Esther and her step-mother set out upon their homeward walk in silence.
The older woman's face was drawn and bitter, Esther's thoughtful and
sad. Though there seemed no reason for haste, Mrs. Coombe's steps grew
constantly quicker until she was hurrying breathlessly.
More than once the girl glanced at her anxiously as if about to speak,
yet hesitating. Then when the walk threatened to become a run she laid a
detaining hand upon her arm.
"If you walk so very rapidly, mother, people will notice." It was the
only argument which never failed of effect. Mrs. Coombe's steps
slackened.
"Besides," went on Esther eagerly, "every moment is a gain. Ten minutes
more will make this the longest interval yet. Don't you think you
could try...."
"No!"
The word was only a gasp and the face Mary turned for a moment on the
girl was livid. The eyes shone with hate. "You--you beast!" she muttered
chokingly.
Esther turned a shade paler, but otherwise gave no sign that she had
heard. "Mother, just try, you are doing so well, so splendidly. The
doctor says ..."
"Be quiet--be quiet! I hate him. I won't try. I won't be tortured--oh,
why can't you all leave me alone!" She began to sob and moan under her
breath, careless even of a possible passerby. Fortunately there was no
one, and they were already within sight of home. Esther, very white,
supported the shaking woman with her arm and they hurried on together.
At the door she would still have accompanied her but Mary flung herself
angrily from her hold and ran up the stairs with sudden feverish
strength. Esther turned into the living room and dropped into the
nearest chair.
She was still sitting there without having removed either hat or gloves
when, a little later, Callandar entered.
"Well, nurse," with a faint smile, "how are things to-day?" His quick
eye had noticed in a moment the girl's closed eyes and listless
attitude, but nothing in his tone betrayed it.
"Very well, I think, until a little while ago. We were late in getting
home from the dressmaker's--"
"I see. You look rather done up. The fact is you are overdoing things.
Rather foolish, don't you think?"
"No," stubbornly. "I am all right."
"You are exhausted and there is no need. Things are going well. The dose
is steadily diminishing, more quickly than she suspects. It looks as if
we might begin to breathe again. It is a great gain to feel reasonably
sure that she has no more of the stuff hidden anywhere. If she had, she
would have used it during that last crisis."
The girl in the chair winced. She hated even to think of the night to
which his words referred. "Yes," she said, "but--but there won't be any
more times like that, will there?"
"Yes," grimly. "We are not through yet. But every crisis will be a
little easier--if things go as they are going."
Esther sighed. "It is very terrible, isn't it?" she said. "And really it
doesn't seem fair, for it wasn't her fault; in the beginning she didn't
know. And she does suffer so."
"We must not think of it in that way. It helps more to think of the
suffering she is escaping. What she is going through now is saving her,
body and soul. It is taking her out of torment and leading her back to
life, and sanity. You don't know, but I do, and any struggle, any
suffering is mild compared to the horrors before her if she kept on. She
was taking some cocaine too. The word means nothing to you, but to a
physician it spells hell. So you see--it gives one strength."
Esther sat up and straightened her collar. "I'm ashamed of myself," she
said. "No wonder you want another nurse. But I won't resign yet. And I
wanted to ask you--do you think it is necessary now to be with her
whenever she goes out? She hates it so. I think she is getting to hate
me, too. Where could she possibly get the stuff? None of our local
stores would sell it without a prescription."
"I know. But in a case like this you can never be sure of anything. No,
we must not relax in the slightest. Even as it is, I am continually
afraid." He began to pace the room restlessly. "There may be a weak spot
somewhere, some loop-hole we have forgotten. I think the druggists are
safe and the mail is watched. That last supply, you are sure it was all
destroyed?"
"Yes, I burned it. At least I gave it to Aunt Amy to burn. I couldn't
leave mother."
"Well, let us call Aunt Amy, and make sure. I believe I am foolishly
nervous, but--" without finishing his sentence the doctor walked to the
door and waited there until Aunt Amy answered his call.
"Auntie," said Esther, "you remember the little package I gave you that
night when mother was so ill? It was done up in purplish blue paper."
"Yes, Esther."
"Do you remember what you did with it, dear?"
Aunt Amy looked frightened.
"I--I don't know. I've a very good memory, Esther. But somehow I'm not
quite sure."
"You will remember presently," said Callandar kindly. "We want to be
quite sure that it was destroyed. You know, I explained to you, that
Mary must take no more of that medicine. It is very dangerous...."
"What does it do?" unexpectedly.
"It is a kind of poison. It makes people very ill, so ill that in time
they die."
"Mary likes it. She says it makes her nerves better and puts her to
sleep."
"When did she say that?"
"When she asked me if I had any."
The doctor and the girl exchanged a quick look.
"And you gave her some?"
"Oh, no, I couldn't. I had burned it in the stove--I remember now."
They both drew a breath of intense relief. But when she had left them,
Callandar looked very sober. "There, you see," he said, "was a
possibility we had overlooked."
"Yes, and it would have been my fault. I should have made sure long ago.
It is hard to get out of the habit of taking things for granted."
"Yet it is the one thing we must never do. In this we must trust no one,
and nothing. Then we shall win. If there is no relapse now, the worst,
the slowest part, is over. Soon you will be free, dear girl--and God
bless you forever for what you have been to her and to me."
She answered him only with a wistful smile and when he had gone, she
sighed. She would be free soon, he said. Strange that he could not see
that it was her freedom that she dreaded. Hard as it had been, hard as
it was, there was a still harder time coming--the time when she would be
free--free, to leave forever the man she loved.
The present with its load of duty and anxiety, the constant strain of
watching, its bearing of poor Mary's thousand ingratitudes seemed dear
and desirable when she thought of the black gulf of separation at the
end of the tortuous way. But of course he could not guess. How could he?
Men are so different from women.
She knew, though, that she was coming to the end of her strength. Not
even the doctor guessed how great the strain of those past weeks
had been.
When Mary had awakened to find that her secret was discovered she had
been like a mad thing. There had been rage, tears, protestations,
hysterical denials--finally confession and anguished promises. That she
had never realised the reality of her danger, nor the extent of her
servitude was plain. It seemed easy enough to promise. Esther and the
doctor were making a terrible fuss about nothing, as usual. She grew
sulky under Callandar's warnings and her fury knew no bounds when she
found that certain of her hidden stores had been confiscated. She
demanded that the supply be left in her hands; was not her
promise enough?
But all this was before she knew what denial meant, before she realised
that the way back along the path she had trodden so easily was
thick-set with suffering; that every backward inch must be fought for
with agony and tears. Then she had broken down altogether, had raved and
pleaded. The very knowledge of the depth to which she had fallen,
threatened to send her deeper still. Callandar soon realised that if she
were to be saved it must be in spite of herself. There were but two
points of strength in her weak nature; one the newly awakened, yet
capricious passion for himself, and the other that ruling terror of her
life, which of all her inherent safeguards was the last to give way
under the assaults of the drug, namely, "What will people say?" but
neither of these, nor both of them together, could stand for a moment
before the terrible appetite when once its craving was denied.
Twice she failed her helpers just when they were beginning to hope. In
her first search Esther had not exhausted the hiding places of the
poison and, to retain the temptation by her, Mary had lied and lied
again. Twice when the crises of her desire had come upon her she had
given way, helplessly, completely; and twice they had begun all over
again. The third time she had not been able to procure the drug, had
been compelled to fight through on the decreasing dose which the doctor
had allowed.
No wonder Esther shuddered when she thought of that night! Yet at the
time she had stood beside the moaning woman, white and firm, when even
Callandar had staggered for a moment from the room.
Next morning they had taken heart of hope again. Undoubtedly Mary had
exhausted the supply, and the possibility of its being replenished
seemed remote. It was only a matter of time now; of care, of
unremitting, yet gentle vigilance and Mary would be cured. The bride
could go to her husband, clean and in her right mind. And Esther
would be free.
Strangely enough, it was Mary herself who objected to a hastening of
their remarriage. Perhaps in spite of her inevitable deterioration there
was that in her still which forbade her going to him as she was. Perhaps
it was only another and more obscure effect of the drug; some downward
instinct which made her dread the putting of herself within the circle
of her husband's strength. She would fight her fight outside. Why? Was
it because she would conquer of herself, or because she did not really
wish to conquer at all?
To Esther, Mary's refusal came as a reprieve. But to Callandar it was
but a lengthening out of torture. Man's love must always, in its
essence, be different from woman's; though many women seem incapable of
recognising this fact. To Esther, now that she had put aside her first
half-understood glimpse of passion, it was sweet to be near him, to hear
his voice, to touch his hand and, above all, to spend her strength in
his service. But to him the strain was almost intolerable. The sight of
her, the touch of her, the whole soul-shattering nearness of her beauty
meant constant conflict; all the fiercer since it must be unsuspected.
Willits, the only man who had been told the truth, watched the fight
with admiration, sharply touched with anxiety. Expert in the moulding of
buttons, he knew very well that Callandar was drawing rather recklessly
upon his newly acquired strength. If the tension did not slacken soon
there might be another physical breakdown, and then--Willits shrugged
his shoulders. It would be entirely too bad if this very fine button
were to be spoiled after all. His heart was sore for his friend.
"You see," Callandar had written in one of his rare letters, "it was a
right instinct which warned me that no man escapes the consequences of
his own acts. There did come a short, golden time when I put the voice
of instinct behind me and dared to think that I, at least, had shaken
myself free. Closing the door of yesterday, I boldly knocked open the
door of to-morrow--and lo, to-morrow and yesterday were one!
"I know, now, that even had poor Mary been dead, as I believed, the
payment would have been exacted in some other way. When my brain is
clear enough to think, I have flashes of thankfulness that payment is
permitted to take the form of expiation. I can save Mary, and I will. In
some strange and rather dreadful way her need is my salvation.
"I have said nothing of Esther. How can I? The other day I heard Miss
Sinclair say that Esther Coombe was losing all her good looks. 'Thin as
a rail, and peeked as a pin' were the words she used. To me she has
never been so lovely. She is thinner; there are hollows in her cheeks;
her lips are no longer a thread of scarlet. The transparent lids of her
deep, wonderful eyes droop often and her hair seems to have lost its
life and hangs soft and very close to her face. I love her. I love her
as a man loves a woman, as a knight loves his lady, as a Catholic loves
the Madonna! This terrible strain must soon be over for her. I am doing
all in my power to hurry on the marriage. She is young. She is bound to
forget. When she leaves here she goes out of my life--and may God
speed her!
"She is to go to Toronto. Lorna Sinnet has good friends there and they
will take her into their circle. She will begin to taste a fuller life,
and as her interests expand the old wound will heal. She will find
happiness yet. When Mary recovers, she and I will return to Montreal. I
am quite fit now. I feel that I can never work hard enough. Mary will
like the excitement of city life, and I rely upon you and Lorna to make
our coming as easy as possible. How is Lorna? A talk with her will be
a tonic.
"Does not all this sound admirably lucid and sensible? I want you to see
that I am not losing my hold--that I have finally faced down the problem
of the future. And there is one thing that has come to me out of all
this, a wonderful thing; I have forgotten Fear. It seems to me that all
my life I have lived in fear. Now I am not afraid...."
It was when Bubble was entering the post office for the purpose of
posting this letter that he met Miss Milligan, coming out. Miss Milligan
was evidently in a hurry, so great a hurry that she had not time to
question Bubble upon affairs in general as was her usual custom. Instead
she asked him to do something for her. It was a trifling service, only
to deliver to Mrs. Coombe a small postal packet which she held in
her hand.
"It will only take you a few moments, Zerubbabel," she said. "I was
going to deliver it myself but Mrs. Stanton wants a fitting right away.
I ought not to have come down to the post at all. But I promised Mrs.
Coombe--does Dr. Callandar permit you to run messages in your
spare time?"
"Sure," declared the youth, "only I don't get much spare time. The
doctor's terrible busy. Since we got the phone in, it's ringing all the
time! But I guess I can slip over to Mrs. Coombe's or if I see Jane I
can give the parcel to her."
"No!" Miss Milligan seemed struck with a sudden hesitancy. "You must
not give it to Jane, you must give it to Mrs. Coombe. Dear me, I believe
I had better take it myself."
Without listening to the boy's polite protests she hurried off again.
Bubble gazed after her with relieved astonishment.
"Guess it must be something for the wedding," declared he, sapiently.