punch bowl. Morrell quickly drained his own glass and, with the empty glass as an excuse, contrived to get to the bowl at the same time as a woman in a ruffled shirtwaist and maroon wool skirt.
He filled the ladle, then, after catching her eye to make sure the liberty would not be unwelcome, poured punch into her glass before dealing with his own. 'Thank you,' she said. She was within a couple of years of thirty herself, with hair black as coal, brown eyes, and warm brown skin with a hint of blush beneath it. When she took a longer look at Morrell, one eyebrow rose. 'Thank you very much, Colonel.'
He was, he suddenly realized, a catch: glancing around, he saw a couple of captains, but no soldiers of higher rank. Men were not the only ones playing this game. Well, on with it: 'My pleasure,' he said. 'If you like, you can pay me back by giving me the next dance.'
'I'll do that,' she said at once. 'My name is Hill, Agnes Hill'
'Very pleased to meet you.' Morrell gave his own name. The musicians struck up what was no doubt intended to be a waltz. He guided her out onto the dance floor. He danced with academic precision. His partner didn't, but it mattered little; the floor was so crowded, couples kept bumping into one another. Everyone laughed when it happened: it was expected.
They talked under and through the semimusical racket. 'My husband was killed in the first few weeks of the war,' Agnes Hill said. 'He was up on the Niagara front, and the Canadians had lots of machine guns, and-' She shrugged in MorrelPs arms.
'I'm sorry,' he answered. She shrugged again. Morrell said, 'I got shot myself about that time, in Sonora. Only reason I'm here is luck.'
His dancing partner nodded. 'I've thought about luck a lot the past few years, Colonel. That's all you can do, isn't it? — think, I mean.' She whirled on with him for another few steps, then said, 'I'm glad you were lucky. I'm glad you are here.' As the music ended, Morrell was glad he was there, too.
Lucien Galtier did not converse with his horse while driving up to Riviere-du-Loup, as he usually did. The horse, a heartless beast, seemed to feel no lack. And Galtier had conversation aplenty, for, instead of going up to the town by the St. Lawrence alone, he had along Marie, his two sons, and the three daughters still living at home with them.
'I can't wait to see the baby,' Denise said. She'd been saying that since word came from Leonard O'Doull that Nicole had had a baby boy the evening before.
'I want to see Nicole,' Marie said. 'Not for nothing do they call childbirth labor.' She glared at Lucien, as if to say it was his fault Nicole had endured what she'd endured. Or maybe she was just thinking it was the fault of men that women endured what they endured.
Soothingly, Galtier said, 'All is well with Nicole, and all is well with the baby, too, for which I give thanks to the holy Mother of God.' He crossed himself. 'And I also give thanks that Nicole gave birth with a doctor attending her who was so intimately concerned with her well-being.'
'Intimately!' Marie sniffed and slapped him on the leg. Then she sniffed again, on a slightly different note. 'A midwife was plenty good for me.'
'A midwife is good,' Lucien agreed, not wanting to quarrel with his wife. But he did not abandon his own opinion, either. 'A doctor, I believe, is better.'
Marie didn't argue with him, for which he was duly grateful. She kept looking around, as if she didn't want to miss anything her sharp eyes might pick up. She didn't get off the farm so often as he did, and wanted to make the most of the excursion in every way. After a bit, she said, 'Traveling on a paved road all the way to town is very nice. It is so smooth, the wagon hardly seems to be moving.'
'Traveling on a paved road all the way to town is even better when it rains,' Galtier said. The road had not been paved for his benefit. Paving had been extended as far out from Riviere-du-Loup as his farm only because the Americans then occupying Quebec south of the St. Lawrence had built their hospital on land they'd taken from his patrimony, not least because he hadn't cared to collaborate with them.
And now his daughter had collaborated on a half-American child. He shook his head. He had not expected that. He had not expected it, but he welcomed it now that it was here.
Clouds drifted across the sky, hiding the sun more often than they let it show through. Snow still lay on the ground to either side of the road. More might fall at any time in the next month. The calendar said it was April, and therefore spring, but the calendar did not understand how far winter could stretch in this part of the world. Lucien and his wife and children were as well muffled as they would have been going out in January, and needed to be.
Here and there, bomb craters showed up as dimples under the snow. British and Canadian aeroplanes had done what they could to harm the Americans after their soldiers were driven north across the river. But now the wounds in the land were healing. The antiaircraft guns that had stood outside of Riviere-du-Loup- guns manned at the end of the war by soldiers in the blue-gray of the new Republic of Quebec-were gone now, stored away heaven only knew where. Lucien hoped they would never come out of storage.
Riviere-du-Loup itself perched on a spur of rock jutting out into the St. Lawrence. Inside its bounds, a waterfall plunged ninety feet from the small river that gave the town its name into the greater one. In the late seventeenth century, when Riviere-du-Loup was founded, it would have been a formidable defensive position. In these days of aeroplanes and giant cannons, Galtier wondered if there were any such thing as a formidable defensive position.
His daughter and son-in-law lived only a couple of blocks from Bishop Pascal's church, not far from the market square. Galtier reckoned that a mixed blessing; the bishop-who had been simply Father Pascal when the war began-had jumped into bed with the Americans so quickly, he had surely endangered his vows of celibacy. There were still times when Lucien had mixed feelings about the way the war had gone. He suspected he would have those times as long as he lived.
The houses on either side pressed close to that of Dr. Leonard O'Doull. 'How cramped things are here in the city,' Marie said, and clucked in distress. Lucien was inclined to agree with her. Coming into town on market day was all very well, but he would not have cared to live here.
As he was tying the horse to an apple tree in front of the house, Dr. O'Doull opened the door and waved. 'Come in, all of you,' he called in his evermore Quebecois French. 'Nicole can't wait to see you, and of course you will want to see little Lucien.'
Galtier froze in his tracks. Slowly, he said, 'When you sent word, you said nothing of naming the baby after me.'
'When I sent word, we had not yet decided what we would name the baby,' his son-in-law returned. 'But Lucien O'Doull he shall be.' He reached into his pocket and held out cigars. 'Come on. Smoke with me. It's the custom in the United States when a man has a son.'
If the cigars were anything like the ones O'Doull usually had, Galtier would have been glad to smoke one regardless of whether he had a grandson or not. Shaken out of his startled paralysis, he hurried toward the house.
A coal fire in the fireplace held the chill at bay. Nicole sat in a rocking chair in front of the fire. She was nursing the baby, and did not get up when her family came in. She looked as if she'd been through a long spell of trench warfare: pale and battered and worn. Had Galtier not seen Marie look the same way after her children were born, he would have been alarmed. His other children, who did not remember such things so well, were alarmed. Even Georges had no snide comments ready.
Marie spoke in tones of command: 'When he is finished there, hand him to me.'
'Yes, Mother. It shouldn't be long.' Nicole sounded battered and worn, too.
Lucien Galtier stared at Lucien O'Doull as he nursed. The baby looked very red and wrinkled, its head somewhat misshapen from its passage out into the world. His children exclaimed about that, too. He said, 'Every one of you looked the same way when you were born.'
Georges said, 'Surely I was much more handsome.'
'What a pity it hasn't lasted, then,' Denise said. She and her sisters laughed. So did Charles. Georges looked something less than amused.
Presently, Nicole lifted the baby from her breast to her shoulder. She patted him on the back. Lucien would have patted harder, but he'd had more practice than his daughter; he realized babies didn't break. After a while, his grandson gave forth with a belch a grown man would not have been ashamed to own.
'Good,' Marie said. 'Very good. Now he is settled. Now you will give him to me.' Nicole held the baby out with
