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’s _oh_ was 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.
He declined to answer her tone. The words of his reply dropped, clear,
distinct, slow, upon her ears.
“No matter. Perhaps some day you may come back to Canada, Miss Howard,
come back, I mean, to stay.”
Nancy drew two or three short, quick breaths. Then she laughed with a
forced mirth.
“Perhaps. One can never tell. I like Canada,” she said nervously.
St. Jacques faced her.
“And the Canadians?” he asked steadily.
His dark eyes held hers for a moment. Then she found herself repeating
his words,—
“Yes, and the Canadians.”
A moment later, she gave a sudden start of surprise and relief. Rounding
a sharp angle in the winding street, they had found themselves directly
upon the heels of Mr. Cecil Barth who was sauntering slowly along just
ahead of them. Turning at the sound of their feet on the board roadway,
he bowed to Nancy with deprecating courtesy, to her companion with
studied carelessness.
Nancy’s quick eye caught the veiled hostility of the salute exchanged by
the two men. Her own poise was shaken by the little scene through which
she had just been passing, but she made a desperate effort to regain
control of the situation.
“Mr. Barth,” she said impetuously.
Barth had resumed his stroll. At her words, he turned back instantly.
“Why not wait for us?” she suggested, as she held out her hand with
frank cordiality. “M. St. Jacques deserves congratulations from us all,
for his record at lacrosse, yesterday; and I know you’ll like to add
your voice to the general chorus. And, besides that, I owe you an
apology. I was very rude to you, yesterday; but, at least, I have the
saving grace to be thoroughly ashamed of myself, to-day.”
And Barth, as he took her hand, felt that that minute atoned for many a
bad half-hour she had given him in the past.
Together, they came out from under the hanging balconies, strayed on
through Sault-au-Matelot and, coming up Mountain Hill Street, wandered
out along the Battery. There they lingered to lean on the wall and stare
across the river at the heights of Lévis bathed in its sunset light
which is neither purple, nor yet altogether of gold. To Nancy, the light
was typical of the hour. The girl was no egotist; yet all at once she
instinctively realized that one or the other of these men was holding
the key to her life. Which it should be, as yet she could not know. The
hour had come, unsought, unexpected. For the present, it was better to
drift. The mood of St. Jacques was kindred to her own. As for Barth, he
was supremely content, without in the least knowing why his recent
dissatisfaction should have fallen from him.
While they lingered by the wall, to watch the fading glow, Dr. Howard
suddenly stepped out into the road behind them. As he came through the
gate in the old stone wall, his glance rested upon the trio of familiar
figures, and his voice rang out in hearty greeting.
“Well, Nancy,” he called. “Are you watching for a hostile fleet?”
With the eagerness which never failed to welcome him, she turned to face
her father; but, midway in her turning, she was stopped by Barth’s
voice.
“Nancy!” he echoed. “Are you another Nancy Howard?”
She faltered. Then she met his blue eyes full and steadily.
“No,” she said, with fearless directness. “So far as I know, Mr. Barth,
I am the only one.”