Up The Hill And Over Part 50

"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 pa.s.serby. 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 att.i.tude, 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 h.e.l.l. 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 G.o.d 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 ingrat.i.tudes 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.saults 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 appet.i.te 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 pa.s.sion, 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 b.u.t.tons, 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 b.u.t.ton 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 G.o.d 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...."