THE THOUSAND AND ONE BOTTLES

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."

CHAPTER IV

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 1239