Afterwards Part 4

Without more ado Anstice complied.

"Miss Ryder made me promise that if the sun should rise before any help came to us I would shoot her with my own hand so that she should not have to face death--or worse--at the hands of our enemies."

"You thought it might be--worse?"

"Yes. My father was a doctor in China at the time of the Boxer rising,"

said Anstice with apparent irrelevance. "And as a boy I heard stories of--of atrocities to women--which haunted me for years. On my soul, Cheniston"--he spoke with a sincerity which the other man could not question--"I was ready--no, glad, to do Miss Ryder the service she asked me."

Twice Cheniston tried to speak, and twice his dry lips refused their office. At last he conquered his weakness.

"You waited till the sun rose ... and then ... you were sure ... you did not doubt that the moment had come?"

"No. I waited as long as I dared ... the sun had risen and we heard the clamour in the courtyard outside...."

"And so----" Again his parched lips would not obey his bidding.

"When the men were at the very door of the hut I carried out my promise," said Anstice steadily. "She closed her eyes ... I told her to, so that she should not be afraid to see death coming ... and then ..."

at the recollection of that last poignant moment a slow shudder shook him from head to foot, "... it was all over in a second. She did not suffer--of that, at least, you may be certain."

Cheniston's hand was over his eyes; and for a s.p.a.ce the room was very still.

Then:

"And you--you went out, as you thought, to meet your own death?"

"Yes--and I wish to G.o.d I'd met it," said Anstice with an uncontrollable outburst of bitterness. "I endured the shame, the horror of it all in vain. You know what happened ... how just as the men were about to fire the rescuers burst into the courtyard.... My G.o.d, why were they so late!

Or, being late, why did they come at all!"

Cheniston's blue eyes, which had been full of a natural human anguish, grew suddenly hard.

"You are not particularly grateful to your rescuers," he said. "Yet if they had been a few minutes later, you too would have been beyond their help."

Anstice was quick to notice the renewed hostility in the young man's tone.

"Just so." His manner, too, had changed. "But can you expect me to feel a very vivid grat.i.tude to the men who restored my life to me, seeing with what memories that life must always be haunted?"

"Need you endure the haunting of those memories?"

The question, spoken quietly, yet with an obvious significance, took Anstice aback. For a moment he frowned, his dazed mind fumbling after the speaker's meaning.

"_Need_ I?" Suddenly he knew what Cheniston had meant to imply. "Ah--you mean a man may always determine the length of his days?"

Cheniston nodded, never taking his eyes off the other's face.

"I see. Well, suicide would be a way out, of course. But"--for a second his eyes hardened, grew stern--"I don't mean to take that way--unless life grows too much for me. A second--mistake"--he spoke slowly--"would not annul the first."

"No." Cheniston's face had lost all its boyishness; it looked haggard, unhappy, old. "Possibly not. But when one has made a mistake of so tragic a nature I should have thought one would have been only too ready to pay the price of one's miscalculation."

For a second Anstice stared at him silently.

"Just so," he said at last, very quietly, taking his hands out of his pockets for the first time. "The question is, What is the price? And do you really think that to repudiate a debt by running away from one's creditor, so to speak, is as satisfactory a settlement as to pay it coin by coin, each coin drawn from one's own heart's blood?"

This time it was Cheniston who stared at him in non-comprehension.

Presently he said slowly:

"I think I understand. You mean the strongest man is the one who can stand up to any situation with which life confronts him; can pay a debt to the uttermost farthing though it may make him bankrupt in the doing.

That is what you mean?"

"Yes," said Anstice steadily. "That is what I mean. G.o.d only knows what the price may be, and whether I shall have the coin in my treasury when I'm called on to pay ... if I am so called upon. And by the way"--his face hardened--"do I understand you to mean that I'm your debtor--that it is to you that the price may--one day--be paid?"

Cheniston made no reply. The hostility had suddenly died out of his eyes; and for a moment Anstice caught a glimpse of the man Hilda Ryder had loved.

"You know"--his square fingers played absently with his cigarette case--"I have loved Hilda Ryder all my life. We were brought up together as children; I was a few years older than she ... by the way, how old are you?"

Surprised, Anstice owned to his twenty-nine years.

"And I am twenty-six. Hilda was twenty-four last year. Well, all my life she has been the one--the only--woman in the world for me. We've been engaged four years; her people wouldn't sanction it till she was twenty, but we always knew we were made for one another, and Hilda used to say she would rather be my wife than marry the richest, the most famous man on earth!"

Suddenly Anstice heard her soft voice in his ear.

"To marry him ... perhaps in time to bear his children, would be to me the most glorious destiny in the world...."

A spasm of uncontrollable anguish convulsed his features for a moment; but Cheniston was too intent on his own self-revelation to notice.

"Life--without--Hilda seems impossible somehow." He laughed drearily.

"We have always been so happy together ... I can't imagine going on without her."

He paused, but Anstice said nothing. He did not know what to say.

"I wonder--can I go on? Is it really required of me that I should continue to hang on to an existence which is absolutely devoid of all attraction, of all meaning?" He fixed his blue eyes on the other's face.

"You're a doctor, aren't you?"

Anstice nodded.

"Yes."

"Well, I daresay it has happened in your experience that some poor devil doomed to a lifetime of torture, condemned, perhaps, to bear the burden of the sins of his ancestors, has begged you to furnish him with the means of escape ... there must be cases in which death is infinitely preferable to life, and a doctor must know plenty of safe ways of setting free the poor imprisoned wretch as one would free a miserable caged bird. Tell me, has such an experience ever come your way?" He spoke almost irritably now.

"Well," said Anstice, "and if it has? What then?"

"How have you answered such entreaties, I wonder? Even you can't pretend that life is always a sacred thing; that a man isn't sometimes justified in turning his back on the existence he never desired and yet has to endure." He paused, and his eyes held a queer blue glitter. "Well, have you nothing to say?"

"No," said Anstice resolutely, moving a step forward as he spoke. "On such a subject I have nothing to say--to you. If, as seems possible, you are suggesting that I should furnish either you or myself with an easy solution of the problem of our respective lives, I fear I must decline the suggestion. I'm a doctor, not a murderer, although"--suddenly he bit his lip and his face turned grey--"you, of all men, may be pardoned for thinking me ready to act as one."

The pa.s.sing softness which had given him back his youth faded out of Cheniston's face; and when he spoke even his voice sounded years older.

"Well, it's no use talking, I suppose. After all"--his lip curled--"no man is dependent on another's good offices if he decides to cut short his sojourn on this delightful planet. Though it strikes me that if, as you say, you feel you owe me a debt, you might perhaps allow me to fix the method of payment."

He stopped short, taken aback by Anstice's imperious gesture.