Afterwards Part 18

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 Ba.s.s!"

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 st.i.tches, 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 pinp.r.i.c.k of pain on this particular patient. "I'm awfully sorry, but I'm afraid I really must put in a couple of st.i.tches. 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 amus.e.m.e.nt!"

"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 rea.s.sured her even while it filled her with a kind of wondering foreboding--"I should never find any impertinence in any interest _you_ might be kind enough to express. I have suffered--bitterly--and the worst of my suffering lies in the fact that others--one other at least besides myself--were involved in the ill I unwittingly wrought."

Again her answer surprised him by the depth of comprehension it conveyed.

"That, too, I can understand," said Iris gently. "I have often tried to imagine how one must feel when one has unknowingly harmed another person; and it has always seemed to me that one would feel as one does when one has spoken unkindly, or impatiently, at least, to a child."

For a second Anstice busied himself in bandaging the slim wrist he held.

Then, without looking up, he said:

"You have thought more deeply than many girls of your age, Miss Wayne. I wonder if you would extend your pity to me if you knew the nature of my particular tragedy."

A sudden spatter of rain against the window-pane made them both look up in surprise; and in a lighter tone Anstice said:

"A sharp shower, I see. I've finished my work, you'll be glad to hear, but I think it will be wiser to wait here till the rain's over. Will your cycle take any harm?"

"Oh, no, it can be dried at home," said Iris rather absently; and both of them were too much preoccupied to expend any of their talked-of sympathy on the overgrown youth patiently guarding the motor by the roadside.

"Come and try an easier chair, won't you?" Anstice pushed forward a capacious rocking-chair and Iris took it obediently, while Anstice leaned against the table regarding her rather curiously.

"Miss Wayne." Suddenly he felt a quite overwhelming desire to admit this girl into his jealously-guarded confidence. "From something you said just now I gathered that you had been good enough to spare a thought for me now and then. Does that mean that your kindness would extend so far as to allow you to listen to a very short story in which I, unfortunately, am the princ.i.p.al 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 trespa.s.sed into a native Temple, and the penalty for such trespa.s.s 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 compa.s.sion, 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.