Afterwards Part 7

She put down her cup rather suddenly, and faced him squarely, her blue eyes full of a resolution which added several years to her age.

"Dr. Anstice." Her deep voice had lost its richness and sounded hard. "I should like to tell you something of myself. Oh"--she laughed rather cynically--"I'm not going to bore you with a rhapsody intended to convey to you that I am a much misunderstood woman and all the rest of it.

Only, if you are to see me again, I think I should like you to know just who and what I am."

Mystified, Anstice bowed.

"Whatever you tell me I shall be proud to hear--and keep to myself," he said.

"Thanks." Her manner had lost its slight animation and was once more weary, indifferent. "Well, first of all, have you ever seen me before?"

"No. Though I confess that something in your face seemed familiar to me last night."

"Oh." She did not seem much impressed. "Well, to put it differently, have you ever heard of me?"

"No," said Anstice. "To the best of my belief I have never heard your name before."

"I see. Well, I will tell you who I am, and what I am supposed to have done." No further warmth enlivened her manner, which throughout was cold, almost, one would have said, absent. "When I was eighteen I married Major Carstairs, a soldier a good many years older than myself.

Presently I went out to India with him, and lived there for four years, coming home when our child was three years old."

She paused.

"I came here--this was my husband's old home--and settled down with Cherry. And when I had been in the parish a year or so, there was a scandal in Littlefield."

She stopped, and her mouth quivered into a faint smile.

"Oh, I was not the chief character--at first! It was a case in which the Vicar's wife won an unenviable notoriety. It seemed there had been a secret in her life, years before when she was a pretty, silly girl, which was known to very few besides her husband and, I presume, her own people. Now you would not think I was a sympathetic person--one in whom a sentimental, rather neurotic woman would confide. Would you?"

And looking at her, with her air of cold indifference, of complete detachment from the world around her, Anstice agreed that he would not expect her to be the confidante of such a woman.

"Yet within a month of our meeting Laura Ogden had confided her secret to me--and a silly, futile story it was." Her pale face looked disdain at the remembrance. "No harm, of course, was done. I kept her secret and advised her not to repeat what she had told me to anyone else in Littlefield."

"She followed your advice?" Anstice had no idea what was coming, but an interest to which he had long been a stranger was waking slowly in his heart.

"_Chi lo so?_" She shrugged her shoulders. "Afterwards she swore she had told no one but me. You see it appeared she very soon regretted having given me her confidence. It happened that shortly after she had told me her story we had--not a quarrel, because to tell you the truth I wasn't sufficiently interested in her to quarrel with her--but there was a slight coolness between us, and for some time we were not on good terms.

Then--well, to cut a long story short, one day anonymous letters and post cards began to fly about the parish, bearing scurrilous comments on that unhappy woman's past history. At first the Vicar tried to hush up the matter, but as you may imagine"--her voice rang with delicate scorn--"everyone else thoroughly enjoyed talking things over and wondering and discussing--with the result that the Bishop of the Diocese heard the tale and came down to hold a private inquiry into the matter."

She stopped short and held out her hand for his cup.

"More tea? I haven't finished yet."

"No more, thank you." He rose, placed his cup on the tray and sat down again in silence.

"The Bishop suggested it was a matter for the police. The writer of those vile communications must be discovered and punished at all costs, he said. So not only the authorities but all the amateur detectives of both s.e.xes in the neighbourhood went to work to find the culprit. And _I_ was the culprit they found."

"You?" For once in his life Anstice was startled out of his usual self-control.

"Yes. They fixed upon me as the anonymous writer of those loathsome scrawls; and the district was provided with a sensation after its own heart."

"But the idea's absurd--monstrous!" Looking at her as she leaned back among her cushions, with her air of delicate distinction, Anstice could hardly believe the story she was telling him.

"So I thought at first." Her blue eyes narrowed. "But in some marvellous manner they brought the charge home to me. I was the only one, they said, who knew the story. I had wormed it out of the silly woman, they alleged, and had then, owing to the subsequent coolness between us, traded upon my knowledge in order to drive her out of the place."

"But others must have known the story?"

"Yes. But I was the only one in Littlefield who knew it."

"So they said. But in reality----"

"In reality, of course, it was known to someone else. But that person took care to keep in the background. When once I had been suggested as the culprit a quant.i.ty of evidence was forthcoming to clinch the matter, so to speak. I was never particularly popular here, and people were quite ready to believe me capable of the deed." She smiled faintly. "I confess one or two things looked black for me--the letters were written on the kind of paper I used, and though of course the handwriting was disguised, there was, in one or two letters, an undeniable similarity to some of my writing."

"But your word--wasn't that sufficient?"

The apathy of her manner relaxed for one moment into a kind of cold amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Oh, I gave my word--at first--quite freely. Knowing nothing of the letters, of course I said so; but I was not believed. I confess everything was against me. Most of the letters were posted in the pillar box not a hundred yards from this house--but on one occasion when I had gone down to Brighton for a couple of days, one of those vile things bore the Brighton postmark."

"But----"

"Oh, I've nearly done." She glanced at the clock. "I am detaining you--you're in a hurry? Don't mind saying so--this delightful story can be continued in our next."

"Please go on." Anstice would not willingly have foregone the rest of the recital.

"Well, after various suspicious happenings, which I won't inflict upon you now, and after being interviewed by the Bishop, by detectives, by a hundred and one individuals who revelled in the case, I was accused, tried, and found guilty."

"Found guilty? Impossible!" He sprang up, quite unable to sit still another moment. Somehow he had not expected this climax.

"Yes. I was found guilty." Her voice held little expression. "And sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment. The judge who sentenced me informed me--and the world at large--that he deemed it expedient to 'make an example' of me--only he put it more legally--as an educated young woman, of apparent refinement, who had committed a crime connected generally with illiterate and ignorant persons of degenerate tendencies."

"But you--you never served the sentence--such a vindictive sentence, too!"

"Yes, I did." For the first time her face changed, a hint of tragedy appeared in her studiously pa.s.sionless eyes. "You look surprised, but I a.s.sure you it is true. I served my sentence, and came out of prison exactly eight weeks ago."

"Eight weeks? But you have only just come here?"

"Yes. First I went down into Kent to stay with an old family friend who had taken charge of Cherry--my little girl--while I was"--she hesitated, then spoke with a directness he felt to be brutal--"in prison. I only came here yesterday, and I suppose the shock of finding myself back in my happy home"--he was sure she was speaking ironically now--"was too much for my--nerves."

"But, Mrs. Carstairs"--he looked down at her with perplexity in his face--"do I understand you to mean you have deliberately come back to live in the place which has treated you so shamefully?"

"Why not?" Her long, blue eyes were inscrutable. "I'm not ashamed of coming back. You see, I really don't care in the very least what these people say about me. I don't even bear them malice. Prison life is supposed to make one bitter, isn't it? You hear a lot about the 'prison taint,' whatever that may be. Well, I don't feel conscious of having sustained any taint. I have suffered a great wrong"--her contralto voice was quite unmoved as she made the a.s.sertion--"a very grievous injustice has been done to me; but now that the physical unpleasantness of the ordeal is over I don't feel as though I--my ego, my soul, if you like--had undergone any particular degradation."

"I suppose"--the question was forced from him by his interest in the human doc.u.ment she was spreading before his eyes--"I suppose what you call the physical unpleasantness is really hard to bear?"

He was sorry he had put the question as he saw the slow shudder which for a moment convulsed her immobility.

"Yes." For a second her voice was almost pa.s.sionate. "I don't think I could make you understand the horror of that side of imprisonment. Most prison reformers, as I say, prate of the injury done to the soul of the prisoner. For my part--it if were worth while, which it isn't--I would always refuse to forgive those enemies who subjected my body to such indignities."

Her vehemence, so much at variance with her usual manner, made Anstice uneasy about her.