Up the Hill and Over. Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
and that she, Esther, was strong. She had always known this. Even when her father had brought home his pretty bride and Esther, a shy, silent child of eleven, had welcomed her, she had known that the newcomer was the weaker spirit. The bride had known it too. She had never attempted to control Esther, leaving the child entirely to her father—a bit of unwitting wisdom which did much to smooth daily life at the Elms. If the doctor saw his wife's weakness of character it is probable that it did not interfere with his love for her. Why need she be strong while he was strong enough for two? But he had forgotten one thing—the day when she would have to be strong alone!
The realisation came to him upon his death-bed. Esther was sure of this. He could not speak, but she had read the message of his eyes, the appeal to the strength in her to help the other's weakness. No getting away from the solemn charge of that entreating look!
* * * * *
Esther was thinking of that look now, as she sat alone in the dusk of the veranda. Tea was over and Aunt Amy was putting Jane to bed. From her mother she had had no word. Blank silence had met her when she had taken the tea tray upstairs and called softly through the closed door. Mrs. Coombe was probably asleep. She would be better to-morrow; but before long she would be ill again, and the interval between the attacks was becoming shorter.
There was anger as well as anxiety in the girl's mind. Her healthy and straightforward youth had little patience with her step-mother's unreasonable caprices. For her illness she had every sympathy, but for the morbid nervousness which seemed to accompany it, none at all. These constant headaches, the increasing nervous irritability from which Mrs. Coombe suffered lay like a shadow over the house. Yet the sufferer refused to take the obvious way of relief and persisted in her refusal with a stubbornness of which no one would have dreamed her light nature capable. Still, willing or unwilling, something must be done. Aunt Amy, too, was becoming more of an anxiety. Once or twice lately she had spoken of "Them," a sign of mental distress which Dr. Coombe had always treated with the utmost seriousness. Perhaps if a doctor were called in for Aunt Amy, Mrs. Coombe would lose her foolish dread of doctors and allow him to prescribe for her also. And if the new doctor were half as clever as Mrs. Sykes said he was—Esther's heart began to warm a little as her fancy pictured such a pleasant solution of all her problems. The little smile curved her lips again as she thought of the maple by the schoolhouse steps, and the lettuce sandwiches and—and everything. She closed her eyes and tried to recall his face as he had looked up at her. Instinctively she knew it for a good face, strong, humorous, kindly, but strong above all. And it was strength that Esther needed. When she went to bed that night her burden seemed a little lighter.
I believe he can help me, she thought, and it isn't as if he were quite a stranger. After all, we had lunch together once!
CHAPTER VI
Undoubtedly Esther slept better that night for the thought of the new doctor. It cannot be said that the doctor slept better because of her. In fact he lay awake thinking of her. He did not want to think of her; he wanted to go to sleep. Twice only had he seen her. Once upon the occasion of the red pump and once when casually passing her on the main street. There was no reason why her white-rose face with its strange blue eyes and its smile-curved lips should float about in the darkness of Mrs. Sykes' best room. Yet there it was. It was the eyes, perhaps. The doctor admitted that they were peculiar eyes, startlingly blue. Dark blue in the shade of the lashes, flashing out light blue fire when the lashes lifted. But Mrs. Sykes' boarder did not want to think about eyes. He wanted to go to sleep. He did not want to think about hair either. Although Miss Coombe had very nice hair—cloudy hair, with little ways of growing about the temple and at the curve of the neck which a blind man could not help noticing. In the peaceful shadows of the room it seemed a still softer shadow framing the vivid girlish face.
Still, on the whole, sleep would have been better company and when at last he did drop off he did not relish being wakened by the voice of Ann at his door.
"Doc-ter, doc-ter! Are you awake? Can I come in?"
"I am not awake. Go away."
Ann's giggle came clearly through the keyhole.
"You've got a visitor," she whispered piercingly through the same medium. "A man. A well man, not a sick one. He came on the train. He came on the milk train—"
"You may come in, Ann." The doctor slipped on his dressing gown with a resigned sigh. "What man and why milk?"
"I don't know. Aunt Sykes kept him on the veranda till she was sure he wasn't an agent. Now he's in the parlour. Aunt hopes you'll hurry, for you never can tell. He may be different from what he looks."
"What does he look?"
Ann's small hands made an expressive gesture which seemed to envisage something long and lean.
"Queer—like that. He's not old, but he's bald. His eyes screw into you.
His nose," another formative gesture, "is like that. A nawful big nose.
He didn't tell his name."
"If he looks like that, perhaps he hasn't any name. Perhaps he is a button-moulder. In fact I'm almost certain he is—other name Willits. Occupation, professor."
"But if he is a button-maker, he can't be a professor," said Ann shrewdly.
"Oh, yes he can. Button-moulding is what he professes. His line is a specialty in spoiled buttons. He makes them over."
"Second-hand?"
"Better than new."
Ann fidgeted idly with the doctor's cuff-links and then with a flash of her odd childish comprehension, "You love him a lot, don't you?" she said jealously.
The doctor adjusted a collar button.
"England expects that every man shall deny the charge of loving another," he said, "but between you and me, I do rather like old Willits. You see I was rather a worn-out button once and he made me over. Where did you say he was?"
"In the parlour—there's Aunt! She said I wasn't to stay. I'll get it."
Indeed the voice of Mrs. Sykes could be heard on the stairs.
"Ann! Where's that child? Doctor, you'd think that child had never been taught no manners. You'll have to take a firm stand with Ann, Doctor. Land Sakes, I don't want to make her out worse'n she is, but you might as well know that your life won't be worth living if you don't set on Ann."
"All right, Mrs. Sykes. Painful as it may be, I shall do it. Are you sure it's safe to leave a stranger in the parlour?"
Mrs. Sykes looked worried. "I hope to goodness it's all right, Doctor. He's been in the parlour half an hour. I don't think he's an agent, hasn't got a case or a book anywhere. But agents are getting cuter every day. Naturally I didn't like to go so far as to ask his name. And I'm not asking it now. Curiosity was never a fault of mine though I do say it. Still a woman does like to know who's setting in her front parlour."
"And you shall," declared Callandar kindly. "Just hang on a few moments longer, dear Mrs. Sykes, and your non-existent but very justifiable curiosity shall be satisfied."
The parlour at Mrs. Sykes opened to the right of the narrow hall. Its two windows, distinguished by eternally half-drawn blinds of yellow, looked out upon the veranda, permitting a decorous gloom to envelop the sacred precincts. Mrs. Sykes was too careful a housekeeper to take risks with her carpet and too proud of her possessions to care to hide their glories altogether; hence the blinds were never wholly drawn and never raised more than half way. In the yellow gloom, one might feast one's eyes at leisure upon the centre table, draped in red damask, mystic, wonderful, and on its wealth of mathematically arranged books, the Bible, the "Indian Mutiny" and "Water Babies" in blue and gold. This last had been a gift to Ann and was considered by Mrs. Sykes to be the height of foolishness. Still, a book is a book, especially when bound in blue and gold.
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