“But if you betray me,” he said, “if
you fail to do as I direct you—”
He paused and tapped Mr. Marvel’s shoulder smartly.
Mr. Marvel gave a yelp of terror at the touch.
“I don’t want to betray you,” said
Mr. Marvel, edging away from the direction of the fingers.
“Don’t you go a-thinking that, whatever
you do. All I want to do is to help you—just
tell me what I got to do. (Lord!) Whatever you want
done, that I’m most willing to do.”
MR. MARVEL’S VISIT TO IPING
After the first gusty panic had spent itself Iping
became argumentative. Scepticism suddenly reared
its head—rather nervous scepticism, not
at all assured of its back, but scepticism nevertheless.
It is so much easier not to believe in an invisible
man; and those who had actually seen him dissolve into
air, or felt the strength of his arm, could be counted
on the fingers of two hands. And of these witnesses
Mr. Wadgers was presently missing, having retired
impregnably behind the bolts and bars of his own house,
and Jaffers was lying stunned in the parlour of the
“Coach and Horses.” Great and strange
ideas transcending experience often have less effect
upon men and women than smaller, more tangible considerations.
Iping was gay with bunting, and everybody was in gala
dress. Whit Monday had been looked forward to
for a month or more. By the afternoon even those
who believed in the Unseen were beginning to resume
their little amusements in a tentative fashion, on
the supposition that he had quite gone away, and with
the sceptics he was already a jest. But people,
sceptics and believers alike, were remarkably sociable
all that day.
Haysman’s meadow was gay with a tent, in which
Mrs. Bunting and other ladies were preparing tea,
while, without, the Sunday-school children ran races
and played games under the noisy guidance of the curate
and the Misses Cuss and Sackbut. No doubt there
was a slight uneasiness in the air, but people for
the most part had the sense to conceal whatever imaginative
qualms they experienced. On the village green
an inclined strong, down which, clinging the while
to a pulley-swung handle, one could be hurled violently
against a sack at the other end, came in for considerable
favour among the adolescent, as also did the swings
and the cocoanut shies. There was also promenading,
and the steam organ attached to a small roundabout
filled the air with a pungent flavour of oil and with
equally pungent music. Members of the club, who
had attended church in the morning, were splendid
in badges of pink and green, and some of the gayer-minded
had also adorned their bowler hats with brilliant-coloured
favours of ribbon. Old Fletcher, whose conceptions
of holiday-making were severe, was visible through
the jasmine about his window or through the open door
(whichever way you chose to look), poised delicately
on a plank supported on two chairs, and whitewashing
the ceiling of his front room.
