Read the book: «The House of Armour», page 21

CHAPTER XXXV
HER WEDDING DAY

“A wild bird in a cage; a trapped beauty and a disconsolate beast,” muttered Camperdown late in the evening of the day of his marriage.

He sat in a corner of his drawing room, his eyes riveted on Stargarde’s back as she stood holding aside the lace window curtain and gazing out into the street.

“It seems to me,” he went on grumblingly, “that I’ve seen a picture called ‘Alone’ or ‘At Last’ or some such rubbishy name, where a bridegroom, and bride having got rid of all their dear friends and relatives are hanging on each other’s necks; this isn’t much like it,” grimly. “What is it now, Stargarde?”

“I thought I heard a child crying in the street,” she said, coming to rest on the sofa beside him.

“You are nervous,” he said, smoothing back the curls from her brow, and noting with a pang at his heart the unearthly pallor of her face, from which every vestige of its usually delicate color had fled. “Your entire specialized apparatus for receiving irritation is up in arms.”

“I am usually counted a steady, firm person, Brian.”

“You’re like all women; you want careful treatment at times. Look at this fine hair, this thin skin, these muscles, small, though they are strong; and don’t tell me that you haven’t a nervous temperament.”

“I wonder how they’re getting on at the Pavilion?” she said dreamily.

He looked down at the head lying on his shoulder with an aggrieved expression. “The Pavilion, the Pavilion, always the Pavilion. It doesn’t matter about me.”

“I am afraid to think of you,” she murmured.

“Why?”

“I am frightened, nay, terrified at my own happiness, when there are so many sore hearts in the world.”

“She’s lying, sweet soul,” he communed with himself as he stared at her; “there’s no happiness in her heart. She’s nearly frantic in this decently furnished house and on this quiet street away from her offscourings. It’s like tearing her soul from her body to give them up. Stargarde!”

She did not hear him.

“Am I to lose her now?” he reflected with sudden anguish; “now, on the threshold of happiness? She’s dropping into one of her ‘misery of the world’ agonies, and if she goes off this time! Stargarde,” he said almost roughly dislodging her head from his shoulder and jumping up, “I’m going for a walk.”

“Are you?” she said with languid surprise.

“Yes. Getting married and being in a crowd indoors all day doesn’t agree with me. Do you know where I’m going?”

“No.”

“Up to Rockland Street, to look at the house where you have slept for so many years, with your narrow white bed dragged against the wall so that even in your sleep you might be near the people who passed on the street.”

She smiled faintly at him.

“You come too. Your namesakes are all out. It is a lovely night.”

She hesitated, but he went to the hall and seizing a cap and a shawl from the hat-rack, came back and put them on her.

“I feel as if I should fall,” she said rising unsteadily.

“Nonsense, my dear girl; nerves again. Take my arm and you’ll be all right when we get into the street. You’re better now, aren’t you?” he asked as they strolled along the flagged pavement.

“Yes,” she murmured absently.

“Don’t dawdle,” he said, “but let us go briskly, and breathe all the fresh air we can, and don’t go to sleep but talk to me. Stay, I’ll do something amusing. Lean against this wall for a jiffy till I see if I can jump this barricade. If I can’t, you shall have twenty dollars for your soup kitchen. Now, Camperdown, distinguish yourself,” and to Stargarde’s mild amazement he proceeded to the middle of the street where some repairs were being carried on, and running back attempted to leap over an erection of planks.

Again and again he went at it, stumbling, falling, and never once clearing it, though it was a marvel to Stargarde that with his great agility he could not do so.

While she stood smiling at him, some one came around the corner of the street. “Ha, ha!” she heard in a laughing voice, “how much for the exhibition? Has matrimony gone to your head or your heels, Camperdown? I beg your pardon, Mrs. Camperdown, I did not see you,” and a young man who was a friend of Valentine’s took off his hat with a flourish.

“Hurrah, I’ve cleared it!” vociferated Camperdown with a final leap, after which he approached them; “but your soup kitchen sha’n’t lose, Stargarde. How do you do, Dana?”

Mr. Dana saluted him with a succession of teasing remarks. “Is it an eviction? If not, what do you mean by dragging your wife through the streets at this hour? This comes of setting yourselves up to be models for your neighbors—refusing wedding presents and not taking a honeymoon trip. You’ll come to a bad end. Why don’t you leave him, Mrs. Camperdown?”

“Any news, Dana?” inquired Camperdown agreeably.

“Nothing but your marriage, with which the town is ringing. All the little newsboys are running about patting their stomachs in satisfaction.”

“My wife wished to give everybody a feast,” returned the physician, “though she did not feel much like entering into it herself on account of her recent affliction.”

“She looks horribly pale to-night,” said the younger man, lowering his voice so that Stargarde who was standing at a little distance from them should not hear.

“That’s why I have her out,” said Camperdown with a sudden burst of confidence; “I feel like those classic fellows who used to get entangled with goddesses, thinking that they were mortal women. That wife of mine is so ultra-human that though she is happy herself she can’t go to sleep till she knows that everything is straight in her old home.”

“I’m glad you haven’t been beating her,” said Mr. Dana serenely, “for as you say, she is beyond the human. Who takes charge at the Pavilion now that she has left it?”

“The Salvation Army—it is too much for one woman.”

“What was your objection to a wedding tour?” asked the young man curiously.

“There it is again,” said his companion in an aggrieved voice, “everybody is badgering me about it. I’ve no objection to tours of any kind, but I can’t go proclaiming through the city that my wife isn’t fit to travel. People are utterly senseless about traveling, which is one of the most fatiguing things on earth. They come to me saying, ‘Doctor, I’m run down, no appetite, can’t sleep—where shall I go?’ ‘Go to bed, you idiots,’ I say, ‘and sleep and eat and take your journey when you recover.’”

Mr. Dana laughed at him and held out his cigar case. “Have one, you will find it composing.”

“No, thank you,” and Camperdown threw a keen glance at his wife. He saw that Mr. Dana’s chatter had partly roused her from the state of deadly languor that always preceded her severe paroxysms of pain, and in intense relief he ejaculated, “Glad we met you, Dana. Good-night,” and offering Stargarde his arm, he proceeded along the street in a leisurely fashion.

Arrived on Rockland Street, they paused outside the dark windows of her deserted room, then walking softly inside the courtyard, skirted the walls of the long building. The lights were nearly all out and the people were asleep. Here and there a feeble gleam told of a sick-bed, and Stargarde, who knew the condition of all, murmured a prayer as she passed such places. Finally her silent adieux were said and there was no longer an excuse for her to linger.

“Remember Lot’s wife,” said Camperdown dryly when she paused under the archway to look back.

She turned to him with a troubled face. “Never mind, Philanthropia, I am only joking,” he said, suppressing a laugh. “It is a satisfaction to you to see that they are all resting quietly without you, is it not?”

“Yes; my work is done here,” she murmured.

“But you can still come back, sweetheart. Here is one gnarled sinner that will be greatly edified by pilgrimages to the Pavilion.”

She clung to his arm without speaking, and as they sauntered out to the street he muttered, “I mustn’t bother her with talk. She won’t slip back into that state again.”

Passing quietly by one door after another, they came suddenly upon a slight, gentle-faced young man with a weak, irresolute mouth, who stole like a ghost around the corner and put his foot on the lower step of a small house with dormer windows.

Camperdown looked at him narrowly without speaking, but in an instant Stargarde’s hand was on his shoulder. “Charlie, you are not going in there!”

He blushed, frowned, and bit his lip.

“Now for the last time I speak to you about it,” said Stargarde. “I want you to decide tonight. Will you not promise me—this is my wedding night, you know. One can refuse nothing to a bride.”

A bride, and such a bride—and on those upper streets by those stealthily closed houses. The boy, for he was scarcely more than that, looked strangely at her. The cool night wind came sweeping down the street blowing to his ears the striking of a distant bell.

“Charlie,” breathed Stargarde in tones of supplication, “you must promise me. You were once such a good boy; and your father—I think,” she said, putting up one of her white hands to her face, “that he was one of the best men that God ever made. Every one loved him.”

The young man saw with manifest distress the tears trickling down between her fingers. “For Heaven’s sake, Miss Turner, compose yourself,” he said. “Come, I will walk back a little way with you.”

“Promise her, boy,” said Camperdown, coming up and clapping his hand on the young man’s other shoulder.

“Your sister and your mother,” whispered Stargarde, “you are breaking their hearts.”

At the mention of his mother the young man’s lip quivered. He hid his face in his hat that he held in his hand, and Camperdown, withdrawing to a little distance, saw a hand uplifted to the quiet sky, and heard the muttered, “So help me, God.”

Stargarde caught the attesting hand in her own. “May God bless you, Charlie; let us go a little way with you. You have made me so happy.”

Side by side the three people went quietly to a house in the northern part of the town. As they stopped before the door, Stargarde said: “You will come to see me to-morrow evening and bring your sister, will you not?”

“Yes, I will,” and the voice had a new ring of truth and cheerfulness in it.

The distinct tones reached the ears of a woman in a widow’s cap who knelt by an open window above. With dry eyes from which all tears had long since been shed, she strained her gaze after Stargarde and her husband, and when they had vanished she threw herself on the floor, and with a sob of thankfulness prayed for the best of blessings on their married life.

Not a word was spoken between them till they reached the parade in the center of the town. There, in the shadow of the City Hall, Camperdown eyed one of the benches on the grass and guided Stargarde’s footsteps to it. “You are tired,” he said. “Let us rest a bit.”

In three minutes she was sound asleep with her head on his shoulder. Camperdown drew the shawl more closely about her, then sat thinking, not at all of the historic spot that they were on, with its old-time memories of feux de joie and drilling of troops, nor of the lords and the ladies of ancient days whose fair faces used to brighten the old stone building that stood on the site of the present City Hall, nor of the terrible year of 1834 when the parade was dotted with tar barrels sending forth volumes of smoke to purge the air from the trail of the cholera demon. Neither did his thoughts wander to the old parish church across the street whose frame was brought from Boston in the year 1750, and whose timbers, if they could talk, would tell many a tale of gay weddings, and pompous buryings of gallant soldiers, whose bones now lie mouldering beneath its aisles. No, he thought only of the woman by his side, of her incomparable worth and goodness, of the little claim that he could put forth to deserve so great a treasure, until a shadow, falling across her face, caused him to look up.

A policeman, who had been observing them at a distance, had at last drawn near.

“Evening, policeman,” said Camperdown. “Situation is peculiar, but can explain. I’m not a tramp, and I think you know my wife.”

“Know her,” said the man lifting his helmet from his head, “I have cause to know her, sir.”

“She’s been walking and is tired,” said Camperdown. “We’re just on our way home.”

“’Tis too heavy a contract she’s been under, sir,” said the man respectfully; “one woman can’t reform a city; but she’s done a powerful lot. Since she came and the Salvation Army followed her, they say the badness has dropped off wonderful, and there’s been less for the police to do.”

“How long have you been on the force?” asked Camperdown, putting an end of the shawl over his wife’s face.

“Three years, sir; ’twas your wife as got me on. I’d thrown up a good job in the country and come to the city, where I thought I’d better myself. I might have been in a heathen country for all the notice I got. Then my wife died and my little girl got fever and I was going to the bad when one day there was a rustlin’ beside me just as if an angel had dropped down from the sky–”

“The angel, I suppose, being my wife,” said Camperdown with interest.

“Yes, sir, and she found me in work, and I’m a happy man to-day, and if there ever was any mischief a-going to happen to her, I’d like to be on the spot,” and replacing his helmet on his head the man ejaculated, “Beg pardon, sir, for disturbing you,” and stalked away.

Camperdown smiled and gently shook his wife. “Come, we must go; you’ll get a stiff neck.”

Stargarde pulled the shawl from her face, blinked her eyes at the electric lights staring at her, and gazed at the back of the retreating policeman. “Where am I? Brian, why did you allow me to fall asleep? That is John Morris, isn’t it? Mr. Morris, how is your little girl?”

The man turned and came back. “Well and hearty, ma’am, thank you.”

“She’s a dear little girl, and so fond of you,” said Stargarde. “Take good care of her. Good-night, good-night,” and she smiled kindly at him.

The man stood with hands crossed behind his broad back until she was out of sight. “Looking at her it seems as if ’twas easy to be good,” he said with a sigh.

“How kind you are to me,” Camperdown heard in his wife’s musical tones as they were about rounding a corner.

“Am I?” meekly. “What is the latest proof of my goodness?”

“Bringing me out to-night. You did it on purpose to make me more contented.”

“Is a similar excursion to take place every night?” he asked, trying to hide a yawn from her.

“No, no; you ridiculous boy,” and stopping short she put up her other hand and rested her cheek against his encircling arm. “I don’t believe that there is another man in the world who would be so indulgent to me.”

“This is joy double-distilled!” he exclaimed. “We are acting that picture.”

“What picture, dearest?”

“One that I saw somewhere,” and he favored her with a brief description of it.

“You mean ‘Married Lovers’?”

“Yes, that’s it,” he said excitedly. “Go on, please; keep your position and talk some nonsense to me; you are irresistible when you talk nonsense, Stargarde. Come now, you think me handsome, don’t you?”

“Superlatively handsome, Brian,” and she laughed gently at him.

“And sweet-tempered?”

“Exquisitely so; and personally I have no objection to continuing this,” she said, lifting her head from his arm, “but there is a dear old man in a night-cap at that window over there who is peeping at us in petrified astonishment.”

“Ugh! you brute,” said Camperdown, turning to shake a fist at him, “go and get married.”

“You absurd boy,” said Stargarde, pulling at his arm; “come home; the poor creature may be married already.”

“Poor creature! Stargarde, do you think marriage an affliction?” And then Camperdown’s conversation became of a nature too personal and sentimental to be of interest to any one but to the woman who loved him so devotedly that in her opinion, “even his failings leaned to virtue’s side.”

CHAPTER XXXVI
BLIND

Very quietly the warm weeks of July slipped away. Valentine had long since recovered, but had not yet been seen beyond the precincts of the cottage.

On a calm Sunday afternoon Vivienne left Mrs. Colonibel’s room and went to wander about under the pines. Absently straying nearer the cottage than she was in the habit of doing, for she knew that Valentine did not wish to see her, she suddenly came upon him lying on his back on a grassy knoll, his hands crossed under his head, his face turned up to the sky, and in “a voice as sweet as the note of the charmed lute” caroling cheerfully the old song:

 
“’Twas I that paid for all things,
’Twas others drank the wine;
I cannot now recall things,
Live but a fool to pine.
’Twas I that beat the bush,
The bird to others flew;
For she, alas, hath left me,
Felero, lero, loo!”
 

With a pained face the girl stood for a minute looking at him, then softly attempted to withdraw, but his ear, sharpened to unnatural quickness, caught the sound of her step, light as it was.

“Who is that?” he asked. “Joe, is it you?”

“No, it is I,” said Vivienne, advancing after an instant of hesitation.

“Oh!” and he listlessly dropped his head on the grass.

“May I come and talk to you?” she asked. “I have longed to see you.”

“Yes, oh yes,” and he raised himself to a sitting posture. “I would get up and find you a seat if I could.”

“I can sit on this rug, thank you,” said Vivienne a little unsteadily.

She placed herself a short distance from him and looked at the sombre trees, the blue sky, the bluer Arm, where a tiny boat was crossing to the other side—anywhere but at the handsome, weary face, with its disfiguring spectacles.

“Have you on a white dress?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And you have your favorite perfume about you,” he said with a half-smile; “or are they real roses?”

“Real ones,” and she put between his fingers a cluster of long, white, rose-shaded Rubens buds.

“You are crying,” he said abruptly.

“Only a little,” she murmured, trying to compose herself. This she could not do; for once she lost all self-control and burying her face in her hands she wept bitterly.

The young man’s face softened as he listened to her. “Stanton has told me that you were breaking your heart about me. It is pitiful, isn’t it? Twenty-five and at the end of everything. But don’t worry; I’ve given that up. At first I raved and beat my head till it was sore against the bars of my bed, but it didn’t do any good. I’ve got to submit,” and with a painful smile he again stretched himself out on the grass.

“This is unpardonable in me,” said Vivienne, resolutely wiping her eyes. “I am ashamed of myself. I shall not offend again. You can see a little, Valentine, can you not?”

“Not a glimmer.”

Vivienne’s lip trembled, but she pressed it with her teeth and went on: “When are you coming up to the house? It is forlorn without you.”

“Never,” he said gloomily. “What do you want of me there?”

“If I can hear your exquisite voice singing words of encouragement I think that I can bear any burden,” said the girl wistfully.

“Oh, you wish me to keep you in good humor.”

“It would be an important mission. I have learned the accompaniments of all your songs.”

“Have you?” and his face grew bright. “I will come up—perhaps this evening. Were you planning to go to church?”

“Yes; but I would rather stay at home with you.”

“Even if Stanton goes?”

“Yes.”

He laughed shortly, and with none of the fierce jealousy of former days said: “We shall be good friends, you and I, when I settle down to this darkness.”

“May I read to you sometime?” asked Vivienne.

“How clever you are,” he said. “You have found out that I hate to have any one do anything for me and you want to wheedle me into getting accustomed to it. No, my dear belle-sœur, you shall not read your Bible and psalm books to me.”

Vivienne smiled hopefully. “Sometime you will allow me to do so, and while we wait for that time there are other books. Now I must return to the house. Au revoir, my brother; God will make you happier.”

“There is no God!” he exclaimed.

She looked down at his mocking face and then up at the serene vault of the sky above them. “No God! Valentine; no Creator of the world! I had hoped that by this time you would think differently.”

“Prove to me that there is one,” he said excitedly, “and I will believe you.”

She stooped and laid a finger on his sightless eyes.

He understood her. “Do you think that your imaginary God has afflicted me willfully?”

“Not willfully, but lovingly.”

“This is infuriating,” he exclaimed, his face flushing violently. “A loving God who casts a created thing into a dark pit!”

“Oh no, no,” said Vivienne sadly; “the creature does that. We cast ourselves into dark pits because we will not see the light of the world shining above us.”

“But we are created with evil propensities that take us pitward, according to you.”

“Evil propensities that we must not follow, for God will also give us strength to overcome them if we ask him.”

“This is Stargarde’s doctrine,” he said sullenly. “I want none of it. You Christians are most illogical people. Primitive traditions, handed down through eighteen centuries and starting among ignorant, unlettered peasants and fishermen, are your rule of life. You can’t prove a single one of your statements to be true.”

“What is proof?” asked Vivienne.

“Proof? Why it is enough evidence about a thing to convince one and produce belief.”

“And you think that Christians do not have that?”

“Decidedly not.”

“I think that you are mistaken. Have you read the Bible through?”

“No.”

“I believe that is often the case with people who criticise it,” she said thoughtfully. “But you are acquainted with portions of it. Can you read without tears the Sermon on the Mount and the account of the crucifixion?”

He made no reply to her, and she continued, “If you take our Bible away, what will you give us to keep our feet from stumbling in the darkness of this world?”

“Let us rely on ourselves,” he said proudly. “Man needs no surer guide than his own internal conviction of right and wrong. That is better than trusting to a fable.”

“I do not think that we get on well when we take charge of ourselves,” she said gently.

“I don’t set myself up for a pattern,” he said hastily; “I’ve been bad—you don’t know how bad I’ve been.”

“Poor Valentine,” she murmured.

“You need not pity me. I was perfectly happy. You goody-goody people talk a lot about sinners’ consciences troubling them. They don’t. One isn’t afraid of anything but being found out.”

“If a conscience sleeps, how can it guide?”

“Well, I intended to let mine wake up some day, then I would sober myself and lead a steady life. Don’t go yet. Tell me more about your beliefs.”

She cast a pitying glance at his restless, unhappy face, and again sat down beside him. “I cannot argue learnedly with you, Valentine. I can only say that I believe in God and in his Son our Saviour, who will forgive our sins if we ask him, and that I believe in the Bible as his revealed word, and that I know I shall go to him when I die. It is a very comfortable belief.”

“Comfortable! yes, for you; not so comfortable for the poor fellows whom you damn.”

“‘God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved,’” repeated Vivienne.

“An attractive myth,” he said lightly; “and you Christians won’t expose it.”

“Why should one doubt a thing that one is sure of?” asked the girl with a puzzled face. “Here is proof enough for me: our glorious faith has been the light of the world; apostles, prophets, and martyrs have died triumphantly for it; Christians are the salt of the earth, and if you had your way and cast every Bible into the sea, our land would become a dreary wilderness of shame and confusion.”

“Fanaticism!” said Valentine; “the Mohammedans talk as wildly as you do.”

“Do not compare Mohammedanism with our holy religion. Christ came with peace on his lips, Mohammed with a sword in his hand. And what has Mohammedanism done for the countries where it is even now decaying?”

“It solidified them,” said Valentine lightly. “So I have read. And all Mohammedans don’t live up to the precepts of the Koran, you know.”

“Mohammedanism is rent by frightful quarrels, and if you have read about it you know the immorality of many of its religious teachers–”

“So are Christians immoral.”

“That is because they do not live up to the teachings of our divine model. But I do not know that it is of very much use to argue with you, Valentine. You misunderstand so sadly. I have heard you reasoning with others—notably, one evening when you spoke of the crucifixion. You said that Jesus Christ could not have died in six hours on the cross, that he was only unconscious when they bore him away to the tomb. I wished to say, his broken heart—broken by the sins of the world; you forget that—but I was too much agitated. I think that we can only pray for you–”

“I do not wish your prayers,” he said quickly; “and I am not unhappy as you think I am—that is, about religious matters. You mistake me.”

“If you think that my religion is a delusion my prayers will not affect you,” said Vivienne; “but have you not a lingering belief in the creed of your forefathers?”

“No,” he said stoutly, “I have not.”

“Stanton has,” she murmured happily; “I could not marry him if he had not.”

“You are young,” pursued Valentine; “do you ever feel a horror of death? What do you think would become of you if a thunderbolt should fall from the sky and strike you dead ten minutes from now?”

“What do you fancy would become of me?” she asked softly.

“I do not know.”

“But I know,” said the girl, looking with joyful eyes on the splendor of the setting sun. “I know whom I have believed, and I do not fear death, because I know that when my soul leaves this body there is prepared for it a dwelling more glorious than anything I can imagine. That is the end of my belief, ‘I know,’ and the end of yours is, ‘I do not know.’”

He turned his blind face toward hers and pictured to himself its transfigured expression.

“Will you not come to the house now?” she said quietly. “Stanton will be delighted to find you there for tea.”

“I suppose you think that I am too wicked to be left alone,” he said as he stumbled to his feet and put his hand in hers.

“No, I do not,” she said.

“You and Stargarde are as much alike as a pair of twin doves,” he grumbled as he moved slowly along beside her.

Stanton, returning home half an hour later, stopped short in the hall, struck by the long unheard sound of music in the drawing room.

“Cast thy burden upon the Lord and he shall sustain thee,” came welling on a soft sweet volume of song through the house.

He drew back the portière. Valentine stood leaning on the piano, his face calm and peaceful, his unseeing eyes in their glasses turned toward Vivienne, who sat with downcast eyelids playing for him.

At the close of the song Armour entered the room. “Is it you, old man?” asked the singer. “Your pretty bird lured me here. Don’t be jealous of me,” he continued childishly, and feeling his way toward the place where Armour stood with features painfully composed. “I’m tired of women—except as sisters,” he added with an apologetic gesture in Vivienne’s direction.

“Let there be no talk of jealousy,” said Armour, laying his hand affectionately on Valentine’s shoulder. “You and Vivienne will henceforth be brother and sister.”