The House of Armour

“Don’t talk nonsense, Judy,” he said, scanning disapprovingly the little passionate figure crouched on the hearthrug.

“Why shouldn’t I follow her?” continued the girl vehemently. “Hasn’t she done more for me already than my mother has ever done? Wasn’t I left, a baby, to the charge of servants who tumbled me about, and injured my spine, and made me a fright, so that I shall never get married as long as I live?” with a choking sob. “And then she hated me because I was ugly, and any time that I had died she would have been glad; but I sha’n’t die. I am going to live for Vivienne. She is making me well and strong. Do you notice how much better I am looking?”

“Yes,” he said kindly. “There is a change in you. You are putting on flesh and have more color in your cheeks, and I see that you don’t use your crutches as much as you did. Camperdown, you know, has told you for years that you were too dependent on them.”

“Vivienne did it,” said Judy triumphantly. “She begged me to gradually lay them aside, and she goes for walks with me, and urges me not to eat sweets and pore over books. You know mamma was always bribing me to do something for her by saying that she would give me a box of caramels and chocolates, and Vivienne puts them in the fire; and have you noticed, Stanton, that at the table I watch her and eat only what she does?”

“No; I haven’t.”

“I do; she says it will help me, to see another person doing without dainties. Was that ice cream nice this evening?” wistfully.

“I forget; did we have any? Yes, I believe it was.”

“It was pistachio, my favorite flavoring,” said Judy. “Vivienne didn’t take it, so I couldn’t. She was hungry, but she refused ever so many things. All this afternoon we were at the rink. She is as graceful as a bird on the ice, Stanton. She skated in Scotland, so she has kept up with the new things. She was waltzing with Mr. Trelawney, and doing the double Dutch roll and the grapevine and all kinds of figures that I don’t know; and I walked about and watched her and sat by the fire in the dressing room and drank only one cup of tea, for Vivienne was looking.”

“Was your mother there?”

“Oh, yes, and ever so many other people, skating around and around. Such a gossip and clatter! Mamma skates gracefully too. Why do fat people so often skate and dance well, Stanton?”

“I don’t know.”

“Stop Stanton; don’t talk any more; Vivienne is really coming out of her sleep. See her eyelids quivering. What will she say first? ‘Is your headache better, Mr. Armour?’ Now I am going to wake her as the princes in the fairy tales wake the princesses. Don’t you envy me?” and bending over Vivienne, Judy laid an airy kiss on her lips. “Heigh ho, maiden, awake!”

Vivienne lifted her heavy lids and started up in laughing confusion.

“You adore Parkman,” said Judy tantalizingly; “yet you fall asleep over him.”

Vivienne smiled at her, and without replying turned to Armour and uttered the predicted sentence.

“My headache is gone, thank you,” he replied, stroking his mustache in sober amusement.

“I beg your pardon for falling asleep,” Vivienne went on; “but the sound of your voices was soothing; I found it impossible to resist.”

“Now what shall we do?” said Judy, jumping up. “Go to bed, I suppose. What time is it, Stanton? Ten o’clock; too late for tea in the drawing room, but we might make some here. Will you help me, Vivienne?”

“If it will not take very much time.”

“That is another thing that she makes me do,” said Judy to Mr. Armour, “go to bed early. But we won’t be long, dearest. Will you drink some tea, Stanton?”

“No, thank you.”

“Perhaps cocoa would be better,” suggested Vivienne.

“Yes,” replied Judy, “much better. Brian Camperdown says it is the least harmful of all our beverages. Do you think you could find us a pot, Stanton, to boil some water?”

“I will try,” he said, laying his hand on the door knob.

“Let us all go,” exclaimed Judy, seizing Vivienne by the hand.

Together they visited kitchen and pantries, and on their return journey were met by Mrs. Colonibel, who stared in astonishment at their burdens of a water kettle, cups and saucers, a cream jug and sugar basin, biscuits and bread and butter.

“We’re trying a cooking experiment, mamma,” said Judy. “Stanton is going to boil a book in that kettle, and Vivienne is to eat it buttered.”

“It is cocoa that we are about to make, Mrs. Colonibel,” said Vivienne; “we shall only be a short time.”

The lady smiled benevolently upon them and proceeded on her way upstairs.

“Talk to us about your beloved France, Vivienne,” pleaded Judy, a few minutes later, when they were seated around the fire drinking their cocoa. “Tell us about beautiful Touraine and the castles of the Loire. No, begin with the crowd on the Newhaven boat, Vivienne, and the Frenchwomen that had no berths and had to lie on the floor. They were deathly ill, Stanton, and cried out ‘Oh la, la, la, la, la,’ and ‘Ha yi, yi, yi, yi, yi,’ and ‘Je meurs! Tout cela va se passer’; and one of them lost her artificial teeth and couldn’t find them.”

Vivienne smiled at the remembrance. “It seems but yesterday,” she said dreamily, “that we landed in Dieppe, and the people ran across from the shops to our train, bringing us soups and milk and coffee. You cannot imagine, Mr. Armour, how very strange and yet familiar it appeared to me—the French faces and language. It was as if I had been asleep all my life and had just waked up.”

“Go on, dear Vivienne; the journey to Paris.”

“I don’t know why it is,” said Vivienne, with an apologetic smile bestowed on Mr. Armour, “but Judy never wearies of tales of France.”

“It is because I hope to go there some day,” said Judy triumphantly; “to visit every place that you have been in. You need not stare at me, Stanton; I am going. Proceed, dear Vivienne, describe to him the lovely scenery on the way to Paris and quaint old Orléans.”

“Did you send me to Orléans because my father’s ancestor, Guillaume Delavigne, had come from there?” said Vivienne to Mr. Armour.

“Partly; also on account of the good Protestant school in the town, where the facilities for studying French would be better than in Paris where there are so many English people.”

She looked gratefully at him. He had thought somewhat of her pleasure. It had not been all business and sternness with him as she had at first imagined. She talked on disjointedly for some time and replied to Judy’s abrupt questions; then she got up with a quiet, “Now we must say good-night.”

“Ah! not yet, not yet,” pleaded the girl; “you have not come to the château of the Lacy d’Entrevilles.”

Vivienne stood firm. “Some other time,” she said smiling. “Let us go now,” and Judy, grumbling a little, prepared to obey her, though she cast her eyes about the room as if seeking an excuse to remain.

“Stanton,” she said amiably, “come up and have afternoon tea with us to-morrow, will you?”

“With pleasure,” he said with equal amiability.

“You’re a good boy,” said Judy condescendingly. “I’ll kiss you for that. Bend your proud neck; I haven’t kissed you for a long time.”

With a little squeal of delight she felt herself lifted off her feet. “Oh, put me down,” she said laughingly; “I don’t like to leave terra firma. Now say good-night to Vivienne. Kiss her too,” she added mischievously.

Armour gave her a look that made her limp expeditiously out into the hall. Then he extended his hand toward Vivienne.

What was the matter with the girl? Her happy gentle demeanor had suddenly turned into stiff reserve and her face was deathly pale.

“You must not!” she exclaimed, when he made a step toward her and extended his hand.

“Must not what?” he asked in surprise. Then her meaning flashed upon him. She thought that he was going to act upon Judy’s suggestion.

“Can you imagine that I would?” he said hastily; “that I would be so, so–”

He was still hesitating for a word, when she drew her fingers from him and hurried away.

He remained rooted to the floor in acute surprise. Just for an instant the girl’s admirable self-control had given way. There had been a flash of the eye, a trembling of the lip. “Something must have disturbed her,” he muttered. “It could not be possible that—no, never. She would not fancy me, a man so much older. And yet it would be just like one of the tricks that fate plays us. If she did, if I were a revengeful man, what an opportunity for me. Stuff and nonsense! What am I thinking of?” and he threw himself in his favorite chair for reflection.

CHAPTER XXII
STARGARDE’S MOTHER

A strong north wind raged like a wild beast over the peninsula on which the city of Halifax is built, driving before it a blinding snow storm. Up and down, backward and forward, the wind whipped the white flakes, till it was a difficult matter to tell whether they came from earth or sky.

Out on the harbor the wind screamed madly and flung the snowy crystals into the teeth of perplexed mariners who were trying to make their wharves, causing them to shake their heads impatiently, for the snow is a blanket for them, while fog is but a curtain.

Not many people were about the streets. A few pedestrians whose business forced them to go abroad, went with bent heads and umbrellas under their arms. The unfortunates who were driving, had somewhat the appearance of distressed birds trying to tuck their heads under their wings.

The wind shrieked and howled about square-roofed Pinewood, but none of the inmates of the house came out to be tortured by it. It hurled sheets of snow against the double windows, but the stanch glass would not yield, and the dry and powdery particles would not cling to the smooth surface, so the wind had not even the poor satisfaction of shutting out the light of day from the house.

With a sob of rage it tried to shake the sober pines. But they had stood the shock of countless winter storms and only slightly bending their stiff bodies and nodding their green heads, with loud sighs and murmurs warned the wild wind that he would find no sport with them.

Roaring wrathfully, the wind swept over the wood and under the trees of the avenue and up the long, bare road leading to the town. Here at least he would find a victim in the solitary occupant of a sleigh jogging slowly out to the Arm.

Sweeping up snow from the road, pouring down flakes from above, curling, twisting, and howling about the head of the patient quadruped, the malicious wind went; but horse and driver, though blinded, smothered, and half covered with the snowy atoms, stood the onset firmly. The driver did not even pull up his horse, but kept moving on slowly as before.

The wind in a last burst of fury swept out to sea. There at least he could do some damage.

The man in the sleigh laughed to himself and put up his head a little way from his high, fur collar to look about him. One glance was enough. He drew back his head and said quietly, “Get on, Polypharmacy; you know where we’re going. Sun or rain, wind or calm, it’s all one to us.”

Not to the bedside of some dangerously sick person was Dr. Camperdown hastening, but to have a tedious conversation on imaginary ailments with a rich and fanciful patient.

“She’s a nuisance, that old Mrs. Prodgers,” he soliloquized as he turned Polypharmacy’s head toward the south. “Sent me word yesterday she was dying. That means she has a headache today. Hallo, there’s Stargarde,” as a woman’s figure passed before his horse’s head and hurried down the snowy road forming the southern boundary of Pinewood. The grove of pines pressed up close to the wall at this side of the house, and lower down, nearer the Arm, was a small gate often used by Colonel Armour’s friends who approached his place of residence from the south and wished to save themselves a longer walk around by the avenue.

“She must be going down to the cottage,” pursued Dr. Camperdown. “She’s crazy to come out in this deep snow. She’ll wet her feet, and wet feet and cold feet are the cause of a third of the miseries the feminine part of this town is subject to, if they only knew it. Stargarde, Stargarde!” and he lifted up his voice; “shall I wait and drive you home?”

The woman quickened her pace to a run, and plunging through the snow, was quickly at the gate in the wall which she hastily opened and passed through.

“Doesn’t want to see me,” he muttered. “Very good. I can wait,” and he resignedly drove on.

About five o’clock the patient Polypharmacy, at his master’s command, drew up in front of the Pavilion. “I won’t throw the rug over you, Polypharmacy,” said Dr. Camperdown, “for I’m not going to stay. Stargarde isn’t home. Will leave this tonic for Zeb, and return in a jiffy. Hallo, what’s this?”

By this time the snow had ceased falling. A brilliantly cold and beautiful winter sunset adorned the western sky. Straggling lines of men with shovels invaded the houses of the city, begging for the privilege of clearing the snow from the sidewalks, and various citizens who had been kept indoors all day by the severity of the storm now ventured forth for a stroll before darkness settled upon the town.

Camperdown’s exclamation was caused by a small procession coming down the street. Six old men and three old women were creeping, halting, and limping along in single file through the snow, and turned in at the entrance to the Pavilion as if to go to Stargarde’s rooms.

“Who are these and whence do they come?” he asked a small boy in red mittens who was alternately watching him and trying to make snowballs out of the dry and powdery snow which refused to stick together.

“I guess Miss Turner’s having a cripple tea,” said the boy. “She often does. The cripples likes to come together, ’cause they can talk about their arms and legs.”

“Miss Turner isn’t at home,” muttered Dr. Camperdown under his breath and hastened in after the cripples.

A little girl opened the door to him, and said that Miss Turner was in the kitchen, and he might go out there if he chose to do so.

He left the child to entertain the cripples, who were warming themselves by the fire and chatting amiably to each other, and passing into the kitchen he found Stargarde standing over a huge pot of soup that was simmering on the stove.

“That is good soup,” she said emphatically and lifted a spoonful to taste it. “Oh, how do you do, Brian?”

“Have you been out this afternoon?” he asked abruptly.

She lifted her clear eyes to his face. “No, I have not.”

“There’s not another woman in the town with a figure like yours,” he said irrelevantly.

“Isn’t there?” she said smilingly. Then looking about to see that they were alone: “Brian, my friend, do not be annoyed with me if I tell you that you are coming here far too often lately.”

He was annoyed, in spite of her caution, and showed it plainly.

“You know I am not one to fear the opinion of the world when I think the opinion is likely to be a wrong one,” she went on with a calmness and sweetness that did much to subdue the opposition in his mind; “but I am a single woman living alone. Society is hard on women, unjustly so sometimes; but there are certain safeguards erected which are necessary, and which we should respect. You are neither my brother nor my lover that you should come here so often. I have never yet been lightly spoken of, dear Brian, in all my comings and goings through the city. You would be the last one to bring reproach upon me–”

He muttered something about coming to see Zeb.

“Zeb is well now,” she went on; “and Brian, she is one of my anxieties at present. What is to become of her? She refuses to go back to her parents. The mother has sent for her again and again. Zeb is not happy with me. She still loves me, but you have the chief place in her affections. She has worshiped you ever since that day you saved her from that man. I think I never saw such infatuation, and she is so quiet about it. You would scarcely have suspected it if I had not told you.”

“Scarcely.”

“I was talking to her this morning of God’s love for her, but she told me scornfully to stop. If God had loved her he would have made you her father instead of that man Gilberto.”

“Am I then as old as that?” asked Dr. Camperdown wistfully.

Stargarde laughed merrily. “Zeb is only ten, Brian.”

“I see you have some plan in your head,” he said. “What is it?”

“I wish you would adopt her,” said Stargarde with sweet audacity.

Camperdown burst into such a roar of laughter that Stargarde was obliged to take him into the pantry to continue their conversation, lest the cripples should be startled by his merriment.

“She is so odd,” said Stargarde pleadingly. “To-day she has gone off somewhere, because I had the cripples coming. She wants one person’s time and attention. Oh, Brian, save that little lamb for the dear Lord.”

“I have one lamb called Hannah,” drily. “Two lambs of that calibre in my pasture would be running their heads together.”

“I have a family of orphans coming to me next week,” Stargarde went on. “Zeb will be furious. She hates other children. Brian, for Christ’s sake save this little child.”

Camperdown shook himself with impatience. “Suppose I got her, who would take care of her?”

“Old Mrs. Trotley; you know she is the last survivor of one of the oldest families of Halifax, a dear, gentle, old lady. Everything has failed her; she has just given up her little shop–”

“So you want to foist her in on me?”

“Brian, you were railing against the city the other day for not taking better care of the children of the poor. Now, here you are not willing to do your duty by one of them.”

“You are an impracticable schemer. Stargarde, I wish you could see how beautiful your hair is against that black jug.”

She paid no attention to the latter part of his speech. “Well, Brian, will you do this at least for me? Go to Zeb’s mother and ask her if she won’t give the child up to me. Any reasonable arrangement I am willing to make. They are not fit people to have the custody of a young girl, and if all else fails, remind her that I shall appeal to the law which takes children from unworthy guardianship. I ask you to do this because the woman avoids me strangely, and will not speak to me.”

“When shall I go?”

“Any time, but soon.”

“I’ll go now,” with unexpected alacrity, and he darted from the room.

Ten minutes later he stood wiping the perspiration from his heated brow, and wondering whether he was still in the possession of his senses, or whether he had fallen a prey to some hideous nightmare.

He had mounted to the crazy attic den which for some weeks had been little Zeb’s home, and had been bidden to enter. Before him he saw a bit of tawdry womanhood at which he gazed in stupid and angry fascination.

A transformation had been effected in Zeb’s mother. Her old rags were gone, and she had been trying to dress herself like a lady. Was it a ghastly, bedraggled imitation of his own Stargarde that he saw there, or did his eyes deceive him? If he could imagine Stargarde twenty years older than she was, a ruined, hardened, degraded creature, a drunkard dragged through the mud of several large cities, he might have conjured up something like this bold and hard-featured woman of unusually large stature who sat in a rickety armchair by the fire, her dress twitched aside to show the cheap embroidery of her petticoat, steam rising in a cloud from her wet boots that she held pressed close against the bars of the grate.

The most horrible part of the thing to him was that she saw his emotion, and plainly understood the cause of it. “Do you think I look like her?” she asked complacently.

There was no light in the room except that coming from the fire, and he stood a little farther back in the shadow, so that she might not read so well the expression of his face, nor hear the sharp click in his throat which was all he could manage by way of reply to her.

She shrugged her shoulders, and coolly drinking from a cup that she held in her hand, said in a coarse and cynical voice: “You will excuse me; I am having afternoon tea to refresh myself after a long walk. Sorry I can’t offer you some, but really I don’t know where to lay my hand on another cup and saucer.”

She had been drinking something stronger than tea, he could tell by her voice, probably at the moment she had some brandy in her cup, but she was not by any means overcome by what she had been taking, and was able to carry on a conversation.

He mastered his emotion, and moistening his lips, which were as dry as if some one had strewn ashes across them, said sternly: “I came here to see on what terms you will part with the child Zeb.”

“Who wants her?” she asked sneeringly.

“I do.”

“What for?”

“To adopt.”

“Will you bring her up a lady?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose the lady of the Pavilion put you up to this.”

At this the man’s two eyes glared at her with so fierce and red a light from under his shaggy eyebrows that the woman, bold as she was, saw that she would spoil her bargain if she persisted in this reference.

“You’re a gentleman,” she went on composedly; “in other words a devil, and if you want anything from me you’ve got to pay dear for it.”

In unspeakable loathing it seemed as if he could find nothing to say to her, and he made a gesture for her to continue.

“I might set a price on her,” she went on in mocking, reflective tones, “and you’d pay me today, and to-morrow it would be gone. No; you’d better be my banker for life. I draw on you when I choose.”

He moved forward a few steps as if to leave the room, but she cried, “Stop.”

“I’m used to your class,” she said with a frightful sneer, “and I know what’s passing in your mind. You’re saying to yourself, ‘The woman is a liar, and I’d better have nothing to do with her. The police will get the child from her, and then I’ll have a clear start.’ But, my fine gentleman,” leering hideously at him, “don’t you, nor the young lady down yonder set the police on me for your own sakes. I’ll make it lively for you if you do. I’m going to leave this dull little hole soon and go back to Montreal. Not to please you, but to suit myself. I came here for a purpose. I’ve no reason to serve you, but if it’s any good to you to know it, I’ve no intention of meddling with you or the young lady yonder. You let me alone, and I’ll let you alone. But I’m hard up now; you give me a certain sum down, and tell me some place in Montreal where I can go quarterly, and we’ll call it a bargain.”

Dr. Camperdown drew his breath hard and fast. “Is Zeb your lawful child?”

“Yes; Gilberto is the only husband I ever had; a beauty, isn’t he?”

In a few rapid words, for the sight of the woman was so hateful to him that he could hardly endure staying in the room with her, Camperdown concluded the agreement with her. “On the day you leave Halifax,” he said, “come to me and I’ll give you a further sum. The sooner you come, the more you’ll get.”

He turned on his heel, his foot was on the threshold of the door, when he heard in a hissing voice close to his ear, “Did you ever hate any one?”

Looking over his shoulder he saw the nearest approach to a fiend incarnate that it had ever been his bad fortune to behold. The woman had risen from her chair, drawn herself up to her great height, and with hand laid on her breast was staring before her, not at him, her face convulsed by a fierce and diabolical rage.

“You are nothing,” she said wildly, “Zeb is nothing, Gilberto is nothing, the lady nothing, to me; I despise you all, but that man, king of devils, how I hate him! If I could see him burning in torment”—and she broke into a stream of fierce imprecations, compared with which Mammy Juniper’s ravings were but as milk and water complaints.

“It is hell to me here,” she cried, striking her breast violently, “to know how to torture him. I could kill him, but what is that. One pang and all is over. But to see him twist and writhe in suffering. That is what I want. I have been to see him to-day—other days. I said, ‘I starve and freeze.’ What did he say? ‘Woman, who are you? get you gone.’ O Lord, Lord!” and throwing herself in her chair, she rocked to and fro in speechless agony.

The gaudy bonnet slipped over the back of her chair, and as her paroxysm increased, her coarse, light hair fell down, and from the rapid motion of her body to and fro, whipped wildly over her head.

Wrapped in a horrible spell, Camperdown gazed silently at her for a few minutes. Then he slammed the door together, and rushing down the crazy steps at imminent risk of breaking his limbs, quickly found himself in the street.

“O God,” he said, putting up one of the most fervent prayers of his life, when he stood once more under the clear, cold canopy of heaven, and lifted his eyes to the first twinkling stars of the evening, “keep my pure, white lily from a knowledge of this!”

He had left Polypharmacy on the opposite side of the street. As he crossed over to him, and lifted his weight to put in the sleigh he noticed a little, lonely figure, that moved away from the horse at his approach, and leaning against the wire fence that bounds the Citadel Hill, watched him silently.

“Zeb,” he exclaimed, peering at her in the half light; “is that you?”

“Yes,” she said quietly, but without moving.

“Come here, little girl,” he said with great tenderness in his voice, “and get in the sleigh with me.”

Without a word of demur the child took her seat beside him, and allowed him to wrap the wolfskin rug around her.

“Am glad I met you,” he said. “Have just been seeing your mother. She says you may come and live with me, if you choose. Will you, little Zeb?”

He was not by any means a nervous man, but he shivered at the look the child gave him. She wished to know whether he was in earnest.

“My house is lonely,” he said; “I want a little girl to make it cheerful. You will come, won’t you?”

The child burst into a passion of tears in which she tried to restrain herself in a curious, unchildlike fashion, finally slipping off the seat and sitting at his feet with her head buried in the robe.

When he arrived at the Pavilion he tried to persuade her to come out, but by various unmistakable signs she gave him to understand that she would not leave him to go back to Stargarde.

His face twitched with a variety of emotions. He requested Stargarde to come to the door of her rooms, for the cripples were at tea and he would not go in. “I have Zeb,” he said hurriedly. “I’ll take her—the mother consents; they’ll sign a contract. Child’s in my sleigh, and I can’t get her out.”

Stargarde clasped her hands; a lovely, rosy flush glorified her face. “Oh, I am so glad! Thank the Lord for that.”

“House will be cold and Hannah’ll be mad,” he said; “but I’ve got to take her.”

“Zeb won’t mind,” said Stargarde joyfully, “if she’s with you; you don’t know her faithful heart.”

“What is Mrs. Trotley’s address?” he asked.

She gave it to him, he looking at her the meanwhile in inexpressible tenderness. “Stargarde,” softly, “I’ll not come here so much. Don’t want to bother you. You know what brings me.”

“Yes, yes,” she said hanging her head. “Dear Brian, it grieves me to grieve you.”

“I know it,” hastily. “But don’t grieve even for me, my darling. I would like your life to have no care. But if trouble does come upon you, you’ll send for me?”

“Yes, yes, I will.”

“Nothing would ever separate us,” he said in a voice vibrating with emotion. “Nothing but your own free will. You are so fair and lovely; always a flower blooming amid dark surroundings.”

“Thank you,” she said gayly; “that is a pretty sentiment.”

With a smile of ineffable affection, he gently pushed her inside the door. “Go in, my darling; you will take cold. Don’t tire yourself with the cripples. Good-night.”

“Zeb,” he said, when he returned to the sleigh, “come up here, I want to talk to you,” and fishing under the wolfskin he drew her up and set her beside him.

“I think I’d like to be a reformer, Zeb, it’s so easy to go about telling other people what they ought to do. But when it comes home to self, that’s a different matter. Zeb, I’m not what I ought to be.”

“Yer a good man,” said the child half sulkily, “if there be’s any.”

“Thank you, little Zeb; would you mind saying ‘you’ instead of ‘yer’? Your mother talks good English, but yours is a little defective.”

“You, you,” repeated the child under her breath. “I’ll say it, doctor.”

He continued talking to her, but amid her brief remarks and the many stirring arrangements he made that evening for her comfort, there was before him all the time the ugly picture of the big, light-haired woman sitting by the fire, drinking her tea and drying her feet, her thick lips moving in the cynical, hardened fashion in which she had talked to him.