The House of Armour

“Yes; he was much older than she was.”

“And her stay here depends upon her cousin, Mr. Armour?”

“Yes; he gives her a handsome salary.”

“It is rather surprising then that she does not try to please him in every respect.”

Stargarde’s eyes lighted up with brilliant indignation. “You bring me to one of my hobbies,” she exclaimed. “I think that if there is one class of people on whom the wrath of God rests more heavily than on others, it is on the good Christian people who, wrapped around in their own virtues, bring up their children in an atmosphere of pagan idolatry. In not one single particle is the child taught to control itself. The very moon and stars would be plucked from the sky if the parent had the power to gratify the child in that way. Nothing, nothing is denied it. And what happens? The parent dies, the child with its shameless disregard of the rights of others is let loose in the world. With what disastrous results we see in the case of Flora Colonibel. Oh, pity her, pity her, my child,” and Stargarde gazed imploringly at Vivienne, her blue eyes dimmed with tears.

Vivienne witnessed Stargarde’s emotion with a kind of awe, and by a gentle glance essayed to comfort her. The woman smiled through her tears, held up her golden head bravely, like a child that has accomplished its season of mourning and is willing to be cheerful, and said steadily: “I rarely discuss Flora—it is too painful a subject—but you are gentle and good; I wish to enlist your sympathies in her favor. You understand?”

“I will try to like her,” said Vivienne with great simplicity, “for your sake.”

“Dear child,” murmured Stargarde, “to do something for others is the way to forget one’s own trouble.”

Vivienne assented to this remark by a smile, and Stargarde fixing her eyes on the fire fell into a brown study. After a time she turned her head with one of her swift, graceful movements, and reading Vivienne’s thoughts with a readiness that rather disconcerted her, said: “You wish to know something about me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said the girl frankly.

“Good, as Dr. Camperdown says,” replied Stargarde. “I will tell you all that I can. First, I spent the first twelve years of my life as the eldest daughter of a poor parson and his wife. What do you think of that?”

“It is easy to imagine that your descent might be clerical,” said Vivienne innocently.

Stargarde laughed at this with such suppressed amusement that Vivienne knew she must have some arrière pensée. “They were not my real parents,” said her new friend at last.

“Indeed,” said Vivienne, measuring her with a glance so pitying that Stargarde hastened to say, “What does it matter? They loved me better I think for being a waif. The Lord knows all about it, so it is all right. You want to know who my parents are, don’t you?”

“Yes; but do not tell me unless you care to do so.”

“I can’t tell you, child,” said Stargarde, gently pinching her cheek. “I will not say that I do not know; I will simply say that I prefer not to tell anything I may know. Would it make any difference to you if I were to tell you that my father had been—well, say a public executioner?”

“I do not know; I cannot tell,” said Vivienne in bewilderment. “I could never imagine that you would spring from such a source as that.”

“Suppose I did; you would not punish the child for the father’s dreadful calling, would you?”

“Most persons would.”

“Yes, they would,” said Stargarde. “We punish the children for the sins of the fathers, and we are always pointing our fingers at our neighbors and saying, ‘I am better than thou,’ as regards lineage. And yet, in the beginning we were all alike.

‘When Adam delved and Eve span,Who was then the gentleman?’”

“That was years ago,” said Vivienne in amusement; “blood trickling through the veins of generations has become blue.”

“My dear, we go up and down. The aristocrats of to-day are the paupers of to-morrow, except in rare instances. I do not think any the more of you for a possible existence in your veins of a diluted drop of the blood royal of France. I can understand your sentiment in regard to it, if you say, ‘I must never commit a mean action because I come of a line of distinguished ancestry’; though I think a better sentiment is, ‘Here I stand as noble in the sight of God as any creature of earth; I owe it to him and to myself to keep my record clean.’”

An alarming suspicion crept into Vivienne’s mind. “Are you an anarchist?” she asked anxiously.

“Oh, no, no,” laughed Stargarde; “a socialist if you will, in the broad sense of the term, a Christian socialist; but an anarchist never.”

“Are you a loyal subject to the Queen?”

Stargarde bent her beautiful head. “I am, God bless her! Not loyalty alone do I give her, but tender love and reverence. May all her descendants rule as wisely as she has done.”

Stargarde when she spoke used as many gestures as Vivienne herself. Then she was brimful of personal magnetism, catching her hearers by the electric brilliance of her bright blue eyes and holding them by the pure and silvery tones of her voice. Vivienne felt her blood stir in her veins as she listened to her. She was loth to have her visitor go, and as she saw her glance at the clock she said hurriedly, “We have wandered from the subject of your up-bringing.”

“Come and see me in my rooms,” said Stargarde rising, “and I will tell you all about myself and how I went to live with the Camperdowns when I was twelve. They are all gone now but Brian,” and she sighed. “How I miss them! Family life is such an exquisite thing. You, poor child, know little of it as yet. Some day you will marry and have a home of your own. You have a lover now, little girl, haven’t you?” and she tilted back Vivienne’s head and looked searchingly into her eyes.

“Yes,” said Vivienne gently.

Stargarde smiled. “Before he takes you away I wish you would come and stay with me for a long time. Now I must fly, I have an appointment at six.”

“Good-bye, Miss Turner,” murmured Vivienne, as her caller took her by the hand.

“Good-bye, Stargarde,” corrected her friend.

“Stargarde—it is a beautiful name,” said the girl.

“It is a great worry to people; they ask me why I was so named, and I never can tell them. I only know that it is German, and is occasionally used in Russia.”

“Are you going? are you going?” called Judy, limping briskly from the other end of the room. “Wait a minute. I want to show you some clothes that I will give you for your poor children.”

“I haven’t time, I fear.”

“I will send you home in a sleigh,” said Mr. Armour, strolling toward them.

“Oh, in that case I can give you a few minutes,” said Stargarde.

“This is what we might call a case of love at first sight, isn’t it?” said Judy, fluttering like a kindly disposed blackbird between Vivienne and Stargarde.

Stargarde laughed merrily as she went into the bedroom.

Vivienne was left behind with Mr. Armour. Ever since her interview in the library with him he had regarded her with some friendliness and with decided curiosity. Now he asked with interest,

“Did you ever see any one like Miss Turner?”

“No,” said Vivienne warmly, “never; she is so devoted, so enthusiastic; her protégés must love her.”

“They do,” he said dryly.

“It is not my way to plunge into sudden intimacies,” said Vivienne with a little proud movement of her neck; “yet with Miss Turner I fancy all rules are set aside.”

“She is certainly unconventional,” said Mr. Armour.

“I wish I were like that,” said Vivienne. “I wish that I had it in me to live for others.”

“You have a different mission in life,” he said. “You are cut out for a leader in society rather than a religious or philanthropic enthusiast. By the way, Macartney wants your marriage to take place as soon as possible. Of course you concur in his opinion.”

“Yes,” said Vivienne absently, “I will agree to anything that he arranges. As I told you the other day,” she went on with some embarrassment, “I think it is advisable for me to leave here as soon as possible. However, I spoke too abruptly to you. I have been wishing for an opportunity to tell you so.”

“Have you?” he said, twisting the corners of his moustache and trying not to smile at the lofty manner in which she delivered her apology. “It really did not matter.”

“No, I dare say not,” she replied with a quick glance at him; “but I was not polite.”

“I mean it did not matter about me,” he said. “A business man must get used to knocks of various kinds.”

How conceited he was, how proud of his business ability! Vivienne shrugged her shoulders and said nothing.

“About this engagement of yours,” he went on; “if you please we will allow its length to remain undetermined for a time. I may as well confess that I brought you here for a purpose. What that purpose is I do not care to tell, and I beg that you will not speculate about it. Do you think that you can make up your mind to remain under my roof for a few weeks longer?”

“I wounded his self-love so deeply that he will never recover from it,” said the girl to herself. Then she went on aloud in a constrained voice. “It is scarcely necessary for you to ask me that question. To stay here for as long a time as you choose is a small favor for me to grant when you have been kind enough to take care of me for so many years.”

“Ah thank you,” said Mr. Armour aloud. To himself he added, “Proud, passionate, restless girl. She will never forgive me for not liking her. She has her father’s face and her mother’s disposition.”

CHAPTER XIII

DR. CAMPERDOWN MAKES A MORNING CALL

Old Polypharmacy, Dr. Camperdown’s horse, attached to a sleigh, was pegging slowly out one of the Arm roads on the day after his master’s visit to Vivienne.

The afternoon was fine and brilliantly sunny, and Polypharmacy unharried by a check-rein, and almost happy for once that he had blinders on, kept his head down and his eyes half shut, on account of the dazzling glare of the sun on the white fields of snow.

If Polypharmacy was half asleep, his master was certainly very wide awake. He sat in a stooping attitude, his body responding to the bumps and jerks of the little open sleigh bobbing over the hillocks of snow, and his keen, bright eyes going like an eagle’s over in the direction of Pinewood. When they reached the sullen, dark semicircle of evergreen surrounding it, he slapped the reins smartly over the back of his lazy quadruped, and ejaculated: “Hie on, Polypharmacy, and hear my programme—to have my delayed conversation with my lady and get back to town by five. Now comport yourself accordingly.”

Polypharmacy, with a disapproving toss of his head at his master’s haste, yet thought it better to quicken his pace and was soon trotting through the lodge gateway and up the drive to the house.

Arrived in front of the hall door, Camperdown sprang out of the sleigh and attaching a weight to the head of his horse rang a smart peal on the bell that brought a maid tripping to the door.

“I want to see Mrs. Colonibel,” he said in his usual lordly fashion and striding past her into the house. “Is she at home?”

The girl clung to the door handle. “No, sir, she isn’t at home—that is, she doesn’t want to see any one.”

“She’ll see me,” he said. “Take me to her.”

Mrs. Colonibel unaware of the visit in store for her, had after lunch donned a dressing-gown of her favorite shade of red, had put on a pair of bedroom slippers and had made her way to the smoking-room, an apartment that was unoccupied at that time of day.

It was a constant source of chagrin to her that she had neither a maid of her own nor a boudoir. A number of times she had hinted to her cousin Stanton the desirability of bestowing on her these privileges, but so far he had listened in unresponsive silence. Of the delight that would fill her soul could she but speak of “my maid” and “my boudoir” while engaging in conversation with her friends, that unsympathetic man had not the slightest idea.

With brows drawn together she looked discontentedly about the little room, which however, had a certain gaudy comfort of its own. A wood fire was burning merrily in the grate, a big easy-chair by the window held out inviting arms toward her. She had been at a sleighing party the evening before and was tired, and she had a novel and a box of sweets with which to console herself; so at last she sighed contentedly and subsiding among soft cushions was soon deep in a tale of love and sorrow.

At one of the most harrowing passages in the story, where the heroine involved in a hundred embarrassments sees no chance of escape and where her sad condition compelled Mrs. Colonibel to apply her handkerchief to her eyes, she was startled by hearing in a deep voice,

“But Black Donald sat in his coffin and ate oat cake.”

Dropping her book she saw Dr. Camperdown hugging himself like a huge bear before the fire. “Good afternoon,” he said; “I met that new domestic of yours in the hall and asked her name. She said it was Gregory. Every letter of that name is full of blood to me. Shall I tell you why?”

“If you like,” said Mrs. Colonibel with an unamiability that affected him not in the least.

“When I was a boy I used to visit at my uncle’s in Yarmouth county. A man called Black Donald Gregory murdered his sister and cousin in a quarrel, and the whole country rang with the story. The sheriff took Black Donald to Yarmouth town to be hanged. On the road the sheriff would say, ‘Black Donald, you have only twelve hours to live’; and Black Donald would sit in his coffin eating oat cake and saying nothing. The sheriff would say further, ‘Black Donald you have only eleven hours to live.’ But Black Donald sat in his coffin eating oat cake all the way to Yarmouth town. The sheriff warned him every hour, but Black Donald ate oat cake to the last, cramming a bit in his mouth as he mounted the scaffold. Queer story, isn’t it? It used to make my blood run cold. Don’t mind it now.”

Flora shuddered, and without answering him picked up her book as a hint to him to be gone. To her secret dismay he appeared to be just in the humor for a gossip, and as he warmed his back at the fire said agreeably,

“What’s that book you’re in such a hurry to get back to?”

Mrs. Colonibel reluctantly mentioned the name of the story.

“Been crying over it, haven’t you?” he asked. “Wasting tears over a silly jade that never existed, and over a nice girl that does exist and does suffer you’ll bestow not a word of sympathy. You women are queer creatures.”

“Not a bit queerer than men,” said Mrs. Colonibel, goaded into a response.

“Yes, you are,” he retorted. “For double-twistedness and mixed motives and general incomprehensibility, commend me to women; and you’re unbusinesslike, the most of you. You, Flora Colonibel, are now acting dead against your own interests. What makes you so hateful to that little French girl?”

Mrs. Colonibel moved uneasily about on her cushions. “She isn’t little,” she said; “she is as tall as I am.”

“What makes you so hateful to her?” he said relentlessly.

“You should not talk in that way to me, Brian,” said Mrs. Colonibel in an aggrieved tone of voice. “I’m not hateful to her.”

“Yes, you are; you know you are,—hateful and spiteful in little feminine ways. You think people don’t notice it; they do.”

Mrs. Colonibel was a little frightened. “What do you mean, Brian?”

“Simply this. You have a young and fascinating girl under your roof. You suppress her in spite of the fact that she will soon be a married woman and in a position to lord it over you. People are talking about it already.”

“That wretched Irish woman!” exclaimed Mrs. Colonibel; “I wish that she had been born without a tongue.”

“Don’t be abusive and vulgar, Flora. Once you get that reputation there isn’t a man in Halifax that will marry you. You know your ambition is to get a husband; but you’re playing a very bad game just now, a very bad one.”

At this bit of information, of which his victim was only too well assured by her own inner consciousness, she began to shed tears of anger and mortification.

“Don’t cry,” said Camperdown soothingly, drawing up a chair and sitting astride it within easy reach of the box of sweetmeats on her lap, “and don’t bite your handkerchief.”

She would have given the world to be alone, but she was obliged to sit still, answering his questions and watching him coolly eat her sweets.

“Confide in me, Flora,” he said kindly; “I’m the best friend you have. Tell me just how you feel toward Miss Delavigne.”

“I hate her,” she said, striking her teeth together and tearing her handkerchief to shreds. “You’ve no idea how I hate her, Brian,” and she burst into violent sobbing.

She had thrown off all disguise, as indeed she was often in the habit of doing with him, for he understood her so well that she never could deceive him and knew that she gained nothing by attempting to do so.

“That’s right,” he said, stripping the paper off a caramel and transferring it to his cheek. “Unburden your conscience; you’ll feel better. We’ll start from that. You hate her. People will hate each other; you can’t help it. Now let us consider the subject without any appeal to higher motives, which would only be an embarrassment in your case, Flora. You can’t help hating her; do you hate yourself?”

“No,” indignantly, “you know I don’t.”

“No,” he repeated in accents of blandishment; “out of all the world the person set up for your love and adoration is Flora Colonibel. Now in hating Miss Delavigne, and in showing that you hate her, are you doing Flora Colonibel good service?”

He would not proceed till she answered him, so at last she vouchsafed him a sulky, “No.”

“You’re working right against Flora Colonibel,” he said. “You’re blasting her prospects for worldly advancement; you’re preparing her for an old age spent in a garret.”

Mrs. Colonibel shivered at the prospect held out before her, but said nothing.

“What’s your income apart from what Stanton gives you?” he asked.

“Five hundred dollars a year,” reluctantly.

“Five hundred to a woman of your expensive tastes! How much was that embroidered toga you have on?”

“Thirty dollars.”

“And your sandals, or whatever they are?”

“Three.”

“And the book?”

“Fifty cents.”

“The ring on your finger?”

“Fifty dollars.”

“That is eighty-three dollars and fifty cents. And you and Judy expect to live on five hundred.” Throwing the empty confectionery box into the fire, he rose as if, in intense disapproval of her plans for the future, he could no longer stay with her.

Mrs. Colonibel was in a state bordering on hysterics. “What shall I do, Brian?” she gasped, holding him convulsively.

“Mend your ways and increase your graces,” succinctly. “Stop nagging Stanton, or he’ll turn you out of the house before you’re a twelvemonth older. Treat ma’m’selle decently, and follow Stanton’s lead in everything. He is your employer. He doesn’t love you overmuch, but he’ll not be a hard one. Good-bye.” And gently pulling his coat from her quivering hand, he sauntered from the room, muttering to himself, “Medicine’s bitter, but it’s better for her to take it.”

Going on his way down the staircase he crossed the lower hall and looked into the drawing room. Its only occupant was Valentine, who lay stretched out at length on a sofa reading a book which he closed when he saw Camperdown.

“Beastly cold day, isn’t it?” he asked, putting his hands under his handsome, graceless head to prop it still higher.

“Depends upon your standpoint,” said Camperdown drily. “Where’s Stanton?”

“In town—in his office, I suppose.”

“Why aren’t you there?”

“Oh, I’ve about cut the office. Stanton doesn’t make me very welcome when I do go.”

“You’re of no use to him, probably.”

“Well, I don’t adore bookkeeping,” frankly; “and Stanton lets me take no responsibility in buying or selling.”

“Suppose he should die, also your father, do you think you could carry on the business?”

“Couldn’t I!” said Valentine, with all of a young man’s sublime confidence in his own capabilities.

“I’d like to see you do it,” grimly. “Things would go ‘ker-smash,’ as old Hannah says. What are you improving you mind with on this glorious day? A literary family, forsooth.”

Valentine Armour, who with all his faults was as sunny-tempered as a child, refused to tell him, and from mischievous motives solely, tried to roll over on his book. He succeeded in getting it under him, and lay on it laughing convulsively. He was slight and tall of figure, but his strength was as nothing against the prodigious power that lay in Camperdown’s limbs when he chose to exert himself.

Shaking Valentine like a rat, he lifted him with one hand by the waistband, and dropped him on the hearth rug, where the young man sat nursing his crossed legs, and convulsed with laughter at the various expressions of disgust chasing themselves over the physician’s plain-featured countenance.

“Too steep for you, eh, Brian?” he said teasingly.

“Erotic trash!” was the reply. “‘He crushed her in his arms’—reading from the book—‘and smothered her with kisses, till terrified at his passion she was–’ Bah! I’ll read no more. You young men read this amatory rubbish and say, ‘That sounds lively,’ and look around for some one to practise on. Why don’t you fill your mind with something solid while you’re young. Do you think you are going to limp around into driveling old age looking for some one to crush to your breast? If you cram your mind with this stuff now, it’s all you’ll have when your gray hairs come. You’re a fool, Valentine. Work is the main business of life—making love an incident. I’ve had my eye on you for some time. You have things reversed.”

“Thank you,” gayly. “Don’t you ever read novels?”

“Of course I do. Good novels have a mission. Many a one preaches a sermon to people that never listen to a minister; but this trash”—scornfully—"into the fire with it!" and he tossed the book among the coals in the grate.

“Peace to its ashes,” said Valentine, stifling a yawn. “It was a slow thing, anyway.”

“Come drive to town with me,” said Camperdown.

“Can’t; I’m tired. I was skating all the morning. I think I’ll go and ask Judy for a cup of tea.”

“Is ma’m’selle civil to you?” asked Camperdown.

“Pretty much so. I’m trying to get up a flirtation with her, but she’s too high and mighty to flirt, though she could very well do it if she tried.”

“I’m glad there’s one girl that doesn’t worship your doll face.”

“That she won’t flirt with me is no sign that she doesn’t,” said Valentine saucily. "Go to your patients, Camperdown, and leave the girls to me.

“His pills as thick as hand grenades flew,And where they fell as certainly they slew.”

Camperdown threw a sofa cushion at him, but Valentine dodged it, and placing himself comfortably by the fire watched lazily through the window the energetic manner in which the friend of his family jumped into his sleigh and drove away.

CHAPTER XIV

THE STOLEN POCKET-BOOK

Early one evening Stargarde was sitting sewing in her room when she heard on the veranda the blustering noise that usually accompanied Dr. Camperdown’s arrival. She smiled and glanced apprehensively at Zeb, who had been spending the day with her, and who now lay on the sofa apparently asleep.

Then she dropped her work and turned to greet the newcomer.

“No, thank you, I can’t sit down,” he said. “I came to bring you some money that Mr. Warner handed me for your poor people. Here it is,” and taking out his pocket-book he handed her a check. “You’d better spend some of it on that little mudlark of yours,” with a nod of his head in the direction of the sofa.

Zeb, who was only pretending to be asleep, heard the half-contemptuous half-good-natured epithet, and like a flash she was off the sofa and clinging to his arm, scratching, snarling, and biting at him like an enraged cat.

Stargarde was intensely distressed, and Dr. Camperdown was electrified. Around and around the table he went, trying to shake the child off without hurting her, and yet becoming more and more disturbed as he heard the ripping of cloth.

“Stop, stop—you little fury,” he exclaimed. “Let go! I’ll have to hurt you, I see,” and bending back the child’s fingers in his powerful hands he dropped her on the floor gently, but as hastily as if she were a rat, and snatching at his hat hurried to the door.