For two or three weeks after his meeting with Mrs. Carstairs' brother,
Anstice avoided both Cherry Orchard and Greengates.
From a chance word in the village he had learned that Bruce Cheniston
was prolonging his visit to his sister; and that new and totally
unreasoning jealousy which had assailed Anstice as he saw Cheniston
bending over Iris Wayne at the piano told him with a horrid certainty
that to the girl herself belonged the responsibility for this change in
the young man's plans.
In his calmer moments Anstice could not help admitting the suitability
of a friendship, at least, between the two. Although he had lost much of
his attractive boyishness Cheniston was a good-looking fellow enough;
and there was no denying the fact that he and Miss Wayne were a
well-matched pair so far as youth and vitality and general good looks
went; and yet Anstice could not visualize the pair together without a
fierce, wild pang of jealousy which pierced his heart with an almost
intolerable anguish.
For he wanted Iris Wayne for himself. He loved her; and therein lay
tragedy; for he told himself miserably that he had no right to ask her
to couple her radiant young life with his, already overshadowed by that
past happening in India.
Not only that, but he was already over thirty, she but eighteen; and Sir
Richard Wayne's daughter was only too well provided with this world's
goods, while he, with all his training, all his toil, was even yet a
comparatively poor man, with nothing to offer the girl in exchange for
the luxurious home from which he would fain take her.
On every count he knew himself to be ineligible; and in the same flash
of insight he saw Bruce Cheniston, young, good-looking, distinguished in
his profession, in the receipt of a large salary; and owned to himself,
with that clarity of vision which rarely failed him, that Cheniston,
rather than he, was a fit suitor for Iris Wayne.
On several occasions during those weeks of May he saw the two together;
and each time this happened he felt as though the sun had vanished from
the sky, as though the soft breezes of early summer were turned to the
cold and hopeless blast of an icy north-easter.
Cheniston had a motor-bicycle on which he intended to explore the
district; and on finding a kindred spirit in Miss Wayne he had
inaugurated a series of expeditions in which she was his companion;
while Chloe Carstairs and Cherry would motor forth in the same direction
and share a picnic lunch at some wayside hostelry--an arrangement which
afforded unbounded pleasure to some members, at least, of the quartette.
That Cheniston was strongly attracted by Iris, Anstice did not doubt. On
one unlucky Sunday he had received an invitation from Greengates, which,
delivered as it was in person by Sir Richard himself, could not have
been refused without discourtesy; and in the middle of the evening
Cheniston had dropped in casually with a message from his sister, and
had stayed on with an easy certainty of welcome which betokened a rapid
growth in favour with both father and daughter.
What Iris' feelings towards the new-comer might be Anstice had no means
of discovering. Her manner towards him was delightfully girlish and
simple, and it was plain to see that she was fascinated by his accounts
of life in the wonderful Egypt which holds always so strong an
attraction for the romantic temperament; but with all her young
_insouciance_ Iris Wayne was not one to wear her heart upon her sleeve;
and her friendliness never lost that touch of reticence, of unconscious
dignity which constituted, to Anstice, one of her greatest charms.
Towards himself, as an older man and one whose life naturally ran on
contrasting lines, her manner was a little less assured, as though she
were not quite certain of her right to treat him as one on a level with
herself; but the tinge of girlish deference to which, as he guessed, his
profession entitled him in her eyes, was now and then coloured with
something else, with a hint of gentleness, not unlike compassion, which
was oddly, dangerously sweet to his sore and lonely heart.
Somehow the idea of marriage had never previously entered his head.
Before the day which had, so to speak, cut his life in two, with a line
of cleavage dividing the careless past from the ever-haunted future, he
had been too busy, too much occupied in preparation for the brilliant
career which he felt would one day be his, to allow thoughts of marriage
to distract him from his chosen work. And since that fatal day, although
his old enthusiasm, his old belief in himself and his capabilities, had
long ago receded into the dim background, he had never consciously
thought of any amelioration of the loneliness, the bitter, regretful
solitude in which he now had his being.
Yet the thought of Iris Wayne was oddly, uncomfortably distracting; and
in those weeks of May, during which he deliberately denied himself the
sight of her, Anstice's face grew haggard, his eyes more sunken beneath
their straight black brows.
Yet Fate ordained that he should meet her, more, do her service; and the
meeting, with its subsequent conversation, was one which Iris at least
was destined never to forget.
One grey and cloudy morning when the sun had forgotten to shine, and the
air was warm and moist, Anstice was driving his car along a country road
when he espied her sitting by the wayside with a rather woe-begone face.
Her motor-bicycle was beside her and she was engaged in tying a knot,
with the fingers of her left hand aided by her teeth, in a
roughly-improvised bandage which hid her right wrist.
On seeing his car she looked up; and something in the rather piteous
expression of her grey eyes made him slow down beside her.
"What's wrong, Miss Wayne? Had a spill?"
She answered him ruefully.
"Yes. At least my motor skidded and landed me in the road. And I cut my
wrist on a sharp stone--look!"
She held up a cruelly-jagged flint; and Anstice sprang out of his car
and approached her.
"I say, what a horrid-looking thing! Let me see your wrist, may I? I
think you'd better let me bind it up for you."
"Will you?" She held out her wrist obediently, and taking off the
handkerchief which bound it he saw that it was really badly cut, the
blood still dripping from the wound.
"Ah, quite a nasty gash--it would really do with a stitch or two." He
hesitated, looking at her thoughtfully. "Miss Wayne, what's to be done?
You can't ride home like that, and yet we can hardly leave your
motor-bike on the roadside."
He paused a second, his wits at work. Then his face cleared.
"I know what we'll do," he said. "Round this corner is a cottage where a
patient of mine lives. We'll go in there, dispatch her son to look after
the bike till I patch you up, and then if you can't manage to ride home
we'll think of some other arrangement."
Iris rose, gladly, from her lowly seat.
"That's splendid, Dr. Anstice. I'm sure I can ride home if you will stop
this stupid bleeding."
"Good." He liked her pluck. "Jump into my car and we'll go and interview
Mrs. Treble."
"What an odd name!"
"Yes, isn't it? And by a strange coincidence her maiden name was Bass!"
Iris laughed, and a little colour came into her pale cheeks as they sped
swiftly round the corner in search of the oddly-named lady's abode.
Mrs. Treble, who was engaged in hanging out the weekly washing in the
small garden, was all sympathy at the sight of the young lady's wounded
wrist, and invited them into the parlour and provided the basin of water
and other accessories for which Anstice asked with a cheerful bustle
which took no account of any trouble involved.
When she had dispatched her son, an overgrown lad who had just left
school, to keep watch over the motor-cycle, Mrs. Treble requested the
doctor's leave to continue her work; and nothing loth, Anstice shut the
door upon her and gave his attention to his pale patient.
He had brought in a small leather case from his car, and after cleansing
the wound he selected a needle and some fine wire in order to put in the
necessary stitches, watched the while by a pair of interested, if
somewhat apprehensive eyes.
"I won't hurt you, Miss Wayne." Somehow he felt oddly reluctant to
inflict even a pinprick of pain on this particular patient. "I'm awfully
sorry, but I'm afraid I really must put in a couple of stitches. I'll be
as gentle as I can."
Iris laughed, rather shamefacedly.
"You think I am a coward," she said, "and you're quite right. I openly
confess I dread bearing pain, probably because I've never known anything
worse than toothache in my life!"
"Toothache can be the very--er--deuce," he said. "I once had it myself,
and ever since then I've had the liveliest sympathy for any poor
victim!"
"But there are so many other pains, so much worse, that it seems absurd
to talk of mere toothache as a real pain," she objected, and Anstice
laughed.
"Quite so, but you must remember that the other 'real pains' have
alleviations which are denied to mere toothache. One's friends do at
least take the other things seriously, and offer sympathy as freely as
more potent remedies; while the sight of a swollen face is apt to cause
one's relations a quite heartless amusement!"
"Well, it must be a consolation to be taken seriously," she said, "and I
do think sympathy is wonderfully cheering. Are all doctors as
sympathetic as you, Dr. Anstice?"
For a moment Anstice suspected her of mockery. He was well aware that
for all his real sympathy with acute suffering he was not remarkable for
patience in cases of less reality; and he knew that the people whose
ailments belonged to the latter category were apt to find his manner
abrupt and unsympathetic.
But a glance at Iris' face showed him she had spoken in good faith; and
he answered her in the same spirit.
"There are a good many men in the world who are far more sympathetic
with suffering humanity than I, Miss Wayne." For a moment his face
clouded, and Iris noticed the change wonderingly. "I'm afraid my manner
isn't all it might be. It isn't that I'm not genuinely sorry for people
who are, or think themselves, ill; but ..." for a second he hesitated,
then a quite unusual impulse drove him into speech, "... the fact is, I
once had a knock-down blow myself; and curiously enough it seemed to
dull my capacity for entering into the sufferings of others."
She took him up with unexpected comprehension.
"I think I can understand that. It has always seemed to me that it is
not the people who have suffered who sympathize ... they understand, if
you know what I mean, but they aren't just sorry like the people who
haven't had any sorrows of their own to spend their pity on...."
She broke off abruptly, and with equal abruptness Anstice suspended
operations to ask, with a solicitude which belied his earlier speech,
whether he were hurting her very badly.
"No ... not at all ... at least, hardly at all," she answered honestly.
"I was just wishing I could explain myself better. Now take Mrs.
Carstairs, for instance." Iris knew that Chloe had told Anstice her
story. "She has suffered as very few people like her have to do, but I
don't think it has made her exactly what you call sympathetic."
"That is just what I mean," said Anstice. "Somehow I think suffering is
apt to destroy one's nerve of sympathy for others. It atrophies, withers
away in the blast of one's personal tragedy; and although Mrs. Carstairs
might be able to enter into the feelings of another unhappy woman more
fully than--well, than you could do, I think you would be more likely to
feel what we call 'sorry for' that woman than she would be."
"I'm glad you agree with me," said Iris slowly. "Dr. Anstice, would you
think me very--impertinent--if I say I'm sorry you have
been--unhappy--too? I--somehow I always thought you"--she stopped,
flushed, but continued bravely--"you looked so sad sometimes I used to
wonder if you too had suffered, like poor Mrs. Carstairs."
For a moment Anstice's fingers faltered in their task, and the girl's
heart missed a beat as she wondered whether she had said too much.
Then:
"Miss Wayne"--Anstice's voice reassured her even while it filled her
with a kind of wondering foreboding--"I should never find any
impertinence in any interest _you_ might be kind enough to express. I
have suffered--bitterly--and the worst of my suffering lies in the fact
that others--one other at least besides myself--were involved in the ill
I unwittingly wrought."
Again her answer surprised him by the depth of comprehension it
conveyed.
"That, too, I can understand," said Iris gently. "I have often tried to
imagine how one must feel when one has unknowingly harmed another
person; and it has always seemed to me that one would feel as one does
when one has spoken unkindly, or impatiently, at least, to a child."
For a second Anstice busied himself in bandaging the slim wrist he held.
Then, without looking up, he said:
"You have thought more deeply than many girls of your age, Miss Wayne. I
wonder if you would extend your pity to me if you knew the nature of my
particular tragedy."
A sudden spatter of rain against the window-pane made them both look up
in surprise; and in a lighter tone Anstice said:
"A sharp shower, I see. I've finished my work, you'll be glad to hear,
but I think it will be wiser to wait here till the rain's over. Will
your cycle take any harm?"
"Oh, no, it can be dried at home," said Iris rather absently; and both
of them were too much preoccupied to expend any of their talked-of
sympathy on the overgrown youth patiently guarding the motor by the
roadside.
"Come and try an easier chair, won't you?" Anstice pushed forward a
capacious rocking-chair and Iris took it obediently, while Anstice
leaned against the table regarding her rather curiously.
"Miss Wayne." Suddenly he felt a quite overwhelming desire to admit this
girl into his jealously-guarded confidence. "From something you said
just now I gathered that you had been good enough to spare a thought for
me now and then. Does that mean that your kindness would extend so far
as to allow you to listen to a very short story in which I,
unfortunately, am the principal character?"
"I am ready to listen to anything you care to tell me," she said gently;
and looking into her steadfast grey eyes Anstice told himself that a man
could desire no sweeter, more trustworthy confidante.
"Well"--he sighed--"here is the story. Once, in India, I found myself in
a tight place, with a woman, a girl, who was almost a perfect stranger
to me. We had unwittingly trespassed into a native Temple, and the
penalty for such trespass was--death."
He paused a second, wondering whether she had heard Bruce Cheniston's
story; but although there was deep interest there was no recognition in
her quiet attention; and he hurried on.
"She--the girl--made me promise not to allow her to fall into the hands
of the natives. Whether she was correct in her fears of what might
happen to her I don't know; but I confess I shared them at the time.
Anyhow I promised that if help did not come before dawn--we were to die
at sunrise--I would shoot her with my own hand."
Again he paused; and the horror in Iris' grey eyes deepened.
"Well, help did come--ten minutes too late. I was standing with my back
against the wall, the guns were levelled at my heart, when the rescuers
burst into the courtyard and the natives fled. But I had shot the girl
ten minutes earlier...."
Anstice's brow was wet with drops of sweat as he finished, his whole
being convulsed with reminiscent agony; and he turned aside lest he
should read shrinking, or worse, condemnation in the grey eyes which had
never left his face.
There was a silence in which to the man who waited the whole world
seemed to halt upon its axis, as though aghast at the brief recital
which was almost Greek in its sense of inevitable tragedy; and for a
wild, hateful moment Anstice told himself that for all her boasted
comprehension Iris had not the power to understand the full force of the
situation.
Then, suddenly, he found her beside him. She had left her chair,
noiselessly, as he turned away, and now she was standing close to him,
her hand on his arm, her grey eyes, full of the sweetest, most divine
compassion, seeking his ravaged face.
"Oh, you poor thing!" The pity in her voice made it sound like the
softest music. "What a dreadfully sad story; and how you must have
suffered. But"--her kind little hand tightened on his arm--"why should
you reproach yourself so bitterly? You did the only thing it was
possible for you to do. No man living could have done anything else."
He turned to her now, and he had recaptured his self-control.
"It is sweet--and kind--of you to say just that." Even now his voice was
not quite steady. "And if I could believe it--but all the time I tell
myself if I had only waited ... there would perhaps have been a
chance ... I was too quick, too ready to obey her request, to carry out
my promise...."
"No, Dr. Anstice." In Iris' voice was a womanliness which showed his
story had reached the depths of her being. "I'm quite certain that's the
wrong way to look at it. As things were, there was nothing else to be
done, _nothing_. If I had been the girl," said Iris quietly, "I should
have thought you very cruel if you had broken your promise to me."
"Ah, yes," he said, slowly; "but you see there is another factor in the
case which I haven't told you--yet. She was engaged to be married--and
by acting prematurely I destroyed the hopes of the man who loved
her--whom she loved to the last second of her life."
This time Iris was silent so long that he went on speaking with an
attempt at a lighter tone.
"Well, that's the story--and a pretty gloomy one, isn't it? But I have
no right to inflict my private sorrows on you, and so----"
She interrupted him as though she had not heard his last words.
"Dr. Anstice, when you realized what had happened, what did you do? I
mean, when you came back to England? I suppose you did come back, after
that?"
"Yes. I had an interview with the man--the girl's _fiancé_ and came
home." He shrugged his shoulders, a bitter memory chasing away the
softer emotions of the preceding moment. "What did I do? Well, I did
what a dozen other fellows might have done in my place. I sought
forgetfulness of the past by various means, tried to drown the thought
of what had happened in every way I could, and merely succeeded in
delivering myself over to a bondage a hundred times more terrible than
that from which I was trying to escape."
For the first time Iris looked perplexed.
"I don't think I understand," she said, and again Anstice's face
changed.
"No," he said, and his voice was gentle, "of course you don't. And
there's no reason why you should. Let us leave the matter at that, Miss
Wayne. I am grateful to you for listening so patiently to my story."
"Ah," she said, and her eyes were wistful, "but I should like to know
what you meant just now. Won't you tell me? Or do you think I am too
stupid to understand?"
"No. But I think you are too young," he said; and the girl coloured.
"Of course if you would rather not----"
Something in her manner made him suddenly change his mind.
"There is no reason why I should make a mystery of it," he said. "I
hesitated about telling you because--well, for various reasons; but
after all you might as well know the truth. I tried to win forgetfulness
by the aid of drugs--morphia, to be exact."
He had startled her now.
"You took morphia----?" Her voice was dismayed.
"Yes, for nearly six months I gave myself up to it. I told myself there
was no real danger for me--I knew the peril of it so well. I wasn't like
the people who go in ignorantly for the thing; and find themselves bound
hand and foot, their lives in ruins round them. That is what I thought,
in my folly." He sighed, and his face looked careworn. "Well, I soon
found out that I was just like other people after all. I went into the
thing, thinking I should find a way out of my troubles. And I was
wrong."
"You gave it up?" Her voice was suddenly anxious.
"Yes. In the nick of time I came across an old friend--a friend of my
student days, who had been looking for me, unknown to me, for months. He
wanted me to do some research work for him--work that necessitated
visiting hospitals in Paris and Berlin and Vienna--and I accepted the
commission only too gladly."
"And--you gave up the terrible thing?"
"Yes. The new interest saved me, you know. I came back, after some
months of hard work, and found my friend on the eve of starting with an
expedition for Central Africa, to study tropical diseases; and had there
been a place for me I would have gone too. But there wasn't; and I was a
bit fagged, so after doing locum work for another friend for some time I
looked about for a practice, bought this one--and here I am."
"Dr. Anstice "--she spoke shyly, though her eyes met his bravely--"you
won't ever take that dreadful stuff again, will you? I am quite sure,"
said Iris Wayne, "that _that_ is not the way out."
"No," he answered steadily, "you are quite right. It isn't. But I haven't
found the way out yet." He paused a moment; then held out his hand, and
she put her uninjured left hand into it rather wonderingly. "Still, I
will not seek that way out again. I will promise--no, I won't promise,
for I'm only human and I couldn't bear to break a promise to _you_--but
I will do my best to avoid the deadly thing for the rest of my life."
He pressed her hand gently, then dropped it as a sudden loud knock
sounded on the door.
"Come in." They turned to see who the visitor might be; and to the
surprise of both in walked Bruce Cheniston, an unmistakable frown on his
face.
"Hullo! It is you, after all, Iris!" Anstice noted the use of her
Christian name, and in the same moment remembered there was a
long-standing friendship between the families. "I thought it was your
motor-cycle I found by the roadside, with a lanky yokel mounting guard
over it; and he said something about an accident----"
"Nothing very serious." Iris smiled at him in friendly fashion, and his
face cleared. "I skidded--or the bicycle did--and I fell off and cut my
wrist."
"I found Miss Wayne sitting by the roadside binding up her wound,"
interposed Anstice rather coldly, "and persuaded her to come in here and
have it properly seen to. If it had not been for the rain she would have
been on her way home by now."
"I see. It was lucky you passed." Evidently Iris' presence prevented any
display of hostility. "Well, the rain is over now, but"--he glanced at
Iris' bandaged wrist--"you oughtn't to ride home if you're disabled.
What do you say, Dr. Anstice?"
"I think, seeing it is the right wrist, it would be neither wise nor
easy for Miss Wayne to ride," said Anstice professionally, and Cheniston
nodded.
"Well, we will leave the cycle here, and send one of the men for it
presently," he said. "Luckily I have got Chloe's car, and I can soon run
you over, Iris. I suppose that is your motor outside?" he added, turning
to Anstice with sudden briskness.
"Yes." Anstice glanced towards the window. "It is fine now, and I must
be off, at any rate."
He packed the things he had used back into their little case, and turned
towards the door.
"Good morning, Miss Wayne. I hope your wrist won't give you any further
pain."
"Good-bye, Dr. Anstice." She held out her left hand with a smile. "Ever
so many thanks. I don't know what I should have done if you had not
passed just then!"
The trio went out together, after a word to the mistress of the cottage;
and Bruce helped Iris into the car with an air of proprietorship which
did not escape the notice of the other man.
"Hadn't you better start first, Dr. Anstice?" Cheniston spoke with cool
courtesy. "Your time is more valuable than ours, no doubt!"
"Thanks. Yes, I haven't time to waste." His tone was equally cool. "Good
morning, Miss Wayne. 'Morning, Cheniston."
A moment later he had started his engine; and in yet another moment his
car was out of sight round the corner of the road.