A week later, Nancy rose from her knees beside her father’s open trunk, and stood staring down into the courtyard. Wrapped to his ears, the old habitant still sat on his block in the corner, peeling potatoes without end. Far above his head, a stray shaft of sunshine gilded the gray wall and reminded Nancy of her resolution to take a final walk, that morning.
It was almost with a feeling of relief that Nancy saw the approaching end of her stay at The Maple Leaf. The past days had held some of the saddest hours she had ever known. Till then, she had never realized how the bright, brave personality of the sturdy little Frenchman had pervaded the place, how acutely she could mourn for a man of whom, less than six weeks before, she had never even heard. Forget him she could not. She and Brock talked of him by the hour, now laughing over the merry days they had spent together, then giving up to the sudden wave of loneliness which swept over them at the thought of the nevermore that separated them from their good comrade. As yet, it was too soon for them to take comfort from the doctor’s words, that the swift passing of Adolphe St. Jacques had been but the merciful forestalling of a pitiful, lingering death in life.
To one day, Nancy never made any allusion. That was the day she had spent alone, at the shrine of the Good Sainte Anne.
Now, as she stood before her mirror, fastening on her hat, her glance fell to the little figure of the good saint and, taking it up, she looked long at the symbols graven on its base. She hesitated. Then she gently slid it into the breast pocket of her coat. In loyalty to St. Jacques, it still should be her companion. His eyes now, in the clearer light, could see what had before been hidden from them. Adolphe St. Jacques was too unselfishly loyal to fail to understand the nature of the only love she could ever have given him and, understanding, to reject it.
Inside the city wall, the early snow had vanished; but it still lay white over the Cove Fields, over the ruins of the old French fortifications, and over the plains beyond. Beyond Saint Sauveur, the hills were blue in the sunshine, and the light wind that swept in from their snowy caps, was crisp and full of ozone. Nancy had left The Maple Leaf with slow step and drooping head; she went tramping along the Grand Allée as if the world were all before her, to be had for the mere sake of asking. Then, as she turned again and halted by the Wolfe monument, her buoyant mood forsook her. That simple shaft marked the end of one who died, victorious. It spoke no word of those others, Frenchmen, brave, true-hearted fellows who fell there in their hour of defeat. And not one of them was braver, more true-hearted than little Adolphe St. Jacques.
“Oh, Miss Howard.”
Impatiently she raised her head from the cold iron palings. Barth was standing close at her side. Even as she nodded to him, she felt a sudden shrinking from his inevitable question as to the cause for her tears. To her surprise, no question came.
“After all, he was a wonderfully good little fellow,” Barth said simply.
She nodded, without speaking. Barth let full five minutes pass, before he spoke again.
“I saw you go by the house,” he said then. “I fancied you would come out here. I knew you liked the place.”