“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, Mr
s 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.”
“You are going to tell me what happened to the Macintyre baby,” said Miles.
Mrs Gossington laughed a jolly laugh.
“So I was, and so I am. Well then, I went to Mrs Moore, and it was the funniest place I ever lived in, I can tell you.”
“In what way?”
“Well, there was Mrs Moore, that wasn’t the sort of woman you’d expect to look across the road at a child, and she’d got three of ’em there to look after, all babies. And why she was doing it, goodness knows, for it wasn’t for what she earned by it. Time and again I had to wait for my wages and we’d be living on porridge and odds and ends of stews and things, and she told me right out that the people who had left the children with her weren’t paying.”
“There were three children?”
Mrs Gossington nodded.
“Three babies—all girls, and all about the same age.”
“Did you know which was the Macintyre baby?”
“Know? Of course I knew! That’s what Flo got me to go there for, to keep an eye on it. Besides she was the prettiest little thing I ever saw. In a way you could understand why Flo was so crazy about her.”
“Won’t you go on?” said Miles.
“All in good time, Mr Clayton. Well, there I was, and not best pleased with my place. Flo stopped coming, because she had a baby of her own, and I’d have left only for my wages being held back. And then in July—July ’15—Flo started coming again. She’d lost her ’usband and her baby, and she was pretty near out of her mind pore thing. She told me she was, and she said if there was one thing that would stop her going right off her head, it was that baby of Mrs Macintyre’s that she’d always had such a fancy for. And when she found that no one ever come to see it or wrote, and how short the money was, she got me to say I’d speak to Mrs Moore and find out whether there was any chance she’d let Flo have the baby to adopt.”
This was Mrs Palmer’s story over again. Miles felt a little bored and a good deal relieved. He didn’t know why he should have felt relieved, but he did. It was ridiculous that he should have had any misgiving as to what Mrs Gossington would say.
She went on in her comfortable, leisurely manner.
“It happened money was as short as short just then. There was one of the babies—her mother was in India. She’d left her with Mrs Moore from the month and gone out to her ’usband right at the beginning of the war, and the ’usband was killed in Mespot, and sometimes she’d send a cheque and sometimes she wouldn’t, and after a bit she didn’t write but to say she was going here and going there, and it was all heathen names as long as your arm.”
“Mrs Gossington, how do you know all this?” said Miles firmly.
She laughed with enjoyment.
“How do you think? I read the letters of course. I’d my wages to think of, and a duty to find out whether there was any money coming. But this Mrs Lestrange, she was one of the sort that’ll send you a hundred pounds one time and then forget about you for a year on end. When she sent a cheque it was a fat one, but the people that had planted Mrs Moore with the Macintyre baby they never sent nothing at all, so I thought maybe Flo had a chance of getting what she wanted.”
“And she did?”
Mrs Gossington winked.
“In a manner of speaking,” she said.
“Do you mind telling me what you mean by that?”
“All in good time, and no need to be in an ’urry. I put it to Mrs Moore, and she went all stiff and haughty which she’d no call to do, and she said, ‘Impossible!’ and she walks out of the room and bangs the door. But in a day or two she’d come to talking about it all in the way of how it couldn’t be thought of, but I could see she was turning it over in her mind.”
“And in the end she said yes?”
Mrs Gossington winked again.
“Well, she did and she didn’t. She told me to tell Flo she could come and see her, and Flo came and they had a talk, and the upshot of it was Flo came into the kitchen and sat down and burst out crying, and ’Ada,’ she says—that being my name—‘Ada, I’ve got her—I’ve got my baby.’ And she cried fit to break her ’eart.”
“And she took the baby?”
“Don’t you be in an ’urry, Mr Clayton. She sits there and cries, and Mrs Moore she calls me into the dining-room and she puts it to me straight. She says, ‘Look here, I can’t let her have that baby, not for anything in the world—not if they never paid another penny. It’d be as much as my life was worth if so be they should ever turn their minds to the child again and want her. I’ve got to keep her whether I want to or not, but if your friend’s so set on having a baby, there’s one she can have and welcome.’ And the minute she said that, I knew what she was up to.”
Miles wasn’t bored any longer. One part of his mind was saying “I told you so”, and the other was full of a half shocked anticipation. He said rather breathlessly,
“Go on.”
“As fast as I can,” said Mrs Gossington. “I told you there were three children, didn’t I? There was the Macintyre baby, and the Lestrange baby, and there was the little thing that Mrs Moore said was a niece but I’d my doubts about it. The same age as the others she was, and a pretty little fair thing with blue eyes. And so soon as Mrs Moore said that to me I knew what was in her mind. She dursn’t let Flo have the Macintyre baby, but she’d be pleased enough to get the one she said was her sister’s child off of her hands. She put it to me straight, I’ll say that for her, and she said, ‘Your friend won’t know the difference.’ And I said, ‘She may or she mayn’t,’ for it was getting on for six months since Flo had set eyes on the Macintyre baby. ‘Well,’ says Mrs Moore, ‘she don’t know the difference, and that’s that. I took and showed her the other one, and she cried all over the top of its head and said she’d have known it anywhere.’ Both fair babies they were, with blue eyes and fair hair and a bit of colour, and this little thing was pretty enough, but the Macintyre baby beat anything I ever did see for looks.”
“Mrs Gossington,” said Miles, “which baby did Flo Palmer have?”
She gave her jolly laugh.
“I’m telling you, aren’t I? You’re in such an ’urry, Mr Clayton. Well, Mrs Moore put it to me straight, and it didn’t take me long to make up my mind. There was pore Flo Palmer breaking her ’eart for a baby, and there was a baby that nobody wanted, and I couldn’t see any harm in bringing ’em together. It’d just about save Flo from going off her head, and the baby’d get a good ’ome. So there you are. I said yes to it, and I’ve never reckoned I did anything wrong.”
“Oh, Lord!” said Miles to himself. Aloud he repeated his former question. “Which baby did Flo Palmer have?”
Mrs Gossington rolled her eyes reproachfully.
“Haven’t I told you?”
“Well, I want it in plain words.”
“Hard to please, aren’t you? But you can have it any way you like. Flo Palmer had the baby that Mrs Moore said was her sister’s child, and that’s the truth, and the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, Mr Clayton.”
“I’ll have to ask you to sign a statement,” said Miles.
CHAPTER XXVI
Mrs Gossington wrote out her statement and signed it, and Miles took it back with him to town. He drove fast, but his thoughts ran faster. He had got to get back, have something to eat, and be at 16 Varley Street by half past two to fetch Kay. Round this definite purpose those racing thoughts of his whirled like the grains in a sandstorm—hard, pelting, stinging thoughts over which he had no control. He had come over here to find Miss Macintvre. He had found Kay. They had found each other. They loved each other. He had come over here to find an he
iress for old Boss Macintyre. He had found Kay. He had lost Kay. She was Kay Macintyre. She was Boss Macintyre’s heiress. She was his employer’s niece. He had lost her. “No, I’m damned if I have! You’ve lost her. You’re bound to lose her. You can’t in common decency hold her to it. She won’t need holding. Boss Macintyre’s heiress. What’s it going to look like, you coming back and saying you’re engaged to her? Mud—that’s what your name will be—common, dirty mud. And no one in the world is going to believe that you got engaged to Kay when you didn’t know who she was.” The thoughts went on, stinging, pelting, burning.
By and by the storm of them died away. He could order his thinking again. He would have to write a new report for to-morrow’s mail. Flo Palmer had adopted Rhoda Moore’s niece, and not the Macintyre baby. Therefore Kay was not Rhoda Moore’s niece at all. She must be Kay Macintyre. Rhoda. Moore’s references to Kay having plenty of money were now explained. It seemed clear that the woman who had posed as Mrs Macintyre’s sister had only taken the baby because she could hardly leave it behind. She was after the jewels, and having planted the baby on Rhoda Moore, she had vanished into the blue.
Or had she? He wasn’t sure. Rhoda Moore had told Ada Gossington that she didn’t dare get rid of the child—it was as much as her life was worth. He wondered whether Ada had invented the phrase. She had stuck to it when she made her statement. And there was Kay’s story of the man who had looked out on her in the garden and looked in on her when she was supposed to be asleep, and Rhoda Moore’s “What a suspicious mind you’ve got!” And then the odd way Kay had come to London and to Varley Street, and the episode of Mr Harris. It all looked as if someone had been keeping an eye on her, never quite losing touch, shepherding her, and just at the moment when she was on the edge of being declared an heiress getting ready to close in. It looked like that to him, and he didn’t like the look of it. Now, whatever happened, Kay must leave Varley Street this afternoon. He would take the car round and fetch her away bag and baggage. If necessary he would interview Miss Rowland or the nurse himself. In the circumstances, he felt equal to bearding his stiffest aunt and demanding her hospitality for Kay.
Blindfold Page 15
