was about as much as a man from this part of the world was ever likely to say. Dr. O'Doull went on, 'I wish I could do more about influenza and rheumatic fever and a dozen other sicknesses, but I don't know of any other doctors anywhere else in the world who wouldn't say the same thing.'
'Your glass is empty, Papa,' Nicole said, and then did something to correct that.
'Pour me full of applejack, yes, and how will I go home?' Galtier asked, not that he didn't want the freshened glass. 'The one advantage a horse has over an automobile is that the horse knows the way.'
'You can sleep here. You know you're welcome,' his daughter said.
He smiled. He did know that. He'd even done it once or twice, on nights when he'd been too drunk to find the door, let alone to fit the Chevrolet's key into the ignition. He might even have slept better here than at home, and that wasn't because he'd been drunk. Trying to sleep alone in a bed where he'd had Marie beside him for so long… He grimaced and took a quick nip from the brandy. No, that wasn't easy at all.
To keep from brooding about that empty bed back at the farmhouse, he asked his son-in-law, 'What do you think of the state of the world?'
That was a question usually good for a long, fruitful discussion. Galtier got one this time, too, but not of the sort he'd expected. The corners of Dr. O'Doull's normally smiling mouth turned down. He said, 'Right this minute, mon beau-pere, I like the state of the world not at all.'
'And why not?' Galtier leaned forward, ready to argue with what ever O'Doull said.
'Because I read the newspapers. Because I listen to what they say on the wireless,' O'Doull replied. 'How could anyone like it when the Freedom Party doubles its vote in the Confederate States? They hold more than a third of the seats in the Confederate Congress now, and heaven only knows what they'll do next.'
With a shrug, Lucien said, 'This, to me, is not so much of a much. The Confederate States are a long, long way from Riviere-du-Loup.'
His son-in-law looked startled. 'Yes, that's true,' he said after a momentary hesitation. 'I still think of myself as an American some ways, I suppose. I've been here more than fifteen years now, so it could be that I shouldn't, but I do.'
'It is not so bad that you do,' Galtier said. 'A man should know where he springs from. If he does not know what he was, how can he know what he is?'
'You sound like a Quebecois, all right.' Leonard O'Doull smiled.
'And why should I not?' Lucien replied. 'By the good God, I know what I am. But tell me, mon beau-fils, why is this Freedom Party so bad for the United States?'
'Because it is the Confederate party for all those who don't want to live at peace with the United States,' O'Doull replied. 'If it comes to power, there will be trouble. Trouble is what its leader, this man Featherston, stands for.'
'I see.' Galtier rubbed his chin. 'You say it is like the Action Francaise in France, then? Or that other party, the one whose name I always forget, in England?'
'The Silver Shirts.' O'Doull nodded. 'Yes, just like them.' He cocked his head to one side, studying Galtier. 'And what do you think of the Action Francaise?'
Lucien Galtier clicked his tongue between his teeth. 'That is not an easy question for me to answer,' he said slowly. As if to lubricate his wits, his son-in-law poured him more apple brandy. 'Thank you,' he murmured, and drank. The applejack might not have made him any smarter, but it tasted good. He went on, 'I would not be sorry to see France strong again. She is the mother country, after all. And even if the Republic of Quebec is a friend of the United States, and so a friend of Germany, which is not a friend of France…' He could feel himself getting tangled up in his sentence, and blamed the applejack-certainly easier than blaming himself. He tried again: 'Regardless of politics, I care about what happens in France, and I wish her well.'
'Moi aussi,' Nicole said softly.
Dr. O'Doull nodded. 'All right. That's certainly fair enough. But let me ask you something else-do you think the Action Francaise will do well for France if they take power there? If France goes to war with Germany, for instance, do you think she can win?'
'My heart says yes. My head says no.' Galtier let out a long, sad sigh. 'I fear my head is right.'
'I think so, too,' his son-in-law agreed.
'But let me ask you something in return,' Lucien said. 'If the Confederate States were to go to war with the United States, do you think they could win?'
'Wouldn't be easy,' O'Doull said. Then he shook his head. 'No. They couldn't. Not a chance, not now.'
'Well, then, why worry about this Freedom Party?' Lucien asked.
Before O'Doull answered, he poured his own glass of brandy full again. 'Because I fear Featherston would start a war if he got the chance, regardless of whether he could win it or not. Because a war is a disaster whether you win or you lose-it's only a worse disaster if you lose. I'm a doctor; I ought to know. And because'-he took a long pull at the applejack-'who knows what might happen five years from now, or ten, or twenty?'
'Who knows, indeed?' Galtier wasn't thinking about countries growing stronger or weaker. He was remembering Marie, remembering her well, and then in pain, and then, so soon, gone forever. He gulped down his own glass of apple brandy, then reached for the bottle to fill it again.
Nicole reached out and set her hand on his own work-roughened one. Maybe she was remembering Marie, too. She said, 'Hard times mean trouble, no matter where they land. And when they land everywhere.. ' She sighed, shook her head, and got to her feet. 'I'm going to see how supper's doing.'
By the odor of roast chicken floating out of the kitchen, supper was doing very well indeed. For a moment, Lucien kept thinking about his wife. Then he realized Nicole meant the hard times that made it easy for him to hire help with the planting and harvest; with so many out of work in Riviere-du-Loup, he could pick and choose his workers. Some of them had never done farm labor before, but they were pathetically grateful for a paying job of any sort, and often worked harder than more experienced men might have done.
To Leonard O'Doull, he said, 'It seems to me, mon beau-fils, that you and I are lucky in what we do. People will always need something to eat, and, God knows, they will always fall sick. No matter what sort of troubles the world has, that will always be true. And so the two of us will always have work to keep us busy.'
'No doubt you are right,' Dr. O'Doull said. 'I think you are also lucky you own your farm free and clear and don't owe much on your machinery. There are too many stories these days of men losing their land because they cannot pay the mortgage, and of losing their tractors and such because they cannot keep up the payments.'
'I've heard these stories, too.' Lucien shivered, though the inside of his son-in-law's house was toasty warm. 'To be robbed of one's patrimony… that would be a hard thing to bear.'
'It is a hard thing to bear,' O'Doull said. 'That fellow in Dakota a couple of weeks ago who shot his wife and children, shot the sheriff and three of his deputies when they came to take him off the farm he'd lost, and then shot himself… Before all this started, who could have imagined such a thing?'
Galtier crossed himself. He'd seen that in the papers, too, and heard about it on the wireless, and he still wished he hadn't. 'God have mercy on that poor man's soul,' he said. 'And on his family, and on the sheriff and his men. That farmer worked a great evil there.'
He let it go at that. He'd told nothing but the truth. If he also said he understood how the desperate American had felt when he knew he must lose his patrimony, Nicole would understand if she was listening from the kitchen, but would Dr. Leonard O'Doull? Lucien doubted it, and so kept quiet.
Then Dr. O'Doull said, 'Of all the sins in this world, which is more unforgivable than the sin of not having enough money? None I can think of.' Galtier realized he'd underestimated his son-in-law.
'W ell, well.' Colonel Irving Morrell stared at the report on his desk. 'Isn't that interesting?' He whistled tunelessly, then looked back at his aide-de-camp. 'There's no doubt of this?'
'Doesn't seem to be, sir,' answered Captain Ike Horwitz, who'd gone through the report before giving it to Morrell.
'It makes an unpleasant amount of sense,' Morrell said, 'especially from the Japs' point of view. I wonder how long it's been going on.' He flipped through the document till he found what he was looking for. 'We never would have found out about it at all if that fellow in Vancouver hadn't had a traffic accident while his trunk was full of Japanese gold.'
'Tokyo's denying everything, of course,' Horwitz said.
'Of course.' Morrell laced agreement with sarcasm. 'But what makes more sense for Japan than keeping us busy with rebellion up here? The busier we are here, the less attention we'll pay to what goes on across the Pacific.
