Bab Bab 4 · MR. CUSS INTERVIEWS THE STRANGER

. 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 chooses 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