The House of Armour

CHAPTER XVI

THE COLONIAL COTTAGE

Stanton Armour was a man who dwelt apart from other men as far as his inner life was concerned. A large number of people saw him going daily to his office; a smaller number had business dealings with him; a select few had an occasional conversation with him in the privacy of his own house; and of the outer man those people could give a very good description.

Of the inner man they knew but little. Wrapped in an impenetrable, frozen reserve, it was impossible to tell what was going on in the hidden recesses of his mind, except at some occasional times when he exhibited a flicker of interest or annoyance at something that was transpiring about him.

His reputation was that of an honorable, upright man, yet he was a person to be respected and avoided rather than cultivated and admired.

There were a few people—discerning souls—who looked deeper than this and even felt pity for the man. They said that his state of frozen composure was unnatural, and that there was somewhere a reason for it; he had received some shock, he had a secret trouble, or had been disappointed in love, or had in some way lost faith in his fellow-men, or perhaps, it was hinted, his brain might be affected. It was a well-known fact that he had been a cheerful lad, a little sober in his ways, inasmuch as he had begged his father to take him from school and give him a seat in his office, yet still a lad happy and companionable in his tastes, and showing no sign of the prematurely grave and reserved man that he was so suddenly to become.

This change in him dated from the time that the firm suffered so heavily from the defalcations of the French bookkeeper, and most people believed that this was the true cause of Stanton Armour’s peculiarities. He had been very much attached to the Frenchman, and his sudden falling into crime had given him a terrible shock. And stepping into the disgraced man’s shoes as soon as he did, would have been an occurrence to sober a much more flighty lad than he had ever been. From the day of Étienne Delavigne’s departure, Stanton Armour in spite of his youth, had begun to take upon himself a strange interest and oversight of his father’s business, and in an incredibly short space of time was admitted to a partnership in the house.

As the years went by, though his father was still nominally head of the firm, he it was who managed all important transactions. Very quietly this went on, and only the devoted servants of the house saw the persistent pushing of the father out of the places of responsibility by his youthful, talented, and apparently intensely ambitious son.

Outsiders, when the fact became impressed upon them, supposed it was Colonel Armour’s good pleasure that his son should be master in place of himself, but such was not the case. The head of the house had been primarily a man of pleasure, but he also loved his business, and had thrown himself into it with a zeal and relish and a skill for making money that had made him the envy and despair of men less fortunate than himself. Then, after the lapse of years, he found himself quietly excluded from the excitements of business life. His son reigned while he was yet alive. He resented this at first, with a wickedness and fury and a sense of impotence that had at times made him feel like a madman, but in late years more wisdom had come to him, and for Stanton to mention a thing was to have his father’s ready acquiescence.

The members of the family and intimate friends of the house knew that there was no sympathy between father and son, and very little intercourse. They rarely spoke to each other, except in the presence of strangers. Stanton was master in the business and master at home. He occupied the seat of honor at the table, and his father was as a guest. Colonel Armour did not even sleep under his own roof, though this was his own doing, and of his usual place of sojourn we have to speak.

The grounds at the back of Pinewood sloped gradually down to that beautiful inlet of the sea—the Northwest Arm. Behind the house were on the one side, a flower garden, a tennis lawn, and a boat house; and on the other a semicircular stretch of pines, that began in front of the house, and with a growth of smaller evergreens formed a thick, wedge-shaped mass down to the water’s edge.

A few places there were where lanes had been cut among the trees and gravel walks formed. The broadest of the walks led to a handsome cottage, where dwelt Colonel Armour, at such times as he was neither away from home, nor up at the large house, his usual attendant being a Micmac Indian rejoicing in the name of Joe Christmas.

Joe would not sleep under the roof of a substantially built house. That would be too great a stretch of Indian devotion. The Micmacs do not take kindly to indoor life, and every night when his day’s work was done, Joe paddled himself in his small canoe across the Arm, where he had a solitary wigwam among the firs and spruces of a bit of woodland belonging to the Armours.

Valentine Armour made a constant jest of the Indian’s wildwood habits. “Plenty trees, Joe,” he would say, pointing to the pines about the house. “Build wigwam here.”

“No, no;” and Joe would shake his head, and show his tobacco-stained teeth in amusement. “Too near big house. Too much speakum.”

Joe’s connection with Colonel Armour arose from the fact that he had been his guide in many a hunting excursion in years gone by, and had found the colonel so indulgent a master that at last he had formed the habit of following him home in the late autumn, and establishing himself near him till the hunting season came around again.

He was a good cook, and he would occasionally condescend to perform household tasks, an unusual favor from a Micmac. He also had charge of the boat house, and at times, by a great stretch of courtesy, would render some slight assistance to the gardener or coachman.

He was an easy-going, pleasure-loving Indian, rather tall of stature, with olive skin, the dark, searching eyes of his race, and thick, black hair reaching to the back of his neck, and there cut squarely across. At a distance there was a ridiculous resemblance to his master about him, owing to his habit of arraying himself in Colonel Armour’s cast-off garments. In common with other Micmacs of the present day, he despised the skins and blankets of his forefathers and aped the fashions of the white man.

None of the house servants ever liked him. He was “creepy and crawly in his ways,” they said, and though nothing could be proved against the good-natured, mild-spoken Christmas, certain it was that he knew quite well of the race prejudice that existed against him, and any man-servant or maid-servant who carried matters with too high a hand invariably departed with suspicious haste from the service of the Armours. They received a fright, or had an illness, or suddenly made up their minds that they would leave without formulating any complaint—in short they always went, and the Indian if remonstrated with at all, only shook his head, and ventured a long-drawn “Ah—h,” of surprise, that he should be so misunderstood.

He professed not to mind the cold weather, but in reality he hated it, and during the winter days he spent most of his time in the cheerful kitchen at the cottage, where before a blazing fire on the old-fashioned hearth, he made and mended flies, fishing rods, bows and arrows, and inspected and polished the various instruments of steel designed to create havoc among beasts, birds, and fishes during the next hunting season.

A few days before Christmas, while Joe was squatting before his fire, Dr. Camperdown was driving leisurely out to Pinewood.

There had been during the preceding day a heavy fall of snow. Arriving inside the lodge gates, Dr. Camperdown heard a sound of merry laughter and shouting before him.

A number of young people in red, white, or blue blanket costumes were careering over the snow before him; and ejaculating, “A snowshoeing party! Flora always has something going on,” he gave Polypharmacy an encouraging “Hie on,” and made haste to join them.

As he caught up with the last stragglers of the party, he was inwardly pleased to see Vivienne among them.

“Had a good tramp?” he asked, after responding to her gay greeting.

“Delightful!” she exclaimed, her cheeks a blaze of color. “We’ve been across the Arm and to Dutch Village, and now we’re coming in to have afternoon tea—and I haven’t had a tumble yet,” and as she spoke she gave a coquettish push to the toque on the back of her head, and looked at him over her shoulder.

“But you’re just going to have one,” he said, “take care.”

It was too late—she had pushed the front of her long snowshoe too far into a drift, and down she went, with an exclamation of surprise, and sending up a cloud of white, powdery flakes above her.

Captain Macartney, who was her escort, made haste to assist her to her feet, and she got up laughing and choking, her mouth full of snow, her black hair looking as if it had been powdered.

“We’re all too lively,” she cried, beating her mittens together; “our tramp hasn’t taken enough out of us—just hear them shouting over there, and see me run,” she vociferated, frolicking off on her snowshoes with a gayety and wildness that made her companion hurry after her, dragging his larger appendages along more heavily, giving an occasional hop to facilitate his progress, and crying warningly, “’Ware snowdrifts, Miss Delavigne. You’ll be down again.”

Down again she was, and up again before he got to her, and with some other members of the merry party sliding down a steep snowbank before the house. Then they joined a group below them busily engaged in arranging a set of lancers before the drawing-room windows.

“Dance my children, dance,” called Flora approvingly, and in a lower key to Valentine Armour, “Unfasten my thongs quick, Val. I wish to go in and see if the maids have everything ready.”

The young man went down on one knee, and bent his head over her snowshoes. He was in a costume of white, bordered by delicate pink and blue stripes. A picture of young, manly beauty he was, his black eyes sparkling, his cheeks glowing, the white-tasseled cap pulled down over the closely cropped hair, that would have been in waving curls all over his head had he allowed it to grow.

Judy, from a window above, was watching the progress of the dance. The couples stood opposite each other, then floundering and plunging through the snow, essayed to form figures more or less involved.

Many falls, inextricable confusion, and much laughter ensued, then the attempt was given up. Unfastening their snowshoes they filed gayly into the house. Dr. Camperdown watched them out of sight, the smile on his face dying away, as his keen eyes caught sight of poor, mis-shapen little Judy, half-hidden behind the window curtains, her face convulsed with envy and annoyance. Such amusements were not for her. She never would be strong and well like other girls.

Dr. Camperdown’s gaze softened. Springing from his sleigh, he anchored Polypharmacy to a snowdrift, and casting off his huge raccoon coat, like an animal shedding its skin, he took a book from a pocket in it, and made his way to the drawing room.

Divans, ottomans, and arm-chairs were full of young people, chatting, laughing, and telling jokes over their tea and coffee, sandwiches and cake.

“I believe you young people laugh all the time,” he grumbled good-naturedly, coming to a halt in the middle of the room, and surveying them from under his eyebrows. “Girls especially—always giggling.”

“How old are you, dear doctor?” exclaimed a pretty girl of seventeen, looking saucily up into his face. “Is it a thousand or two thousand? I’m only twenty,” and she made an audacious face at her teacup.

“Silly girl,” and the man looked down kindly at her; “silly girl. Where is Judy Colonibel? She is the only sensible one in this party. Judy, Judy; where are you?”

“I don’t know where she has bestowed herself,” said Mrs. Colonibel complainingly. “She could be of assistance to me if she were here. Won’t you find her, Brian?”

Camperdown went out into the hall, and lifted up his voice. “Judy, I have a present for you.”

She appeared then—hobbling along over the carpet with childish eagerness.

"It is that rara avis, a Canadian novel," said Camperdown. “The glittering romance of the ‘Golden Dog.’ See the picture of him. Gnawing a man’s thigh bone. Looks as if he enjoyed it. Read the French, Judy.”

The girl bent her head over the book and read slowly:

“Hateful words,” said Dr. Camperdown, “and a hateful tragedy. When you go to Quebec, Judy, you’ll see the dog tablet there yet. But you needn’t go out of Halifax for Golden Dogs. Bitten ones there are here, plenty of them, gnawing bones and waiting a chance to bite back. You’ve got your own Golden Dog, you Armours,” he added under his breath.

Then surveying critically the young girl whose face was buried in the volume, “Body here, Judy—mind already back to time of Louis Quinze. Don’t read so steadily, you small bookworm. Remember your eyes. Better, aren’t they?”

“No; worse,” said the girl impatiently.

“Go and help your mother, won’t you? She needs you.”

“She can get on without me,” sullenly. “I have to do without her,” and pulling her hand from him, she made as though she would go upstairs. Suddenly she stopped, and eyed him curiously. She was struck by the intentness of his glance. “What are you thinking of?” she asked.

“Of a poor child—younger than you, called Zeb. When you’re disagreeable you look like her.”

She smiled disdainfully, and began to limp upstairs. “Judy,” he called after her, “where’s the colonel? He likes this sort of thing,” with a gesture in the direction of the drawing room.

“He’s not well,” said Judy with a meaning smile. “Mamma sent for him, but he’s dining early in the seclusion of the cottage. Good-bye, and thank you for the book,” and she took herself upstairs with such haste that he could not have recalled her had he wished to do so.

“Poor girl,” he muttered; “books her only comfort. Glad Flora isn’t my mother,” and with this sage reflection, he rammed his fur cap over his ears, turned up his coat collar, and opening a door at the back of the hall, crossed a veranda, went down a flight of steps, and struck into a path cut through the drifted snow, and leading down to the cottage.

It was very quiet under the pines. There was only a faint breath of wind, ruffling occasionally a few flakes of snow from the feathery armfuls held out by the flat, extended branches of the evergreens. Everything was pure and spotless. The white path that he followed was almost untrodden. The stars blinked down through fleecy clouds on an earth that for once was clean and without stain.

The lights from the cottage streamed out through the windows and lay in colored bands on the banks of snow. Dr. Camperdown paused an instant in the shadows of the trees as some one approached one of the windows and propped open a variegated square of glass.

“Must be getting hot in there,” he murmured, going nearer. “I hope the Colonel isn’t getting hors de combat.”

He was looking into the dining room, a small apartment floored and wainscoted in dark Canadian wood, and hung around with pictures, trophies, and implements of hunting life. The floor was partly-covered with bear and wolfskin rugs, and in the middle of the room stood a small table, covered with a spotless damask cloth, and having served on it a dinner for one person. Of this dinner Colonel Armour had evidently been partaking, but at the moment when Dr. Camperdown looked in at the window, his strength or will to enjoy it had suddenly forsaken him, for the Micmac was carefully assisting him to the floor.

Colonel Armour was, as usual, handsomely dressed, and held his serviette clutched in his hand, but his head hung on one side and his limbs seemed powerless as the Micmac, holding him under the arms, slipped him to the center of the soft, bearskin rug. The rug had been dressed with the head of the bear, and placing his master’s head close to the fiery jaws, Joe took the napkin from the clasped fingers, straightened out the loose limbs, and placing a fire-screen between Colonel Armour’s face and the leaping flames on the hearth, seated himself at the table and proceeded to eat up the dinner decently and in order.

Rejecting all the wine glasses that stood in a group beside Colonel Armour’s plate, Joe selected one of the several decanters on the table, and drank only from it, tilting it up to his mouth with an occasional stealthy glance at the prostrate figure beyond him.

“Port!” ejaculated Dr. Camperdown. “The beggar has a discriminating tooth. Drinks moderately too. Doesn’t emulate his master,” with a contemptuous glance at the hearth rug. “Sound as a pig, he is. I’ll go in. First though,” with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, “must frighten Joe. He’s doing wrong. Ought to be punished.”

Drawing in a deep breath he ejaculated in a sepulchral voice, “Joe Christmas!”

The Indian had a conscience, and he knew that he ought to be taking his dinner in the kitchen, so when Dr. Camperdown’s terrifying voice fell on his ear he sprang from his seat, wildly extended his arms in the air, and still clutching between his fingers the half-empty decanter, unfortunately reversed it and allowed the wine to trickle in a red stream down Colonel Armour’s immaculate shirt front.

Camperdown laughed convulsively, and strode along the path to the front door.

The Micmac let him in and surveyed him with mingled respect, admiration, and remonstrance.

“Couldn’t help it, Joe,” exclaimed Dr. Camperdown chuckling. “You looked too comfortable. Is the colonel sick?” pointing to the hearthrug.

“Not bery sick,” said the Micmac, looking at the table. “Drinkum too much wine.”

“Colonel can drinkum wine, but if Micmac drinks too much, he can go live in woods,” said Dr. Camperdown meaningly.

“Me no likum wine,” said Joe.

“Come now, Joe, is that truth in inside heart?” asked the doctor.

The Indian smiled and laid his hand on his wide chest. “Little wine good—make inside warm, Much wine bad—makeum squaws lazy.”

“And Indians too,” said Dr. Camperdown. “Now listen, Joe; I want to talk to you. Who gave Micmac medicine when he was doubled up with awful disease called cramps?”

“Doctor did,” said Joe bluntly.

“Who gave him powders when he got too yellow, and pills when he got too fat?”

“Doctor did,” replied Joe yet more bluntly.

“Who gave him good tobacco, and paid his gambling debts, when colonel would have been angry, and policeman might have taken Joe to prison and skinned him alive?”

“Big doctor did,” responded Joe, his manner the quintessence of independence.

“And who will do it again? great fool that he is,” asked Dr. Camperdown grumblingly.

“Doctor will,” exclaimed Joe joyfully.

With an abrupt change of subject, Dr. Camperdown went on, “You know new young lady up to big house?”

“Me knowum.”

“She very fine girl,” said Dr. Camperdown earnestly.

“Bery fine,” echoed Joe, in level, guarded tones, but with the slightest suspicion of a glance in the direction of the hearth-rug, that at once caught Dr. Camperdown’s attention.

“Colonel not very polite to young lady,” he said carelessly.

“Not bery polite,” responded Joe with portentous gravity.

“Colonel musn’t get too cross to young lady,” asserted Dr. Camperdown without apparent meaning.

“Not too cross young lady,” repeated Joe with the aggravating inanity of a talking machine.

Dr. Camperdown almost lost patience, and felt inclined to indulge in one of his fits of ill-temper. But he restrained himself, only muttering under breath, “You rasping, unaccommodating Micmac, I’d like to thrash you.” Then he said aloud, “Young lady French, Joe. Her fathers and your fathers great friends.”

Joe replied to this statement by a non-committal grunt.

“Servants up at big house not like young lady much,” observed Dr. Camperdown.

The Micmac’s sleepy eyes lighted up. “Cook—fat porpoise—Jane one wild-cat. She not stay many moons.”

Dr. Camperdown laughed sarcastically. “You true prophet about servants, Joe. Shall I tell Mrs. Colonibel to search for new maids?”

Joe did not show any signs of confusion, except by withdrawing his eyes from Dr. Camperdown, and staring stolidly at the fire.

“You good servant, Joe,” remarked Dr. Camperdown cajolingly. “You serve Colonel Armour well. You can serve him and young lady too. She all alone. You watch, Joe, and if young lady wants a friend, you help her. You not let any one do anything to hurt her.”

Joe was a faithful servant to the House of Armour in his mistaken sense of the term, inasmuch as he was too ready to do the bidding of any members of the family, no matter how dishonorable a thing he might be required to do. If Vivienne Delavigne had been received kindly by the Armours and treated as one of themselves he would have had not the slightest hesitation in giving Dr. Camperdown the pledge he required. But with the keenness and sharp wit of an Indian, he had quickly divined the status of the young lady up at the big house, and thought that a promise of service to her might complicate his relations with the family of his employer. And still, he was under great obligations to Dr. Camperdown, and felt sure that the physician would not require him to attempt the impossible. So at last he said gravely, “If young lady need, I servum—if no need, I no servum.”