บทที่ บทที่ 3 · THE THOUSAND AND ONE BOTTLES

. 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 bring 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, then?” 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.”