CHAPTER XXX
Mrs. Moss, who had loved her brilliant, impulsive little stepdaughter like her own child, had given her up unwillingly. But it had been her husband's wish that Elsie should go to her uncle; the latter could give her advantages her stepmother could not afford; and she supposed it was right and natural for the girl to be with her own people, even though they had been strangers to her up to her sixteenth year.
At first her loneliness found some solace in Elsie's letters. They were short, but seemed brimming over with happiness. Mrs. Moss didn't get any dear idea of the household at Enderby, but it was apparently all that the girl desired. Then gradually the letters began to fall off, and before Christmas-time she felt a decided change in them. They had become unsatisfactory, perfunctory; the girl seemed to be slipping away from her. She began to wonder if Elsie were not concealing something, and soon after Christmas was forced to the conclusion that she was unhappy and would not acknowledge it.
She endeavored to regain the confidence that had been fully hers; she tried in her own letters to prepare the way, to make confession easy, but she received no response. In such circumstances letters are at best unsatisfactory, and it was maddening to Mrs. Moss that she was at such a distance that her warm words must grow cold in the five or six days that elapsed between the writing and the reading.
Christmas passed, and the winter, and she was unrelieved. She was busy with her teaching, but except when engrossed by that, was haunted by anxiety and apprehension. She had finally decided to go East during the long summer vacation, ill as she could afford to make the journey, to investigate for herself, when one night after school she dropped in to see a friend, and while waiting picked up a New York paper.
Some one in the house had that day returned from a journey East, and the paper was dated five days earlier. It happened to be folded with the page given over to amusements uppermost. Glancing carelessly over columns that devoted a paragraph each to an amazing number of cinema theatres, her eye suddenly caught the familiar name, Elsie Marley.
With a vision of her stepdaughter as she had sung the old rhyme, she mechanically followed the words until the word "dimples" arrested her attention. Then she read the paragraph with beating heart. She read it twice before she fully comprehended—understood that Elsie Marley had completed her sixth week at the Merry Nickel in her song-dance specialty, "And Do You Ken Elsie Marley, Honey?" Miss Marley was declared to be more popular than ever; managers were clamoring for her and she had engagements a year ahead. The notice added that despite the fact that her voice was so wonderful, her dancing and acting inimitable, some people declared that it was her dimples that wrought the spell—that she might stand dumb and motionless before the footlights if she would only smile.
Mrs. Moss's first clear sensation was indignation toward Mr. Middleton. She felt she could never forgive him for allowing this situation to come about without warning her. Then she realized that this was the key to the whole situation. She had not heard from the girl for six weeks—just the length of time she must now have been at the theatre. Excusing herself before her friend appeared, she hastened home in a tumult of emotion.
She did not know which way to turn. She couldn't bear the idea of Elsie being on the stage of a motion-picture theatre; it seemed as if it would break her heart. And still worse was the knowledge that the girl had deceived her; that she had written empty, non-committal notes calculated to make her believe she was staying quietly with her uncle, when she was all the time preparing for this. And she had always been so frank and upright, so easy to appeal to and to persuade! It seemed to Mrs. Moss that she must have come under unfortunate influence.
Her first impulse was to write to Elsie; her second, to Mr. Middleton; but she did neither. The situation was now too critical to be handled from a distance. There were only two weeks more of school. She secured accommodations on the railway for the evening of the last day of the term.
On the sixth day after, she appeared without warning at the parsonage at Enderby. A pleasant-faced woman who might be Mrs. Middleton, though she did not look like an invalid, sat on the veranda entertaining a little girl with a big baby in a perambulator. She asked at the door for Mr. Middleton and was shown into his study.
He came in directly, and the sight of his handsome, refined, strong and serene face, with a vague resemblance to Elsie's, revived her drooping spirits. Suddenly she felt that whatever he sanctioned must be right. She inquired falteringly for Elsie before she announced her name or her errand.
She learned that the girl was well, and, to her surprise, would be in presently. Then the season was over, she decided, and recollecting herself, gave her name.
He smiled. "I thought as much from the way you spoke her name," he said. "Elsie will be delighted. May I call Mrs. Middleton?"
"Just a moment, please. I felt troubled about Elsie, Mr. Middleton, and came on without writing or sending word. I'm impulsive too, like Elsie, though only her stepmother."
He had never felt that Elsie was impulsive, and as he looked up in some surprise, she wondered if he minded her comparing herself to Elsie, and so to his sister.
"Perhaps I should have sent word," she went on. "But I hesitated. I knew you didn't approve of Elsie's father marrying me."
"Oh, Mrs. Moss, if I had any such feeling, it has long since disappeared," he assured her earnestly. "From the moment I saw Elsie and realized what you have made of her, I have felt only the gratitude I am sure my sister would have felt for your devotion to her motherless child."
"Thank you," she said. "Now about Elsie——"
But she couldn't go on. A sudden wave of indignation swept over her. If he had felt kindly toward her, why hadn't he warned her?
He glanced at her with some concern. She seemed so fatigued and overwrought after the long journey that he begged her to let him call Mrs. Middleton that she might have a cup of tea and go to her room before Elsie's return. The latter had gone into town but would be back very soon, for she went into the library at four.
Mrs. Moss stared at him, and he asked if Elsie hadn't told her that she had been assistant librarian since September.
She shook her head. He wondered, and when she had again refused refreshment or rest, explained. As he did so, it came out that she knew little or nothing of Elsie's activities, and he launched into glowing descriptions. And the further he went, the more she marvelled. She couldn't understand how Elsie had become the sedate, dutiful girl he portrayed unless some great blow had fallen upon her. Then she recollected what had brought her hither.
"Elsie has been away lately?" she asked.
"Oh, no, Mrs. Moss, she only went into Boston to do some shopping."
"But she was in New York in May?"
"Why, no," he returned with some surprise. "I'm sorry to say she hasn't been away overnight since she came. But we have made up our minds she shall have a change this summer, and now that you are here, we shall surely be able to put it through. Perhaps you will go to the shore with her? Of course you will spend the summer with us? Mrs. Middleton will insist."
Mrs. Moss was too dazed to reply. Indeed, the only statement she had taken in was that Elsie had not been away since she came. For an instant she wondered if she could have mistaken. But that could not be. Surely there were no two girls in the country who would have selected that particular song and have had peculiar dimples into the bargain. On the other hand, Elsie couldn't have been in two places at once. Neither could she have been away without his knowledge. It wasn't conceivable that he——
It struck her coldly that he was not in his right mind—that this handsome, courteous gentleman was mildly insane. In spite of his fine manner and bearing, his every word had been irrational. She hazarded one last question.
"Has Elsie said anything—shown any interest in the stage?"
As she spoke, there was a curious expression on her face—it seemed to him so watchful as to be almost furtive. He began to suspect that something was wrong. She was certainly overwrought and almost hysterical—beyond anything the journey would bring about. Possibly that was the explanation of the mystery. Elsie had rarely spoken of her stepmother. Perhaps her husband's death had unbalanced her mind?
Whereupon he murmured something soothingly and courteously evasive that confirmed Mrs. Moss in her suspicion with regard to him, his mind was wandering now; he had illusions, without doubt. Quite likely Elsie was now in New York, and he constantly believed her to be in Boston for the day, coming back in time for the library. And Mrs. Moss wondered how she could get the ear of the lady on the porch.
She could see her through the window. Now she saw that she had a mass of wool, red, white, and blue, in her lap and was knitting a curious-looking article, and it came to her that perhaps she, too, was out of her mind? Perhaps this was a mental sanitarium? True, she had inquired for the parsonage. Could it be that in the cultured East that was a new euphemism for insane asylum?
But that idea was too ludicrous, and suddenly struck by the absurdity, she laughed out. Her laugh was so merry and infectious as to lay his suspicion at once, and he couldn't help joining her. And then, somehow, each understood the misapprehension of the other, and they laughed the harder.
Even as they laughed, there was a light step on the veranda outside, and some one cried Elsie in a tone of warm welcome.
Mr. Middleton had risen. "Shall I tell her who it is, or just send her in, saying that it's an old friend?" he asked in a low voice.
Her heart was beating violently. "Don't tell her who it is," she begged weakly and shrank back as he opened the door.
He closed it behind him and she waited breathlessly. She forgot everything except that she was to see Elsie. At the first sound she sprang to her feet, and as the door opened—not with Elsie's characteristic fling—she held out her arms.
"Elsie!" she cried, then started violently.
A total stranger stood before her, a pretty girl with a sweet face and long light-brown curls hanging from her neck.
"And who are you?" she cried wildly. "Am I mad or is this a lunatic asylum?"
For a moment the girl stared at her with sweet perplexed face. Was she another patient, then? thought the distressed woman.
"I am Mrs. Moss," she said in a sort of desperation. "Pray tell me who you are and where I am?"
All the pretty color left the girl's face. She stepped back and leaned against the door.
"This is the parsonage," she faltered. "I am Elsie Pritchard Marley. Your Elsie is in New York with my cousin. We exchanged."