The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance Page 12

  CHAPTER XII

  THE INVISIBLE MAN LOSES HIS TEMPER

  It is unavoidable that at this point the narrative should break offagain, for a certain very painful reason that will presently beapparent. While these things were going on in the parlour, andwhile Mr. Huxter was watching Mr. Marvel smoking his pipe againstthe gate, not a dozen yards away were Mr. Hall and Teddy Henfreydiscussing in a state of cloudy puzzlement the one Iping topic.

  Suddenly there came a violent thud against the door of the parlour,a sharp cry, and then--silence.

  "Hul-lo!" said Teddy Henfrey.

  "Hul-lo!" from the Tap.

  Mr. Hall took things in slowly but surely. "That ain't right," hesaid, and came round from behind the bar towards the parlour door.

  He and Teddy approached the door together, with intent faces. Theireyes considered. "Summat wrong," said Hall, and Henfrey noddedagreement. Whiffs of an unpleasant chemical odour met them, andthere was a muffled sound of conversation, very rapid and subdued.

  "You all right thur?" asked Hall, rapping.

  The muttered conversation ceased abruptly, for a moment silence,then the conversation was resumed, in hissing whispers, then asharp cry of "No! no, you don't!" There came a sudden motion andthe oversetting of a chair, a brief struggle. Silence again.

  "What the dooce?" exclaimed Henfrey, _sotto voce_.

  "You--all--right thur?" asked Mr. Hall, sharply, again.

  The Vicar's voice answered with a curious jerking intonation:"Quite ri-right. Please don't--interrupt."

  "Odd!" said Mr. Henfrey.

  "Odd!" said Mr. Hall.

  "Says, 'Don't interrupt,'" said Henfrey.

  "I heerd'n," said Hall.

  "And a sniff," said Henfrey.

  They remained listening. The conversation was rapid and subdued."I _can't_," said Mr. Bunting, his voice rising; "I tell you, sir,I _will_ not."

  "What was that?" asked Henfrey.

  "Says he wi' nart," said Hall. "Warn't speaking to us, wuz he?"

  "Disgraceful!" said Mr. Bunting, within.

  "'Disgraceful,'" said Mr. Henfrey. "I heard it--distinct."

  "Who's that speaking now?" asked Henfrey.

  "Mr. Cuss, I s'pose," said Hall. "Can you hear--anything?"

  Silence. The sounds within indistinct and perplexing.

  "Sounds like throwing the table-cloth about," said Hall.

  Mrs. Hall appeared behind the bar. Hall made gestures of silence andinvitation. This aroused Mrs. Hall's wifely opposition. "What yerlistenin' there for, Hall?" she asked. "Ain't you nothin' better todo--busy day like this?"

  Hall tried to convey everything by grimaces and dumb show, but Mrs.Hall was obdurate. She raised her voice. So Hall and Henfrey, rathercrestfallen, tiptoed back to the bar, gesticulating to explain toher.

  At first she refused to see anything in what they had heard atall. Then she insisted on Hall keeping silence, while Henfrey toldher his story. She was inclined to think the whole businessnonsense--perhaps they were just moving the furniture about. "Iheerd'n say 'disgraceful'; _that_ I did," said Hall.

  "_I_ heerd that, Mrs. Hall," said Henfrey.

  "Like as not--" began Mrs. Hall.

  "Hsh!" said Mr. Teddy Henfrey. "Didn't I hear the window?"

  "What window?" asked Mrs. Hall.

  "Parlour window," said Henfrey.

  Everyone stood listening intently. Mrs. Hall's eyes, directedstraight before her, saw without seeing the brilliant oblong of theinn door, the road white and vivid, and Huxter's shop-frontblistering in the June sun. Abruptly Huxter's door opened and Huxterappeared, eyes staring with excitement, arms gesticulating. "Yap!"cried Huxter. "Stop thief!" and he ran obliquely across the oblongtowards the yard gates, and vanished.

  Simultaneously came a tumult from the parlour, and a sound ofwindows being closed.

  Hall, Henfrey, and the human contents of the tap rushed out at oncepell-mell into the street. They saw someone whisk round the cornertowards the road, and Mr. Huxter executing a complicated leap inthe air that ended on his face and shoulder. Down the street peoplewere standing astonished or running towards them.

  Mr. Huxter was stunned. Henfrey stopped to discover this, but Halland the two labourers from the Tap rushed at once to the corner,shouting incoherent things, and saw Mr. Marvel vanishing by thecorner of the church wall. They appear to have jumped to theimpossible conclusion that this was the Invisible Man suddenlybecome visible, and set off at once along the lane in pursuit. ButHall had hardly run a dozen yards before he gave a loud shout ofastonishment and went flying headlong sideways, clutching one ofthe labourers and bringing him to the ground. He had been chargedjust as one charges a man at football. The second labourer cameround in a circle, stared, and conceiving that Hall had tumbledover of his own accord, turned to resume the pursuit, only to betripped by the ankle just as Huxter had been. Then, as the firstlabourer struggled to his feet, he was kicked sideways by a blowthat might have felled an ox.

  As he went down, the rush from the direction of the village greencame round the corner. The first to appear was the proprietor ofthe cocoanut shy, a burly man in a blue jersey. He was astonishedto see the lane empty save for three men sprawling absurdly on theground. And then something happened to his rear-most foot, and hewent headlong and rolled sideways just in time to graze the feetof his brother and partner, following headlong. The two were thenkicked, knelt on, fallen over, and cursed by quite a number ofover-hasty people.

  Now when Hall and Henfrey and the labourers ran out of the house,Mrs. Hall, who had been disciplined by years of experience,remained in the bar next the till. And suddenly the parlour doorwas opened, and Mr. Cuss appeared, and without glancing at herrushed at once down the steps toward the corner. "Hold him!" hecried. "Don't let him drop that parcel."

  He knew nothing of theexistence of Marvel. For the Invisible Man had handed over thebooks and bundle in the yard. The face of Mr. Cuss was angry andresolute, but his costume was defective, a sort of limp white kiltthat could only have passed muster in Greece. "Hold him!" hebawled. "He's got my trousers! And every stitch of the Vicar'sclothes!"

  "'Tend to him in a minute!" he cried to Henfrey as he passed theprostrate Huxter, and, coming round the corner to join the tumult,was promptly knocked off his feet into an indecorous sprawl.Somebody in full flight trod heavily on his finger. He yelled,struggled to regain his feet, was knocked against and thrown on allfours again, and became aware that he was involved not in a capture,but a rout. Everyone was running back to the village. He rose againand was hit severely behind the ear. He staggered and set off backto the "Coach and Horses" forthwith, leaping over the desertedHuxter, who was now sitting up, on his way.

  Behind him as he was halfway up the inn steps he heard a suddenyell of rage, rising sharply out of the confusion of cries, and asounding smack in someone's face. He recognised the voice as thatof the Invisible Man, and the note was that of a man suddenlyinfuriated by a painful blow.

  In another moment Mr. Cuss was back in the parlour. "He's comingback, Bunting!" he said, rushing in. "Save yourself!"

  Mr. Bunting was standing in the window engaged in an attempt toclothe himself in the hearth-rug and a _West Surrey Gazette_. "Who'scoming?" he said, so startled that his costume narrowly escapeddisintegration.

  "Invisible Man," said Cuss, and rushed on to the window. "We'dbetter clear out from here! He's fighting mad! Mad!"

  In another moment he was out in the yard.

  "Good heavens!" said Mr. Bunting, hesitating between two horriblealternatives. He heard a frightful struggle in the passage of theinn, and his decision was made. He clambered out of the window,adjusted his costume hastily, and fled up the village as fast ashis fat little legs would carry him.

  From the moment when the Invisible Man screamed with rage and Mr.Bunting made his memorable flight up the village, it becameimpossible to give a consecutive account of affairs in Iping.Possibly the Invisible Man's original intention was simply to coverMarvel's retreat with
the clothes and books. But his temper, at notime very good, seems to have gone completely at some chance blow,and forthwith he set to smiting and overthrowing, for the meresatisfaction of hurting.

  You must figure the street full of running figures, of doorsslamming and fights for hiding-places. You must figure the tumultsuddenly striking on the unstable equilibrium of old Fletcher'splanks and two chairs--with cataclysmic results. You must figurean appalled couple caught dismally in a swing. And then the wholetumultuous rush has passed and the Iping street with its gauds andflags is deserted save for the still raging unseen, and litteredwith cocoanuts, overthrown canvas screens, and the scattered stockin trade of a sweetstuff stall. Everywhere there is a sound ofclosing shutters and shoving bolts, and the only visible humanityis an occasional flitting eye under a raised eyebrow in the cornerof a window pane.

  The Invisible Man amused himself for a little while by breaking allthe windows in the "Coach and Horses," and then he thrust a streetlamp through the parlour window of Mrs. Gribble. He it must havebeen who cut the telegraph wire to Adderdean just beyond Higgins'cottage on the Adderdean road. And after that, as his peculiarqualities allowed, he passed out of human perceptions altogether,and he was neither heard, seen, nor felt in Iping any more. Hevanished absolutely.

  But it was the best part of two hours before any human beingventured out again into the desolation of Iping street.