“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.”
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.”
