Читать книгу The Secret Life - Elizabeth Bisland - Страница 13

I lunched with Mary R – yesterday and heard a curious story. Mrs. M – , who is ordinarily so amusing, seemed distrait and disturbed all through the meal, and when the other women had gone, Mary, who is extremely sensitive and sympathetic to the state of mind of everyone about her, led Mrs. M – , in a manner fascinating in its skilfulness, to unpack her overladen spirit.

She said: "I have been spending the morning with a friend, who is half mad with melancholia. She has had a terrible experience. She is a Philadelphia woman. Her husband was a manufacturer of window glass. He died about five years ago from typhoid fever and left her with a small fortune and two daughters; one fourteen years old, one seventeen – nice, rosy, wholesome, well brought up girls. They had always wanted to travel, but during her husband's lifetime he was too busy and she would never leave him. About a year after his death, they concluded, as the lease of their house had run out, to store their furniture and go abroad for a time, with the idea that the girls could perfect themselves in languages and music and see something of the world.

"I don't want you to think there was anything sensational about them. They were just quiet, middle-class Philadelphians, – you know the type, – modest, conventional, devoted to the proprieties. That's what makes their story all the more tragic.

"They arrived in London; took quiet lodgings in Dover Street, and concluded to spend six months in England, seeing the sights, and making these London lodgings their headquarters. They had been there all through the month of May, doing picture galleries, churches, and the museums, and occasionally a theatre. One Saturday they had tickets for a concert, and as the place was near and the day was fine, they decided to walk to the place where the concert was to be given, stopping at a shop in Regent street on the way to give an order about something being made there. I don't know what it was, or where the shop was situated, but at all events the three were walking abreast, the girls chattering and joking about the order. The sidewalk was very crowded, so that the mother stepped ahead, but heard her daughters' voices at her elbow for several minutes.

"The street grew clearer as she went, and she turned to beckon the girls alongside again. She didn't see them, and stood a few moments for them to catch up. After waiting awhile she walked back and still missed them. It occurred to her that they might have passed ahead without her noticing it, and gone on to the shop where they had planned to stop, so she went there and waited twenty minutes. Then she imagined they might have missed their way, and gone to the concert hall to wait for her. By this time she felt sufficient anxiety to hail a cab, but no one had seen them at the concert hall, and she herself had all three of the tickets, so she returned to their lodgings, sure that they would turn up there eventually in any case.

"At six o'clock they were still absent, and really frightened by this time she visited all the near-by police stations, but could get no news of them.

"That was four years ago, and from that day to this she has never seen or heard of them. She has travelled all over Europe and returned twice to America, has advertised in every possible way, and has employed the best detectives of both continents. Now she has come back for the third time, utterly broken in health and fortune. Their home in Philadelphia has become a boarding-house, and she has taken a room and will spend the rest of her life there, hoping that in that way, if they ever return, they may be able to reach her. Nearly all her money has gone in the search, and her mind is almost equally a wreck. She goes over to Philadelphia this afternoon, and I went in the morning to tell her good-by."

Mary said – her lips were white – "But, good heavens, Emily! where could the girls have gone?"

"That's the terrible part of it," Mrs. M – answered. "One can't imagine. They were both so young. It was in a foreign country: they had no money. As far as the mother knew, neither had, nor could have had, any reason for going, nor anyone a reason for taking them. If one only had gone one might suspect a lover, or a sudden aberration of mind, but there were two; it was in broad daylight. Three minutes before they had been beside her. There was no struggle, no accident. No one could have silently carried off or made way with two grown girls in Regent Street in midday. One minute they were there, laughing, happy, and commonplace, and the next minute they had vanished utterly and forever, without a word or a cry."

"But why has one never heard of it?" I said.

"Well, of course, the mother kept it out of the papers. For a long time she feared they might have been the victims of the sort of person who preys on young girls, and dreaded that there should be a scandal by which their lives should be ruined if they ever returned. To-day I think she would be glad to find them even in the lowest brothel, if she might only see them again."

"Hadn't any of the police or detectives a theory?"

"Oh, thousands at first, but they never bore any fruit. Consider all the circumstances. They were sensible, self-reliant American girls. By this time, if they were alive, they would have found some means of communicating with their mother. She has published guarded appeals, which they would understand, and always in the English language, in about every paper in this country and Europe."

"But what do you think?"

"What can one think? Can you conceive of any solution when you consider all the facts?"

"Has the mother no theory?"

"Well, she has, but then she is hardly sensible, you know, after the strain of such an experience. You've heard of the Fourth Dimension, haven't you? She says if that's not the explanation, she cannot imagine any other. She doesn't really believe it, I think, but she says if they did not stumble into it, where are they? And what answer can one give her?"

By this time it was late, and I came away. Outside the sun was shining and the trolley cars buzzing by. The theory of the Fourth Dimension seemed absurd, but I wondered where those poor young girls could have gone, and felt an oppression in my breathing.