Out of darkness and peace, Mr. Cecil Barth drifted slowly backward to the consciousness of the glare of the sunshine, of a babel of foreign tongues and of two points of physical anguish, centering respectively in a bruised head and a sprained ankle. He closed his eyes again; but he was unable to close his ears. Still too weak to make any effort upon his own behalf, he wondered vaguely when those clacking tongues would cease, and their owners begin to do something for his relief. “Stand out of the way, please. He needs air.”
The words were English; the accent unmistakably American. Barth pinched his lids together in a sturdy determination not to manifest any interest in his alien champion. For that reason, he missed the imperative gesture which explained the words to the crowd; he missed the anxious, kindly light in Nancy Howard’s eyes, as she elbowed her way to his side and bent down over him.
“You are hurt?” she questioned briefly.
Even in this strait, Barth remained true to his training. He opened his eyes for the slightest possible glance at the broad black hat above him. Then he shut them languidly once more.
“Rather!” he answered, with equal brevity.
The corners of Nancy’s mouth twitched ominously. It was not thus that her ministrations were wont to be received. Accustomed to fulsome gratitude, the absolute indifference of this stranger both amused and piqued her.
“You are American?” she asked.
This time, Barth’s eyes remained open.
“English,” he returned laconically.
Again Nancy’s lips twitched.
“I beg your pardon. I might have known,” she answered, with a feigned contrition whose irony escaped her companion. “But you speak French?”
“Not this kind. I shall have to leave it to you.” In spite of the racking pain in his ankle, Barth was gaining energy to rebel at his short sight and the loss of his glasses. It would have been interesting to get a good look into the face of this intrepid young woman who had come to his rescue.
She received his last statement a little blankly.
“But I don’t speak any French of any kind,” she confessed.
“How unusual!” Barth murmured, with vague courtesy.
Nancy rose from her knees and dusted off her skirt.
“I don’t see why. I’ve never been abroad, and we don’t habitually speak French at home,” she answered a little resentfully.
Barth made no reply. All the energy he could spare from bearing the pain of his ankle was devoted to the study of how he could get himself out of his present position. His gravelly resting-place was uncomfortable, and it appeared to him that his foot was swelling to most unseemly dimensions. Nevertheless, he had no intention of throwing himself upon the mercy of a strange American girl of unknown years and ancestry. Raising himself on his elbow, he addressed the bystanders in the best Parisian French at his command. The bystanders stared back at him uncomprehendingly.
Standing beside him, Nancy saw his dilemma, saw, too, the bluish ring about his lips. Her amused resentment gave place to pity.
“I am afraid you are badly hurt,” she said gently.
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“My ankle.”
“Sprained?”
“Broken, I am afraid.” Barth’s answers still were brief; but now it was the brevity of utter meekness, not of arrogance.
“Oh, I hope not!” she exclaimed. “You can’t walk at all?”
Gritting his teeth together, Barth struggled up into a sitting posture.
“I am afraid not. It was foolish to faint; but I hit my head as I went down, and the blow knocked me out.”
As he spoke, he bent forward and tried to reach the laces of his shoe. With a swift gesture, Nancy forestalled him and deftly slipped the shoe from the swollen ankle. Her quick eye caught the fact that few of her friends at home could match the quality of the stocking within. Then her glance roved to his necktie, and she smiled approvingly to herself. In her girlish mind, Barth would pass muster.
Nevertheless, there was nothing especially heroic about him, as he sat there on the gravel with his ankle clasped in his hands and the color rising and dying in his cheeks. A man barely above the middle height, spare and sinewy and without an ounce of extra flesh, Cecil Barth was in no way remarkable. His features were good, his hair was tawny yellow, and his near-sighted eyes were clear and blue.
“Where can I find a surgeon?” he asked, after a little pause.
“I don’t know, unless—” Nancy hesitated; then she added directly, “My father is a doctor.”
He nodded.
“And speaks English?” he queried.
Nancy bravely suppressed her laughter.
“New York English,” she replied gravely.
And Barth answered with perfect good faith,—
“That will do. They are not so very different, and we can understand each other quite well, I dare say. Where is he?”
The girl pointed towards the crest of the bluff.
“He is at the Gagnier farm.”
“May I trouble you to send some one for him?” Barth asked courteously.
She glanced about her at the group of French faces, and she shook her head.
“I never can make them understand,” she objected. “I’d better go, myself.”
But, in his turn, Barth offered an objection.
“Oh, don’t go and leave me,” he urged a little piteously. “I might go off again, you know.”
“But you just said you couldn’t walk?” Nancy responded, in some surprise, for, granted that the stranger was able to remove himself, she could see no reason whatsoever that he should not feel free to do so.
“Oh, no. I can’t walk a step. My foot is broken,” he answered rather testily, as a fresh twinge ran through his ankle.
“Then how can you go off, I’d like to know.”
Barth stared at her uncomprehendingly for a moment. Then a light broke in upon his brain.
“Oh, I see. You don’t understand. I meant that I might faint away,” he explained.
Nancy’s reply struck him as being a trifle unsympathetic.
“Well, what if you did?” she demanded. “I can’t be in two places at once, and these people won’t eat you up. Make up your mind that you won’t faint, and then you probably won’t.”
Barth peered up at her uneasily.
“Are you—are you a Christian Scientist?” he asked.
Nancy’s laugh rang out gayly.
“Didn’t I say my father was a doctor?” she reminded him. “Now please do lie still and save your strength, and I’ll see what I can do about it all.”
She was gone from his side only for a moment. Then she came flying back, flushed and eager.
“Such luck!” she said. “Right at the foot of the hill, I found Père Gagnier and the cabbage cart, just coming home from market. He will be here in a minute, and he talks French. Some of these people will carry you to the cart, and you can be driven right up to the door. That will take so much less time than the sending for my father; and, besides, even if he came down, you couldn’t be left lying here on the gravel walk for an indefinite period. You would be arrested for blocking the path of the pilgrims, to say nothing of having relays of cripples crutching themselves along over you.”
In her relief at having solved the situation, she paid no heed to the stream of nonsense coming from her lips. Barth’s stare recalled her to self-consciousness.
“No, really,” he answered stiffly.
“Well, daddy?”
At the question, Dr. Howard looked up. Still a little breathless and dishevelled by her hurried scramble up the hill, Nancy stood before him, anxiety in her eyes and a laugh on her lips.
“How is the British Lion?”
“Most uncommonly disagreeable,” the doctor answered, with unwonted energy.
“So I found out; but he has occasional lucid intervals. How is his ankle?”
“Bad. For his own sake, I wish he had broken it outright. Nancy, what am I going to do with the fellow?”
Nancy dropped down into a chair, and smoothed her ruffled hair into some semblance of order.
“Cure him,” she answered nonchalantly.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
“It takes two to make a cure.”
“Then hire Père Gagnier to cart him back to Sainte Anne again, and let her try her finger upon him.”
In spite of himself, the doctor laughed. Then he grew grave again.
“It’s not altogether funny, Nancy. You have unloaded a white elephant on my hands, and I can’t see what to do with it.”
“How do you mean?” she questioned, for she was quick to read the anxiety in her father’s tone.
“The man speaks no French that these people here can understand, and he is going to be helpless for a few days. How is he going to have proper care?”
“Send him in to Quebec. There must be a hospital there.”
“I won’t take the risk of moving him; not for ten days, at least.”
“Hm!” Nancy’s falling inflection was thoughtful. “And you came here to get away from all professional worry. Daddy, it’s a shame! I ought never to have had him brought here.”
Pausing in his tramp up and down the room, Dr. Howard rested his hand on the pile of auburn hair.
“It was all you could do, Nancy. One must take responsibilities as they come.”
Nancy broke the pause that followed. Rising, she pinned on her hat.
“Where are you going?”
“To the station. I’ll telegraph to Quebec for a nurse. We can have one out here by night. Good by, daddy; and don’t let the Lion eat you up.”
More than an hour later, she came toiling up the hill and dropped wearily down on the steps.
“No use, daddy! I have exhausted every chance, and there’s not a nurse to be had. Quebec appears to be in the throes of an epidemic. However, I have made up my mind what to do next.”
“What now?”
“I shall turn nurse.”
“Nancy, you can’t!”
“I must. You’re not strong enough, and such a curiosity as this man mustn’t be left to die alone. Besides, it will be fun, and Mother Gagnier will help me.”
“But you don’t know anything about nursing.”
“I won’t kill him. You can coach me behind the scenes, and I shall scramble through, some way or other. Besides, the Good Sainte Anne will help me. I’ve just been tipping her, for the way she has come to my relief. Only this morning, I promised her half a dollar, if she would deign to give me a little excitement.” Then the girl turned still more directly to her father, and looked up at him with wayward, mocking, tender eyes. “Daddy dear, this isn’t the only emergency we have met, side by side. Mother Gagnier shall do all the rougher part; the rest you shall leave to me. Truly, have you ever known me to fail you at the wrong time?”
And the doctor answered, with perfect truthfulness,—
“No, Nancy; I never have.”