XXV
After all, Lexy’s search for Charles Houseman was neither difficult nor heroic, except in intention. She found him in the Lymewell Hospital. Joe told her where he was, and Joe took her there.
Houseman himself was rigidly determined not to be heroic. He had refused to go to bed, and Lexy found him in a bare, whitewashed waiting room, where he sat on a bench.
“Just came in to get the hand dressed,” he said. “I’ll go back with you now.”
The doctor advised him not to, but Charles was not very susceptible to advice. He wished to be entirely casual and matter-of-fact, and Lexy tried to humor him. They stood together in the hall of the hospital while a nurse went to get him a bottle of lotion from the dispensary, and he talked in what he intended to be an offhand manner; but Lexy could see that he was in pain, and almost exhausted, and his hair was all on end.
Somehow, that was the thing she couldn’t bear—that his hair should be so ruffled. She could respect his determination to ignore the throbbing anguish of his hand, she would, if he liked, pretend that there was nothing at all tragic or unusual in the night’s adventure; but his hair—
The nurse returned with the bottle, gave him directions for its use, and told him sternly that he must come back the next morning for a dressing.
“All right!” he said impatiently. “Come on, Lexy!”
They got into Joe’s cab together, and off they went.
“What happened to your hand?” inquired Lexy, as if it didn’t much matter.
“Knife through it,” he answered. “You see, I held the old fellow, to give Mrs. Quelton a chance to get away. When I thought it was all right, I gave him a shove backward, and started to climb over the balcony; and he jabbed a knife through my hand. That’s what kept me so long—I couldn’t get it out; and after I did, I—rested for a while. Then I started for Wyngate, and I met Joe coming back to look for me. He said he’d landed Mrs. Quelton all right. So that’s all!”
Lexy was silent for a moment.
“Of course you didn’t know it wasn’t Mrs. Quelton,” she said. “It was Caroline all the time.”
“Caroline?” he cried. “What do you mean? It couldn’t have been Caroline!”
Lexy gave him a very brief, very bare account of Caroline’s narrative.
“Oh!” he said, when she had done; and again there was silence for a time. “Does she still want to go on with the thing—marrying me, I mean?” he asked finally, in a queer, flat tone.
“No,” said Lexy pleasantly. “No—she does not.”
“Oh!” he said again, with undisguised relief. “Well, then—it’s all right, then!”
“You don’t seem to be much surprised,” said Lexy. “Don’t you think it’s the most extraordinary story you ever heard?”
“Well, you see—I’m a bit tired,” he explained. “I haven’t grasped it all yet; only, if she doesn’t want to marry me now, Lexy, dear, will you?”
At last Lexy could do what she had longed to do for the last half hour—she could stroke down his ruffled hair.
And this, as far as they were concerned, was the last act and the fitting climax of the play. They were ready now for the curtain to rise upon another play; but there were other people not so young, or not so sturdy, for whom the first drama was not so readily dismissed.
There was Captain Grey, who was never to see his sister now, never to know if she had really wanted him and needed him. He did not soon forget what had happened at the Tower.
Mrs. Enderby was sent for, and arrived that morning before sunrise, with her husband. She listened to Caroline’s strange story, and made what she could of it. She had not one word of reproach for her daughter.
“We shall not cry over the spilled milk,” she said. “Let us see what is to be done, before the police come.” She had a thoroughly European point of view about the police. “If we are fortunate enough to find an officer with discretion,” she added, “even yet a scandal may be averted.[Pg 367]”
For that was still her passionate resolve—that there should be no scandal. She thought and planned with desperate energy; she directed every one as to the part he or she should play; and in the end she succeeded. Nobody knew that Caroline had disappeared, and nobody ever would know. Nobody knew that the so-called Mrs. Quelton was Caroline, and that, too, would never be known. Only let Joe and Mrs. Royce be persuaded to hold their tongues; as for Lexy, Captain Grey, and Houseman, she could of course rely upon them.
So the police were, as they say, baffled. Mr. Houseman told them a tale. He had been alarmed about the lady whom he knew as Mrs. Quelton, and he had climbed up on the balcony, hoping to see her alone; but he had met Dr. Quelton instead, and had been hurt in trying to escape from him.
Captain Grey also had a tale. He, too, had been alarmed about the lady whom he believed to be his sister. He had gone with Miss Moran to call upon her, and they had found the doctor dead, lying across the coffin.
There was an inquest, and Mr. Houseman had a very unpleasant time of it, being the last one who had seen the doctor alive; but there was no really serious suspicion against him. The post-mortem showed that the doctor had died of some unknown poison, at least half an hour after the young man had arrived at the hospital. The verdict was suicide, although the coroner’s jury had its own opinion about the mysterious dark woman who had posed as the doctor’s wife. An autopsy revealed that Mrs. Quelton had died from a natural cause—phthisis of the lungs. In short, as far as could be discovered, there was no murder at all.
This was a disappointment to the public, but there was always the mysterious dark woman. The police instituted a search for her, and there was much about her in the newspapers, but she was never found.
Miss Enderby returned to the city from her visit to Miss Craigie, and friends of the family were interested to learn that while away she had met such a nice young man—a Captain Grey, from India. He had to return to his regiment, but, before he went, Caroline’s engagement to him was announced. Later he was to retire from the army and come back to live in New York.
There was another item of news, of minor importance. That pretty little secretary of Mrs. Enderby’s got married, and the Enderbys were wonderfully kind about it—surprisingly so. It didn’t seem at all like Mrs. Enderby to let the girl be married from her own house, and to give her a smart little car for a wedding present. What is more, Mr. Enderby found a very good position in his office for the young man.
“My dear Sophie,” said one of Mrs. Enderby’s old friends, with the peculiar candor of an old friend, “I’ve never known you to do so much for any one before!”
Mrs. Enderby was standing on the top doorstep of her house, looking after the car in which Lexy and her Charles had driven off for their honeymoon, with Joe, of Wyngate, as their chauffeur.
“So much for her?” she said. “It’s not enough—not half enough!”
And there were actually tears in her eyes as she went back into the house where Caroline was.
THE END[Pg 368]
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
MARCH, 1926
Vol. LXXXVII NUMBER 2
Dogs Always Know
INTO THIS DIGNIFIED LOVE STORY HUGE CAPTAIN MacGREGOR BARGES WITH A GRAND CARGO OF HUMOR TO MATCH LITTLE LEROY’S DRAMATIC DOG
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
THE lovely little Miss Selby came from Boston, and the large and not unhandsome Mr. Anderson came from New York, and they did not like each other.
Indeed, Miss Selby was not very fond, just then, of any one who did not come from Boston. Sometimes she even went so far as to declare to herself that she did not like any one at all except the members of one certain household in Boston.
It was at night, after she had gone to bed, that she usually made this somewhat narrow-minded declaration, because it was at that time, when she was lying in the dark, that she would most vividly imagine that especial household. Her mother, her grandmother, and her two aunts; they were the kindest, wittiest, most delightful, lovable people who ever breathed, and she compared all other persons with them. And, so compared, Mr. Anderson came out very badly.
As for Mr. Anderson, the reason he did not like Miss Selby was because she obviously did not like him. He was a little sensitive about being liked.
He almost always had been, in the past, and when he saw Miss Selby’s eyes resting on him, with that look which meant that she was mentally comparing him with her mother, her grandmother, and her two aunts, he felt chilled to the bone. Not that he looked chilled; on the contrary, his face grew red, and he fancied that his neck, his ears, and his hands did also.
He justly resented this. It was not his fault that he was sitting at her table. It wasn’t her table, anyhow; purely by luck had she sat alone at it so long. It was the only place left in the dining room, and the landlady told him to sit there.
As he pulled out his chair he said, “Good evening,” with a friendly and unsuspicious smile, and Miss Selby glanced up at him as if she were surprised to hear a human voice issuing from this creature, and bent her head in something probably intended to be a nod.
Naturally, he did not speak again. But, as he sat facing her, and with his back to the room, he could not help his eyes resting upon her from time to time, and it was then that he had encountered that chilly look.
It was very pitiful, he thought, to see one as young as she behaving in such a way—really pitiful. Because she was not unattractive; even a casual glance had informed him of that.
Dark-browed, she was, and dark-eyed; but with hair that was bright and soft and almost blond, and a lovely rose color in her cheeks; the sort of girl a man would admire, if there had been the true womanly gentleness in her aspect. But after that look, it was impossible to admire; he could only pity.
Strange as it may seem, Miss Selby pitied him, and for a somewhat illogical reason. She saw pathos in the man because he was so large—so much too large. His great shoulders towered above the table; knives and forks looked like toys in his lean, brown hands, and his face was invisible, unless she raised her eyes, which she did not intend to do again.
She had seen him, though, as he crossed the room, and she might have thought him not bad looking, if he had not come to sit at her table. It was an honest and alert young face, healthily tanned, with warm, gray eyes, and a crest of wheat-colored hair above his forehead. But when he did sit[Pg 370] down at her table, she immediately began her usual comparisons.
She imagined this young man in that sitting room in Boston, and she saw clearly how much too large he was. It was a small room, and her mother and her grandmother and her two aunts were all of a nice, neat, polite size.
“Like a bull in a china shop,” she thought, imagining him among them.
This was unjust. It is never fair to judge bulls by their possible behavior in china shops, anyhow; they seldom go into them, and when seen in the fields, or in bullfights, and so on, they are really noble animals.
But that is what she did think, and as soon as she could finish her dinner, she arose, with another of those almost imperceptible nods, and went away. She went up to her own room, and began to study shorthand.
She did this every evening, with great earnestness, for she was very anxious to get a better position than the one she now had, and she was so far advanced in her study that she could write absolutely anything in shorthand—if you gave her time enough. She could often read what she had written, too.
As for Mr. Anderson, he also went up to his room, but not to study. He had had all he wanted of that at college. Nor did he need to worry about a better position.
The one he had was good, and he was confident that he would have a better one next year, and a still better one the year after that, and so on and on, until he was one of the leading paper manufacturers in the country—if not the leading one. He had just been made assistant superintendent of a paper mill in this little town, and he had come out in the most hopeful and cheerful humor.
The hope and cheer had fled, now. He felt profoundly dejected. He had no friends here, and if other people were like that girl, he never would have any. For all he knew, there might be something repellent in his manner, which his old friends had kindly overlooked.
He began to think sorrowfully of those old friends, of the little flat he had had in New York with two other fellows—such nice fellows—such a nice flat. When you looked out of the window there you saw a façade of other windows, with shaded lamps in them, and the shadows of people passing back and forth, and down below in the street more people, and taxis, and big, quiet, smooth-running private cars, and all the familiar city sounds. And here, outside this window, there were trees—nothing but trees.
He had heard, often enough, about the loneliness of country dwellers when in a great city, but he felt that it was not to be compared with the loneliness of a city dweller among trees. He got up and went to the window, and he couldn’t even see a human creature, only those sentinel trees, moving a little against the pale and cloudy sky.
It was a May night, and the air that blew on his face was May air, a wonderful thing, filled with tender and exquisite perfumes, so cool and sweet that he grew suddenly sick of his tobacco-scented room, and decided to go out on the veranda.
What happened was a coincidence, but it would surely have happened, sooner or later. He met Miss Selby. As soon as he had stepped outside, she opened the door and came out, too.
There was an electric light in the ceiling of this veranda, which gave it a singularly cheerless appearance, rather like the deck of a deserted ship, with the chairs all drawn up along the wall. There was nobody else there, and Mr. Anderson stood directly under the light, so that she could see him very plainly.
She said: “Oh!” and drew back hastily, putting her hand on the doorknob.
This was a little too much!
“Look here!” said Mr. Anderson crisply. “Don’t go in on my account. I’ll go, myself.”
Now, Miss Selby was not really haughty or disagreeable. Simply, she had been brought up on all sorts of Red Riding-hood tales, in which all the trouble was caused by giving encouragement to strangers.
She had been taught that it was a mad, reckless thing to acknowledge the existence of persons whose grandparents had not been known, and favorably known, to her grandparents. But certainly she had no desire to offend any one, and this stranger did seem to be offended. So she said:
“Oh, no! You mustn’t think of such a thing!”
She meant it kindly, but unfortunately she was utterly unable to speak in a natural way to a stranger. In reality she was a poor, homesick, affectionate, kind-hearted young girl of twenty, who, not fifteen min[Pg 371]utes before, had been weeping from sheer loneliness.
But she spoke in what seemed to him an obnoxiously condescending and superior tone. He was a young man of many excellent qualities, but meekness was not one of them, and he resented this tone.
So he spoke with an air of amused indulgence, as if he thought her such a funny little thing:
“I don’t want to drive you away, you know.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Why, of course not!” she said, just as much amused as he was, and sat down in one of the chairs against the wall.
She sat there, and he stood opposite her, leaning against the railing, both of them silently not liking each other. Presently the silence became unbearable.
“The spring has come early this year,” observed Miss Selby.
Mr. Anderson, the city dweller, knew precious little about what was expected of spring, but he was determined to say something, anything.
“Yes,” he agreed. “They were selling violets in the streets yesterday.”
Miss Selby looked at him with a sort of horror. Was that his idea of spring—violets being sold on street corners?
“But that doesn’t mean anything!” she cried. “They were probably hothouse violets, anyway. You can’t possibly see the real spring unless you go in the woods.”
She needn’t think she owned the spring. Every year of his life he had spent several weeks in the country at various hotels. He had seen any number of woods, had walked in them, and admired them, too, with moderation, however.
“Yes, I know,” he admitted. “Last June I motored up through Connecticut—”
“Oh, but that’s different!” she explained. “Motoring—that’s not the same thing at all! There’s a little wood near here—I go there almost every Sunday—I wish you could see it!”
“I’d like to,” he replied, without realizing the step implied.
They were both dismayed by what had happened. Miss Selby arose hastily.
“Well—good night!” she said, and fled upstairs to her room in a panic.
“Heavens!” she thought. “Did he think I wanted him to come with me to-morrow? Oh, dear! How—how awfully awkward! Oh, I do hope it will rain!”
Mr. Anderson, left by himself, lit his pipe.
“After that,” he mused, “of course I’ll have to ask her to let me go with her to-morrow. That’s only common courtesy.”
Very well, he was willing to make the sacrifice.