The Wonderful Visit Read online

  "The Land of Dreams! Pardon me if I suggest you have just come out ofit," was the Vicar's remark.

  "How can that be?" said the Angel.

  "Your wing," said the Vicar, "is bleeding. Before we talk, may I havethe pleasure--the melancholy pleasure--of tying it up? I am really mostsincerely sorry...." The Angel put his hand behind his back and winced.

  The Vicar assisted his victim to stand up. The Angel turned gravely andthe Vicar, with numberless insignificant panting parentheses, carefullyexamined the injured wings. (They articulated, he observed withinterest, to a kind of second glenoid on the outer and upper edge of theshoulder blade. The left wing had suffered little except the loss ofsome 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 Vicarstanched the bleeding as well as he could and tied up the bone with hispocket handkerchief and the neck wrap his housekeeper made him carry inall weathers.

  "I'm afraid you will not be able to fly for some time," said he, feelingthe 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 havemuch of this Pain in the Land of Dreams?"

  "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 totie a knot. "I think this bandaging must serve for the present," hesaid. "I've studied ambulance work before, but never the bandaging up ofwing 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, stillintent on the wound.

  The Angel gave a shrug of the wing and turned round to look at the Vicaragain. He had been trying to keep an eye on the Vicar over his shoulderduring all their interview. He looked at him from top to toe with raisedeyebrows and a growing smile on his beautiful soft-featured face. "Itseems so odd," he said with a sweet little laugh, "to be talking to aMan!"

  "Do you know," said the Vicar, "now that I come to think of it, it isequally odd to me that I should be talking to an Angel. I am a somewhatmatter-of-fact person. A Vicar has to be. Angels I have always regardedas--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. ButI have seen several since the sunrise, solid real men, besides a horseor so--those Unicorn things you know, without horns--and quite a numberof those grotesque knobby things called 'cows.' I was naturally a littlefrightened at so many mythical monsters, and came to hide here until itwas dark. I suppose it will be dark again presently like it was atfirst. _Phew!_ This Pain of yours is poor fun. I hope I shall wake updirectly."

  "I don't understand quite," said the Vicar, knitting his brows andtapping his forehead with his flat hand. "Mythical monster!" The worstthing he had been called for years hitherto was a 'mediaevalanachronism' (by an advocate of Disestablishment). "Do I understandthat you consider me as--as something in a dream?"

  "Of course," said the Angel smiling.

  "And this world about me, these rugged trees and spreading fronds----"

  "Is all so _very_ dream like," said the Angel. "Just exactly what onedreams of--or artists imagine."

  "You have artists then among the Angels?"

  "All kinds of artists, Angels with wonderful imaginations, who inventmen 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 tellwhen 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. Hehad not studied mathematics at Cambridge for nothing, after all. "Tellme please. Some animals of _your_ world ... of the Real World, realanimals you know."

  "Real animals!" said the Angel smiling. "Why--there's Griffins andDragons--and Jabberwocks--and Cherubim--and Sphinxes--and theHippogriff--and Mermaids--and Satyrs--and...."

  "Thank you," said the Vicar as the Angel appeared to be warming to hiswork; "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 ourmen with imaginations have told us all about them, you know. And even Iat times ... there are places in this village where you must simply takewhat they set before you, or give offence--I, I say, have seen in mydreams 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 curiousdream. 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 worldsas 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 adelicious 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, ordrowsing under the noon-tide sun, I have seen strange corrugated facesjust like yours, going by me, and trees with green leaves upon them, andsuch queer uneven ground as this.... It must be so. I have fallen intoanother world."

  "Sometimes," began the Vicar, "at bedtime, when I have been just on theedge of consciousness, I have seen faces as beautiful as yours, and thestrange dazzling vistas of a wonderful scene, that flowed past me,winged shapes soaring over it, and wonderful--sometimes terrible--formsgoing to and fro. I have even heard sweet music too in my ears.... Itmay be that as we withdraw our attention from the world of sense, thepressing world about us, as we pass into the twilight of repose, otherworlds.... Just as we see the stars, those other worlds in space, whenthe glare of day recedes.... And the artistic dreamers who see suchthings most clearly...."

  They looked at one another.

  "And in some incomprehensible manner I have fallen into this world ofyours 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 maybe (ahem) Four Dimensions after all. In which case, of course," he wenton hurriedly--for he loved geometrical speculations and took a certainpride in his knowledge of them--"there may be any number of threedimensional universes packed side by side, and all dimly dreaming of oneanother. There may be world upon world, universe upon universe. It'sperfectly possible. There's nothing so incredible as the absolutelypossible. But I wonder how you came to fall out of your world intomine...."

  "Dear me!" said the Angel; "There's deer and a stag! Just as they drawthem on the coats of arms. How grotesque it all seems! Can I really beawake?"

  He rubbed his knuckles into his eyes.

  The half-dozen of dappled deer came in Indian file obliquely through thetrees and halted, watching. "It's no dream--I am really a solid concreteAngel, in Dream Land," said the Angel. He laughed.
The Vicar stoodsurveying him. The Reverend gentleman was pulling his mouth askew aftera habit he had, and slowly stroking his chin. He was asking himselfwhether he too was not in the Land of Dreams.

  VII.

  Now in the land of the Angels, so the Vicar learnt in the course of manyconversations, there is neither pain nor trouble nor death, marrying norgiving in marriage, birth nor forgetting. Only at times new thingsbegin. 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 thetrees. It is Wonderland, with glittering seas hanging in the sky, acrosswhich strange fleets go sailing, none know whither. There the flowersglow in Heaven and the stars shine about one's feet and the breath oflife is a delight. The land goes on for ever--there is no solar systemnor interstellar space such as there is in our universe--and the airgoes upward past the sun into the uttermost abyss of their sky. Andthere is nothing but Beauty there--all the beauty in our art is butfeeble rendering of faint glimpses of that wonderful world, and ourcomposers, our original composers, are those who hear, however faintly,the dust of melody that drives before its winds. And the Angels, andwonderful monsters of bronze and marble and living fire, go to and frotherein.

  It is a land of Law--for whatever is, is under the law--but its lawsall, in some strange way, differ from ours. Their geometry is differentbecause their space has a curve in it so that all their planes arecylinders; and their law of Gravitation is not according to the law ofinverse squares, and there are four-and-twenty primary colours insteadof only three. Most of the fantastic things of our science arecommonplaces there, and all our earthly science would seem to them themaddest dreaming. There are no flowers upon their plants, for instance,but jets of coloured fire. That, of course, will seem mere nonsense toyou because you do not understand Most of what the Angel told the Vicar,indeed the Vicar could not realise, because his own experiences, beingonly of this world of matter, warred against his understanding. It wastoo strange to imagine.

  What had jolted these twin universes together so that the Angel hadfallen suddenly into Sidderford, neither the Angel nor the Vicar couldtell. Nor for the matter of that could the author of this story. Theauthor is concerned with the facts of the case, and has neither thedesire nor the confidence to explain them. Explanations are the fallacyof a scientific age. And the cardinal fact of the case is this, that outin Siddermorton Park, with the glory of some wonderful world where thereis neither sorrow nor sighing, still clinging to him, on the 4th ofAugust 1895, stood an Angel, bright and beautiful, talking to the Vicarof Siddermorton about the plurality of worlds. The author will swear tothe Angel, if need be; and there he draws the line.

  VIII.

  "I have," said the Angel, "a most unusual feeling--_here_. Have hadsince 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 Vicarbegan, feeling his chin.

  "And do you know, I have also the most curious sensations in mymouth--almost as if--it's so absurd!--as if I wanted to stuff thingsinto 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."

  "Put food into your mouth, you know. One has to here. You will soonlearn. If you don't, you get thin and miserable, and suffer a greatdeal--_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 feelpain and have your wings broken, you may even have to die before you getout of it again. At anyrate you had better try eating. For my ownpart--ahem!--there are many more disagreeable things."

  "I suppose I _had_ better Eat," said the Angel. "If it's not toodifficult. 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. Whata very odd world this is!"

  "To Die," said the Vicar, "is generally considered worse than eitherpain or hunger.... It depends."

  "You must explain all that to me later," said the Angel. "Unless I wakeup. At present, please show me how to eat. If you will. I feel a kind ofurgency...."

  "Pardon me," said the Vicar, and offered an elbow. "If I may have thepleasure of entertaining you. My house lies yonder--not a couple ofmiles from here."

  "_Your_ House!" said the Angel a little puzzled; but he took the Vicar'sarm affectionately, and the two, conversing as they went, waded slowlythrough the luxuriant bracken, sun mottled under the trees, and on overthe stile in the park palings, and so across the bee-swarming heatherfor a mile or more, down the hillside, home.

  You would have been charmed at the couple could you have seen them. TheAngel, slight of figure, scarcely five feet high, and with a beautiful,almost effeminate face, such as an Italian old Master might havepainted. (Indeed, there is one in the National Gallery [_Tobias and theAngel_, by some artist unknown] not at all unlike him so far as face andspirit go.) He was robed simply in a purple-wrought saffron blouse, barekneed 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 apiebald straw hat with a black ribbon, a very neat white tie, and a finegold watch-chain. He was so greatly interested in his companion that itonly occurred to him when he was in sight of the Vicarage that he hadleft 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 rapidlyin intensity.

  PARENTHESIS ON ANGELS.

  IX.

  Let us be plain. The Angel of this story is the Angel of Art, not theAngel that one must be irreverent to touch--neither the Angel ofreligious feeling nor the Angel of popular belief. The last we all know.She is alone among the angelic hosts in being distinctly feminine: shewears a robe of immaculate, unmitigated white with sleeves, is fair,with long golden tresses, and has eyes of the blue of Heaven. Just apure woman she is, pure maiden or pure matron, in her _robe de nuit_,and with wings attached to her shoulder blades. Her callings aredomestic and sympathetic, she watches over a cradle or assists a sistersoul heavenward. Often she bears a palm leaf, but one would not besurprised if one met her carrying a warming-pan softly to some poorchilly sinner. She it was who came down in a bevy to Marguerite inprison, in the amended last scene in _Faust_ at the Lyceum, and theinteresting and improving little children that are to die young, havevisions of such angels in the novels of Mrs Henry Wood. This whitewomanliness with her indescribable charm of lavender-like holiness, heraroma of clean, methodical lives, is, it would seem after all, a purelyTeutonic invention. Latin thought knows her not; the old masters havenone of her. She is of a piece with that gentle innocent ladylike schoolof art whereof the greatest triumph is "a lump in one's throat," andwhere wit and passion, scorn and pomp, have no place. The white angelwas made in Germany, in the land of blonde women and the domesticsentiments. She comes to us cool and worshipful, pure and tranquil, assilently soothing as the breadth and calmness of the starlit sky, whichalso is so unspeakably dear to the Teutonic soul.... We do herreverence. And to the angels of the Hebrews, those spirits of power andmystery, to Raphael, Zadkiel, and Michael, of whom only Watts has caughtthe shadow, of whom only Blake has seen the splendour, to them too, dowe do reverence.

  But this Angel the Vicar shot is, we say, no such angel at all, but theAngel of Italian art, polychromatic and gay. He comes from the land ofbeautiful dreams and not from any holier place. At best he is
a popishcreature. Bear patiently, therefore, with his scattered remiges, and benot hasty with your charge of irreverence before the story is read.

  AT THE VICARAGE.

  X.

  The Curate's wife and her two daughters and Mrs Jehoram were stillplaying at tennis on the lawn behind the Vicar's study, playing keenlyand talking in gasps about paper patterns for blouses. But the Vicarforgot and came in that way.

  They saw the Vicar's hat above the rhododendrons, and a bare curly headbeside 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 ballbetween the fingers of the other. "_He_ really ought to have gone to seeher--being the Vicar. Not George. I----_Ah!_"

  For the two figures suddenly turned the corner and were visible. TheVicar, arm in arm with----

  You see, it came on the Curate's wife suddenly. The Angel's face beingtowards her she saw nothing of the wings. Only a face of unearthlybeauty in a halo of chestnut hair, and a graceful figure clothed in asaffron garment that barely reached the knees. The thought of thoseknees flashed upon the Vicar at once. He too was horrorstruck. So werethe two girls and Mrs Jehoram. All horrorstruck. The Angel stared inastonishment at the horrorstruck group. You see, he had never seenanyone horrorstruck before.