THE WONDERFUL VISIT
THE
WONDERFUL VISIT
BY
H. G. WELLS
AUTHOR OP "THE WORLD SET FREE," ETC.
NEW YORK
E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY
COPYBIGHT, 1895,
BT MACMILLAN AND CO.
p/e
WS7
TO THE
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WALTER LOW
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CONTENTS.
PA9K
THE NIGHT OP 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 .34
AT THE VICARAGE 37
THE MAN OF SCIENCE 49
THE CURATE 69
AFTER DINNER 74
MORNING 94
THE VIOLIN - 97
THE ANGEL EXPLORES THE VILLAGE .... 102
LADY HAMMERGALLOW'S VIEW ..... 123
FURTHER ADVENTURES OF THE ANGEL IN THE VILLAGE 131
MRS. JEHORAM'S BREADTH OF VIEW .... 144
A TRIVIAL INCIDENT 150
vii
viii CONTENTS.
THE WAHP AND THE WOOF OF THINGS .... 152
THE ANGEL'S DEBUT ....... 166
THE TROUBLE OF THE BARBED WIRE .... 183
DELIA .......... 192
DOCTOR CRUMP ACTS ....... 196
SIB JOHN GOTCH ACTS ....... 205
THE SEA CLIFF ........ 210
MRS. HINIJER ACTS ........ 213
THE ANGEL IN TROUBLE ....... 217
THE LAST DAT OF THE VISIT ...... 224
THE EPILOGUE . 243
THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
THB NIGHT OF THE STBANGB BIRD.
I.
N 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.
B 1
2 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
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 chil-
dren 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
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 3
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 ner-
vous man and all alone, he was alarmed forth-
with, 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.
4
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 5
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 dark-
ness after the Strange Bird. At last he got
upon his knees and began to thank Heaven for
his merciful deliverance, with his eyes down-
hill. He went on down into the village, talk-
ing 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
6 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
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 rounc(
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 bright-
ness 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.
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 7
Now in these days one does not cower before
the devil and one's own sinfulness, or see
strange iridescent 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 black-
smith 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 Sidder-
morton.
"They are not an imaginative race about
here," said the Vicar of Siddermorton, "I won-
der 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 im-
possible 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 connexion, of the Glare
upon Sidderford moor.
Now, the Vicar of Siddermorton had two
8
THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
rivals in his scientific pursuits; Gully of Sid-
derton, 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 advan-
tage of his littoral position to pick up rare sea
birds. It was evident to anyone who knew any-
thing 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 Saun-
ders' 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 Sidder-
morton." 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 after-
noon. He knew it would make him feel very
disagreeable if he went out into the hot sun-
shine bofch on the top of his head and gen-
erally. Yet Gully perhaps was out, prowling
10 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
observant. Suppose it was something very good
.and Gully got it!
His gun stood in the corner. (The thing had
iridescent 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.
THE HUNTING OF THE STRANGE BIRD con-
tinued.
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 inter-
esting things. But happily the collector pre-
vents 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 hun-
dred 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
11
12 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
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 fol-
lows 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 camphor-
ated 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 Lei-
sure (morally spent) over the Delights of Life.
(All of which, as you very properly remark, has
nothing whatever to do with the Strange Bird.)
THE HUNTING OP THE STRANGE BIRD con-
tinued.
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
13
14 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
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 hol-
low 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 with 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.
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 15
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 win-
dows, not the wings of butterflies, not even the
glories of crystals seen between prisms, no col-
ours on earth could compare with them. Twice
the Angel raised himself, only to fall over side-
ways 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.
16 THB WONDERFUL VISIT.
"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 fore-
head ; " 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 VlCAK 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. Sun-
bespattered 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 extrava-
gant 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 subtle-
ties. 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.
c 17
18 THE WONDEBFTJL VISIT.
He accepted him in the confusion of the moment,
and the mischief was done. Put yourself in
his place, my dear Athenceum. 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 mad-
dest 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 sug-
gest 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 WONDERFUL VISIT. 19
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 ? "
20 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
"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 pres-
ent," 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 some-
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 21
what 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 sev-
eral 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 'mediseval 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.
22 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
"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
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 23
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 Jab-
berwocks 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 imagi-
nations 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
24 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
of view, you know, they are Dream Creat-
ures ..."
" Dream Creatures ! " said the Angel. " How
singular! This is a very curious dream. A
kind of topsy-turvy 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."
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 25
"Sometimes," began the Vicar, "at bedtime,
when I have been just on the edge of conscious-
ness, 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 Di-
mensions after all. In which case, of course, ' f
26 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
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 noth-
ing 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 survey-
ing him. The Reverend gentleman was pull-
ing his mouth askew after a habit he had, and
slowly stroking his chin. He was asking him-
self whether he too was not in the Land of
Dreams.
THE VICAR AND THE ANGEL continued.
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 JEolian 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
27
28 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
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 com-
posers, 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 in-
verse squares, and there are four-and-twenty
primary colours instead of only three. Most of
the fantastic things of our science are common-
places 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, would
seem mere nonsense to you because you do not
understand. Most of what the Angel told the
Vicar, indeed, the Vicar could not realise, be-
cause his own experiences, being only of this
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 29
world of matter, warred against his understand-
ing. 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. Explana-
tions 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 won-
derful world where there is neither sorrow nor
sighing, still clinging to him, on the 4th of
August, 1895, stood an Angel, bright and beau-
tiful, 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.
THE VICAR AND THE ANGEL continued.
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."
30
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 31
"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 any rate 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 con-
sidered worse than either pain or hunger. . . ,
It depends."
S2 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
"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 enter-
taining you. My house lies yonder not a
couple of miles from here."
" Your House ! " said the Angel a little puz-
zled; but he took the Vicar's arm affectionately,
and the two, conversing as they went, waded
slowly through the luxuriant bracken, sun-mot-
tled 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. (In-
deed, 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
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 33
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.
JP AKENTHESIS 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 sur-
prised 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
34
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 35
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 in-
describable 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 si-
lently 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 rev-
erence.
36 THE WONDEKFUL VISIT.
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 irrever-
ence before the story is read.
AT THE VlCAKAGE.
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 rhodo-
dendrons, 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 cor-
ner and were visible. The Vicar, arm in arm
with
You see, it came on the Curate's wife sud-
37
38 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
denly. 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 horror-
struck 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 impas-
sioned 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 under-
stand "
"Oh!" they all said again.
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 39
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 min-
ute 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 examin-
ing 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 cos-
tume 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 trap, he knew. Anything but de
trop. The Angel was de trap, but certainly not
his costume. Ah! Sans culotte!
40 THB WONDERFUL VISIT.
The Vicar examined his visitor critically
for the first time. "He will be difficult to ex-
plain," he said to himself softly.
The Angel stuck the sunshade into the turf
and went to smell the sweet briar. The sun-
shine 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.
AT THE VICARAGE continued.
XL
"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 fright-
ened 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 sup-
pose 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 "
41
42 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
"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, some-
what 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 arid 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
THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
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 ! "
AT THE VICARAGE continued.
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 band-
aging 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 be-
cause of his wings). At first he wanted to lie
44
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 45
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 super-
human 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 civilisation.
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 ugli-
ness, 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 cus-
46 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
tomer." 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 furni-
ture. Outside the French windows the lawn,
with its array of dahlias and sunflowers, glowed
in the warm sunlight, and Mrs. Jehoram's sun-
shade 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
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 47
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
48 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
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 ? "
K 49
50 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
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 cora-
coid. Possible, of course, but I've never seen
it before." The Angel winced under his hands.
" Humerus. Radius and Ulna. All there. Con-
genital, 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
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 51
and feeling, keeping time with a series of grunts
and inarticulate muttering. . . . "But this is
really a very good bit of amateur bandaging," said
he. " I think I shall leave it. Curious malfor-
mation 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.
44 Wings ! " said the Doctor. 44 Eigh ? Call 'em
wings ! Yes what else should I mean ? "
44 Saw them off ! " said the Angel.
44 Don't you think so ? It's of course your affair.
I am only advising "
44 Saw them off! What a funny creature you
are ! " said the Angel, beginning to laugh.
52 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
"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 com-
plete reduplication before at least among ani-
mals. 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 reduplica-
tion, 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. . . ."
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 53
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!"
THE MAN OF SCIENCE continued.
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 ? "
" My dear fellow, everything that is, is natural.
There is nothing unnatural in the world. If I
thought there was I should give up practice and
go into Le Grand Chartreuse. There are abnor-
mal phenomena, of course. And v
" But the way I came upon him," said the Vicar.
" Yes, tell me where you picked him up," said
the Doctor. He sat down on the hall table.
The Vicar began rather hesitatingly he was
not very good at story telling with the rumours
of a strange great bird. He told the story in
clumsy sentences for, knowing the Bishop as he
54
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 55
did, with that awful example always before him
he dreaded getting his pulpit style into his daily
conversation and at every third sentence or so,
the Doctor made a downward movement of his
head the corners of his mouth tucked away, so
to speak as though he ticked off the phases of
the story and so far found it just as it ought to be.
" Self-hypnotism," he murmured once.
"I beg your pardon?" said the Vicar.
" Nothing," said the Doctor. " Nothing, I assure
you. Go on. This is extremely interesting."
The Vicar told him he went out with his gun.
"After lunch, I think you said?" interrupted
the Doctor.
44 Immediately after," said the Vicar.
"You should not do such things, you know.
But go on, please."
He came to the glimpse of the Angel from the
gate.
" In the full glare," said the Doctor, in paren-
thesis. " It was seventy-nine in the shade."
When the Vicar had finished, the Doctor pressed
his lips together tighter than ever, smiled faintly,
and looked significantly into the Vicar's eyes.
" You don't ..." began the Vicar, falteringly.
56 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
The Doctor shook his head. " Forgive me," he
said, putting his hand on the Vicar's arm.
" You go out," he said, " on a hot lunch and on
a hot afternoon. Probably over eighty. Your
inind, what there is of it, is whirling with avian
expectations. I say, * what there is of it,' because
most of your nervous energy is down there, digest-
ing your dinner. A man who has been lying in
the bracken stands up before you and you blaze
away. Over he goes and as it happens as it
happens he has reduplicate fore-limbs, one pair
being not unlike wings. It's a coincidence cer-
tainly. And as for his iridescent colours and so
forth Have you never had patches of col-
our swim before your eyes before, on a brilliant
sunlight day ? . . . Are you sure they were con-
fined to the wings ? Think."
" But he says he IB an Angel ! " said the Vicar,
staring out of his little round eyes, his plump
hands in his pockets.
"Ah!" said the Doctor with his eye on the
Vicar.' "I expected as much." He paused.
" But don't you think ..." began the Vicar.
" That man," said the Doctor in a low, earnest
voice, " is a mattoid."
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 57
"A what?" said the Vicar.
/' A mattoid. An abnormal man. Did you notice
the effeminate delicacy of his face ? His tendency
to quite unmeaning laughter? His neglected
hair? Then consider his singular dress . . . '
The Vicar's hand went up to his chin.
" Marks of mental weakness," said the Doctor.
" Many of this type of degenerate show this same
disposition to assume some vast mysterious creden-
tials. One will call himself the Prince of Wales,
another the Archangel Gabriel, another the Deity
even. Ibsen thinks he is a Great Teacher, and
IMaeterlink a new Shakespeare. I've just been
reading all about it in Nordau. No doubt his
- odd deformity gave him an idea. . . ."
" But really," began the Vicar.
" No doubt he's slipped away from confinement."
" I do not altogether accept . . . '
"You will. If not, there's the police, and
failing that, advertisement ; but, of course, his
people may want to hush it up. It's a sad thing
in a family. ..."
" He seems so altogether ..."
" Probably you'll hear from his friends in a day
or so," said the Doctor, feeling for his watch.
58 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
"He can't live far from here, I should think.
He seems harmless enough. I must come along
and see that wing again to-morrow." He slid
off the hall table and stood up.
" Those old wives' tales still have their hold on
you," he said, patting the Vicar on the shoulder.
" But an angel, you know ha, ha ! "
"I certainly did think . . ." said the Vicar
dubiously.
"Weigh the evidence," said the Doctor, still
fumbling at his watch. "Weigh the evidence
with our instruments of precision. What does
it leave you ? Splashes of colour, spots of fancy
muscce volantes"
"And yet," said the Vicar, "I could almost
swear to the glory on his wings. . . ."
" Think it over," said the Doctor (watch out) ;
" hot afternoon brilliant sunshine boiling down
on your head. ... But really I must be going.
It is a quarter to five. I'll see your angel (ha,
ha !) to-morrow again, if no one has been to fetch
him in the meanwhile. Your bandaging was
really very good. I flatter myself on that score.
Our ambulance classes were a success you see.
Good afternoon."
THE CURATE.
XV.
THE Vicar opened the door half mechanically
to let out Crump, and saw Mendham, his curate,
coming up the pathway by the hedge of purple
vetch and meadowsweet. At that his hand went
up to his chin and his eyes grew perplexed. Sup-
pose he was deceived. The Doctor passed the
Curate with a sweep of his hand from his hat
brim. Crump was an extraordinarily clever fel-
low, the Vicar thought, and knew far more of
anyone's brain than one did oneself. The Vicar
felt that so acutely. It made the coming ex-
planation difficult. Suppose he were to go back
into the drawing-room, and find just a tramp
asleep on the hearthrug.
Mendham was a cadaverous man with a mag-
nificent beard. He looked, indeed, as though he
had run to beard as a mustard plant does to seed.
But when he spoke you found he had a voice as
well.
60 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
" My wife came home in a dreadful state," he
brayed out at long range.
"Come in," said the Vicar; "come in. Most
remarkable occurrence. Please come in. Come
into the study. I'm really dreadfully sorry. But
when I explain ..."
" And apologise, I hope," brayed the Curate.
" And apologise. No, not that way. This way.
The study."
" Now what was that woman ? " said the Curate,
turning on the Vicar as the latter closed the study
door.
" What woman ? "
"Pah!"
"But really!"
" The painted creature in light attire disgust-
ingly light attire, to speak freely with whom
you were promenading the garden."
" My dear Mendham that was an Angel ! "
" A very pretty Angel ? "
"The world is getting so matter-of-fact," said
the Vicar.
" The world," roared the Curate, "grows blacker
every day. But to find a man in your position,
shamelessly, openly . . ."
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 61
" Bother ! " said the Vicar aside. He rarely
swore. "Look here, Mendham, you really mis-
understand. I can assure you ..."
"Very well," said the Curate. "Explain!"
He stood with his lank legs apart, his arms folded,
scowling at his Vicar over his big beard.
(Explanations, I repeat, I have always consid-
ered the peculiar fallacy of this scientific age.)
The Vicar looked about him helplessly. The
world had all gone dull and dead. Had he been
dreaming all the afternoon ? Was there really an
angel in the drawing-room ? Or was he the sport
of a complicated hallucination?
"Well?" said Mendham, at the end of a minute.
The Vicar's hand fluttered about his chin.
"It's such a roundabout story," he said.
" No doubt it will be," said Mendham harshly.
The Vicar restrained a movement of impatience.
" I went out to look for a strange bird this
afternoon. . . . Do you believe in angels, Mend-
ham, real angels?"
"I'm not here to discuss theology. I am the
husband of an insulted woman."
" But I tell you it's not a figure of speech ; this
is an angel, a real angel with wings. He's in
62 THE WONDEKFUL VISIT.
the next room now. You do misunderstand me,
so . . ."
"Really, Hilyer "
"It is true I tell you, Mendham. I swear it
is true." The Vicar's voice grew impassioned.
"What sin I have done that I should entertain
and clothe angelic visitants, I don't know. I only
know that inconvenient as it undoubtedly will
be I have an angel now in the drawing-room,
wearing my new suit and finishing his tea. And
he's stopping with me, indefinitely, at my invita-
tion. No doubt it was rash of me. But I can't
turn him out, you know, because Mrs. Mendham
1 may be a weakling, but I am still a
gentleman."
"Really, Hilyer "
"I can assure you it is true." There was a
note of hysterical desperation in the Vicar's voice.
"I fired at him, taking him for a flamingo, and
hit him in the wing."
"I thought this was a case for the Bishop.
I find it is a case for the Lunacy Commis-
sioners."
" Come and see him, Mendham ! "
"But there are no angels."
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 63
"We teach the people differently," said the
Vicar.
" Not as material bodies," said the Curate.
" Anyhow, come and see him."
"I don't want to see your hallucinations,"
began the Curate.
" I can't explain anything unless you come and
see him," said the Vicar. "A man who's more
like an angel than anything else in heaven or
earth. You simply must see if you wish to
understand."
" I don't wish to understand," said the Curate.
"I don't wish to lend myself to any imposture.
Surely, Hilyer, if this is not an imposition, you
can tell me yourself. . . . Flamingo, indeed ! "
THE CURATE continued.
XVI.
THE Angel had finished his tea and was stand-
ing looking pensively out of the window. He
thought the old church down the valley lit by the
light of the setting sun was very beautiful, but he
could not understand the serried ranks of tomb-
stones that lay up the hillside beyond. He turned
as Mendham and the Vicar came in.
Now Mendham could bully his Vicar cheerfully
enough, just as he could bully his congregation ;
but he was not the sort of man to bully a stranger.
He looked at the Angel, and the "strange woman"
theory was disposed of. The Angel's beauty was
too clearly the beauty of the youth.
" Mr. Hilyer tells me," Mendham began, in an
almost apologetic tone, " that you ah it's so
curious claim to be an Angel."
" Are an Angel," said the Vicar.
The Angel bowed.
64
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 65
" Naturally," said Mendham, " we are curious."
" Very," said the Angel. " The blackness and
the shape."
" I beg your pardon ? " said Mendham.
"The blackness and the flaps," repeated the
Angel; "and no wings."
" Precisely," said Mendham, who was altogether
Sit a loss. "We are, of course, curious to know
something of how you came into the village in
such a peculiar costume."
The Angel looked at the Vicar. The Vicar
touched his chin.
"You see," began the Vicar.
" Let him explain," said Mendham ; " I beg."
" I wanted to suggest," began the Vicar.
" And I don't want you to suggest."
" Bother ! " said the Vicar.
The Angel looked from one to the other.
"Such rugose expressions flit across your faces!"
he said.
"You see, Mr. Mr. I don't know your
name," said Mendham, with a certain diminution
of suavity. "The case stands thus: My wife
four ladies, I might say are playing lawn tennis,
when you suddenly rush out on them, sir; you
66 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
rush out on them from among the rhododendra in
a very defective costume. You and Mr. Hilyer."
" But I " said the Vicar.
"I know. It was this gentleman's costume
was defective. Naturally it is my place in fact
to demand an explanation." His voice was
growing in volume. " And I must demand an
explanation."
The Angel smiled faintly at his note of anger
and his sudden attitude of determination arms
tightly folded.
"I am rather new to the world," the Angel
began.
"Nineteen at least," said Mendham. "Old
enough to know better. That's a poor excuse."
"May I ask one question first?" said the
Angel.
"Well?"
"Do you think I am a Man like yourself?
As the chequered man did."
" If you are not a man "
" One other question. Have you never heard
of an Angel?"
"I warn you not to try that story upon me,"
said Mendham, now back at his familiar crescendo.
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 67
The Vicar interrupted: "But Mendham he
has wings ! "
" Please let me talk to him," said Mendham.
"You are so quaint," said the Angel; "you
interrupt everything I have to say."
" But what have you to say ? " said Mendham.
" That I really am an Angel ..."
" Pshaw ! "
" There you go ! "
" But tell me, honestly, how you came to be in
the shrubbery of Siddermorton Vicarage in the
state in which you were. And in the Vicar's com-
pany. Cannot you abandon this ridiculous story
of yours ? . . ."
The Angel shrugged his wings. " What is the
matter with this man?" he said to the Vicar.
"My dear Mendham," said the Vicar, "a few
words from me . . ."
" Surely my question is straightforward
enough ! "
" But you won't tell me the answer you want,
and it's no good my telling you any other."
"Pshaw!" said the Curate again. And then
turning suddenly on the Vicar, "Where does he
come from?"
68 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
The Vicar was in a dreadful state of doubt by
this time.
" He says he is an Angel ! " said the Vicar.
"Why don't you listen to him?"
" No angel would alarm four ladies ..."
"Is that what it is all about?" said the
Angel.
" Enough cause too, I should think ! " said the
Curate.
" But I really did not know," said the Angel.
" This is altogether too much ! "
" I am sincerely sorry I alarmed these ladies."
" You ought to be. But I see I shall get
nothing out of you two." Mendham went towards
the door. " I am convinced there is something
discreditable at the bottom of this business. Or
why not tell a simple straightforward story? I
will confess you puzzle me. Why, in this en-
lightened age, you should tell this fantastic, this
far-fetched story of an Angel, altogether beats-
me. What good can it do? . . ."
" But stop and look at his wings ! " said the
Vicar. " I can assure you he has wings ! "
Mendham had his fingers on the door-handle.
44 1 have seen quite enough," he said. "It may
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 69
be this is simply a foolish attempt at a hoax,
Hilyer."
" But Mendham ! " said the Vicar.
The Curate halted in the doorway and looked at
the Vicar over his shoulder. The accumulating
judgment of months found vent. " I cannot under-
stand, Hilyer, why you are in the Church. For
the life of me I cannot. The air is full of Social
Movements, of Economic change, the Woman
Movement, Rational Dress, The Reunion of Chris-
tendom, Socialism, Individualism all the great
and moving Questions of the Hour ! Surely, we
who follow the Great Reformer . . . And here
you are stuffing birds, and startling ladies with
your callous disregard . . ."
" But Mendham," began the Vicar.
The Curate would not hear him. " You shame
the Apostles with your levity ... But this is
only a preliminary enquiry," he said, with a threat-
ening note in his sonorous voice, and so vanished
abruptly (with a violent slam) from the room.
THE CUKATE continued.
XVII.
" ARE all men so odd as this ? " said the Angel.
" I'm in such a difficult position," said the Vicar.
" You see," he said, and stopped, searching his chin
for an idea.
" I'm beginning to see," said the Angel.
" They won't believe it."
" I see that."
" They will think I tell lies."
"And?"
" That will be extremely painful to me."
"Painful! . . . Pain," said the Angel. "I hope
not."
The Vicar shook his head. The good report of
the village had been the breath of his life, so far.
" You see," he said, " it would look so much more
plausible if you said you were just a man."
" But I'm not," said the Angel.
"No, you're not," said the Vicar. "So that's
no good."
70
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 71
"Nobody here, you know, has ever seen an
Angel, or heard of one except in church. If
you had made your dSbut in the chancel on
Sunday it might have been different. But
that's too late now. . . . (Bother!) Nobody,
absolutely nobody, will believe in you."
"I hope I am not inconveniencing you?"
"Not at all," said the Vicar; "not at all.
Only Naturally it may be inconvenient
if you tell a too incredible story. If I might
suggest (ahem) "
"Well?"
"You see, people in the world, being men
themselves, will almost certainly regard you as
a man. If you say you are not, they will simply
say you do not tell the truth. Only exceptional
people appreciate the exceptional. When in
Rome one must well, respect Roman preju-
dices a little talk Latin. You will find it
better "
"You propose I should feign to become a
man?"
"You have my meaning at once."
The Angel stared at the Vicar's hollyhocks
and thought.
72 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
"Possibly, after all," he said slowly, "I shall
become a man. I may have been too hasty in
saying I was not. You say there are no angels-
in this world. Who am I to set myself up
against your experience? A mere thing of a
day so far as this world goes. If you say
there are no angels clearly I must be some-
thing else. I eat angels do not eat. I may
be a man already."
" A convenient view, at any rate," said the Vicar.
"If it is convenient to you "
"It is. And then to account for your presence
here."
" If," said the Vicar, after a hesitating moment
of reflection, "if, for instance, you had been an
ordinary man with a weakness for wading, and
you had gone wading in the Sidder, and your
clothes had been stolen, for instance, and I had
come upon you in that position of inconven-
ience; the explanation I shall have to make to
Mrs. Mendham would be shorn at least of
the supernatural element. There is such a feel-
ing against the supernatural element nowadays
even in the pulpit. You would hardly be-
lieve "
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 73
"It's a pity that was not the case," said the
Angel.
"Of course," said the Vicar. "It is a great
pity that was not the case. But at any rate
you will oblige me if you do not obtrude your
angelic nature. You will oblige everyone, in
fact. There is a settled opinion that angels do
not do this kind of thing. And nothing is
more painful as I can testify than a decay-
ing settled opinion. . . . Settled opinions are
mental teeth in more ways than one. For my~
own part," the Vicar's hand passed over his
eyes for a moment "I cannot but believe you
are an angel. . . . Surely I can believe my
own eyes."
"We always do ours," said the Angel.
"And so do we, within limits."
Then the clock upon the mantel chimed seven r
and almost simultaneously Mrs. Hinijer an-
nounced dinner.
AFTER DINNER.
XVIII.
THE Angel and the Vicar sat at dinner.
The Vicar, with his napkin tucked in at his
neck, watched the Angel struggling with his
soup. "You will soon get into the way of it,"
said the Vicar. The knife and fork business
was done awkwardly but with effect. The
Angel looked furtively at Delia, the little wait-
ing maid. When presently they sat cracking
nuts which the Angel found congenial enough
and the girl had gone, the Angel asked:
"Was that a lady, too?"
"Well," said the Vicar (CracK). "No she
is not a lady. She is a servant."
"Yes," said the Angel; "she had rather a
nicer shape."
"You mustn't tell Mrs. Mendham that," said
the Vicar, covertly satisfied.
"She didn't stick out so much at the shoul-
74
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 75
ders and hips, and there was more of her
in between. And the colour of her robes
was not discordant simply neutral. And her
face "
"Mrs. Mendham and her daughters had been
playing tennis," said the Vicar, feeling he ought
not to listen to detraction even of his mortal
enemy. " Do you like these things these
nuts?"
"Very much," said the Angel. (Crack.}
"You see," said the Vicar {Chum, chum,
chum). "For my own part I entirely believe
you are an Angel."
"Yes!" said the Angel.
" I shot you I saw you flutter. It's beyond
dispute. In my own mind. I admit it's curious
and against my preconceptions, but practically
I'm assured, perfectly assured in fact, that I
saw what I certainly did see. But after the be-
haviour of these people. {Crack.) I really don't
see how we are to persuade people. Nowadays
people are so very particular about evidence.
So that I think there is a great deal to be said
for the attitude you assume. Temporarily at
least I think it would be best of you to do a&
76 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
you propose to do, and behave as a man as far
as possible. Of course there is no knowing how
or when you may go back. After what has
happened (GlucJc, gluck, gluclc as the Vicar
refills his glass) after what has happened I
should not be surprised to see the side of the
room fall away, and the hosts of heaven appear
to take you away again take us both away
even. You have so far enlarged my imagination.
All these years I have been forgetting Wonder-
land. But still It will certainly be wiser
to break the thing gently to them."
"This life of yours," said the Angel. "I'm
still in the dark about it. How do you begin?"
"Dear me!" said the Vicar. "Fancy having
to explain that! We begin existence here, you
know, as babies, silly pink helpless things
wrapped in white, with goggling eyes, that
yelp dismally at the Font. Then these babies
grow larger and become even beautiful when
their faces are washed. And they continue to
grow to a certain size. They become children,
boys and girls, youths and maidens (Crack),
young men and young women. That is the
finest time in life, according to many cer-
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 77
tainly the most beautiful. Full of great hopes
and dreams, vague emotions and unexpected
dangers."
" TJiat was a maiden?" said the Angel, indi-
cating the door through which Delia had disap-
peared.
"Yes," said the Vicar, "that was a maiden."
And paused thoughtfully.
"And then?"
"Then," said the Vicar, "the glamour fades
and life begins in earnest. The young men
and young women pair off most of them.
They come to me shy and bashful, in smart
ugly dresses, and I marry them. And then
little pink babies come to them, and some of
the youths and maidens that were, grow fat and
vulgar, and some grow thin and shrewish, and
their pretty complexions go, and they get a
queer delusion of superiority over the younger
people, and all the delight and glory goes out
of their lives. So they call the delight and
glory of the younger ones, Illusion. And then
they begin to drop to pieces."
"Drop to pieces!" said the Angel. "How-
grotesque ! "
78 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
"Their hair comes off and gets dull coloured
or ashen grey," said the Vicar. "/, for in-
stance." He bowed his head forward to show
a, circular shining patch the size of a florin.
" And their teeth come out. Their faces collapse
and become as wrinkled and dry as a shrivelled
apple. 'Corrugated' you called mine. They
care more and more for what they have to eat
and to drink, and less and less for any of the
other delights of life. Their limbs get loose in
the joints, and their hearts slack, or little pieces
from their lungs come coughing up. Pain ..."
"Ah!" said the Angel.
"Pain comes into their lives more and more.
And then they go. They do not like to go,
but they have to out of this world, ver^
reluctantly, clutching its pain at last in their
eagerness to stop. ..."
"Where do they go?"
"Once I thought I knew. But now I am
older I know I do not know. We have a
Legend perhaps it is not a legend. One may
be a churchman and disbelieve. Stokes says
there is nothing in it. ..." The Vicar shook
his head at the bananas.
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 79
"And you?" said the Angel. "Were you a
little pink baby?"
"A little while ago I was a little pink baby."
"Were you robed then as you are now?"
"Oh no! Dear me! What a queer idea!
Had long white clothes, I suppose, like the
rest of them."
"And then you were a little boy?"
"A little boy."
"And then a glorious youth?"
" I was not a very glorious youth, I am afraid.
I was sickly, and too poor to be radiant, and
with a timid heart. I studied hard and pored
over the dying thoughts of men long dead. So
I lost the glory, and no maiden came to me, and
the dulness of life began too soon."
" And you have your little pink babies ? "
"None," said the Vicar with a scarce percep-
tible pause. "Yet all the same, as you see, I
am beginning to drop to pieces. Presently my
back will droop like a wilting flowerstalk.
And then, in a few thousand days more I shall
be done with, and I shall go out of this world
of mine. . . . Whither I do not know."
"And you have to eat like this every day?"
SO THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
"Eat, and get clothes and keep this roof
above me. There are some very disagreeable
things in this world called Cold and Rain. And
the other people here how and why is too long
a story have made me a kind of chorus to
their lives. They bring their little pink babies
to me and I have to say a name and some othei
things over each new pink baby. And when the
children have grown to be youths and maidens,
they come again and are confirmed. You will
understand that better later. Then before they
may join in couples and have pink babies of
their own, they must come again and hear me
read out of a book. They would be outcast, and
no other maiden would speak to the maiden who
had a little pink baby without I had read over
her for twenty minutes out of my book. It's a
necessary thing, as you will see. Odd as it
may seem to you. And afterwards, when they
are falling to pieces, I try and persuade them of
a strange world in which I scarcely believe
1 myself, where life is altogether different from
jwhat they have had or desire. And in the
end, I bury them, and read out of my book to
those who will presently follow into the un-
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 81
known land. I stand at the beginning, and at
the zenith, and at the setting of their lives.
And on every seventh day, I who am a man
myself, I who see no further than they do,
talk to them of the Life to Come the life of
which we know nothing. If such a life there
be. And slowly I drop to pieces amidst my
prophesying."
"What a strange life!" said the Angel.
"Yes," said the Vicar. "What a strange life!
But the thing that makes it strange to me is
new. I had taken it as a matter of course
until you came into my life.
"This life of ours is so insistent," said the
Vicar. "It, and its petty needs, its tempo-
rary pleasures (Crack) swathe our souls about.
While I am preaching to these people of mine
of another life, some are ministering to one
appetite and eating sweets, others the old
men are slumbering, the youths glance at the
maidens, the grown men protrude white waist-
coats and gold chains, pomp and vanity on a
substratum of carnal substance, their wives
flaunt garish bonnets at one another. And I
go on droning away of the things unseen and
82 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
unrealised 'Eye hath not seen/ I read, 'nor
ear heard, nor hath it entered into the imagina-
tion of man to conceive/ and I look up to catch
an adult male immortal admiring the fit of a
pair of three and sixpenny gloves. It is damp-
ing year after year. When I was ailing in my
youth I felt almost the assurance of vision that
beneath this temporary phantasm world was the
real world the enduring world of the Life
Everlasting. But now "
He glanced at his chubby white hand, finger-
ing the stem of his glass. "I have put on flesh
since then," he said. \_Pause.~]
" I have changed and developed very much. The
battle of the Flesh and Spirit does not trouble me
as it did. Every day I feel less confidence in my
beliefs, and more in God. I live, I am afraid, a
quiescent life, duties fairly done, a little orni-
thology and a little chess, a trifle of mathematical
trifling. My times are in His hands "
The Vicar sighed and became pensive. The
Angel watched him, and the Angel's eyes were
troubled with the puzzle of him. "Gluck,
gluck, gluck," went the decanter as the Vicar
refilled his glass.
AFTER DINNEK continued.
XIX.
So the Angel dined and talked to the Vicar,
and presently the night came and he was over-
taken by yawning.
" Yah oh ! " said the Angel suddenly.
"Dear me! A higher power seemed suddenly
to stretch my mouth open and a great breath of
air went rushing down my throat."
"You yawned," said the Vicar. "Do you
never yawn in the angelic country?"
"Never," said the Angel.
"And yet you are immortal! 1 suppose
you want to go to bed."
"Bed!" said the Angel. "Where's that?"
So the Vicar explained darkness to him and
the art of going to bed. (The Angels, it seems,
sleep only in order to dream, and dream like
primitive man with their foreheads on their
knees. And they sleep among the white poppy
84 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
meadows in the heat of the day.) The Angel
found the bedroom arrangements quaint enough.
"Why is everything raised up on big wooden
legs?" he said. "You have the floor, and then
you put everything you have upon a wooden
quadruped. Why do you do it?" The Vicar
explained with philosophical vagueness. The
Angel burnt his finger in the candle-flame
and displayed an absolute ignorance of the
elementary principles of combustion. He was
merely charmed when a line of fire ran up the
curtains. The Vicar had to deliver a lecture on
fire so soon as the line was extinguished. He
had all kinds of explanations to make even
the soap needed explaining. It was an hour or
more before the Angel was safely tucked in for
the night.
"He's very beautiful," said the Vicar, de-
scending the staircase, quite tired out; "and
he's a real Angel no doubt. But I am afraid
he will be a dreadful anxiety, all the same, be-
fore he gets into our earthly way with things."
He seemed quite worried. He helped himself
to an extra glass of sherry before he put away
the wine in the cellaret.
AFTER DINNER continued.
XX.
THE Curate stood in front of the looking-glass
and solemnly divested himself of his collar.
"I never heard a more fantastic story," said
Mrs. Mendham from the basket chair. "The
man must be mad. Are you sure "
"Perfectly, my dear. I've told you every
word, every incident "
" Well!" said Mrs. Mendham, and spread her
hands. "There's no sense in it."
"Precisely, my dear."
"The Vicar," said Mrs. Mendham, "must be
mad."
"This hunchback is certainly one of the
strangest creatures I've seen for a long time.
Foreign looking, with a big bright-coloured face
and long brown hair. ... It can't have been
cut for months!" The Curate put his studs
85
86 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
carefully upon the shelf of the dressing-table.
"And a kind of staring look about his eyes,
and a simpering smile. Quite a silly looking
person. Effeminate."
"But who can he be?" said Mrs. Mendham.
"I can't imagine, my dear. Nor where he
came from. He might be a chorister or some-
thing of that sort."
"But why should he be about the shrubbery
. .' . in that dreadful costume?"
"I don't know. The Vicar gave me no
explanation. He simply said, 'Mendham, this
is an Angel. ' '
" I wonder if he drinks. . . . They may have
been bathing near the spring, of course," re-
flected Mrs. Mendham. "But I noticed no
other clothes on his arm."
The Curate sat down on his bed and unlaced
his boots.
"It's a perfect mystery to me, my dear."
(Flick, flick of laces.) "Hallucination is the
only charitable "
"You are sure, George, that it was not a
woman."
"Perfectly,' 5 said the Curate.
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 87
"I know what men are, of course."
"It was a young man of nineteen or twenty,"
said the Curate.
"I can't understand it," said Mrs. Mendham.
" You say the creature is staying at the Vicar-
age?"
"Hilyer is simply mad," said the Curate.
He got up and went padding round the room to
the door to put out his boots. "To judge by
his manner you would really think he believed
this cripple was an Angel." ("Are your shoes
out, dear?")
("They're just by the wardrobe"), said Mrs.
Mendham. " He always was a little queer, you
know. There was always something childish
about him. . . . An Angel ! "
The Curate came and stood by the fire, fum*
bling with his braces. Mrs. Mendham liked a
fire even in the summer. "He shirks all the
serious problems in life and is always trifling
with some new foolishness," said the Curate.
" Angel indeed ! " He laughed suddenly. " Hil-
yer must be mad," he said.
Mrs. Mendham laughed too. "Even that
doesn't explain the hunchback," she said.
88 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
"The hunchback must be mad too,'* said the
Curate.
"It's the only way of explaining it in a
sensible way," said Mrs. Mendham. [Pause.~\
"Angel or no Angel," said Mrs. Mendham,
"I know what is due to me. Even supposing
the man thought he was in the company of an
Angel, that is no reason why he should not be-
have like a gentleman."
"That is perfectly true."
"You will write to the Bishop, of course?"
Mendham coughed. "No, I shan't write to
the Bishop," said Mendham. "I think it seems
a little disloyal. . . . And he took no notice
of the last, you know."
"But surely "
"I shall write to Austin. In confidence. He
will be sure to tell the Bishop, you know. And
you must remember, my dear "
"That Hilyer can dismiss you, you were
going to say. My dear, the man's much too
weak ! / should have a word to say about that.
And besides, you do all his work for him.
Practically, we manage the parish from end to
end. I do not know what would become of the
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 89
poor if it was not for me. They'd have free
quarters in the Vicarage to-morrow. There is
that Goody Ansell "
"I know, my dear," said the Curate, turning
away and proceeding with his undressing.
"You were telling me about her only this
afternoon."
AFTER DINNER continued.
XXI.
AND thus in the little bedroom over the gable
we reach a first resting place in this story.
And as we have been hard at it, getting our
story spread out before you, it may be perhaps
well to recapitulate a little.
Looking back you will see that much has been
done; we began with a blaze of light "not uni-
form but broken all over by curving flashes like
the waving of swords," and the sound of a
mighty harping, and the advent of an Angel
with polychromatic wings.
Swiftly, dexterously, as the reader must admit,
wings have been clipped, halo handled off, the
glory clapped into coat and trousers, and the
Angel made for all practical purposes a man,
under a suspicion of being either a lunatic or an
impostor. You have heard too, or at least been
able to judge, what the Vicar and the Doctor
90
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 91
and the Curate's wife thought of the strange
arrival. And further remarkable opinions are
to follow.
The afterglow of the summer sunset in the
northwest darkens into night and the Angel
sleeps, dreaming himself back in the wonderful
world where it is always light, and everyone is
happy, where fire does not burn and ice does
not chill ; where rivulets of starlight go stream-
ing through the amaranthine meadows, out to
the seas of Peace. He dreams, and it seems to
him that once more his wings glow with a
thousand colours and flash through the crystal
air of the world from which he has come.
So he dreams. But the Vicar lies awake, too
perplexed for dreaming. Chiefly he is troubled
by the possibilities of Mrs. Mendham, but the
evening's talk has opened a kind of window in
his mind, and he is also stimulated by a sense
as of something seen darkly through a veiled
window, of a hitherto unsuspected wonderland
lying about his world. For twenty years now
he has held his village living and lived his daily
life, protected by his familiar creed, by the
clamour of the details of life, from any mystical
92 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
dreaming. But now interweaving with the
familiar bother of his persecuting neighbour, is
an altogether unfamiliar sense of strange new
things.
There was something ominous in the feeling.
Once, indeed, it rose above all other considera-
tions, and in a kind of terror he blundered out
of bed, bruised his shins very convincingly,
found the matches at last, and lit a candle to
assure himself of the reality of his own custom-
ary world again. But on the whole the more
tangible trouble was the Mendham avalanche.
Her tongue seemed to be hanging above him
like the sword of Damocles. What might she
not say of this business, before her indignant
imagination came to rest?
And while the successful captor of the Strange
Bird was sleeping thus uneasily, Gully of Sid-
derton was carefully unloading his gun after a
wearisome blank day, and Sandy Bright was on
his knees in prayer, with the window carefully
fastened. Annie Durgan was sleeping hard
with her mouth open, and Amory's mother was
dreaming of washing, and both of them had long
since exhausted the topics of the Sound and the
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 93
Glare. Lumpy Durgan was sitting up in his
bed, now crooning the fragment of a tune and
now listening intently for a sound he had heard
once and longed to hear again. As for the
solicitor's clerk at Iping Hanger, he was trying
to write poetry about a confectioner's girl at
Portburdock, and the Strange Bird was quite
out of his head. But the ploughman who had
seen it on the confines of Siddermorton Park
had a black eye. That had been one of the
more tangible consequences of a little argument
about birds' legs in the "Ship." It is worthy of
this passing mention, since it is probably the
only known instance of an Angel causing any-
thing of the kind.
MORNING.
XXII.
THE Vicar going to call the Angel, found him
dressed and leaning out of his window. It was a
glorious morning, still dewy, and the rising sun-
light slanting round the corner of the house
struck warm and yellow upon the hillside. The
birds were astir in the hedges and shrubbery.
Up the hillside for it was late in August a
plough drove slowly. The Angel's chin rested
upon his hands and he did not turn as the Vicar
came up to him.
" How's the wing ? " said the Vicar.
I'd forgotten it," said the Angel. " Is that
yonder a man ? "
The Vicar looked. " That's a ploughman."
" Why does he go to and fro like that ? Does
it amuse him ? "
" He's ploughing. That's his work."
"Work! Why does he do it? It seems a
monotonous thing to do."
94
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 95
" It is," admitted the Vicar. " But he has to
do it to get a living, you know. To get food to
eat and all that kind of thing."
" How curious ! " said the Angel. " Do all men
have to do that ? Do you ? "
" Oh, no. He does it for me ; does my share."
" Why ? " asked the Angel.
"Oh! in return for things I do for him, you
know. We go in for division of labour in this
world. Exchange is no robbery."
" I see," said the Angel, with his eyes still on
the ploughman's heavy movements.
" What do you do for him ? "
" That seems an easy question to you," said the
Vicar, " but really ! it's difficult. Our social
arrangements are rather complicated. It's impos-
sible to explain these things all at once, before
breakfast. Don't you feel hungry ? "
"I think I do," said the Angel slowly, still
at the window ; and then abruptly, " Somehow I
can't help thinking that ploughing must be far
from enjoyable."
"Possibly," said the Vicar, "very possibly.
But breakfast is ready. Won't you come
down ? "
96 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
The Angel left the window reluctantly.
" Our society," explains the Vicar on the stair-
case, " is a complicated organisation."
"Yes?"
" And it is so arranged that some do one thing
and some another."
"And that lean, bent old man trudges after
that heavy blade of iron pulled by a couple of
horses while we go down to eat ? "
" Yes. You will find it is perfectly just. Ah !
mushrooms and poached eggs ! It's the Social
System. Pray' be seated. Possibly it strikes you
as unfair."
" I'm puzzled," said the Angel.
" The drink I'm sending you is called coffee,"
said the Vicar. " I daresay you are. When I
was a young man I was puzzled in the same way.
But afterwards comes a Broader View of Things.
(These black things are called mushrooms ; they
look beautiful.) Other Considerations. Do you
know, instead of explaining this matter now
(this is yours), I think I will lend you a little
book to read (Chum, chum, chum), these mush-
rooms are well up to their appearance, which sets
the whole thing out very clearly."
THE VIOLIN.
XXIII.
AFTER breakfast the Vicar went into the
little room next his study to find a book on
Political Economy for the Angel to read. For
the Angel's social ignorances were clearly
beyond any verbal explanations. The door
stood ajar.
" What is that ? " said the Angel, following
him. " A violin ! " He took it down.
" You play ? " said the Vicar.
The Angel had the bow in his hand, and by
way of answer drove it across the strings. The
quality of the note made the Vicar turn
suddenly.
The Angel's hand tightened on the instru-
ment. The bow flew back and flickered, and
an air the Vicar had never heard before danced
in his ears. The Angel shifted the fiddle under
his dainty chin and went on playing, and as
H 97
98 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
he played his eyes grew bright and his lips
smiled. At first he looked at the Vicar, then
his expression became abstracted. He seemed
no longer to look at the Vicar, but through
him, at something beyond, something in his
memory or his imagination, something infinitely
remote, undreamt of hitherto . . .
The Vicar tried to follow the music. The
air reminded him of a flame, it rushed up,
shone, flickered and danced, passed and reap-
peared. No! it did not reappear! Another
air like it and unlike it, shot up after it,
wavered, vanished. Then another, the same and
not the same. It reminded him of the flaring
tongues that palpitate and change above a newly
lit fire. There are two airs or motifs, which
is it? thought the Vicar. He knew remark-
ably little of musical technique. They go
dancing up, one pursuing the other, out of the
fire of the incantation, pursuing, fluctuating,
turning, up into the sky. There below was the
fire burning, a flame without fuel upon a level
space, and there two flirting butterflies of sound,
dancing away from it, up, one over another,
swift, abrupt, uncertain.
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 99
" Flirting butterflies were they ! " What was
the Vicar thinking of ? Where was he ? In
the little room next to his study, of course !
And the Angel standing in front of him smiling
into his face, playing the violin, and looking
through him as though he was only a window
That motif again, a yellow flare, spread
fanlike by a gust, and now one, then with a swift
eddying upward flight the other, the two things
of fire and light pursuing one another again up
into that clear immensity.
The study and the realities of life suddenly
faded out of the Vicar's eyes, grew thinner and
thinner like a mist that dissolves into air, and
he and the Angel stood together on a pinnacle
of wrought music, about which glittering melo-
dies circled, and vanished, and reappeared. He
was in the land of Beauty, and once more
the glory of heaven was upon the Angel's face,
and the glowing delights of colour pulsated in
his wings. Himself the Vicar could not see.
But I cannot tell you of the vision of that
great and spacious land, of its incredible open-
ness, and height, and nobility. For there is no
space there like ours, no time as we know it ;
100 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
one must needs speak by burgling metaphors
and own in bitterness after all that one has
failed. And it was only a vision. The wonder-
ful creatures flying through the sether saw them
not as they stood there, flew through them as
one might pass through a whisp of mist. The
Vicar lost all sense of duration, all sense of
necessity
" Ah ! " said the Angel, suddenly putting down
the fiddle.
The Vicar had forgotten the book on Political
Economy, had forgotten everything until the
Angel had done. For a minute he sat quite
still. Then he woke up with a start. He was
sitting on the old iron-bound chest.
" Really," he said slowly, " you are very
clever."
He looked about him in a puzzled way. "I
had a kind of vision while you were playing.
I seemed to see What did I see? It has
gone."
He stood up with a dazzled expression upon
his face. "I shall never play the violin again,"
he said. "I wish you would take it to your
room and keep it And play to me
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 101
again. I did not know anything of music until
I heard you play. I do not feel as though I
had ever heard any music before."
He stared at the Angel, then about him at the
room. " I have never felt anything of this kind
with music before," he said. He shook his head.
" I shall never play again."
THE ANGEL EXPLOKES THE VILLAGE.
XXIV.
VERY unwisely, as I think, the Vicar allowed
the Angel to go down into the village by himself,
to enlarge his ideas of humanity. Unwisely,
because how was he to imagine the reception the
Angel would receive? Not thoughtlessly, I am
afraid. He had always carried himself with
decorum in the village, and the idea of a slow
procession through the main street with all the
inevitable curious remarks, explanations, point-
ings, was too much for him. The Angel might
do the strangest things, the village was certain
to think them. Peering faces. " Who's he got
now?". Besides, was it not his duty to prepare
his sermon in good time? The Angel, duly di-
rected, went down cheerfully by himself still
innocent of most of the peculiarities of the human
as distinguished from the angelic turn of mind.
The Angel walked slowly, his white hands
102
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 103
folded behind his hunched back, his sweet face
looking this way and that. He peered curiously
into the eyes of the people he met. A little child
picking a bunch of vetch and honeysuckle looked
in his face, and forthwith came and put them in his
hand. It was about the only kindness he had
from a human being (saving only the Vicar and
one other). He heard Mother Gustick scolding
that granddaughter of hers as he passed the door.
" You Brazen Faggit you ! " said Mother Gus-
tick. " You Trumpery Baggage ! "
The Angel stopped, startled at the strange
sounds of Mother Gustick's voice. "Put yer
best clo'es on, and yer feather in yer 'at, and off
you goes to meet en, fal lal, and me at 'ome
slaving for ye. 'Tis a Fancy Lady you'll be
wantin' to be, my gal, a walkin' Touch and Go,
with yer idleness and finery "
The voice ceased abruptly, and a great peace
came upon the battered air. "Most grotesque
and strange ! " said the Angel, still surveying
this wonderful box of discords. " Walking Touch
and Go I " He did not know that Mrs. Gustick
had suddenly become aware of his existence,
and was scrutinising his appearance through the
104 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
window-blind. Abruptly the door flew open, and
she stared out into the Angel's face. A strange
apparition, grey and dusty hair, and the dirty
pink dress unhooked to show the stringy throat,
a discoloured gargoyle, presently to begin spout-
ing incomprehensible abuse.
"Now, then, Mister," began Mrs. Gustick.
"Have ye nothin' better to do than listen at
people's doors for what you can pick up?"
The Angel stared at her in astonishment.
" D'year ! " said Mrs. Gustick, evidently very
angry indeed. " Listening"
" Have you any objection to my hearing . . ."
" Object to my hearing ! Course I have !
Whad yer think ? You ain't such a Ninny . . ."
" But if ye didn't want me to hear, why did
you cry out so loud? I thought . . ."
" You thought ! Softie ' that's what you are !
You silly girt staring Gaby, what don't know any
better than to come holding yer girt mouth wide
open for all that you can catch holt on? And
then off up there to tell ! You great Fat-Faced,
Tale-Bearin' Silly-Billy! I'd be ashamed to
come poking and peering round quiet people's
houses . . ."
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 105
The Angel was surprised to find that some inex-
plicable quality in her voice excited the most dis-
agreeable sensations in him and a strong desire to
withdraw. But, resisting this, he stood listening
politely (as the custom is in the Angelic Land, so
long as anyone is speaking). The entire eruption
was beyond his comprehension. He could not per-
ceive any reason for the sudden projection of this
vituperative head, out of infinity, so to speak.
And questions without a break for an answer were
outside his experience altogether.
Mrs. Gustick proceeded with her characteristic
fluency, assured him he was no gentleman, en-
quired if he called himself one, remarked that
every tramp did as much nowadays, compared
him to a Stuck Pig, marvelled at his impudence*
asked him if he wasn't ashamed of himself stand-
ing there, enquired if he was rooted to the ground,
was curious to be told what he meant by it, wanted
to know whether he robbed a scarecrow for his
clothes, suggested that an abnormal vanity
prompted his behaviour, enquired if his mother
knew he was out, and finally remarking, " I got
somethin'll move you, my gentleman," disappeared
with a ferocious slamming of the door.
106 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
The interval struck the Angel as singularly
peaceful. His whirling mind had time to analyse
his sensations. He ceased bowing and smiling,
and stood merely astonished.
"This is a curious painful feeling," said the
Angel. " Almost worse than Hungry, and quite
-different. When one is hungry one wants to eat.
I suppose she was a woman. Here one wants to
get away. I suppose I might just as well go."
He turned slowly and went down the road
meditating. He heard the cottage door reopen,
and turning his head, saw through intervening
scarlet runners Mrs. Gustick with a steaming
saucepan full of boiling cabbage water in her hand.
"'Tis well you went, Mister Stolen Breeches,"
came the voice of Mrs. Gustick floating down
through the vermilion blossoms. "Don't you
come peeping and prying round this yer cottage
again or I'll learn ye manners, I will ! "
The Angel stood in a state of considerable
perplexity. He had no desire to come within
earshot of the cottage again ever. He did not
understand the precise import of the black pot,
but his general impression was entirely disagree-
able. There was no explaining it.
THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
10T
" I mean it ! " said Mrs. Gustick, crescendo.
"Drat it! I mean it."
The Angel turned and went on, a dazzled look
in his eyes.
" She was very grotesque ! " said the AngeL
" Very. Much more than the little man in black.
And she means it But what she means I
don't know! . . ." He became silent. "I sup-
pose they all mean something," he said, presently,
still perplexed.
THE ANGEL EXPLORES THE VILLAGE continued.
XXV.
THEN the Angel came in sight of the forge,
where Sandy Bright's brother was shoeing a horse
for the carter from Upmorton. Two hobbledehoys
were standing by the forge staring in a bovine
way at the proceedings. As the Angel ap-
proached these two and then the carter turned
slowly through an angle of thirty degrees and
watched his approach, staring quietly and steadily
at him. The expression on their faces was one
of abstract interest.
The Angel became self-conscious for the first
time in his life. He drew nearer, trying to main-
tain an amiable expression on his face, an expres-
sion that beat in vain against their granitic stare.
His hands were behind him. He smiled pleas-
antly, looking curiously at the (to him) incom-
prehensible employment of the smith. But the
battery of eyes seemed to angle for his regard.
108
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 109
Trying to meet the three pairs at once, the Angel
lost his alertness and stumbled over a stone. One
of the yokels gave a sarcastic cough, and was
immediately covered witlr confusion at the Angel's
enquiring gaze, nudging his companion with his
elbow to cover his disorder. None spoke, and
the Angel did not speak.
So soon as the Angel had passed, one of the
three hummed this tune ill an aggressive tone.
Then all three of them laughed. One tried to
sing something and found his throat contained
phlegm. The Angel proceeded on his way.
" Who's 'e then ? " said the second hobbledehoy.
"Ping, ping, ping," went the blacksmith's
hammer.
" Spose he's one of these here foweners," said
the carter from Upmorton. " Daamned silly fool
he do look to be sure."
" Tas the way with them foweners," said the
first hobbledehoy sagely.
" Got something very like the 'ump," said the
carter from Upmorton. " Daa-a-amned if 'e ent."
110 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
Then the silence healed again, and they re-
sumed their quiet expressionless consideration
of the Angel's retreating figure.
"Very like the 'ump et is," said the carter
after an enormous pause.
THE ANGEL EXPLORES THE VILLAGE continued.
XXVI.
THE Angel went on through the village, find-
ing it all wonderful enough. Once he heard
some invisible mouth chant inaudible words to
the tune the man at the forge had hummede
" They begin, and just a little while and then
they end," he said to himself in a puzzled voice.
" But what are they doing meanwhile ? "
" That's the poor creature the Vicar shot with
that great gun of his," said Sarah Glue (of 1,
Church Cottages), peering over the blind.
" He looks Frenchified," said Susan Hopper,
peering through the interstices of that convenient
veil on curiosity.
" He has sweet eyes," said Sarah Glue, who
had met them for a moment.
The Angel sauntered on. The postman passed
him and touched his hat to him; further down
ill
112 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
was a dog asleep in the sun. He went on and
saw Mendham, who nodded distantly and hurried
past. (The Curate did not care to be seen talk-
ing to an Angel in the village, until more was
known about him.) There came from one of
the houses the sound of a child screaming in a
passion, that brought a puzzled look to the
Angelic face. Then the Angel reached the
bridge below the last of the houses, and stood
leaning over the parapet watching the glittering
little cascade from the mill.
" They begin, and just a little while, and then
they end," said the weir from the mill. The
water raced under the bridge, green and dark,
and streaked with foam.
Beyond the mill rose the square tower of the
church, with the churchyard behind it, a spray
of tombstones and wooden headboards splashed
up the hillside. A half dozen of beech trees
framed the picture.
Then the Angel heard a shuffling of feet and
the gride of wheels behind him, and turning his
head saw a man dressed in dirty brown rags and
a felt hat grey with dust, who was standing
with a slight swaying motion and fixedly re-
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 113
garding the Angelic back. Beyond him was
another almost equally dirty, pushing a knife
grinder's barrow over the bridge.
" Mornin'," said the first person smiling weakly.
"Goomorn'." He arrested an escaping hiccough.
The Angel stared at him. He had never seen-
a really fatuous smile before. "Who are you?"
said the Angel.
The fatuous smile faded. " No your business
whoaaam. Wishergoornorn."
"Carm on," said the man with the grindstone,
passing on his way.
" Wishergoomorn," said the dirty man, in a
tone of extreme aggravation. "Carncher An-
swerme ? "
" Carm on you fool ! " said the man with the
grindstone receding.
"I don't understand," said the Angel.
" Donunderstan'. Sim'l enough. Wishergoo-
morn. Willyanswerme ? Wontchr? gemwisher-
gem goomorn. Cusom answer goomorn. No
gem. Haverteachyer."
The Angel was puzzled. The drunken man
stood swaying for a moment, then he made an
unsteady snatch at his hat and threw it down at
114 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
the Angel's feet. "Ver well," he said, as one
who decides great issues.
" Carm on ! " said the voice of the man with the
grindstone stopping perhaps twenty yards off.
" You wan fight, you " the Angel failed to
catch the word. " 111 show yer, not answer gem's
goomorn."
He began to struggle with his jacket. " Think
I'm drun," he said, " I show yer." The man with
the grindstone sat down on the shaft to watch.
" Carm on," he said. The jacket was intricate,
and the drunken man began to struggle about
the road, in his attempts to extricate himself,
breathing threatenings and slaughter. Slowly
the Angel began to suspect remotely enough, that
these demonstrations were hostile. "Mur wun
know yer when I done wi' yer," said the drunken
man, coat almost over his head.
At last the garment lay on the ground, and
through the frequent interstices of his reminis-
cences of a waistcoat, the drunken tinker displayed
a fine hairy and muscular body to the Angel's ob-
servant eyes. He squared up in masterly fashion.
" Take the paint off yer," he remarked, advanc-
ing and receding, fists up and elbows out.
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 115
" Carm on," floated down the road.
The Angel's attention was concentrated on two
huge hairy black fists, that swayed and advanced
and retreated. "Come on d'yer say? I'll show
yer," said the gentleman in rags, and then with
extraordinary ferocity : " My crikey ! I'll show
yer."
Suddenly he lurched forward, and with a new-
born instinct and raising a defensive arm as he did
so, the Angel stepped aside to avoid him. The fist
missed the Angelic shoulder by a hairsbreadth,
and the tinker collapsed in a heap with his face
against the parapet of the bridge. The Angel
hesitated over the writhing dusty heap of blas-
phemy for a moment, and then turned towards
the man's companion up the road. " Lemmeget
up," said the man on the bridge. " Lemmeget
up, you swine. I'll show yer."
A strange disgust, a quivering repulsion came
upon the Angel. He walked slowly away from
the drunkard towards the man with the grind-
stone.
"What does it all mean?" said the Angel.
"I don't understand it."
"Dam fool! . . . says it's 'is silver weddin',"
116 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
answered the man with the grindstone, evidently
much annoyed ; and then, in a tone of growing-
impatience, he called down the road once more:
" Carm on ! "
"Silver wedding!" said the Angel. "What i&
a silver wedding?"
"Jest 'is rot," said the man on the barrow.
"But Vs always 'avin's some 'scuse like that.
Fair sickenin' it is. Lars week it wus 'is bloomin'
birthday, and then 'e adn't 'ardly got sober orf
a comlimentary drunk to my noo barrer. {Carm
on, you fool.) "
" But I don't understand," said the AngeL
" Why does he sway about so ? Why does he
keep on trying to pick up his hat like that
and missing it?"
"TJ%/" said the tinker. "Well this is a
blasted innocent country ! Why ! Because 'e's
blind ! Wot else ? (Carm on Dam yer.) Be-
cause Vs just as full as 'e can 'old. That's why ! "
The Angel noticing the tone of the second
tinker's voice, judged it wiser not to question
him further. But he stood by the grindstone
and continued to watch the mysterious evolu-
tions on the bridge.
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 117
"Carm on! I shall 'ave to go and pick up
that 'at I suppose . . . 'E's always at it. I ne'er
'ad such a blooming pard before. Always at it,
'e is."
The man with the barrow meditated. " 'Tain't
as if 'e was a gentleman and adn't no livin' to
get. An' e's such a reckless fool when 'e gets
a bit on. Goes offerin' out everyone 'e meets.
(There you go!) I'm blessed if 'e didn't offer
out a 'ole bloomin' Salvation Army. No judg-
ment in it. (Oh ! Carm on ! Carm on !) 'Ave
to go and pick this bloomin' 'at up now I s'pose.
"*E don't care wot trouble 'e gives."
The Angel watched the second tinker walk
back, and, with affectionate blasphemy, assist the
first to his hat and his coat. Then he turned,
absolutely mystified, towards the village again.
THE ANGEL EXPLORES THE VILLAGE continued,
XXVII.
AFTER that incident the Angel walked along
past the mill and round behind the church, to
examine the tombstones.
"This seems to be the place where they put
the broken pieces," said the Angel reading the
inscriptions. " Curious word relict ! Kesurgam !
Then they are not done with quite. What a huge
pile it requires to keep her down ! . . . It is
spirited of her."
" Hawkins ? " said the Angel softly, . . . "Haw-
kins? The name is strange to me. . . . He did
not die then. ... It is plain enough, Joined
the Angelic Hosts, May 17, 1863. He must
have felt as much out of place as I do down
here. But I wonder why they put that little pot
thing on the top of this monument. Curious I
118
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 119
There are several others about little stone pots
with a rag of stiff stone drapery over them."
Just then the boys came pouring out of the
National School, and first one and then several
stopped agape at the Angel's crooked black
figure among the white tombs. "Ent 'e gart a
baak on en ! " remarked one critic.
" 'E's got 'air like a girl ! " said another.
The Angel turned towards them. He was
struck by the queer little heads sticking up over
the lichenous wall. He smiled faintly at their
staring faces, and then turned to marvel at the
iron railings that enclosed the Fitz-Jarvis tomb.
"A queer air of uncertainty," he said. "Slabs,
piles of stone, these railings. . . . Are they
afraid? . . . Do these Dead ever try and get
up again? There's an air of repression forti-
fication "
"Ge*t yer 'air cut, Ge*t yer 'air cut," sang three
little boys together.
" Curious these Human Beings are ! " said the
Angel. " That man yesterday wanted to cut off
my wings, now these little creatures want me to
cut off my hair ! They will leave nothing of me
120 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
"Where did you get that 'at?" sang another
little boy. "Where did you get them clo'es?"
" They ask questions that they evidently do not
want answered," said the Angel. "I can tell
from the tone." He looked thoughtfully at the
little boys. "I don't understand the methods of
Human intercourse. These are probably friendly
advances, a kind of ritual. But I don't know the
responses. I think I will go back to the little fat
man in black, with the gold chain across his
stomach, and ask him to explain. It is difficult."
He turned towards the lych gate. " Oh!"
said one of the little boys, in a shrill falsetto,
and threw a beechnut husk. It came bounding
across the churchyard path. The Angel stopped
in surprise.
This made all the little boys laugh. A second
imitating the first, said " Oh ! " and hit the Angel.
His astonishment was really delicious. They all
began crying " Oh ! " and throwing beechnut
husks. One hit the Angel's hand, another stung
him smartly by the ear. The Angel made un
gainly movements towards them. He splutterec
some expostulation and made for the roadway
The little boys were amazed and shocked at his
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 121
discomfiture and cowardice. Such sawney be*
haviour could not be encouraged. The pelting
grew vigorously. You may perhaps be able to
imagine those vivid moments, daring small boys
running in close and delivering shots, milder small
boys rushing round behind with flying discharges,
Milton Screever's mongrel dog was roused to
yelping ecstacy at the sight, and danced (full of
wild imaginings) nearer and nearer to the Angelic
legs.
" Hi, hi ! " said a vigorous voice. " I never
did! Where's Mr. Jarvis? Manners, manners!
you young rascals."
The youngsters scattered right and left, some
over the wall into the playground, some down the
street.
" Frightful pest these boys are getting ! " said
Crump, coming up. "I'm sorry they have been
annoying you."
The Angel seemed quite upset. " I don't under-
stand," he said. " These Human ways . . ."
" Yes, of course. Unusual to you. How's
your excrescence?"
"My what?" said the Angel.
"Bifid limb, you know. How is it? Now
122 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
you're down this way, come in. Come in and
let me have a look at it again. You young
roughs ! And meanwhile these little louts of ours
will be getting off home. They're all alike in
these villages. Can't understand anything abnor-
mal. See an odd-looking stranger. Chuck a
stone. No imagination beyond the parish. . . .
I'll give you physic if I catch you annoying
strangers again. ... I suppose it's what one
might expect. . . . Come along this way."
So the Angel, horribly perplexed still, was
hurried into the surgery to have his wound re-
dressed.
LADY HAMMEKGALLOW'S VIEW.
XXVIII.
IN Siddermorton Park is Siddermorton House,
where old Lady Hammergallow lives, chiefly
upon Burgundy and the little scandals of the
village, a dear old lady with a ropy neck, a
ruddled countenance and spasmodic gusts of odd
temper, whose three remedies for all human
trouble among her dependents are, a bottle of
gin, a pair of charity blankets, or a new crown
piece. The House is a mile-and-a-half out of
Siddermorton. Almost all the village is hers,
saving a fringe to the south which belongs to
Sir John Gotch, and she rules it with an auto-
cratic rule, refreshing in these days of divided
government. She orders and forbids marriages,
drives objectionable people out of the village by
the simple expedient of raising their rent, dis-
misses labourers, obliges heretics to go to church,
123
124 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
and made Susan Dangett, who wanted to call her
little girl " Euphemia," have the infant christened
" Mary- Anne." She is a sturdy Broad Protestant
and disapproves of the Vicar's going bald like a
tonsure. She is on the Village Council, which
obsequiously trudges up the hill and over the
moor to her, and (as she is a trifle deaf) speaks
all its speeches into her speaking trumpet instead
of a rostrum. She takes no interest now in
politics, but until last year she was an active
enemy of "that Gladstone." She has parlour
maids instead of footmen to do her waiting,
because of Hockley, the American stockbroker,
and his four Titans in plush.
She exercises what is almost a fascination upon
the village. If in the bar-parlour of the Cat and
Cornucopia you swear by God no one would be
shocked, but if you swore by Lady Harnmer-
gallow they would probably be shocked enough
to turn you out of the room. When she drives
through Siddermorton she always calls upon
Bessy Flump, the post-mistress, to hear all that
has happened, and then upon Miss Finch, the
dressmaker, to check back Bessy Flump. Some-
times she calls upon the Vicar, sometimes upon
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 125
Mrs. Mendham whom she snubs, and even some-
times on Crump. Her sparkling pair of greys
almost ran over the Angel as he was walking
down to the village.
"So that's the genius!" said Lady Hammer-
gallow, and turned and looked at him through the
gilt glasses on a stick that she always carried in
her shrivelled and shaky hand. " Lunatic indeed !
The poor creature has rather a pretty face. I'm
sorry I've missed him."
But she went on to the vicarage nevertheless,
and demanded news of it all. The conflicting
accounts of Miss Flump, Miss Finch, Mrs. Mend-
ham, Crump, and Mrs. Jehoram had puzzled her
immensely. The Vicar, hard pressed, did all he
could to say into her speaking trumpet what had
really happened. He toned down the wings and
the saffron robe. But he felt the case was hope-
less. He spoke of his prote*g6 as " Mr." Angel. He
addressed pathetic asides to the kingfisher. The
old lady noticed his confusion. Her queer old
head went jerking backwards and forwards, now
the speaking trumpet in his face when he had
nothing to say, then the shrunken eyes peering at
him, oblivious of the explanation that was coming
126 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
from his lips. A great many Ohs ! and Ahs !
She caught some fragments certainly.
"You have asked him to stop with you
indefinitely?" said Lady Hammergallow with a
Great Idea taking shape rapidly in her mind.
" I did perhaps inadvertently make such "
" And you don't know where he comes from ? "
"Not at all."
" Nor who his father is, I suppose ? " said Lady
Hammergallow mysteriously.
" No," said the Vicar.
"Now!" said Lady Hammergallow archly, and
keeping her glasses to her eye, she suddenly dug
at his ribs with her trumpet.
" My dear Lady Hammergallow ! "
"I thought so. Don't think I would blame
you, Mr. Hilyer." She gave a corrupt laugh that
she delighted in. " The world is the world, and
men are men. And the poor boy's a cripple, eh ?
A kind of judgment. In mourning, I noticed.
It reminds me of the Scarlet Letter. The
mother's dead, I suppose. It's just as well.
Really I'm not a narrow woman I respect
you for having him. Really I do."
" But, Lady Hammergallow ! "
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 127
" Don't spoil everything by denying it. It is so
very, very plain, to a woman of the world. That
Mrs. Mendham ! She amuses me with her suspi-
cions. Such odd ideas ! In a Curate's wife. But
I hope it didn't happen when you were in orders."
"Lady Hammergallow, I protest. Upon my
word."
"Mr. Hilyer, I protest. I know. Not any-
thing you can say will alter my opinion one jot.
Don't try. I never suspected you were nearly
such an interesting man."
"But this suspicion is unendurable!"
"We will help him together, Mr. Hilyer.
You may rely upon me. It is most romantic."
She beamed benevolence.
" But, Lady Hammergallow, I must speak ! "
She gripped her ear-trumpet resolutely, and
held it before her and shook her head.
" He has quite a genius for music, Vicar, so I
hear?"
" I can assure you most solemnly "
" I thought so. And being a cripple "
"You are under a most cruel "
" I thought that if his gift is really what that
Jehoram woman says."
128 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
" An unjustifiable suspicion that ever a man "
("I don't think much on her judgment, of
course.")
"Consider my position. Have I gained no
character ? "
" It might be possible to do something for him
as a performer."
" Have I (Bother ! It's no good /) "
44 And so, dear Vicar, I propose to give him an
opportunity of showing us what he can do. I
have been thinking it all over as I drove here.
On Tuesday next, I will invite just a few people
of taste, and he shall bring his violin. Eigh?
And if that goes well, I will see if I can get some
introductions and really push him."
" But Lady, Lady Hammergallow."
"Not another word!" said Lady Hammer-
gallow, still resolutely holding her speaking
trumpet before her and clutching her eyeglasses.
" I really must not leave those horses. Cutler is
so annoyed if I keep them too long. He finds
waiting tedious, poor man, unless there is a
public-house near." She made for the door.
"Damn!" said the Vicar, under his breath.
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 129
He had never used the word since he had taken
orders. It shows you how an Angel's visit may
disorganise a man.
He stood under the verandah watching the
carriage drive away. The world seemed coming
to pieces about him. Had he lived a virtuous
celibate life for thirty odd years in vain? The
things of which these people thought him capable !
He stood and stared at the green cornfield
opposite, and down at the straggling village. It
seemed real enough. And yet for the first time
in his life there was a queer doubt of its reality.
He rubbed his chin, then turned and went slowly
upstairs to his dressing-room, and sat for a long
time staring at a garment of some yellow text-
ure. "Know his father!" he said. "And he is
immortal, and was fluttering about his heaven when
my ancestors were marsupials. ... I wish he was
there now."
He got up and began to feel the robe.
" I wonder how they get such things," said the
Vicar. Then he went and stared out of the win-
dow. "I suppose everything is wonderful, even
the rising and setting of the sun. I suppose
130 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
there is no adamantine ground for any belief.
But one gets into a regular way of taking things.
This disturbs it. I seem to be waking up to the
Invisible. It is the strangest of uncertainties.
I have not felt so stirred and unsettled since my
adolescence."
FURTHER ADVENTURES OF THE ANGEL IN THE
VILLAGE.
XXIX.
"THAT'S all right," said Crump when the
bandaging was replaced. " It's a trick of mem-
ory, no doubt, but these excrescences of yours
don't seem nearly so large as they did yesterday.
I suppose they struck me rather forcibly. Stop
and have lunch with me now you're down here.
Midday meal, you know. The youngsters will
be swallowed up by school again in the after-
noon."
"I never saw anything heal so well in my
life," he said, as they walked into the dining-
room. "Your blood and flesh must be as clean
and free from bacteria as they make 'em.
Whatever stuff there is in your head, " he added
sotto voce.
At lunch he watched the Angel narrowly, and
talked to draw him out.
131
132 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
" Journey tire you yesterday ? " he said suddenly.
" Journey ! " said the Angel. " Oh ! my wings
felt a little stiff."
("Not to be had/') said Crump to himself.
("Suppose I must enter into it.")
"So you flew all the way, eigh? No convey-
ance?"
"There wasn't any way," explained the Angel,
taking mustard. "I was flying up a symphony
with some Griffins and Fiery Cherubim, and
suddenly everything went dark and I was in
this world of yours."
"Dear me!" said Crump. "And that's why
you haven't any luggage." He drew his servi-
ette across his mouth, and a smile flickered in
his eyes.
" I suppose you know this world of ours pretty
well? Watching us over the adamantine walls
and all that kind of thing. Eigh?"
"Not very well. We dream of it sometimes.
In the moonlight, when the Nightmares have
fanned us to sleep with their wings."
"Ah, yes of course," said Crump. "Very
poetical way of putting it. Won't you take
some Burgundy? It's just beside you.
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 133
"There's a persuasion in this world, you
know, that Angels' Visits are by no means
infrequent. Perhaps some of your friends
have travelled? They are supposed to come
down to deserving persons in prisons, and do
refined Nautches and that kind of thing. Faust
business, you know."
"I've never heard of anything of the kind,"
said the Angel.
"Only the other day a lady whose baby was
my patient for the time being indigestion
assured me that certain facial contortions the
little creature made indicated that it was Dream-
ing of Angels. In the novels of Mrs. Henry
Wood that is spoken of as an infallible symptom
of an early departure. I suppose you can't
throw any light on that obscure pathological
manifestation ? "
"I don't understand it at all," said the Angel,
puzzled, and not clearly apprehending the Doc-
tor's drift.
("Getting huffy,") said Crump to himself.
("Sees I'm poking fun at him.")
"There's one thing I'm curious about. Do
the new arrivals complain much about their
134 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
medical attendants? I've always fancied there
must be a good deal of hydropathic talk just at
first. I was looking at that picture in the
Academy only this June. . . ."
"New Arrivals!" said the Angel. "I really
don't follow you."
The Doctor stared. "Don't they come?"
" Come ! " said the Angel. " Who ? "
'The people who die here."
'After they've gone to pieces here?"
'That's the general belief, you know."
' People, like the woman who screamed out of
the door, and the black -faced man and his volu-
tations and the horrible little things that threw
husks ! certainly not. 1 never saw such creat-
ures before I fell into this world."
"Oh! but come!" said the Doctor. "You'll
tell me next your official robes are not white
and that you can't play the harp."
"There's no such thing as white in the An-
gelic Land," said the Angel. "It's that queer
blank colour you get by mixing up all the
others."
"Why, my dear Sir!" said the Doctor, sud-
denly altering his tone, "you positively know
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 135
\
nothing about the Land you come from. White's
the very essence of it."
The Angel stared at him. Was the man jest-
ing? He looked perfectly serious.
"Look here," said Crump, and getting up, he
went to the sideboard on which a copy of the
Parish Magazine was lying. He brought it
round to the Angel and opened it at the col-
oured supplement. "Here's some real Angels,"
he said. "You see it's not simply the wings
make the Angel. White you see, with a curly
whisp of robe, sailing up into the sky with their
wings furled. Those are angels on the best
authority. Hydroxyl kind of hair. One has a
bit of a harp, you see, and the other is helping
this wingless lady kind of larval Angel, you
know upward. "
"Oh! but really!" said the Angel, "those are
not Angels at all."
"But they are," said Crump, putting the
magazine back on the sideboard and resuming
his seat with an air of intense satisfaction. "I
can assure you I have the lest authority. . . ."
"I can assure you ..."
Crump tucked in the corners of his mouth
136 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
and shook his head from side to side even as
he had done to the Vicar. "No good," he said,
"can't alter our ideas just because an irresponsi-
ble visitor ..."
"If these are Angels," said the Angel, "then
I have never been in the Angelic Land."
"Precisely," said Crump, ineffably self-satis-
fied; "that was just what I was getting at."
The Angel stared at him for a minute round
eyed, and then was seized for the second time
by the human disorder of laughter.
"Ha, ha, ha!" said Crump, joining in. "I
thought you were not quite so mad as you
seemed. Ha, ha, ha!"
And for the rest of the lunch they were both
very merry, for entirely different reasons, and
Crump insisted upon treating the Angel as a
"dorg" of the highest degree.
.
FURTHER ADVENTURES OF THE ANGEL IN THE
VILLAGE continued.
XXX.
AFTER the Angel had left Crump's house he
went up the hill again towards the Vicarage.
But possibly moved by the desire to avoid
Mrs. Gustick he turned aside at the stile and
made a detour by the Lark's Field and Bradley's
Farm.
He came upon the Respectable Tramp slum-
bering peacefully among the wild-flowers. He
stopped to look, struck by the celestial tran-
quillity of that individual's face. And even as
he did so the Respectable Tramp awoke with a
start and sat up. He was a pallid creature,
dressed in rusty black, with a broken-spirited
crush hat cocked over one eye. "Good after-
noon," he said affably. "How are you?"
"Very well, thank you," said the Angel, who
had mastered the phrase.
The Respectable Tramp eyed the Angel criti-
138 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
cally. "Padding the Hoof, matey?" he said.
"Like me."
The Angel was puzzled by him. "Why,"
asked the Angel, "do you sleep like this in-
stead of sleeping up in the air on a Bed?"
"Well I'm blowed!" said the Respectable
Tramp. "Why don't I sleep in a bed? Well,
it's like this. Sandringham's got the painters
in, there's the drains up in Windsor Castle,
and I 'aven't no other 'ouse to go to. You
'aven't the price of a 'arf pint in your pocket,
'ave yer?"
"I have nothing in my pocket," said the
Angel.
"Is this here village called Siddermorton ? "
said the Tramp, rising creakily to his feet and
pointing to the clustering roofs down the hill.
"Yes," said the Angel, "they call it Sidder-
morton."
"I know it, I know it," said the Tramp.
"And a very pretty little village it is too." He
stretched and yawned, and stood regarding the
place. "'Ouses," he said reflectively; "Pro-
juce" waving his hand at the cornfields and
orchards. "Looks cosy, don't it?"
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 139>
"It has a quaint beauty of its own," said the
Angel.
" It 'as a quaint beauty of its own yes. . . .
Lord! I'd like to sack the blooming place. . . .
I was born there."
"Dear me," said the Angel.
"Yes, I was born there. Ever heard of a
pithed frog?"
"Pithed frog," said the Angel. "No!"
"It's a thing these here vivisectionists do.
They takes a frog and they cuts out his brains
and they shoves a bit of pith in the place of
'em. That's a pithed frog. Well that there
village is full of pithed human beings."
The Angel took it quite seriously. "Is that
so?" he said.
"That's so you take my word for it.
Everyone of them 'as 'ad their brains cut out
and chunks of rotten touchwood put in the
place of it. And you see that little red
place there?"
"That's called the national school," said the
Angel.
"Yes that's where they piths 'em," said the
Tramp, quite in love with his conceit.
140 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
"Really! That's very interesting."
"It stands to reason," said the Tramp. "If
they 'ad brains they'd 'ave ideas, and if they
'ad ideas they'd think for themselves. And you
can go through that village from end to end
and never meet anybody doing as much. Pithed
human beings they are. I know that village.
I was born there, and I might be there now,
a-toilin' for my betters, if I 'adn't struck against
the pithin'."
"Is it a painful operation?" asked the Angel.
"In parts. Though it ain't the heads gets
hurt. Arid it lasts a long time. They take
'em young into that school, and they says to
them, 'come in 'ere and we'll improve your
minds,' they says, and in the little kiddies go
as good as gold. And they begins shovin' it
into them. Bit by bit and 'ard and dry, shovin'
out the nice juicy brains. Dates and lists and
things. Out they comes no brains in their
'eads, and wound up nice and tight, ready to
touch their 'ats to anyone who looks at them.
Why! One touched 'is 'at to me yesterday.
And they runs about spry and does all the dirty
work, and feels thankful they're allowed to live.
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 141
They take a positive pride in 'ard work for its
own sake. Arter they bin pithed. See that
chap ploughin'?"
"Yes," said the Angel; "is he pithed?"
"Rather. Else he'd be paddin' the hoof this
pleasant weather like me and the blessed
Apostles."
"I begin to understand," said the Angel,
rather dubiously.
"I knew you would," said the Philosophical
Tramp. "I thought you was the right sort.
But speaking serious, ain't it ridiculous? cent-
uries and centuries of civilisation, and look at
that poor swine there, sweatin' 'isself empty arid
trudging up that 'ill-side. 'E's English, 'e is.
'E belongs to the top race in creation, 'e does.
'E's one of the rulers of Indjer. It's enough to
make a nigger laugh. The flag that's braved a
thousand years the battle an' the breeze that's
'is flag. There never was a country was as
great and glorious as this. Never. And that's
wot it makes of us. I'll tell you a little story
about them parts as you seems to be a bit of a
stranger. There's a chap called Gotch, Sir
John Gotch they calls 'im, and when 'e was a
142 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
young gent from Oxford, I was a little chap of
eight and my sister was a girl of seventeen.
Their servant she was. But Lord! everybody's
'eard that story it's common enough, of 'im
or the likes of 'im."
"I haven't," said the Angel.
"All that's pretty and lively of the gals they
chucks into the gutters, and all the men with
a penurth of spunk or adventure, all who won't
drink what the Curate's wife sends 'em instead
of beer, and touch their hats promiscous, and
leave the rabbits and birds alone for their bet-
ters, gets drove out of the villages as rough
characters. Talk about improvin' the race!
Wot's left ain't fit to look a nigger in the face,
a Chinaman 'ud be ashamed of 'em. ..."
"But I don't understand," said the Angel.
"I don't follow you."
At that the Philosophic Tramp became more
explicit, and told the Angel the simple story
of Sir John Gotch and the kitchen-maid. It's
scarcely necessary to repeat it. You may under-
stand that it left the Angel puzzled. It was
full of words he did not understand, for the
only vehicle of emotion the Tramp possessed
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 143
was blasphemy. Yet, though their tongues
differed so, he could still convey to the Angel
some of his own (probably unfounded) persua-
sion of the injustice and cruelty of life, and the
utter detestableness of Sir John Gotch.
The last the Angel saw of him was his dusty
black back receding down the lane towards
Iping Hanger. A pheasant appeared by the
roadside, and the Philosophical Tramp immedi-
ately caught up a stone and sent the bird cluck-
ing with a viciously accurate shot. Then he
disappeared round the corner.
MRS. JEHORAM'S BREADTH OF VIEW.
XXXI.
"I HEARD someone playing the fiddle in the
Vicarage, as I came by," said Mrs. Jehoram,
taking her cup of tea from Mrs. Mendham.
"The Vicar plays," said Mrs. Mendham. "I
have spoken to George about it, but it's no
good. I do not think a Vicar should be allowed
to do such things. It's so foreign. But there,
.he . . ."
"I know, dear," said Mrs. Jehoram. "But I
heard the Vicar once at the schoolroom. I
don't think this was the Vicar. It was quite
clever, some of it, quite smart, you know. And
new. I was telling dear Lady Hammergallow this
morning. I fancy "
"The lunatic! Very likely. These half-wit-
ted people . . . My dear, I don't think I
shall ever forget that dreadful encounter. Yes-
terday."
"Nor I."
144
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 145
" My poor girls ! They are too shocked to say
a word about it. I was telling dear Lady
Ham "
" Quite proper of them. It was dreadful, dear.
For them."
" And now, dear, I want you to tell me frankly
Do you really believe that creature was a
man?"
"You should have heard the violin."
" I still more than half suspect, Jessie "
Mrs. Mendham leant forward as if to whisper.
Mrs. Jehoram helped herself to cake. "I'm
sure no woman could play the violin quite like
I heard it played this morning."
"Of course, if you say so that settles the
matter," said Mrs. Mendham. Mrs. Jehoram
was the autocratic authority in Siddermorton
upon all questions of art, music and belles-
lettres. Her late husband had been a minor
poet. Then Mrs. Mendham added a judicial
"Still "
"Do you know," said Mrs. Jehoram, "I'm
half inclined to believe the dear Vicar's story."
"How good of you, Jessie," said Mrs. Mend-
ham.
146 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
" But really, I don't think he could have had
anyone in the Vicarage before that afternoon.
I feel sure we should have heard of it. I don't
see how a strange cat could come within four
miles of Siddermorton without the report coming
round to us. The people here gossip so. ... "
"I always distrust the Vicar," said Mrs.
Mendham. "I know him."
"Yes. But the story is plausible. If this
Mr. Angel were someone very clever and ec-
centric "
"He would have to be very eccentric to dress
as he did. There are degrees and limits, dear."
"But kilts," said Mrs. Jehoram.
"Are all very well in the Highlands ..."
Mrs. Jehoram's eyes had rested upon a black
speck creeping slowly across a patch of yellowish-
green up the hill.
"There he goes," said Mrs. Jehoram, rising,
"across the cornfield. I'm sure that's him. I
can see the hump. Unless it's a man with a
sack. Bless me, Minnie! here's an opera glass.
How convenient for peeping at the Vicarage!
. . . Yes, it's the man. He is a man. With
such a sweet face."
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 147
Very unselfishly she allowed her hostess to
share the opera glass. For a minute there was
a rustling silence.
"His dress," said Mrs. Mendham, "is quite
respectable now.'*
"Quite," said Mrs. Jehoram.
Pause.
" He looks cross ! "
"And his coat is dusty."
" He walks steadily enough, " said Mrs. Mend-
ham, "or one might think . . . This hot
weather ..."
Another pause.
"You see, dear," said Mrs. Jehoram, putting
down the lorgnette. " What I was going to say
was, that possibly he might be a genius in dis-
guise."
"If you can call next door to nothing a dis-
guise."
"No doubt it was eccentric. But I've seen
children in little blouses, not at all unlike him.
So many clever people are peculiar in their
dress and manners. A genius may steal a
horse where a bank-clerk may not look over the
hedge. Very possibly he's quite well known
148 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
and laughing at our Arcadian simplicity. And
really it wasn't so improper as some of these
New Women bicycling costumes. I saw one in
one of the Illustrated Papers only a few days
ago the New Budget I think quite tights,
you know, dear. No I cling to the genius
theory. > Especially after the playing. I'm sure
the creature is original. Perhaps very amusing.
In fact, I intend to ask the Vicar to intro-
duce me."
"My dear!" cried Mrs. Mendham.
"I'm resolute," said Mrs. Jehoram.
"I'm afraid you're rash," said Mrs. Mendham.
"Geniuses and people of that kind are all very
well in London. But here at the Vicarage."
"We are going to educate the folks. I love
originality. At any rate I mean to see him."
"Take care you don't see too much of him,"
said Mrs. Mendham. "I've heard the fashion
is quite changing. I understand that some of
the very best people have decided that genius
is not to be encouraged any more. These re-
cent scandals . . ."
"Only in literature, I can assure you, dear.
In music ..."
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 149
"Nothing you can say, my dear," said Mrs.
Mendham, going off at a tangent, "will con-
vince me that that person's costume was not
extremely suggestive and improper."
A TRIVIAL INCIDENT.
XXXII.
THE Angel came thoughtfully by the hedge
across the field towards the Vicarage. The rays
of the setting sun shone on his shoulders, and
touched the Vicarage with gold, and blazed like
fire in all the windows. By the gate, bathed in
the sunlight, stood little Delia, the waiting
maid. She stood watching him under her hand.
It suddenly came into the Angel's mind that
she, at least, was beautiful, and not only beau-
tiful but alive and warm.
She opened the gate for him and stood aside.
She was sorry for him, for her elder sister was
a cripple. He bowed to her, as he would have
done to any woman, and for just one moment
looked into her face. She looked back at him
and something leapt within her.
The Angel made an irresolute movement.
"Your eyes are very beautiful," he said quietly,
with a remote wonder in Ins voice.
150
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 151
"Oh, sir!" she said, starting back. The
Angel's expression changed to perplexity. He
went on up the pathway between the Vicar's
flower-beds, and she stood with the gate held
open in her hand, staring after him. Just
under the rose-twined verandah he turned and
looked at her.
She still stared at him for a moment, and
then with a queer gesture turned round with
her back to him, shutting the gate as she did
so, and seemed to be looking down the valley
towards the church tower.
THE WARP AND THE WOOF OF THINGS.
XXXIII.
AT the dinner table the Angel told the Vicar
the more striking of his day's adventures.
"The strange thing," said the Angel, "is the
readiness of you Human Beings the zest, with
which you inflict pain. Those boys pelting me
this morning "
"Seemed to enjoy it," said the Vicar. "I
know."
"Yet they don't like pain," said the Angel.
"No," said the Vicar; "they don't like it."
"Then, "said the Angel, "I saw some beauti-
ful plants rising with a spike of leaves, two this
way and two that, and when I caressed one it
caused the most uncomfortable "
" Stinging nettle ! " said the Vicar.
"At any rate a new sort of pain. And
another plant with a head like a coronet, and
richly decorated leaves, spiked and jagged "
"A thistle, possibly."
152
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 15$
"And in your garden, the beautiful sweet-
smelling plant "
"The sweet briar," said the Vicar. "I re-
member."
" And that pink flower that sprang out of the
box "
"Out of the box?" said the Vicar.
"Last night," said the Angel, "that went
climbing up the curtains Flame!"
"Oh! the matches and the candles! Yes,"
said the Vicar.
"Then the animals. A dog to-day behaved
most disagreeably And these boys, and
the way in which people speak Every-
one seems anxious willing at any rate to
give this Pain. Everyone seems busy giving
pain "
"Or avoiding it," said the Vicar, pushing his
dinner away before him. "Yes of course.
It's fighting everywhere. The whole living
world is a battle-field the whole world. We
are driven by Pain. Here. How it lies on the
surface! This Angel sees it in a day!"
" But why does everyone everything want
to give pain? "asked the Angel.
154 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
" It is not so in the Angelic Land ? " said the
Vicar.
"No," said the Angel. "Why is it so here?"
The Vicar wiped his lips with his napkin
slowly. "It is so," he said. "Pain," said he
still more slowly, "is the warp and the woof of
this life. Do you know," he said, after a pause,
"it is almost impossible for me to imagine . . .
a world without pain. . . . And yet, as you
played this morning
"But this world is different. It is the very
reverse of an Angelic world. Indeed, a num-
ber of people excellent religious people have
been so impressed by the universality of pain
that they think, after death, things will be even
worse for a great many of us. It seems to me
an excessive view. But it's a deep question.
Almost beyond one's power of discussion "
And incontinently the Vicar plumped into an
impromptu dissertation upon "Necessity," how
things were so because they were so, how one
had to do this and that. "Even our food,"
said the Vicar. "What?" said the Angel. "Is
not obtained without inflicting Pain," said the
Vicar.
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 155
The Angel's face went so white that the
Vicar checked himself suddenly. Or he was
just on the very verge of a concise explanation
of the antecedents of a leg of lamb. There
was a pause.
" By-the-bye, " said the Angel, suddenly.
4 'Have you been pithed? Like the common
people."
THE ANGEL'S DEBUT.
XXXIV.
WHEN Lady Hammergallow made up her
mind, things happened as she resolved. And
though the Vicar made a spasmodic protest,
she carried out her purpose and got audience,
Angel, and violin together, at Siddermorton
House before the week was out. "A genius
the Vicar has discovered," she said ; so with
eminent foresight putting any possibility of
blame for a failure on the Vicar's shoulders.
"The dear Vicar tells me," she would say, and
proceed to marvellous anecdotes of the Angel's
cleverness with his instrument. But she was
quite in love with her idea she had always had
a secret desire to play the patroness to obscure
talent. Hitherto it had not turned out to be
talent when it came to the test.
" It would be such a good thing for him," she
said. " His hair is long already, and with that
156
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 157
high colour he would be beautiful, simply beauti-
ful on a platform. The Vicar's clothes fitting
him so badly makes him look quite like a
fashionable pianist already. And the scandal
of his birth not told, of course, but whispered
would be quite an Inducement when he
gets to London, that is."
The Vicar had the most horrible sensations as
the day approached. He spent hours trying to
explain the situation to the Angel, other hours
trying to imagine what people would think, still
worse hours trying to anticipate the Angel's
behaviour. Hitherto the angel had always played
for his own satisfaction. The Vicar would startle
him every now and then by rushing upon him
with some new point of etiquette that had just
occurred to him. As for instance : " It's very
important where you put your hat, you know.
Don't put it on a chair, whatever you do. Hold
it until you get your tea, you know, and then
let me see then put it down somewhere, you
know." The journey to Siddermorton House was-
accomplished without misadventure, but at the
moment of introduction the Vicar had a spasm
of horrible misgivings. He had forgotten to ex-
158 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
plain introductions. The Angel's naive amuse-
ment was evident, but nothing very terrible
happened.
"Rummy looking greaser," said Mr. Rath-
bone-Slater, who devoted considerable attention
to costume. " Wants grooming. No manners.
Grinned when he saw me shaking hands. Did
it chic enough, I thought."
One trivial incident occurred. When Lady
Hammergallow welcomed the Angel she looked
at him through her glasses. The apparent size
of her e}^es startled him. His surprise and his
quick attempt to peer over the brims was only
too evident. But the Vicar had warned him
of the ear-trumpet.
The Angel's incapacity to sit on anything but
a music stool appeared to excite some interest
among the ladies, but led to no remarks. They
regarded it perhaps as the affectation of a
budding professional. He was remiss with the
teacups and scattered the crumbs of his cake
abroad. (You must remember he was quite an
amateur at eating.) He crossed his legs. He
fumbled over the hat business after vainly try-
ing to catch the Vicar's eye. The eldest Miss
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 159
Papaver tried to talk to him about continental
watering places and cigarettes, and formed a low
opinion of his intelligence.
The Angel was surprised by the production of
an easel and several books of music, and a little
unnerved at first by the sight of Lady Hammer-
gallow sitting with her head on one side, watch-
ing him with those magnified eyes through her
gilt glasses.
Mrs. Jehoram came up to him before he began
to play and asked him the Name of the Charming
Piece he was playing the other afternoon. The
Angel said it had no name, and Mrs. Jehoram
thought music ought never to have any names-
and wanted to know who it was by, and when the
Angel told her he played it out of his head, she
said he must be Quite a Genius and looked open
(and indisputably fascinating) admiration at him.
The Curate from Iping Hanger (who was pro-
fessionally a Kelt and who played the piano and
talked colour and music with an air of racial
superiority) watched him jealously.
The Vicar, who was presently captured and
set down next to Lady Hammergallow, kept an
anxious eye ever Angelward while she told him
160 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
particulars of the incomes made by violinists
particulars which, for the most part, she invented
as she went along. She had been a little ruffled
by the incident of the glasses, but had decided
that it came within the limits of permissible
originality.
(Mrs. Mendham and the two Mendham girls
had declined the invitation even at the risk of
offending Lady Hammergallow. They had the
Parish to consider. Mrs. Mendham was surprised
and hurt at Lady Hammergallow giving such
people encouragement.)
So figure to yourself the Green Saloon at
Siddermorton Park ; an Angel thinly disguised in
clerical vestments and with a violin in his hands,
standing by the grand piano, and a respectable
gathering of quiet nice people, nicely dressed,
grouped about the room. Anticipatory gabble
one hears scattered fragments of conversation.
"He is incog"; said the very eldest Miss
Papaver to Mrs. Pirbright. "Isn't it quaint and
delicious. Jessica Jehoram says she saw him
at Vienna, but she can't remember the name.
The Vicar knows all about him, but he is so
close "
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 161
"How hot and uncomfortable the dear Vicar
is looking," said Mrs. Pirbright. " I've noticed it
before when he sits next to Lady Hammergallow.
She simply will not respect his cloth. She goes
on "
"His tie is all askew," said the very eldest
Miss Papaver, "and his hair! It really hardly
looks as though he had brushed it all day."
" Looks a foreign sort of chap. Affected. All
very well in a drawing-room," said George Har-
ringay, sitting apart with the younger Miss Pir-
bright. " But for my part give me a masculine
man and a feminine woman. What do you think ? "
" Oh ! I think so too," said the younger Miss
Pirbright.
" Guineas and guineas," said Lady Hammer-
gallow. "I've heard that some of them keep
quite stylish establishments. You would scarcely
credit it "
" I love music, Mr. Angel, I adore it. It stirs
something in me. I can scarcely describe it,"
said Mrs. Jehoram. "Who is it says that delicious
antithesis : Life without music is brutality ; music
without life is Dear me ! perhaps you remem-
ber ? Music without life it's Ruskin I think ? "
162 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
" I'm sorry that I do not," said the Angel. " I
have read very few books."
"How charming of you!" said Mrs. Jehoram.
"I wish I didn't. I sympathise with you pro-
foundly. I would do the same, only we poor
women 1 suppose it's originality we lack
And down here one is driven to the most desper-
ate proceedings "
" He's certainly very pretty. But the ultimate
test of a man is his strength," said George Har-
ringay. "What do you think?"
"Oh! I think so too," said the younger Miss
Pirbright.
"It's the effeminate man who makes the mas-
culine woman. When the glory of a man is his
hair, what's a woman to do ? And when men go
running about with beautiful hectic dabs "
" Oh George ! You are so dreadfully satirical
to-day," said the younger Miss Pirbright. "I'm
sure it isn't paint."
"I'm really not his guardian, my dear Lady
Hammergallow. Of course it's very kind indeed
of you to take such an interest "
" Are you really going to improvise ? " said Mrs.
Jehoram in a state of cooing delight.
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 163
"SSsh!" said the Curate from Iping Hanger.
Then the Angel began to play, looking straight
before him as he did so, thinking of the wonderful
things of the Angelic Land, and insensibly letting
the sadness he was beginning to feel, steal over
the fantasia he was playing. When he forgot his
company the music was strange and sweet ; when
the sense of his surroundings floated into his mind
the music grew capricious and grotesque. Mrs.
Jehoram sat and looked rapt and sympathetic as
hard as she could (though the music was puzzling
at times) and tried to catch his eye. He really
had a wonderfully expressive face, and the ten-
derest shades of expression ! And Mrs. Jehoram
was a judge. George Harringay looked bored,
until the younger Miss Pirbright, who adored
him, put out her mousy little shoe to touch his
manly boot, and then he turned his face to catch
the feminine delicacy of her coquettish eye, and
so was comforted. The very eldest Miss Papaver
and Mrs. Pirbright sat quite still and looked
churchy for nearly four minutes.
Then said the eldest Miss Papaver in a whisper,
"I always Enjoy violin music so much." And
Mrs. Pirbright answered, " We get so little Nice
164 * THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
music down here." And Miss Papaver said, " He
plays Very nicely." And Mrs. Pirbright, " Such
a Delicate Touch ! " And Miss Papaver, " Does
Willie keep up his lessons?" and so to a whis-
pered conversation.
The Curate from Iping Hanger sat (he felt)
in full view of the company. He had one hand
curled round his ear, and his eyes hard and star-
ing fixedly at the pedestal of the Hammergallow
Sevres vase. He supplied, by the movements of
his mouth, a kind of critical guide to any of the
company who were disposed to avail themselves
of it. It was a generous way he had. His aspect
was severely judicial, tempered by starts of evi|
dent disapproval and guarded appreciation. The
Vicar leaned back in his chair and stared at the
Angel's face, and was presently rapt away in a
wonderful dream. Lady Hammergallow, with
quick jerky movements of the head and a low
but insistent rustling, surveyed and tried to judge
of the effect of the Angelic playing. Mr. Rath-
bone-Slater stared very solemnly into his hat and
looked very miserable, and Mrs. Rathbone-Slater
made mental memoranda of Mrs. Jehoram's sleeves.
And the air about them all was heavy with ex-
quisite music for all that had ears to hear.
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 165
"Scarcely affected enough," whispered Lady
Hammergallow hoarsely, suddenly poking the
Vicar in the ribs. The Vicar came out of Dream-
land suddenly. "Eigh?" shouted the Vicar,
startled, coming up with a jump. " Sssh ! " said
the Curate from Iping Hanger, and everyone
looked shocked at the brutal insensibility of
Hilyer. "So unusual of the Vicar," said the
very eldest Miss Papaver, "to do things like
that!" The Angel went on playing.
The Curate from Iping Hanger began making
mesmeric movements with his index finger, and
as the thing proceeded Mr. Rathbone-Slater got
amazingly limp. He solemnly turned his hat
round and altered his view. The Vicar lapsed
from an uneasy discomfort into dreamland again.
Lady Hammergallow rustled a great deal, and
presently found a way of making her chair creak.
And at last the thing came to an end. Lady
Hammergallow exclaimed " De licious ! " though
she had never heard a note, and began clapping
her hands. At that everyone clapped except Mr.
Rathbone-Slater, who rapped his hat brim instead.
The Curate from Iping Hanger clapped with a
judicial air.
166 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
" So I said (dap, clap, dap), if you cannot cook
the food my way (clap, clap, clap) you must go"
said Mrs. Pirbright, clapping vigorously. " (This
music is a delightful treat.) "
" (It is. I always revel in music,) " said the
veiy eldest Miss Papaver. "And did she im-
prove after that?"
" Not a bit of it," said Mrs. Pirbright.
The Vicar woke up again and stared round the
saloon. Did other people see these visions, or
were they confined to him alone? Surely they
must all see . . . and have a wonderful command
of their feelings. It was incredible that such
music should not affect them. " He's a trifle
gauche" said Lady Hammergallow, jumping upon
the Vicar's attention. "He neither bows nor
smiles. He must cultivate oddities like that.
Every successful executant is more or less
gauche"
"Did you really make that up yourself?" said
Mrs. Jehoram, sparkling her eyes at him, " as you
went along. Really, it is wonderful! Nothing
less than wonderful."
"A little amateurish," said the Curate from
Iping Hanger to Mr. Rathbone-Slater. " A great
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 167
gift, undoubtedly, but a certain lack of sustained
training. There were one or two little things
... I would like to talk to him."
" His trousers look like concertinas," said Mr.
Rathbone-Slater. "He ought to be told that.
It's scarcely decent."
"Can you do Imitations, Mr. Angel?" said
Lady Hammergallow.
" Oh c?o, do some Imitations ! " said Mrs.
Jehoram. "I adore Imitations."
"It was a fantastic thing," said the Curate of
Iping Hanger to the Vicar of Siddermorton, wav-
ing his long indisputably musical hands as he
spoke; "a little involved, to my mind. I have
heard it before somewhere I forget where. He
has genius undoubtedly, but occasionally he is
loose. There is a certain deadly precision want-
ing. There are years of discipline yet."
" I don't admire these complicated pieces of
music," said George Harringay. " I have simple
tastes, I'm afraid. There seems to me no tune
in it. There's "nothing I like so much as simple
music. Tune, simplicity is the need of the age,
in my opinion. We are so over subtle. Every-
thing is far-fetched. Home-grown thoughts and
168 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
' Home, Sweet Home ' for me. What do you
think ?"
" Oh ! I think so quite?' said the younger
Miss Pirbright.
"Well, Amy, chattering to George as usual?"
said Mrs. Pirbright, across the room.
"As usual, Ma!" said the younger Miss Pir-
bright, glancing round with a bright smile at
Miss Papaver, and turning again so as not to
lose the next utterance from George.
" I wonder if you and Mr. Angel could manage
a duet?" said Lady Hammergallow to the Curate
from Iping Hanger, who was looking preternat-
urally gloomy.
" I'm sure I should be delighted," said the
Curate from Iping Hanger, brightening up.
" Duets ! " said the Angel ; " the two of us.
Then he can play. I understood the Vicar told
me"
" Mr. Wilmerdings is an accomplished pianist,"
interrupted the Vicar.
" But the Imitations ? " said Mrs. Jehoram, who
detested Wilmerdings.
" Imitations ! " said the Angel.
" A pig squeaking, a cock crowing, you know,"
THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
said Mr. Rathbone-Slater, and added lower, " Best
fun you can get out of a fiddle my opinion.'*
"I really don't understand," said the Angel.
" A pig crowing ! "
" You don't like Imitations," said Mrs. Jehoram.
" Nor do I really. I accept the snub. I think
they degrade. . . ."
"Perhaps afterwards Mr. Angel will Relent,"
said Lady Hammergallow, when Mrs. Pirbrighthad
explained the matter to her. She could scarcely
credit her ear-trumpet. When she asked for Imi-
tations she was accustomed to get Imitations.
Mr. Wilmerdings had seated himself at the
piano, and had turned to a familiar pile of music
in the recess. "What do you think of that Bar-
carole thing of Spohr's ? " he said over his shoul-
der. "I suppose you know it?" The Angel
looked bewildered.
He opened the folio before the Angel.
" What an odd kind of book ! " said the Angel.
" What do all those crazy dots mean ? " (At that
the Vicar's blood ran cold.)
"What dots?" said the Curate.
" There ! " said the Angel with incriminating
finger.
170 THE WONDEBFUL VISIT.
" Oh come ! " said the Curate.
There was one of those swift, short silences that
mean so much in a social gathering.
Then the eldest Miss Papaver turned upon the
Vicar. " Does not Mr. Angel play from ordinary
. . . Music from the ordinary notation ? "
"I have never heard," said the Vicar, getting
red now after the first shock of horror. "I have
really never seen. . . ."
The Angel felt the situation was strained,
though what was straining it he could not under-
stand. He became aware of a doubtful, an un-
friendly look upon the faces that regarded him.
" Impossible ! " he heard Mrs. Pirbright say ;
*' after that beautiful music." The eldest Miss
Papaver went to Lady Hammergallow at once,
and began to explain into her ear-trumpet that
Mr. Angel did not wish to play with Mr. Wil-
merdings, and alleged an ignorance of written
music.
" He cannot play from Notes ! " said Lady
Hammergallow in a voice of measured horror.
" Non sense I "
"Notes!" said the Angel perplexed. "Are
these notes?" asked the Angel.
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 171
" It's carrying the joke too far simply because
he doesn't want to play with Wilmerdings," said
Mr. Rathbone-Slater to George Harringay.
There was an expectant pause. The Angel
perceived he had to be ashamed of himself. He
was ashamed of himself.
"Then," said Lady Hammergallow, throwing
her head back and speaking with deliberate indig-
nation, as she rustled forward, " if you cannot play
with Mr. Wilmerdings I am afraid I cannot ask
you to play again." She made it sound like an
ultimatum. Her glasses in her hand quivered
violently with indignation. The Angel was now
human enough to appreciate the fact that he was
crushed.
"What is it?" said little Lucy Rustchuck in the
further bay.
" He's refused to play with old Wilmerdings,"
said Tommy Rathbone-Slater. " What a lark !
The old girl's purple. She thinks heaps of that
ass, Wilmerdings."
" Perhaps, Mr. Wilmerdings, you will favour
us with that delicious Polonaise of Chopin's,"
said Lady Hammergallow. Everybody else was
hushed. The indignation of Lady Hammergallow
172 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
inspired much the same silence as a coming earth-
quake or an eclipse. Mr. Wilmerdings perceived
he would be doing a real social service to begin
at once, and (be it entered to his credit now
that his account draws near its settlement)
he did.
"If a man pretend to practise an Art," said
George Harringay, " he ought at least to have
the conscience to study the elements of it. What
do you . . ."
" Oh ! I think so too," said the youngest Miss
Pirbright.
The Vicar felt that the heavens had fallen.
He sat crumpled up in his chair, a shattered man.
Lady Hammergallow sat down next to him with-
out appearing to see him. She was breathing
heavily, but her face was terribly calm. Every-
one sat down. Was the Angel grossly ignorant
or only grossly impertinent? The Angel was
vaguely aware of some frightful offence, aware
that in some mysterious way he had ceased to be
the centre of the gathering. He saw reproachful
despair in the Vicar's eye. He drifted slowly
towards the window in the recess and sat down
on the little octagonal Moorish stool by the side
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 173
of Mrs. Jehoram. And under the circumstances
he appreciated at more than its proper value Mrs.
Jehoram's kindly smile. He put down the violin
in the window seat.
THE ANGEL'S DBBUT continued.
XXXV.
MRS. JEHORAM and the Angel (apart) Mr.
Wilmerdings playing.
" I have so longed for a quiet word with you,"
said Mrs. Jehoram in a low tone. " To tell you
how delightful I found your playing."
" I am glad it pleased you," said the Angel.
"Pleased is scarcely the word," said Mrs.
Jehoram. "I was moved profoundly. These
others did not understand ... I was glad you
did not play with him."
The Angel looked at the mechanism called
Wilmerdings, and felt glad too. (The Angelic
conception of duets is a kind of conversation
upon violins.) But he said nothing.
"I worship music," said Mrs. Jehoram. "I
know nothing about it technically, but there is
something in it a longing, a wish . . ."
* 174
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 175
The Angel stared at her face. She met his eyes.
" You understand," she said. " I see you under-
stand." He was certainly a very nice boy, senti-
mentally precocious perhaps, and with deliciously
liquid eyes.
There was an interval of Chopin (Op. 40}
played with immense precision.
Mrs. Jehoram had a sweet face still, in shadow,
with the light falling round her golden hair, and
a curious theory flashed across the Angel's mind.
The perceptible powder only supported his view
of something infinitely bright and lovable caught r
tarnished, coarsened, coated over.
" Do you," said the Angel in a low tone. " Are
you . . . separated from . . . your world?"
" As you are ? " whispered Mrs. Jehoram.
"This is so cold," said the Angel. "So
harsh!" He meant the whole world.
"I feel it too," said Mrs. Jehoram, referring
to Siddermorton Home.
"There are those who cannot live without
sympathy," she said after a sympathetic pause.
" And times when one feels alone in the world.
Fighting a battle against it all. Laughing, flirt-
ing, hiding the pain of it . . ."
176 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
" And hoping," said the Angel with a wonder-
ful glance " Yes."
Mrs. Jehoram (who was an epicure of flirta-
tions) felt the Angel was more than redeeming
the promise of his appearance. (Indisputably he
worshipped her.) " Do you look for sympathy ? "
she said. " Or have you found it ? "
" I think," said the Angel, very softly, leaning
forward, " I think I have found it."
Interval of Chopin Op. 40. The very eldest
Miss Papaver and Mrs. Pirbright whispering.
Lady Hammergallow (glasses up) looking down
the saloon with an unfriendly expression at the
Angel. Mrs. Jehoram and the Angel exchanging
deep and significant glances.
" Her name," said the Angel (Mrs. Jehoram
made a movement), " is Delia. She is . . ."
" Delia ! " said Mrs. Jehoram sharply, suddenly
realising a terrible misunderstanding. " A fanci-
ful name . . . Why! ... No! Not that
little housemaid at the Vicarage ? ..."
The Polonaise terminated with a flourish. The
Angel was quite surprised at the change in Mrs.
Jehoram's expression.
" I never did ! " said Mrs. Jehoram, recovering.
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 177
** To make me your confidant in an intrigue with
a servant. Really, Mr. Angel, it's possible to be
too original ..."
Then suddenly their colloquy was interrupted.
THE ANGEL'S DEBUT continued.
XXXVI.
THIS section is (so far as my memory goes) the
shortest in the book.
But the enormity of the offence necessitates
the separation of this section from all other
sections.
The Vicar, you must understand, had done his
best to inculcate the recognised differentiae of a
gentleman. "Never allow a lady to carry any-
thing," said the Vicar. " Say, ' permit me ' and
relieve her." "Always stand until every lady is
seated." "Always rise and open a door for a
lady ..." and so forth. (All men who have
elder sisters know that code.)
And the Angel (who had failed to relieve Lady
Hammergallow of her teacup) danced forward
with astonishing dexterity (leaving Mrs. Jehoram
178
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 179
in the window seat) and with an elegant " permit
nie" rescued the tea-tray from Lady Hammer-
gallow's pretty parlour-maid and vanished offi-
ciously in front of her. The Vicar rose to his feet
with an inarticulate cry.
THE ANGEL'S DEBUT continued.
XXXVII.
"HE'S drunk!" said Mr. Rathbone-Slater,
breaking a terrific silence. "That's the matter
with him"
Mrs. Jehoram laughed hysterically.
The Vicar stood up, motionless, staring. " Oh!
I forgot to explain servants to him I " said the
Vicar to himself in a swift outbreak of remorse.
" I thought he did understand servants."
" Really, Mr. Hilyer ! " said Lady Hammer-
gallow, evidently exercising enormous self-control
and speaking in panting spasms. " Really, Mr.
Hilyer ! Your genius is too terrible. I must,
I really must, ask you to take him home."
So to the dialogue in the corridor of alarmed
maid-servant and well-meaning (but shockingly
gauche) Angel appears the Vicar, his botryoidal
little face crimson, gaunt despair in his eyes, and
his necktie under his left ear.
180
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 181
"Come," he said struggling with emotion.
Come away. ... I ... I am disgraced for
ever."
And the Angel stared for a second at him and
obeyed meekly, perceiving himself in the pres-
ence of unknown but evidently terrible forces.
And so began and ended the Angel's social
career.
In the informal indignation meeting that fol-
lowed, Lady Hammergallow took the (informal)
chair. " I feel humiliated," she said. " The Vicar
assured me he was an exquisite player. I never
imagined . . ."
"He was drunk," said Mr. Rathbone-Slater.
" You could tell it from the way he fumbled with
his tea."
" Such a fiasco ! " said Mrs. Mergle.
"The Vicar assured me," said Lady Hammer-
gallow. " The man I have staying with me is a
musical genius,' he said. His very words."
"His ears must be burning anyhow," said
Tommy Rathbone-Slater.
"I was trying to keep him Quiet," said Mrs.
Jehoram. "By humouring him. And do you
know the things he said to me there ! "
182 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
" The thing he played," said Mr. Wilmerdings,
" I must confess I did not like to charge him
to his face. But really! It was merely drifting"
" Just fooling with a fiddle, eigh ? " said George
Harringay. " Well, I thought it was beyond me.
So much of your fine music is "
" Oh, George ! " said the youngest Miss Pir-
bright.
" The Vicar was a bit on too to judge by his
tie," said Mr. Rathbone-Slater. "It's a dashed
nimmy go. Did you notice how he fussed after
the genius?"
" One has to be so very careful," said the very
eldest Miss Papaver.
"He told me he is in love with the Vicar's
housemaid!" said Mrs. Jehoram. "I almost
laughed in his face."
"The Vicar ought never to have brought him
here," said Mrs. Rathbone-Slater with decision.
THE TBOUBLB OF THE BARBED WIRE.
xxxvni.
So, ingloriously, ended the Angel's first and
last appearance in Society. Vicar and Angel re-
turned to the Vicarage ; crestfallen black figures
in the bright sunlight, going dejectedly. The
Angel, deeply pained that the Vicar was pained.
The Vicar, dishevelled and desperate, intercalating
spasmodic remorse and apprehension with broken
explanations of the Theory of Etiquette. " They
do not understand," said the Vicar over and over
again. " They will all be so very much aggrieved.
I do not know what to say to them. It is all so
confused, so perplexing." And at the gate of
the Vicarage, at the very spot where Delia had
first seemed beautiful, stood Horrocks, the village
constable, awaiting them. He held coiled up
about his hand certain short lengths of barbed
.
wire.
183
184 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
"Good-evening, Horrocks," said the Vicar as
the constable held the gate open.
" Evening Sir," said Horrocks, and added in a
kind of mysterious undertone, " Could I speak to
you a minute, Sir ? "
" Certainly," said the Vicar. The Angel walked
on thoughtfully to the house, and meeting Delia
in the hall stopped her and cross-examined her
at length over differences between Servants and
Ladies.
" You'll excuse my taking the liberty, Sir," said
Horrocks, "but there's trouble brewin' for that
crippled gent you got stayin' here."
" Bless me ! " said the Vicar. " You don't say
so!"
" Sir John Gotch, Sir. He's very angry indeed,
Sir. His language, Sir But I felt bound to
tell you, Sir. He's certain set on taking out a
summons on account of that there barbed wire.
Certain set, Sir, he is."
"Sir John Gotch!" said the Vicar. "Wire!
I don't understand."
" He asked me to find out who did it. Course
I've had to do my duty, Sir. Naturally a dis-
agreeable one."
THE WONDEBFUL VISIT. 185
" Barbed wire ! Duty ! I don't understand
you, Horrocks."
44 I'm afraid, Sir, there's no denying the evidence-
I've made careful enquiries, Sir." And forthwith
the constable began telling the Vicar of a new
and terrible outrage committed by the Angelie
visitor.
But we need not follow that explanation in
detail or the subsequent confession. (For my
own part I think there is nothing more tedious
than dialogue.) It gave the Vicar a new view of
the Angelic character, a vignette of the Angelie
indignation. A shady lane, sun-mottled, sweet
hedges full of honeysuckle and vetch on either
side, and a little girl gathering flowers, forgetful
of the barbed wire which, all along the Sidderford
Road, fenced in the dignity of Sir John Gotch
from " bounders " and the detested " million.'*
Then suddenly a gashed hand, a bitter outcry, and
the Angel sympathetic, comforting, inquisitive.
Explanations sob-set, and then altogether novel
phenomenon in the Angelic career passion. A
furious onslaught upon the barbed wire of Sir
John Gotch, barbed wire recklessly handled,
slashed, bent and broken. Yet the Angel acted
186 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
without personal malice saw in the thing only
an ugly and vicious plant that trailed insidiously
among its fellows. Finally the Angel's explana-
tions gave the Vicar a picture of the Angel alone
amidst his destruction, trembling and amazed at
the sudden force, not himself, that had sprung up
within him, and set him striking and cutting.
Amazed, too, at the crimson blood that trickled
down his fingers.
" It is still more horrible," said the Angel when
the Vicar had explained the artificial nature of
the thing. " If I had seen the man who put this
silly-cruel stuff there to hurt little children, I
know I should have tried to inflict pain upon him.
I have never felt like this before. I am indeed
becoming tainted and coloured altogether by the
wickedness of this world.
"To think, too, that you men should be so
foolish as to combine to uphold a law that lets a
man do such spiteful things. Yes I know ; you
will say it has to be so. For some remoter
reason. That is a thing that only makes me
angrier. Why cannot an act rest on its own
merits? . . ."
And that was the incident of which the Vicar
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 187
now gradually learnt the history, getting the bare
outline from Horrocks, the colour and emotion
subsequently from the Angel. The thing had
happened the day before the musical festival at
Siddermorton House.
"Have you told Sir John who did it?" asked
the Vicar. "And are you sure?"
"Quite sure, Sir. There can be no doubting it
was your gentleman, Sir. I've not told Sir John
yet, Sir. But I shall have to tell Sir John this
evening. Meaning no offence to you, Sir, as I
hopes you'll see. It's my duty, Sir. Besides
which- "
" Of course," said the Vicar, hastily. "Certainly
it's your duty. And what will Sir John do ? "
" He's dreadful set against the person who did
it destroying property like that and sort of
slapping his arrangements in the face."
Pause. Horrocks made a movement. The
Vicar, tie almost at the back of his neck now,
a most unusual thing for him, stared blankly at
his toes.
" I thought I'd tell you, Sir," said Horrocks.
"Yes," said the Vicar. "Thanks, Horrocks,
thanks!" He scratched the back of his head.
188 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
"You might perhaps ... I think it's the best
way . . . Quite sure Mr. Angel did it ? "
" Sherlock 'Omes, Sir, couldn't be cocksurer."
" Then I'd better give you a little note to the
Squire."
THE TROUBLE OF THE BARBED WIBE
continued.
XXXIX.
THE Vicar's table-talk at dinner that night,
after the Angel had stated his case, was full of
grim explanations, prisons, madness.
" It's too late to tell the truth about you now,"
said the Vicar. "Besides, that's impossible. I
really do not know what to say. We must face
our circumstances, I suppose. I am so undecided
so torn. It's the two worlds. If your Angelic
world were only a dream, or if this world were
only a dream or if I could believe either or both
dreams, it would be all right with me. But here
is a real Angel and a real summons how to
reconcile them I do not know. I must talk to
Gotch. . . . But he won't understand. Noboch:
will understand. . . ."
" I am putting you to terrible inconvenience, I
am afraid. My appalling unworldliness "
189
190 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
" It's not you," said the Vicar. " It's not you.
I perceive you have brought something strange
and beautiful into my life. It's not you. It's
myself. If I had more faith either way. If I
could believe entirely in this world, and call you
an Abnormal Phenomenon, as Crump does. But
no. Terrestrial Angelic, Angelic Terrestrial. . . .
See-Saw.
" Still, Gotch is certain to be disagreeable, most
disagreeable. He always is. It puts me into his
hands. He is a bad moral influence, I know.
Drinking. Gambling. Worse. 43 till, one must
render unto Caesar the things that are Csesar's.
And he is against Disestablishment. . . ."
Then the Vicar would revert to the social
collapse of the afternoon. "You are so very
fundamental, you know," he said several times.
The Angel went to his own room puzzled
but very depressed. Every day the world had
frowned darker upon him and his angelic ways.
He could see how the trouble affected the Vicar,
yet he could not imagine how he could avert it.
It was all so strange and unreasonable. Twice
again, too, he had been pelted out of the village.
He found the violin lying on his bed where he
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 191
had laid it before dinner. And taking it up he
began to play to comfort himself. But now he
played no delicious vision of the Angelic Land.
The iron of the world was entering into his soul.
For a week now he had known pain and rejec-
tion, suspicion and hatred; a strange new spirit
of revolt was growing up in his heart. He played
a melody, still sweet and tender as those of the
Angelic Land, but charged with a new note, the
note of human sorrow and effort, now swelling
into something like defiance, dying now into a
plaintive sadness. He played softly, playing to
himself to comfort himself, but the Vicar heard,
and all his finite bothers were swallowed up in a
hazy melancholy, a melancholy that was some-
how quite remote from sorrow. And besides the
Vicar, the Angel had another hearer of whom
neither Angel nor Vicar was thinking.
DELIA.
XL.
SHE was only four or five yards away from the
Angel in the westward gable. The diamond-
paned window of her little white room was open.
She knelt on her box of japanned tin, and rested
her chin on her hands, her elbows on the window-
sill. The young moon hung over the pine trees,
and its light, cool and colourless, lay softly upon
the silent-sleeping world. Its light fell upon her
white face, and discovered new depths in her
dreaming eyes. Her soft lips fell apart and
showed the little white teeth.
Delia was thinking vaguely, wonderfully, as
girls will think. It was feeling rather than think-
ing; clouds of beautiful translucent emotion drove
across the clear sky of her mind, taking shape
that changed and vanished. She had all that
wonderful emotional tenderness, that subtle ex-
quisite desire for self-sacrifice, which exists so
192
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 193
inexplicably in a girl's heart, exists it seems only
to be presently trampled under foot by the grim
and gross humours of daily life, to be ploughed
in again roughly and remorselessly, as the farmer
ploughs in the clover again that has sprung up in
the soil. She had been looking out at the tran-
quillity of the moonlight long before the Angel
began to play waiting ; then suddenly the quiet,
motionless beauty of silver and shadow was suf-
fused with tender music.
She did not move, but her lips closed and her
eyes grew even softer. She had been thinking
before of the strange glory that had suddenly
flashed out about the stooping hunchback when
he spoke to her in the sunset ; of that and of a
dozen other glances, chance turns, even once the
touching of her hand. That afternoon he had
spoken to her, asking strange questions. Now the
music seemed to bring his very face before her,
his look of half curious solicitude, peering into her
face, into her eyes, into her and through her, deep
down into her soul. He seemed now to be speak-
ing directly to her, telling her of his solitude and
trouble. Oh ! that regret, that longing ! For he
was in trouble. And how could a servant-girl
194 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
help him, this soft-spoken gentleman who carried
himself so kindly, who played so sweetly. The
music was so sweet and keen, it came so near to
the thought of her heart, that presently one band
tightened on the other, and the tears came stream-
ing down her face.
As Crump would tell you, people do not do
that kind of thing unless there is something
wrong with the nervous system. But then, from
the scientific point of view, being in love is a
pathological condition.
I am painfully aware of the objectionable
nature of my story here. I have even thought of
wilfully perverting the truth to propitiate the
Lady Reader. But I could not. The story has
been too much for me. I do the thing with my
eyes open. Delia must remain what she really
was a servant-girl. I know that to give a
mere servant-girl, or at least an English servant-
girl, the refined feelings of a human being, to
present her as speaking with anything but an
intolerable confusion of aspirates, places me
outside the pale of respectable writers. Asso-
ciation with servants, even in thought, is dangerous
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 195
in these days. I can only plead (pleading vainly,
I know), that Delia was a very exceptional
servant-girl. Possibly, if one enquired, it might
be found that her parentage was upper middle-
class that she was made of the finer upper
middle-class clay. And (this perhaps may avail
me better) I will promise that in some future
work I will redress the balance, and the patient
reader shall have the recognised article, enor-
mous feet and hands, systematic aspiration of
vowels and elimination of aspirates, no figure
(only middle-class girls have figures the thing
is beyond a servant-girl's means), a fringe (by
agreement), and a cheerful readiness to dispose
of her self-respect for half-a-crown. That is the
accepted English servant, the typical English
woman (when stripped of money and accomplish-
ments) as she appears in the works of contem-
porary writers. But Delia somehow was different.
I can only regret the circumstance it was alto-
gether beyond my control.
DOCTOR CRUMP ACTS.
XLI.
EARLY the next morning the Angel went
down through the village, and climbing the
fence, waded through the waist-high reeds that
fringe the Sidder. He was going to Ban dram
Bay to take a nearer view of the sea, which one
could just see on a clear day from the higher
parts of Siddermorton Park. And suddenly he
came upon Crump sitting on a log and smoking.
(Crump always smoked exactly two ounces per
week and he always smoked it in the open
air.)
"Hullo!" said Crump, in his healthiest tone.
"How's the wing?"
"Very well," said the Angel. "The pain's
gone."
" I suppose you know you are trespassing ? "
" Trespassing ! " said the Angel.
196
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 197
" I suppose you don't know what that means,"
said Crump.
" I don't," said the Angel.
" I must congratulate you. I don't know how
long you will last, but you are keeping it up
remarkably well. I thought at first you were
a mattoid, but you're so amazingly consistent.
Your attitude of entire ignorance of the element-
ary facts of Life is really a very amusing pose.
You make slips of course, but very few. But
surely we two understand one another."
He smiled at the Angel. "You would beat
Sherlock Holmes. I wonder who you really are."
The Angel smiled back, with eyebrows raised
and hands extended. "It's impossible for you
to know who I am. Your eyes are blind, your
ears deaf, your soul dark, to all that is wonderful
about me. It's no good my telling that I fell into
your world."
The Doctor waved his pipe. " Not that, please.
I don't want to pry if you have your reasons for
keeping quiet. Only I would like you to think
of Hilyer's mental health. He really believes
this story."
The Angel shrugged his dwindling wings.
198 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
"You did not know him before this affair.
He's changed tremendously. He used to be
neat and comfortable. For the last fortnight
he's been hazy, with a far-away look in his eyes.
He preached last Sunday without his cuff links,
and something wrong with his tie, and he took
for his text, 'Eye hath not seen nor ear heard.'
He really believes all this nonsense about the
Angel-land. The man is verging on mono-
mania ! "
"You will see things from your own stand-
point," said the Angel.
" Every one must. At any rate, I think it jolly
regrettable to see this poor old fellow hypnotised,
as you certainly have hypnotised him. I don't
know where you come from nor who you are,
but I warn you I'm not going to see the old
boy made a fool of much longer."
"But he's not being made a fool of. He's
simply beginning to dream of a world outside
his knowledge "
"It won't do," said Crump. "I'm not one of
the dupe class. You are either of two things
a lunatic at large (which I don't believe), or a
knave. Nothing else is possible. I think I
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 199
know a little of this world, whatever I do of
yours. Very well. If you don't leave Hilyer
alone I shall communicate with the police, and
either clap you into a prison, if you go back on
your story, or into a madhouse if you don't. It's
stretching a point, but I swear I'd certify you
insane to-morrow to get you out of the village.
It's not only the Vicar. As you know. I hope
that's plain. Now what have you to say?"
"With an affectation of great calm, the Doctor
took out his penknife and began to dig the blade
into his pipe bowl. His pipe had gone out during
this last speech.
For a moment neither spoke. The Angel
looked about him with a face that grew pale.
The Doctor extracted a plug of tobacco from
his pipe and flung it away, shut his penknife
and put it in his waistcoat pocket. He had not
meant to speak quite so emphatically, but speech
always warmed him.
" Prison," said the Angel. " Madhouse ! Let
me see." Then he remembered the Vicar's ex-
planation. "Not that!" he said. He approached
Crump with eyes dilated and hands outstretched.
"I knew you would know what those things
200 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
meant at any rate. Sit down," said Crump,,
indicating the tree trunk beside him by a move-
ment of the head.
The Angel, shivering, sat down on the tree
trunk and stared at the Doctor.
Crump was getting out his pouch. "You are
a strange man," said the Angel. "Your beliefs
are like a steel trap."
u They are," said Crump flattered.
"But I tell you I assure you the thing is
so I know nothing, or at least remember noth-
ing of anything I knew of this world before
I found myself in the darkness of night on the
moorland above Sidderford."
" Where did you learn the language then ? "
"I don't know. Only I tell you But I
haven't an atom of the sort of proof that would
convince you."
44 And you really," said Crump, suddenly com-
ing round upon him and looking into his eyes ;
44 You really believe you were eternally in a kind
of glorious heaven before then ? "
44 1 do," said the Angel.
"Pshaw!" said Crump, and lit his pipe. He
sat smoking, elbow on knee, for some time, and
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 201
the Angel sat and watched him. Then his face
grew less troubled.
"It is just possible," he said to himself rather
than to the Angel, and began another piece of
silence.
"You see;" he said, when that was finished.
" There is such a thing as double personality. . . .
A man sometimes forgets who he is and thinks he
is someone else. Leaves home, friends, and every-
thing, and leads a double life. There was a case
in Nature only a month or so ago. The man was.
sometimes English and right-handed, and some-
times Welsh and left-handed. When he was
English he knew no Welsh, when he was Welsh
he knew no English. . . . H'm."
He turned suddenly on the Angel and said
" Home ! " He fancied he might revive in the
Angel some latent memory of his lost youth.
He went on " Dadda, Pappa, Daddy, Mammy,
Pappy, Father, Dad, Governor, Old Boy, Mother,,
dear Mother, Ma, Mumsy. . . . No good ? What
are you laughing at?"
"Nothing,"' said the Angel. "You surprised
me a little, that is all. A week ago I should
have been puzzled by that vocabulary."
202 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
For a minute Crump rebuked the Angel silently
out of the corner of his eye.
"You have such an ingenuous face. You
almost force me to believe you. You are cer-
tainly not an ordinary lunatic. Your mind
except for your isolation from the past seems
balanced enough. I wish Nordau or Lombroso
or some of these Saltpetriere men could have a
look at you. Down here one gets no practice
worth speaking about in mental cases. There's
one idiot and he's just a damned idiot of an
idiot ; all the rest are thoroughly sane people."
"Possibly that accounts for their behaviour,"
said the Angel thoughtfully.
"But to consider your general position here,"
said Crump, ignoring his comment, "I really
regard you as a bad influence here. These
fancies are contagious. It is not simply the
Vicar. There is a man named Shine has caught
the fad, and he has been in the drink for a week,
off and on, and offering to fight anyone who says
you are not an Angel. Then a man over at
Sidderford is, I hear, affected with a kind of
religious mania on the same tack. These things
spread. There ought to be a quarantine in mis-
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 203
chievous ideas. And I have heard another
story. . . ."
"But what can I do?" said the Angel.
"Suppose I am (quite unintentionally) doing
mischief. . . ."
" You can leave the village," said Crump.
44 Then I shall only go into another village."
44 That's not my affair," said Crump. " Go
where you like. Only go. Leave these three
people, the Vicar, Shine, the little servant-girl,
whose heads are all spinning with galaxies of
Angels. . . ."
"But," said the Angel, "Face your world!
I tell you I can't. And leave Delia! I don't
understand. ... I do not know how to set
about getting Work and Food and Shelter. And
I am growing afraid of human beings. . . ."
44 Fancies, fancies," said Crump, watching him,
44 mania."
44 It's no good my persisting in worrying you,"
he said suddenly, "but certainly the situation is
impossible as it stands." He stood up with a jerk.
"Good-morning, Mr. Angel," he said, "the
long and the short of it is I say it as the
medical adviser of this parish you are an
204 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
unhealthy influence. We can't have you. You
must go."
He turned, and went striding through the grass
towards the roadway, leaving the Angel sitting
disconsolately on the tree trunk. " An unhealthy
influence," said the Angel slowly, staring blankly
in front of him, and trying to realise what it
meant.
SIR JOHN GOTCH ACTS.
XLII.
SIR JOHN GOTCH was a little man with scrubby
hair, a small, thin nose sticking out of a face
cracked with wrinkles, tight brown gaiters, and a
riding whip. "I've come, you see," he said, as
Mrs. Hinijer closed the door.
" Thank you," said the Vicar, " I'm obliged to
you. I'm really obliged to you."
"Glad to be of any service to you," said Sir
John Gotch. (Angular attitude.)
" This business," said the Vicar, " this unfortu-
nate business of the barbed wire is really, you
know, a most unfortunate business."
Sir John Gotch became decidedly more angular
in his attitude. " It is," he said.
" This Mr. Angel being my guest "
" No reason why he should cut my wire," said
Sir John Gotch, briefly.
"None whatever."
205
206 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
"May I ask who this Mr. Angel is?" asked
Sir John Gotch with the abruptness of long
premeditation.
The Vicar's fingers jumped to his chin. What
was the good of talking to a man like Sir John
Gotch about Angels ?
" To tell you the exact truth," said the Vicar,
*' there is a little secret "
"Lady Hammergallow told me as much."
The Vicar's face suddenly became bright red.
" Do you know," said Sir John, with scarcely a
pause, "he's been going about this village preach-
ing Socialism?"
" Good heavens ! " said the Vicar, " No ! "
" He has. He has been buttonholing every
yokel he came across, and asking them why they
had to work, while we I and you, you know
did nothing. He has been saying we ought to
educate every man up to your level and mine
out of the rates, I suppose, as usual. He has
been suggesting that we I and you, you know
keep these people down pith 'em."
" Dear me ! " said the Vicar, " I had no idea."
" He has done this wire-cutting as a demonstra-
tion, I tell you, as a Socialistic demonstration. If
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 207
we don't come down on him pretty sharply, I tell
you, we shall have the palings down in Flinders
Lane next, and the next thing will be ricks afire,
and every damned (I beg your pardon, Vicar. I
know I'm too fond of that word), every blessed
pheasant's egg in the parish smashed. I know
these"
"A Socialist," said the Vicar, quite put out, "I
had no idea."
" You see why I am inclined to push matters
against our gentleman though he is your guest.
It seems to me he has been taking advantage of
your paternal "
" Oh, not paternal ! " said the Vicar. " Really "
"(I beg your pardon, Vicar it was a slip.)
Of your kindness, to go mischief-making every-
where, setting class against class, and the poor
man against his bread and butter."
The Vicar's fingers were at his chin again.
"So there's one of two things," said Sir John
Gotch. "Either that Guest of yours leaves the
parish, or I take proceedings. That's final."
The Vicar's mouth was all askew.
"That's the position," said Sir John, jumping
to his feet, " if it were not for you, I should take
208 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
proceedings at once. As it is am I to take
proceedings or no ? "
"You see," said the Vicar in horrible per-
plexity.
"Well?"
" Arrangements have to be made."
"He's a mischief-making idler. ... I know
the breed. But I'll give you a week "
" Thank you," said the Vicar. " I understand
your position. I perceive the situation is getting
intolerable. . . ."
" Sorry to give you this bother, of course," said
Sir John.
" A week," said the Vicar.
" A week," said Sir John, leaving.
The Vicar remained sitting before his desk in
his study. " A week ! " he said after an immense
silence. " Here is an Angel, a glorious Angel,
who has quickened my soul to beauty and delight,
who has opened my eyes to Wonderland, and
something more than Wonderland, . . . and I
have promised to get rid of him in a week !
What are we men made of ? . . . How can I tell
him?"
He began to walk up and down the room,
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 209
then he went into the dining-room, and stood
staring blankly out at the cornfield. The table
was already laid for lunch. Presently he turned,
still dreaming, and almost mechanically helped
himself to a glass of sherry.
THE SEA CLIFF.
XLIII.
THE Angel lay upon the summit of the cliff
above Bandram Bay, and stared out at the
glittering sea. Sheer from under his elbows fell
the cliff, five hundred and seven feet of it down
to the datum line, and the sea-birds eddied and
soared below him. The upper part of the cliff
was a greenish chalky rock, the lower two-thirds
a warm red, marbled with gypsum bands, and
from half-a-dozen places spurted jets of water, to
fall in long cascades down its face. The swell
frothed white on the flinty beach, and the water
beyond where the shadows of an outstanding
rock lay, was green and purple in a thousand
tints and marked with streaks and flakes of foam.
The air was full of sunlight and the tinkling of
the little waterfalls and the slow soughing of
the seas below. Now and then a butterfly
flickered over the face of the cliff, and a multi-
210
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 211
tude of sea-birds perched and flew hither and
thither.
The Angel lay with his crippled, shrivelled
wings humped upon his back, watching the gulls
and jackdaws and rooks, circling in the sunlight,
soaring, eddying, sweeping down to the water or
upward into the dazzling blue of the sky. Long
the Angel lay there and watched them going to and
fro on outspread wings. He watched, and as he
watched them he remembered with infinite long-
ing the rivers of starlight and the sweetness of
the land from which he came. And a gull came
gliding overhead, swiftly and easily, with its broad
wings spreading white and fair against the blue.
And suddenly a shadow came into the Angel's
eyes, the sunlight left them, he thought of his own
crippled pinions, and put his face upon his arm
and wept.
A woman who was walking along the footpath
across the Cliff Field saw only a twisted hunch-
back dressed in the Vicar of Siddermorton's
cast-off clothes, sprawling foolishly at the edge
of the cliff and with his forehead on his arm.
She looked at him and looked again. "The
silly creature has gone to sleep," she said, and
212 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
though she had a heavy basket to carry, came
towards him with an idea of waking him up.
But as she drew near she saw his shoulders heave
and heard the sound of his sobbing.
She stood still a minute, and her features
twitched into a kind of grin. Then treading
softly she turned and went back towards the
pathway. "Tis so hard to think of anything
to say," she said. " Poor afflicted soul ! "
Presently the Angel ceased sobbing, and stared
with a tear-stained face at the beach below him.
" This world," he said, " wraps me round and
swallows me up. My wings grow shrivelled and
useless. Soon I shall be nothing more than a
crippled man, and I shall age, and bow myself to
pain, and die. ... I am miserable. And I am
alone."
Then he rested his chin on his hands upon the
edge of the cliff, and began to think of Delia's
face with the light in her eyes. The Angel felt
a curious desire to go to her and tell her of his
withered wings. To place his arms about her and
weep for the land he had lost. " Delia ! " he said
to himself very softly. And presently a cloud
drove in front of the sun.
MBS. HINIJER ACTS.
XLIV.
MRS. HINIJER surprised the Vicar by tapping
at his study door after tea. "Begging your par-
don, Sir," said Mrs. Hinijer. " But might I make
so bold as to speak to you for a moment? "
" Certainly, Mrs. Hinijer," said the Vicar, little
dreaming of the blow that was coming. He held
a letter in his hand, a very strange and disagree-
able letter from his bishop, a letter that irritated
and distressed him, criticising in the strongest
language the guests he chose to entertain in his
own house. Only a popular bishop living in a
democratic age, a bishop who was still half a
pedagogue, could have written such a letter.
Mrs. Hinijer coughed behind her hand and
struggled with some respiratory disorganisation.
The Vicar fel't apprehensive. Usually in their
interviews he was the most disconcerted. Invari-
ably so when the interview ended.
213
214 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
"Well? "he said.
" May I make so bold, sir, as to arst when Mr.
Angel is a-going ? " (Cough.)
The Vicar started. " To ask when Mr. Angel
is going?" he repeated slowly to gain time.
"Another!"
"I'm sorry, sir. But I've been used to waitin'
on gentlefolks, sir ; and you'd hardly imagine how
it feels quite to wait on such as 'im."
"Such as ... 'im! Do I understand you,
Mrs. Hinijer, that you don't like Mr. Angel?"
" You see, sir, before I came to you, sir, I was
at Lord Dundoller's seventeen years, and you, sir
if you will excuse me are a perfect gentle-
man yourself, sir though in the Church. And
then . . ."
" Dear, dear ! " said the Vicar. " And don't
you regard Mr. Angel as a gentleman?"
"I'm sorry to 'ave to say it, sir."
" But what . . . ? Dear me ! Surely ! "
" I'm sorry to 'ave to say it, sir. But when a
party goes turning vegetarian suddenly and put-
ting out all the cooking, and hasn't no proper
luggage of his own, and borry's shirts and socks
from his 'ost, and don't know no better than to
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 215
try his knife at peas (as I seed my very self), and
goes talking in odd corners to the housemaids,
and folds up his napkin after meals, and eats
with his fingers at minced veal, and plays the
fiddle in the middle of the night keeping every-
body awake, and stares and grins at his elders
a-getting upstairs, and generally misconducts him-
self with things that I can scarcely tell you all,
one can't help thinking, sir. Thought is free, sir,
and one can't help coming to one's own conclu-
sions. Besides which, there is talk all over the
village about him what with one thing and
another. I know a gentleman when I sees a
gentleman, and I know a gentleman when I don't
see a gentleman, and me, and Susan, and George,
we've talked it over, being the upper servants,
so to speak, and experienced, and leaving out
that girl Delia, who I only hope won't come to
any harm through him, and depend upon it, sir,
that Mr. Angel ain't what you think he is,
sir, and the sooner he leaves this house the
better."
Mrs. Hinijer ceased abruptly and stood panting
but stern, and with her eyes grimly fixed on
the Vicar's face.
216 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
"Realty, Mrs. Hinijer!" said the Vicar, and
then, "Oh Lord!"
" What have I done ? " said the Vicar, suddenly
starting up and appealing to the inexorable fates.
"What HAVE I done?"
"There's no knowing," said Mrs. Hinijer.
"Though a deal of talk in the village."
"Bother!" said the Vicar, going and staring
out of the window. Then he turned. "Look
here, Mrs. Hinijer! Mr. Angel will be leaving
this house in the course of a week. Is that
enough ? "
" Quite," said Mrs. Hinijer. " And I feel sure,
sir . . ."
The Vicar's eyes fell with unwonted eloquence
upon the door.
THE ANGEL IN TROUBLE.
XLV.
"THE fact is," said the Vicar, "this is no world
for Angels."
The blinds had not been drawn, and the twi-
light outer world under an overcast sky seemed
unspeakably grey and cold. The Angel sat at
table in dejected silence. His inevitable de-
parture had been proclaimed. Since his presence
hurt people and made the Vicar wretched he
acquiesced in the justice of the decision, but what
would happen to him after his plunge he could not
imagine. Something very disagreeable certainly.
"There is the violin," said the Vicar. "Only
after our experience "
" I must get you clothes a general outfit
Dear me ! you don't understand railway travel-
ling ! And coinage ! Taking lodgings ! Eating-
houses ! ' I must come up at least and see
you settled. Get work for you. But an Angel
in London ! Working for his living ! That grey
217
218 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
cold wilderness of people! What will become
of you ? If I had one friend in the world
I could trust to believe me ! "
"I ought not to be sending you away "
" Do not trouble overmuch for me, my friend,"
said the Angel. " At least this life of yours ends.
And there are things in it. There is something
in this life of yours Your care for me ! I
thought there was nothing beautiful at all in
life "
" And I have betrayed you ! " said the Vicar,
with a sudden wave of remorse. " Why did I
not face them all say, ' This is the best of life ' ?
What do these everyday things matter?"
He stopped suddenly. "What do they matter?"
he said.
" I have only come into your life to trouble it,"
said the Angel.
" Don't say that," said the Vicar. " You have
come into my life to awaken me. I have been dream-
ing dreaming. Dreaming this was necessary and
that. Dreaming that this narrow prison was the
world. And the dream still hangs about me and
troubles me. That is all. Even your departure
Am I not dreaming that you must go ? "
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 219
When he was in bed that night the mystical
aspect of the case came still more forcibly before
the Vicar. He lay awake and had the most
horrible visions of his sweet and delicate visitor
drifting through this unsympathetic world and
happening upon the cruellest misadventures. His
guest was an Angel assuredly. He tried to go
over the whole story of the past eight days again.
He thought of the hot afternoon, the shot fired
out of sheer surprise, the fluttering iridescent
wings, the beautiful saffron-robed figure upon
the ground. How wonderful that had seemed
to him ! Then his mind turned to the things he
had heard of the other world, to the dreams
the violin had conjured up, to the vague, fluct-
uating, wonderful cities of the Angelic Land.
He tried to recall the forms of the buildings, the
shapes of the fruits upon the trees, the aspect of
the winged shapes that traversed its ways. They
grew from a memory into a present reality, grew
every moment just a little more vivid and his
troubles a little less immediate ; and so, softly
and quietly, the Vicar slipped out of his troubles
and perplexities into the Land of Dreams.
THE ANGEL IN TROUBLE continued.
XLVI.
DELIA sat with her window open, hoping to
hear the Angel play. But that night there was
to be no playing. The sky was overcast, yet
not so thickly but that the moon was visible.
High up a broken cloud-lace drove across the
sky, and now the moon was a hazy patch of light,
and now it was darkened, and now rode clear
and bright and sharply outlined against the blue
gulf of night. And presently she heard the door
into the garden opening, and a figure came out
tinder the drifting pallor of the moonlight.
It was the Angel. But he wore once more
the saffron robe in the place of his formless over-
coat. In the uncertain light this garment had
only a colourless shimmer, and his wings behind
him seemed a leaden grey. He began taking
short runs, flapping his wings and leaping, going
220
THE WONDEBFUL VISIT. 221
to and fro amidst the drifting patches of light
and the shadows of the trees. Delia watched
him in amazement. He gave a despondent cry,
leaping higher. His shrivelled wings flashed
and fell. A thicker patch in the cloud-film made
everything obscure. He seemed to spring five
or six feet from the ground and fall clumsily.
She saw him in the dimness crouching on the
ground and then she heard him sobbing.
" He's hurt ! " said Delia, pressing her lips to-
gether hard and staring. " I ought to help him."
She hesitated, then stood up and flitted swiftly
towards the door, went slipping quietly down-
stairs and out into the moonlight. The Angel
still lay upon the lawn, and sobbed for utter
wretchedness.
"Oh! what is the matter?" said Delia, stoop-
ing over him and touching his head timidly.
The Angel ceased sobbing, set up abruptly,
and stared at her. He saw her face, moonlit,
and soft with pity. " What is the matter ? " she
whispered. " Are you hurt ? "
The Angel stared about him, and his eyes
came to rest on her face. " Delia ! " he whispered.
"Are you hurt?" said Delia.
222 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
"My wings," said the Angel. "I cannot use
my wings."
Delia did not understand, but she realised that
it was something very dreadful. "It is dark, it
is cold," said the Angel; "I cannot use my
wings."
It hurt her unaccountably to see the tears on
his face. She did not know what to do.
"Pity me, Delia," said the Angel, suddenly
extending his arms towards her ; " pity me."
Impulsively she knelt down and took his face
between her hands. "I do not know," she said;
*' but I am sorry. I am sorry for you, with all my
heart."
The Angel said not a word. He was looking at
her little face in the bright moonlight, with an ex-
pression of uncomprehending wonder in his eyes.
" This strange world I " he said.
She suddenly withdrew her hands. A cloud
drove over the moon. " What can I do to help
you?" she whispered. "I would do anything to
help you."
He still held her at arm's length, perplexity
replacing misery in his face. " This strange
world!" he repeated.
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 22$
Both whispered, she kneeling, he sitting, in
the fluctuating moonlight and darkness of the
lawn.
" Delia ! " said Mrs. Hinijer, suddenly project-
ing from her window ; " Delia, is that you ? "
They both looked up at her window in con-
sternation.
"Come in at once, Delia," said Mrs. Hinijer*
"If that Mr. Angel was a gentleman (which he
isn't), he'd feel ashamed of hisself. And you an
orphan tool"
THE LAST DAY OF THE VISIT.
XL VII.
ON the morning of the next day the Angel,
after he had breakfasted, went out towards the
moor, and Mrs. Hinijer had an interview with
the Vicar. What happened need not concern us
now. The Vicar was visibly disconcerted. " He
must go," he said; "certainly he must go," and
straightway he forgot the particular accusation
in the general trouble. He spent the morning
in hazy meditation, interspersed by a spasmodic
study of Skiff and Waterlow's price list, and
the catalogue of the Medical, Scholastic, and
Clerical Stores. A schedule grew slowly on a
sheet of paper that lay on the desk before him.
He cut out a self-measurement form from the
tailoring department of the Stores and pinned
it to the study curtains. This was the kind of
document he was making:
"1 Black Melton Frock Coat, pattsf 3, 10s.
" Trousers. 2 pairs or one.
224
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 225
"1 Cheviot Tweed Suit (write for patterns.
Self-meas. f) "
The Vicar spent some time studying a pleasing
army of model gentlemen. They were all very
nice-looking, but he found it hard to imagine the
Angel so transfigured. For, although six days
had passed, the Angel remained without any suit
of his own. The Vicar had vacillated between a
project of driving the Angel into Portburdock
and getting him measured for a suit, and his
absolute horror of the insinuating manners of
the tailor he employed. He knew that tailor
would demand an exhaustive explanation. Be-
sides which, one never knew when the Angel
might leave. So the six days had passed, and the
Angel had grown steadily in the wisdom of this
world and shrouded his brightness still in the
ample retirement of the Vicar's newest clothes.
"1 Soft Felt Hat, No. a. 1 (ay), 8* 6d.
1 Silk Hat, 14s Qd. Hatbox ? "
("I suppose he ought to have a silk hat,"
said the Vicar ; " it's the correct thing up there.
Shape No. 3 seems best suited to his style. But
it's dreadful to think of him all alone in that
great city. Everyone will misunderstand him,
226 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
and he will misunderstand everybody. However,
I suppose it must be. Where was I ? ")
"1 Toothbrush. 1 Brush and Comb. Razor f
" doz. Shirts (? measure his neck*), 6s ea.
"Socks? Pants f
" 2 suits Pyjamas. Price f Say 15s.
"1 doz. Collars QThe Life Guardsman'), 8s.
"Braces. Oxon Patent Versatile, Is 11 Jd."
("But how will he get them on?" said the
Vicar.)
" 1 Rubber Stamp, T. Angel, and Marking Ink
in box complete, 9d.
" Those washerwomen are certain to steal all
his things."
"1 Single-blade Penknife with Corkscrew, say
Is6d.
"N.B. Dorft fo~get Cuff Links, Collar Stud,
c." (The Vicar loved "&c.", it gave things
such a precise and business-like air.)
"1 Leather Portmanteau (had better see these)"
And so forth meanderingly. It kept the Vicar
busy until lunch time, though his heart ached.
The Angel did not return to lunch. This was
not so very remarkable once before he had
missed the midday meal. Yet, considering how
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 227
short was the time they would have together now,
he might perhaps have come back. Doubtless
he has excellent reasons, though, for his absence.
The Vicar made an indifferent lunch. In the
afternoon he rested in his usual manner, and did
a little more to the list of requirements. He did
not begin to feel nervous about the Angel till tea-
time. He waited, perhaps, half an hour before
he took tea. " Odd," said the Vicar, feeling still
more lonely as he drank his tea.
As the time for dinner crept on and no Angel
appeared the Vicar's imagination began to trouble
him. " He will come in to dinner, surely," said
the Vicar, caressing his chin, and beginning to
fret about the house upon inconsiderable errands,
as his habit was when anything occurred to break
his routine. The sun set, a gorgeous spectacle,
amidst tumbled masses of purple cloud. The
gold and red faded into twilight; the evening
star gathered her robe of light together from out
the brightness of the sky in the West. Breaking
the silence of evening that crept over the outer
world, a corncrake began his whirring chant.
The Vicar's face grew troubled; twice he went
and stared at the darkening hillside, and then
228 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
fretted back to the house again. Mrs. Hinijer
served dinner. " Your dinner's ready," she an-
nounced for the second time, with a reproachful
intonation. "Yes, yes," said the Vicar, fussing
off upstairs.
He came down and went into his study and lit
his reading lamp, a patent affair with an incan-
descent wick, dropping the match into his waste-
paper basket without stopping to see if it was
extinguished. Then he fretted into the dining-
room and began a desultory attack on the cooling
dinner . . .
(Dear Reader, the time is almost ripe to say
farewell to this little Vicar of ours.)
THE LAST DAY OF THE VISIT continued.
XLVIII.
SIB JOHN GOTCH (still smarting over the busi-
ness of the barbed wire) was riding along one of
the grassy ways through the preserves by the
Bidder, when he saw, strolling slowly through the
trees beyond the undergrowth, the one particular
human being he did not want to see.
"I'm damned," said Sir John Gotch, with
immense emphasis; "if this isn't altogether too
much."
He raised himself in the stirrups. " Hi ! " he
shouted. " You there ! "
The Angel turned smiling.
" Get out of this wood ! " said Sir John Gotch.
" Why f " said the Angel.
" I'm ," said Sir John Gotch, meditating
some cataclysmal expletive. But he could think
of nothing more than "damned." "Get out of
this wood," he said.
230 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
The Angel's smile vanished. "Why should I
get out of this wood?" he said, and stood still.
, Neither spoke for a full half minute perhaps,
and then Sir John Gotch dropped out of his saddle
and stood by the horse.
(Now you must remember lest the Angelic
Hosts be discredited hereby that this Angel had
been breathing the poisonous air of this Struggle
for Existence of ours for more than a week. It
was not only his wings and the brightness of his
face that suffered. He had eaten and slept and
learnt the lesson of pain had travelled so far on
the road to humanity. All the length of his Visit
he had been meeting more and more of the harsh-
ness and conflict of this world, and losing touch
with the glorious altitudes of his own.)
" You won't go, eigh ! " said Gotch, and began
to lead his horse through the bushes towards the
Angel. The Angel stood, all his muscles tight
and his nerves quivering, watching his antagonist
approach.
" Get out of this wood," said Gotch, stopping
three yards away, his face white with rage, his
bridle in one hand and his riding whip in the other.
Strange floods of emotion were running through
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 231
the Angel. "Who are you," he said, in a low
quivering voice; "who am I that you should
order me out of this place ? What has the World
done that men like you . . ."
"You're the fool who cut my barbed wire," said
Gotch, threatening, " if you want to know ! "
" Your barbed wire," said the Angel. "Was
that your barbed wire? Are you the man who
put down that barbed wire? What right have
you . . ."
" Don't you go talking Socialist rot," said Gotch
in short gasps. " This wood's mine, and I've a
right to protect it how I can. I know your kind
of muck. Talking rot and stirring up discontent.
And if you don't get out of it jolly sharp . . ."
"Well!" said the Angel, a brimming reservoir
of unaccountable energy.
" Get out of this damned wood ! " said Gotch,
flashing into the bully out of sheer alarm at the
light in the Angel's face.
He made one step towards him, with the whip
raised, and then something happened that neither
he nor the Angel properly understood. The
Angel seemed to leap into the air, a pair of grey
wings flashed out at the Squire, he saw a face
232 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
bearing down upon him, full of the wild beauty of
passionate anger. His riding whip was torn out
of his hand. His horse reared behind him, pulled
him over, gained his bridle and fled.
The whip cut across his face as he fell back,
stung across his face again as he sat on the
ground. He saw the Angel, radiant with anger,
in the act to strike again. Gotch flung up his
hands, pitched himself forward to save his eyes,
and rolled on the ground under the pitiless fury
of the blows that rained down upon him.
"You brute," cried the Angel, striking wherever
he saw flesh to feel. " You bestial thing of pride
and lies ! You who have overshadowed the souls
of other men. You shallow fool with your horses
and dogs ! To lift your face against any living
thing ! Learn ! Learn ! Learn ! "
Gotch began screaming for help. Twice he
tried to clamber to his feet, got to his knees, and
went headlong again under the ferocious anger
of the Angel. Presently he made a strange
noise in his throat, and ceased even to writhe
under his punishment.
Then suddenly the Angel awakened from his
wrath, and found himself standing, panting and
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 23$
trembling, one foot on a motionless figure, under
the green stillness of the sunlit woods.
He stared about him, then down at his feet
where, among the tangled dead leaves, the hair
was matted with blood. The whip dropped from
his hands, the hot colour fled from his face.
"Paw/" he said. "Why does he lie so still?"
He took his foot off Gotch's shoulder, bent
down towards the prostrate figure, stood listen-
ing, knelt shook him. " Awake ! " said the
Angel. Then still more softly, " Awake ! "
He remained listening some minutes or more,
stood up sharply, and looked round him at the
silent trees. A feeling of profound horror De-
scended upon him, wrapped him round about.
With an abrupt gesture he turned. "What has
happened to me ? " he said, in an awe-stricken
whisper.
He started back from the motionless figure.
" Dead ! " he said suddenly, and turning, panic-
stricken, fled headlong through the wood.
THE LAST DAY OP THE VISIT continued.
XLIX.
So the Angel, thinking that Gotch was dead,
went wandering off in a passion of remorse and
fear through the brakes and copses along the
Sidder. You can scarcely imagine how appalled
he was at this last and overwhelming proof of
his encroaching humanity. All the darkness,
passion and pain of life seemed closing in upon
him, inexorably, becoming part of him, chaining
him to all that a week ago he had found strange
and pitiful in men.
" Truly, this is no world for an Angel ! " said
the Angel. "It is a World of War, a World
of Pain, a World of Death. Anger comes upon
one ... I, who know not pain and anger, stand
here with blood stains on my hands. I have
fallen. To come into this world is to fall. One
must hunger and thirst and be tormented with
a thousand desires. One must fight for foothold,
be angry and strike "
234
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 235
He lifted up his hands to Heaven, the ultimate
bitterness of helpless remorse in his face, and
then flung them down with a gesture of despair.
The prison walls of this narrow passionate life
seemed creeping in upon him, certainly and
steadily, to crush him presently altogether. He
felt what all we poor mortals have to feel sooner
or later the pitiless force of the Things that
Must Be, not only without us but (where the real
trouble lies) within, all the inevitable tormenting
of one's high resolves, those inevitable seasons
when the better self is forgotten. But with us
it is a gentle descent, made by imperceptible
degrees over a long space of years ; with him
it was the horrible discovery of one short week.
He felt he was being crippled, caked over,
blinded, stupefied in the wrappings of this life,
he felt as a man might feel who has taken some
horrible poison, and feels destruction spreading
within him.
He took no account of hunger or fatigue or
the flight of time. On and on he went, avoiding
houses and roads, turning away from the sight
and sotind of a human being in a wordless des-
perate argument with Fate. His thoughts did
236 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
riot flow but stood banked back in inarticulate
remonstrance against his degradation. Chance
directed his footsteps homeward and, at last, after
nightfall, he found himself faint and weary and
wretched, stumbling along over the moor at the
back of Siddermorton. He heard the rats run
and squeal in the heather, and once a noiseless
big bird came out of the darkness, passed, and
vanished again. And he saw without noticing it
a dull red glow in the sky before him.
THE LAST DAY OF THE VISIT continued.
L.
BUT when he came over the brow of the moor,
a vivid light sprang up before him and refused
to be ignored. He came on down the hill and
speedily saw more distinctly what the glare was.
It came from darting and trembling tongues of
fire, golden and red, that shot from the windows
and a hole in the roof of the Vicarage. A cluster
of black heads, all the village in fact, except the
fire-brigade who were down at Aylmer's Cottage
trying to find the key of the machine-house
came out in silhouette against the blaze. There
was a roaring sound, and a humming of voices,
and presently a furious outcry. There was a
shouting of "No! No!" "Come back!" and
an inarticulate roar.
He began to run towards the burning house.
He stumbled and almost fell, but he ran on. He
found black figures running about him. The
237
238 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
flaring fire blew gustily this way and that, and
he smelt the smell of burning.
" She went in," said one voice, " she went in."
" The mad girl ! " said another.
" Stand back ! Stand back ! " cried others.
He found himself thrusting through an excited,
swaying crowd, all staring at the flames, and with
the red reflection in their eyes.
" Stand back ! " said a labourer, clutching him.
"What is it?" said the Angel. "What does
this mean?"
" There's a girl in the house, and she can't get
out!" -
" Went in after a fiddle," said another.
" 'Tas hopeless," he heard someone else say.
" I was standing near her. I heerd her. Says
she: 'I can get his fiddle.' I heerd her Just
like that! 'I can get his fiddle.'"
For a moment the Angel stood staring. Then
in a flash he saw it all, saw this grim little world
of battle and cruelty, transfigured in a splendour
that outshone the Angelic Land, suffused sud-
denly and insupportably glorious with the won-
derful light of Love and Self-Sacrifice. He gave
a strange cry, and before anyone could stop him,
THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
was running towards the burning building. There
were cries of " The Hunchback ! The Fowener ! "
The Vicar, whose scalded hand was being tied
up, turned his head, and he and Crump saw the
Angel, a black outline against the intense, red
glare of the doorway. It was the sensation of
the tenth of a second, yet both men could not
have remembered that transitory attitude more
vividly had it been a picture they had studied
for hours together. Then the Angel was hidden
by something massive (no one knew what) that
fell, incandescent, across the doorway.
There was a cry of " Delia " and no more. But
suddenly the flames spurted out in a blinding
glare that shot upward to an immense height*
a blinding brilliance broken by a thousand flicker-
ing gleams like the waving of swords. And a
gust of sparks, flashing in a thousand colours*
whirled up and vanished. Just then, and for a
moment by some strange accident, a rush of music*
like the swell of an organ, wove into the roaring
of the flames.
The whole village standing in black knots heard
the sound, except Gaffer Siddons who is deaf
strange and beautiful it was, and then gone again.
240 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
Lumpy Durgan, the idiot boy from Sidderford,
said it began and ended like the opening and
shutting of a door.
But little Hetty Penzance had a pretty fancy
of two figures with wings, that flashed up and
vanished among the flames.
(And after that it was she began to pine for
the things she saw in her dreams, and was
abstracted arid strange. It grieved her mother
sorely at the time. She grew fragile, as though
she was fading out of the world, and her eyes
had a strange, far-away look. She talked of
Angels and rainbow colours and golden wings,
and was for ever singing an unmeaning fragment
of an air that nobody knew. Until Crump took
her in hand and cured her with fattening dietary,
syrup of hypophosphites and cod liver oil.)
THE LAST DAY OF THE VISIT continued.
LI.
IT was some minutes after the footsteps of the
Angel had died away in the distance that Gotch
raised himself on his hand. " By Jove ! " he said.
" Crump's right.
" Cut at the head, too ! "
He put his hand to his face and felt the two
weals running across it, hot and fat. "I'll think
twice before I lift my hand against a lunatic
again," said Sir John Gotch.
" He may be a person of weak intellect, but I'm
damned if he hasn't a pretty strong arm. Phew !
He's cut a bit clean off the top of my ear with
that infernal lash.
"That infernal horse will go galloping to the
house in the approved dramatic style. Little
Madam'll be scared out of her wits. And I ...
B 241
242 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
I shall have to explain how it all happened.
While she vivisects me with questions.
"I'm a jolly good mind to have spring guns
and man-traps put in this preserve. Confound the
Law!"
THE EPILOGUE.
LIT.
AND there the story of the "Wonderful Visit
ends. The Epilogue is in the mouth of Mrs.
Mendham. There stand two little white crosses
in the Siddermorton churchyard, near together,
where the brambles come clambering over the
stone wall. One is inscribed Thomas Angel and
the other Delia Hardy, and the dates of the
deaths are the same. Really there is nothing
beneath them but the ashes of the Vicar's stuffed
ostrich. (You will remember the Vicar had his
ornithological side.) I noticed them when Mrs.
Mendham was showing me the new De la Beche
monument. (Mendham has been Vicar since
Hilyer died.) "The granite came from some-
where in Scotland," said Mrs. Mendham, "and
cost ever so 'much I forget how much but a
wonderful lot ! It's quite the talk of the village."
243
244 THE WONDERFUL VISIT.
" Mother," said Cissie Mendham, " you are step-
ping on a grave."
" Dear rne ! " said Mrs. Mendham. " How heed-
less of me! And the cripple's grave too. But
really you've no idea how much this monument
cost them."
"These two people, by the bye," said Mrs.
Mendham, "were killed when the old Vicarage
was burnt. It's rather a strange story. He was
a curious person, a hunchbacked fiddler, who
came from nobody knows where, and imposed
upon the late Vicar to a frightful extent. He
played in a pretentious way by ear, and we found
out afterwards that he did not know a note of
music not a note. He was exposed before quite
a lot of people. Among other things, he seems
to have been 'carrying on,' as people say, with
one of the servants, a sly little drab. ... But
Mendham had better tell you all about it. The
man was half-witted and curiously deformed. It's
strange the fancies girls have."
She looked sharply at Cissie, and Cissie blushed
to the eyes.
" She was left in the house and he rushed into
the flames in an attempt to save her. Quite ro-
THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 245
inantic isn't it? He was rather clever with
the fiddle in his uneducated way.
" All the poor Vicar's stuffed skins were burned
at the same time. It was almost all he cared for.
He never really got over the blow. He came to
stop with us for there wasn't another house
available in the village. But he never seemed to
be happy. He seemed all shaken. I never saw
a man so changed. I tried to stir him up, but it
was no good no good at all. He had the queer-
est delusions about the Angels and that kind of
thing. It made him odd company at times. He
would say he heard music, and stare quite stupidly
at nothing for hours together. He got quite
careless about his dress. ... He died within
a twelvemonth of the fire."
THE END.
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