The House of Armour

CHAPTER XXXVII

ADIEU TO FRISPI

Zilla Camperdown was strutting up and down Hollis Street after the fashion of a small peacock airing itself. Back and forth she went, now in front of the shops, now passing hotels where gentlemen smoking and lounging stared curiously at the well-plumaged little creature in her white and black garments.

She was doing wrong to be parading the streets alone, that she very well knew, but she was enjoying herself so hugely that she made no haste to go home, and continued to complacently spread the tail of her little white dress while sunning herself in the glances of admiration bestowed upon her dark, piquante face.

Her only fear was that her adopted brother might suddenly come upon her. If he did she knew that she would receive a sharp scolding and would probably be sent to bed, but willing to snatch the present moment she did not allow this to interfere with her enjoyment. A strict rule with regard to her was that she must never set foot in the street alone. Her idle, dissolute father still haunted the streets of Halifax, and although he was too wise to attempt any interference with her, knowing that he might stop the supplies of food and clothing that he received from Camperdown, he often lurked about waiting for a chance to hold some conversation with her. Hence the order that she should always be accompanied during her walks abroad.

The child’s punishment came swiftly upon her. Sauntering up the hill from Water Street with his monkey on his shoulder and a troop of children at his heels, Gilberto Frispi suddenly appeared and came face to face with his daughter.

“Ah, little bird,” he ejaculated in Italian patois, while the monkey screamed and chattered in delight and clutched its tiny hands toward Zilla’s lace hat; “is it thou at last? I have longed to see thee, but thou art not allowed to fly far from thy nest.”

Scarcely knowing what she did the girl turned and walked back toward the hotels. Her mortification was intense, and if a glance could have killed the smiling Frispi he would have fallen dead by the side of the daughter whom he presumed to address. She was exasperated too, almost beyond endurance, at the children who were hooting and shrieking with delight at the acrobatic feats of the monkey on Frispi’s shoulder.

“Send them away,” she exclaimed, stopping short.

“Scatta, my children,” said Frispi in English, “go roun’ de corna. I come lata.”

“With your organ?” inquired his expectant youthful followers, to whom an Italian with a monkey and minus an organ partook of the nature of a phenomenon.

“Yes, yes. I got organ,” said the man mendaciously. “Five, six organ. I bring. Go ’long.”

They looked at him as trustingly as if they expected to find musical instruments issuing from his pockets, then went to peep around the corner and listen surreptitiously to the conversation between him and his elegant companion.

“What do you wish?” asked Zilla sharply.

“Oh ze beauty clothes!” exclaimed Frispi spreading his hands over her in delight. Then relapsing into Italian he told her in eager tones of his longing to have her with him. “Could she not leave her fine friends and run away with him?”

“Hold thy tongue,” said Zilla scornfully interrupting him. “I wish no more of thee. Thou must leave this town.”

“No, no, my loved one, not till thou canst go.”

“Thou shalt go alone—at once, never to return,” she said, hissing the words through her pointed white teeth that looked as if they might bite him. “I hate thee and thy poverty; and art thou not a thief?”

“Si, si,” he said blandly; “and thou also?”

“Thou art worse,” she said furiously, but in a low tone, for she was desperately aware that she was being surveyed curiously not only by the children, but also by some of the gentlemen in the hotel windows.

“I am thy father,” said the man with a flash of anger, for he rarely relapsed into a passion unless he had been drinking.

“Who stabbed Constante?” breathed the girl. “Ah, thou startest! I did not always sleep when thou entertainedst thy friends. And if thou dost not leave here, I write at once to the Mafia and thou wilt be declared infamous. A cross will be drawn on thy door,” and she made gestures with her hands signifying the choking of a person.

The man’s olive skin turned to a greenish pallor and he kept his small black eyes fixed pleadingly on her face. “Surely thou wouldst not do that, my daughter. The Mafia is implacable and the companions would consider me a traitor and put me to sleep for what was a mistake. It was not in my heart to kill Constante.”

“Thou hast soft shoes; thou canst walk backward,” said Zilla inexorably. “By sundown if thou art here I write to Guglielmo Barzoni, and thou art doomed.”

“Enough,” replied the man with a gesture of resignation. “Thou art thy mother’s child. Thou canst do all and more than thou promisest. Thou wilt never see me more,” and with no other sign of emotion beyond his unusual pallor, he noiselessly left her and in polite broken English postponed his engagement with the children until the next day, at which time they would return and wait anxiously for the man whose shadow would fall no more on the streets of Halifax.

Zilla began to tremble as soon as he left her. The interview with him had been a terrible strain on her, yet she courageously tried to make her way home. At the street corner she paused and leaned against a house. One of the gentlemen at the window seeing this, left his station there and came slowly sauntering up to her.

“Good-morning,” he said kindly. “Do you remember me?”

“Yes; you are Mr. Patrick Macartney’s brother,” she said, “and I am Dr. Camperdown’s little girl, and that bad beggar-man frightened me.”

“Will you come into the hotel and rest?” he asked, noting in some anxiety that her two small feet were braced against the pavement to keep her from falling.

She drew herself up suspiciously: “No, thank you.”

“There is a ladies’ entrance,” he said, pulling severely at his moustache.

“I am going to see my brother,” she said loftily, and leaving him without a word she, by a severe effort, managed to walk as far as the door having on it the brass plate, “Dr. Camperdown, Surgeon.” Arrived there, she tottered inside and seated herself on the lowest step of the staircase, while Captain Macartney, passing by the open doorway, knew that she would be safe now, and went on his way muttering thoughtfully, “Poor child!”

After she had rested sufficiently Zilla, with lips firmly compressed, climbed the steps to the waiting room and seated herself among her adopted brother’s patients.

The next time Camperdown opened the door he saw her and called her into the inner room. “Now, birdling, what is it? Be quick, for I am rushed this morning. What’s the matter with your cheeks? Have you seen a ghost?”

“I have done a bad thing,” said the little girl deliberately.

“Indeed! An unusual confession for you. I thought that you and the pope had the infallibility of the world between you. Out with it.”

“I have told my father to leave Halifax.”

“H’m—well, yes, that was bad—for you. What was the occasion of it?” and by means of questions he drew from her an account of her meeting with Frispi after she had run away from Mrs. Trotley, who had gone shopping with her.

“What do you know about the Mafia, Zilla?”

With a reluctance that she would not have displayed three months earlier in her career, Zilla gave a child’s account of low brigandage according to her observation of her father and his associates.

“Stop,” said Camperdown at last, when she was describing the disarticulation of the fingers of the “picciotti” so that they might be more expert at stealing, “never mention this again, Zilla. Don’t let a living soul know that you were familiar with such iniquities. The Lord in his mercy has delivered you from them. Now, what do you want me to do about your father?”

The child hung her head. “Tell him to stay, for I do not wish Stargarde to know that I would do so bad a thing. Tears will come in her eyes and she will say: ‘Your father is all that you have; do not send him away as a dog’.”

Camperdown’s thoughts ran back to the day when he had acquainted Zilla with her relationship to Stargarde. The child’s passion of astonishment and joy when she found that she was connected with a woman whom she not only loved and admired, but who was the acme of respectability to her, had not seemed to decrease as time went by. She still loved him more intensely perhaps, but Stargarde was her pride and delight, her own blood relation, and the person in the world for whom she had the most reverence.

“Run home and tell her all about it,” said Camperdown softly. “In the meantime I will look up Frispi,” and patting Zilla’s relieved face, he sent her away.

“Ha, sir, were you addressing me?” said his next patient fiercely, as he hobbled into the room.

Camperdown stared blankly at a choleric old gentleman. “No—was talking aloud as I have a habit of doing. What was I saying?”

“‘Low, stealthy brute,’ sir, you said, ‘and a constant worry to me.’”

Camperdown threw back his head and laughed heartily. “I crave your pardon. I was thinking of a pensioner of my wife’s—a miserable foreigner that I hope has been frightened from the town.”

Long after his usual lunch time Camperdown arrived home to find Stargarde and Zilla waiting for him—the latter hanging about her half—sister with red eyes and glances of suppressed adoration.

“Have been all over the town,” said Camperdown; “there’s no trace of Frispi to be had. He went to his lodging, gathered up his few belongings, and left. The police are on his track–”

“He will not be found,” said Zilla quietly and despairingly. “He knows how to run away.”

“I propose,” said Camperdown, seating himself at the table, “to have something to eat now. Subsequently, to take my wife and Zilla and Mrs. Trotley for a drive to Cow Bay. Don’t carry your bathing suit, Zilla; it’s too late in the day for a plunge in the breakers. We’ll have a run over the sands. Then I propose two weeks hence to take my wife and Zilla vagabondizing—that is, in the earliest sense of the word. We’ll stroll about this continent and see if we can’t pick up some trace of the runaway–”

He was interrupted by Zilla, who precipitated herself into his arms.

“A little girl with a sleeping conscience is rather a ticklish possession, isn’t she?” he said, addressing his smiling wife over Zilla’s bent head. “A little girl with an awakened conscience is something very precious and must be treated with very great care.”

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE GHOST FLOWER

“Me no diggum up,” said Joe decidedly. He stood knee deep in pale green ferns growing among heavy shadows formed by the interlaced branches of trees overhead, his eyes fixed on a group of etherially white flowers springing up from the richest of leaf mould on a mossy bank at a little distance from him.

Vivienne knelt by the wax-like cluster of flower interrogation points in speechless delight, while Armour stood above her saying in quiet amusement, “Why don’t you dig it up, Joe?”

“Callum ghos’ flower,” said Joe doggedly; “spirits angry when touchum. Come ’way, Miss Debbiline.”

His voice was really concerned, but Vivienne looked at him with a gay laugh and continued to touch with caressing finger tips the beautiful, unearthly flower, which was furnished with colorless bracts in place of green leaves.

“If I were to wear a few of these to the ‘drawing room’ my decoration would be unique, would it not?” she said to Armour.

“Decidedly unique,” he said. “Have you ever heard any poetry about this curious flower?”

“No, never.”

“Then let me repeat to you some exquisite lines by a Canadian poet, impressed by observing that the stalks and blossoms form interrogation points. Remember that this determines the cast of the sonnet,” and he recited with great taste:

“Alas, the poor flower!” said Vivienne. “Like some mortals it loved the darkness rather than the light. And yet how touching the final question.”

“Yes,” said Armour quietly, “a regret has been born even among ‘the deadly shadows.’”

“Will you not repeat to me some more of those things that you repeat so well?” asked Vivienne demurely.

Bareheaded and standing with his back against a tree, Armour murmured to her the praises of another fairy glen in far-distant Wales, a place peopled with shy winds,

Then dropping on his knees on the ground he said, “Give me your clasp knife, Joe.”

“Me no give you big knife,” said the superstitious Christmas; “me ’fraid for Miss Debbiline. Spirits killum if touch ghos’ flower,” and he retreated farther among the ferns.

Armour laughed as he bent his light head over the flower that he was about to wrest from its home among the “sweet wood’s golden glooms.”

“Do you think it will grow if we plant it in the greenhouse?” asked Vivienne, as she watched her lover carefully insinuating a sharp-pointed stone among the decayed leaves of many seasons.