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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
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