Nance left her ice untouched, and slipped through the back entry and up to the dainty blue bedroom that had been hers now for three months. All the delicious languor of the past hour was gone, and in its place was a turmoil of hope and fear and doubt. Dan was coming back. The words beat on her brain. He cared nothing for her, and he was married, and she would never see him, but he was coming back.
She opened the drawer of her dressing table and took out a small faded photograph which she held to the silk-shaded lamp. It was a cheap likeness of an awkward-looking working-boy in his Sunday clothes, a stiff lock of unruly hair across his temple, and a pair of fine earnest eyes looking out from slightly scowling brows.
Nance looked at it long and earnestly; then she flung it back in the drawer with a sigh and, putting out the light, went down again to her patient.
CHAPTER x.x.xI
MR. DEMRY
The next afternoon, armed with her flowers and fruit, Nance was setting forth for Calvary Alley, when Mrs. Clarke called to her from an upper window.
"If you will wait ten minutes, I will take you down in the machine."
"But I want the walk," Nance insisted. "I need the exercise."
"Nonsense, you are on your feet nearly all the time. I won"t be long."
Nance made a wry face at an unoffending sparrow and glanced regretfully at the long white road that wound invitingly in and out of the woods until it dropped sharply to the little station in the valley a mile below. She had been looking forward to that walk all morning. She wanted to get away from the hot-house atmosphere of the Clarke establishment, away from Mac"s incessant appeals and his mother"s increasing dependence.
Aside from amusing her patient and seeing that he obeyed Dr. Adair"s orders, her duties for the past few weeks had been too light to be interesting. The luxury that at first had so thrilled her was already beginning to pall. She wanted to be out in the open alone, to feel the sharp wind of reality in her face, while she thought things out.
"I am going to the cathedral," said Mrs. Clarke, emerging from the door, followed by a maid carrying coats and rugs. "But I can drop you wherever you say."
"I"ll go there, too," said Nance as she took her seat in the car. "The old gentleman I"m taking the things to lives just back of there, in the very house Dr. Adair is trying to get for the clinic."
"Poor soul!" said Mrs. Clarke idly, as she viewed with approval Nance"s small brown hat that so admirably set off the lights in her hair and the warm red tints of her skin.
"He"s been up against it something fierce for over a year now," Nance went on. "We"ve helped him all he"d let us since he stopped playing at the theater."
"Playing?" Mrs. Clarke repeated the one word that had caught her wandering attention. "Is he an actor?"
"No; he is a musician. He used to play in big orchestras in New York and Boston. He plays the fiddle."
For the rest of the way into town Mrs. Clarke was strangely preoccupied.
She sat very straight, with eyes slightly contracted, and looked absently out of the window. Once or twice she began a sentence without finishing it. At the cathedral steps she laid a detaining hand on Nance"s arm.
"By the way, what did you say was the name of the old man you are going to see?"
"I never said. It"s Demry."
"Demry--Never mind, I just missed the step. I"m quite all right. I think I will go with you to see this--this--house they are talking about."
"But it"s in the alley. Mrs. Clarke; it"s awfully dirty."
"Yes, yes, but I"m coming. Can we go through here?"
So impatient was she that she did not wait for Nance to lead the way, but hurried around the bishop"s study and down the concrete walk to the gate that opened into the alley.
"Look out for your skirt against the garbage barrel," warned Nance. It embarra.s.sed her profoundly to have Mrs. Clarke in these surroundings; she hated the mud that soiled her dainty boots, the odors that must offend her nostrils, the inevitable sights that awaited her in Number One. She only prayed that Mrs. Snawdor"s curl-papered head might not appear on the upper landing.
"Which way?" demanded Mrs. Clarke, impatiently.
Nance led the way into the dark hall where a half-dozen ragged, dirty-faced children were trying to drag a still dirtier pup up the stairs by means of a twine string.
"In here, Mrs. Clarke," said Nance, pushing open the door at the left
The outside shutters of the big cold room were partly closed, but the light from between them fell with startling effect on the white, marble-like face of the old man who lay asleep on a cot in front of the empty fireplace. For a moment Mrs. Clarke stood looking at him; then with a smothered cry she bent over him.
"Father!" she cried sharply, "Oh, G.o.d! It"s my father!"
Nance caught her breath in amazement; then her bewildered gaze fell upon a familiar object. There, in its old place on the mantel stood the miniature of a pink and white maiden in the pink and white dress, with the golden curl across her shoulder. In the delicate, beautiful profile Nance read the amazing truth.
Mr. Demry sighed heavily, opened his eyes with an effort and, looking past the bowed head beside him, held out a feeble hand for the flowers.
"Listen, Mr. Demry," said Nance, breathlessly. "Here"s a lady says she knows you. Somebody you haven"t seen for a long, long time. Will you look at her and try to remember?"
His eyes rested for the fraction of a minute on the agonized face lifted to his, then closed wearily.
"Can you not get the lady a chair, Nancy?" he asked feebly. "You can borrow one from the room across the hall."
"Father!" demanded Mrs. Clarke, "don"t you know me? It is Elise. Your daughter, Elise Demorest!"
"Demorest," he repeated, and smiled. "How unnatural it sounds now!
Demorest!"
"It"s no use," said Nance. "His mind wanders most of the time. Let me take you back to the cathedral, Mrs. Clarke, until we decide what"s got to be done."
"I am going to take him home," said Mrs. Clarke, wildly. "He shall have every comfort and luxury I can give him. Poor Father, don"t you want to come home with Elise?"
"I live at Number One, Calvary Alley," said Mr. Demry, clinging to the one fact he had trained his mind to remember. "If you will kindly get me to the corner, the children will--"
"It"s too late to do anything!" cried Mrs. Clarke, wringing her hands. "I knew something terrible would happen to him. I pleaded with them to help me find him, but they put me off. Then I got so absorbed in Mac that he drove everything else out of my mind. How long has he been in this awful place? How long has he been ill? Who takes care of him?"
Nance, with her arms about Mrs. Clarke, told her as gently as she could of Mr. Demry"s advent into the alley fourteen years before, of his friendship with the children, his occasional lapses from grace, and the steady decline of his fortune.
"We must get him away from here!" cried Mrs. Clarke when she had gained control of herself. "Go somewhere and telephone Mr. Clarke. Telephone Dr.
Adair. Tell him to bring an ambulance and another nurse and--and plenty of blankets. Telephone to the house for them to get a room ready. But wait--there"s Mac--he mustn"t know--"
It was the old, old mother-cry! Keep it from Mac, spare Mac, don"t let Mac suffer. Nance seized on it now to further her designs.
"You go back to Mr. Mac, Mrs. Clarke. I"ll stay here and attend to everything. You go ahead and get things ready for us."
And Mrs. Clarke, used to taking the easiest way, allowed herself to be persuaded, and after one agonized look at the tranquil face on the pillow, hurried away.
Nance, shivering with the cold, got together the few articles that const.i.tuted Mr. Demry"s worldly possessions. A few shabby garments in the old wardrobe, the miniature on the shelf, a stack of well-worn books, and the violin in its rose-wood case. Everything else had been sold to keep the feeble flame alive in that wasted old form.