The Wonderful Visit, H. G. Wells [me reader txt] 📗

Hammergallow!”

“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 suspicions. 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 anything 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.”

“An unjustifiable suspicion that ever a man⁠—”

(“I don’t think much of 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!)”

“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 Hammergallow, 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. He had never used the word since he had taken orders. It shows you how an Angel’s visit may disorganize 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 texture. “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 window. “I suppose everything is wonderful, even the rising and setting of the sun. I suppose 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.”

XXIX Further Adventures of the Angel in the Village

“That’s all right,” said Crump when the bandaging was replaced. “It’s a trick of memory, 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 afternoon.”

“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.

“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 conveyance?”

“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 serviette 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.”

“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 Dreaming 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 Doctor’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