DEALS WITH CHARITY AND ARCHÆOLOGY
Immediately after breakfast on the following morning I made my way
to Mr. Richard Watts’s establishment, where I learned that all the
poor travellers had departed with the exception of my patient, who had
been allowed to stay pending my report on him.
“I shall be glad to see the back of him, poor fellow,” said the
matron, “for, of course, we have no arrangements for dealing with sick
men.”
“Do you often get cases of illness here?” I asked.
“I really don’t know,” she answered. “You see, I am only doing
temporary duty here while the regular matron is away. But I should
think not, though little ailments are apt to occur in the case of a
poor man who has been on the road for a week or so.”
“This man is on tramp, is he?” said I.
“Well, no,” she replied. “It seems, from what he tells me, that his
wife has left him, and he had reason to believe that she was staying
in this town. So he came down here to try to find her. He supposed
that Rochester was a little place where everybody knew everybody else,
and that he would have no difficulty in discovering her whereabouts.
But all his inquiries have come to nothing. Nobody seems to have heard
of her. I suppose you don’t happen to know the name--Frood?”
“I only came here yesterday, myself,” was my evasive reply. “I am a
stranger to the town. But is he certain that she is here?”
“I don’t think he is. At any rate, he seems inclined to give up the
search for the present, and he is very anxious to get back to London.
But I don’t know how he is going to manage it. He isn’t fit to walk.”
“Well,” I said, “if it is only the railway fare that stands in the
way, that difficulty can be got over. I will pay for his ticket; but I
should like to be sure that he really goes.”
“Oh, I’ll see to that,” she said, with evident relief. “I will go with
him to the station, and get his ticket and see him into the train. But
you had better just have a look at him, and see that he is fit to go.”
She conducted me to the supper-room, where our friend was sitting in a
Windsor armchair, looking the very picture of misery and dejection.
“Here is the doctor come to see you, Mr. Frood,” the matron said
cheerfully, “and he is kind enough to say that, if you are well enough
to travel, he will pay your fare to London. So there’s an end of your
difficulties.”
The poor devil glanced at me for an instant, and then looked away;
and, to my intense discomfort, I saw that his eyes were filling.
“It is indeed good of you, Sir,” he murmured, shakily, but in a very
pleasant voice and with a refined accent; “most good and kind to help
a lame dog over a stile in this way. I don’t know how to thank you.”
Here, as he showed a distinct tendency to weep, I replied hastily:
“Not at all. We’ve all got to help one another in this world. And how
are you feeling? Hand is still a little bit shaky, I see.”
I put my finger on his wrist and then looked him over generally. He
was a miserable wreck, but I judged that he was as well as he was ever
likely to be.
“Well,” I said, “you are not in first-class form, but you are up to a
short railway journey. I suppose you have somewhere to go to in
London?”
“Yes,” he replied, dismally, “I have a room. It isn’t in the Albany,
but it is a shelter from the weather.”
“Never mind,” said I. “We must hope for better times. The matron is
going to see you safely to the station and comfortably settled in the
train--and”--here I handed her a ten shilling note--“you will get Mr.
Frood’s ticket, matron, and you had better give him the change. He may
want a cab when he gets to town.”
He glowered sulkily at this arrangement--I suspect he had run out of
cigarettes--but he thanked me again, and, when I had privately
ascertained the time of the train which was to bear him away, I wished
him adieu.
“I suppose,” said I, “there is no likelihood of his hopping out at
Strood to get a drink and losing the train?”
The matron smiled knowingly. “He will start from Strood,” said she. “I
shall take him over the bridge in the tram and put him into the London
express there. We don’t want him back here to-night.”
Much relieved by the good lady’s evident grasp of the situation, I
turned away up the street and began to consider my next move. I had
nothing to do this morning, for at present there was not a single
patient on my books with the exception of Mrs. Frood; and it may have
been in accordance with the prevailing belief that to persons in my
condition, an individual, familiarly known as “the old gentleman,”
obligingly functions as employment agent, that my thoughts turned to
that solitary patient. At any rate they did. Suddenly, it was borne in
on me that I ought, without delay, to convey to her the glad tidings
of her husband’s departure. Whether the necessity would have appeared
as urgent if her personal attractions had been less, I will not
presume to say; nor whether had I been more self-critical, I should
not have looked with some suspicion on this intense concern respecting
the welfare of a woman who was almost a stranger to me. As it was, it
appeared to me that I was but discharging a neighbourly duty when I
executed an insinuating rat-tat on the handsome brass knocker which
was adorned--somewhat inappropriately, under the circumstances--with
a mask of Hypnos.
After a short interval, the door was opened by a spare, middle-aged
woman of melancholic aspect, with tow-coloured hair and a somewhat
anæmic complexion, who regarded me inquiringly with a faded blue eye.
“Is Mrs. Frood at home?” I asked briskly.
“I am afraid she is not,” was the reply, uttered in a dejected tone.
“I saw her go out some time ago, and I haven’t heard her come back.
But I’ll just see, if you will come in a moment.”
I entered the hall and listened with an unaccountable feeling of
disappointment as she rapped on the door first of the front room, and
then of the back.
“She isn’t in her rooms there,” was the dispirited report, “but she
may be in the basement. I’ll call out and ask.”
She retired to the inner hall and gave utterance to a wail like that
of an afflicted sea-gull. But there was no response; and I began to
feel myself infected by her melancholy.
“I am sorry you have missed her, Sir,” said she; and then she asked:
“Are you her doctor, Sir?”
I felt myself justified in affirming that I was, whereupon she
exclaimed:
“Ah, poor thing! It is a comfort to know that she has someone to look
after her. She has been looking very sadly of late. Very sadly, she
has.”
I began to back cautiously towards the door, but she followed me up
and continued: “I am afraid she has had a deal of trouble; a deal of
trouble, poor dear. Not that she ever speaks of it to me. But I know.
I can see the lines of grief and sorrow--like a worm in the bud, so to
speak, Sir--and it makes my heart ache. It does, indeed.”
I mumbled sympathetically and continued to back towards the door.
“I don’t see very much of her,” she continued in a plaintive tone.
“She keeps herself very close. Too close, I think. You see, she does
for herself entirely. Now and again, when she asks me, which is very
seldom, I put a bit of supper in her room. That is all. And I do think
that it isn’t good for a young woman to live so solitary; and I do
hope you’ll make her take a little more change.”
“I suppose she goes out sometimes,” said I, noting that she was out at
the present moment.
“Oh, yes,” was the reply. “She goes out a good deal. But always alone.
She never has any society.”
“And what time does she usually come in?” I asked, with a view to a
later call.
“About six; or between that and seven. Then she has her supper and
puts the things out on the hall table. And that is the last I usually
see of her.”
By this time I had reached the door and softly unfastened the latch.
“If you should see her,” I said, “you might tell her that I shall look
in this evening about half-past seven.”
“Certainly, Sir,” she replied. “I shall see her at lunch-time, and I
will give her your message.”
I thanked her, and, having now got the door open, I wished her good
morning, and retreated down the steps.
As I was in the act of turning away, my eye lighted on the adjacent
bay window, appertaining to the office of Messrs. Japp and Bundy, and
I then perceived above the green curtain the upper half of a human
face, including a pair of tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles; an
apparition which informed me that Mr. Bundy had been--to use Sam
Weller’s expression--“a-twigging of me.” On catching my eye, the face
rose higher, disclosing a broad grin; whereupon, without any apparent
reason, I felt myself turning somewhat red. However, I mounted the
official steps, and, opening the office door, confronted the smiler
and his more sedate partner.
“Ha!” said the former, “you drew a blank, Doctor. I saw the lovely
Angelina go out about an hour ago. Whom did you see?”
“The lady of the house, I presume; a pale, depressed female.”
“I know,” said Bundy. “Looks like an undertaker’s widow. That’s Mrs.
Gillow. Rhymes with willow--very appropriate, too,” and he began to
chant in an absurd, Punch-like voice: “Oh, all round my hat I’ll wear
the green----”
“Be quiet, Bundy,” said Mr. Japp, regarding his partner with a wrinkly
and indulgent smile.
Bundy clapped his hand over his mouth and blew out his cheeks, and I
took the opportunity to explain: “I called on Mrs. Frood to let her
know that her husband is leaving the town.”
“Leaving the town, is he?” said Mr. Japp, elevating his eyebrows and
thereby causing his forehead to resemble a small Venetian blind. “Do
you know when?”
“He goes this morning by the ten-thirty express to London.”
“Hooray!” ejaculated Bundy, with a flourish of his arms that nearly
capsized his stool. He recovered himself with an effort, and then,
fixing his eyes on me, proceeded to whistle the opening bars of “O!
Thou that tellest good tidings to Zion!”
“That’ll do, Bundy,” said Mr. Japp. Then turning to me, he asked:
“Where did you learn these good tidings, Doctor?”
I gave them a brief account of the happenings of the previous night
and this morning’s sequel, to which they listened with deep attention.
When I had finished Mr. Japp said: “You have done a very great
kindness to my friend Mrs. Frood. It will be an immense relief to her
to know that she can walk abroad without the danger of encountering
this man. Besides, if he had stayed here he would probably have found
her out.”
“He might even have found her at home,” said Bundy, “and that would
have been worse. So I propose a vote of thanks to the doctor--with
musical honours. For-hor he’s a jolly good fell----”
“There, that’ll do, Bundy, that’ll do,” said Mr. Japp. “I never saw
such a fellow. You’ll have the neighbours complaining.”
Bundy leaned towards me confidentially and remarked in a stage
whisper, glancing at his partner: “Fidgetty old cove; regular old
kill-joy.” Then, with a sudden change of manner, he asked: “What about
that wall job, Japp? Are you going to have a look at them?”
“I can’t go at present,” said Japp. “Bulford will be coming in
presently and I must see him. Have you got anything special to do?”
“Only old Jeffson’s lease, and that can wait. Shall I trot over and
see what sort of mess they are making of things?”
“I wish you would,” said Japp; whereupon Mr. Bundy removed his
spectacles, stuck in his eye-glass, extracted from the desk his hat
and gloves which he assumed with the aid of the looking-glass, and
took his stick from the corner. Then he looked at me reflectively and
asked:
“Are you interested in archæology, Doctor?”
“Somewhat,” I replied. “Why do you ask?”
“Because we are putting some patches in the remains of the city wall.
It isn’t much to look at, and there isn’t a great deal of the original
Roman work left; but if you would care to have a look at it you might
walk up there with me.”
I agreed readily, being, as I have said, somewhat at a loose end, and
we set forth together, Bundy babbling cheerfully as we went.
“I have often thought,” said he, “that there must have been something
rather pleasant and restful about the old walled cities, particularly
after curfew when the gates were shut--that is, provided you were
inside at the time.”
“Yes,” said I. “An enclosed precinct has a certain agreeable quality
of seclusion that you can’t get in an open town or village. When I was
a student, I lived for a time in chambers in Staple Inn, and it was,
as you say, rather pleasant, when one came home at night, and the
porter had let one in at the wicket, to enter and find the gates
closed, the courts all quiet and empty, and to know that all traffic
was stopped and all strangers shut out until the morning. But it
doesn’t appear to be in accordance with modern taste, for those old
Chancery Inns have nearly all gone, and there is no tendency to
replace them with anything similar.”
“No,” Bundy agreed, stopping to look up at an old timber house, “taste
in regard to buildings, if there is any--Japp says there isn’t--has
changed completely in the last hundred years or so. Look at this alley
we are in now. Every house has got a physiognomy of its own. But when
we rebuild it, we shall fill it up with houses that will look as if
they had been bought in packets like match-boxes.”
Gossiping thus, we threaded our way through all sorts of queer little
alleys and passages. At length Bundy stopped at a wooden gate in a
high fence, and, pushing it open, motioned for me to enter; and as I
did so he drew out the key which was in the lock and put it in his
pocket.
The place which we had entered was a space of waste land, littered
with the remains of some old houses that had been demolished and
enclosed on three sides by high fences. The fourth side was formed by
a great mass of crumbling rubble, patched in places with rough masonry
and brickwork, and showing in its lower part the remains of courses of
Roman bricks. It rose to a considerable height, and was evidently of
enormous thickness, as could be seen where large areas of the face had
crumbled away, exposing great cavities, in which wall-flowers,
valerian and other rock-haunting plants, had taken up their abode. On
one of these a small gang of men were at work, and it was evident that
repairs on a considerable scale were contemplated, for there were
several large heaps of rough stone and old bricks, and in a cart-shed
in a corner of the space were a large number of barrels of lime.
As we entered, the foreman came forward to meet us, and Bundy handed
him the key from the gate.
“Better keep it in your pocket,” said he. “Mr. Japp is rather
particular about keys that he has charge of. He doesn’t like them left
in doors or gates. How are the men getting on?”
“As well as you can expect of a lot of casuals like these,” was the
reply. “There isn’t a mason or a bricklayer among them, excepting that
old chap that’s mixing the mortar. However, it’s only a rough job.”
We walked over to the part of the old wall where the men were at work,
and the appearances certainly justified the foreman’s last remark. It
was a very rough job. The method appeared to consist in building up
outside the cavity a primitive wall of unhewn stone with plenty of
mortar, and, when it had risen a foot or two, filling up the cavity
inside with loose bricks, lumps of stone, shovelfuls of liquid mortar,
and chunks of lime.
I ventured to remark that it did not look a very secure method of
building, upon which Bundy turned his eyeglass on me and smiled
knowingly.
“My dear Doctor,” said he, “you don’t appear to appreciate the
subtlety of the method. The purpose of these activities is to create
employment. That has been clearly stated by the town council. But if
you want to create employment you build a wall that will tumble down
and give somebody else the job of putting it up again.”
Here, as a man suddenly bore down on us with a bucket of mortar, Bundy
hopped back to avoid the unclean contact, and nearly sat down on a
heap of smoking lime.
“You had a narrow escape that time, mister,” remarked the old
gentleman who presided over the mortar department, as Bundy carefully
dusted his delicate shoes with his handkerchief; “that stuff would
’ave made short work of them fine clothes of yourn.”
“Would it?” said Bundy, dusting his shoes yet more carefully and
wiping the soles on the turf.
“Ah,” rejoined the old man; “terrible stuff is quicklime. Eats up
everything same as what fire does.” He rested his hands on his shovel,
and, assuming a reminiscent air, continued: “There was a pal o’ mine
what was skipper of a barge. A iron barge, she was, and he had to take
on a lading of lime from some kilns. The stuff was put aboard with a
shoot. Well, my pal, he gets ’is barge under the shoot and then ’e
goes off, leavin’ ’is mate to see the lime shot into the hold. Well,
it seems the mate had been takin’ some stuff aboard, too. Beer, or
p’raps whisky. At any rate, he’d got a skinful. Well, presently the
skipper comes back, and he sees ’em a-tippin’ the trucks of lime on to
the shoot, and he sees the barge’s hold beginning to fill, but ’e
don’t see ’is mate nowhere. He goes aboard, down to the cabin, but
there ain’t no signs of the mate there, nor yet anywheres else. Well,
they gets the barge loaded and the hatch-covers on, and everything
ready for sea; and still there ain’t no signs of the mate. So my pal,
rememberin’ that the mate--his name was Bill--rememberin’ that Bill
seemed a bit squiffy, supposed he must ’ave gone overboard. So ’e
takes on a fresh hand temporary and off ’e goes on ’is trip.
“Well, they makes their port all right and brings up alongside the
wharf, but owing to a strike among the transport men they can’t unload
for about three weeks. However, when the strike is over, they rigs a
whip and a basket and begins to get the stuff out. All goes well until
they get down to the bottom tier. Then one of the men brings up a bone
on his shovel. ‘Hallo!’ says the skipper, ‘what’s bones a-doin’ in a
cargo of fresh lime?’ He rakes over the stuff on the floor and up
comes a skull with a hole in the top of it. ‘Why, blow me,’ says the
skipper, ‘if that don’t look like Bill. He warn’t as thin in the face
as all that, but I seem to know them teeth.’ Just then one of the men
finds a clay pipe--a nigger’s head, it was--and the skipper
reckernizes it at once. ‘That there’s Bill’s pipe,’ sez he, ‘and them
bones is Bill’s bones,’ ’e sez. And so they were. They found ’is
belt-buckle and ’is knife, and ’is trouser buttons and the nails out
of ’is boots. And that’s all there was left of Bill. He must have
tumbled down into the hold and cracked his nut, and then the first
truckful of lime must ’ave covered ’im up. So, if you sets any value
on them ’andsome shoes o’ yourn, don’t you go a-treadin’ in quick
lime.”
Bundy looked down anxiously at his shoes, and, having given them an
additional wipe, he moved away from the dangerous neighbourhood of the
lime and we went together to examine the ancient wall.
“That was rather a tall yarn of the old man’s,” remarked Bundy. “Is it
a fact that lime is as corrosive as he made out?”
“I don’t really know very much about it,” I replied. “There is a
general belief that it will consume almost anything but metal. How
true that is I can’t say, but I remember that at the Crippen trial one
of the medical experts--I think it was Pepper--said that if the body
had been buried in quicklime it would have been entirely
consumed--excepting the bones, of course. But it is difficult to
believe that a body could disappear completely in three weeks, or
thereabouts, as our friend said. How fine this old wall looks with
those clumps of valerian and wallflowers growing on it! I suppose it
encircled the town completely at one time?”
“Yes,” he replied, “and it is a pity there isn’t more of it left, or
at least one or two of the gateways. A city gate is such a magnificent
adornment. Think of the gates of Canterbury and Rye, and especially at
Sandwich, where you actually enter the town through the barbican; and
think of what Rochester must have been before all the gates were
pulled down. But you must hear Japp on the subject. He’s a regular
architectural Jeremiah. By the way, what did you think of Mrs. Frood?
You saw her last night, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I was rather taken with her. She is very nice and friendly and
unaffected, and good-looking, too. I thought her distinctly handsome.”
“She isn’t bad-looking,” Bundy admitted. “But I can’t stand her voice.
It gets on my nerves. I hate a squeaky voice.”
“I shouldn’t call it squeaky,” said I. “It is a high voice, and rather
sing-song; and it isn’t, somehow, quite in keeping with her appearance
and manner.”
“No,” said Bundy, “that’s what it is. She’s too big for a voice like
that.”
I laughed at the quaint expression. “People’s voices,” said I, “are
not like steamers’ whistles, graduated in pitch according to their
tonnage. Besides, Mrs. Frood is not such a very big woman.”
“She is a good size,” said he. “I should call her rather tall. At any
rate, she is taller than I am. But I suppose you will say that she
might be that without competing with the late Mrs. Bates.”
“Comparisons between the heights of men and women,” I said cautiously,
“are rather misleading,” and here I changed the subject, though I
judged that Bundy was not sensitive in regard to his stature, for
while he was cleaning the lime from his shoes I had noticed that he
wore unusually low heels. Nor need he have been, for though on a small
scale, he was quite an important-looking person.
“Don’t you think,” he asked, after a pause, “that it is rather queer
that the man Frood should have gone off so soon? He only came down
yesterday, and he can’t have made much of a search for Madame.”
“The queer thing is that he should have come down on that particular
day,” I replied. “It seems that he draws a monthly allowance on the
fifteenth. That was what made him so anxious to get back; but it is
odd that he didn’t put off his visit here until he had collected the
money.”
“If he had run his wife to earth, he could have collected it from
her,” said Bundy. “I wonder how he found out that she was here.”
“He evidently hadn’t very exact information,” I said, “nor did he seem
quite certain that she really was here. And his failure to get any
news of her appears to have discouraged him considerably. It is just
possible that he has gone back to get more precise information if he
can, when he has drawn his allowance.”
“That is very likely,” Bundy agreed; “and it is probable that we
haven’t seen the last of him yet.”
“I have a strong suspicion that we haven’t,” said I. “If he is sure
she is here, and can get enough money together to come and spend a
week here, he will be pretty certain to discover her whereabouts. It
is a dreadful position for her. She ought to get a judicial
separation.”
“I doubt if she could,” said he. “You may be sure he would contest
that application pretty strongly, and what case would she have in
support of it? He is an unclean blighter; he doesn’t work; he smokes
and drinks too much, and you say he takes drugs. But he doesn’t seem
to be violent or dangerous or threatening, or to be on questionable
terms with other women--at least, I have never heard anything to that
effect. Have you?”
“No,” I answered-- I had said nothing to him or Japp about the London
incident. “He seems to have married the only woman in the world who
would look at him.”
Bundy grinned. “An unkind cut, that, Doctor,” said he; “but I believe
you’re right. And here we are, back at the official premises. Are you
coming in?”
I declined the invitation, and as he skipped up the steps I turned my
face homewards.