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

and spreading fronds⁠—”

“Is all so very dreamlike,” said the Angel. “Just exactly what one dreams of⁠—or artists imagine.”

“You have artists then among the Angels?”

“All kinds of artists, Angels with wonderful imaginations, who invent men and cows and eagles and a thousand impossible creatures.”

“Impossible creatures!” said the Vicar.

“Impossible creatures,” said the Angel. “Myths.”

“But I’m real!” said the Vicar. “I assure you I’m real.”

The Angel shrugged his wings and winced and smiled. “I can always tell when I am dreaming,” he said.

“You⁠—dreaming,” said the Vicar. He looked round him.

“You dreaming!” he repeated. His mind worked diffusely.

He held out his hand with all his fingers moving. “I have it!” he said. “I begin to see.” A really brilliant idea was dawning upon his mind. He had not studied mathematics at Cambridge for nothing, after all. “Tell me please. Some animals of your world⁠ ⁠… of the Real World, real animals you know.”

“Real animals!” said the Angel smiling. “Why⁠—there’s Griffins and Dragons⁠—and Jabberwocks⁠—and Cherubim⁠—and Sphinxes⁠—and the Hippogriff⁠—and Mermaids⁠—and Satyrs⁠—and.⁠ ⁠…”

“Thank you,” said the Vicar as the Angel appeared to be warming to his work; “thank you. That is quite enough. I begin to understand.”

He paused for a moment, his face pursed up. “Yes⁠ ⁠… I begin to see it.”

“See what?” asked the Angel.

“The Griffins and Satyrs and so forth. It’s as clear.⁠ ⁠…”

“I don’t see them,” said the Angel.

“No, the whole point is they are not to be seen in this world. But our men with imaginations have told us all about them, you know. And even I at times⁠ ⁠… there are places in this village where you must simply take what they set before you, or give offence⁠—I, I say, have seen in my dreams Jabberwocks, Bogle brutes, Mandrakes.⁠ ⁠… From our point of view, you know, they are Dream Creatures.⁠ ⁠…”

“Dream Creatures!” said the Angel. “How singular! This is a very curious dream. A kind of topsy-turvey one. You call men real and angels a myth. It almost makes one think that in some odd way there must be two worlds as it were.⁠ ⁠…”

“At least two,” said the Vicar.

“Lying somewhere close together, and yet scarcely suspecting.⁠ ⁠…”

“As near as page to page of a book.”

“Penetrating each other, living each its own life. This is really a delicious dream!”

“And never dreaming of each other.”

“Except when people go a-dreaming!”

“Yes,” said the Angel thoughtfully. “It must be something of the sort. And that reminds me. Sometimes when I have been dropping asleep, or drowsing under the noontide sun, I have seen strange corrugated faces just like yours, going by me, and trees with green leaves upon them, and such queer uneven ground as this.⁠ ⁠… It must be so. I have fallen into another world.”

“Sometimes,” began the Vicar, “at bedtime, when I have been just on the edge of consciousness, I have seen faces as beautiful as yours, and the strange dazzling vistas of a wonderful scene, that flowed past me, winged shapes soaring over it, and wonderful⁠—sometimes terrible⁠—forms going to and fro. I have even heard sweet music too in my ears.⁠ ⁠… It may be that as we withdraw our attention from the world of sense, the pressing world about us, as we pass into the twilight of repose, other worlds.⁠ ⁠… Just as we see the stars, those other worlds in space, when the glare of day recedes.⁠ ⁠… And the artistic dreamers who see such things most clearly.⁠ ⁠…”

They looked at one another.

“And in some incomprehensible manner I have fallen into this world of yours out of my own!” said the Angel, “into the world of my dreams, grown real.”

He looked about him. “Into the world of my dreams.”

“It is confusing,” said the Vicar. “It almost makes one think there may be (ahem) four dimensions after all. In which case, of course,” he went on hurriedly⁠—for he loved geometrical speculations and took a certain pride in his knowledge of them⁠—“there may be any number of three-dimensional universes packed side by side, and all dimly dreaming of one another. There may be world upon world, universe upon universe. It’s perfectly possible. There’s nothing so incredible as the absolutely possible. But I wonder how you came to fall out of your world into mine.⁠ ⁠…”

“Dear me!” said the Angel; “There’s deer and a stag! Just as they draw them on the coats of arms. How grotesque it all seems! Can I really be awake?”

He rubbed his knuckles into his eyes.

The half-dozen of dappled deer came in Indian file obliquely through the trees and halted, watching. “It’s no dream⁠—I am really a solid concrete Angel, in Dream Land,” said the Angel. He laughed. The Vicar stood surveying him. The Reverend gentleman was pulling his mouth askew after a habit he had, and slowly stroking his chin. He was asking himself whether he too was not in the Land of Dreams.

VII The Vicar and the Angel (Continued)

Now in the land of the Angels, so the Vicar learnt in the course of many conversations, there is neither pain nor trouble nor death, marrying nor giving in marriage, birth nor forgetting. Only at times new things begin. It is a land without hill or dale, a wonderfully level land, glittering with strange buildings, with incessant sunlight or full moon, and with incessant breezes blowing through the Aeolian traceries of the trees. It is Wonderland, with glittering seas hanging in the sky, across which strange fleets go sailing, none know whither. There the flowers glow in Heaven and the stars shine about one’s feet and the breath of life is a delight. The land goes on forever⁠—there is no solar system nor interstellar space such as there is in our universe⁠—and the air goes upward past the sun into the uttermost abyss of their sky. And there is nothing but Beauty there⁠—all the beauty in our art is but feeble rendering of faint glimpses of that wonderful world, and our composers, our original composers, are those who hear, however faintly, the dust of melody that drives before its winds. And the Angels, and wonderful monsters