At four o’clock, when it was fairly dark and Mrs. Hall was
screwing up her courage to go in and ask her visitor if he would take some tea,
Teddy Henfrey, the clock-jobber, came into the bar. “My sakes! Mrs.
Hall,” said he, “but this is terrible weather for thin boots!” The snow outside
was falling faster.
Mrs. Hall agreed, and then noticed he had his bag with
him. “Now you’re here, Mr. Teddy,” said she, “I’d be glad if you’d give
th’ old clock in the parlour a bit of a look. ’Tis going, and it strikes
well and hearty; but the hour-hand won’t do nuthin’ but point at six.”
And leading the way, she went across to the parlour door and
rapped and entered.
Her visitor, she saw as she opened the door, was seated in
the armchair before the fire, dozing it would seem, with his bandaged head
drooping on one side. The only light in the room was the red glow from
the fire which lit his eyes like adverse railway signals, but left his
downcast face in darkness and the scanty vestiges of the day that came in
through the open door. Everything was ruddy, shadowy, and indistinct to
her, the more so since she had just been lighting the bar lamp, and her eyes
were dazzled. But for a second it seemed to her that the man she looked
at had an enormous mouth wide open a vast and incredible mouth that swallowed
the whole of the lower portion of his face. It was the sensation of a
moment: the white-bound head, the monstrous goggle eyes, and this huge
yawn below it. Then he stirred, started up in his chair, put up his
hand. She opened the door wide, so that the room was lighter, and she saw
him more clearly, with the muffler held up to his face just as she had seen him
hold the serviette before. The shadows, she fancied, had tricked her.
“Would you mind, sir, this man a-coming to look at the
clock, sir?” she said, recovering from the momentary shock.
“Look at the clock?” he said, staring round in a drowsy
manner, and speaking over his hand, and then, getting more fully awake,
“certainly.”
Mrs. Hall went away to get a lamp, and he rose and stretched
himself. Then came the light, and Mr. Teddy Henfrey, entering, was
confronted by this bandaged person. He was, he says, “taken aback.”
“Good afternoon,” said the stranger, regarding him as Mr.
Henfrey says, with a vivid sense of the dark spectacles “like a lobster.”
“I hope,” said Mr. Henfrey, “that it’s no intrusion.”
“None whatever,” said the stranger. “Though, I understand,”
he said turning to Mrs. Hall, “that this room is really to be mine for my own
private use.”
“I thought, sir,” said Mrs. Hall, “you’d prefer the clock ”
“Certainly,” said the stranger, “certainly but, as a rule,
I like to be alone and undisturbed.
“But I’m really glad to have the clock seen to,” he said,
seeing a certain hesitation in Mr. Henfrey’s manner. “Very glad.”
Mr. Henfrey had intended to apologise and withdraw, but this anticipation
reassured him. The stranger turned round with his back to the fireplace
and put his hands behind his back. “And presently,” he said, “when the
clock-mending is over, I think I should like to have some tea. But not
till the clock-mending is over.”
Mrs. Hall was about to leave the room she made no
conversational advances this time, because she did not want to be snubbed in
front of Mr. Henfrey when her visitor asked her if she had made any
arrangements about his boxes at Bramblehurst. She told him she had
mentioned the matter to the postman, and that the carrier could bring them over
on the morrow. “You are certain that is the earliest?” he said.
She was certain, with a marked coldness.
“I should explain,” he added, “what I was really too cold
and fatigued to do before, that I am an experimental investigator.”
“Indeed, sir,” said Mrs. Hall, much impressed.
“And my baggage contains apparatus and appliances.”
“Very useful things indeed they are, sir,” said Mrs. Hall.
“And I’m very naturally anxious to get on with my
inquiries.”
“Of course, sir.”
“My reason for coming to Iping,” he proceeded, with a
certain deliberation of manner, “was ... a desire for solitude. I do not
wish to be disturbed in my work. In addition to my work, an accident ”
“I thought as much,” said Mrs. Hall to herself.
“ necessitates a certain retirement. My eyes are
sometimes so weak and painful that I have to shut myself up in the dark for
hours together. Lock myself up. Sometimes now and then. Not
at present, certainly. At such times the slightest disturbance, the entry
of a stranger into the room, is a source of excruciating annoyance to me it is
well these things should be understood.”
“Certainly, sir,” said Mrs. Hall. “And if I might make
so bold as to ask ”
“That I think, is all,” said the stranger, with that quietly
irresistible air of finality he could assume at will. Mrs. Hall reserved
her question and sympathy for a better occasion.
After Mrs. Hall had left the room, he remained standing in
front of the fire, glaring, so Mr. Henfrey puts it, at the clock-mending.
Mr. Henfrey not only took off the hands of the clock, and the face, but
extracted the works; and he tried to work in as slow and quiet and unassuming a
manner as possible. He worked with the lamp close to him, and the green
shade threw a brilliant light upon his hands, and upon the frame and wheels,
and left the rest of the room shadowy. When he looked up, coloured
patches swam in his eyes. Being constitutionally of a curious nature, he
had removed the works a quite unnecessary proceeding with the idea of delaying
his departure and perhaps falling into conversation with the stranger.
But the stranger stood there, perfectly silent and still. So still, it
got on Henfrey’s nerves. He felt alone in the room and looked up, and
there, grey and dim, was the bandaged head and huge blue lenses staring
fixedly, with a mist of green spots drifting in front of them. It was so
uncanny to Henfrey that for a minute they remained staring blankly at one
another. Then Henfrey looked down again. Very uncomfortable
position! One would like to say something. Should he remark that
the weather was very cold for the time of year?
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’ve got to do
is to fix the hour-hand on its axle. You’re simply humbugging ”
“Certainly, sir one minute more. I overlooked ” and
Mr. Henfrey finished and went.
But he went 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-ly.”
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 wropped 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 computations 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 you 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.
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