"One minute, Crump," said the Vicar, taking the Doctor"s arm and leading him towards the door.
The Angel"s smile grew brighter. He looked down at his black-clad legs.
"He positively thinks I am a man!" said the Angel. "What he makes of the wings beats me altogether. What a queer creature he must be! This is really a most extraordinary Dream!"
XIV.
"That _is_ an Angel," whispered the Vicar. "You don"t understand."
"_What?_" said the Doctor in a quick, sharp voice. His eyebrows went up and he smiled.
"But the wings?"
"Quite natural, quite ... if a little abnormal."
"Are you sure they are natural?"
"My dear fellow, everything that is, is natural. There is nothing unnatural in the world. If I thought there was I should give up practice and go into _Le Grand Chartreuse_. There are abnormal phenomena, of course. And----"
"But the way I came upon him," said the Vicar.
"Yes, tell me where you picked him up," said the Doctor. He sat down on the hall table.
The Vicar began rather hesitatingly--he was not very good at story telling--with the rumours of a strange great bird. He told the story in clumsy sentences--for, knowing the Bishop as he did, with that awful example always before him he dreaded getting his pulpit style into his daily conversation--and at every third sentence or so, the Doctor made a downward movement of his head--the corners of his mouth tucked away, so to speak--as though he ticked off the phases of the story and so far found it just as it ought to be. "Self-hypnotism," he murmured once.
"I beg your pardon?" said the Vicar.
"Nothing," said the Doctor. "Nothing, I a.s.sure you. Go on. This is extremely interesting."
The Vicar told him he went out with his gun.
"_After_ lunch, I think you said?" interrupted the Doctor.
"Immediately after," said the Vicar.
"You should not do such things, you know. But go on, please."
He came to the glimpse of the Angel from the gate.
"In the full glare," said the Doctor, in parenthesis. "It was seventy-nine in the shade."
When the Vicar had finished, the Doctor pressed his lips together tighter than ever, smiled faintly, and looked significantly into the Vicar"s eyes.
"You don"t ..." began the Vicar, falteringly.
The Doctor shook his head. "Forgive me," he said, putting his hand on the Vicar"s arm.
"You go out," he said, "on a hot lunch and on a hot afternoon. Probably over eighty. Your mind, what there is of it, is whirling with avian expectations. I say, "what there is of it," because most of your nervous energy is down there, digesting your dinner. A man who has been lying in the bracken stands up before you and you blaze away. Over he goes--and as it happens--as it happens--he has reduplicate fore-limbs, one pair being not unlike wings. It"s a coincidence certainly. And as for his iridescent colours and so forth----. Have you never had patches of colour swim before your eyes before, on a brilliant sunlight day?... Are you sure they were confined to the wings? Think."
"But he says he _is_ an Angel!" said the Vicar, staring out of his little round eyes, his plump hands in his pockets.
"_Ah!_" said the Doctor with his eye on the Vicar. "I expected as much." He paused.
"But don"t you think ..." began the Vicar.
"That man," said the Doctor in a low, earnest voice, "is a mattoid."
"A what?" said the Vicar.
"A mattoid. An abnormal man. Did you notice the effeminate delicacy of his face? His tendency to quite unmeaning laughter? His neglected hair?
Then consider his singular dress...."
The Vicar"s hand went up to his chin.
"Marks of mental weakness," said the Doctor. "Many of this type of degenerate show this same disposition to a.s.sume some vast mysterious credentials. One will call himself the Prince of Wales, another the Archangel Gabriel, another the Deity even. Ibsen thinks he is a Great Teacher, and Maeterlink a new Shakespeare. I"ve just been reading all about it--in Nordau. No doubt his odd deformity gave him an idea...."
"But really," began the Vicar.
"No doubt he"s slipped away from confinement."
"I do not altogether accept...."
"You will. If not, there"s the police, and failing that, advertis.e.m.e.nt; but, of course, his people may want to hush it up. It"s a sad thing in a family...."
"He seems so altogether...."
"Probably you"ll hear from his friends in a day or so," said the Doctor, feeling for his watch. "He can"t live far from here, I should think. He seems harmless enough. I must come along and see that wing again to-morrow." He slid off the hall table and stood up.
"Those old wives" tales still have their hold on you," he said, patting the Vicar on the shoulder. "But an angel, you know--Ha, ha!"
"I certainly _did_ think...." said the Vicar dubiously.
"Weigh the evidence," said the Doctor, still fumbling at his watch.
"Weigh the evidence with our instruments of precision. What does it leave you? Splashes of colour, spots of fancy--_muscae volantes_."
"And yet," said the Vicar, "I could almost swear to the glory on his wings...."
"Think it over," said the Doctor (watch out); "hot afternoon--brilliant sunshine--boiling down on your head.... But really I _must_ be going. It is a quarter to five. I"ll see your--angel (ha, ha!) to-morrow again, if no one has been to fetch him in the meanwhile. Your bandaging was really very good. I flatter _myself_ on that score. Our ambulance cla.s.ses _were_ a success you see.... Good afternoon."
THE CURATE.
XV.