At her window looking out upon the Ring in the ancient Place d’Armes and upon the Chateau beyond, Nancy Howard stood idly drumming on the pane. Under its gray October sky, the gray-walled city of Quebec had appeared most alluring to her, that morning; but she had turned her back upon its invitation and had resolutely busied herself in settling her own possessions and those of her father in the rooms which had been waiting for them at The Maple Leaf.
Nancy had left Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré with scant regret, the night before. She had spent numberless interesting hours in the society of Mr. Cecil Barth. He had piqued her, antagonized her and occasionally had even compelled her to like him in spite of herself. However, the whole episode had been forced upon her. Now that it was ended, she was glad to dismiss it entirely into the past, and she had not thought it necessary to inform Barth that she too expected to pass some weeks in Quebec. There was scant chance of their meeting again, and Nancy had imagined that she had parted from him without regret.
On his side, Barth had been at no pains to conceal his regrets. As Dr. Howard had reminded him, Nancy had been a most loyal nurse; and the young Englishman took it quite as a matter of course that his attendant should be a girl of brains and breeding as well. He had heard much of the American college girl, and he promptly pigeonholed Nancy with others of that class, although in fact she had been educated by her father and polished by a year or so spent at a famous old school on the Hudson. Barth admired Nancy’s brains, her common sense and her alert deftness. To his mind, these qualities in part atoned for her independence and her hot-headed Americanism; but only in part. Her society was often restful, but never cloying; and Barth, now able to hobble about his room, peered mournfully out of his window after his departing nurse with feelings akin to those of a youngster suddenly deprived of his best mechanical toy. Bereft of his nurse, he took to his pipe, smoked himself into lethargy, and emerged from his lethargy so cross that Madame Gagnier, lumbering into the room to settle him for the night, fled from his presence with her cap awry and her checked pinafore pressed to her aged eyes.
Dusk had fallen, when Nancy and her father drove up the steep slope of Palace Hill, passed the Basilica and stopped at the low yellow door of The Maple Leaf. Of the city Nancy saw but little. Of The Maple Leaf, glaring with electric lights, she saw much and, even at the first glance, she assured herself that that much was wholly to her liking. It was not alone the curved ceiling of the entrance hallway, nor the cheery little dining-room where the four tables and the huge mahogany sideboard struggled not to elbow each other in their close quarters; nor yet the deep window-seats of the rooms with their French casements and their panelled shutters. It was the nameless flavor of the place, pervading all things and beautifying all things, the flavor of nothing in the world but of old Quebec. The Chateau might exist anywhere; The Maple Leaf could have existed nowhere outside of the ancient city wall.
“Don’t you love it, daddy?” Nancy urged for the third time, as they came up from their late supper.
“It seems very central,” the doctor assented tranquilly. “Of course, it is a great advantage for me to be so near Laval. I only hope you won’t be lonely here, Nancy.”
She laughed scornfully.
“Lonely! After Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré!” she protested.
“The town is often a good deal more lonely than the country,” he assured her.
But Nancy, whose eyes had not been entirely busy with the furniture of the dining-room, shook her head. Then she went into her own room, to fall asleep and, quite as a matter of course, to dream that Mr. Cecil Barth, Union Jack in hand, was chasing her around and around the little fountain she could hear plashing down in the Ring.
All the next morning, Nancy was busy in their two adjoining rooms, hanging up her gowns and trying to devise an arrangement which should keep her father’s shirts from too close connection with his bottle of ink. Now and then she halted beside his windows which looked down on a gray-walled courtyard where an aged habitant sat on a chopping-block and peeled potatoes without end. Occasionally she wandered back to her own room, and stood gazing out at the Champlain statue by the northern end of the terrace and at the pointed copper roofs of the huge Chateau. Then she went on brushing her father’s clothes, and sorting out her own tangle of gloves and belts and the kindred trifles that add a touch of chaos to even the most orderly of trunks. At last, her work done, she smoothed her hair, tweaked her gown into position and, without a glance into the long mirror of her wardrobe, she ran down to the dining-room in search of her father.
She found him the sole occupant of a table near the door, and the other tables were absolutely deserted. As she went back to her room, Nancy was forced to admit that the meal had been a bit dull. A father and daughter who have been constant companions for years, are unable to produce an unfailing stream of brilliant table talk; and Dr. Howard, tired with the effort of getting his bearings in a strange library, was even more taciturn than was his wont. Accordingly, it was in a mood dangerously akin to homesickness that Nancy left the empty dining-room and returned to her equally empty bedroom. Once inside the door, she made the mortifying discovery that her lashes were wet; and, with a swift realization of the ignominy of her mood, she caught up her hat and coat, and started out to explore the city on her own account.
As she dressed herself for supper, two nights later, Nancy confessed to herself that the past two days were the dreariest days she had ever spent. Totally engrossed in his historical research, her father spent his daytime hours in poring over the manuscripts in Laval library, his evening in rearranging and copying his hurried notes. Left entirely to herself, Nancy discovered the truth of his words, that a town could be far more lonely than the country. At Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré, every one had had a word of greeting for the bright-faced American girl; here it seemed to her that she had no more personality than one of the pawns on a chessboard. She walked the streets by the hour at a time, straying at random from church to church, loitering on the terrace, or tramping swiftly out the Grand Allée far past the Franciscan convent and the tollgate beyond. The tourist season was almost ended. A few honeymoon couples were still straying blissfully about the ramparts; but, for the most part, Quebec had come back from summer quarters on lake and river, and was settling into winter routine. Nancy watched it all with wide, interested, dissatisfied eyes. The show delighted her; but, as at all other shows, she felt the need of some companion whose elbow she could joggle in moments of extreme excitement.
As a part of the show, The Maple Leaf had gratified her whole artistic sense. Humanly speaking, she had found it a bit disappointing. Manœuvre as she would, she could never succeed in finding the dining-room full. There seemed to be something utterly inconsequent in the way in which the boarders took their meals, now late, now early, and now apparently not at all. She had been told that there were forty of them; but, so far as she could discover, six constituted a quorum, and the meal was served accordingly. Once only, the entire quorum had occurred at her own table. Four fresh-faced elderly Frenchmen had marched into the room in procession, and had planted themselves opposite Nancy and her father. Dr. Howard read French, but spoke it not at all. Nancy felt that her own three words would prove inadequate. Accordingly, after one international deadlock over the possession of the salt, silence had fallen. When she left the table, Nancy felt that she had gained a full perception of the viewpoint of a deaf mute.
It was with a spirit of absolute desperation that Nancy flung open the door of her wardrobe, that night. Humanity failing, she would take refuge in clothes. At Sainte Anne, she had lived chiefly in a short skirt and blouse; at The Maple Leaf, she had been waiting to discover the prevailing habits of dress. Now she told herself that two women at a time could not make a habit; and, furthermore, she assured herself that she cared nothing for local habits anyway. The wardrobe held three new gowns, obviously of New York manufacture. Nancy did not hesitate. With unerring instinct, she chose the most ornate one of the three, which also chanced to be the one which was most becoming.
And so it came to pass that Reginald Brock, pausing in the hall to take off his overcoat, whistled softly to himself as he caught a glimpse of a pale gown of dusky blue and a head capped with heavy coils of tawny hair. The coat slid off in a hurry, Brock gave one hurried look into the tiny mirror of the rack; then, his honest Canadian face beaming with content, he came striding into the dining-room and dropped into his place at Nancy’s side, with a friendly nod of greeting.
Half an hour later, Brock followed Nancy into the parlor. The Lady of The Maple Leaf was at his side, and Nancy had an instinctive feeling that they were in search of her. It was the Lady who spoke.
“Mr. Brock has just been talking to your father in the hall,” she said; “and now he has asked me to give him a ceremonious introduction to you. As a rule, we aren’t so ceremonious, here in Canada; but Mr. Brock insists upon it that the butter-knife and the mustard are no proper basis for acquaintance.”
“I have learned a thing or two from Johnny Bull,” the tall Canadian added, as he placed himself in the window-seat beside Nancy’s chair.
“Johnny Bull?”
“Yes, an English fellow that has been stopping here for a few days. Where is he? I haven’t seen him for a week,” he added, turning to the Lady.
“He is ill; I expect him back in a day or two. Please excuse me. I hear the telephone.” And she hurried out of the room.
Nancy looked after her regretfully. Even during the three days she had been there, she had gained a sound liking for the blithe little woman, always busy, never hurried, and invariably at leisure for a friendly word with any or all of her great family of boarders. Brock’s glance followed that of Nancy.
“Yes, she is a remarkable woman,” he assented gravely to her unspoken words. For an instant, his keen gray eyes met Nancy’s eyes, steadily, yet with no look of boldness. Then his tone changed. “But about Johnny Bull. He is a revelation to the house, the son of a stiff-backed generation. He was here for a week, and left us all trying to get his accent and to imitate his manners.”
“And what became of him?”
“Gone. The Lady says he is ill. I hope we didn’t make him so. Have you been here long, Miss Howard?”
“Three days.”
“And have you seen anything at all of Quebec?”
“Yes, a little. I have been to the Cathedral, and the Basilica, and the Gray Nunnery, and the Ursuline Convent, and—”
“You appear to be of an ecclesiastical turn of mind,” Brock suggested, laughing.
“So does Quebec,” she retorted.
He laughed again.
“Yes, I suppose it does to a stranger; but wait till you have been here a little longer.”
“What then?”
“You’ll forget that a church exists, except the one you go to, on Sundays.”
She laughed in her turn.
“Not unless I grow deaf. The Ursuline bell begins to ring at four, and the one on the Basilica at half-past. From that time on until midnight, the bells never stop for one single instant. Under such circumstances, how can one forget that a church exists?”
He modified his statement.
“I mean that you’ll find that Quebec has its worldly side.”
“Which side?” she queried. “As far as I can discover, the city is bounded on the north by the Gray Nuns, and on the south by the Franciscan sisters. Moreover, I met Friar Tuck in the flesh, down in Saint Sauveur, yesterday.”
Brock raised his brows questioningly.
“Do you mean that your explorations have even extended into Saint Sauveur?”
“Yes. Still, there is hope for me. I haven’t been to the Citadel yet, and I keep my guide-book strictly out of sight.”
“Out of mind, too, I hope,” he advised her. “It holds one error to every two facts, and the average tourist carries away the impression that Montgomery was shot in mid-air, like a hawk above a hen-roost. If you don’t believe me, go and listen to their comments upon his tablet.”
“Where is it?”
“Two thirds of the way up Cape Diamond, above Little Champlain Street. It is labelled as being the spot where Montgomery fell; but, as it is two hundred feet above the road, one can only infer that he came down from somewhere aloft. Is this your first visit to Quebec, Miss Howard?”
“Yes. I have been in Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré for three weeks, though.”
“Any pilgrimages?” Brock inquired, as he deliberately settled himself in a less tentative position and crossed his legs. A closer inspection of Nancy was undermining his vigorous objection to red hair, and he suddenly determined that the parlor was a much more attractive spot than he had been wont to suppose.
“One; but it was a large one.”
“Miracles, too?”
Nancy laughed.
“One and a half,” she responded unexpectedly.
“Meaning?” Brock questioned.
“The half miracle was a man who threw away his crutches and crawled off without them.”
“And the whole one?”
Nancy laughed again. Then she said demurely,—
“That the Good Sainte Anne answered my prayer for a little excitement.”
“Was that a miracle?”
She answered question with question.
“Did you ever stop at Sainte Anne?”
“Yes, once for the space of two hours. We had all the excitement I cared for, though.”
Nancy sat up alertly.
“Was it a pilgrimage?”
“No; merely a pig on the track.”
She nestled back again in the depths of her chair.
“What anticlimax!” she protested.
“But you haven’t told me what form your own excitement took,” Brock reminded her.
“It was an Englishman.”
“Oh, we’re used to those things,” he answered.
“Then I pity you,” she said, with an explosiveness of which she was swift to repent. “Oh, I beg your pardon,” she added contritely. “Perhaps you are one of them, yourself.”
“No; merely a Canadian,” Brock reassured her.
“Isn’t it the same thing?”
A mocking light came into Brock’s gray eyes.
“Not always,” he replied quietly.
“No.” Nancy’s tone was thoughtful. “I am beginning to find it out. Our Englishman was unique.”
“Ours?”
“Yes, by adoption. The Good Sainte Anne and I took him in charge.”
“With what success?”
“It remains to be seen. We did our best for him; but really he was very preposterous.”
“What became of him?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“No. He is there now; at least, he was there, when we came away.”
“Was he working out his novena?”
“No; just mending himself. He fell off from something, his dignity most likely, and bumped his head and sprained his ankle. I happened to be on the spot, and rashly admitted that my father was a doctor. Then, before I really had grasped the situation, the poor man was bundled into a cart and deposited at our door, half fainting and wholly out of temper.”
“And then?”
“And then we couldn’t get a nurse for love or money, and I had to go to work and take care of him.”
“Happy man!” Brock observed. “I only hope he appreciated his luck.”
The corners of Nancy’s mouth curved upwards, and a malicious light came into her eyes.
“I think he did. He not only expressed himself as pleased with my services; but, on one occasion, he gave me a—”
“A what?”
“A brand-new guinea.” And Nancy’s laugh rang out so infectiously that Brock would have joined in it, if she had been discussing the foibles of himself rather than of the unknown Englishman.
“How exactly like our Johnny Bull!” he commented, when he found his voice once more.
Suddenly Nancy’s puritan conscience asserted itself.
“Truly, I ought not to laugh about him, Mr. Brock. He had no idea that I was anything but a servant, and he thought he had every reason to tip me. He wasn’t bad, only very funny. He really knew a great deal and, according to his notions, he was a most perfect gentleman. It was only that our notions clashed sometimes. Yes, daddy, I am coming. Good night, Mr. Brock.” And she left him staring rather wishfully after the disappearing train of her dull blue gown.
It must be confessed that Brock dawdled over his breakfast, the next morning; but his dawdling was quite in vain. Nancy had taken her own breakfast long before he appeared, and, by the time Brock had reached his second cup of coffee, she was walking rapidly along the terrace towards the Citadel. At the end, she paused for a moment of indecision. Then, with a glance up at the Union Jack above her head, she slowly mounted the long flight of steps and came out on the narrow upper terrace which skirts the outer wall of the fortress. There she paused again and stood, her arms folded on the railing, looking down on the picture at her feet. She had been there once before; to-day, however, the impression was keener, more enjoyable. The change might have come from the sunshine that lay in yellow splashes over the city beneath; it might have come in part from the memory of her idle talk with Brock, the night before. In all that town of antiquity and of strangers, it had been good to meet some one whose age and viewpoint corresponded to her own. The direct gaze of Brock’s clear eyes had pleased Nancy. She had liked his voice, and the unconscious ease with which he carried his seventy-three inches of height. Too outward seeming, his type was as unfamiliar as that of the Englishman, and Nancy liked it vastly better. With Barth, she had been standing on tiptoe, psychologically speaking. With Brock, she could be her every-day, normal self.
It had been at Brock’s suggestion that she had gone to the upper terrace, that morning; and she shook off the memory of his gray eyes in order to recall the dozen sentences with which he had characterized the salient points of the view beneath. Then she gave up the attempt. In the face of all that beauty, it was impossible to fix one’s mind upon mere questions of geography. At her left, the city sloped down to Saint Roch and the Charles River beyond, and beyond that again was the long white village of Beauport straggling along the bluff above the river. At her right, quarter of a mile beyond the Citadel, were the ruined hillocks of the old French fortifications; and, on the opposite shore, the town of Lévis was crested with its trio of forts and dotted with tapering spires of gray. From one of the piers below, a little steamer was swinging out into midstream and heading towards the point where Sillery church overlooks the valley; and, close against the base of the cliff, the irregular roofs of Champlain Street lay huddled in a long line of shadow. The river was shadowy, too; but above the city a rift in the clouds sent the strong sun pouring down over the guns on the eastern ramparts, over the southern tower of the Basilica and over the spires of Laval. As she looked, Nancy drew a long breath of sheer delight and, all at once and for no assignable cause, she decided that she was glad she had come. Then abruptly she turned her back upon a tall figure crossing Dufferin Terrace, and walked swiftly away past Cape Diamond and came out on the Cove Fields beyond.
When she came in to dinner, she was flushed and animated. As Brock had predicted, she had discovered that Quebec’s interest did not centre wholly in its churches. True, there had been a certain disillusion in finding a portly Englishman playing golf with himself upon the ground over which the French troops had marched out to face the invading, conquering foe, in seeing a Martello Tower begirt with clothes-lines and flapping garments, and in discovering a brand-new rifle factory risen up, Phœnix-like, from the ashes of the old-time battleground. The impression was blurred a little; nevertheless, it was there, and Nancy, as her feet wandered up and down the trail of the armies upon that thirteenth of September of the brave year ’Fifty-nine, took a curious satisfaction in the fact that Wolfe, too, had been banned with a head of red hair. Her own ancestors were English. Perhaps some of their kin had landed at Sillery Cove, to scale the cliff and die like gentlemen upon the Plains of Abraham. Her blood flowed more quickly at the thought. In Nancy’s mind, this was the hour of England. She even forgot the shining golden guinea that reposed among her extra hairpins.
Nancy came into the house to find the Lady packing a dinner into an elaborate system of pails and cosies. The Lady looked up with a smile.
“Our invalid has come back again,” she explained; “and I am sending his dinner over to his room.”
“Well,” Brock inquired, three days later; “have you been doing ecclesiastics again, to-day?”
Nancy, glancing up from her soup, registered the impression that Brock supported an extremely good tailor, and that his Sabbath raiment was becoming to him.
“Yes. You told me that this was the proper day for it.”
“Where did you go?”
“To the Basilica, of course.”
Brock smiled.
“True to the tradition of the tourist. By the way, that’s rather a good alliteration. I think I’ll use it again sometime.”
Nancy disregarded his rhetorical outburst and pinned her attention to the fact.
“Do they always go there?”
“Yes, to start with. Of course, you didn’t stop there.”
“But I did. Why not?”
“Miss Howard, you have neglected your opportunities. The regular tourist itinerary begins with the Basilica at ten, sneaks out and goes over to the English Cathedral at eleven and follows on the tail of the band when it escorts the soldiers home to the Citadel. Then it takes in the Ursuline Chapel at two, stops to drop a tear over Montcalm’s skull and then skurries off, on the chance of getting in an extra service before five-o’clock Benedictions at the Franciscan Convent.”
“The white chapel with the pale green pillars?”
“Yes, out on the Grand Allée.”
“I’ve been there,” she assented. “I love the place.”
“And then,” Brock continued inexorably; “if you make good time over your supper, you can just get back to the Basilica at seven.”
Nancy drew a long breath.
“But I don’t need to do all that,” she objected. “There are more Sundays coming.”
“That makes no difference. Every stranger is bound to gallop through his first Sunday in Quebec. It is one of the duties of the place. You think you won’t do it; but, at two o’clock, you’ll have an uneasy consciousness that those cloistered nuns over at the Ursuline may do something or other worth seeing. By quarter past two, you’ll be buried in a haze of mediævalism and incense.”
“Never!” she protested, with what proved to be strict adherence to truth.
“And what about the Basilica?” Brock asked her.
“Superb!” Nancy’s eyes lighted. “I was there, a few days ago. It was empty, and it didn’t impress me in the least. It seemed to me a dead weight of white enamel paint and gold leaf, so heavy that it wasn’t even cheerful. But to-day—”
“To-day?” he echoed interrogatively.
But Nancy made an unexpected digression.
“Mr. Brock, what is that huge pinky-purple Tam O’Shanter dangling above the chancel?”
“Miss Howard, where was your bump of reverence, and where were your guide-books?”
“My bump of reverence was fastened down with hatpins, and my guide-books are buried in the bottom of my trunk.”
“Since when?”
“Since I made the discovery that Quebec must be inhaled, not analyzed,” she responded promptly.
Brock laid down his knife and fork, and patted his hands together in mock applause.
“A subtle distinction. Might I ask whether it applies to the incense?”
Nancy made a wry face.
“No. Incense should be a symbol, not a fact. It is destructive to all my devotional spirit. Still, even in this one week, I have become an epicure in it. Granted that the wind is in the right direction, I can recognize the brand at least a block away. I like the kind they use at the Basilica best. That out at the Franciscan Convent is doubtless choice; but it is a bit too pungent for my Protestant nose.” Then of a sudden her face grew grave. “Please don’t think I am making fun of serious matters, Mr. Brock,” she added. “Even if I do dislike the incense, I can appreciate the beauty of the service, and I should be ashamed of myself, if I couldn’t be really and truly reverent in the midst of all that dignified worship.”
Brock was no Catholic; he possessed the average devoutness of his age and epoch. Nevertheless, he liked Nancy’s swift change of mood. All in all, he liked Nancy extremely, and he was sincerely grateful to the fate which had given him this attractive table companion. The past three days had brought them into an excellent understanding and friendship. Trained in totally different lines, they yet had many a point in common. They were equally direct, equally frank, equally blest with the saving sense of humor. In spite of the dainty femininity of all her belongings, Nancy met Brock with the unconscious simplicity of a growing boy. The manner was new to Brock, and he found it altogether pleasing. Most of the women he had met, had contrived to impress upon him that he was expected to flirt with them. It was obvious that Nancy Howard wished either to be liked for herself, or to be let alone.
“Then you enjoyed yourself?” he asked.
Nancy’s mind went swiftly backward over the morning. Impressionable and artistic of temperament, she could yet feel the thrill which accompanies the worship of close-packed, kneeling humanity, still hear the chanting of the huge antiphonal choirs, the throng of priests in the chancel answered by the green-sashed seminarians in the organ loft above. The gorgeous robes of the celebrants, the ascetic face of the young preacher, and even the motley crowd who, too poor to hire seats in a church of such wealth and fashion, knelt in a huddled mass of humanity upon the bare pavement just within the nave: all these were details; but they helped to fill in a picture of absolute devotion and faith. Nancy raised her eyes to Brock’s face.
“I would be willing to pray with a rosary, all my days,” she said impulsively; “if it would give me the look of some of those people.”
For a moment, Brock felt, the look was hers. Then she laughed again.
“Still, I shall always have one regret. Why didn’t you tell me how to make a procession of myself?”
“What do you mean?”
“About the gorgeous man that ushers one in?”
“I didn’t know there was one.”
“Mr. Brock!”
“Miss Howard?”
“But you ought to.”
“But I don’t go to the Basilica.”
“Not always, of course; but surely sometimes.”
“I was never inside the doors.”
“I met,” Nancy observed reflectively; “a New York man, last summer, who had never set eyes on the Washington Arch.”
“Well?”
“Well, the two cases seem to me to be about parallel.”
Brock reddened. Nevertheless, it was impossible to take offence at Nancy’s downright tone and, the color still in his cheeks, he laughed.
“I may as well plead guilty. But who is the man?”
“The New Yorker?”
“No; the Basilica.”
“What is he, you’d better say. He appears to be a mixture of an usher, a tithingman and a glorious personification of the Church Militant. He is at least six feet tall, and he wears a long blue coat with scarlet facings and yards of gold lace. That would be impressive enough; but he gains an added bit of dignity by perambulating himself up the aisles with a tall, gold-headed sceptre in his hand.”
“Did he also perambulate you?”
Nancy’s head moved to and fro in sorrowful negation.
“No; nobody told me about him, and I lost my chance. I was so disappointed, too. One doesn’t get a chance, every day in the week, to be converted into a whole triumphal procession with an ecclesiastical drum-major at its head.”
“Most likely it is only a Sunday luxury there,” Brock suggested dryly. “But what did you do?”
Nancy’s face lengthened.
“I disgraced myself,” she confessed. “But how could I know the customs of the country? I went in good season, and I stood back, meekly waiting for an usher, until the whole open space around me was full of men, kneeling on handkerchiefs and newspapers and even on their soft hats. I began to feel like a Tower of Babel set out in the middle of a village of huts. I know I never was half so tall before. And still no usher came. At last, I couldn’t bear it any longer, and I sneaked into an empty pew, half-way up the aisle.”
Brock nodded.
“Oh; but it wasn’t at all the right thing to do. I was barely seated, when I felt a forefinger poke itself into my shoulder. I looked around, and there stood a woman in crape, frowning at me as if I were a naughty child. She whispered something to me. It sounded very stern; but I couldn’t understand what it was about, so I just smiled at her and started to move in. But she poked me again, quite viciously, that time, and pointed out into the aisle. Then I understood her.”
“And obeyed?” Brock asked, laughing.
“What else could I do? She was taller than I.”
“And then?”
“Then the Good Samaritan appeared.”
“The gold-laced one?”
“No; nothing so impressive. He was a little Frenchman who came out of his pew farther down the aisle, and in the nicest possible English asked me to go there with him. You’ve no idea how merciful he was to me, nor how I appreciated it. I was beginning to feel like an outcast, and he saved my self-respect and returned it to me, unbroken.”
Brock started to answer; but Dr. Howard had appealed to Nancy for confirmation of one of his statements. By dint of much effort and at cost of frequent misunderstandings, the good doctor had established relations with his neighbor across the table, and the two men had been toiling through a prolonged conversation. Concerning mere matters of theory, each fondly imagined that he understood the other perfectly. Confronted with the problem of the ultimate destination of the sugar-bowl, they lost their bearings completely, and were forced to supplement their tongues with the use of their right forefingers.
Nancy’s acquaintance with the row of Frenchmen was limited to the careful distribution, at every meal, of exactly two little nods apiece, one of hail, the other of farewell. Since her first meeting with Brock, she had been surprised at the chance which had continually brought them into the dining-room at the same hour; and, in her absorption in his talk, one or other of the Frenchmen was often half through his deliberate meal before she remembered to deal out to him his nod of greeting. She liked them well enough; but, at the present stage of intercourse, they seemed to her a good deal like well-bred automatons.
While Nancy talked to her father, Brock eyed her furtively. She wore a dark green gown, that noon, and her vivid hair was piled high in an intricate heap of burnished coils. Her hands were bare of rings, her whole costume void of the dangling ornaments which Brock so keenly detested; but, close in the hollow of her throat, there blazed one great opal like a drop of liquid fire.
So suddenly that he had no time to drop his eyes to his plate, Nancy turned to him.
“Mr. Brock, there is my French Samaritan!” she exclaimed softly.
Brock glanced up at the figure who was moving past the table where they sat.
“That? That is St. Jacques,” he said.
“Who is he?”
“A law student, over at Laval, and one of the best fellows walking the earth at the present time,” Brock answered, with the swift enthusiasm which, as Nancy discovered in the weeks to come, was one of his most striking characteristics.
Nancy rested her elbows on the table, with a fine disregard of appearances.
“Well, he looks it,” she said impressively.
“He’s all right.” Brock nodded over his grapes.
“And lives here?”
“Eats here; that’s all. The table just back of you is full of Laval men. They come in relays, twenty of them for the six seats; and Johnny Bull sits enthroned among them like a mute at the funeral feast. St. Jacques sits just back of your father. I wonder you haven’t noticed him before.”
Nancy played aimlessly with her grapes for a minute or two. Then, turning slightly in her chair, she looked over her shoulder towards the next table. As she did so, the man who sat exactly at her back, moved by some sudden impulse, turned at the same instant, and Nancy found herself staring directly into the unrecognizing eyeglasses of no less a person than Mr. Cecil Barth.
To adopt the vernacular of the stables, Nancy shied violently, for the apparition was both unexpected and unwelcome. She rallied swiftly, however, and, promptly resolving to make the best of a bad matter, she gave a little nod and smile of recognition. The next instant, both nod and smile went sliding away from the unresponsive countenance of Mr. Cecil Barth and focussed themselves with an added touch of cordiality upon M. St. Jacques, while the young Frenchman bowed low in surprised pleasure at her friendly greeting.
Even in her instantaneous glance, Nancy saw that Barth looked worn and ill; and, with unregenerate spite working in her heart, she told herself that she was glad of it. She had no idea that, unable to supply himself with new glasses before his return to the city, Barth had gained absolutely no conception of the personal appearance of his quondam nurse. Moreover, as Nancy had neglected to inform him in regard to her normal pursuits and her future plans, he had spent the last week in regretfully picturing her, still in cap and pinafore, ministering to the needs of some invalid Yankee in that vast unknown which he vaguely termed The States. Accordingly, it came about that the dinner, that Sunday noon, was finished in hot rage by Nancy, in joyous anticipation by Adolphe St. Jacques, and in stolid unconcern by Mr. Cecil Barth who was aware neither of the existence of an emotional crisis, nor of the fact that to him was due any share of its creation.
Nancy sat alone in the parlor, after dinner, waiting for her father to join her, when Barth came into the room. He halted on the threshold long enough to look her over in detail; then he limped past her and took possession of the chair beyond her own. As they sat there silent, elbow to elbow, Nancy was conscious of a wayward longing to remind him that it was high time for his liniment. However, she refrained. Two could play at that game of stolid disregard.
The Lady looked puzzled, as she followed Barth into the room, a few moments later. Only a day or two before, Nancy, moved by a spirit of iniquity, had confided to the Lady the whole tale of her connection with Barth, and the Lady, who already adored Nancy and, moreover, was discerning enough to see the inherent manliness of Barth, had held her peace. A charming scene of recognition was bound to follow Barth’s return to The Maple Leaf. No hint of a mystery to come should take from the glamor of that pleasant surprise. Barth and Nancy both were curiously alone; both were aliens, meeting upon neutral soil. Already in her mind’s eye the Lady foresaw romance and international complications.
With her bodily eye the Lady saw the elements of her international complications sitting in close juxtaposition, but with their backs discreetly turned to an obtuse angle with each other. She made a swift, but futile, effort to account for the situation. Then she gave Nancy a merry nod of comprehension, if not of understanding, and passed on to speak to Barth.
“You are better, to-day, I hope.”
“Oh, yes.”
“I hope you didn’t feel obliged to come over to dinner. It was no trouble to send your meals to you.”
“Oh, no. I was tired of stopping in my room.”
“You look as if you had been having rather a hard time of it,” the Lady said kindly.
“Yes. I never supposed an ankle could be so painful. Still, I hope it is over now.”
“Then it doesn’t trouble you to walk?”
“Oh, rather! And, besides, it makes one such an object, you know, and then people stare. It won’t be long, though, I dare say, before I can walk without limping.”
A naughty impulse seized upon the Lady.
“You were at Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré, you said? And could you get proper care in so small a place?”
Over the unconscious head of Mr. Cecil Barth, Nancy shook her fist at the Lady. Then she fled from the room; but not quickly enough to lose Barth’s answer,—
“Oh, so-so; nothing extra, but still quite tolerable. The doctor was clever; but the nurse, his daughter, was an American, a good-hearted sort of girl, but rather rude and untrained.”
All that Sunday afternoon, Nancy cherished her hopes of vengeance. Plan after plan suggested itself to her fertile brain, was weighed and found wanting. Planned hostility was totally inadequate; she would leave everything to chance. Nevertheless, Nancy tarried long at her mirror, that night; and she went down to supper with her head held high and a brilliant spot of color in either cheek. As she passed the parlor door, she saw Barth, book in hand, seated exactly where she had left him, and she suddenly realized that, rather than endure the short walk to his room, he had chosen to spend his afternoon in the dreary solitude of a public sitting-room. For an instant, her heart smote her, and her step lagged a little; then she remembered the guinea, and recalled Barth’s words, that noon, and her step quickened once more.
Brock followed her back to the parlor.
“Oh, let the Basilica go, to-night,” he urged.
“But you told me it was a part of my itinerary.”
“No matter. You haven’t kept up your round, to-day, anyway. Did you do the Ursulines, this afternoon?”
“No. I was all ready to go; but something happened that put me in an unchurchly frame of mind,” Nancy said vindictively.
“Just as well. It makes people suspicious of your past habits, if you rush too violently into church-going.”
“But twice isn’t too violently.”
“Two is too,” he retorted. “Besides, St. Jacques asked me to ask you if he might be formally introduced, to-night.”
Nancy’s face brightened, and her voice lost the little sharp edge it had taken on with her reference to her encounter with Barth.
“Of course. Both on account of his courtesy to me, and of your characterization of him, I shall be delighted to meet him. Where is he?”
Over in his corner by the window, Barth glanced up from his book. Voices rarely made any impression upon him; but something in Nancy’s tone caught his fancy, reminded him, too, of an indefinite something in his past. With calm deliberation, he fumbled about for the string of his glasses, put them on and favored Nancy with a second scrutiny, critical and prolonged. The girl’s cheeks reddened under his gaze, and instinctively she turned to Brock for protection; but Brock had gone in search of his friend. From across the room, one rose from a group of women and came to Nancy’s rescue.
“Mr. Barth?” she said interrogatively, in her pretty broken French. “I think it is Mr. Cecil Barth; is it not? My friend, Mrs. Vivian, has written to me about you. I believe you brought a letter, introducing yourself to her.”
Instantly, though a little stiffly, Barth rose to his feet. This acquaintance, at least, could show its proper credentials.
“And have you met Miss Howard?” she continued, after a moment’s talk. “Miss Howard, like yourself, is a stranger among us. Perhaps she will allow me to introduce Mr. Cecil Barth.”
“Howard appears to be rather a common name, here in Canada,” Barth observed.
“Really? I’ve not met any one else by the name,” Nancy answered rashly.
“Yes. It was the name of my nurse.”
“Your—nurse?”
“Yes. I don’t mean the nurse who took care of me when I was a little chap,” Barth explained elaborately. “I’ve just been ill, you know, sprained my ankle out here at Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré and was laid up for two weeks. My nurse out there was a Miss Howard, Miss Nancy Howard; but she was an American.”
Something in the cadence of the final word was displeasing to Nancy, and the edge came back into her voice.
“What a coincidence!” she observed quietly. “I am an American, myself, Mr. Barth.”
Barth’s answer was refreshingly naïve.
“Oh, really? But nobody would ever think it, I am sure.”
It was two days before Nancy met Barth again. From her window, she watched with pitiless eyes as he hobbled to and from his meals, and her strategic position enabled her to avoid the dining-room while he was in it. Meanwhile, her acquaintance with the Lady and St. Jacques had made rapid strides and, together with Brock, omnipresent and always jovial, they formed a merry group in the tiny office where the Lady mothered them all by turns. Nancy shunned the parlor in these latter days. Dr. Howard was increasingly absorbed in his studies; and Nancy felt the increasing need of a duenna, as it dawned upon her more and more clearly that, wherever she went, there Brock and St. Jacques were sure to follow. Nancy looked at life simply; these healthy-minded boys were only a pair of excellent playmates. Nevertheless, all things considered, Nancy preferred to play in the society of an older person. Furthermore, for long hours at a time, Mr. Cecil Barth sat enthroned in the parlor; and, by this time, Nancy was resolved to avoid Mr. Cecil Barth at any cost.
The gray October noon was cool and sweet, two days later, when Nancy came tramping down the Grand Allée. The exhilaration of a long walk was upon her, and her step was as energetic as when she had left The Maple Leaf, early that morning. Starting at random by way of the Chien d’Or and the ramparts, she had skirted the Upper Town and come out by Saint John’s Gate to the Saint Foye Road which she had followed until the monumentAux Braveswas left far behind and the glimpses of the dark blue Laurentides were lost in the nearer trees. Then, turning sharply to the eastward, she came into the Grand Allée not far from the shady entrance to Mount Hermon. A glance at her watch assured her that the morning was nearly over, and she sped along the interminable plank sidewalk at a pace which should bring her back to the tollgate in time for the short detour to the Wolfe monument. Once in sight of that inscription, grand in its simple brevity, Nancy invariably forgot the present, forgot the gray wall of the jail close by, forgot even the insistent voices that hailed her from the cab-stand at the gate. For the moment, she stood alone in the presence of the past and of that daring leader whose destiny forbade his entering the stronghold he had conquered.
Her breath coming quickly and her lower lip caught between her teeth, Nancy stood leaning against the rail, looking out across the Plains. So absorbed was she in her day-dream of the past that she paid no heed to a cab which halted at her side.
“Oh, Miss Howard?”
Starting abruptly, she turned to face Barth. Tired of his solitary drive, the young fellow’s eyes were smiling down into the familiar face as, hat in hand, he bent forward in eager greeting.
Nancy’s day-dream vanished like a broken Prince Rupert’s drop.
“Good morning, Mr. Barth,” she said grimly.
“It is a jolly sort of morning; isn’t it? You are paying homage to my countryman?” he inquired.
The allusion was unfortunate. It recalled his last words to Nancy, and she grew yet more grim.
“Brave gentlemen belong to no country,” she answered, with what seemed to her a swift burst of eloquence.
Barth laughed.
“Poor beggars! Must they all be expatriated? If that’s the case, it’s better to be whimpering over a sprained ankle than to die victorious on the Plains of Abraham.”
“That wasn’t what I meant at all,” Nancy interposed hastily. Then she took out her watch and looked at it a little ostentatiously. “It is a glorious day, Mr. Barth, and I wish you a pleasant drive. It is nearly dinner time, and I must hurry on.”
“Why not let me take you in?” he urged. “I am going directly back to The Maple Leaf.”
But Nancy’s answer permitted no argument.
“Thank you, no. I am out for the exercise, and you are going on farther. It is impossible for me to interfere with your drive.” And, with a curt bow, she turned away and stalked off in the direction of the Grand Allée.
The light died out of Barth’s eyes and the friendly smile fled from his lips, as he realized that, for the first time in his life, he had had his overtures rejected. Worst of all, the rejection was by an American and, from his point of view, totally without cause. Mr. Cecil Barth dropped back in his seat, stretched out his lame foot into a position of comparative comfort, and then said Things to himself.
He passed Nancy just outside the Saint Louis Gate. Head up, shoulders thrown back, she was swinging along with the free step of perfect health and equally perfect content. From the solitary dignity of his cab, Barth eyed her askance.
“Wait a bit, though,” he apostrophized her, with a sudden burst of prophecy. “The time will come, Miss Howard, when you don’t rush off and leave me alone like this.”
But Nancy, rosy and flushed with exercise, entered the dining-room, that noon, without a glance in his direction. Barth kept his own eyes glued to his plate; but, from over his right shoulder, he could hear every word of her merry talk with Reginald Brock. As he listened, Barth began to question whether England might not have allowed too great a share of independence to certain of her western colonies.
“Miss Howard?”
Nancy glanced up, as St. Jacques appeared in the doorway with Brock at his side. At the farther end of the room, Barth also glanced up. The action was wholly involuntary, however, and Barth sought to disguise with a yawn his ill-timed manifestation of interest.
“You look as if you had something of importance to announce,” Nancy replied, as she rose and crossed the room to the door.
“So we have. What are you going to do, this evening?”
“That isn’t an announcement; it is a question,” she suggested.
St. Jacques laughed. Nancy always enjoyed the sudden lighting of his face. At rest, it was almost heavy in its dark, intent earnestness; at a chance word, it could turn mirthful as the face of a child, gentle with the sympathetic gentleness of a strong man. Just now, the rollicking child was uppermost.
“How can I tell the difference? I am not English,” he answered.
Nancy cocked the white of one eye towards the far corner of the room.
“Neither am I,” she said demurely.
Brock’s answer was enigmatic; but Nancy held the key.
“It is always possible to be grateful to Allah,” he said, low, but not so low as to keep the color from rising in Barth’s cheeks.
St. Jacques turned suddenly.
“Good evening, Mr. Barth. Is your ankle better?” he queried.
But Barth was as yet unable to make any distinctions in measuring out his displeasure.
“Thank you, Mr. St. Jacques,” he answered icily. “It is almost quite well.”
“O—oh. I am very glad,” St. Jacques responded, in such vague uncertainty as to how great a degree of gain might be represented by thealmost quitethat he entirely missed the note of hostility in Barth’s voice.
Again the white of Nancy’s eye moved towards the corner of the room, as Brock said,—
“But you haven’t answered St. Jacques’s question, Miss Howard.”
“I beg your pardon. I am not going to do anything, unless sitting in this room counts for something.”
“But it doesn’t.” Barth took an unexpected plunge into the conversation.
“Then what makes you do it?” Brock inquired.
His intention had been altogether hostile, for he had been irritated by the discourtesy shown to his friend. Nevertheless, his irritation gave place to good-tempered pity, as the young Englishman answered quietly,—
“Because there’s not so very much left that I can do. One doesn’t get much variety in a radius of half a mile a day.”
This time, Nancy turned around.
“Doesn’t that ligament grow strong yet?” she asked, in a wave of sympathy which swept her off her guard.
Then she blushed scarlet, for Barth was looking up at her in manifest astonishment. How could this impetuous young woman have discovered the fact that he owned a ligament? He had not considered it a fit subject for conversation. Was there no limit to the unexpected workings of the American mind?
“I didn’t know—Oh, it is better,” he answered.
Then in a flash the situation dawned upon Brock. He recalled Barth’s unexplained illness; he remembered Nancy’s story of the Englishman and his golden guinea. Back in the depths of his sinful brain he stored the episode, ready to be brought out for use, whenever the time should be ripe. And Nancy, looking into those clear gray eyes, knew that he knew; knew, too, that it would be useless to beg for mercy for the unsuspecting Britisher. Moreover, she was not altogether sure that she wished to beg for mercy.
“But really, have you any plan for this evening?” St. Jacques was urging.
Dismissing the others from her mind, Nancy smiled into the dark face which was almost on a level with her own.
“Nothing at all.”
“That is good. There is a little opera at the Auditorium, to-night; nothing great, but rather pretty. I saw it in Saint John, last year. Brock and I both thought—”
“What time is it now?” Nancy asked.
“About seven.”
Nancy reflected swiftly. Then she said,—
“Impromptu parties are always the best. Go and ask the Lady if she can come with us. If she will—”
But only Barth in his corner heard the ending of her sentence.
Half an hour later, Nancy came rustling softly down the stairway, her shining hair framed in the white fur ruff of her cloak. Two immaculate youths were pacing the hall; but Barth had disappeared. She found him sitting in the office beside the Lady. He rose, as Nancy appeared in the doorway.
“Don’t let me keep you,” he said regretfully. “You are going out?”
In his present mood of content, St. Jacques felt that he could afford to be gracious.
“Don’t we look it?” he asked boyishly.
Experience had taught Nancy what to expect when Barth fell to fumbling about the front of his waistcoat. Nevertheless, even she blushed at the prolonged stare which was too full of interest to be impertinent. Then, without a glance at the others, Barth let the glasses fall back again.
“Oh, rather!” he answered, with unwonted fervor.
The Lady laughed.
“Is that the best you can say of us, Mr. Barth?” she inquired.
“Ratheris Barth’s strongest superlative,” Brock commented. “Well, are we ready?”
The Lady rose with some reluctance. During the few days of his imprisonment, she had been brought into closer contact with Barth. She had watched him keenly, and she had come to the conclusion that, underneath all his haughty indifference, the young Englishman was lonely, homesick and altogether likable.
“It is really too bad to turn you out, Mr. Barth,” she said kindly. “Won’t you stay here and read? It is more cosy here, and you can be quite by yourself.”
The friendly words touched Barth and, for an instant, he lost his poise. A sudden note of dejection crept into his voice, as he answered,—
“I seem to accomplish that end, wherever I go.”
Brock was already leading the way to the door, and Nancy was gathering up her long skirt. It was St. Jacques who lingered.
“Perhaps you would like to go with us,” he suggested.
“Oh, I—” Barth was beginning, when the Frenchman interrupted,—
“We shall be very glad to have you, and I can easily telephone for another seat. It is not a great opera; but it will be better than sitting alone in your room.”
The unexpected addition to their party was by no means to Nancy’s liking. Nevertheless, her eyes rested upon St. Jacques with full approval. The deed had been a gracious one, and Nancy felt that, with Brock and St. Jacques to help her, she could easily manœuvre Barth to the outer seat beyond the Lady.
The event justified her belief. Barth demurred, then yielded to a second invitation which was cordially echoed by the Lady; and it was at the Lady’s side that he limped down the aisle. Nancy, in the rear with the others, told herself that he had no need for his profuse apologies regarding his dress. Even in morning clothes, Barth showed that both his figure and his tailor were irreproachable. She also told herself that, until then, she had had no notion of the way the man must have suffered. It is not without reason that a man of the early twenties allows himself to hobble ungracefully into a strange theatre, or gets white at the lips, by the time he is finally seated.
As St. Jacques had said, the opera was by no means a great one. However, Nancy, sitting in that dull green interior, looking about her at the half-veiled lights and at the dainty gowns, was absolutely content. Barth, at the farther end of the row, was talking dutifully to the Lady, and Nancy had no idea that his position, bending forward with his hands clasped over his knee, was taken for the sole purpose of being able to watch herself. Brock was for the moment wholly absorbed in a scrutiny of the audience, and Nancy settled back at her ease and fell into idle talk with St. Jacques.
Already the young Frenchman was assuming a prominent place in her thoughts. He was serious without being dull, merry without being frivolous; and Nancy rarely found it needful to explain to him the unexpected workings of her somewhat inconsequent mind. Even Brock was sometimes left gasping in the rear. St. Jacques, although by different and far less devious paths, was generally waiting to meet her, when she reached her new viewpoint.
Little by little, she had come to know much of his history. The strong habitant blood of two hundred years before had brought forth a line of sturdy, earnest professional men. True to their ancestry, they had made no effort to shake off its customs or its tongue. Highly educated, first at Laval, then at Paris, they had gone back to the simple life of their own people, to give to them the fruits of what, generations before, had been taken from them. Because the primeval St. Jacques had wrested supremacy from his neighbors, there was no reason that his son’s sons should turn their backs upon their less fortunate brothers, and seek wealth and fame in the luxury-loving cities to the southward. St. Jacques was of the physical type of the old-time habitant; but developed far towards the level of all that is best in manhood. The defensive instincts of a young girl are not always unreliable. Nancy trusted Adolphe St. Jacques implicitly. She was sure that he never stopped to question how to show himself loyal and courteous; it came to him quite as a matter of course.
“But you speak English at home?” she asked him.
“No; only French.”
“Then you surely have been trained in an English school,” she persisted.
He shook his head.
“The school was like Laval, all French.”
“And yet, you speak as we do.”
His lower lip rolled out into his odd little smile.
“As you do, but more slowly. Of course, I understand; but I think in French, and it takes a little time to put it into English. But my English is not like Mr. Barth’s.”
“Nor mine,” she assured him merrily.
But he met her merriment with a curiously grave face.
“Miss Howard, I do not see why I can’t like that fellow,” he said thoughtfully.
“Nor I. And yet, he isn’t half bad,” Nancy replied, with unexpected loyalty.
“I know. He is intelligent, and he means to be a gentleman,” St. Jacques answered, frowning gravely as he argued out the position. “I think I see his good points; but I have nothing that—that is in common with any of them. Our worlds are different, and we can never bring them into connection.”
For the moment, Nancy lost her own gayety and spoke with a seriousness which matched his own.
“I think I understand you. I have felt it, myself. It is not anything he does consciously, yet he leaves me feeling that we have absolutely no common ground. By all rights, we Americans ought to feel kinship with the English; but—”
St. Jacques turned to face her.
“But?” he echoed.
However, Nancy’s eyes were fastened on her fan, and she answered, with the fearless honesty of a boy,—
“But now and then I have felt, since I came here, that my likeness was entirely to the French.”
And St. Jacques bowed in silence, as the curtain rose for the final act.
Just then, there came an unexpected scene and one not down upon the programme. The soprano was already in place and the tenor, in the wings, was preparing to rush in to kneel at her feet, when the manager came out across the stage. In the midst of the gaudy costumes, his black-clothed figure made an instantaneous impression, an impression which was heightened by his level voice.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to be obliged to announce to you—”
Brock never knew from what corner of the upper gallery came that shrill, insistent cry of fire. When he realized his surroundings, he was bracing himself against the seat in front of him, his whole tall figure tense in the effort to keep Nancy from being crushed by the mad rush for the doors. Then, with a bound, the young Frenchman vaulted over the seat towards the other end of the row.
“Look out for the Lady, Brock,” he ordered, as he dashed past. “Some one must help Barth. His foot is giving out, and he will drop, in a minute.”
Then, as swiftly as it had arisen, the panic died away. Again and again the orchestra pounded outGod Save the Kingwith an energetic rhythm which could not fail to be reassuring. The tumult in the galleries subsided; one by one, in shamefaced fashion, the people came straggling back to their seats. Brock was mockingly recounting the list of his bruises, while the manager completed his ill-timed announcement of the sudden illness of one of the singers. Then the curtain was rung down and rung up again for a fresh start. Just as it shivered and began to rise, Barth bent forward.
“Oh, Mr. St. Jacques.”
“Yes?”
“I have to thank you for your help. I needed it, and it was given in a most friendly way.”
St. Jacques had no idea of what those few words cost the dignity of the taciturn young Englishman. Otherwise, he would have framed his answer in quite another fashion. As it was, he shook his head.
“You count it too highly,” he said, with dry courtesy. “In our language we call such things, not friendship, but just mere chivalry.”
And Nancy, though unswerving in her loyalty to St. Jacques, felt a sudden pity for Mr. Cecil Barth, as he shut his lips and leaned back again in his chair.