The stranger came early in February one wintry day, through a
biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over
the down, walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station and
carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He
was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat
hid every inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow
had piled itself against his shoulders and chest, and added a white
crest to the burden he carried. He staggered into the Coach and
Horses, more dead than alive as it seemed, and flung his portmanteau
down. "A fire," he cried, "in the name of human
charity! A room and a fire!" He stamped and shook the snow from
off himself in the bar, and followed Mrs. Hall into her guest
parlour to strike his bargain. And with that much introduction, that
and a ready acquiescence to terms and a couple of sovereigns flung
upon the table, he took up his quarters in the inn.
Mrs. Hall lit the fire and left him there while she went to
prepare him a meal with her own hands. A guest to stop at Iping in
the winter-time was an unheard-of piece of luck, let alone a guest
who was no "haggler," and she was resolved to show herself
worthy of her good fortune. As soon as the bacon was well under way,
and Millie, her lymphatic aid, had been brisked up a bit by a few
deftly chosen expressions of contempt, she carried the cloth,
plates, and glasses into the parlour and began to lay them with the
utmost clat. Although the fire was burning up briskly, she was
surprised to see that her visitor still wore his hat and coat,
standing with his back to her and staring out of the window at the
falling snow in the yard. His gloved hands were clasped behind him,
and he seemed to be lost in thought. She noticed that the melted
snow that still sprinkled his shoulders dripped upon her carpet.
"Can I take your hat and coat, sir," she said, "and
give them a good dry in the kitchen?"
"No," he said without turning.
She was not sure she had heard him, and was about to repeat her
question.
He turned his head and looked at her over his shoulder. "I
prefer to keep them on," he said with emphasis, and she noticed
that he wore big blue spectacles with side-lights and had a bushy
side-whisker over his coat-collar that completely hid his face.
"Very well, sir," she said. "As you like. In a bit
the room will be warmer."
He made no answer and had turned his face away from her again;
and Mrs. Hall, feeling that her conversational advances were ill-
timed, laid the rest of the table things in a quick staccato and
whisked out of the room. When she returned he was still standing
there like a man of stone, his back hunched, his collar turned up,
his dripping hat-brim turned down, hiding his face and ears
completely. She put down the eggs and bacon with considerable
emphasis, and called rather than said to him, "Your lunch is
served, sir."
"Thank you," he said at the same time, and did not stir
until she was closing the door. Then he swung round and approached
the table.
As she went behind the bar to the kitchen she heard a sound
repeated at regular intervals. Chirk, chirk, chirk, it went, the
sound of a spoon being rapidly whisked round a basin. "That
girl!" she said. "There! I clean forgot it. It's her being
so long!" And while she herself finished mixing the mustard,
she gave Millie a few verbal stabs for her excessive slowness. She
had cooked the ham and eggs, laid the table, and done everything,
while Millie (help indeed!) had only succeeded in delaying the
mustard. And him a new guest and wanting to stay! Then she filled
the mustard pot, and, putting it with a certain stateliness upon a
gold and black tea-tray, carried it into the parlour.
She rapped and entered promptly. As she did so her visitor moved
quickly, so that she got but a glimpse of a white object
disappearing behind the table. It would seem he was picking
something from the floor. She rapped down the mustard pot on the
table, and then she noticed the overcoat and hat had been taken off
and put over a chair in front of the fire. A pair of wet boots
threatened rust to her steel fender. She went to these things
resolutely. "I suppose I may have them to dry now," she
said in a voice that brooked no denial.
"Leave the hat," said her visitor in a muffled voice,
and turning she saw he had raised his head and was sitting looking
at her.
For a moment she stood gaping at him, too surprised to speak.
He held a white cloth--it was a serviette he had brought with
him--over the lower part of his face, so that his mouth and jaws
were completely hidden, and that was the reason of his muffled
voice. But it was not that which startled Mrs. Hall. It was the fact
that all his forehead above his blue glasses was covered by a white
bandage, and that another covered his ears, leaving not a scrap of
his face exposed excepting only his pink, peaked nose. It was bright
pink, and shiny just as it had been at first. He wore a dark-brown
velvet jacket with a high black linen lined collar turned up about
his neck. The thick black hair, escaping as it could below and
between the cross bandages, projected in curious tails and horns,
giving him the strangest appearance conceivable. This muffled and
bandaged head was so unlike what she had anticipated, that for a
moment she was rigid.
He did not remove the serviette, but remained holding it, as she
saw now, with a brown gloved hand, and regarding her with his
inscrutable blue glasses. "Leave the hat," he said,
speaking very distinctly through the white cloth.
Her nerves began to recover from the shock they had received. She
placed the hat on the chair again by the fire. "I didn't know,
sir," she began, "that--" and she stopped
embarrassed.
"Thank you," he said drily, glancing from her to the
door and then at her again.
"I'll have them nicely dried, sir, at once," she said,
and carried his clothes out of the room. She glanced at his
white-swathed head and blue goggles again as she was going out of
the door; but his napkin was still in front of his face. She
shivered a little as she closed the door behind her, and her face
was eloquent of her surprise and perplexity. "I never,"
she whispered. "There!" She went quite softly to the
kitchen, and was too preoccupied to ask Millie what she was messing
about with now, when she got there.
The visitor sat and listened to her retreating feet. He glanced
inquiringly at the window before he removed his serviette and
resumed his meal. He took a mouthful, glanced suspiciously at the
window, took another mouthful, then rose and, taking the serviette
in his hand, walked across the room and pulled the blind down to the
top of the white muslin that obscured the lower panes. This left the
room in twilight. This done, he returned with an easier air to the
table and his meal.
"The poor soul's had an accident or an op'ration or
something," said Mrs. Hall. "What a turn them bandages did
give me, to be sure!"
She put on some more coal, unfolded the clothes-horse, and
extended the traveller's coat upon this. "And they goggles!
Why, he looked more like a divin' helmet than a human man!" She
hung his muffler on a corner of the horse. "And holding that
handkerchief over his mouth all the time. Talkin' through
it!...Perhaps his mouth was hurt too--maybe."
She turned round, as one who suddenly remembers. "Bless my
soul alive!" she said, going off at a tangent; "ain't you
done them taters yet, Millie?"
When Mrs. Hall went to clear away the stranger's lunch, her idea
that his mouth must also have been cut or disfigured in the accident
she supposed him to have suffered, was confirmed, for he was smoking
a pipe, and all the time that she was in the room he never loosened
the silk muffler he had wrapped round the lower part of his face to
put the mouthpiece to his lips. Yet it was not forgetfulness, for
she saw he glanced at it as it smouldered out. He sat in the corner
with his back to the window-blind and spoke now, having eaten and
drunk and being comfortably warmed through, with less aggressive
brevity than before. The reflection of the fire lent a kind of red
animation to his big spectacles they had lacked hitherto.
"I have some luggage," he said, "at Bramblehurst
station," and he asked her how he could have it sent. He bowed
his bandaged head quite politely in acknowledgment of her
explanation. "To-morrow!" he said. "There is no
speedier delivery?" and seemed quite disappointed when she
answered "No." Was she quite sure? No man with a trap who
would go over?
Mrs. Hall, nothing loath, answered his questions and developed a
conversation. "It's a steep road by the down, sir," she
said in answer to the question about a trap; and then, snatching at
an opening said, "It was there a carriage was upsettled, a year
ago and more. A gentleman killed, besides his coachman. Accidents,
sir, happen in a moment, don't they?"
But the visitor was not to be drawn so easily. "They
do," he said through his muffler, eyeing her quietly through
his impenetrable glasses.
"But they take long enough to get well, sir, don't they? ...
There was my sister's son, Tom, jest cut his arm with a scythe,
tumbled on it in the 'ayfield, and, bless me! he was three months
tied up, sir. You'd hardly believe it. It's regular given me a dread
of a scythe, sir."
"I can quite understand that," said the visitor.
"He was afraid, one time, that he'd have to have an
op'ration --he was that bad, sir."
The visitor laughed abruptly, a bark of a laugh that he seemed to
bite and kill in his mouth. "Was he?" he said.
"He was, sir. And no laughing matter to them as had the
doing for him, as I had--my sister being took up with her little
ones so much. There was bandages to do, sir, and bandages to undo.
So that if I may make so bold as to say it, sir--"
"Will you get me some matches?" said the visitor, quite
abruptly. "My pipe is out."
Mrs. Hall was pulled up suddenly. It was certainly rude of him,
after telling him all she had done. She gasped at him for a moment,
and remembered the two sovereigns. She went for the matches.
"Thanks," he said concisely, as she put them down, and
turned his shoulder upon her and stared out of the window again. It
was altogether too discouraging. Evidently he was sensitive on the
topic of operations and bandages. She did not "make so bold as
to say," however, after all. But his snubbing way had irritated
her, and Millie had a hot time of it that afternoon.
The visitor remained in the parlour until four o'clock, without
giving the ghost of an excuse for an intrusion. For the most part he
was quite still during that time; it would seem he sat in the
growing darkness smoking in the firelight, perhaps dozing.
Once or twice a curious listener might have heard him at the
coals, and for the space of five minutes he was audible pacing the
room. He seemed to be talking to himself. Then the armchair creaked
as he sat down again.
