The Angel of Pain. Benson Edward Frederic

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СКАЧАТЬ a ridiculous piece of gaiety by sheer exuberance of animal spirits, and even Lady Ellington forgot to examine the dishes with her usual magisterial air, and really ate and drank without criticising.

      There was an extraordinary superficial resemblance in certain ways between the two men. Both, at any rate, were glorious examples of the happiness that springs from health, a happiness which is as inimitable as it is contagious. By health, it must be premised, is not meant the mere absence of definite ailments, but that perfect poise between an active mind and an exuberant body which is so rare.

      It was on this very subject that Merivale was speaking now.

      “Ah, no, Lady Ellington,” he was saying, “to be able to get through the day’s work, day after day and year after year, is not health. Perfect health implies practically perfect happiness.”

      “But how if you have a definite cause of worry?” she said.

      “You can’t worry when you are well. One knows, for example, that if one is definitely unwell, the same cause produces greater worry and discomfort than if one is not. And my theory is, that if one is absolutely well, if your mind and soul, that is to say, as well as your body, are all in accord with each other and with their environment, worry is impossible.”

      Lady Ellington, to do her justice, always listened to that were really new to her. She always assumed, by the way, that they were not.

      “My theory exactly,” she said. “I could scarcely have lived through these last years unless I had made up my mind never to let any anxiety take hold of me.”

      Evelyn Dundas laughed. Dinner was nearing its end and conversation was general.

      “My mind and my body are not in absolute accord this moment,” he said, “and I am rather anxious. My body demands some more ice-pudding; my mind tells me it would be extremely unwise. Which am I to listen to, Tom?”

      “Give Mr. Dundas some more ice-pudding,” remarked Philip to a footman.

      “The laws of hospitality compel me to fall in with my host’s suggestions,” said Evelyn. “Tom, where you are wrong lies in thinking that it is worth while spending all your time in keeping well. He lives in the New Forest, Lady Ellington, and if when you are passing you hear the puffs of a loud steam-engine somewhere near Brockenhurst you will know it is Tom doing deep breathing. He expects in time to become a Ram-jam or something, by breathing himself into Raj-pan-puta.”

      Tom Merivale laughed.

      “No, I don’t want to become a Ram-jam,” he said, “whatever that may be. I want to become myself.”

      “No clothes,” murmured Mrs. Home.

      “Become yourself?” asked Lady Ellington.

      “Yes, most of us are stunted copies of our real selves,” he said. “Imitations of what we might be. And what might one not be?”

      The talk had got for him, at any rate, suddenly serious, and he looked up at Lady Ellington with a sparkling eye.

      “Explain,” she said.

      “Well, it seems to me one cripples oneself in so many ways. One allows oneself to be nervous, and to be angry, and to be bound by conventions that are useless and cramping.”

      “Tall hats, frock-coats?” asked she.

      “No, certainly not, because they, at any rate, are perfectly harmless. But, to take an example of what I mean, it seems to me a ridiculous convention that we should all consider ourselves obliged to know what is going on in the world. It does not really do one any good to know that there is war between China and Japan. What does do us good is not to be ill-tempered, and never to be sad. Sadness and pessimism are the worst forms of mental disease I know. And the state will not put sad and pessimistic people in asylums, or isolate them at any rate so that their disease should not spread. Such diseases are so frightfully catching, and they are more fatal than fevers. People die of them, soul and body!”

      Lady Ellington felt that Mrs. Home was collecting her eye, and rose.

      “What a fascinating theory,” she said. “Just what I have always thought. Ah, I have caught my dress under my chair. You should have castors, Mr. Home, on your dining-room chairs.”

* * * * * * *

      Evelyn moved up next to Tom Merivale after the others had left them.

      “Dear old Hermit!” he said. “Now, you’ve got to give an account of yourself. Neither Phil nor I have seen you for a year. What have you been doing?”

      Tom let the port pass him.

      “I suppose you would call it nothing,” said he.

      “Ah, but in real life people don’t go and live in the New Forest and do nothing. What have you written in the last year?”

      “Not one line. Seriously, I have been doing nothing except a little gardening and carpentering; just manual labour to keep one sane.”’

      “Well, it looks as if it suited you. You look well enough, and what is so odd, you look so much younger.”

      Tom laughed again.

      “Ah, that strikes you, does it?” he said. “I suppose it could not have been otherwise, though that wasn’t my object in going to live there.”

      “Well, tell us, then!” said Evelyn, rather impatiently. He had begun to smoke, and smoked in a most characteristic manner; that is to say, that in little more than a minute his cigarette was consumed down one side, and was a peninsula of charred paper down the other, while clouds of smoke ascended from it. Perceiving this, he instantly lit another one.

      But Philip rose.

      “Tell us afterwards, Tom,” he said. “Lady Ellington likes to play bridge, I know, as soon as dinner is over.”

      Evelyn rose also.

      “Ah, she is like me,” he said. “She wants to do things not soon, but immediately, Philip, how awfully pretty Miss Ellington is. Why wasn’t I told? I should like to paint her.”

      Philip paused by the door.

      “Really, do you mean that?” he said. “And have you got time? I hear you always have more orders than you can ever get through.”

      Evelyn tossed his head with a quick, petulant gesture.

      “You talk as if I was a tailor,” he said. “But you suggest to me the advisability of my getting apprentices to paint the uninteresting people for me, and I will sign them. That would satisfy a lot of them. Yes, I have more than I can do. But I could do Miss Ellington remarkably well. Shall I ask her to sit for me?”

      “That would be rather original, the first time you saw her.”

      “A good reason for doing it,” said Evelyn, hastily drinking another glass of port.

      “But it would certainly give her a good reason for saying ‘No,’” remarked Philip.

      Madge, it appeared, did not play bridge; her mother, at any rate, said she did not, and Evelyn Dundas, rather to his satisfaction, cut out. That feat happily accomplished, he addressed himself to Madge.

      “Fancy a hermit СКАЧАТЬ