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?"