The Angel of Pain. Benson Edward Frederic
he had managed – chiefly by means of working some sixteen hours out of the twenty-four during the last week – to secure for himself five days of complete holiday. Like a wise man, he had refused to pepper his house with mere acquaintances when friends were there, and with only one out of his four guests did he, like his mother, not feel on terms of intimacy. Her presence, however, as Madge’s mother, was a matter of necessity, and Philip did not hide from himself the fact that she certainly favoured his suit. For Lady Ellington, as Mrs. Home had already remarked, was a very practical woman, and it seemed to her, in her own phrasing, that Madge could scarcely “do better.” Her practical sense, it may be remarked, was like an all-fitting handle with a smart steel spring which grasped whatever was presented to it in firm tentacles; and the proper way of sweeping carpets, the right board wages for scullery-maids, the correct lead with doubled no trumps at bridge, were as clearly defined in her mind as the desirability of wealth in sons’-in-law. She was, it may be added, extremely generous with advice, being anxious to lay open to all the world the multifarious discoveries of her master-mind.
Lady Ellington was certainly a very handsome woman, and the passage of the glacier of years over her face and her mind had produced hardly any striations either on the one or the other. Her bodily health was superb, and she took the utmost care of it; while, since one of her most constantly applied maxims was to let no sadness or worry weigh on her, her mind had by this time become something like a very hard, bright, polished globe which it was impossible to dint or damage. She had strolled after tea with her hostess and Madge to the croquet lawn, leaving Evelyn Dundas and Tom Merivale to smoke and await Philip’s return from the river. The gardener there was still engaged in his belated mowing, and Lady Ellington examined the cutter with a magisterial air.
“Very old-fashioned and heavy,” she said. “You should get the new light American type. It does far more work, and a boy with it can get through what it takes a man to do with a heavier machine. How many gardeners do you keep, Mrs. Home.”
The poor lady shook her head.
“I don’t really know,” she said. “How many are there of you, Hawkins?”
Lady Ellington sniffed rather contemptuously.
“The labour-sheet will tell you,” she said. “Why are there no flower borders on this lawn?”
“Ah, that is Philip’s plan,” said his mother, delighted to be able to refer the inquisitor to another source. “He says that they get so trampled by people looking for balls.”
“I should have thought wire-netting would have obviated that,” said Lady Ellington. “Under the north wall there is an excellent aspect. Personally, I should put bulbs here. And the rose garden is below, is it not? Certainly Mr. Home keeps his garden in fairly good order.”
This concession, though not altogether unqualified, was fully appreciated by Mrs. Home.
“I’m sure he spends enough on it,” she said.
Lady Ellington laughed.
“That is the surest way of getting satisfactory results,” she said. “It is all nonsense to say that flowers do best in the gardens of those that love them, unless that love takes the practical form of spending money on them. And in the latter case, they do equally well if you hate them!”
This was in the best Ellingtonian manner, hard and clean-cut and glittering – there was nothing foggy about it – and it represented very fairly Lady Ellington’s method of dealing with life. Love or hatred did not seem to her to matter very particularly; the dinner of herbs, at any rate, in the house of love was markedly less attractive to her than the well-ordered house of hate, and she could do without friends better than without a motor-car. She had had rather a hard tussel with life, and shrewd blows had been given on both sides; she had lost her money and her husband during the last few years, and, being without a son, the title and estates had gone to her husband’s nephew, a man for whom for years she had felt, and indeed shown, an extreme dislike. Her jointure was narrow, and she had only got her motor-car by the simple expedient of ordering it but not paying for it. But of the two combatants – life and herself – life was at last beginning to get the worst of it. Certain speculations she had lately indulged in had brought her in money, and if once she could marry her daughter to Philip, she felt that this would be a knock-down blow to life, and her struggles on this side of the grave would be over. What might happen on the other side concerned her very little.
Madge meantime, while this short cross-examination had been going on, strolled a little behind the other two, with a faint smile of amusement in her eyes. She had inherited all her mother’s beauty, and dark violet eyes glowed beneath her black lashes. Her nose was a little tip-tilted, as if raised in curiosity about things in general, but her mouth somewhat contradicted that, for it drooped a little at the corners, as if to imply that her curiosity when satisfied proved rather disappointing. Curiosity and a shade of contempt, indeed, were the emotions most strongly in evidence on her face, and the observer – allowing that features may represent the character of their owner rather than that of her ancestry – would perhaps conclude that her habitual view of the world was of the kind that tends to laugh at rather than with that admirable comedy. Otherwise her face was strangely sexless; it was, indeed, more the face of a boy than of a girl. Even among tall women she was tall, and by her side Mrs. Home looked more than ever like a figure of Dresden china.
Lady Ellington after her sympathetic remark about flowers, turned to her daughter.
“Well situated, is it not, Madge?” she said. “And the river is below there. You will be all day on it, I expect, if Mr. Home is kind enough to take you. And who else is here, Mrs. Home?”
“Ah, there is no party at all, I am afraid,” said she. “Philip said that acquaintances mix so badly with friends. Only Mr. Dundas and Mr. Merivale.”
Lady Ellington thought this over for a moment, and the conclusion apparently was most satisfactory.
“That is charming of him!” she said. “It is always a compliment to be asked to a small party; whereas, if you have a houseful it doesn’t matter who is there. Dear me, those roses should be cut much further back, if they are to do any good. But it is quite true; if one asks friends and acquaintances together, the friends always wonder why the acquaintances have been asked, and the acquaintances are disgusted that nobody takes any notice of them. And I particularly want your son’s advice on some shares I have lately purchased. Mr. Dundas, too – I am so glad to meet him. They say his portraits are going up in price so. I wonder if he could be induced – just a little sketch – Ah, there is Mr. Home coming up from the river. I wonder why he wears a dark coat on so hot a day?”
A little curiosity perhaps lingered in Madge’s face when she met Philip, and certainly the contempt all vanished. She had a great respect and liking for him, and her whole expression brightened when she saw him. Then after greetings they strolled on, the two elder ladies in front.
“Mother has a great many questions to ask you,” she said to him in a gentle, slow, but very audible voice. “She wants to know how many gardeners you have, why you don’t cut your roses back and something about South African mines.”
Philip’s habit of neatness and instinct of gardening led him to stop a moment and nip off a couple of ill-localised buds from a rose. In effect the two others got a little further ahead of them. This may or may not have been intentional.
“All my information is at her service,” he said – “particularly on the subject of roses, about which I know more than South African mines.”
“And care more!” suggested Madge.
“Infinitely more. Are they not clearly more attractive?”
Madge looked at him curiously.
“I believe you really think so,” she said. “And that is so odd. Doesn’t the scheming, the calculation, the foresight required in financial things interest you enormously?”
“Certainly; but I scheme just as much over the roses. Whether this one is to have – well, a whisky-and-soda, or whether it is rheumatic and wants a lowering treatment; that is just as interesting in itself as whether South Africans want lowering or screwing up.”
“You