Thus it was that on the 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 was 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, than
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 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 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, all so
rapidly that he had 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.
After a couple of minutes 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 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 enquiry. "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 carried into the parlour, in
accordance with his directions, 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 labelled 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
book-shelf-- 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.
And directly the crates were unpacked, the stranger went to the
window and set to work, not troubling in the least about the litter
of straw, the fire which had gone out, the box of books outside, nor
for the trunks and other luggage that had gone upstairs.
When Mrs. Hall took his dinner in to him, he was already so
absorbed in his work, pouring little drops out of the bottles into
test-tubes, that he did not hear her until she had swept away the
bulk of the straw and put the tray on the table, with some little
emphasis perhaps, seeing the state that the floor was in. Then he
half turned his head and immediately turned it away again. But she
saw he had removed his glasses; they were beside him on the table,
and it seemed to her that his eye sockets were extraordinarily
hollow. He put on his spectacles again, and then turned and faced
her. She was about to complain of the straw on the floor when he
anticipated her.
"I wish you wouldn't come in without knocking," he said
in the tone of abnormal exasperation that seemed so characteristic
of him.
"I knocked, but seemingly--"
"Perhaps you did. But in my investigations--my really very
urgent and necessary investigations--the slightest disturbance, the
jar of a door--I must ask you--"
"Certainly, sir. You can turn the lock if you're like that,
you know--any time."
"A very good idea," said the stranger.
"This stror, sir, if I might make so bold as to
remark--"
"Don't. If the straw makes trouble put it down in the
bill." And he mumbled at her--words suspiciously like curses.
He was so odd, standing there, so aggressive and explosive,
bottle in one hand and test-tube in the other, that Mrs. Hall was
quite alarmed. But she was a resolute woman. "In which case, I
should like to know, sir, what you consider--"
"A shilling. Put down a shilling. Surely a shilling's
enough?"
"So be it," said Mrs. Hall, taking up the tablecloth
and beginning to spread it over the table. "If you're
satisfied, of course--"
He turned and sat down, with his coat-collar towards her.
All the afternoon he worked with the door locked and, as Mrs.
Hall testifies, for the most part in silence. But once there was a
concussion and a sound of bottles ringing together as though the
table had been hit, and the smash of a bottle flung violently down,
and then a rapid pacing athwart the room. Fearing "something
was the matter," she went to the door and listened, not caring
to knock.
"I can't go on," he was raving. "I can't go on.
Three hundred thousand, four hundred thousand! The huge multitude!
Cheated! All my life it may take me! Patience! Patience indeed! Fool
and liar!"
There was a noise of hobnails on the bricks in the bar, and Mrs.
Hall very reluctantly had to leave the rest of his soliloquy. When
she returned the room was silent again, save for the faint
crepitation of his chair and the occasional clink of a bottle. It
was all over. The stranger had resumed work.
When she took in his tea she saw broken glass in the corner of
the room under the concave mirror, and a golden stain that had been
carelessly wiped. She called attention to it.
"Put it down in the bill," snapped her visitor.
"For God's sake don't worry me. If there's damage done, put it
down in the bill"; and he went on ticking a list in the
exercise book before him.
"I'll tell you something," said Fearenside
mysteriously. It was late in the afternoon, and they were in the
little beer-shop of Iping Hanger.
"Well?" said Teddy Henfrey.
"This chap you're speaking of, what my dog bit. Well--he's
black. Leastways, his legs are. I seed through the tear of his
glove. You'd have expected a sort of pinky to show, wouldn't you?
Well--there wasn't none. Just blackness. I tell you, he's as black
as my hat."
"My sakes!" said Henfrey. "It's a rummy case
altogether. Why, his nose is as pink as paint!"
"That's true," said Fearenside. "I knows that. And
I tell 'ee what I'm thinking. That marn's a piebald, Teddy. Black
here and white there--in patches. And he's ashamed of it. He's a
kind of half-breed, and the colour's come off patchy instead of
mixing. I've heard of such things before. And it's the common way
with horses, as anyone can see."
