The Wonderful Visit E-Book

Herbert George Wells

• Herausgeber: Herbert George Wells
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

"The Wonderful Visit" is an 1895 novel by H. G. Wells. With an angel—a creature of fantasy unlike a religious angel—as protagonist and taking place in contemporary England, the book could be classified as contemporary fantasy, although the genre was not recognised in Wells's time. "The Wonderful Visit" also has strong satirical themes, gently mocking customs and institutions of Victorian England as well as idealistic rebellion itself.

Leseprobe

Table Of Contents

I. The Night of the Strange Bird.

II. The Coming of the Strange Bird.

III. The Hunting of the Strange Bird.

IV.

V.

VI. The Vicar and the Angel.

VII.

VIII.

IX. Parenthesis on Angels.

X. At the Vicarage.

XI.

XII.

XIII. The Man of Science.

XIV.

XV. The Curate.

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII. After Dinner.

XIX.

XX.

XXI.

XXII. Morning.

XXIII. The Violin.

XXIV. The Angel Explores the Village.

XXV.

XXVI.

XXVII.

XXVIII. Lady Hammergallow’s View.

XXIX. Further Adventures of the Angel in the Village.

XXX.

XXXI. Mrs. Jehoram’s Breadth of View.

XXXII. A Trivial Incident.

XXXIII. The Warp and the Woof of Things.

XXXIV. The Angel’s Debut.

XXXV.

XXXVI.

XXXVII.

XXXVIII. The Trouble of the Barbed Wire.

XXXIX.

XL. Delia.

XLI. Doctor Crump Acts.

XLII. Sir John Gotch Acts.

XLIII. The Sea Cliff.

XLIV. Mrs. Hinijer Acts.

XLV. The Angel in Trouble.

XLVI.

XLVII. The Last Day of the Visit.

XLVIII.

XLIX.

L.

LI.

LII.

The Epilogue.

I. The Night of the Strange Bird.

On the Night of the Strange Bird, many people atSidderton(and some nearer) saw a Glare on theSidderfordmoor. But no one inSidderfordsaw it, for most ofSidderfordwas abed.

All day the wind had been rising, so that the larks on the moor chirruped fitfully near the ground, or rose only to be driven like leaves before the wind. The sun set in a bloody welter of clouds, and the moon was hidden. The glare, they say, was golden like a beam shining out of the sky, not a uniform blaze, but broken all over by curving flashes like the waving of swords. It lasted but a moment and left the night dark and obscure. There were letters about it inNature, and a rough drawing that no one thought very like. (You may see it for yourself—the drawing that was unlike the glare—on page 42 of Vol. cclx, of that publication.)

None inSidderfordsaw the light, but Annie HookerDurgam’swife,was lying awake, and she saw the reflection of it—a flickering tongue of gold—dancing on the wall.

She, too, was one of those who heard the sound. The others who heard the sound were LumpyDurgan, the half–wit, and Amory’s mother. They said it was a sound like children singing and a throbbing of harp strings, carried on a rush of notes like that which sometimes comes from an organ. It began and ended like the opening and shutting of a door, and before and after they heard nothing but the night wind howling over the moor and the noise of the caves underSidderfordcliff. Amory’s mother said she wanted to cry when she heard it, bug Lumpy was only sorry he could hear no more.

That is as much as anyone can tell you of the glare uponSidderfordMoor and the alleged music therewith. And whether these had any realconnexionwith the StrangeBirdwhose history follows, is more than I can say. But I set it down here for reasons that will be more apparent as the story proceeds.

II. The Coming of the Strange Bird.

Sandy Bright was coming down the road from Spinner’s carrying a side of bacon he had taken in exchange for a clock. He saw nothing of the light but he heard and saw the Strange Bird. He suddenly heard a flapping and a voice like a woman wailing, and being a nervous man and all alone, he was alarmed forthwith, and turning (all a-tremble) saw something large and black against the dim darkness of the cedars up the hill. It seemed to be coming right down upon him, and incontinently he dropped his bacon and set off running, only to fall headlong.

He tried in vain—such was his state of mind—to remember the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer. The strange bird flapped over him, something larger than himself, with a vast spread of wings, and, as he thought, black. He screamed and gave himself up for lost. Then it went past him, sailing down the hill, and, soaring over the vicarage, vanished into the hazy valley towardsSidderford.

And Sandy Bright lay upon his stomach there, for ever so long, staring into the darkness after the strange bird. At last he got upon his knees and began to thank Heaven for his merciful deliverance, with his eyes downhill. He went on down into the village, talking aloud and confessing his sins as he went, lest the strange bird should come back. All who heard him thought him drunk. But from that night he was a changed man, and had done with drunkenness and defrauding the revenue by selling silver ornaments without alicence. And the side of bacon lay upon the hillside until the tallyman fromPortburdockfound it in the morning.

The next who saw the Strange Bird was a solicitor’s clerk atIpingHanger, who was climbing the hill before breakfast, to see the sunrise. Save for a few dissolving wisps of cloud the sky had been blown clear in the night. At first he thought it was an eagle he saw. It was near the zenith, and incredibly remote, a mere bright speck above the pink cirri, and it seemed as if it fluttered and beat itself against the sky, as an imprisoned swallow might do against a window pane. Then down it came into the shadow of the earth, sweeping in a great curve towardsPortburdockand round over the Hanger, and so vanishing behind the woods ofSiddermortonPark. It seemed larger than a man. Just before it was hidden, the light of the rising sun smote over the edge of the downs and touched its wings, and they flashed with the brightness of flames and thecolourof precious stones, and so passed, leaving the witness agape.

A ploughman going to his work, along under the stone wall ofSiddermortonPark, saw the Strange Bird flash over him for a moment and vanish among the hazy interstices of the beech trees. But he saw little of thecolourof the wings, witnessing only that its legs, which were long, seemed pink and bare like naked flesh, and its body mottled white. It smote like an arrow through the air and was gone.

These were the first three eye-witnesses of the Strange Bird.

Now in these days one does not cower before the devil and one’s own sinfulness, or see strangeiridiscentwings in the light of dawn, and say nothing of it afterwards. The young solicitor’s clerk told his mother and sisters at breakfast, and, afterwards, on his way to the office atPortburdock, spoke of it to the blacksmith ofHammerpond, and spent the morning with his fellow clerksmarvellinginstead of copying deeds. And Sandy Bright went to talk the matter over withMrJekyll, the“Primitive”minister, and the ploughman told old Hugh and afterwards the vicar ofSiddermorton.

“They are not an imaginative race about here,”said the Vicar ofSiddermorton,“I wonder how much of that was true. Barring that he thinks the wings were brown it sounds uncommonly like a Flamingo.”

III. The Hunting of the Strange Bird.

The Vicar ofSiddermorton(which is nine miles inland fromSiddermouthas the crow flies) was an ornithologist. Some such pursuit, botany, antiquity, folk-lore, is almost inevitable for a single man in his position. He was given to geometry also, propounding occasionally impossible problems in theEducational Times, but ornithology was hisforte. He had already added two visitors to the list of occasional British birds. His name was well-known in the columns of theZoologist(I am afraid it may be forgotten by now, for the world moves apace). And on the day after the coming of the Strange Bird, came first one and then another to confirm the ploughman’s story and tell him, not that it had any connection, of the Glare uponSidderfordmoor.

Now, the Vicar ofSiddermortonhad two rivals in his scientific pursuits; Gully ofSidderton, who had actually seen the glare, and who it was sent the drawing toNature, and Borland the natural history dealer, who kept the marine laboratory atPortburdock. Borland, the Vicar thought, should have stuck to his copepods, but instead he kept a taxidermist, and took advantage of his littoral position to pick up rare sea birds. It was evident to anyone who knew anything of collecting that both these men would be scouring the country after the strange visitant, before twenty-four hours were out.

The Vicar’s eye rested on the back of Saunders’British Birds, for he was in his study at the time. Already in two places there was entered:“the only known British specimen was secured by the Rev. K.Hilyer, Vicar ofSiddermorton.”A third such entry.He doubted if any other collector had that.

He looked at his watch—two. He had just lunched, and usually he“rested”in the afternoon. He knew it would make him feel very disagreeable if he went out into the hot sunshine-both on the top of his head and generally.

Yet Gully perhaps was out, prowling observant. Suppose it was something very good and Gully got it!

His gun stood in the corner. (The thing hadiridiscentwings and pink legs! The chromatic conflict was certainly exceedingly stimulating). He took his gun.

He would have gone out by the glass doors andverandah,and down the garden into the hill road, in order to avoid his housekeeper’s eye. He knew his gun expeditions were not approved of. But advancing towards him up the garden, he saw the curate’s wife and her two daughters, carrying tennis rackets. His curate’s wife was a young woman of immense will, who used to play tennis on his lawn, and cut his roses, differ from him on doctrinal points, andcriticisehis personalbehaviourall over the parish. He went in abject fear of her, was always trying to propitiate her. But so far he had clung to his ornithology....

However, he went out by the front door.

IV.

If it were not for collectors England would be full, so to speak, of rare birds and wonderful butterflies, strange flowers and a thousand interesting things. But happily the collector prevents all that, either killing with his own hands or, by buyingextravagantly,procuring people of the lower classes to kill such eccentricities as appear. It makes work for people, even though Acts of Parliament interfere. In this way, for instance, he is killing off the chough in Cornwall, the Bath white butterfly, the Queen of Spain Fritillary; and can plume himself upon the extermination of the Great Auk, and a hundred other rare birds and plants and insects.All that is the work of the collector and his glory alone.In the name of Science.And this is right and as it should be; eccentricity, in fact, is immorality—think over it again if you do not think so now—just as eccentricity in one’s way of thinking is madness (I defy you to find another definition that will fit all the cases of either); and if a species is rare it follows that it is not Fitted to Survive. The collector is after all merely like the foot soldier in the days of heavyarmour-he leaves the combatants alone and cuts the throats of those who are overthrown. So one may go through England from end to end in the summer time and see only eight or ten commonplace wild flowers, and the commoner butterflies, and a dozen or so common birds, and never be offended by any breach of the monotony, any splash of strange blossom or flutter of unknown wing. All the rest have been“collected”years ago. For which cause we should all love Collectors, and bear in mind what we owe them when their little collections are displayed. These camphorated little drawers of theirs, their glass cases and blotting-paper books, are the graves of the Rare and the Beautiful, the symbols of the Triumph of Leisure (morally spent) over the Delights of Life. (All of which, as you very properly remark, has nothing whatever to do with the Strange Bird.)

V.

There is a place on the moor where the black water shines among the succulent moss, and the hairy sundew, eater of careless insects, spreads its red-stained hungry hands to the God who gives his creatures—one to feed another. On a ridge thereby grow birches with a silvery bark, and the soft green of the larch mingles with the dark green fir. Thither through the honey humming heathercamethe Vicar, in the heat of the day, carrying a gun under his arm, a gun loaded withswanshotfor the Strange Bird. And over his disengaged hand he carried a pocket handkerchief wherewith, ever and again, he wiped his beady face.

He went by and on past the big pond and the pool full of brown leaves where theSidderarises, and so by the road (which is at first sandy and then chalky) to the little gate that goes into the park. There are seven steps up to the gate and on the further side six down again-lest the deer escape-so that when the Vicar stood in the gateway his head was ten feet or more above the ground. And looking where a tumult of bracken fronds filled the hollow between two groups of beech, his eye caught somethingparti-colouredthat wavered and went. Suddenly his face gleamed and his muscles grew tense; he ducked his head, clutched his gun with both hands, and stood still. Then watching keenly, he came on down the steps into the park, and still holding his gun with both hands, crept rather than walked towards the jungle of bracken. Nothing stirred, and he almost feared that his eyes had played him false, until he reached the ferns and had gone rustling breast high into them. Then suddenlyrosesomething full of waveringcolours, twenty yards or less in front of his face, and beating the air. In another moment it had fluttered above the bracken and spread its pinions wide. He saw what it was, his heart was in his mouth, and he fired out of pure surprise and habit.

There was a scream of superhuman agony, the wings beat the air twice, and the victim came slanting swiftly downward and struck the ground—a struggling heap of writhing body, broken wing and flying bloodstained plumes—upon the turfy slope behind.

The Vicar stood aghast, with his smoking gun in his hand. It was no bird at all, but a youth with an extremely beautiful face, clad in a robe of saffron and with iridescent wings, across whose pinions great waves ofcolour, flushes of purple and crimson, golden green and intenseblue,pursued one another as he writhed in his agony. Never had the Vicar seen such gorgeous floods ofcolour, not stained glass windows, not the wings of butterflies, not even the glories of crystals seen between prisms, nocolourson earth could compare with them. Twice the Angel raisedhimself, only to fall over sideways again. Then the beating of the wings diminished, the terrified face grew pale, the floods ofcolourabated, and suddenly with a sob he lay prone, and the changing hues of the broken wings faded swiftly into one uniform dull grey hue.

“Oh!whathas happened to me?”cried the Angel (for such it was), shuddering violently, hands outstretched and clutching the ground, and then lying still.

“Dear me!”said the Vicar.“I had no idea.”He came forward cautiously.“Excuse me,”he said,“I am afraid I have shot you.”It was the obvious remark.

The Angel seemed to become aware of his presence for the first time. He raised himself by onehand,his brown eyes stared into the Vicar’s. Then, with a gasp, and biting his nether lip, he struggled into a sitting position and surveyed the Vicar from top to toe.

“A man!”said the Angel, clasping his forehead;“a man in the maddest black clothes and without a feather upon him. Then I was not deceived. I am indeed in the Land of Dreams!”

VI. The Vicar and the Angel.

Now there are some things frankly impossible. The weakest intellect will admit this situation is impossible. TheAthenaeumwill probably say as much should it venture to review this.Sunbespatteredferns, spreading beech trees, the Vicar and the gun are acceptable enough. But this Angel is a different matter. Plain sensible people will scarcely go on with such an extravagant book. And the Vicar fully appreciated this impossibility. But he lacked decision. Consequently he went on with it, as you shall immediately hear. He was hot, it was after dinner,hewas in no mood for mental subtleties. The Angel had him at a disadvantage, and further distracted him from the main issue by irrelevant iridescence and a violent fluttering. For the moment it never occurred to the Vicar to ask whether the Angel was possible or not. He accepted him in the confusion of the moment, and the mischief was done. Put yourself in his place, my dearAthenceum. You go out shooting. You hit something. That alone would disconcert you. You find you have hit an Angel, and hewrithesabout for a minute and then sits up and addresses you. He makes no apology for his own impossibility. Indeed, he carries the charge clean into your camp.“A man!”he says, pointing.“A man in the maddest black clothes and without a feather upon him.Then I was not deceived. I am indeed in the Land of Dreams!”Youmustanswer him.Unless you take to your heels.Or blow his brains out with your second barrel as an escape from the controversy.

“The Land of Dreams!Pardon me if I suggest you have just come out of it,”was the Vicar’s remark.

“How can that be?”said the Angel.

“Your wing,”said theVicar,“is bleeding. Before we talk, may I have the pleasure—the melancholy pleasure—of tying itup ?I am really most sincerely sorry...”The Angel put his hand behind his back and winced.

The Vicar assisted his victim to stand up. The Angel turned gravely and the Vicar, with numberless insignificant panting parentheses, carefully examined the injured wings. (They articulated, he observed with interest, to a kind of second glenoid on the outer and upper edge of the shoulder blade. The left wing had suffered little except the loss of some of the primary wing-quills, and a shot or so in theala spuria, but thehumerusbone of the right was evidently smashed.) The Vicar stanched the bleeding as well as he could and tied up the bone with his pocket handkerchief and the neck wrap his housekeeper made him carry in all weathers.

“I’m afraid you will not be able to fly for some time,”said he, feeling the bone.

“I don’t like this new sensation,”said the Angel.

“The Pain when I feel your bone?”

“Thewhat?”said theAngel.

“The Pain.”

“’Pain’—you call it. No, I certainly don’t like the Pain. Do you have much 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 to tie a knot.“I think this bandaging must serve for the present,”he said.“I’ve studied ambulance work before, but never the bandaging up of wing 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, still intent on the wound.

The Angel gave a shrug of the wing and turned round to look at the Vicar again. He had been trying to keep an eye on the Vicar over his shoulder duringall theirinterview. He looked at him from top to toe with raised eyebrows and a growing smile on his beautiful soft-featured face.“It seems so odd,”he said with a sweet little laugh,“to be talking to a Man!”

“Do you know,”said the Vicar,“now that I come to think of it, it is equally odd to me that I should be talking to an Angel. I am a somewhat matter-of-fact person. A Vicar has to be. Angels I have always regarded as—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.But I have seen several since the sunrise, solid real men, besides a horse or so those Unicorn things you know, without horns and quite a number of those grotesque knobby things called‘cows.’I was naturally a little frightened at so many mythical monsters, and came to hide here until it was dark. I suppose it will be dark again presently like it was at first.Phew! This Pain of yours is poor fun. I hope I shall wake up directly.”

“I don’t understand quite,”said the Vicar, knitting his brows and tapping his forehead with his flat hand.“Mythical monster!”The worst thing he had been called for years hitherto was a‘mediaeval anachronism’(by an advocate of Disestablishment).“Do I understand that 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 soverydream-like,”said the Angel.“Just exactly what one dreams of—or artists imagine.”

“You have artists then among the Angels?”