We get so very little ugliness, that I find all this ... delightful."
Mrs Hinijer, the Vicar"s housekeeper, looked at the Angel suspiciously when she brought in the tea. She thought him rather a "queer customer."
What she would have thought had she seen him in saffron no one can tell.
The Angel shuffled about the room with his cup of tea in one hand, and the bread and b.u.t.ter in the other, and examined the Vicar"s furniture.
Outside the French windows, the lawn with its array of dahlias and sunflowers glowed in the warm sunlight, and Mrs Jehoram"s sunshade stood thereon like a triangle of fire. He thought the Vicar"s portrait over the mantel very curious indeed, could not understand what it was there for. "You have yourself round," he said, _apropos_ of the portrait, "Why want yourself flat?" and he was vastly amused at the gla.s.s fire screen.
He found the oak chairs odd--"You"re not square, are you?" he said, when the Vicar explained their use. "_We_ never double ourselves up. We lie about on the asphodel when we want to rest."
"The chair," said the Vicar, "to tell you the truth, has always puzzled _me_. It dates, I think, from the days when the floors were cold and very dirty. I suppose we have kept up the habit. It"s become a kind of instinct with us to sit on chairs. Anyhow, if I went to see one of my parishioners, and suddenly spread myself out on the floor--the natural way of it--I don"t know what she would do. It would be all over the parish in no time. Yet it seems the natural method of reposing, to recline. The Greeks and Romans----"
"What is this?" said the Angel abruptly.
"That"s a stuffed kingfisher. I killed it."
"Killed it!"
"Shot it," said the Vicar, "with a gun."
"Shot! As you did me?"
"I didn"t kill you, you see. Fortunately."
"Is killing making like that?"
"In a way."
"Dear me! And you wanted to make me like that--wanted to put gla.s.s eyes in me and string me up in a gla.s.s case full of ugly green and brown stuff?"
"You see," began the Vicar, "I scarcely understood----"
"Is that "die"?" asked the Angel suddenly.
"That is dead; it died."
"Poor little thing. I must eat a lot. But you say you killed it. _Why?_"
"You see," said the Vicar, "I take an interest in birds, and I (_ahem_) collect them. I wanted the specimen----"
The Angel stared at him for a moment with puzzled eyes. "A beautiful bird like that!" he said with a shiver. "Because the fancy took you. You wanted the specimen!"
He thought for a minute. "Do you often kill?" he asked the Vicar.
THE MAN OF SCIENCE.
XIII.
Then Doctor Crump arrived. Grummet had met him not a hundred yards from the vicarage gate. He was a large, rather heavy-looking man, with a clean-shaven face and a double chin. He was dressed in a grey morning coat (he always affected grey), with a chequered black and white tie.
"What"s the trouble?" he said, entering and staring without a shadow of surprise at the Angel"s radiant face.
"This--_ahem_--gentleman," said the Vicar, "or--_ah_--Angel"--the Angel bowed--"is suffering from a gunshot wound."
"Gunshot wound!" said Doctor Crump. "In July! May I look at it, Mr--Angel, I think you said?"
"He will probably be able to a.s.suage your pain," said the Vicar. "Let me a.s.sist you to remove your coat?"
The Angel turned obediently.
"Spinal curvature?" muttered Doctor Crump quite audibly, walking round behind the Angel. "No! abnormal growth. Hullo! This is odd!" He clutched the left wing. "Curious," he said. "Reduplication of the anterior limb--bifid coracoid. Possible, of course, but I"ve never seen it before." The angel winced under his hands. "Humerus. Radius and Ulna.
All there. Congenital, of course. Humerus broken. Curious integumentary simulation of feathers. Dear me. Almost avian. Probably of considerable interest in comparative anatomy. I never did!----How did this gunshot happen, Mr Angel?"
The Vicar was amazed at the Doctor"s matter-of-fact manner.
"Our friend," said the Angel, moving his head at the Vicar.
"Unhappily it is my doing," said the Vicar, stepping forward, explanatory. "I mistook the gentleman--the Angel (_ahem_)--for a large bird----"
"Mistook him for a large bird! What next? Your eyes want seeing to,"
said Doctor Crump. "I"ve told you so before." He went on patting and feeling, keeping time with a series of grunts and inarticulate mutterings.... "But this is really a very good bit of amateur bandaging," said he. "I think I shall leave it. Curious malformation this is! Don"t you find it inconvenient, Mr Angel?"
He suddenly walked round so as to look in the Angel"s face.
The Angel thought he referred to the wound. "It is rather," he said.
"If it wasn"t for the bones I should say paint with iodine night and morning. Nothing like iodine. You could paint your face flat with it.
But the osseous outgrowth, the bones, you know, complicate things. I could saw them off, of course. It"s not a thing one should have done in a hurry----"
"Do you mean my wings?" said the Angel in alarm.
"Wings!" said the Doctor. "Eigh? Call "em wings! Yes--what else should I mean?"
"Saw them off!" said the Angel.
"Don"t you think so? It"s of course your affair. I am only advising----"
"Saw them off! What a funny creature you are!" said the Angel, beginning to laugh.
"As you will," said the Doctor. He detested people who laughed. "The things are curious," he said, turning to the Vicar. "If inconvenient"--to the Angel. "I never heard of such complete reduplication before--at least among animals. In plants it"s common enough. Were you the only one in your family?" He did not wait for a reply. "Partial cases of the fission of limbs are not at all uncommon, of course, Vicar--six-fingered children, calves with six feet, and cats with double toes, you know. May I a.s.sist you?" he said, turning to the Angel who was struggling with the coat. "But such a complete reduplication, and so avian, too! It would be much less remarkable if it was simply another pair of arms."
The coat was got on and he and the Angel stared at one another.
"Really," said the Doctor, "one begins to understand how that beautiful myth of the angels arose. You look a little hectic, Mr Angel--feverish.
Excessive brilliance is almost worse as a symptom than excessive pallor.
Curious your name should be Angel. I must send you a cooling draught, if you should feel thirsty in the night...."
He made a memorandum on his shirt cuff. The Angel watched him thoughtfully, with the dawn of a smile in his eyes.