"Songs my mother taught meIn the days long vanished!"
"Songs my mother taught meIn the days long vanished!"
So far Anstice heard the pure, soft voice; and suddenly he felt a half-shy, half-reverential wonder as to what manner of woman she had been who had brought this adorable girl into the world. Surely Fate had been cruel to this unknown woman, inasmuch as Death had been permitted to snatch her away before her eyes had been gladdened by the vision of her child grown into this priceless, this wonderful youth, which held a hint of a yet more gracious, yet more desirable womanhood....
And then the second verse stole softly on the quiet air....
"Now I teach my childrenEach melodious measure...."
"Now I teach my childrenEach melodious measure...."
Again did one, at least, of Iris' hearers lose the remaining lines. For to Anstice these words brought another vision—a vision in which Iris, this fair-haired girl who looked so adorably young and sweet, bent over a little child whose rose-leaf face was a baby replica of her own....
And suddenly Anstice knew, knew irrevocably, beyond shadow of doubt, that he wanted Iris Wayne for himself, that she was the one woman in all the world he desired to make his wife....
With a wild throb of his heart he looked up—to find Bruce Cheniston's eyes fixed upon his face with a half-mocking smile in their blue depths, of whose hostile meaning there could be no question.
An hour or so later, when the guests had departed, and Cheniston had finished a solitary pipe downstairs, he went up, yawning, to bed. Passing his sister's open door he heard her call him, and after a second's indecision he answered the summons, wondering why she were not already asleep.
Chloe was sitting by the open window, wearing a thin grey wrapper which made her look curiously pale and ethereal. Her thick hair hung in two heavy plaits over her shoulders, and in the dim light her face showed indistinctly in its silky black frame.
"Chloe, why aren't you in bed?" Bruce paused half-way across the room.
"I'm not sleepy," she said indifferently. "I often sit here half the night. Bruce"—her voice grew more alert—"have you and Dr. Anstice met before?"
"Yes," he said, "we have. But why do you ask?"
"I thought there was something rather curious about your meeting," she answered slowly. "At first I could not understand it, and then it dawned upon me that you had met—and distrusted one another—before."
"Distrusted?" He stared at her. "That isn't the right word, Chloe. Wehavemet before—in India. I almost wonder you yourself didn't realize that fact, but I suppose you were not sufficiently interested——"
She interrupted him without ceremony.
"I? But how should I realize ... unless"—suddenly her intuition serving her as it serves so many women, she grasped the truth with a quickness which surprised even her brother—"was that the name of the man who—you don't mean it was Dr. Anstice who ... who...."
He nodded.
"Yes. I see you've grasped the truth. Anstice is an uncommon name, and I'm surprised you did not recognize it earlier."
"I had forgotten it." She stared at him, her blue eyes narrowing as her mind worked quickly. "I see now. Dr. Anstice is the man——"
"Who shot Hilda Ryder." Cheniston finished her sentence for her calmly, but she saw him whiten beneath his tan. "Yes. He is the man all right. We met, once, in Bombay—afterwards. And now you know why our meeting to-night was not calculated to give either of us any great pleasure."
"Yes. I know now." She spoke slowly, almost meditatively. "And I know, too, why he always looks so sad. Bruce, from the bottom of my heart I pity that man."
"You do?" Bruce's eyebrows rose. "I confess I don't see why you should waste your pity on him. I think you might bestow a little more of it on me—though it is rather late for pity now."
"On you?" Slowly her blue gaze rested on his face. "Bruce, you don't compare your position with his? Surely even you can understand that he is a thousand times more to be pitied than you? I always thought there was a tragedy in Dr. Anstice's life. But I never dreamed it was quite so piteous as this."
Bruce uttered an exclamation of impatience.
"I didn't expect such sentimentality from you, Chloe. I gathered from your conversation before dinner that you were pretty well disillusioned by this time, and it rather surprises me to hear you pouring out your compassion on a man like Anstice, who certainly doesn't strike me as requiring any outside sympathy."
For a moment there was silence, while Chloe played absently with a bracelet she had just discarded. Then she said tranquilly:
"You never were overburdened with brains, Bruce, though I grant you do well in your own profession. But, if you fail to see the reason why Dr. Anstice is deserving of more compassion than you I'm afraid it's hopeless to expect anything very brilliant from you in the future."
Cheniston's eyes darkened and his jaw set itself aggressively. For a moment his sister found him an unfamiliar personality, and in her own indifferent way asked herself whether after all she had ever known her brother thoroughly.
Then as she was considering the problem, and finding it mildly attractive, Bruce turned on his heel and strode sulkily to the door.
"Good night," he said angrily as he reached it. "You're in one of your aggravating moods to-night, and it's no use me staying to talk to you."
"Not a bit of use," she assented serenely; and her brother went out, nearly falling over Tochatti, who was evidently about to seek admission to her mistress's room.
"Why on earth aren't you in bed, Tochatti?" His inward annoyance made him speak harshly; but Tochatti apparently bore no resentment.
She murmured something to which he paid scant attention; and then, standing aside for him to pass her, she quietly entered the room he had just quitted, and proceeded with her final duties for the night.
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 younginsoucianceIris 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 interestyoumight 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'sfiancéand 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, "thatthatis 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 toyou—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.
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.
"Well, Dr. Anstice, I have come, as you see."
Cheniston entered the room on the stroke of nine, and Anstice turned from the window with an oddly reluctant movement.
The golden day was dying, slowly, in the west. In the clear green sky one or two silver stars shone steadily, and in the little garden beyond the house the white moths circled eagerly round the tall yellow evening primroses which reared arrogant heads among their sleeping brother and sister flowers.
Anstice's room was lighted only by a couple of candles, placed on the writing-table; but neither man desired a brilliant light to-night—Anstice because he realized that this interview was a fateful one, Cheniston because, although he had come here with the intention of making havoc of a man's life, he was not particularly anxious to watch that man's face during the process.
"Yes. I see you have come." Anstice pointed to a chair. "Sit down, won't you? And will you have a drink?"
"No, thanks." Somehow Anstice's manner made Cheniston feel uncomfortable; and it was suddenly impossible to accept hospitality of any kind from his rival.
"Well?" As Cheniston made no attempt to seat himself, Anstice, too, stood upright, and the two faced one another with the lighted candles between them.
"I wonder——" Cheniston drew out his cigarette case and selected a cigarette, which he proceeded to light with extreme care. "I wonder if you have any idea what I have come to say?"
On his side Anstice took a cigarette from an open box before him, but he did not light it, yet.
"I was never very good at guessing conundrums," he said coolly. "Suppose you tell me, without more ado, why you have—honoured me to-night?"
His tone, the deliberate pause before he uttered the word, showed Cheniston plainly that his motive was suspected, and his manner hardened.
"I will tell you, as you wish, without more ado," he said. "Only—it is always a little awkward to introduce a lady's name."
"Awkward, yes; and sometimes unnecessary." Anstice's eyes, stern beneath their level brows, met the other man's in a definitely hostile gaze. "Are you quite sure it is necessary now?"
"I think so." His tone was every whit as hostile. "The lady to whom I refer is, as you have doubtless guessed by now, Miss Wayne."
"I gathered as much from your manner." Anstice spoke coldly. "Well? I really don't see why Miss Wayne's name should be mentioned between us, but——"
"Don't you?" Cheniston's blue eyes gleamed in his brown face. "I think you do. Look here, Anstice. There is nothing to be gained by hedging. Let us fight fair and square, gloves off, if you like, and acknowledge that we both admire and respect Miss Wayne very deeply."
"I quite agree with that." Anstice's eyes, too, began to glitter. "And—having said so much, what then?"
"Well, having cleared the ground so far, suppose we go a little further. I think—you will correct me if I am wrong in my surmise—I think I am right in saying that we both cherish a dream in regard to Miss Wayne."
His unexpected phraseology made Anstice pause before he replied. There was a touch of pathos, an unlooked-for poetry about the words which seemed to intimate that whatever his attitude towards the world in general, Cheniston's regard for Iris Wayne was no light thing; and when he replied Anstice's voice had lost a little of its hostility.
"As to your dreams I can say nothing," he said quietly. "For mine—well, a man's dreams are surely his own."
"Certainly, when they interfere with no other man's visions." Bruce hesitated a moment. "But in this case—look here, Anstice, once before you shattered a dream of mine, broke it into a thousand fragments; and by so doing took something from my life which can never be replaced. I think you understand my meaning?"
White to the lips Anstice answered him:
"Yes. I do understand. And if ever a man regretted the breaking of a dream I have regretted it. But——"
"Wait." Cheniston interrupted him ruthlessly. "Hear me out. It is three years since that day in India when the woman I loved died by your hand. Oh"—Anstice had made an involuntary movement—"I am not here to heap blame upon you. I have since recognized that you could have done nothing else——"
"For that, at least, I thank you," said Anstice bitterly.
"But you can't deny you did me an ill turn on that fatal morning. And"—Cheniston threw away his cigarette impatiently—"are you prepared to make amends—now—or not?"
For a second Anstice's heart seemed to stop beating. Then it throbbed fiercely on again, for he knew he had guessed Bruce Cheniston's meaning.
"Make amends?" He spoke slowly to gain time. "Will you explain just what you mean?"
"Certainly." Yet for all his ready reply Cheniston hesitated. "I mean—we're both of us in love with Iris Wayne. Oh"—Anstice had muttered something—"let's be honest, anyway. As to which—if either—of us she prefers, I'm as much in the dark as you. But"—his voice was cold and hard as iron—"having robbed me of one chance of happiness, are you going to rob me—try to rob me—of another?"
In the silence which followed his last words a big brown moth, attracted by the yellow candlelight, blundered into the room, and began to flutter madly round the unresponsive flame; and in the poignant hush the beating of his foolish wings sounded loudly, insistently.
Then Anstice spoke very quietly.
"You mean I am to stand aside and let you have a fair field with the lady?" He could not bring himself to mention her name.
"Yes. That's just what I do mean." Cheniston spoke defiantly—or so it seemed to the man who listened.
Again the silence fell, and again the only sound to be heard was the soft flutter of the brown wings as the moth circled vainly round the candle flame which would inevitably prove fatal to him by and by.
"I see." Anstice's face was very pale now. "At least you do me the honour of looking upon me in the light of a possible rival."
"I do—and I'll go further," said Cheniston suddenly. "I have an uncomfortable notion that if you tried you could cut me out. Oh—I'm not sure"—he regretted the admission as soon as it was made—"after all, Miss Wayne and I are excellent friends, and upon my soul I sometimes dare to think I have a chance. But she has a great regard for you, I know, and if you really set out to win her——"
"I'm afraid you overrate my capabilities," said Anstice rather cynically. "Miss Wayne has certainly never given me the slightest reason to suppose she would be ready to listen to me, did I overstep the bounds of friendship."
"Of course not!" Cheniston smiled grimly. "Miss Wayne is not the sort of girl to give any man encouragement. But as a man of honour, Anstice"—again his voice cut like steel—"don't you think I have the prior right to the first innings, so to speak?"
"You mean I am to stand aside, efface myself, and let you chip in before me?" His colloquial speech accorded badly with his formal tone. "I quite see your point of view; and no doubt you think yourself justified in your demand; but still——"
"I do think I'm justified, yes," broke in Cheniston coolly. "After all, if one man has a precious stone, a diamond, let us say, and another man manages to lose it, well in the unlikely event of the two of them discovering another stone, which of them has the best right to the new one?"
"That's a pretty ingenious simile," said Anstice slowly. "But it's a false premise all the same. The diamond would naturally have no voice in the matter of its ownership. But the woman in the case might reasonably be expected to have the power of choice."
"But that's just what I'm anxious to avoid." So much in earnest was the speaker that he did not realize the fatuity of his words till they were out of his mouth. Then he uttered an impatient exclamation.
"Oh, hang it all, don't let's stand here arguing. You see the point, that's enough. I honestly feel that since it was through you that I lost Hilda Ryder"—even though he was prepared to woo another woman his voice softened over the name—"it will be doubly hard if you are to come between me and the only other girl I've ever put in Miss Ryder's place."
"I see the point, as I said before," returned Anstice deliberately. "But what I don't see is the justice of it. You've admitted I was not to blame in doing what I did that day; yet in the same breath in which you acquit me of the crime you expect me to pay the penalty!"
For a second this logical argument took Cheniston aback. Then, for his heart was set on winning Iris Wayne, he condescended to plead.
"Yes. I admit all that—and I can see I haven't a leg to stand on. But—morally—or in a spiritual sense so to speak, don't you think yourself that I have just the shadow of a right to ask you to stand aside?"
"Yes." His assent was unflinching, though his lips were white. "You have that right, and that's why I'm listening to you to-night. But—don't you think we are both taking a wrong view of the matter? What faintest grounds have we for supposing Miss Wayne will listen to either of us?"
"Oh, that's not an insurmountable obstacle." Cheniston saw the victory was won, and in an instant he was awake to the expediency of clinching the matter finally. "We don't know, of course, that she will listen either to me or to you. But for my part I am ready to take my chance. And"—at the last moment the inherent honesty of the man came to the surface through all the unscrupulous bargain he was driving—"my chance is a hundred times better if you withdraw from the contest."
"I see." With an effort Anstice crushed down the tide of revolt which swept over his heart. "As you say, I owe you something for that evil turn I did you, unwittingly, in India. And if you fix this as the price of my debt I suppose, as an honourable man, there is nothing for me to do but to pay that price."
Bruce Cheniston looked away quickly. Somehow he did not care to meet the other man's eyes at that moment.
"One thing only I would like to ask of you." Anstice's manner was not that of a man asking a favour. "If Miss Wayne remains impervious to your entreaties"—Cheniston coloured angrily, suspecting sarcasm—"will you be good enough to let me know?"
"Certainly." Cheniston was suddenly anxious to leave the house, to quit the presence of this man who spoke so quietly even while his black eyes flamed in his haggard face. "I will try my luck at once—within the next week or two. See here, Miss Wayne's birthday dance comes off shortly. If, after that, I have not won her consent, I will quit the field. Is that fair?"
"Quite fair." Suddenly Anstice laughed harshly. "And you think I can then step forward and try my luck. Why, you fool, can't you see that for both of us this is the psychological moment—that the man who hangs back now is lost? I am to wait in the background while you go forward and seize the golden minute? Well"—his voice had a bitter ring—"I've agreed, and you've got your way; but for God's sake go before I repent of the bargain."
Cheniston, startled by his manner, moved backward suddenly; and a chair went over with a crash which set the nerves of both men jarring.
"When you've quite done smashing my furniture"—Anstice's jocularity was savage—"perhaps you'll be good enough to clear out. I won't pretend I'm anxious for more of your company to-night!"
Cheniston picked up the chair, and placed it against the table with quite meticulous care.
"I'll go." He suddenly felt as though the man who stood opposite, the flame from the candles flickering over his face with an odd effect of light and shadow, had after all come off the best in this horrible interview. "I—I suppose it's no use saying any more, Anstice. You know, after all"—in spite of his words he felt an irresistible inclination to justify himself—"you do owe me something——"
"Well? Have I denied it?" Now his tone was coldly dangerous. "I have promised to pay a debt which after all was incurred quite blamelessly; but if you expect me to enter into further details of the transaction, you are out in your reckoning."
"I see." Suddenly the resentment which Cheniston had felt for this man since their first meeting flamed into active hatred. "Well, I have your word, and that's enough. As you say, this is a business transaction, and the less said the better. Good night."
He turned abruptly away and plunged through the shadowy room towards the door. As he reached it, Anstice spoke again.
"Cheniston." There was a note in his voice which no other man of Anstice's acquaintance had ever heard. "In proposing this bargain, this payment of a debt, I think you show yourself a hard and a pitiless creditor. But if, in these circumstances, you fail to win Miss Wayne, I shall think you are a fool—a damned fool—as well. That's all. Good night."
Without, another word Cheniston opened the door and went out, letting it fall to behind him with a bang. And Anstice, left alone, extinguished both candles impatiently, as though he could not bear even their feeble light; and going to the open window stood gazing out over the starlit garden with eyes which saw nothing of the green peacefulness without.
And on the table, the big brown moth, scorched to death by his adored flame in the very moment of his most passionate delight, fluttered his burnt wings feebly and lay still.
Having given Cheniston his word, Anstice set himself to carry out his share of the bargain with a thoroughness which did not preclude a very bitter regret that he had made this fatal promise.
As he had been of late in the habit of spending a good deal of time in the society of Iris Wayne, it was only natural that his absence should cause comment at Greengates; but while Lady Laura openly labelled Anstice as capricious and inclined to rate his own value too highly, Sir Richard more charitably supposed that the poor fellow was overworked; and Iris, after a day or two spent in futile conjecture as to the sudden cessation of his visits, accepted the fact of Anstice's defection with a composure which was a little hurt.
She had thought they were such friends. Once or twice she had even fancied he was beginning to like her—even to herself Iris would not admit the possibility of any return of liking on her side; and on the occasion of their meeting in the wayside cottage, when he had bandaged her wrist, he had spoken to her in a more confidential, more really intimate manner than he had ever before displayed.
In the weeks that followed that sudden leap into intimacy, they had been such good comrades, had enjoyed so many half-playful, half-serious conversations, had played so many thrilling tennis matches, that it was small wonder she had begun to look upon him as one of her most genuine friends; and his sudden absence hurt her pride, and made her wonder whether, after all, his friendliness had been merely a pretence.
Once or twice he met her in the village, but he only saluted her and hurried on his way; while the invitations which the ever-hospitable Sir Richard insisted on sending him were refused with excuses so shallow that even the good-natured host of Greengates refrained from comment.
The contrast between this ungracious behaviour and Bruce Cheniston's open delight in her society was strongly marked; and the friendliness of the younger man brought balm to Iris' sore heart, sore with the first rebuff of her budding womanhood. When Anstice failed her, refused her invitations, and appeared indifferent to her smiles, it was undoubtedly soothing to feel that in Cheniston she had a friend who asked nothing better than to be in her company at all hours, to do her bidding, and to pay her that half-laughing, half-earnest homage which was so delicate and sincere a tribute to her charms.
Anstice had spoken truly when he said the psychological moment was at hand. Until the day when his visits to Greengates ceased abruptly Iris had been inclined, ever so unconsciously, to look upon Anstice with a slightly deeper, more genuine regard than that which she gave to the other man; and had Anstice been able to seize the moment, to follow up the impression he had made upon her, it is possible she, would have listened to him with favour, and the tiny seed of affection which undoubtedly lay in her heart would have burst into a lovely and precious blossom which would have beautified and made fragrant the rest of their lives.
But Anstice might not seize the moment; and although Bruce Cheniston had hitherto taken the second place in Iris' esteem, when once she realized that Anstice had apparently no intention of renewing their late friendship she gently put the thought of him out of her heart and turned for relief to the man who had not failed her.
So matters stood on the morning of Iris' birthday, a glorious day in mid-July, when the gardens of Greengates were all ablaze with roses and sweet-peas, with tall white lilies whose golden hearts flung sweetest incense on the soft air, with great masses of Canterbury bells and giant phlox making gorgeous splashes of colour, mauve and red and white and palest pink, against their background of velvet lawns and dark-green cedar trees.
This was the day on which Bruce Cheniston had decided to put his fortune to the test; and as he looked out of his window at Cherry Orchard and noted the misty blue haze which foretold a day of real summer heat, he told himself that on such a day as this there could be no need to fear a reverse in his present luck.
He whistled as he dressed, and when the breakfast-bell rang he went downstairs feeling at peace with himself and all the world.
"'Morning, Chloe. What a day!" He stooped and kissed his sister as he passed behind her chair, and she looked faintly amused at the unusual salutation.
"Yes. A beautiful day." Her deep voice expressed little pleasure in the morning's beauty. "Are you going anywhere particular that the fine weather fills you with such joy?"
"No—only over to Greengates." He was so accustomed to making this reply that it came out almost automatically and certainly caused Chloe no surprise.
"It's Iris' birthday, isn't it, Bruce?" Cherry flatly refused to endow her uncle with the title which rightly belonged to him. "What are you going to give her?"
"Give her? Well, come round here, and you shall see."
Nothing loth, Cherry obeyed, and stood beside him attentively while he opened a small leather case and took out a pair of earrings each consisting of a tiny, pear-shaped moonstone dangling at the end of a thin platinum chain.
"Earrings! But Iris hasn't any holes in her ears, my dear!" Cherry's consternation was genuine.
"I know that, you little goose! But these don't want holes—see, you screw them on like this."
He took one of her little pink ears in his fingers and screwed on the earring deftly.
"There, run and look at yourself," he commanded, and she trotted away to an oval glass which hung on the wall between the long windows. As she moved, Cheniston passed the remaining earring to his sister.
"What do you say, Chloe—is it a suitable present for her ladyship!"
Chloe took up the little trinket with a rather dubious air.
"Somehow I don't think I can fancy Iris wearing earrings," she said; and Bruce, who had a respect for his sister's opinion which she herself did not suspect, looked rueful.
"But, Chloe, why not? You always wear them?"
"Certainly I do." As a matter of fact she did, and the pearls or sapphires which she affected were as much a part of her personality as her black hair or her narrow blue eyes. "But then Iris is a different sort of person. She is younger, more natural, more unsophisticated; and I'm not quite sure whether these pretty things will suit her charming face."
"Oh!" Bruce's own face fell, and for once Chloe felt an impulse of compassion with another's disappointment.
"At any rate they are very dainty and girlish," she said, handing back the case. "I congratulate you on your taste, Bruce. You might very easily have got more elaborate ones—like some of mine—which would have been very inappropriate to a girl."
"Why do you always speak of yourself as though you were a middle-aged woman, Chloe?" asked her brother with a sudden curiosity. "You seem to forget you are younger than I—why, you are only twenty-six now."
"Am I?" Her smile was baffling. "In actual years I believe I am. But in thought, in feeling, in everything, I am a hundred years older than you, Bruce."
Cherry's return to her uncle's side with a request to him to take out "the dangly thing what tickles my ear" cut short Bruce's reply, and breakfast proceeded tranquilly, while the sun shone gaily and the roses for which Cherry Orchard was famous scented the soft, warm air which floated in through the widely-opened windows.
Meanwhile Anstice was in a quandary on this beautiful summer morning.
Before he had pledged his word to Cheniston to stand aside and leave the field open to his rival, he had gladly accepted Iris' invitation to her birthday dinner and dance; but the thought of the dances she had promised him had changed from a source of anticipatory delight to one of the sheerest torment.
It had not been easy to avoid her. There had been hours in which he had had to restrain himself by every means in his power from rushing over to Greengates to implore her pardon for his discourtesy, and to beg her to receive him back into her most desirable favour. It had cost him an effort whose magnitude had left him cold and sick to greet her distantly on the rare occasions of their meeting; and many times he had been ready to throw his promise to the winds, to repudiate the horrible bargain he had struck, and to tell her plainly in so many words that he loved her and wanted her for his wife.
But he never yielded to the temptation. He had pledged his word, and somehow the thought that he was paying the price, now, for Hilda Ryder's untimely death, brought, ever and again, a fleeting sense of comfort as though the sacrifice of his own chance of happiness was an offering laid at her feet in expiation of the wrong he had all unwittingly wrought her.
But his heart sank at the idea of facing Iris once more, and the thought of her as she would surely be, the centre and queen of all the evening's gaiety, was almost unendurable.
At times he told himself that he could not go to Greengates that night. He was only human, and the sight of her, dressed, as she would surely be, in some shimmering airy thing which would enhance all her beauty, would break down his steadfast resolve. He could not be with her in the warm summer night, hold her in his arms in the dance, while the music of the violins throbbed in his ears, the perfume of a thousand roses intoxicated all his senses, and not cry out his love, implore her to be kind as she was fair, to readmit him to her friendship, and grant him, presently, the privileges of a lover....
And then, in the next moment he told himself he could not bear to miss the meeting with her. He must go, must see her once more, see the wide grey eyes beneath their crown of sunny hair, hear her sweet, kind voice, touch her hand....