“It sounds horrid,” said Lilla in a distressed voice.
Milly Armitage made the face which she had been forbidden to make when she was ten years old. It made her look quite extraordinarily like a frog, and conveyed better than any number of words the discomfort of the Jocelyn ménage. Then she said,
“It’s going to be very hard on Lyn having them in town. She is devoted to Anne-at least she was. I don’t know how much of it’s left now, but she’ll think she ought to be, and it will tear her to pieces. They’re bound to meet. I don’t think Anne knows anything-I don’t think it would occur to her. She thinks about Lyn as she was before the war-just a little school-girl who had a crush on her. And Lyn won’t give anything away. She’ll make herself go and see Anne and be friends with her because she’ll think that’s the right thing to do, and if she feels a thing is right she’ll do it. She’s got no armour-she’ll get horribly hurt. And I can’t bear her to be hurt-that’s why I’m saying all this.”
“Yes?”
Milly Armitage put out her hand impulsively.
“That’s why I was so glad to hear about Pelham Trent. I don’t mean that I want anything serious to come of it-he’s a bit old for her.”
“He doesn’t seem old.”
“About thirty-seven, I should say. But that doesn’t matter. It’s a perfect godsend to have someone to admire her, to take her about, to take up her time. I don’t suppose anything will come of it, but she likes him, and he’ll help to tide her over a bit of bad going.”
The conversation ended as it had begun, with Pelham Trent.
CHAPTER 16
Miss Nellie Collins settled herself in the corner of an empty third-class carriage…She hoped someone else would get in- someone nice. She never really cared about travelling in an empty carriage, because of course there was always the chance of someone getting in who was not really nice. When she was a little girl she had heard a story about a lunatic who got into a train with a friend of her Aunt Chrissie and made her eat carrots and turnips all the way from Swindon to Bristol. Her Aunt Chrissie’s friend had a very severe nervous breakdown after this experience, and though it had happened at least fifty years ago, and this local train from Blackheath to Waterloo stopped much too frequently to give a lunatic any real scope, Miss Nellie preferred to be on the safe side. She sat up very straight in her best coat and skirt, her Sunday hat, and the fur necktie which she kept for great occasions because it was beginning to shed a little, and you couldn’t tell how long it would have to last with fur the dreadful price it was now. The coat and skirt was of rather a bright shade of blue, because when Nellie Collins was young someone had told her that she ought to dress to match her eyes. He had married somebody else, but she remained perseveringly attached to the colour. Her hat, it was true, was black. She had been brought up to consider a black hat ladylike, but it boasted a blue ribbon which didn’t quite match the coat and skirt, and a little bunch of flowers which did. Under the rather wide brim her hair stuck out in a faded frizz which had once been the colour of corn, but was now as old and dusty-looking as August stubble. When she was a girl she had had one of those apple-blossom complexions, but there was nothing left of it now. Only her eyes were still astonishingly blue.
Just as she was beginning to think that no one was going to get in, some half dozen people came past the porter who was inspecting tickets. Two of them were men. They walked straight across the platform and into the nearest compartment. Miss Collins heaved a sigh of relief. She thought they had a jovial appearance, and that one of them was not quite steady upon his feet. There remained a heavily built woman with two children, and a small upright figure in a black cloth jacket with a fur collar which had seen better days.
The family party followed the two men into the train, but the little woman in the dowdy coat came on. Miss Collins hoped very much that she would get in with her. She even loosened the catch of the door and allowed something that was almost a smile to relax her features. And all at once there was the door opening, and just as the train began to move, the lady in black got in and settled herself in the opposite corner. As she did so she met Miss Collins’ sympathetic gaze and heard her say, “Oh dear, you very nearly missed the train!”
The lady who had got in was Miss Maud Silver. Her original occupation had been that of a governess, and she still looked the part, but for a good many years now her neat professional card had carried in one corner the words Private Investigations. It was part of her business to be a good mixer. She owed no small measure of her success to the fact that people found her astonishingly easy to talk to. She neither repelled by stiffness nor alarmed by gush. If there is a middle way between these two extremes, it could be said that she pursued it equably. She now produced a mild but friendly response and remarked that it was always very annoying to miss a train-“but my watch is out of order, and I had to depend upon my niece’s dining-room clock, which is not, I am afraid, quite as reliable as she gave me to understand.”
This was exactly the kind of opening which Miss Collins could be trusted not to neglect.
“You have been staying with a niece? How very pleasant.”
Miss Silver shook her head. She was wearing a pre-war black felt hat, but the ribbon had been renewed, and the bunch of pansies had only done one winter.
“Not visiting,” she said. “I came down to lunch, and I should have been very sorry to miss this train, as I have a tea engagement in London.”
Miss Collins gazed at her with envy. Lunch with a niece, and then a tea engagement-how gay it sounded!
“How very pleasant,” she repeated. “I have often thought how nice it would be to have nieces to go and see, but there was only my sister and myself in our family, and neither of us married.”
Miss Silver coughed.
“Marriage can be a very happy state, but it can also be a very unhappy one.”
“But it must be very nice to have nieces. Not such a responsibility as children, if you know what I mean, but near enough to make you feel you’ve got something of your own.”
Miss Silver’s smile was restrained. If it had been her niece Ethel Burkett whom she had been visiting, she would have responded rather more warmly, but she had always inclined to the belief that Gladys was spoiled, and her visit today had done nothing to alter this opinion. Younger than Ethel and a good deal prettier, she was also considerably better off, having married a widower twice her age with an excellent practice as a solicitor. She could not, of course, say so to a stranger, but in the privacy of her own thoughts Miss Silver did not consider Gladys a great deal more dependable than her dining-room clock. And she had allowed herself to be patronizing about Ethel and Ethel’s husband, who was a bank manager, and Ethel’s children, to whom Miss Silver was deeply attached. She opened her handbag now and took out the sensible grey stocking she was knitting for Johnny Burkett.
“Of course,” said Miss Collins, “in a way it’s a responsibility bringing up children, whether they’re your own relations or not. There was a little girl my sister and I brought up, and if she were alive I might be going up to see her- very much as if she were my niece, as you might say.”
Miss Silver looked discreetly sympathetic.
“She died?”
“I suppose she did.” Miss Collins’ tone was a hesitant one. A little flush came up on to her cheekbones. “You see, my sister and I had a very refined little business-I have it still- fancy work, with a few toys and calendars at Christmas. We had the whole house, and when my mother died we let off the first floor-very nice quiet people with a little girl between three and four-no trouble at all. And we got fond of the child-you know how it is. And when Mrs. Joyce died-well, what could we do? We couldn’t turn poor Mr. Joyce out- really quite crushed he was. And it came, as you may say, to our bringing Annie up. I suppose people talked, but Carrie was a good bit older than me, and after all-well, you’ve got to be human, haven’t you? And there wasn’t any of his grand relations came bothering about him when he was l
eft like that.”
Miss Silver’s needles clicked, the stocking revolved at a great rate. Her eyes had an attentive expression. When Miss Collins paused she was encouraged to proceed by a sympathetic “Dear me!”
“Never came near him,” said Nellie Collins with emphasis. “Always talking about them, he was, because, you see, if his father had done the right thing by his mother, he’d have been a baronet with a fine estate instead of a clerk in a shipping-office, and you’d have thought those that came in for it instead of him would have taken a bit of interest-but not they. Twelve years he had our first floor, and believe it or not, no one ever came near him-not in the way of a relation, if you know what I mean, and not until the breath was out of his body.”
“Someone came down after his death?”
Miss Collins tossed her head.
“A cousin she said she was.”
Miss Silver gave her slight cough.
“Miss Theresa Jocelyn, I presume.”
“Oh!” said Miss Collins with a kind of gasp. “Oh! I never said-I’m sure I never dreamed-”
Miss Silver smiled.
“You mentioned the name of Joyce, and you called the little girl Annie. You must forgive me if I could not help putting two and two together. The papers have been full of Lady Jocelyn’s return after being mourned as dead for three and a half years, and the fact that the person buried in her name was an illegitimate connection of the family who had been adopted by Miss Theresa Jocelyn, and whose name was Annie Joyce.”
Miss Collins was very much taken aback.
“I’m sure I would never have said a word if I’d thought- the name must have just slipped out. I wouldn’t have had it happen for the world-after I’d passed my word and all!”
“After you had passed your word?”
Miss Collins nodded.
“To the gentleman that rang me up and made the appointment for Lady Jocelyn. He didn’t say who he was, and I’ve been wondering if it was Sir Philip-because of course you read about baronets, but I’ve never spoken to one that I know of, unless it was him.”
Miss Silver was giving her the most flattering attention.
“Pray, what did he say?”
“Well, you see, I wrote to Lady Jocelyn-I hope you don’t think it was pushing of me-”
“I am sure you would never be pushing.”
Miss Collins nodded in a gratified manner.
“Well, I thought I had a right to, after bringing Annie up.”
“What did you say?”
“I wrote and told her who I was, and I said I’d like to come and see her if she’d let me, because of hearing anything there was to hear about poor Annie, and of course I was looking for an answer and wondering what she would say. And then there was this gentleman ringing up. I had the telephone put in when my sister was ill, and the lady who has the first floor now pays half of it, so it isn’t such a great expense, and ever since Carrie died I won’t say it hasn’t been company, knowing you can ring a friend up if you want to. So I put the telephone number on the top of my letter, and he rang up like I told you. But he didn’t give any name-only said Lady Jocelyn would see me, and would I be under the clock at Waterloo Station at a quarter to four and hold a newspaper in my left hand so that she would recognize me.”
The newspaper was folded neatly beside her. Miss Silver’s eyes went to it for a moment and then returned to Miss Collins’ face. She was really showing the most gratifying attention.
“And of course, as I told him, that wasn’t necessary at all, because if Lady Jocelyn is anything nearly as like poor Annie as she must be for Sir Philip to have made a mistake between them, why, I should recognize her the very first minute she came in sight. And he said, ‘Oh, would you?’ and I said, ‘Indeed I would, because one of the papers had a picture of Lady Jocelyn, and I’d have known it anywhere.’ From the likeness to Annie, you know-the very same identical features, and that’s a thing that doesn’t change. Right from the time I took her over when she was five years old Annie had those features. You know, some little girls, they change a lot-fat one year and thin the next, so that you’d hardly know them. But not Annie-features, that’s what she’d got, and features don’t change. And Lady Jocelyn’s got them too. So I said to the gentleman, ‘Well, I’ll carry that paper, though it isn’t necessary, because I’d know her anywhere.’ ”
Miss Silver continued to gaze in that interested manner.
“What did he say to that?”
Nellie Collins leaned forward. She was enjoying herself. Her life was a lonely one. She missed Carrie very much. Mrs. Smithers who occupied her first-floor rooms had always got plenty to say, but she never wanted to listen. She had eight children, all married and in different parts of the world, so that the steady stream of family news never ran dry-births, illnesses, engagements, accidents, promotions, fatalities, christenings, funerals, fortunate and unfortunate occurrences, prizes won at school, the total wreck of a business, a son-in-law’s disastrous pre-occupation with a strip-tease artist-there was never any end to it, and Nellie sometimes found it a little daunting. It was balm to pour out her own tale to this quiet, interested lady who seemed to desire nothing better than to listen.
The train had already stopped more than once, but no one had entered the compartment. She leaned forward in a confidential manner and said,
“Well, he asked me whether the picture was a lot like Annie, and I said yes it was. And he said did I think I’d have known the two of them apart-that is, Lady Jocelyn and Annie, you know-and I said not in a picture, I mightn’t, but if I was to see either of them I’d know fast enough. He said, ‘How?’ and I said, ‘Well, that’s telling!’ So he laughed and said, ‘Well, you can tell Lady Jocelyn when you see her.’ A very pleasant gentleman he sounded, and I wondered if it was Sir Philip. Do you think it could have been?”
Miss Silver coughed.
“I really could not say.”
It would have pleased Nellie Collins to be encouraged in the idea that she had spoken to a baronet. She felt a little disappointed, and went on talking to make up for it.
“I thought it might have been. Perhaps I could ask Lady Jocelyn when I see her. Do you think I could do that?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I think it must have been really, because of his asking me whether I had told anyone I had written, and asking me not to tell anyone I was coming up to meet her. He said they had had a dreadful time with reporters. That sounds as if it might have been Sir Philip-doesn’t it?”
The grey stocking revolved briskly. Miss Silver said,
“Yes.”
“So of course I promised I wouldn’t say a word to anyone, and I haven’t-not even to Mrs. Smithers. That’s the lady I’ve got in my first-floor rooms now-the same the Joyces used to have. She’s all right, but you can’t get from it she’s a talker, and things do get round.”
“They do indeed. I think you were very wise not to talk about it.” Miss Silver coughed. “You said just now that you were quite sure you could always have told Annie Joyce from Lady Jocelyn. Did you mean, I wonder, that there was some distinguishing mark-something that would identify Miss Joyce beyond a doubt?”
Nellie Collins moved her head in a way that might have been meant for a nod if it had ever got so far. Whatever it was, she checked it, pursed up her lips, and sat back. After a moment she said,
“I didn’t say anything about that.”
“Oh, no-of course not. I was only thinking how difficult a positive identification might be. The papers have been very discreet, but it seems to me that the family were not immediately convinced that it was Lady Jocelyn who had returned to them. In that case any special knowledge which you possessed might be very important.”
For the first time for many years Nellie Collins found herself considered as a person of importance. It went to her head a little. There was quite a bright colour in her cheeks as she said,
“And that’s what I as good as told him. ‘You couldn’t take me in,’ I
said-‘not if it was ever so.’ He laughed very pleasantly, I must say, and said, ‘You’re very positive, Miss Collins’-that’s my name, Nellie Collins. And I said ‘Of course I am,’ but I didn’t tell him why. Only it stands to reason when you’ve had a child from five years old, and washed it and dressed it, and done everything, well, if there’s anything to know about it you’d know it-wouldn’t you?”
Miss Silver was in the act of saying “Yes, indeed,” when the train once more drew up. But this time the platform was crowded. Almost before it was really safe the door had been wrenched open and a number of people poured into the compartment, not only filling the seats, but taking up all the standing room.
Miss Silver put away her knitting, and Nellie Collins picked up her newspaper. Further conversation was impossible.
But when they arrived at Waterloo Miss Collins turned back upon the platform to bid Miss Silver a polite good-bye.
“It’s always so pleasant to have company on a journey. Perhaps we shall meet again if you are coming down to see your niece.”
Miss Silver’s small, neat features expressed a polite response. It was exceedingly improbable that she would repeat her visit to Gladys-at least not for a considerable time-but she did not think it necessary to say so.
“I am quite near the station. Anyone would direct you- The Lady’s Workbox-lavender and blue curtains. And my name is Collins-Nellie Collins.”
She Came Back Page 9
