Afterwards Part 9

He hesitated, torn between a desire to accept and an uncomfortable suspicion that he could not afford the time.

"You will have to lunch somewhere, you know!" Her manner was a trifle warmer than usual. "And it will really save time to do it here!"

"My lunch is a very hurried affair as a rule," he said, smiling. "But if I may run away as soon as I've finished I'll be delighted to stay."

He felt a small hand slip into his as he spoke, and looked down, to meet Cherry's clear eyes.

"Do stay, my dear!" Her tone was a quaint imitation of her mother's, and before the twofold invitation Anstice's scruples were put to flight.

"I'll stay with pleasure," he said, patting the kind little hand; and with an air of satisfaction Cherry led him into the hall, her mother and Miss Wayne following their lead.

Once seated at the pretty round table, sweet with the fragrance of hyacinths in a big Swansea bowl, and bright with silver and gla.s.s, Anstice owned inwardly to a feeling of pleasure at his position.

Although as a rule he loved his solitude, welcomed the silence of the old panelled house he had taken in Littlefield, and shunned those of his kind who had no direct need of his services, there were times when his self-sought loneliness weighed heavily upon his spirit, when the ghosts of the past, whose shrouded forms were ever present to remind him that he had made a fatal mistake on that bygone morning in India, were but poor company.

At first, during that first haunted year, when Hilda Ryder's face was ever before his eyes, her sad and tender accents in his ear, he had sought many and dubious ways of laying those same ghosts. It had seemed to him, during those dreadful days, that although some instinct within him forbade him to end his own life, none could doubt his right to alleviate his mental suffering by any means he knew; and when temporary oblivion, a blessed forgetfulness, could be purchased at the price of a pinp.r.i.c.k, it seemed not only overscrupulous but foolish to forgo that Nirvana.

But that indulgence, too, had nearly ended in disaster; and for the last two years his only use for the alluring drug had been to alleviate the pain of others. Yet the struggle was a hard one; and he wondered sometimes, rather hopelessly, if he would have the strength to continue it to the bitter end.

But to-day, sitting in the pretty room, with the sun pouring in through the cas.e.m.e.nt windows, widely opened to the green garden beyond, Anstice owned that for once life seemed to be in harmony with the beautiful spring world around.

As for Iris Wayne, he told himself presently that he had rarely seen a prettier girl! Although at present his admiration was quite impersonal, it was none the less sincere; and his approval of her grey eyes, set widely apart beneath her crown of sunny hair, of the delicately rounded face, the frank mouth, which disclosed teeth as white as milk, was enhanced by the fact that every line, every tint spoke of flawless health and a mind attuned to the simple, gracious things of life rather than those which are complex and hard to comprehend.

Looking from Iris, bright-eyed and alert, to Chloe, sitting at the head of her table in a white cloth gown which somehow looked elaborate in spite of its utter simplicity, Anstice was struck by the contrast between them. Although the difference in their actual ages was not great, they might well have been at different stages of life. For all her youth, all her grace, her black and white distinction, Chloe was a woman, and no one looking at her would have doubted that to her had come some of the most vital moments of a woman's life. But Iris Wayne was only a girl, an untried warrior in the battle of existence. The glance of her large and radiant eyes was far more akin to that of the child Cherry's brown orbs than to the serious, rather cynical regard which habitually dwelt in Mrs. Carstairs' sapphire-blue eyes; and in every look, every word, was the delicious freshness of a joyous youth. Yet he fancied there was something in the curve of her lips, in the shape of her head, which betokened strength of character as well as lightness of heart. He fancied that her mouth could be tender as well as gay, that her eyes might one day look into the eyes of a man with a promise in their depths of strong and steadfast womanhood.

It chanced presently that Anstice was offered some strawberries, floating in a delicious-looking syrup; and a glance at his hostess betrayed his half-humorous perplexity.

"I know it isn't the right season for strawberries," said Mrs. Carstairs with a smile. "But these are some of our own, bottled by a famous method of Tochatti's. Do try them and give us your opinion."

Anstice complied; and found them excellent.

"They are delicious," he said, "and bring summer very close. Don't you like them?" he asked Cherry, who was demurely nibbling a macaroon.

"No thank you, my dear," replied Cherry gravely. "They give me a pain in my head."

"Oh, do they?" Anstice was nonplussed by this extraordinary a.s.sertion, the grounds for which were not borne out by such medical skill as he possessed; but chancing to look across the table at Iris Wayne he found her dimpling deliciously at his perplexity.

"You look puzzled, Dr. Anstice!" She laughed outright. "You see you don't understand how it happens that a pain in the head is connected with strawberries!"

"I don't," he said, "but if you will kindly explain----"

"May I, Cherry?" She looked at the child with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes, and Cherry nodded.

"If you like, my dear. But _I_ think it's rather a silly story."

Notwithstanding this expression of opinion Iris entered forthwith into an explanation.

"You see, Dr. Anstice, Cherry came to stay with me last summer when the strawberries were ripe; and seeing the bed covered with netting--to keep off the birds"--she smiled--"she thought it very hard that the poor little things should not have their share."

"You had heaps and heaps for yourself," came a reproachful voice from the bottom of the table where Cherry sat in state.

"Certainly--until you came on the scene, Cherry Ripe! Well, Dr. Anstice, to cut a long story short, Cherry thought us so selfish and cruel to prevent the poor birds sharing our fruit that she slipped into the kitchen garden one very hot morning, and devoted a good hour to taking up the netting--with the result that the stooping down with the sun beating on her head gave her a touch of sunstroke."

"You forget I had eaten a few strawberries--just to encourage the birdies." Evidently Cherry liked accuracy in any statement, even when it militated against herself.

"Well, whether it was the sun or the strawberries, the fact remains Cherry was in bed for three days, and since then strawberries are _tabu_. Isn't it so, Mrs. Carstairs?"

"Yes, Iris." Chloe's voice was more weary than usual, as though the subject did not interest her; and suddenly Anstice remembered that during the previous summer she had been shut away from the beautiful world of sun and strawberries and roses red and white....

A moment later Chloe rose from the table; and Anstice stole a look at his watch as they pa.s.sed into the hall.

As though she divined his action Chloe turned to him.

"You will spare time for a cup of coffee? We have not lingered over our lunch."

Anstice hesitated, and Cherry again added her entreaties to the invitation.

"Do stay a little longer, my dear. Iris will have to go in a minute, but I want her to sing me a song first."

"Do you sing, Miss Wayne?" Looking at her firm round throat and deep chest he thought it possible she sang well.

"Yes." She shook her head at Cherry. "But how can I sing after meringues and strawberries, you bad child?"

"You always say that," returned Cherry placidly. "And then you sing most bee-autifully!"

Iris coloured at this obviously genuine compliment and Anstice laughed outright.

"After that testimonial, Miss Wayne, I hope you don't expect me to run away without hearing you!" He turned to his hostess. "I will stay for a cup of coffee with pleasure, Mrs. Carstairs, and you will persuade Miss Wayne to sing, won't you?"

"Certainly." They were in the cool, hyacinth-scented drawing-room by now, and Chloe drew the girl towards the grand piano which stood by one of the big latticed windows. "Sing to us at once, Iris, before you have your coffee. Will you?"

"Of course I will." She seated herself as she spoke. "What shall it be?

Cherry, you know all my songs. What do you want to-day?"

After due consideration Cherry gave her verdict for "the song about the lady in the wood;" and although both Mrs. Carstairs and Iris rallied her on the mournfulness of her choice, Cherry stuck to her guns; and to judge from the rapt expression in her big brown eyes as the singer prophesied the lonely and tragic fate of poor unhappy Melisande, the idea of that fate proved exquisitely soothing to the youthful listener.

Anstice's supposition had been correct. Iris Wayne could sing well. Her voice, a clear mezzo-soprano, had been excellently trained, and in its purity and flexibility gave promise of something exceptional when it should have attained its full maturity. She accompanied herself perfectly, in nowise hampered by the lack of any music; and when she had brought the song to a close, Anstice was sincere in his request for another.

"I've just got some new songs," said Iris, twisting round on the stool to face her hostess. "A book of Indian love-lyrics. Shall I sing you one of those?"

And without waiting for an answer she turned back and began to play an accompaniment which subtly suggested the atmosphere of the East, accentuated by the sound of the bells of some wayside Temple pealing through the dusty, sun-baked land.

"The Temple bells are ringing----"

With the first line of the song Anstice was back in the hideous past, back in the fatal Temple which had proved the antechamber to the halls of Death ... he heard again the chatter of native voices, smelt the odd, indescribable perfume of the East, felt the dread, the impotent horror of that bygone adventure in the ruined Temple of Alostan....

The drawing-room in which he sat, bright with chintz, sweet with the fragrance of hyacinths, faded away; and he saw again the dimly lighted hut in which he and Hilda Ryder had spent that last dreadful night. He heard her voice imploring him to kill her before the men should rush in upon them, saw the anguish in her eyes as she understood that no help was forthcoming from the world without; and he knew again the great and unavailing remorse which had filled his soul when he realized that Hilda Ryder had died too soon....

When the song ended he rose abruptly, and Chloe was startled by the change in his manner.