He fiddled with his wing collar and cravat. Marie had gone on and on about how handsome he looked in his somber black suit. Whether he looked handsome or not, he disliked the way the collar grabbed him around the neck. He sniffed at his sleeve, hoping neither the suit nor the white shirt under it smelled too overpoweringly of mothballs. They spent most of their time in a chest in the closet, coming forth for hardly anything but funerals and weddings.
His sons stood around fiddling with their collars, too. He’d had to tie their neckties for them: it was either that or spend half an hour waiting while they botched the job and then do the tying. Neither of them had had much practice at the art. He hadn’t had much himself, and hoped the knot in his own cravat was as straight as those he’d tied for Charles and Georges.
Had Nicole been marrying some young man of the vicinity, he too would have worn a black suit of no particular age (and no particular shape), and like as not a cravat his father had tied for him. Dr. Leonard O’Doull, on the other hand, wore a cutaway, white tie, trousers pressed into creases scalpel-sharp, and a stovepipe hat. When Georges saw him in his splendor, he whistled and said, “I thought I was getting a doctor for a brother-in-law, not a Rockefeller.”
“And I thought I was getting a troublemaker for a brother-in-law, and I see I was right,” Dr. O’Doull returned. He refused to let Georges get his goat. Lucien reckoned that the best way to handle his younger son, who was indeed a troublemaker.
Father Fitzpatrick came up to them, a little man with a beaky nose and hair the color halfway between rust and a sunset. “We’ll do it in just a few minutes, now,” he said. He spoke Parisian French with a peculiar lilting accent. When he spoke English with Dr. O’Doull, the lilt remained.
“This is good,” Lucien said. “This is very good.” He slowed his own speech a little for the priest’s benefit. Turning to his daughter’s fiance, he asked, “Are you nervous?”
“Of course I’m nervous,” O’Doull answered. Georges looked disappointed; had O’Doull tried to deny it, Lucien’s son would have made him pay. The American doctor went on, “Weren’t you nervous when you married your wife?”
“Now that I think on it, it could be that I was,” Galtier said, and pursed his lips to show he knew he was understating things. He’d been as nervous as a man getting a half-grown lynx out of a tree, and he’d known Marie since they were both children. O’Doull had known Nicole only since they began working together at the hospital. No wonder he was nervous.
Friends and relatives filed into the church. Most of them waved to Lucien; some came over to shake hands with him and O’Doull. A few went inside with rather sour expressions. They were families with young men who might possibly have been matched to Nicole had her father not chosen this outsider. In their shoes, he would have shown a long face, too.
And then it was time to go inside, and for Lucien to lead Nicole down the aisle toward the altar. In her dress all of white, she looked very young and very beautiful. She beamed at him through the veil. He patted the hand she’d set on his arm. If she was happy, he would be happy. And, even if Dr. O’Doull was an American, he struck Galtier as a solidly good fellow.
So did Father Fitzpatrick, though he gave Lucien a start by pronouncing the Latin of his prayers in a most peculiar fashion. Galtier glanced sharply over at Father Pierre. The local priest remained calm. That let Lucien also remain calm. If Father Pierre thought Father Fitzpatrick’s pronunciation acceptable, God likely would, too.
After Dr. O’Doull had opened Nicole’s veil and kissed her, after he had set a ring on her finger, people headed across the street to the hall Lucien had hired for the reception-the money Major Quigley had paid for back rent for the land on which the hospital stood was proving useful in all sorts of ways. Once there, Lucien got a drink and then found an excuse to get Father Pierre in a corner and ask him about Father Fitzpatrick’s Latin.
Father Pierre was also holding a drink. He knocked it back, chuckled, and answered, “You need have no concern over that. English and Irish and American priests are in the habit of pronouncing their Latin as they believe the ancient Romans would have spoken.”
“And you, how do you pronounce your Latin?” Lucien asked.
“In the same way as does His Holiness the Pope,” Father Pierre said. “I think I have made the better choice, but the other is in no way evil, merely different.”
“I also think you have made the better choice,” Lucien said. “In your mouth, Latin sounds splendid. In Father Fitzpatrick’s mouth, I found it harsh and rather ugly.”
“Part of that is because you are not used to it,” the priest of St.-Antonin replied. “Their way does have a certain majesty to it-although, as I say, I prefer our own.” He rolled his eyes. “Trust English-speakers to pay no attention to what the rest of the world does.” Galtier laughed at that.
“Where is the joke, mon beau-pere?” Leonard O’Doull asked. He could properly call Lucien his father-in-law now.
“Yes, Father, where is the joke?” Nicole echoed. Instead of Galtier’s arm, she clung with proud possessiveness to her new husband’s.
“It is a matter of Latin,” Lucien answered. With any luck at all, that would impress and confuse both the newlyweds.
It worked with his daughter, but not with O’Doull. The doctor thumped his forehead with the heel of his free hand. “But of course! I’m an idiot. Fitz learned his Latin the Ciceronian way, same as I did. But you folks here pronounce it as if the Romans had been Italians, don’t you? He must have sounded pretty funny to you.”
“If our way is good enough for the Holy Father in Rome, it is good enough for me,” Galtier said. Behind him, Father Pierre nodded. “And yes, your friend’s Latin did sound odd, though I am given to understand it is also good, of its kind.”
He wondered if that would insult the American. Instead, he saw that O’Doull was having a hard time not laughing. “Fitz’s Latin is certainly better than mine, these days,” his son-in-law said. “Who but a priest has the chance to keep his grasp of the language so fresh?”
“You have reason,” Father Pierre said. “I speak no English, I am sorry to say, and many priests who do speak English know not a word of French-unlike your friend Father Fitzpatrick, whose French is very good, if, like his Latin, spoken in an interesting way. But with such folk I speak in Latin, and I am understood. Even with the differences in pronunciation, I am understood.”
“It’s like the difference between the French of Paris and the French of Quebec,” O’Doull said.
“Why, so it is!” The priest of St.-Antonin beamed at him, then turned to Lucien and slapped him on the back. “You are a fortunate man, to have a scholar as part of your family.”
“I am a fortunate man,” Lucien said. “That is enough. And if I owe some of my good fortune to an American-why then, I do, that is all.”
Before either Leonard O’Doull or Father Pierre could say anything to that, shouts from the street distracted both of them and Galtier, too. A couple of people near the doorway called out to learn what was going on. Lucien heard the reply very clearly: “The flag of the Republic of Quebec flies over the city of Quebec!”
Several other people who also heard shouted for joy. A moment later, somebody punched one of them in the nose. Half a dozen men jumped on the puncher and threw him out. To Lucien’s dismay, he saw the fellow sprawled in the street with his trousers torn was a cousin he’d always liked pretty well.
Before the reception could turn into a free-for-all, he let out a great bellow: “Enough!” He was loud enough to make everyone turn around and notice him. Still at the top of his lungs, he went on, “This is a wedding, not a political rally. Anyone who wishes to make it a political rally will answer to me.” He cocked a fist, leaving no doubt about what he meant.