The clouds hung gray and low over the old gray city. From the river the
wind swept in, raw and cutting, and the Laurentides lay in the purple
haze which betokens a coming storm. The terrace was deserted; the
fountain in the Ring had stopped playing, and narrow Sainte Anne Street
was turned into a tunnel thick with flying dust. Indian summer was at an
end, and winter was at hand.
With her ruddy hair flying and her broad hat tilted rakishly over one
ear, Nancy came fighting her way down Saint Louis Street and across the
Place d’Armes. Her pulses were pounding gayly with the intoxication of
the cold; her face glowed with the struggle of meeting the boisterous
wind. From his ducal casement, Barth eyed her wishfully. Then he
returned to his book. Nancy, in such a mood as that, defied his powers
of comprehension. Upon one former occasion he had seen her thus, a
veritable spirit of the storm. Experience had taught him certain
lessons. Mr. Cecil Barth looked down on Nancy’s erect head and blazing
cheeks, on her vigorous, elastic tread. Looking, he sighed, and
prudently remained hidden in his room.
Ten minutes later, Nancy’s shut hand descended upon her father’s door.
The door was locked.
“Oh, daddy, are you there?” she called ingratiatingly.
There was no reply, and she tapped again. This time, the doctor
answered.
“Busy, Nancy.”
“Really and truly?” she wheedled.
“Yes.”
“Oh, how mean of you! How long?”
“I can’t tell.”
Her lips to the keyhole, she heaved an ostentatious sigh. The sigh
brought forth no sign of relenting.
“I am very lonesome, daddy,” she said then. “It is too bad of you to
neglect me like this. But, if you really won’t let me in, I’m going out
on the ramparts for a breath of fresh air.”
“Well,” the doctor’s accent bespoke his manifest relief. “Go on, dear;
but don’t get blown away.”
“No; and don’t you fall asleep over your horrid old manuscripts, and
forget to let yourself out and come down to supper,” she cautioned him.
“Good by.”
Going back to her room, she took off her jacket and broad hat, and
replaced them with a sealskin coat and toque. Then she went running down
the stairs and turned out into Sainte Anne Street, already powdered
thickly with falling flakes.
With the coming of the snow, the wind was dying, and Nancy made her way
easily enough around the corner into Buade Street, past the Chien d’Or,
gnawing his perennial bone high in the air, and out to the northeast
corner of the city wall where she halted, breathless, beside one of the
venerable guns.
Just then, the door of the doctor’s room opened, and Adolphe St. Jacques
stepped out into the hall.
“Courage, boy!” said the doctor kindly.
And St. Jacques nodded in silence, as he gripped the outstretched hand.
As a matter of course, he took his way straight in the direction of the
ramparts. St. Jacques could think of but one person in the world, just
then; and that person was Nancy Howard. He overtook her at the angle of
the ancient wall. Later, it occurred to him that there was a symbolic
meaning in the situation, as he came hurrying onward, with Laval at his
left, Nancy at his right, and the brief, empty stretch of road before
him. At the time, however, he had but one thought, and that was to get
to Nancy.
He found her standing with her back towards the direction from whence he
came. One arm lay lightly across the cannon, the other rested on the old
gray parapet which made a fitting background for her slight figure in
its dark cloth skirt and dark fur coat. Her shoulders were sprinkled
with the fine, soft snow and, against the snowy air above the river, her
vivid hair, loosened by the wind, stood out in a gleaming aureole above
the high collar of her coat.
“Miss Howard!”
She turned with a start to find St. Jacques at her side. Releasing the
cannon, she held out her hand in blithe greeting.
“Isn’t this superb?” she exclaimed breathlessly. “I am so glad you have
come to enjoy it with me. See how the river is all blown into a chopping
sea! And the snow over Lévis! And look at those thick clouds of snow
that keep scurrying across the river! How can people stay in-doors and
lose it all?”
For an instant, St. Jacques felt himself dazzled by her beauty and by
her strong vitality. In all his past experience, there had been no other
Nancy. He sought to get a firm grasp upon himself. The instant’s delay
caught Nancy’s quick attention, and she shrank from him, as she saw his
rigid face and lambent eyes. Then she rallied and laughed lightly.
“What is it, M. St. Jacques?” she queried. “You look as if you had seen
a ghost.”
“So I have.”
“Was it a pretty one?” she asked nervously, as she locked her hands
above the crowned monogram on the gun, and stood looking at him a little
defiantly.
He shook his head.
“It was the ghost of what I might have been,” he answered quietly.
Again Nancy sought to dominate the scene.
“So bad as that?” she asked, with a futile attempt at flippancy.
He disregarded her words.
“Miss Howard,” he said slowly; “I have come to say good by.”
Instantly her tone changed.
“Oh, I am so sorry! Is it for a long time?”
“I may not come back while you are here.”
It was plain that he was struggling hard to hold himself steady; and
Nancy, at a loss to explain the situation, nevertheless found herself
sharing his mood.
“I am sorry,” she repeated slowly. “Are you going to leave Quebec?”
“I am going home.”
“There is no trouble there, I hope.”
“No. The trouble is all here.”
Nancy’s mind went swiftly southward to the frisky, boyish days that
unfold themselves at Yale.
“At Laval?” she questioned, with a smile.
St. Jacques shook his head.
“What should be the trouble at Laval?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing; unless you have come into collision with a dean or two,”
she answered hastily.
St. Jacques smiled, with a pitiful attempt at mirth.
“No. On the other hand, something came into collision with me.”
“What was that?”
For his only answer, he brushed aside his hair and let the storm sweep
pitilessly against the scar beneath. Nancy caught her breath sharply.
“M. St. Jacques! Do you mean that it is going to be serious?”
“So serious that I must give up all work.”
“Who says so?” she demanded.
“Your father.”
“My father?” Nancy’s accent dropped to utter hopelessness. “For how
long?”
“Until I am better.”
“And when will that be?”
“He says it is impossible for him to tell. Perhaps—”
“Perhaps?” Nancy echoed questioningly.
“Perhaps—never.”
There was no answer for a moment. Then Nancy’s glove tore itself across
with the strain of her clenched fingers.
“Oh, I could kill the man who struck that blow!” she burst out. Then her
head went down on the crowned monogram, and the silence dropped again.
At length, Nancy raised her head.
“Shall we walk on?” she asked, as steadily as she could. “It is very
cold here, all at once.”
Side by side, they turned the corner to the westward, and came into
comparative shelter.
“How long have you known it?” she said, as soon as she could speak
quietly.
“Just as you came to the door of your father’s room.”
She drew a slow breath, as she looked up at his face, white, but
resolute still.
“And already it seems ages old. You are sure?”
“He is. It has been coming on for a month now. Three weeks ago, I went
to your father and told him that I feared there was trouble. He bade me
wait, to live out of doors and to work as little as possible. I kept the
hope. My profession means so much to me now, that I could not give it
up.”
“Yes, I know. Your profession is your very life,” Nancy answered gently.
Swiftly he turned and faced her. In that one glance, Nancy saw all the
fiery, repressed nature of the man, read his secret and, with a sinking
heart, acknowledged to herself the fatal keenness of the blow which she
must one day in honor deal.
But the answer of St. Jacques was already in her ears.
“It means far more than life.”
She tried to stem the tide of his words.
“When do you go?” she asked hurriedly.
“To-morrow.”
“So soon as that?”
“There must be an operation.”
“Where?”
“At my home. Your father will go with me. Every one says no greater man
can be found. He is very good,” St. Jacques added simply.
Again Nancy’s courage failed her. Again she looked into her companion’s
face, and took heart from the resolution written there.
“I wish I knew what to say,” she said quietly.
“Sometimes there is nothing to say. It is all said for us,” he replied,
with sudden dreariness. “Meanwhile, may I ask a favor of you?”
“Of course.”
“You have your little Sainte Anne?”
For her only answer, she took it from the folds of her blouse and laid
it in his hand. He walked on for a moment, looking down at it with
loving, reverent eyes. Then he gave it back into her keeping.
“I had hoped so much from it,” he said slowly; “so much more than you
ever knew. I regarded the name as an omen of good. I even made my
novena; but it was all in vain.” His voice dropped. “All in vain.” Then
he steadied himself. “But the favor? It is to be next Thursday, three
days from now. The operation, I mean. On that day, will you go out to
the shrine of the Good Sainte Anne, and say a prayer for me? You are no
Catholic, I know; but it will help me to be brave, if I can feel that
together you and she are making intercession in my behalf.”
Resolutely Nancy brushed the tears from her cheeks and faced him with a
smile.
“I—promise,” she said. Then her voice failed her again.
“Thank you. It will be a help. Beyond that, I ask nothing of you. In the
one case, it could do no good. In the other, I shall come back to you.
There is no need to tell you all I have wished—and hoped—and prayed
for, all you have been in my life, these past weeks. If the Good Sainte
Anne wills it, I shall tell it all to you, some day. If not—good by.”
As he took her hand into his strong fingers, Nancy’s tear-dim eyes were
blind to everything but the unspoken love and longing in the great dark
eyes before her, everything but the point of the lower lip rolling
outward in its pitiful attempt to form its own brave, characteristic
little smile.
Then, hat in hand and the snow sifting down on his thick dark hair, he
turned away and left her alone beside the old gray wall in the
fast-gathering snow.