Lexy slept late the next morning. It was nearly nine o’clock when she opened her eyes. She lay for a few minutes, looking about her. The gray light of another rainy day filled the neat, unfamiliar little room, and outside the window she could see the branches of a little pear tree rocking in the wind.
“I’m here in Wyngate,” she said to herself. “I was bent on coming here to find Caroline; and now, here I am, and how am I going to begin?”
She got up, and washed in cold water, in a queer, old-fashioned china basin painted with flowers. She brushed her shining hair, and dressed, feeling more hopeful every minute.
“One step at a time!” she thought. “The first step was to come here; and the next step—well, I’ll think of it after breakfast. Perhaps Captain Grey will have thought of something.”
But Captain Grey had gone out.
“Jest a few minutes ago,” Mrs. Royce informed her. “He was down real early—around seven, and he waited and waited for you. At half past eight he et, and off he went.”
“Did he say when he’d be back?”
“No,” said Mrs. Royce. “He didn’t say much of anything. He’s a kind of quiet young man, ain’t he? Well, he’d ought to get on with his sister, then.”
“Is she very quiet?” asked Lexy.
“Quiet!” repeated Mrs. Royce. “Set down an’ begin to eat, Miss Moran. I’ve fixed a real nice tasty breakfast for you, if I do say it as shouldn’t. Corn gems, too. Mis’ Quelton quiet? I should say she was! Quiet as”—she paused—“as the dead,” she went on, and the phrase made an unpleasant impression upon Lexy. “An’ her husband, too. I never saw the like of them. They never come into the village, an’ nobody ever goes out there to the Tower. About twice a week the doctor drives into Lymewell—the town below here—and he buys a lot of food an’ all, an’ he goes home. I can see him out of my front winder, an’ the sight of him, driving along in that black buggy of his—it gives me the shivers!”
“But if he’s a doctor—”
“Don’t ask me what kind of doctor he is, Miss Moran! He don’t go to see the sick—that’s all I know.”
“But his wife—what is she like?”
“Miss Moran,” said the landlady, with profound impressiveness, “I guess there ain’t three people in Wyngate that’s ever set eyes on her!”
“But how awfully queer!”
“You may well say ‘queer,’” said Mrs. Royce. “There she stays, out in that lonely place—never seeing a soul from one month’s end to another. She’s a young woman, too—young, an’ just as pretty as a picture.”
“Then you are—”
“I’m one of the few that has seen her,” said Mrs. Royce, with a sort of grim satisfaction. “That’s why I take a kind of special interest in her. I seen her the night the doctor brought her here to Wyngate a young bride. That’ll be three years ago this winter, but I remember it as plain as plain. There was a terrible snowstorm, and he couldn’t git out to his place, so he had to bring her here, and she sat right in this very room, just where you’re sitting.”
Instinctively Lexy looked behind her.
“I feel that same way myself—as if she was a ghost,” said Mrs. Royce solemnly. “Near three years ago, and her living only three miles off, an’ I’ve never set eyes on her again. I’ve never forgotten her, though, the sweet pretty young creature!”
“But why do you suppose she lives like that?”
Mrs. Royce came nearer.
“Miss Moran,” she said, “that doctor is crazy. I’m not the only one to say it. He’s as crazy—hush, now! Here’s that poor young man!”
The “poor young man” came into the room, with that very nice smile of his.
“Good morning!” he said. “I say, I’m sorry I didn’t wait for you a bit longer, Miss Moran.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” said Lexy. “I’d have felt awfully guilty.”
“I went out to telephone,” he explained. “Thought I’d tell Muriel I was here, you know; but they have no telephone. Dashed odd, isn’t it, for a doctor not to have a telephone in the house?”
“I don’t think he’s a real doctor—a physician, I mean,” said Lexy. She glanced around and saw that Mrs. Royce had gone. Springing up, she crossed the room to Captain Grey. “Has Mrs. Royce—has any one said anything to you?” she asked, almost in a whisper.
“No!” answered the young man, startled. “Why? What’s up?”
“Mrs. Royce says—I suppose I really ought to tell you.”
“No doubt about it!”
“Mrs. Royce says Dr. Quelton is crazy!”
Captain Grey took the news very coolly. Lexy observed that he suppressed a smile.
“Oh, that!” he said. “But you know, Miss Moran, in these little villages any one who’s at all out of the ordinary is called crazy. I’ve noticed it before. I can soon find out for myself, though, can’t I? I thought, if you didn’t want me this morning, I’d go over there—pay a call, you know. I understand it’s three miles from here, so I shouldn’t be very long. I’d come back here for lunch.”
“But, Captain Grey, you mustn’t think I expect you to—”
“It’s not that,” he said. “Only you said you’d let me help you in your little job, and I want to!” He smiled down at her. “So,” he said, “I’ll be back for lunch;” and off he went.
Lexy went to the window and looked out. She saw Captain Grey striding off up the muddy road, perfectly indifferent to the rain, and curiously elegant, in spite of his wet weather clothes. She was thinking of him with great friendliness and appreciation; but she was not thinking of him in the least as Mrs. Royce imagined she was thinking.
Mrs. Royce stood in the doorway, watching Lexy watch Captain Grey, smiling and even beaming with benevolence; but she would have been disappointed if she had suspected what was in Lexy’s head.
“He’s awfully nice,” thought Lexy, “and awfully handsome, and I’m certain that he’s absolutely trustworthy and honorable, but—”
But somehow he wasn’t to be compared to Mr. Houseman. She knew practically nothing about Mr. Houseman. She had talked with him for five or ten minutes in the park, and his conversation had been entirely about Caroline Enderby. He had shown himself to be quick-tempered and sadly lacking in patience. He had written Lexy a stiff, offended, boyish letter, and then he had disappeared. There was no sensible reason in the world why she should think of him as she did, no reason why she should hope so much to see him again; but she did.
“Well, now!” said Mrs. Royce, at last. “You’ll be wanting a nice quiet place for your writing.”
“Writing!” said Lexy. “I never—” She stopped herself just in time, remembering her shocking falsehood of the night before. “I never care much where I write,” she ended.
“Well, I’ve fixed up the sewing room for you,” said Mrs. Royce. “I’ve put a nice strong table in there with drawers, where you can keep your papers an’ all.”
“You’re a dear!” said Lexy warmly.
She said this because she thought it, and without the least calculation. She liked Mrs. Royce, and when she liked people she told them so. That was what made people love her.
Mrs. Royce was completely won.
“I’m real glad to do it for you,” she said. “I won’t bother you, neither, while you’re working. I know how it is with writing. My cousin, now—her husband was writing for the movies, an’ he was that upset if he was disturbed!”
Still conversing with great affability, Mrs. Royce led the reluctant writer upstairs to the small room prepared for her, and shut her in. Lexy sat down in a chair before the workmanlike table, and grinned ruefully. She had said she was a writer, and now she had to be one.
“Well,” she reflected, “here’s a chance to write to Mr. Houseman, anyhow.”
She never had the least difficulty in writing letters. For one reason, she never bothered about them unless she had something to say, and then she said it, briefly and lucidly, and was done. She told Mr. Houseman all she knew about Caroline’s disappearance, and explained that she had gone out to Wyngate in the hope of picking up some trace of her.
“Of course,” she wrote, “I don’t know whether I’ll still be here when you get back. If I’ve gone, I’ll leave my address with Mrs. Royce, in case you should want to communicate with me.”
This was admirable, so far; but, reading it over, Lexy was not satisfied. She remembered the misery, the trouble and anxiety, in Mr. Houseman’s blue eyes. She imagined him sailing the seas, bitterly hurt because he thought Caroline had changed her mind. She thought of him coming back and getting this letter, to revive .all his alarm for Caroline. This wasn’t, after all, a business letter. She took up her pen again, and added:
I think I can imagine how you feel about all this, and I am more sorry than I can tell you. I hope we shall meet soon.
This last phrase rather astonished her. She hadn’t meant to write just that. She picked up the letter, intending to tear it up and write another; but she thought better of it.
“No!” she said to herself. “Let it stay. It’s true; why shouldn’t I hope that we’ll meet again?”
So she addressed the letter and sealed it, and then sat looking out of the window at the rain. It was a hopeless sort of rain, faint and fine—a hopeless, melancholy world, without color or promise.
“I’d better take a walk!” thought Lexy, springing up.
Before she reached the door there was a knock, and Mrs. Royce put her head in.
“He’s here!” she whispered. “He’s asking for you.”
“Who?” cried Lexy.
“Hush! The doctor!” answered Mrs. Royce. “You could ’a’ knocked me down with a feather!”