On the day before that fixed for Iris Wayne's wedding a large garden
party was held at Greengates; and fortunately the late September
afternoon was all that could be desired in regard to sunshine and soft
breezes.
The wedding itself was to be a comparatively quiet affair, only a score
or two of intimate friends and relations being invited to the house
after the ceremony; but Lady Laura had ordained that on the previous day
half the countryside was to be entertained; and although there were some
people who did not altogether approve of the match--for Bruce Cheniston
was, after all, the brother of the notorious Mrs. Carstairs--the
majority were only too ready to follow Sir Richard Wayne's lead and
extend a hand of friendship to Miss Wayne's prospective bridegroom.
Anstice had received an invitation to both ceremonies, and had accepted,
provisionally, for each; but in his heart he knew that no power on earth
could induce him to see Iris Wayne married to another man; and although
he duly appeared at Greengates while the garden party was in full swing
he only remained there a brief half-hour.
As he was bidding Lady Laura good-bye, Iris, with whom he had as yet
only exchanged a couple of words, came up to him with a friendly little
smile on her lips.
"Are you leaving us already, Dr. Anstice? I don't believe you've even
had a cup of tea--or what Daddy calls a peg. Have you?"
"Yes, thanks, Miss Wayne." He lied so convincingly that the girl
believed him. "I'm just off again--you must excuse me, but you know my
time is not my own."
"No." He thought she looked a little pale this afternoon. "I quite
understand, and I think it is very nice of you to come at all. You are
coming to-morrow?"
"I hope so." Again he lied, and something in the frank eyes which were
raised to his made him ashamed of his mendacity. "Of course--it's
possible I may be prevented, but in any case, Miss Wayne, please
remember my best wishes will be yours all day."
As though reminded of something she spoke impulsively.
"Dr. Anstice, I've never thanked you--except in a note--for your lovely
present. It is really quite the most uncommon one I have had, and I
shall value it immensely."
"I am glad you like it," he said. He had sent her a pair of ancient
Chinese vases which his father had received many years ago from the
grateful wife of a mandarin to whom he had once rendered a service. "I
hardly knew what to send you, and then I remembered you once said you
liked curios."
"I do--and these are so lovely." As she stood talking to him in the
sunlight Anstice told himself that this was really his farewell to the
girl he had known and loved, and his eyes could hardly leave her
adorable face. The next time they met--if Fate ordained that they should
meet again--she would be Bruce Cheniston's wife; and believing as he did
that this would be their last meeting as man and maid, Anstice took the
hand she held out to him with a very sore heart.
"Good-bye, Miss Wayne." Just for a moment he hesitated, feeling that he
could not bear to let her go like this; and the girl, puzzled by his
manner, waited rather uneasily, her hand in his. Then he gave her
fingers a last clasp, wringing them unconsciously hard, and let them go.
"Good-bye, Dr. Anstice." Standing as she did on the threshold of a new
life, face to face with a mystery she dreaded, yet was prepared, to
fathom, perhaps Iris' perceptions were a little quickened. All at once
she saw that this man looked upon her with different eyes from the other
men she knew; and the memory of her strange fancy earlier in the summer
gave her the key suddenly to his rather curious manner of bidding her
farewell.
With a foolish, but purely womanly, impulse of compassion, she spoke
again, laying her hand for a second on his arm with a friendliness which
no man could have misunderstood.
"No, Dr. Anstice. Not good-bye. We shall meet again to-morrow, at any
rate; so let us just say--_au revoir!_"
The kind little hand, the friendly words, almost broke down Anstice's
self-control.
With a huge effort he kept his voice steady; but his face was grey as he
answered her.
"If you wish, Miss Wayne--from the bottom of my heart let it
be--only--_au revoir!_"
* * * * *
And Fate, who foresaw in what wise their next meeting should take place,
probably chuckled to herself, like the malignant lady she can be, at
this parting between the two who might have been lovers but for a
miscalculated shot in the days gone by.
* * * * *
When Anstice had finished his day's work it was barely seven o'clock.
Fortunately for him he had no very serious cases on his hands just now,
and there was no need, save in the event of an urgent call, for him to
go out again when he had eaten his solitary dinner.
He was thankful for the respite, for the strain of the last few weeks,
the weeks of Iris' engagement, had been severe; and mind and body were
alike overtasked and weary. For several days he had suffered from a
severe neuralgic headache, and to-night the torture in head and eyes
threatened to overwhelm him.
For three or four nights he had hardly slept; and on more than one
occasion he had thought, with a queer, detached interest, of the relief
which morphia might bring to his tormented nerves; but with the thought
came another--the picture of Iris Wayne who had bidden him remember that
this was not the way out of the tragic muddle into which his life had
been plunged by his own action.
She had believed him when he told her he would not again deliver himself
into bondage to the fatal drug, and although he had not given her his
promise--foreseeing even then the possibility of this black hour--he had
meant, at the moment, to turn his back for ever on the seductive thing
which whispers such sweet, such deliriously fatal promises to the man in
the clutch of any agony he does not know how to bear.
So, although on the last two or three occasions he had not won the
victory without a struggle, Anstice had managed to win through without
lowering his flag; but to-night he began to wonder whether after all it
were worth while waging the unequal war any longer.
He had parted from Iris Wayne, as he thought, for ever. As the wife of
Bruce Cheniston he must henceforward regard her; and although he was no
saint, to covet his neighbour's wife was not compatible with Anstice's
code of decency.
He might love her still--at this moment he thought he knew that he would
love her always--but for all practical purposes their friendship, with
all its privileges and its obligations, was at an end. And this being
so, why should he hesitate to gain, if he might, relief from this agony
of mind and body by the help of the drug he had hitherto forsworn?
It is always hard on a man when to physical anguish is added agony of
mind, since in that dual partnership of pain no help may be rendered
either by its complementary part; and it does not need a physician to
know that such help given by the one to the other is frequently a ruling
factor in the recovery of the sick body or mind. And to-night Anstice
was enduring a physical and mental suffering which taxed mind and body
to their utmost limits, and absolutely precluded the possibility of any
helpful reaction one upon the other.
His eyeballs felt as though they were being pierced by red-hot needles;
while the stabbing pain in his head increased every moment. Had he
witnessed such suffering in another he would instantly have set about
alleviating it so far as his skill might allow; but he told himself that
there was only one effectual remedy for him and that was forbidden him
by his implied promise to Iris Wayne. And so he sat on in a corner of
the couch in his dim and shadowy room, and endured the excruciating pain
as best he might.
The house was very quiet, and suddenly he remembered that the servants
were out, witnessing the fireworks which Sir Richard had provided in the
park of Greengates for the entertainment of the village on the eve of
his daughter's wedding.
They had asked permission to go, and he had granted it readily enough;
and now he was grateful for the peace and tranquillity which their
absence engendered in the dark and quiet house.
Dimmer and more gloomy grew the room in which he sat--his
consulting-room, chosen to-night for its long window open to the garden
without. More and more thickly clustered the shadows round him as he sat
half-sunk in a corner of the big leather couch. Once an owl hooted in
the tall trees outside the house, and the strange, melancholy note
seemed a fit accompaniment to the eerie stillness of the night.
Worse and ever more hard to bear grew the fierce throbbing in his head
and eyes, but his wretchedness of mind ran a good race with his bodily
suffering; and had he been asked, suddenly, the nature of the pain which
tormented him he would have found it hard to answer immediately.
Only as the quiet hours wore on he began to feel that the limit of his
endurance was almost reached. He told himself that even Iris herself
would not willingly sanction such suffering as his had now become. In
all the world he desired only one boon--oblivion, unconsciousness, rest
from this state of being which was surely unendurable; and as a more
exquisitely painful throb of anguish shot through his head he plunged
his hand into his breast-pocket in search of a certain little case which
was generally to be found there during his day's round.
But he remembered, with a sudden keen disappointment, that he had
changed his coat on returning home to dinner, and the means of
alleviation which he sought were not at hand.
He half rose, intending to go in search of the thing he wanted; but the
effort of moving was too much, and he sank back again with an irritable
groan and prepared to endure still more of this misery.
Next he thought he would try the effect of a cigarette, but the matches
were not on the table before him. That obstacle, however, need not be
insurmountable, for in a drawer at his elbow he kept a supply, and
moving cautiously, for every movement set his nerves jangling, he turned
on the couch and opened the drawer to seek the matches which should be
there.
He found them immediately, and was in the act of taking one from the box
when his eye fell on a small package which somehow roused a strange
feeling of interest in his pain-shrouded mind.
It seemed familiar--at least he thought he remembered handling it
before, and by a queer twist of memory he thought of Mrs. Carstairs as
he took up the mysterious little parcel and turned it about in his
hands.
Yet his throbbing brain would not allow him to feel certain what was
really inside the packet, and with a sudden access of nervous irritation
he broke the seal which held its contents a mystery, and tore off the
enwrapping papers.
And as he realized what it was that the paper had hidden he uttered an
exclamation in which surprise and dismay and relief were oddly blended.
In his hand he held a box containing a hypodermic syringe and a supply
of morphia, and now he remembered how Mrs. Carstairs had told him of her
purchase of the same, and her subsequent decision to let the insidious
thing alone. She had given him the packet without apparent reluctance,
and as his own words, "I shan't be tempted to steal yours for my private
use," came flashing back to his memory he smiled, rather cynically, to
himself.
"If I believed in signs and omens I should take this as an unmistakable
invitation to me to hesitate no longer." He fingered the syringe
thoughtfully. "And upon my soul I don't see why I shouldn't accept it as
a sign. In any case"--all the pent-up bitterness of his soul found vent
in the words--"in future what I do can have no interest for Iris
Cheniston!"
As if the sound of the name, premature as it was, had put the finishing
touch to his reckless cynicism, he hesitated no longer.
With an almost savage gesture he struck a match and lighted a candle on
his writing-table; and as the little yellow flame sprang up, and strove,
vainly, to enlighten the encompassing gloom, he set about his
preparations with a sudden energy in striking contrast with his previous
lethargy.
When all was ready there came a last second of hesitation. With the
syringe in his hand, his arm bared, he paused, and for a last poignant
moment Iris' face rose before him in the flickering light. But now her
eyes had no power to move him from his purpose. Rather they maddened him
with their steadfast radiance, and with a muttered oath he looked aside
from that appealing vision and turned the key, recklessly, in the door
which led to the Paradise of Fools.
* * * * *
Nearly an hour later the telephone bell rang, sharply, insistently in
the hall. It went on ringing, again and again, a curiously vital sound
in the quiet house; but Anstice did not hear it, and at length the
ringing ceased.
It was nearly half an hour later when another bell rang, this time the
bell of the front door; but again no answer came to the imperative
summons. And now the bell rang on, so continuously, so persistently,
that at last its sound penetrated the dulled hearing of the man who
huddled in a corner of the big couch, mind and body alike dazed and
incapable of making any effort to understand the meaning of this oddly
insistent noise.
He was only conscious of a desire for it to cease; of a longing, not
sufficiently vivid to be acute, but the strongest emotion of which he
was at the moment capable, for a return to the silence which had
hitherto prevailed; and although the noise disturbed and angered him it
never occurred to him that to answer the summons would be the best way
of ending the irritating sound.
So that bell too went unanswered; and in due course it also ceased to
ring.
But that was not to be the end.
Dimly he heard the sound of voices, of footsteps in the hall, of the
striking of a match and the hissing of the gas. Then there was a
confused noise which was like and yet unlike a rapping on the panels of
the door of the room in which he sat; but he felt no inclination
whatever to move or make any response; and even when at length the door
itself opened, slowly and tentatively, he merely looked up with languid
curiosity to see what these phenomena might imply.
* * * * *
And in the doorway stood Iris Wayne, her face very pale, one hand
holding a flimsy scarf about her, with Bruce Cheniston by her side.