Confronted by a tea-tray and a Britisher in combination, Nancy Howard was conscious of a certain abashment.
At home in New York, she was accustomed to administer informal tea by means of a silver ball and a spirit lamp. These two diminutive pots, the one of water and the other of tea, left her in a blissful state of uncertainty whether she was to measure them out, half and half, or, emptying the teapot at the first round, fill it up with the water in the hopes of decocting a feeble second cup. Moreover, Nancy preferred lemon in her tea, and, worst of all, there were no sugar tongs. Nancy wondered vaguely whether Englishwomen were wont to make tea in brand-new gloves, or whether Englishmen were less finical than their transatlantic brethren.
Barth, his glasses on his nose, watched her intently. His very intentness increased her abashment. It had been at his suggestion that they had gone to the little tea shop, that afternoon, and Nancy had no wish to bring disgrace either upon Barth or herself, in the presence of those of Quebec’s fair daughters who, at the tables around them, were sipping tea and gossip by turns.
Devoutly praying that she might not upset the cream jug, nor forget to call the sugarbowl abasin, Nancy at last succeeded in filling Barth’s cup.
“How scriptural!” he observed, as he took it from her hand.
“In what way?”
He pointed to the pale ring of overflow in the saucer.
“It runneth over,” he quoted gravely.
Nancy developed a literal turn of mind. She did it now and then; it was always unexpected, and it left her companion of the moment in the conversational lurch.
“That means happiness, not tea,” she said calmly.
Barth looked at her inquiringly. Then, with unwonted swiftness, he rallied.
“Sometimes the two are synonymous,” he said quietly.
But Nancy turned wayward.
“Not when they are watered down. But you must admit that Americans give good measure.”
Barth smiled across the table at her, in manifest content.
“Of both,” he asserted, as he stirred his tea.
“Have a biscuit,” Nancy advised him suddenly.
“A—Would you like me to order some? I dare say they have them out there.”
Nancy rested her elbows on the table with a protesting bump.
“There you go Britishing me again!” she said hotly. “You said you wouldn’t do it. Even if I am an American, I do know enough not to saycracker. That was one of the few lessons I learned at my mother’s knee. But there aren’t any cracker-biscuits here. I was referring to these others.”
Barth glanced anxiously about the table. Aside from the tray, there were two plates upon the table, and one of the two held tiny strips of toasted bread. All told, there were exactly eight of the strips, each amounting to a mouthful and a half, and Nancy had just been out at the Cove Fields, playing golf.
Nancy pointed to the other plate.
“I mean those—biscuits,” she said conclusively and with emphasis.
“Those? Oh. But those aren’t biscuits.”
“What do you call them, then? Buns?” Nancy inquired, with scathing curiosity.
“Buns? Oh, no. Those are scones.”
This time, Nancy fairly bounced in her chair.
“They are nothing in this world but common, every-day American soda biscuits,” she said, as she helped herself to the puffiest and the brownest. “You are in America now, Mr. Barth, and there is no sense in your putting British names to our cooking. Will you have a biscuit?”
“Oh, yes. But really, you know, they are scones,” he protested. “My mother nearly always has them.”
Nancy cast anxious eyes at the drop of molten butter that was trickling along the base of her thumb.
“And so do we,” she replied firmly; “only we eat them at breakfast, with a napkin. I don’t mean that we actually eat the napkin,” she explained hastily, in mercy for the limitations of her companion’s understanding. “But, really, these are very buttery.”
Barth sucked his forefinger with evident relish.
“Oh, rather!” he assented. “That’s what makes them so good.”
Nancy furtively rescued her handkerchief from her temporary substitute for a pocket. Then, bending forward, she arranged four of the strips of toast around the margin of her saucer.
“What’s that for?” Barth queried, at a loss to know whether the act was another Americanism, or merely a Nancyism pure and simple.
“We are going to go halves on our rations,” Nancy answered coolly. “I am just as hungry as you are, and I don’t propose to have you eating more than your share of things.”
“Would you like to have me order some more scones?” he asked courteously.
For the space of a full minute, Nancy bestowed her entire attention upon her teacup. Then she lifted the white of one eye to Barth’s questioning face.
“Oh, rather!” she responded nonchalantly.
At the tables around them, Quebec’s fair daughters paused in their tea and their gossip to cast a questioning glance in the direction of Barth’s mirth. As a rule, masculine mirth had scant place in the cosy little tea shop. In summer, it was visited by a procession of American tourists who imbibed its tea in much the same solemn spirit as they breathed the incense of the Basilica, inhaled the crisp breeze over Cape Diamond and tasted the vigorous brew that ripened in the vaults of the old intendant’s palace. When the tourists had betaken themselves southward and Quebec once more began to resume its customary life, the shop became a purely feminine function. It was an ideal place for a dish of gossip in the autumnal twilight. The walls hung thick with ancient plates and mirrors, venerable teapots and jugs stood in serried ranks along the shelf about the top of the room, and a quaint assortment of rugs nearly covered the floor. Here and there about the wide room were scattered little claw-footed tables whose shiny tops were covered with squares of homespun linen, brown and soft as a bit of Indian pongee. Not even the blazing electric lights could give an air of modernness to the place, and Nancy, in the intervals of her struggles with the tray, looked about her with complete content.
Barth possessed certain of the attributes of a successful general. Wide experience had taught him to administer fees freely and, as a rule, with exceeding discretion. As a result, he and Nancy were in possession of the most desirable table in the room, close beside the deep casement overlooking Saint Louis Street. Nancy, the light falling full on her eager face, over her radiant hair and on her dark cloth gown, could watch at her will the loitering passers in the street beneath, or the idle groups at the tables around her. Barth, his own face in shadow, could see but one thing. That one thing, however, was quite enough, for it was Nancy.
More than a week had passed since the morning in the market. To Mr. Cecil Barth, the week had seemed like a year, and yet shorter than many a single day of his past experience. Their walk homeward from the market had been by way of Saint Roch and the old French fortifications, and their conversation had been as devious as their path. Nevertheless, Barth, as he sat in his room applying liniment and red flannel to his aching ankle, felt that they had been moving straight towards a perfect understanding and good-fellowship. He had left Nancy, the night before, convinced of her generosity, but equally convinced that the worst hour of his life had been the hour when he took the train for Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré. Now, as he meditatively contemplated the pool of liniment on the carpet at his feet, he acknowledged to himself that the Good Sainte Anne had wrought a mighty series of miracles in his behalf, and he offered up a prayer, as devout as it was incoherent, that she might not remove her favor until she had wrought the mightiest miracle of all. Then, his prayer ended and his ankle anointed, he fell to whistling contentedly to himself as he tied up his shoe and brushed his yellow hair in preparation for dinner.
As far as possible, for the next week, he had been a fixture at Nancy’s side. As yet, much walking was out of the question for him; but, within the narrow limits of the city wall, or under the roof of The Maple Leaf, neither Brock nor St. Jacques were able to sever him from his self-imposed connection with Nancy’s apron string. He took small part in the conversation; with Brock, at least, he manifested a complete indifference to the course of events. It was merely that he was there, and that there he meant to stay, filling in the hiatuses of Nancy’s time, answering her lightest appeals for attention and now and then adding a pithy word of support to even her most wayward opinions. It was not the first time that an invading British force had encamped about a fortress at Quebec. Wolfe at the head of his army showed no more gritty determination to win than did that quiet, simple-minded Britisher, Mr. Cecil Barth.
And, as the October days crept by, Nancy Howard grew increasingly nervous, St. Jacques increasingly annoyed, and Reginald Brock increasingly amused at the whole situation.
That morning, Barth had sat for a long hour, staring thoughtfully at the yellow-striped paper of his room, while he pondered the entire case. One by one, he passed over the events of the past six weeks in detailed review. He recalled those first days in Quebec, when his one idea had been to avoid the unsought society of the whole cordial American tribe. He bethought himself contentedly of his first aversion for Adolphe St. Jacques, which had been coördinate, in point of time, with his introduction to the dining-room of The Maple Leaf. He remembered the sunshiny morning which, following on the heels of a week of drizzle, had lured him forth to Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré and to his ultimate destruction.
Up to that time, his memories were orderly and logical. From that point onward, they fell into chaos. Days of grinding pain and intense dreariness were lightened by the sound of Nancy’s low voice and the touch of Nancy’s firm, supple fingers upon his injured foot. True, she had been an American; but, even at that early stage of his experience, it had begun to dawn upon Mr. Cecil Barth that, under proper conditions and in their proper places, Americans might have certain pleasing attributes. Then Nancy had left him. In the lonely days which followed, Barth had acknowledged to himself that, for Americans of a proper type, the proper conditions and the proper places bore direct connection with his own individual bottle of liniment. The acknowledgment was reached in the midst of his own efforts to establish relations with his own ankle which, all at once, seemed to him peculiarly remote and elusive. And then? Then he had returned to The Maple Leaf, and had found Nancy there, and she was the same Nancy, and there was a very jolly little tea shop in Saint Louis Street. At that point in his musings, Mr. Cecil Barth had seized his cap and rushed down the stairs of his ducal home.
Only once, as he was crossing through the Ring, did it occur to his mind, as a possible factor in the case, that, though a younger son, his departure for America had been attended by the wailing of a large chorus of mothers. Even then, he dismissed the thought as unworthy of Nancy and of himself. Details of that kind entered into the present situation not at all.
Fate was all in his favor, that morning. He found Nancy quite alone, and, as a result of his finding her, Nancy had been confronted by the tea-tray and the Britisher in combination.
“I don’t see what you are laughing at,” she said plaintively, in answer to Barth’s merriment. “I am only trying to make my meaning unmistakable to you.”
Barth laughed again.
“Oh, in time you would make a fairly good Englishwoman,” he said reassuringly.
Only Nancy’s super-acute ear could have discovered the note of condescension in his voice. She set down her teacup with a thump.
“Thank you; but I have no aspirations in that direction,” she responded shortly.
“How strange!” Barth observed, as he took another scone, opened it and peered in to see which was the more buttery side.
“I don’t see anything strange at all,” Nancy argued. “Who wants to be English?”
Barth shut up the scone like a box, and laid it down on the edge of his saucer.
“I do.”
“Well, you are. You ought to be satisfied.”
In hot haste, Barth felt about for his glasses; but they were tangled in his buttons, and he missed them.
“Oh, rather!” he assented hurriedly. “Do have another scone.”
Notwithstanding her indignation, Nancy laughed. Barth’s accent was so like that of an elderly uncle bribing a naughty child to goodness by means of a stick of candy.
“Thank you, I always like hot biscuits,” she assented. Then, for the second time, she put her elbows on the table and sat resting her chin upon her clasped hands. “Mr. Barth,” she said meditatively; “has it ever occurred to you that I may possibly be proud of having been born an American?”
Barth peered up at her in near-sighted curiosity.
“Oh, no,” he answered.
Nancy’s eyes were fixed thoughtfully upon him, taking in every detail of his earnest face, honest and boyish, and likable withal.
“Well,” she reiterated slowly; “I am.”
“And you wouldn’t rather be English, if you could?” Barth queried, with an eagerness for which she was at a loss to account.
“No. Why should I?”
He sat looking steadily at her, while the scarlet color mounted across his cheeks and brow. Then even Nancy’s ears could not fail to distinguish the minor cadence in his voice, as he said, in slow regret,—
“I—I am sorry. I really can’t see why.”
“And still,” Dr. Howard added cheerily; “I wouldn’t give up hope yet.”
Adolphe St. Jacques turned from a listless contemplation of the habitant in the courtyard, and looked the doctor full in the face.
“You think—?” he said interrogatively.
The doctor’s nod was plainly reluctant.
“Yes; but I do not know. It is impossible to tell. If I were in your place, I would hold on as long as I could, on the chance. Meanwhile, take things as easily as you can, and don’t worry.”
“It is sometimes harder to take things easily than to—”
St. Jacques was interrupted by a knock at the door, followed by a call from Nancy.
“May I come in, daddy?”
Hastily the young Frenchman turned to the doctor.
“And you won’t speak to her about it yet?” he urged.
“No. I promise you to wait until you give me permission.”
“Thank you,” St. Jacques answered. “It is better to keep silent for the present. Still, it is a relief to have told you, and to know your opinion.”
“Oh, daddy, I’m coming. I want to talk to you,” Nancy reiterated.
Noiselessly the doctor slid back the bolt on the panelled door, just as Nancy turned the knob. It was done so deftly that the girl pushed open the door and entered the room, without in the least suspecting that she had walked in upon a secret conference.
“You here?” she said, nodding gayly to St. Jacques.
“Yes; but I am just going away.”
“Don’t hurry. I only came to ask my father a question or two. How much longer are we going to stay here, daddy?”
The doctor pressed together, tip to tip, the fingers of his two hands.
“I am sorry, Nancy,” he answered a little deprecatingly; “but I am afraid it will take me fully three weeks longer to finish my work.”
Her face fell.
“Is that all?”
“But I thought you were in a hurry to get home.”
“I was; but I’m not,” she answered, in terse contradiction.
St. Jacques laughed, as he bowed in exaggerated gratitude.
“Canada thanks you for the compliment, Miss Howard.”
“It’s not so much Canada as Quebec, not so much Quebec as it is The Maple Leaf,” she replied. “It is going to be a great wrench, when I tear myself out of this place. But it will be three weeks at least, daddy?”
“Fully that.”
Nancy twisted the letter in her hand.
“I’ve heard again from Joe, and he wants to come, the last of the week,” she said slowly.
St. Jacques caught the note of discontent in her voice and smiled. It escaped the doctor, however, and he made haste to answer,—
“But we are always glad to see Joe. How long will he stay?”
“Two or three days. He has never been here, and he expects me to show him the sights of Quebec. Imagine me, M. St. Jacques, doing the tourist patter, as I take him the grand round!” Then she turned back to her father. “Joe obviously has something on his mind, daddy. You don’t suppose it is a case of Persis Routh.”
The doctor laughed.
“Jealous, Nancy?”
“Of course I am. Joe is my especial property, you know. Besides, I don’t like Persis.”
The doctor laughed again.
“Neither do I. Still, she is wonderfully pretty.”
“Yes,” Nancy added disconsolately; “and she doesn’t have red hair and a consequent pain in her temper. Daddy?”
“Yes.” With his back to the two young people, the doctor was cramming some papers into his limp portfolio.
“Were you going to walk with me, this afternoon?”
“No, my dear; I wasn’t.”
“But you promised.”
“When?”
“At dinner, yesterday. You promised that, if I would let you off then, you would go with me, to-day.”
“Did I? I am sorry. Really, Nancy, I can’t go.”
“But it is a perfect day.”
“I don’t doubt it; but I have an appointment with the ghost of Monseigneur Laval. Both his time and mine are precious.”
“But I want to go,” Nancy said, with a suspicion of a pout.
“Where?”
“Out to Sillery.”
The doctor looked at her in benign rebuke.
“Nancy, it is eight miles to Sillery and back, and your father is short of wind. Even if Monseigneur Laval’s ghost were not calling me, I couldn’t be tempted to take any such tramp as that.”
Just then, though apparently by chance, St. Jacques stepped forward. The doctor’s eyes lighted, as they fell upon this possible substitute.
“You’d better ask M. St. Jacques to go, Nancy. I was just advising him to be out in the open air as much as possible.”
Nancy’s spine stiffened slightly, but quite perceptibly. Much as she liked St. Jacques and enjoyed his society, it was no part of her plan to accept his escort, when it was offered by a third person.
“M. St. Jacques has lectures and things to go to, daddy,” she said, with an accent of calm rebuke.
St. Jacques started to speak; but the doctor forestalled him.
“Then he’d better cut the lectures. There may be such a thing as working too hard.”
Nancy felt a swift longing to administer personal chastisement to her father. She wondered if good men were, of their very goodness, bound to be unduly guileless. She bit her lip. Then she smiled sweetly at St. Jacques.
“But M. St. Jacques may have other plans for the afternoon.”
This time, the Frenchman took the matter into his own hands.
“As soon as it becomes my turn to speak—” he interpolated.
“Well?” Nancy inquired obdurately.
“I should like to say that I have nothing to do, this afternoon; that I was wishing for a walk, and that no other comrade would be half so enjoyable as Miss Nancy Howard.”
“Oh,” Nancy responded. “Is that all?”
“It is enough. Will you go?”
She hesitated.
“If my father hasn’t decoyed you into the trap, quite against your will.”
St. Jacques raised his brows.
“Did you ever know me to say things for the mere sake of being polite?”
“No,” Nancy said honestly; “I never did.”
“Then where is your hat?”
Nancy laughed. Then she departed to wrestle with her hat pins, while the good doctor rubbed his hands with pleasure over the successful tact with which he had won his uninterrupted afternoon.
A round hour later, they stood on the church steps, looking down upon Sillery Cove. One starlit night, long years before, a young general, indomitable in the presence of mortal disease as in the face of an impregnable foe, had dropped down the river to land at that spot and, scaling the cliff, to fight his way to his victorious death. Now the dropping tide had left a broad beach, and the Cove lay in heavy shadow; but, beyond, the open stream flashed blue in the sunlight. Full to the northward, the windows in the rifle factory caught the light and tossed it back to them, dazzling as the glory which Wolfe, landing in the Cove, was fated to find awaiting him upon those selfsame Plains. Still farther beyond, the rock city lay, a gray mound against the vivid blue of the distant hills, and above its crest, even from afar, Nancy could distinguish the blood-red dot which flutters each day from dawn to dusk above the cannon on the King’s Bastion.
“Do you care to see the inside of the church?” St. Jacques asked her.
“Of course. I may never come here again, and I am growing to love your churches,” Nancy answered, suddenly calling herself back from a dream of the day when the golden lilies floated above the Citadel, and of the night when the fleet of English boats crept noiselessly up the river to face—and win—a forlorn hope of victory. Then abruptly she faced St. Jacques. “Bigot or no Bigot, right or wrong, my sympathies are sometimes with the French,” she said. “Wolfe was a hero; but I can’t help siding with the under dog, even if he is coated with gold and fat with bones.”
St. Jacques smiled at her outburst.
“And the under dog is always grateful,” he replied briefly. “Come!”
Cap in hand, he led the way into the empty church, made his swift genuflection before the altar, and turned to look at Nancy. The girl stood a step or two in the rear, glancing about her at the arching roof and at the decorations of the chancel. St. Jacques hesitated.
“If Mademoiselle will excuse me,” he said then, for the first time in their acquaintance speaking in his native tongue. And, without waiting for Nancy to reply, he went swiftly forward, bowed for a moment at the altar rail, then turned and knelt before the first of the painted Stations of the Cross.
It was done with the simple unconsciousness of a child to whom his religion was a matter of every-day experience. Nevertheless, as Nancy stepped noiselessly into a pew and rested her cheek on her clasped fingers, she knew by instinct that her companion was in no normal mood. It was not for nothing that Nancy had watched the sturdy little Frenchman during the past month. Watching him now, she could see the pallor underneath his swarthiness, see the sudden weakening of his resolute chin, and the pitiful curve of the thin lips. Then, all at once, St. Jacques covered his face with his slim, dark hands, and Nancy could see nothing more. Involuntarily she wondered whether she might not already have seen too much.
St. Jacques was smiling, when he joined her at the door; but they both were rather silent, as they went down the interminable flight of steps which leads to Champlain Street, and came out on the broad beach of sand that borders the Cove when the tide is low. Even during their brief delay in the church, the short afternoon had waned perceptibly, and the sun had dropped beneath the crest of the point. Behind their backs, the bluff rose in a wall of deep purple rock, at their right it was splashed with an occasional dot of color where some sheltered maple still held its crown of ruddy leaves. The river beside them flowed on noiselessly, swiftly, relentlessly as time itself, in a level sheet of steely gray. But, beyond the gray, relentless flowing, there rose the stately cliffs of Lévis, solid, permanent and bathed in a glow of mingled purple and gold.
As they rounded the Cove with its rotting, moss-grown piers, and reached the point whence Champlain Street runs in a straight-cut line at the base of the cliff, St. Jacques came out of his silence, and began to talk once more. At first, Nancy stared at him in amazement. In all their acquaintance, she had seen him in no such mood of rattling gayety. The words flew from his tongue, now English, now French, framing themselves into every conceivable sort of quip and whim and jest. He laughed at Nancy for her lusty Americanism, predicted her conversion to Canadian life and ways, made sport of his own experiences when he had come, a stranger, to Laval and Quebec. He laughed about Barth and eulogized him by turns, paused to give a word of hearty admiration to Brock, and then rushed on into a merry account of his boyhood among the little brothers and sisters in the quiet French home at Rimouski. Then, as they mounted the little rise beneath Cape Diamond, his merriment fell from him like the falling of a mask.
“Miss Howard,” he said suddenly; “do you remember the sword of Damocles?”
“Yes,” she assented, at a loss for the key to this new mood. “What of it?”
He pointed up to the cliff.
“That. They were all at supper, resting and happy after the day, playing with their little children, perhaps, when the rock fell upon them. There was no warning, and there were tons and tons of the rock. Seventy-eight were found, and their coffins were placed together in one huge pile before the altar rails. Nobody knows how many more are buried under this little hill in the road. It was impossible to move away the stone; they could only level it as best they could, and build above it a road for the living to walk on.”
Nancy shivered. All at once she became aware of the chill that swept in from the river, of the growing dusk which the scattered electric lights were powerless to break. Above her, the cliff towered in sinister, threatening dignity; and the houses below leaned to its face impotently, as if their weakness appealed to its strength for mercy and support.
St. Jacques drew a deep breath.
“It is no easy thing to live on steadily under an overhanging fate,” he said, half to himself.
But Nancy heard and wondered.
Then, from the heart of the dusk far up the river, there came a distant throbbing. It grew nearer, more distinct, until they could make out the dim outline of a mighty ocean-going steamer. In steady majesty it swept down upon them, glowing with lights from stem to stern, passed them by and, only a few hundred feet beyond them, paused to drift idly on the current, as it sent out its shrill call for a pilot.
The sudden whistle roused St. Jacques from his absorption. He shook himself free from his mood, and faced Nancy again with a laughing face.
“Come,” he said. “Supper is calling, and we must hurry.”
Merrily they picked their way along the darkening tunnel of Little Champlain Street, merrily they slid upward in the dismal wooden recesses of the elevator, merrily they tramped along Sainte Anne Street and halted at the door of The Maple Leaf.
On the threshold, Nancy faced St. Jacques with merry eyes.
“Thank you so much for my glorious walk,” she said eagerly. “Confess that it has been a most jovial occasion.”
But all the merriment had fled from the dark eyes of St. Jacques.
“Perhaps,” he assented gravely. “But a true Frenchman often smiles most gayly when he has been hardest hit.” And, cap in hand, he stood aside to let Nancy pass in before him.
International complications had arisen at the supper table. Confronted by an English menu, the four elderly Frenchmen had held a hasty consultation over a new item which had appeared thereon. Their minds were strictly logical; they had come to the conclusion that sweetbreads were a species of cake, and they had ordered accordingly.
“Mais oui,” one of them observed, as he gravely prodded the resultant tidbit with his knife and fork. “Vat ees eet?”
“Them’s the sweetbreads,” responded the waitress, who was an Hibernian and scanty of grammar.
There followed an anxious pause, while four prodding forks worked in unison.
“Huitres?” suggested one Frenchman.
“Côtelettes?” added the second.
“C’est bon,” said the third, more daring than his companions.
But the fourth pushed aside his plate.
“C’est dommage!” he exclaimed, and Nancy, who shared his opinion, took refuge in her napkin.
She emerged to find Brock just taking his place beside her, and she looked up with a welcoming smile. After the too obvious devotion of the Englishman, after the self-repressed, high-strung temperament of St. Jacques, Nancy was always conscious of a certain sense of relief in the society of the jovial Canadian. It is no slight gift to be always merry, always thoughtful of the comfort of one’s companions, always at peace with one’s self and with the world. This gift Brock possessed in its entirety. Without him at her elbow, Nancy would have passed many a lonely hour in Quebec. An own brother could not have been more undemonstratively careful to heed her slightest wish. Best of all, Brock had a trick of placing himself at her service, not at all as if he were in love with her; but merely as if it were the one thing possible for him to do.
Just once, their friendship had lacked little of coming to grief. On the evening after the market episode, Nancy had gathered together her courage and had read Brock a long lecture upon his sins. An hour later, she had retired from the contest, worsted. With imperturbable good nature, Brock had assented to her charges against him. Then, swiftly turning the tables, he had summed up all of Barth’s vulnerable points and had accused her of increasing their number by an injudicious system of coddling. Nancy’s hair was red, her temper by no means imperturbable. She had defended herself with vigor and clearness. Then, with snapping eyes, she had stalked away out of the room, leaving Brock, serene and smiling, in undisturbed possession of the field. The next morning, Brock had been called out of town on business. When he returned, two days later, Nancy had met him with whole-hearted smiles. Without Brock’s genial presence, the atmosphere of The Maple Leaf became altogether too fully charged with electricity for her liking. From that time onward, Nancy remembered her hair, and fought shy of argument with the tall Canadian whose very imperturbability only rendered him the more maddening foe.
“You look as if you had heard some good news,” she assured him, even while he was unfolding his napkin.
Brock smiled with conscious satisfaction.
“So I have.”
“Tell me.”
“Not now.”
“How long must I wait?”
“A week.”
“How unkind of you, when you know I am consumed with curiosity!”
With the butterknife in his hand, Brock turned. Nancy, as she looked far into the depths of those clear gray eyes of his, was suddenly aware that all was right with Brock’s world. Moreover, she was aware that he was as eager as she herself for the week to pass away and give him the chance to speak.
“Then I really must wait,” she assented to the look in his eyes. “A week is a long time. Meanwhile, I have some news.”
“Good, I hope.”
“Certainly. We are expecting a guest, next Friday.”
“How unlucky for him!” Brock observed.
“Are you superstitious?”
“No; but you are.”
She raised her brows in question, and Brock answered the unspoken words.
“Otherwise, why do you carry a pocket edition of Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré?”
“How do you know I do?”
“Because it fell out on the floor just now, when I upset your coat. It is a very superior little Sainte Anne, made of silver.”
This time, Nancy had the grace to blush. Only the day before, she had come into possession of the dainty toy.
“That’s not superstition,” she answered; “it is merely an effigy of my patron saint.”
Brock nodded.
“For the name? I suspect I could tell who chose it.”
Again Nancy’s brows rose inquiringly.
“If you like,” she said composedly.
“Barth, of course.”
“No. I knew you would say so. Now you have forfeited your one guess,” she responded smilingly, yet with an odd little tugging at her heart, as she recalled the face of St. Jacques, as he had laid the little silver image into her outstretched palm.
“Make her your patron saint as well,” he had said briefly. “The time may come when I shall need the prayers of her name-child to help me at her shrine.”
And Nancy, looking straight into his dark eyes, had given the promise that he asked.
But now, with full intention, she was seeking to drive St. Jacques from her mind.
“You don’t ask about our guest,” she added.
“No.” Brock buttered his bread with calm deliberation. “I knew you would tell me, when you were ready.”
She fell into the trap laid by his apparent indifference.
“I am ready now. It is an old friend of ours from New York, Mr. Joseph Churchill.”
“So glad he is an old friend,” Brock responded coolly.
“Why?”
“Because he won’t complicate things, as a young man would do.”
“Mr. Churchill is twenty-five,” Nancy remarked a little severely.
“We call that rather young up here. Will he stop long?”
“A day or two.”
Brock helped himself to marmalade.
“And he comes, next Friday?”
“Yes.”
“Right, oh! See that he gets out of the way by Monday. The Maple Leaf is quite full enough, as it is.”
“But he is going to the Chateau,” Nancy explained.
“Lucky fellow to have money enough! In his place, I should probably have to seek the Lower Town. What are you going to do with him?”
Nancy smiled ingratiatingly.
“Just what I was meaning to ask you, Mr. Brock.”
Brock’s answering laugh sent Barth’s fingers in search of the string of his eyeglasses.
“There’s a snug little cell empty up at the Citadel,” he suggested. “Take him up there and let him see how he likes military hospitality. He could put in a very instructive two days, studying the position of the Bunker Hill cannon.”
Two days later, Nancy stood in the extreme bow of the Lévis ferry. Beside her, blond and big and altogether bonny, stood Mr. Joseph Churchill, obviously an American, equally obviously from New York. At the stern, in the lee of the deck house, Dr. Howard was doing his best to shelter himself from the cutting wind.
Nancy and the New Yorker were in full tide of conversation. No hint of regret had marked Nancy’s manner, as she had stood scanning the doors of the sleeping-cars. Before Lévis was a river-breadth behind, she had gathered from her companion a detailed account of the early gayeties of the season, had filled his ears with the more sober charms of quaint Quebec, and had drawn a vivid outline of the more salient characteristics of Mr. Reginald Brock. Of Barth and St. Jacques, she had omitted to make any mention.
Upon one point, the doctor was rigid. Churchill might register at the Chateau, if he insisted. He must take his meals with them at The Maple Leaf. And so it came about that Barth’s first intimation that a guest was expected, occurred when he looked up from his tea, that night, to greet Nancy as she came into the room, and discovered the huge, sleek American at Nancy’s side.
“Oh, by George!” remarked Mr. Cecil Barth, and promptly dropped his bread, butter-side down, into the starched recesses of his immaculate white waistcoat.
Later, he sought the parlor. Over his shoulder, he had heard the gay voices of Brock and Nancy, and the deeper chest tones of the burly American. He felt an acute longing to put on his glasses and, screwing himself about in his chair, to take a prolonged stare at the intruder. His hurried glance had given him the impression of vast stature combined with the workmanship of an unexceptionable tailor. But where did the fellow come from? What was the fellow doing there? And what, oh, by George, what was the fellow’s connection with Nancy?
“I’d like to punch him,” Mr. Cecil Barth muttered vengefully to himself. “Oh, rather!”
He found the parlor quite deserted. St. Jacques, who had met Churchill earlier in the afternoon, had betaken himself to his room. Brock and the Howards, with their guest, were still at the table. Accordingly, Barth pulled a book from his pocket and sat himself down to wait. He waited long. When at last Nancy led the way into the parlor, Barth was surprised to miss Brock from her train. Under such conditions, it was inconceivable to him that the Canadian should not have stood his ground. The parlor was common property. He himself would sit there forever, rather than let himself be ousted by any American, least of all an American who would bedeck himself with jewelry as uncouth as the hymnbook of blue and gold that dangled from this American’s fob. Barth had always heard that Americans were stiffed-necked dissenters. Nevertheless, he had never supposed they would find it needful to advertise their dissent by means of enamelled trinkets. He wrapped himself in his Britishism, and sat tight in his chair, waiting to see what would occur.
Nothing occurred. Nancy gave him her usual friendly smile and nod. Then, crossing the room, she settled herself on a sofa and, making room for Churchill at her side, dropped into animated talk of places and persons who were totally remote from Barth’s previous knowledge. Now and then, she glanced across at him carelessly. Now and then, her huge companion turned and bestowed upon him a rebuking stare which said, plainly as words could have done, that his further presence there was needless.
Regardless of the fact that he knew Nancy was fully aware he never read through his glasses, Barth remained stolidly on guard, glasses on nose and nose apparently in his book. Now and then, however, he lowered his book and refreshed himself with a smile at Nancy, or a scowl at the unconscious back of Nancy’s companion.
At length, Nancy could endure the situation no longer. Much as she liked Barth, she could willingly have dispensed with his society, just then. After their weeks of separation, she and Churchill had much to talk over, and she found the presence of an outsider a check upon the freedom of their dialogue. So sure had she been of Barth’s prompt and tactful withdrawal that she had made no effort to introduce him, when they had first entered the room. Her plans for the next day were formed to include the young Englishman. For that one evening, she had intended to give her attention entirely to her guest. Now, however, she saw that an introduction was fast becoming a matter of social necessity, and she tried to prepare the way for it.
During the space of a minute, she permitted the talk with Churchill to lapse. Then, meeting Barth’s eyes above the deckled edges of his book, she smiled across at him in the friendly, informal fashion he had learned to know and to like so well.
“I thought you were bound for the theatre, this evening, Mr. Barth,” she said.
It was a wholly random bullet; but it met its billet. Barth reddened. In his interest in Nancy’s companion, he had entirely forgotten his explicit announcement of his evening’s plan.
“Oh, no,” he answered nonchalantly.
“Then men do occasionally change their minds. Isn’t it a good play?”
“Oh, yes,” he answered again, still more nonchalantly.
Turning slightly, Churchill looked across at the slender, boyish figure at the farther side of the room. His glance was disrespectful, and Barth was keenly conscious of the disrespect. He made a manful effort to assert himself.
“Jolly sort of night, Miss Howard,” was the only bubble that effervesced from his mind.
Nancy felt a wave of petulant sympathy sweeping over her. Long experience of her guest had taught her the meaning of that swift motion of his head and shoulders, and she feared what might follow, both for Barth’s sake and her own. She dreaded any possible injury to the feelings of the young Englishman; she dreaded still more the hearing Churchill’s irreverent comments upon a man whom she had grown proud to number among her loyal friends. Never had Barth appeared more impenetrably dull, never more obdurately British! It was the mockery of fate. Just when she was praying that he might be at his best, he turned monosyllabic, and then completed his disgrace by talking about the weather. Meanwhile her annoyance was forcing all ideas from her own brain, and her answering question was equally banal.
“Is it cold, to-night?”
Barth was not impenetrable, by any means. He felt Nancy’s embarrassment, was keenly alive to her efforts in his behalf. The knowledge only rendered him more tongue-tied than ever; but his blue eyes smiled eagerly back at her, as he responded, with admirable brevity,—
“Oh, rather!”
“Joe, what is it?” Nancy demanded, as she followed her strangling guest out into the hall.
Churchill was walking to and fro, coughing and teary.
“Nancy Howard,” he said, as soon as he could speak; “will you kindly tell me what manner of thing that is?”
Then Nancy asserted herself. Erect and gracious in her dainty evening gown, she turned back and stood on the threshold.
“Mr. Barth,” she said, in a quiet tone of command; “will you please come here and be introduced to my cousin? Mr. Churchill, I want you to meet my friend,” an almost imperceptible pause added emphasis to the word; “my friend, Mr. Cecil Barth.”
“And this,” the guide continued, with the loquacity of his kind; “directly at our feet is the River Saint Lawrence. That building there with the pointed roofs is the Chateau Frontenac, built on the exact site of the old Chateau de Saint Louis. Beyond it, you see the spire of the French Basilica, consecrated in sixteen hundred and sixty-six, and, slightly to the right, are the roofs and spires of Laval.”
“And, right under our noses, the city of Quebec, huddled indiscriminately around The Maple Leaf,” Brock interrupted, as their red-coated escort stopped for breath. “Miss Howard, I wish you hadn’t been quite so generous in your fee.”
“But I am sure it is very interesting,” Churchill observed politely. “Remember that I am a stranger here.”
The guide took the hint and edged towards Churchill’s end of the line.
“This is what is termed the King’s Bastion,” he went on glibly. “Beyond is Cape Diamond, so called from the crystals of quartz that used to be found there. Now they are very rare; but,” with every appearance of anxiety, he fell to searching his pockets; “but I happen to have—”
Again Brock interrupted.
“No use, Thomas Atkins,” he said jovially. “We are too old birds to be caught in that trap.”
Unabashed, the guide let the bits of quartz drop back into his pocket.
“Many ladies admire my buttons,” he said tentatively. “They make interesting hat pins.”
“The ladies, or the buttons?” Nancy queried innocently. “But, thank you, I think you have showed us everything, and we can find our way out alone.” And, leaving the bastion, she led the way back to the tiny cannon of Bunker Hill, where she loyally halted her companions.
A cloudless sky arched above the old gray Citadel, that morning. Inside the walls, the daily routine was going its usual leisurely course. Few visitors were abroad; but an occasional private strayed across the enclosure and, not far from the gate, guard-mounting was just taking place. Nancy watched the new guard as it tramped out into the open, saluted and went into position, its every evolution followed in detail by the stout Newfoundland dog who waddled along at its heels. Then, as the band swung about and marched off for its daily practice, she moved away.
“Come,” she said a little impatiently. “After the glorious past, the present is a bit of anticlimax. Shall we go for a walk?”
Her companions assented, and together they went down into Saint Louis Street and turned towards the terrace. As they passed Barth’s quarters, he unexpectedly appeared upon the steps.
“Whither?” Nancy called blithely, as he lifted his cap.
“To post some letters.”
“Come with us, instead,” she bade him, notwithstanding the murmured protestations which arose from both Brock and Churchill.
To Nancy’s mind, the previous evening had not been altogether a shining success. For half an hour after their introduction, she had dragged the two men through a species of conversation; but there had been a triple sigh of relief as the evening gun had marked the hour for Barth’s departure. Nancy had followed him to the parlor door.
“Good night,” she said cordially there. “We shall see you, in the morning?”
“Oh,—yes. If I can,” Barth answered vaguely.
Then he had made a dejected exit. As he strolled languidly away to his room, he alternated between fears of a possible relapse in his ankle, and mutinous thoughts regarding the hero of Valley Forge.
“Beastly race, those American men!” was the finale of his reflections. “Oh, rather!”
Now, however, his dejection vanished in the face of the sunshiny morning and of Nancy’s greeting.
“Won’t I be in the way?” he asked.
“Why should you?”
“I can’t walk much, you know.”
“But I thought Englishmen were famous for their walking,” Churchill said, as he greeted the young Englishman much as a genial mastiff might salute a youthful pug.
Barth glanced towards Nancy with a confident smile.
“Didn’t Miss Howard tell you?” he asked.
“Tell me what?”
“About the way we first met. I sprained my ankle, and Miss Howard turned into a hired nurse, and took care of me.”
Churchill’s eyes sought Nancy’s scarlet face.
“The deuce she did! Where was this party?”
“This—?”
“This party?”
“Oh, no. It wasn’t a party at all. I was entirely by myself. I have sometimes wondered how she ever chanced to find me in all that crowd.”
“Probably the Good Sainte Anne guided her unworthy namesake,” Nancy responded lightly. “That was where the tragedy occurred.”
“Oh!” Beside Barth’soh, that of Churchill seemed needlessly crisp and curt. “But I thought you were bored to death at Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré, Nancy.”
“That was only at first. Later, events happened.”
“So I should judge. Strange you forgot to mention them!”
“There are unexplained gaps in your own letters,” she reminded him audaciously. “It was only by chance that I heard whom you took out, the night of the Leighton dinner.” Then she turned to the others. “We mustn’t go far, this morning,” she added; “not so much on account of your foot, Mr. Barth, as because of our early dinner. Shall we take ourselves to the terrace?”
High up on the glacis in the lee of the King’s Bastion, they found a belated bit of Indian summer. Nancy dropped down on the crisp, dry turf and, turning, beckoned St. Jacques to her side. Crossing the terrace with Barth, she had seen the Frenchman pacing to and fro beside the rail, and she had answered his wishful greeting with a smile of welcome. Leaving Brock and Churchill to lead the way, Nancy had sauntered idly along in the rear, adjusting her quick step to the frailties of Barth’s ankle, her alert happiness to the darker mood which sat heavily upon her other companion.
“You are not going to fail us, this afternoon, M. St. Jacques?” she asked now.
Silently he shook his head.
“Your cousin has a perfect day,” he said, after a pause.
“And he appreciates it. Already, he declares himself the slave of the place.”
“You are coming with me, in the morning?” St. Jacques inquired.
“I am not sure. I hope we can; but Mr. Churchill is not a very good Catholic,” she answered, with a smile.
St. Jacques’s eyes lighted mirthfully.
“But Sainte Anne is his patron saint?” he questioned.
Nancy shook her head.
“Alas, no! He has shifted his allegiance, and poor Sainte Anne is feeling very much cut up about it.”
“No matter,” St. Jacques answered philosophically. “She is getting her fair share of devotees, and, with France and England at her shrine, she can afford to be content without America.” Then his face darkened. “If only she will be propitious!” he added, with sudden gravity.
Nancy’s hand shut on a tuft of grass at her side. Slowly she had come, during those past days, to the realization of the dual personality of the patron saint of Adolphe St. Jacques. Half human, half divine, the Good Sainte Anne was holding complete sway in the mind of the young Frenchman, just then. Half his unspoken wish was plain to her, half was still beyond her ken. She wondered restlessly when would come the time that she was free to speak. She wondered, too, what were the words she was destined to say.
With a swift motion, St. Jacques settled backward to rest his elbow on the grass at her side. Pushing back his cap, as if its slight weight irritated him, he swept the dark hair from his forehead. Nancy frowned involuntarily as her eyes rested on the angry scar.
“That was a shocking blow,” she said pityingly.
He nodded, with slow thoughtfulness. Then he bit his lip, and shook his hair forward until the scar was completely hidden.
“It might have been worse—perhaps.”
“You’d better ask the Good Sainte Anne to do a miracle on you,” Brock suggested, from his place farther up the slope.
Instantly the dark eyes sought Nancy’s face.
“I have already asked her,” Adolphe St. Jacques answered quietly.
“And what did the lady say?”
The Frenchman’s eyes moved northward and rested upon the purple tops of the far-off Laurentides.
“My novena is not finished. She has yet to make her answer,” he said.
And, for the second time in their acquaintance, Nancy was conscious of the dull tugging at her heart. Forgetful of Barth, watching from the other side, she turned to look straight down into the face of St. Jacques; and Brock, who alone of them all had been taken into the heart of the Frenchman’s secret, felt it no shame to himself when the tears rushed into his clear gray eyes, as he saw the look on Nancy’s face, womanly, earnest, yet all unconscious of impending ill.
It was Churchill who broke the silence. A stranger to them all but Nancy, he yet could not fail to realize the tension of the moment. Nevertheless he assured himself that he had met those symptoms before. Nancy’s path, the past season, had been strewn with similar victims.
“Wonderful view!” he said calmly.
The platitude broke the strain. St. Jacques sat up and put on his cap, and Barth fumbled for his glasses. Above them, Brock openly rubbed his eyes with the bunched-up fingers of his gloves.
“So glad you like it, Joe! It is wonderful; and then it is endeared to me by all manner of associations. Away up there in those blue hills, Mr. Barth sprained his ankle; M. St. Jacques and I spent an afternoon in this road just underneath the cliff, and,” her eyes sought Brock’s eyes mockingly; “and there aren’t ten blocks in the entire city that can’t mark some sort of a skirmish between the American and Canadian forces.”
Brock’s answering shot was prompt.
“It is only that America refuses to be annexed,” he supplemented gravely. “We hope to bring her to terms in time.”
And Barth fell to kicking the turf in moody discontent. Nancy checked him.
“Don’t destroy the glacis of your chief American outpost, Mr. Barth. You may need it sometime to fight off the French from your possessions.”
Her words had been wholly free from any allegorical meaning. Nevertheless, Barth’s heels ground into the turf more viciously than ever, as he made grim answer,—
“Oh, we English need no artificial defenses to fight off the Frenchmen, you know.”
“Sic ’em!” Brock observed impartially. Then he snatched his hat from his head, and, forgetful of their differences, Barth and St. Jacques followed his lead.
Distant and faint from behind the sheltering wall came the strains ofGod Save the King, as the band marched back from practice.
“Strange to hearAmericaup here!” Churchill said idly.
“America?” The Frenchman’s accent was inquiring.
“Yes. That is our national anthem.”
“How long since?” Brock queried coolly.
“Why, always, I suppose.”
Barth bestowed a contemplative stare upon the stranger.
“How very—American!” he observed.
“Of course. We think it is rather characteristic, and are no end proud of it,” Churchill assured him blandly.
Barth sat up, straight and stiff.
“Mr. Churchill, did you ever happen to hear ofGod Save the King?”
“Queen? Oh, beg pardon! She’s dead, and it is a king now. Yes, I’ve heard of it. What about it?”
“That.” Barth swept his little gray cap towards the dying notes of the final phrase. “Your so-calledAmericais only ourGod Save the King.”
“Is it? I’m no musician, and didn’t know. Still, I can’t see that it hurts it, to have started with you. So did we all, if it comes to that.”
“Then you should give us the credit for having originated it,” Brock suggested.
St. Jacques rolled over on his other elbow.
“As it happens, Brock, you didn’t originate it. It came from the other side of the Channel.”
“Oh, rather! But it’s ours,” Barth interposed hastily.
St. Jacques rolled back again.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Barth; but it chances to be French,” he returned quietly. “Lulli wrote it for Louis Quatorze, and England borrowed it without returning thanks.” And then, still leaning on his elbow with his eyes fixed upon Barth, he sang to the end the good old song,—