“And this,” the guide continued, with the loquacity of his kind;
“directly at our feet is the River Saint Lawrence. That building there
with the pointed roofs is the Chateau Frontenac, built on the exact site
of the old Chateau de Saint Louis. Beyond it, you see the spire of the
French Basilica, consecrated in sixteen hundred and sixty-six, and,
slightly to the right, are the roofs and spires of Laval.”
“And, right under our noses, the city of Quebec, huddled
indiscriminately around The Maple Leaf,” Brock interrupted, as their
red-coated escort stopped for breath. “Miss Howard, I wish you hadn’t
been quite so generous in your fee.”
“But I am sure it is very interesting,” Churchill observed politely.
“Remember that I am a stranger here.”
The guide took the hint and edged towards Churchill’s end of the line.
“This is what is termed the King’s Bastion,” he went on glibly. “Beyond
is Cape Diamond, so called from the crystals of quartz that used to be
found there. Now they are very rare; but,” with every appearance of
anxiety, he fell to searching his pockets; “but I happen to have—”
Again Brock interrupted.
“No use, Thomas Atkins,” he said jovially. “We are too old birds to be
caught in that trap.”
Unabashed, the guide let the bits of quartz drop back into his pocket.
“Many ladies admire my buttons,” he said tentatively. “They make
interesting hat pins.”
“The ladies, or the buttons?” Nancy queried innocently. “But, thank you,
I think you have showed us everything, and we can find our way out
alone.” And, leaving the bastion, she led the way back to the tiny
cannon of Bunker Hill, where she loyally halted her companions.
A cloudless sky arched above the old gray Citadel, that morning. Inside
the walls, the daily routine was going its usual leisurely course. Few
visitors were abroad; but an occasional private strayed across the
enclosure and, not far from the gate, guard-mounting was just taking
place. Nancy watched the new guard as it tramped out into the open,
saluted and went into position, its every evolution followed in detail
by the stout Newfoundland dog who waddled along at its heels. Then, as
the band swung about and marched off for its daily practice, she moved
away.
“Come,” she said a little impatiently. “After the glorious past, the
present is a bit of anticlimax. Shall we go for a walk?”
Her companions assented, and together they went down into Saint Louis
Street and turned towards the terrace. As they passed Barth’s quarters,
he unexpectedly appeared upon the steps.
“Whither?” Nancy called blithely, as he lifted his cap.
“To post some letters.”
“Come with us, instead,” she bade him, notwithstanding the murmured
protestations which arose from both Brock and Churchill.
To Nancy’s mind, the previous evening had not been altogether a shining
success. For half an hour after their introduction, she had dragged the
two men through a species of conversation; but there had been a triple
sigh of relief as the evening gun had marked the hour for Barth’s
departure. Nancy had followed him to the parlor door.
“Good night,” she said cordially there. “We shall see you, in the
morning?”
“Oh,—yes. If I can,” Barth answered vaguely.
Then he had made a dejected exit. As he strolled languidly away to his
room, he alternated between fears of a possible relapse in his ankle,
and mutinous thoughts regarding the hero of Valley Forge.
“Beastly race, those American men!” was the finale of his reflections.
“Oh, rather!”
Now, however, his dejection vanished in the face of the sunshiny morning
and of Nancy’s greeting.
“Won’t I be in the way?” he asked.
“Why should you?”
“I can’t walk much, you know.”
“But I thought Englishmen were famous for their walking,” Churchill
said, as he greeted the young Englishman much as a genial mastiff might
salute a youthful pug.
Barth glanced towards Nancy with a confident smile.
“Didn’t Miss Howard tell you?” he asked.
“Tell me what?”
“About the way we first met. I sprained my ankle, and Miss Howard turned
into a hired nurse, and took care of me.”
Churchill’s eyes sought Nancy’s scarlet face.
“The deuce she did! Where was this party?”
“This—?”
“This party?”
“Oh, no. It wasn’t a party at all. I was entirely by myself. I have
sometimes wondered how she ever chanced to find me in all that crowd.”
“Probably the Good Sainte Anne guided her unworthy namesake,” Nancy
responded lightly. “That was where the tragedy occurred.”
“Oh!” Beside Barth’s _oh_, that of Churchill seemed needlessly crisp and
curt. “But I thought you were bored to death at Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré,
Nancy.”
“That was only at first. Later, events happened.”
“So I should judge. Strange you forgot to mention them!”
“There are unexplained gaps in your own letters,” she reminded him
audaciously. “It was only by chance that I heard whom you took out, the
night of the Leighton dinner.” Then she turned to the others. “We
mustn’t go far, this morning,” she added; “not so much on account of
your foot, Mr. Barth, as because of our early dinner. Shall we take
ourselves to the terrace?”
High up on the glacis in the lee of the King’s Bastion, they found a
belated bit of Indian summer. Nancy dropped down on the crisp, dry turf
and, turning, beckoned St. Jacques to her side. Crossing the terrace
with Barth, she had seen the Frenchman pacing to and fro beside the
rail, and she had answered his wishful greeting with a smile of welcome.
Leaving Brock and Churchill to lead the way, Nancy had sauntered idly
along in the rear, adjusting her quick step to the frailties of Barth’s
ankle, her alert happiness to the darker mood which sat heavily upon her
other companion.
“You are not going to fail us, this afternoon, M. St. Jacques?” she
asked now.
Silently he shook his head.
“Your cousin has a perfect day,” he said, after a pause.
“And he appreciates it. Already, he declares himself the slave of the
place.”
“You are coming with me, in the morning?” St. Jacques inquired.
“I am not sure. I hope we can; but Mr. Churchill is not a very good
Catholic,” she answered, with a smile.
St. Jacques’s eyes lighted mirthfully.
“But Sainte Anne is his patron saint?” he questioned.
Nancy shook her head.
“Alas, no! He has shifted his allegiance, and poor Sainte Anne is
feeling very much cut up about it.”
“No matter,” St. Jacques answered philosophically. “She is getting her
fair share of devotees, and, with France and England at her shrine, she
can afford to be content without America.” Then his face darkened. “If
only she will be propitious!” he added, with sudden gravity.
Nancy’s hand shut on a tuft of grass at her side. Slowly she had come,
during those past days, to the realization of the dual personality of
the patron saint of Adolphe St. Jacques. Half human, half divine, the
Good Sainte Anne was holding complete sway in the mind of the young
Frenchman, just then. Half his unspoken wish was plain to her, half was
still beyond her ken. She wondered restlessly when would come the time
that she was free to speak. She wondered, too, what were the words she
was destined to say.
With a swift motion, St. Jacques settled backward to rest his elbow on
the grass at her side. Pushing back his cap, as if its slight weight
irritated him, he swept the dark hair from his forehead. Nancy frowned
involuntarily as her eyes rested on the angry scar.
“That was a shocking blow,” she said pityingly.
He nodded, with slow thoughtfulness. Then he bit his lip, and shook his
hair forward until the scar was completely hidden.
“It might have been worse—perhaps.”
“You’d better ask the Good Sainte Anne to do a miracle on you,” Brock
suggested, from his place farther up the slope.
Instantly the dark eyes sought Nancy’s face.
“I have already asked her,” Adolphe St. Jacques answered quietly.
“And what did the lady say?”
The Frenchman’s eyes moved northward and rested upon the purple tops of
the far-off Laurentides.
“My novena is not finished. She has yet to make her answer,” he said.
And, for the second time in their acquaintance, Nancy was conscious of
the dull tugging at her heart. Forgetful of Barth, watching from the
other side, she turned to look straight down into the face of St.
Jacques; and Brock, who alone of them all had been taken into the heart
of the Frenchman’s secret, felt it no shame to himself when the tears
rushed into his clear gray eyes, as he saw the look on Nancy’s face,
womanly, earnest, yet all unconscious of impending ill.
It was Churchill who broke the silence. A stranger to them all but
Nancy, he yet could not fail to realize the tension of the moment.
Nevertheless he assured himself that he had met those symptoms before.
Nancy’s path, the past season, had been strewn with similar victims.
“Wonderful view!” he said calmly.
The platitude broke the strain. St. Jacques sat up and put on his cap,
and Barth fumbled for his glasses. Above them, Brock openly rubbed his
eyes with the bunched-up fingers of his gloves.
“So glad you like it, Joe! It is wonderful; and then it is endeared to
me by all manner of associations. Away up there in those blue hills, Mr.
Barth sprained his ankle; M. St. Jacques and I spent an afternoon in
this road just underneath the cliff, and,” her eyes sought Brock’s eyes
mockingly; “and there aren’t ten blocks in the entire city that can’t
mark some sort of a skirmish between the American and Canadian forces.”
Brock’s answering shot was prompt.
“It is only that America refuses to be annexed,” he supplemented
gravely. “We hope to bring her to terms in time.”
And Barth fell to kicking the turf in moody discontent. Nancy checked
him.
“Don’t destroy the glacis of your chief American outpost, Mr. Barth. You
may need it sometime to fight off the French from your possessions.”
Her words had been wholly free from any allegorical meaning.
Nevertheless, Barth’s heels ground into the turf more viciously than
ever, as he made grim answer,—
“Oh, we English need no artificial defenses to fight off the Frenchmen,
you know.”
“Sic ’em!” Brock observed impartially. Then he snatched his hat from his
head, and, forgetful of their differences, Barth and St. Jacques
followed his lead.
Distant and faint from behind the sheltering wall came the strains of
_God Save the King_, as the band marched back from practice.
“Strange to hear _America_ up here!” Churchill said idly.
“_America?_” The Frenchman’s accent was inquiring.
“Yes. That is our national anthem.”
“How long since?” Brock queried coolly.
“Why, always, I suppose.”
Barth bestowed a contemplative stare upon the stranger.
“How very—American!” he observed.
“Of course. We think it is rather characteristic, and are no end proud
of it,” Churchill assured him blandly.
Barth sat up, straight and stiff.
“Mr. Churchill, did you ever happen to hear of _God Save the King_?”
“Queen? Oh, beg pardon! She’s dead, and it is a king now. Yes, I’ve
heard of it. What about it?”
“That.” Barth swept his little gray cap towards the dying notes of the
final phrase. “Your so-called _America_ is only our _God Save the
King_.”
“Is it? I’m no musician, and didn’t know. Still, I can’t see that it
hurts it, to have started with you. So did we all, if it comes to that.”
“Then you should give us the credit for having originated it,” Brock
suggested.
St. Jacques rolled over on his other elbow.
“As it happens, Brock, you didn’t originate it. It came from the other
side of the Channel.”
“Oh, rather! But it’s ours,” Barth interposed hastily.
St. Jacques rolled back again.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Barth; but it chances to be French,” he returned
quietly. “Lulli wrote it for Louis Quatorze, and England borrowed it
without returning thanks.” And then, still leaning on his elbow with his
eyes fixed upon Barth, he sang to the end the good old song,—
“Grand Dieu! Sauvez le Roi!
Grand Dieu! Sauvez le Roi!
Sauvez le Roi!
Que toujours glorieux,
Louis Victorieux,
Voye ses ennemis
Toujours soumis.”
As the light baritone voice died on the still air, Nancy looked down at
him with a smile.
“France scores, this time,” she said. “But what a text for an
international alliance! Here we are, three nations sitting under the
eaves of the most famous citadel in America, and each claiming as his
very own the same national anthem.”
“Oh; but it is generally admitted to belong to us,” Barth added, with
unflinching persistence.
The next night, Churchill and the doctor were left alone for a few
moments. The doctor held out his hand with a smile.
“Nancy tells me you are open to congratulation, Joe.”
“Yes. That is what brought me up here. I am too fond of you both to be
willing to take your congratulations in ink. She is a wonderful girl,
Uncle Ross.” The happiness of the young American sat well upon him. In
his uncle’s eyes, he gained dignity, even as he spoke those few words.
Then he laughed. “You may find yourself in the face of a similar
situation,” he suggested.
“What do you mean?”
“Nancy.”
The doctor stared at him for a moment.
“Oh, not a bit! Not a bit!” he said then. “Every lover is looking for
love. Nancy is nothing but a little girl.”
Churchill smiled.
“Then look out for your little girl. You may lose her, some day.”
“No,” the doctor protested valiantly. “The Lady will see to that. They
are nice boys, good boys; but they are only children.”
“Don’t be too sure. If I know anything at all about such matters—”
“You don’t,” the doctor interrupted testily. “But go on! Go on!”
“Then St. Jacques is very much in love with Nancy; and, what is more,
that snip of an Englishman is in love with her, too.”
“Hh! And what about Brock?” growled the doctor.
Churchill thrust his hands into his pockets and smiled back into the
frowning face of his uncle.
“That’s where you have me,” he answered coolly. “I have been watching
the two of them, all day long, and I’ll be sanctified if I can tell you
now.”