” he said. “It is most awfully good of you. But it’s your profession. Hullo, here’s the Hermit back.”

Tom Merivale entered at this moment.

“Aren’t we going to sit out to-night?” he said.

Evelyn rose.

“Yes, let’s go out,” he said. “Well, Philip, not a line will I draw unless you take it. Or I’ll give it to Miss Ellington and not you.”

“You really musn’t,” said Philip.

“But don’t you see I want to paint her? I said so to you only the other day. Hang it all, I tell you that I do it for pleasure. I shall also be the vast gainer artistically. I’ve got an idea about her, in fact, and if you don’t let me paint her I shall do it from memory, in which case it will not be so good.”

An idea struck Philip.

“Well, paint me as well,” he said, “and let me pay you for that.”

Evelyn followed Tom out.

“Oh, I can’t haggle,” he said. “Yes, I’ll paint you if you like. But I will paint Miss Ellington first. In fact, you shall be painted when I’ve nothing else to do. Well, Hermit, seen Pan to-day?”

“No, you scoffer,” said Tom.

“Call me when you do. I should like to see him, too. Let’s see, he was a man with goat’s legs; sort of things you see in Barnum’s.”

Tom shifted in his chair.

“Some day, perhaps, you may think it serious,” he said.

“I daresay; a man with goat’s legs is not to be taken lightly,” said Evelyn. “And he sits by the roadside, doesn’t he, or so Browning says, playing the pipes? What pipes, I wonder? Bagpipes, do you suppose?”

Tom laughed; his equanimity was quite undisturbed even by chaff upon what was to him the most serious subject in the world.

“Ah, who was frightened at a nightingale coming to sit on my finger a few nights ago? Evelyn, if you are not serious, I’ll frighten you again.”

“Well, but is it bagpipes?” asked he.

Tom suddenly got grave.

“No, it sounded more like a glass flute very far off,” he said. “No explanations are forthcoming, because I haven’t got any.”

Evelyn was silent a moment.

“And when did you hear this glass flute very far off?” he asked.

“Two mornings ago, up above the house in that big clearing in the woods,” he answered. “I know nothing more about it. It frightened me rather, and then it stopped.”

“What did it play?” asked Philip.

“A world-without-end tune,” he said. “The catechising is now over. I shall go to bed, I think. I must leave to-morrow, Philip.”

“I hoped you would stop a day or two longer. Must you really go?”

“I must, I find.”

“Appointment with Pan in the New Forest,” remarked Evelyn, dodging the cushion that was thrown at him.

Philip had to spend the inside of the next day in London, and left with Tom Merivale by an early train, leaving Evelyn alone with his mother, Lady Ellington, and Madge. It came about very naturally that Lady Ellington gravitated to Mrs. Home, and Evelyn, finishing his background sketch in front of a great clump of purple clematis, found Madge on the terrace when he went out, with an unopened book on her lap.

The book had lain there, indeed, in the same state for half an hour before he came, for Madge had been very fully occupied with her own thoughts. She had had a talk to her mother the night before, which this morning seemed to her to be more revealing of herself than even her own confession to Philip in their stroll on the terrace had been. She had told her just what she had told him, namely, that she gave him very willingly all that she knew of herself, liking, esteem, respect, adding out of Philip’s mouth that this more than contented him. But then Lady Ellington, for the first time perhaps for many years, had made a strategical error, allowing her emotion, not her reason, to dictate to her, and had said —

“Ah, Madge, how clever of you.”

She had seen her mistake a moment afterwards, and just a moment too late, for Madge had asked the very simple question “Why?” And the unsatisfactory nature of her mother’s reply had given her food for thought.

For Lady Ellington had applauded as clever what was to her the very rudiment of honour, and she had supposed that her mother would say “How very stupid of you.” Clearly, then, while extremely uncalculating to herself, Madge had succeeded in giving the impression of calculation to one who, she well knew, calculated. What, then, she asked herself, was the secret of this love of which she was ignorant, that rendered her confession of ignorance so satisfactory a reply?

Effusive pleasure on her mother’s part at the termination of this recital had not consoled her. Somehow, according to Lady Ellington’s view, an almost quixotic honesty appeared clever. And it was over this riddle that she was puzzling when Evelyn appeared, with brilliance, so to speak, streaming from him. Brilliance certainly streamed from his half-finished sketch, and brilliance marked his exposition of it.

“Oh, I lead a dog’s life,” he said, as he planted his easel down on the gravel. “Do you know Lady Taverner, for whom this is to be a background? No? I congratulate you. She is pink, simply pink, like a phlox, with butter-coloured hair, probably acquired. Well, put a pat of butter and a phlox on a purple plate, and you will see that the phlox is pinker than ever and the butter more buttery. Therefore, since I really am very thorough, I make a sketch of clematis to see how the flowers really grow, and shall plaster her with them – masses behind her, sapphires round her neck; and a pink Jewess in the middle,” he added, in a tone of extraordinary irritation.

Madge let her book slide to the ground.

“Do you want to be talked to or not?” she asked. “If you don’t, say so, and I will go away.”

Evelyn looked up from his purple clematis.

“I lead a dog’s life,” he said, “but sometimes somebody throws me a bone. So throw me one.”

“You seem to growl over it,” said she.

“I know I do. That is because, though I lead a dog’s life, nobody shall take my bone from me.”

He bit the end of his brush.

“And the filthy thing casts purple shadows upwards,” he said. “At least the sun shines on the purple, and reflects the purple on leaves that overhang it. I wish I had been born without any sense of colour. I should have made such ripping etchings.”

Madge had no immediate reply to this, and he painted for some ten minutes in silence. She had picked up her book again, and read the words of it – reading it could not be called.

“You haven’t given me many bones,” said he at length.

Madge looked up.

“I know I haven’t,” she said; “but seriously I considered if I had got anything to say, and found I hadn’t. So I decided to say nothing.”

Evelyn dabbed in a purple star.

“But surely one has always something in one’s mind,” he said. “One can’t help that, so why not say it? A penny for your thoughts now.”

Madge laughed.

“No, they are worth far more. In fact, they are not in the market,” she said.

Evelyn grew portentously grave.

“Mrs. Gummidge,” he said.

“Oh, what do you mean?” she asked.

“You’ve been thinking of the old one,” said Evelyn. “Philip.”

“Quite true, I was,” she said. “He is such a dear.”

“So glad you like him,” muttered Evelyn, again frowning and biting his brushes. “Lord love us, what a blue world it is this morning! There, I can’t paint any more just now.”

“That’s rather sudden, isn’t it?”