Afterwards Part 10

"I must really say good-bye, Mrs. Carstairs." He had not touched his coffee. "Many thanks for your hospitality." He shook hands with her and turned to Iris with something of an effort. "And many thanks for your songs, Miss Wayne." He tried to smile as they exchanged a handshake, but the attempt was a failure.

"I'll come to the steps with you, my dear," volunteered Cherry politely, and without further leave-taking Anstice went out into the hall, seized his hat, and stumbled towards the door, half-blinded by the pain of that terribly acute inward vision.

He took leave of Cherry with a hasty courtesy which would have hurt some children, but was not displeasing to the stately Cherry; and three minutes later he was driving down the avenue at a furious pace, in a vain endeavour to outstrip the phantoms which a girl's careless song had evoked from their place in the background of his thoughts.

After his abrupt departure Iris turned impulsively to her hostess.

"Mrs. Carstairs"--her voice was disturbed--"what was wrong with Dr.

Anstice just now? Did my singing displease him? He got up and went so--so unexpectedly."

For a moment Chloe said nothing. Then:

"Don't you think you are rather too imaginative, Iris? Probably Dr.

Anstice remembered some urgent case, and thought he ought to go at once."

"No. I don't think that was it." Iris sank down on to the cus.h.i.+oned window-seat and gazed thoughtfully ahead. "I think----I wonder if that last song could have any a.s.sociations for him? Has he been in India?"

"I don't know." Chloe smiled faintly. "You must ask him, Iris. I suppose your father would send for him if he were ill, wouldn't he, now that Dr.

Meade is really gone?"

"I suppose so." Iris spoke rather dreamily. "At first I thought he was quite old--at least forty," said the schoolgirl. "And then, when he talked to Cherry I was not really sure. I guessed he might be worried about professional things and look older than he was. And now----"

She broke off, and for a moment Chloe Carstairs made no rejoinder, though her blue, almond-shaped eyes held a slightly quizzical expression.

"And now"--she said at length--"what is your opinion now?"

"Now"--Iris spoke very slowly, and in her eyes was something of the womanly tenderness and strength whose possibility Anstice had divined--"I think he has the very saddest face I have ever seen in my life."

CHAPTER IV

Anstice was destined to renew his acquaintance with Iris Wayne sooner than he had antic.i.p.ated.

On the Sunday afternoon following the little luncheon party at Cherry Orchard, he was tramping, pipe in mouth, over the golf-links when he saw her ahead of him, in company with an elderly gentleman whom he guessed must be her father.

She had just holed her ball by a deft stroke, and as he approached Anstice heard her utter an exultant exclamation.

"Very good, my dear." Her companion patted her arm. "A little more care and you will make quite a fair player."

"Fair player indeed!" Iris tossed her curly head disdainfully. "I'd have you know I can beat _you_ anyway, Daddy!"

As she spoke she recognized the approaching figure and her frank smile flashed out.

"Dr. Anstice--are you playing too?"

"No, Miss Wayne." He advanced and shook hands. "I'm taking my Sunday afternoon tramp. It's the only chance I get of walking in the week."

"Daddy, this is Dr. Anstice." Iris turned to the elderly man. "My father," she explained casually to Anstice, and Sir Richard Wayne held out his hand with a smile.

"You're not a golfer, Dr. Anstice?" Sir Richard was keen on the game.

"No, sir. I used to be a footballer in my hospital days, but"--for a second he hesitated--"I have had no time lately for any kind of game----"

"Well, golf's a grand game for an old buffer like me"--Sir Richard was a hale and well-set-up man who could afford to make such speeches--"but I daresay you younger men like something a bit more strenuous. My daughter here only plays with me now and then as a concession--she prefers tennis, or flying about on that precious motor-cycle of hers."

"Well, judging from what I have seen of Miss Wayne's riding I should say she is a very expert motor-cyclist," said Anstice; and Sir Richard nodded.

"Oh, she rides all right," he owned, "and she bothered me to such an extent that I simply had to give in to her. But it wasn't until she had been 'run in' for exceeding the speed limit in one of my cars and I'd had to sentence her from the Bench in my magisterial capacity that I did give in and buy her a Douglas."

"He fined me twenty s.h.i.+llings and costs!" Iris spoke with mock indignation. "How's that for meanness to your only daughter?"

"And paid the fine out of my own pocket--don't forget that!" Sir Richard chuckled. "Well, Dr. Anstice, if you're not in a hurry, walk round with us, will you? You aren't busy on a Sunday afternoon, I suppose?"

"Well, not very." In spite of himself Anstice felt a strange reluctance to part from his new friends. "I was going for a walk, as you see, and if I may come with you----"

So it fell out that for the first Sunday since he had arrived in Littlefield Anstice's walk was no solitary stroll, companioned only by his own moody or rebellious thoughts, but a pleasant interlude in a life which in spite of incessant and often engrossing work, was on the whole a joyless one.

This afternoon Iris Wayne looked little more than a schoolgirl in her short skirt and brightly coloured jersey, a cap pulled well down over her curls, which nevertheless rioted over her forehead in entrancing confusion. It was very evident that she and her father were on the best of terms; and if, as seemed probable, Sir Richard was proud of his pretty daughter, it was no less certain that she, on her side, thought her father the most wonderful of men.

The trio chatted pleasantly as they crossed the sunny golf links, and Sir Richard told himself that his impressions of this man, gathered from hasty visions of him about the village, or from the chatter of the countryside, impressions which had labelled him as a morose, sullen kind of fellow, had certainly been fallacious.

Reserved he might be; but although his manner was quiet and his smile a trifle sad, there was nothing morose about him to-day; and if his conversation was not particularly brilliant Sir Richard thought none the worse of him for that.

So pleased, indeed, was he with his new acquaintance that when they reached the Club House on the return journey he pressed the young man to accompany them home for a cup of tea.

"I'm sure your patients must cease from troubling on a Sunday afternoon at any rate," he said genially, "and you haven't anyone waiting for you at home, have you?"

With a rather melancholy smile Anstice admitted that there was no one waiting for him at home; and since Iris seconded her father's invitation with a kind little entreaty on her own account, he accepted their joint hospitality without further demur.

Greengates, the home of the Waynes, was a stately old house, more dignified, though perhaps less charming, than the fascinating Cherry Orchard; but its very dignity gave charm; and it formed a by no means incongruous background for this youngest and prettiest of its daughters.

For all her youth and high spirits, Iris seemed to fit into the place as one born to it; and when she tossed aside her cap and sat down behind the ma.s.sive silver tea-tray, her gold-brown curls shone against the oak panelling of the walls as the wild daffodils gleam golden against the ma.s.sive brown trunks of the trees in whose shade they grow.

Lady Wayne had been dead for many years; and although Anstice gathered, from casual conversation between father and daughter, that a certain Aunt Laura made her home with them as a rule, it appeared that she was at present travelling in Switzerland, leaving Iris mistress of Greengates in her absence.

"I confess Iris and I rather enjoy a week or two to ourselves!" Sir Richard's eyes twinkled. "My sister is a thoroughly good sort, but she loves to manage people; and Iris and I are both of us const.i.tutionally averse to being managed!"

"I manage Daddy without him knowing it," said Iris loftily; and Anstice could not refrain from an impulse to tease her a little.

"That is very clever of you, Miss Wayne," he said gravely, "and I'm sure your management must be most tactful. But--if you'll excuse me suggesting it--wouldn't it be cleverer still of you if you refrained from hinting as much to your father?"

"You mean the really clever women never let the men know they're doing it?" Her grey eyes laughed into his. "You are quite right, of course--but then I don't pretend to be clever. I don't think clever people--clever women, anyway--are ever happy."

"Don't you?" Somehow Anstice felt extraordinarily interested in the views of this very youthful woman. "May I be allowed to know what has driven you to that conclusion?"