He looked up as if to take aim with that introductory shot. “The weather” — he began.
“Why don’t you finish and go?” said the rigid figure, evidently in a state of painfully suppressed rage. “All you got to do is to fix the hour-hand on its axle. You’re simply humbugging — ”
“Certainly, sir — one minute more, sir. I overlooked — ” and Mr. Henfrey finished and went.
But he went off feeling excessively annoyed. “Damn it!” said Mr. Henfrey to himself, trudging down the village through the thawing snow; “a man must do a clock at times, sure lie.”
And again “Can’t a man look at you? — Ugly!”
And yet again: “Seemingly not. If the police was wanting you you couldn’t be more wrooped and bandaged.”
At Gleeson’s corner he saw Hall, who had recently married the stranger’s hostess at the Coach and Horses, and who now drove the Iping conveyance, when occasional people required it, to Sidderbridge junction, coming towards him on his return from that place. Hall had evidently been “stopping a bit” at Sidderbridge, to judge by his driving. “‘Ow do, Teddy?” he said, passing.
“You got a rum un up home!” said Teddy.
Hall very sociably pulled up. “What’s that?” he asked.
“Rum-looking customer stopping at the Coach and Horses,” said Teddy. “My sakes!”
And he proceeded to give Hall a vivid description of his grotesque guest. “Looks a bit like a disguise, don’t it? I’d like to see a man’s face if I had him stopping in my place,” said Henfrey. “But women are that trustful, — where strangers are concerned. He’s took your rooms and he ain’t even given a name, Hall.”
“You don’t say so!” said Hall, who was a man of sluggish apprehension.
“Yes,” said Teddy. “By the week. Whatever he is, you can’t get rid of him under the week. And he’s got a lot of luggage coming to-morrow, so he says. Let’s hope it won’t be stones in boxes, Hall.”
He told Hall how his aunt at Hastings had been swindled by a stranger with empty portmanteaux. Altogether he left Hall vaguely suspicious. “Get up, old girl,” said Hall. “I s’pose I must see ’bout this.”
Teddy trudged on his way with his mind considerably relieved.
Instead of “seeing ’bout it,” however, Hall on his return was severely rated by his wife on the length of time he had spent in Sidderbridge, and his mild inquiries were answered snappishly and in a manner not to the point. But the seed of suspicion Teddy had sown germinated in the mind of Mr. Hall in spite of these discouragements. “You wim’ don’t know everything,” said Mr. Hall, resolved to ascertain more about the personality of his guest at the earliest possible opportunity. And after the stranger had gone to bed, which he did about half-past nine, Mr. Hall went very aggressively into the parlour and looked very hard at his wife’s furniture, just to show that the stranger wasn’t master there, and scrutinised closely and a little contemptuously a sheet of mathematical computation the stranger had left. When retiring for the night he instructed Mrs. Hall to look very closely at the stranger’s luggage when it came next day.
“You mind your own business, Hall,” said Mrs. Hall, “and I’ll mind mine.”
She was all the more inclined to snap at Hall because the stranger was undoubtedly an unusually strange sort of stranger, and she was by no means assured about him in her own mind. In the middle of the night she woke up dreaming of huge white heads like turnips, that came trailing after her, at the end of interminable necks, and with vast black eyes. But being a sensible woman, she subdued her terrors and turned over and went to sleep again.
The Thousand and One Bottles
So it was that on the twenty-ninth day of February, at the beginning of the thaw, this singular person fell out of infinity into Iping Village. Next day his luggage arrived through the slush. And very remarkable luggage it was. There were a couple of trunks indeed, such as a rational man might need, but in addition there were a box of books, — big, fat books, of which some were just in an incomprehensible handwriting, — and a dozen or more crates, boxes, and cases, containing objects packed in straw, as it seemed to Hall, tugging with a casual curiosity at the straw — glass bottles. The stranger, muffled in hat, coat, gloves, and wrapper, came out impatiently to meet Fearenside’s cart, while Hall was having a word or so of gossip preparatory to helping bring them in. Out he came, not noticing Fearenside’s dog, who was sniffing in a dilettante spirit at Hall’s legs. “Come along with those boxes,” he said. “I’ve been waiting long enough.”
And he came down the steps towards the tail of the cart as if to lay hands on the smaller crate.
No sooner had Fearenside’s dog caught sight of him, however, then it began to bristle and growl savagely, and when he rushed down the steps it gave an undecided hop, and then sprang straight at his hand. “Whup!” cried Hall, jumping back, for he was no hero with dogs, and Fearenside howled, “Lie down!” and snatched his whip.
They saw the dog’s teeth had slipped the hand, heard a kick, saw the dog execute a flanking jump and get home on the stranger’s leg, and heard the rip of his trousering. Then the finer end of Fearenside’s whip reached his property, and the dog, yelping with dismay, retreated under the wheels of the waggon. It was all the business of a swift half-minute. No one spoke, every one shouted. The stranger glanced swiftly at his torn glove and at his leg, made as if he would stoop to the latter, then turned and rushed swiftly up the steps into the inn. They heard him go headlong across the passage and up the uncarpeted stairs to his bedroom.
“You brute, you!” said Fearenside, climbing off the waggon with his whip in his hand, while the dog watched him through the wheel. “Come here,” said Fearenside — “You’d better.”
Hall had stood gaping. “He wuz bit,” said Hall. “I’d better go and see to en,” and he trotted after the stranger. He met Mrs. Hall in the passage. “Carrier’s darg,” he said, “bit en.”
He went straight upstairs, and the stranger’s door being ajar, he pushed it open and was entering without any ceremony, being of a naturally sympathetic turn of mind.
The blind was down and the room dim. He caught a glimpse of a most singular thing, what seemed a handless arm waving towards him, and a face of three huge indeterminate spots on white, very like the face of a pale pansy. Then he was struck violently in the chest, hurled back, and the door slammed in his face and locked. It was so rapid that it gave him no time to observe. A waving of indecipherable shapes, a blow, and a concussion. There he stood on the dark little landing, wondering what it might be that he had seen.
A couple of minutes after, he rejoined the little group that had formed outside the Coach and Horses. There was Fearenside telling about it all over again for the second time; there was Mrs. Hall saying his dog didn’t have no business to bite her guests; there was Huxter, the general dealer from over the road, interrogative; and Sandy Wadgers from the forge, judicial; besides women and children, — all of them saying fatuities: “Wouldn’t let en bite me, I knows;”
“‘Tasn’t right have such dargs;” “Whad ‘e bite’n for then?” and so forth.
Mr. Hall, staring at them from the steps and listening, found it incredible that he had seen anything so very remarkable happen upstairs. Besides, his vocabulary was altogether too limited to express his impressions.
“He don’t want no help, he says,” he said in answer to his wife’s inquiry. “We’d better be a-takin’ of his luggage in.”
“He ought to have it cauterised at once,” said Mr. Huxter; “especially if it’s at all inflamed.”
“I’d shoot en, that’s what I’d do,” said a lady in the group.
Suddenly the dog began growling again.
“Come along,” cried an angry voice in the doorway, and there stood the muffled stranger with his collar turned up, and his hat- brim bent down. “The sooner you get those things in the better I’ll be pleased.” It is stated by an anonymous bystander that his trousers and gloves had been changed.
“Was you hurt sir?” said Fearenside. “I’m rare sorry the darg — ”
“Not a bit,” said the stranger. “Never broke the skin. Hurry up with those things.”
He then swore to himself, so Mr. Hall asserts.
Directly the first crate was, in accordance with his directions, carried into the parlour, the stranger flung himself upon it with extraordinary eagerness, and began to unpack it, scattering the straw with an utter disregard of Mrs. Hall’s carpet. And from it he began to produce bottles, — little fat bottles containing powders, small and slender bottles containing coloured and white fluids, fluted blue bottles labeled Poison, bottles with round bodies and slender necks, large green-glass bottles, large white-glass bottles, bottles with glass stoppers and frosted labels, bottles with fine corks, bottles with bungs, bottles with wooden caps, wine bottles, salad-oil bottles, — putting them in rows on the chiffonier, on the mantel, on the table under the window, round the floor, on the bookshelf, — everywhere. The chemist’s shop in Bramblehurst could not boast half so many. Quite a sight it was. Crate after crate yielded bottles, until all six were empty and the table high with straw; the only things that came out of these crates besides the bottles were a number of test-tubes and a carefully packed balance.