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!”