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The Invisible Man
Chapter 1. THE STRANGE MAN'S ARRIVAL
The stranger came early in February.
It was a wintry day with a biting wind and driving snow.
This was the last snowfall of the year.
He walked from Bramblehurst railway station over the down.
He carried a little black bag in his thickly gloved hand.
He was wrapped from head to foot, his felt hat's brim hid all his face but the shiny tip of his nose.
The snow had piled itself against his shoulders and chest, and added a white top to the burden he carried.
He staggered into the "Coach and Horses" more dead than alive, and threw his bag down.
A fire," he cried, "in the name of human kindness!
"A room and a fire!" He stamped and shook the snow from himself in the bar.
"A room and a fire!" He stamped and shook the snow from himself in the bar.
"He followed Mrs. Hall into her guest room to make his deal."
And with that much introduction, that and a couple of gold coins thrown upon the table, he took up his rooms 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 stay at Iping in the wintertime was an unheard-of piece of luck, let alone a guest who was no "bargainer,"
And she was determined to show herself worthy of her good fortune.
The bacon was cooking well, Millie, her slow maid, had been hurried up by a few well-chosen words of anger.
She carried the cloth, plates, and glasses into the room.
She began to lay them with the greatest care.
The fire was burning up quickly.
She was surprised to see her visitor still wore his hat and coat.
He stood with his back to her, staring out the window at the falling snow in the yard.
His gloved hands were held behind him, and he seemed to be lost in thought.
She noticed that the melting snow that still covered 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 wasn't 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 force.
She noticed he wore big blue glasses with side pieces.
He also had a bushy side-whisker over his coat-collar.
It 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, he had turned his face away from her again.
Mrs. Hall felt her attempts at conversation were badly timed.
She laid the rest of the table things in a quick way and hurried out of the room.
When she returned, he was still standing there like a man of stone.
His back was bent, his collar was turned up and his wet hat-brim hid his face and ears completely.
She put down the eggs and bacon with great force, and called rather than said to him, "Your lunch is served, sir."
"Thank you," he said at the same time, and didn't move until she was closing the door.
Then he turned around 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 times.
Chirk, chirk, chirk, it went, the sound of a spoon being quickly turned around a bowl.
"That girl!" she said.
"There! I completely 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 great 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 dignity upon a gold and black tea-tray, carried it into the room.
She knocked and entered quickly, carrying the mustard pot and feeling slightly nervous.
As she did so her visitor moved quickly, so that she got only a quick look at a white object disappearing behind the table.
It seemed he was picking something from the floor.
She put down the mustard pot on the table.
Then she noticed the overcoat and hat had been taken off.
They were placed over a chair in front of the fire.
A pair of wet boots threatened rust to her steel fender.
She went to these things firmly.
"I suppose I may have them to dry now," she said in a voice that allowed no refusal.
"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 staring at him, too surprised to speak.
He held a white cloth over the lower part of his face.
It was a napkin he had brought with him.
His mouth and jaws were completely hidden.
That was the reason for his muffled voice.
But it wasn't that which surprised Mrs. Hall.
A white bandage covered all his forehead above his blue glasses.
Another bandage covered his ears, Only his pink, pointed nose was left showing.
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 below and between the bandages stuck out in tails and horns, giving him a strange look.
This muffled and bandaged head was so unlike what she had expected, that for a moment she was frozen.
He did not remove the napkin, he held it with a brown gloved hand and looked at her through his blue glasses.
"Leave the hat," he said, speaking very clearly 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 dryly, looking 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 looked at his white-wrapped head and blue glasses 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 showed her surprise and confusion.
"I never," she whispered.
"There!" She went quite softly to the kitchen, and was too busy thinking to ask Millie what she was messing about with now, when she got there.
The visitor sat and listened to her retreating feet.
He looked questioningly at the window before he removed his napkin, and continued his meal.
He took a mouthful, he looked suspiciously at the window.
He took another mouthful, then rose.
Taking the napkin in his hand, he walked across the room.
He pulled the blind down to the top of the white cloth that covered the lower parts of the windows.
This left the room in a half-darkness.
This done, he returned with a more relaxed air to the table and his meal.
"The poor soul's had an accident or an operation or something," said Mrs. Hall.
"What a shock them bandages did give me, to be sure!"
She put on some more coal, unfolded the clothes-horse, and spread the traveler's coat upon this.
"And them glasses! Why, he looked more like a diving helmet than a human man!" She hung his scarf on a corner of the horse.
"And holding that handkerchief over his mouth all the time. Talking through it! . Perhaps his mouth was hurt too, maybe."
She turned around, as one who suddenly remembers.
"Bless my soul alive!" she said, changing direction.
"Haven't you done them potatoes yet, Millie?"
Mrs. Hall went to clear away the stranger's lunch.
Her idea that his mouth must have been cut or hurt in the accident was confirmed.
He was smoking a pipe, but he never loosened the silk scarf wrapped around his lower face.
Yet it wasn't forgetfulness, for she saw he looked at it as it burned out.
He sat in the corner, back to the blind, eating and drinking, feeling warm, he spoke with less shortness.
The reflection of the fire gave a kind of red life to his big glasses they had lacked until now.
"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 thanks for her explanation.
"Tomorrow?" he said.
"There's no faster delivery?" and seemed quite disappointed when she answered, "No." Was she quite sure?
No man with a cart who would go over?
Mrs. Hall, not unwilling, answered his questions and started a conversation.
"It's a steep road by the down, sir," she said in answer to the question about a cart.
And then, taking a chance, said, "It was there a carriage was overturned, a year ago and more."
"A gentleman killed, besides his driver."
"Accidents, sir, happen in a moment, don't they?"
But the visitor wasn't to be drawn so easily.
"They do," he said through his scarf, looking at her quietly through his unreadable glasses.
"But they take long enough to get well, don't they? ."
My sister's son Tom cut his arm with a farm tool in the hayfield, bless me, he was tied up for three months, sir.
"You'd hardly believe it."
"It's regularly given me a fear of a scythe, sir."
"I can quite understand that," said the visitor.
"He was afraid, one time, that he'd have to have an operation, he was that bad, sir."
The visitor laughed suddenly, a short 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 taken 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 suddenly.
"My pipe is out."
Mrs. Hall was stopped suddenly, it was certainly rude of him, after telling him all she had done.
She stared at him for a moment, and remembered the two gold coins, she went for the matches.
"Thanks," he said shortly, as she put them down, and turned his shoulder upon her and stared out of the window again.
It was altogether too discouraging, Clearly he was sensitive on the subject of operations and bandages.
She didn't "make so bold as to say," however, after all.
But his rude way had annoyed her, and Millie had a hot time of it that afternoon.
The visitor remained in the room until four o'clock, without giving the slightest excuse for an interruption.
For the most part he was quite still during that time.
It seemed he sat in the growing darkness smoking in the firelight, perhaps sleeping.
Once or twice a curious listener might have heard him at the coals, for five minutes he walked around the room.
He seemed to be talking to himself.
Then the armchair creaked as he sat down again.