Blindfold (19 page)

He felt her quiver.

“Darling—don't!”

“No, I won't. It was only for a moment. And another time she said, ‘You'll be rich, but you needn't think that's everything.' And she always ended up with, ‘Nobody will ever love you like I have.' I—I've never told anyone else. I never felt I could.”

Miles was thinking more of Kay than of what she was saying. Rhoda Moore was probably wandering. Her jealous love for Kay had always had something crazy about it.

Kay went on speaking.

“And then she began to write. She wasn't in bed all the time, you know. She used to sit up in a chair, and she made me fetch her old desk and put it by her, and then she wrote and wrote. She said, ‘I'm putting it all down, but you're not to dare to read it till I'm gone.'”

Miles' interest woke up. If Rhoda Moore had really left a statement of some kind, there might be something about Flossie Palmer in it. He said,

“She
wrote?”

“Sheets and sheets,” said Kay. “I couldn't stop her. And when she had finished she put them away in the secret drawer of her desk. It was a funny old thing with a secret drawer, and she showed me how to open it, only I had to promise that I wouldn't as long as she was alive. She died about a week later.”

“Kay, what had she written?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know? Didn't you read it?”

“No. That's the odd part. I was going to, but I thought I'd wait till the funeral was over. I was so tired. I had been sitting up with her. I just wanted to lie down and go to sleep. I didn't care about anything else. But afterwards when I thought about the desk and went to open it, it wasn't there.”

“The desk wasn't there?”

“No. Wasn't that extraordinary? It was gone—just vanished. So I never knew what Aunt Rhoda had written.”

“But, Kay—who could have taken it?”

He felt her come a little closer.

“Miles, I couldn't tell anyone else, but I do think Aunt Rhoda had some very queer friends. She said things when she was ill—bits of things, but I couldn't help putting them together. Once she said, ‘It's no good threatening me.' And another time she woke suddenly with a dreadful start, and she said, ‘Is he here?' I said, ‘Who, Aunt Rhoda?' and she said, ‘It's not his real name. He won't tell anyone that.' And then she said, ‘Don't let him in. I know too much. It's not safe to know too much, Kay. That's why I never told you anything, but you'll know all about it when I'm gone.' She went on saying that sort of thing. And I don't know, but I think perhaps someone came down and took the desk when they knew she was dead. It was quite an easy house to get into, and I'm sure I shouldn't have heard anyone those first two nights, I was so tired.”

“Kay—you weren't there alone!” his tone was a horrified one.

“Oh yes—I didn't mind that. Mrs Ellery didn't know, or she wouldn't have let me. She'd been away, and as soon as she came back she made me come to them, and I stayed on as mother's help. She was the Vicar's wife I told you about. She was very kind to me.”

They walked on for a little while in silence. Rhoda Moore's statement seemed to have been effectually disposed of. Kay's explanation sounded likely enough. Her odd friends had doubtless considered it safer to make sure of her papers. He had a horrid vivid picture of the house that was “quite easy to get into”, with Rhoda Moore lying dead in her room and Kay sunk deep in an exhausted sleep, while some unknown criminal went soft-foot up and down. Perhaps he had ransacked the dead woman's drawers and boxes. Perhaps he had stood looking in on Kay in her sleep. In the end he had taken the desk and gone. But why take the desk? Perhaps he had been disturbed. Perhaps … What was the good of speculating? The desk was gone, and Rhoda Moore's statement with it. She might have saved herself the painful, fevered effort of writing those lost sheets. Her secrets, if she had any, had died with her. After all it didn't matter very much. Kay was Kay. He didn't need Rhoda Moore to tell him that. Let the dead past bury its dead. With every look, and word, and tone of her voice Kay was telling him about herself. With every passing moment his own heart was telling him about Kay. There was a living present and a living future. He didn't give a damn for the past or Rhoda Moore.

He said, “Kay, do you mind?”

Kay didn't mind anything in the world just then. To have a friend, and for that friend to be Miles, to be able to tell him all the things she had never been able to tell anyone before, was to feel a happiness and a security which were beyond words. She said with a little laugh,

“How do you mean,
mind?
There just wasn't anything to mind.”

He laughed too.

“I'm afraid your riches have taken wings.”

“I don't want to be rich.”

“I've got about six hundred a year besides my salary. It's something to put one's back against.”

To Angela it had seemed grinding poverty. To Kay it appeared to be a most impressive income. She said with a little gurgle of laughter,

“I haven't got six hundred pence. But I don't mind—not now.”

They were getting into deeper water than either of them had intended. The ground had shelved suddenly beneath their feet and the current ran strong. Miles had not meant to say what he had said, but when he had said it he did not wish to take it back, because it was the most natural thing in the world that he and Kay should be talking like this. He said,

“Why don't you mind—now?”

Her answer was as quick and spontaneous as if she had still been only twelve years old.

“Because I've got you. Oh, Miles, it's so lovely to have a real friend! I've never had anyone to talk to or to tell things to. You know, I couldn't talk to Aunt Rhoda. She used to come in sometimes after I was in bed, and she used to sit on the edge of the bed and say, ‘You don't tell me things. Why don't you confide in me? I want to know your thoughts, and you hide them.' But you know, Miles, when she talked like that I simply hadn't got any thoughts to tell. She just made me feel all hollow and dry and empty. It's dreadful to feel like that when someone is loving you and wanting you to love them.”

“Don't let's talk about Rhoda Moore,” said Miles.

“What shall we talk about?”

“You and me.”

Kay laughed. She didn't quite know why.

“All right—you begin.”

“Kay—”

“Miles—”

“Kay—”

“Yes?”

The current took Miles off his feet.

“If—if I asked you to love me, would it make you feel all cold and hollow and empty?”

It made Kay feel the exact opposite. There was an astonishing warmth, a feeling of being fed and comforted.

“Oh, Kay, would it—
would
it?”

Kay didn't answer, because something seemed to have happened to her voice. The breath fluttered in her throat, but it did not make any words. They were between two lamp-posts and the darkness closed them in. She turned with a childish unconscious movement and lifted her face to his. Her hair brushed his cheek, and in a moment he had his arms round her and was kissing her.

CHAPTER XXV

There was a letter waiting for Miles Clayton when he got back to his hotel. It had a neatly typed address and he took it to be a circular of the more exclusive kind, but on opening it discovered an enclosure addressed in violet ink to the box number which he had given in his advertisement. This second envelope contained a sheet of ruled paper upon which he read in an untidy handwriting:

“Dear Sir,

I was formerly Ada Mills as per your advertisement and beg to inform you I am now Mrs Gossington and quite willing to oblige in any way at the Horse and Groom, Lea Hill Road, Perry Green, Essex.

Yours truly

Mrs A. Gossington.”

Well, she was a day after the fair, but it would be just as well to have Mrs Palmer's statement corroborated by someone else. He had better go and see this Gossington woman to-morrow morning. Ian's car would come in useful again if he didn't happen to be wanting it himself. He would have to fix that up in the morning. But whatever happened, he must be back in time to meet Kay at half past two, and on Monday at latest she must leave that house in Varley Street. If he had had anywhere to take her, she wouldn't be there now.

He considered his plans. Three hours should cover this Gossington business. If he was back in town by half past twelve, that would give him two hours to find somewhere for Kay. Now that they were engaged, he could appear in the matter. If necessary Lila must give a hand—there were hostels, and people who took in paying guests. Then at half past two he would call for Kay, tell her what he had arranged, and if possible get her to come away with him then and there. If this wasn't possible—and he had a feeling that Kay might be obstinate about it—then he would give her until Monday morning, but not a moment later.

Having settled all this, he let himself go back to thinking about Kay—just Kay herself. A few hours before he had not known whether he was in love with her or not. Now he was most humbly, triumphantly, and gloriously sure of it. It wasn't in the least like being in love with Angela, because of course he had never really been in love with Angela at all. He had been miraculously preserved from a marriage which would have wrecked his happiness. Horrible to think that he might have married Angela and never met Kay at all, or that having married Angela, he might have met Kay too late. He was made for Kay, and Kay was made for him. She was romance, but she was also home, the home of his heart. Everything about her was as dear and familiar as if the years that had separated them had been lived out side by side, and yet the glamour and the dream were there too.

He passed a night almost entirely without sleep, planning with a good deal of enthusiasm the future which he and Kay would share. He would probably have to find another job, but that didn't matter in the least. He felt in himself a complete ability to achieve any one of fifty jobs. Nothing was difficult. Nothing was impossible. In such a mood it would be sheer waste of time to sleep. The night was all too short for his dreams.

It was something of a come-down to drive through miles of East End streets with a small public house as his objective.

Perry Green still boasted a green, but the pear trees from which it had once taken its name were now no more. Street upon street of small new villas and small new shops obliterated the very site of what had been green fields not so long ago. He discovered Lea Hill Road somewhere in the middle of this eruption of houses. The “Horse and Groom,” which had begun life upon an open country road, stood about half way up the rise. It had taken to itself a new front hung with mustard-coloured tiles, but the old sign still swung shabbily in the wind.

Miles found himself presently in a parlour behind the bar shaking hands with Mrs Gossington. She was a large, hearty woman with a high colour and a rolling eye. Her hand was warm and rather damp. She wore a bright blue dress that might with advantage have been a size or two larger and an inch or two longer.

Miles began to explain why he had come, and was most hospitably pressed to take a seat.

“I thought as much,” said Mrs Gossington. “As soon as ever I saw the advert I said to my 'usband, ‘You mark my words, Henery, it's that there old business a-cropping up—you see if it isn't. I've always had a feeling in my bones about it, and if anyone's going to make trouble, well, it wasn't nothing to do with me.' And my 'usband says to me, ‘You leave it alone. What's it got to do with you anyway?' But as I says to him, ‘That's all very well, but suppose someone's been and left me a fortune—what about it then?' So I answered the advert.”

She had a jolly, fat voice, and was, as she had stated in her letter, quite willing to oblige. He could see her twenty years ago as a buxom, good-natured girl with a roving eye. He wondered what she was going to tell him.

“Well now, Mrs Gossington,” he said—“you were with Mrs Smith in Laburnum Vale when Mrs Macintyre had her baby and died in July 1914. And afterwards—some months afterwards—Flo Palmer persuaded you to go to Mrs Moore at Ealing because she had discovered that the Macintyre baby was there.”

“That's right,” said Mrs Gossington. “I went to oblige her—and not so sorry to leave Mrs Smith neither. Funny how set Flo was on that baby. I won't say it wasn't a pretty little thing, because it was, but I can't understand anyone wanting to clutter 'emselves up with someone else's kid. 'Tisn't natural to my mind. But there, there's all sorts in the world.”

“Yes,” said Miles. “Now, Mrs Gossington, would you mind just telling me in your own words what happened to the Macintyre baby?”

Mrs Gossington's rolling eyes came to rest upon his face in an odd half hesitating look. He thought it meant “How much do you know already?” He smiled encouragingly and said,

“I'd be most awfully grateful.”

“Oh well,” said Mrs Gossington, “you might as well have it. I can hold my tongue when there's a reason for it, but I'm not one of your close sort and never was. You may believe me or you may not, but I'd sooner tell the truth any day of the week. I only done it to oblige Mrs Moore, and I don't see where the harm came in, and as I said to my 'usband last night, it's twenty years ago or getting on that way, so I don't see how anyone's going to make trouble about it now.”

Miles reassured her.

“There won't be any trouble, Mrs Gossington. If you would just tell me what happened—”

“Well, Mr Clayton, it was this way. I went there to oblige Flo Palmer like I said. I always liked Flo—different as chalk from cheese to Mrs Smith she was. Did you say you'd met her? She's Mrs Syme now, isn't she? And what two men wanted to marry her for passes me. But Flo was different.”