Chapter 3 — CHAPTER III.<br>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.”

dilettante

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.

me

have

e

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!”

can’t

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.”