Let us be plain. The Angel of this story is the Angel of Art, not the Angel that one must be irreverent to touch--neither the Angel of religious feeling nor the Angel of popular belief. The last we all know.
She is alone among the angelic hosts in being distinctly feminine: she wears a robe of immaculate, unmitigated white with sleeves, is fair, with long golden tresses, and has eyes of the blue of Heaven. Just a pure woman she is, pure maiden or pure matron, in her _robe de nuit_, and with wings attached to her shoulder blades. Her callings are domestic and sympathetic, she watches over a cradle or a.s.sists a sister soul heavenward. Often she bears a palm leaf, but one would not be surprised if one met her carrying a warming-pan softly to some poor chilly sinner. She it was who came down in a bevy to Marguerite in prison, in the amended last scene in _Faust_ at the Lyceum, and the interesting and improving little children that are to die young, have visions of such angels in the novels of Mrs Henry Wood. This white womanliness with her indescribable charm of lavender-like holiness, her aroma of clean, methodical lives, is, it would seem after all, a purely Teutonic invention. Latin thought knows her not; the old masters have none of her. She is of a piece with that gentle innocent ladylike school of art whereof the greatest triumph is "a lump in one"s throat," and where wit and pa.s.sion, scorn and pomp, have no place. The white angel was made in Germany, in the land of blonde women and the domestic sentiments. She comes to us cool and worshipful, pure and tranquil, as silently soothing as the breadth and calmness of the starlit sky, which also is so unspeakably dear to the Teutonic soul.... We do her reverence. And to the angels of the Hebrews, those spirits of power and mystery, to Raphael, Zadkiel, and Michael, of whom only Watts has caught the shadow, of whom only Blake has seen the splendour, to them too, do we do reverence.
But this Angel the Vicar shot is, we say, no such angel at all, but the Angel of Italian art, polychromatic and gay. He comes from the land of beautiful dreams and not from any holier place. At best he is a popish creature. Bear patiently, therefore, with his scattered remiges, and be not 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 still playing at tennis on the lawn behind the Vicar"s study, playing keenly and talking in gasps about paper patterns for blouses. But the Vicar forgot and came in that way.
They saw the Vicar"s hat above the rhododendrons, and a bare curly head beside 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 ball between the fingers of the other. "_He_ really ought to have gone to see her--being the Vicar. Not George. I----_Ah!_"
For the two figures suddenly turned the corner and were visible. The Vicar, arm in arm with----
You see, it came on the Curate"s wife suddenly. The Angel"s face being towards her she saw nothing of the wings. Only a face of unearthly beauty in a halo of chestnut hair, and a graceful figure clothed in a saffron garment that barely reached the knees. The thought of those knees flashed upon the Vicar at once. He too was horrorstruck. So were the two girls and Mrs Jehoram. All horrorstruck. The Angel stared in astonishment at the horrorstruck group. You see, he had never seen anyone horrorstruck before.
"MIS--ter Hilyer!" said the Curate"s wife. "This is _too_ much!" She stood speechless for a moment. "_Oh!_"
She swept round upon the rigid girls. "Come!" The Vicar opened and shut his voiceless mouth. The world hummed and spun about him. There was a whirling of zephyr skirts, four impa.s.sioned faces sweeping towards the open door of the pa.s.sage that ran through the vicarage. He felt his position went with them.
"Mrs Mendham," said the Vicar, stepping forward. "Mrs Mendham. You don"t understand----"
"_Oh!_" they all said again.
One, two, three, four skirts vanished in the doorway. The Vicar staggered half way across the lawn and stopped, aghast. "This comes," he heard the Curate"s wife say, out of the depth of the pa.s.sage, "of having an unmarried vicar----." The umbrella stand wobbled. The front door of the vicarage slammed like a minute gun. There was silence for a s.p.a.ce.
"I might have thought," he said. "She is always so hasty."
He put his hand to his chin--a habit with him. Then turned his face to his companion. The Angel was evidently well bred. He was holding up Mrs Jehoram"s sunshade--she had left it on one of the cane chairs--and examining it with extraordinary interest. He opened it. "What a curious little mechanism!" he said. "What can it be for?"
The Vicar did not answer. The angelic costume certainly was--the Vicar knew it was a case for a French phrase--but he could scarcely remember it. He so rarely used French. It was not _de trop_, he knew. Anything but _de trop_. The Angel was _de trop_, but certainly not his costume.
Ah! _Sans culotte!_
The Vicar examined his visitor critically--for the first time. "He _will_ be difficult to explain," he said to himself softly.
The Angel stuck the sunshade into the turf and went to smell the sweet briar. The sunshine fell upon his brown hair and gave it almost the appearance of a halo. He p.r.i.c.ked his finger. "Odd!" he said. "Pain again."
"Yes," said the Vicar, thinking aloud. "He"s very beautiful and curious as he is. I should like him best so. But I am afraid I must."
He approached the Angel with a nervous cough.
XI.
"Those," said the Vicar, "were ladies."
"How grotesque," said the Angel, smiling and smelling the sweet briar.
"And such quaint shapes!"
"Possibly," said the Vicar. "Did you, _ahem_, notice how they behaved?"
"They went away. Seemed, indeed, to run away. Frightened? I, of course, was frightened at things without wings. I hope---- they were not frightened at my wings?"
"At your appearance generally," said the Vicar, glancing involuntarily at the pink feet.
"Dear me! It never occurred to me. I suppose I seemed as odd to them as you did to me." He glanced down. "And my feet. _You_ have hoofs like a hippogriff."
"Boots," corrected the Vicar.
"Boots, you call them! But anyhow, I am sorry I alarmed----"
"You see," said the Vicar, stroking his chin, "our ladies, _ahem_, have peculiar views--rather inartistic views--about, _ahem_, clothing.
Dressed as you are, I am afraid, I am really afraid that--beautiful as your costume certainly is--you will find yourself somewhat, _ahem_, somewhat isolated in society. We have a little proverb, "When in Rome, _ahem_, one must do as the Romans do." I can a.s.sure you that, a.s.suming you are desirous to, _ahem_, a.s.sociate with us--during your involuntary stay----"
The Angel retreated a step or so as the Vicar came nearer and nearer in his attempt to be diplomatic and confidential. The beautiful face grew perplexed. "I don"t quite understand. Why do you keep making these noises in your throat? Is it Die or Eat, or any of those...."
"As your host," interrupted the Vicar, and stopped.
"As my host," said the Angel.
"_Would_ you object, pending more permanent arrangements, to invest yourself, _ahem_, in a suit, an entirely new suit I may say, like this I have on?"
"Oh!" said the Angel. He retreated so as to take in the Vicar from top to toe. "Wear clothes like yours!" he said. He was puzzled but amused.
His eyes grew round and bright, his mouth puckered at the corners.
"Delightful!" he said, clapping his hands together. "What a mad, quaint dream this is! Where are they?" He caught at the neck of the saffron robe.
"Indoors!" said the Vicar. "This way. We will change--indoors!"
XII.
So the Angel was invested in a pair of nether garments of the Vicar"s, a shirt, ripped down the back (to accommodate the wings), socks, shoes--the Vicar"s dress shoes--collar, tie, and light overcoat. But putting on the latter was painful, and reminded the Vicar that the bandaging was temporary. "I will ring for tea at once, and send Grummet down for Crump," said the Vicar. "And dinner shall be earlier." While the Vicar shouted his orders on the landing rails, the Angel surveyed himself in the cheval gla.s.s with immense delight. If he was a stranger to pain, he was evidently no stranger--thanks perhaps to dreaming--to the pleasure of incongruity.
They had tea in the drawing-room. The Angel sat on the music stool (music stool because of his wings). At first he wanted to lie on the hearthrug. He looked much less radiant in the Vicar"s clothes, than he had done upon the moor when dressed in saffron. His face shone still, the colour of his hair and cheeks was strangely bright, and there was a superhuman light in his eyes, but his wings under the overcoat gave him the appearance of a hunchback. The garments, indeed, made quite a terrestrial thing of him, the trousers were puckered transversely, and the shoes a size or so too large.
He was charmingly affable and quite ignorant of the most elementary facts of civilization. Eating came without much difficulty, and the Vicar had an entertaining time teaching him how to take tea. "What a mess it is! What a dear grotesque ugly world you live in!" said the Angel. "Fancy stuffing things into your mouth! We use our mouths just to talk and sing with. Our world, you know, is almost incurably beautiful.