ACT III

[In the Rectory garden next morning, with the sun shining from a
cloudless sky. The garden wall has a five-barred wooden gate, wide
enough to admit a carriage, in the middle. Beside the gate hangs a bell
on a coiled spring, communicating with a pull outside. The carriage
drive comes down the middle of the garden and then swerves to its left,
where it ends in a little gravelled circus opposite the Rectory porch.
Beyond the gate is seen the dusty high road, parallel with the wall,
bounded on the farther side by a strip of turf and an unfenced pine
wood. On the lawn, between the house and the drive, is a clipped yew
tree, with a garden bench in its shade. On the opposite side the garden
is shut in by a box hedge; and there is a little sundial on the turf,
with an iron chair near it. A little path leads through the box hedge,
behind the sundial.]

[Frank, seated on the chair near the sundial, on which he has placed the
morning paper, is reading The Standard. His father comes from the house,
red-eyed and shivery, and meets Frank's eye with misgiving.]

FRANK [looking at his watch] Half-past eleven. Nice hour for a rector to
come down to breakfast!

REV. S. Don't mock, Frank: don't mock. I am a little--er--[Shivering]--

FRANK. Off color?

REV. S. [repudiating the expression] No, sir: _unwell_ this morning.
Where's your mother?

FRANK. Don't be alarmed: she's not here. Gone to town by the 11.13
with Bessie. She left several messages for you. Do you feel equal to
receiving them now, or shall I wait til you've breakfasted?

REV. S. I h a v e breakfasted, sir. I am surprised at your mother
going to town when we have people staying with us. They'll think it very
strange.

FRANK. Possibly she has considered that. At all events, if Crofts is
going to stay here, and you are going to sit up every night with him
until four, recalling the incidents of your fiery youth, it is clearly
my mother's duty, as a prudent housekeeper, to go up to the stores and
order a barrel of whisky and a few hundred siphons.

REV. S. I did not observe that Sir George drank excessively.

FRANK. You were not in a condition to, gov'nor.

REV. S. Do you mean to say that _I_--?

FRANK [calmly] I never saw a beneficed clergyman less sober. The
anecdotes you told about your past career were so awful that I really
don't think Praed would have passed the night under your roof if it hadnt
been for the way my mother and he took to one another.

REV. S. Nonsense, sir. I am Sir George Crofts' host. I must talk to him
about something; and he has only one subject. Where is Mr Praed now?

FRANK. He is driving my mother and Bessie to the station.

REV. S. Is Crofts up yet?

FRANK. Oh, long ago. He hasn't turned a hair: he's in much better
practice than you. Has kept it up ever since, probably. He's taken
himself off somewhere to smoke.

[Frank resumes his paper. The parson turns disconsolately towards the
gate; then comes back irresolutely.]

REV. S. Er--Frank.

FRANK. Yes.

REV. S. Do you think the Warrens will expect to be asked here after
yesterday afternoon?

FRANK. Theyve been asked already.

REV. S. [appalled] What!!!

FRANK. Crofts informed us at breakfast that you told him to bring Mrs
Warren and Vivie over here to-day, and to invite them to make this house
their home. My mother then found she must go to town by the 11.13 train.

REV. S. [with despairing vehemence] I never gave any such invitation. I
never thought of such a thing.

FRANK [compassionately] How do you know, gov'nor, what you said and
thought last night?

PRAED [coming in through the hedge] Good morning.

REV. S. Good morning. I must apologize for not having met you at
breakfast. I have a touch of--of--

FRANK. Clergyman's sore throat, Praed. Fortunately not chronic.

PRAED [changing the subject] Well I must say your house is in a charming
spot here. Really most charming.

REV. S. Yes: it is indeed. Frank will take you for a walk, Mr Praed,
if you like. I'll ask you to excuse me: I must take the opportunity
to write my sermon while Mrs Gardner is away and you are all amusing
yourselves. You won't mind, will you?

PRAED. Certainly not. Don't stand on the slightest ceremony with me.

REV. S. Thank you. I'll--er--er--[He stammers his way to the porch and
vanishes into the house].

PRAED. Curious thing it must be writing a sermon every week.

FRANK. Ever so curious, if he did it. He buys em. He's gone for some
soda water.

PRAED. My dear boy: I wish you would be more respectful to your father.
You know you can be so nice when you like.

FRANK. My dear Praddy: you forget that I have to live with the governor.
When two people live together--it don't matter whether theyre father and
son or husband and wife or brother and sister--they can't keep up the
polite humbug thats so easy for ten minutes on an afternoon call.
Now the governor, who unites to many admirable domestic qualities the
irresoluteness of a sheep and the pompousness and aggressiveness of a
jackass--

PRAED. No, pray, pray, my dear Frank, remember! He is your father.

FRANK. I give him due credit for that. [Rising and flinging down his
paper] But just imagine his telling Crofts to bring the Warrens over
here! He must have been ever so drunk. You know, my dear Praddy, my
mother wouldn't stand Mrs Warren for a moment. Vivie mustn't come here
until she's gone back to town.

PRAED. But your mother doesn't know anything about Mrs Warren, does she?
[He picks up the paper and sits down to read it].

FRANK. I don't know. Her journey to town looks as if she did. Not that
my mother would mind in the ordinary way: she has stuck like a brick to
lots of women who had got into trouble. But they were all nice women.
Thats what makes the real difference. Mrs Warren, no doubt, has her
merits; but she's ever so rowdy; and my mother simply wouldn't put up
with her. So--hallo! [This exclamation is provoked by the reappearance
of the clergyman, who comes out of the house in haste and dismay].

REV. S. Frank: Mrs Warren and her daughter are coming across the heath
with Crofts: I saw them from the study windows. What _am_ I to say about
your mother?

FRANK. Stick on your hat and go out and say how delighted you are to see
them; and that Frank's in the garden; and that mother and Bessie have
been called to the bedside of a sick relative, and were ever so
sorry they couldn't stop; and that you hope Mrs Warren slept well;
and--and--say any blessed thing except the truth, and leave the rest to
Providence.

REV. S. But how are we to get rid of them afterwards?

FRANK. Theres no time to think of that now. Here! [He bounds into the
house].

REV. S. He's so impetuous. I don't know what to do with him, Mr Praed.

FRANK [returning with a clerical felt hat, which he claps on his
father's head]. Now: off with you. [Rushing him through the gate].
Praed and I'll wait here, to give the thing an unpremeditated air. [The
clergyman, dazed but obedient, hurries off].

FRANK. We must get the old girl back to town somehow, Praed. Come!
Honestly, dear Praddy, do you like seeing them together?

PRAED. Oh, why not?

FRANK [his teeth on edge] Don't it make your flesh creep ever so little?
that wicked old devil, up to every villainy under the sun, I'll swear,
and Vivie--ugh!

PRAED. Hush, pray. Theyre coming.

[The clergyman and Crofts are seen coming along the road, followed by
Mrs Warren and Vivie walking affectionately together.]

FRANK. Look: she actually has her arm round the old woman's waist. It's
her right arm: she began it. She's gone sentimental, by God! Ugh! ugh!
Now do you feel the creeps? [The clergyman opens the gate: and Mrs
Warren and Vivie pass him and stand in the middle of the garden looking
at the house. Frank, in an ecstasy of dissimulation, turns gaily to Mrs
Warren, exclaiming] Ever so delighted to see you, Mrs Warren. This quiet
old rectory garden becomes you perfectly.

MRS WARREN. Well, I never! Did you hear that, George? He says I look
well in a quiet old rectory garden.

REV. S. [still holding the gate for Crofts, who loafs through it,
heavily bored] You look well everywhere, Mrs Warren.

FRANK. Bravo, gov'nor! Now look here: lets have a treat before lunch.
First lets see the church. Everyone has to do that. It's a regular old
thirteenth century church, you know: the gov'nor's ever so fond of it,
because he got up a restoration fund and had it completely rebuilt six
years ago. Praed will be able to shew its points.

PRAED [rising] Certainly, if the restoration has left any to shew.

REV. S. [mooning hospitably at them] I shall be pleased, I'm sure, if
Sir George and Mrs Warren really care about it.

MRS WARREN. Oh, come along and get it over.

CROFTS [turning back toward the gate] I've no objection.

REV. S. Not that way. We go through the fields, if you don't mind. Round
here. [He leads the way by the little path through the box hedge].

CROFTS. Oh, all right. [He goes with the parson].

[Praed follows with Mrs Warren. Vivie does not stir: she watches them
until they have gone, with all the lines of purpose in her face marking
it strongly.]

FRANK. Ain't you coming?

VIVIE. No. I want to give you a warning, Frank. You were making fun of
my mother just now when you said that about the rectory garden. That is
barred in the future. Please treat my mother with as much respect as you
treat your own.

FRANK. My dear Viv: she wouldn't appreciate it: the two cases require
different treatment. But what on earth has happened to you? Last night
we were perfectly agreed as to your mother and her set. This morning I
find you attitudinizing sentimentally with your arm around your parent's
waist.

VIVIE [flushing] Attitudinizing!

FRANK. That was how it struck me. First time I ever saw you do a
second-rate thing.

VIVIE [controlling herself] Yes, Frank: there has been a change: but I
don't think it a change for the worse. Yesterday I was a little prig.

FRANK. And today?

VIVIE [wincing; then looking at him steadily] Today I know my mother
better than you do.

FRANK. Heaven forbid!

VIVIE. What do you mean?

FRANK. Viv: theres a freemasonry among thoroughly immoral people that
you know nothing of. You've too much character. _That's_ the bond
between your mother and me: that's why I know her better than youll ever
know her.

VIVIE. You are wrong: you know nothing about her. If you knew the
circumstances against which my mother had to struggle--

FRANK [adroitly finishing the sentence for her] I should know why she is
what she is, shouldn't I? What difference would that make?

Circumstances or no circumstances, Viv, you won't be able to stand your
mother.

VIVIE [very angry] Why not?

FRANK. Because she's an old wretch, Viv. If you ever put your arm around
her waist in my presence again, I'll shoot myself there and then as a
protest against an exhibition which revolts me.

VIVIE. Must I choose between dropping your acquaintance and dropping my
mother's?

FRANK [gracefully] That would put the old lady at ever such a
disadvantage. No, Viv: your infatuated little boy will have to stick to
you in any case. But he's all the more anxious that you shouldn't make
mistakes. It's no use, Viv: your mother's impossible. She may be a good
sort; but she's a bad lot, a very bad lot.

VIVIE [hotly] Frank--! [He stands his ground. She turns away and
sits down on the bench under the yew tree, struggling to recover her
self-command. Then she says] Is she to be deserted by the world because
she's what you call a bad lot? Has she no right to live?

FRANK. No fear of that, Viv: _she_ won't ever be deserted. [He sits on
the bench beside her].

VIVIE. But I am to desert her, I suppose.

FRANK [babyishly, lulling her and making love to her with his voice]
Mustn't go live with her. Little family group of mother and daughter
wouldn't be a success. Spoil o u r little group.

VIVIE [falling under the spell] What little group?

FRANK. The babes in the wood: Vivie and little Frank. [He nestles
against her like a weary child]. Lets go and get covered up with leaves.

VIVIE [rhythmically, rocking him like a nurse] Fast asleep, hand in
hand, under the trees.

FRANK. The wise little girl with her silly little boy.

VIVIE. The dear little boy with his dowdy little girl.

FRANK. Ever so peaceful, and relieved from the imbecility of the little
boy's father and the questionableness of the little girl's--

VIVIE [smothering the word against her breast] Sh-sh-sh-sh! little girl
wants to forget all about her mother. [They are silent for some moments,
rocking one another. Then Vivie wakes up with a shock, exclaiming] What
a pair of fools we are! Come: sit up. Gracious! your hair. [She smooths
it]. I wonder do all grown up people play in that childish way when
nobody is looking.

I never did it when I was a child.

FRANK. Neither did I. You are my first playmate. [He catches her hand to
kiss it, but checks himself to look around first. Very unexpectedly, he
sees Crofts emerging from the box hedge]. Oh damn!

VIVIE. Why damn, dear?

FRANK [whispering] Sh! Here's this brute Crofts. [He sits farther away
from her with an unconcerned air].

CROFTS. Could I have a few words with you, Miss Vivie?

VIVIE. Certainly.

CROFTS [to Frank] Youll excuse me, Gardner. Theyre waiting for you in
the church, if you don't mind.

FRANK [rising] Anything to oblige you, Crofts--except church. If you
should happen to want me, Vivvums, ring the gate bell. [He goes into the
house with unruffled suavity].

CROFTS [watching him with a crafty air as he disappears, and speaking to
Vivie with an assumption of being on privileged terms with her] Pleasant
young fellow that, Miss Vivie. Pity he has no money, isn't it?

VIVIE. Do you think so?

CROFTS. Well, whats he to do? No profession. No property. Whats he good
for?

VIVIE. I realize his disadvantages, Sir George.

CROFTS [a little taken aback at being so precisely interpreted] Oh, it's
not that. But while we're in this world we're in it; and money's money.
[Vivie does not answer]. Nice day, isn't it?

VIVIE [with scarcely veiled contempt for this effort at conversation]
Very.

CROFTS [with brutal good humor, as if he liked her pluck] Well thats not
what I came to say. [Sitting down beside her] Now listen, Miss Vivie.
I'm quite aware that I'm not a young lady's man.

VIVIE. Indeed, Sir George?

CROFTS. No; and to tell you the honest truth I don't want to be either.
But when I say a thing I mean it; and when I feel a sentiment I feel it
in earnest; and what I value I pay hard money for. Thats the sort of man
I am.

VIVIE. It does you great credit, I'm sure.

CROFTS. Oh, I don't mean to praise myself. I have my faults, Heaven
knows: no man is more sensible of that than I am. I know I'm not
perfect: thats one of the advantages of being a middle-aged man; for
I'm not a young man, and I know it. But my code is a simple one, and, I
think, a good one. Honor between man and man; fidelity between man and
woman; and no can't about this religion or that religion, but an honest
belief that things are making for good on the whole.

VIVIE [with biting irony] "A power, not ourselves, that makes for
righteousness," eh?

CROFTS [taking her seriously] Oh certainly. Not ourselves, of course. Y
o u understand what I mean. Well, now as to practical matters. You may
have an idea that I've flung my money about; but I havn't: I'm richer
today than when I first came into the property. I've used my knowledge of
the world to invest my money in ways that other men have overlooked; and
whatever else I may be, I'm a safe man from the money point of view.

VIVIE. It's very kind of you to tell me all this.

CROFTS. Oh well, come, Miss Vivie: you needn't pretend you don't see what
I'm driving at. I want to settle down with a Lady Crofts. I suppose you
think me very blunt, eh?

VIVIE. Not at all: I am very much obliged to you for being so definite
and business-like. I quite appreciate the offer: the money, the
position, _Lady Crofts_, and so on. But I think I will say no, if you
don't mind, I'd rather not. [She rises, and strolls across to the
sundial to get out of his immediate neighborhood].

CROFTS [not at all discouraged, and taking advantage of the additional
room left him on the seat to spread himself comfortably, as if a few
preliminary refusals were part of the inevitable routine of courtship]
I'm in no hurry. It was only just to let you know in case young Gardner
should try to trap you. Leave the question open.

VIVIE [sharply] My no is final. I won't go back from it.

[Crofts is not impressed. He grins; leans forward with his elbows on his
knees to prod with his stick at some unfortunate insect in the grass;
and looks cunningly at her. She turns away impatiently.]

CROFTS. I'm a good deal older than you. Twenty-five years: quarter of
a century. I shan't live for ever; and I'll take care that you shall be
well off when I'm gone.

VIVIE. I am proof against even that inducement, Sir George. Don't you
think youd better take your answer? There is not the slightest chance of
my altering it.

CROFTS [rising, after a final slash at a daisy, and coming nearer to
her] Well, no matter. I could tell you some things that would change
your mind fast enough; but I wont, because I'd rather win you by honest
affection. I was a good friend to your mother: ask her whether I wasn't.
She'd never have make the money that paid for your education if it hadnt
been for my advice and help, not to mention the money I advanced her.
There are not many men who would have stood by her as I have. I put not
less than forty thousand pounds into it, from first to last.

VIVIE [staring at him] Do you mean to say that you were my mother's
business partner?

CROFTS. Yes. Now just think of all the trouble and the explanations
it would save if we were to keep the whole thing in the family, so to
speak. Ask your mother whether she'd like to have to explain all her
affairs to a perfect stranger.

VIVIE. I see no difficulty, since I understand that the business is
wound up, and the money invested.

CROFTS [stopping short, amazed] Wound up! Wind up a business thats
paying 35 per cent in the worst years! Not likely. Who told you that?

VIVIE [her color quite gone] Do you mean that it is still--? [She stops
abruptly, and puts her hand on the sundial to support herself. Then she
gets quickly to the iron chair and sits down].

What business are you talking about?

CROFTS. Well, the fact is it's not what would considered exactly a
high-class business in my set--the country set, you know--o u r set it
will be if you think better of my offer. Not that theres any mystery
about it: don't think that. Of course you know by your mother's being
in it that it's perfectly straight and honest. I've known her for many
years; and I can say of her that she'd cut off her hands sooner than
touch anything that was not what it ought to be. I'll tell you all about
it if you like. I don't know whether you've found in travelling how hard
it is to find a really comfortable private hotel.

VIVIE [sickened, averting her face] Yes: go on.

CROFTS. Well, thats all it is. Your mother has got a genius for managing
such things. We've got two in Brussels, one in Ostend, one in Vienna,
and two in Budapest. Of course there are others besides ourselves in
it; but we hold most of the capital; and your mother's indispensable
as managing director. You've noticed, I daresay, that she travels a good
deal. But you see you can't mention such things in society. Once let out
the word hotel and everybody thinks you keep a public-house. You wouldn't
like people to say that of your mother, would you? Thats why we're so
reserved about it. By the way, youll keep it to yourself, won't you?
Since it's been a secret so long, it had better remain so.

VIVIE. And this is the business you invite me to join you in?

CROFTS. Oh no. My wife shan't be troubled with business. Youll not be in
it more than you've always been.

VIVIE. _I_ always been! What do you mean?

CROFTS. Only that you've always lived on it. It paid for your education
and the dress you have on your back. Don't turn up your nose at business,
Miss Vivie: where would your Newnhams and Girtons be without it?

VIVIE [rising, almost beside herself] Take care. I know what this
business is.

CROFTS [starting, with a suppressed oath] Who told you?

VIVIE. Your partner. My mother.

CROFTS [black with rage] The old--

VIVIE. Just so.

[He swallows the epithet and stands for a moment swearing and raging
foully to himself. But he knows that his cue is to be sympathetic. He
takes refuge in generous indignation.]

CROFTS. She ought to have had more consideration for you. _I'd_ never
have told you.

VIVIE. I think you would probably have told me when we were married: it
would have been a convenient weapon to break me in with.

CROFTS [quite sincerely] I never intended that. On my word as a
gentleman I didn't.

[Vivie wonders at him. Her sense of the irony of his protest cools and
braces her. She replies with contemptuous self-possession.]

VIVIE. It does not matter. I suppose you understand that when we leave
here today our acquaintance ceases.

CROFTS. Why? Is it for helping your mother?

VIVIE. My mother was a very poor woman who had no reasonable choice but
to do as she did. You were a rich gentleman; and you did the same for
the sake of 35 per cent. You are a pretty common sort of scoundrel, I
think. That is my opinion of you.

CROFTS [after a stare: not at all displeased, and much more at his ease
on these frank terms than on their former ceremonious ones] Ha! ha! ha!
ha! Go it, little missie, go it: it doesn't hurt me and it amuses you.
Why the devil shouldn't I invest my money that way? I take the interest
on my capital like other people: I hope you don't think I dirty my own
hands with the work.

Come! you wouldn't refuse the acquaintance of my mother's cousin the Duke
of Belgravia because some of the rents he gets are earned in queer ways.
You wouldn't cut the Archbishop of Canterbury, I suppose, because the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners have a few publicans and sinners among
their tenants. Do you remember your Crofts scholarship at Newnham? Well,
that was founded by my brother the M.P. He gets his 22 per cent out of
a factory with 600 girls in it, and not one of them getting wages enough
to live on. How d'ye suppose they manage when they have no family to
fall back on? Ask your mother. And do you expect me to turn my back on
35 per cent when all the rest are pocketing what they can, like sensible
men? No such fool! If youre going to pick and choose your acquaintances
on moral principles, youd better clear out of this country, unless you
want to cut yourself out of all decent society.

VIVIE [conscience stricken] You might go on to point out that I myself
never asked where the money I spent came from. I believe I am just as
bad as you.

CROFTS [greatly reassured] Of course you are; and a very good thing too!
What harm does it do after all? [Rallying her jocularly] So you don't
think me such a scoundrel now you come to think it over. Eh?

VIVIE. I have shared profits with you: and I admitted you just now to
the familiarity of knowing what I think of you.

CROFTS [with serious friendliness] To be sure you did. You won't find
me a bad sort: I don't go in for being superfine intellectually; but Ive
plenty of honest human feeling; and the old Crofts breed comes out in
a sort of instinctive hatred of anything low, in which I'm sure youll
sympathize with me. Believe me, Miss Vivie, the world isn't such a bad
place as the croakers make out. As long as you don't fly openly in the
face of society, society doesn't ask any inconvenient questions; and
it makes precious short work of the cads who do. There are no secrets
better kept than the secrets everybody guesses. In the class of people
I can introduce you to, no lady or gentleman would so far forget
themselves as to discuss my business affairs or your mothers. No man can
offer you a safer position.

VIVIE [studying him curiously] I suppose you really think youre getting
on famously with me.

CROFTS. Well, I hope I may flatter myself that you think better of me
than you did at first.

VIVIE [quietly] I hardly find you worth thinking about at all now. When
I think of the society that tolerates you, and the laws that protect
you! when I think of how helpless nine out of ten young girls would
be in the hands of you and my mother! the unmentionable woman and her
capitalist bully--

CROFTS [livid] Damn you!

VIVIE. You need not. I feel among the damned already.

[She raises the latch of the gate to open it and go out. He follows her
and puts his hand heavily on the top bar to prevent its opening.]

CROFTS [panting with fury] Do you think I'll put up with this from you,
you young devil?

VIVIE [unmoved] Be quiet. Some one will answer the bell. [Without
flinching a step she strikes the bell with the back of her hand. It
clangs harshly; and he starts back involuntarily. Almost immediately
Frank appears at the porch with his rifle].

FRANK [with cheerful politeness] Will you have the rifle, Viv; or shall
I operate?

VIVIE. Frank: have you been listening?

FRANK [coming down into the garden] Only for the bell, I assure you; so
that you shouldn't have to wait. I think I shewed great insight into your
character, Crofts.

CROFTS. For two pins I'd take that gun from you and break it across your
head.

FRANK [stalking him cautiously] Pray don't. I'm ever so careless in
handling firearms. Sure to be a fatal accident, with a reprimand from
the coroner's jury for my negligence.

VIVIE. Put the rifle away, Frank: it's quite unnecessary.

FRANK. Quite right, Viv. Much more sportsmanlike to catch him in a
trap. [Crofts, understanding the insult, makes a threatening movement].
Crofts: there are fifteen cartridges in the magazine here; and I am a
dead shot at the present distance and at an object of your size.

CROFTS. Oh, you needn't be afraid. I'm not going to touch you.

FRANK. Ever so magnanimous of you under the circumstances! Thank you.

CROFTS. I'll just tell you this before I go. It may interest you, since
youre so fond of one another. Allow me, Mister Frank, to introduce you
to your half-sister, the eldest daughter of the Reverend Samuel Gardner.
Miss Vivie: you half-brother. Good morning! [He goes out through the
gate and along the road].

FRANK [after a pause of stupefaction, raising the rifle] Youll testify
before the coroner that it's an accident, Viv. [He takes aim at the
retreating figure of Crofts. Vivie seizes the muzzle and pulls it round
against her breast].

VIVIE. Fire now. You may.

FRANK [dropping his end of the rifle hastily] Stop! take care. [She lets
it go. It falls on the turf]. Oh, you've given your little boy such
a turn. Suppose it had gone off! ugh! [He sinks on the garden seat,
overcome].

VIVIE. Suppose it had: do you think it would not have been a relief to
have some sharp physical pain tearing through me?

FRANK [coaxingly] Take it ever so easy, dear Viv. Remember: even if the
rifle scared that fellow into telling the truth for the first time in
his life, that only makes us the babes in the woods in earnest. [He
holds out his arms to her]. Come and be covered up with leaves again.

VIVIE [with a cry of disgust] Ah, not that, not that. You make all my
flesh creep.

FRANK. Why, whats the matter?

VIVIE. Goodbye. [She makes for the gate].

FRANK [jumping up] Hallo! Stop! Viv! Viv! [She turns in the gateway]
Where are you going to? Where shall we find you?

VIVIE. At Honoria Fraser's chambers, 67 Chancery Lane, for the rest of
my life. [She goes off quickly in the opposite direction to that taken
by Crofts].

FRANK. But I say--wait--dash it! [He runs after her].

The setting of Act III is the Gardner home, where Praed and Crofts have spent the night. It is late morning and the Reverend Samuel Gardner comes outside to find Frank reading the newspaper. The Reverend has a hangover, having stayed up late drinking with his two guests. Frank tells him that Mrs. Gardner and Bessie, one of Frank's sisters, have gone into town in order to avoid meeting Mrs. Warren, who will be arriving at the house shortly. As Reverend Samuel Gardner excuses himself, Praed enters and scolds Frank for treating his father with disrespect all the time. Mrs. Warren and Vivie arrive, and the Reverend Samuel Gardner goes to meet them nervously. He leads Mrs. Warren and Crofts on a tour of the church and rectory grounds, leaving Frank and Vivie alone together. Vivie and Frank discuss Mrs. Warren. Frank makes fun of her, calling her "an old wretch" and scolding Vivie for pretending to get along with her. Vivie, however, insists that he show her mother more respect. Frank and Vivie's ensuing conversation is flirtatious in a specific way: they play at being children with each other. Vivie wonders if their game is strange, but they decide it's not since neither of them played house in this way as children. Crofts returns to the scene, interrupting their flirtation. He asks Frank to leave. Crofts proposes marriage to Vivie, using the same commercial justification he used with her mother the night before. Whereas Mrs. Warren reacted negatively to this approach, Vivie assures Crofts that she understands and appreciates it. However, she still rejects him, since she does not wish to marry anyone. Crofts does not take her "no" easily, and continues to try to convince her to say yes. In trying to convince her to marry him, Crofts inadvertently reveals to Vivie that her mother is his business partner. Upon learning that Mrs. Warren continues to operate brothels, Vivie becomes sickened. Crofts doesn't understand her reaction, and continues to discuss his and her mother's business as if it were a reason for her to marry him, rather than a reason for her to separate herself from both of them. Vivie tells Crofts that she knew about her mother's profession already, accusing him of wanting to withhold it from her until they were married as a way to break her spirit and manipulate her. She tells him she is disgusted with his work, since unlike her mother, he chose it for the profits. Crofts laughs at her for being naive about where money comes from in the world; in fact, the money that supports her own lifestyle comes from his and her mother's work. She tries to leave and he stops her, so she rings the bell on the gate. Frank appears immediately, having been listening the whole time. He carries a rifle and points it at Crofts, but Vivie tells him to put it away. Before exiting through the gate, Crofts tells Vivie and Frank that they are half-siblings. Frank is still pointing the gun after Crofts, and Vivie puts it to her own chest, telling him to fire. Frank drops the gun and tries to continue their flirtation, but Vivie is disgusted now and leaves to return to the city. Frank runs after her.

The relationship between mother and daughter has changed in Act III, with the former disrespect Vivie showed her mother now reflected in Frank's attitude toward his father. Frank comes off as resentful and childish in both cases. Praed scolds him for making fun of the Reverend Samuel Gardner, on whom he is financially dependent, and Vivie demands he show more respect to Mrs. Warren. Her attitude toward her mother has changed because, the night before, Mrs. Warren revealed her sympathetic history to her daughter. Vivie and Frank's friendship is revealed as close and flirtatious, if a bit strange. The way they flirt with each other is to pretend to be children, as if they are playing house. They admit that neither of them played this way when they actually were children, suggesting that this kind of interaction is a coping mechanism for something that was absent in their childhoods. Whereas Vivie had shut down Frank's advances the night before, now that she has reconciled with her mother, she is more open to flirting back. However, after Crofts suggests that they are half-siblings, Vivie's interest in this particular flirtation turns cold. She tells Frank, "You make all my flesh creep"  before leaving. Croft's marriage proposal serves to highlight the difference between Vivie's approach to marriage and that of her mother. Whereas both women reject the idea that Crofts should marry Vivie, Mrs. Warren's rejection is based in repulsion at such a commercial approach to marriage. Vivie, on the other hand, tells Crofts that she appreciates how "business-like"  he is about the offer. However, she rejects him based on personal preference. In this act, Crofts reveals to Vivie the rest of Mrs. Warren's secret regarding her profession: she continues to run brothels. Upon learning this new information, Vivie no longer understands her mother's point of view and judges both Mrs. Warren and Crofts harshly. In asking her to keep the secret from others, Crofts invokes convention and the judgment of others: "Since it's been a secret so long, it had better remain so" . The dramatic irony at play here is that Crofts does not know the damage he has just done to the relationship between Vivie and her mother by revealing the rest of this secret. The idea of morality comes into question on a large scale during Crofts argument with Vivie in this act. She accuses him of being immoral for operating brothels purely for the sake of profit. In response, he chastises her for assuming that there is any honest way to make money. He insists that everyone "in decent society"  operates immorally in order to maintain status. The irony of this statement is not lost on Vivie: if everyone in the upper echelons of society is immoral, how can they see themselves as above those people who, like Mrs. Warren, turn to prostitution or other "immoral" work to survive?


THE STRANGE MAN'S ARRIVAL

The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a
biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over
the down, walking from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a
little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped
up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every
inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled
itself against his shoulders and chest, and added a white crest to
the burden he carried. He staggered into the "Coach and Horses" more
dead than alive, and flung his portmanteau down. "A fire," he cried,
"in the name of human charity! A room and a fire!" He stamped and
shook the snow from off himself in the bar, and followed Mrs. Hall
into her guest parlour to strike his bargain. And with that much
introduction, that and a couple of sovereigns flung upon the table,
he took up his quarters 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 stop at Iping in the
wintertime was an unheard-of piece of luck, let alone a guest who
was no "haggler," and she was resolved to show herself worthy of her
good fortune. As soon as the bacon was well under way, and Millie,
her lymphatic maid, had been brisked up a bit by a few deftly chosen
expressions of contempt, she carried the cloth, plates, and glasses
into the parlour and began to lay them with the utmost _eclat_.
Although the fire was burning up briskly, she was surprised to see
that her visitor still wore his hat and coat, standing with his back
to her and staring out of the window at the falling snow in the yard.
His gloved hands were clasped behind him, and he seemed to be lost
in thought. She noticed that the melting snow that still sprinkled
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 was not 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 emphasis, and she noticed that he wore
big blue spectacles with sidelights, and had a bush side-whisker
over his coat-collar that 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, and had turned his face away from her again, and
Mrs. Hall, feeling that her conversational advances were ill-timed,
laid the rest of the table things in a quick staccato and whisked
out of the room. When she returned he was still standing there, like
a man of stone, his back hunched, his collar turned up, his dripping
hat-brim turned down, hiding his face and ears completely. She put
down the eggs and bacon with considerable emphasis, and called
rather than said to him, "Your lunch is served, sir."

"Thank you," he said at the same time, and did not stir until she
was closing the door. Then he swung round 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 intervals. Chirk, chirk, chirk, it went, the sound of a
spoon being rapidly whisked round a basin. "That girl!" she said.
"There! I clean 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 excessive 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 stateliness upon a gold and black tea-tray, carried
it into the parlour.

She rapped and entered promptly. As she did so her visitor moved
quickly, so that she got but a glimpse of a white object disappearing
behind the table. It would seem he was picking something from the
floor. She rapped down the mustard pot on the table, and then she
noticed the overcoat and hat had been taken off and put over a chair
in front of the fire, and a pair of wet boots threatened rust to her
steel fender. She went to these things resolutely. "I suppose I may
have them to dry now," she said in a voice that brooked no denial.

"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 gaping at him, too surprised to speak.

He held a white cloth--it was a serviette he had brought with
him--over the lower part of his face, so that his mouth and jaws
were completely hidden, and that was the reason of his muffled
voice. But it was not that which startled Mrs. Hall. It was the fact
that all his forehead above his blue glasses was covered by a white
bandage, and that another covered his ears, leaving not a scrap of
his face exposed excepting only his pink, peaked nose. 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 as it could below and
between the cross bandages, projected in curious tails and horns,
giving him the strangest appearance conceivable. This muffled and
bandaged head was so unlike what she had anticipated, that for a
moment she was rigid.

He did not remove the serviette, but remained holding it, as she
saw now, with a brown gloved hand, and regarding her with his
inscrutable blue glasses. "Leave the hat," he said, speaking very
distinctly 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 drily, glancing 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 glanced at his white-swathed head
and blue goggles 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 was eloquent of her surprise
and perplexity. "I _never_," she whispered. "There!" She went quite
softly to the kitchen, and was too preoccupied to ask Millie what
she was messing about with _now_, when she got there.

The visitor sat and listened to her retreating feet. He glanced
inquiringly at the window before he removed his serviette, and
resumed his meal. He took a mouthful, glanced suspiciously at the
window, took another mouthful, then rose and, taking the serviette
in his hand, walked across the room and pulled the blind down to
the top of the white muslin that obscured the lower panes. This
left the room in a twilight. This done, he returned with an easier
air to the table and his meal.

"The poor soul's had an accident or an op'ration or somethin'," said
Mrs. Hall. "What a turn them bandages did give me, to be sure!"

She put on some more coal, unfolded the clothes-horse, and extended
the traveller's coat upon this. "And they goggles! Why, he looked
more like a divin' helmet than a human man!" She hung his muffler
on a corner of the horse. "And holding that handkerchief over his
mouth all the time. Talkin' through it! ... Perhaps his mouth was
hurt too--maybe."

She turned round, as one who suddenly remembers. "Bless my soul
alive!" she said, going off at a tangent; "ain't you done them
taters _yet_, Millie?"

When Mrs. Hall went to clear away the stranger's lunch, her idea
that his mouth must also have been cut or disfigured in the accident
she supposed him to have suffered, was confirmed, for he was smoking
a pipe, and all the time that she was in the room he never loosened
the silk muffler he had wrapped round the lower part of his face to
put the mouthpiece to his lips. Yet it was not forgetfulness, for
she saw he glanced at it as it smouldered out. He sat in the corner
with his back to the window-blind and spoke now, having eaten and
drunk and being comfortably warmed through, with less aggressive
brevity than before. The reflection of the fire lent a kind of red
animation to his big spectacles they had lacked hitherto.

"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 acknowledgment of her explanation. "To-morrow?" he
said. "There is no speedier delivery?" and seemed quite disappointed
when she answered, "No." Was she quite sure? No man with a trap who
would go over?

Mrs. Hall, nothing loath, answered his questions and developed a
conversation. "It's a steep road by the down, sir," she said in
answer to the question about a trap; and then, snatching at an
opening, said, "It was there a carriage was upsettled, a year ago
and more. A gentleman killed, besides his coachman. Accidents, sir,
happen in a moment, don't they?"

But the visitor was not to be drawn so easily. "They do," he said
through his muffler, eyeing her quietly through his impenetrable
glasses.

"But they take long enough to get well, don't they? ... There was
my sister's son, Tom, jest cut his arm with a scythe, tumbled on it
in the 'ayfield, and, bless me! he was three months tied up sir.
You'd hardly believe it. It's regular given me a dread of a scythe,
sir."

"I can quite understand that," said the visitor.

"He was afraid, one time, that he'd have to have an op'ration--he
was that bad, sir."

The visitor laughed abruptly, a bark of a 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 took 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 abruptly.
"My pipe is out."

Mrs. Hall was pulled up suddenly. It was certainly rude of him,
after telling him all she had done. She gasped at him for a moment,
and remembered the two sovereigns. She went for the matches.

"Thanks," he said concisely, as she put them down, and turned his
shoulder upon her and stared out of the window again. It was
altogether too discouraging. Evidently he was sensitive on the
topic of operations and bandages. She did not "make so bold as to
say," however, after all. But his snubbing way had irritated her,
and Millie had a hot time of it that afternoon.

The visitor remained in the parlour until four o'clock, without
giving the ghost of an excuse for an intrusion. For the most part
he was quite still during that time; it would seem he sat in the
growing darkness smoking in the firelight--perhaps dozing.

Once or twice a curious listener might have heard him at the coals,
and for the space of five minutes he was audible pacing the room.
He seemed to be talking to himself. Then the armchair creaked as
he sat down again.

The book starts with a stranger arriving in a snowstorm at the Coach and Horses, an inn/bar in Iping. The stranger is totally covered, with only his shiny nose showing. He's also wearing spectacles with sidelights, which basically look like goggles. At least one person says he looks like he's wearing a diving helmet The stranger looks, well, strange, but he's got money, so Mrs. Hall, the innkeeper, gives him a room. Still, Mrs. Hall is surprised by his appearance when she sees him in his room without his hat: Luckily, he's covered the lower part of his face with a serviette , so she doesn't have to deal with what's there. Mrs. Hall assumes that this guy was in an accident. She tries to get him to talk about what happened , but he doesn't want to talk about his "accident" with a gossipy innkeeper. Instead, he asks her about getting his luggage from the railroad station. Not quite as good for gossip. Sorry, Mrs. Hall.


MR. TEDDY HENFREY'S FIRST IMPRESSIONS

At four o'clock, when it was fairly dark and Mrs. Hall was screwing
up her courage to go in and ask her visitor if he would take some
tea, Teddy Henfrey, the clock-jobber, came into the bar. "My sakes!
Mrs. Hall," said he, "but this is terrible weather for thin boots!"
The snow outside was falling faster.

Mrs. Hall agreed, and then noticed he had his bag with him. "Now
you're here, Mr. Teddy," said she, "I'd be glad if you'd give th'
old clock in the parlour a bit of a look. 'Tis going, and it strikes
well and hearty; but the hour-hand won't do nuthin' but point at
six."

And leading the way, she went across to the parlour door and rapped
and entered.

Her visitor, she saw as she opened the door, was seated in the
armchair before the fire, dozing it would seem, with his bandaged
head drooping on one side. The only light in the room was the red
glow from the fire--which lit his eyes like adverse railway signals,
but left his downcast face in darkness--and the scanty vestiges of
the day that came in through the open door. Everything was ruddy,
shadowy, and indistinct to her, the more so since she had just been
lighting the bar lamp, and her eyes were dazzled. But for a second
it seemed to her that the man she looked at had an enormous mouth
wide open--a vast and incredible mouth that swallowed the whole of
the lower portion of his face. It was the sensation of a moment:
the white-bound head, the monstrous goggle eyes, and this huge yawn
below it. Then he stirred, started up in his chair, put up his hand.
She opened the door wide, so that the room was lighter, and she saw
him more clearly, with the muffler held up to his face just as she
had seen him hold the serviette before. The shadows, she fancied,
had tricked her.

"Would you mind, sir, this man a-coming to look at the clock, sir?"
she said, recovering from the momentary shock.

"Look at the clock?" he said, staring round in a drowsy manner,
and speaking over his hand, and then, getting more fully awake,
"certainly."

Mrs. Hall went away to get a lamp, and he rose and stretched
himself. Then came the light, and Mr. Teddy Henfrey, entering, was
confronted by this bandaged person. He was, he says, "taken aback."

"Good afternoon," said the stranger, regarding him--as Mr. Henfrey
says, with a vivid sense of the dark spectacles--"like a lobster."

"I hope," said Mr. Henfrey, "that it's no intrusion."

"None whatever," said the stranger. "Though, I understand," he said
turning to Mrs. Hall, "that this room is really to be mine for my
own private use."

"I thought, sir," said Mrs. Hall, "you'd prefer the clock--"

"Certainly," said the stranger, "certainly--but, as a rule, I
like to be alone and undisturbed.

"But I'm really glad to have the clock seen to," he said, seeing a
certain hesitation in Mr. Henfrey's manner. "Very glad." Mr. Henfrey
had intended to apologise and withdraw, but this anticipation
reassured him. The stranger turned round with his back to the
fireplace and put his hands behind his back. "And presently," he
said, "when the clock-mending is over, I think I should like to
have some tea. But not till the clock-mending is over."

Mrs. Hall was about to leave the room--she made no conversational
advances this time, because she did not want to be snubbed in front
of Mr. Henfrey--when her visitor asked her if she had made any
arrangements about his boxes at Bramblehurst. She told him she had
mentioned the matter to the postman, and that the carrier could
bring them over on the morrow. "You are certain that is the
earliest?" he said.

She was certain, with a marked coldness.

"I should explain," he added, "what I was really too cold and
fatigued to do before, that I am an experimental investigator."

"Indeed, sir," said Mrs. Hall, much impressed.

"And my baggage contains apparatus and appliances."

"Very useful things indeed they are, sir," said Mrs. Hall.

"And I'm very naturally anxious to get on with my inquiries."

"Of course, sir."

"My reason for coming to Iping," he proceeded, with a certain
deliberation of manner, "was ... a desire for solitude. I do not
wish to be disturbed in my work. In addition to my work, an
accident--"

"I thought as much," said Mrs. Hall to herself.

"--necessitates a certain retirement. My eyes--are sometimes so
weak and painful that I have to shut myself up in the dark for
hours together. Lock myself up. Sometimes--now and then. Not at
present, certainly. At such times the slightest disturbance, the
entry of a stranger into the room, is a source of excruciating
annoyance to me--it is well these things should be understood."

"Certainly, sir," said Mrs. Hall. "And if I might make so bold as
to ask--"

"That I think, is all," said the stranger, with that quietly
irresistible air of finality he could assume at will. Mrs. Hall
reserved her question and sympathy for a better occasion.

After Mrs. Hall had left the room, he remained standing in front of
the fire, glaring, so Mr. Henfrey puts it, at the clock-mending. Mr.
Henfrey not only took off the hands of the clock, and the face, but
extracted the works; and he tried to work in as slow and quiet and
unassuming a manner as possible. He worked with the lamp close to
him, and the green shade threw a brilliant light upon his hands,
and upon the frame and wheels, and left the rest of the room
shadowy. When he looked up, coloured patches swam in his eyes.
Being constitutionally of a curious nature, he had removed the
works--a quite unnecessary proceeding--with the idea of delaying his
departure and perhaps falling into conversation with the stranger.
But the stranger stood there, perfectly silent and still. So still,
it got on Henfrey's nerves. He felt alone in the room and looked up,
and there, grey and dim, was the bandaged head and huge blue lenses
staring fixedly, with a mist of green spots drifting in front of
them. It was so uncanny to Henfrey that for a minute they remained
staring blankly at one another. Then Henfrey looked down again. Very
uncomfortable position! One would like to say something. Should he
remark that the weather was very cold for the time of year?

He looked up as if to take aim with that introductory shot. "The
weather--" he began.

"Why don't you finish and go?" said the rigid figure, evidently in
a state of painfully suppressed rage. "All you've got to do is to
fix the hour-hand on its axle. You're simply humbugging--"

"Certainly, sir--one minute more. I overlooked--" and Mr. Henfrey
finished and went.

But he went feeling excessively annoyed. "Damn it!" said Mr. Henfrey
to himself, trudging down the village through the thawing snow; "a
man must do a clock at times, surely."

And again, "Can't a man look at you?--Ugly!"

And yet again, "Seemingly not. If the police was wanting you you
couldn't be more wropped and bandaged."

At Gleeson's corner he saw Hall, who had recently married the
stranger's hostess at the "Coach and Horses," and who now drove
the Iping conveyance, when occasional people required it, to
Sidderbridge Junction, coming towards him on his return from that
place. Hall had evidently been "stopping a bit" at Sidderbridge,
to judge by his driving. "'Ow do, Teddy?" he said, passing.

"You got a rum un up home!" said Teddy.

Hall very sociably pulled up. "What's that?" he asked.

"Rum-looking customer stopping at the 'Coach and Horses,'" said
Teddy. "My sakes!"

And he proceeded to give Hall a vivid description of his grotesque
guest. "Looks a bit like a disguise, don't it? I'd like to see a
man's face if I had him stopping in _my_ place," said Henfrey. "But
women are that trustful--where strangers are concerned. He's took
your rooms and he ain't even given a name, Hall."

"You don't say so!" said Hall, who was a man of sluggish apprehension.

"Yes," said Teddy. "By the week. Whatever he is, you can't get rid
of him under the week. And he's got a lot of luggage coming
to-morrow, so he says. Let's hope it won't be stones in boxes, Hall."

He told Hall how his aunt at Hastings had been swindled by a
stranger with empty portmanteaux. Altogether he left Hall vaguely
suspicious. "Get up, old girl," said Hall. "I s'pose I must see
'bout this."

Teddy trudged on his way with his mind considerably relieved.

Instead of "seeing 'bout it," however, Hall on his return was
severely rated by his wife on the length of time he had spent in
Sidderbridge, and his mild inquiries were answered snappishly and
in a manner not to the point. But the seed of suspicion Teddy
had sown germinated in the mind of Mr. Hall in spite of these
discouragements. "You wim' don't know everything," said Mr. Hall,
resolved to ascertain more about the personality of his guest at
the earliest possible opportunity. And after the stranger had gone
to bed, which he did about half-past nine, Mr. Hall went very
aggressively into the parlour and looked very hard at his wife's
furniture, just to show that the stranger wasn't master there,
and scrutinised closely and a little contemptuously a sheet of
mathematical computations the stranger had left. When retiring
for the night he instructed Mrs. Hall to look very closely at
the stranger's luggage when it came next day.

"You mind your own business, Hall," said Mrs. Hall, "and I'll mind
mine."

She was all the more inclined to snap at Hall because the stranger
was undoubtedly an unusually strange sort of stranger, and she was
by no means assured about him in her own mind. In the middle of the
night she woke up dreaming of huge white heads like turnips, that
came trailing after her, at the end of interminable necks, and with
vast black eyes. But being a sensible woman, she subdued her
terrors and turned over and went to sleep again.

Now we're introduced to Teddy Henfrey. He's a villager and a clockjobber, which might sound awesome, but it just means that he fixes clocks. Still awesome, we guess. At any rate, Henfrey makes his way to the Coach and Horses that afternoon. Mrs. Hall wants Henfrey to fix a clock in the stranger's room. They enter his room without knocking, which is a bad idea whether your guest is a mad scientist or not. For a moment, Mrs. Hall thinks the stranger has a giant mouth, but he covers his face again. The stranger tells Mrs. Hall that he would like to be left alone. See, he's an "experimental investigator" - which means scientist - and he's got some research that could be messed up by people entering whenever they want. Also, he was in an accident, and his eyes are sensitive, which is why he's always covered and wearing his dark glasses. Wow, sounds like the stranger's got an answer for everything. Mrs. Hall leaves Henfrey to fix the clock. Henfrey takes a long time with the clock on purpose, so that he can see more of the stranger. Looks like Henfrey could use a hobby. The stranger catches him wasting time, though, and tells him to finish up and get out. Henfrey wonders what the man's secret is - maybe he's wanted by the police? On his way through the village, Henfrey runs into Mr. Hall and tells him, "You got a rum un up home!" . Translation: "there's a weird guy staying at your place." This gets Mr. Hall a little suspicious. But he's also a little drunk , so his wife tells him to mind his own business. Although, truth be told, Mrs. Hall is a little suspicious of the stranger herself.


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."

We learn here that the stranger came to Iping on February 29th. . So let's all agree that it's hard to keep track of time.) The next day, the stranger's luggage is brought from the station by a man named Fearenside, who has a dog, which makes Fearenside our favorite character so far. The stranger has lots of luggage, including boxes of glass bottles cushioned by straw. Naturally. He would probably love to yell at people to be careful with his boxes, but Fearenside's dog attacks him and rips his glove and pants. The stranger runs back to his room to change his clothes. Mr. Hall, nice guy that he is, checks on the stranger to make sure he wasn't hurt. But when he enters the room without knocking , he sees something strange. Unfortunately for the reader, Hall gets pushed out of the room before he can figure out what he saw. The villagers are now hanging around the luggage, gossiping and saying what they would do if a dog bit them. These people clearly don't have TVs. When the unhurt stranger gets the boxes, he starts unpacking all of his bottles and gets to work immediately. Mrs. Hall brings him dinner, but - surprise, surprise! - enters without knocking. So, of course, two things happen: she catches a glimpse of something strange ; and he complains about being interrupted. Mrs. Hall fusses over the mess that he's making, but the stranger just tells her to bill him. Down at a local bar, Fearenside and Henfrey gossip about the stranger. Fearenside says the stranger has black legs - he apparently saw the leg when his dog ripped his pants. Since the stranger has a pink nose, says Fearenside, maybe he's colored like a piebald horse.


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.

Cuss rapped at the parlour door and entered. There was a fairly
audible imprecation from within. "Pardon my intrusion," said Cuss,
and then the door closed and cut Mrs. Hall off from the rest of
the conversation.

She could hear the murmur of voices for the next ten minutes, then
a cry of surprise, a stirring of feet, a chair flung aside, a bark
of laughter, quick steps to the door, and Cuss appeared, his face
white, his eyes staring over his shoulder. He left the door open
behind him, and without looking at her strode across the hall and
went down the steps, and she heard his feet hurrying along the
road. He carried his hat in his hand. She stood behind the door,
looking at the open door of the parlour. Then she heard the
stranger laughing quietly, and then his footsteps came across the
room. She could not see his face where she stood. The parlour door
slammed, and the place was silent again.

Cuss went straight up the village to Bunting the vicar. "Am I mad?"
Cuss began abruptly, as he entered the shabby little study. "Do I
look like an insane person?"

"What's happened?" said the vicar, putting the ammonite on the
loose sheets of his forth-coming sermon.

"That chap at the inn--"

"Well?"

"Give me something to drink," said Cuss, and he sat down.

When his nerves had been steadied by a glass of cheap sherry--the
only drink the good vicar had available--he told him of the
interview he had just had. "Went in," he gasped, "and began to
demand a subscription for that Nurse Fund. He'd stuck his hands in
his pockets as I came in, and he sat down lumpily in his chair.
Sniffed. I told him I'd heard he took an interest in scientific
things. He said yes. Sniffed again. Kept on sniffing all the time;
evidently recently caught an infernal cold. No wonder, wrapped up
like that! I developed the nurse idea, and all the while kept my
eyes open. Bottles--chemicals--everywhere. Balance, test-tubes
in stands, and a smell of--evening primrose. Would he subscribe?
Said he'd consider it. Asked him, point-blank, was he researching.
Said he was. A long research? Got quite cross. 'A damnable long
research,' said he, blowing the cork out, so to speak. 'Oh,' said
I. And out came the grievance. The man was just on the boil, and my
question boiled him over. He had been given a prescription, most
valuable prescription--what for he wouldn't say. Was it medical?
'Damn you! What are you fishing after?' I apologised. Dignified
sniff and cough. He resumed. He'd read it. Five ingredients. Put it
down; turned his head. Draught of air from window lifted the paper.
Swish, rustle. He was working in a room with an open fireplace, he
said. Saw a flicker, and there was the prescription burning and
lifting chimneyward. Rushed towards it just as it whisked up the
chimney. So! Just at that point, to illustrate his story, out came
his arm."

"Well?"

"No hand--just an empty sleeve. Lord! I thought, _that's_ a
deformity! Got a cork arm, I suppose, and has taken it off. Then, I
thought, there's something odd in that. What the devil keeps that
sleeve up and open, if there's nothing in it? There was nothing in
it, I tell you. Nothing down it, right down to the joint. I could
see right down it to the elbow, and there was a glimmer of light
shining through a tear of the cloth. 'Good God!' I said. Then he
stopped. Stared at me with those black goggles of his, and then
at his sleeve."

"Well?"

"That's all. He never said a word; just glared, and put his sleeve
back in his pocket quickly. 'I was saying,' said he, 'that there
was the prescription burning, wasn't I?' Interrogative cough.
'How the devil,' said I, 'can you move an empty sleeve like that?'
'Empty sleeve?' 'Yes,' said I, 'an empty sleeve.'

"'It's an empty sleeve, is it? You saw it was an empty sleeve?' He
stood up right away. I stood up too. He came towards me in three
very slow steps, and stood quite close. Sniffed venomously. I
didn't flinch, though I'm hanged if that bandaged knob of his, and
those blinkers, aren't enough to unnerve any one, coming quietly
up to you.

"'You said it was an empty sleeve?' he said. 'Certainly,' I said.
At staring and saying nothing a barefaced man, unspectacled, starts
scratch. Then very quietly he pulled his sleeve out of his pocket
again, and raised his arm towards me as though he would show it to
me again. He did it very, very slowly. I looked at it. Seemed an
age. 'Well?' said I, clearing my throat, 'there's nothing in it.'

"Had to say something. I was beginning to feel frightened. I could
see right down it. He extended it straight towards me, slowly,
    slowly--just like that--until the cuff was six inches from my
    face. Queer thing to see an empty sleeve come at you like that!
    And then--"

    "Well?"

    "Something--exactly like a finger and thumb it felt--nipped my
    nose."

    Bunting began to laugh.

    "There wasn't anything there!" said Cuss, his voice running up into
    a shriek at the "there." "It's all very well for you to laugh, but
    I tell you I was so startled, I hit his cuff hard, and turned
    around, and cut out of the room--I left him--"

    Cuss stopped. There was no mistaking the sincerity of his panic.
    He turned round in a helpless way and took a second glass of the
    excellent vicar's very inferior sherry. "When I hit his cuff," said
    Cuss, "I tell you, it felt exactly like hitting an arm. And there
    wasn't an arm! There wasn't the ghost of an arm!"

    Mr. Bunting thought it over. He looked suspiciously at Cuss. "It's
    a most remarkable story," he said. He looked very wise and grave
    indeed. "It's really," said Mr. Bunting with judicial emphasis, "a
    most remarkable story."

The narrator tells us that, after the dog incident, not much happens in Iping until the club festival . Instead, the village settles into something of a routine. This is the routine: when Mrs. Hall complains about his messes, the stranger tells her to bill him extra, which works fine until April, when he starts to run out of money. No one in Iping really likes the stranger and everyone has a theory about why he's so weird. Some people think he's a criminal or an anarchist or a lunatic or simply a freak who could make a fortune charging people at county fairs to check him out. Whatever his deal is, everyone seems to agree that the stranger is too irritable for a village, "though might have been comprehensible to an urban brain-worker" . One villager who does want to talk to him is the town doctor, Cuss. On Whit Sunday, Cuss goes to talk to the stranger - partly because he's curious, partly because he's jealous of all his bottles. After the talk , Cuss runs out to see Bunting, the vicar. Cuss wanted gossip, but this is apparently what happened instead: while the stranger was telling him a story about why his research was taking so long , the stranger revealed that his sleeve was empty. Then he seemed to use an invisible hand to tweak Cuss' nose. To be clear, if you're trying to hide the fact that you're invisible, tweaking people's noses with your invisible hand is not a good strategy.


THE BURGLARY AT THE VICARAGE

The facts of the burglary at the vicarage came to us chiefly
through the medium of the vicar and his wife. It occurred in the
small hours of Whit Monday, the day devoted in Iping to the Club
festivities. Mrs. Bunting, it seems, woke up suddenly in the
stillness that comes before the dawn, with the strong impression
that the door of their bedroom had opened and closed. She did not
arouse her husband at first, but sat up in bed listening. She then
distinctly heard the pad, pad, pad of bare feet coming out of the
adjoining dressing-room and walking along the passage towards the
staircase. As soon as she felt assured of this, she aroused the
Rev. Mr. Bunting as quietly as possible. He did not strike a light,
but putting on his spectacles, her dressing-gown and his bath
slippers, he went out on the landing to listen. He heard quite
distinctly a fumbling going on at his study desk down-stairs, and
then a violent sneeze.

At that he returned to his bedroom, armed himself with the most
obvious weapon, the poker, and descended the staircase as
noiselessly as possible. Mrs. Bunting came out on the landing.

The hour was about four, and the ultimate darkness of the night was
past. There was a faint shimmer of light in the hall, but the study
doorway yawned impenetrably black. Everything was still except the
faint creaking of the stairs under Mr. Bunting's tread, and the
slight movements in the study. Then something snapped, the drawer
was opened, and there was a rustle of papers. Then came an
imprecation, and a match was struck and the study was flooded with
yellow light. Mr. Bunting was now in the hall, and through the
crack of the door he could see the desk and the open drawer and a
candle burning on the desk. But the robber he could not see. He
stood there in the hall undecided what to do, and Mrs. Bunting, her
face white and intent, crept slowly downstairs after him. One thing
kept Mr. Bunting's courage; the persuasion that this burglar was a
resident in the village.

They heard the chink of money, and realised that the robber had
found the housekeeping reserve of gold--two pounds ten in half
sovereigns altogether. At that sound Mr. Bunting was nerved to
abrupt action. Gripping the poker firmly, he rushed into the room,
closely followed by Mrs. Bunting. "Surrender!" cried Mr. Bunting,
fiercely, and then stooped amazed. Apparently the room was
perfectly empty.

Yet their conviction that they had, that very moment, heard somebody
moving in the room had amounted to a certainty. For half a minute,
perhaps, they stood gaping, then Mrs. Bunting went across the room
and looked behind the screen, while Mr. Bunting, by a kindred
impulse, peered under the desk. Then Mrs. Bunting turned back the
window-curtains, and Mr. Bunting looked up the chimney and probed it
with the poker. Then Mrs. Bunting scrutinised the waste-paper basket
and Mr. Bunting opened the lid of the coal-scuttle. Then they came
to a stop and stood with eyes interrogating each other.

"I could have sworn--" said Mr. Bunting.

"The candle!" said Mr. Bunting. "Who lit the candle?"

"The drawer!" said Mrs. Bunting. "And the money's gone!"

She went hastily to the doorway.

"Of all the strange occurrences--"

There was a violent sneeze in the passage. They rushed out, and as
they did so the kitchen door slammed. "Bring the candle," said Mr.
Bunting, and led the way. They both heard a sound of bolts being
hastily shot back.

As he opened the kitchen door he saw through the scullery that
the back door was just opening, and the faint light of early dawn
displayed the dark masses of the garden beyond. He is certain that
nothing went out of the door. It opened, stood open for a moment,
and then closed with a slam. As it did so, the candle Mrs. Bunting
was carrying from the study flickered and flared. It was a minute
or more before they entered the kitchen.

The place was empty. They refastened the back door, examined the
kitchen, pantry, and scullery thoroughly, and at last went down
into the cellar. There was not a soul to be found in the house,
search as they would.

Daylight found the vicar and his wife, a quaintly-costumed little
couple, still marvelling about on their own ground floor by the
unnecessary light of a guttering candle.

That night, the vicar's house is robbed. The vicar and his wife wake up when they hear a sneeze and some fumbling in his office. Of course, the couple can't see a robber and are they're incredibly confused. Yep, that's it for the chapter.


THE FURNITURE THAT WENT MAD

Now it happened that in the early hours of Whit Monday, before
Millie was hunted out for the day, Mr. Hall and Mrs. Hall both rose
and went noiselessly down into the cellar. Their business there was
of a private nature, and had something to do with the specific
gravity of their beer. They had hardly entered the cellar when Mrs.
Hall found she had forgotten to bring down a bottle of sarsaparilla
from their joint-room. As she was the expert and principal operator
in this affair, Hall very properly went upstairs for it.

On the landing he was surprised to see that the stranger's door was
ajar. He went on into his own room and found the bottle as he had
been directed.

But returning with the bottle, he noticed that the bolts of the
front door had been shot back, that the door was in fact simply on
the latch. And with a flash of inspiration he connected this with
the stranger's room upstairs and the suggestions of Mr. Teddy
Henfrey. He distinctly remembered holding the candle while Mrs.
Hall shot these bolts overnight. At the sight he stopped, gaping,
then with the bottle still in his hand went upstairs again. He
rapped at the stranger's door. There was no answer. He rapped
again; then pushed the door wide open and entered.

It was as he expected. The bed, the room also, was empty. And what
was stranger, even to his heavy intelligence, on the bedroom chair
and along the rail of the bed were scattered the garments, the only
garments so far as he knew, and the bandages of their guest. His
big slouch hat even was cocked jauntily over the bed-post.

As Hall stood there he heard his wife's voice coming out of the
depth of the cellar, with that rapid telescoping of the syllables
and interrogative cocking up of the final words to a high note,
by which the West Sussex villager is wont to indicate a brisk
impatience. "George! You gart whad a wand?"

At that he turned and hurried down to her. "Janny," he said, over
the rail of the cellar steps, "'tas the truth what Henfrey sez.
'E's not in uz room, 'e en't. And the front door's onbolted."

At first Mrs. Hall did not understand, and as soon as she did she
resolved to see the empty room for herself. Hall, still holding the
bottle, went first. "If 'e en't there," he said, "'is close are.
And what's 'e doin' 'ithout 'is close, then? 'Tas a most curious
business."

As they came up the cellar steps they both, it was afterwards
ascertained, fancied they heard the front door open and shut, but
seeing it closed and nothing there, neither said a word to the other
about it at the time. Mrs. Hall passed her husband in the passage
and ran on first upstairs. Someone sneezed on the staircase. Hall,
following six steps behind, thought that he heard her sneeze. She,
going on first, was under the impression that Hall was sneezing.
She flung open the door and stood regarding the room. "Of all the
curious!" she said.

She heard a sniff close behind her head as it seemed, and turning,
was surprised to see Hall a dozen feet off on the topmost stair.
But in another moment he was beside her. She bent forward and put
her hand on the pillow and then under the clothes.

"Cold," she said. "He's been up this hour or more."

As she did so, a most extraordinary thing happened. The bed-clothes
gathered themselves together, leapt up suddenly into a sort of peak,
and then jumped headlong over the bottom rail. It was exactly as if
a hand had clutched them in the centre and flung them aside.
Immediately after, the stranger's hat hopped off the bed-post,
described a whirling flight in the air through the better part of
a circle, and then dashed straight at Mrs. Hall's face. Then as
swiftly came the sponge from the washstand; and then the chair,
flinging the stranger's coat and trousers carelessly aside, and
laughing drily in a voice singularly like the stranger's, turned
itself up with its four legs at Mrs. Hall, seemed to take aim at her
for a moment, and charged at her. She screamed and turned, and then
the chair legs came gently but firmly against her back and impelled
her and Hall out of the room. The door slammed violently and was
locked. The chair and bed seemed to be executing a dance of triumph
for a moment, and then abruptly everything was still.

Mrs. Hall was left almost in a fainting condition in Mr. Hall's
arms on the landing. It was with the greatest difficulty that Mr.
Hall and Millie, who had been roused by her scream of alarm,
succeeded in getting her downstairs, and applying the restoratives
customary in such cases.

"'Tas sperits," said Mrs. Hall. "I know 'tas sperits. I've read in
papers of en. Tables and chairs leaping and dancing..."

"Take a drop more, Janny," said Hall. "'Twill steady ye."

"Lock him out," said Mrs. Hall. "Don't let him come in again.
I half guessed--I might ha' known. With them goggling eyes and
bandaged head, and never going to church of a Sunday. And all
they bottles--more'n it's right for any one to have. He's put the
sperits into the furniture.... My good old furniture! 'Twas in
that very chair my poor dear mother used to sit when I was a
little girl. To think it should rise up against me now!"

"Just a drop more, Janny," said Hall. "Your nerves is all upset."

They sent Millie across the street through the golden five o'clock
sunshine to rouse up Mr. Sandy Wadgers, the blacksmith. Mr.
Hall's compliments and the furniture upstairs was behaving most
extraordinary. Would Mr. Wadgers come round? He was a knowing man,
was Mr. Wadgers, and very resourceful. He took quite a grave view
of the case. "Arm darmed if thet ent witchcraft," was the view of
Mr. Sandy Wadgers. "You warnt horseshoes for such gentry as he."

He came round greatly concerned. They wanted him to lead the way
upstairs to the room, but he didn't seem to be in any hurry. He
preferred to talk in the passage. Over the way Huxter's apprentice
came out and began taking down the shutters of the tobacco window.
He was called over to join the discussion. Mr. Huxter naturally
followed over in the course of a few minutes. The Anglo-Saxon
genius for parliamentary government asserted itself; there was a
great deal of talk and no decisive action. "Let's have the facts
first," insisted Mr. Sandy Wadgers. "Let's be sure we'd be acting
perfectly right in bustin' that there door open. A door onbust is
always open to bustin', but ye can't onbust a door once you've
busted en."

And suddenly and most wonderfully the door of the room upstairs
opened of its own accord, and as they looked up in amazement,
they saw descending the stairs the muffled figure of the stranger
staring more blackly and blankly than ever with those unreasonably
large blue glass eyes of his. He came down stiffly and slowly,
staring all the time; he walked across the passage staring, then
stopped.

"Look there!" he said, and their eyes followed the direction of his
gloved finger and saw a bottle of sarsaparilla hard by the cellar
door. Then he entered the parlour, and suddenly, swiftly,
viciously, slammed the door in their faces.

Not a word was spoken until the last echoes of the slam had died
away. They stared at one another. "Well, if that don't lick
everything!" said Mr. Wadgers, and left the alternative unsaid.

"I'd go in and ask'n 'bout it," said Wadgers, to Mr. Hall. "I'd
d'mand an explanation."

It took some time to bring the landlady's husband up to that pitch.
At last he rapped, opened the door, and got as far as, "Excuse me--"

"Go to the devil!" said the stranger in a tremendous voice, and
"Shut that door after you." So that brief interview terminated.

Back at the Coach and Horses inn, the Halls head down to the cellar to water down their beer. Yum. Mr. Hall has to go back upstairs to get some sarsaparilla to cover the taste of the watered-down beer . On his way, he notices some strange things: the front door is unlocked and the stranger isn't in his room. The lady of the house, Mrs. Hall, comes to check on the situation in the stranger's room. She peeks in and, after a few sneezes, the blankets and pillows start flying around the room, and the furniture starts banging around. Mrs. Hall immediately assumes that the stranger has put ghosts into her furniture. Some of the villagers - including Sandy Wadgers, the blacksmith, and Mr. Huxter, the general shop owner - get involved in the mystery of the stranger's disappearance and the haunted furniture. With so many people, not much gets done: "The Anglo-Saxon genius for parliamentary government asserted itself; there was a great deal of talk and no decisive action" . Zing! Take that, parliamentary government. Finally, the stranger comes out of his room and demands to be left alone. Huh?