"That's what Iris used to call me," said Cherry, burrowing her head contentedly into his neck. "I wish she was back, don't you, my dear?

Somehow things don't seem half such fun without Iris--I can't think what she wanted to go and marry Uncle Bruce for, can you?"

"There are many things I can't understand, little Cherry," said Anstice with a smile whose sadness was hidden from the child. "But I agree with you that it was much nicer when Iris"--he might venture here to use the beloved little name--"was at home. But we can't always have the people we like with us, can we?"

"No--or I'd always have you, my dear," said Cherry with unexpected though rather sleepy affection; and as Anstice, touched by the words, kissed her upturned little face, her pretty brown eyes closed irresistibly.

"Good-night, Cherry! Pleasant dreams!" He laid her back deftly on her pillows and the child was asleep almost before he had time to reach the door.

But as he went back to the drawing-room, eager to tell Mrs. Carstairs and Sir Richard of the revelations so innocently made by Cherry, he wondered whether at last the mystery were really within reach of a solution.

Cherry's story, although fragmentary and confused, was sufficiently coherent to rank as evidence; and although he could hardly credit Tochatti with a genuine belief in the old superst.i.tion of the wax image he reminded himself she was half a Southerner; and that in some of the mediaeval Italian towns and cities superst.i.tions still thrive, in spite of the teaching of the modern world.

And if Cherry's story were true----

"Out of the mouths of babes"--he murmured to himself as he went down the shallow oak stairs--"strange if, after all, the child should be the one to clear up the whole mysterious affair! At any rate, we are a step further on the way to elucidation; and from the bottom of my heart I hope Mrs. Carstairs may be righted at last!"

And with this aspiration on his lips he entered the drawing-room and related the substance of his unexpectedly profitable interview with the unsuspicious Cherry to an interested and enthralled audience of two.

CHAPTER VI

It did not take Anstice long to discover that the accusation against him--an accusation all the more difficult to refute because of the half-truth on which it was based--had been disseminated throughout Littlefield with a thoroughness which implied a determination on the part of the anonymous writer to leave no prominent resident in the neighbourhood in ignorance of Anstice's supposed cowardice on that bygone day in India.

He could not help noticing as he went here and there on his daily business that some of his patients looked askance at him, although they did their best to hide their new and rather disconcerting interest in him. So far as he knew, none of his patients forsook him for another and less notorious doctor, but he was keenly alive to the altered manner of some of those whom he attended, and although at present it was evident that he was not yet condemned--after all, no fair-minded person condemns another solely on the evidence of a tale-bearer who is ashamed to put his name to the stories he relates--yet Anstice felt with a quick galling of his pride that he was on probation, as it were, that those with whom he came in contact were considering what verdict they should pa.s.s upon him. And although his indifference to that verdict equalled Mrs. Carstairs' former indifference to the opinion of these same neighbours, his soul was seared with the thought that his unhappy story--or rather a garbled version of it--was common property among those men and women whom he had served faithfully to the best of his ability during the eighteen months he had spent in Littlefield.

On one thing he was fully determined. So soon as this mystery should be solved--and he fancied a solution was no longer impossible--he would leave the place, resign the position which had become tedious, unbearably tedious in its cramped monotony, and seek some other place, in England or abroad, where he might have leisure to pursue those studies in research which had been so ruthlessly cut short by his own most unhappy miscalculation.

True, he no longer cared for fame. The possibility of some renown crowning his toil no longer danced before his eyes with alluring promises. The part of him which had craved success, recognition, the youthful, vital part of him was dead, slain by the same bullet which had ended poor Hilda Ryder's happy life; and although he was beginning to look forward to a new and less cramped career than this which now shackled him, the joyous, optimistic antic.i.p.ation of youth was sadly missing.

It was impossible that once at work the old interest in his subject might awake; but now he would work for the work's sake only, for the sake of the distraction it might afford him; and though through all his troubles he had preserved, at bottom, the quick humanity which had led him to choose medicine as his career, he was thinking less now of his old ambition to find a means of alleviation for one of the greatest ills of mankind than of the zest which the renewed study of the subject might restore to his own overshadowed life.

Yet although he was determined to turn his back as soon as he decently might on Littlefield and its people, with the perversity of mankind he was equally determined to see them brought to confusion before he left them--see them impelled to admit that in the case of Mrs. Carstairs they had been unjust, prejudiced, and, most galling of all, misled; and the question of his own vindication was only a secondary matter after all.

One day he heard, casually, that Major Carstairs was expected at Cherry Orchard, and when he entered his house at lunch-time he found a note from Chloe asking him to call upon her between tea and dinner and remain, if possible, for the latter meal. In any case she asked him to come for half an hour, at least, and he rang her up at once and fixed six o'clock for the time of his call upon her.

At six accordingly he entered the drawing-room, and found Major Carstairs in possession, as it were, standing on the hearth-rug with the air of a man at home in his own house. Before Anstice had time to wonder how this situation had arisen Chloe advanced, smiling, and held out her hand.

"Good-evening, Dr. Anstice. I think you and my husband have met already."

In these words she announced her cognizance of that meeting in Piccadilly a few days earlier, and Anstice acknowledged the supposition to be correct, relieved to see by her smile that she did not grudge his former secrecy.

"Yes, by Jove! Dr. Anstice came to the rescue or I'd have had a nasty fall on the pavement," said Major Carstairs genially. "And by the way, I declare I'm quite jealous of your supremacy with Cherry! She does nothing but talk of you, and I hear she infinitely prefers your car to her mother's!"

"Yes, Cherry and I are very good friends," said Anstice with a smile.

"We had a slight difference last week because I wouldn't allow her to drive that same car; but Cherry is always amenable to reason, and when I pointed out to her that she had no licence, and might possibly be reported by some interfering police-constable and get us both into trouble she gave in like a lamb. By the way, Mrs. Carstairs, where is she to-night? Not in disgrace again, I hope?"

"No, she's as good as gold to-day because she is to sit up to dinner to-night," said Chloe, smiling--Anstice thought her smiles came more readily than usual this evening. "I believe she is making an elaborate toilette upstairs just now; and I admit I was glad to have her occupied, for I wanted, if you and my husband agree, to talk over the matters of the letters--and Tochatti."

For a second Anstice felt uncomfortable, but Major Carstairs probably noted his discomfort, for he turned to him with a sincerity there was no doubting.

"Look here, Dr. Anstice, you have been--luckily for us, if I may say so--mixed up in this most unsavoury affair, and from what my wife tells me I believe you are going to be the means of clearing it up--a consummation most devoutly to be wished."

Anstice's embarra.s.sment vanished before the soldier's frankness.

"I only hope you may be right, Major Carstairs," he said, looking the other man squarely in the face. "Personally, since I intended to leave Littlefield before long in any case, these wretched slanders don't affect me much. The few friends I have made in this place are not likely to give credence to the rumour which has been spread broadcast in the last week or two--and for the rest----"

"I understand your indifference to the opinion of 'the rest,'" said Major Carstairs, smiling, "but I think it will be more satisfactory for all of us when the affair is really cleared up. But won't you sit down?

Chloe tells me it is too late for tea--but you'll have a peg?"

"Not for me, thanks." Anstice was too intent on the matter in hand to turn to side issues. "If you don't mind giving me your opinion on the subject--do you think it possible that the woman Tochatti is the one to blame?"

"Well----" Major Carstairs sat down as he spoke, and since Chloe had already taken her accustomed seat in a corner of the big couch, Anstice followed their joint example. "Personally I have never been able to conquer a dislike, which I always put down as absolutely unjust and uncharitable, for the woman. I know she has served my wife faithfully, and her devotion to our little daughter has been beyond praise. But"--he smiled rather deprecatingly--"even ten years in India haven't apparently cured me of British insularity, and I have never liked foreigners--especially half-breeds such as Tochatti, Italian on one side, English on the other."

"Then you think it possible, at least, that she may be the culprit?"

"I do, quite possible. And I thank G.o.d from the bottom of my heart for the bare possibility," returned Major Carstairs deliberately, and his words and manner both served to a.s.sure Anstice that at last this man had been brought to believe, wholeheartedly, in his wife's innocence.

Anstice never knew, either then or afterwards, exactly how the miracle had come about. Indeed, so subtle are the workings of a man's heart, so complex and incomprehensible the thoughts and motives which touch a soul to finer issues, that it is quite possible Major Carstairs himself could not have told how or when he first began to realize that his judgment might well be at fault, that his own stern honesty and unflinching integrity, which would not permit him to subscribe outwardly to a belief which inwardly he did not hold, might after all have been stumbling-blocks in the way of true understanding rather than the righteous bulwarks which he had fancied them.

Probably the conviction that he had misjudged his wife had been stealing imperceptibly into Major Carstairs' mind during many lonely days spent on the Indian Frontier; and though he could never have stated with any degree of certainty the exact moment in which he understood, at last, that his wife, the woman he had married, the mother of his child, was incapable of the action which a censorious and unkind world had been ready to attribute to her, when once that conviction entered his honest, logical, if somewhat stubborn mind, it had found a home there for ever.

His chance meeting with Anstice, whose belief in Mrs. Carstairs was too genuine to be doubted for an instant, had come at an opportune moment, setting, as it were, the seal on his own changed judgment; and being essentially a man of honour, upright and just to a fault, he deemed it not only a duty but a privilege to come directly to his wife, and while asking her pardon for his unjustifiable suspicions, a.s.sure her of his firm determination to see her innocence made manifest before all the world.

Something of this Anstice guessed as he watched the interchange of glances between husband and wife on this bitter November evening, and he told himself that few women would have accepted their husband's tardy reparation as this woman had done. It did not need a magician to know that husband and wife were truly reunited, and though some might have been inclined to label Chloe Carstairs poor-spirited in that she had apparently forgiven her husband's mistrust so easily, Anstice told himself that Chloe was a woman in a thousand, that this very forgiveness and lack of any natural resentment showed the unalloyed fineness, the pure gold of her character, as nothing else could have done.

It was Chloe who broke the silence which followed Major Carstairs' last words, and as he looked at her Anstice was struck suddenly by the change in her appearance this evening. Where she had hitherto been cold, impa.s.sive, indifferent, now she was warm, glowing, responsive. In her pale cheeks was a most unusual wild-rose colour and her blue, almond-shaped eyes held a light which made them look like two beautiful sapphires shining in the sun.

When she spoke her rich, deep voice lost its undertone of melancholy, and rang joyously, with the soft beauty of a 'cello's lower notes.

"You see, Dr. Anstice, your faith in me--for which I have never attempted to thank you--is at last within measure of being justified!"

She smiled happily. "And although Tochatti has served me faithfully she cannot be allowed to go on with this thing--if she be the one responsible. The question is, How is it to be brought home to her?"

Thus encouraged Anstice again outlined the plan he had formerly suggested--that a watch should be set during the night; but, as he had half expected, Chloe did not give it her unqualified approval.

"No, Dr. Anstice." She spoke too gently to cause him offence. "I don't think, honestly, I like the idea. Can't I speak openly, ask her quite plainly why she has done this thing--what perverted notion of--well, resentment she has against me which would lead her to act in this manner?"

To Anstice's relief Major Carstairs vetoed this plan, unhesitatingly.

"No, Chloe, that is an absolutely impossible suggestion! As Dr. Anstice says, guile must be met with guile, and the only way to catch this woman is to take her absolutely red-handed. And if, as you seem to think, she is likely to creep down in the night--well, it could do no harm to set a watch."

"There is one reason against that delightfully simple plan of yours,"

objected Chloe. "Tochatti would not be likely to write any more of these letters with you in the house, Leo. You see, it would be very serious for her if _you_ encountered her at my writing-table in the night!"