The House of Armour

CHAPTER I

SCOTLAND THE NEW

In the southeastern extremity of Canada, jutting out into the blue waters of the Atlantic, holding on to the great mainland of North America only by one narrow arm or isthmus, is the green and fertile little peninsula called Acadie, land of abundance, by the French and Indians, and Nova Scotia, New Scotland, by the baronet Sir William Alexander, when in 1621 it was ceded to him by his most worshipful majesty, King James the First of England.

Projected, pushed out from the mainland as it is, the province is pre-eminently a child of the sea. Her wealth comes from it; her traffic is over it; it keeps her warm in winter; it cools her in summer. Old Father Atlantic, savage, boisterous old parent that he is, dashing so often the dead bodies of her children against her rockbound coasts, is yet her chief guardian and protector, and the one who loves her most.

He is on all her sides, lapping her grassy shores, breaking against her frowning cliffs, and running away up into the land, wide, blue tongues of water, where foreign ships can ride at anchor and give to lovely Nova Scotia their fairest merchandise.

Among all the harbors, among all the bays—and they are long and numerous—can none be found to eclipse the chief and prince of them all, glorious old Chebucto, which hundreds of years ago Indians paddled over and called the greatest of waters. It lies almost midway between the two ends of the peninsula and sends up between smiling shores a long, wide, crystal expanse of water, that is curved like a slightly bent arm and is six whole miles in length. Clear and shining it comes in from the sea, washing around its guardian forts, and with a strong, full tide floating the most ponderous leviathans of the deep right up to the wharves of the capital town of the province, built along its shores.

At all times white-winged ships sail over its waters. Farther north the bays skim over and harbors freeze. Here the waters are always blue and open, and tired ships, bruised and buffeted by the angry winter winds of the Northern Atlantic, can always steal in and find a safe and pleasant anchorage. The shores are gently sloping, the hills are wooded, only the softest breezes blow here. Boreas and all his gang must lurk outside the harbor mouth.

It is with one of these ships that we have to do. Steadily day by day plowing the ocean track that leads from England to the little maritime province, a large passenger steamer had come. Soon she would sight the harbor lights, would make her way to the desired haven.

The evening was cold and still; the time was early December. A brilliant moon in a sky of lovely steely blue was in mid-heaven, staring down at the lighted, busy town, the silent country, the glistening line of the harbor, and the crystal sea beyond.

The hull of the steamer sat on the waters a large, black mass. Its decks were white and as bright as day in the moonlight. The captain stood on the bridge, occasionally speaking, but mostly by signs and gestures making known his wishes. A few sailors were hurrying about the decks and officers were directing preparations made for entering port.

The most of the passengers had gone forward and stood in a group at the bow of the ship, eagerly straining their eyes to catch the first glimpse of the town they were approaching. A few lingered behind. Among them were two people, a man of a straight, military figure, and a young girl with a dark, brilliant face.

The man observed attentively his youthful companion, making, man of the world that he was, amused comments on her badly suppressed girlish enthusiasm at being again within sight of her native land.

It was absolutely necessary for her to talk and it charmed him to listen to her sweet, half-foreign voice. At first she had seemed to him to be thoroughly French. Then he had found grafted on her extreme Frenchiness manners and ways so entirely English that she made at the same time an interesting and an amusing combination to him.

They were still well out at sea when she looked over her shoulder and made her first salutation.

“There is Thrum Cap,” she exclaimed, “wicked old Thrum Cap, thrusting his bald, sandy head out of the water, pretending to look at the moonbeams. What a tale the old villain could tell!” and she shook her glove so impatiently at him that her companion was moved to ask what power the barren sand dune had to call forth such a display of emotion.

“There are treacherous ledges beneath his shimmering waves,” said the girl. “Shall I tell you the tale of the English frigate ‘La Tribune,’ that was wrecked there in 1797?”

“If you will be so kind,” he said gravely, giving her no hint that he was already acquainted with the story of the disaster.

At the conclusion of her recital he gave her an inscrutable look, which she did not perceive.

“You seem—ah—to know a vast deal about your native land,” he said meditatively. “How has all this knowledge been acquired, since you left here at such an early age?”

“By reading, always reading,” said the girl restlessly.

“And you are fond of your country,” he said.

“Passionately. What else have I to love? Father, mother—both are gone.”

“Your friends, acquaintances–”

“Ah, there are too many. Life has been change to me, always change. Imagine me in early youth a young and tender plant. I throw out my tendrils and attach myself to this object—it is snatched away from me; to that one—it too is snatched away; and finally my tendrils are all gone. Suppose the most charming object to come within my reach, I have no tendril to grasp it. Nothing remains but my country.”

“That will all change some day,” said the man sententiously.

“In what manner?” she asked.

“You will meet some man in whom everything will become merged—friends, country, everything.”

“You mean that I shall fall in love?”

“I do.”

“Possibly,” she said with a gay laugh. “Probably not.”

“Why not?”

“Because, as I have told you, I make few attachments; and if I did I never stay long enough in one place for one to mature. This winter I fancied that I was settled in Paris, but you see I am summoned here.”

“Leaving sorrowing admirers behind you,” said her companion imperturbably.

“According to me—yes.”

“You would not overstate,” he said hastily; “you are not like most girls.”

“Did you never see any one like me?” she asked vivaciously.

“No,” he said quietly; “you are an anomaly. A Frenchwoman educated among English people and speaking your own language with a foreign accent—half of you goes in one direction, half in another.”

“Ah, you understand me, Captain Macartney,” said the girl with an eager gesture. “You will know what I mean when I say that at times I seem to feel in my veins the gay French blood running beside the sober English.”

“Yes, I understand you,” he said with a smile, and he fixed his gaze admiringly on her dark eyes that were wandering restlessly from shore to shore of the entrance to the beautiful harbor.

“Away down there is the place of wrecks,” she said, waving her hand toward the western coast. “Some of my countrymen named it Saint Cendre, and the careless Nova Scotians corrupted it into Sambro. Do you hear that, Captain Macartney?”

The man’s glance had suddenly dropped to the sea and he was staring at it as if he were trying to wrest some secret from it. Now he roused himself. “Yes, Miss Delavigne, I hear.”

“The old name of the harbor was Chebucto,” the girl went on; “Chebook-took—chief haven. The Indian and French names should still remain; it was unfair in Englishmen to drive them out. Is not Acadie more charming than Nova Scotia, and Chebucto than Halifax?”

“Is it not a natural thing that a child should be named after its father?” asked Captain Macartney.

“After its own father, yes,” said the girl quickly; “after a stepfather, no. The French owned this province; the English drove them out.”

“They deserved to go,” said Captain Macartney with some show of warmth.

“Ah, yes, they did at last,” said the girl sadly. “But it is a painful subject; do not let us discuss it.”

“May I ask you one question?” he said eagerly. “Do you approve of the expulsion of the Acadians?”

“Yes.”

“Then you are the most fair-minded and impartial Frenchwoman that I ever met.”

“Because I agree with you,” she said. “Ah, Captain Macartney, you are like the rest of your sex. Now let us see if we can find the forts lying cunningly concealed among those hills. This is the most strongly fortified town in Canada, is it not?”

“Yes,” he replied, with an inward malediction on her fervor of patriotism. “On that island is a battery, a military camp, and a rifle range.”

The girl surveyed with a passionate glance the wooded points of an island they were passing. On a narrow spit of land running out from it was a Martello tower lighthouse.

“It is quite as round and quite as much like a plum pudding as when I left it,” she said merrily; “and it fixes on me its glittering eye in the same manner that it did when I, a little child, went down this harbor to countries that I knew nothing about, and the fog bell seemed to cry, ‘Adieu, adieu, another gone from the pleasant land.’”

“But you have returned,” said the man, biting his lip to hide a smile.

“I have; many have not. You have read of the ’Cajiens of Louisiana and other places. They went but did not return; their sore hearts are buried among strangers.”

“And you,” he said curiously, “are you going to remain in Canada?”

“Yes,” said the girl softly; “I shall never leave it again.”

“But your guardians; suppose they–” he stopped abruptly.

“I shall live and die in my native land. They will not prevent me,” she said calmly.

He maintained a polite, though an unsatisfied silence.

“We are looking toward the east, we forget the west,” said the girl turning around. “See, there is York Redoubt, and Sandwich Point, and Falkland with its chapel—dear little Falkland, ‘a nest for fisher people’—and there is the entrance to the Northwest Arm.”

For the twentieth time that evening Captain Macartney smiled at the girl’s enthusiasm. Her eyes were turned lovingly toward the narrow strip of salt water that runs up like an arm behind the peninsula on which the city of Halifax is built.

At the extremity of the peninsula is one of the loveliest natural parks in the world. The girl’s enraptured gaze was turned toward it and she was just about to launch into an ardent enumeration of its attractions, when she was interrupted.

CHAPTER II

MRS. MACARTNEY’S IMPRESSIONS OF CANADA

A bright-faced lad with dark blue Irish eyes and glossy hair came hurrying down the deck, his hands thrust into the pockets of his long ulster, his whole expression that of one suffering from extreme cold.

“Are you frostproof,” he exclaimed, “that you stand here motionless in this stinging air? I am not surprised at you, Miss Delavigne,” and he made her a low bow, “as you are a Canadian, but I marvel at Geoffrey,” and he glanced at his brother, “fresh from India’s suns as he is. Shall we not have a last promenade, mademoiselle? The cold is biting me like a dog.”

Vivienne laughed and placed herself beside him, while Captain Macartney murmured, “There go our guns; we are announcing ourselves.”

“Will you not tell me, Miss Delavigne,” said the boy in a confidential tone of voice, “about this matter of signaling? I have asked Geoffrey several times, but he only grunts like an Irish pig, and gives me no answer.”

“With all my heart, Mr. Patrick,” said the girl with a businesslike air. “From the outposts at the harbor mouth every vessel is reported to the citadel.”

“What is the citadel?” he asked.

“It is the fort on the hill in the middle of the town.”

“What a quarrelsome set you Halifax people must be,” said the boy, “to require so many fortifications and such a number of redcoats to keep you in order.”

“Not for ourselves do we need them, Mr. Patrick,” she said teasingly, “but for our troublesome guests from the old country.” Then hastily, to avoid the wordy warfare that he was eager to plunge into, she went on. “Up there is an island that is all fort.”

“Shades of my uncle the general!” he said; “can that be so? Let us go forward and see it.”

“A French vice-admiral who ran himself through with his sword is buried on it,” said Vivienne, as they proceeded slowly along the deck.

“Hush!” said the boy. “What is mamma doing?”

Vivienne smiled broadly. Mrs. Macartney, the good-hearted, badly educated daughter of a rich but vulgar Dublin merchant, was a constant source of amusement to her. Just now she was waddling down the deck, driving before her a little dapper Nova Scotian gentleman who had become known to them on the passage as excessively polite, excessively shy, and, like Vivienne, excessively patriotic.

Hovering over her victim like a great good-natured bird she separated him from a group of people standing near, and motioned him into the shadow of a suspended lifeboat.

“Ducky, ducky, come and be killed,” said Patrick wickedly. “Do you know what mamma is going to do, Miss Delavigne?”

“No, I do not.”

“She is going to cross-question that man about Canada in such a ladylike, inane way that he won’t know whether he’s on his head or his heels. Come and listen.”

“Mrs. Macartney may not like it.”

“Yes, she will; the more the merrier. Come along.”

Vivienne laughed and followed him near the Irish lady, who was preposterously and outrageously fat. A living tide was slowly rolling over her, obliterating all landmarks of a comely person. Her ankles were effaced; her waist was gone. Her wrists had disappeared, and her neck had sunk into her shoulders. Cheeks and chin were a wide crimson expanse, yet her lazy, handsome blue eyes looked steadily out, in no wise affrighted by the oncoming sea of flesh.

“Mamma always does this,” said Patrick gleefully. “She doesn’t know any more about geography than a tabby cat, and she won’t learn till she gets to a place. Look at the little man writhing before her. She has called his dear land Nova Zembla six times. Listen to him.”

“Madam,” the Nova Scotian was saying, “this is Nova Scotia. Nova Zembla is situated in the Arctic regions. It is a land of icebergs and polar bears. I scarcely think it has any inhabitants.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Mrs. Macartney, shaking her portly person with a good-natured laugh. “The names are so much alike that they confuse me. I only know that one is a cold place and the other a warm one, that one is in North America and the other in South.”

“Madam,” he said desperately, and shifting his feet about on a coil of rope on which he had taken refuge, “Nova Zembla is in the north of Europe. We are in North America.”

“Are we?” she said amiably; “then we haven’t come to Canada yet?”

“Oh yes, madam, we have. Nova Scotia is in Canada, in the lower southeastern part—nearest England you know. It is the last in the line of provinces that stretch from the Pacific to the Atlantic.”

At the mention of the Pacific, Mrs. Macartney’s lumbering fancy attempted to take flight to the coral groves of Oceanica. “I did not know that Canada bordered on the Pacific,” she returned dubiously. “How near is it?”

“Just three thousand six hundred and sixty-two miles away, madam. The continent lies between us.”

“Oh indeed,” with relief; “and Canada you say extends all the way across.”

“Yes, madam.”

“And it is made up of different provinces?”

“Yes, madam; they have been confederated.”

“And this one is called Nova Scotia?”

“Yes, madam.”

“And how large may it be?” cajolingly; “half as large as one of our Irish provinces?”

“Madam,” trembling with indignation, “Nova Scotia, with the island at its northeastern extremity, has only about ten thousand square miles of area less than all Ireland with every province in it.”

“Bless me!” she exclaimed in unmitigated surprise. Then after a long pause, and with less assurance, “The island, I suppose, is Newfoundland?”

“No, madam,” dejectedly. “Newfoundland is away to the northeast of us—a two days’ voyage from here.”

Mrs. Macartney, a trifle abashed, decided to abandon the somewhat dangerous ground of Canada’s geographical position, and confine herself to general remarks. She started out gallantly on a new career. “This a fine place to live in, I suppose—plenty of sport. You have hunting and fishing all the year round, don’t you?”

Somewhat mollified he assented unqualifiedly to this. Following the law of association, she dragged from some recess in her mind another less pleasing feature of the hunting world in Canada, which she had somewhere and at some time heard mentioned. “Do the Indians cause you very much trouble?” she asked sympathetically.

“No, madam; our aborigines are a very peaceful set.”

“How long may it be since your last massacre?”

“I don’t quite catch your meaning, madam.”

“Don’t you have risings and rebellions? I had some cousins living in Halifax when I was a girl—army people they were, and they told me that they used to shoot Indians from their bedroom windows.”

At this point the little man gave tokens of a general collapse.

“Perhaps they said bears—I really believe they did,” Mrs. Macartney added hastily, by way of restoring his suspended animation; “in fact I am sure they did, and,” confusedly, “I think they said the bears came in from the forests after dark, and went about the streets to pick up the scraps thrown from the houses, and it was quite a common thing to see a night-capped head at a window with a gun in its hand–” she stopped delightedly, for the little man was not only himself again, but was laughing spasmodically.

“Madam,” he gasped at length, “our native Indians fought vigorously when this province was a battleground between England and France. Since the founding of this city they have gradually calmed down, till now they are meeker than sheep. We have only a few thousands of them, and they are scattered all over the province, living in camps in the woods, or in small settlements. They never do anybody any harm.”

“It does my heart good to hear that,” said Mrs. Macartney, with a jovial laugh. “Truth to tell, my scalp has been feeling a trifle loose on my head since we came in sight of this country. And if the Indians don’t worry you now,” insinuatingly, “I daresay you are able to make quite a civilized town of Halifax.”

He stifled a laugh. “We try to, madam.”

This answer was too indefinite to suit Mrs. Macartney. A suspicion was gaining ground in her mind that Halifax was not the military camp and collection of log houses that she had thought it to be.

“How many people are there in the town?” she inquired guilelessly.

“About forty thousand, madam.”

“In Halifax?” she asked hesitatingly, “or in the whole province?”

“In Halifax, madam. There are over four hundred and forty thousand in the province.”

Mrs. Macartney was considerably staggered. “And do you have shops and hotels and churches?”

“All three, madam.”

“I had an idea that Canadians sent to England for all the necessaries of life.”

“Just turn around, madam,” said the Nova Scotian.

Mrs. Macartney had opened her mouth to make another remark, but the words died away on her lips.

Stretching along the western shore a busy, prosperous town presented itself to her gaze. Like all other towns it must be somewhat grimy and dirty in the light of day. At night, with the moon hanging over it and myriad lights flashing from the tiers of buildings rising one above another on the slope of a long hill, it was like a fairy city.

All along the shore were rows of wooden wharves running out into the harbor where there were moored ocean steamers, coasting vessels, fishing boats, ferry steamers, tugboats, and tiny skiffs, some of which darted gayly in and out among the wharves. Some of the ships were brightly lighted, and people could be seen moving about on them.

“Surely, surely,” said Mrs. Macartney, turning to her companion in unfeigned amazement, “I have been misinformed about Canada. One of its provinces is larger than Ireland, and its chief town, if you shut your eyes, would make you think that you were looking at Dublin itself. Sure, I feel like the Queen of Sheba,” and with a comical twinkle in her eye, she turned around to see who had laid a hand on her arm.

Her son Patrick stood before her. “And I feel like King Solomon,” he exclaimed; “so many unruly ladies to take care of. Miss Delavigne won’t come below to look after her traps. Mamma, will you come and point out yours to me?”

“Indeed, no, my son,” said the lady amiably; “you weren’t here just now when I wanted you, and I had to apply to this gentleman,” with a bow to the Nova Scotian. “I’m going to see further sights,” and she waddled toward a better place of observation.

CHAPTER III

HOME AGAIN

One of the long wharves was sprinkled with people watching the “Acadian” come in from the sea. Custom-house officials were there, wharf laborers, sailors, loafers, and at the very end of the wharf was a group of fur-clad individuals who were laughing, joking, stamping their feet, or pacing briskly up and down while waiting to welcome the friends and relatives drawing so near to them.

With them, yet a little apart from them, stood a man who did not move from his place and who seemed indifferent to the extreme cold. He was wrapped in a black fur coat, and a cap of the same material—a fine and costly Persian lamb—was pulled down over his brows.

His pale, cold face was turned toward the “Acadian,” and his blue eyes scanned without emotion the people hurrying to and fro on her decks.

When the steamer swung around toward the wharf, he watched the gangways being thrown out and the living tide pouring down them and overflowing in all directions. The air was full of greetings. Mothers and fathers, lovers and friends, were looking into each others’ eyes, and embracing one another tenderly. Then the first gush of salutation over their thoughts reverted to business. In a mass the passengers precipitated themselves upon the custom officials and eagerly watched for and identified their luggage as it was rapidly hoisted from the hold of the steamer to the wharf.

The man in the fur coat pressed his way through the throng of people and gained the deck of the steamer. The Macartneys and Vivienne Delavigne stood together.

The girl saw him coming, went to meet him, and putting out her hand said, “How do you do, Mr. Armour?”

Composed as his face usually was she yet caught an almost instantly repressed look of repulsion. Unspeakably chilled by it and the brevity and stiffness of his greeting, yet too proud and philosophical to show the slightest sign of disappointment, she said steadily:

“This is Mrs. Macartney, who has been kind enough to chaperon me across the Atlantic.”

Mr. Armour bowed politely, his cap in his hand. Captain Macartney she found to her surprise he already knew, though he spoke to him almost as formally as if they had never met before.

Patrick, after a searching glance at Mr. Armour, turned away muttering, “Iceberg!”

When Mr. Armour in a few brief sentences thanked Mrs. Macartney for her kindness to his ward, she said cheerfully: “She’s one of the right sort is Miss Delavigne. She is the only girl I have ever seen that would have satisfied my old grandmother. I was the one that never could please her.” Mr. Armour stared slightly at her as if he did not understand what she was saying, then turning to Vivienne he said shortly, “What luggage have you?”

“Four boxes,” she replied; “black ones with V. D. on the covers.”

“Will you come with me to find them?” he said, and after a brief leavetaking of the Macartneys he preceded her to the gangway.

Vivienne looked regretfully over her shoulders. Mrs. Macartney waved her hand good-naturedly, Captain Macartney smiled and lifted his cap, and Patrick blew a kiss from the tips of his fingers and exclaimed, "Au revoir, mademoiselle."

However they met again. After a time, borne to and fro in the surgings of the crowd, they found themselves in the shed where the luggage had been taken to be examined. Vivienne was a short distance from Mrs. Macartney, who had seated herself on a box that she recognized as her own. Neither Captain Macartney nor Patrick was in sight and she was surveying in huge amusement the scene of civilized confusion so different from the picture of their arrival that her fancy had conjured up—a few logs thrown out in the water, their descent thereupon, and welcome by swarms of half-clad savages dancing around, their tomahawks in hand.