It is unavoidable that at this
point the narrative should break off again, for a certain very
painful reason that will presently be apparent. While these things
were going on in the parlour, and while Mr. Huxter was watching
Mr. Marvel smoking his pipe against the gate, not a dozen yards
away were Mr. Hall and Teddy Henfrey discussing in a state of
cloudy puzzlement the one Iping topic.
Suddenly there came a violent thud
against the door of the parlour, a sharp cry, and then--silence.
"Hul--lo!" said Teddy
Henfrey.
"Hul--lo!" from the Tap.
Mr. Hall took things in slowly but
surely. "That ain't right," he said, and came round from
behind the bar towards the parlour door.
He and Teddy approached the door
together, with intent faces. Their eyes considered. "Summat
wrong," said Hall, and Henfrey nodded agreement. Whiffs of an
unpleasant chemical odour met them, and there was a muffled sound
of conversation, very rapid and subdued.
"You all raight thur?"
asked Hall, rapping.
The muttered conversation ceased
abruptly, for a moment silence, then the conversation was resumed
in hissing whispers, then a sharp cry of "No! no, you
don't!" There came a sudden motion and the oversetting of a
chair, a brief struggle. Silence again.
"What the dooce?"
exclaimed Henfrey, sotto voce.
"You--all--raight--thur?"
asked Mr. Hall sharply, again.
The Vicar's voice answered with a
curious jerking intonation: "Quite ri--ight. Please
don't--interrupt."
"Odd!" said Mr. Henfrey.
"Odd!" said Mr. Hall.
"Says, 'Don't
interrupt,'" said Henfrey.
"I heerd'n," said Hall.
"And a sniff," said
Henfrey.
They remained listening. The
conversation was rapid and subdued. "I can't," said Mr.
Bunting, his voice rising; "I tell you, sir, I will
not."
"What was that?" asked
Henfrey.
"Says he wi' nart," said
Hall. "Warn't speakin' to us, wuz he?"
"Disgraceful!" said Mr.
Bunting, within.
"'Disgraceful,'" said Mr.
Henfrey. "I heard it--distinct.
"Who's that speaking
now?" asked Henfrey.
"Mr. Cuss, I s'pose,"
said Hall. "Can you hear--anything?"
Silence. The sounds within
indistinct and perplexing.
"Sounds like throwing the
table-cloth about," said Hall.
Mrs. Hall appeared behind the bar.
Hall made gestures of silence and invitation. This roused Mrs.
Hall's wifely opposition. "What yer listenin' there for,
Hall?" she asked. "Ain't you nothin' better to do--busy
day like this?"
Hall tried to convey everything by
grimaces and dumb show, but Mrs. Hall was obdurate. She raised her
voice. So Hall and Henfrey, rather crestfallen, tip-toed back to
the bar, gesticulating to explain to her.
At first she refused to see
anything in what they had heard at all. Then she insisted on Hall
keeping silence, while Henfrey told her his story. She was
inclined to think the whole business nonsense --perhaps they were
just moving the furniture about. "I heerd'n say
'disgraceful'; that I did," said Hall.
"I heerd that, Mis'
Hall," said Henfrey.
"Like as not--" began
Mrs. Hall.
"Hsh!" said Mr. Teddy
Henfrey. "Didn't I hear the window?"
"What window?" asked Mrs.
Hall.
"Parlour window," said
Henfrey.
Every one stood listening intently.
Mrs. Hall's eyes, directed straight before her, saw without seeing
the brilliant oblong of the inn door, the road white and vivid,
and Huxter's shop-front blistering in the June sun. Abruptly
Huxter's door opened and Huxter appeared, eyes staring with
excitement, arms gesticulating. "Yap!" cried Huxter.
"Stop thief!" and he ran obliquely across the oblong
towards the yard gates, and vanished.
Simultaneously came a tumult from
the parlour, and a sound of windows being closed.
Hall, Henfrey, and the human
contents of the Tap rushed out at once pell-mell into the street.
They saw some one whisk round the corner towards the down road,
and Mr. Huxter executing a complicated leap in the air that ended
on his face and shoulder. Down the street people were standing
astonished or running towards them.
Mr. Huxter was stunned. Henfrey
stopped to discover this, but Hall and the two labourers from the
Tap rushed at once to the corner, shouting incoherent things, and
saw Mr. Marvel vanishing by the corner of the church wall. They
appear to have jumped to the impossible conclusion that this was
the Invisible Man suddenly become visible, and set off at once
along the lane in pursuit. But Hall had hardly run a dozen yards
before he gave a loud shout of astonishment and went flying
headlong sideways, clutching one of the labourers and bringing him
to the ground. He had been charged just as one charges a man at
football. The second labourer came round in a circle, stared, and
conceiving that Hall had tumbled over of his own accord, turned to
resume the pursuit, only to be tripped by the ankle just as Huxter
had been. Then, as the first labourer struggled to his feet, he
was kicked sideways by a blow that might have felled an ox.
As he went down, the rush from the
direction of the village green came round the corner. The first to
appear was the proprietor of the cocoanut shy, a burly man in a
blue jersey. He was astonished to see the lane empty save for
three men sprawling absurdly on the ground. And then something
happened to his rear-most foot, and he went headlong and rolled
sideways just in time to graze the feet of his brother and
partner, following headlong. The two were then kicked, knelt on,
fallen over, and cursed by quite a number of over- hasty people.
Now when Hall and Henfrey and the
labourers ran out of the house, Mrs. Hall, who had been
disciplined by years of experience, remained in the bar next the
till. And suddenly the parlour door was opened, and Mr. Cuss
appeared, and without glancing at her rushed at once down the
steps towards the corner. "Hold him!" he cried.
"Don't let him drop that parcel! You can see him so long as
he holds the parcel." He knew nothing of the existence of
Marvel. For the Invisible Man had handed over the books and bundle
in the yard. The face of Mr. Cuss was angry and resolute, but his
costume was defective, a sort of limp white kilt that could only
have passed muster in Greece. "Hold him!" he bawled.
"He's got my trousers! And every stitch of the Vicar's
clothes!
"'Tend to him in a
minute!" he cried to Henfrey as he passed the prostrate
Huxter, and coming round the corner to join the tumult, was
promptly knocked off his feet into an indecorous sprawl. Somebody
in full flight trod heavily on his finger. He yelled, struggled to
regain his feet, was knocked against and thrown on all fours
again, and became aware that he was involved not in a capture, but
a rout. Every one was running back to the village. He rose again
and was hit severely behind the ear. He staggered and set off back
to the Coach and Horses forthwith, leaping over the deserted
Huxter, who was now sitting up, on his way.
Behind him as he was halfway up the
inn steps he heard a sudden yell of rage, rising sharply out of
the confusion of cries, and a sounding smack in some one's face.
He recognised the voice as that of the Invisible Man, and the note
was that of a man suddenly infuriated by a painful blow.
In another moment Mr. Cuss was back
in the parlour. "He's coming back, Bunting!" he said,
rushing in. "Save yourself! He's gone mad!"
Mr. Bunting was standing in the
window engaged in an attempt to clothe himself in the hearth-rug
and a West Surrey Gazette. "Who's coming?" he said, so
startled that his costume narrowly escaped disintegration.
"Invisible Man," said
Cuss, and rushed to the window. "We'd better clear out from
here! He's fighting mad! Mad!"
In another moment he was out in the
yard.
"Good heavens!" said Mr.
Bunting, hesitating between two horrible alternatives. He heard a
frightful struggle in the passage of the inn, and his decision was
made. He clambered out of the window, adjusted his costume
hastily, and fled up the village as fast as his fat little legs
would carry him.
From the moment when the Invisible
Man screamed with rage and Mr. Bunting made his memorable flight
up the village, it became impossible to give a consecutive account
of affairs in Iping. Possibly the Invisible Man's original
intention was simply to cover Marvel's retreat with the clothes
and books. But his temper, at no time very good, seems to have
gone completely at some chance blow, and forthwith he set to
smiting and overthrowing, for the mere satisfaction of hurting.
You must figure the street full of
running figures, of doors slamming and fights for hiding-places.
You must figure the tumult suddenly striking on the unstable
equilibrium of old Fletcher's planks and two chairs,--with
cataclysmal results. You must figure an appalled couple caught
dismally in a swing. And then the whole tumultuous rush has passed
and the Iping streets with its gauds and flags is deserted save
for the still raging Unseen, and littered with cocoanuts,
overthrown canvas screens, and the scattered stock in trade of a
sweetstuff stall. Everywhere there is a sound of closing shutters
and shoving bolts, and the only visible humanity is an occasional
flitting eye under a raised eyebrow in the corner of a window
pane.
The Invisible Man amused himself
for a little while by breaking all the windows in the Coach and
Horses, and then he thrust a street lamp through the parlour
window of Mrs. Gribble. He it must have been who cut the telegraph
wire to Adderdean just beyond Higgins' cottage on the Adderdean
road. And after that, as his peculiar qualities allowed, he passed
out of human perceptions altogether, and he was neither heard,
seen, nor felt in Iping any more. He vanished absolutely.
But it was the best part of two
hours before any human being ventured out again into the
desolation of Iping Street.
