As the weeks passed Anstice's acquaintance with the Waynes ripened into something which he found strangely pleasant.
Although he had long ago decided that for him the simple human things of life, friendship, social intercourse with the world of men and women, were, since that bygone Indian morning, forbidden, even his acquired misanthropy was not proof against the kindly advances made to him by Sir Richard and his daughter.
Busy as he was, he still found time to accept some of their invitations to Greengates, and he and Sir Richard enjoyed a quiet chat over their cigars now and again when by chance he had an evening to himself.
On their side the Waynes found him, each in his and her own degree, an agreeable companion. Sir Richard approved of his quiet and reserved manner, and was not inclined to quarrel with his occasional fits of moodiness—for there were times when the ghosts which haunted him refused to be exorcised, and Anstice felt himself unfit, by reason of the handicap which Fate had imposed upon him, to mingle with the happy, the careless, the innocent ones of the earth.
To Sir Richard, kind-hearted, uncritical, undiscerning, such fits of silence, even of gloom, were natural enough in a man whose life was spent largely in the service of the sick and suffering among humanity. He was probably worried over some difficult case, Sir Richard concluded, when he found the younger man's conversation halting, his manner absent, or, on rare occasions, morose; and it must be noted that as a rule Anstice had too much respect for his friends to inflict these moods upon them. As for Iris, quicker of discernment than her father, of a more analytical turn of mind, she guessed that the changing moods which characterized her new acquaintance were not induced by any external or professional worries, but were the marks of a trouble far more serious, far more vital to the man himself. Of the nature of this trouble Iris had naturally no very clear idea, though now and again she considered the probability of him having been what she called, rather school-girlishly, crossed in love. But though her phraseology might be childish there was something purely womanly in the compassion with which she thought of Anstice; and on one occasion when a fit of melancholy had overcome him unexpectedly in her presence, he was startled, not to say dismayed, to notice something of this half-tender, half-impersonal pity in the soft, brooding glance of her eyes as they rested on him for a moment.
It was not with the Waynes alone that he grew more intimate as the days went by. A short time after his introduction to Greengates Anstice received a summons to Cherry Orchard, and on repairing thither found that his patient on this occasion was Cherry Carstairs. With all her demure dignity Cherry was at times possessed of a very spirit of perversity; and being, although of such tender years, absolutely devoid of fear, she had tried conclusions in secret with a shaggy pony in a field close by her home, with the result that, owing to the pony's stubborn refusal to allow her to climb upon his back, Cherry received a kick, more in sorrow than in anger, which snapped the bone in her tiny forearm, and sent her stumbling home, very pale and shaky, her dignity sadly in abeyance, to seek her mother.
Anstice, on arrival, soon had the small arm set and comfortably bandaged; and once safely in bed, although more upset than she wished anyone to imagine, Cherry regained her usual half-affectionate half-patronizing manner, and insisted upon Anstice sitting down beside her "for at least five minutes, my dear!"
With a smile, Anstice sat down as requested; and Cherry instantly began to question him on the subject of Greengates.
"Isn't it a fassynating house, my dear?" Cherry never employed a short word when she thought a long one fairly appropriate. "Have you seen Iris' bedroom?—all done in white and purple and green—and irises everywhere—on the walls and the curtains—just like a gorjus purple iris what grows in the garden?"
"No, I've not seen Miss Wayne's bedroom," owned Anstice rather hastily. "But it couldn't be prettier than this—why, those bunches of cherries on the wall are so life-like that I wonder the birds don't come in to make a meal of them!"
"Do you like them?" Cherry was openly gratified by his approval. "But I wish you could see Iris' room. She always takes me there to wash my hands and face, and the basin is all over irises too."
"Fassynating" as these details of Miss Wayne's domestic arrangements might be, Anstice judged it safer to switch his small patient on to another topic; and in an animated discussion as to the proper age at which a young lady might begin to ride a motor-bicycle—Cherry inclining to seven, Anstice to seventeen years—the promised five minutes flew swiftly away.
"You'll come again, my dear?" Cherry's anxiety to ensure his attendance was flattering, and he laughed and assured her he would visit her every day if she desired it.
As a matter of fact he did visit her with some regularity; for she managed, with a perversity known only to imps of a like nature, to catch a severe chill which puzzled her attendants, none of them knowing of a certain feverishly delightful ten minutes spent in hanging out of the window holding an interesting conversation with the gardener's boy below on the subject of broken bones. In any case, Anstice found it necessary to call at Cherry Orchard on several consecutive days; and during the child's illness and subsequent convalescence he was perforce obliged to come into contact with Mrs. Carstairs herself.
As a physiological study Chloe interested him strongly. Although she appeared genuinely fond of her little daughter and waited on her night and day with a solicitude which never varied, there was nothing in her manner to denote passionate affection, nor did the child appear to desire it. Even to Cherry her voice, rich and deep as it was, never softened; and she rarely used an endearing term. Yet Cherry appeared to be quite satisfied; and Anstice came to the conclusion that the child's fine instinct was able to pierce behind this apparent coldness to the warm human love which doubtless lay beneath.
One fact about Mrs. Carstairs he was not slow in discovering. With the exception of Iris Wayne and her father, Chloe appeared to be absolutely devoid of friends, even of casual acquaintances. The Littlefield people, who had been first surprised, then outraged, by her reappearance among them, had long since decided that for them Cherry Orchard wastabu; and although the Vicar, Mr. Carey, successor to the man whose wife had raised the storm in which Chloe Carstairs' barque had come to shipwreck, had called upon her, and endeavoured, in his gentle, courtly fashion, to make her welcome, his parishioners had no intention of following his example.
That Mrs. Carstairs felt her isolation in a social sense Anstice did not believe; but that she must feel very lonely at times, find the days very long and empty, he felt pretty well assured. She was not an accomplished woman in the usual sense of the word. He never found her playing the piano, or painting water-colour pictures as did so many of the women ha visited. She did not appear to care for needlework, and in spite of the books scattered about the house, he rarely saw her reading; yet all the while he had a feeling that had she desired to shine in any or all of the arts peculiar to women she would have no difficulty in doing so.
That she ordered her household excellently he knew from the glimpses he had obtained of her domestic life; but there again she was assisted by a staff of superior servants who all, from her personal attendant, the devoted Tochatti, down to the boy who cleaned the knives, worshipped their mistress with a wholehearted affection which held about it a touch of something almost resembling fanaticism.
One day Anstice did find her with a book in her hand; and on venturing to inquire into its contents was informed it was a well-knownTreatise on Chess.
"Do you play?" he asked, rather astonished, for in common with many men he imagined chess to be almost purely a masculine pastime.
"Yes—at least I used to play once," she admitted slowly. "I can't very well indulge in a game nowadays. Even the grownup Cherry declines to play, though I hope in time I may incite her to learn!"
"I used to play—indifferently—once," Anstice said meditatively; and Chloe looked at him with a faint smile.
"Did you? Some day when you are not too busy will you drop in to tea and play a game with me?"
"I'd like to immensely." His tone was sincere, and Chloe's manner warmed ever so little.
"Can you stay now?" The hour was just on five; and Cherry, who had that day been promoted to tea downstairs, seconded the invitation as usual from her nest on the big Chesterfield.
"Do stay, my dear, and I'll help you to move all the funny little men and the castles!"
Anstice could not refuse this double invitation; and after a hasty cup of tea he and his hostess sat down to the board and set out the ancient ivory chessmen which were so well suited to the pretty, old-fashioned room in which the players sat.
To Anstice's quite unjustifiable surprise Chloe Carstairs played an admirable game. Her moves were clearly reasoned out, and she displayed a quickness of thought, a brilliance of man[oe]uvre, which soon convinced Anstice he was outplayed.
At the end of fifteen minutes Chloe had vanquished him completely; and while most of his men were reposing in the carved box at her elbow, the ranks of her army were scarcely thinned.
"I give in, Mrs. Carstairs!" He laughed and rose. "You won't think me unsporting if I run away now? I'm beat hollow, and I know it, but if you will condescend to play with me another day——"
"I shall look forward to another game," she said serenely; and Anstice departed, feeling he had been permitted to obtain another sidelight on her somewhat complex character.
Two days later he made another and rather disconcerting discovery, which set him wondering afresh as to the real nature of the woman who, like himself, had been the victim of a strangely vindictive fate.
The day was Sunday, and Cherry had been permitted the indulgence of breakfast in bed; so that Anstice interviewed his young patient in her own pink-and-white nest, where, attended by the faithful Tochatti, she gave herself innumerable airs and graces, but finally allowed him to examine her small arm, which was now practically healed.
"Mrs. Carstairs not up yet?" It was ten o'clock—but there was no sign of Cherry's mother.
"Yes, sir." Tochatti spoke slowly, her foreign accent more strongly marked than usual. "My mistress has a slight headache and is in her own room. She would like to see you before you go."
Accordingly, after a prolonged parting from Cherry, who shamelessly importuned him to neglect his other and less important patients, Anstice accompanied Tochatti to Mrs. Carstairs' sitting-room where its owner presumably awaited him.
The room itself was in its way as uncommon as its occupant, being furnished entirely in black and white. The walls were white, the carpet black. The chairs and couches were upholstered in black-and-white chintz, with a profusion of cushions of both hues, and the pictures on the white walls were etchings in black oak frames. On the mantelpiece was a collection of carved ivory toys of all kinds, with here and there an ebony elephant from Ceylon or Assam. The paint on doors and windows was black, yet in spite of the sombreness of the general scheme there was nothing depressing, nothing sinister in the finished effect.
Possibly because Chloe Carstairs was an artist—or a wise woman who knew the value of relief—one note of colour was struck in the presence of a huge china bowl filled with tulips of every conceivable shade of flame and orange and yellow and red; but with that exception black and white predominated, and when Chloe Carstairs rose from her low chair near the window and advanced towards him, she, too, carried out the subtle suggestion of the whole room.
Dressed in white, her silky black hair and blue eyes the only bits of colour about her, she looked paler than usual, and Anstice jumped to the conclusion she had sent for him to prescribe for her.
"Good morning, Dr. Anstice." Anstice, who hated shaking hands with most people, always liked her firm, cool handshake. "How is Cherry? You find her better?"
"Yes, she is really quite herself again, and her arm has healed most satisfactorily." He stood in front of her as he spoke, and studied her face carefully. "But you don't look very fit, Mrs. Carstairs. Can I do anything for you now that your little daughter has finished with me?"
She looked at him with a smile which was more melancholy than usual.
"I think not," she said slowly. "You see, I am not ill, only a little tired—tired with remembering days that are gone."
"Isn't that rather a fatal thing to do?" His own bitter memories gave him the clue to her state of mind. "No good ever comes of remembering sad things. I think the perfect memory would be one which would only retain the happiness of life. You know the old motto found on many sundials: 'I only record sunny hours.'"
"I don't agree with you," she said quietly. "It's the shadows which give value to the high lights, isn't it? And sometimes to remember dreadful things is a happiness in itself, knowing they are gone for ever. I can quite well bear to remember that horrible prison"—as always when speaking of it, her lips whitened—"because no power on earth can ever put me back there again."
"I don't think it can do you any good to dwell on such memories," he persisted. "If you are wise you will forget them. No wonder your head aches if you dwell on such unpleasant things."
She looked at him more fully, and in her eyes he read something which baffled him.
"You are quite right—and delightfully sane and sensible," she said. "But as a matter of fact, I wasn't really thinking of the prison to-day. You see, this is the anniversary of my wedding day, and my thoughts were not altogether sad ones."
He looked at her, nonplussed for the moment, and suddenly Chloe's face softened.
"Dr. Anstice, forgive me. The fact is, I had a bad night, and am all on edge this morning."
"Why do you sit in here?" asked Anstice abruptly. "It is a lovely morning—the sun is warm and there's no wind. Why not go out into your charming garden? Lie in a low chair and sleep—or read some amusing book. Is this a particularly engrossing one?"
He picked up the volume she had laid down at his entrance, and she watched him with a faint hint of mockery in her blue eyes. His face changed as he read the title.
"De Quincey'sConfessions! Mrs. Carstairs, you're not interested in this sort of thing?"
"Why not?" Her manner was ever so slightly antagonistic. "The subject is a fascinating one, isn't it? I confess I've often felt inclined to try opium—morphia or something of the sort, myself."
"Morphia?" His voice startled her by its harshness. "Don't make a joke of it, Mrs. Carstairs. If I thought you really meant that——"
"But I do—or did." She spoke coolly. "I even went so far as to purchase the means of indulging my fancy."
"You did? But—forgive me—why?"
"Don't we all sigh for oblivion now and then?" She put the question calmly, looking him squarely in the face the while. "I have always understood that morphia is one of the roads into Paradise—a Fool's Paradise, no doubt, but we poor wretches can't always choose our heavens."
"Nor our hells!" He still spoke vehemently. "Yes, there are times in all our lives when oblivion, forgetfulness, seems very desirable, very alluring. But let me entreat you, Mrs. Carstairs, not to seek to enter Paradise by that devil's key!"
Her almond-shaped eyes grew still more narrow as she looked at him.
"I wonder why you speak so impressively," she said slowly. "As a doctor doubtless you areau faitin the subject, yet your vehemence seems to imply——" She paused.
"As a doctor I've seen enough of the havoc the opium fiend plays in the lives of men—and women," he said steadily, "to realize the danger that lies in the insidious habit. I have seen women—women like you"—he had no idea of sparing her—"young, of good position and all the rest of it, who have slid into the deadly thing on the flimsiest of pretexts—and then, too late, have realized they are bound—for life—with fetters which cannot be broken."
"Yet the deadly thing is fascinating, isn't it? Else why do so many fall under its sway?"
"Fascinating?" With an inward shudder Anstice recalled those months after Hilda Ryder's death—those horrible, chaotic months when, in a vain endeavour to stifle thought, to deaden remorse, he had invoked the aid of the poppy, and by so doing had almost precipitated a moral catastrophe which should have been more overwhelming than the first. "For God's sake, Mrs. Carstairs, don't become obsessed by that idea. The morphia habit is one degrading slavery of mind and body, and only the miserable victims know how delusive are its promises, how unsatisfactory its rewards. What can you expect from a cult whose highest reward—the only thing, indeed, it has to offer you, is—oblivion?"
Chloe Carstairs did not reply. Instead, she turned away and moved across the room to a small black escritoire which stood against the white wall. Bending down she opened it, and after pressing a spring, released what appeared to be a secret drawer. From this she lifted out a little packet wrapped in white paper and sealed with red wax, and holding it in her hand she came slowly back to where Anstice stood, made vaguely uncomfortable by her curious, almost secretive manner.
"Dr. Anstice"—she held out the packet—"will you take charge of this for me? It is the key—what you called the devil's key just now—to the Paradise I have never had the courage to enter."
Anstice took the little parcel from her with something of sternness in his face.
"Yes, Mrs. Carstairs. But what, exactly, is this thing?"
"An hypodermic syringe and a supply of morphia," she informed him tranquilly. Then, as he pursed his lips into an involuntary whistle, she went on, with more than a hint of mockery in her manner: "Oh, I came by it quite honestly, I assure you! I didn't steal it from a doctor's surgery—I bought it at a chemist's shop in London."
"You did?"
"Yes, and I made the young man show me how to use it." She smiled rather ironically. "Naturally I was ignorant in the matter, and I didn't want to make a blunder in its use."
"Really? Well, Mrs. Carstairs, this is your property, but I wish I might persuade you to leave it in my keeping for the present."
"You think it would be safer there?" She looked at him as though considering the matter. "Well, I wonder?"
"You wonder—what?" He spoke dryly.
"Whether itissafer with you. Of course, as a doctor you can get plenty of your own——"
"I shan't be tempted to steal yours for my private use," said Anstice a trifle grimly; and the Fates who rule the lives of men probably smiled to themselves over the fatuity of mankind.
"Well, I gave it to you myself, so you may as well keep it," said Chloe indifferently, as though already tired of the subject; and without more ado Anstice slipped the little white packet into his pocket, and took leave of its former owner before she had opportunity to change her mind on the subject.
He could not dismiss the figure of Chloe Carstairs from his thoughts as he went about his day's work. Intuitively he knew that she was a bitterly unhappy woman, that her life, like his own, had been rent in two by a cataclysm of appalling magnitude, such as visits very few human beings, and he told himself that this woman, too, had been down in the depths even as he had been. And no man, no woman, who has once known the blackness of the abyss, that "outer darkness" in which the soul sits apart in a horror of loneliness, can ever view the world again with quite the clear-eyed vision of the normal human being to whom, fortunately for the sanity of the race, such appalling experiences are mercifully unknown.
On a morning a week later Anstice received a note from Mrs. Carstairs.
"Dear Dr. Anstice,""My brother has unexpectedly written to offer himself for a couple of nights, and I shall be pleased if you will come to dinner this evening at half-past seven to meet him. I have invited Miss Wayne, so please complete our quartette if you can.""Sincerely,""Chloe Carstairs."
"Dear Dr. Anstice,"
"My brother has unexpectedly written to offer himself for a couple of nights, and I shall be pleased if you will come to dinner this evening at half-past seven to meet him. I have invited Miss Wayne, so please complete our quartette if you can."
"Sincerely,"
"Chloe Carstairs."
For some moments Anstice sat inwardly debating the question, the note in his hand.
He had no engagement for the evening. The people of Littlefield, puzzled, perhaps a little piqued, by the aloofness of his manner, rarely invited him to their houses in anything but his professional capacity, though they called upon his services in and out of season; and Sir Richard Wayne and Mr. Carey, the gentle, courtly Vicar of the parish, were the only two men with whom he ever enjoyed an hour's quiet chat over a soothing pipe or cigar.
So that there was no reason why he should hesitate to accept Chloe Carstairs' invitation for that particular evening, yet hesitate he did, unaccountably; and when, after fifteen minutes indecision, he suddenly scribbled and dispatched an acceptance, the messenger had barely gone from his presence before he felt an unreasoning impulse to recall the letter.
What lay at the bottom of his strange reluctance to enjoy Chloe's hospitality he had not the faintest notion. He had no special aversion to meeting her brother, nor was he in any way reluctant to improve his acquaintance with Iris Wayne.... Did his heart, indeed, beat just a shade faster at the thought of meeting her? Yet something seemed to whisper that this invitation was disastrous, that it would set in train events which might be overwhelming in their sequence.
He tried, vainly, to banish the faint premonition of evil which had fallen upon him when he realized it was too late to recall his acceptance. Throughout the day it persisted, and when at length he went to his room to dress for the evening, he felt a strong inclination to excuse himself over the telephone on the plea of an urgent call to whose importance he could not turn a deaf ear.
Such an excuse would, he knew, pass muster well enough. A doctor can rarely be depended upon, socially, and when he was dressed he went downstairs with the intention of ringing up Cherry Orchard and regretting his inability to make a fourth at Mrs. Carstairs' dinner-table that night.
Yet at the last moment Fate, or that other Higher Power of which we know too little to speak with any familiarity, intervened to restrain his impulse, and with a muttered imprecation at his own unusual vacillation he turned away from the telephone and went out to his waiting car impatiently.
Arriving at Cherry Orchard, the elderly manservant relieved him of his coat with a deferential smile.
"I think I'm a little late, Hagyard." Anstice glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner. "Or perhaps your clock's a bit forward."
"I daresay it is, sir." Hagyard accepted the suggestion with well-trained alacrity. "Miss Wayne has only been here a moment or two."
He threw open the door as he spoke and Anstice entered the drawing-room with a sudden unwelcome return of his premonition strong upon him.
Yet the room, with its shaded lamps, small wood-fire, and latticed windows open to the sweet spring twilight, looked peaceful enough. As usual there were masses of flowers about, tulips, narcissi, anemones; and the atmosphere was fragrant as Anstice went forward to greet his hostess, who stood by one of the casements with her guests beside her.
She came towards him with her usual slow step, which never, for all its deliberation, suggested the languor of ill-health; and as he began to apologize for his late arrival she smiled away his apologies.
"You're not really late, Dr. Anstice, and in any case we should have given you a few minutes' grace."
She stood aside for him to greet Iris, and as he shook hands with the girl Anstice's heart gave a sudden throb of pleasure, which, for the moment, almost succeeded in banishing that uncanny premonition of evil which had come with him to the very gates of Cherry Orchard.
She was very simply dressed in a frock of filmy grey-green chiffon whose colour reminded him of the spiky leaves of a carnation; but he had never seen her look prettier than on that mild spring night; and his eyes unconsciously softened as they dwelt upon her face for one fleeting moment.
Then as Chloe's soft, deep voice, introducing her brother, stole on his ear, he turned to greet the other man; and instantly he realized, too late, the meaning of that presentiment of ill which had haunted him all day; understood why the inner, spiritual part of him had bidden him refuse Chloe Carstairs' invitation to Cherry Orchard that night.
For the man who turned leisurely from the window to greet the new-comer was the man whom he had last seen in a green-walled bedroom in an Indian hotel, the man whom, by a tragic error, he had robbed of the woman he loved, from whom he had parted with a mutual hope that their paths in life might never cross again.
Mrs. Carstairs' brother was the man whom Hilda Ryder had loved, Bruce Cheniston himself.
As a rule the psychological moments of life come and go so quietly that their passing attracts little notice. Quite minor happenings give rise to demonstrations of excitement, of joy, of loudly voiced approbation or disappointment. But the moments which really matter in a life, which mark an epoch or destroy a dream, pass as a rule so quietly that only those whose dreams are shattered, or whose lives have been touched with the glory of the immortal, know that for a brief instant Time has become interchangeable with Eternity; that in the space of sixty fleeting seconds whole cycles of life have been lived through, and a vast and yawning gulf, in thought, in feeling, in spiritual growth or mental outlook, has opened to divide this moment from the one which directly preceded it.
Such a moment was this one in which the two men who were bound together by so tragic a link came face to face in Chloe Carstairs' drawing-room.
Each had been quite sincere in his dread of any future meeting; but whereas Bruce Cheniston had been the victim of as cruel a circumstance as ever deprived lover of his beloved, Anstice was the more to be pitied, inasmuch as to his own burden of regret must be added the knowledge that through his premature action he had given another man the right to execrate his name so long as they both should live.
For a second Anstice wondered, growing cold whether Cheniston would refuse to shake hands with him. In his heart he knew quite well, had always known, that he had not been to blame in that bygone episode; that although he had done a thing which must haunt him for the rest of his life by reason of its tragic uselessness, as a man in whom a woman had trusted he had had no alternative but to act as he had acted.
Yet of all men on earth Cheniston might well question the necessity of his action; and Anstice told himself with a fast-beating heart that he would have no right to resentment should the other refuse to take his hand, to sit at meat with the man who had deprived Hilda Ryder of her share in the gracious inheritance of life in the world she had called so beautiful.
For a second, indeed, Cheniston himself hesitated, checked in the friendly greeting he had been about to bestow on his sister's visitor. He had arrived late that evening, and had been dismissed to dress with the hasty information that two guests were expected to dinner, but he had had no idea of the last arrival's identity; and to him, too, the meeting brought back with horrible poignancy that last bitter interview in the haunted East.
Then, for Bruce Cheniston was sufficiently just to acquit Anstice of any share in this untoward situation, he held out his hand with a cold courtesy which plainly betokened no intention of alluding to any former meeting.
"Good evening." Their hands touched, then fell apart. "You are a new-comer to Littlefield, I understand. Like the place?"
"Yes—in moderation," rejoined Anstice with equally frigid courtesy. "The country has its charms—at this season of the year."
"It has charms at all seasons, Dr. Anstice." Iris' light voice challenged him, even while her grey eyes noted the strange expression in his face. "I'm afraid you're not a real country lover if you qualify your affection by picking out a particular season!"
"You remind one of those people who love dogs—'in their proper place.'" Chloe's tone was delicately quizzical. "On inquiry you find their proper place is outside—in some kennel or inclosure as far away from the speaker as it is possible to get!"
"You can't be charged with that particular kind of affection, Chloe." There was an assertive note in Cheniston's voice when he spoke to his sister which was new to her. "You think a dog's proper place is the best armchair or the downiest bed in the house!"
For a second Chloe did not reply; and without waiting Bruce went on speaking.
"By the way, where are your dogs? I've not seen hide or hair of one since I arrived."
Again there was a short, but quite perceptible silence. Then Chloe said tranquilly:
"No wonder you haven't seen any dogs, Bruce. There aren't any to see."
"No dogs?" Bruce was frankly astonished. "Why, in the old days you used to declare you couldn't live without them!"
Just for a second a quiver of emotion convulsed Chloe's usually impassive face. Then she laughed, and Anstice thought her laugh almost painful in its artificiality.
"My dear Bruce," she said, "please remember the old days are as dead as—as Queen Anne. When I was young enough and foolish enough to believe in disinterested affection, and in the right of every creature to be happy, I adored dogs—or thought I did. Now I am wiser, and know that life is not all bones and playtime, so to speak. Besides, they always die when one is fond of them, and I quite agree with Kipling that with so much unavoidable discomfort to put up with, it's the height of folly to 'give one's heart to a dog to tear.' In future I yield no fraction of my heart to any living creature—not even a dog."
Certainly Chloe's drawing-room was a battlefield of conflicting emotions this evening. Just for a moment she had been shaken out of her usual poise, had spoken warmly, as a normal woman might have done; yet both Iris who loved her, and Anstice who had studied her, knew that this warmer manner, this apparent freedom of speech, was in reality the outward sign of some inward disturbance; and both guessed, vaguely, that the meeting with her brother, who had not been in England for several years, was the cause of her unusual animation.
Fortunately as she finished speaking the gong which summoned them to dinner began to sound; and a moment later Bruce offered his arm to Iris and led her into the dining-room, followed by Anstice and his hostess.
Not appearing to notice his proffered arm, Chloe walked beside him in a sudden pensive silence which Anstice found oddly appealing after her impetuous speech; and for a moment he forgot his own equivocal position in a desire to help her through what he guessed to be a trying moment.
Once seated at the pretty round table things became easier. The room was softly lit by innumerable candles—a fancy of Chloe's—and in their tender light both women looked their best. As usual Mrs. Carstairs wore white, the fittest setting, Anstice thought, for her pale and tragic grace; but to-night she had thrown a wonderful Chinese scarf round her shoulders, and the deep blue ground, embroidered with black and green birds and flowers, gave an unusually distinctive note to her elusive personality. Opposite to her Iris, in her filmy grey-green frock, a big bunch of violets at her breast, wore the look of a nymph, some woodland creature whose fragrant charm and youthful freshness were in striking contrast to Chloe's more finished beauty.
The conversation, once started, ran easily enough. Although he never mentioned India, Cheniston was ready enough to talk of Egypt, where for some years he had made his home; and Iris, to whose young imagination the very name of that mysterious land was a charm, listened entranced to his description of a trip he had lately taken up the Nile.
"You are an engineer, Mr. Cheniston?" Anstice interpolated a polite question and Cheniston answered in the same tone.
"Yes. And engineering in the land of the Pharaohs is no joke. You must remember that we, as engineers, are only now where they were thousands of years ago. I mean that our present-day feats, the Dam at Assouan, wonderful as it is, and the rest, are mere child's play compared with the marvels they constructed in their day."
"So I have been told before." Only Anstice knew how hard it was to sit there conversing as though he and this man shared no tragic memory in common. "But if Egyptologists are to be believed there is hardly any invention, any scientific discovery—so called—which wasn't known to the Egyptians many thousands of years before the birth of Christ."
"They even possessed aeroplanes, didn't they?" asked Iris, smiling; and Bruce Cheniston turned to her with an involuntary softening in his rather harsh voice.
"So it is stated, I believe," he said, with an answering smile. "And it is generally believed that in the lost Continent of Atlantis——"
He went on talking, not monopolizing the conversation, but keeping it going so skilfully that Iris, at least, did not recognize the fact that both Mrs. Carstairs and Anstice were more than ordinarily silent as the meal progressed.
When the short but perfect dinner was finished Chloe rose.
"We will have coffee in the drawing-room, Bruce," she said as she moved slowly to the door. "If you are not too long over your cigarettes I daresay Miss Wayne will sing for us."
"With that inducement we shall soon follow you," said Cheniston gravely; and as Iris passed through the door which Anstice held open for her she gave him a friendly little smile which somehow nerved him for the ordeal which he foresaw to be at hand.
Closing the door he came back again to the table, but did not yet sit down. Bruce had already reseated himself and was pouring out a glass of port, an operation he interrupted with a perfunctory apology.
"Forgive me—pray help yourself." He pushed the decanter across the table, but Anstice shook his head.
"No, thanks." He hesitated a moment, then plunged into the subject which must surely be uppermost in both their minds. "See here, Cheniston, I should like you to understand that when I accepted Mrs. Carstairs' kind hospitality to-night I had no idea you were the brother I was to meet."
For a second Cheniston said nothing, his brown hand playing absently with a pair of nutcrackers beside him. Then he raised his head and looked Anstice squarely in the face.
"I am quite ready to believe that," he said slowly. "I can hardly conceive any circumstances in which you would care to run the risk of a meeting with me."
"Quite so." Something in Cheniston's manner made Anstice suddenly angry. "Though I would ask you, in common fairness, to believe that my distaste for such a meeting rises rather from my reluctance to remind you of the past than from any acknowledgment that you have a right to resent my presence."
Again Bruce Cheniston looked him in the face; and this time there was a genuine surprise in his blue eyes.
"I don't think I have given you reason to suppose I resent meeting you," he said with a new note in his voice, a note of something more definitely like hostility than he had hitherto permitted himself to show. "Since you have started the subject I may say that as a rule one doesn't greet as a brother the man who has robbed one of one's most treasured possession—I'm speaking metaphorically, of course—but I think you can hardly find fault with my—hesitation just now."
"Oh, you have been politeness itself," said Anstice, rather bitterly. "And in return for your forbearance I will relieve you of my unwelcome presence immediately. Luckily my profession makes it easy for me to behave with what, in another man, would appear discourtesy."
He turned towards the door; but Bruce's voice arrested him midway.
"One moment, Dr. Anstice." His tone was less openly hostile. "Don't go yet, please. There are still one or two things to be said between us. Will you do me the favour of sitting down again and letting us talk a little?"
"I don't see what good will come of it, but I'll stay if you wish." Anstice returned to the table, and drawing out a chair—the one which Iris had occupied during the meal—he sat down and lighted a cigarette with a slightly defiant air.
"To begin with"—Cheniston spoke abruptly—"I gather you know my sister's story—know the bitter injustice that has been done to her in this damned place?"
Rather taken aback Anstice hesitated before replying, and Cheniston continued without waiting for him to speak:
"I say you know it, because my sister has a code of honour which forbids her welcoming to her house anyone who is ignorant of that horrible chapter in her history. And since I find you here, not only as a doctor, but as a friend, I gather you believe she was innocent of the charge against her."
"Most certainly I believe in Mrs. Carstairs' innocence." He spoke warmly now.
"For that, at least, I am grateful to you." His tone did not betray overwhelming gratitude, yet Anstice felt a sudden lightening of his spirit. "To me, of course, it is absolutely inconceivable how anyone could believe my sister guilty of such a degrading crime—or series of crimes—but doubtless I am biassed in her favour. Still, you are a new acquaintance, and don't know her as I do; so that I am grateful to you for your clear-sightedness in the matter."
He broke off for a moment to drink some wine. Then:
"I should like to ask you one question. Does my sister know of that episode in India? I mean, of course, of your share in the affair?"
"No. And," said Anstice, "it has been puzzling me for the last couple of hours to understand how it is that she has not connected my name with you. Didn't she know it at the time?"
"I daresay. But you must remember that my sister has gone through a great deal since that day, three years ago. Very soon after that she became involved in that terrible chain of events which led to her public humiliation; and I haven't a shadow of doubt that the names of the actors in the tragedy which broke up my life vanished completely from her memory. As you may have noticed, Chloe is a self-centred woman. Her sympathies are not deep, nor her interests wide. Her own life is a good deal more interesting to her than the lives of other people—it is generally so with strong characters, I believe—and after all, her own tragedy has been so appalling that she may be excused if she has not a very keen curiosity for those of others."
"I quite agree with you. But"—it was Anstice's turn to look Cheniston fully in the face—"do I understand you wish me to tell your sister of our former—acquaintance?"
After his question there fell a silence, during which Anstice had time to study the other man more fully than he had hitherto done.
Like himself, Cheniston had altered since that day in India. Although still sunburned and florid, a typical young Englishman in his square-shouldered build and general air of clean fitness, there was something in his face which had not been there before, which warred oddly with the youth which still lurked in the blue eyes and round the clean-shaven mouth. The boyishness had vanished from his features, taking with it all hint of softness; and in its place was a hard, assertive look, the look of one who, having been once worsted in a bout with Fate, through no fault of his own, was determined for the future to keep a sharp lookout for his own interests and well-being.
That it was a stronger face there was no denying, but it was also a far less attractive one than that which Bruce Cheniston, the boy, had presented to the world.
At another moment Anstice would have found occasion for interested speculation in the question as to whether or no this new man were the real Bruce Cheniston—the Cheniston who would eventually have come to the surface no matter how his life had been ordained; and as a psychologist he would have found pleasure in debating the subject in all its aspects. But as things were he was too miserably conscious that to him, indirectly, this change from boy to man was due to take any interest in the subtler question as to whether, after all, the alteration was only the logical outcome of the man's true character, uninfluenced by external happenings.
"No." Cheniston spoke so suddenly that Anstice started. "On the whole I see no reason why my sister need be told the truth. Of course, one day the similarity of name may flash upon her, and then, naturally, she must be told."
"Quite so." Anstice played with an empty glass for a moment. "As a matter of fact I should really prefer Mrs. Carstairs to know the truth. Of course the decision rests with you; but if you see your way to telling her the story, pray don't be held back from doing so by any scruples on my account. Besides——"
Suddenly, so suddenly that he broke off involuntarily in his sentence, the notes of the piano rang out from the room across the hall, and without thinking what he did he rose hastily to his feet.
"Miss Wayne is going to sing." Cheniston followed his lead politely. "Shall we go and listen to the concert, Anstice?"
"As you like. Forgive my abruptness, Cheniston." He had realized he had acted unconventionally. "Miss Wayne's singing is a treat one doesn't want to lose."
With a queer little smile Cheniston led the way across the hall, and they entered the drawing-room, Iris bringing her prelude to a close as the door opened to admit them.
"Come and sit down, Dr. Anstice." Chloe indicated a deep chair beside the piano, and nothing loth, Anstice sat down as directed, while Cheniston, his face a little in shadow, stood by one of the widely-opened casements, through which the scents of the sleeping garden stole softly, like a benison from the heart of the pitiful earth.
A moment later Iris began to sing, and once again her rich, soft tones seemed to cast a spell over Anstice's troubled, bitter spirit.
From his low seat he had an unimpeded view of the singer. Her profile, shaded by her soft, fair hair, looked unusually pure and delicate in the candlelight, and as she sang the rise and fall of her breast in its fold of filmy chiffon, the motion of her hands over the ivory keys, the sweet seriousness of her expression, gave her an appearance of radiant, tender youth which held an appeal as potent as it was unconscious.
When she had finished her song, the last notes dying away into silence, Cheniston came forward quickly.
"Miss Wayne, you sing beautifully. May we ask for another song? You're not tired, are you?"
He bent over her as he spoke, and something in his manner, something subtly protective, made Anstice's heart beat with a sudden fierce jealousy which he knew to be quite unjustifiable.
"No, I'm not in the least tired." Iris lifted her grey eyes frankly to Cheniston's face, and again Anstice, watching, felt a pang of whose nature he could have no doubt. He rose from his chair, with a half-formed intention of adding his entreaties to those of Cheniston, but sank back again as he realized the favour was already won.
"I will sing with pleasure." Iris turned on the music-stool to glance at her hostess, and Anstice saw her face, pearly and luminous in the soft candlelight. "Mrs. Carstairs, you like Dvorak. Shall I sing you one of his gipsy songs?"
"Please, Iris." Few words of endearment ever passed between the two, yet each felt something like real affection for the other, and Chloe's deep voice was always gentle when she spoke to Iris.
The next moment Cheniston stepped back and took up his former position on the far side of the piano; and Iris began the simple little melody which Dvorak acquired from the gipsies of his native land.