Blindfold (15 page)

“Is there
really
straw, Mrs Green?”

Mrs Green tossed her head. All her chins quivered like jellies.

“Haven't I said so? There's enough for a hundred cats, let alone one little misery like that. Now just you hurry along!”

Kay hurried. She took up the Benger as the clock struck half past ten. Nurse Long opened the bedroom door and took in the tray. She did not say thank you, and she did not say good night. She just took the tray and shut the door again.

Kay went downstairs, and presently to bed. She was very sad about the kitten. She would have liked so much to have had it to sleep with her, but Mrs Green had been dreadfully out of temper when she suggested it. Any cat she had in her kitchen would go into the cellar for the night unless it went into the yard. Kay could take her choice. It would be one or the other.

Curled up in bed, Kay cried a little about the kitten. It was so small, and it had rubbed its head against her cheek and purred. And perhaps there were rats in the cellar. She did hope not, but suppose there were. Supposing it was very, very frightened.… Even Mrs Green was frightened of rats.… The kitten was so very small. Supposing a rat were to bite it … She cried herself to sleep.

CHAPTER XX

Flossie Palmer had also slipped out that evening. Ernie had written her the sort of letter which a girl who respected herself couldn't be expected to take lying down, and if Ernie thought he could come it over her like that, Ernie had got to be shown where he was wrong. The Gilmores were dining out, and Cook was agreeable, so Flossie put on her bright pink dress and her beads and slipped out. Ernie was partial to a bit of colour, and as it was a mild night, she could leave the collar of her coat open. Those old beads did sort of make your skin look white. She took a final look in the glass, and was a good deal heartened by what she saw there.

Mr Bowden awaited her at the church end of the street. His letter had announced the firm intention of having things out whether or no. Either she could come and meet him, or he would come to the house and have it out there—“And if Mrs Gilmore hears about it, so much the better, and perhaps she'll want to know what you're doing taking up with one of her gentleman friends.”

Flossie halted under the lamp at the street corner. What was the good of having pink cheeks, blue eyes, and golden hair if they couldn't be seen? And Ernie needn't think he'd only to hold up his little finger to have her come after him. She didn't mind coming as far as the corner, but she wasn't going to come any farther.

Mr Bowden came up glowering. He missed neither the yellow hair, the bright cheeks, the angry sparkle of the eyes, nor the whiteness of the neck, which the open coat collar allowed to be seen.

Flossie wasted no time, but plunged directly into the fray.

“Coo, Ernie Bowden—if you haven't got a nerve! I shouldn't of thought you'd have dared to come and meet me, not after the things you wrote in that letter of yours! If I was to show it to Aunt, well, I dursn't think what she'd say nor what she'd do. The very least of it would be that I wasn't never to speak to you again—and perhaps that's what you're after. And I must say that if I wanted to break off with anyone I'd been going with reg'lar, I wouldn't do it in the sort of hinting underground way what you done it—no, that I wouldn't! I'd tell them open, and say good-bye, and no harm done. I wouldn't go sending them insulting letters—as good as taking their characters away. And, as I said before, if Aunt was to see what you'd wrote, well, I'd be sorry for you, Ernie Bowden.”

Mr Bowden was a good deal shaken. He had written the letter in a tearing temper. His heart quaked at the thought of losing Flossie. It also quaked at the thought of Aunt. He said in a deep growling voice,

“You don't half carry on.”

This was an unfortunate remark. Flossie pounced on it.

“And what do you expect a girl to do when you've as good as told her she's lost her character?”

“I never!” said Mr Bowden explosively.

Flossie took no notice.

“And if anyone else had said the half or the quarter of what you done, I'd have come to you, thinking you was my
friend
, and I'd have said, ‘Here's someone that wants his face pushed in,' and I'd have looked for you to do it for me—yes, I
would
, Ernie—till I got that letter!”

“Flossie!”

“It's no good saying Flossie one minute and taking away my character the next!”

“Flossie, I never!”

The scene ran the course which Flossie had mapped out for it. When, thoroughly repentant and alarmed, Ernie was allowed to plead brokenly for pardon and reinstatement.

At somewhere about half past ten there was a complete reconciliation and a specially tender embrace on the steps of No. 12 Merriton Street.

“Ooh, Ernie—you're not half strong!” Flossie's voice was a little breathless.

Mr Bowden nodded.

“I could choke you with one hand,” he asserted, and proceeded to demonstrate the size and strength of his hand by clasping it about her throat.

Flossie, thrilled and a little frightened, tried to twist away. She found that she could not move. Ernie's arm was like a steel bar. If his hand were to close upon her throat—A shiver ran down her spine. Instead, the hand tilted her chin, the arm lifted her. She was very soundly hugged and kissed and set down again. Mr Bowden's submissive mood had passed. He said roughly,

“You're my girl, and don't you forget it!”

Flossie ran into the house with a beating heart. Cook had let her have a key, but she'd to give it back and not be later than half past ten. She put on the light in the hall, and it was as she lifted her hand to the switch that she felt the sag and pull of the beads about her neck. She looked quickly down and clutched them. The string was broken. That was Ernie, when he pretended to choke her.

“Coo! He
is
strong!”

The little shiver went down her back again, and still clutching the beads, she stepped into the dining-room and felt for the switch inside the door. The lights went on, but the beads were slipping. It took her a moment to find the broken ends of the string, and in that moment some of them had dropped and rolled. She spread out her handkerchief, lowered the string carefully down upon it, and picked up all the beads she could find. It was well past half past ten, and she didn't want to get on the wrong side of Cook. She knotted the handkerchief tightly, pushed it into her pocket, and ran downstairs with the key.

CHAPTER XXI

Kay woke from a dream of distress. She could not remember what the dream was about. She had been in some far empty place and had heard the wind go by. That was the nearest she could get to it. She sat up in bed and listened with straining ears. Had something really cried, or had it only been the wind of her dream? If anything had cried down there in the cellar, would she have heard it? She didn't know how far the cellar ran under the house. She thought it must run a long way, because Mrs Green had said something about “those big old cellars.” She had said they did keep the house dry and that was about all you could say for them, nasty creepy things, and as for going down into them, she'd sooner give in her notice and have done with it any day of the week.

Kay lit the candle and looked at her clock. It was half past five. She was supposed to get up at six. Mrs Green couldn't be very angry if she were to go and let the kitten out now—she couldn't really. She could bring it in here and cuddle it for half an hour before it was time to get up.

She got out of bed, put on her shoes and the old red dressing-gown which she had had since she was sixteen and which was much too short for her, and went through into the scullery carrying her candle. The kitchen smelled of mice, and the scullery, of mice and cabbage-water and the fish which Miss Rowland had had for breakfast the day before. Mrs Green hated open windows so much that smells had no chance of escaping from the basement. They lingered till they died, and sometimes they took a very long time to die.

Kay opened the door in the oven-shaped bulge which covered the cellar stair. The smell that came up out of the mouldy dark made the smell of the scullery seem quite homely and comfortable. The cellar smelled like something forgotten time out of mind. It was a most dreadfully discouraging sort of smell, and Kay hated it very much. She held her candle up and called in a small anxious voice, “Kitty—Kitty—” There was no answer and no sound.

Kay leaned down over the stair and cried a little louder, “Kitty—Kitty—Kitty!”

The silence and the old, forgotten smell rose up out of the dark. There was no other answer.

Then she caught her nightgown and the red dressing-gown tightly about her and went down four steps without letting herself stop to think. She called again, and when again there was no answer, she went right on down to the bottom of the stair and stood there holding up her candle. It was like going down into a well. It wasn't exactly cold, but it was still.

She looked about her. The cellar was very large. It must run right under the kitchen. There were doors opening from it. The place which the steps ran down into was like a wide stone-paved hall. There were doors all along one side of it. If she turned so as to face the front of the house, the doors were on her right. On the other side there was a white-washed wall running up to the roof, and at the foot of the wall was the straw which Mrs Green had spoken about. It was piled in a heap, and consisted partly of the straw covers in which bottles are packed, and partly of the loose straw which had doubtless been stuffed between them. There was certainly plenty of bedding for one small kitten.

Kay was getting used to the feel of the cellar. She went over to the straw and stirred it with her foot, calling to the kitten, but there was no answering rustle, no little sleepy waking mew. She went along the line of doors and tried them. Only one was locked. The others showed empty cellars with brick walls and stone floors—all except the one nearest the back of the house, which contained some empty packing-cases and some more straw, but no kitten.

Kay was beginning to feel most dreadfully worried about the kitten. Suppose the rats had killed it. She hadn't seen any rats, but they might have dragged the kitten down into a hole. There were several holes in the brick. In the cellar where the packing-cases were there was a horrid-looking one on the floor level just where the party wall of the cellar met what she thought must be the side wall of the house. She called “Kitty—Kitty—Kitty!” and tried not to think about a rat coming out of the hole and running up her bare leg. She found herself away from the hole and over by the door without quite knowing how she had got there. It mightn't be a rat-hole, but it did look most dreadfully like one.

And then she heard a sound which terrified her. It wasn't exactly a groan—or was it?

She had reached the stair and climbed half the steps before she stopped to think, and by that time she no longer knew what she had heard. There had been something, and it had frightened her very much, but she didn't know what it was.

And with that, the kitten came running out of the darkness of the last cellar. It came to her mewing, just as it had come to her in the Square the night before. She went down the steps to meet it, and as soon as she lifted it, it ran up her arm and on to her shoulder, purring loudly.

She ran back to her room and shut the door. As she turned from setting down the candle, the kitten sprang on to her pillow. Kay put out her hand to stroke it and stopped short. She stopped because she caught sight of her fingers in the candle-light, and they were smeared with blood. The kitten purred. It didn't seem to be hurt. She picked it up, and found a wet smear of blood upon its shoulder. But there wasn't any cut from which the blood could have come. Search as she would, there wasn't any cut. She washed her own hand, but there was no cut there either.

When she had cleaned the kitten's fur, she got into bed and snuggled down with it.

“Did you kill a rat, Kitty? I don't believe you could. You're too small. Yes, I know your teeth are like needles. No, little wicked thing—you're not to bite me! Did you bite a rat and run away? I believe you did. But supposing it had run after us, what would you have done? I know what I should have done—I should have run away. I'm not a bit brave about rats, Kitty. Are you?”

The kitten stopped biting and became a warm purring ball just under Kay's chin. She found it very comforting. It was a pity when it was time to get up.

Mrs Palmer also dreamed that night. She lay awake through all the first part of the night, not fidgeting as most people do when they cannot sleep, but lying stiff and straight with her head on the one low hard pillow which was all she allowed herself. She heard all the hours strike until four, and then she fell into a troubled sleep and dreamed.

She must have been thinking about the verse upon which her finger had lighted when she opened the Bible at random after sending Miles Clayton away, because in her dream she saw Flossie riding on a camel across an open sandy waste. The camel and the sand came straight out of the picture-book of Bible scenes which her grandmother used to show her when she was a little girl, but there were additions which were due to her own disturbed imagination. There was Flossie, who sat cross-legged on the top of the camel's hump in the pink dress which was a deal too bright for a Christian young woman. And there was the needle's eye sticking up out of the sand, for all the world like a needle sticking up out of bran when you empty a pin-cushion, only the eye of this needle was as large as the Marble Arch, and the sinful thought came into Mrs Palmer's mind that there was something wrong about the text, because the camel and Flossie would go through the eye of that needle as easily as a thread of silk through a horseshoe.

And while she was thinking this, a voice said, “Look at the text,” and there, out in the middle of the desert, was her polished table with the big Bible lying on it which ought by rights to be in the parlour standing against the wall next the door. And in her dream she put her hand between the leaves of the Bible and opened it. Then the voice said, “Read,” and she looked where her finger was pointing and read aloud. But it wasn't the verse she had read before. It wasn't the verse about the camel and the eye of the needle, and the rich who cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. It was another verse altogether, and it made her heart quake within her. She read it because she had to read it, and her heart quaked so much that she woke up. And as she woke, she heard her own voice repeating the verse aloud: