“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.
