Afterwards Part 39

"Yes, that is quite possible. The question is, How are we going to bring it home to her? At present we have no clue beyond the specialist's opinion that the writer is a foreigner."

"No, and it's going to be a hard nut to crack," said Anstice thoughtfully. "But it shall be cracked all the same. What do you say to taking Mrs. Carstairs into our confidence, Sir Richard? Of course the idea will be a shock to her at first; but if the matter could be cleared up, think what a difference it would make to her!"

"Yes, indeed!" Sir Richard agreed heartily. "And to her husband as well.

You know, Major Carstairs is a man with a rather peculiar code of honour; and you must not run away with the idea that because he refuses to believe in his wife's innocence he is necessarily a narrow-minded or--or callous person."

"I don't," said Anstice quickly. "By the way I've not told you all that happened the day I was in town. By a curious coincidence I met Major Carstairs----"

"What, is he in England again?"

"Yes." Anstice related the particulars of the meeting between them, and repeated, so far as he could remember it, the substance of the subsequent conversation in the club. "So you see, Sir Richard, Major Carstairs is not only ready, but longing, to be convinced of his wife's innocence in the matter."

"Good! That's capital!" Sir Richard beamed. "If once Chloe can be led to understand that her husband will believe in her one day she will be ready to help us to prove her innocence. You know I have sometimes thought that if she had taken up a rather more human, more feminine att.i.tude, had relinquished the pride which forbade her to protest loudly against the injustice which was done her, she might have been better off in the end. It is very hard fighting for a woman who won't fight for herself; and that idea of hers that if her own personal character were not enough to prove her blameless of so vile a charge nothing else was worth trying--well, it was the att.i.tude of conscious innocence, no doubt, but it was certainly above the heads of a conscientious, but particularly unintelligent jury!"

He put down the stump of his cigar, which unlike Anstice he had smoked to the end, and looked at the other man with a kindly eye.

"Look here, Anstice, why shouldn't we go--you and I--to visit Mrs.

Carstairs now?"

"Now?" Anstice was somewhat taken aback at the proposal.

"Yes. Why not? There's no time like the present. It is barely six o'clock, and she will certainly be at home."

"But--won't she be at church?" Anstice felt suddenly unwilling to go into the matter with the mistress of Cherry Orchard.

"Not she! Don't you know Chloe only goes to church once in a blue moon?"

Sir Richard laughed breezily. "I don't blame her--I expect she feels she owes Providence a grudge--but anyway she will be at home to-night.

And--another inducement--Tochatti will almost certainly be at _her_ church. Those Catholics are a queer lot," said Sir Richard, who was a Protestant of the old school. "They will cheat you and lie to you--aye, and half murder you, on a Sat.u.r.day night--and turn up at Ma.s.s without fail on Sunday morning!"

"Yes, I know Tochatti does go to the Roman Catholic chapel at night,"

owned Anstice rather reluctantly. "Well, sir, if you really think the moment is propitious let us go by all means. After all, it is just possible Mrs. Carstairs may have had suspicions of Tochatti herself."

"Yes. I remember Iris often used to say she distrusted the woman--don't know why. I never paid much attention to her caprices," said Sir Richard with a smile; and Anstice made haste to seize the opportunity thus offered.

"Ah--by the way, what news have you of your daughter?" He could not call her by the name he hated. "She is still in Egypt, I suppose?"

"Yes. She and Bruce are somewhere in the Fayoum at present--he has been engaged on some irrigation job for a rich Egyptian of sorts, and he and Iris have been camping out in the desert--quite a picnic they seem to have had."

"Really?" For the life of him he could not speak naturally; but Sir Richard was merciful and ignored his strained tone.

"They sent me some photographs--snapshots--last week," said Sir Richard.

"Would you care to see them? I have them here somewhere."

He opened a drawer as he spoke, and after rummaging in the contents for a few moments drew out half a dozen small prints which he handed to Anstice, saying:

"Amateur, of course--but quite good, all the same. Oh, by the way"--he spoke with elaborate carelessness--"how did you come? Are you walking, or have you the car?"

"The car? No, I walked--wanted exercise," said Anstice rather vaguely; and Sir Richard nodded.

"Then we'll have out the little car, and you shall drive us over if you will. And if you'll excuse me for a moment I'll just go and order it round."

He waited for no reply, but bustled out of the room as though in sudden haste; and left to himself Anstice turned over the little photographs he held and studied them with eager eyes.

Four of them were of Iris--happy little studies of her in delightfully natural poses. In one she was standing bare-headed beneath a tall date-palm, shading her eyes with her hand as though looking for someone across the expanse of sunny sand before her. In another she stood by the edge of the Nile, in converse with a native woman who bore a _bala.s.s_ on her head; and even the tiny picture was sufficiently large to bring out the contrast between the slim, fair English girl in her white gown and Panama hat and the dusky Egyptian, whose dark skin and closely-swathed robes gave her the look of some Old Testament character, a look borne out by the surroundings of reed-fringed river and plumy, tufted palms.

In the third photograph Iris was on horseback; but it was the fourth and last which brought the blood to Anstice's brow, made his heart beat quickly with an emotion in which delight, regret, wild happiness and over-mastering sorrow fought for the predominance.

It was a photograph of Iris' head, nothing more; but it brought out every separate charm with an art which seemed to bring the living girl before the man who pored over the print with greedy eyes.

She was looking straight out from the photograph and in her face was that look of half-laughing, half-wistful tenderness which Anstice knew so well. Her lips were ever so slightly parted; and in her whole expression was something so vital as to be almost startling, as though some tinge of the sitter's personality had indeed been caught by the camera and imprisoned for ever in the picture. It was Iris as Anstice knew--and loved--her best: youth personified, yet with a womanliness, a gracious femininity, which seemed to promise a more than commonly attractive maturity.

And as he looked at the little picture, the presentment of the girl he loved caught and imprisoned by the magic of the sun, Anstice felt the full bitterness of his hopeless love surge over his soul in a flood whose onrush no philosophy could stem. To him Iris would always be the one desired woman in the world. No other woman, be she a hundred times more beautiful, could ever fill the place held in his heart by this grey-eyed girl. With her, life would have been a perpetual feast, a lingering sacrament. Her companionship would have been sufficient to turn the dull fare of ordinary life into the mysterious Bread and Wine which only lovers know; and with her beside him there had been no heights to which he might not have attained, no splendour of achievement, of renown, even of renunciation, which might not have been reached before the closing cadence which is death had ended, irrevocably, the symphony of life.

But not for him was this one supreme glory, the glory of an existence spent with her. She had chosen otherwise--for one fiercely rebellious moment he told himself he had been a fool, and worse, to enter on that infamous bargain with Bruce Cheniston--and henceforth he must put away all thoughts of her, must banish his dreams to that mysterious region where our lost hopes lie--never, so far as we can see, to come to fruition; unless, as some have thought, there shall be in another world a great and marvellous country where lost causes shall be retrieved, forlorn hopes justified, and the thousand and one pitiful mistakes we make in our earthly blindness rectified at last.

The door opened suddenly, and Sir Richard's voice smote cheerily on his ears.

"I've got the car, Anstice, and if you are ready----"

Anstice hastily replaced the photographs, face downwards on the table, and turned to Sir Richard with a trace of confusion in his manner.

"The car there? Oh, yes, I'm ready. You would like me to drive?"

"If you will--then Fletcher can stop at home. You'll come back to dinner with me, of course."

With some haste Anstice excused himself; and after a courteous repet.i.tion of the invitation Sir Richard did not press the matter.

Mrs. Carstairs was at home, and alone; and in a moment the two men were ushered into her pretty drawing-room, where she sat, book in hand, over a dancing wood-fire.

She looked up in some surprise as the door opened to admit visitors; but on seeing Sir Richard she rose with a welcoming smile.

"Sir Richard! How good of you to take pity on me on a day like this!"

She greeted the old man with almost daughterly affection; and then turned to Anstice with a rather forced expression of cordiality.

"You, too, Dr. Anstice! How sorry Cherry will be to have missed you!"

"Is she in bed, then?"

"Yes, I'm sorry to say she was a naughty girl and was put to bed immediately after tea!" She laughed a little, and Anstice asked, smiling, what had been the extent of Cherry's latest misdemeanour.

"Oh, nothing very serious," said Chloe lightly. "It was really to soothe Tochatti's wounded feelings that I had to banish the poor child. It seems that one day last week, while out walking with Tochatti, Cherry noticed a house in the village with all its blinds down; and on inquiring the reason Tochatti informed her that someone was dead in the house; further entering, so I gather, into full details as to the manner in which Catholics decorate the death-chamber."

"Oh?" Anstice looked rather blank. "But I don't see----"

"Well, it seems the idea fired Cherry's imagination; and this morning, when Tochatti returned from High Ma.s.s about noon, she found the blinds pulled down in all the front windows of the house!"