"That"s the position," said Sir John, jumping to his feet, "if it were not for you, I should take proceedings at once. As it is--am I to take proceedings or no?"
"You see," said the Vicar in horrible perplexity.
"Well?"
"Arrangements have to be made."
"He"s a mischief-making idler.... I know the breed. But I"ll give you a week----"
"Thank you," said the Vicar. "I understand your position. I perceive the situation is getting intolerable...."
"Sorry to give you this bother, of course," said Sir John.
"A week," said the Vicar.
"A week," said Sir John, leaving.
The Vicar returned, after accompanying Gotch out, and for a long time he remained sitting before the desk in his study, plunged in thought. "A week!" he said, after an immense silence. "Here is an Angel, a glorious Angel, who has quickened my soul to beauty and delight, who has opened my eyes to Wonderland, and something more than Wonderland, ... and I have promised to get rid of him in a week! What are we men made of?...
How _can_ I tell him?"
He began to walk up and down the room, then he went into the dining-room, and stood staring blankly out at the cornfield. The table was already laid for lunch. Presently he turned, still dreaming, and almost mechanically helped himself to a gla.s.s of sherry.
THE SEA CLIFF.
XLIII.
The Angel lay upon the summit of the cliff above Bandram Bay, and stared out at the glittering sea. Sheer from under his elbows fell the cliff, five hundred and seven feet of it down to the datum line, and the sea-birds eddied and soared below him. The upper part of the cliff was a greenish chalky rock, the lower two-thirds a warm red, marbled with gypsum bands, and from half-a-dozen places spurted jets of water, to fall in long cascades down its face. The swell frothed white on the flinty beach, and the water beyond where the shadows of an outstanding rock lay, was green and purple in a thousand tints and marked with streaks and flakes of foam. The air was full of sunlight and the tinkling of the little waterfalls and the slow soughing of the seas below. Now and then a b.u.t.terfly flickered over the face of the cliff, and a mult.i.tude of sea birds perched and flew hither and thither.
The Angel lay with his crippled, shrivelled wings humped upon his back, watching the gulls and jackdaws and rooks, circling in the sunlight, soaring, eddying, sweeping down to the water or upward into the dazzling blue of the sky. Long the Angel lay there and watched them going to and fro on outspread wings. He watched, and as he watched them he remembered with infinite longing the rivers of starlight and the sweetness of the land from which he came. And a gull came gliding overhead, swiftly and easily, with its broad wings spreading white and fair against the blue.
And suddenly a shadow came into the Angel"s eyes, the sunlight left them, he thought of his own crippled pinions, and put his face upon his arm and wept.
A woman who was walking along the footpath across the Cliff Field saw only a twisted hunchback dressed in the Vicar of Siddermorton"s cast-off clothes, sprawling foolishly at the edge of the cliff and with his forehead on his arm. She looked at him and looked again. "The silly creature has gone to sleep," she said, and though she had a heavy basket to carry, came towards him with an idea of waking him up. But as she drew near she saw his shoulders heave and heard the sound of his sobbing.
She stood still a minute, and her features twitched into a kind of grin.
Then treading softly she turned and went back towards the pathway. ""Tis so hard to think of anything to say," she said. "Poor afflicted soul!"
Presently the Angel ceased sobbing, and stared with a tear-stained face at the beach below him.
"This world," he said, "wraps me round and swallows me up. My wings grow shrivelled and useless. Soon I shall be nothing more than a crippled man, and I shall age, and bow myself to pain, and die.... I am miserable. And I am alone."
Then he rested his chin on his hands upon the edge of the cliff, and began to think of Delia"s face with the light in her eyes. The Angel felt a curious desire to go to her and tell her of his withered wings.
To place his arms about her and weep for the land he had lost. "Delia!"
he said to himself very softly. And presently a cloud drove in front of the sun.
MRS HINIJER ACTS.
XLIV.
Mrs Hinijer surprised the Vicar by tapping at his study door after tea.
"Begging your pardon, Sir," said Mrs Hinijer. "But might I make so bold as to speak to you for a moment?"
"Certainly, Mrs Hinijer," said the Vicar, little dreaming of the blow that was coming. He held a letter in his hand, a very strange and disagreeable letter from his bishop, a letter that irritated and distressed him, criticising in the strongest language the guests he chose to entertain in his own house. Only a popular bishop living in a democratic age, a bishop who was still half a pedagogue, could have written such a letter.
Mrs Hinijer coughed behind her hand and struggled with some respiratory disorganisation. The Vicar felt apprehensive. Usually in their interviews he was the most disconcerted. Invariably so when the interview ended.
"Well?" he said.
"May I make so bold, sir, as to arst when Mr Angel is a-going?" (Cough.)
The Vicar started. "To ask when Mr Angel is going?" he repeated slowly to gain time. "_Another!_"
"I"m sorry, sir. But I"ve been used to waitin" on gentlefolks, sir; and you"d hardly imagine how it feels quite to wait on such as "im."
"Such as ... _"im_! Do I understand you, Mrs Hinijer, that you don"t like Mr Angel?"
"You see, sir, before I came to you, sir, I was at Lord Dundoller"s seventeen years, and you, sir--if you will excuse me--are a perfect gentleman yourself, sir--though in the Church. And then...."
"Dear, dear!" said the Vicar. "And don"t you regard Mr Angel as a gentleman?"
"I"m sorry to "ave to say it, sir."
"But what...? Dear me! Surely!"
"I"m sorry to "ave to say it, sir. But when a party goes turning vegetarian suddenly and putting out all the cooking, and hasn"t no proper luggage of his own, and borry"s shirts and socks from his "ost, and don"t know no better than to try his knife at peas (as I seed my very self), and goes talking in odd corners to the housemaids, and folds up his napkin after meals, and eats with his fingers at minced veal, and plays the fiddle in the middle of the night keeping everybody awake, and stares and grins at his elders a-getting upstairs, and generally misconducts himself with things that I can scarcely tell you all, one can"t help thinking, sir. Thought is free, sir, and one can"t help coming to one"s own conclusions. Besides which, there is talk all over the village about him--what with one thing and another. I know a gentleman when I sees a gentleman, and I know a gentleman when I don"t see a gentleman, and me, and Susan, and George, we"ve talked it over, being the upper servants, so to speak, and experienced, and leaving out that girl Delia, who I only hope won"t come to any harm through him, and depend upon it, sir, that Mr Angel ain"t what you think he is, sir, and the sooner he leaves this house the better."
Mrs Hinijer ceased abruptly and stood panting but stern, and with her eyes grimly fixed on the Vicar"s face.
"_Really_, Mrs Hinijer!" said the Vicar, and then, "Oh _Lord_!"
"What _have_ I done?" said the Vicar, suddenly starting up and appealing to the inexorable fates. "What HAVE I done?"
"There"s no knowing," said Mrs Hinijer. "Though a deal of talk in the village."
"_Bother!_" said the Vicar, going and staring out of the window. Then he turned. "Look here, Mrs Hinijer! Mr Angel will be leaving this house in the course of a week. Is that enough?"
"Quite," said Mrs Hinijer. "And I feel sure, sir...."
The Vicar"s eyes fell with unwonted eloquence upon the door.