Nancy was trying conscientiously to interest herself in other people’s troubles. After the first great shock of pain following her loss at a blow of her lover and Sheila, she began automatically to try to work her way through her suffering. The habit of application to the daily task combined with her instinct for taking immediate action in a crisis stood her in good stead in her hour of need. She decided what to occupy herself with, and then devoted herself faithfully to the prescribed occupation.
The Inn did not need her. With Betty to guide him economically Gaspard was able to superintend all the details of the establishment adequately and artistically. Sheila was gone. She packed up several trunks of dresses and toys and other childish belongings and sent them to Washington Square, but even without these constant reminders of her, the hunger for the child’s presence did not abate. The little 272 girl was curiously dissociated from her father in Nancy’s mind. She had seen so little of the two together that they seemed to belong to entirely different compartments of her consciousness. It was only the anguish of losing them that linked them together.
Nancy decided to devote a certain proportion of her days and nights to remedying such evils as lay under her immediate observation;—to helping the individuals with whom she came into daily contact—the dependents and tradespeople with whom she dealt. She had always been convinced that the people who ministered to her daily comfort in New York should occupy some part in her scheme of existence. It was one of her favorite arguments that a little more energy and imagination on the part of New York citizens would develop the communal spirit which was so painfully lacking in the soul of the average Manhattanite.
So the milkman and the corner grocer, the newspaper man, and Hitty’s small brood of grand nieces and nephews, to say nothing of the Italian fruit man’s family, and her laundress’s invalid daughter, were all occupying a considerable place in Nancy’s daily schedule. In a 273 very short interval she had the welfare of more than half a dozen families on her hands, and was involved in all manner of enterprises of a domestic nature,—from the designing of confirmation gowns to the purchase of rubber-tired rolling chairs, and heterogeneous woolen garments and other intimate necessities.
She was a little ashamed of her new line of activities, and still hurt enough to shun the scrutiny of her friends, and thereby succeeded in mystifying and alarming Billy and Dick and Betty and Caroline almost beyond the limit of their endurance by resolutely keeping them at arm’s length. She was supremely unconscious of anything at all remarkable in her behavior, and believed that they accepted her excuses and apologies at their face value. She had no conception of the fact that her tortured face, with tragedy looking newly out of her eyes, kept them from their rest at night.
Sheila wrote to thank her for sending the trunks.
“My dear, ma chère, Miss Dear,” she said. “Merci beaucoup pour my clothes and other beautiful things. I like them. Je t’aime—je t’aime toujours. My father will not permit me 274 to go back. Comme—how I desire to see you! My father has been sick. He fell down or was hurt in the street. There was blood—a great deal. Are they well—the others? Tell Monsieur Dick I give him tout mon coeur. Come to see me if it is permit. No more. You could write peut-être. Je t’aime.”
“Yours,
“Sheila.”