by Anthology
"Silver wedding!" said the Angel. "What is a silver wedding?"
"Jest is rot," said the man on the barrow. "But 'E's always avin' some 'scuse like that. Fair sickenin it is. Lars week it wus 'is bloomin' birthday, and then 'e ad'nt 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?"
"Why!" said the tinker. "Well this is a blasted innocent country! Why! Because 'E's blind! Wot else? (Carm on—Dam yer). Because 'E's 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 evolutions on the bridge.
"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. "Taint as if 'e was a gentleman and 'adnt 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 judgment 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.
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! Resurgam! 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,…. "Hawkins? 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! 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 bääk 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—fortification——"
"Gét yer 'air cut, Gét 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! And the man on the bridge offered to take the 'paint' off me. They will leave nothing of me soon."
"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 beech-nut 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 ungainly movements towards them. He spluttered some expostulation and made for the roadway. The little boys were amazed and shocked at his discomfiture and cowardice. Such sawney behaviour 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 understand," 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 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 abnormal. 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 HAMMERGALLOW'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 autocratic 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, dismisses labourers, obliges heretics to go to church, 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 Hammergallow 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. Sometimes she calls upon the Vicar, sometimes upon Mrs Mendham whom she snubs, and even sometimes 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 Hammergallow, 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."
&nb
sp; But she went on to the vicarage nevertheless, and demanded news of it all. The conflicting accounts of Miss Flump, Miss Finch, Mrs Mendham, 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 hopeless. He spoke of his protégé 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 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!"
"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."
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 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 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 blackfaced man and his volutations and the horrible little things that threw husks!—certainly not. I never saw such creatures 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 Angelic 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, suddenly altering his tone, "you positively know nothing about the Land you come from. White's the very essence of it."
The Angel stared at him. Was the man jesting? 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 coloured 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 best authority…."
"I can assure you…."
Crump tucked in the corners of his mouth 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 irresponsible visitor…."
"If these are angels," said the Angel, "then I have never been in the Angelic Land."
"Precisely," said Crump, ineffably self-satisfied; "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.