Chapter Chapter 1 · THE STRANGE MAN’S ARRIVAL

. THE STRANGE MAN’S ARRIVAL

The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting

wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down,

walking from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black

portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped up from head to

foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every inch of his face but

the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled itself against his

shoulders and chest, and added a white crest to the burden he carried.

He staggered into the “Coach and Horses” more dead than alive, and

flung his portmanteau down. “A fire,” he cried, “in the name of human

charity! A room and a fire!” He stamped and shook the snow from off

himself in the bar, and followed Mrs. Hall into her guest parlour to

strike his bargain. And with that much introduction, that and a couple

of sovereigns flung upon the table, he took up his quarters in the inn.

Mrs. Hall lit the fire and left him there while she went to prepare him

a meal with her own hands. A guest to stop at Iping in the wintertime

was an unheard-of piece of luck, let alone a guest who was no

“haggler,” and she was resolved to show herself worthy of her good

fortune. As soon as the bacon was well under way, and Millie, her

lymphatic maid, had been brisked up a bit by a few deftly chosen

expressions of contempt, she carried the cloth, plates, and glasses

into the parlour and began to lay them with the utmost _éclat_.

Although the fire was burning up briskly, she was surprised to see that

her visitor still wore his hat and coat, standing with his back to her

and staring out of the window at the falling snow in the yard. His

gloved hands were clasped behind him, and he seemed to be lost in

thought. She noticed that the melting snow that still sprinkled his

shoulders dripped upon her carpet. “Can I take your hat and coat, sir?”

she said, “and give them a good dry in the kitchen?”

“No,” he said without turning.

She was not sure she had heard him, and was about to repeat her

question.

He turned his head and looked at her over his shoulder. “I prefer to

keep them on,” he said with emphasis, and she noticed that he wore big

blue spectacles with sidelights, and had a bush side-whisker over his

coat-collar that completely hid his cheeks and face.

“Very well, sir,” she said. “_As_ you like. In a bit the room will be

warmer.”

He made no answer, and had turned his face away from her again, and

Mrs. Hall, feeling that her conversational advances were ill-timed,

laid the rest of the table things in a quick staccato and whisked out

of the room. When she returned he was still standing there, like a man

of stone, his back hunched, his collar turned up, his dripping hat-brim

turned down, hiding his face and ears completely. She put down the eggs

and bacon with considerable emphasis, and called rather than said to

him, “Your lunch is served, sir.”

“Thank you,” he said at the same time, and did not stir until she was

closing the door. Then he swung round and approached the table with a

certain eager quickness.

As she went behind the bar to the kitchen she heard a sound repeated at

regular intervals. Chirk, chirk, chirk, it went, the sound of a spoon

being rapidly whisked round a basin. “That girl!” she said. “There! I

clean forgot it. It’s her being so long!” And while she herself

finished mixing the mustard, she gave Millie a few verbal stabs for her

excessive slowness. She had cooked the ham and eggs, laid the table,

and done everything, while Millie (help indeed!) had only succeeded in

delaying the mustard. And him a new guest and wanting to stay! Then she

filled the mustard pot, and, putting it with a certain stateliness upon

a gold and black tea-tray, carried it into the parlour.

She rapped and entered promptly. As she did so her visitor moved

quickly, so that she got but a glimpse of a white object disappearing

behind the table. It would seem he was picking something from the

floor. She rapped down the mustard pot on the table, and then she

noticed the overcoat and hat had been taken off and put over a chair in

front of the fire, and a pair of wet boots threatened rust to her steel

fender. She went to these things resolutely. “I suppose I may have them

to dry now,” she said in a voice that brooked no denial.

“Leave the hat,” said her visitor, in a muffled voice, and turning she

saw he had raised his head and was sitting and looking at her.

For a moment she stood gaping at him, too surprised to speak.

He held a white cloth—it was a serviette he had brought with him—over

the lower part of his face, so that his mouth and jaws were completely

hidden, and that was the reason of his muffled voice. But it was not

that which startled Mrs. Hall. It was the fact that all his forehead

above his blue glasses was covered by a white bandage, and that another

covered his ears, leaving not a scrap of his face exposed excepting

only his pink, peaked nose. It was bright, pink, and shiny just as it

had been at first. He wore a dark-brown velvet jacket with a high,

black, linen-lined collar turned up about his neck. The thick black

hair, escaping as it could below and between the cross bandages,

projected in curious tails and horns, giving him the strangest

appearance conceivable. This muffled and bandaged head was so unlike

what she had anticipated, that for a moment she was rigid.

He did not remove the serviette, but remained holding it, as she saw

now, with a brown gloved hand, and regarding her with his inscrutable

blue glasses. “Leave the hat,” he said, speaking very distinctly

through the white cloth.

Her nerves began to recover from the shock they had received. She

placed the hat on the chair again by the fire. “I didn’t know, sir,”

she began, “that—” and she stopped embarrassed.

“Thank you,” he said drily, glancing from her to the door and then at

her again.

“I’ll have them nicely dried, sir, at once,” she said, and carried his

clothes out of the room. She glanced at his white-swathed head and blue

goggles again as she was going out of the door; but his napkin was

still in front of his face. She shivered a little as she closed the

door behind her, and her face was eloquent of her surprise and

perplexity. “I _never_,” she whispered. “There!” She went quite softly

to the kitchen, and was too preoccupied to ask Millie what she was

messing about with _now_, when she got there.

The visitor sat and listened to her retreating feet. He glanced

inquiringly at the window before he removed his serviette, and resumed

his meal. He took a mouthful, glanced suspiciously at the window, took

another mouthful, then rose and, taking the serviette in his hand,

walked across the room and pulled the blind down to the top of the

white muslin that obscured the lower panes. This left the room in a

twilight. This done, he returned with an easier air to the table and

his meal.

“The poor soul’s had an accident or an op’ration or somethin’,” said

Mrs. Hall. “What a turn them bandages did give me, to be sure!”

She put on some more coal, unfolded the clothes-horse, and extended the

traveller’s coat upon this. “And they goggles! Why, he looked more like

a divin’ helmet than a human man!” She hung his muffler on a corner of

the horse. “And holding that handkerchief over his mouth all the time.

Talkin’ through it! ... Perhaps his mouth was hurt too—maybe.”

She turned round, as one who suddenly remembers. “Bless my soul alive!”

she said, going off at a tangent; “ain’t you done them taters _yet_,

Millie?”

When Mrs. Hall went to clear away the stranger’s lunch, her idea that

his mouth must also have been cut or disfigured in the accident she

supposed him to have suffered, was confirmed, for he was smoking a

pipe, and all the time that she was in the room he never loosened the

silk muffler he had wrapped round the lower part of his face to put the

mouthpiece to his lips. Yet it was not forgetfulness, for she saw he

glanced at it as it smouldered out. He sat in the corner with his back

to the window-blind and spoke now, having eaten and drunk and being

comfortably warmed through, with less aggressive brevity than before.

The reflection of the fire lent a kind of red animation to his big

spectacles they had lacked hitherto.

“I have some luggage,” he said, “at Bramblehurst station,” and he asked

her how he could have it sent. He bowed his bandaged head quite

politely in acknowledgment of her explanation. “To-morrow?” he said.

“There is no speedier delivery?” and seemed quite disappointed when she

answered, “No.” Was she quite sure? No man with a trap who would go

over?

Mrs. Hall, nothing loath, answered his questions and developed a

conversation. “It’s a steep road by the down, sir,” she said in answer

to the question about a trap; and then, snatching at an opening, said,

“It was there a carriage was upsettled, a year ago and more. A

gentleman killed, besides his coachman. Accidents, sir, happen in a

moment, don’t they?”

But the visitor was not to be drawn so easily. “They do,” he said

through his muffler, eyeing her quietly through his impenetrable

glasses.

“But they take long enough to get well, don’t they? ... There was my

sister’s son, Tom, jest cut his arm with a scythe, tumbled on it in the

’ayfield, and, bless me! he was three months tied up sir. You’d hardly

believe it. It’s regular given me a dread of a scythe, sir.”

“I can quite understand that,” said the visitor.

“He was afraid, one time, that he’d have to have an op’ration—he was

that bad, sir.”

The visitor laughed abruptly, a bark of a laugh that he seemed to bite

and kill in his mouth. “_Was_ he?” he said.

“He was, sir. And no laughing matter to them as had the doing for him,

as I had—my sister being took up with her little ones so much. There

was bandages to do, sir, and bandages to undo. So that if I may make so

bold as to say it, sir—”

“Will you get me some matches?” said the visitor, quite abruptly. “My

pipe is out.”

Mrs. Hall was pulled up suddenly. It was certainly rude of him, after

telling him all she had done. She gasped at him for a moment, and

remembered the two sovereigns. She went for the matches.

“Thanks,” he said concisely, as she put them down, and turned his

shoulder upon her and stared out of the window again. It was altogether

too discouraging. Evidently he was sensitive on the topic of operations

and bandages. She did not “make so bold as to say,” however, after all.

But his snubbing way had irritated her, and Millie had a hot time of it

that afternoon.

The visitor remained in the parlour until four o’clock, without giving

the ghost of an excuse for an intrusion. For the most part he was quite

still during that time; it would seem he sat in the growing darkness

smoking in the firelight—perhaps dozing.

Once or twice a curious listener might have heard him at the coals, and

for the space of five minutes he was audible pacing the room. He seemed

to be talking to himself. Then the armchair creaked as he sat down

again.