Now it certainly was not Lexy’s way to take any great interest in strange young men. There was not a trace of coquetry in her honest heart, and she had always looked upon the little flirtations of her friends with distaste and wonder.
“I’m not romantic!” she had said more than once.
She believed that. She would have denied indignantly that her present mission was romantic. She thought it a matter-of-course thing which she was in honor bound to do for her friend Caroline Enderby. She felt that she was very cool and practical about it, and a mighty sensible sort of girl altogether.
Certainly she saw the young man on the train, for her alert glance saw pretty well everything. She saw him, and she thought she had never set eyes on a handsomer man.
He was very tall, and slenderly and strongly built. He was dressed with fastidious perfection, and he had an air of marked distinction. In short, he was a man whom any one would look at—and remember; but Lexy, the unromantic girl, thought him inferior to the blue-eyed Mr. Houseman. She preferred young Houseman’s blunt, sunburned face to the dark and haughty one of this stranger. She simply was not interested in dark and haughty strangers, however distinguished and handsome. She looked at this one, and then returned to her magazines.
She had a weakness for detective stories, and she was reading one now—reading it in the proper spirit, uncritical and absorbed. Whenever the train stopped at a station, she glanced up, and more than once, as she turned her head, she caught the stranger’s eye. She wondered, later on, why she hadn’t had some sort of premonition. People in stories always did. They always recognized at once the other people who were going to be in the story with them; but Lexy did not. Even toward the end of the journey, when she and the stranger were the only ones left in the car, she was not aware of any interest in him.
Even when he, too, got out at Wyngate, Lexy was not specially interested. It was only a little after five o’clock, but it was dark already on that rainy afternoon, and the only thing that interested her just then was the sight of a solitary taxi drawn up beside the platform. Bag in hand, she hurried toward it, but the stranger got there before her. When she arrived, he was speaking to the driver.
There was no other taxi or vehicle of any sort in sight, no other lights were visible except those of the station. It was a strange and unknown world upon which she looked in the rainy dusk, and she felt a justifiable annoyance with the ungallant stranger. He jumped into the cab and slammed the door.
“Driver!” cried Lexy. “Will you please come back for me?”
But before the driver could answer, the door of the cab opened, and the stranger sprang out.
“I beg your pardon!” he said, standing hat in hand before Lexy. “I’m most awfully sorry! Give you my word I didn’t notice. I should have noticed, of course. Absent-minded sort of beggar, you know! Please take the cab, won’t you? I don’t in the least mind waiting. Please take it! Allow me!”
He tried to take her bag. His manner was not at all haughty. On the contrary, it was a very agreeable manner, and the impulsive Lexy liked him.
“Why can’t we both go?” said she.
“Oh, no!” he protested. “Please take the cab! Give you my word I don’t mind waiting.”
“It’s a dismal place to wait in,” said Lexy. “We can both go, just as well as not.”
The driver approved of Lexy’s idea. It saved him trouble.
“Where do you want to go, miss?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Lexy. “I suppose there’s a hotel, isn’t there?”
“I say!” exclaimed the stranger. “Just what I’d been asking him, you know! He says there’s no hotel, but a very decent boarding house.”
“Mis’ Royce’s,” added the driver. “She takes boarders.”
“All right!” said Lexy cheerfully. “Miss Royce’s it is!”
The stranger took her bag, and put it into the taxi. He would have assisted Lexy, but she was already inside; so he, too, got in. He closed the door, and off they went.
“I am sorry, you know,” he said, “shoving ahead like that; but I didn’t notice—”
“Well, please stop being sorry now,” requested Lexy firmly.
“Right-o!” said he. “You won’t mind my saying you’ve been wonderfully nice about it?”
“No, I don’t mind that a bit,” replied Lexy. “I like to be wonderfully nice.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Will you allow me to introduce myself?” said the stranger. “Grey, you know—George Grey—Captain Grey, you know.”
“Captain of a ship?” asked Lexy, with interest. She thought she would like to talk about ships.
“Oh, no!” said he, rather shocked. “Army—British army—stationed in India.”
“I knew you were an Englishman.”
“Did you really?” said he, as if surprised. “People do seem to know. My first visit to your country—six months’ leave—so I’ve come here to see my sister—Mrs. Quelton. She’s married to an American doctor.”
Lexy thought there was something almost pathetic in his chivalrous anxiety to explain himself.
“I’m Alexandra Moran,” she said.
“Thank you!” said Captain Grey. “Thank you very much, Miss Moran!”
There was no opportunity for further polite conversation, for the taxi had stopped and the driver came around to the door.
“Better make a run fer it!” he said. “I’ll take yer bags.”
So Captain Grey took Lexy’s arm, and they did make a run for it, through the fine, chilly rain, along a garden path and up on a veranda. The door was opened at once.
“Miss Royce?” asked Captain Grey.
“Mrs. Royce,” said the other. “Come right in. My, how it does rain!”
They followed her into a dimly lit hall. She opened a door on the right, and lit the gas in what was obviously the “best parlor”—a dreadful room, stiff and ugly, and smelling of camphor and dampness. Captain Grey remained in the hall to settle with the driver, and Lexy decided to let her share of the reckoning wait for a more auspicious occasion. She went into the parlor with Mrs. Royce.
“You and your husband just come from the city?” inquired the landlady.
“He’s not my husband,” replied Lexy, with a laugh. “I never set eyes on him before. There was only one taxi, and we were both looking for a hotel. The driver said you took boarders, and that’s how we happened to come together.”
“I don’t take boarders much, ’cept in the summer time,” said Mrs. Royce. She was a stout, comfortable sort of creature, gray-haired, and very neat in her dark dress and clean white apron. She had a kindly, good-humored face, too, but she had a landlady’s eye. “People don’t come here much, this time of year,” she went on. “Nothing to bring ’em here.”
These last words were a challenge to Lexy to explain her business, and she was prepared.
“I passed through here the other day in a motor,” she said, “on my way to Adams Corners, and I thought it looked like such a nice, quiet place for me to work in. I’m a writer, you know, and I thought Wyngate would just suit me.”
“I was born and raised out to Adams Corners,” said Mrs. Royce. “Guess there’s no one living out there that I don’t know.”
“Then perhaps you know Miss Craigie?”
“Miss Margaret Craigie? I should say I did! If you’re a friend of hers—”
“Only an acquaintance,” said Lexy cautiously.
“Set down!” suggested Mrs. Royce, very cordial now. “I’ll light a nice wood fire. A writer, are you? Well, well! And the gentleman—I wonder, now, what brings him here!”
“He told me he’d come to see his sister,” said Lexy. “Mrs. Quelton, I think he said.”
“Quelton!” cried the landlady. “You didn’t say Quelton? Not the doctor’s wife?”
“Yes,” said the captain’s voice from the doorway. “Nothing happened to her, has there? Nothing gone wrong?”
Mrs. Royce stared at him with the most profound interest, and he stared back at her, somewhat uneasily.
“No,” said she, at last. “No—only—well, I’m sure!”
There was a silence.
“Could we possibly have a little supper?” asked Lexy politely.
“Yes, indeed you can!” said Mrs. Royce. “Right away!” But still she lingered. “Mrs. Quelton’s brother!” she said. “Well, I never!”
Then she tore herself away, leaving Lexy and Captain Grey alone in the parlor.
“Seems to bother her,” he said. “I wonder why!”
Lexy was also wondering, and longing to ask questions, but she felt that it wouldn’t be good manners.
“People in small places like this are always awfully curious,” she observed.
“Yes,” said he; “and Muriel may be a bit eccentric, you know. I rather imagine she is, from her letters. I’ve never seen her.”
“Never seen your own sister!”
Lexy would certainly have asked questions now, manners or no manners, only that Mrs. Royce entered the room again, to fulfill her promise to make a “nice wood fire.” Amazing, the difference it made in the room! The ugliness and stiffness vanished in the ruddy glow. It seemed a delightful room, now, homely and welcoming and safe.
“It’s real cozy here,” said Mrs. Royce, “on a night like this. I’m sorry the dining room’s so kind of chilly.”
“Oh, can’t we have supper here, by the fire?” cried Lexy. “Please! We’ll promise not to get any crumbs on your nice carpet, Mrs. Royce!”
“I guess you can,” replied the landlady benevolently.
And so it happened that the ancient magic of fire was invoked in Lexy’s behalf. Probably, if she and Captain Grey had had their supper in the chilly dining room, they would have been a little chilly, too, and more cautious. They might not have said all that they did say.