"A middle-aged housemaid who had lived with the Carstairs' all her life, and whose character was quite above suspicion. As a matter of course her writing was compared with that of the letters and was proved to have none of the characteristics of the anonymous handwriting. For another thing her sight was bad, and she couldn't write straight to save her life."

"I see. And what of the other two?"

"One was a pretty young girl who acted as maid to Mrs. Carstairs herself; and I admit at first it seemed that she was the most likely person to have been mixed up in the affair; for she was a flighty minx who wasn't too particular about her behaviour, and was generally engaged to two or three young men at once."

"Well?" From Sir Richard's manner Anstice gathered that there was no case against the pretty young minx; and the next words confirmed his supposition.

"Sad to say the poor girl caught a chill and died of pneumonia after only five days' illness, during which time the letter-writer was particularly active; and as the communications continued after her death, she must be counted out."

"Well," said Anstice, "that accounts for three of them. What about the fourth?"

"The fourth was an old servant of the other side of the family--Chloe's family--the woman they call Tochatti, who lives there still. She's half Italian, though she's lived the greater part of her life in England.

Chloe's mother picked her up on her honeymoon, and she was Chloe's nurse. She has been a most devoted servant all the time, and I would almost as soon suspect Chloe herself as suspect the poor woman of working any harm to her adored young mistress."

Remembering the woman's solicitude on the occasion of his first visit to Cherry Orchard, Anstice was compelled to admit it was unlikely she was the culprit; and his impression was deepened by Sir Richard's next speech.

"As a matter of fact, it came out that the poor old thing couldn't even write her name. The other woman, Janet, was what she called a 'poor scollard', but Tochatti went one better, for she could neither write nor read. It appeared they had often teased her about it, and she had frequently flown into a rage when the other servants poked fun at her; but she certainly scored in the end!"

"Well, that disposes of the household," said Anstice rather regretfully.

"But what about outdoor workers--gardeners and so forth?"

"There was only one gardener--and a boy--and neither could possibly have had access to Chloe's writing-table; added to which they both left Cherry Orchard during the critical time and took situations in different parts of the county. So they too had to be counted out."

"All this came out in court?"

"Yes. You see, had the matter rested between the party libelled and the libeller--if there is such a term--an action in the Civil Courts to recover damages would have met the case. But owing to the fact that practically everyone in the neighbourhood was victimized, and warnings, almost amounting to threats, issued to the Ogden woman's friends to have nothing more to do with her, the public were, so to speak, directly affected; and it was in the interests of the public that, finally, criminal proceedings were inst.i.tuted."

"And in the end an intelligent jury brought in a verdict of guilty?"

"Yes. The case came on at Ripstone, five miles away, and of course excited no end of interest locally. To give them their due, the jury were very reluctant to bring in that verdict--but I a.s.sure you"--he spoke weightily--"when I heard the other side marshalling their facts, each one making the case look still blacker and more d.a.m.ning, I began to be afraid. Yes, I confess it, I began to feel very much afraid."

"And they brought her in guilty?"

"Yes, and the Judge sentenced her. I don't like to accuse one of His Majesty's judges of allowing his judgment to be prejudiced by personal feeling," said Sir Richard slowly; "but it has always seemed to me that Chloe's manner--her peculiarly detached, indifferent manner, as though the case did not interest her vitally--was in some subtle fashion an affront to the man. His remarks to her seemed to me unnecessarily severe, and he certainly did not err on the side of leniency."

"I should think not! Twelve months--why, it's an Eternity!"

"What must it have seemed to that poor girl!" Sir Richard spoke pitifully. "I used to fancy she would die in prison--I could not imagine how she could support the life in there, in those degrading surroundings. You know, not only had she been lapped in luxury, as they say, all her life, but, more important still, she had been used to boundless love and affection from all around her."

"You find her much altered?"

"Yes. I can't say exactly in what the alteration consists," returned Sir Richard thoughtfully. "It's not merely a surface thing--the change goes deeper than that. I called her _posee_ just now. Well, I don't know if that's the right word. Sometimes I think that frozen manner of hers isn't a pose after all, it's natural to her nowadays. She seems to be literally turned to stone by all she's gone through. Where she used to be all sympathy, all ardour, all life, now she's cold, frigid, pa.s.sionless. The girl's barely twenty-five, but upon my soul she might be a woman of fifty for all the youth there is about her--except in her looks, and there I believe she's handsomer than ever!"

Anstice's cigar was smoked out; but there was one question he must ask before he took his leave.

"And her husband--Major Carstairs? He--I gather he was inclined to agree with the verdict?"

Sir Richard hesitated, and when he spoke there was a note of pain in his voice.

"I am sorry to say Carstairs could not bring himself to believe in his wife's innocence. He was in India at the time, you know, and only got home--on special leave--when the case was coming on. Heaven knows on what grounds he bases his doubts of her. One would have thought it impossible for a man to live with a woman like Chloe and not know her incapable of the deed. But human nature is a strange thing----" He broke off.

"I understand they do not contemplate keeping house together for the future?" Anstice hoped he was not appearing unduly curious, but Sir Richard's manner invited interest.

"No--though mind you, Carstairs has not left his wife because she was unfortunate enough to be convicted and sent to prison. He's not that sort. If he could have believed her innocent he would have stuck to her through thick and thin. As it is he gives her the house, a large allowance, which permits motor-cars and things of that kind, and since he is known to be in India a good many people don't know they are really living apart in a double sense."

"Yet he can't believe in her?"

"No--and that's why he will not live with her. In his own rather peculiar way he has a remarkably high code of honour, and since he genuinely believes her to be guilty it would doubtless be quite impossible for him to live with her again."

"I am rather surprised--seeing she must know his opinion of her--that she condescends to live in his house and take his money," said Anstice, voicing a question which had caused him a very real and acute wonder.

"I'm glad you have raised that point," said Sir Richard quickly. "She does it for the sake of the child, so that Cherry may have all the advantages of wealth. Chloe herself has nothing and Carstairs is a rich man; so it is an eminently proper arrangement, and in my opinion Chloe behaved like a sensible woman in agreeing to it."

He threw away his cigar, which had gone out as he talked.

"No--what I wonder at is that Chloe should deliberately choose to come back here where the whole story is known. It's not bravado, of that I'm certain, but it beats me altogether how she can do it, for as you know women can be uncommonly cruel sometimes, and these creatures here aren't by any means charitably disposed towards her."

"You allow Miss Wayne to visit her?"

"Yes--and I welcome her to my house on the rare occasions she honours me by entering it," said Sir Richard with evident sincerity; and Anstice felt oddly gratified by the other man's speech.

A clock striking seven brought him to his feet in genuine dismay.

"Seven o'clock! I'd no idea it was so late! Pray excuse me inflicting myself on you all this time."

"Must you go?" Sir Richard rose too, and stood regarding the tall, loosely built figure with something like admiration. "Well, you're a busy man, I know; and if you really must go I'll not detain you. But you'll come in again, won't you? Come to dinner--Iris shall send you a note--and drop in for a smoke any evening you're at liberty."

The invitation so heartily given was accepted with a pleasure to which Anstice had long been a stranger; and then he said good-bye to his kind host and left Greengates feeling that he had found two unexpectedly congenial friends in Iris Wayne and her father.

He had been deeply, genuinely interested in Sir Richard's story, that unhappy story in which Chloe Carstairs figured so tragically; yet as he made his way homewards between the blossoming hedgerows his mind dwelt upon another woman, a younger, happier woman than the pale mistress of Cherry Orchard. And the face which floated before his eyes in the starlit spring dusk was the laughing, grey-eyed face of Iris Wayne.

CHAPTER V

As the weeks pa.s.sed Anstice's acquaintance with the Waynes ripened into something which he found strangely pleasant.

Although he had long ago decided that for him the simple human things of life, friendship, social intercourse with the world of men and women, were, since that bygone Indian morning, forbidden, even his acquired misanthropy was not proof against the kindly advances made to him by Sir Richard and his daughter.

Busy as he was, he still found time to accept some of their invitations to Greengates, and he and Sir Richard enjoyed a quiet chat over their cigars now and again when by chance he had an evening to himself.

On their side the Waynes found him, each in his and her own degree, an agreeable companion. Sir Richard approved of his quiet and reserved manner, and was not inclined to quarrel with his occasional fits of moodiness--for there were times when the ghosts which haunted him refused to be exorcised, and Anstice felt himself unfit, by reason of the handicap which Fate had imposed upon him, to mingle with the happy, the careless, the innocent ones of the earth.

To Sir Richard, kind-hearted, uncritical, undiscerning, such fits of silence, even of gloom, were natural enough in a man whose life was spent largely in the service of the sick and suffering among humanity.

He was probably worried over some difficult case, Sir Richard concluded, when he found the younger man's conversation halting, his manner absent, or, on rare occasions, morose; and it must be noted that as a rule Anstice had too much respect for his friends to inflict these moods upon them. As for Iris, quicker of discernment than her father, of a more a.n.a.lytical turn of mind, she guessed that the changing moods which characterized her new acquaintance were not induced by any external or professional worries, but were the marks of a trouble far more serious, far more vital to the man himself. Of the nature of this trouble Iris had naturally no very clear idea, though now and again she considered the probability of him having been what she called, rather school-girlishly, crossed in love. But though her phraseology might be childish there was something purely womanly in the compa.s.sion with which she thought of Anstice; and on one occasion when a fit of melancholy had overcome him unexpectedly in her presence, he was startled, not to say dismayed, to notice something of this half-tender, half-impersonal pity in the soft, brooding glance of her eyes as they rested on him for a moment.

It was not with the Waynes alone that he grew more intimate as the days went by. A short time after his introduction to Greengates Anstice received a summons to Cherry Orchard, and on repairing thither found that his patient on this occasion was Cherry Carstairs. With all her demure dignity Cherry was at times possessed of a very spirit of perversity; and being, although of such tender years, absolutely devoid of fear, she had tried conclusions in secret with a s.h.a.ggy pony in a field close by her home, with the result that, owing to the pony's stubborn refusal to allow her to climb upon his back, Cherry received a kick, more in sorrow than in anger, which snapped the bone in her tiny forearm, and sent her stumbling home, very pale and shaky, her dignity sadly in abeyance, to seek her mother.