The Invisible Man By H.G. Wells
Chapter One
Part Two
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.
A strange silence descended.
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