"A pain!" she cried. "A terrible pain!"
She doubled herself over the backgammon board, sending the men in all directions. Philip sprang up.
"I’ll fetch you some brandy", he said.
He strode to the dining-room and returned with a small glass of brandy. She still had her hand to her side but she was calm.
"Are you better?" he asked.
"Yes. But give me the brandy". She sipped a little.
"It must be something you ate", he said, eyeing her anxiously.
"Yes… those nuts… I shouldn’t touch Brazil nuts". She took another sip.
"Come to the sofa and lie down".
He raised her to her feet. She took a step, then gave another cry. Boney echoed it and peered inquisitively into her face.
"My God!" said Philip.
"Send for the doctor! Quick! Quick! Quick!" she cried. "The child’s coming!"
"It can’t! The doctor’s out of town".
"Then fetch another!" She tore herself from him, ran to the sofa and lay down, gripping her body in her hands. "Get Berthe Balestrier’s doctor! Call Marie!"
In half an hour a short, burly French doctor with a pointed black moustache stepped out of the December dark into the brightly lighted bedroom to which Marie had supported Adeline. Philip walked the floor below, filled with apprehension and distrust.
Inside of another hour a son was born to the Whiteoaks.
The celerity of this birth as compared with Gussie’s, and Adeline’s speedy recovery from it, were a miracle to her. She gave all the credit to Dr. St. Charles. She sang his praises to everyone who came to see her. She even gave him credit for the vigour of the lusty babe. Though Philip did not much like the idea, she added St. Charles to the chosen name, and, though Christmas was three weeks off, the name Noel. She was truly happy. Adeline was able to nurse Nicholas, which she had not been fitted to do for Gussie. She found an English nurse who, with the arrogance of her class, took almost complete possession of the babe. Marie, however, would not give up Gussie. She and the nurse established two hostile camps in the domestic quarters. The nurse had the advantage of knowing she was almost indispensable to Adeline. Marie knew that Philip revelled in her soufflés and meringues. When it came to having words she had all the advantage of being able to pour forth a flood of mingled English and French, unintelligible as she grew angrier, unanswerable except by glares and head-tossings. The nurse extolled her charge’s beauty. He was the handsomest infant in Quebec. He looked like the Christ-child. Marie could see no such resemblance and she, being a good Catholic, ought at least to know something of the appearance of the Blessed Infant. She told how people stopped her in the street to admire la petite Augusta, in her white lamb coat and blue velvet bonnet.
There was no disagreement between the parents as to the relative beauty of their children. Nicholas was indeed a fine child and, in the months that followed, he grew more attractive each week. His skin was like a milk-white flower-petal. His brown eyes had golden lights in them and early sparkled with mischief and vitality. He was not bald at his birth but had a pretty coating of brown down which grew so fast that, by the time he was five months old, his nurse could coax it into a fine Thames tunnel, the very pride of her life. Adeline could see in him a strong resemblance to her mother but there was a promise of Whiteoak stalwartness in his infant frame. Philip said he was the image of Adeline without the red hair. Adeline thanked God he had not inherited that. She hoped none of her children would, for she looked on red hair as a blemish. She had her wish. Not one of her four children had an auburn hair in its head. It remained for her eldest grandson to inherit, even in a more pronounced degree, her colouring.
The christening was an event in Quebec. The robe worn by Adeline and her brothers, somewhat the worse for wear, was sent out from Ireland to adorn him. The ceremony was at the Garrison Church, the guests being entertained afterwards at the Whiteoaks’ house where short but effective speeches were made and much champagne was drunk to the health and future happiness of Nicholas Noel St. Charles.
The Whiteoaks gave a still larger party at mid-Lent. The guests were asked to wear the costume of the reign of Louis XVI. How they were transformed by powdered hair and patches, by the elegance of their costumes! Philip and Adeline were charming hosts. They were in their element. The house in the Rue St. Louis echoed laughter and the music of the dance, as it had not since the days of the Duke of Kent. During the supper a cage full of artificial singing birds, which Adeline had been given by Philip as a Christmas present, broke into song to the delight of the company. Monsieur Balestrier drank a little too much champagne. Adeline danced rather too often with Wilmott, though it was small wonder, for he danced perfectly and his satin breeches and silk stockings displayed the shapeliest of legs. He was wrong in having spent so much money on a costume whose usefulness was for no more than a night, but such was Adeline’s ill influence on him, he told her, smiling somewhat grimly down into her eyes.
The elderly brother and sister, Monsieur and Mademoiselle de Granville, wore authentic costumes of the period, brought from France in the early days. He wore the costume with melancholy distinction which, as the night wore on, changed to a strange gaiety. He was Adeline’s partner in a quadrille when suddenly he stopped dancing, fixing his eyes on her with a look of terror.
"What is the matter?" she asked anxiously.
"Maman!" he said, in a choking voice. "Maman! Don’t leave me!"
He stood transfixed, his fine face frozen into a mask of fear. His sister came hurriedly and led him away. Those who noticed the incident remarked only that poor Monsieur de Granville had had another of his attacks of nerves but his sister perceived something more serious and early next morning sent for Dr. St. Charles. He could do little to stem the violence of the fever and delirium that followed. All the haunting horror which had darkened Monsieur de Granville’s life burst upon him like an electric storm that throws a livid light into the darkest shadow. He recalled everything. The dimly remembered horrors of his childhood were as though they had happened yesterday.
For almost a week he was in this state, then the fever left him. He became calm. He had no recollection of what had happened. He spoke regretfully of his having to leave the charming party of the Whiteoaks and begged his sister to see to it that his costume was carefully folded and laid away. That night he died in his sleep.
The death of Monsieur de Granville was a shock to Adeline. Birth and death had visited the adjacent houses in so short a time! If only she had not given the fancy-dress party, poor Mademoiselle de Granville would not now be going to Mass weighed down by black, with black rings under her eyes! A bronchial cough kept Adeline indoors. The weather was bitterly cold. It had been a severe winter and surely it was time for spring. But day by day it grew colder. Great snowfalls made the streets impassable, weighed upon the roofs till, having formed a mass too great for the slope, it slid off with a crash into the street. All day long men in mufflers and ear-muffs shovelled the snow, building high walls of it on either side of the roads so that to see anyone on the opposite side was impossible. Milk was delivered in frozen blocks. Meat was frozen. One morning Patsy O’Flynn found a dog frozen stiff on the doorstep. Philip had his ears frozen when returning from dinner at the Fort. The thermometer sank to thirty degrees below zero. The lights of the Lower Town twinkled palely at night like little cold stars. The sun, aloof all day, blazed at its setting into crimson grandeur across the ice-bound St. Lawrence. Like ice made manifest the metallic clangour of church bells sounded in early morning across the town. Adeline could hear the closing of the door and Marie’s footsteps crunching on the snow as she hastened to Mass. Gussie made herself a little shrine in a corner of the kitchen out of a white table-napkin laid over a box on which stood a picture of the Sacred Heart and, in front of it, a candle in a tin candlestick. She genuflected when she passed this. She knelt before it, crossing herself and moving her lips as in prayer. And she scarcely two! Marie’s eyes filled with tears as she watched her. Was the little one perhaps too good to live? Nicholas’ nurse exclaimed to Adeline: