But, however much he sometimes wanted to, he couldn't quite forget that he was an American, that he came from a wider world than the one in which he chose to live. Reading about the gathering storm far to the south-even reading about it in French, which made it seem all the farther away-brought that home to him. In an odd way, so did the passing of his father-in-law.
To Leonard O'Doull, Lucien Galtier had stood for everything he admired about Quebec: a curious mix of adaptability and a deeper stubbornness. Now that the older man was gone, O'Doull felt as if he'd lost an anchor that had been mooring him to la belle Rйpublique.
His wife, of course, had other feelings about the way her father had died: one part shock, O'Doull judged, to about three parts mortification. "Did it have to be there?" she would say, over and over again. "Did he have to be doing that?"
"Coronary thrombosis comes when it comes," O'Doull would reply, as patiently and sympathetically as he could. "The exertion, the excitement- they could, without a doubt, help bring it on."
Patience and sympathy took him only so far. About then, Nicole would usually explode: "But people will never let us live it down!"
Knowing how places like Riviиre-du-Loup and the surrounding farms worked, O'Doull suspected she was right. Even so, he said, "You worry too much. Many of the people I've talked to say they're jealous of such an end."
"Men!" Nicole snarled. "Tabernac! What do you know?" That was unfair to half the human race, not that she cared. Then she went on, "And what of poor Йloise Granche? Is she jealous of such an end?"
That, unfortunately, wasn't unfair, and was very much to the point. Йloise wasn't jealous. She was horror-stricken, and who could blame her? To have to watch someone die at such a moment… How would she ever forget that? How could she ever want to get close to another man as long as she lived?
O'Doull said, "Your father didn't leave us… unappreciated." He needed to pause there to pick the right word. After another moment, he went on, "Would you rather it had happened while he was mucking out the barn?"
"I'd rather it didn't happen at all," Nicole answered. But that wasn't what he'd asked, and she knew it. Now she hesitated. At last, she said, "Maybe I would. It would have been more, more dignified."
"Death is never dignified." O'Doull spoke with a doctor's certainty. "Never. Dignity in death is something we invent afterwards to make the living feel better."
"I would have felt better if it had happened while Papa was in the barn," Nicole said. "Whether he-" She broke off, not soon enough, and burst into tears. " 'Osti! Do you see? Even I'm starting to make jokes about it. And if I do, what's everyone else doing?"
"The same thing, probably," O'Doull said. "People are like that."
"It's not right!" Nicole said. "He wouldn't have wanted to be remembered- this way." She cried harder than ever.
Although Leonard held her and patted her and did his best to comfort her, he was far from sure she was right. He'd known his father-in-law for a quarter of a century. Wouldn't Lucien Galtier have taken a certain wry pride in the reputation that grew out of his end? Lucien might even have taken a pride that wasn't so ordinary. Any number of ways to go. To how many, though, was it given to go like a man?
Which brought him back to the question Nicole had asked. What about Йloise? She was wounded, no doubt about it, and Lucien wouldn't have wanted that. He'd cared for her, even if he hadn't necessarily loved her. But would things have been any easier for her if he'd dropped dead while they were dancing, not after they'd gone back to her farmhouse? Maybe a little. Maybe a little, yes, but not much.
One of these days, O'Doull told himself, yes, one of these days, I'll have to pour a few drinks into Georges and find out what he really thinks about this. The time wasn't ripe yet. He knew that. But it would come. A lot of things for which the time hadn't been ripe looked to be coming. Most of them were a lot less appetizing than lying down with a nice woman and being unlucky enough not to get up again.
That evening, the newscaster on the wireless gave an account of a speech President Smith had made at Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. "The president of the United States spoke with just anger regarding the Confederate States' violation of their pledge not to send soldiers into Kentucky and the state formerly known as Houston." The French-speaker made heavy going of the place names. He continued, "The president of the United States also reminded the president of the Confederate States that he had pledged himself to ask for no more territorial changes on the continent of North America. If he ignores this solemn undertaking, President Smith said, he cannot seriously expect the United States to return to him the portions of Virginia, Arkansas, and Sonora to which he has referred." He had trouble pronouncing Arkansas, too. And why not? Arkansas was a long, long way from the Republic of Quebec.
Al Smith finally seemed to have decided he couldn't trust Jake Featherston. As far as O'Doull could see, the U.S. president had taken longer than he might have to figure that out. He had it down now, though. More than what he'd said, where he'd made the speech spoke volumes. Almost eighty years ago now, Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had crushed McClellan's Army of the Potomac at Camp Hill, ensuring that the Confederate States would triumph in the War of Secession. No president of the United States would have anything to do with the place these days unless he wanted to tell his own people, We're in trouble again.
Nicole didn't understand any of that. Neither did little Lucien, who was anything but little these days. O'Doull found himself envying his wife and son for being so thoroughly Quebecois. He also found himself reminded that, no matter how long he'd lived here, he was at bottom an American. He'd sometimes wondered about that. He didn't any more.
When he went to his office the next morning, newsboys were hawking papers by shouting about President Smith's speech. Papers in Quebec always seemed to back the USA to the hilt: more royalist than the king, more Catholic than the Pope. Again, why not? The Great War had touched lightly here, which it hadn't anywhere else between Alaska and the Empire of Mexico.
O'Doull's receptionist was already at the office when he got there. She smiled at him and said, "Bonjour, monsieur. Зa va?"
"Pas pire, merci," he answered, which made her smile. Nobody who spoke Parisian French would have said, Not bad, thanks, like that. O'Doull had put down deep roots here, and he knew it. He went on, "When is the first appointment?"
"Half an hour, Doctor," she said.
"Good. I'll see what I can catch up on till then." He went into his private office to skim through medical journals. He wished he had time to do more than skim. He had never known-had never imagined-such an exciting age in medicine. Back when he was a boy, immunization and sanitation had begun to cut into death rates, which had kept on falling ever since. Now, though, some of the new drugs on the market were doing what quack nostrums had promised since the beginning of time: they really were curing diseases that could easily have been fatal. How many times had he watched someone die of infection after surgery that would have succeeded without it? More than he cared to recall, certainly. Now, with luck, he-and his patients-wouldn't have to go through that particular hell any more.
And here was an article about some new medicine that was said to be-even more effective than the sulfonamides, which had been the last word for the past year or two. Drugs that killed germs without poisoning people were, to him, far more exciting than fighters that flew twenty miles an hour faster and five thousand feet higher than previous models.
Not everybody thought so, though, which meant new models of fighters came out more often and got more fanfare than new drugs did. They were liable to be used, too, which worried him.