Afterwards Part 21

"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.

CHAPTER IX

"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 att.i.tude 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.