Afterwards Part 30

All through the bright September afternoon he sat alone in his rarely-used drawing-room. The consulting-room was haunted ground to him since the episode of the previous evening, and he could not bear to go out into the village lest he might perhaps behold some signs of the great event which was agitating peaceful Littlefield to-day.

But his imagination, unmercifully awakened from the stupor which had temporarily lulled it to repose, showed him many visions on that golden September afternoon.

He saw the old grey church decked with flowers, saw the sunlight filtering through the famous Burne-Jones window in a splash of gorgeous blue and crimson, staining the white petals of the big lilies in the chancel ... he heard the peals of the organ as the choristers broke out into the hymn which heralded the bride ... saw the bride herself, a little pale, a little serious, in her white robes, in her eyes the grave and tender look whose possibility he had long ago divined....

Oh, he was a fool to let his imagination torment him so ... and he sprang to his feet, determined to put an end to these maddening visions which only unfitted him for the stern and hopeless battle which was all that he could look forward to henceforth....

As he moved impatiently towards the door a sudden peal of bells rang out gaily, exultantly on the soft and balmy air; and his face turned grey as he realized that this was the signal which betokened that Iris was now the wife of Bruce Cheniston, his to have and to hold, irrevocably his until death should intervene to end their dual existence....

With a muttered oath he strode out of the house, and making his way round to the garage ordered his car to be brought forth immediately.

When it came he flung himself into the steering seat and drove away at such a pace that Andrews, his outdoor man and general factotum, looked after him anxiously.

"Looks like getting his licence endorsed," he observed to the pretty housemaid, Alice, who was watching her master's departure from a convenient window. "Never saw him drive so reckless--he's generally what you might call a very considerate driver."

"Considerate? What of?" asked Alice ungrammatically. "The dogs and chickens in the road, d'you mean?"

"Dogs and chickens! Good Lord, no!" Andrews was a born mechanician, and it was a constant source of regret to him that Anstice generally drove the car himself. "They're nothing but a nuisance anyway. No, I meant he considered the car--but he don't look much like it to-day."

"Oh, the car!" Alice was openly scornful. "Well, from the pace he went off just now, I should think he'll smash up your precious old car before he goes far. And no loss either," said Alice, who was engaged to a soldier in a cavalry regiment, and therefore disdained all purely mechanical means of locomotion.

But once out on the road Anstice moderated his pace somewhat, since to run over an unwary pedestrian would only add to the general hopelessness of the situation; and he reached Cherry Orchard without any such mishap as his servants had prophesied for him.

Here he found things less satisfactory than he had hoped. Cherry was no better; indeed, to his experienced eye, the child was worse, and although Mrs. Carstairs showed no signs of fatigue, and was apparently prepared to nurse her little daughter indefinitely, it was evident that the woman Tochatti was worn out with pain, anxiety, and, possibly, remorse.

Although she pulled herself together sufficiently to answer Anstice's questions intelligibly, it was plain to see that she was in reality half dazed by the shock she had experienced and by want of sleep, and Anstice realized that if Cherry were to be properly nursed some other help must be obtained at once.

"See here, Mrs. Carstairs." His face was grave as he examined the child's condition. "I'm not going to beat about the bush--I'm going to send you a nurse to help you with Cherry."

"A nurse? But--can't Tochatti and I----?"

"You're all right," he said shortly. "You look good for any amount of nursing, though I can't imagine how you do it, seeing you had no sleep last night. But Tochatti is no use at present." He judged it best to speak frankly. "It is evident she is in pain with that hand of hers, and she will be fit for nothing to-night, at any rate."

Chloe did not contest the point further.

"Very well, Dr. Anstice. You know best; and if you think it necessary, will you find us someone at once?"

"Yes. I think I know just the person for you." He turned to Tochatti, who was standing by, her face full of smouldering resentment. "I'm sure you want me to do the best thing for Miss Cherry, don't you?"

She did not answer; and he repeated his question rather sharply.

This time she answered him.

"_Si, signor._" She spoke sulkily, and a flash of something like actual hatred shot from her black eyes as he watched her; but he had no time to spare for her vagaries, and turned back to Chloe Carstairs forthwith.

"Then I will try to find Nurse Trevor and bring her along. She will sit up to-night, and then you can both get some rest." He spoke kindly, including Tochatti in his smile; but the woman merely glowered, and he felt a spasm of sudden annoyance at her ungracious behaviour.

Luckily Nurse Trevor was at hand and disengaged; and Anstice had the satisfaction of finding her safely installed and apparently completely at home in her new surroundings when he paid his last visit to Cherry Orchard late that night.

She was a pretty girl of twenty-seven, who had had a good deal of experience in nursing children, and although poor little Cherry was by this time too ill to pay much attention to any of the people around her, it really seemed as though Margaret Trevor's soft voice, with its cooing, dove-like notes, had a soothing influence on the suffering child.

Anstice stayed some time in Cherry's room, doing all his skill could suggest for the alleviation of his little patient's pain, and when at length he took his departure Chloe herself came downstairs with him.

"What a lovely night!" She had opened the big hall door quietly while he sought his hat. "The moon must be nearly at the full, I think."

Together they stood on the steps looking out over the dew-drenched garden. The white stars of the jasmine which cl.u.s.tered thickly round the house sent out a delicious fragrance, and there were a dozen other scents on the soft and balmy air, as though the sleeping stocks and carnations and mignonette breathed sweetly in their sleep.

A big white owl flow, hooting, across the path, and Chloe shivered.

"I hate owls--I always think them unlucky, harbingers of evil," she said, and her face, as she spoke, was quite pale.

In an ordinary way Anstice would have deemed it his duty to scoff at such superst.i.tion; but to-night, his nerves unstrung, by the happenings of the last few days, his bodily vigour at a low ebb, his mind a chaos of miserable, hopeless memories and fears, Chloe's words woke a quite unexpected response in his soul.

"Don't say that, Mrs. Carstairs!" He spoke sharply. "Don't let us talk of bad luck--to-night of all nights!"

In the moonlight her narrow blue eyes studied his face with sudden keenness, and she felt an unusual desire to bring comfort to the soul which she felt with instinctive certainty stood in need of some help.

As a rule Chloe Carstairs, like Anstice himself, was too much preoccupied with the thought of her own private grudge against fate to have any sympathy to spare for others who might have known that Deity's frown; but to-night, owing possibly to some softening of her mental fibres induced by the sight of her child's suffering, she felt oddly pitiful towards this man, and her inward emotion found vent in words which surprised her as much as they startled the man to whom they were addressed.

"Why to-night, Dr. Anstice? Has this day been to you what it has been to me--a day of the bitterest suffering I have ever known?"

The tone of her deep voice, so oddly gentle, the compa.s.sionate expression in her usually cold blue eyes, were too much for Anstice, whose endurance was nearly at the breaking point; and he turned to her with a look in his face which dismayed her, so tragic was it.

"Mrs. Carstairs, this day I have been in--_h.e.l.l_!" The word sounded cruelly out of place in the quiet moonlit night. "Once before I fancied I had reached the point at which a man may turn his back on life and its horrors without thinking himself a pitiful coward. I suffered then--my G.o.d, how I suffered!--but the torture I have endured to-day makes me feel as though I have never known what suffering is until now."

Her answer came quickly.

"But you know now that no man can turn his back on life and yet escape the allegation of cowardice!" It was an a.s.sertion rather than a question. "Dr. Anstice, I don't ask to know what your suffering has been--I don't want you to tell me--but one thing I do know, that you, and men like you, are not the ones who give up the battle when the fight is fiercest."

He delayed his answer so long that Chloe had time to feel curiously frightened by his silence. And when his reply came it was hardly rea.s.suring.

"I thought you were too wise a woman to indulge in generalities, Mrs.

Carstairs." His tired voice robbed the words of offence. "And don't you know that it is never safe to prophesy what a man will do in a battle?

The bravest may turn coward beneath a hail of fire--the man who is afraid may perform some deed which will ent.i.tle him--and rightly--to the coveted Victoria Cross."

"Yes." She spoke steadily, her eyes on his face. "But that's the battlefield of the world, Dr. Anstice, the material, earthly battlefield. It's the battlefield of the soul I was thinking of just now; and if I may use a quotation which has been battered out of nearly all its original fine shape by careless usage, to me the truly brave man is he who remains to the end the--'captain of his soul!'"

Her voice sank on the last words; but Anstice had caught her meaning, and he turned to her with a new light in his tired eyes.

"Mrs. Carstairs, thank you for what you've just said. Captain of his soul--yes, I've heard it often enough, but never stopped to ponder its meaning. And as the captain mustn't lose his ship if mortal man can prevent the loss, so a man must bring the ship of his soul safely into port. Is that what you meant just now?"