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 yourpain," said the Vicar. "Let me assist you to remove your coat?"
The Angel turned obediently.
"Spinal curvature?" muttered Doctor Crump quite audibly, walking round behind the Angel. "No! abnormal growth. Hullo! This is odd!" He clutched the left wing. "Curious," he said. "Reduplication of the anterior limb—bifid coracoid. Possible, of course, but I've never seen it before." The angel winced under his hands. "Humerus. Radius and Ulna. All there. Congenital, of course. Humerus broken. Curious integumentary simulation of feathers. Dear me. Almost avian. Probably of considerable interest in comparative anatomy. I never did!——How did this gunshot happen, Mr Angel?"
The Vicar was amazed at the Doctor's matter-of-fact manner.
"Our friend," said the Angel, moving his head at the Vicar.
"Unhappily it is my doing," said the Vicar, stepping forward, explanatory. "I mistook the gentleman—the Angel (ahem)—for a large bird——"
"Mistook him for a large bird! What next? Your eyes want seeing to," said Doctor Crump. "I've told you so before." He went on patting and feeling, keeping time with a series of grunts and inarticulate mutterings.... "But this is really a very good bit of amateur bandaging," said he. "I think I shall leave it. Curious malformation this is! Don't you find it inconvenient, Mr Angel?"
He suddenly walked round so as to look in the Angel's face.
The Angel thought he referred to the wound. "It is rather," he said.
"If it wasn't for the bones I should say paint with iodine night and morning. Nothing like iodine. You could paint your face flat with it. But the osseous outgrowth, the bones, you know, complicate things. I could saw them off, of course. It's not a thing one should have done in a hurry——"
"Do you mean my wings?" said the Angel in alarm.
"Wings!" said the Doctor. "Eigh? Call 'em wings! Yes—what else should I mean?"
"Saw them off!" said the Angel.
"Don't you think so? It's of course your affair. I am only advising——"
"Saw them off! What a funny creature you are!" said the Angel, beginning to laugh.
"As you will," said the Doctor. He detested people who laughed. "The things are curious," he said, turning to the Vicar. "If inconvenient"—to the Angel. "I never heard of such complete reduplication before—at least among animals. In plants it's common enough. Were you the only one in your family?" He did not wait for a reply. "Partial cases of the fission of limbs are not at all uncommon, of course, Vicar—six-fingered children, calves with six feet, and cats with double toes, you know. May I assist you?" he said, turning to the Angel who was struggling with the coat. "But such a complete reduplication, and so avian, too! It would be much less remarkable if it was simply another pair of arms."
The coat was got on and he and the Angel stared at one another.
"Really," said the Doctor, "one begins tounderstand how that beautiful myth of the angels arose. You look a little hectic, Mr Angel—feverish. Excessive brilliance is almost worse as a symptom than excessive pallor. Curious your name should be Angel. I must send you a cooling draught, if you should feel thirsty in the night...."
He made a memorandum on his shirt cuff. The Angel watched him thoughtfully, with the dawn of a smile in his eyes.
"One minute, Crump," said the Vicar, taking the Doctor's arm and leading him towards the door.
The Angel's smile grew brighter. He looked down at his black-clad legs. "He positively thinks I am a man!" said the Angel. "What he makes of the wings beats me altogether. What a queer creature he must be! This is really a most extraordinary Dream!"
"Thatisan 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 intoLe Grand Chartreuse. There are abnormal phenomena, of course. And——"
"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 inclumsy sentences—for, knowing the Bishop as he 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.
"Afterlunch, I think you said?" interrupted the Doctor.
"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 parenthesis. "It was seventy-nine in the shade."
When the Vicar had finished, the Doctorpressed his lips together tighter than ever, smiled faintly, and looked significantly into the Vicar's eyes.
"You don't ..." began the Vicar, falteringly.
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 mind, 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, digesting 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 certainly. And as for his iridescent colours and so forth——. Have you never had patches of colour swim before your eyes before, on a brilliant sunlight day?... Are you sure they were confined to the wings? Think."
"But he says heisan 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."
"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 credentials. One will call himself the Prince of Wales, another the Archangel Gabriel, another the Deity even. Ibsen thinks he is a Great Teacher, and Maeterlink 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. "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 certainlydidthink...." 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—muscae 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 Imustbe 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 flattermyselfon that score. Our ambulance classeswerea success you see.... Good afternoon."
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. Suppose hewasdeceived. The Doctor passed the Curate with a sweep of his hand from his hat brim. Crump was an extraordinarily clever fellow, 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 explanation 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 magnificent 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.
"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 whatwasthat 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—disgustingly light attire, to speak freely—with whom you were promenading the garden."
"My dear Mendham—that was an Angel!"
"A v e r y p r e t t y 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...."
"Bother!" said the Vicar aside. He rarely swore. "Look here, Mendham, you really misunderstand. 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 considered 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 round-about 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 thisafternoon.... Do you believe in angels, Mendham, 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; thisisan angel, a real angel with wings. He's in 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 invitation. No doubt it was rash of me. But I can't turn him out, you know, because Mrs Mendham——I 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 Commissioners."
"Come and see him, Mendham!"
"But thereareno angels."
"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 Angel had finished his tea and was standing 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 tombstones 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."
"Arean Angel," said the Vicar.
The Angel bowed.
"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 at 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.
"Lethimexplain," 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 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 Imustdemand 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 youneverheard of an Angel?"
"I warn you not to try that story upon me," said Mendham, now back at his familiar crescendo.
The Vicar interrupted: "But Mendham—he has wings!"
"Pleaselet me talk to him," said Mendham.
"You are so quaint," said the Angel; "you interrupt everything I have to say."
"But whathaveyou to say?" said Mendham.
"That I reallyaman 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 company. 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?"
The Vicar was in a dreadful state of doubt by this time.
"Hesayshe is an Angel!" said the Vicar. "Why don't you listen to him?"
"No angel would alarm four ladies...."
"Isthatwhat 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 enlightened age, you should tell this fantastic, this far-fetched story of an Angel, altogether beats me. What goodcanit 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. "I have seen quite enough," he said. "It may 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 understand, 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 Christendom, 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 threatening note in his sonorous voice, and so vanished abruptly (with a violent slam) from the room.
"Areallmen 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."
"Nobody here, you know, has ever seen an Angel, or heard of one—except in church. If you had made yourdebutin 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 prejudices 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.
"Possibly, after all," he said slowly, "Ishallbecome 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 something else. I eat—angels do not eat. Imaybe 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 inconvenience; the explanation I shall have to make to Mrs Mendham——would be shorn at least of the supernatural element. There is such a feeling against the supernatural element nowadays—even in the pulpit. You would hardly believe——"
"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 anyrate 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 decaying 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, and almost simultaneously Mrs Hinijer announced dinner.
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 waiting 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; "shehadrather a nicer shape."
"You mustn't tell Mrs Mendham that," said the Vicar, covertly satisfied.
"She didn't stick out so much at the shouldersand 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 behaviour 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 youto do as 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 (Gluck,gluck,gluck—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 Wonderland. 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—certainly the most beautiful. Full of great hopes and dreams, vague emotions and unexpected dangers."
"Thatwas a maiden?" said the Angel, indicating the door through which Delia had disappeared.
"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!"
"Their hair comes off and gets dull coloured or ashen grey," said the Vicar. "I, for instance." 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, very 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.
"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 perceptible 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?"
"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 other 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 myself, where life is altogether different from what they havehad—or desire. And in the end, I bury them, and read out of my book to those who will presently follow into the unknown 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 temporary 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 waistcoats and gold chains, pomp and vanity on a substratum of carnalsubstance, their wives flaunt garish bonnets at one another. And I go on droning away of the things unseen and unrealised—'Eye hath not seen,' I read, 'nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the imagination 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 damping 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, fingering 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 ornithology and a little chess, a trifle of mathematical trifling. My times are in His hands——"
The Vicar sighed and became pensive. TheAngel 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.
So the Angel dined and talked to the Vicar, and presently the night came and he was overtaken 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!——I 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 meadows in the heat of the day.) The Angelfound 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 flame 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, descending 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, before 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.
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 carefully upon the shelf of the dressing-table. "And a kind of staring look about hiseyes, and a simpering smile. Quite a silly looking person. Effeminate."
"But whocanhe be?" said Mrs Mendham.
"I can't imagine, my dear. Nor where he came from. He might be a chorister or something of that sort."
"Butwhyshould 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," reflected 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 wasnota woman."
"Perfectly," said the Curate.
"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 Vicarage?"
"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, fumbling 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. "Hilyermustbe mad," he said.
Mrs Mendham laughed too. "Even that doesn't explain the hunchback," she said.
"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 hewasin the company of an angel, that is no reason why he should not behave 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!Ishould 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 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."
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 uniform 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 and the Curate's wife thought of the strangearrival. And further remarkable opinions are to follow.
The afterglow of the summer sunset in the north-west 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 streaming 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 strange vistas in his mind, and he is stimulated by a sense as of something seen darkly by the indistinct vision 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 anymystical 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 considerations, 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 customary 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 Sidderton 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 sinceexhausted the topics of the Sound and the 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 anything of the kind.
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 sunlight 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."
"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 impossible 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?"
The Angel left the window reluctantly.
"Our society," explained the Vicar on the staircase, "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. All men are brothers, of course, but some are youngerbrothers, so to speak. There is work that requires culture and refinement, and work in which culture and refinement would be an impediment. And the rights of property must not be forgotten. One must render unto Cæsar.... 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 mushrooms are well up to their appearance), which sets the whole thing out very clearly."
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 instrument. 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 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 reappeared. 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—ormotifs, which is it?—thought the Vicar. He knew remarkably 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.
"Flirting butterflies were they!" What wasthe 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——. Thatmotifagain, 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 melodies 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 openness, and height, and nobility. For there is no space there like ours, no time as we knowit; one must needs speak by bungling metaphors and own in bitterness after all that one has failed. And it was only a vision. The wonderful creatures flying through the æther 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 yourroom—and keep it——. And play to me 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."
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 little street with all the inevitable curious remarks, explanations, pointings, was too much for him. The Angel might do the strangest things, the village was certain to think them. Peering faces. "Who'shegot now?" Besides, was it not his duty to prepare his sermon in good time? The Angel, duly directed, 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 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. "YouBrazenFaggit—you!" said Mother Gustick. "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. "WalkingTouch and Go!" He did not know that Mrs Gustick had suddenly become aware of his existence, and was scrutinizing his appearance through the 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 spouting 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. "Listenin'."
"Have you any objection to my hearing...."
"Object to my hearing! Course I have! Whad yer think? You aint 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 whatyouare! 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? Andthen 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 Angel was surprised to find that some inexplicable quality in her voice excited the most disagreeable 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 perceive 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, enquired 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 standing 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.
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 re-open, 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 downthrough 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 disagreeable. There was no explaining it.
"Imeanit!" said Mrs Gustick, crescendo. "Drat it!—Imeanit."
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 suppose they all mean something,", he said, presently, still perplexed.