“Nor have you, really,” said Miles.
At this point he became aware that a milkman emerging from the area of No. 30 was regarding them with an expression of gloom. He was a perfectly worthy young man of the name of Edward Jones, and the housemaid of No. 30 had just informed him that she wasn’t coming out with him any more because she liked Bob Stevens a lot better than him, so there. In these circumstances the sight of Miles and Kay holding hands and gazing at one another in the middle of the pavement was more than flesh and blood could bear. His expression became so homicidal that Miles reluctantly let go and, taking Kay by the arm, began to walk her along.
“Where are you going? And can I come with you, or will you turn me down like you did the other chap and ask that ferocious milkman to protect you?”
“I’d rather have you than the milkman. I was going on a bus.”
“What bus?”
“Just any bus—just for the ride. It’s a lovely day.”
“All right, we’ll go on a bus together.”
Kay’s heart beat joyfully. Miles—as well as a bus ride, and a fine day, and her afternoon out. It was almost too much. She felt as if there were wings under her feet.
She said “lovely!” and then, “Miles, tell me all about all of you. I haven’t heard anything, not for years.”
“My mother’s gone,” said Miles.
She said, “I know. When Aunt Rhoda died I wrote, and someone wrote back and said she had gone—two years before.”
“She was very, very fond of you, Kay.”
Kay was silent for a little. Then she turned a curious beaming look on him and said,
“I love her—always.”
Miles felt an extraordinary rush of emotion. It was four years since anyone had used that present tense in speaking of Eleanor Clayton. It seemed to bring her very near. He was so suddenly and deeply moved that he found it quite impossible to speak. His hand tightened on Kay’s arm and they walked on in silence.
When they came to the corner, he began to tell her that George was in India with his regiment, Kitty married and in India too. “And I’ve been over in New York for three years.” And then the story of how he had come over here to try and find out what had happened to a baby who had disappeared nearly twenty years ago.
They chose their bus, climbed on the top, got a seat right in front, and went on talking. Such a lot can happen in eight years, and it was nearly eight years since Kay had gone sadly away from the only home she had known.
“And what did you do then, Kay? Where did you go? You never wrote.”
Kay looked away over the top of the bus rail to the houses crowding up into the misty blue sky. It hadn’t been misty a moment before, but clear. The mist was in her eyes—the mist of an old weeping for things which she had loved and lost. She said at last,
“I couldn’t write—not until Aunt Rhoda died, and then it was too late.”
“Where did you go, Kay?”
Kay said, “Everywhere. We kept moving—three months—four months—six months. We just kept moving on until she died.”
“When was that?”
“Getting on for three years ago.”
She told him about being mother’s help to the Vicar’s wife, and how she had had to leave because they couldn’t afford to keep her.
“The next place I went to I didn’t like at all. There was a perfectly revolting boy of twenty. His mother spoilt him, and he would come into the nursery, so I simply couldn’t stay. And so I thought I would be a house-parlour-maid, because you get better wages and proper times off, but I got into a horrid place. Oh, Miles, it really was.”
Miles frowned. She had come up the steps of No. 16 Varley Street. He said quickly,
“What sort of horrid? You mustn’t stay there, Kay.”
“Oh, but I didn’t. I was only there two months. I didn’t like the people or their friends—rather horrid men. I left as soon as I could.”
“And came to 16 Varley Street?”
She nodded.
“Perhaps it was ungrateful to say that about their friends being horrid, because it was really one of their friends who helped me to get another place—at least not exactly a friend—” She broke off. “Miles, she told me not to tell anyone, so perhaps I oughtn’t—”
“You’re to tell me at once!”
“But she said—you see, it might make it awkward for her with her friends. You do see that?”
“Well, I’m not any of her friends. You’re going to tell me at once!”
When he looked like that, she could believe that it was nearly eight years since he had last ordered her about. She had been very ready to be ordered about, but it was nearly eight years ago. She smiled a little fleeting smile, because the eight years which had changed them both so much hadn’t really changed anything at all. She would still do what he told her, but she would do it with a little secret amusement.
“Well, it was like this,” she said. “Nurse Long used to come to the house sometimes—not to the parties, you know, but just quietly in the afternoon to see Mrs Marston. I think they’d been at school together, so she wasn’t like the other people who came. And one day she spoke to me going down the stairs. It was rather curious, Miles, because she said, ‘Is your name Kay Moore?’ and when I said it was, she asked me if I had an aunt called Rhoda. She said she used to know her long ago. Then she asked me if I liked the place, and of course it was rather difficult to say I didn’t, but when we got down to the door she gave me her address and said if I wanted to make a change she might be able to help me.”
“What was the address?” said Miles quickly.
“16 Varley Street,” said Kay.
“How long have you been there?”
Kay looked at him. There was something in his voice which she didn’t understand. It seemed to ring an echo in her own mind. She couldn’t understand what it said. It was just an echo. She answered his question.
“Only since Saturday. I came in on Saturday evening.” She went on talking, because she rather wanted to drown that echo. “Miles, it was rather funny. I gave notice at the Marstons about a week ago, so I really had almost another month to put in there. Then on Saturday afternoon Mrs Marston sent for me and said she would like me to go at once, because she was suited, but her friend Nurse Long was wanting someone and would I speak to her on the telephone. So I did, and she told me the girl there had left in a hurry and she would like to engage me. So of course I was very glad, because I really hadn’t anywhere to go, and I haven’t been able to save anything yet because of having to get uniform and all that sort of thing. Mrs Marston got the things and stopped it out of my wages. That was why I couldn’t leave before.”
“Tell me about 16 Varley Street, Kay.”
Kay’s heart gave a little flutter of happiness. Lovely to have someone to tell. It was when you had to bottle things up that they were sort of frightening. There wasn’t anything to be frightened of, and there wasn’t anything to tell, but it was lovely to have someone to tell it to. She was in the outside seat, and she sat right round with her back against the rail so that she could face Miles. There was hardly anyone else on the top of the bus, only two giggling children about half way down on the other side, and a workman with a large bag of tools on the back seat. To all intents and purposes they were alone. That was a lovely feeling too. They could talk secrets if they wanted to. And then Kay laughed, because of course they hadn’t any secrets. She thought it would be rather nice to have a secret with Miles. She looked at him with the laugh in her eyes and began to tell him about No. 16 Varley Street.
“It isn’t Nurse Long’s house, you know. She’s looking after an old invalid lady who hardly ever comes out of her room. She’s a Miss Rowland, and I’ve only seen her twice. There’s a lot to do, because there’s only the cook and me, and Mrs Green never comes upstairs at all. She ought to do the dining-room and the hall of course, but she says she’s too fat to get up the stairs, and I really think she is. She’s very good-natur
ed, and she’s been there for years and years.”
“Is there anyone else in the house?” said Miles.
“No—just Miss Rowland, and Nurse Long, and Mrs Green, and me. And they don’t seem to have any visitors, It’s a good thing, or I’d never get through. Nurse Long does the old lady’s room, but I’ve got everything else, and all the trays to take up and fetch. It’s a basement house, and that always makes work.”
Miles asked a funny question. Afterwards she thought it was a very funny question indeed. He said,
“What’s the drawing-room like?” and she laughed and said,
“Oh, my dear, it’s exactly like the pictures in the old Punches your mother had—bunches of flowers on the carpet, and a table with photograph albums, and a gold clock with cherubs, and things like that.”
“What sort of shape is it?”
“Wide across the front of the house and narrow at the back, like an L. Two doors—one in the wide part and the other behind.”
“Is there a mirror in the narrow part?” said Miles.
Kay nodded.
“A great big one with a wide gilt border. How did you know?”
Miles laughed.
“That sort of room ought to have a mirror in it,” he said.
But he hadn’t laughed because he felt like laughing. He was thinking that Flossie Palmer hadn’t invented the mirror. And Flossie Palmer said that she had seen a gaping hole within the wide gilt frame—a gaping hole with a frame round it—and something else so frightening that she had then and there run out of the house into the fog.… The thought of Kay in the house from which Flossie had fled filled him with disquiet. It also filled him with an unreasonable resentment against the very pleasant and agreeable Captain Grey who had married his sister Kitty and taken her out to India. If Kitty had been available, he could have insisted on Kay leaving 16 Varley Street immediately. Kitty being some thousands of miles away and no longer of the least use, he racked his brains in vain for a substitute. He had two aunts and a sprinkling of cousins, but as far as Kay was concerned they were a wash-out. The aunts were his father’s sisters, and they had always deplored what they called “dear Eleanor’s vagaries”. He blenched at the thought of explaining Kay to them. The cousins he remembered as pretty, conventional girls entirely taken up with their own affairs. His thought glanced at Lila Gilmore, only to provoke him to rueful laughter at his own expense. Besides, Kay and Flossie under the same roof—He thought not.
He found Kay looking at him as if she would like to know what he was thinking about. He would have liked to tell her too, but he restrained himself. Instead he asked her,
“Who was the fellow you wouldn’t go out with?”
Kay flushed.
“I don’t know.”
“But he called you Kay.”
“I know he did—but I don’t know him all the same.”
“Do you mean you’ve never seen him before, or just that you don’t want to know him?”
“I’ve never seen him before—at least—I don’t think so—” Her voice faltered a little on the last words.
“Well?” said Miles. “What about it?”
He saw a distressed look come into her eyes. She said,
“Miles—he said he knew Aunt Rhoda. You know, she did have some horrid friends. I might have seen him—long ago—because just in the middle of saying I didn’t know him a horrid sort of feeling came over me as if I was just going to remember something. I think it was his eyes—he had such horrid eyes.”
Miles was thinking that Aunt Rhoda’s friends seemed to be rather too much in evidence. Here was Kay newly come to London, and Nurse Long, who had known Aunt Rhoda, came visiting at the house of Kay’s employers and offered to find her a place. And after taking that place another of Aunt Rhoda’s friends turns up on her first afternoon out and makes a nuisance of himself. Strange ubiquity of Aunt Rhoda’s friends. Why on earth couldn’t Kitty have stayed in England? He frowned, and asked,
“What was the fellow’s name? Did he say?”
“He said it was Harris,” said Kay doubtfully. Then she laughed. “Oh, Miles, do you know what that reminds me of? Kitty and me reading Martin Chuzzlewit out loud, and your mother telling us what to skip, and Mrs Gamp always talking about Mrs Harris.”
Miles laughed too.
“‘I don’t believe there’s no such person,’” he quoted.
Kay nodded earnestly.
“That’s just what I think about him,” she said.
CHAPTER XIV
When Mr Harris walked away he went on walking until he reached the Square. Varley Street runs into it at the right-hand corner. Mr Harris turned to the right, which took him out of the Square into Little Banham Street. Almost at once he turned to the right again, and entered Barnabas Row, which runs parallel with Varley Street.
Barnabas Row is one of those odd streets which are to be found here and there in London. They contain a little of everything, like a village street, and are in fact survivals from an earlier day when a great deal of what is now London clustered about the city as village or hamlet.
Barnabas Row begins with a modern house or two, dwindles into a line of old mews, part of which has been turned into a garage, and continues by way of some small shops, a rickety warehouse, and a row of very archaic cottages to its lower end, where it breaks into shops again. The garage is on the right, backing upon Varley Street. Mr Harris entered it.
A little later he was in conversation with Nurse Long in that L-shaped drawing-room with the wine-coloured velvet curtains, the Victorian furniture, and the handsomely framed mirror so faithfully described by Flossie Palmer. Mr Harris was leaning against the mantelpiece, and Nurse Long was sitting in a very unprofessional attitude on the arm of one of the rather uncomfortable easy chairs. Her cap was pushed back to show a line of reddish hair. Her rather pale and indeterminate features wore a decidedly unamiable expression. She was smoking a cigarette in a series of short angry puffs, and between each puff and the next she had something to say.
“You would do it.… I told you it wouldn’t come off.… She’s not that sort of girl … I told you she wasn’t.”
Mr Harris spoke in a cold, displeased voice.
“That’ll be enough about that! You make me tired!”
Nurse Long laughed.
“And what about me? I told you you were going to muff it. I didn’t want her here, but you would have it. It’s dangerous—I’ve said so all along. If anyone’s looking for her, you don’t want them coming here, do you?”
“They won’t come here,” said Mr Harris.
“Says you!” said Nurse Long.
“Why should they?” said Mr Harris. “That trail’s lost—years ago.”
She finished her cigarette and lit another.
“Lost trails can be found again,” she said. “Besides, how do you know that it’s lost? If we could keep track of her, so could other people. I never did trust Rhoda Moore.”
Mr Harris looked as if this amused him.
“Do you know, I seem to have heard that before.”
A little colour came into her pale face.
“And you’ll hear it again if I feel like it. Rhoda’d got her own game, and she’d only play yours as long as it suited her. I’ve always said so, and I’ve never come across anything to make me change my mind. What did she go dodging about all over the map for if it wasn’t to cover her tracks? You told me yourself there were years when she’d given you the slip and you didn’t know where she was.”
Mr Harris laughed. It was not an attractive laugh.
“You needn’t get excited. I knew all I wanted to know. If I’d wanted Rhoda or the girl, I could have found them—but I didn’t happen to want them—then.”
“Well, whether you wanted her or not, for all you know, Rhoda was double-crossing you. That’s my point—she didn’t go hiding like that for nothing.”
“She wanted to keep the girl. She was crazy about her. Queer how it gets people. Of course she’s
a taking little thing—always was. But that’s neither here nor there. She’s a good business proposition, and that’s what interests me.”
Her voice was sharp with sudden anger.
“What’s the good of talking to me like that? If you think it takes me in, it doesn’t—so there! The beginning and end of it is that you’ve taken one of your fancies, and I’m telling you straight out that you’re asking for trouble. Go after any girl in London you like, but leave this one alone! Don’t try and mix business and pleasure, or you’ll come a most almighty smash. I don’t care who you take up with, but we don’t want any more girls running out of the house in a fright.”
“Chuck it!” said Mr Harris. “We’ve had all this out before! I’m not doing anything in the house, am I? No, my next move will be to write her a charming little note. Apologies for having startled her, reminiscences of dear Rhoda—and what do you think of a reference to her mother?—a hint perhaps of an old romance. That always goes down with a good girl—and you say she’s a good girl.”
Nurse Long nodded.
“Then she ought to be easy,” said Mr Harris. “As a matter of fact, Addie, you’re wrong about my fancy. She’s all right, and I’d sooner she was pretty than plain, but I’ve not gone off the deep end about her.” He laughed a little. “Is it likely? No, this is business—big business, Addie. In certain circumstances, my dear, my intentions will be strictly honourable. Meanwhile, I’m not committing myself. But I want her here, and I’m going to get friendly.”
Nurse Long laughed, a short disagreeable laugh. Then quite suddenly she shivered, knocked the ash off her cigarette, and jumped up.
“I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that!” she said.
Mr Harris did not remove his pale stare.
“You know, Addie,” he said, “some day you’ll vex me. I shouldn’t wonder if it wasn’t some day soon.” He shrugged his shoulders very slightly. “I shouldn’t if I were you. No, I shouldn’t.”
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