The House of Armour

CHAPTER XLI
IN DEEP DESPAIR

Judy was curled up like a dog on the library door mat. “I will not get up—I will not get up,” she cried, groveling at Vivienne’s feet, as she came out, “till you tell me that you are not going to leave us.”

“I am,” said Vivienne; “but you are to go with me.”

“With you, my precious?” cried the girl springing to her feet. “Where are you going?”

“To England.”

“When?” almost screamed the excited girl.

“To-morrow.”

“And Stanton—what is he going to do?”

“Marry me and go too.”

“Oh this is delicious,” said Judy clasping her around the waist. “I never dreamed of this. Oh I will be good. I shall never get out of temper now,” and she sidled in ecstasy up and down the hall.

“My father will accompany us, I hope,” said Vivienne. “I wish never to separate from him again. I must go to see him now, the beloved martyr. I can scarcely believe that he is here; so many wonderful things have happened to-night. My head is in a whirl.”

“Don’t go,” said Judy detaining her. "Mamma gave him the best room in the house, where he has, I hope, quietly gone to sleep. You will see him in a few hours; let us talk some more about England and your marriage. I don’t understand perfectly yet. Things have been so rushed that I am confused. Will you explain to me about your father? I thought Uncle Colonel liked him. Why did he wish to get rid of him?”

“Dear Judy,” and Vivienne drew the girl to a seat beside her, “it seems to me that all the trouble and all the comfort in the world comes through women. You know sometimes men love the women they should not. It is a shocking thing to say, but my father tells me that Colonel Armour loved my mother better than he has ever loved any person in the world.”

“Shocking indeed,” said Judy, “in plain English, brutal; for I suppose in liking her, his first thought was to get rid of your father.”

“Yes, he wished to ruin him, to bring about a separation between him and my mother, and he hoped that my father, being of a sensitive nature, would take his own life, and my mother being proud and hating treachery, would despise his memory and marry him.”

“The old wretch!”

“But my mother was more clever than he thought her. She understood his wiles, and though she could prove nothing, she told him that he himself had falsified the books that he accused my father of doing, and that she loved her husband more than ever when he became an unhappy victim.”

“And where does MacDaly come in?”

“He overheard a conversation in which my father rebuked Colonel Armour for his obsequious attentions paid to my mother during the absence of her husband. Colonel Armour lost his temper and in a fury dismissed him from his service, declaring that he would ruin him.”

“Which he certainly did,” interrupted Judy. “It is a strange thing that all this has not been found out before. That creature MacDaly ought to be horsewhipped.”

“He was afraid for himself,” said Vivivenne, “for it was he that set the warehouse on fire.”

“What, MacDaly?”

“Yes, but without an intention of doing it. It happened in this way: he listened to the altercation between my father and Colonel Armour, then went into a place of hiding. No stir was made with regard to the affair, so he issued from his place and loitered about to hear later on a conversation between Colonel Armour and Stanton. Colonel Armour said that he was coming back that evening to write in the office. This was unusual; MacDaly suspected that it bore on my father’s case and resolved to watch. Therefore returning stealthily at an earlier hour than his customary one to the warehouse, he saw Colonel Armour enter and leave his office. MacDaly then crept to the room. He found the safes closed, but he guessed shrewdly that his master had been tampering with the accounts of his clerk. While shuffling over loose papers on the table he mistakenly thought he heard Colonel Armour’s returning step. He ran, forgetting a lighted cigar or pipe he had laid down. It set fire to the papers. MacDaly, watching from the wharf, saw the windows bright with flames. He rushed to the spot but he could not extinguish the fire. He feared to call for help, and not till the passers-by saw the blazing building, was an alarm sounded. Then unfortunately, it was too late. The cunning MacDaly hid himself till the fire was over; but Colonel Armour suspected his connection with it, and taxed him with it, only sparing him from exposure because his purpose was to have my father blamed. This is a whip that he has held over MacDaly’s head to keep him from making any revelations about my father.”

“That if he did he would be punished for setting fire to the building?” said Judy inquiringly.

“Yes, Colonel Armour frightened him by saying that he would prove that he had done it intentionally, which by the common law is felony. The simple MacDaly knew that his master was rich and powerful, and he did not dare to brave him.”

“And how do you feel about it all?”

“It is horrible,” whispered Vivienne raising her hands as if to lift some heavy weight from her shoulders. “To think of all these years of agony, my mother’s death, my father’s martyrdom, Stanton’s slow misery, my unhappiness, and all through the sin of one man. Now all seems brightness except the living death that has come upon the one who has caused all this trouble. If he never comes out of it, Judy, if he has no chance for repentance!”

“Don’t worry about him,” said Judy scornfully. “Think of your father. Hasn’t he a sweet face, and isn’t he a perfect gentleman? And you and Stanton thought to find him in some cobbler’s shop!”

“A cobbler can be a gentleman, Judy.”

“Ah, Miss Aristocrat, you’ve rather changed your opinions since you came to Halifax. By the way, why do we leave so soon as to-morrow? Is it because you are in a hurry to get Stanton away?”

“Yes, Judy.”

“And here comes that man you are so proud of. I think I’ll go to bed. I’ve stuff for a dozen nightmares.”

CHAPTER XLII
ACROSS THE SEA

Some weeks later Armour and his wife, with Judy and Mr. Delavigne, installed themselves in a suite of apartments in the principal hotel of a gray old English town. Outside Armour’s room ran a narrow iron balcony, and on this balcony he stood one evening, his hands behind his back, his face upturned to the sky.

“What star are your thoughts on?” asked Vivienne softly, as she came to the open window.

“One called Vivienne; won’t you come out?” he said. “It is very warm.”

“It seems to me that you think a very great deal about that star,” she said roguishly as she accepted the mute invitation of his arm to come and stand beside him.

He wrapped her white-furred dressing gown more closely about her and stowed her long hair in a hood at the back of it. “Now I can see your face. Why should I not think of you, Vivienne? You are a constant source of interest to me with your pretty feminine ways. I don’t think women understand how odd it is for a man who has always lived to himself to have some woman about him with her constant care of him, and her questions as to why he does this thing and that thing and what he is thinking about.”

Vivienne laughed merrily. “Is that why you watch me with such profound interest when I mend your gloves, and why you looked at me in such surprise when I went to your rescue the other day as you struggled with an obstinate necktie?”

“Yes; you are a very fearful and wonderful creation to me at all times; but when I think of you with all your attributes you are a mystery.”

“You are not a mystery to me,” said Vivienne. “I understand you and I am satisfied. Over there is a rookery, Stanton. In the morning you will hear such a cawing.”

“And yonder is the school where you used to sit and look over the trees toward Canada?”

“Yes, Stanton.”

“And read my brief, cold letters, darling? I wish I had known what I know now. How differently I should have written.”

“Yes, I used to read them there, but they did not worry me so very much.”

“And it was there,” he said, “that you, one year ago, put up the photograph to send to me that was to make such a change in my life.”

“Yes, my dear husband, it was. Madame Dubois and I were spending the summer here.”

“I have never told you of the day that I received it, Vivienne. I was exceedingly busy, and in the midst of my rush of work I unfastened the string on the cardboard, and there was your face looking serenely at me. I was completely upset by your surprising likeness to your father, and at once the project of having you come to Canada flashed into my mind. I thought, surely if my father were confronted with you, the daughter of a woman that he had virtually murdered—for I believe if it had not been for him your mother would be alive to-day—his toughened conscience would be touched.”

“What became of the photograph? You have never told me.”

Armour blushed slightly. “I am ashamed to say that I tore it up. I almost hated you in those days; for I thought if the Delavignes had never been born, my father would not have been tempted to commit the crime of his life. I would give a thousand dollars to have it again.”

“Five shillings will get you one,” said Vivienne lightly. “We will visit the photographer to-morrow, and I will order one like it.”

Armour was silent for a time. Then he said thoughtfully, “I wonder how affairs are going on at home.”

“We know that Stargarde goes to the cottage every day to weep and pray beside your father,” said Vivienne softly, “and Flora is happy with the housekeeping, and Valentine practises—ah, Stanton, that first Sunday he sang in church, when he stood beside the organ and raised his calm face to sing ‘Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden,’ I could not keep back the tears. How glad he will be to have us home again."

“How long do you wish to stay away, Vivienne?” asked Armour.

“Until you are happy in returning.”

“I could go back to-morrow.”

“Stanton!” and she looked up at his face which was illumined by the gaslight from the room behind.

“Yes,” he said firmly. “I see now that there is no place to retrieve a lost reputation like one’s own home. If acquaintances of long standing are more curious and critical than strangers they are also more compassionate. The people of Halifax are my people. My father has sinned among them and among them will I endeavor, God helping me, to make what amendment I can for his sins, and for my own sins of pride and obstinacy, and begin my new life where I lived the old.”

Vivienne surveyed him in passionate affection. “I thank heaven every day of my life that I have married a man who is strong enough to acknowledge his weakness, and who knows where to look for aid. Ah, the Divine guidance, Stanton, what should we do without it?” And standing with her hand in her husband’s, she repeated slowly the words of one of her beloved Canadian poets:

 
"Forever constant to the good
Still arm our faith, thou Guard sublime,
To scorn, like all who’ve understood,
The atheist dangers of the time.
 
 
“Thou hearest! Lo, we feel our love
Of loyal thoughts and actions free
Tow’rd all divine achievement move,
Ennobled, blest, ensured, by Thee.”