The House of Armour

With a noiseless, catlike tread the Indian, a few minutes later, knocked at the library door and after waiting for Mr. Armour’s “Come in,” advanced slowly into the room, and stared at his master with lazy, observant eyes, his hands hanging straight by his sides.

“You are prompt, Joe,” said the gentleman; “you were not off to your wigwam?”

A fiction politely kept up in the family for Joe’s gratification was that he every evening crossed the Arm to his solitary camp in the woods, when as a matter of fact he, on cold nights, occupied a snug and warm retreat at the cottage.

“Too early,” said he sententiously. “Go later, when moon shinum.”

“Mrs. Colonibel is going to have a skating party to-night,” said Mr. Armour.

“Yes; me busy,” said Joe.

“Are you; I am glad to hear it. I sent for you to ask that you give some assistance in preparing for it.”

“Mr. Valentine askum,” said Joe. Then he added with a gurgle in his throat resembling a laugh, “He likeum bear in trap now.”

Armour’s face darkened, then as quickly lightened again at a deliberate proceeding on the part of the Indian, whose eyes during a slow voyage of discovery about the room revealed to him a photograph of Vivienne on the mantelpiece at the sight of which he crossed himself devoutly.

“Why do you do that, Joe?”

“She likum Wirgin Mary.”

“I’m afraid your ideas of religion are rather mixed, Joe.”

“She likum Wirgin,” repeated the man.

“Do you really think so?” said Armour softly.

“Um,” and the Indian grunted half-contemptuously. “Me likum Wirgin girl when you cold like fish. Joe watch her always. She say, ‘Joe, in wigwam you freezum; you go some warm place; me pay.’ Joe say no, then Wirgin girl makeum this,” and throwing open his coat he displayed a bright vest of fine red cloth embroidered with gold, by the presentation of which Vivienne had won his heart forever, for she had gratified his savage fondness for gay colors, a fondness strictly repressed in his dependence on Colonel Armour for cast-off garments of sober, gentlemanly hues.

Armour’s face flushed in deep gratification. He was also much interested in the curious fact that the Indian should display ten times more attachment to Vivienne, whom he had only known for a few months, than he ever had to Stargarde, who had been a devoted friend to him for years. Probably Stargarde, with her leveling doctrine of the brotherhood of all men, did not appeal to his semi-civilized nature as did Vivienne, with her aristocratic habit of treating dependents kindly, and yet rather as if they belonged to a different order of beings from herself.

“You marryum soon?” said Joe, who, in spite of his press of work, was in an unusually loquacious mood.

“Not for a good while, Joe—four whole months.”

A sound of guttural disapproval issued from Joe’s throat. Then with a sardonic smile he inwardly reflected: “Cunnel wishum Miss Debbiline marry Mr. Val; Joe’s heart say, ‘No, Cunnel, Miss Debbiline likeum Mr. Stanton.’ Joe guessum Mr. Stanton know.”

Mr. Stanton did know. There was a look of white, suppressed rage on his face. Strange to say his thoughts had gone in the same direction as Joe’s. He was at that moment reflecting for the thousandth time on the bitterness of the unnatural struggle that he had carried on with an unnatural parent for so many years.

“You not feelum bad,” said Joe consolingly, as he observed his emotion. “Me watchum like dog, always.”

Armour instantly recovered himself and turned his despairing eyes from the photograph. “That is all, Joe. You may go now.”

The Micmac buttoned his coat over the sacred scarlet vest. “You never loseum, Mr. Stanton. Me watchum. Mr. Val get out of trap—sore paw heal—he snarl, but not much hurt. Ging,” and with this invariable parting salutation, he glided from the room.

With a face as devoid of expression as one of the blocks of wood that he was cutting, Joe laid the foundation of a substantial bonfire on a gravel walk close to the frozen shore of the Arm. A number of garden seats he placed near by, and a few small tables. Then walking along the path, he surveyed the jagged cakes of ice shouldering each other up the bank, and selecting the clearest place, chopped a cutting to lay a plank walk to the smooth ice. This done, he examined the sky where a pale and sickly moon was reluctantly climbing above the trees, a hazy cloud hanging on her skirt.

“No wind—crows much chatter this sundown—big snow ‘fore morning,” muttered Joe; then he sauntered to the cottage to see that the fires were burning brightly and watched the house-servants who were bringing down china and eatables in covered baskets, and large kettles for heating tea, coffee, and soup.

An hour later the snapping, crackling bonfire sent up a cheerful blaze that brightly illumined the frozen declivity, the walls of the little cottage against the evergreens, and the sheet of bluish-white ice spreading itself out under the pale rays of the moon. Groups of guests came hurrying down in detachments from the house, laughing and exclaiming at the pleasures of an impromptu skating party, and Joe, standing a little aside, watched them. To his Indian mind, the obsequious manner in which the gentlemen of a party always served and ministered in every possible way to their “squaws,” was the most remarkable thing in the social intercourse of white people.

“Makeum no good,” he soliloquized, surveying a little lady’s delicate foot extended for a skate that Valentine was putting on with an empressement as great as if kneeling at her feet were the most supreme happiness that could be bestowed upon him.

Though talking and laughing with the little lady, Valentine kept one eye on the path to the house, and Joe knew that he was watching for Vivienne, who had not yet appeared. Presently she came lightly over the gravel, Judy hanging on her arm.

Valentine had just finished his task and springing up was about to offer his services to Vivienne, when Joe strolled out from the trees.

“Me puttum skates on, Miss Debbiline?” he said inquiringly.

“Yes, Joe,” and she seated herself a little apart from the others.

“Here, Val,” said Judy mischievously, taking the seat that had just been vacated. “I’m very fidgety about my boots. If you don’t get them on right you’ll have to unlace them again.”

Joe had never done such a thing before as to put on a lady’s boots, and it was a great honor for Vivienne that he should offer to do so. If it had been the simple clasping of a pair of spring skates his task would have been more simple, but Vivienne, in common with many Canadian skaters, wore steel blades that were screwed to the soles of a pair of boots.

Joe took off the little slippers in which she had run down from the house, carefully fitted her boots, right and left, then proceeded to grapple with the long laces which he reflected would be sufficient to fasten on two pairs of moccasins. Carefully he drew the black strings in and out till his task was done, when he drew his hand over the smooth firm leather that fitted over the ankles so neatly, and had some kind of a conceit pass through his mind similar to that of the classic Mercury with winged heels.

Vivienne rose, thanked him, and walked over the planks down to the edge of the ice where Judy was waiting for her.

“Joe, Joe,” exclaimed the latter looking back at him, “bring some chairs out on the ice and get that one with runners. Mrs. Macartney will be here later on.”

“La voilà,” said Vivienne, as a loud, jovial voice was heard in the distance, and presently Captain Macartney and Patrick were lifting their caps to the two girls, while Mrs. Macartney roamed to and fro, looking apprehensively at the heaped-up ice floes, and the plank walk to which she was by no means inclined to trust herself.

“It’s like the man that ran away with Lord Ullin’s daughter,” she vociferated in her jolly way. “He couldn’t get across—that is, the father couldn’t—and he said, ‘My daughter, oh, my daughter.’”

Vivienne came swiftly back, and seized both her hands. “Dear Mrs. Macartney, I am so glad to see you.”

“And sorry that we came,” said Patrick, pretending to cry. “Come away, Geoffrey.”

“Naughty boy,” and Vivienne shook her head at him, then with Captain Macartney and Judy busied herself in getting Mrs. Macartney out on the ice and into the chair with runners, on which the lady sat for the remainder of the evening, being pushed hither and thither by any man who felt the spirit moving him to do so.

Camperdown arriving half an hour later, stood high up on the bank struck by the strange beauty of the scene. The moon, as if still uncertain of herself, shone with rays more pale and more tremulous, and shed a weird and peculiar light over the dark hills and the white breast of the Arm. There was a strange hush in the air, and not a breath of wind, and it was hardly freezing. Assuredly a storm was brewing and a thaw coming on.

Immediately below him the bonfires and torches stuck in the ground threw a broad, bold glare of light for some distance out on the ice, and the skaters for the most part were keeping pretty well in the bright space, and away from the semi-darkness of the regions beyond, where a few adventurous boys were madly careering. Their frolicsome shouts and exclamations Camperdown could hear but confusedly in the velvety softness of the air, but beneath him he could distinctly distinguish Patrick Macartney’s voice.

“Dr. Camperdown, my mother begs to inquire whether she has your gracious permission to partake of a cup of tea.”

“Three-quarters only, a whole cup later on,” said Camperdown, who, by means of rigid dieting had so reduced the weight of his patient that she had made a vow never to leave Nova Scotia.

“Camperdown, Camperdown,” called some one who espied him on the bank, “make haste; we want one for a set of sixteen lancers.”

Thus appealed to, he quickly put on his skates, passing on his way to the place where he was in demand, a little group consisting of Judy, Patrick, and Vivienne, who was giving them instructions in the art of skating.

Valentine skated swiftly up to them as he went by. “You are victimizing yourself,” he heard him say in a low voice to Vivienne, “Come with me for a spin.”

He saw the girl hesitate, but Valentine laughed, peremptorily seized her hand, and away they went toward the mouth of the Arm like two birds that had taken wing.

Vivienne was not pleased. Valentine’s action had been abrupt, almost rude, and it annoyed her to be treated with so much unceremoniousness. And yet in her heart there was such a profound and sorrowful compassion for the young man whose unhappy state of mind she realized only too fully, that it kept her from any outward display of resentment.

He was laughing and talking somewhat wildly, and there was a reckless gleam in his eye that made her avoid meeting his glance.

They were both excellent skaters, swift and graceful of foot; and for a few minutes Vivienne had a kind of painful enjoyment in the rapid rushing through the air, but at last she said gently: “Had we not better return?”

“Not yet!” he exclaimed, and his grasp of her fingers tightened.

The girl had one of her quick, unerring intuitions. Valentine had fallen into one of his rash humors, in which he was a slave to the impulse of the moment. Without sufficient hardihood to plan a deliberate misdeed, scarcely a day passed without his falling heedlessly into one.

The eastern bank of the Arm that they were close to seemed to be rushing by them like the dim and hazy outline of some huge beast tearing along in the opposite direction from that in which they were going. The light and noise of the skating party were far behind them. Away in front was the smooth, black ice, dark and treacherous, that they would soon be on. Then beyond the ice, where it grew thinner and thinner, was the icy, open water.

“Valentine,” she said calmly, “what are you doing?” and she again strove to draw her hand from his.

He laughed wildly, made a sudden turn, and was skating backward, his desperate eyes looking into hers, his left hand outstretched to seize her right. He would make sure of her other hand in order that she might not escape him.

She saw the mocking, reckless devil looking out of his eyes, and the hot, French blood rose in her veins. She held back her hand from him; dangling from it was a stout leather strap by which she had been pulling Judy about. At the end of the strap was a buckle.

“Coward!” she exclaimed in bitter contempt, and swinging the strap in her hand, she struck him on the forehead.

The sudden shock, the sting of the metal, and the blood that trickled down his face confused him. He threw both hands to his head, staggered, and fell backward. Vivienne stood looking at him, and as he groped blindly for his pocket, skated to him and dropped a handkerchief between his fingers.

With a low cry of rage like that of a wounded beast, he sprang to his feet, stretched out his hands, felt himself pulled from behind, and again fell to the ice.

He was a sorry spectacle as he lay raving and swearing there. “You better go, Miss Debbiline,” said Joe, who in a pair of long racing skates had appeared just as he was needed. “I takeum care him.”

Vivienne turned and went slowly up the Arm. “Where is my strap?” asked Judy when she rejoined her. “I want you to drag me about a little more, if you are not tired.”

“I threw it away,” said Vivienne. “Here is my necktie,” and she drew a voluminous tie from the bosom of her short skating jacket.

“Why, it is dripping wet,” exclaimed Judy.

“I am very warm,” said Vivienne with a faint smile. “Give it to me, Judy.”

“But, Vivienne, it looks as if you had been in the water.”

“I assure you I have not. Give me the tie. Now take my hand.”

At ten o’clock, when servants were running to and fro from the cottage to the ice, and the skating party was refreshing itself with various meats and drinks, an acquaintance of Mrs. Colonibel suddenly lifted up her voice:

“There comes Mr. Armour, running down the bank like a boy.”

He was in great good humor, and saluted her with the utmost cheerfulness. “Yes, Mrs. Fairlee, I did think I was going to miss this; and I haven’t been on the ice this winter. Will you have a turn with me?” and standing beside her, first on one leg and then on the other, he fastened his skates to the heavy soles of his boots with two decisive clicks.

“No, I won’t skate with you,” she said, rolling her eyes at him over her coffee cup. “I don’t believe there’s a woman here cruel enough to do such a thing—is there, ladies?” and she took in the party with a mischievous, inclusive glance.

“No, no—no cruelty here—don’t know what it is, but we won’t persecute Mr. Armour,” and similar laughing ejaculations were heard.

“I want to see Major Heathcote on a matter of the last importance,” she continued loudly; “does any one know where he is, and will you, Mr. Armour, find him for me?”

“I will,” he replied, simultaneously with a voice announcing that Major Heathcote was explaining something to Miss Delavigne.

“Ocular demonstration, probably,” said Mrs. Fairlee. “Off you go to find them, Mr. Armour; here’s a currant bun for refreshment,” slipping it from her saucer to his pocket.

He smiled at her—she never could tease him—and turning his face toward the north he skated from her with long, powerful strides. Not twenty paces distant he met the two people whom he was in search of.

“No, we have not been to Melville Island,” said Major Heathcote, stopping short. “Would you have cared to go, Miss Delavigne?”

“I did not think of it, thank you.”

“Perhaps you would like to skate in that direction with Mr. Armour?”

Miss Delavigne did care to do so, after a deliberate survey of Mr. Armour’s face, and Major Heathcote went smilingly in search of his wife and refreshments.

Through the faltering moonlight they skated, rapidly skirting the dusky shore where one comfortable residence succeeded another; all standing in grounds trending down to the inlet of the sea.

Keeping close to the trees, they struck across to the opposite side, where on tiny Melville Island is perched the house of the keeper of the prison, dominating the prison itself, a long, low red building situated close to the Arm on the shores of a tiny cove.

This cove Armour skated slowly around, holding Vivienne by the hand and confiding to her reminiscences of boyish days hoarded for many years in his own breast. She listened with great attentiveness, understanding well, in the quiet intensity of her love for him, what a relief it was for his over-burdened mind to have at last found one being in the world to whom its secrets could be partly confided. That she did not have his whole confidence she knew well, but she was willing to bide her time.

At last he stopped, and looked searchingly at her. “Tu as les yeux fatigués,” he murmured in the French that it was such a pleasure to her to hear him speak, and he guided her to a fallen tree that lay near the old prison. They sat down on it and he again scanned her face.

“You are quiet and pale,” he said uneasily. “Is there anything the matter with you?”

“Not now,” she said softly. “What is this round thing that you have in your pocket? Ah, a bun,” and taking it out she began to eat it, offering him an occasional currant.

Armour sat beside her laughing and talking happily, and at intervals lapsing into the serious by a discussion of the history of the prison, among whose captives had been some American officers taken in the war of 1812.

Vivienne listened silently but appreciatively to him till a low sob of wind and a few flying snowflakes warned her that they must hasten home.

Armour’s high spirits suddenly left him. “Vivienne, I hate to return to that house,” he said. “I wish I could take you and turn my back on it forever. Would you be willing to leave Nova Scotia? Would you like to live in France?” and he put his arm around her as he skated slowly beside her.

“For what reason, Stanton?”

“I am sick to death of Halifax, and do you know, darling, that I have, without consulting you, found out that the old Lacy d’Entreville château is for sale? Will you go and live there with me by that French river that you love so much?”

Vivienne stopped skating, and looked up in surprise at him. They were in the midst of a deathly solitude. Not a creature was near, not a sound was heard, now that the swift striking of their skates against the ice had ceased.

“Stanton,” she said dreamily, “I told you about Orléans, then later on of the other place still dearer to me for my mother’s sake, of the strange mass of buildings heaped up beside the Loire, and the little village crouching below. Perhaps I said too much of my pleasure when I beheld those walls, and saw the tapestried chambers of my ancestors, and the great tower with its sloping ascent, where a carriage and pair could start from the town and drive up into the château——”

“Vivienne,” gently, “it was not any grandeur in your picture that touched me. It was the homeliness of it; the comfort of Madame la Princess’ apartments, the loneliness of the servants, the care they were giving even to the dogs of their absent mistress, the interest of the villagers in you–”

“Yes,” said Vivienne, “when we went into the lodge of the concierge, the dogs of the princess occupied all the comfortable chairs in the room, and the old man and woman sat on the stone window ledge. Ah, those white hounds! They were charming, Stanton, and they licked my hands.”

“The princess will sell the château, reasonably too,” said Armour kissing Vivienne’s abstracted face. “You will go, sweetheart? We can live in Paris for half the year.”

“Stanton,” said the girl with startling emphasis, “did I tell you that it was like home to me?”

“No, my child, but I guessed that it might easily become so.”

“Never, never! France is beautiful, but this is my home,” gazing about her. “This Canada, that France so basely deserted. The English conquered us, protected us, and now the British flag is mine. We are Canadians, Stanton, you and I; do not talk of France, and yet—and yet,” losing her enthusiasm and speaking with a sweet and feminine softness, “if it is for your good I will go to a desert with you.”

He opened his mouth to reply to her, but she laid a finger across his lips. “Stanton,” eagerly, “are you sure you would be happy to leave here? You have great cares, great worries; but reflect—you are no longer a boy. Can you tear yourself from your native land, and become happy in another where you know no one? I think perhaps you might even long for some of the old anxieties. Are you sure that you would not regret the change?”

“I am sure of nothing except that I love you,” he said passionately; “and I will not do anything that you do not approve of.”

“Then you will at once cease embracing me,” she said, and darted away from him.

He soon caught up to her, and folding her fingers securely within his, went flying before the north wind over the ice and arrived at the Pinewood bank to find the skating party a dream. Every trace of it had vanished—even the smoking embers of the bonfire had been carried away. On coming nearer they found one solitary seat that had been left, and on it Vivienne’s slippers laid conspicuously by her cloak.

“Stanton, I wish to do something for Joe,” she said.

“Well, darling, what shall it be?”

“Will you always keep him, Stanton? He is a watchful servant.”

“We will keep him,” with gentle emphasis. “And now do you think you can do without an escort up the bank? I wish to see Joe about something at the cottage before he curls up for the night.”

“It looks dark up there,” said Vivienne wistfully.

“Oh, sweet story-teller!” said Mr. Armour with a low, happy laugh. “You fear nothing on earth, and you cannot play Desdemona, so do not try. You don’t wish me to see Joe,” and catching her up in his arms he hurried up the gentle acclivity, bending his face teasingly down to hers.

“If I ask you what Joe has been doing and why you are so subdued this evening, shall I hear another pretty prevarication?” he inquired, putting her down at the veranda steps.

“No,” she said gravely, and as he stood beside her in the now rapidly falling snow, she mentally ran over her painful experience of the evening. Should she shock Armour with an account of the treachery of his wayward brother? No, a thousand times no.

“I am disturbed about something,” she said at last deliberately, “but I do not care to talk about it.”

“Will you tell me to-morrow?” he asked eagerly.

“No, nor the next day, nor any day,” she replied. “I beg that you will not make a mystery of it. Some one has offended me—and been forgiven. After to-night I shall put the matter out of my thoughts.”

Armour’s face grew dark as he listened to her. “Perhaps it is as well not to tell me,” he muttered: “I should not forgive so easily.”