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The Wonderful Visit
* * * * *
By the Same Author
The Time Machine
DAILY CHRONICLE.--"Grips the imagination as it is only
gripped by genuinely imaginative work.... A strikingly
original performance."
SATURDAY REVIEW.--"A book of remarkable power and
imagination, and a work of distinct and individual merit."
SPECTATOR.--"Mr Wells' fanciful and lively dream is well
worth reading."
NATIONAL OBSERVER.--"A _tour de force_.... A fine piece
of literature, strongly imagined, almost perfectly expressed."
GLASGOW HERALD.--"One of the best pieces of work I have
read for many a day."
* * * * *
Macmillan's Colonial Library
The Wonderful Visit
by H. G. Wells
Author of the "Time Machine"
London
Macmillan and Co.
and New York
1895
No. 241
_All rights reserved_
This Edition is intended for circulation only in India and the British
Colonies
TO THE MEMORY OF MY DEAR FRIEND, WALTER LOW.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE NIGHT OF THE STRANGE BIRD 1
THE COMING OF THE STRANGE BIRD 4
THE HUNTING OF THE STRANGE BIRD 8
THE VICAR AND THE ANGEL 17
PARENTHESIS ON ANGELS 35
AT THE VICARAGE 38
THE MAN OF SCIENCE 50
THE CURATE 61
AFTER DINNER 76
MORNING 97
THE VIOLIN 101
THE ANGEL EXPLORES THE VILLAGE 106
LADY HAMMERGALLOW'S VIEW 127
FURTHER ADVENTURES OF THE ANGEL IN THE VILLAGE 135
MRS JEHORAM'S BREADTH OF VIEW 148
A TRIVIAL INCIDENT 154
THE WARP AND THE WOOF OF THINGS 156
THE ANGEL'S DEBUT 160
THE TROUBLE OF THE BARBED WIRE 186
DELIA 195
DOCTOR CRUMP ACTS 199
SIR JOHN GOTCH ACTS 208
THE SEA CLIFF 213
MRS HINIJER ACTS 217
THE ANGEL IN TROUBLE 221
THE LAST DAY OF THE VISIT 229
THE EPILOGUE 248
THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
THE NIGHT OF THE STRANGE BIRD.
I.
On the Night of the Strange Bird, many people at Sidderton (and some
nearer) saw a Glare on the Sidderford moor. But no one in Sidderford saw
it, for most of Sidderford was abed.
All day the wind had been rising, so that the larks on the moor
chirruped fitfully near the ground, or rose only to be driven like
leaves before the wind. The sun set in a bloody welter of clouds, and
the moon was hidden. The glare, they say, was golden like a beam shining
out of the sky, not a uniform blaze, but broken all over by curving
flashes like the waving of swords. It lasted but a moment and left the
night dark and obscure. There were letters about it in _Nature_, and a
rough drawing that no one thought very like. (You may see it for
yourself--the drawing that was unlike the glare--on page 42 of Vol.
cclx. of that publication.)
None in Sidderford saw the light, but Annie, Hooker Durgan's wife, was
lying awake, and she saw the reflection of it--a flickering tongue of
gold--dancing on the wall.
She, too, was one of those who heard the sound. The others who heard the
sound were Lumpy Durgan, the half-wit, and Amory's mother. They said it
was a sound like children singing and a throbbing of harp strings,
carried on a rush of notes like that which sometimes comes from an
organ. It began and ended like the opening and shutting of a door, and
before and after they heard nothing but the night wind howling over the
moor and the noise of the caves under Sidderford cliff. Amory's mother
said she wanted to cry when she heard it, but Lumpy was only sorry he
could hear no more.
That is as much as anyone can tell you of the glare upon Sidderford
Moor and the alleged music therewith. And whether these had any real
connexion with the Strange Bird whose history follows, is more than I
can say. But I set it down here for reasons that will be more apparent
as the story proceeds.
THE COMING OF THE STRANGE BIRD.
II.
Sandy Bright was coming down the road from Spinner's carrying a side of
bacon he had taken in exchange for a clock. He saw nothing of the light
but he heard and saw the Strange Bird. He suddenly heard a flapping and
a voice like a woman wailing, and being a nervous man and all alone, he
was alarmed forthwith, and turning (all a-tremble) saw something large
and black against the dim darkness of the cedars up the hill. It seemed
to be coming right down upon him, and incontinently he dropped his bacon
and set off running, only to fall headlong.
He tried in vain--such was his state of mind--to remember the beginning
of the Lord's Prayer. The strange bird flapped over him, something
larger than himself, with a vast spread of wings, and, as he thought,
black. He screamed and gave himself up for lost. Then it went past him,
sailing down the hill, and, soaring over the vicarage, vanished into the
hazy valley towards Sidderford.
And Sandy Bright lay upon his stomach there, for ever so long, staring
into the darkness after the strange bird. At last he got upon his knees
and began to thank Heaven for his merciful deliverance, with his eyes
downhill. He went on down into the village, talking aloud and confessing
his sins as he went, lest the strange bird should come back. All who
heard him thought him drunk. But from that night he was a changed man,
and had done with drunkenness and defrauding the revenue by selling
silver ornaments without a licence. And the side of bacon lay upon the
hillside until the tallyman from Portburdock found it in the morning.
The next who saw the Strange Bird was a solicitor's clerk at Iping
Hanger, who was climbing the hill before breakfast, to see the sunrise.
Save for a few dissolving wisps of cloud the sky had been blown clear
in the night. At first he thought it was an eagle he saw. It was near
the zenith, and incredibly remote, a mere bright speck above the pink
cirri, and it seemed as if it fluttered and beat itself against the sky,
as an imprisoned swallow might do against a window pane. Then down it
came into the shadow of the earth, sweeping in a great curve towards
Portburdock and round over the Hanger, and so vanishing behind the woods
of Siddermorton Park. It seemed larger than a man. Just before it was
hidden, the light of the rising sun smote over the edge of the downs and
touched its wings, and they flashed with the brightness of flames and
the colour of precious stones, and so passed, leaving the witness agape.
A ploughman going to his work, along under the stone wall of
Siddermorton Park, saw the Strange Bird flash over him for a moment and
vanish among the hazy interstices of the beech trees. But he saw little
of the colour of the wings, witnessing only that its legs, which were
long, seemed pink and bare like naked flesh, and its body mottled white.
It smote like an arrow through the air and was gone.
These were the first three eye-witnesses of the Strange Bird.
Now in these days one does not cower before the devil and one's own
sinfulness, or see strange iridiscent wings in the light of dawn, and
say nothing of it afterwards. The young solicitor's clerk told his
mother and sisters at breakfast, and, afterwards, on his way to the
office at Portburdock, spoke of it to the blacksmith of Hammerpond, and
spent the morning with his fellow clerks marvelling instead of copying
deeds. And Sandy Bright went to talk the matter over with Mr Jekyll, the
"Primitive" minister, and the ploughman told old Hugh and afterwards the
vicar of Siddermorton.
"They are not an imaginative race about here," said the Vicar of
Siddermorton, "I wonder how much of that was true. Barring that he
thinks the wings were brown it sounds uncommonly like a Flamingo."
THE HUNTING OF THE STRANGE BIRD.
III.
The Vicar of Siddermorton (which is nine miles inland from Siddermouth
as the crow flies) was an ornithologist. Some such pursuit, botany,
antiquity, folk-lore, is almost inevitable for a single man in his
position. He was given to geometry also, propounding occasionally
impossible problems in the _Educational Times_, but ornithology was his
_forte_. He had already added two visitors to the list of occasional
British birds. His name was well-known in the columns of the _Zoologist_
(I am afraid it may be forgotten by now, for the world moves apace). And
on the day after the coming of the Strange Bird, came first one and then
another to confirm the ploughman's story and tell him, not that it had
any connection, of the Glare upon Sidderford moor.
Now, the Vicar of Siddermorton had two rivals in his scientific
pursuits; Gully of Sidderton, who had actually seen the glare, and who
it was sent the drawing to _Nature_, and Borland the natural history
dealer, who kept the marine laboratory at Portburdock. Borland, the
Vicar thought, should have stuck to his copepods, but instead he kept a
taxidermist, and took advantage of his littoral position to pick up rare
sea birds. It was evident to anyone who knew anything of collecting that
both these men would be scouring the country after the strange visitant,
before twenty-four hours were out.
The Vicar's eye rested on the back of Saunders' British Birds, for he
was in his study at the time. Already in two places there was entered:
"the only known British specimen was secured by the Rev. K. Hilyer,
Vicar of Siddermorton." A third such entry. He doubted if any other
collector had that.
He looked at his watch--_two_. He had just lunched, and usually he
"rested" in the afternoon. He knew it would make him feel very
disagreeable if he went out into the hot sunshine--both on the top of
his head and generally. Yet Gully perhaps was out, prowling observant.
Suppose it was something very good and Gully got it!
His gun stood in the corner. (The thing had iridiscent wings and pink
legs! The chromatic conflict was certainly exceedingly stimulating). He
took his gun.
He would have gone out by the glass doors and verandah, and down the
garden into the hill road, in order to avoid his housekeeper's eye. He
knew his gun expeditions were not approved of. But advancing towards him
up the garden, he saw the curate's wife and her two daughters, carrying
tennis rackets. His curate's wife was a young woman of immense will, who
used to play tennis on his lawn, and cut his roses, differ from him on
doctrinal points, and criticise his personal behaviour all over the
parish. He went in abject fear of her, was always trying to propitiate
her. But so far he had clung to his ornithology....
However, he went out by the front door.
IV.
If it were not for collectors England would be full, so to speak, of
rare birds and wonderful butterflies, strange flowers and a thousand
interesting things. But happily the collector prevents all that, either
killing with his own hands or, by buying extravagantly, procuring people
of the lower classes to kill such eccentricities as appear. It makes
work for people, even though Acts of Parliament interfere. In this way,
for instance, he is killing off the chough in Cornwall, the Bath white
butterfly, the Queen of Spain Fritillary; and can plume himself upon the
extermination of the Great Auk, and a hundred other rare birds and
plants and insects. All that is the work of the collector and his glory
alone. In the name of Science. And this is right and as it should be;
eccentricity, in fact, is immorality--think over it again if you do not
think so now--just as eccentricity in one's way of thinking is madness
(I defy you to find another definition that will fit all the cases of
either); and if a species is rare it follows that it is not Fitted to
Survive. The collector is after all merely like the foot soldier in the
days of heavy armour--he leaves the combatants alone and cuts the
throats of those who are overthrown. So one may go through England from
end to end in the summer time and see only eight or ten commonplace wild
flowers, and the commoner butterflies, and a dozen or so common birds,
and never be offended by any breach of the monotony, any splash of
strange blossom or flutter of unknown wing. All the rest have been
"collected" years ago. For which cause we should all love Collectors,
and bear in mind what we owe them when their little collections are
displayed. These camphorated little drawers of theirs, their glass cases
and blotting-paper books, are the graves of the Rare and the Beautiful,
the symbols of the Triumph of Leisure (morally spent) over the Delights
of Life. (All of which, as you very properly remark, has nothing
whatever to do with the Strange Bird.)
V.
There is a place on the moor where the black water shines among the
succulent moss, and the hairy sundew, eater of careless insects, spreads
its red-stained hungry hands to the God who gives his creatures--one to
feed another. On a ridge thereby grow birches with a silvery bark, and
the soft green of the larch mingles with the dark green fir. Thither
through the honey humming heather came the Vicar, in the heat of the
day, carrying a gun under his arm, a gun loaded with swanshot for the
Strange Bird. And over his disengaged hand he carried a pocket
handkerchief wherewith, ever and again, he wiped his beady face.
He went by and on past the big pond and the pool full of brown leaves
where the Sidder arises, and so by the road (which is at first sandy and
then chalky) to the little gate that goes into the park. There are seven
steps up to the gate and on the further side six down again--lest the
deer escape--so that when the Vicar stood in the gateway his head was
ten feet or more above the ground. And looking where a tumult of bracken
fronds filled the hollow between two groups of beech, his eye caught
something parti-coloured that wavered and went. Suddenly his face
gleamed and his muscles grew tense; he ducked his head, clutched his gun
with both hands, and stood still. Then watching keenly, he came on down
the steps into the park, and still holding his gun in both hands, crept
rather than walked towards the jungle of bracken.
Nothing stirred, and he almost feared that his eyes had played him
false, until he reached the ferns and had gone rustling breast high into
them. Then suddenly rose something full of wavering colours, twenty
yards or less in front of his face, and beating the air. In another
moment it had fluttered above the bracken and spread its pinions wide.
He saw what it was, his heart was in his mouth, and he fired out of pure
surprise and habit.
There was a scream of superhuman agony, the wings beat the air twice,
and the victim came slanting swiftly downward and struck the ground--a
struggling heap of writhing body, broken wing and flying bloodstained
plumes--upon the turfy slope behind.
The Vicar stood aghast, with his smoking gun in his hand. It was no bird
at all, but a youth with an extremely beautiful face, clad in a robe of
saffron and with iridescent wings, across whose pinions great waves of
colour, flushes of purple and crimson, golden green and intense blue,
pursued one another as he writhed in his agony. Never had the Vicar seen
such gorgeous floods of colour, not stained glass windows, not the wings
of butterflies, not even the glories of crystals seen between prisms, no
colours on earth could compare with them. Twice the Angel raised
himself, only to fall over sideways again. Then the beating of the wings
diminished, the terrified face grew pale, the floods of colour abated,
and suddenly with a sob he lay prone, and the changing hues of the
broken wings faded swiftly into one uniform dull grey hue.
"Oh! _what_ has happened to me?" cried the Angel (for such it was),
shuddering violently, hands outstretched and clutching the ground, and
then lying still.
"Dear me!" said the Vicar. "I had no idea." He came forward cautiously.
"Excuse me," he said, "I am afraid I have shot you."
It was the obvious remark.
The Angel seemed to become aware of his presence for the first time. He
raised himself by one hand, his brown eyes stared into the Vicar's.
Then, with a gasp, and biting his nether lip, he struggled into a
sitting position and surveyed the Vicar from top to toe.
"A man!" said the Angel, clasping his forehead; "a man in the maddest
black clothes and without a feather upon him. Then I was not deceived. I
am indeed in the Land of Dreams!"
THE VICAR AND THE ANGEL.
VI.
Now there are some things frankly impossible. The weakest intellect will
admit this situation is impossible. The _Athenaeum_ will probably say as
much should it venture to review this. Sunbespattered ferns, spreading
beech trees, the Vicar and the gun are acceptable enough. But this Angel
is a different matter. Plain sensible people will scarcely go on with
such an extravagant book. And the Vicar fully appreciated this
impossibility. But he lacked decision. Consequently he went on with it,
as you shall immediately hear. He was hot, it was after dinner, he was
in no mood for mental subtleties. The Angel had him at a disadvantage,
and further distracted him from the main issue by irrelevant iridescence
and a violent fluttering. For the moment it never occurred to the Vicar
to ask whether the Angel was possible or not. He accepted him in the
confusion of the moment, and the mischief was done. Put yourself in his
place, my dear _Athenaeum_. You go out shooting. You hit something. That
alone would disconcert you. You find you have hit an Angel, and he
writhes about for a minute and then sits up and addresses you. He makes
no apology for his own impossibility. Indeed, he carries the charge
clean into your camp. "A man!" he says, pointing. "A man in the maddest
black clothes and without a feather upon him. Then I was not deceived. I
am indeed in the Land of Dreams!" You _must_ answer him. Unless you take
to your heels. Or blow his brains out with your second barrel as an
escape from the controversy.
"The Land of Dreams! Pardon me if I suggest you have just come out of
it," was the Vicar's remark.
"How can that be?" said the Angel.
"Your wing," said the Vicar, "is bleeding. Before we talk, may I have
the pleasure--the melancholy pleasure--of tying it up? I am really most
sincerely sorry...." The Angel put his hand behind his back and winced.
The Vicar assisted his victim to stand up. The Angel turned gravely and
the Vicar, with numberless insignificant panting parentheses, carefully
examined the injured wings. (They articulated, he observed with
interest, to a kind of second glenoid on the outer and upper edge of the
shoulder blade. The left wing had suffered little except the loss of
some of the primary wing-quills, and a shot or so in the _ala spuria_,
but the humerus bone of the right was evidently smashed.) The Vicar
stanched the bleeding as well as he could and tied up the bone with his
pocket handkerchief and the neck wrap his housekeeper made him carry in
all weathers.
"I'm afraid you will not be able to fly for some time," said he, feeling
the bone.
"I don't like this new sensation," said the Angel.
"The Pain when I feel your bone?"
"The _what_?" said the Angel.
"The Pain."
"'Pain'--you call it. No, I certainly don't like the Pain. Do you have
much of this Pain in the Land of Dreams?"
"A very fair share," said the Vicar. "Is it new to you?"
"Quite," said the Angel. "I don't like it."
"How curious!" said the Vicar, and bit at the end of a strip of linen to
tie a knot. "I think this bandaging must serve for the present," he
said. "I've studied ambulance work before, but never the bandaging up of
wing wounds. Is your Pain any better?"
"It glows now instead of flashing," said the Angel.
"I am afraid you will find it glow for some time," said the Vicar, still
intent on the wound.
The Angel gave a shrug of the wing and turned round to look at the Vicar
again. He had been trying to keep an eye on the Vicar over his shoulder
during all their interview. He looked at him from top to toe with raised
eyebrows and a growing smile on his beautiful soft-featured face. "It
seems so odd," he said with a sweet little laugh, "to be talking to a
Man!"
"Do you know," said the Vicar, "now that I come to think of it, it is
equally odd to me that I should be talking to an Angel. I am a somewhat
matter-of-fact person. A Vicar has to be. Angels I have always regarded
as--artistic conceptions----"
"Exactly what we think of men."
"But surely you have seen so many men----"
"Never before to-day. In pictures and books, times enough of course. But
I have seen several since the sunrise, solid real men, besides a horse
or so--those Unicorn things you know, without horns--and quite a number
of those grotesque knobby things called 'cows.' I was naturally a little
frightened at so many mythical monsters, and came to hide here until it
was dark. I suppose it will be dark again presently like it was at
first. _Phew!_ This Pain of yours is poor fun. I hope I shall wake up
directly."
"I don't understand quite," said the Vicar, knitting his brows and
tapping his forehead with his flat hand. "Mythical monster!" The worst
thing he had been called for years hitherto was a 'mediaeval
anachronism' (by an advocate of Disestablishment). "Do I understand
that you consider me as--as something in a dream?"
"Of course," said the Angel smiling.
"And this world about me, these rugged trees and spreading fronds----"
"Is all so _very_ dream like," said the Angel. "Just exactly what one
dreams of--or artists imagine."
"You have artists then among the Angels?"
"All kinds of artists, Angels with wonderful imaginations, who invent
men and cows and eagles and a thousand impossible creatures."
"Impossible creatures!" said the Vicar.
"Impossible creatures," said the Angel. "Myths."
"But I'm real!" said the Vicar. "I assure you I'm real."
The Angel shrugged his wings and winced and smiled. "I can always tell
when I am dreaming," he said.
"_You_--dreaming," said the Vicar. He looked round him.
"_You_ dreaming!" he repeated. His mind worked diffusely.
He held out his hand with all his fingers moving. "I have it!" he said.
"I begin to see." A really brilliant idea was dawning upon his mind. He
had not studied mathematics at Cambridge for nothing, after all. "Tell
me please. Some animals of _your_ world ... of the Real World, real
animals you know."
"Real animals!" said the Angel smiling. "Why--there's Griffins and
Dragons--and Jabberwocks--and Cherubim--and Sphinxes--and the
Hippogriff--and Mermaids--and Satyrs--and...."
"Thank you," said the Vicar as the Angel appeared to be warming to his
work; "thank you. That is _quite_ enough. I begin to understand."
He paused for a moment, his face pursed up. "Yes ... I begin to see it."
"See what?" asked the Angel.
"The Griffins and Satyrs and so forth. It's as clear...."
"I don't see them," said the Angel.
"No, the whole point is they are not to be seen in this world. But our
men with imaginations have told us all about them, you know. And even I
at times ... there are places in this village where you must simply take
what they set before you, or give offence--I, I say, have seen in my
dreams Jabberwocks, Bogle brutes, Mandrakes.... From our point of view,
you know, they are Dream Creatures...."
"Dream Creatures!" said the Angel. "How singular! This is a very curious
dream. A kind of topsy-turvey one. You call men real and angels a myth.
It almost makes one think that in some odd way there must be two worlds
as it were...."
"At least Two," said the Vicar.
"Lying somewhere close together, and yet scarcely suspecting...."
"As near as page to page of a book."
"Penetrating each other, living each its own life. This is really a
delicious dream!"
"And never dreaming of each other."
"Except when people go a dreaming!"
"Yes," said the Angel thoughtfully. "It must be something of the sort.
And that reminds me. Sometimes when I have been dropping asleep, or
drowsing under the noon-tide sun, I have seen strange corrugated faces
just like yours, going by me, and trees with green leaves upon them, and
such queer uneven ground as this.... It must be so. I have fallen into
another world."
"Sometimes," began the Vicar, "at bedtime, when I have been just on the
edge of consciousness, I have seen faces as beautiful as yours, and the
strange dazzling vistas of a wonderful scene, that flowed past me,
winged shapes soaring over it, and wonderful--sometimes terrible--forms
going to and fro. I have even heard sweet music too in my ears.... It
may be that as we withdraw our attention from the world of sense, the
pressing world about us, as we pass into the twilight of repose, other
worlds.... Just as we see the stars, those other worlds in space, when
the glare of day recedes.... And the artistic dreamers who see such
things most clearly...."
They looked at one another.
"And in some incomprehensible manner I have fallen into this world of
yours out of my own!" said the Angel, "into the world of my dreams,
grown real."
He looked about him. "Into the world of my dreams."
"It is confusing," said the Vicar. "It almost makes one think there may
be (ahem) Four Dimensions after all. In which case, of course," he went
on hurriedly--for he loved geometrical speculations and took a certain
pride in his knowledge of them--"there may be any number of three
dimensional universes packed side by side, and all dimly dreaming of one
another. There may be world upon world, universe upon universe. It's
perfectly possible. There's nothing so incredible as the absolutely
possible. But I wonder how you came to fall out of your world into
mine...."
"Dear me!" said the Angel; "There's deer and a stag! Just as they draw
them on the coats of arms. How grotesque it all seems! Can I really be
awake?"
He rubbed his knuckles into his eyes.
The half-dozen of dappled deer came in Indian file obliquely through the
trees and halted, watching. "It's no dream--I am really a solid concrete
Angel, in Dream Land," said the Angel. He laughed. The Vicar stood
surveying him. The Reverend gentleman was pulling his mouth askew after
a habit he had, and slowly stroking his chin. He was asking himself
whether he too was not in the Land of Dreams.
VII.
Now in the land of the Angels, so the Vicar learnt in the course of many
conversations, there is neither pain nor trouble nor death, marrying nor
giving in marriage, birth nor forgetting. Only at times new things
begin. It is a land without hill or dale, a wonderfully level land,
glittering with strange buildings, with incessant sunlight or full moon,
and with incessant breezes blowing through the AEolian traceries of the
trees. It is Wonderland, with glittering seas hanging in the sky, across
which strange fleets go sailing, none know whither. There the flowers
glow in Heaven and the stars shine about one's feet and the breath of
life is a delight. The land goes on for ever--there is no solar system
nor interstellar space such as there is in our universe--and the air
goes upward past the sun into the uttermost abyss of their sky. And
there is nothing but Beauty there--all the beauty in our art is but
feeble rendering of faint glimpses of that wonderful world, and our
composers, our original composers, are those who hear, however faintly,
the dust of melody that drives before its winds. And the Angels, and
wonderful monsters of bronze and marble and living fire, go to and fro
therein.
It is a land of Law--for whatever is, is under the law--but its laws
all, in some strange way, differ from ours. Their geometry is different
because their space has a curve in it so that all their planes are
cylinders; and their law of Gravitation is not according to the law of
inverse squares, and there are four-and-twenty primary colours instead
of only three. Most of the fantastic things of our science are
commonplaces there, and all our earthly science would seem to them the
maddest dreaming. There are no flowers upon their plants, for instance,
but jets of coloured fire. That, of course, will seem mere nonsense to
you because you do not understand Most of what the Angel told the Vicar,
indeed the Vicar could not realise, because his own experiences, being
only of this world of matter, warred against his understanding. It was
too strange to imagine.
What had jolted these twin universes together so that the Angel had
fallen suddenly into Sidderford, neither the Angel nor the Vicar could
tell. Nor for the matter of that could the author of this story. The
author is concerned with the facts of the case, and has neither the
desire nor the confidence to explain them. Explanations are the fallacy
of a scientific age. And the cardinal fact of the case is this, that out
in Siddermorton Park, with the glory of some wonderful world where there
is neither sorrow nor sighing, still clinging to him, on the 4th of
August 1895, stood an Angel, bright and beautiful, talking to the Vicar
of Siddermorton about the plurality of worlds. The author will swear to
the Angel, if need be; and there he draws the line.
VIII.
"I have," said the Angel, "a most unusual feeling--_here_. Have had
since sunrise. I don't remember ever having any feeling--_here_ before."
"Not pain, I hope," said the Vicar.
"Oh no! It is quite different from that--a kind of vacuous feeling."
"The atmospheric pressure, perhaps, is a little different," the Vicar
began, feeling his chin.
"And do you know, I have also the most curious sensations in my
mouth--almost as if--it's so absurd!--as if I wanted to stuff things
into it."
"Bless me!" said the Vicar. "Of course! You're hungry!"
"Hungry!" said the Angel. "What's that?"
"Don't you eat?"
"Eat! The word's quite new to me."
"Put food into your mouth, you know. One has to here. You will soon
learn. If you don't, you get thin and miserable, and suffer a great
deal--_pain_, you know--and finally you die."
"Die!" said the Angel. "That's another strange word!"
"It's not strange here. It means leaving off, you know," said the Vicar.
"We never leave off," said the Angel.
"You don't know what may happen to you in this world," said the Vicar,
thinking him over. "Possibly if you are feeling hungry, and can feel
pain and have your wings broken, you may even have to die before you get
out of it again. At anyrate you had better try eating. For my own
part--ahem!--there are many more disagreeable things."
"I suppose I _had_ better Eat," said the Angel. "If it's not too
difficult. I don't like this 'Pain' of yours, and I don't like this
'Hungry.' If your 'Die' is anything like it, I would prefer to Eat. What
a very odd world this is!"
"To Die," said the Vicar, "is generally considered worse than either
pain or hunger.... It depends."
"You must explain all that to me later," said the Angel. "Unless I wake
up. At present, please show me how to eat. If you will. I feel a kind of
urgency...."
"Pardon me," said the Vicar, and offered an elbow. "If I may have the
pleasure of entertaining you. My house lies yonder--not a couple of
miles from here."
"_Your_ House!" said the Angel a little puzzled; but he took the Vicar's
arm affectionately, and the two, conversing as they went, waded slowly
through the luxuriant bracken, sun mottled under the trees, and on over
the stile in the park palings, and so across the bee-swarming heather
for a mile or more, down the hillside, home.
You would have been charmed at the couple could you have seen them. The
Angel, slight of figure, scarcely five feet high, and with a beautiful,
almost effeminate face, such as an Italian old Master might have
painted. (Indeed, there is one in the National Gallery [_Tobias and the
Angel_, by some artist unknown] not at all unlike him so far as face and
spirit go.) He was robed simply in a purple-wrought saffron blouse, bare
kneed and bare-footed, with his wings (broken now, and a leaden grey)
folded behind him. The Vicar was a short, rather stout figure, rubicund,
red-haired, clean-shaven, and with bright ruddy brown eyes. He wore a
piebald straw hat with a black ribbon, a very neat white tie, and a fine
gold watch-chain. He was so greatly interested in his companion that it
only occurred to him when he was in sight of the Vicarage that he had
left his gun lying just where he had dropped it amongst the bracken.
He was rejoiced to hear that the pain of the bandaged wing fell rapidly
in intensity.
PARENTHESIS ON ANGELS.
IX.
Let us be plain. The Angel of this story is the Angel of Art, not the
Angel that one must be irreverent to touch--neither the Angel of
religious feeling nor the Angel of popular belief. The last we all know.
She is alone among the angelic hosts in being distinctly feminine: she
wears a robe of immaculate, unmitigated white with sleeves, is fair,
with long golden tresses, and has eyes of the blue of Heaven. Just a
pure woman she is, pure maiden or pure matron, in her _robe de nuit_,
and with wings attached to her shoulder blades. Her callings are
domestic and sympathetic, she watches over a cradle or assists a sister
soul heavenward. Often she bears a palm leaf, but one would not be
surprised if one met her carrying a warming-pan softly to some poor
chilly sinner. She it was who came down in a bevy to Marguerite in
prison, in the amended last scene in _Faust_ at the Lyceum, and the
interesting and improving little children that are to die young, have
visions of such angels in the novels of Mrs Henry Wood. This white
womanliness with her indescribable charm of lavender-like holiness, her
aroma of clean, methodical lives, is, it would seem after all, a purely
Teutonic invention. Latin thought knows her not; the old masters have
none of her. She is of a piece with that gentle innocent ladylike school
of art whereof the greatest triumph is "a lump in one's throat," and
where wit and passion, scorn and pomp, have no place. The white angel
was made in Germany, in the land of blonde women and the domestic
sentiments. She comes to us cool and worshipful, pure and tranquil, as
silently soothing as the breadth and calmness of the starlit sky, which
also is so unspeakably dear to the Teutonic soul.... We do her
reverence. And to the angels of the Hebrews, those spirits of power and
mystery, to Raphael, Zadkiel, and Michael, of whom only Watts has caught
the shadow, of whom only Blake has seen the splendour, to them too, do
we do reverence.
But this Angel the Vicar shot is, we say, no such angel at all, but the
Angel of Italian art, polychromatic and gay. He comes from the land of
beautiful dreams and not from any holier place. At best he is a popish
creature. Bear patiently, therefore, with his scattered remiges, and be
not hasty with your charge of irreverence before the story is read.
AT THE VICARAGE.
X.
The Curate's wife and her two daughters and Mrs Jehoram were still
playing at tennis on the lawn behind the Vicar's study, playing keenly
and talking in gasps about paper patterns for blouses. But the Vicar
forgot and came in that way.
They saw the Vicar's hat above the rhododendrons, and a bare curly head
beside him. "I must ask him about Susan Wiggin," said the Curate's wife.
She was about to serve, and stood with a racket in one hand and a ball
between the fingers of the other. "_He_ really ought to have gone to see
her--being the Vicar. Not George. I----_Ah!_"
For the two figures suddenly turned the corner and were visible. The
Vicar, arm in arm with----
You see, it came on the Curate's wife suddenly. The Angel's face being
towards her she saw nothing of the wings. Only a face of unearthly
beauty in a halo of chestnut hair, and a graceful figure clothed in a
saffron garment that barely reached the knees. The thought of those
knees flashed upon the Vicar at once. He too was horrorstruck. So were
the two girls and Mrs Jehoram. All horrorstruck. The Angel stared in
astonishment at the horrorstruck group. You see, he had never seen
anyone horrorstruck before.
"MIS--ter Hilyer!" said the Curate's wife. "This is _too_ much!" She
stood speechless for a moment. "_Oh!_"
She swept round upon the rigid girls. "Come!" The Vicar opened and shut
his voiceless mouth. The world hummed and spun about him. There was a
whirling of zephyr skirts, four impassioned faces sweeping towards the
open door of the passage that ran through the vicarage. He felt his
position went with them.
"Mrs Mendham," said the Vicar, stepping forward. "Mrs Mendham. You don't
understand----"
"_Oh!_" they all said again.
One, two, three, four skirts vanished in the doorway. The Vicar
staggered half way across the lawn and stopped, aghast. "This comes," he
heard the Curate's wife say, out of the depth of the passage, "of having
an unmarried vicar----." The umbrella stand wobbled. The front door of
the vicarage slammed like a minute gun. There was silence for a space.
"I might have thought," he said. "She is always so hasty."
He put his hand to his chin--a habit with him. Then turned his face to
his companion. The Angel was evidently well bred. He was holding up Mrs
Jehoram's sunshade--she had left it on one of the cane chairs--and
examining it with extraordinary interest. He opened it. "What a curious
little mechanism!" he said. "What can it be for?"
The Vicar did not answer. The angelic costume certainly was--the Vicar
knew it was a case for a French phrase--but he could scarcely remember
it. He so rarely used French. It was not _de trop_, he knew. Anything
but _de trop_. The Angel was _de trop_, but certainly not his costume.
Ah! _Sans culotte!_
The Vicar examined his visitor critically--for the first time. "He
_will_ be difficult to explain," he said to himself softly.
The Angel stuck the sunshade into the turf and went to smell the sweet
briar. The sunshine fell upon his brown hair and gave it almost the
appearance of a halo. He pricked his finger. "Odd!" he said. "Pain
again."
"Yes," said the Vicar, thinking aloud. "He's very beautiful and curious
as he is. I should like him best so. But I am afraid I must."
He approached the Angel with a nervous cough.
XI.
"Those," said the Vicar, "were ladies."
"How grotesque," said the Angel, smiling and smelling the sweet briar.
"And such quaint shapes!"
"Possibly," said the Vicar. "Did you, _ahem_, notice how they behaved?"
"They went away. Seemed, indeed, to run away. Frightened? I, of course,
was frightened at things without wings. I hope---- they were not
frightened at my wings?"
"At your appearance generally," said the Vicar, glancing involuntarily
at the pink feet.
"Dear me! It never occurred to me. I suppose I seemed as odd to them as
you did to me." He glanced down. "And my feet. _You_ have hoofs like a
hippogriff."
"Boots," corrected the Vicar.
"Boots, you call them! But anyhow, I am sorry I alarmed----"
"You see," said the Vicar, stroking his chin, "our ladies, _ahem_, have
peculiar views--rather inartistic views--about, _ahem_, clothing.
Dressed as you are, I am afraid, I am really afraid that--beautiful as
your costume certainly is--you will find yourself somewhat, _ahem_,
somewhat isolated in society. We have a little proverb, 'When in Rome,
_ahem_, one must do as the Romans do.' I can assure you that, assuming
you are desirous to, _ahem_, associate with us--during your involuntary
stay----"
The Angel retreated a step or so as the Vicar came nearer and nearer in
his attempt to be diplomatic and confidential. The beautiful face grew
perplexed. "I don't quite understand. Why do you keep making these
noises in your throat? Is it Die or Eat, or any of those...."
"As your host," interrupted the Vicar, and stopped.
"As my host," said the Angel.
"_Would_ you object, pending more permanent arrangements, to invest
yourself, _ahem_, in a suit, an entirely new suit I may say, like this I
have on?"
"Oh!" said the Angel. He retreated so as to take in the Vicar from top
to toe. "Wear clothes like yours!" he said. He was puzzled but amused.
His eyes grew round and bright, his mouth puckered at the corners.
"Delightful!" he said, clapping his hands together. "What a mad, quaint
dream this is! Where are they?" He caught at the neck of the saffron
robe.
"Indoors!" said the Vicar. "This way. We will change--indoors!"
XII.
So the Angel was invested in a pair of nether garments of the Vicar's, a
shirt, ripped down the back (to accommodate the wings), socks,
shoes--the Vicar's dress shoes--collar, tie, and light overcoat. But
putting on the latter was painful, and reminded the Vicar that the
bandaging was temporary. "I will ring for tea at once, and send Grummet
down for Crump," said the Vicar. "And dinner shall be earlier." While
the Vicar shouted his orders on the landing rails, the Angel surveyed
himself in the cheval glass with immense delight. If he was a stranger
to pain, he was evidently no stranger--thanks perhaps to dreaming--to
the pleasure of incongruity.
They had tea in the drawing-room. The Angel sat on the music stool
(music stool because of his wings). At first he wanted to lie on the
hearthrug. He looked much less radiant in the Vicar's clothes, than he
had done upon the moor when dressed in saffron. His face shone still,
the colour of his hair and cheeks was strangely bright, and there was a
superhuman light in his eyes, but his wings under the overcoat gave him
the appearance of a hunchback. The garments, indeed, made quite a
terrestrial thing of him, the trousers were puckered transversely, and
the shoes a size or so too large.
He was charmingly affable and quite ignorant of the most elementary
facts of civilization. Eating came without much difficulty, and the
Vicar had an entertaining time teaching him how to take tea. "What a
mess it is! What a dear grotesque ugly world you live in!" said the
Angel. "Fancy stuffing things into your mouth! We use our mouths just to
talk and sing with. Our world, you know, is almost incurably beautiful.
We get so very little ugliness, that I find all this ... delightful."
Mrs Hinijer, the Vicar's housekeeper, looked at the Angel suspiciously
when she brought in the tea. She thought him rather a "queer customer."
What she would have thought had she seen him in saffron no one can tell.
The Angel shuffled about the room with his cup of tea in one hand, and
the bread and butter in the other, and examined the Vicar's furniture.
Outside the French windows, the lawn with its array of dahlias and
sunflowers glowed in the warm sunlight, and Mrs Jehoram's sunshade stood
thereon like a triangle of fire. He thought the Vicar's portrait over
the mantel very curious indeed, could not understand what it was there
for. "You have yourself round," he said, _apropos_ of the portrait, "Why
want yourself flat?" and he was vastly amused at the glass fire screen.
He found the oak chairs odd--"You're not square, are you?" he said, when
the Vicar explained their use. "_We_ never double ourselves up. We lie
about on the asphodel when we want to rest."
"The chair," said the Vicar, "to tell you the truth, has always puzzled
_me_. It dates, I think, from the days when the floors were cold and
very dirty. I suppose we have kept up the habit. It's become a kind of
instinct with us to sit on chairs. Anyhow, if I went to see one of my
parishioners, and suddenly spread myself out on the floor--the natural
way of it--I don't know what she would do. It would be all over the
parish in no time. Yet it seems the natural method of reposing, to
recline. The Greeks and Romans----"
"What is this?" said the Angel abruptly.
"That's a stuffed kingfisher. I killed it."
"Killed it!"
"Shot it," said the Vicar, "with a gun."
"Shot! As you did me?"
"I didn't kill you, you see. Fortunately."
"Is killing making like that?"
"In a way."
"Dear me! And you wanted to make me like that--wanted to put glass eyes
in me and string me up in a glass case full of ugly green and brown
stuff?"
"You see," began the Vicar, "I scarcely understood----"
"Is that 'die'?" asked the Angel suddenly.
"That is dead; it died."
"Poor little thing. I must eat a lot. But you say you killed it. _Why?_"
"You see," said the Vicar, "I take an interest in birds, and I (_ahem_)
collect them. I wanted the specimen----"
The Angel stared at him for a moment with puzzled eyes. "A beautiful
bird like that!" he said with a shiver. "Because the fancy took you. You
wanted the specimen!"
He thought for a minute. "Do you often kill?" he asked the Vicar.
THE MAN OF SCIENCE.
XIII.
Then Doctor Crump arrived. Grummet had met him not a hundred yards from
the vicarage gate. He was a large, rather heavy-looking man, with a
clean-shaven face and a double chin. He was dressed in a grey morning
coat (he always affected grey), with a chequered black and white tie.
"What's the trouble?" he said, entering and staring without a shadow of
surprise at the Angel's radiant face.
"This--_ahem_--gentleman," said the Vicar, "or--_ah_--Angel"--the Angel
bowed--"is suffering from a gunshot wound."
"Gunshot wound!" said Doctor Crump. "In July! May I look at it,
Mr--Angel, I think you said?"
"He will probably be able to assuage your pain," said the Vicar. "Let
me assist you to remove your coat?"
The Angel turned obediently.
"Spinal curvature?" muttered Doctor Crump quite audibly, walking round
behind the Angel. "No! abnormal growth. Hullo! This is odd!" He clutched
the left wing. "Curious," he said. "Reduplication of the anterior
limb--bifid coracoid. Possible, of course, but I've never seen it
before." The angel winced under his hands. "Humerus. Radius and Ulna.
All there. Congenital, of course. Humerus broken. Curious integumentary
simulation of feathers. Dear me. Almost avian. Probably of considerable
interest in comparative anatomy. I never did!----How did this gunshot
happen, Mr Angel?"
The Vicar was amazed at the Doctor's matter-of-fact manner.
"Our friend," said the Angel, moving his head at the Vicar.
"Unhappily it is my doing," said the Vicar, stepping forward,
explanatory. "I mistook the gentleman--the Angel (_ahem_)--for a large
bird----"
"Mistook him for a large bird! What next? Your eyes want seeing to,"
said Doctor Crump. "I've told you so before." He went on patting and
feeling, keeping time with a series of grunts and inarticulate
mutterings.... "But this is really a very good bit of amateur
bandaging," said he. "I think I shall leave it. Curious malformation
this is! Don't you find it inconvenient, Mr Angel?"
He suddenly walked round so as to look in the Angel's face.
The Angel thought he referred to the wound. "It is rather," he said.
"If it wasn't for the bones I should say paint with iodine night and
morning. Nothing like iodine. You could paint your face flat with it.
But the osseous outgrowth, the bones, you know, complicate things. I
could saw them off, of course. It's not a thing one should have done in
a hurry----"
"Do you mean my wings?" said the Angel in alarm.
"Wings!" said the Doctor. "Eigh? Call 'em wings! Yes--what else should I
mean?"
"Saw them off!" said the Angel.
"Don't you think so? It's of course your affair. I am only advising----"
"Saw them off! What a funny creature you are!" said the Angel, beginning
to laugh.
"As you will," said the Doctor. He detested people who laughed. "The
things are curious," he said, turning to the Vicar. "If
inconvenient"--to the Angel. "I never heard of such complete
reduplication before--at least among animals. In plants it's common
enough. Were you the only one in your family?" He did not wait for a
reply. "Partial cases of the fission of limbs are not at all uncommon,
of course, Vicar--six-fingered children, calves with six feet, and cats
with double toes, you know. May I assist you?" he said, turning to the
Angel who was struggling with the coat. "But such a complete
reduplication, and so avian, too! It would be much less remarkable if it
was simply another pair of arms."
The coat was got on and he and the Angel stared at one another.
"Really," said the Doctor, "one begins to understand how that beautiful
myth of the angels arose. You look a little hectic, Mr Angel--feverish.
Excessive brilliance is almost worse as a symptom than excessive pallor.
Curious your name should be Angel. I must send you a cooling draught, if
you should feel thirsty in the night...."
He made a memorandum on his shirt cuff. The Angel watched him
thoughtfully, with the dawn of a smile in his eyes.
"One minute, Crump," said the Vicar, taking the Doctor's arm and leading
him towards the door.
The Angel's smile grew brighter. He looked down at his black-clad legs.
"He positively thinks I am a man!" said the Angel. "What he makes of the
wings beats me altogether. What a queer creature he must be! This is
really a most extraordinary Dream!"
XIV.
"That _is_ an Angel," whispered the Vicar. "You don't understand."
"_What?_" said the Doctor in a quick, sharp voice. His eyebrows went up
and he smiled.
"But the wings?"
"Quite natural, quite ... if a little abnormal."
"Are you sure they are natural?"