“That the Good Sainte Anne answered my prayer for a little excitement.”
“Was that a miracle?”
She answered question with question.
“Did you ever stop at Sainte Anne?”
“Yes, once for the space of two hours. We had all the excitement I cared
for, though.”
Nancy sat up alertly.
“Was it a pilgrimage?”
“No; merely a pig on the track.”
She nestled back again in the depths of her chair.
“What anticlimax!” she protested.
“But you haven’t told me what form your own excitement took,” Brock
reminded her.
“It was an Englishman.”
“Oh, we’re used to those things,” he answered.
“Then I pity you,” she said, with an explosiveness of which she was
swift to repent. “Oh, I beg your pardon,” she added contritely. “Perhaps
you are one of them, yourself.”
“No; merely a Canadian,” Brock reassured her.
“Isn’t it the same thing?”
A mocking light came into Brock’s gray eyes.
“Not always,” he replied quietly.
“No.” Nancy’s tone was thoughtful. “I am beginning to find it out. Our
Englishman was unique.”
“Ours?”
“Yes, by adoption. The Good Sainte Anne and I took him in charge.”
“With what success?”
“It remains to be seen. We did our best for him; but really he was very
preposterous.”
“What became of him?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“No. He is there now; at least, he was there, when we came away.”
“Was he working out his novena?”
“No; just mending himself. He fell off from something, his dignity most
likely, and bumped his head and sprained his ankle. I happened to be on
the spot, and rashly admitted that my father was a doctor. Then, before
I really had grasped the situation, the poor man was bundled into a cart
and deposited at our door, half fainting and wholly out of temper.”
“And then?”
“And then we couldn’t get a nurse for love or money, and I had to go to
work and take care of him.”
“Happy man!” Brock observed. “I only hope he appreciated his luck.”
The corners of Nancy’s mouth curved upwards, and a malicious light came
into her eyes.
“I think he did. He not only expressed himself as pleased with my
services; but, on one occasion, he gave me a—”
“A what?”
“A brand-new guinea.” And Nancy’s laugh rang out so infectiously that
Brock would have joined in it, if she had been discussing the foibles of
himself rather than of the unknown Englishman.
“How exactly like our Johnny Bull!” he commented, when he found his
voice once more.
Suddenly Nancy’s puritan conscience asserted itself.
“Truly, I ought not to laugh about him, Mr. Brock. He had no idea that I
was anything but a servant, and he thought he had every reason to tip
me. He wasn’t bad, only very funny. He really knew a great deal and,
according to his notions, he was a most perfect gentleman. It was only
that our notions clashed sometimes. Yes, daddy, I am coming. Good night,
Mr. Brock.” And she left him staring rather wishfully after the
disappearing train of her dull blue gown.
It must be confessed that Brock dawdled over his breakfast, the next
morning; but his dawdling was quite in vain. Nancy had taken her own
breakfast long before he appeared, and, by the time Brock had reached
his second cup of coffee, she was walking rapidly along the terrace
towards the Citadel. At the end, she paused for a moment of indecision.
Then, with a glance up at the Union Jack above her head, she slowly
mounted the long flight of steps and came out on the narrow upper
terrace which skirts the outer wall of the fortress. There she paused
again and stood, her arms folded on the railing, looking down on the
picture at her feet. She had been there once before; to-day, however,
the impression was keener, more enjoyable. The change might have come
from the sunshine that lay in yellow splashes over the city beneath; it
might have come in part from the memory of her idle talk with Brock, the
night before. In all that town of antiquity and of strangers, it had
been good to meet some one whose age and viewpoint corresponded to her
own. The direct gaze of Brock’s clear eyes had pleased Nancy. She had
liked his voice, and the unconscious ease with which he carried his
seventy-three inches of height. Too outward seeming, his type was as
unfamiliar as that of the Englishman, and Nancy liked it vastly better.
With Barth, she had been standing on tiptoe, psychologically speaking.
With Brock, she could be her every-day, normal self.
It had been at Brock’s suggestion that she had gone to the upper
terrace, that morning; and she shook off the memory of his gray eyes in
order to recall the dozen sentences with which he had characterized the
salient points of the view beneath. Then she gave up the attempt. In the
face of all that beauty, it was impossible to fix one’s mind upon mere
questions of geography. At her left, the city sloped down to Saint Roch
and the Charles River beyond, and beyond that again was the long white
village of Beauport straggling along the bluff above the river. At her
right, quarter of a mile beyond the Citadel, were the ruined hillocks of
the old French fortifications; and, on the opposite shore, the town of
Lévis was crested with its trio of forts and dotted with tapering spires
of gray. From one of the piers below, a little steamer was swinging out
into midstream and heading towards the point where Sillery church
overlooks the valley; and, close against the base of the cliff, the
irregular roofs of Champlain Street lay huddled in a long line of
shadow. The river was shadowy, too; but above the city a rift in the
clouds sent the strong sun pouring down over the guns on the eastern
ramparts, over the southern tower of the Basilica and over the spires of
Laval. As she looked, Nancy drew a long breath of sheer delight and, all
at once and for no assignable cause, she decided that she was glad she
had come. Then abruptly she turned her back upon a tall figure crossing
Dufferin Terrace, and walked swiftly away past Cape Diamond and came out
on the Cove Fields beyond.
When she came in to dinner, she was flushed and animated. As Brock had
predicted, she had discovered that Quebec’s interest did not centre
wholly in its churches. True, there had been a certain disillusion in
finding a portly Englishman playing golf with himself upon the ground
over which the French troops had marched out to face the invading,
conquering foe, in seeing a Martello Tower begirt with clothes-lines and
flapping garments, and in discovering a brand-new rifle factory risen
up, Phœnix-like, from the ashes of the old-time battleground. The
impression was blurred a little; nevertheless, it was there, and Nancy,
as her feet wandered up and down the trail of the armies upon that
thirteenth of September of the brave year ’Fifty-nine, took a curious
satisfaction in the fact that Wolfe, too, had been banned with a head of
red hair. Her own ancestors were English. Perhaps some of their kin had
landed at Sillery Cove, to scale the cliff and die like gentlemen upon
the Plains of Abraham. Her blood flowed more quickly at the thought. In
Nancy’s mind, this was the hour of England. She even forgot the shining
golden guinea that reposed among her extra hairpins.
Nancy came into the house to find the Lady packing a dinner into an
elaborate system of pails and cosies. The Lady looked up with a smile.
“Our invalid has come back again,” she explained; “and I am sending his
dinner over to his room.”