MR. CUSS INTERVIEWS THE STRANGER

I have told the circumstances of the stranger's arrival in Iping

with a certain fulness of detail, in order that the curious

impression he created may be understood by the reader. But

excepting two odd incidents, the circumstances of his stay until

the extraordinary day of the club festival may be passed over very

cursorily. There were a number of skirmishes with Mrs. Hall on

matters of domestic discipline, but in every case until late April,

when the first signs of penury began, he over-rode her by the easy

expedient of an extra payment. Hall did not like him, and whenever

he dared he talked of the advisability of getting rid of him; but

he showed his dislike chiefly by concealing it ostentatiously, and

avoiding his visitor as much as possible. "Wait till the summer,"

said Mrs. Hall sagely, "when the artisks are beginning to come.

Then we'll see. He may be a bit overbearing, but bills settled

punctual is bills settled punctual, whatever you'd like to say."

The stranger did not go to church, and indeed made no difference

between Sunday and the irreligious days, even in costume. He

worked, as Mrs. Hall thought, very fitfully. Some days he would

come down early and be continuously busy. On others he would rise

late, pace his room, fretting audibly for hours together, smoke,

sleep in the armchair by the fire. Communication with the world

beyond the village he had none. His temper continued very

uncertain; for the most part his manner was that of a man suffering

under almost unendurable provocation, and once or twice things were

snapped, torn, crushed, or broken in spasmodic gusts of violence.

He seemed under a chronic irritation of the greatest intensity. His

habit of talking to himself in a low voice grew steadily upon him,

but though Mrs. Hall listened conscientiously she could make

neither head nor tail of what she heard.

He rarely went abroad by daylight, but at twilight he would go out

muffled up invisibly, whether the weather were cold or not, and he

chose the loneliest paths and those most overshadowed by trees and

banks. His goggling spectacles and ghastly bandaged face under the

penthouse of his hat, came with a disagreeable suddenness out of

the darkness upon one or two home-going labourers, and Teddy

Henfrey, tumbling out of the "Scarlet Coat" one night, at half-past

nine, was scared shamefully by the stranger's skull-like head (he

was walking hat in hand) lit by the sudden light of the opened inn

door. Such children as saw him at nightfall dreamt of bogies, and

it seemed doubtful whether he disliked boys more than they disliked

him, or the reverse; but there was certainly a vivid enough dislike

on either side.

It was inevitable that a person of so remarkable an appearance and

bearing should form a frequent topic in such a village as Iping.

Opinion was greatly divided about his occupation. Mrs. Hall was

sensitive on the point. When questioned, she explained very

carefully that he was an "experimental investigator," going

gingerly over the syllables as one who dreads pitfalls. When asked

what an experimental investigator was, she would say with a touch

of superiority that most educated people knew such things as that,

and would thus explain that he "discovered things." Her visitor had

had an accident, she said, which temporarily discoloured his face

and hands, and being of a sensitive disposition, he was averse to

any public notice of the fact.

Out of her hearing there was a view largely entertained that he was

a criminal trying to escape from justice by wrapping himself up so

as to conceal himself altogether from the eye of the police. This

idea sprang from the brain of Mr. Teddy Henfrey. No crime of any

magnitude dating from the middle or end of February was known to

have occurred. Elaborated in the imagination of Mr. Gould, the

probationary assistant in the National School, this theory took the

form that the stranger was an Anarchist in disguise, preparing

explosives, and he resolved to undertake such detective operations

as his time permitted. These consisted for the most part in looking

very hard at the stranger whenever they met, or in asking people

who had never seen the stranger, leading questions about him. But

he detected nothing.

Another school of opinion followed Mr. Fearenside, and either

accepted the piebald view or some modification of it; as, for

instance, Silas Durgan, who was heard to assert that "if he choses

to show enself at fairs he'd make his fortune in no time," and

being a bit of a theologian, compared the stranger to the man with

the one talent. Yet another view explained the entire matter by

regarding the stranger as a harmless lunatic. That had the

advantage of accounting for everything straight away.

Between these main groups there were waverers and compromisers.

Sussex folk have few superstitions, and it was only after the

events of early April that the thought of the supernatural was

first whispered in the village. Even then it was only credited

among the women folk.

But whatever they thought of him, people in Iping, on the whole,

agreed in disliking him. His irritability, though it might have

been comprehensible to an urban brain-worker, was an amazing thing

to these quiet Sussex villagers. The frantic gesticulations they

surprised now and then, the headlong pace after nightfall that

swept him upon them round quiet corners, the inhuman bludgeoning

of all tentative advances of curiosity, the taste for twilight

that led to the closing of doors, the pulling down of blinds,

the extinction of candles and lamps--who could agree with such

goings on? They drew aside as he passed down the village, and when

he had gone by, young humourists would up with coat-collars and

down with hat-brims, and go pacing nervously after him in imitation

of his occult bearing. There was a song popular at that time called

"The Bogey Man". Miss Statchell sang it at the schoolroom concert

(in aid of the church lamps), and thereafter whenever one or two of

the villagers were gathered together and the stranger appeared, a

bar or so of this tune, more or less sharp or flat, was whistled in

the midst of them. Also belated little children would call "Bogey

Man!" after him, and make off tremulously elated.

Cuss, the general practitioner, was devoured by curiosity. The

bandages excited his professional interest, the report of the

thousand and one bottles aroused his jealous regard. All through

April and May he coveted an opportunity of talking to the stranger,

and at last, towards Whitsuntide, he could stand it no longer, but

hit upon the subscription-list for a village nurse as an excuse. He

was surprised to find that Mr. Hall did not know his guest's name.

"He give a name," said Mrs. Hall--an assertion which was quite

unfounded--"but I didn't rightly hear it." She thought it seemed

so silly not to know the man's name.

Cuss rapped at the parlour door and entered. There was a fairly

audible imprecation from within. "Pardon my intrusion," said Cuss,

and then the door closed and cut Mrs. Hall off from the rest of

the conversation.

She could hear the murmur of voices for the next ten minutes, then

a cry of surprise, a stirring of feet, a chair flung aside, a bark

of laughter, quick steps to the door, and Cuss appeared, his face

white, his eyes staring over his shoulder. He left the door open

behind him, and without looking at her strode across the hall and

went down the steps, and she heard his feet hurrying along the

road. He carried his hat in his hand. She stood behind the door,

looking at the open door of the parlour. Then she heard the

stranger laughing quietly, and then his footsteps came across the

room. She could not see his face where she stood. The parlour door

slammed, and the place was silent again.

Cuss went straight up the village to Bunting the vicar. "Am I mad?"

Cuss began abruptly, as he entered the shabby little study. "Do I

look like an insane person?"

"What's happened?" said the vicar, putting the ammonite on the

loose sheets of his forth-coming sermon.

"That chap at the inn--"

"Well?"

"Give me something to drink," said Cuss, and he sat down.

When his nerves had been steadied by a glass of cheap sherry--the

only drink the good vicar had available--he told him of the

interview he had just had. "Went in," he gasped, "and began to

demand a subscription for that Nurse Fund. He'd stuck his hands in

his pockets as I came in, and he sat down lumpily in his chair.

Sniffed. I told him I'd heard he took an interest in scientific

things. He said yes. Sniffed again. Kept on sniffing all the time;

evidently recently caught an infernal cold. No wonder, wrapped up

like that! I developed the nurse idea, and all the while kept my

eyes open. Bottles--chemicals--everywhere. Balance, test-tubes

in stands, and a smell of--evening primrose. Would he subscribe?

Said he'd consider it. Asked him, point-blank, was he researching.

Said he was. A long research? Got quite cross. 'A damnable long

research,' said he, blowing the cork out, so to speak. 'Oh,' said

I. And out came the grievance. The man was just on the boil, and my

question boiled him over. He had been given a prescription, most

valuable prescription--what for he wouldn't say. Was it medical?

'Damn you! What are you fishing after?' I apologised. Dignified

sniff and cough. He resumed. He'd read it. Five ingredients. Put it

down; turned his head. Draught of air from window lifted the paper.

Swish, rustle. He was working in a room with an open fireplace, he

said. Saw a flicker, and there was the prescription burning and

lifting chimneyward. Rushed towards it just as it whisked up the

chimney. So! Just at that point, to illustrate his story, out came

his arm."

"Well?"

"No hand--just an empty sleeve. Lord! I thought, _that's_ a

deformity! Got a cork arm, I suppose, and has taken it off. Then, I

thought, there's something odd in that. What the devil keeps that

sleeve up and open, if there's nothing in it? There was nothing in

it, I tell you. Nothing down it, right down to the joint. I could

see right down it to the elbow, and there was a glimmer of light

shining through a tear of the cloth. 'Good God!' I said. Then he

stopped. Stared at me with those black goggles of his, and then

at his sleeve."

"Well?"

"That's all. He never said a word; just glared, and put his sleeve

back in his pocket quickly. 'I was saying,' said he, 'that there

was the prescription burning, wasn't I?' Interrogative cough.

'How the devil,' said I, 'can you move an empty sleeve like that?'

'Empty sleeve?' 'Yes,' said I, 'an empty sleeve.'

"'It's an empty sleeve, is it? You saw it was an empty sleeve?' He

stood up right away. I stood up too. He came towards me in three

very slow steps, and stood quite close. Sniffed venomously. I

didn't flinch, though I'm hanged if that bandaged knob of his, and

those blinkers, aren't enough to unnerve any one, coming quietly

up to you.

"'You said it was an empty sleeve?' he said. 'Certainly,' I said.

At staring and saying nothing a barefaced man, unspectacled, starts

scratch. Then very quietly he pulled his sleeve out of his pocket

again, and raised his arm towards me as though he would show it to

me again. He did it very, very slowly. I looked at it. Seemed an

age. 'Well?' said I, clearing my throat, 'there's nothing in it.'

"Had to say something. I was beginning to feel frightened. I could

see right down it. He extended it straight towards me, slowly,

slowly--just like that--until the cuff was six inches from my

face. Queer thing to see an empty sleeve come at you like that!

And then--"

"Well?"

"Something--exactly like a finger and thumb it felt--nipped my

nose."

Bunting began to laugh.

"There wasn't anything there!" said Cuss, his voice running up into

a shriek at the "there." "It's all very well for you to laugh, but

I tell you I was so startled, I hit his cuff hard, and turned

around, and cut out of the room--I left him--"

Cuss stopped. There was no mistaking the sincerity of his panic.

He turned round in a helpless way and took a second glass of the

excellent vicar's very inferior sherry. "When I hit his cuff," said

Cuss, "I tell you, it felt exactly like hitting an arm. And there

wasn't an arm! There wasn't the ghost of an arm!"

Mr. Bunting thought it over. He looked suspiciously at Cuss. "It's

a most remarkable story," he said. He looked very wise and grave

indeed. "It's really," said Mr. Bunting with judicial emphasis, "a

most remarkable story."

CHAPTER V

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 992