After the episode in the wayside cottage on that showery morning of May
Anstice made no further attempt to avoid Iris Wayne.
The way in which she had received his story had lifted a weight off his
mind. She had not shrunk from him, as in his morbid distrust he had
fancied possible. Rather she had shown him only the sweetest, kindest
pity; and it seemed to him that on the occasion of their next meeting
she had greeted him with a new warmth in her manner which was surely
intended to convey to him the fact that she had appreciated the
confidence he had bestowed upon her.
Besides--like the rest of us Anstice was a sophist at heart--the
kindness with which Sir Richard Wayne had consistently treated him was
surely deserving of gratitude at least.
It would be discourteous, if nothing more, to refuse his invitations
save when the press of work precluded their acceptance; and so it came
about that Anstice once more entered the hospitable doors which guarded
Greengates, incidentally making the acquaintance of Lady Laura Wells,
Sir Richard's widowed sister, who kept house for him with admirable
skill, if at times with rather overbearing imperiousness.
Sir Richard, for all his years, was hale and hearty and loved a game of
tennis; so that when once Iris' wrist was healed there were many keenly
contested games during the long, light evenings--games in which Iris,
partnered either by Cheniston or Anstice, darted about the court like a
young Diana in her short white skirt and blouse open at the neck to
display the firm, round throat which was one of her greatest charms.
The antagonism between Anstice and Bruce Cheniston deepened steadily
during these golden summer days. Had they met in different
circumstances, had there been no question, however vague and undefined,
of rivalry between them, it is possible there would have been no
positive hostility in their mutual attitude. Any genuine friendship was
naturally debarred, seeing the nature of the memory they shared in
common; but it would have been conceivably possible for them to have met
and recognized one another's existence with a neutrality which would
have covered a real but harmless distaste for each other's society.
Having been forced, by an unkind Fate, into a position in which each saw
in the other a possible rival, any neutrality was out of the question.
It had not taken Anstice long to discover that Cheniston had so far
recovered from the loss of Hilda Ryder as to consider the possibility of
making another woman his wife; nor had Cheniston's eyes been less keen.
He had very quickly discovered that Anstice was in love with pretty
Iris; and instantly a fire of opposition sprang into fierce flame in his
heart; and to himself he said that this man, having once deprived him of
his chosen woman, should not again be permitted to come between him and
his desire.
True, he did not profess to love Iris Wayne as he had loved Hilda Ryder;
for no other woman in the world could ever fill the place in his life
left vacant by that untimely shot in the dawn of an Indian day.
Until the hour in which he learned of Miss Ryder's tragic death Bruce
Cheniston had been an ordinary easy-going youth, cleverer in some ways
than the average man, on a level with most as regarded his outlook on
life and its possibilities. He had never been very deeply moved over
anything. Things had always gone smoothly with him, and he had passed
through school and college with quite passable success and complete
satisfaction in himself and his surroundings. His love for Hilda Ryder
was the best and highest thing in his whole life; and in his attempt to
become what she believed him to be he rose to a higher mental and moral
stature than he had ever before attained.
And then had come the tragedy which had deprived him at once of the girl
he had loved and the incentive to a better, worthier manhood which her
love had supplied. For her sake he could have done much, could have
vanquished all the petty failings, the selfish weaknesses which marred
his not otherwise unattractive character; but when Hilda Ryder vanished
from his life he lost something which he never regained.
He grew older, harder, more cynical. His sunny boyishness, which had
effectually masked the cold determination beneath, dropped from him as a
discarded garment; and the real man, the man whose possibilities Hilda
Ryder had dimly presaged and had resolved to conquer, came to the
surface.
He felt, perhaps naturally, that he had a grudge against Fate; and the
immediate result was to eliminate all softness from his character, and
replace such amiable weakness by a harsh determination to shape his life
henceforth to his own design, if indeed strength of purpose and a
relentless lack of consideration for any other living being could
compass such an end.
Fate had beaten him once. He was determined such victory should be
final; and during the last few years Bruce Cheniston had been known as a
man who invariably achieved his object in whatever direction such
achievement lay--a man of whom his friends prophesied that he would
surely go far; while his enemies, a small number, certainly, for on the
whole he was popular, labelled him ruthless in the pursuit of his
particular aims.
Perhaps he was not to blame for the metamorphosis which followed Hilda
Ryder's death. For the first time he had loved a human being better than
himself; so that the reaction which fell upon his spirit when he
realized that his love was no longer needed was in its very nature
severe.
Never again would he rise to the height of greatness to which his love
for Hilda Ryder had raised him; and whatever the quality of any
affection he might in future bestow upon a woman, the spark of
immortality, of selflessness, which had undoubtedly inspired his first
and truest love, would never again be kindled in his heart.
Yet in his way Bruce was attracted to Iris Wayne. On their last meeting
she had been a little schoolgirl, a pretty creature, certainly, but not
to be compared with the beautiful and gracious Hilda, to whom he was
newly betrothed. Yet now, on meeting her again, he was bound to confess
that Iris was wonderfully attractive; and in a strangely short period of
time he came, by imperceptible degrees, to look upon her as a possible
successor to the woman he had lost.
The fact that Anstice too found her desirable was stimulating. One of
Cheniston's newly-acquired characteristics was a tendency to covet any
object on which another had set his heart; and although in matters of
business this trait was possibly excusable enough, in this instance it
seemed likely to prove fatal to Anstice's happiness.
* * * * *
Which of the two men Iris herself preferred it would have taken a
magician to understand.
With Bruce she was always her gayest self, plying him with eager
questions concerning his life in Egypt; and she was quite evidently
flattered by the pains he took to charm and interest her with his
picturesque narratives of experiences in the land of the Nile. He was,
moreover, at her service at all times, always ready to take her
motor-cycling, or to play tennis or golf with her; and although Iris was
as free from vanity as any girl could possibly be, it was not unpleasing
to her youthful self-esteem to find a man like Cheniston over ready at
her beck and call.
With Anstice she was quieter, shyer, more serious; yet Sir Richard, who
watched the trio, as it were from afar, had a suspicion sometimes that
the Iris whom Anstice knew was a more real, more genuine person than the
gay and frivolous girl who laughed through the sunny hours with the
younger man.
So the days passed on; and if Anstice was once more living in a fools'
Paradise, this time the key which unlocked the Gate of Dreams was made
of purest gold.
* * * * *
In the middle of July Iris was to celebrate the eighteenth anniversary
of her birth; and rather to Anstice's dismay he found that the event was
to be marked by a large and festive merry-making--nothing less, in fact,
than a dinner-party, followed by a dance to be held in the rarely-used
ballroom for which Greengates had been once famous.
"You'll come, of course, Dr. Anstice?" Iris asked the question one sunny
afternoon as she prepared an iced drink for her visitor, after a
strenuous game of tennis. "You do dance, don't you? For my part I could
dance for ever."
"I do dance, yes," he said, taking the tumbler she held out to him, with
a word of thanks. "But I don't think a ball is exactly in my line
nowadays."
"It's not a ball," she said gaily. "Aunt Laura doesn't approve of oven a
dance, seeing I'm not really 'out' till I've been presented next
year--but Dad has been a perfect dear and says we can dance as long as
we like down here where none of our London relations can see us!"
"Well, dance or ball, I suppose it will be a large affair?" He smiled at
her, and she told herself that he grew younger every day.
"About a hundred and fifty, I suppose," she said lightly. "The room holds
two hundred, but a crowded room is hateful--though an empty one would be
almost worse. Anyhow, you are invited, first of all. Dinner is at seven,
because we want to start dancing at nine. Will you come?"
Just for a second he hesitated. Then:
"Of course I'll come," he said recklessly. "But you must promise me at
least three dances, or I shall plead an urgent telephone call and fly in
the middle!"
"Three!" Her grey eyes laughed into his. "That's rather greedy!
Well--I'll give you two, and--perhaps--an extra."
"That's a promise," he said, and taking out a small notebook he made an
entry therein. "And now, in view of coming frivolities, I must go and
continue my day's work."
He rose and looked round the lovely old garden rather regretfully.
"How lucky you are to be able to spend the summer days in such a cool,
shady spot as this! I wish you could see some of the stuffy cottages I
go into round here--windows hermetically sealed, and even the
fireplaces, when there are any, blocked up!"
She looked at him rather strangely.
"Do you know. Dr. Anstice," she said, irrelevantly, it seemed, "I don't
believe you ought to be a doctor. Oh, I don't mean you aren't very
clever--and kind--but somehow I don't believe you were meant to spend
your days going in and out of stuffy cottages and attending to little
village children with measles and whooping-cough!"
"Don't you?" Anstice leaned against the trunk of the big cedar under
which she sat, and apparently forgot the need for haste. "To tell you
the truth I sometimes wonder to find myself here. When I was younger,
you know, I never intended to go in for general practice. I had dreams,
wild dreams of specializing. I was ambitious, and intended making some
marvellous discovery which should revolutionize medical science...."
He broke off abruptly, and when he spoke again his voice held the old
bitter note which she had not heard of late.
"Well, that's all over. I lost ambition when I lost everything else, and
now I suppose I shall go on to the end of the chapter as a general
practitioner, attending old women in stuffy cottages, and children with
measles and whooping-cough!"
He laughed; but Iris' face was grave.
"But, Dr. Anstice"--she spoke rather slowly--"isn't it possible for
you to go back to those dreams and ambitions? Suppose you were to
start again--to try once more to make the discovery you speak of.
Mightn't it ..." her voice faltered a moment, but her grey eyes were
steady, "... mightn't that be the way out--for you?"
There was a sudden silence, broken only by the cooing of a wood-pigeon
in a tall tree close at hand. Then Anstice said thoughtfully:
"I wonder? Supposing that were the way out, after all?"
Ha gazed at her with a long and steady gaze which was yet oddly
impersonal, and she met his eyes bravely, though the carnation flush
deepened in her cheeks. Just as she opened her lips to reply a new voice
broke upon their ears.
"Good afternoon, Iris. Am I too late for a game of tennis?"
Bruce Cheniston, racquet in hand, had come round the corner of the
shrubbery, and as she heard his voice Iris turned to him swiftly.
"Oh, good afternoon! You are late, aren't you? We waited for you ever so
long, then as you did not come Dr. Anstice and I played a single."
"Oh." He looked rather curiously at the other man. "Which was the
victor? You?"
"Oh, Dr. Anstice always beats me!" Iris laughed. "You and I are more
evenly matched, Bruce--though I confess you generally win."
"Well, come and have a sett before the light goes." He glanced again at
Anstice. "Unless Anstice is giving you your revenge?"
"No, I'm off." Anstice straightened himself and held out his hand.
"Good-bye, Miss Wayne. Thanks so much for our game."
"Good-bye." She smiled at him with a hint of mischief in her eyes. "You
won't forget the fifteenth? I shan't believe any excuses about urgent
cases!"
He smiled too.
"I shan't tax your credulity," he said, "and I hope you won't forget
your promise!"
Their mutual smile, and the hint of an understanding between them which
Anstice's last words, perhaps intentionally, conveyed, brought a frown
to Cheniston's bronzed forehead.
"Oh, by the way, Anstice"--he spoke very deliberately, looking the other
man full in the face the while--"I want to have a chat with you--on a
matter of some little importance to us both. When are you likely to be
at liberty?"
The brightness died from Anstice's face; and when he answered his voice
was devoid of any note of youth.
"I am generally at liberty late in the evening," he said coolly. "If the
matter is important I can see you at nine o clock to-night. You'll come
to my place?"
"Thanks." Bruce took out his cigarette case and having selected a
cigarette handed the case to the other. "Then, if convenient to you, I
will be round at nine this evening."
"Very good." Anstice declined a cigarette rather curtly. "If I should be
unavoidably detained elsewhere I will ring you up."
"Right." Bruce picked up his racquet and turned to Iris as though to say
the subject was closed. "Are you ready, Iris? You like this side best, I
know."
And, with a sudden premonition of evil at his heart, Anstice turned away
and left them together in the sunny garden.