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 a _basin_, 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 say
_cracker_. 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.”