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 being 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 swift
half-minute. No one spoke, everyone 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, than?” 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 chiffonnier, 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.
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 table-cloth and
beginning to spread it over the table. “If you’re satisfied, of course ”
He turned and sat down, with his coat-collar toward 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! fool!”
There was a noise of hobnails on the bricks in the bar, and
Mrs. Hall had very reluctantly 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
trousers and 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 any one can see.”
No comments:
Post a Comment