Afterwards Part 25

"Miss Wayne told me, yes," said Anstice, taking his hat and coat from the chair where he had thrown them on his late entrance, and turning towards the door. "And I don't know that there is anything more to be said between us. Oh, yes, there is, though. One word, Cheniston." The other man had followed him to the door and now stood on the steps looking out into the fragrant July night. "I think that in all fairness you will now agree that I have paid my debt to you; wiped it out to the uttermost farthing. In future"--turning on the lowest stop he faced the man who stood above him, and in his face was a look which no other human being had ever seen there--"in future we are quits, you and I. The debt is paid in full."

And before Bruce Cheniston could frame any reply to his words Anstice turned away and was lost in the soft summer darkness.

CHAPTER XI

On the day before that fixed for Iris Wayne's wedding a large garden party was held at Greengates; and fortunately the late September afternoon was all that could be desired in regard to sunshine and soft breezes.

The wedding itself was to be a comparatively quiet affair, only a score or two of intimate friends and relations being invited to the house after the ceremony; but Lady Laura had ordained that on the previous day half the countryside was to be entertained; and although there were some people who did not altogether approve of the match--for Bruce Cheniston was, after all, the brother of the notorious Mrs. Carstairs--the majority were only too ready to follow Sir Richard Wayne's lead and extend a hand of friendship to Miss Wayne's prospective bridegroom.

Anstice had received an invitation to both ceremonies, and had accepted, provisionally, for each; but in his heart he knew that no power on earth could induce him to see Iris Wayne married to another man; and although he duly appeared at Greengates while the garden party was in full swing he only remained there a brief half-hour.

As he was bidding Lady Laura good-bye, Iris, with whom he had as yet only exchanged a couple of words, came up to him with a friendly little smile on her lips.

"Are you leaving us already, Dr. Anstice? I don't believe you've even had a cup of tea--or what Daddy calls a peg. Have you?"

"Yes, thanks, Miss Wayne." He lied so convincingly that the girl believed him. "I'm just off again--you must excuse me, but you know my time is not my own."

"No." He thought she looked a little pale this afternoon. "I quite understand, and I think it is very nice of you to come at all. You are coming to-morrow?"

"I hope so." Again he lied, and something in the frank eyes which were raised to his made him ashamed of his mendacity. "Of course--it's possible I may be prevented, but in any case, Miss Wayne, please remember my best wishes will be yours all day."

As though reminded of something she spoke impulsively.

"Dr. Anstice, I've never thanked you--except in a note--for your lovely present. It is really quite the most uncommon one I have had, and I shall value it immensely."

"I am glad you like it," he said. He had sent her a pair of ancient Chinese vases which his father had received many years ago from the grateful wife of a mandarin to whom he had once rendered a service. "I hardly knew what to send you, and then I remembered you once said you liked curios."

"I do--and these are so lovely." As she stood talking to him in the sunlight Anstice told himself that this was really his farewell to the girl he had known and loved, and his eyes could hardly leave her adorable face. The next time they met--if Fate ordained that they should meet again--she would be Bruce Cheniston's wife; and believing as he did that this would be their last meeting as man and maid, Anstice took the hand she held out to him with a very sore heart.

"Good-bye, Miss Wayne." Just for a moment he hesitated, feeling that he could not bear to let her go like this; and the girl, puzzled by his manner, waited rather uneasily, her hand in his. Then he gave her fingers a last clasp, wringing them unconsciously hard, and let them go.

"Good-bye, Dr. Anstice." Standing as she did on the threshold of a new life, face to face with a mystery she dreaded, yet was prepared, to fathom, perhaps Iris' perceptions were a little quickened. All at once she saw that this man looked upon her with different eyes from the other men she knew; and the memory of her strange fancy earlier in the summer gave her the key suddenly to his rather curious manner of bidding her farewell.

With a foolish, but purely womanly, impulse of compa.s.sion, she spoke again, laying her hand for a second on his arm with a friendliness which no man could have misunderstood.

"No, Dr. Anstice. Not good-bye. We shall meet again to-morrow, at any rate; so let us just say--_au revoir!_"

The kind little hand, the friendly words, almost broke down Anstice's self-control.

With a huge effort he kept his voice steady; but his face was grey as he answered her.

"If you wish, Miss Wayne--from the bottom of my heart let it be--only--_au revoir!_"

And Fate, who foresaw in what wise their next meeting should take place, probably chuckled to herself, like the malignant lady she can be, at this parting between the two who might have been lovers but for a miscalculated shot in the days gone by.

When Anstice had finished his day's work it was barely seven o'clock.

Fortunately for him he had no very serious cases on his hands just now, and there was no need, save in the event of an urgent call, for him to go out again when he had eaten his solitary dinner.

He was thankful for the respite, for the strain of the last few weeks, the weeks of Iris' engagement, had been severe; and mind and body were alike overtasked and weary. For several days he had suffered from a severe neuralgic headache, and to-night the torture in head and eyes threatened to overwhelm him.

For three or four nights he had hardly slept; and on more than one occasion he had thought, with a queer, detached interest, of the relief which morphia might bring to his tormented nerves; but with the thought came another--the picture of Iris Wayne who had bidden him remember that this was not the way out of the tragic muddle into which his life had been plunged by his own action.

She had believed him when he told her he would not again deliver himself into bondage to the fatal drug, and although he had not given her his promise--foreseeing even then the possibility of this black hour--he had meant, at the moment, to turn his back for ever on the seductive thing which whispers such sweet, such deliriously fatal promises to the man in the clutch of any agony he does not know how to bear.

So, although on the last two or three occasions he had not won the victory without a struggle, Anstice had managed to win through without lowering his flag; but to-night he began to wonder whether after all it were worth while waging the unequal war any longer.

He had parted from Iris Wayne, as he thought, for ever. As the wife of Bruce Cheniston he must henceforward regard her; and although he was no saint, to covet his neighbour's wife was not compatible with Anstice's code of decency.

He might love her still--at this moment he thought he knew that he would love her always--but for all practical purposes their friendship, with all its privileges and its obligations, was at an end. And this being so, why should he hesitate to gain, if he might, relief from this agony of mind and body by the help of the drug he had hitherto forsworn?

It is always hard on a man when to physical anguish is added agony of mind, since in that dual partnership of pain no help may be rendered either by its complementary part; and it does not need a physician to know that such help given by the one to the other is frequently a ruling factor in the recovery of the sick body or mind. And to-night Anstice was enduring a physical and mental suffering which taxed mind and body to their utmost limits, and absolutely precluded the possibility of any helpful reaction one upon the other.

His eyeb.a.l.l.s felt as though they were being pierced by red-hot needles; while the stabbing pain in his head increased every moment. Had he witnessed such suffering in another he would instantly have set about alleviating it so far as his skill might allow; but he told himself that there was only one effectual remedy for him and that was forbidden him by his implied promise to Iris Wayne. And so he sat on in a corner of the couch in his dim and shadowy room, and endured the excruciating pain as best he might.

The house was very quiet, and suddenly he remembered that the servants were out, witnessing the fireworks which Sir Richard had provided in the park of Greengates for the entertainment of the village on the eve of his daughter's wedding.

They had asked permission to go, and he had granted it readily enough; and now he was grateful for the peace and tranquillity which their absence engendered in the dark and quiet house.

Dimmer and more gloomy grew the room in which he sat--his consulting-room, chosen to-night for its long window open to the garden without. More and more thickly cl.u.s.tered the shadows round him as he sat half-sunk in a corner of the big leather couch. Once an owl hooted in the tall trees outside the house, and the strange, melancholy note seemed a fit accompaniment to the eerie stillness of the night.

Worse and ever more hard to bear grew the fierce throbbing in his head and eyes, but his wretchedness of mind ran a good race with his bodily suffering; and had he been asked, suddenly, the nature of the pain which tormented him he would have found it hard to answer immediately.

Only as the quiet hours wore on he began to feel that the limit of his endurance was almost reached. He told himself that even Iris herself would not willingly sanction such suffering as his had now become. In all the world he desired only one boon--oblivion, unconsciousness, rest from this state of being which was surely unendurable; and as a more exquisitely painful throb of anguish shot through his head he plunged his hand into his breast-pocket in search of a certain little case which was generally to be found there during his day's round.

But he remembered, with a sudden keen disappointment, that he had changed his coat on returning home to dinner, and the means of alleviation which he sought were not at hand.

He half rose, intending to go in search of the thing he wanted; but the effort of moving was too much, and he sank back again with an irritable groan and prepared to endure still more of this misery.

Next he thought he would try the effect of a cigarette, but the matches were not on the table before him. That obstacle, however, need not be insurmountable, for in a drawer at his elbow he kept a supply, and moving cautiously, for every movement set his nerves jangling, he turned on the couch and opened the drawer to seek the matches which should be there.

He found them immediately, and was in the act of taking one from the box when his eye fell on a small package which somehow roused a strange feeling of interest in his pain-shrouded mind.

It seemed familiar--at least he thought he remembered handling it before, and by a queer twist of memory he thought of Mrs. Carstairs as he took up the mysterious little parcel and turned it about in his hands.

Yet his throbbing brain would not allow him to feel certain what was really inside the packet, and with a sudden access of nervous irritation he broke the seal which held its contents a mystery, and tore off the enwrapping papers.

And as he realized what it was that the paper had hidden he uttered an exclamation in which surprise and dismay and relief were oddly blended.

In his hand he held a box containing a hypodermic syringe and a supply of morphia, and now he remembered how Mrs. Carstairs had told him of her purchase of the same, and her subsequent decision to let the insidious thing alone. She had given him the packet without apparent reluctance, and as his own words, "I shan't be tempted to steal yours for my private use," came flashing back to his memory he smiled, rather cynically, to himself.