Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

“ A shiver ran through her.
“Miss Moran is nervous,” said the doctor, with solicitude.
“I’m not!” replied Lexy sharply.
“I hope it’s not a chill,” said Captain Grey.
“I should be inclined to think it nervousness,” said Dr. Quelton. “Our landscape here is lonely and depressing, and Miss Moran has the artist’s temperament, impressionable, high-strung.”
“Not I!” declared Lexy, in a tone that startled Captain Grey. “Lonely places don’t bother me. I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Oh!” said the doctor. “But here’s Mrs. Quelton. Muriel, this is Miss Moran, the young writer of fiction.” ”

“ He went into every room, lit the gas, looked about, and found nothing. Lexy grew confused with the opening and closing of doors, the sudden flare of light in the darkness, the succession of empty rooms.
He went up into the cupola. Nothing there, nor in the servants’ rooms. Then downstairs, through the long library, the dining room, the sitting room, the kitchen, the pantry. He proceeded with a sort of merciless deliberation, opened every door, looked into every cupboard.
Finding a stable lantern in the kitchen, he lighted it and carried it with him. The door to the cellar stood open. ”

“ Seeing Lexy still frankly bewildered, Mrs. Enderby lost her patience.
“The man!” she said. “Who is the man?”
“I never heard Caroline speak of any man,” said Lexy.
She spoke firmly enough, and she was telling the truth; but she remembered that telephone call, and the memory brought a faint flush into her cheeks. Mrs. Enderby did not fail to notice it.
“Listen!” she said. “There is one thing you can do—only one thing. You can hold your tongue. Tell no one. Let no one know that Caroline is not here. You understand?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Dr. Quelton and Captain Grey were playing chess. They sat facing each other at a small table, in a haze of tobacco smoke, silent and intent, as if they had been gods deciding human destinies. Mrs. Quelton lay on her chaise longue, doing nothing at all. If Lexy spoke to her, she answered in a low tone, but cheerfully enough; but she so obviously preferred not to talk that Lexy had taken up a book and vainly attempted to read. ”

“ Lexy looked up at him. There was a smile on his heavy, pallid face, aloof and contemptuous; but she was chiefly concerned just then in trying to put into words her own firm conviction, more for her own benefit than for his. It was not reason that had brought her here to look for Caroline, it was not reason that sustained her.
“There’s something else,” she said again, with a frown. “There’s a way of knowing things without reason. It’s—I don’t know just how to put it, but it’s a thing beyond reason.” ”

“ Houseman skipped stones with skill and earnest attention, and Lexy watched the minnows flitting past through the limpid water. The sky was an unclouded blue. The sunlight came through the branches, where the leaves were scarcely unfolded, and made little golden sparkles on the hurrying current. It was all so quiet—and yet it wasn’t peaceful. The world seemed too young, too warmly and joyously alive, for peace. ”

“ Lexy, he said that even without that, without making the least change in my appearance, no one would have known me, because my mind was changed. He said there was no disguise in the world like that. Was it true, Lexy? Was I old, and—and horrible to every one?”
“No,” Lexy briefly replied.
“Then he went on. He said he had no more of the drug left, and that he’d have to dispose of me. ‘You know you’re very ill,’ he said. ‘The nurse and that young fool of a doctor agree with me. I think you’re likely to grow worse—very much worse—to-night. You’re very likely to die.’ Oh, Lexy! ”

“ Let us say, for example, that a murder is committed. The police investigate, they arrest some one. There is a trial, the jury finds that the suspect is guilty, the judge sentences him, and he is executed. Public opinion is satisfied; but as a matter of fact, nothing whatever has been solved. It is all guesswork. Not one living soul, not one member of the jury, not the judge, not the executioner, really knows that the accused man was guilty. They think so—that is all. What you call a ‘solution’ is merely a guess, based upon probabilities.”
Lexy considered this with an earnest frown. ”

“ Lexy inquired in a brisk and cheerful tone. “I like to come here!”
A curious thrill of exultation ran through her, for she saw on the doctor’s face the faintest shadow of a frown. He was perplexed! She baffled him, and he didn’t know whether she understood what had happened.
“It is a great pleasure to Mrs. Quelton and myself,” he said politely. Then he raised his eyes and looked directly at her. “Perhaps,” he went on, “you would be kind enough to spend a week here with us some time? Although I’m afraid you might find it very dull.”
“Oh, no!” Lexy assured him. ”

“ But Lexy was not thinking that Captain Grey was a fool. She was only very much afraid of being one herself, and was engaged in a severe struggle against this danger. That dread, that vague and oppressive dread, had come back, and she was fighting to throw it off. She wanted to be, she would be, her own normal, cheerful self again, living in a normal, everyday world.
“All this about his sister, and about Caroline!” she thought. “It’s really nothing—nothing serious. Our both being here in Wyngate—that’s nothing, either. It’s just a coincidence. ”

“ Lexy waited to hear no more. She slipped down the stairs as quietly as she had come up, hurried along the hall, and went into her own room again. Her knees gave way and she collapsed into a chair, staring ahead of her with the most singular expression on her face.
She was, in fact, looking at a new idea, and it was not a welcome one.
“No!” she said to herself. “It’s out of the question. It’s too dangerous. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was not a very difficult matter to touch Lexy’s heart. Whatever resentment she may have felt against Mrs. Enderby vanished now, lost in a sincere pity and respect; but she was firm in her purpose.
“I’ve got to tell one person,” she said. “If I do, I shall be able to tell you something you ought to know. I wish you could trust me! I wish you could believe that all I’m thinking of is—Caroline!”
“I do believe you,” said Mrs. Enderby. “You are very honest, and very, very young. You wish to do good, but you do harm. ”

“ Mrs. Quelton was coming down the long room, a beautiful woman, dark and delicate, with a sort of plaintive languor in her manner. She held out her hand to Lexy.
“I’m so glad you’ve come!” she said. “George has told me so much about you—the first American girl he’s known!”
She glanced at her brother with a little smile. Lexy glanced at him, too; and she was surprised and very much touched by the look on his face. He couldn’t even smile. His face was grave, pale, almost solemn, and he was regarding his sister with something like reverence.
“Oh, poor fellow!” thought Lexy. “Poor lonely fellow! ”

“ He didn’t care if the other man were killed. He’s—he’s not human, Lexy! He told me he had never in his life cared for any one except his wife. He told me what a beautiful, wonderful woman she was—and yet he had stolen her emerald when she was dying. Love! He couldn’t love any one!”
But Lexy remembered her last glimpse of Dr. Quelton, lying dead across the coffin of the woman he had robbed. Who would ever know, who was to judge now, what might have been in his warped and utterly solitary heart?
“He told me,” Caroline went on, “that he had never felt any great interest in me. ”

“ A psychologist will offer to tell you why a man has murdered his grandmother. I can’t pretend to do that, but I can give that man a tablet which will make it practically certain that he will kill his grandmother if they are left alone together for ten minutes.”
“But, I say!” protested Captain Grey.
“I can assure you that I have never made the experiment,” said Dr. Quelton, with a laugh; “but I could do it. I have learned that certain states of mind can be produced by certain drugs.”
Captain Grey turned his head, so that Lexy could see his handsome, sensitive face in profile. ”

“ If it was me, now, I wouldn’t want that gas flaring and blaring away—and burning up good money,” she added, to herself.
“You’re right,” Lexy cheerfully agreed. “We’ll turn it down.”
The rain was falling fast outside, driving against the windows when the wind blew; and inside the young people sat by the fire, very content.
“Queer thing!” said Captain Grey meditatively. “Never been in this place before—never been in this country before—and yet it’s like coming home!”
“I know that feeling,” said Lexy. “I’ve had it before. I think only people who haven’t any real homes of their own ever have it.” ”

“ She would have risen and turned up the gas, only that she was ashamed to do so. The fire was blazing merrily, shedding a ruddy light upon the homely room, the most commonplace room in the world. There was Captain Grey sitting there smoking—just an ordinary young man come to visit his sister. There was herself—just Lexy Moran, well fed and warm and comfortable, with more than a hundred dollars in a bag round her neck. She could hear Mrs. Royce moving about in the kitchen, humming to herself in a low drone. ”

“ I did so hate that horrible drug that changed her so! When I did it, it seemed right; but now—”
“It was right,” said he. “Any one’s better off dead than being drugged. Everything you’ve done was right and splendid. You’re the pluckiest girl I ever heard of—the best and most loyal little pal to poor Caroline! There’s no one like you!”
After Mrs. Enderby’s cold and skeptical smile, after Dr. Quelton’s parting sneer, after Captain Grey’s doubts and uncertainties, this speech rather went to Lexy’s head. The world seemed a different place. ”

“ I’ve been an ass, imagining all sorts of silly rot. She’s not very strong, I’m afraid, but she’s happy, and—well, you know, their life out there is lonely, of course, but there’s something about it, rather—rather charming, you know. I’d like you to see it for yourself. I was speaking about you to Muriel. She wants to know you, and I think you’d like her. Would you come out there to tea with me this afternoon?”
“Yes!” cried Lexy, with a vehemence that surprised him.
There was nothing in the world she wanted more at that moment than to see Captain Grey’s sister and to visit Dr. Quelton’s house. ”

“ Most pitifully eloquent, they seemed to her—the hat that had covered Caroline’s fair hair, the coat that had fitted her slender shoulders. Lexy looked and looked, grave and sorrowful—and in that moment her resolution was made.
“I’m going to find her!” she said, half aloud. “I don’t care what any one else does or what any one else thinks. I know she’s in trouble of some sort, and I’m going to find her!”
The last trace of what Lexy had called “mawkish self-pity” had vanished now. She was no longer concerned with Mrs. Enderby’s attitude toward herself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Her father had died some three years ago, and, instead of leaving the snug little fortune she had been taught to expect, he had left nothing at all; so that at twenty she had had her first puzzle to solve—how to keep alive without eating the bread of charity.
It was no easy matter for a girl who was still in boarding school, but she had done it. She had come to New York and had found a post as nursery governess, and later as waitress in a tea room, and then in the art department of an enormous store. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ Mr. Enderby finished his breakfast and rose, and, as usual, his wife accompanied him to the front door. Alone in the dining room, Lexy made haste to finish her own meal. Just as she pushed back her chair, Mrs. Enderby returned.
“I shall ring, Annie,” she told the parlor maid, and the girl disappeared. Then she turned to Lexy. “The letter has come,” she said.
Lexy stared at her with such an expression of amazement and dismay that Mrs. Enderby smiled.
“You are very young,” she said. “You wish always for the dramatic. When you have lived as long as I, you will see that such things do not happen.” ”