Read the book: «The House of Armour», page 4

CHAPTER VII
IN DR. CAMPERDOWN’S OFFICE

The principal hotels of the town of Halifax are situated on Hollis Street, and Hollis Street is next Water Street, and Water Street is next the harbor.

On a dull, windless morning, when the snow clouds hung low in the air, Captain Macartney, encased in a dark uniform and looking exceedingly trim and soldierlike, stepped out of one of these hotels, where he had been to see his stepmother and brother, and walking slowly along the street looked up at the high buildings on each side of him, attentively scrutinizing doorplates and signs as he did so.

There at last was the name he wanted, on the door of a large building that looked rusty and shabby between its smart brick and stone neighbors—Dr. Camperdown, Surgeon. He repeated the words with a satisfied air, then making his way up a dark staircase, pushed open a door that had the polite invitation “Walk in” on it in staring letters. He found himself in a large, bare room, with a row of chairs set about its walls. Unfortunately for him, he was not the first on the field. Six of the chairs were occupied. Three old women, two young ones, and an old man, all poorly dressed and looking in their shabby clothes only half protected from the cold, eyed with small approval the smartly dressed officer who might prove to be a first claimant of the doctor’s attention. To their joy he took a seat at the back of the room, thereby giving notice that he was prepared to wait his turn.

They all looked up when the door of an inner apartment was opened. An ugly, sandy head appeared, and a sharp “Next” was flung into the room. One of the old women meekly prepared to enter, stripping off some outer wrap which she dropped on the chair behind her.

“Take your cloud with you,” said one of the younger women kindly; “he’ll let you out by another door into the hall.”

After what seemed to Captain Macartney an unconscionably long time, the door was again opened, and another “Next” was ejaculated. His jaws ached with efforts to suppress his yawns. He longed in vain for a paper.

Finally, after long, weary waiting and much internal grumbling, all his fellow-sufferers had one by one disappeared, and he had the room to himself. The last to go, the old man, stayed in the inner office a longer time than all the others combined, and Captain Macartney, fretting and chafing with impatience, sprang to his feet, and walking up and down the room, stared at everything in it, singly and collectively. He found out how many chairs were there. He counted the cobwebs, big and little, high up in the corners. He discovered that one leg of the largest press was gone, and that a block of wood had been stuck in its place, thereby rendering it exceedingly shaky and unsteady. He speculated on the number of weeks that had elapsed since the windows had been washed. He wondered why they should be so dirty and the floor so clean, when suddenly, to his immense relief, the door opened and Dr. Camperdown stood before him.

His hair was shaggy and unkempt, his sharp gray eyes, hiding under the huge eyebrows, were fixed piercingly on the military figure which he came slowly toward, the more closely to examine. His long arms, almost as long as those of the redoubtable Rob Roy—who, Sir Walter Scott tells us, could, without stooping, tie the garters of his Highland hose placed two inches below the knee—were pressed against his sides, and his hands were rammed down into the pockets of an old coffee-colored, office coat, on which a solitary button lingered.

“Macartney, is it you,” he said doubtfully, “or your double?”

“Myself,” said the officer with a smile and extending his hand.

“Come in, come in,” said Dr. Camperdown, passing into the other room. “Sit down,” dragging forward a leather chair on which the dust lay half an inch thick. “Afraid of the dust? Finicky as ever. Wait, I’ll clean it for you—where’s my handkerchief? Gave it to that old woman. Stop a bit—here’s a towel. Now for a talk.” Sprawled out across two chairs, and biting and gnawing at his moustache as if he would uproot it, he gazed with interest at his visitor. “What are you doing in Halifax? Are you in the new regiment?”

“Yes; I arrived three days ago in the ‘Acadian.’”

“Same hot-headed Irishman as ever?”

“No; I have cooled considerably since the old subaltern days. India and fevers and accidents have taken the life out of me. How are you getting on? You have a number of charity patients I see.”

“Oh Lord, yes; the leeches!”

“Why don’t you shake them off?”

Camperdown grunted disapprovingly.

“You encourage them, I fancy,” said the officer in his smooth, polished tones. “They would not come if you did not do so. I hope you have others, rich ones, to counterbalance them.”

“Yes,” gruffly, “I have.”

“And you bleed them to make up for the losses you sustain through penniless patients. Ha, ha, Camperdown,” and Captain Macartney laughed the pleasant, mellifluous laugh of a man of culture and fashion.

Camperdown looked benevolently at him. “Never mind me. Talk about yourself. What are you making of your life? You’re getting older. Have you married?”

“No, but I am thinking of it,” gravely and with the faintest shade of conceit. “My stepmother urges me to it, and the advice is agreeable, for I have fallen in love.”

“Does she reciprocate?” and Dr. Camperdown bit his moustache more savagely than ever in order to restrain a smile.

“Not entirely; but—you remember the time I broke my leg, Camperdown, five years ago?”

“Yes, a compound fracture.”

“The time,” scornfully, “that I was fool enough to let Flora Colonibel twist me ’round her little finger.”

“Exactly.”

“I was taken to the Armours’ house you remember, and was fussed over and petted till I loathed the sight of her.”

“Yes,” dryly, “as much as you had previously admired it.”

“By Jove, yes,” said the other with a note of lazy contempt in his voice; “and but for that broken leg, Flora Colonibel would have been Flora Macartney now.”

“Very likely,” said Camperdown grimly; “but what are you harking back to that old story for?”

“It is an odd thing,” went on Captain Macartney with some show of warmth, “that, tame cat as I became out at Pinewood, and bored to death as I was with confidences and family secrets, from the old colonial days down, that one thing only was never revealed to me.”

“What was that?”

“The fact that the family possessed a kind of ward or adopted daughter, who was being educated abroad.”

“So—they did not tell you that?”

“Not a syllable of it,” and Captain Macartney eyed keenly the uncommunicative face before him.

“Why should they have told you?” said Dr. Camperdown.

“Why—why,” echoed his visitor in some confusion, his face growing furiously red, “for the very good reason that that is the girl with whom I have chosen to fall in love.”

Camperdown shrugged his huge shoulders. “How did they know you’d fall in love with the daughter of their poor devil of a bookkeeper?”

Captain Macartney half rose from his seat. “Camperdown,” he said haughtily, “in the old days we were friends; you and your father before you were deep in the secrets of the house of Armour. I come to you for information which I am not willing to seek at the club or in the hotels. Who is Miss Vivienne Delavigne?”

“Sit down, sit down,” said Camperdown surlily and impatiently. “Scratch a Russian and you’ll find a Tartar, and scratch an Irishman and you’ll find a fire-eater, and every sensible man is a fool when he falls in love. What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

“You love the girl—isn’t that everything?”

“No.”

“You didn’t propose to her?”

“No.”

“Did you ask her about her family?”

“I did not,” loftily.

“You wish to know what her station in life is, and whether she can with propriety be taken into the aristocratic family of the Macartneys?”

“Yes,” shortly; “if you will be so kind as to tell me.”

“Here’s the matter in a nutshell then. Her father was French, mother ditto, grandfathers and grandmothers the same—all poorest of the poor, and tillers of the soil. Her father got out of the peasant ring, became confidential man for Colonel Armour, and when he reached years of discretion, which was before I did, I believe that he embezzled largely, burnt the Armours’ warehouse, and not being arrested, decamped—the whole thing to the tune of some thousands of dollars. That is her father’s record.”

Captain Macartney was visibly disturbed. “How long ago did this take place?”

“Twenty years.”

“Is it well known—much talked of?”

“No, you know how things are dropped in a town. The story’s known, but no one speaks of it. Now the girl has come back, I suppose Dame Rumor will set it flying again.”

Captain Macartney relapsed into a chagrined silence. Camperdown sucking in both his cheeks till he was a marvel of ugliness, watched him sharply, and with wicked enjoyment. “You’ll have to give her up, Macartney.”

“By Jove, I will,” said the officer angrily. “My uncle would cut me off with a ha’penny.”

“Bah!” said his companion contemptuously. “I would not give her up for all the uncles in Christendom.”

“You know nothing about the duty of renunciation,” said the other sarcastically. “I’ve not drunk a glass of wine for a twelve-month.”

“What’s wrong?” said the physician with professional curiosity.

“Indigestion,” shortly. Then slowly, “Suppose I married the girl—she could not live on air.”

“Your pay.”

“Is not enough for myself.”

“You hoped to find her a rich girl,” said Dr. Camperdown sharply.

“I will not deny that I had some such expectation,” said the other raising his head, and looking at him coolly, but with honest eyes. “Her dress and appearance—her whole entourage is that of a person occupying a higher station in life than she does.”

“Fiddle-de-dee, what does it matter? She’s a lady. What do you care about her ancestors?”

“We don’t look upon things on the other side of the Atlantic as you do here,” said Captain Macartney half regretfully. “And it is not that alone. It is the disgrace connected with her name that makes the thing impossible.”

“Bosh—give her an honest name. You’re not half a man, Macartney.”

The officer sprang from his seat. His Irish blood was “up.” Camperdown chuckled wickedly to himself as he watched him pacing up and down the narrow apartment, holding up his sword with one hand and clasping the other firmly behind his back. From time to time he threw a wrathful glance in the surgeon’s direction and after he had succeeded in controlling himself, he said doggedly: “I shall not marry her, but I will do what I can for her; she ought to be got out of that house.”

“Why?” said his friend inanely.

“Beg pardon, Camperdown, but your questions infuriate me,” said his companion in a low voice. “You know that is no place for a young, innocent girl to be happy. Begin with the head of the house, Colonel Armour. I’ll sketch his career for you in six words; young devil, middle-aged devil, old devil. Flora Colonibel is a painted peacock. Stanton an iceberg. Judy an elf, imp, tigress, anything you will. Valentine a brainless fop. If you’re a man, you’ll help me get her out of it.”

“You can’t do anything now,” said Dr. Camperdown pointedly.

“Yes I can—I’m her friend.”

“You’re her lover, as long as you dangle about her.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” said Captain Macartney peevishly and resuming his seat. “She isn’t in love with me.”

Dr. Camperdown burst into a roar of laughter. “She doesn’t smile upon you; then why all this agony?”

“It’s easily seen that you’ve not proposed to many women,” said Captain Macartney coolly. “They never say yes, at first.”

The shaft went home. His ugly vis-à-vis shrugged his shoulders and made no reply.

“We had a saying about Flora Colonibel in the past,” said Captain Macartney earnestly, “that she feared neither saint, angel, nor demon, but that she stood in mortal dread of Brian Camperdown. She will persecute that girl to a dead certainty. Can’t you hold her in check? My stepmother will stand by you. She would even take her for a trip somewhere, or have her visit her.”

“I’ll look after her,” briefly. “By the way, where did you meet her?”

“In Paris, with the French lady who has been traveling with her since she left school, and who asked my stepmother to take charge of her on the journey here.”

“Her arrival was a surprise,” said Dr. Camperdown. “Armour didn’t tell me that she was coming.”

Captain Macartney surveyed him with some jealousy. “So you too have an eye to her movements?”

“Yes,” said Camperdown impishly. “I don’t care for her antecedents.”

“Oh, indeed; I am glad that you do not,” said the officer, drawing on his gloves with a smile. “Of course you do not. You have no right to do so. How is that lady with the charming name?”

“She is well.”

“Is she still in her old quarters?”

“Yes.”

“I must do myself the pleasure of calling on her. She is as remarkable as ever I suppose?”

“More so.”

“I can well believe it. Now I must leave you. I am due at the South Barracks at twelve,” and he rose to go.

“Stop, Macartney; there are mitigating circumstances connected with this affair. I told you that Miss Delavigne’s immediate ancestry was poor. It is also noble on her mother’s side—formerly rich. You have heard of the French family the Lacy d’Entrevilles?”

“I have.”

“Ever hear that they sprang from the stock of a prince royal of France?”

“No, I have not.”

“They say they did; one of them, a Marquis Réné Théodore something or other was a colonel in Louis the Fourteenth’s body-guards—came out to Quebec in command of a regiment there, then to Acadie and founded this branch of the family; it is too long a story to tell. I dare say mademoiselle is as proud as the rest of them.”

“She is,” said his hearer with a short laugh.

“Born aristocrats—and years of noses to the grindstone can’t take it out of them, and the Delavignes, though hewers of wood and drawers of water, as compared with the aristocratic Lacy d’Entrevilles, were all high strung and full of honesty. Seriously, Macartney, I think her father was a monomaniac. A quiet man immersed in his business wouldn’t start out all at once on a career of dishonesty after an unblemished record.”

“I am glad to hear this,” said Captain Macartney, “and I am exceedingly obliged to you. Some other time I shall ask you to favor me with the whole story,” and he went thoughtfully away.

CHAPTER VIII
AN INTERVIEW IN THE LIBRARY

At ten o’clock on the evening of the day that Captain Macartney made his call on Dr. Camperdown Judy was restlessly hitching herself up and down the big front hall at Pinewood.

“Oh, that crutch!” ejaculated Mrs. Colonibel, who was playing cards with Valentine in the drawing room; “how I hate to hear it.”

“Don’t you like to hear your offspring taking a little exercise?” he asked tantalizingly.

“Not when she’s waiting for that detestable French girl,” said Mrs. Colonibel. “I do wish Stanton would send her away.”

“Everything comes to her who waits,” said Valentine. “The trouble is with you women that you won’t wait. Play, cousin.”

“Here she is,” exclaimed Judy, and she flung open the door with a joyful, “Welcome home.”

Vivienne was just getting out of a sleigh. “Ah, Judy, how kind of you to wait for me,” she said. “Did you get my note?”

“Yes; but nobody asked where you were except mamma.”

Vivienne’s face clouded slightly, then it brightened again. “Where is Mr. Armour?”

“In the library; he always spends his evenings there.”

“I wish to speak to him. Do you think I could go in.”

“Yes; what do you want to say?”

“I will tell you afterward,” and with a smile Vivienne let her cloak slip from her shoulders and knocked at a near door.

Judy with her head on one side like a little cat listened to the brief “Come in,” then as Vivienne disappeared from view she spun round and round the hall in a kind of dance.

“What is the matter with you?” asked her mother, coming from the drawing room.

Judy stopped. “I have a pain in my mind.”

“What kind of a pain, Judy?” asked Valentine, looking over Mrs. Colonibel’s shoulder.

“A joyful pain.”

“Miss Delavigne has gone upstairs, has she?” asked Mrs. Colonibel.

“Yes, she came in,” said Judy evasively.

“Why don’t you go to bed?” continued her mother.

“Because I choose to stay here and read,” and Judy seizing a book flung herself on a divan.

“Well, I am going,” said Mrs. Colonibel; “goodnight,” and she turned toward the staircase.

Valentine tossed a cap on his black head and opening a door leading to a veranda ran swiftly down a snowy path to the cottage.

When Vivienne entered the library Mr. Armour looked up in some surprise and with a faint trace of annoyance.

“I hope I am not disturbing you,” she said politely.

“Not at all,” and he turned his back on the table bestrewn with papers and invited her by a wave of the hand to sit down.

He stood himself leaning one elbow on the mantel, and looked curiously down at her as she sat glancing about at the book-cases and the rose and ashen hangings of his handsome room.

What a strangely self-possessed girl she was. Could he think of another who would come boldly into his presence and demand an interview with his own dignified self? No, he could not. Well, she was a foreigner. How he hated the type; the smooth black bands of hair, the level heavy eyebrows, the burning eyes. What havoc a face like this had already wrought in his family, and he shaded his eyes with his hand and averted them from her as she ejaculated:

“I beg your pardon for keeping you. I will say what I wish very shortly. I have just come from dining with the Macartneys.”

“At their hotel?”

“Yes.”

“I wish that you had consulted me,” he said in his most chilling manner. “Hotels are public places for young girls.”

“Not when they are under proper chaperonage,” she said gently; “and really I did not suppose that you took any interest in my movements.”

He glanced suspiciously at her, but saw that there was no hint of fault-finding in her manner.

“I have come in this evening to tell you something that I know will please you,” she said.

Something to please him—he wondered in a dull way what it was.

“Captain Macartney wishes to marry me,” she said.

He stared incredulously at her. “Captain Macartney!”

“Yes; he asked me this evening.”

He pondered over the news for some instants in silence, then he said, “Why do you say that this will please me?”

Vivienne looked steadily at him. “Mr. Armour, you cannot conceal the fact from me that I am a great burden to you.”

“A great burden,” he repeated frigidly. “Surely you forget yourself, Miss Delavigne.”

“No, no,” she replied with animation. “Do not be vexed with me, Mr. Armour; I am just beginning to understand things. You know that I have no father and mother. When I was a little girl away across the sea, and the other children went home for their holidays, I used to cry to think that I had no home. When I got older I found out from your letters that you did not wish me to come. I was surprised that you at last sent for me, but yet delighted, for I thought, even if the Armours do not care for me I shall be in my native land, I shall never leave it; yet, yet–”

She paused for an instant and seemed to be struggling with some emotion. Mr. Armour raised his heavy eyelids just long enough to glance at her, then dropped them again. His eyes carried the picture to the reddish-brown tiles of the hearth—the pretty graceful figure of the half girl, half woman, before him, her little foreign gestures, the alluring softness of her dark eyes. Yet the picture possessed no attraction for him. It only appealed slightly to his half-deadened sensibilities. He was doing wrong to dislike her so intensely. He must keep his feelings under better control.

“Well,” he said less coldly, “you were going to say something else.”

“I was going to say,” remarked Vivienne, a bright impatient color coming and going in her cheeks, “that one cannot live on patriotism. I thought that I would not miss my friends—the people who have been good to me. I find that I do. In this house I feel that I am an intruder–”

“And the Macartneys adore you,” he said, a steely gleam of amusement coming into his eyes, “and consequently you wish to be with them.”

“That is a slight exaggeration,” said Vivienne composedly; “yet we will let it pass. With your permission I will marry Captain Macartney.”

“Suppose I withhold my permission.”

Vivienne glanced keenly at him. Was this man of marble capable of a jest? Yes, he was. “If you do,” she said coolly, “I will run away.” Then she laughed with the ease and gayety of girlhood and Mr. Armour watching her smiled gravely.

“I suppose the Macartneys have been much touched by your stories of our cruel treatment of you,” he said sarcastically.

Vivienne tapped her foot impatiently on the floor. Did he really think that she was a tell-tale?

“Ah yes,” she said nonchalantly; “I have told them that you detest me and allow me only bread and water, that I sleep in a garret, and your father and Mrs. Colonibel run away whenever they see me, small Judy being my only friend in the house.”

Mr. Armour smiled more broadly. How quick she was to follow his lead! “Does my father really avoid you?” he asked.

There was some complacency in his tone and Vivienne holding her head a trifle higher responded: “I make no complaint of members of your family to you or to any other person, Mr. Armour.”

He frowned irritably and with one of the peremptory hand gestures that Vivienne so much disliked he went on: “Why did not Macartney speak to me himself about this affair?”

“He will do so to-morrow. I wished to see you first.”

“Why?”

“Will you be kind enough to excuse me from telling you?”

“No,” said Mr. Armour unexpectedly; “I wish to know.”

Vivienne shook her head in an accession of girlish independence that was highly distasteful to him.

“I cannot endure a mystery,” he said sternly.

“Nor I,” said Vivienne demurely; “but really, Mr. Armour, I do not wish to tell you.”

“Those Irish people are spoiling her,” he reflected. Vivienne was watching him and after a time she said relentingly:

“However, it is a slight thing—you may think it worse than it is if I do not tell you. I”—proudly—"did not wish Captain Macartney to be the first to tell you lest, lest–"

“Lest what?”

“Lest you should seem too glad to get rid of me,” she concluded.

“What do you mean?” he asked haughtily.

Vivienne pushed back her chair and stepped a little farther away from him. “You may think that because I am young, Mr. Armour, I have no pride; I have. I bitterly, bitterly resent your treatment of me. I have tried to please you; never a word of praise have you given me all these years. I come back to you to be treated like an outcast. My father was a gentleman, if he was poor, and of a family superior to that of the Armours. You will be glad, glad, glad to throw me off–”

She stopped to dash away an angry tear from her cheek while Mr. Armour surveyed her in the utmost astonishment.

“You think because I am a girl I do not care,” she went on, her fine small nostrils dilating with anger. “Girls care as well as men.”

“How old are you?” ejaculated Mr. Armour stupidly.

“You do not even know my age,” she retorted, “you—my guardian,” and with a glance of sublime displeasure she tried to put her hand on the door handle.

“Stop a moment,” said Mr. Armour confusedly.

“I have talked long enough to you,” she responded. “You have made me lose my temper; a thing I seldom do,” and with this parting shaft she left the room.

Mr. Armour stood holding the door open for some time after she left him. Then he stooped down and picked a crumpled handkerchief from the floor.

“What irrepressibility!” he muttered; “a most irritating girl. I shall be glad to have her taken off my hands, and she is angry about it. Well, it cannot be helped,” and he seated himself in a quiet, dull fashion by the fire. Worry, annoyance, dread, and unutterable weariness oppressed him, yet through it all his face preserved its expression of icy calm. A stranger looking into the room would have said: “A quiet, handsome man meditating in the solitude of his library;” not by any means, a poor, weary pilgrim to whom life was indeed no joyous thing but a grievous, irksome burden that he longed to, yet dared not, lay down.

Vivienne went slowly upstairs resting one hand on the railing as she did so.

“Well, my dear,” said Judy, meeting her halfway, “what makes your face so red? Have you had an exhibition of Grand-Turkism?”

“Judy,” said Vivienne, stopping short, “I knew before I went to that room to-night that Mr. Armour likes to have his own way.”

“You are a match for him,” said Judy dryly; “now tell me what you wanted to say to him.”

“I wished to announce my engagement to Captain Macartney.”

“Oh, you bad, bad girl,” exclaimed Judy; “oh, you bad girl!”

“A bad girl!” exclaimed Vivienne.

“Come along,” said Judy, dragging her upstairs. “Come to our room. Oh, I am so disappointed! I had other plans for you.”

“Indeed—what were they?”

“I don’t know. I must forget them, I suppose. But don’t be too hard on Stanton, Vivienne.”

“What do you mean by being too hard? You have never heard me say a word against him.”

“No, but you look things with those big eyes of yours. He has a detestable time with Uncle Colonel and Val.”

“In what way?” asked Vivienne feebly.

“Because they are demons; regular dissipated demons, and he is their keeper. They lead him a life; that’s why he’s so solemn. What did he say about your engagement?”

“I fancy that it meets with his approbation.”

“Approbation—fiddlesticks! Do you love your fiancé, Vivienne?”

“No, certainly not. He is a gentleman; I like him, and he is very good to his stepmother.”

“What an excellent reason for marrying him,” said Judy sarcastically; “he is good to his stepmother.”

“Therefore he will be good to me.”

“Well, you’re about half right. Let us go to bed. I don’t feel like discussing this engagement of yours.”

Vivienne looked wistfully after the little elfish figure limping away from her. “Judy,” she said, “Judy.”

The girl stopped.

“Don’t you think it is nauseating to hear some girls gushing about their dear darling lovers?”

“Yes, perfectly so.”

“So many of those terrible enthusiastic marriages turn out badly.”

“A great many; I must get Stargarde to talk to you about the marriage question.”

“Who is Stargarde?” asked Vivienne curiously.

“Stargarde is Stargarde,” said Judy enigmatically; “wait till you see her. Good-night.”