He declined to answer her tone. The words of his reply dropped, clear, distinct, slow, upon her ears.
“No matter. Perhaps some day you may come back to Canada, Miss Howard, come back, I mean, to stay.”
Nancy drew two or three short, quick breaths. Then she laughed with a forced mirth.
“Perhaps. One can never tell. I like Canada,” she said nervously.
St. Jacques faced her.
“And the Canadians?” he asked steadily.
His dark eyes held hers for a moment. Then she found herself repeating his words,—
“Yes, and the Canadians.”
A moment later, she gave a sudden start of surprise and relief. Rounding a sharp angle in the winding street, they had found themselves directly upon the heels of Mr. Cecil Barth who was sauntering slowly along just ahead of them. Turning at the sound of their feet on the board roadway, he bowed to Nancy with deprecating courtesy, to her companion with studied carelessness.
Nancy’s quick eye caught the veiled hostility of the salute exchanged by the two men. Her own poise was shaken by the little scene through which she had just been passing, but she made a desperate effort to regain control of the situation.
“Mr. Barth,” she said impetuously.
Barth had resumed his stroll. At her words, he turned back instantly.
“Why not wait for us?” she suggested, as she held out her hand with frank cordiality. “M. St. Jacques deserves congratulations from us all, for his record at lacrosse, yesterday; and I know you’ll like to add your voice to the general chorus. And, besides that, I owe you an apology. I was very rude to you, yesterday; but, at least, I have the saving grace to be thoroughly ashamed of myself, to-day.”
And Barth, as he took her hand, felt that that minute atoned for many a bad half-hour she had given him in the past.
Together, they came out from under the hanging balconies, strayed on through Sault-au-Matelot and, coming up Mountain Hill Street, wandered out along the Battery. There they lingered to lean on the wall and stare across the river at the heights of Lévis bathed in its sunset light which is neither purple, nor yet altogether of gold. To Nancy, the light was typical of the hour. The girl was no egotist; yet all at once she instinctively realized that one or the other of these men was holding the key to her life. Which it should be, as yet she could not know. The hour had come, unsought, unexpected. For the present, it was better to drift. The mood of St. Jacques was kindred to her own. As for Barth, he was supremely content, without in the least knowing why his recent dissatisfaction should have fallen from him.
While they lingered by the wall, to watch the fading glow, Dr. Howard suddenly stepped out into the road behind them. As he came through the gate in the old stone wall, his glance rested upon the trio of familiar figures, and his voice rang out in hearty greeting.
“Well, Nancy,” he called. “Are you watching for a hostile fleet?”
With the eagerness which never failed to welcome him, she turned to face her father; but, midway in her turning, she was stopped by Barth’s voice.
“Nancy!” he echoed. “Are you another Nancy Howard?”
She faltered. Then she met his blue eyes full and steadily.
“No,” she said, with fearless directness. “So far as I know, Mr. Barth, I am the only one.”
With masculine obtuseness, Barth regarded it as a matter of pure chance that he found Nancy standing alone in the hall, that night.
“Please go away and take M. St. Jacques with you,” she had begged Brock, as he had left the table. “I must have it out with him sometime, and I’d rather have it over.”
Brock looked at his watch.
“Will an hour be long enough?” he asked.
“I can’t tell. Please bid me good night now,” she urged him.
He smiled reassuringly down into her anxious eyes.
“Don’t take the situation too tragically, Miss Howard,” he said, with a brotherly kindness she was quick to feel as a relief to her strained nerves. “You weren’t to blame in the first place, and I can bear witness that you have been the most loyal friend he has had. If he is a bit unpleasant about it, send him to me, and I’ll knock him down.” He rose; but he lingered long enough to add, “I’ll look in on you, about nine o’clock, and see if I can help pick up the pieces.” And, with a nod of farewell, he was gone.
“Are you busy?” Barth asked, as he joined her, a little later.
“Am I ever busy in this indolent atmosphere?” she questioned in return, with a futile effort for her usual careless manner.
“Sometimes, as far as I am concerned. But what if we come into the drawing-room? It is quieter there.”
He spoke gently, yet withal there was something masterful in his manner, and Nancy felt that her hour was come. Nervously she tried to anticipate it.
“And you need a quiet place for the scene of the fray?” she asked flippantly.
“Fray?” His accent was interrogative.
“For the discussion, then.”
He was moving a chair forward. Then he looked up sharply, as he stood aside for her to take it.
“I can’t see that there is reason for any discussion, Miss Howard.”
“But you know you think I have been playing a double game with you,” Nancy broke out, in sudden irritation at his quiet.
His hands in his pockets, he walked across to the window and stood looking out. Then he turned to face Nancy.
“No. I am not sure that I do.”
“You feel that I ought to have told you before?”
“It would have been a little fairer to me,” he assented.
“I don’t see why,” she said defensively.
Barth raised his blue eyes to her face, and she repented her untruth.
“At least,” she amended; “I don’t see what difference it would have made.”
“Perhaps not. Still, it isn’t pleasant to be a stranger, and the one person outside a secret which concerns one’s self most of all.”
“No.”
“I wish you had told me,” he said thoughtfully. “It might have prevented some things that now I should like to forget.”
“For instance?”
“For instance, the way I have told you details with which you were already familiar.”
Nancy laughed nervously.
“And some with which I wasn’t familiar at all,” she added.
Barth’s color rose to the roots of his hair, and he bit his lip. Then he answered, with the same level accent,—
“Yes. But even you must admit that my error was unintentional.”
Nancy sat up straight in her deep chair.
“Even me!” she echoed stormily. “What do you mean, Mr. Barth?”
He met her angry eyes fearlessly, yet with perfect respect.
“Even you who were willing to take all the advantage of a complete stranger.”
“But I took no advantage,” she protested.
“No,” he admitted, after a pause. “Perhaps it was forced upon you. However, you accepted it. Miss Howard,” he paused again; “we Englishmen dislike to make ourselves needlessly ridiculous.”
She started to interrupt him; but he gave her no opportunity.
“I was ridiculous. I can fancy how funny it all must have seemed to you: my meeting you here without recognizing you, my telling you over all my regard for my former nurse. Of course, I must have seemed an ass to you, and to Mr. Brock and Mr. St. Jacques, too, after you had told them.”
This time, Nancy did interrupt him.
“Stop, Mr. Barth!” she said angrily. “Now you are the one who is unfair. I did tell Mr. Brock about our adventure at Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré; but it was when I first met him, when I had no idea that either of us would ever see you again. I told the adventure; but I used no names. You had been in the house for several days before Mr. Brock found out that you were my former patient, and he found it out then from your own lips. When he told M. St. Jacques, or whether he told him at all, I am unable to say. I do know that M. St. Jacques knew it; but, upon my honor, I have told no one but the Lady and Mr. Reginald Brock.”
Bravely, angrily, she raised her eyes to his. Notwithstanding his former doubts, Barth believed her implicitly.
“Forgive my misunderstanding you, then,” he said simply. “But why couldn’t you have told me?”
“How could I?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“I am sorry,” she said briefly. “It seemed to me out of the question.”
“Even when we were introduced?” he urged.
“It was before that that you had refused to recognize me.”
“When was that?”
“At the table, the first time you reappeared here,” she said vindictively. “I did my best to speak to you then; but you tried to give me the impression that you had never seen me before.”
Barth bowed in assent.
“I never had. You forget that my glasses were lost. You should be generous to a near-sighted man, Miss Howard, as you once were kind to a cripple. You might have given me another chance, when we were introduced.”
“There was nothing to show you cared for it,” Nancy returned curtly.
“And, even at Sainte Anne, you might have told me you were coming to Quebec,” he went on. “You knew I was coming here; you might have given me the opportunity to call and thank you.”
Impatiently Nancy clasped her hands and unclasped them.
“What is the use of arguing about it all?” she demanded restlessly. “You never could see the truth of it; no man could. I don’t want to beg off and make excuses. I have been in a false position from the start. I never made it, nor even sought it. It all came from chance. Still, it has been impossible for me to get myself out of it; but truly, Mr. Barth,” she looked up at him appealingly; “from the first hour I met you at Sainte Anne until to-day, I have never meant to be disloyal to you.”
“Then why couldn’t you have told me you had met me before?” he asked, returning to his first question with a curious persistency.
Nancy fenced with the question.
“But, strictly speaking, I had not met you.”
Barth’s eyes opened to their widest limit.
“Oh, really,” he said blankly.
“No; not in any social sense. Nobody introduced us. I was just your nurse.”
Suddenly, for the first time since the discovery of Nancy’s identity, there flashed upon Barth’s mind the thought of the guinea. He turned scarlet. Then he rallied.
“Miss Howard,” he said slowly, as he took the chair at her side; “I am not sure you were the only one who has been placed in a false position.”
The girl’s irritation vanished, and she laughed.
“About the guinea? Perhaps we can cry quits, Mr. Barth. Still, your mistake was justifiable. You took me for a nurse.”
“Yes. And so you were.”
“Thank you for the implied compliment. But, I mean, for a hired nurse.”
“Certainly. I did hire you. At least, I paid you wa—”
In mercy to his later reflections, Nancy cut him off in the midst of his phrase.
“Perhaps. We knew you wouldn’t let me do it out of charity, so my father collected his usual fee in two ways.”
Barth’s glasses had fallen from his nose. Now, his eyes still on Nancy’s face, he felt vaguely for the string.
“And you never received your money?”
Again the frosty accent came into Nancy’s tone.
“Certainly not.”
“Oh, what a beastly shame!” And, seizing his glasses, Barth stared at her in commiserating surprise.
For a short instant, Nancy longed to tweak the glasses from his nose. Then she laughed.
“As a rule, I don’t nurse people for money, Mr. Barth,” she said lightly.
“No? How generous you must be, Miss Howard!”
Was there ever a more maddening combination of manly simplicity and British bigotry, Nancy reflected impatiently. More and more she began to despair of making her position clear. Nevertheless, she went on steadily,—
“And, in fact, you were my one and only patient.”
“That you have ever had, in all your professional life?”
“I never had any professional life,” Nancy replied shortly.
Barth’s face showed his increasing perplexity.
“But you are a nurse.”
“No,” Nancy answered in flat negation.
“You nursed me.”
“After a fashion.”
“What for?”
Again Nancy’s impatience gave place to mirth.
“To cure you, of course.”
“Rather! But I didn’t mean that. We all know it, in fact; and you did it awfully well. But what made you—er—pick me out in the first place?”
“Pick you out?” This time, Nancy was the one to show perplexity.
“Yes. How did you happen to choose me for a patient?”
Nancy gasped at the new phase of the situation opened by Barth’s words. In his British ignorance of American customs, did he think that she habitually wandered about the country, selecting attractive strangers to be the objects of her feminine ministrations?
“I didn’t choose you,” she said indignantly.
“Then, by George, how did you get me?” Mr. Cecil Barth queried, by this time too tangled in the web of mystery to select his words with care.
Nancy blushed; then she frowned; then she laughed outright.
“Mr. Barth,” she said at last; “we are talking in two different languages. If we keep on, we shall end by needing an interpreter. This is the whole of my side of the story, so please listen. I am not a nurse. I am not anything but just a commonplace American girl who dances and who eats fish in Lent. My father is a doctor, and, even in New York, one knows his name. He came up here to rest and to gather materials for a monograph on the miracles of Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré, and I came with him. I always do go with him. We had been at Sainte Anne a little more than a week, when there was a pilgrimage. I had never seen a pilgrimage, so I went down to the church. As I was coming out afterwards, I saw some one fall. No one was near, except the pilgrim people; and they all lost their heads and fell to crowding and gesticulating. I was afraid you would be trodden on; and my father has always trained me what to do in emergencies, so I told the people to stand back. By the time I could get to you, you had fainted; but I saw you were no pilgrim. In fact,” Nancy added, with sudden malice; “I took you for an American.”
Barth winced.
“Oh, I am sure you were very kind,” he protested hastily.
“I am glad you think so. Well, you know the rest of the story.”
Barth rose and stood facing her.
“No,” he objected. “That is exactly what I do not know.”
“How you were taken to the Gagnier farm?”
“How you became my nurse,” he persisted quietly. “Please don’t leave that out of your story, Miss Howard.”
She smiled.
“It was sheer necessity, Mr. Barth. You said you spoke no French; neither did I. You were suffering and in need of a doctor at once. I knew of no doctor there but my father, and you assented to my suggestion of him. He will tell you that your ankle was in a bad condition and needed constant care. I knew he was not strong enough to give it, and I telegraphed all over Quebec in a vain search for a nurse. I couldn’t get one; neither, for the sake of a few conventions, could I let you end your days with a stiff ankle. There was only one thing to be done, and I did it.” She stopped for a moment. Then she added, “I only hope I may not have done it too clumsily. It was new work for me, Mr. Barth; but I did the very best I could.”
In her earnest self-justification, she sat looking up at Barth with the unconscious eyes of a child. Barth held out his hand.
“Miss Howard, you must have thought me an awful cad,” he said contritely.
“I did, at first; but now I know better,” she answered honestly. “There was no real reason you should have known I was not an hireling. At first, I resented it, though. I resented it again, when you came here and didn’t recognize me. It seemed to me impossible that you could have spent ten days with me, and forgotten me so completely. It wasn’t flattering to my vanity, Mr. Barth; and I only gained my lost self-respect when you informed me, the other day, that you were still hoping to meet me again.”
He echoed her laugh; but his tone was a little eager, as he added,—
“And that, in my secret thoughts, I used to call you my Good Sainte Anne?”
Nancy shook her head.
“Never that, I fear,” she answered lightly. “The Good Sainte Anne works miracles, Mr. Barth.”
“Oh, yes,” he said slowly. “I know she does. But sometimes the surest miracles are the slowest to reach their full perfection.”
“And there are many pilgrims to her shrine who go away again without having beheld a miracle,” she reminded him, still with the same lightness.
“Oh, rather!” he answered gravely. “Still, do you know, Miss Howard, I may be the one exception who proves the rule.”
“And what next?” Brock inquired, the next morning.
“Market,” Nancy replied.
“To spend your guinea?”
“Hush!” she bade him, with a startled glance over her shoulder.
“Oh, you needn’t worry. Barth never gets around till the fifty-ninth minute. He’ll wait until the last trump sounds, before he orders his ascension robe, and then he’ll tip Saint Peter to hold the gate open while he puts it on. But what about the market?”
“I am going with the Lady.”
“To carry the basket?”
“No. I’ll leave that for you,” Nancy retorted.
A sudden iniquitous idea shot athwart Brock’s brain.
“Very well. What time do you start?”
“At ten.”
“Right, oh! I’ll be on hand.”
An equally iniquitous idea entered Nancy’s head.
“Have you ever been to market?” she asked.
“Never.”
“And you want to go?”
“Surely I do.”
“Then we can count on you?”
“Yes. Ten o’clock sharp. If I’m not there, I’ll agree to send a substitute. But count on me.”
When they went their separate ways from breakfast, Brock sought the town house of the Duke of Kent; but Nancy went in search of the Lady.
“Were you going to take Tommy to carry the basket?” she asked.
“Yes. He always goes.”
“And will the basket be very huge?”
“Yes.”
“Good!” Nancy said, laughing. “I am glad, for we are going to leave Tommy at home, to-day, and take Mr. Brock in his place.”
“Nancy!” the Lady remonstrated.
“He insisted upon being invited,” Nancy returned obdurately; “and, if he does go, he must be made useful. We sha’n’t need both him and Tommy; Mr. Brock wants to carry the basket.”
Brock, meanwhile, had left the maid standing in the lower hallway and, two steps at a time, was mounting the ducal staircase which led to Barth’s room. His fist, descending upon the panels, cleft the Englishman’s dream in two.
“Oh, yes. What is it? Wait a bit, and I’ll let you in.”
From the other side of the door, muffled sounds betrayed the fact that Barth was struggling with his dressing-gown and slippers. Then the door was flung open, and Barth stood on the threshold. He started back in astonishment, as he caught sight of his unexpected guest.
“Oh. Mr. Brock?”
“Yes. Sorry to have routed you out so early; but I came to bring you word from Miss Howard and the Lady.”
Barth stepped away from the doorway.
“Come in,” he said hospitably. “Excuse the look of the place, though.”
Brock’s keen eyes swept the room with direct, impersonal curiosity, took note of the half-unpacked boxes, the piles of books, the heaps of clothing, then moved back to Barth’s face, where they rested with mirthful, kindly scrutiny. Then he crossed the room and dropped into a chair by the window.
“You brought me a message from Miss Howard?” Barth queried tentatively, after a pause which his companion seemed disinclined to break.
“Not so much a message as a—a suggestion,” Brock answered, with a hesitation so short as to escape the Englishman’s ear. “Miss Howard and the Lady are going to market, this morning, and I gathered, from what Miss Howard said, that she would like you to be on hand.”
“To—market?”
“Yes. She evidently thought you understood it was an engagement. The only question seemed to be about the hour.”
“Oh. What time do they go?”
“Ten.”
“And now?”
“It is past nine now.”
Barth stepped to the table and glanced at his watch.
“Fifteen past nine,” he read. “There is plenty of time. And you are sure Miss Howard wanted me?”
“Perfectly,” Brock answered, with brazen mendacity.
“How strange!” observed Mr. Cecil Barth.
“Strange that she should want you? Oh, not at all,” Brock demurred politely.
“Oh, no. Strange that she shouldn’t have mentioned it before.”
“Didn’t she say anything about it, last night?” Brock inquired.
“No. At least, I don’t remember it.”
“It may have slipped her mind. You had a good deal to talk over, I believe.”
“What do people do, when they go to market?” Barth queried, with sudden and intentional inconsequence.
“Buy things.”
“Yes. But what sort of things?”
“Haven’t you been down into the market yet?” Brock asked, as he craned his neck to watch two girls passing in the street beneath.
“Oh, no. Why should I?”
“Strangers generally do; it is quite one of the sights.”
“Do you mind if I begin dressing, Mr. Brock? What sort of sights?”
“Oh, cabbages, and pigs, and country things like that.”
Barth’s brows knotted, partly over his dressing, partly over his effort to grasp the situation.
“And is Miss Howard going down to—to look at those things?” he inquired.
“No, man; of course not. She is going down with the Lady to buy them.”
“To—buy—a pig?” Barth spoke in three detached sentences.
Brock smothered his merriment according to the best of his ability.
“The Lady will do the buying. Miss Howard goes to look on.”
“And does she expect me to look on, too?”
“Certainly.”
Barth sat with his shoe horn hanging loosely in his hand.
“But, Mr. Brock, I don’t know a bad pig from a good one,” he protested hastily.
“Oh, it’s quite easy to tell. Just pinch him a bit about the ribs. If he is fat and squeals nicely, he’ll go. But, as I understand it, you aren’t to do the marketing. You are expected to carry the basket for them.”
Barth looked up from his second shoe.
“The basket?”
“Yes. Women here take their baskets with them.”
“And get them filled?”
“Surely. Then they bring them home.”
Barth finished the tying of his shoestrings. Then he rose and picked up his collar.
“Oh, really!” he remonstrated, as he fumbled with the buttonholes. “Miss Howard can’t be expecting that I am going to bring a pig home in my arms.”
Brock rose.
“It is never safe to predict what a pretty woman will expect next,” he said oracularly. “I usually make a point of being ready for almost anything. As far as Miss Howard is concerned, I’d rather carry a pig for her than a bunch of roses for some women.”
This time, Brock’s words rang true. Moreover, they dismissed any doubts lingering in the mind of his companion.
“Oh, rather!” he assented, with some enthusiasm.
A mocking light came into Brock’s clear eyes.
“I am glad you agree with me. You knew her before I did, I believe.”
“Yes. At Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré. Miss Howard was very good to me, when I was there.” Over the top of his half-fastened collar, Barth spoke with simple dignity.
Brock liked the tone.
“I can imagine it, Barth,” he answered, with a sudden wave of liking for the loyal little Englishman before him. “Both St. Jacques and I would gladly have offered up our ankles at the shrine of Sainte Anne, for such a chance as yours.”
“What kind of a chance do you mean?”
“Chance to be coddled by Miss Howard, of course.”
Barth slid the string of his glasses over his head, put on his glasses and looked steadily up at Brock.
“It was a chance,” he assented gravely. “Chance and the handiwork of the Good Sainte Anne. It might have meant a good deal to me. Instead, I threw it all away by my own dulness; and now, instead of having the advantage of a three-weeks’ acquaintance, I have to start at the very beginning once more. If, as you are hinting, you and Mr. St. Jacques and I are on a strife to win the regard of Miss Howard, you and Mr. St. Jacques have already distanced me in the race.”
Brock laughed; but his eyes had grown surprisingly gentle. In all his easy-going life, a life when friends and their confidences had been his for the asking, few things had touched him as did this direct, simple expression of trust on the part of Mr. Cecil Barth. Contrary to his custom, he met confidence with confidence.
“You’re a good fellow, Barth,” he said heartily. “I am a little out of the running, myself. I’d like to wish you success, if I could; but St. Jacques is the older friend.” Then, relenting, he recurred to the object of his call. “Now see here, Barth,” he added; “you needn’t feel obliged to go to market. There may be some joke in the matter. Miss Howard laughed, when she was talking about it. Don’t go, if you don’t wish to. They can take Tommy.”
“Oh, but I’d like to go,” Barth interposed hurriedly, as he looked at his watch. “It is past ten now, Mr. Brock. May I ask you to excuse me?” And, without waiting for a final word from Brock, he turned and went dashing down the staircase at a speed which boded little good for an invalid ankle.
Ten o’clock, that sunny morning, found Champlain Market the centre of an eager, jostling, basket-laden throng. As a rule, the Lady sought her purchases at the market just outside the Saint John Gate. To-day, however, she had elected to go to the Lower Town, and, true to an old engagement, Nancy had elected to go with her. It was a novel experience for the girl, and she wandered up and down at the heels of the Lady, now staring at the stout old habitant women who, since early dawn, had sat wedged into their packed carts, knitting away as comfortably as if they had been surrounded by sofa pillows rather than by pumpkins; at the round-faced, bundled-up children who guarded the stalls of belated flowers, of blue-yarn socks and of baskets of every size; at the groups of men, gathered here and there in the throng, offering to their possible customers the choice between squealing pigs and squawking fowls which one and all seemed to be resenting the liberties taken with their breast-bones. Back of the old stone market building, the carts were drawn up in long lines; and the board platforms between were heaped with cabbages and paved with crates. At the north, the little gray spire of Notre Dame des Victoires guarded the square where, for over two hundred years, it had done honor to the name of Our Lady and to the memory of successive victories won, by her protecting care, over invading foes. Above it all, the black-faced cannon poked its sullen nose over the wall of the King’s Bastion where, a scarlet patch against the sky, there fluttered the threefold cross of the Union Jack.
And still Brock failed to appear.
“Just like a man!” Nancy said impatiently, as the half-hour struck. “You are sure Mary understood the message?”
“She never forgets. I was sorry not to wait, Nancy; but we should have lost our chance to get anything good. We are late, as it is.”
“Late! What time does the market open?”
“By five o’clock. These people have been coming in, all night long. By five in the morning, the place is full of customers. It is worth the seeing then.”
Nancy shivered.
“Uh! Not at this season of the year. I am not fond of the clammy dawn; and, down here by the river, it must be deathly. But, in the meanwhile,—” Again she glanced towards the corner of Little Champlain Street.
The Lady laughed.
“It is no use, Nancy. You are caught in your own trap, and now you must either go home and send Tommy to me, or else help me to carry home the basket.”
“I don’t mind the basket, though I confess I wish I hadn’t urged you to bring your very largest one. But I am disappointed in Mr. Brock. I thought he possessed more invention than this. He made me believe he had some mischief lurking in his brain; and it is very flat and boyish merely to promise to appear and then not to materialize.”
“He may have been prevented, at the last minute.”
“Then,” Nancy responded grimly; “he’d much better have kept to the letter of his promise and sent a substitute.”
She was still wandering aimlessly to and fro among the crowd, now jostled by a packed basket on the arm of a sturdy habitant, now whacked on the ankle by a hen dangling limply, head downward, from the hand of the habitant’s wife, now pausing to bargain for a bunch of pale violet sweet peas or a tiny replica of one of the melon-shaped baskets so characteristic of the town. All at once, she turned to the Lady.
“If there isn’t Mr. Barth!” she exclaimed, lapsing, in her surprise, into the unmistakable vernacular of The States.
The Lady was deeply absorbed in her final purchase of the day, which, as it chanced, was a piglet for the morrow’s dinner. Engrossed in the relative merits of a whole series of piglets of varying dimension, she was deaf to Nancy’s words. Left to herself, the girl met Barth with an eager smile.
“Is it peace, or war?” she asked merrily, as she gave him her hand, sweet peas and all.
“Peace, of course. Are the flowers a token of the treaty?”
“Do you want them?”
“Oh, rather!” And Barth pulled off his glove to fasten them into the lapel of his dark blue coat. “I am so sorry to be late, Miss Howard; but Mr. Brock stopped a little, to talk.”
“You have seen Mr. Brock, this morning?”
“Oh, yes. He was in my room.”
Nancy’s face betrayed her surprise.
“And did he say anything about market?”
“He told me you were coming at ten. I meant to be on hand; but he delayed me, and, when I finally started, I missed my way and came out over by the custom house. I must have taken a wrong turning.”
“Perhaps. But where is Mr. Brock?”
“I think he went to his office.”
There was a little pause.
“Jolly crowd, this,” Barth commented at length. “Where is the Lady?”
“Over there.” Nancy pointed to the Lady, still bending over the crate of piglets.
“Oh. And those are the pigs? Oughtn’t we to go across and help her?”
Nancy laughed.
“I am afraid I’m not a judge of them,” she demurred.
Barth’s voice dropped confidentially.
“Neither am I. Still, as long as I came to help her, I think it would be rather decent to see if I can do anything about it, now I am here.”
“Oh,” Nancy said blankly. “Was the Lady expecting you?”
Barth’s gratified smile completed her mystification.
“Oh, rather! I wouldn’t have felt at liberty without, you know. That’s what the Lady is for.”
A moment later, the Lady started in surprise. Stick and gloves in hand and a frown of deep consideration on his boyish brow, Barth suddenly knelt down at her side and shut his slim fingers upon the flank of the nearest piglet, which gave vocal expression to its displeasure.
“Oh. Good morning,” he added, not to the piglet, however, but to the Lady. “I think you will find this little chap quite satisfactory.”
For an instant, Nancy had difficulty in repressing her mirth. Then, from the Lady’s manifest astonishment at Barth’s appearing, from Barth’s own manner, and from her memory of Brock’s final words, she saw the hand of the young Canadian in the situation. This was the substitute whom Brock had promised. She determined to put her theory to the test.
“Mr. Brock was very good to act as our messenger,” she suggested craftily.
“Rather! He is a good fellow, anyway,” Barth answered, as he rose and dusted off his knees. “I like the English Canadians, myself. They are a grade above the French ones. But, do you know, Mr. Brock only just saved me from disgracing myself again. I was so absorbed in—in the other things we talked over, last night, that I quite forgot about the trip to market, this morning.”
For a minute, as she looked into Barth’s animated face, Nancy waxed hot with indignation over Brock’s childish trick. She half resolved to warn the young Englishman against the species of hazing which he was called upon to undergo. Then she held her peace. Her warnings would count for more, if she levelled them at Brock, rather than at Brock’s victim. Even her limited experience of Barth had assured her that, in certain directions, his understanding was finite. It would never occur to his insular mind that his very naïveté would make him a more tempting prey to the jovial young Canadian.
“Never mind, as long as you came at all, Mr. Barth,” she replied lightly. “It would have been a pity for you to have missed the sight. We couldn’t very well wait for you, because the Lady had to come on business, not pleasure.”
“And is this all?” Barth said, as the Lady turned from the piglet. “Where is the basket?”
“There.” And Nancy, as she pointed to the heaped assortment of garden stuffs, suddenly resolved to put Barth’s chivalry to the test.
The test was weighty, unlovely of outline and unsavory of odor; nevertheless, the young Britisher did not shrink. Without a glance around him, Mr. Cecil Barth bent over the great basket and passed its handles over the curve of his elbow.
“Shall we go home by the steps?” he asked. “Or do you take the lift?”
Then the Lady interfered.
“I go to the nearest cab-stand,” she replied promptly. “I find I must dash over to the other market as fast as I can go. There are cabs just around the corner, Mr. Barth, if you are willing to put my basket into one. Then, if you and Miss Howard will excuse me for deserting the expedition, I will leave you to walk home together.”
And Nancy’s answering smile assured the Lady of her full forgiveness.
“I love all things British, saving and excepting their manners and their mortar,” Nancy soliloquized.
Nancy’s temper was ruffled, that morning. As she had left the table, Barth had followed her to the parlor where, apparently apropos of an inoffensive Frenchman crossing the Place d’Armes, he had been drawn into strictures concerning American and French peculiarities of speech and manner. The talk had been impersonal; nevertheless, Nancy had been quick to discern that its text lay in the growing friendship between herself and St. Jacques. For a time, she had listened in silence to the Britisher’s accusing monologue. Then her temper had given way completely. Flapping the American flag full in his face, she had loosed the American eagle and promptly routed Barth and driven him from the field, with the British Lion trudging dejectedly at his heels.
“I want him to understand that he’s not to sayAmericanto me, in any such tone as that!” Nancy muttered vindictively, as she pinned on her hat.
Then she went out to walk herself into a good temper.
The good temper was still conspicuous by its absence, when, regardless of appearances, she dropped down in the grass by the hospital gate, and fell to picking the scraps of mortar out of the meshes of her rough cloth gown.
“I believe I am all kinds of an idiot,” she continued to herself explosively. “First, Joe’s letter rubbed me the wrong way. I don’t see how he could be so stupid as to imagine I’m homesick. Of course, I am glad he is coming up here; but an extra man, in any relation, does have a tendency to complicate things. And then Mr. Brock didn’t come to breakfast. I know he was cross, last night, because I took Mr. Barth’s part. And now Mr. Barth has made me lose my temper again. I believe he does it, just for the sake of seeing me abase myself afterwards. Dear me! Everybody is cross, and I am the crossest of the lot.”
Beside her on the grass, the shadow of the Union Jack above the hospital moved idly to and fro. Behind her was the low, squat bulk of the third Martello Tower whose crumbling mortar Nancy was even now removing from her clothing. The fourth Martello Tower, hidden somewhere within the dingy confines of Saint Sauveur, had eluded all her efforts to find it; the other two had been too obviously converted to twentieth-century purposes. This had looked more inviting, and Nancy had spent a chilly hour in its depths. By turning her back upon the dripping icehouse in its southern edge, and focussing her mind upon the mammoth central column which supported its arching roof, she had been able to force herself backward into the days when a Martello Tower was a thing for an invading army to reckon with. In the magazine beneath, the drip from the icehouse had spoiled the illusion; but the open platform above, albeit now snugly roofed in, still offered its battlements and its trio of dismounted cannon to her cynical gaze. Nancy left the dim interior, bored, but sternly just. In some moods and with certain companions, even the third Martello Tower might be interesting. Meantime, she was conscious of a distinct wish that the relics of the crumbling past might not have such marked affinity for her shoulder-blades.
“Miss Howard!”
She looked up. Cap in hand, St. Jacques was standing before her.
“I am glad I have found you,” he added directly. “I was wishing that something good might happen.”
Nancy’s smile broadened to a laugh.
“Are you cross, too?” she queried, without troubling herself to rise.
“Very,” St. Jacques assented briefly.
“I am so glad. Let’s be cross together.”
“Here?”
“Why not?”
The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t like the place. The associations are not pleasant.”
“I don’t see why. It looks a very comfortable place to be ill.”
“Yes; but who wants to think of being ill?”
“Nobody,” Nancy returned philosophically. “Still, now and then we must, you know. Witness Mr. Barth.”
St. Jacques smiled.
“Yes. But even Mr. Barth had a good nurse.”
“Don’t be too sure of that. Even my level best is none too even,” Nancy replied enigmatically, with scant consideration for the alien tongue of her companion.
He ignored her words.
“If I should be ill, would you take care of me?” he asked suddenly.
Still laughing, the girl shook her head.
“Never. I like you altogether too well, M. St. Jacques, to risk your life with my ministrations. Instead of that, though, I will come out here to see you as often as you will grant me admission.”
“Not here. They would never grant me admission in the first place,” St. Jacques responded dryly.
“Why, then?”
“Because I am Catholic.”
“Oh, how paltry!” Nancy burst out in hot indignation.
“It is true, however.”
With a sweep of her arm, Nancy pointed to the Union Jack whose scarlet folds stained the sky line.
“Then the sooner they pull that down, the better,” she said scornfully. “I thought that the British flag stood for religious freedom.”
“But you are not Catholic,” St. Jacques said slowly.
“What difference does that make? I am not a Seven-Day Baptist, either. Neither fact makes me ignore the rights of my friends who are.”
St. Jacques still stood looking down at her. His face was unusually grave, that morning; and it seemed to Nancy that his swarthy cheeks were flushed more than it was their wont to be.
“You have friends who are Catholics?” he asked.
“One, I hope,” she answered quietly. Then she rose to her feet. “What are you doing out here at this hour?” she added.
“Walking, to tire myself,” he answered. “Will you come?”
For her only answer, she dropped into step at his side, and they turned down the steep slope leading into Saint Sauveur, crossed Saint Roch and the Dorchester Bridge and came out on the open road to Beauport.
Never a garrulous companion, St. Jacques was more silent than ever, that morning, and Nancy let him have his way. Moreover, at times she was conscious of something restful in the long pauses which came in her talk with St. Jacques. When he chose, the young Frenchman spoke easily and well. Apparently, however, he saw no need of talking, unless he had something to say. In their broken talk and their long silences, Nancy had gained a better understanding of St. Jacques, a more perfect sympathy with his point of view and his mood than she had gained of Brock in all their hours of chattering intercourse.
For a long mile, they walked on without speaking. Shoulder to shoulder, they had gone tramping along the narrow plank walk with the sure rhythm of perfectly adapted step.
“How well we walk together!” Nancy said, suddenly breaking the silence.
“Yes,” St. Jacques assented briefly. “I have always noticed it.”
Some men would have used her random words as the theme for a sentimental speech. To St. Jacques, they were too obvious; emotion should not be wasted upon anything so matter of fact. Long since, Nancy had become accustomed to that phase of his mind. It gave a certain restfulness to their intercourse to know that St. Jacques would never read unintended meanings into her simplest utterances. At first, she had supposed him too stolid, too earnestly intent upon his own ends to waste sentiment upon herself. Lately, she had begun to doubt; and she confessed to herself that the doubt was sweet.
“You said you were cross, to-day?” St. Jacques broke the silence, this time.
“Yes, detestably.”
“For any especial reason?”
“How uncomplimentary of you to suggest that I am ever cross without reason!” Nancy rebuked him.
“What is the reason?” he asked coolly.
“There are several of them, all tangled up together.”
“And, as usual, Barth is one of them,” St. Jacques supplemented.
“Perhaps; and Mr. Brock is another,” Nancy replied unexpectedly.
“Brock? What has he done?”
“Nothing. I did it. At least, I tried to lecture him for playing tricks on Mr. Barth, and—”
“One is always at liberty to play tricks with a monkey,” St. Jacques interpolated quietly.
“Mr. Barth isn’t a monkey,” Nancy retorted.
“No? Then what is he?”
“The best little Englishman that ever lived,” she answered promptly.
The lower lip of St. Jacques rolled out into his odd little smile.
“Then the game surely ought to be in the hands of the French,” he responded.
“You’re not fair to Mr. Barth,” Nancy said, as she stooped to pull off a spray of scarlet maple leaves from a bush at her feet.
“Perhaps not. Neither are you.”
“Yes, I am. He hasn’t a more loyal friend in America, M. St. Jacques.”
“I know that. It is not always fair to be too loyal.”
“Why not?”
“Because it makes one wonder whether the game is worth the candle,” the Frenchman replied imperturbably. “One doesn’t fly to defend the strongest spot on the city wall.”
Nancy looked up into his dark face.
“No; and, in the same way, I’ve not fought a battle in your behalf since we met.”
“No?”
“At least—” she added hurriedly, as she recalled stray sentences of her talk with Barth, that morning. “But in a way you have told the truth. I have fought Mr. Barth’s battles with you all, until I sometimes feel as if I were wholly responsible for the man.”
“Then why not let him fight his own battles?”
A torn red leaf fluttered from Nancy’s fingers.
“Because he won’t. It’s not that he is a coward; it’s not that he is conceited or too sure of himself. It is only that he is like a great, overgrown child who never stops to think of the impression he is making. Sometimes it is refreshing; sometimes it makes one long to box him up and send him back to be tethered out on a chain attached to Westminster Abbey. Even that wouldn’t do, though, for the Poets’ Corner has made room for an American or two. Mr. Barth is queer and innocent and, just now and then, superlatively stupid. And yet, M. St. Jacques, I don’t believe he ever had an ignoble idea from the day of his birth up to to-day. He is absolutely generous and high-minded, and one can forgive a good deal for the sake of that.”
Flushed with her eager championship, she paused and smiled up into her companion’s eves. His answering smile drove the gravity from his face.
“Yes,” he assented; “and, from your very persistence, you imply that there is a good deal to forgive.”
“Something, perhaps,” she assented in her turn; “but it is largely negative. Meanwhile, he isn’t fair game for you and Mr. Brock.”
“Why not?”
“Because he believes everything you tell him; because it never once enters his mind that you would find it worth your while to torment him. If he lets you alone, he expects you to do the same by him.”
St. Jacques made no answer. With his dark eyes fixed on the broad river at his right hand, he marched steadily along by Nancy’s side until the quaint little roadside cross of temperance was far behind them. Then he said abruptly,—
“Miss Howard, I wish I knew just how well you like that fellow.”
Nancy’s thoughts, like her steps, had lain parallel to his. She responded now without hesitation,—
“I wish I knew, myself; but I don’t.”
For an instant, St. Jacques removed his eyes from the river. He smiled, as he moved them back again.
Nancy’s next words showed that her mind had taken a backward leap.
“You said you were walking to tire yourself?” she said interrogatively.
“Yes. Am I also tiring you?” St. Jacques answered, with instant courtesy.
“No. I always dislike the turning around to go home by the same road.”
“Then we can walk on to Beauport church, and take the tram back,” he suggested.
“As you like,” she agreed. “But why tire yourself?”
The thin, firm lips shut into a resolute line. Then St. Jacques replied briefly,—
“I have been lying awake too much for my pleasure.”
“Thinking of your sins?” Nancy asked gayly.
“Yes, and of some other things.”
“Pleasant things, I hope.”
The Frenchman’s brows contracted.
“I have had dreams that were pleasanter.”
Nancy stole a sidelong glance at him, saw the expression in his eyes, and, turning, looked him full in the face.
“M. St. Jacques,” she said quietly; “something is wrong.”
He smiled, as he shook his head; but his eyes did not light.
“There is no use of denying it. I have been a nurse, you know,” she persisted laughingly; “and I have learned to watch for symptoms. Men don’t frown like that and beetle their brows, without some cause or other. Does something worry you; or aren’t you feeling well?”
Without breaking his even pace, St. Jacques turned and looked steadily into her earnest, sympathetic face. This time, his dark eyes lighted in response to the friendly look in her own.
“Perhaps it may be a little of both,” he answered quietly. “Even then, there is no reason one should be a worry to one’s friends.”
The pause which followed was a short one. Then St. Jacques roused himself and laughed.
“Really, Miss Howard,” he added, as he brushed his thick hair backward from the scarlet gash in his forehead; “it is only that I started with headache, this morning. I was too dull for work; but either Nurse Howard or the Good Sainte Anne has made me forget it.”
And Nancy smiled back at him in token of perfect understanding. She had not heard his last inaudible words,—
“Or perhaps it may be the work of good Saint Joseph.”
In fact, Nancy Howard as yet had gained no inkling of the especial attributes of Saint Joseph, nor did she suspect the part that the good old saint was beginning to play in the coming events of her life. To Nancy’s mind, May was always May. So long as it lasted, there was no reason for looking forward into the coming month of June. The future tense was created solely for those whose present was not absolutely good.