Part 52

Mrs. Enderby had advertised for a secretary, and Lexy had answered the advertisement. Mrs. Enderby had wanted personal references, and Lexy had supplied them, some five or six, of the highest quality. Mrs. Enderby had investigated them with remarkable thoroughness, and had asked Lexy many questions. Indeed, it had taken ten days to satisfy her that Miss Moran was a fit person to come into her house, and Lexy had lived under her roof and under her eagle eye for a month before she was allowed to be alone with Caroline. After that first month, however, Mrs. Enderby had made up her mind that Lexy was to be trusted, and the thin pretext of “secretary” was dropped.

Mrs. Enderby suffered from a not uncommon form of insomnia. She could not sleep at convenient hours--at night, for instance--but could and did sleep at very inconvenient hours during the day; and what she wanted was not a secretary, but a companion for her daughter during these hours.

She realized, too, that even the most strictly brought up _jeune fille_ needed some sort of youthful society, and in Lexy she had found pretty well what she wanted--a well mannered, well bred young woman of unimpeachable honesty. So she had permitted Lexy and Caroline to go shopping alone, and sometimes to a matinée or to a tea room. She asked them shrewd questions when they came home, and their answers satisfied her perfectly. They had never even spoken to a man!

“And yet,” thought Miss Moran, “somehow Caroline has been carrying on with some one, without even me finding out! I didn’t know she had it in her!”

Lexy yawned mightily. She was growing very sleepy, but not for worlds would she go to bed until she had seen Caroline. She lay down on the divan, her hands clasped under her head, and let all sorts of little idle thoughts drift through her mind. Now and then a taxi went by, but this street in the East Sixties was a very quiet one. The house was so very still, and there was nothing in her own young heart to trouble her. Her eyes closed.

She was half asleep when the sound of Mrs. Enderby’s voice in the hall brought her to her feet. It was a penetrating voice, with a trace of foreign accent, and it was not a voice that Lexy loved. She went out of the library into the hall.

“Did you enjoy--” she began politely, and then stopped short. “But where’s Caroline?” she cried.

“Caroline? But at home, of course,” answered Mrs. Enderby.

“At home? Here?”

“But certainly! She had a headache. At the last moment she decided not to go with us. You were not here when we left, Miss Moran.”

“I know,” murmured Lexy. “I had just run out to the drug store; but--”

“She went directly to bed,” Mrs. Enderby continued. “I thought, however, that she would have sent for you during the course of the evening.”

“Oh, I see!” said Lexy casually.

At heart, however, she was curiously uneasy. Mr. Enderby stopped for a moment, to give her some kindly information about the opera they had heard. Then he and his wife ascended the stairs, followed by Lexy; and with every step her uneasiness grew. She was sure that Caroline would have sent for her if she had been in the house.

Mrs. Enderby paused outside her child’s door.

“The light is out,” she said. “She will be asleep. I shall not disturb her. Good night, Miss Moran!”

“Good night, Mrs. Enderby!” Lexy answered, and went into her own room.

She gave Mrs. Enderby twenty minutes to get safely stowed away; then she went out quietly into the hall, to Caroline’s room. She knocked softly; there was no answer. She turned the handle and went in; the room was dark and very still. She switched on the light.

It was as she had expected--the room was empty. Caroline was not there.

II

Lexy’s first impulse was to close the door of that empty room, and to hold her tongue. It seemed to her that it would be treachery to Caroline to tell Mrs. Enderby. She and Caroline were both young, both of the same generation; they ought to stand loyally together against the tyrannical older people.

“Because, golly, what a row there’d be if Mrs. Enderby ever knew she’d gone out!” Lexy thought.

That was how she saw it, at first. Caroline had pretended to have a headache so that she would be left behind, and would get a chance to slip out alone. It was simply a lark. Lexy had known such things to happen often before, at boarding school; and the unthinkable and impossible thing was for one girl to tell on another.

“She’ll be back soon,” thought Lexy, “and she’ll tell me all about it.”

So she went into Caroline’s room, to wait. It was a charming room, pink and white, like Caroline herself. Lexy turned on the switch, and two rose-shaded lamps blossomed out like flowers. She sat down on a _chaise longue_, and stretched herself out, yawning. On the desk before her was Caroline’s writing apparatus, a quill pen of old rose, an ivory desk set, everything so dainty and orderly; only poor Caroline had no friends, and never had letters to write or to answer.

“I wonder who on earth that was on the telephone,” Lexy reflected. “It _was_ queer--just on the only night of her life when she’d ever gone out on her own. And he sounded so terribly upset! It _was_ queer. Perhaps--”

She was aware of a fast-growing oppression. The influence of Caroline’s room was beginning to tell upon her. Caroline didn’t understand about larks. She wasn’t that sort of girl. Quiet, shy, and patient, she had never shown any trace of resentment against her restricted life, or any desire for the good times that other girls of her age enjoyed. The more Lexy thought about it, the more clearly she realized the strangeness of all this, and the more uneasy she became.

When the little Dresden clock on the mantelpiece struck one, it came as a shock. Lexy sprang to her feet and looked about the room, filled with unreasoning fear. One o’clock, and Caroline hadn’t come back! Suppose--suppose she never came back?

Lexy dismissed that idea with healthy scorn. Things like that didn’t happen; and yet--what was it that gave to the pink and white lamplit room such an air of being deserted?

“Why, the photographs are gone!” she cried.

She noticed now for the first time that the photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Enderby in silver frames, which had always stood on the writing desk, were not standing there now.

She turned to the bureau. Caroline’s silver toilet set was not there. She made a rapid survey of the room, and she made sure of her suspicions. Caroline had gone deliberately, taking with her all the things she would need on a short trip.

“I’ve got to tell Mrs. Enderby now,” she thought. “It’s only fair.”

She went out into the corridor, closing the door behind her, and turned toward Mrs. Enderby’s room. She was very, very reluctant, for she dreaded to break the peace of the quiet house by this dramatic announcement. She hated anything in the nature of the sensational. Level-headed, cool, practical, her instinct was to make light of all this, to insist that nothing was really wrong. Caroline had gone, and that was that.

“There’s going to be such a fuss!” she thought. “If there’s anything I loathe, it’s a fuss.”

And all the time, under her cool and sensible exterior, she was frightened. She felt that after all she was very young, and very inexperienced, in a world where things--anything--things beyond her knowledge--might happen.

She knocked upon the door lightly--so lightly that no one heard her; and she had to knock again. This time Mrs. Enderby opened the door.

“Well?” she asked, not very amiably.

“I thought I ought to tell you--” Lexy began; and still she hesitated, moved by the unaccountable feeling that this might be treachery to Caroline.

“Tell me what?” asked Mrs. Enderby. “Come, if you please, Miss Moran! Tell me at once!”

“Caroline’s gone.”

The words were spoken. Lexy waited in great alarm, wondering if Mrs. Enderby would faint or scream.

The lady did neither. She came out into the corridor, shutting the door of her room behind her, and her first word and her only word was:

“Hush!”

Then she glanced about her at the closed doors, and, taking Lexy’s arm in a firm grip, hurried her to Caroline’s room. Not until they were shut in there did she speak again.

“Now tell me!” she said. “Speak very low. You said--Caroline has gone?”

“Yes,” said Lexy. “I came in here after you’d gone to bed, and--you can see for yourself--the bed hasn’t been slept in. She’s taken her things--her brush and comb and--”

“And she told you--what?”

“Me? Why, nothing!” answered Lexy, in surprise. “I didn’t see her. I haven’t seen her since dinner.”

“But you know,” said Mrs. Enderby. “You know where she has gone.”

She spoke with cool certainty, and her black eyes were fixed upon Lexy with a far from pleasant expression.

Lexy looked back at her with equal steadiness.

“Mrs. Enderby,” she said, “I _don’t_ know.”

Mrs. Enderby shrugged her shoulders.

“Very well!” she said. “You do not know exactly where she has gone. _Bien, alors!_ You guess, eh?”

“No,” answered Lexy, bewildered. “I don’t. I can’t.”

“She has spoken to you of some--friend?”

Seeing Lexy still frankly bewildered, Mrs. Enderby lost her patience.

“The man!” she said. “Who is the man?”

“I never heard Caroline speak of any man,” said Lexy.

She spoke firmly enough, and she was telling the truth; but she remembered that telephone call, and the memory brought a faint flush into her cheeks. Mrs. Enderby did not fail to notice it.

“Listen!” she said. “There is one thing you can do--only one thing. You can hold your tongue. Tell no one. Let no one know that Caroline is not here. You understand?”

“But aren’t you going to--”

“I am going to do nothing. You understand--nothing. There is to be no scandal in my house.”

“But, Mrs. Enderby!”

“Hush! No one must know of this. To-morrow morning I shall have a letter from Caroline.”

“Oh!” said Lexy, with a sigh of genuine relief. “Oh, then you know where she’s gone!”

“I?” replied Mrs. Enderby. “I know nothing. This has come to me from a clear sky. I have always tried to safeguard my child. I--”

She paused for a moment, and for the first time Lexy pitied her.

“It is the American blood in her,” Mrs. Enderby went on. “No French girl would treat her parents so; but in this country--She has gone with some fortune hunter. To-morrow I shall have a letter that she is married. ‘Please forgive me, _chère Maman_,’ she will say. ‘I am so happy. I, at nineteen, and of an ignorance the most complete, have made my choice without you.’ That is the American way, is it not? That is your ‘romance,’ eh? My one child--”

Her voice broke.

“No more!” she said. “It is finished. But--attend, Miss Moran! There must be no scandal. No one is to know that she is not here.”

She turned and walked out of the room. Lexy sank into a chair.

“I don’t care!” she said to herself. “She’s wrong--I know it! It’s not what she thinks. Caroline’s not like that. Something dreadful has happened!”

III

It seemed perfectly natural to be awakened in the morning by Mrs. Enderby’s hand on her shoulder, and to look up into Mrs. Enderby’s flashing black eyes. Lexy had gone to sleep dominated by the thought of that masterful woman. She vaguely remembered having dreamed of her, and when she opened her eyes--there she was.

“Get up!” said Mrs. Enderby in a low voice. “Go into Caroline’s room. When Annie comes with the breakfast tray, take it from her at the door. I have told her that Caroline is ill with a headache. You understand?”

“Yes, Mrs. Enderby,” answered Lexy.

She sprang out of bed and began to dress, filled with an unreasoning sense of haste. It wasn’t a dream, then--it was true. Caroline had gone, and there was something Lexy must do for her. She could not have explained what this something was, but it oppressed and worried her. She could not rid herself of the feeling that she was not being loyal to Caroline.

“And yet,” she thought, “I had to tell Mrs. Enderby she wasn’t there. I suppose I ought to have told her about that telephone call, too, but I hate to do it! I know Caroline wouldn’t like me to; and what good can it do, anyhow? Whoever it was, he didn’t know where she was. It was the queerest thing--a man asking, ‘For God’s sake, where’s Miss Enderby?’ when she wasn’t here! No, Mrs. Enderby is wrong. Caroline hasn’t just gone away of her own accord. She’s not that sort of girl. Something has happened!”

Lexy finished dressing and went into Caroline’s room. In the gay April sunshine, that dainty room seemed almost unbearably forlorn.

She went over to the window and looked down into the street. People were passing by, and taxis, and private cars--all the ordinary, casual, cheerful daily life at which Caroline Enderby had so often looked out, like a poor enchanted princess in a tower. A wave of pity and affection rose in Lexy’s heart.

“Oh, poor Caroline!” she said to herself. “Such a dull, miserable life! I do wish--”

There was a knock at the door, and she hurried across the room to open it. The parlor maid stood there with a tray. Lexy took it from her with a pleasant “good morning,” and closed the door again. Caroline’s breakfast! There was something disturbing in the sight of that carefully prepared tray, ready for the girl who was not there.

The door opened--without a preliminary knock, this time--and Mrs. Enderby came in. She turned the key behind her, and, without a word, went over to the bed and pulled off the covers. Then she went into the adjoining bathroom and started the water running in the tub. This done, she sat down at the table and began to eat the breakfast on the tray.

Lexy stood watching all this with indignation and a sort of horror.

“All she cares about is keeping up appearances,” the girl thought. “The only thing that worries her is that some one might find out. She doesn’t know where poor Caroline is--and she can sit down and eat! I’m comparatively a stranger, and even I--”

Lexy was an honest soul, however. The fragrance of coffee and rolls reached her, and she admitted in her heart that she, too, could eat, if she had a chance.

Mrs. Enderby was not going to give her a chance just yet. She finished her meal and rose.

“Now!” she said. “Just what is gone from here? We shall look.”

So they looked, in the wardrobe, in the drawers, even in the orderly desk. Very little was gone.

“And now,” said Mrs. Enderby, “you lent her--how much money, Miss Moran?”

“I never lent her a penny in my life,” replied Lexy.

Mrs. Enderby’s tone aroused a spirit of obstinate defiance in her. Those flashing black eyes were fixed upon her with an expression which did not please Lexy, and Lexy looked back with an expression which did not please Mrs. Enderby.

“So you will not tell me what you know!” said Mrs. Enderby, with a chilly smile.

It was on the tip of Lexy’s tongue to say, with considerable warmth, that she _had_ told all she knew; but the memory of the telephone call checked her.

“If I tell her about that,” she thought, “she’ll just say, ‘Ah, I thought so!’ And she’ll be surer than ever that Caroline has eloped with a fortune hunter, and she won’t make any effort to find her. No--I’m not going to tell her until she gets really frightened.” Aloud she said: “I’ll do anything in the world that I can do, Mrs. Enderby, to help you find Caroline.”

“It is not necessary,” said Mrs. Enderby. “I shall have her letter.”

There was another tap at the door. Mrs. Enderby closed the door leading into the bathroom, and then called:

“Come in!”

The parlor maid entered.

“You may take away the tray,” her mistress said graciously. “Miss Enderby has finished.”

Again a feeling that was almost horror came over Lexy. There was the bed Caroline had slept in, there was the breakfast Caroline had eaten, there was Caroline’s bath running--and Caroline wasn’t there! Lexy wanted to get out of that room and away from Mrs. Enderby.

“Do you mind if I go down and get my own breakfast now?” she asked, when the parlor maid had gone out with the tray.

“But certainly not!” Mrs. Enderby blandly consented. “We shall go down together.”

She turned off the water in the bath, and, following Lexy out of the room, locked the door on the outside. The girl dropped behind her as they descended the stairs, and studied the stout, dignified figure before her with indignant interest.

“A mother!” she thought. “A mother, behaving like this! How long is she going to wait for her letter, I wonder? Well, if she won’t do anything, then, by jiminy, I will!”

A fresh example of Mrs. Enderby’s remarkable strength of mind awaited them. Mr. Enderby was already seated at the table in the dining room. As his wife entered, he rose, with his invariable politeness, and one glance at his ruddy, cheerful face convinced Lexy that he knew nothing of what had happened.

“Caroline has a headache,” Mrs. Enderby explained. “It will be better for her to rest for a little.”

“Ah! Too bad!” said he. “Don’t think she gets out in the air enough. Er--good morning, Miss Moran!”

Lexy almost forgot to answer him, so intent was she upon watching Mrs. Enderby open her letters. There must, she thought, be some change in that calm, pale face when she didn’t find a letter from Caroline, there must be something to break this inhuman tranquillity.

But nothing broke it. Mr. Enderby ate his breakfast, and his wife chatted affably with him while she glanced over her mail. The sunshine poured into the room, gleaming on silver and linen, and on the cheerful young parlor maid moving quietly about her duties. It was a morning just like other mornings; and, in spite of herself, Lexy’s feeling of dread and oppression began to lighten. Mr. Enderby was so thoroughly unperturbed, Mrs. Enderby was so serene and majestic, the house was so bright and pleasant in the spring morning, that it was hard to believe that anything could be really amiss.

“But I don’t care!” she thought sturdily. “_I_ know there is!”

Mr. Enderby finished his breakfast and rose, and, as usual, his wife accompanied him to the front door. Alone in the dining room, Lexy made haste to finish her own meal. Just as she pushed back her chair, Mrs. Enderby returned.

“I shall ring, Annie,” she told the parlor maid, and the girl disappeared. Then she turned to Lexy. “The letter has come,” she said.

Lexy stared at her with such an expression of amazement and dismay that Mrs. Enderby smiled.

“You are very young,” she said. “You wish always for the dramatic. When you have lived as long as I, you will see that such things do not happen.”

She spoke kindly, and Lexy saw in her dark eyes a look of weariness and pain.

“No, my child,” she went on. “In this life it is always the same things that happen again and again. At twenty, one breaks the heart for a man; at forty, one breaks the heart for one’s child. There is only that--and money. Love and money--nothing else!”

Lexy felt extraordinarily sorry for Mrs. Enderby; but even yet she couldn’t quite believe that Caroline could have done such a thing.

“But do you mean that she’s really--that she’s--” she began.

“See, then!” said Mrs. Enderby. “Here is the letter!”

Lexy took it from her, and read:

CHERE MAMAN:

I only beg you and papa to forgive me for what I have done; but I knew that if I told you, you would not have let me go. When you get this I shall be married. To-morrow I shall write again, to tell you where I am, and to beg you to let me bring my husband to you.

Oh, please, dear, dear mother and father, forgive me!

Your loving, loving daughter, CAROLINE.

“You see!” said Mrs. Enderby. “It is as I told you.”

There were tears in Lexy’s eyes as she put the letter back into the envelope.

“It doesn’t seem a bit like Caroline, though,” she remarked.

Mrs. Enderby smiled again, faintly, and held out her hand for the letter. Lexy returned it to her, with an almost mechanical glance at the postmark--“Wyngate, Connecticut.”

All her defiance had vanished. She was obliged to admit now that Mrs. Enderby was wise, and that she herself was--

“A little fool!” said Lexy candidly to herself.

IV

“Do you mind if I go out for a walk?” asked the crestfallen Lexy; for that was her instinct in any sort of trouble--to get out into the fresh air and walk.

“No,” answered Mrs. Enderby; “but I shall ask you to return in half an hour. There is much to be done.”

“Done!” cried Lexy. “But what can be done--now?”

“That I shall tell you when you return,” said Mrs. Enderby. “In the meantime, I trust you to say nothing of all this to any person whatever. You understand, Miss Moran?”

Miss Moran certainly did not understand, but she gave her promise to keep silent, and, putting on her hat and coat, hurried out of the house. Mighty glad she was to get out, too!

“But why make a mystery of it like this?” she thought. “Every one has to know, sooner or later, and it’s so--so ghastly, pretending that Caroline’s there! Oh, it doesn’t seem possible, Caroline running off like that, and I never even dreaming she was the least bit interested in any man! I don’t see how she could have seen any one or written to any one without my knowing it. It doesn’t seem possible!”

She had reached the corner of Fifth Avenue, and was waiting for a halt in the traffic, when she became aware of a young man who was standing near her and staring at her. She glanced carelessly at him, and he took off his hat, but he got no acknowledgment of his salute. He was a stranger, and she meant him to remain a stranger. The bright-haired, sturdy little Lexy was a very pretty girl, and she was not unaccustomed to strange young men who stared. She knew how to handle them.

As she crossed the avenue, he crossed, too. When she entered the park, he followed. Now Lexy was never tolerant of this sort of thing, and to-day, in her anxiety and distress, she was less so than ever. She turned her head and looked the young man squarely in the face with a scornful and frigid look; and he took off his hat again!

“Just you say one word,” said she to herself, “and I’ll call a policeman!”

Yet, as she walked briskly on, something in the man’s expression haunted her. He didn’t look like that sort of man. His sunburned face somehow seemed to her a very honest one, and the expression on it was not at all flirtatious, but terribly troubled and unhappy.