When Lucien Galtier came in from the fields, the sun was going down. As summer slid into fall, it set ever sooner, rose ever later. The air had-not quite a chill, but the premonition of a chill-it hadn't held even a couple of weeks earlier. Pretty soon, frost would fern across the windows when he got up in the morning.
Marie came bustling out of the farmhouse to meet him before he came inside. She didn't usually do that. Automatically, he began to worry. Any change in routine portended trouble. A lifetime's experience and a cultural inheritance of centuries warned him that was true.
So did his wife's face. "What is it now?" he asked her, and picked the two worst things he could think of: "Have we had a visit from Father Pascal while I was cultivating? Or is that the American, Major Quigley, was here?"
"No, neither of those, for which I thank le bon Dieu," Marie answered. "But it is, all the same, something of which I wish to speak to you without having any of the children hear." She looked down to make sure none of their numerous brood was in earshot.
Lucien did the same thing. "Of course, our trying to keep them from hearing but makes them try the more to hear," he said, again from long experience. "But what is it that you would keep a secret from them?"
"Not from all of them, not quite." Marie took a deep breath. When she spoke, the words tumbled out all in a rush: "Nicole just came home from the hospital"-she did not look at the big building the Americans had run up on Galtier land; she made a point of not looking at it-"and she, she, she asked permission of me to bring to supper tomorrow night one of the doctors who works there."
"'Osti," Lucien said softly. Once, and once only, he stomped a booted foot on the ground. "I knew it would come to this. Did I not say it would come to this? When she went to work at that place"-he not only did not look at the hospital, he refused even to name it-"I knew it would come to this."
"His name is O'Doull," Marie said, pronouncing the un-Quebecois appellation with care. "He speaks French, Nicole says, and he is himself a member of the holy Catholic Church-so she assures me."
"He is himself a member of the United States Army," Lucien retorted. Since that was manifestly true, Marie could only nod. Her husband went on, "The people in Ottawa-the Protestants in Ottawa-had the courtesy, more or less, to leave us alone. The Americans, merely by their coming, are taking from us our patrimony."
"I did not tell Nicole yes, and I did not tell her no, either," Marie answered. "I told her I would tell you, and that you would decide."
Galtier opened his mouth to declare that he had already decided, and that the answer was and would always be no. Before he did so, though, he cast a quizzical eye on Marie. She knew everything he'd said, and knew it at least as well as he did. More cautiously than he'd expected, he asked, "Why did you not say no on your own behalf?"
Marie let out a long sigh. "Because I fear the Americans will remain here in Quebec for a long time to come, and I do not believe we shall be able to make it as if they do not exist. And because I do not believe that Nicole would come to know any fondness for a man who is wicked, even if he is an American. And because one supper, here in front of the lot of us, is not the end of the world. And it could even be that, seeing this…man O'Doull here in our own place, not at the other one where she works, would be the best way to convince her he is not the proper one."
Yes, I had good reason to be cautious, Lucien thought. Aloud, he said, "And if I still believe this should not be?"
"Then it shall not be, of course," his wife replied at once. She was always properly submissive, and she usually got her way.
She would get her way this time, too. "It could even be," Galtier said in a speculative voice, "that seeing all of her family will have a chilling effect on this Dr. O'Doull." He smiled, remembering. "This is often true, when a man who is not serious meets a young lady's family."
"You have reason," Marie answered, smiling too. "Let us go in now, and tell Nicole she may bring him, then."
"Very well," Lucien said. It wasn't very well, or anywhere close to being very well, but he seemed to have no good choices whatever. In that, he thought of himself as a tiny version of the entire province of Quebec.
Nicole squealed when Marie told her (Lucien could not make himself do anything more than nod) she might invite the doctor for supper. Georges said, "Ah, so I am to have an American brother-in-law, n'est-ce pas?" Nicole's face turned the color of fire. She threw a potato at him. It thumped against his ribs. Grinning still, he said, "I am wounded! The doctor must cure me!" and thrashed about on the floor.
Charles, his older brother, said nothing, not with words, but the look he sent Lucien said, Father, how could you? Galtier's shrug showed how little true choice he had had. Nicole's three younger sisters couldn't seem to decide whether to be horrified or fascinated by the news.
Galtier went through the next day's work as if he were a machine wound up to perform its tasks without thought. His mind had already leapt to the evening, and to the meeting with the American, O'Doull. In his mind, he ran through a dozen, a score of conversations with the man. Whether any of them would have anything to do with reality he had no idea, but he played them out all the same.
He looked up in some surprise to see the sun near setting. Time to go in, he realized, on most days a welcome thought but today one so much the opposite that he looked around for more chores to do. Talking with the American in the privacy of his own mind was one thing. Talking with the man in the real world was a different, far more daunting prospect.
He wiped his boots with special care. Even so, he knew he brought the aromas of the farmyard into the house with him. How could he help it? Knowing he could not help it, knowing he was not the only one on the farm who did it, he thought nothing of it most of the time. Now-
Now, there in the parlor sat a tall, skinny stranger in town clothes; he was talking with Nicole and doing what looked to be his gallant best not to be upset at having her brothers and sisters stare at him. He sprang to his feet when Lucien came in. So did Nicole. "Father," she said formally, "I would like to introduce to you Dr. Leonard O'Doull. Leonard, this is my father, Monsieur Lucien Galtier."
"I am very pleased to meet you, sir," O'Doull said in good French, the Parisian accent with which he'd learned the tongue overlain by the rhythms of the Quebecois with whom he'd been working. Galtier took that as a good sign, a sign of accommodation. He could not imagine Major Quigley sounding like a Quebecois if he stayed in this country a hundred years.
O'Doull's hands were pale and soft, but not smooth. The skin on them was chafed and reddened and cracked in many places, some of those cracks looking angry and inflamed. Doctors had to wash often in corrosive chemicals to keep their hands free of germs.
As for the rest of the doctor, he looked like an Irishman: fair skin with freckles, sandy hair, almost cat-green eyes, a dimple in his chin so deep a plow might have dug it. He was unobtrusively sizing up Galtier as the farmer examined him. "I do thank you very much for letting me come into your home," he said. "I know it is an intrusion, and I know it is a"-he cast about for a word-"an awkwardness for you as well."
He was frank. Lucien liked him the better for that. "Well, we shall see how it goes," he said. "I can always throw you out, after all."
"Father!" Nicole exclaimed in horror. But one of O'Doull's gingery eyebrows lifted; he knew Galtier hadn't meant that seriously. Again, against his will, Galtier's opinion of the doctor went up.
Marie served up potatoes and greens and ham cooked with prunes and dried apples. Lucien got out a jug of applejack he'd bought from one of the farmers nearby. He hadn't expected he'd want to do that. O'Doull, though, even if he was an American, seemed a man of both sense and humor. He also made appreciative noises about Marie's cooking, which caused her to fill up his plate once more after he'd demolished his first helping. The second disappeared as quickly.