The Keeper of the Door Part 2

She raised it at once to her lips, feeling as if she had no choice, and drank with shuddering distaste.

"I always have hated _sal volatile_," she said, as she finished the draught.

"You can't have everything you like in this world," returned Max sententiously. "Come over here by the window! Now you are to do exactly what I tell you. Understand? Put your own judgment in abeyance. Yes, I know it's bleeding; but you needn't shudder like that. Give me your hand!" She gave it, trembling. He held it firmly, looking straight into her quivering face. "We won't proceed," he said, "until you have quite recovered your self-control, or you may go and slit a large vein, which would be awkward for us both. Just stand still and pull yourself together."

She found herself obliged to obey. The shrewd green eyes watched her mercilessly, and under their unswerving regard her agitation gradually died down.

"That's better," he said at length, and released her hand. "Now see what you can do."

It seemed to Olga later that he took so keen an interest in the operation as to be quite insensible of the pain it involved. She obeyed his instructions herself with a set face and a quaking heart, suppressing a sick shudder from time to time, finally achieving the desired end with a face so ghastly that the victim of her efforts laughed outright.

"Whom are you most sorry for, yourself or me?" he wanted to know. "I say, please don't faint till you have bandaged me up! I can't attend to you properly if you do, and I shall probably spill blood over you and make a beastly mess."

Again his insistence carried the day. Olga bandaged the torn hand without a murmur.

"And now," said Dr. Max Wyndham, "tell me what you did it for!"

She looked at him then with quick defiance. She had endured much in silence, mainly because she had known that she had deserved it; but there was a limit. She was not going to be brought to book as though she had been a naughty child.

"You had yourself alone to thank for it," she declared with indignation.

"If--if you hadn't interfered and behaved intolerably, it wouldn't have happened."

"What a nave way of expressing it!" said Max. "Shall I tell you how I regard the 'happening'?"

"You can do as you like," she flung back. She was longing to go, but stood her ground lest departure should look like flight.

Max took out and lighted another cigarette before he spoke again. Then: "I regard it," he said very deliberately, "as a piece of spiteful mischief for which you deserve a sound whipping--which it would give me immense pleasure to administer."

Olga's pale face flamed scarlet. Her eyes flashed up to his in fiery disdain.

"You!" she said, with withering scorn. "You!"

"Well, what about me?"

Carelessly, his hands in his pockets, Max put the question. Quite obviously he did not care in the smallest degree what answer she made.

And so Olga, being stung to rage by his unbearable superiority, cast scruples to the wind.

"I'd do the same to you again--and worse," she declared vindictively, "if I got the chance!"

Max smiled at that superciliously, one corner of his mouth slightly higher than the other. "Oh, no, you wouldn't," he said. "For one thing, you wouldn't care to run the risk of having to sew me up again. And for another, you wouldn't dare!"

"Not dare! Do you think I am afraid of you?"

Olga stood in a streak of sunlight that slanted through the wire blind of the doctor's surgery and fell in chequers upon her white dress. Her pale eyes fairly blazed. No one who had ever seen her thus would have described her as colourless. She was as vivid in that moment as the flare of the sunset; and into the eyes of the man who leaned against the table coolly appraising her there came an odd little gleam of satisfaction--the gleam that comes into the eyes of the treasure-hunter at the first glint of gold.

Olga came a step towards him. She saw the gleam and took it for ridicule. The situation was intolerable. She would be mocked no longer.

"Dr. Wyndham," she said, her voice pitched rather low, "do you call yourself a gentleman?"

"I really don't know," he answered. "It's a question I've never asked myself."

"Because," she said, speaking rather quickly, "I think you a cad."

"Not really!" said Max, smiling openly. "Now I wonder why! Sit down, won't you, and tell me?"

The colour was fading from her face again. She had made a mistake in thus a.s.sailing him, and already she knew it. He only laughed at her puny efforts to hurt him, laughed and goaded her afresh.

"Why am I not a gentleman?" he asked, and drew in a mouthful of smoke which he puffed at the ceiling. "Because I said I should like to give you a whipping? But you would like to tar and feather me, I gather.

Isn't that even more barbarous?" He watched the smoke ascend, with eyes screwed up, then, as she did not speak, looked down at her again.

She no longer stood in the sunlight, and the pa.s.sing of the splendour seemed to have left her cold. She looked rather small and pinched--there was even a hint of forlornness about her. But she had learned her lesson.

As he looked at her, she clenched her hands, drew a deep breath, and spoke. "Dr. Wyndham, I beg your pardon for hurting you, and for being rude to you. I can't help my thoughts, of course, but I was wrong to put them into words. Please forget--all I've said!"

"Oh, I say!" said Max, opening his eyes, "that's the cruellest thing you've done yet. You've taken all the wind out of my sails, and left me stranded. What is one expected to say to an apology of that sort? It's outside my experience entirely."

Olga had turned to the door, but at his words she paused, looking back.

A glimmer of resentment still shone in her eyes.

"If I were in your place," she said, "I should apologize too."

"Oh, no, you wouldn't," said Max. "Not if you wished to achieve the desired effect. You see, I've nothing to apologize for."

"How like a man!" exclaimed Olga.

"Yes, isn't it? Thanks for the compliment! Strange to say, I am much more like a man than anything else under the sun. I say, are you really going? Well, I forgive you for being naughty, if that's what you want.

And I'm sorry I can't grovel to you, but I don't feel justified in so doing, and it would be very bad for you in any case. By the way--er--Miss Ratcliffe, I think you will be interested to learn that my visit to the Campions was of a social and not of a professional character. That was all you wanted to know, I think?"

Olga, holding the door open, looked across at him with surprise that turned almost instantly to half-scornful enlightenment.

"Oh, that's it, is it?" she said.

"That's it," said Max. "Quite sure you don't want to know anything else?"

Again he puffed the smoke upwards and watched it ascend.

"Why on earth couldn't you have said so before?" said Olga.

He turned at that and surveyed her quite seriously. "Oh, that was entirely for your sake," he said.

"For my sake!" said Olga. Sheer curiosity impelled her to remain and probe this mystery.

"Yes," said Max, with a sudden twinkle in his green eyes. "You know, it isn't good for little girls to know too much."

As the door banged upon her retreat, he leaned back, holding to the edge of the table, and laughed with his chin in the air.

Life in the country, notwithstanding its many drawbacks, was turning out to be more diverting than he had antic.i.p.ated.