CHAPTER VI

As a rule the psychological moments of life come and go so quietly that their pa.s.sing attracts little notice. Quite minor happenings give rise to demonstrations of excitement, of joy, of loudly voiced approbation or disappointment. But the moments which really matter in a life, which mark an epoch or destroy a dream, pa.s.s as a rule so quietly that only those whose dreams are shattered, or whose lives have been touched with the glory of the immortal, know that for a brief instant Time has become interchangeable with Eternity; that in the s.p.a.ce of sixty fleeting seconds whole cycles of life have been lived through, and a vast and yawning gulf, in thought, in feeling, in spiritual growth or mental outlook, has opened to divide this moment from the one which directly preceded it.

Such a moment was this one in which the two men who were bound together by so tragic a link came face to face in Chloe Carstairs' drawing-room.

Each had been quite sincere in his dread of any future meeting; but whereas Bruce Cheniston had been the victim of as cruel a circ.u.mstance as ever deprived lover of his beloved, Anstice was the more to be pitied, inasmuch as to his own burden of regret must be added the knowledge that through his premature action he had given another man the right to execrate his name so long as they both should live.

For a second Anstice wondered, growing cold whether Cheniston would refuse to shake hands with him. In his heart he knew quite well, had always known, that he had not been to blame in that bygone episode; that although he had done a thing which must haunt him for the rest of his life by reason of its tragic uselessness, as a man in whom a woman had trusted he had had no alternative but to act as he had acted.

Yet of all men on earth Cheniston might well question the necessity of his action; and Anstice told himself with a fast-beating heart that he would have no right to resentment should the other refuse to take his hand, to sit at meat with the man who had deprived Hilda Ryder of her share in the gracious inheritance of life in the world she had called so beautiful.

For a second, indeed, Cheniston himself hesitated, checked in the friendly greeting he had been about to bestow on his sister's visitor.

He had arrived late that evening, and had been dismissed to dress with the hasty information that two guests were expected to dinner, but he had had no idea of the last arrival's ident.i.ty; and to him, too, the meeting brought back with horrible poignancy that last bitter interview in the haunted East.

Then, for Bruce Cheniston was sufficiently just to acquit Anstice of any share in this untoward situation, he held out his hand with a cold courtesy which plainly betokened no intention of alluding to any former meeting.

"Good evening." Their hands touched, then fell apart. "You are a new-comer to Littlefield, I understand. Like the place?"

"Yes--in moderation," rejoined Anstice with equally frigid courtesy.

"The country has its charms--at this season of the year."

"It has charms at all seasons, Dr. Anstice." Iris' light voice challenged him, even while her grey eyes noted the strange expression in his face. "I'm afraid you're not a real country lover if you qualify your affection by picking out a particular season!"

"You remind one of those people who love dogs--'in their proper place.'"

Chloe's tone was delicately quizzical. "On inquiry you find their proper place is outside--in some kennel or inclosure as far away from the speaker as it is possible to get!"

"You can't be charged with that particular kind of affection, Chloe."

There was an a.s.sertive note in Cheniston's voice when he spoke to his sister which was new to her. "You think a dog's proper place is the best armchair or the downiest bed in the house!"

For a second Chloe did not reply; and without waiting Bruce went on speaking.

"By the way, where are your dogs? I've not seen hide or hair of one since I arrived."

Again there was a short, but quite perceptible silence. Then Chloe said tranquilly:

"No wonder you haven't seen any dogs, Bruce. There aren't any to see."

"No dogs?" Bruce was frankly astonished. "Why, in the old days you used to declare you couldn't live without them!"

Just for a second a quiver of emotion convulsed Chloe's usually impa.s.sive face. Then she laughed, and Anstice thought her laugh almost painful in its artificiality.

"My dear Bruce," she said, "please remember the old days are as dead as--as Queen Anne. When I was young enough and foolish enough to believe in disinterested affection, and in the right of every creature to be happy, I adored dogs--or thought I did. Now I am wiser, and know that life is not all bones and playtime, so to speak. Besides, they always die when one is fond of them, and I quite agree with Kipling that with so much unavoidable discomfort to put up with, it's the height of folly to 'give one's heart to a dog to tear.' In future I yield no fraction of my heart to any living creature--not even a dog."

Certainly Chloe's drawing-room was a battlefield of conflicting emotions this evening. Just for a moment she had been shaken out of her usual poise, had spoken warmly, as a normal woman might have done; yet both Iris who loved her, and Anstice who had studied her, knew that this warmer manner, this apparent freedom of speech, was in reality the outward sign of some inward disturbance; and both guessed, vaguely, that the meeting with her brother, who had not been in England for several years, was the cause of her unusual animation.

Fortunately as she finished speaking the gong which summoned them to dinner began to sound; and a moment later Bruce offered his arm to Iris and led her into the dining-room, followed by Anstice and his hostess.

Not appearing to notice his proffered arm, Chloe walked beside him in a sudden pensive silence which Anstice found oddly appealing after her impetuous speech; and for a moment he forgot his own equivocal position in a desire to help her through what he guessed to be a trying moment.

Once seated at the pretty round table things became easier. The room was softly lit by innumerable candles--a fancy of Chloe's--and in their tender light both women looked their best. As usual Mrs. Carstairs wore white, the fittest setting, Anstice thought, for her pale and tragic grace; but to-night she had thrown a wonderful Chinese scarf round her shoulders, and the deep blue ground, embroidered with black and green birds and flowers, gave an unusually distinctive note to her elusive personality. Opposite to her Iris, in her filmy grey-green frock, a big bunch of violets at her breast, wore the look of a nymph, some woodland creature whose fragrant charm and youthful freshness were in striking contrast to Chloe's more finished beauty.

The conversation, once started, ran easily enough. Although he never mentioned India, Cheniston was ready enough to talk of Egypt, where for some years he had made his home; and Iris, to whose young imagination the very name of that mysterious land was a charm, listened entranced to his description of a trip he had lately taken up the Nile.

"You are an engineer, Mr. Cheniston?" Anstice interpolated a polite question and Cheniston answered in the same tone.

"Yes. And engineering in the land of the Pharaohs is no joke. You must remember that we, as engineers, are only now where they were thousands of years ago. I mean that our present-day feats, the Dam at a.s.souan, wonderful as it is, and the rest, are mere child's play compared with the marvels they constructed in their day."

"So I have been told before." Only Anstice knew how hard it was to sit there conversing as though he and this man shared no tragic memory in common. "But if Egyptologists are to be believed there is hardly any invention, any scientific discovery--so called--which wasn't known to the Egyptians many thousands of years before the birth of Christ."

"They even possessed aeroplanes, didn't they?" asked Iris, smiling; and Bruce Cheniston turned to her with an involuntary softening in his rather harsh voice.

"So it is stated, I believe," he said, with an answering smile. "And it is generally believed that in the lost Continent of Atlantis----"

He went on talking, not monopolizing the conversation, but keeping it going so skilfully that Iris, at least, did not recognize the fact that both Mrs. Carstairs and Anstice were more than ordinarily silent as the meal progressed.

When the short but perfect dinner was finished Chloe rose.

"We will have coffee in the drawing-room, Bruce," she said as she moved slowly to the door. "If you are not too long over your cigarettes I daresay Miss Wayne will sing for us."

"With that inducement we shall soon follow you," said Cheniston gravely; and as Iris pa.s.sed through the door which Anstice held open for her she gave him a friendly little smile which somehow nerved him for the ordeal which he foresaw to be at hand.

Closing the door he came back again to the table, but did not yet sit down. Bruce had already reseated himself and was pouring out a gla.s.s of port, an operation he interrupted with a perfunctory apology.

"Forgive me--pray help yourself." He pushed the decanter across the table, but Anstice shook his head.

"No, thanks." He hesitated a moment, then plunged into the subject which must surely be uppermost in both their minds. "See here, Cheniston, I should like you to understand that when I accepted Mrs. Carstairs' kind hospitality to-night I had no idea you were the brother I was to meet."

For a second Cheniston said nothing, his brown hand playing absently with a pair of nutcrackers beside him. Then he raised his head and looked Anstice squarely in the face.

"I am quite ready to believe that," he said slowly. "I can hardly conceive any circ.u.mstances in which you would care to run the risk of a meeting with me."

"Quite so." Something in Cheniston's manner made Anstice suddenly angry.

"Though I would ask you, in common fairness, to believe that my distaste for such a meeting rises rather from my reluctance to remind you of the past than from any acknowledgment that you have a right to resent my presence."

Again Bruce Cheniston looked him in the face; and this time there was a genuine surprise in his blue eyes.

"I don't think I have given you reason to suppose I resent meeting you,"

he said with a new note in his voice, a note of something more definitely like hostility than he had hitherto permitted himself to show. "Since you have started the subject I may say that as a rule one doesn't greet as a brother the man who has robbed one of one's most treasured possession--I'm speaking metaphorically, of course--but I think you can hardly find fault with my--hesitation just now."

"Oh, you have been politeness itself," said Anstice, rather bitterly.

"And in return for your forbearance I will relieve you of my unwelcome presence immediately. Luckily my profession makes it easy for me to behave with what, in another man, would appear discourtesy."

He turned towards the door; but Bruce's voice arrested him midway.