Up The Hill And Over Part 48

An indescribable look flitted across the doctor's face. He looked at the girl a moment in measuring silence and then pointed to a chair.

"Sit down," he said briefly, "I thought that this would come. I have been afraid of it for some time. Is it possible that you have no suspicion at all in regard to these peculiar--illnesses--of your mother's?"

The startled wonder in her eyes was answer enough even without the quick, "What do you mean?"

Callandar's face grew gravely compa.s.sionate. "I think you ought to know," he said. "I have put off saying anything because I was not absolutely sure myself. And I have never had quite the right opportunity of finding out. But I have had fears for some time now that your mother is in the habit of taking some drug which--well, which is certainly not good for her. Do not look so frightened. It may not be serious. Do you remember when you first consulted me about your mother and how we both agreed that the medicine she was taking for her nervous attacks might be harmful? I was suspicious then, but there was little to go on, only her fear of any one seeing the prescription, and a few general symptoms which might be due to various causes. Since then I--I have noticed things which have made me anxious. I think for her own sake as well as yours and mine, the sooner the truth is known the better. Are you sure the door is locked?"

"Yes," the girl's voice was tense, "but the window is open. It opens on the top of the veranda. You could enter there."

"If that is the only way, I must take it. I thought, I hoped that if things were as I feared she would tell me herself, but she never has. It is useless, now, to hope for her confidence. The instinct is so strongly for concealment. We must help her in spite of herself."

"Hurry then! I shall wait here. You will call me if necessary?"

She did not ask him exactly what it was that he feared nor did he tell her, but for the first time in many weeks they were able to look at each other as comrades look. The eruption of the old trouble into the new obscured the latter so that, for the time at least, the sick woman behind the locked door held first place in both their thoughts.

It seemed to Esther that she waited a long time before the summons came.

Then she heard him call, "Esther!" It was a doctor's call, cool, pa.s.sionless, commanding. She flew up the stairs, closing Jane's door as she hurried by. The door to her mother's room was open. It was brightly lighted. The shade of the lamp had been removed and its garish yellow fell full upon the bed and the strange figure which lay there.

Mary Coombe had apparently thrown herself down fully dressed--but in what a costume! Surely no nightmare held anything more bizarre. Esther had no time to notice details but she remembered afterwards how the feet were clothed in different coloured stockings and that while one displayed a gaily buckled slipper, the other was carefully laced into a tan walking boot. Just now she could see nothing but the face, for the greatest shock was there. It did not look like Mary's face at all--it was strange, old, yellow and repulsive. Her unbrushed, l.u.s.treless hair hung about it in a dull mat, one of her hands was clutched in it--the hand was dirty.

A terrible thought struck every vestige of colour from Esther's cheek.

Her terrified gaze swept over the disordered room, up to the face of the man who stood there so silently, then down again to the inert woman upon the bed. Once, not long ago, she had seen a drunken man asleep upon the roadside gra.s.s--like this.

"Is it--is it drink?" The words were a whisper of horror.

The doctor shook his head.

"I wish it were. I wish it were only that. Have you never heard of the drug habit--morphia, opium? That is what we have to fight--and it is what I feared."

"Oh!" It was a breath of relief. To Esther, who knew nothing of drugs, or drug habits, the truth seemed less awful than the thing she had imagined.

"Is--is it serious?" she asked timidly.

The doctor smiled grimly. "You will see. No need to frighten you now.

But it will be a fight from this on." He threw a light coverlet over the helpless figure and replacing the shade on the lamp, turned down the flaring wick. "I will tell you what I can, but at present it is very little. Probably this began long ago, before your father's death. In the first place there may have been a prescription--I think you said she had had an illness in which she suffered greatly. The drug, opium in some form probably, may have been given to reduce the pain--and continued after need for it was gone without knowledge of its dangerous qualities.

Nervous people form the habit very quickly. Then--I am only guessing--as the amount contained in the original prescription ceased to produce the desired effect, she may have found out what drug it was that her appet.i.te craved. If she saw the danger then, it was already too late. She could not give up voluntarily and was compelled to go on, shutting her eyes to the inevitable consequences, if indeed she ever clearly knew them."

"But now that you know? It ought not to be hard to help her now that you know. There are other drugs--"

"Yes. There is a frying-pan and a fire. In fact I fear that she has already tried that expedient herself. Some of the symptoms point to cocaine. No, our best hope is in the decreasing dose with proper auxiliary treatment. I cannot tell yet how serious the case may be. At any rate there must be an end of the mystery. Every one in the house must know, even Jane; for in this fight ignorance means danger. But," he hesitated and his face grew dark, "you cannot realise what this is going to mean. It is my burden, not yours. At least I have the right to save you that. We must have a nurse--"

A little eager cry burst from her. "Oh, no! Not that! You wouldn't do that. You can't mean not to let me help."

"You do not know--"

"I do not care what it means. But if you won't let me help, if you shut me out--" Her voice quivered dangerously, but with a spark of her old fire she recovered herself. "You cannot," she added more firmly, "because it is my burden as well as yours. Whatever she is to you, she was my father's wife and I am responsible to him. Unless extra help is really needed, no nurse shall take my place."

"Very well," quietly. "Call Aunt Amy, then, and search the room. She will sleep for a long time yet. When she wakes there must be no more of the drug within her reach. I must find out the amount to which she has been accustomed and arrange a decreasing dose. But if you are to be a nurse, you know, you must expect a bad time. It will not be easy."

Esther's reply was to call Aunt Amy and while the doctor explained to the bewildered old lady the danger in which her niece stood and the absolute importance of keeping all "medicine" away from her, Esther quietly and swiftly searched the room. Boxes and drawers she unlocked and opened, the dresser, the writing-table, the bureau, the long unused sewing basket, all were examined without success. But in the locked box which contained her father's portrait, she made another discovery which woke a little throb of angry pity in her heart. There, still wrapped in its carelessly torn off postal wrappings, lay the box containing the ruby ring which Jessica Bremner had returned. Mary must have got it from the post herself and had immediately hidden it, careless of the fact that all Esther's careful savings had been necessary to make the return possible. Without comment she slipped the ring into the bosom of her dress.

"Have you found anything?"

"Nothing yet."

Aunt Amy took a fascinated step nearer the figure on the bed. If Callandar could have intercepted the look she cast upon it he might have been warned of the subtle change which had taken place in her of late, but the doctor had turned to help Esther. Aunt Amy could gaze undisturbed.

"She looks like Richard," said Aunt Amy suddenly. "Do you remember Richard?" She brushed her hand over her eyes in a painful effort of memory. "He was a bad man, a very bad man."

"She means her brother Richard," explained Esther. "He has been dead for ages. I believe he was not a family ornament."

"Just like Richard," murmured Aunt Amy again with a quickly checked chuckle. "But you ought to be glad of that. You won't have to marry her now. You can marry Esther."

If a sh.e.l.l had burst in the quiet room, it could scarcely have caused more consternation. The doctor's stern face quivered, Esther's searching hand dropped paralysed. Here was a danger indeed! Was their secret really so patent? Or had it been but a vagrant guess of a clouded mind?

Callandar recovered himself first. Without glancing at the girl he walked quietly over to the bed and placing his hand upon Aunt Amy's shoulder compelled wavering eyes to his.

"Aunt Amy, you must never say that again." He spoke with the crisp incisiveness of a master, but for once his subject did not immediately respond. With a sulky look she tried to wrench herself free.

"Why?" she questioned. But Callandar knew his business too well to argue. "You must never say it again," he repeated.

"You--must--never--say--it--again!"

The poor, weak lips began to quiver. Her own boldness had frightened her quite as much as his vehemence. Her eyes fluttered and fell.

"Very well, Doctor," she answered meekly.

They searched now in silence and presently Esther emerged from the closet with a pair of dainty slippers in her hand.

"I think I have found something," she said. "There are three pairs of party slippers and the toes of them are all stuffed with these." She handed the doctor a package of innocent looking tablets done up in purplish blue paper.

Callandar glanced at them, shook them out and counted their number.

"You are sure you have them all?"

"I can find no trace of more."

"Then I think we have a strong fight coming--but a good hope, too."

CHAPTER XXIX

Miss A. Milligan stood before the door of her select dressmaking parlours, meditatively picking her teeth with a needle. We hasten to observe that her teeth were quite clean and that this was merely a harmless habit denoting intense mental concentration. Miss Milligan was tall and full of figure with an elegant waist and a bust so like a pin-cus.h.i.+on that it fulfilled the duties of that article admirably. Her small bright eyes set in a wide expanse of face suggested nothing so much as currants in an underdone bun, and just now, as she watched the graceful figure of Mrs. Coombe, bride to be, disappear around the corner, they gave the impression of having been poked too far in while the bun was soft.

The door of Miss Milligan's select parlours did not open upon the main street, it being far from her desire to attract promiscuous trade. The parlours, indeed, were situated upon one of the "nicest" streets in Coombe and occupied a corner lot, so that a splendid view down two of the most genteel residential streets was obtainable from their windows.

The only sign of business anywhere was a board of chaste design over the doorway, bearing the simple legend, "A. MILLIGAN." Even the word "Dressmaker" was considered superfluous. Also there was one window, near the door, which from time to time displayed wonderfully coloured plates of terribly twisting and elegantly elongated females purporting to be the very latest from Paris (_France_).