E. F. Benson

“ Above all, did Madge know, had she seen? If ever love had vibrated in a voice, it had in her’s, but did she know, or had she only seen these bandages?
With his frightfully sensitive artistic nature, this seemed to cut deeper than anything, this thought that he was disfigured; horrible to look on, an offence to the eye of day and to the light of the sun, and—to the sight of her he loved. He would be pitied, too; and even as man and woman turned away from the sight of him they would be sorry for him, and the thought of pity was like a file on his flesh. ”

“ One terrific second of calm preceded the explosion, and, as if Nature was following the lines of this human drama, for that second the downpour of the blinding rain outside was stayed. Inside and out there was a moment’s silence.
“I know all that,” he said quietly, “but I can’t help myself. It is not for the picture—that doesn’t matter. It is for me. Because I love you.”
Madge threw her arms wide, then brought them together in front of her as if keeping him off, and a sort of cry of triumph that had begun to burst from her lips ended in a long moan. ”

“ He rose from his chair, and went to the edge of the verandah, stretching his arms wide and breathing deeply of the warm, fragrant air. Then he turned again to his companion.
“That, too, I hope is what death will be like,” he said. “All the sunlight of life will be concentrated into that moment, until one’s mere body can hold no more of the glow that impregnates it, and is shattered. Look at those clusters of rambler; a little more and they must burst with the colour.”
Evelyn got up too.
“Don’t be so uncomfortable, Tom,” he cried, in a sort of boyish petulance. ”

“ For solitude is a habit of extraordinary fascination, and very quick to grow on anyone who has sufficient interest in things not to be bored by the absence of people. And with Tom Merivale, Nature, the unfolding of flowers, the lighting of the stars in the sky, the white splendour of the moon, the hiss of the rain on to cowering shrubs and thirsty grass was much more than an interest; it was a passion which absorbed and devoured him. For Nature, to the true devotee, is a mistress far more exacting and far more infinite in her variety and rewards than was ever human mistress to her adorer. ”

“ I give it the same welcome as I have ever given to joy. It may frighten me out of existence, because the body is a poor sort of thing, and an ounce of lead or less will kill it, or, what is worse, deprive it of sight or hearing. But whatever can happen cannot hurt me, this me. Do you tell me that a rifle bullet, or a hangman’s noose can kill me? And can a frightful revelation of all the sorrow of the world, and its pain, and its terror, and its preying, the one creature on another, touch my belief that life is triumphant, and that joy is triumphant over pain? ”

“ The future holds no more terrors than the past. Indeed the two terms, which sound so opposite to most people, are really one. Past or future, it is I. I have pursued the joys of life, not beastly, sensual joys, for never have I had part in them, but the clean, vital joy of living. And you tell me, as Evelyn has told me, that there are vital pains of living, as clean and as essential as those joys. Well, let them come. I am ready. They can come to-night if they choose. Ah, the huge Bogey of pain and sorrow may come and lie on my chest, like a nightmare. ”

“ Ah, there is lightning again: there is going to be a storm to-night.”
“Sleep indoors,” said Philip quietly. He was quiet, for fear of his nerves. But Tom laughed.
“I should rather say to you ‘Sleep outside,’” he said. “If the lightning makes another shot here, it will certainly shoot at the highest thing, and the house is much higher than my hammock.”
He looked at him a moment in silence, with the pity that is akin not to contempt, but to love.
“Ah, you are afraid of fear,” he said. “That is one degree worse than anything we need be afraid of. It is of our own making, too. ”

“ That moment which had come to Philip, when the outpouring of his bitterness and resentment were stayed, was an epoch to him, which ranked by itself. It drew away from his other days and deeds, it was a leaven that worked incessantly, clouds cleared, Marah itself began to grow sweet, and splash by splash pieces of his bitterness dropped like stones into that sea of forgetfulness and forgiveness which, before any soul is complete and ready to stand before God, must spread from pole to pole. The determination to forget in most cases, as here, sets the tides on the flow ”

“ Philip had possessed himself of Madge’s left hand, the hand that he never ceased to wonder at. It was always cool, never hot, never cold, and the skin of it was like a peach. The fingers were long and tapered to almond-shaped nails, and for all its slimness and delicacy it was yet a strong hand. And mechanically she returned the touch of his, which half unconsciously lingered at the base of the fourth finger as if showing the place where so soon the plain circlet of gold would be.
“Ah! it is always a pity if anybody thinks one a brute,” he said. ”

“ But there is so much joy and life on the surface of things that I don’t wish to probe down. Ah, Tom, a day like this now; woven webs of blue heat, hot scents from the flower beds, the faces of our friends. Is that not enough? It is for me. And, talking of faces, Miss Ellington has the most perfectly modelled face I ever saw. The more I look at it, the more it amazes me. I stared at her all breakfast. And the charm of it is its consistent irregularity; not a feature is anything like perfect, but what a whole! I wish I could do her portrait. ”

“ Evelyn gave a little click of impatience.
“You must go on trying till you do help it,” he said. “Of course, if one dwells on the matter, one is sorry for Philip; I am awfully sorry for Philip when I think of him. I hate the idea of anybody being wounded and hurt as he must have been, and since he was my friend, it is the more distressing. Only it is an effort for me to think of him at all. I can only think of one person, and of one thing—you and my love for you.”
This time Madge’s smile was more satisfactory, and with his bright eager eyes he looked at her as the eagle to the sun. ”

“ I have been thinking of my own misery too much; I have not thought enough about poor Evelyn. But I did not know there was such sorrow in the world.”
Lady Dover looked at her a moment, and drew her gently to a seat behind some bushes. And her own pretty, neat face was suddenly puckered up.
“Oh, Madge,” she said, “just let yourself go for ten minutes, and cry, my dear, sob your heart out, as they say. Have a good cry, dear; it will do you good. It is not cowardly, that—it helps one, it softens one, and it makes one braver perhaps afterwards. ”

“ Up to a certain point his knowledge was complete and consolidated; the joy of animate nature was utterly his, no thrush or scudding blackbird knew better than he the joy that comes from the mere fact of life and air and food and sleep and drink, of which every moment brings its own reward. To none, too, could he have stated this so easily as to his old friend, and the very fact that Philip was but now just beginning to emerge from black and bitter waters, made his understanding of it more piercing. ”

“ And so when I went to Nature I shut my ears and eyes to that minor undercurrent of sound. Of the result I was sure; day after day there is more life in the world, in spite of the death that day after day goes on. All the death goes to form fresh life. In the same way with the joy and sorrow of Nature; for every animal that suffers there are two that are glad, for every tree that dies there are two in the full vigour of the joy of life. And that joy and that life is my constant study. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ That view of his, which Madge knew so well he would take when he learned, one way or another, of the wreck that had come to his face, might or might not be a shallow view, but that view he would assuredly take, and construe her love for him into mere pity and forbearance. She did not love him for his face—he would not say that—but his face was part of him, and if that was spoiled, so surely was part of her love spoiled. Body and soul she had loved him, but how could a woman love a sightless, scarred thing? ”

“ A child crying seems to me a dreadful thing, a beggar by the wayside with a broken tobacco-pipe, and not a penny to get another, the shriek of the rabbit when the stoat’s teeth fasten in its throat; they are all dreadful, and enemies to joy. But I am no longer convinced, as I used to be, that pain is unnecessary; I am beginning, as I said, to hold an open mind on the subject, and only say that I believe I can realise myself best and bring myself best into harmony with Nature, with the whole design, by avoiding it. Yet for me also pain and suffering may be necessary. ”

“ A tired light came over the sky, as if drowsy eyelids had winked. Through the clouds the reflection of distant lightning illuminated the garden for a moment. There was a gap in the trees by the stream, where the stricken tree had stood, but of its corpse nothing remained; it had all been cut up and taken to make firewood for the winter. But a hot air blew, and in the bushes those strange, unaccountable noises of creaking twigs sounded insistently loud.
“Ah, you know my gospel well enough,” said Merivale. “The joy of life; the joy inherent in the fact of life. ”

“ Lady Ellington’s own most acute feelings of rage, indignation, disappointment, were for the moment altogether subordinated by her pity for this strong man, who had suddenly been dealt this shattering, paralysing blow. If he had raged and stormed, if he had cursed Madge and threatened to shoot Evelyn, she would have felt less sorry for him. But the quietness with which he received it was more pathetic, all strength had gone from him. ”

“ Tom laughed.
“And another proof of my youth is that I feel as I do about death,” he said. “The more you are conscious of your own life, the more absurd the notion that one can die becomes. Why, even one’s body won’t die; it will make life, it will be grass on one’s grave, just as the dead leaves that fall from the tree make the leaf-mould which feeds that tree or another tree or the grass. It doesn’t in the least matter which, it is all one, it is all life.”
Evelyn shivered slightly. ”

“ But forgiveness could not be there yet, and it was the most she could do to resolve not to think about either Madge or Evelyn. Philip’s sorrow and what faint consolation or palliation she could bring to that was enough to fill her thoughts; the authors of his sorrow she wished as far as was humanly possible to root out from her mind altogether. Resentment would do no good to anybody and only hurt herself, and since she knew that she could not wholly forgive, since there was no sign of sorrow or regret on their parts, the best thing she could cultivate in their regard was oblivion. ”

“ For old-age unembittered was her’s, and in the completeness and fulness of Philip’s manhood, not in keeping him undeveloped and unstung by the sunlight, though through it was flung bitter foam of the sea that breaks forever round this life of man, she realised not herself only but him most fully and best. She would not retain him, even if she could; he had got to live his life, and make it as round and perfect as it could be made. It was her part only to watch from the shore as he put out into the breakers, and wish him God-speed. ”

“ Madge and Evelyn had found they loved each other, and that being so, how infinitely more wretched must any attempt to disregard or stifle that have proved! The thought of the girl as Philip’s wife secretly loving another was a situation which she knew well was far more terrible than this, far more rotten, far more insecure. There the foundation of their lives would be founded on a lie, their house would be built over a volcano which might break out and overwhelm with fire and burning the fabric that was reared upon it. ”

“ For with his complete and instinctive surrender to every mood of the moment, he had permitted himself to take great pleasure in the contemplation—it was really hardly more than that—of Madge’s beauty, and he felt secretly, for no shadow obscured the genuineness of his congratulations, a certain surprise and sense of being ill-used. He was not the least in love with Madge, but even in so short a time they had fallen into ways of comradeship, and her engagement, he felt, curtailed the liberties of that delightful relationship. ”

“ At present I have not seen—so as to know—the necessity of it, though I have long known that all Nature groans under it. Everything preys on something else—you prey on the animals you eat, and the folk you make fools of on the Stock Exchange. And Evelyn preys on you. Yes, yes. And I—I try to prey on nobody, but perhaps this law of preying will some day be brought home to me. My joy, which so weighs down the scale, may have its compensating burden of suffering given to it. And whatever blackness of horror awaits me, I won’t turn back. ”

“ Merivale looked at him; even as Gladys had seen that some change had come in Madge, so he saw that something had happened to Evelyn, and he registered that impression in his mind. But the change, whatever it was, was not permanent—it was a phase, a mood only, for next moment Evelyn had broken out into a perfectly natural laugh.
“You shan’t make me think of melancholy subjects any more,” he cried. “Indeed you may try, but you won’t be able to do it. I have never been more full of the joy of life than to-day. That was why I was so glad to come down here, as you are a sort of apostle of joy. ”

“ I have just come here from the New Forest: you will not have heard what has happened. Tom Merivale is dead, the Hermit, you know. I will tell you about it all when we meet; now I can only say that the sorrows of the world were, I believe, suddenly revealed to him, and he died of it. And some of the sorrows of the world, you poor dear, have been revealed to Evelyn and you, and perhaps to me. Only we have got to live and not die. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lady Dover did not, as Madge’s mother would certainly have done, squeeze her hand and utter words of sympathy. She did not even look at Madge, but with those clear, level eyes looked straight in front of her while she considered this. Her first instinct was, as would have been the instinct of everyone, to say something sympathetic, but her wisdom—the existence of which Lady Ellington really did not believe in—gave her better counsel. For to be natural is not synonymous with doing the first thing that happens to come into one’s head. ”