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 glass 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 turncock
was to come, see, and overcome the reluctance of the allotted
cock-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 glass 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 passer-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 passages.
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 circumstances 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 identity. 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 apron, and suppresses appearances of gardening;
then goes quickly through the house, passes 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 assigning 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 assumed 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 accumulate, 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 pass 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 assume 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 passed
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.
Left alone, Mrs. Nightingale, the elder Rosalind, seems reflective.
"A funny thing, too!" she says aloud to herself. She is thinking,
clearly, of how this man in the cab, who can't give any account of
himself, once knew a Rosalind Nightingale.
Probably the handle has come off the drawer, for they are a long time
over that string. Curiosity has time to work, and has so much effect
that the lady seems to determine that, after all, she would like to
see the man. Now that the cab is so far from the door, even if she
spoke to him, she would not stand committed to anything. It is all
settled, arranged, ratified, that he shall go to the police-station,
or the infirmary, "or somewhere."
When the string, and Dr. Vereker, and Sally the daughter come out of
the house, both exclaim. And the surprise they express is that the
mother of the latter should have walked all the way after the cab,
and should be talking to the man in it! It is not consistent with her
previous attitude.
"Now, isn't that like mamma?" says Sally. If so, why be so astonished
at it?--is a question that suggests itself to her hearer. But
self-confutation is not a disorder for his treatment. Besides, the
doctor likes it, in this case. His own surprise at mamma's conduct is
unqualified by any intimate acquaintance with her character. She may
be inconsistency itself, for anything he knows.
"Is she going to turn the cab round and bring him to the house, after
all?" It looks like it.
"I'm so glad," Sally replies to the doctor.
"I hope you won't repent it in sackcloth and ashes."
"I shan't. Why do you think I shall?"
"How do you know you won't?"
"You'll see!" Sally pinches her red lips tight over her two rows of
pearls, and nods confirmation. Her dark eyes look merry under the
merry eyebrows, and the lip-pinch makes a dimple on her chin--a dimple
to remember her by. She is a taking young lady, there is no doubt of
it. At least, the doctor has none.
"Yes, Sally, it's all quite right." Thus her mother, arriving a little
ahead of the returning cab. "Now, don't dispute with me, child, but do
just as I tell you. We'll have him in the breakfast-room; there's
fewer steps." She seems to have made up her mind so completely that
neither of the others interposes a word. But she replies, moved by a
brain-wave, to a question that stirred in the doctor's mind.
"Oh yes; he has spoken. He spoke to me just now. I'll tell you presently.
Now let's get him out. No, never mind calling cook. You take him on that
side, doctor.... That's right!"
And then the man, whose name we still do not know, found himself half
supported, half standing alone, on the pavement in front of a little
white eligible residence smelling of new paint. He did not the least
know what had happened. He had only a vague impression that if some
one or something, he couldn't say what, would only give up hindering
him, he would find something he was looking for. But how could he
find it if he didn't know what it was? And that he was quite in the
dark about. The half-crown and the pretty girl who had given it to
him, the train-guard and his cowardice about responsibility, the
public-spirited gentleman, the railway-carriage itself, to say nothing
of all the exciting experiences of the morning--all, all had vanished,
leaving behind only the trace of the impulse to search. Nothing else!
He stood looking bewildered, then spoke thickly.
"I am giving trouble," said he. Then the two ladies and the gentleman,
whom he saw dimly and did not know, looked at one another, each
perhaps to see if one of the others would speak first. In the end the
lady who was a woman nodded to the gentleman to speak, and then the
lady who was a girl confirmed her by what was little more than an
intention to nod, not quite unmixed with a mischievous enjoyment at
the devolution of the duty of speech on the gentleman. It twinkled in
her closed lips. But the gentleman didn't seem overwhelmed with
embarrassment. He spoke as if he was used to things.
"You have had an accident, sir.... On the railway.... In the Twopenny
Tube.... Yes, you'll remember all about it presently.... Yes, I'm a
doctor.... Yes, we want you to come in and sit down and rest till
you're better.... No, it won't be a long job. _You'll_ soon come
round.... What?... Oh no, no trouble at all! It's this lady's house,
and she wants you to come in." The speaker seems to guess at the right
meanings, as one guesses in the jaws of the telephone, perhaps with
more confidence. But there was but little audible articulation on the
other's part.
He seemed not to want much support--chiefly guidance. He was taken
down the half-dozen steps that flanked a grass slope down to a stone
paving, and through a door under the more numerous steps he had
escaped climbing, and into a breakfast-room flush with the kitchen,
opening on a small garden at the back. There was the marriage of Queen
Victoria and Prince Albert over the chimney-piece, and a tortoiseshell
cat with a collar on the oilskin cover of a square table, who rose as
though half resenting strange visitors; then, after stretching,
decided on some haven less liable to disturbance, and went through the
window to it without effort, emotion, or sound. There was a clock
under a glass cover on the chimney-piece whose works you could see
through, with a fascinating ratchet movement of perfect grace and
punctuality. Also a vertical orange-yellow glass vase, twisted to a
spiral, and full of spills. Also the leaning tower of Pisa, done small
in alabaster. He could see all these things quite plainly, and but
that his tongue seemed to have struck work, could have described them.
But he could not make himself out, nor how and why he came to be there
at all. Where ought he to have been, he asked himself? And, to his
horror, he could not make that out either. Never mind. Patience was
the word, clearly. Let him shut his eyes as he sat there, in the
little breakfast-room, with the flies continually droning in the
ceiling, and an especially large bluebottle busy in the window, who
might just as easily have gone out and enjoyed the last hour of a long
evening in a glorious sunshine, but who mysteriously preferred to beat
himself for ever against a closed pane of glass, a self-constituted
prisoner between it and a gauze blind--let him shut his eyes, and try
to think out what it all meant, what it was all about.
All that he was perfectly certain of, at that moment, was that he was
awake, with a contused pain all over, and a very stiff left hand and
foot. And that, knowing he had been insensible, he was striving hard
to remember what something was that had happened just before he became
insensible. He had nearly got it, once or twice. Yes, now he _had_ got
it, surely! No, he hadn't. It was gone again.
A mind that is struggling to remember some particular thing does not
deal with other possibilities of oblivion. We all know the painful
phenomenon of being perfectly aware what it is we are trying to
remember, feeling constantly close to it, but always failing to grasp
it. We know what it will sound like when we say it, what it will mean,
where it was on the page we read it on. Oh dear yes!--quite plainly.
The only thing we can't remember for the life of us is--what it _was_!
And while we are making stupendous efforts to recapture some such
thing, does it ever occur to any of us to ask if we may not be
mistaken in our tacit assumption that we are quite certain to remember
everything else as soon as we try? That, in fact, it may be our
memory-faculty itself that is in fault and that we are only failing to
recall one thing because at the moment it is that one sole thing, and
no other, that we are trying our brains against.
It was so in the pause of a few minutes in which this man we write of,
left to himself and the ticking of the clock, and hearing, through the
activity of the bluebottle and the monotony of the ceiling flies, the
murmur of a distant conversation between his late companions, who for
the moment had left him alone, tried in vain to recover his particular
thread of memory, without any uneasiness about the innumerable skeins
that made up the tissue of his record of a lifetime.
When the young doctor returned, he found him still seated where he had
left him, one hand over his eyes, the other on his knee. As he
sat--for the doctor watched him from the door for a moment--he moved
and replaced either hand at intervals, with implied distress in the
movements. They gave the impression of constant attempt constantly
baffled. The doctor, a shrewd-seeming young man with an attentive pale
eye, and very fair hair, seemed to understand.
"Let me recommend you to be quiet and rest. Be quite quiet. You will
be all right when you have slept on it. Mrs. Nightingale--that's the
lady you saw just now; this is her house--will see that you are
properly taken care of."
Then the man tried to speak; it was with an effort.
"I wish to thank--I must thank----"
"Never mind thanks yet. All in good time. Now, what do you think you
can take--to eat or drink?"
"Nothing--nothing to eat or drink."
"Well, you know best. However, there's tea coming; perhaps you'll go
so far as a cup of tea? You would be the better for it."
* * * * *
Rosalind junior, or Sally, slept in the back bedroom on the
first-floor--that is to say, if we ignore the basement floor and call
the one flush with the street-door step the ground-floor. We believe
we are right in doing so. Rosalind senior, the mother, slept in the
front one. It wasn't too late for tea, they had decided, and thereupon
they had gone upstairs to revise and correct.
After a certain amount of slopping and splashing in the back room,
uncorroborated by any in the front, Sally called out to her mother, on
the disjointed lines of talk in real life:
"I like this soap! Have you a safety-pin?" Whereto her mother replied,
speaking rather drowsily and perfunctorily:
"Yes, but you must come and get it."
"It's so nice and oily. It's not from Cattley's?"
"Yes, it is."
"I thought it was. Where's the pin?" At this point she came into her
mother's room, covering her slightly _retroussé_ nose with her
fresh-washed hands, to enjoy the aroma of Cattley's soap.
"In the little pink saucer. Only don't mess my things about."
"Headache, mammy dear?" For her mother was lying back on the bed, with
her eyes closed. The speaker left her hands over her nostrils as she
spoke, to do full justice to the soap, pausing an instant in her
safety-pin raid for the answer:
"I've been feeling the heat. It's nothing. You go down, and I'll
come."
"Have some eau-de-Cologne?" But, alas! there was no eau-de-Cologne.
"Never mind. You go down, and I'll follow. I shall be all right
after a cup of tea." And Sally, after an intricate movement with a
safety-pin, an openwork lace cuff that has lost a button, and a white
wrist, goes down three accelerandos of stair-lengths, with landing
pauses, and ends with a dining-room door staccato. But she isn't long
gone, for in two minutes the door reopens, and she comes upstairs as
fast, nearly, as she went down. In her hand she carries, visibly,
Johann Maria Farina.
"Where on earth did you find that?" says her mother.
"The man had it. Wasn't it funny? He heard me say to Dr. Vereker that
I was so sorry I'd not been able to eau-de-Cologne your forehead, and
he began speaking and couldn't get his words. Then he got this out of
his pocket. I remember one of the men at the station said something
about his having a bottle, but I thought he meant a pocket-flask. He
looks the sort of man that would have a pocket-flask and earrings."
Her mother doesn't seem to find this inexplicable, nor to need
comment. Rather the contrary. Sally dabs her brow with eau-de-Cologne,
beneficially, for she seems better, and says now go; she won't be
above a couple of minutes. Nor is she, in the sense in which her
statement has been accepted, for she comes downstairs within seven by
the clock with the dutiful ratchet movement.
* * * * *
When she came within hearing of those in the room below, she heard
a male voice that was not Dr. Vereker's. Yes, the man (whom we still
cannot speak of by a name) was saying something--slowly, perhaps--but
fairly articulately and intelligibly. She went very deliberately, and
listened in the doorway. She looked very pale, and very interested--a
face of fixed attention, of absorption in something she was irresolute
about, rather than of doubt about what she heard; an expression rather
out of proportion to the concurrent facts, as we know them.
"What is so strange"--this is what the man was saying, in his slow
way--"is that I could find words to tell you, if I could remember what
it is I have to tell. But when I try to bring it back, my head fails.
Tell me again, mademoiselle, about the railway-carriage." Sally
wondered why she was mademoiselle, but recognised a tone of deference
in his use of the word. She did as he asked her, slightly interrupting
her narrative to make sure of getting the tea made right as she did
so.
"I trod on your foot, you know. (One, two, three spoonfuls.) Surely
you must remember that? (Four, and a little one for the pot.)"
"I have completely forgotten it."
"Then I was sorry, and said I would have come off sooner if I had
known it was a foot. You _must_ remember that?" The man half smiled as
he shook a slow-disclaiming head--one that would have remembered so
gladly, if it could. "Then," continues Sally, "I saw your thumb-ring
for rheumatism."
"My thumb-ring!" He presses his fingers over his closed eyes, as
though to give Memory a better chance by shutting off the visible
present, then withdraws them. "No, I remember no ring at all."
"How extraordinary!"
"I remember a violent concussion _somewhere_--I can't say where--and
then finding myself in a cab, trying to speak to a lady whose face
seemed familiar to me, but who she could be I had not the slightest
idea. Then I tried to get out of the cab, and found I could not
move--or hardly."
"Look at mamma again! Here she is, come." For Mrs. Nightingale has
come into the room, looking white. "Yes, mother dear, I have. Quite
full up to the brim. Only it isn't ready to pour yet." This last
concerns the tea.
Mrs. Nightingale moves round behind the tea-maker, and comes full-face
in front of her guest. One might have fancied that the hand that held
the pocket-handkerchief that caused the smell of eau-de-Cologne that
came in with her was tremulous. But then that very eau-de-Cologne was
eloquent about the recent effect of the heat. Of course, she was a
little upset. Nothing strikes either the doctor or Mademoiselle Sally
as abnormal or extraordinary. The latter resumes:
"Surely, sir! Oh, you must, you _must_ remember about the name
Nightingale?"
"This young gentleman said it just now. _Your_ name, madame?"
"Certainly, my name," says the lady addressed. But Sally
distinguishes:
"Yes, but I didn't mean that. I meant when I took the ring from you,
and was to pay for it. Sixpence. And you had no change for
half-a-crown. And then I gave you my mother's card to send it to us
here. One-and-elevenpence, because of the postage. Why, surely you can
remember that!" She cannot bring herself to believe him. Dr. Vereker
does, though, and tells him not to try recollecting; he will only put
himself back. "Take the tea and wait a bit," is the doctor's advice.
For Miss Sally is transmitting a cup of tea with studied equilibrium.
He receives it absently, leaving it on the table.
"I do not know if you will know what I mean," he says, "but I have
a sort of feeling of--of being frightened; for I have been trying to
remember things, and I find I can remember almost nothing. Perhaps
I should say I cannot remember _at all_--can't do any recollecting,
if you understand." Every one can understand--at least, each says so.
Sally goes on, half _sotto voce_: "You can recollect your own name,
I suppose?" She speaks half-way between soliloquy and dialogue. The
doctor throws in counsel, aside, for precaution.
"You'll only make matters worse, like that. Better leave him quite
alone."
But the man's hearing doesn't seem to have suffered, for he catches
the remark about his name.
"I can't tell," he says. "I am not so sure. Of course, I can't have
forgotten my own name, because that's impossible. I will tell it you
in a minute.... Oh dear!..."
The young doctor seemed to disapprove highly of these efforts, and to
wish to change the conversation. "Let it alone now," said he. "Only
for a little. Would you kindly allow me to see your arm again?"
"Let him drink his tea first." This is from Miss Sally, the
tea-priestess. "Another cup?" But no; he won't take another cup,
thanks.
"Now let's have the coat off, and get another look at the arm; never
mind apologizing." But the patient had not contemplated apology. It
was the stiffness made him slow. However, he got his coat off, and
drew the blue shirt off his left arm. He had a fine hand and arm, but
the hand hung inanimate, and the fingers looked scorched. Dr. Vereker
began feeling the arm at intervals all the way up, and asking each
time questions about the degree of sensibility.
"I couldn't say whether it's normal or not up there." So the patient
testified. And Mrs. Nightingale, who was watching the examination
intently, suggested trying the other arm in the same place for
comparison.
"You didn't see the other arm at the station, doctor?" she said.
"Didn't I?"
"I was asking."
"Well, no. Now I come to think of it, I don't think I did. We'll have
a look now, anyhow."
"_You're_ a nice doctor!" This is from Miss Sally; a little
confidential fling at the profession. She is no respecter of persons.
Her mother would, no doubt, check her--a pert little monkey!--only she
is absorbed in the examination.
The doctor, as he ran back the right-arm sleeve, uttered an
exclamation. "Why, my dear sir," cried he, "here we have it! What more
can we want?"--and pointed at the arm. And Sally said, as though
relieved: "He's got his name written on him plain enough, anyhow!" Her
mother gave a sigh of relief, or something like it, and said, "Yes."
The patient himself seemed quite as much perplexed as pleased at the
discovery, saying only, in a subdued way: "It _must_ be my name." But
he did not seem to accept at all readily the name tattooed on his arm:
"A. Fenwick, 1878."
"Whose name can it be if it is not yours?" said Mrs. Nightingale. She
fixed her eyes on his face, as though to watch his effort of memory.
"Try and think." But the doctor protested.
"Don't do anything of the sort," said he. "It's very bad for him, Mrs.
Nightingale. He _mustn't_ think. Just let him rest."
The patient, however, could not resign himself without a struggle to
this state of anonymous ambiguity. His bewilderment was painful to
witness. "If it were my name," he said, speaking slowly and not very
clearly, "surely it would bring back the first name. I try to recall
the word, and the effort is painful, and doesn't succeed." His hostess
seemed much interested, even to the extent of ignoring the doctor's
injunctions.
"Very curious! If you heard the name now, would you recollect it?"
"I _wish_ you wouldn't try these experiments," says the doctor. "They
won't do him _any_ good. _Rest's_ the thing."
"I think I would rather try," says Fenwick, as we may now call him.
"I will be quiet if I can get this right."
Mrs. Nightingale begins repeating names that begin with A. "Alfred,
Augustus, Arthur, Andrew, Algernon----"
Fenwick's face brightens. "That's it!" says he. "Algernon. I knew it
quite well all the time, of course. But I couldn't--couldn't....
However, I don't feel that I shall make myself understood."
"I can't make out," said Sally, "how you came to remember the bottle
of eau-de-Cologne."
"I did not remember it. I do not now. I mean, how it came to be in the
pocket. I can remember nothing else that was there--would have been,
that is. There is nothing else there now, except my cigar-case and
a pocket-book with nothing much in it. I can tell nothing about my
watch. A watch ought to be there."
"There, there!" says the doctor; "you will remember it all presently.
Do take my advice and be quiet, and sit still and don't talk."
But half an hour or more after, although he had taken this advice,
Fenwick remembered nothing, or professed to have remembered nothing.
He seemed, however, much more collected, and except on the
memory-point nearly normal.
When the doctor, looking at his watch, referred to his obligation to
keep another engagement, Fenwick rose, saying that he was now
perfectly well able to walk, and he would intrude no longer on his
hostesses' hospitality. This would have been perfectly reasonable, but
for one thing. It had come out that his pockets were empty, and he was
evidently quite without any definite plan as to what he should do
next, or where he should go. He was only anxious to relieve his new
friends of an encumbrance. He was evidently the sort of person on
whom the character sat ill; one who would always be most at ease when
shifting for himself; such a one as would reply to any doubt thrown on
his power of doing so, that he had been in many a worse plight than
this before. Yet you would hardly have classed him on that account as
an adventurer, because that term implies unscrupulousness in the way
one shifts for oneself. His face was a perfectly honourable one. It
was a face whose strength did not interfere with its refinement, and
there was a pleasant candour in the smile that covered it as he
finally made ready to depart with the doctor. He should never, he
said, know how to be grateful enough to madame and her daughter for
their kindness to him. But when pressed on the point of where he
intended to go, and how they should hear what had become of him, he
answered vaguely. He was undecided, but, of course, he would write and
tell them as they so kindly wished to hear of him. Would mademoiselle
give him the address written down?
They found themselves--at least, the doctor and Sally did--inferring,
from his refreshed manner and his confidence about departing, that his
memory was coming back, or would come back. It might have seemed
needless inquisitiveness to press him with further questions. They
left the point alone. After all, they had no more right to catechize
him about himself than if he had been knocked down by a cart outside
the door, and brought into the house unconscious--a thing which might
quite well have happened.
Mrs. Nightingale seemed very anxious he should not go away quite
unprovided with money. She asked Dr. Vereker to pass him on a loan
from her before he parted with him. He could post it back when it was
quite convenient, so the doctor was to tell him. The doctor asked,
Wasn't a sovereign a large order? But she seemed to think not.
"Besides," said she, "it makes it certain we shall not lose sight of
him. I'm not sure we ought to let him go at all," added she. She
seemed very uneasy about it--almost exaggeratedly so, the doctor
thought. But he was reassuring and confident, and she allowed his
judgment to overrule hers. But he must bring him back without scruple
if he saw reason to do so. He promised, and the two departed together,
the gait and manner of Fenwick giving rise to no immediate
apprehension.
"How rum!" said Sally, when they had gone. "I never thought I should
live to see a man electrocuted."
"A man what?"
"Well, half-electrocuted, then. I say, mother----"
"What, dear?" She is looking very tired, and speaks absently. Sally
makes the heat responsible again in her mind, and continues:
"I don't believe his name's Algernon at all! It's Arthur, or Andrew,
or something of that sort."
"You're very wise, poppet. Why?"
"Because you stopped such a long time after Algernon. It was like
cheating at Spiritualism. You _must_ say the alphabet quite
steady--A--B--C--D----" Sally sketches out the proper attitude for
the impartial inquirer. "Or else you're an accomplice."
"You're a puss! No, _his_ name's Algernon, right enough.... I mean,
I've no doubt it's Algernon. Why shouldn't it be?"
"No reason at all. Dr. Vereker's is Conrad, so, of course, there's no
reason why his shouldn't be Algernon." Satisfactory and convincing! At
least, the speaker thinks so, and is perfectly satisfied. Her mother
doesn't quarrel with the decision.
"Kitten!" she says suddenly. And then in reply to her daughter's,
"What's up, mammy dear?" she suggests that they shall walk out in
front--it is a quiet, retired sort of cul-de-sac road, ending in a
fence done over with tar, with nails along the top like the letter
_L_ upside down--in the cool. "It's quite delicious now the sun's
gone down, and Martha can make supper another half-hour late." Agreed.
The mother pauses as they reach the gate. "Who's that talking?" she
asks, and listens.
"Nobody. It's only the sparrows going to bed."
"No, no; not that! Shish! be quiet! I'm sure I heard Dr. Vereker's
voice----"
"How could you? He's home by now."
"Do be quiet, child!" She continues listening.
"Why not look round the corner and see if it isn't him?"
"Well, I was going to; only you and the sparrows make such a
chattering.... There, I knew it would be that! Why doesn't he bring
him back here, at once?" For at the end of the short road are Dr.
Vereker and Fenwick, the latter with his hand on the top of a post,
as though resting. They must have been there some minutes.
"Fancy their having got no further than the fire-alarm!" says Sally,
who takes account of her surroundings.
"Of course, I ought never to have let him go." Thus her mother, with
decision in her voice. "Come on, child!"
She seems greatly relieved at the matter having settled itself--so
Sally thinks, at least.
"We got as far as this," Dr. Vereker says--rather meaninglessly, if
you come to think of it. It is so very obvious.
"And now," says Mrs. Nightingale, "how is he to be got back again?
That's the question!" She seems not to have the smallest doubt about
the question, but much about the answer. It is answered, however, with
the assistance of the previous police-constable, who reappears like
a ghost. And Mr. Fenwick is back again within the little white villa,
much embarrassed at the trouble he is giving, but unable to indicate
any other course. Clearly, it would never do to accept the only one
he can suggest--that he should be left to himself, leaning on the
fire-alarm, till the full use of his limbs should come back to him.
Mrs. Nightingale, who is the person principally involved, seems quite
content with the arrangement. The doctor, in his own mind, is rather
puzzled at her ready acquiescence; but, then, the only suggestion he
could make would be that he should do precisely the same good office
himself to this victim of an electric current of a good deal too
many volts--too many for private consumption--or cab him off to the
police-station or the workhouse. For Mr. Fenwick continues quite
unable to give any account of his past or his belongings, and can only
look forward to recollecting himself, as it were, to-morrow morning.