CHAPTER III

KRAKATOA VILLA, AND HOW THE ELECTROCUTED TRAVELLER WENT THERE IN A CAB. A CURIOUS WELCOME TO A PERFECT STRANGER. THE STRANGER'S LABEL.

A CANCELLED MEMORY. BACK LIKE A BAD SHILLING

Krakatoa was a semi-detached villa, a few minutes' walk from Shepherd's Bush Station. It looked like a showily dressed wife of a shabby husband; for the semi-detached other villa next door had been standing to let for years, and its compo front was in a state of decomposition from past frosts, and its paint was parched and thin in the glare of the present June sun, and peeling and dripping spiritlessly from the closed shutters among the dead flies behind the cracked panes of gla.s.s that had quite forgotten the meaning of whitening and water, and that wouldn't hack out easy by reason of the putty having gone 'ard. One knew at a glance that if the turnc.o.c.k was to come, see, and overcome the reluctance of the allotted c.o.c.k-to-be-turned, the water would burst out at every pore of the service-pipes in that house, except the taps; and would know also that the adept who came to soften their hearts and handles would have to go back for his tools, and would be a very long time away.

Krakatoa, on the other hand, was resplendent with stone-colour, and smelt strongly of it. And its door you could see through the gla.s.s of into the hall, when its shutters were not thumb-screwed up over the panes, was painted a green that staggered the reason, and smelt even more strongly than the stone-colour. And all the paint was so thick that the beadings on the door were dim memories, and all the execution on the sculptured goblets on pedestals flanking the steps in the front garden was as good as spoiled. And the paint simmered in the sun, and here and there it blistered and altogether suggested that Krakatoa, like St. Nicholas, might have halved its coats with the beggar next door--given him, suppose, one flat and one round coat. Also, that either the job had been 'urried, and not giv' proper time to dry, or that the summer had come too soon, and we should pay for it later on, you see if we didn't!

The coatless and woe-begone villa next door had almost lost its name, so faded was the lettering on the gate-post that was putting out its bell-handle to the pa.s.ser-by, even as the patient puts out his tongue to the doctor. But experts in palimpsests, if they had penetrated the superscriptions in chalk and pencil of idle authorship, would have found that it was The Retreat. Probably this would have been revealed even if the texts had been merely Bowdlerised with Indian-rubber or a sponge, because there were a good many objectionable pa.s.sages.

But The Retreat _was_ a retreat, and smelt strong of the Hermits, who were cats. Krakatoa was not a volcano, except so far as eruptions on the paint went. But then it had become Krakatoa through a mistake; for the four coats of paint at the end of the first seven years, as per agreement, having completely hidden the first name, Saratoga, and the builders' retention of it having been feeble--possibly even affected by newspaper posters, for it was not long after the date of the great eruption--the new name had crept in in the absence of those who could have corrected it, but had gone to Brighton to get out of the smell of the paint.

When they returned, Mr. Prichard, the builder, though shocked and hurt at the discovery that the wrong name had been put up, was strongly opposed to any correction or alteration, especially as it would always show if altered back. You couldn't make a job of it; not to say a proper job. Besides, the names were morally the same, and it was absurd to allow a variation in the letters to impose on our imagination. The two names had been applied to very different turns-out abroad, certainly; but then they did all sorts of things abroad. If Saratoga, why not Krakatoa? Mr. Prichard was entrenched in a stronghold of total ignorance of literary matters, and his position, that mere differences of words ought not to tell upon a healthy mind, was difficult to shake, especially as he had the coign of vantage. He had only to remain inanimate, and what could a (presumably) widow lady with one small daughter do against him? So at the end of the first seven years, what had been Saratoga became Krakatoa, and remained so.

And it was in the back garden of the again newly painted villa, seven years later, that the lady of the house, who was watering the garden in the cool of the afternoon, asked her excited daughter, who had just come home in a cab, what on earth could have prompted her to do such a mad thing, such a perfectly _insane_ thing! We shall see what it was immediately.

"Oh, Sally, Sally!" exclaimed that young person's still young and very handsome mother. "What _will_ the child do next?"

"Oh, mamma, mamma!" answers Sally, just on the edge of a burst of tears; "what _was_ I to do? What _could_ I do? It was all my fault from the beginning. You _know_ I couldn't leave him to be taken to the police-station, or the hospital, or----"

"Yes, of course you could! Why not?"

"And not know what became of him, or anything? Oh, mother!"

"You silly child! Why on earth couldn't you leave him to the railway people?"

"And run away and leave him alone? Oh, _mother_!"

"But you don't even know his name."

"Mamma, dear, how _should_ I know his name? Don't you see, it was just like this." And then Miss Sally Nightingale repeats, briefly and rapidly, for the second time, the circ.u.mstances of her interview in the railway-carriage and its tragic ending. Also their sequel on the railway platform, with the partial recovery of the stunned or stupefied man, his inability to speak plainly, the unsuccessful search in his pockets for something to identify him, and the final decision to put him in a cab and take him to the workhouse infirmary, pending discovery of his ident.i.ty. The end of her story has a note of relief in it:

"And it was then I saw Dr. Vereker on the platform."

"Oh, you saw Dr. Vereker?"

"Of course I did, and he came with me. He's always so kind, you know, and he knew the station people, so...."

"Where is he now?"

"Outside in the cab. He stopped to see after the man. We couldn't both come away, so I came to tell you."

"You stupid chit! why couldn't you tell me at first? There, don't cry and be a goose!"

But Sally disclaims all intention of crying. Her mother discards the watering-pot and an ap.r.o.n, and suppresses appearances of gardening; then goes quickly through the house, pa.s.ses down the steps between the scarlet geraniums in the over-painted goblets, through the gate on which Saratoga ought to be, and Krakatoa is, written, and finds a four-wheeled cab awaiting developments. One of its occupants alights and meets her on the pavement. A rapid colloquy ensues in undertones, ending in the slightly raised voice of the young man, who is clearly Dr. Vereker.

"Of course, you're perfectly right--perfectly right. But you'll have to make my peace with Miss Sally for me."

"A chit of a girl like that! Fancy a responsible man like you letting himself be twisted round the finger of a young monkey. But you men are all alike."

"Well, you know, really, what Miss Sally said was quite true--that it was only a step out of the way to call here. And she had got this idea that it was all her fault."

"Was it?"

"I can only go by what she says." The girl comes into the conversation through the gate. She may perhaps have stopped for a word or two with cook and a house-and-parlourmaid, who are deeply interested, in the rear.

"It _was_ my fault," she said. "If it hadn't been for me, it would never have happened. Do see how he is now, Dr. Vereker."

It is open to surmise that the first strong impulse of generosity having died down under the corrective of a mother, our young lady is gradually seeing her way to interposing Dr. Vereker as a buffer between herself and the subject of the conversation, for she does not go to the cab-door to look in at him. The doctor does. The mother holds as aloof as possible, not to get entangled into any obligations.

"Get him away to the infirmary, or the station at once," she says.

"That's the best thing to be done. They'll take care of him till his friends come to claim him. Of course, they'll come. They always do."

The doctor seems to share this confidence, or affects to do so.

"Sure to. His friends or his servants," says he. "But he can't give any account of himself yet. Of course, I don't know what he'll be able to do to-morrow morning."

He resumes his place in the cab beside its occupant, who, except for an entire want of animation, looks much like what he did in the railway-carriage--the same strong-looking man with well-marked cheek-bones, very thick brown hair and bushy brows, a skin rather tanned, and a scar on the bridge of the nose; very strong hands with a tattoo-mark showing on the wrist and an abnormal crop of hair on the back, running on to the fingers, but flawed by a scar or two. Add to this the chief thing you would recollect him by, an Elizabethan beard, and you will have all the particulars about him that a navy-blue serge suit, with shirt to match, allows to be seen of him. But you will have an impression that could you see his skin beyond the sun-mark limit on his hands and neck, you would find it also tattooed. Yet you would not at once conclude he was a sailor; rather, your conclusion might go on other lines, but always a.s.signing to him a rough adventurous outdoor life.

When the doctor got into the cab and shut the door himself, he took too much for granted. He a.s.sumed the driver, without whom, if your horse has no ambition at all beyond tranquillity and an empty nosebag, your condition is that of one camping out; or as one in a ship moored alongside in dock, the kerbstone playing the part of the quay. Boys will then acc.u.mulate, and undervalue your appearance and belongings.

And impossible persons, with no previous or subsequent existence, will endeavour to see their way to the establishment of a claim on you. And you will be rather grateful than otherwise that a policeman without active interests should accrue, and communicate to them the virus of dispersal, however long its incubation may be. You will then probably do as Dr. Vereker did, and resent the driver's disappearance. The boys, mysteriously in his, each other's, and the policeman's confidence (all to your exclusion), will be able to quicken his movements, and he will come trooping from the horizon, on or beyond which is Somebody's Entire.

All this came to pa.s.s in due course, and the horse, deprived of his nosebag, returned to his professional obligations. But it was a shabby horse in a shabby cab, to which he imparted movement by falling forwards and saving himself just before he reached the ground. His reins were visibly made good with stout pack-thread, and he had a well-founded contempt for his whip, which seemed to come to an end too soon, and always to hit something wooden before it reached any sensitive part of his person. But he did get off at last, and showed that, as Force is a mode of motion, so Weakness is a mode of slowness, and one he took every advantage of.

The mother and daughter stood looking after the vanishing label, that stated that the complication of inefficiencies in front of it was one of twelve thousand and odd--pray Heaven, more competent ones!--in the Metropolis, and had nearly turned to go into the house, when the very much younger sister (that might have been) addressed the very much, but not impossibly, older one thus:

"Mamma, he said he knew somebody of our name!"

"Well, Miss Fiddlestick!"--with an implication of what of that? Were there not plenty of Nightingales in the world? Miss Sally is perceptive about this.

"Yes, but he said Rosalind."

"Where?"

"He didn't say where. That's all he said--Rosalind."

As the two stand together watching the retreating cab we are able to see that our first impression of them, derived perhaps from their relative ages only, was an entirely false one as far as size went. The daughter is nearly as tall as her mother, and may end by being as big a woman when she has completely graduated, taken her degree, in womanhood. But for all that we, who have looked at both faces, know that when they turn round we shall see on the shoulders of the one youth, inexperience, frankness, and expectation of things to come; on those of the other a head that keeps all the mere physical freshness of the twenties, if not quite the bloom of the teens, but--expressed Heaven knows how!--experience, reserve, and retrospect on things that have been once and are not, and that we have no right to a.s.sume to be any concern of ours. Equally true of all faces of forty, do we understand you to say? Well, we don't know about that. It was all very strong in this face.

We can look again, when they turn round. But they don't; for number twelve thousand and odd has come to a standstill, and its energumenon has come down off its box, and is "fiddlin' at something on the 'orse's 'ed." So cook says, evidently not impressed with that cab. The doctor looks out and confers; then gets out and comes back towards the house. The girl and her mother walk to meet him.

"Never saw such a four-wheeler in my life! The harness is tied up with string, and the rein's broken. The idiot says if he had a stout bit of whipcord, he could make it square." No sooner have the words pa.s.sed the doctor's lips than Miss Sally is off on a whipcord quest.

"I wish the child wouldn't always be in such a hurry," says her mother. "Now she won't know where to get it."

She calls after her ineffectually. The doctor suggests that he shall follow with instructions. Yes, suppose he does? There is precisely the thing wanted in the left-hand drawer of the table in the hall--the drawer the handle comes off. This seems unpromising, but the doctor goes, and transmission of messages ensues, heard within the house.