“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.”

CHAPTER X

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.