“Daddy dear?”
Nancy’s accent was a little wishful, as she turned her back on the
habitant in the courtyard and faced her father by the dressing-table.
“Yes.” The doctor was absently rummaging among his neckties.
“Can’t you spare time to go out with me, this afternoon?”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. Lorette, or Beaumanoir, or even just up and down the city.
You really have seen nothing of Quebec, daddy, and I—once in a while I
get lonely.”
The doctor dropped his neckties and looked up sharply.
“Lonely, Nancy? I am sorry. Do you want to go home?”
“Oh, no!” The startled emphasis of her accent left no doubt of its
truthfulness.
“Then what is it, child?”
“Nothing; only—It is just as I said. Now and then I feel a little
lonesome.”
The doctor smiled at his own reflection in the mirror.
“I thought Brock and the Frenchman looked out for that, Nancy.”
“They do,” she returned desperately; “and that is just what worries me.
It makes me feel as if I needed to have some family back of me.”
Gravely and steadily the doctor looked down into her troubled eyes.
“Has anything—?”
Nancy raised her head haughtily, as she answered him.
“No, daddy; trust me for that. The boys are gentlemen, and, besides,
they treat me as if I were a mere cousin, or something else quite
unromantic. I like them, and I like to talk with them. It is only—”
Her father understood her.
“I think you do not need to be anxious, Nancy. Over the top of my
manuscripts, I keep a sharp eye out for my girl. And, besides, it is a
rare advantage for you to have the friendship of the Lady. Even if I
were not here, I would trust you implicitly to her care.”
Nancy nodded in slow approval.
“Yes, and she is one of us. Sometimes I am half jealous of her. M. St.
Jacques is her devoted slave.”
“What about Brock?”
Nancy laughed with a carelessness which was not entirely feigned.
“Mr. Brock burns incense before every woman, young or old. He is
adorable to us all, and we all adore him. Still, he never really takes
us in earnest, you know.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” the doctor said, with sudden decision.
“You like Mr. Brock?” she questioned.
“Yes. Don’t you?”
“I should be an ungrateful wretch, if I didn’t.” Then she added,
“Speaking of ungrateful wretches, daddy, was anything ever more strange
than the whole Barth episode?”
“Haven’t you told him yet?”
“Told him! How could I? It is all I can do not to betray myself by
accident; I would die rather than tell him deliberately. But I can’t see
how the man can help knowing.”
“Extreme egotism coupled with extreme myopia,” the doctor suggested.
“Exactly. If it were one of us alone, I shouldn’t think so much about
it; but it is a mystery to me how he can see us both, without having the
truth dawn upon him.”
The doctor pondered for a moment.
“Do you know, Nancy, I believe I haven’t once come into contact with the
fellow. Except for the dining-room, I’ve not even been into the same
room with him. It is really wonderful how little one can see of one’s
neighbors.”
Nancy faced back to the window with a jerk.
“And also how much,” she added mutinously.
But the doctor pursued his own train of thought.
“After all, Nancy, it may be our place to make the first advances. We
are older—at least, I am—and there are two of us. He may be waiting
for us to recognize him. I believe I’ll look him up, this evening, and
tell him how we happen to be here.”
Nancy faced out again with a second jerk.
“Daddy, if you dare to do such a thing!”
“Why not? After all, I rather liked Barth.”
“I didn’t.”
“But surely you thought he was a gentleman,” the doctor urged.
“After a fashion,” Nancy admitted guardedly. “Still, now that I have met
him, I’d rather let bygones be bygones. It would be maddening, for
instance, just when I was sailing past him on my way in to supper, to
have him remember how I used to coil strips of red flannel around his
aristocratic ankle. No; we’ll let the dead past bury its bandages and
water them with its liniment, daddy. If I am ever to know Mr. Cecil
Barth now, it must be as a new acquaintance from London, not as my old
patient from Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré.”
“And yet,” the doctor still spoke meditatively; “Barth appreciated you,
Nancy, and he was certainly grateful.”
The girl laughed wilfully.
“He appreciated his hired nurse, daddy, and he was grateful to me to the
extent of paying me my wages. By the way, I’d like that money.”
“For what?”
“I would drop it into the lap of the Good Sainte Anne. It is no small
miracle to have delivered a British Lion into the hands of an American
and allowed her to minister to his wounded paw. It was a great
experience, daddy, and, now I think of it, I would like to reward the
saint according to her merits.”
The doctor’s eyes brightened, as he looked at her merry face.
“Wait,” he advised her. “Even now, the miracle may not be complete.”
She ran after him and caught him by the lapels of his collar.
“Oh, don’t talk in riddles,” she protested. “And, anyway, promise me you
won’t tell any tales to Mr. Barth.”
“My dear child, I have something to do, besides forcing my acquaintance
upon stray young Englishmen who don’t care for it.”
She kissed him impetuously.
“Spoken like your daughter’s own father!” she said approvingly. “Now, if
you really won’t go out to play with me, I’m going to the library to
read the new magazines.”
An hour later, Nancy was sitting by a window, _Harper’s_ in her lap and
her eyes fixed on the dark blue Laurentides to the northward. The girl
spent many a leisure hour in the grim old building, once a prison, but
now the home of a little library whose walls breathed a mingled
atmosphere of mustiness and learning. Ancient folios were not lacking;
but Kipling was on the upper shelves and one of the tables was littered
with rows of the latest magazines.
To-day, however, Nancy’s mind was not upon her story, nor yet upon the
Laurentides beneath her thoughtful gaze. The episode of the previous
night had left a strong impression upon her. It was the first time she
had seen the three men together; she had watched them with shrewd,
impartial eyes. Britisher, Canadian, and Frenchman, Catholic and
Protestant: three more distinct types could scarcely have been gathered
into the narrow limits of an impromptu theatre party. Beyond the simple
attributes of manliness and breeding, they possessed scarcely a trait in
common. In two of them, Nancy saw little to deplore; in all three, she
saw a good deal to like.
Barth she dismissed with a brief shake of her head. He was undeniably
plucky, far more plucky than at first she had supposed. To her
energetic, healthy mind, there had been nothing so very bad about a
sprained ankle. A little pain, a short captivity, and that was the end
of it. Once or twice it had seemed to her that Barth had been needlessly
depressed by the situation, needlessly unresponsive to her efforts to
arouse him. It was only during the past few days that she had seen what
it really meant: the physical pain and weariness to be borne as best it
might, in a strange city and cut off from any friendly companionship. It
even occurred dimly to her mind that Barth was not wholly responsible
for his chilly inability to make new friends, that it was just possible
he regretted the fact as keenly as any one else. Moreover, Nancy was
just. She admitted, as she looked back over those ten days at Sainte
Anne-de-Beaupré, that Barth had been singularly free from fault-finding
and complaint. She also admitted that his ignoring of their past
relations was no mere matter of social snobbery. Mr. Cecil Barth was
totally ignorant of the identity of his former nurse. Having exonerated
him from the charge of certain sins, Nancy dismissed him with a shake of
her head.
Upon Brock and St. Jacques, her mind rested longer. Until the night
before, they had seemed to her to be a pair of boon comrades. While
their holiday lasted, they would make merry together. When she turned
her face to the southward, the bonds of their acquaintance would drop
apart, and their lives would spin on in their individual orbits. Now,
all at once, she questioned. The naked impulses of humanity show
themselves in times of danger. At last night’s alarm, both Brock and St.
Jacques had turned instinctively to her protection. Then the difference
had showed itself. Brock had given his whole care and strength to her
alone. St. Jacques had swiftly assured himself that she was in safe
hands; then, with a caution to Brock to guard the Lady, he had thrown
himself to the rescue of Mr. Cecil Barth, not because he liked Barth,
but because his instincts were all for the succoring of the weak. All
night long, Nancy had gloried in Brock’s strength and in the singleness
of his devotion. Nevertheless, she was woman enough to glory still more
in the more prosaic gallantry of the dark-browed little Frenchman. As a
rule, the pretty girl in evening dress is prone to inspire more chivalry
than a taciturn Britisher of chilly manners and unflattering tongue.
Suddenly Nancy buried her nose in her story. Barth had come into the
library and seated himself at the table close at her elbow. When she
looked up again, he had put on his glasses and was waiting to meet her
eye. She nodded to him, and, before she could go back to her magazine
again, he had turned his chair until it faced her own. Over the blue
Laurentides the twilight was dropping fast. Upstairs in the dim gallery
the librarian was moving slowly here and there among his books.
Otherwise the place was quite deserted, save for the two young people
sitting in the sunset glow.
“And is this one of your haunts, too, Miss Howard?” Barth asked, as he
tossed his magazine back to the table.
The matter-of-course friendliness of his tone struck a new note in their
acquaintance. Nancy liked it.
“Yes, I often come here, when it is too stormy for walking,” she
assented.
“You walk a great deal?”
“Endlessly. Still, it doesn’t take so many steps to circumnavigate this
little city, I find. I love to explore the out-of-the-way nooks and
corners; don’t you?”
“I did, until I was cut off in my prime. I had only had two weeks,
before disaster overtook me.”
This time, Nancy was mindful of her incognito.
“You broke your ankle, I think?” she said interrogatively.
“Sprained it. It amounts to the same thing in the end.”
“Was it long ago?”
“Three weeks. Sometimes three weeks become infinite.”
“Was it so painful?”
“Yes, especially to my pride. It’s so babyish to be ill.”
“But you weren’t babyish at all,” Nancy protested courteously.
Barth stared blankly at her for a minute. Then he laughed.
“You flatter me. Still, it’s not well to take too much on trust, Miss
Howard. But I am glad if I’ve gained any reputation for pluck.”
Nancy interposed hastily.
“How did it happen?”
“I don’t know. The last I remember beforehand, I was standing on the
steps of Sainte Anne, watching a pilgrimage getting itself blessed. The
next I knew, I was lying on my back on the ground, with my ankle twisted
into a knot, and my future nurse taking full possession of my case. That
was your namesake, Miss Howard.”
“Indeed. Was—was she—pretty?” Nancy inquired, not quite certain what
she was expected to say next.
“I never knew. My glasses were lost in the scrimmage, and I can’t see
ten inches from my nose without them. I couldn’t very well ask her to
come forward and be inspected at any such range as that. I was sorry,
too. The girl really took very good care of me, and I grew quite fond of
her. Behind her back, I used to call her my Good Sainte Anne. She was
Nancy, you know.”
Nancy’s magazine slid to the floor.
“Did she know it?” she asked, smiling a little at her awkward efforts to
reach the book.
“Allow me,” Barth said gravely. “No; I am not sure that she did.”
“When you meet her, next time, you can tell her,” Nancy advised him.
Barth shook his head.
“I am afraid I never shall meet her.”
“The world is very tiny,” Nancy observed sententiously. “As a rule, the
same person is bound to cross one’s trail twice.”
“And, besides, even if I did meet her, how could I ever know her?”
“How could you help it?” she queried, smiling into his face which seemed
to her, that afternoon, to be curiously boyish and likable.
“But I have no idea how she looked.”
“You would know her voice.”
“Oh, no. I notice voices; but I rarely remember them.”
“But her name?”
“It is of no use, just Nancy Howard. Such a commonplace sort of name as
that is no clue. Why, you may be a Nancy Howard, yourself, for anything
I know to the contrary.”
Nancy laughed, as she rose.
“I might also be your nurse,” she suggested. “Stranger things than that
have happened, even in my experience, Mr. Barth. However, when you do
meet your Nancy Howard, I hope you will tell her that you liked her.”
The young fellow looked up at her a little eagerly.
“Do you suppose she would mind about it?”
“Women are generally glad to know when they are liked,” Nancy said
sagely.
“But most likely she knew it, without my telling.”
Nancy shook her head.
“More likely she never guessed it. You probably lorded it over her and
treated her like a servant.”