"Merci beaucoup." Dr. O'Doull reached into a jacket pocket and took out two cigars. He gave one to Galtier. "Here you are. I delivered a baby boy yesterday. These are part of the reward from the father."
"I thank you. I thank him. Come-let's go into the front room." When they'd sat down, when they had the cigars going, Lucien raised his glass of homemade Calvados. "Salut!" he said, and drank.
So did O'Doull. After a good swig, he whistled softly. "Son of a bitch," he said in English, a tongue he used these days only when taken by surprise. He sipped again, more cautiously, and returned to French: "Potent stuff."
"Yes, a strong batch," Lucien agreed. Quality varied wildly from one jug to the next, as was only to be expected when people made the stuff in small stills with no tedious government regulations or even more tedious taxes. "Strong, but good. So… How wags your world?"
"Well enough, if I didn't set fire to my liver there," Leonard O'Doull replied. "For myself, for Nicole and little Lucien, all is well, as I hope it is for you."
"As you say, well enough." Galtier puffed on the cigar. He'd had better. Whoever the new father was, he was a cheapskate. He paused. "All is well for your family, you say, which is good. All is not so well somewhere else?" He wasn't sure he'd heard that in the doctor's voice, but thought he had.
And O'Doull nodded. "I am not nearly so sure I like the direction in which I see the world headed."
Galtier tried to make sense of that. "What man ever does?"
"Non, mon beau-pиre, not like that," O'Doull said. "Not the little thoughts that make a man wonder if he is all he should be. When I say the world, I mean… the world." His expansive gesture not only took in the whole world, it nearly knocked over a lamp on the table next to the sofa where he sat. Maybe the applejack was hitting hard and fast. Maybe, too, he did have something big on his mind.
"And what of the world?" Lucien Galtier asked. "Most of it goes its way far from here. When I remember how things were when that was not so, I think this is not so bad. I can do without soldiers and bombs and such things on my doorstep. That ambulance driver I saw, poor fellow, wounded in his very manhood…" He shuddered and sipped again from his own drink.
"If you will recall, though, helping the wounded is why I first came to Quebec." O'Doull picked up his glass. Instead of drinking, he stared at the pale yellow apple brandy. "I have been comfortable here for many years, forgetting the world and by the world forgot. But I fear one day I may have to go back to my proper craft, healing the wounded once more."
"Here? In Quebec?" Lucien shook his head. "I do not believe it."
"Nor I," O'Doull replied with a sweet, sad smile. "But the world, poor thing, is wider than Quebec, and wilder, too, worse luck. And I am a doctor, and I am an American, and if my country should ever need me in another war-"
"God forbid!" Galtier broke in, and crossed himself.
"Yes. God forbid." Leonard O'Doull nodded. "So the world said in 1914. But God did not forbid. And so, if He should happen to be watching a football match again…" Lucien laughed at the delicious blasphemy. His son-in-law was not in a laughing mood. O'Doull went on, "If that happens, how could I stay quiet here, attending to cases of measles and rheumatism? That would be a waste of everything for which I trained."
The worst part of it was, what he said made sense to Galtier. Soberly-in spite of the applejack-the farmer said, "All I can tell you is, may this not come to pass."
"Yes. May it not, indeed." O'Doull knocked back the rest of his drink. After he got over the coughing fit that followed-the stuff was too strong for such cavalier treatment-he said, "Thank you for letting me share my darkness with you."
"C'est rien," Lucien replied. "And it is nothing because who but you saw my darkness not so long ago?" Who but you caused it? he thought. But that wasn't fair, and he knew as much. O'Doull had only diagnosed the trouble Marie already had.
"Between the Action Franзaise and the Freedom Party and the Silver Shirts in England, the world is a nastier place than it was ten years ago," O'Doull said. "And in Russia, the Tsar seems to think the Jews cause all his problems, and no one seems to want to stay in Austria-Hungary except the Austrians and the Hungarians, and even the Hungarians are not so sure. And the Turks treat the Armenians as the Russians treat the Jews, and-"
"And you Americans hold down English-speaking Canada." Galtier hadn't expected to say that. It just popped out. He wondered if his son-in-law would be offended.
But Leonard O'Doull only nodded. "Yes. And that. Small next to some of the others, I believe, but no less real even so." He got to his feet. "And now I had better leave. If you ask me to have another drink, I'll say yes, and then I'll be too drunk to go back to Riviиre-du-Loup, and Nicole will be unhappy with me-and with you." He gave a curiously old-fashioned bow, then made his way to the door, and to his motorcar.
Galtier wasn't going anywhere that night. He made himself another drink, and poured it all down. Maybe it helped him go to sleep. After O'Doull's dark fantasies, he needed all the help he could get.
When Sunday came, he drove into Riviиre-du-Loup to hear Mass. As he'd got into the habit of doing the past few months, he stopped at Йloise Granche's house to give her a ride into town. "Bonjour, Lucien," she said as he opened the passenger-side door of the Chevrolet for her. "You look very handsome today."
"I thank you… for not buying new spectacles any time lately," he replied. She laughed. He went on, "Now, I do not need spectacles of any sort to know what a pretty woman I am lucky enough to have with me."
"How you do go on," she said, but indulgently.
When they got to the church, Йloise saw some lady friends and went to chat with them. Lucien sat in the bosom of his family. Nothing could have been more decorous. Nicole said, "How nice that you were able to bring Mme. Granche again." Lucien nodded. The service started a moment later.
After taking communion, Galtier led Йloise Granche back to his auto. As they'd driven north, so they went south. When he stopped by the house, she said, "Would you care to come in for a cup of tea?"
"Thank you. I'd like that. I can't stay long, though," he replied.
They went inside. Everything was quiet and peaceful-and dark, for Йloise had no electricity. She turned. Lucien took her in his arms. A moment later, they were holding each other and kissing and murmuring endearments, for all the world as if they were a couple of youngsters discovering love for the very first time.
Laughing, exulting in his strength, Lucien lifted her into his arms and carried her upstairs to the bedroom. "Be careful!" Йloise exclaimed. "You'll hurt yourself." He laughed some more. She said that every time. He hadn't hurt himself yet, and didn't seem likely to. And the soft feel of her made the way his heart pounded till he gently set her on the bed seem altogether worthwhile.
Before too long, his heart was pounding again, from an even more pleasurable exertion. "Oh, Lucien!" Йloise gasped, urging him on. Her nails dug into his back. "So sweet," she murmured, eyes half closed. "So sweet."
Afterwards, he gave her a kiss as he lay beside her. His heart was still drumming, harder than it would have when he was a younger man. He had more trouble catching his breath, too, than he would have when he and Marie were newlyweds.
"One of these days," he said, "we should have Father Guillaume say the words over us."
Women were supposed to be the ones who wanted such things, but Йloise shook her head, as she had several times before. "Not necessary," she said. "Better if he doesn't, in fact. It would only complicate matters with both our families. If we marry, it turns into a question of patrimonies. If we don't, then this is… what it is, that's all. I like it better this way."