“He seems to think you are.”
“That is because he didn’t give me time to answer his letter. I’m certainly not going out with Mr Harris. I don’t know him.”
Nurse Long looked at her with rather an odd expression. It was cold, but behind the coldness Kay had an idea that she was amused—and angry. She said,
“I think you’d better go. He is calling for you at two.”
Kay was now so angry that she had stopped being frightened. She was too angry to speak. She pressed her lips together and shook her head.
“You’d better,” said Nurse Long.
Kay shook her head again.
“Do you really mean it?”
“Of course I mean it!” said Kay with her chin in the air.
Nurse Long turned round and went out of the room.
Kay went down to get the tray. She was still angry, and she was very glad to be angry, because being angry stopped her being frightened, and what had been frightening her more than anything else was knowing that she would have to take up Miss Rowland’s tray. It was like a dreadful shadow across the path, and she would have to go through it before she could get to the place where Miles was waiting to take her away. If she could only keep on being angry she might be able to do it. But as she propped open the basement door and went down for the tray, she felt the anger beginning to drain out of her, and when she got to the kitchen Mrs Green wasn’t ready with the cutlets.
Miss Rowland had a very good appetite for an invalid, and so had Nurse Long. Very little that was sent upstairs ever came down again, and they both liked their meat well done. There were cutlets and mashed potato and a vegetable, and a shape of calves-foot jelly.
“And another ten minutes I’ll be at the very least of it. Better say quarter of an hour,” said Mrs Green.
Try as she would, Kay couldn’t go on being angry for a quarter of an hour. She ran along the passage to her own room and finished her packing. When she had put her out-door things ready on the bed and locked her box, she began to feel that she really was going away with Miles. It was a quarter past one, and he would come and call for her at half past two. If Mr Harris chose to call at two o’clock, he would get no for an answer, and that was that.
She went back into the kitchen and found Mrs Green dishing up.
All the way upstairs she had to fight against a cold, sick feeling of fear. It was no use telling herself that there was nothing to be afraid of, because what she wanted to do was to drop the tray and run for her life out of the front door and down the street. You may want to do things like that, but you can’t really do them. Kay wasn’t twenty yet, but she had often had to do things that frightened her, and she had never yet run away from what she had to do. Life with Rhoda Moore had at least taught her self-control. As long as she was in Miss Rowland’s service she must do the work that she had been engaged to do, and it was part of that work to carry up Miss Rowland’s tray.
She went up the last flight holding tightly on to the thought of how lovely it would be to be coming down again. She had only to knock at Miss Rowland’s door, give the tray to Nurse Long, and run, run, run downstairs again to the basement where her box was locked and her coat and hat laid all ready for her to go away with Miles.
Between the two doors on the landing there was a small table. Kay rested the tray upon it and knocked on the nearer door, and at once it was opened, and there was Nurse Long, still in her out-door things. She took the tray, and it was just as if she was lifting a cold, heavy weight from Kay’s heart. Now it was over. Now she could run down the stairs.
She turned to go, and Nurse Long said,
“You’d better hurry up and have your lunch if you’re going out. You can come up for the tray as soon as you’ve finished.” And with that she went back into the room and Kay ran down.
It was frightfully stupid of her, but she had forgotten that she would have to fetch the tray. She wasn’t running down the stairs for the last time after all, because she would have to go up for the tray. Perhaps Miles would be early. If she knew he was waiting outside, she wouldn’t mind going up again. Perhaps …
She and Mrs Green had rabbit stew and a suet pudding. Mrs Green ate so heartily herself that she didn’t notice whether Kay ate anything or not. Kay couldn’t eat. She put a little gravy on her plate and kept the potatoes between herself and Mrs Green, and when it came to the suet pudding she said she wasn’t hungry. Mrs Green didn’t mind who ate, or who didn’t eat, as long as she had plenty herself. She put away two helpings of the stew and an incredible amount of suet pudding, and she talked all the time.
But in the end Kay had to go upstairs for the tray. She ran, because the quicker she went, the quicker it would be over. When she came to the last turn she had to stop and get her breath. It was new for her to be out of breath after running upstairs. She stood still for a moment, and what must she think about horridly, suddenly, and vividly, but the stains on the next-door stairs—stains where something had been spilt and the carpet had been rubbed and rubbed but the marks had never quite come out. Bloodstains never quite come out. It was such a dreadful thought that Kay ran away from it.
She ran up six steps to the bedroom landing and knocked on the door as she had knocked before. This time it didn’t open, but Nurse Long’s voice said, “Come in.” There was nothing in that. Only two days ago the same thing had happened, and Kay had gone in and fetched the tray. She went in, and there was the wardrobe facing her, and the Japanese screen on her right, only now it was drawn up close to the wall so she couldn’t see the head of the bed.
Once she was actually in the room, she wasn’t so much afraid. Everything looked very comfortable and old-fashioned. The crimson curtains were drawn across the windows towards the street, but plenty of light came in through the window which looked out at the back.
Kay went round the screen and saw Miss Rowland sitting up in bed propped with pillows. She wore an old-fashioned night-cap with a frill, and she had a big white cross-over shawl about her shoulders. Nurse Long was at the window, and as Kay came round the screen, she pulled the right-hand curtain so that the light no longer fell upon the bed. The tray was on a little table which had been pulled out from the wall. But before Kay could take it up Miss Rowland spoke to her in her deep quavering voice.
“You are going out this afternoon.”
Kay said, “Yes, madam.”
Miss Rowland looked at her out of the red shadow cast by the curtain, and Kay had again that odd feeling of recognition. She didn’t like it. It frightened her. She stooped to take up the tray, but Miss Rowland spoke again.
“Nurse tells me you are going out with Mr Harris. It is very kind of him. I am pleased that you should go.”
Kay stood up straight. Why did they want her to go out with Mr Harris? They couldn’t make her go. She said politely but firmly,
“I can’t go out with Mr Harris because I’m going out with a friend.”
“Better go with Mr Harris,” said Miss Rowland.
There was a funny smell in the room like the smell of a chemist’s shop. Kay loathed it with a sudden passionate loathing. She said, “I’m afraid I can’t,” and she stooped again to pick up the tray.
As she did so, Miss Rowland nodded, and Nurse Long turned quickly round from the window with something white in her hand. The smell which was like the smell of a chemist’s shop became overpowering, and all at once, and before Kay could touch the tray, there was a thick soft pad over her nose and mouth, and two very strong hands were holding it there. She tried to scream, and she couldn’t scream. She put up her hands and tried to tear the pad away, and as she did that she saw Miss Rowland throw back the bedclothes and jump out of bed. Her cap fell off, and her woolly shawl fell off, and she had a close-cropped head of dark hair, and she had on a man’s striped shirt and a pair of grey tweed trousers. Kay saw this, and then she stopped seeing anything at all, but she heard Miss Rowland say in a man’s deep voice which seemed to come from a long way off. “Mind you d
on’t give her too much.” And then she went down, and down, and down into a deep place where she could neither hear nor see. Fear went with her, but in the end there wasn’t even fear. There wasn’t anything at all.
CHAPTER XXX
Half an hour later Miles Clayton was being sent away by Mrs Green. He was a good deal more disturbed and disappointed than the occasion seemed to warrant. He couldn’t very well force his way into the house and burst into the bedroom of an invalid old lady to insist that Kay should leave with him at once. One of the disadvantages of being brought up in a civilized society is that it gives you tiresome inhibitions about this sort of thing. The natural man in Miles was all for shoving Mrs Green out of the way, finding Kay wherever she might be, and removing her with a strong hand and no damned nonsense about it. Had he followed this impulse, it is just possible that he might have surprised Miss Rowland in those incongruous grey tweed trousers, and everything might have happened a little differently. As it was, the inhibitions were too much for him, and he went away in a state of champing impatience. He hadn’t the slightest intention of waiting till nine o’clock. Nurse Long would be bound to be back by half past four or so to give the old lady her tea. Meanwhile he had better go and see the Gilmores about Flossie. Since it now seemed that she was not Flossie Macintyre, but Rhoda Moore’s niece, the sooner this was made quite clear the better it would be for everyone.
Flossie opened the door, and it was perfectly plain that she had been crying. Her eyelids were swollen and pink, and so was her pretty little nose. As Miles walked in, she sniffed a most woe-begone sniff and said,
“Mrs Gilmore’s out, Mr Miles.”
“Good Lord, Flossie—what’s the matter?”
Flossie shut the door and burst into tears.
“I’m sure I wish I was dead!” she said, and dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief already sodden.
Miles took her by the arm and marched her into the dining-room.
“You’d better tell me all about it. Mrs Gilmore won’t mind. What’s been happening?”
Flossie sat down on one of the dining-room chairs and looked up at him through her long, drenched eyelashes.
“I don’t care if I never see Ernie again!” she declared.
Not a very tactful fellow Ernie. A bit class-conscious too. He had probably been renouncing the Macintyre heiress with plain-spoken scorn. From Flossie’s rather incoherent remarks this appeared to be the case, and it had naturally incensed her very much. If there was any breaking off to be done, she was the one to do it. Furthermore it would have been one thing to be nobly renounced in the humble adoring manner so popular on the stage and in romantic fiction, and quite another to be scornfully discarded as belonging to a class detested by the true Marxian. Ernie, it seemed, was Red, and though not averse from a partnership in a garage with the giddy height of proprietorship in view, yet drew the line quite firmly at everything else of a capitalist nature.
“Him to have the neck to talk about blood-suckers, and exploiting wage-slaves, and all the rest of it! And to say he wouldn’t demean himself to marry a girl out of a capitalist family! Which I said to him, ‘Ernie Bowden,’ I said, ‘you may think yourself lucky if you ever get married at all,’ I said. ‘And it won’t be me,’ I said, ‘not if it was ever so,’ I said, ‘and not if you went down on your bended knees and begged and beseeched me till you was black in the face,’ I said. ‘And I’m sure whoever she is, I’m sorry for her, pore thing—I am reelly—for she won’t know what a bargain she’s getting till it’s too late! And I’m sure I’ve reason to be thankful as I’ve found you out in time, for a more miserable girl there won’t never be than the one that’s got to call herself Mrs Ernest Bowden—which it isn’t me and never will be!’ I said.” The words came pouring out, accompanied but not impeded by dabbings, and sniffs, and gulps.
When she stopped for breath, Miles said,
“Poor Ernie! But you wouldn’t have married him if you’d been an heiress, would you, Flossie?”
Flossie was sharp. Flossie was uncommon sharp. The handkerchief dropped from her eyes, and her first angry stare gave place to a look which combined intelligence and relief.
“What do you mean, Mr Miles?”
“Well, you wouldn’t—would you?”
Flossie brushed that away. It wasn’t any of his business anyhow—not whether she married Ernie it wasn’t.
“You said if, Mr Miles. And I’d like to know what you mean by that.”
Miles told her. He took another of Lila Gilmore’s backless glass chairs and sat down upon its scarlet velvet cushion. Then he told Flossie all about his visit to Mrs Gossington, and about half way through she got so interested that she stopped sniffing and put her handkerchief away.
“So I’m afraid you’re not Miss Macintyre after all,” he finished up.
Flossie heaved a sigh.
“Well, I don’t think that I was all that struck on it,” she said. “You see, Mr Miles, it’s this way. I didn’t sleep last night—not what you might call sleep. And when you can’t sleep, you do a bit of thinking, and it come over me pretty strong that a bit more than what you’ve got is what everybody’d like to have. There’s things I’ve planned to do and things I thought I’d save up for, and got a lot of fun out of it. But when it isn’t just a little more, but an awful lot that you hardly know what you’d do with, why it makes all the things you’ve been planning for look kind of silly, don’t you think? And then look how it’s upset Ernie—right down made him forget himself. And what Aunt would have said if she’d heard him, I don’t know.”
Miles felt a good deal of admiration and respect for Miss Flossie Palmer. He said,
“I think Ernie’s a very lucky young man.”
The colour came into Flosie’s cheeks. She tossed her head.
“Oh—Ernie—” she said. “If he thinks he can treat me the way he done and not hear no more about it, he’s got to hurry up and think again!”
Miles laughed.
“Don’t be too fierce with him!”
Flossie stuck her chin in the air, and then spoilt the effect by giggling.
“Fact is, Ernie’s got a temper, and so’ve I, and when he goes all on about capitalists and that Marx that you can’t understand a word of it feeds me up—it does reelly. And when it comes to saying as how he wouldn’t marry a capitalist’s daughter, well, I did think it was the limit and no mistake. And mind you, Mr Miles, he’s right down fond of me Ernie is, so how he’d the nerve, I don’t know. And look what a sight he’s made me make of myself!” She tossed her head again. “Pore Ernie indeed! If he’s half as miserable as what he’s made me, it’s no more than what he deserves—and I only hope he is!”
Miles waited until the Gilmores came in, and informed them that Flossie wasn’t Miss Macintyre after all.
“She’s done nothing but cry her eyes out ever since you told her she was,” said Lila plaintively. “I can’t think why, but she has. You know, Miles darling, if you were to tell me that I was a simply enormous heiress, and that those divine black pearls were really mine, I shouldn’t cry. But Flossie’s done nothing but cry. It’s too unbalanced of her—isn’t it?”
“Ah, but then you see her young man cut up rough, and she thought she’d lost him.”
Lila hung on Freddy’s arm.
“Freddy darling, you wouldn’t leave me if I was an heiress, would you?”
“I don’t know,” said Freddy. “If you began to come it over me, I might.”
“But, darling, I shouldn’t, and I’d simply love to be an heiress. Fitz says he’s got the most marvellous investment if I’ve got any spare cash—and of course I haven’t, but it would be simply bound to make my fortune if I had. And I do think, Freddy might listen about it even if he won’t do anything—don’t you, Miles? It’s either a gold mine or a coal mine, and I can’t remember whether the name of the place is Yukon or Yucatan, but I’m practically certain it begins with a Y. And Fitz says it’s the most wonderful offer that’s ever been ma
de and he’s putting his shirt on it, and Freddy simply won’t listen.”
Freddy looked up from Mrs Gossington’s statement, which he had been reading.
“So you’ve got to start all over again and look for this Mrs Moore.”
“She’s dead,” said Miles.
“Oh, you know that? Well then, you’ve got to find her niece. I suppose if she passed off her niece as the Macintyre child, she’s probably just changed them over and said the Macintyre child was her niece.”
“Freddy darling, I don’t see that at all.”
“Well, as a matter of fact—” said Miles.
“Miles darling, you’re blushing!” said Lila. “He is, Freddy—isn’t he? I didn’t know anyone could—especially not anyone who’s been to America. I believe he’s found her! Have you really, Miles?”
“Yes, I’ve found her,” said Miles. “Her name is Kay Moore, but I think she really is Kay Macintyre. If you don’t mind, I think I had better begin at the beginning and tell you all about it, because there’s more in it than meets the eye, and I want your help.”
The telling took a little time, and Miles found it a great relief. All the time that he was talking Lila sat leaning forward in one of her gold chairs. She remained quite silent, and sometimes she looked at him, and sometimes she looked at Freddy, with a small puzzled frown between her eyes.
When Miles had finished telling them about Kay, Freddy said, “You’d better bring her here—hadn’t he, Lila?” and Lila gave a start and said,
“Oh yes, Miles darling.”
But presently, when Miles had gone away and she still sat on and didn’t speak, Freddy came and put his arm round her and said,
“What’s the matter, darling?”
“I don’t know. When he said that girl’s name, I thought—” She broke off and looked up at him. “Freddy, I didn’t like it.”
“Silly old goose! What didn’t you like?”
“I don’t know, Freddy, say it again.”
“Say what?”
“What you said—‘Silly old goose!’ It makes me feel safe.”
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