“Daddy dear?”
Nancy’s accent was a little wishful, as she turned her back on the habitant in the courtyard and faced her father by the dressing-table.
“Yes.” The doctor was absently rummaging among his neckties.
“Can’t you spare time to go out with me, this afternoon?”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. Lorette, or Beaumanoir, or even just up and down the city. You really have seen nothing of Quebec, daddy, and I—once in a while I get lonely.”
The doctor dropped his neckties and looked up sharply.
“Lonely, Nancy? I am sorry. Do you want to go home?”
“Oh, no!” The startled emphasis of her accent left no doubt of its truthfulness.
“Then what is it, child?”
“Nothing; only—It is just as I said. Now and then I feel a little lonesome.”
The doctor smiled at his own reflection in the mirror.
“I thought Brock and the Frenchman looked out for that, Nancy.”
“They do,” she returned desperately; “and that is just what worries me. It makes me feel as if I needed to have some family back of me.”
Gravely and steadily the doctor looked down into her troubled eyes.
“Has anything—?”
Nancy raised her head haughtily, as she answered him.
“No, daddy; trust me for that. The boys are gentlemen, and, besides, they treat me as if I were a mere cousin, or something else quite unromantic. I like them, and I like to talk with them. It is only—”
Her father understood her.
“I think you do not need to be anxious, Nancy. Over the top of my manuscripts, I keep a sharp eye out for my girl. And, besides, it is a rare advantage for you to have the friendship of the Lady. Even if I were not here, I would trust you implicitly to her care.”
Nancy nodded in slow approval.
“Yes, and she is one of us. Sometimes I am half jealous of her. M. St. Jacques is her devoted slave.”
“What about Brock?”
Nancy laughed with a carelessness which was not entirely feigned.
“Mr. Brock burns incense before every woman, young or old. He is adorable to us all, and we all adore him. Still, he never really takes us in earnest, you know.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” the doctor said, with sudden decision.
“You like Mr. Brock?” she questioned.
“Yes. Don’t you?”
“I should be an ungrateful wretch, if I didn’t.” Then she added, “Speaking of ungrateful wretches, daddy, was anything ever more strange than the whole Barth episode?”
“Haven’t you told him yet?”
“Told him! How could I? It is all I can do not to betray myself by accident; I would die rather than tell him deliberately. But I can’t see how the man can help knowing.”
“Extreme egotism coupled with extreme myopia,” the doctor suggested.
“Exactly. If it were one of us alone, I shouldn’t think so much about it; but it is a mystery to me how he can see us both, without having the truth dawn upon him.”
The doctor pondered for a moment.
“Do you know, Nancy, I believe I haven’t once come into contact with the fellow. Except for the dining-room, I’ve not even been into the same room with him. It is really wonderful how little one can see of one’s neighbors.”
Nancy faced back to the window with a jerk.
“And also how much,” she added mutinously.
But the doctor pursued his own train of thought.
“After all, Nancy, it may be our place to make the first advances. We are older—at least, I am—and there are two of us. He may be waiting for us to recognize him. I believe I’ll look him up, this evening, and tell him how we happen to be here.”
Nancy faced out again with a second jerk.
“Daddy, if you dare to do such a thing!”
“Why not? After all, I rather liked Barth.”
“I didn’t.”
“But surely you thought he was a gentleman,” the doctor urged.
“After a fashion,” Nancy admitted guardedly. “Still, now that I have met him, I’d rather let bygones be bygones. It would be maddening, for instance, just when I was sailing past him on my way in to supper, to have him remember how I used to coil strips of red flannel around his aristocratic ankle. No; we’ll let the dead past bury its bandages and water them with its liniment, daddy. If I am ever to know Mr. Cecil Barth now, it must be as a new acquaintance from London, not as my old patient from Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré.”
“And yet,” the doctor still spoke meditatively; “Barth appreciated you, Nancy, and he was certainly grateful.”
The girl laughed wilfully.
“He appreciated his hired nurse, daddy, and he was grateful to me to the extent of paying me my wages. By the way, I’d like that money.”
“For what?”
“I would drop it into the lap of the Good Sainte Anne. It is no small miracle to have delivered a British Lion into the hands of an American and allowed her to minister to his wounded paw. It was a great experience, daddy, and, now I think of it, I would like to reward the saint according to her merits.”
The doctor’s eyes brightened, as he looked at her merry face.
“Wait,” he advised her. “Even now, the miracle may not be complete.”
She ran after him and caught him by the lapels of his collar.
“Oh, don’t talk in riddles,” she protested. “And, anyway, promise me you won’t tell any tales to Mr. Barth.”
“My dear child, I have something to do, besides forcing my acquaintance upon stray young Englishmen who don’t care for it.”
She kissed him impetuously.
“Spoken like your daughter’s own father!” she said approvingly. “Now, if you really won’t go out to play with me, I’m going to the library to read the new magazines.”
An hour later, Nancy was sitting by a window,Harper’sin her lap and her eyes fixed on the dark blue Laurentides to the northward. The girl spent many a leisure hour in the grim old building, once a prison, but now the home of a little library whose walls breathed a mingled atmosphere of mustiness and learning. Ancient folios were not lacking; but Kipling was on the upper shelves and one of the tables was littered with rows of the latest magazines.
To-day, however, Nancy’s mind was not upon her story, nor yet upon the Laurentides beneath her thoughtful gaze. The episode of the previous night had left a strong impression upon her. It was the first time she had seen the three men together; she had watched them with shrewd, impartial eyes. Britisher, Canadian, and Frenchman, Catholic and Protestant: three more distinct types could scarcely have been gathered into the narrow limits of an impromptu theatre party. Beyond the simple attributes of manliness and breeding, they possessed scarcely a trait in common. In two of them, Nancy saw little to deplore; in all three, she saw a good deal to like.
Barth she dismissed with a brief shake of her head. He was undeniably plucky, far more plucky than at first she had supposed. To her energetic, healthy mind, there had been nothing so very bad about a sprained ankle. A little pain, a short captivity, and that was the end of it. Once or twice it had seemed to her that Barth had been needlessly depressed by the situation, needlessly unresponsive to her efforts to arouse him. It was only during the past few days that she had seen what it really meant: the physical pain and weariness to be borne as best it might, in a strange city and cut off from any friendly companionship. It even occurred dimly to her mind that Barth was not wholly responsible for his chilly inability to make new friends, that it was just possible he regretted the fact as keenly as any one else. Moreover, Nancy was just. She admitted, as she looked back over those ten days at Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré, that Barth had been singularly free from fault-finding and complaint. She also admitted that his ignoring of their past relations was no mere matter of social snobbery. Mr. Cecil Barth was totally ignorant of the identity of his former nurse. Having exonerated him from the charge of certain sins, Nancy dismissed him with a shake of her head.
Upon Brock and St. Jacques, her mind rested longer. Until the night before, they had seemed to her to be a pair of boon comrades. While their holiday lasted, they would make merry together. When she turned her face to the southward, the bonds of their acquaintance would drop apart, and their lives would spin on in their individual orbits. Now, all at once, she questioned. The naked impulses of humanity show themselves in times of danger. At last night’s alarm, both Brock and St. Jacques had turned instinctively to her protection. Then the difference had showed itself. Brock had given his whole care and strength to her alone. St. Jacques had swiftly assured himself that she was in safe hands; then, with a caution to Brock to guard the Lady, he had thrown himself to the rescue of Mr. Cecil Barth, not because he liked Barth, but because his instincts were all for the succoring of the weak. All night long, Nancy had gloried in Brock’s strength and in the singleness of his devotion. Nevertheless, she was woman enough to glory still more in the more prosaic gallantry of the dark-browed little Frenchman. As a rule, the pretty girl in evening dress is prone to inspire more chivalry than a taciturn Britisher of chilly manners and unflattering tongue.
Suddenly Nancy buried her nose in her story. Barth had come into the library and seated himself at the table close at her elbow. When she looked up again, he had put on his glasses and was waiting to meet her eye. She nodded to him, and, before she could go back to her magazine again, he had turned his chair until it faced her own. Over the blue Laurentides the twilight was dropping fast. Upstairs in the dim gallery the librarian was moving slowly here and there among his books. Otherwise the place was quite deserted, save for the two young people sitting in the sunset glow.
“And is this one of your haunts, too, Miss Howard?” Barth asked, as he tossed his magazine back to the table.
The matter-of-course friendliness of his tone struck a new note in their acquaintance. Nancy liked it.
“Yes, I often come here, when it is too stormy for walking,” she assented.
“You walk a great deal?”
“Endlessly. Still, it doesn’t take so many steps to circumnavigate this little city, I find. I love to explore the out-of-the-way nooks and corners; don’t you?”
“I did, until I was cut off in my prime. I had only had two weeks, before disaster overtook me.”
This time, Nancy was mindful of her incognito.
“You broke your ankle, I think?” she said interrogatively.
“Sprained it. It amounts to the same thing in the end.”
“Was it long ago?”
“Three weeks. Sometimes three weeks become infinite.”
“Was it so painful?”
“Yes, especially to my pride. It’s so babyish to be ill.”
“But you weren’t babyish at all,” Nancy protested courteously.
Barth stared blankly at her for a minute. Then he laughed.
“You flatter me. Still, it’s not well to take too much on trust, Miss Howard. But I am glad if I’ve gained any reputation for pluck.”
Nancy interposed hastily.
“How did it happen?”
“I don’t know. The last I remember beforehand, I was standing on the steps of Sainte Anne, watching a pilgrimage getting itself blessed. The next I knew, I was lying on my back on the ground, with my ankle twisted into a knot, and my future nurse taking full possession of my case. That was your namesake, Miss Howard.”
“Indeed. Was—was she—pretty?” Nancy inquired, not quite certain what she was expected to say next.
“I never knew. My glasses were lost in the scrimmage, and I can’t see ten inches from my nose without them. I couldn’t very well ask her to come forward and be inspected at any such range as that. I was sorry, too. The girl really took very good care of me, and I grew quite fond of her. Behind her back, I used to call her my Good Sainte Anne. She was Nancy, you know.”
Nancy’s magazine slid to the floor.
“Did she know it?” she asked, smiling a little at her awkward efforts to reach the book.
“Allow me,” Barth said gravely. “No; I am not sure that she did.”
“When you meet her, next time, you can tell her,” Nancy advised him.
Barth shook his head.
“I am afraid I never shall meet her.”
“The world is very tiny,” Nancy observed sententiously. “As a rule, the same person is bound to cross one’s trail twice.”
“And, besides, even if I did meet her, how could I ever know her?”
“How could you help it?” she queried, smiling into his face which seemed to her, that afternoon, to be curiously boyish and likable.
“But I have no idea how she looked.”
“You would know her voice.”
“Oh, no. I notice voices; but I rarely remember them.”
“But her name?”
“It is of no use, just Nancy Howard. Such a commonplace sort of name as that is no clue. Why, you may be a Nancy Howard, yourself, for anything I know to the contrary.”
Nancy laughed, as she rose.
“I might also be your nurse,” she suggested. “Stranger things than that have happened, even in my experience, Mr. Barth. However, when you do meet your Nancy Howard, I hope you will tell her that you liked her.”
The young fellow looked up at her a little eagerly.
“Do you suppose she would mind about it?”
“Women are generally glad to know when they are liked,” Nancy said sagely.
“But most likely she knew it, without my telling.”
Nancy shook her head.
“More likely she never guessed it. You probably lorded it over her and treated her like a servant.”
To her surprise, Barth blushed scarlet. Then he answered frankly,—
“How you do get at things, Miss Howard! The fact is, I tipped the girl, one night. It seemed to me then merely the usual thing to do. Since then, I haven’t been so sure. She was quite a lady, and—”
Nancy interrupted him ruthlessly.
“How did she take it?” she demanded.
“As she would have taken a blow on the cheek. I meant it well. I had given her a bad day of it, and I thought it was only decent to make up for it. I wish now I hadn’t; but I couldn’t well ask for the money again, though I knew from the way her heels hit the floor that she was wishing she could throw it back at me. Do you know,” Mr. Cecil Barth added thoughtfully; “that I sometimes think our English ways aren’t always understood over here.”
And, in that instant, Nancy forgave the existence of the golden guinea, still reposing among her superfluous hairpins.
“Not always,” she assented. “Still, if you were to tell your Nancy Howard what you have just told me, I think she would understand.”
“Oh, but I couldn’t do that,” Barth protested.
“I don’t see why not. Very likely she is no more formidable than I am. Anyway, I advise you to try.”
As she stood smiling down at him, there came a click, and the dusky library was flooded with the blaze from a dozen electric bulbs. They both winced at the unexpected glare; then Nancy’s eyes and Barth’s glasses met in a steady gaze. His face was earnest; hers merry and altogether winsome. Suddenly she held out her hand.
“Good by, Mr. Barth,” she said kindly. “I am glad you have told me about this.”
He rose to his feet.
“You are going? May I walk back with you?”
“Thank you so much for offering. It would be a pleasure; but Mr. Brock is waiting outside to take me for a turn on the terrace.”
And, the next instant, Barth was left alone with the librarian.
“Prove it,” Nancy said defensively.
“I will.”
“Now.”
“Give me time.”
“Time is something one seizes, not takes as a free gift.”
Brock laughed.
“Your utterances make superb epigrams, Miss Howard. The only objection to them arises when one stops to find out what they really mean.”
“I mean that you can never prove to me that the French are really outclassed by the English,” she retorted, bringing the discussion back to its point of departure.
Brock looked down at her quizzically.
“Shall St. Jacques and I fight it out in three rounds?” he inquired.
“That’s no test. You’re not English.”
“Not in the real sense of it. But neither is he French. We’re both of us relative terms.”
“And so useless for the sake of argument,” she replied.
“For the sake of nothing else, I trust,” Brock said lightly.
She looked up at him with a smile.
“Mr. Brock, I am not an ingrate. Without you and M. St. Jacques, I should have been a good deal more lonely, this past month. My father is an old man, and not strong. He has appreciated your courtesy to him, too.”
Brock shifted his stick to his left hand.
“Shall we shake hands on it?” he said jovially. “The month has been rather jolly for us, as Barth would say. The Maple Leaf is a mighty good sort of place; but the atmosphere there is sometimes a little more mature than one cares for. St. Jacques and I haven’t given all the good times. But about the argument: when can you take time to be convinced?”
“By a walk to the Wolfe monument?” she queried mockingly.
“No; by two hours of eloquent pleading on my part. I propose to do it by sheer weight of intellect and statistics. How about to-morrow afternoon at three?”
“Very well,” she assented.
“I’ll cut the office for the afternoon. Shall we choose the Saint Foye Road for the scene of the fray?”
“As you like,” she answered merrily. “But remember that you are to do no monologues. I reserve the right to interrupt, whenever I choose.”
Then they fell silent, as they tramped briskly up and down the terrace. The lights from the Frontenac beside them glowed in the purple dusk and mingled with the glare that lingered in the west. At their feet, the streets of the Lower Town were crowded in the last mad scurry of the dying day, and the river beyond was dotted here and there with the moving lights of an occasional ferry. Then a bugle call rang down from the Citadel, and Nancy roused herself abruptly.
“I suppose we really ought to go to supper,” she said regretfully.
“It isn’t late.”
“No; but my father will be waiting.”
Reluctantly Brock faced about.
“Well, I suppose there are more days to come,” he observed philosophically.
“Especially to-morrow,” she reminded him.
Barth was at the table, when they entered the dining-room. Eager, flushed with her swift exercise in the crisp night air and daintily trim from top to toe, Nancy seemed to him a most attractive picture as she came towards him. Brock was close behind; together, they were laughing over some jest of which he was in ignorance. Nevertheless, Nancy paused beside his chair long enough to give him a friendly word of greeting, and Barth smiled back at her blissfully. For an instant, it occurred to him that it was rather pleasant to be no longer on the outer edge of The Maple Leaf. At a first glance, he had resented the supremacy of this American girl in an English house. The shorter grew his radius, however, the surer grew his allegiance to the focal point. American or no American, Nancy was undeniably pretty, her gowns threw the gowns of his own sisters into disrepute, and, moreover, that afternoon, she had shown herself altogether friendly and womanly and winning. Accordingly, he sowed the seeds of incipient indigestion by bolting his supper at a most unseemly speed, in order to gain possession of a chair near the parlor door. Close study of the situation, during many previous evenings, had informed him that this chair held a position of strategic importance. As a rule, St. Jacques had occupied it, while Barth had rested on his dignity in remote corners. With the tail of his eye, Barth had assured himself that the Frenchman was at the final stage of the meal, when he himself reached the table. However, the Frenchman was munching toast and marmalade in a most leisurely fashion, turning now and then for a word with Brock and Nancy; and Barth felt sure that he could overtake him. His surety increased as St. Jacques, abandoning his toast, took possession of a mammoth bun and a fresh supply of marmalade. Barth, who scorned all things of the jammy persuasion, finished his meat with the greed of a half-grown puppy, scalded his throat with the tea which had obstinately resisted his efforts to cool it, and, with a brief nod to St. Jacques, left the table and betook himself to the parlor.
“Monsieur has a haste upon himself, to-night,” St. Jacques observed dryly.
His early training had been potent, and St. Jacques no longer wasted upon Barth any conversational efforts whatsoever. In Nancy’s presence, he treated the Englishman with distant courtesy. In the face of Brock’s teasing, he gave him an occasional grudging word of moral support; but, at the table, he ignored him completely. According to the creed of Adolphe St. Jacques, a man should never allow himself to be snubbed twice by the same person. He carried his creed so far that, waitresses failing, he chose to rise and march completely around the table rather than ask for a stray pepper-pot lodged at Barth’s other hand.
By the time Barth had gone twice through the diminutive evening paper, advertisements and all, he came to the tardy conclusion that the race was not always to the swift. He knew that Brock had left the house. Hat in hand, the tall Canadian had come into the parlor for a book. The next minute, the front door had slammed, and Brock’s measured stride had passed the parlor windows. Brock gone, Barth wondered what could be keeping Nancy. Not even a healthy American appetite could linger for an hour and a half over a meal of cold beef and marmalade.
He started upon a third tour of the paper, in true British fashion beginning with the editorials, and finally losing himself in an enthusiastic account of a recent opening of fall hats. By the time he realized that he was mentally trying each of the hats upon Nancy Howard’s auburn hair, he also realized that it was time he roused himself to action. Letting the newspaper slide to the floor, he rose and walked out into the hall. From the office beyond, there came the low, continuous buzz of earnest voices. Rising on his toes, Barth peered cautiously around the corner. Then he seized his hat and stick and, stamping out of the house, banged the street door behind him. The Lady was temporarily absent. In her place, the office chair was occupied by Nancy and comfortably settled opposite to Nancy was M. Adolphe St. Jacques.
Laval had a banquet at the St. Louis, that night. It began late and ended early. From certain random words he had overheard, Barth knew that St. Jacques was not only to be present, but was to be one of the speakers. Accordingly, a personal animosity mingled with his annoyance at the sounds from next door which broke in upon his dreams. The singing was off the key; the cheering was harsh and unduly loud, and when at lastGod Save the Kingwas followed by a rush into the quiet street, Barth crawled out of bed and stood shivering at the window, as the tri-colored banner and its accompanying crowd marched past his ducal residence. In his present mood, it would have been a consolation to have seen that St. Jacques was the worse for his revel. However, that consolation was denied him. In the sturdy color-bearer heading the line, he failed to recognize his table companion; the other revellers tramped along as steadily as did the soldiers going home from church parade. In the depths of his swaddling blankets, Barth shivered. He shivered again, as he crawled back into the icy sheets which he had thoughtlessly left open to the chill night air.
His spirits rose, next morning, when he discovered that St. Jacques did not appear at breakfast. They fell again, when Nancy also failed to appear. His masculine mind could not be expected to discern that she had risen early, in order to attack a basket heaped with long arrears of undarned socks and flimsy stockings. His near-sighted eyes had not discovered Nancy, sitting at her own front window, with a stout number thirteen drawn on over her slender hand. Nancy saw him, however; and, in the midst of her musings, she took friendly note of the fact that, this morning, Barth scarcely limped at all.
Barth loitered in his room until the dinner hour was past. To the Lady he gave the excuse of important letters; but a copper coin would have paid the postal bills incurred by his morning’s work. The honest fact was that he longed acutely for more of Nancy’s society, and he had no idea how to set about obtaining it. To ask it would be too bald a compliment; he lacked the arrogant graces of his Canadian rivals who appropriated the girl promptly and quite as a matter of course. Barth had been used to more deliberate and tentative methods. Nevertheless, as he stared at the yellow walls of his room, he took a sudden resolve. English methods failing, he would, according to the best of his ability, adopt the methods of America. In his turn, he too would take possession of Nancy. With Nancy’s possible wishes in the matter, he concerned himself not at all.
“Too bad it rains!” Brock said, as he met Nancy at dinner, that noon.
“Because you must delay your argument?”
“No. Because we can’t have it in the open air. The Saint Foye Road must be changed for the parlor.”
“Can you do it there?”
“Why not? It is always empty, in the afternoon.”
“I didn’t mean that. But will there be room for you there?” Nancy questioned, with lazy impertinence. “I have always noticed that a man needs to gesticulate a great deal, whenever he is arguing for a lost cause.”
Brock laughed, as he patted his side pocket.
“Don’t be too sure it is lost. You haven’t seen my documents yet. Can you be ready, directly after dinner?”
“As soon as I see my father off. Else he would be sure to forget his goloshes and neglect to open his umbrella. A father is a great responsibility; isn’t it, daddy?” she added, with a little pat on the gray tweed sleeve.
Nearly an hour later, Barth bounced into the room. By largesse wisely distributed, he had gained a good dinner, in spite of his tardiness. He had found Brock’s coat hanging on the rack where he had left his own; and experience had taught him where Brock, once inside The Maple Leaf, was generally to be found. The office was quite deserted; and, with unerring instinct, Barth betook himself in the direction of the parlor.
In the angle behind the half-shut door, at a table covered with maps and papers, Brock and Nancy sat side by side. They looked up in surprise, as Barth dashed into the room.
“Good afternoon, Miss Howard,” he said abruptly.
It was Brock who answered.
“You appear to be in haste about something,” he remarked.
“Oh, no. I have no engagement for the afternoon. I just looked in to see if Miss Howard—”
Again it was Brock who answered.
“Miss Howard has an engagement.”
“To—?” Barth queried, as he edged towards Nancy’s side of the table.
Craftily Brock avoided the ambiguous preposition.
“Miss Howard and I are busy together, this afternoon.”
“Oh, really. I am very sorry. I hope I don’t intrude.” And, with the hope still dangling from his lips, Barth plumped himself down on the sofa beside them and felt about for his glasses. As soon as they were found and settled on his nose, he turned to Nancy. “I do hope I’m not in the way,” he reiterated spasmodically.
Brock was growling defiantly in his throat; but Nancy’s answer was dutifully courteous.
“Not at all, Mr. Barth.”
“You are sure you wouldn’t rather I went away?” he persisted.
“It isn’t our parlor,” Nancy reminded him.
“Yours by right of possession.” As he spoke, Barth arose and carefully closed the door.
“Oh, no. And we could easily move out.”
Barth looked startled. It was hard enough to force himself to this cheerful arrogance of manner. It was harder still to have the manner miss fire in this fashion. It was thus, to his mind, that Brock was accustomed to take forcible possession of Nancy’s leisure hours. He had never heard her suggest the advisability of moving out, when Brock came in upon the scene. Vaguely conscious that something was amiss, Barth nevertheless persevered in his undertaking.
“Oh, but why should you move out?”
Nancy’s eyes lighted, half with amusement, half with impatience. What was the man driving at? Only yesterday she had been ready to accept him as a friend, as a man of tact and ingrained breeding. Now his former obtuseness seemed to have returned upon him, fourfold. And she had just been explaining to Brock that the man wasn’t half bad, after all. The question of what Brock must be thinking of her taste lent an added tinge of acidity to her reply.
“Merely in case you wished to move in,” she answered, with the lightest possible of laughs.
Barth turned scarlet; but he valiantly sought to explain.
“But I only came in here, because I was looking for you.”
From a man of Barth’s previous habits of speech, this was rather too direct. In her turn, Nancy became scarlet.
“What did you wish, Mr. Barth?”
“Oh, just to—to talk to you. It is a beastly day, you know; and I thought—I fancied—”
Nancy cut in remorselessly. Instead of recognizing Barth’s imitation of the American manner, she came to the swift conclusion that his vagueness was due to temporary dementia.
“I am sorry, Mr. Barth; but I am very busy with Mr. Brock. Don’t let us drive you away, though. We can go to the office.”
“But don’t do that. Stay here. That’s what I came for. I fancied you would like to have a little more talk about Sainte Anne.”
Nancy felt Brock’s keen gray eyes fixed upon her, felt the world of merriment in their depths. She reflected swiftly. During the past twenty hours, there had been scant chance that Barth should have discovered her identity. His suggestion was doubtless only the random result of chance. Nevertheless, with Brock’s eyes upon her, she was unable to parry the suggestion with her wonted ease.
“Why should I care to talk about Sainte Anne?” she asked coldly.
“I—I thought you seemed interested, last night.”
Again Nancy felt Brock’s eyes on her, and she chafed at the false position in which she found herself. It was plain that Brock took it for granted that she had decoyed the unsuspecting Barth into telling over the tale of his experiences; and Nancy, rebelling at the suspicion, was powerless to deny it. She felt a momentary pity for the young Englishman who seemed bent upon offering himself up as a victim to his allied foes, yet she found it impossible to come to his rescue without imperiling her secret.
Suddenly Barth spoke again.
“Were you ever at Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré, Miss Howard?”
There was an instant’s pause, when it seemed to Nancy that Brock must be able to count the throbbing of her pulse. Then she answered quietly,—
“Once, quite a long time ago. However, the whole episode is so unpleasant that I rarely allow myself to think much about it. Mr. Brock, perhaps we’d better go out to the office, if Mr. Barth will excuse us.”
Nancy spent the evening in the Valley of Humiliation, Barth spent it in the office with the Lady.
“But what did you say to irritate her?” the Lady asked at length, when Barth, by devious courses, had brought the conversation around to Nancy.
“Oh, nothing. I wouldn’t irritate Miss Howard for any consideration,” he returned eagerly.
“But she was irritated.”
“Y—es; but I didn’t do it.”
The Lady smiled. Liking Barth as she did, she could still realize that his point of view might be antagonistic to a girl like Nancy. Moreover, she too had seen Barth, that noon. She too had wondered at the unaccountable elation of his manner; and she had recorded the impression that, when a narrow Britisher begins to expand his limits, the broad American would better make haste to seek shelter.
“Tell me all about it,” she said kindly.
Barth’s feigned arrogance of manner had fallen from him; it was a most humble-minded Britisher who stood before the Lady, and the Lady pitied him. Barth’s eyes looked tired; the corners of his mouth drooped, and dejection sat heavy upon him.
The Lady turned a chair about until it faced her own.
“Sit down and tell me all about it, Mr. Barth,” she repeated.
Barth obeyed. Later, alone in his room, he wondered how it was that he had been betrayed into speaking so frankly to a comparative stranger; yet even then he felt no regrets. A petted younger son, he had been too long deprived of feminine companionship and understanding. Now that it was offered, he accepted it eagerly. Moreover, Barth was by no means the first lonely youth to pour the story of his woes into the Lady’s ear.
Seated with the light falling full upon his honest, boyish face, he plunged at once into his confession, with the absolute unreserve that only a man customarily reserved can show.
“It is just a case of Miss Howard,” he said bluntly. “She is an American, and not at all like the girls I have known, treats you like a good fellow one minute, and freezes you up the next. I can’t seem to understand her at all.”
“What makes you try?” the Lady asked.
It never seemed to occur to the young fellow to blush, as he answered,—
“Because I like her a great deal better than any other girl I ever saw.”
In spite of herself, the Lady smiled at the unqualified terms of his reply.
“It hasn’t taken you long to find it out.”
“No. But what’s the use of waiting to make up your mind about a thing of that sort?” Barth responded, as he plunged his hands into his trouser pockets. “You like a person, or else you don’t. I like Miss Howard; but, by George, I can’t understand her in the least!”
“Is there any use of trying?” the Lady inquired.
Barth stared at her blankly.
“Oh, rather! How else would I know how to get on with her?”
“But, by your own story, you don’t succeed in getting on with her.”
Barth closed the circle of her argument.
“No. Because I can’t seem to understand her.”
“Are you sure she understands herself?”
“Oh, yes. Miss Howard is very clever, you know.”
“Perhaps. It doesn’t always follow. And are you sure she cares to have you understand her?”
The young Englishman winced at the question.
“What should she have against me?” he asked directly.
“I am not saying that she has anything,” the Lady answered, in swift evasion. “Sometimes it is to their best friends that girls show their most contradictory sides.”
“Oh. You mean it is one of her American ways?”
“Yes, if you choose to call it that.”
Barth shook his head.
“Miss Howard is very American,” he observed a little regretfully.
The Lady smiled.
“And, my dear boy, so are you very British.”
“Of course. I mean to be,” Barth answered quietly.
“And perhaps Miss Howard finds it hard to understand your British ways.”
Barth looked perplexed.
“Oh, no. I think not,” he said slowly. “She never acts at all embarrassed, when she is with me. In fact,” he laughed deprecatingly; “I am generally the one to be embarrassed, when we are together.”
There was a short pause. Then Barth continued thoughtfully, as if from the heart of his reverie,—
“And I didn’t like her especially, at first. She seemed a bit—er—cocksure and—er—energetic. Now I am beginning to like her more and more.”
“Have you seen much of her?”
Barth shook his head.
“No. It is only once that we have had any real talk together. That was yesterday, at the library. It’s a queer old place, and one talks there in spite of one’s self. We had a good time. But generally those other fellows are around in the way.”
The Lady raised her brows interrogatively.
“Mr. Brock and that Frenchman,” Barth explained. “They are always with her; they haven’t any hesitation in coming into the drawing-room and carrying her off, just as I am getting ready to talk to her.”
A blot on the Lady’s account book demanded her full attention for a moment. Then she looked up at Barth again.
“Why don’t you try the same tactics?” she asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why don’t you carry her off, just as Mr. Brock is getting ready to talk to her?”
“Because he is so quick that he gets right about it, before I have time to begin. Mr. Brock has a good deal of the American way, himself,” Mr. Cecil Barth added, with an accent of extreme disfavor.
The Lady smiled again.
“I think you’ll have to develop some American ways, yourself, Mr. Barth,” she suggested.
Again the note of dejection came into his voice.
“I tried. Tried it, this afternoon.”
“And?” she said interrogatively.
“It was all wrong.”
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I thought I did it just as Mr. Brock does. I went into the drawing-room and found them together, just the way he has so often found us. I began to talk to her just as he does, only of course I wouldn’t think of chaffing her. You know he chaffs her, and she can’t seem to make him stop,” Barth added, in hasty explanation.
“What did you talk to her about?” the Lady queried.
“That’s just it. I didn’t get started talking at all. I just asked her if she wouldn’t like to talk.”
Once more the Lady bent over the blot.
“What did you invite her to talk about?” she asked quietly.
“Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré and all that.”
There was a pause. Then,—
“Go on,” said the Lady.
“We’d been talking about it in the library, just the afternoon before, and she seemed interested, asked about my accident and my nurse and all. Really, we were just beginning to get on capitally, when she had to go. I thought the best thing to do would be to begin where we left off; but she turned very cross, wouldn’t say a word to me and finally picked up her books and walked out of the room. I don’t see what I could have done to displease her.” And, putting on his glasses, Barth stared at the Lady with disconsolate, questioning blue eyes.
The Lady laughed a little. Nevertheless, she felt a deep longing to scold Nancy, to give Fate a sound box on the ear and to take Mr. Cecil Barth into her motherly embrace. She liked his frankness, liked the under note of respect which mingled in his outspoken admiration for Nancy. She could picture the whole scene: Barth’s nervous assumption of ease confronted with the nonchalant assurance of Brock, Nancy’s hidden amusement at the tentative request for polite conversation, and her open consternation at the subject which Barth had proposed for discussion. It was funny. She looked upon the scene with the eyes of Nancy and Brock, yet her whole womanly sympathy lay with the Englishman, an open-hearted, tongue-tied alien in a land of easy speech. Barth’s hand rested on the corner of her desk. Bending forward, she laid her own hand across his fingers.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Barth,” she said kindly. “You and Miss Howard will be good friends in time. It is an odd position, your meeting here on neutral soil. Your whole ways of life are so different that you find it hard to understand each other. I am half-way between you, and I know you both. What is more, I like you both, and I’d like to see you good friends. Leave something to time, and a great deal to Miss Howard. And—forgive me, my dear boy, but I am quite old enough to be your mother—I would let the American ways take care of themselves, and just be my own English self. If Miss Howard is going to like you at all, it will be for yourself, not for any misfit manners you may choose to put on.”
“But, the question is, is she going to like me at all?” Barth said despondingly.
The Lady’s eyes roved over him from the parting of his yellow hair to the toes of his unmistakably British shoes.
“Forgive my bluntness,” she said, with a smile; “if I say that I don’t see how she can very well help it.”
Half an hour later, she knocked at Nancy’s door.
“May I come in?” she asked blithely. “All the evening, I have been talking to a most downcast young Englishman, and now I have come up to administer justice to you. The justice will be tempered with mercy; nevertheless, I think you deserve a lecture.”
“Your Englishman is an idiot,” Nancy observed dispassionately; “and I don’t deserve any lecture at all. However, go on.”
Crossing the room, the Lady turned on the electric light.
“Nancy Howard,” she said sternly; “your voice was suspicious enough; but your eyes betray you. You’ve been crying.”
“What if I have?” the girl asked defiantly.
The Lady’s quick eye caught the glitter of a gold coin on the dressing-table. Then she turned back to Nancy.
“Girls like you don’t cry for nothing,” she remarked. “May I sit down on the bed?”
Nancy nodded. Then she replied to the first remark.
“I wasn’t crying for nothing. I was crying over my conscience.”
“What has your conscience been doing?”
“Pricking,” the girl answered frankly. “I hate to be nasty to people; but now and then I am driven into it.”
“Mr. Barth?”
“Yes, Mr. Barth,” Nancy assented, with an accent of finality. “Now go on with your lecture.”
The Lady laughed.
“Really, Nancy, you sometimes take away even my Canadian breath. I can imagine that you leave Mr. Barth gasping.”
“Mr. Barth would gasp in a stilly vacuum,” Nancy replied tranquilly.
“Very likely. It is possible that you might do likewise. But to my point. Was it quite fair, Nancy, to encourage the boy to talk about the Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré episode, and then snub him, the next time he alluded to it?”
“Did he tell you any such tale as that?” Nancy demanded, in hot wrath.
“He—he implied it.”
“And you believed him?”
“I—I couldn’t understand your doing it.” The Lady began to wonder whether the promised lecture were to be given or received.
Nancy sprang up and walked the length of the room.
“Oh, the horrid little cad!” she said explosively.
The Lady turned champion of the absent Englishman.
“He’s not a cad, Nancy; he is a thoroughbred little Englishman. I have seen his type before, though never so extreme a case. He is frank and honest as a boy can be. He’s born to his British ways, as we are born to ours. It is only that you’re not used to him, and don’t understand him.”
“He doesn’t leave much to the imagination,” Nancy observed scathingly. Then she dropped down beside the Lady, and looked her straight in the eyes. “I don’t want you to be thinking horrid things of me,” she said slowly. “I don’t want you to think I have been two-sided with Mr. Barth. After what happened at Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré, I have tried to keep out of his way as much as possible. It has been a miserable chance that has brought us into such close quarters; a recognition wasn’t going to be pleasant for either of us. But, every time I meet the man, he seems possessed with an insane desire to babble to me about his ankle. I could tell more about it than he can, for I was in league with the doctor, and heard all the professional details. A dozen times, I have been on the very verge of betraying myself. Last night, it reached a climax. He found me alone in the library, and he began to talk. Really, he was more agreeable than I ever knew him before. But you know how it is: the presence of a grass widow always moves you to rake up all the divorce scandals of your experience. Before we had talked for ten minutes, the man was calmly informing me that he was really very fond of his nurse, that, in the secret recesses of his heart, he called her his Good Sainte Anne, that he wished he could meet her again, and finally that he was very sorry he had tipped her.”
“Indeed!”
“No; I don’t mean that,” Nancy protested hastily. “You are the disloyal one now. He didn’t imply that she had not deserved the tip. His regrets were for sentimental reasons, not frugal. He was very nice and honest about it, and I never liked him half so well.”
“And showed it,” the Lady added gently.
“Very likely I did. I don’t see why not. But, to-day!” Nancy paused.
“What happened?”
“Didn’t he tell you?”
“Only his side of it. Still, I could imagine the rest.”
“No; you couldn’t. No one could, without having seen it. He came dashing, fairly splashing, into the parlor where Mr. Brock and I were squabbling over politics. Only a little while before, I had been defending him to Mr. Brock, telling him that Mr. Barth was really a gentleman and clever, that I liked him extremely. And then, on the heels of that statement, the man came whacking into the room, interrupted our talk without a shadow of an apology and then, after acting like a crazy being, he capped the climax of his sins by specifically inviting me to talk to him some more about Sainte Anne.”
“Well?”
“Well.”
The rising cadence was met by the falling one. Then silence followed.
“Well,” Nancy resumed at length; “you see my predicament. Mr. Brock knows the whole story; I let it out to him, the day we met. I had no idea I should ever meet Mr. Barth again, and I used no names. Mr. Brock patched together the two ends of the story, and told M. St. Jacques; and it has been all I could do to keep them from using it as an instrument of torture on poor Mr. Barth. To-day, I knew Mr. Brock was furious at him; I knew he was longing to say something, and, worst of all, I knew he thought, as you did, that I had been coaxing Mr. Barth to make an idiot of himself.”
“Well?” the Lady said again.
“And he does it, without being coaxed,” Nancy responded mutinously. Then she relented. “But he was so pitifully bent on making a fool of himself, just when I had been pleading his cause to the very best of my ability! He babbled at us till I was on the very verge of frenzy. Stop him I could not. He absolutely refused to know when he was snubbed. At last, I fled from the scene and took Mr. Brock with me, and, for all I know to the contrary, the man may be sitting there in the parlor, babbling still.”
Nancy laughed; but the tears were near the surface.
“And then?” the Lady asked gently.
“Then I came up here and bemoaned my sins,” Nancy answered, with utter frankness. “I hate to be hateful; but I lost my head, and couldn’t help it. Now I am sorry, for I truly like Mr. Barth, and I know I scratched him till he felt it clear down through his veneering. He has not only spoiled my whole evening; but, worse than that, I have an apology on my hands, and I really don’t see how I am going to make it, without being too specific.”
Thirty-six hours after his banquet, St. Jacques reappeared in the dining-room. Barth eyed him narrowly.
“Back again?” Nancy queried in blithe greeting.
“At last.”
“It was a good while. How are you feeling?”
Barth felt a shock of surprise. Did American girls have no reservations?
“A good deal the worse for wear,” the Frenchman was replying, with equal frankness.
Nancy laughed.
“Any particular spot?” she inquired.
“Yes, my head. There’s nothing much to show; but it feels swollen to twice its usual size, to-day.”
“I am so sorry,” she answered sympathetically. “Can I do anything for it?”
St. Jacques laughed, as his face lighted with the expression Nancy liked so well.
“Does your pity go a long way?” he asked.
“At your service.”
“To the extent of a walk, after dinner?”
“Yes, if you feel up to it,” she answered. “It is a delightful day, and you know I want to hear all about it.”
Towards the middle of the morning, Barth sought the Lady.
“Really, it is none of my affair; but what is the girl thinking of?” he demanded.
The Lady’s mind chanced to be upon the problem involved in a departing waitress.
“What girl?” she asked blankly.
“Miss Howard.”
“What is the matter with Miss Howard now?”
“I don’t know. What can she be thinking of, to go for a walk with a man in his condition?” he expostulated.
“Whose condition?”
“That French Catholic, Mr. St. Jacques.”
“But there’s nothing wrong with his condition. It is only his head,” the Lady explained.
“Oh, yes. That is what I mean. She knows it, too.”
“Of course. We all know it, and we all are so sorry.”
Barth was still possessed of his self-made idea, and continued his argument upon that basis.
“Naturally. One is always sorry for such things. Sometimes even good fellows get caught. Still, that is no reason a girl should speak of it, to say nothing of going to walk with the fellow. Really, Miss Howard’s father ought to put a stop to it.”
This time, even the Lady lost her patience.
“Really, Mr. Barth, I don’t see why. On your own showing, you asked Miss Howard to let you walk home from the library with her, two days ago.”
“Yes. But that was different.”
“I don’t see how. M. St. Jacques is as much a gentleman as you are.”
“Oh. Do you think so? But what about his head?”
For the instant, the Lady questioned the stability of Barth’s own head.
“I really can’t see how that enters into the question at all. Even a gentleman is liable to be hit on the head, when he is playing lacrosse.”
“Lacrosse?”
“Yes. M. St. Jacques spent yesterday at Three Rivers with the lacrosse team from Laval.”
“Oh.” In his mortification at his own blunder, Barth’sohwas more dissyllabic even than usual. “I didn’t understand. I thought it was only the result of the banquet.”
The Lady looked at him with a steady, kindly smile.
“Mr. Barth,” she said; “I really think that idea was not quite worthy of you.”
And Barth shut his lips in plucky acceptance of the rebuke.
The haunt of tourists and the prey of every artist, be his tools brushes or mere words, Sous-le-Cap remains the crowning joy of ancient Quebec. The inconsequent bends in its course, the wood flooring of its roadway, the criss-cross network of galleries and verandas which join the two rows of houses and throw the street into a shadow still deeper than that cast by the overhanging cape, the wall of naked rock that juts out here and there between the houses piled helter-skelter against the base of the cliff: these details have endured for generations, and succeeding generations well may pray for their continued endurance. Quebec could far better afford to lose the whole ornate length of the Grand Allée than even one half the flying galleries and fluttering clothes-lines of little Sous-le-Cap.
“And yet,” St. Jacques said thoughtfully; “this hardly makes me proud of my countrymen.”
From the many-colored garments flapping on the clothes-lines, Nancy glanced down at a scarlet-coated child playing in the open doorway of a shop at her side.
“Don’t think of the sociological aspect of the case,” she advised him. “Once in a while, it is better to be simply picturesque than it is to be hygienic. I have seen a good deal of America; I know nothing to compare with this.”
St. Jacques picked his way daintily among the rubbish.
“I hope not. I also hope there’s not much in France.”
“You have been there?” Nancy questioned.
“Not yet. After two more years at Laval.”
“To live there?”
“Only to study. My home is here.”
“Not in Quebec?”
“No. In Rimouski. I am a countryman,” he added, with a smile.
“And shall you go back there?”
“It is impossible to tell. I hope not; but my father is growing older, and there are little children. In a case like that, one can never choose for himself,” he said, with a little accent of regret.
“But your profession,” Nancy reminded him. “Will there be any opening for it there?”
St. Jacques shrugged his shoulders.
“There is always an opening. It is only a question whether one feels too large to try to enter it. If I were as free as Mr. Brock, I would come back here, or go to The States. As it is, I am not free.”
“Tell me about Rimouski,” Nancy urged him.
“What do you care to know? It is a little place. The ocean-going steamers stop there; there is a cathedral and a seminary.”
“Is it pretty?”
His eyes lighted.
“I was born there, Miss Howard. It is impossible for me to say. Perhaps sometime you may see it for yourself.”
“I wish I might,” the girl assented idly.
The next minute, she felt herself blushing, as she met the eager look on the face of her companion, and she hurried away from the dangerous subject.
“How long shall you be abroad?” she asked hastily.
“Two years.”
“Nearly five years before you go into your professional work.”
“Yes.” His accent dropped a little. “It is long to wait.”
“It depends on the way the time goes,” Nancy suggested, with a fresh determination to drive the minor key from his voice. “Between banquets and lacrosse matches and broken heads, your days ought not to drag. Was it really so bad a bump you had?”
Pushing his cap still farther to the back of his head, St. Jacques lifted the dark hair from his forehead.
“So much,” he said coolly, as he displayed a short, deep cut.
Nancy exclaimed in horror.
“M. St. Jacques! And you take it without a word of complaint.”
This time, he laughed.
“Complaint never mends a split head, Miss Howard. We Frenchmen take our knocks and say nothing.”
“Is that aimed at Mr. Barth?” Nancy asked.
St. Jacques shook his head; but his lips and eyes denied the gesture of negation.
“Really,” she urged; “he didn’t complain.”
“No; but he talked about it more than I cared to listen.”
“Aren’t you a little hard on him, M. St. Jacques?”
The Frenchman looked up in surprise.
“Is he your friend, then?” he queried gravely.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Nancy was vainly struggling to frame her reply according to the strictest truth. “I think he thought so; but now we don’t know.”
“I am afraid I do not understand,” St. Jacques said, with slow formality. “As your friend, I shall treat him with respect. Otherwise—”
“Oh, he isn’t my friend,” Nancy explained hurriedly. “We have had an awful fight; at least, not exactly a fight, but I was rude to him.”
St. Jacques interrupted her.
“Then it will make up for some of the times he has been rude to me, and I shall be still more in your debt.”
Nancy shook her head ruefully.
“No; we can’t square our accounts that way, M. St. Jacques. I have seen Mr. Barth detestably rude to you, and it never once has dawned upon him that he wasn’t the very pink of courtesy. With me, it was different. I did my very best, not only to be rude to him; but to have him know that I meant it.”
Again came the answering flash over the Frenchman’s face.
“I am very glad you did it,” he said briefly.
“I’m not, then,” Nancy said flatly. “I hate making apologies.”
“Then let him apologize to you,” St. Jacques suggested, laughing. “He has no right to put himself in the wrong so far as to make you feel it worth your while to be rude to him.”
Nancy laughed in her turn.
“M. St. Jacques, you do not like Mr. Barth,” she said merrily.
“No, Miss Howard; I do not. It will be a happy day for me, when he takes himself out to his ranch.”
“But I shall have gone, long before that,” she said thoughtfully.
St. Jacques turned upon her with a suddenness which startled her.
“So soon as that?”
“Sooner. Three or four weeks more here will see the end of our stay.”
The blood rolled hotly upward across his swarthy face. Then it rolled back again, leaving behind it a pallor that brought his thin lips and resolute chin into strong relief.
“I am sorry,” he said slowly. “I thought you had come to stay.”
“Only till my father has ransacked every book in your Laval library,” she said, with intentional lightness.