The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, Chapter 4, Part One, Mr. Cuss interviews the stranger.

CHAPTER IV
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.