Читать книгу Blindfold - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 8

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Miss Rowland lay on the sofa in her drawing-room at 16 Varley Street. The blinds were down and the curtains were drawn—those wine-coloured velvet curtains with the fringed pelmets which Flossie Palmer had thought handsome but too sober for her taste. Both the electric wall-brackets were lighted, but they were so heavily shaded that the room seemed to be full of a greenish twilight. Miss Rowland’s sofa was drawn up at right angles to the fire. About the head of it a tall, light screen which displayed golden storks upon a black ground was so arranged as to shade her still further from the light.

Kay came timidly up to the sofa and set the tea-tray down upon the small walnut table which stood ready for it. This was the first time she had seen her new mistress, and she did not quite know whether to look at her or not. She put down the tray, and then she did look up, because Miss Rowland was speaking. She had a very low, weak voice.

“You are the new maid?”

“Yes, madam.”

“Your name?”

“Kay, madam.”

“That’s a very unusual name. I suppose you have a surname?”

A deep carnation colour rose in Kay’s cheeks.

“I should have said Kay Moore, madam.”

All this time she had not looked directly at Miss Rowland. She had seen the pillows heaped in the shadow behind her, the crimson silk eiderdown which hid all the lower part of her body and was drawn up above her waist, the fringed edges of the shawl about her shoulders. She had seen these coverings and adjuncts, but Miss Rowland herself she had not seen. Now she looked at her. The shadow of the screen was reinforced by the shadow of an old-fashioned cap. It was made of lace and muslin and tied under the chin with a large bow of lilac ribbon. It hid all the hair and half the forehead and cheeks. There remained in the twilight a long pale nose, two half closed eyes, and a pale drawn-in mouth.

Just as Kay looked, the eyelids lifted and the eyes met hers. They were pale too, but Kay didn’t think of this at the time, because when Miss Rowland looked at her she was shaken by a sudden vivid sense of recognition. It came and went in a flash and left her with shaking knees.

Miss Rowland did not speak again, and she went out of the room wondering what had startled her so. She hadn’t ever seen Miss Rowland before. But she had recognized her—or been recognized. She didn’t know which. Something had happened in her mind when she looked at Miss Rowland and Miss Rowland looked at her, but it had happened so quickly that she hadn’t been able to get hold of it. That is the case sometimes with a word or a name that you have known and then forgotten. It hovers on the very edge of consciousness, and sometimes flashes across the conscious field, and you snatch at it, but it is gone before you can hold it. It was like that.

Kay went down into the kitchen and found Mrs. Green stirring the teapot.

“Well, did you see her?” she asked.

Kay said, “Yes.”

“Nurse there?”

Kay said, “No.”

“Nice and chatty you are, I don’t think!” said Mrs. Green. “I suppose you got a tongue, ’aven’t you? What did you think of her?”

“Is she very ill?” said Kay in a shrinking voice.

Mrs. Green began to pour out the tea.

“Five years I been here, and she’s never been out. Doctor comes every week reg’lar—and not an ordinary doctor neither, but one of those high up specialists. But there—she’s got plenty of money and nothing to spend it on, pore thing. Once in a way she’ll be down like she is to-day, but mostly she’s in ’er room and ’as to be kep’ that quiet—not a sound in the ’ouse. And that’s a thing you’ll ’ave to remember, my girl—you don’t go up on Miss Rowland’s landing, not for nothing you don’t, except when you’re rung for and when you takes ’er Benger’s up at night like I told you. I don’t mind it myself, but it makes a dull ’ouse for a girl. Now how many girls d’you suppose we’ve ’ad ’ere since I come? Eight or nine a year, I reckon, and you can do the sum yourself. Most of them goes at the month, and if they don’t go of themselves they get the sack. Two month’s the limit. So now you know. Why’d you leave your last place?”

“I didn’t like it.”

“You’re not a London girl?”

“No.”

Mrs. Green pushed the jam across.

“Oh, find your tongue—come! The last girl we ’ad wasn’t ’ere only a couple of hours and she’d told me all about ’er boy friend before she run away. And it’s no use your asking me why she run, for I don’t know, nor no one else. But anyhow open your mouth a bit and let’s ’ave the story of your life, as they say.”

Kay’s lips parted. The dimple showed. Some pretty white teeth showed.

“I haven’t got a story—yet,” she said.

Mrs. Green put a fourth lump of sugar in her tea. She was a fat woman with a pale, moist skin and a great many rolling curves. Her cheeks rolled into her chin, and her chin by way of two or three subsidiary chins rolled into her neck, and so to a vast bosom, a waist which still attempted to be a waist, and monumental hips. She stirred her sweet, strong tea with a vigorous spoon.

“Well, I suppose you were born like the rest of us, and I suppose you were brought up somehow by someone or other? You’re not going to tell me you were found under a gooseberry bush, are you?”

The bright carnation colour came again.

“No,” said Kay—“it wasn’t a gooseberry bush.” Then, quickly, “I don’t really know anything about my father and mother. I don’t remember them.”

Mrs. Green finished her first cup of tea and poured herself out another, horribly black. This time she put in five lumps.

“Then ’ow were you brought up? Relations? You don’t look like a norphanage girl.”

“An aunt brought me up. I haven’t any other relations.”

“Oh, come on!” said Mrs. Green. “This isn’t a police court, for me to be asking you questions and you to be saying just as little as you can for fear of what might come out. Unless such was the case,” she added darkly and stirred her tea again.

Kay looked down at her piece of bread and jam and began to cut it into strips.

“There isn’t anything to tell,” she said. “My aunt wasn’t well off. We moved about a good deal. She taught me, and I helped in the house. I didn’t go to school. She died two years ago, and there wasn’t any money, so I went as mother’s help to the Vicar’s wife—we were in a village then.”

“Mother’s ’elp!” said Mrs. Green, in a tone of scorn. “ ’Eaven ’elp them is what I say! All ’elp and no wages—work from six in the morning till eleven at night in return for a kind ’ome! That’s about the size of it as a rule!”

“Oh no!” said Kay warmly. “They were most awfully kind to me, and they paid me ten pounds a year. They had six children and very little money, so they couldn’t pay me any more. I only left because they couldn’t afford to go on having me.”

Mrs. Green scooped up the remains of her sugar lumps and ate them out of her spoon.

“Did you go for another ’elp?”

“Yes. I only stayed a few months. They were rather like you said.”

Mrs. Green nodded.

“They mostly is.”

“So then I thought I’d try being a house-parlourmaid. I thought I could do the work, and I should get a proper day out and much more money. But I didn’t like the place I got, and now I’ve come here.”

“And ’ow did you come ’ere?” said Mrs. Green. “That’s what I want to know, my girl. That there Ivy Hodge, she come day before yesterday, and so far as anyone knew we were all fixed up. Well, she takes and runs away—banged the area door and off like a mad thing. And lunch-time yesterday Nurse comes in in ’er outdoor things and she says as cool as a cucumber, ‘There’s a new ’ouse-parlourmaid coming in, Green, and I ’ope you’ll find ’er satisfactory.’ Now that’s what I call a quick bit of work.”

Kay hesitated. Her colour rose. Then she said,

“I wanted a place, and you wanted a house-parlourmaid. That’s how it happened, Mrs. Green.”