The House of Armour

“Who wants her?” she asked sneeringly.

“I do.”

“What for?”

“To adopt.”

“Will you bring her up a lady?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose the lady of the Pavilion put you up to this.”

At this the man’s two eyes glared at her with so fierce and red a light from under his shaggy eyebrows that the woman, bold as she was, saw that she would spoil her bargain if she persisted in this reference.

“You’re a gentleman,” she went on composedly; “in other words a devil, and if you want anything from me you’ve got to pay dear for it.”

In unspeakable loathing it seemed as if he could find nothing to say to her, and he made a gesture for her to continue.

“I might set a price on her,” she went on in mocking, reflective tones, “and you’d pay me today, and to-morrow it would be gone. No; you’d better be my banker for life. I draw on you when I choose.”

He moved forward a few steps as if to leave the room, but she cried, “Stop.”

“I’m used to your class,” she said with a frightful sneer, “and I know what’s passing in your mind. You’re saying to yourself, ‘The woman is a liar, and I’d better have nothing to do with her. The police will get the child from her, and then I’ll have a clear start.’ But, my fine gentleman,” leering hideously at him, “don’t you, nor the young lady down yonder set the police on me for your own sakes. I’ll make it lively for you if you do. I’m going to leave this dull little hole soon and go back to Montreal. Not to please you, but to suit myself. I came here for a purpose. I’ve no reason to serve you, but if it’s any good to you to know it, I’ve no intention of meddling with you or the young lady yonder. You let me alone, and I’ll let you alone. But I’m hard up now; you give me a certain sum down, and tell me some place in Montreal where I can go quarterly, and we’ll call it a bargain.”

Dr. Camperdown drew his breath hard and fast. “Is Zeb your lawful child?”

“Yes; Gilberto is the only husband I ever had; a beauty, isn’t he?”

In a few rapid words, for the sight of the woman was so hateful to him that he could hardly endure staying in the room with her, Camperdown concluded the agreement with her. “On the day you leave Halifax,” he said, “come to me and I’ll give you a further sum. The sooner you come, the more you’ll get.”

He turned on his heel, his foot was on the threshold of the door, when he heard in a hissing voice close to his ear, “Did you ever hate any one?”

Looking over his shoulder he saw the nearest approach to a fiend incarnate that it had ever been his bad fortune to behold. The woman had risen from her chair, drawn herself up to her great height, and with hand laid on her breast was staring before her, not at him, her face convulsed by a fierce and diabolical rage.

“You are nothing,” she said wildly, “Zeb is nothing, Gilberto is nothing, the lady nothing, to me; I despise you all, but that man, king of devils, how I hate him! If I could see him burning in torment”—and she broke into a stream of fierce imprecations, compared with which Mammy Juniper’s ravings were but as milk and water complaints.

“It is hell to me here,” she cried, striking her breast violently, “to know how to torture him. I could kill him, but what is that. One pang and all is over. But to see him twist and writhe in suffering. That is what I want. I have been to see him to-day—other days. I said, ‘I starve and freeze.’ What did he say? ‘Woman, who are you? get you gone.’ O Lord, Lord!” and throwing herself in her chair, she rocked to and fro in speechless agony.

The gaudy bonnet slipped over the back of her chair, and as her paroxysm increased, her coarse, light hair fell down, and from the rapid motion of her body to and fro, whipped wildly over her head.

Wrapped in a horrible spell, Camperdown gazed silently at her for a few minutes. Then he slammed the door together, and rushing down the crazy steps at imminent risk of breaking his limbs, quickly found himself in the street.

“O God,” he said, putting up one of the most fervent prayers of his life, when he stood once more under the clear, cold canopy of heaven, and lifted his eyes to the first twinkling stars of the evening, “keep my pure, white lily from a knowledge of this!”

He had left Polypharmacy on the opposite side of the street. As he crossed over to him, and lifted his weight to put in the sleigh he noticed a little, lonely figure, that moved away from the horse at his approach, and leaning against the wire fence that bounds the Citadel Hill, watched him silently.

“Zeb,” he exclaimed, peering at her in the half light; “is that you?”

“Yes,” she said quietly, but without moving.

“Come here, little girl,” he said with great tenderness in his voice, “and get in the sleigh with me.”

Without a word of demur the child took her seat beside him, and allowed him to wrap the wolfskin rug around her.

“Am glad I met you,” he said. “Have just been seeing your mother. She says you may come and live with me, if you choose. Will you, little Zeb?”

He was not by any means a nervous man, but he shivered at the look the child gave him. She wished to know whether he was in earnest.

“My house is lonely,” he said; “I want a little girl to make it cheerful. You will come, won’t you?”

The child burst into a passion of tears in which she tried to restrain herself in a curious, unchildlike fashion, finally slipping off the seat and sitting at his feet with her head buried in the robe.

When he arrived at the Pavilion he tried to persuade her to come out, but by various unmistakable signs she gave him to understand that she would not leave him to go back to Stargarde.

His face twitched with a variety of emotions. He requested Stargarde to come to the door of her rooms, for the cripples were at tea and he would not go in. “I have Zeb,” he said hurriedly. “I’ll take her—the mother consents; they’ll sign a contract. Child’s in my sleigh, and I can’t get her out.”

Stargarde clasped her hands; a lovely, rosy flush glorified her face. “Oh, I am so glad! Thank the Lord for that.”

“House will be cold and Hannah’ll be mad,” he said; “but I’ve got to take her.”

“Zeb won’t mind,” said Stargarde joyfully, “if she’s with you; you don’t know her faithful heart.”

“What is Mrs. Trotley’s address?” he asked.

She gave it to him, he looking at her the meanwhile in inexpressible tenderness. “Stargarde,” softly, “I’ll not come here so much. Don’t want to bother you. You know what brings me.”

“Yes, yes,” she said hanging her head. “Dear Brian, it grieves me to grieve you.”

“I know it,” hastily. “But don’t grieve even for me, my darling. I would like your life to have no care. But if trouble does come upon you, you’ll send for me?”

“Yes, yes, I will.”

“Nothing would ever separate us,” he said in a voice vibrating with emotion. “Nothing but your own free will. You are so fair and lovely; always a flower blooming amid dark surroundings.”

“Thank you,” she said gayly; “that is a pretty sentiment.”

With a smile of ineffable affection, he gently pushed her inside the door. “Go in, my darling; you will take cold. Don’t tire yourself with the cripples. Good-night.”

“Zeb,” he said, when he returned to the sleigh, “come up here, I want to talk to you,” and fishing under the wolfskin he drew her up and set her beside him.

“I think I’d like to be a reformer, Zeb, it’s so easy to go about telling other people what they ought to do. But when it comes home to self, that’s a different matter. Zeb, I’m not what I ought to be.”

“Yer a good man,” said the child half sulkily, “if there be’s any.”

“Thank you, little Zeb; would you mind saying ‘you’ instead of ‘yer’? Your mother talks good English, but yours is a little defective.”

“You, you,” repeated the child under her breath. “I’ll say it, doctor.”

He continued talking to her, but amid her brief remarks and the many stirring arrangements he made that evening for her comfort, there was before him all the time the ugly picture of the big, light-haired woman sitting by the fire, drinking her tea and drying her feet, her thick lips moving in the cynical, hardened fashion in which she had talked to him.

CHAPTER XXIII

ON MARKET DAY

Just as the city clocks struck ten on the last Saturday morning of January of the year of which we write, Dr. Camperdown came down the steps and into the street from the large, stone building known as the post office.

His hands were full of letters and papers that he had just taken from his private box in the post office, and which he stuffed into his pockets, as he carefully picked his steps among the various boxes, and bundles, and numberless things in the way of encumbrances with which the sidewalk was almost blocked.

The scene was not new to him. He was looking about him absently rather than attentively, till he caught sight of Stargarde coming over the crossing from the near Provincial Building, accompanied by her solemn black dog. She had a little basket on her arm, and was evidently about to follow the custom of many Halifax housekeepers who on Saturday mornings do their marketing themselves.

A glad light, almost instantly repressed, leaped to his face when he saw her. “Good-morning,” he said, quietly touching his cap, and acting as though he were about to pass her by.

“Are you not going to speak to me?” she inquired with a gracious smile and extending a hand to him. “I wish to praise you a little.”

“For what?” he inquired, opening his eyes, through which he had been looking in a squinting fashion at her.

“For your goodness in not coming to see me. I think I shall have to start a system of cards of merit, and bestow them upon you at regular intervals.”

He smiled peculiarly. “I mustn’t take too much credit to myself; you have given me a new interest in life.”

“Yes; Zeb. I am longing to talk to you about her. Can you not walk about with me while I do my marketing? then we can have a little talk afterward. You don’t stay in your office Saturday mornings, I think.”

“No,” and hypocritically concealing his extravagant joy, he turned and walked beside her. “You have a very high color this morning, Stargarde,” he said demurely. "I hope that you are not feverish.”

“Why, it is cold, Brian, very cold for Halifax. Don’t you feel the chill in the air?”

“No,” indifferently, and swinging open his coat. “I am never cold; don’t feel a lowering of the temperature any more than our friends the market women. Just look at them, Stargarde,” and with a sudden interest in his surroundings, now that he was no longer alone, he pointed to the unique spectacle before them.

The people in the market on this particular morning were mostly colored. Their rough sleds, many of which were drawn by oxen, were ranged along the gutters close to the pavements. In most cases the animals had been taken out, and were fastened to telegraph poles, railings, anywhere that the ingenious Negro could find a rod or a staff around which to twine a rope. A few of the oxen were tethered to the tailboards of their sleds and stood patiently munching wisps of hay, and surveying their owners with kind, pathetic eyes.

One woman who had had the good fortune to dispose of her stock, was just about leaving the market, skillfully guiding through the crowded street her tandem pair, consisting of a cow and an attenuated horse, the horse leading.

“Look at her,” said Camperdown. “Happy as a queen! She has sold her stuff, and sits enthroned on a bundle of old clothes, and a few packages of flour and sugar and a jug of molasses that she’s taking home to her pickaninnies. You won’t see many ‘carriage ladies’ with an expression like that. What’s this? ‘Cow for sail,’” and he read the placard hanging over the neck of a dirty white animal tied to a telegraph pole. “When does that cow sail?” to a melancholy-looking Negro standing near, whose two huge, protruding lips curled back like pink-lined breakers over the foam-like whiteness of a jagged reef of teeth.

“She’ll sail now, mister, if you can raise de wind,” said the man with a depressed yet amiable smile.

“Ah, Brian, the biter bitten,” observed Stargarde laughingly.

“He’s gut out three sheets now, I b’lieve, missis,” the Negro went on inexorably. “You white folkses be always a makin’ fun of us Niggers,” with an apologetic grin.

“Oh, take in sail, take in sail,” said Camperdown, pointing to the obnoxious placard.

“Guess I better, if’n it’s goin’ to send all the white people into gales of high sterricks,” said the colored man agreeably. “You be’s the secon’ or third lot what has come to anchor here, gigglin’ and laughin’. What’s wrong wid the card, missis?”

“Only one word,” said Stargarde gently, “which is usually spelt s-a-l-e, rather than s-a-i-l, when one has anything to sell.”

“Thank you kin’ly, missis. I’ll altercate it,” and he lazily watched the two people going on their way.

“Here are eggs,” said Camperdown, “big, white ones, Stargarde, and butter like gold.”

Stargarde stopped beside a shy-faced French woman, who was standing guard over a wagon, and asked her how much her eggs were a dozen.

“Dwenty-vive cent, madam.”

“I will take two dozen, if you please, and four prints of butter.”

Camperdown looked at the woman, and seeing that he was looking at her, she immediately dropped her eyes. She was tall and neatly dressed, and wore a black shawl over her hair and pinned under her chin. “A Chezzencooker,” he muttered, then aloud, “What else have you?”

“Smells, zur; dirty sents a ztring.”

“Don’t want any of them; enough bad odors in Halifax now.”

“Smelts, Brian,” corrected Stargarde. “He doesn’t understand French,” she said kindly to the woman.

“Beg pardon, I do; once got a prize at school for extensive knowledge of the language. Needn’t tell her I was the only one in the class,” in a lower tone.

“And you have ducks, and chickens, and cherry bark tied up in neat, little bundles, haven’t you?” Stargarde went on; “also woolen socks and sarsaparilla. You must get some of the latter, Brian. Hannah will make you some tea. She says it is good for the blood.”

“Give me ten bundles, madam,” he said obligingly.

“I have only vive,” said the Frenchwoman, raising her eyes just long enough to glance at the man, who seemed to be a very bold kind of monster to her.

“Very well, give me the five; and in addition those little brooms. They will do for Hannah to sweep her hearth.”

“I buy zem for myself, zur,” said the woman hastily. “We make no brooms; ’tis the Neegurs that does.”

“Ah,” politely. “I understand. Infra dignitatem. Thank you, madam,” and he put his parcel of sarsaparilla under his arm. “Whom does she remind you of?” he asked Stargarde as they went on.

“Vivienne, naturally; but Brian, the Chezzencook people are not the same as the Digby and Yarmouth French, are they?”

“No; a different lot. Came here at another time. French though.”

“Oh, yes; I know that. What is happening here? Brian, let us stand back and watch them. I do love colored people.”

They withdrew a little from the moving stream of passers-by on the sidewalk, and accompanied by the dog placed their backs against the building. In front of them was a group of colored men and women, all warmly bundled in odds and ends of clothing, and laughing, chattering, and joking in the “wisely careless, innocently gay” fashion peculiar to their race.

“Small wonder that they do not feel the cold,” said Camperdown. “Just look at the clothes they have on. Talk about Edinburgh fishwives, they only wear seventeen petticoats. This stout dame has on seventy at least, haven’t you, auntie?” he asked, as a middle-aged colored woman approached them to get a basket, which was like a little, gay garden spot on the frozen snow, so filled was it with bunches of wintergreen and verdant ferns, dyed grasses, long and feathery, and heaps of red maple leaves, carefully pressed and waxed to preserve their flaming tints.

“Hasn’t I what, chile?” she asked, taking her short, black pipe from her mouth, and regarding him with a beaming, ebony face.

“Aren’t you pretty well protected against the inclemency of the weather?” he inquired meekly.

“I don’t know what ’clemency be, but the weather, good lan’, I knows that. Has to dress accordin’. Look at me feet, chile,” and she held up a substantial pair of men’s long-legged boots. “Inside that I’ve got on socks. Inside that agin, women’s stockin’s. And I’ve got on other wearin’ apparels belongin’ to men too, and Jemima Jane’s dress, and Grandmother Brown’s and me own ole frock, and on me head I puts a cloud, and on me cloud I puts a cap, and on me arms three pair o’ stockin’ legs, and on me hans two pair o’ mitts, an’ over all I puts me bes’ Sunday-go-to-meetin’ mantle, what I wears to the baptizins, an’ here an’ there,” mysteriously, “a few other happenins,” and bending over her basket she closed her thick lips on her pipe.

Camperdown watched her gravely.

“If you was a colored gemman, an’ had to ris’ in the middle o’ the night, an’ bile your kettle, an’ feed your pig, an breakfus your young uns, an hitch your ox,” she said presently, straightening herself up and laughing all over her face at him, “an drive a thought o’ twelve mile to town, an’ stan’ till gun fire, and perform your week’s buyin’, an’ peregrenize home over the Preston roads, which is main bad this weather, you’d habit yourself mebbe worsen I do, an’ not look so handsum nuther.”

Roguishly winking at him, she elevated her long basket to the top of her head and walked away, her back as straight as a soldier’s. With never a hand put up to steady the nodding, swaying garden spot atop of her head, she guided herself among the crowd of people, her manifold tier of petticoats bobbing behind her like the tail of a gigantic bird, and presently disappeared.

“Good souls, those colored people,” ejaculated Camperdown, looking after her. “They live on their spirits. Oh, look here, Stargarde,” and he drew some envelopes from his pocket. “Flora is chameleonizing. She’s going to give a dance for ma’m’selle. Read that invitation card. I frightened her into civility.”

“Poor Vivienne,” said Stargarde.

“Happy Vivienne; she enjoys herself. It’s marvelous to see the coolness with which she treats Flora—the right line of conduct to adopt. If she were meek and humble, Flora would impose upon her shamefully. They’re going to have some lively times at Pinewood, and that girl will be the leading spirit. I suppose you’ve noticed that Stanton is taking rather more interest than usual in her?”

“Yes; take care, Brian; take care. You are playing at match-making, and it is a dangerous game.”

“Well,” stoutly, “as you women nowadays are so busy attending to departments of public good, what is there for men to do but take up the private ones, such as the making of marriages? Don’t alarm yourself though, I don’t do much; only say a word now and then.”

“But your words have weight.”

“I am glad they have,” sarcastically, “with some people.”

“In your zeal for Stanton’s interests I hope you will do nothing to bias Vivienne; she may fancy Valentine.”

“Is thy servant a sneak?” he asked in an injured tone of voice. “And that is Stanton’s affair, not mine. He will be as just as the Lord Chancellor; but ma’m’selle doesn’t love Valentine. He’s too young; Stanton is just the age for her; he isn’t so old as his years. He got frozen when he was a lad, and has stayed frozen ever since. Frost preserves you know. I want to see him melt now, and dance for some woman the way the rest of us do.”

“Brian, it makes me nervous to hear you planning so surely on a thing that may never come to pass.”

“Stanton is all right,” he continued, rather as if he were soliloquizing; “but you women are uncertain qualities. That he will fall in love with her is a foregone conclusion. He rarely goes anywhere; never has been brought into intimacy with any woman for any length of time; propinquity makes a man either hate or love a woman. He’s disliked her long enough; can’t keep it up. There will be a tremendous rebound that will nearly shake the life out of him; but will she reciprocate?”

“I don’t see how she can help it,” said Stargarde impulsively; and the mere thought of Stanton beloved and happy, touched her tender heart and filled her eyes with tears.

“Nor I,” said Camperdown, with mock enthusiasm. “Such a sweet and tender bit of marble as he is! Such a loving block of wood! But you women like such creatures.”

Stargarde paid no attention to him. “And Valentine too,” she went on earnestly, “I do wish that he could fall under the influence of some good girl.”

“If he wants a good girl let him be a good boy,” coolly. “That’s your own doctrine, Stargarde. Pray don’t make an exception in favor of Valentine, when you’ve been so firm with the rest of the world. You’re one of the new women, you know. ‘A white life for two,’ isn’t that your motto? Same thorny path of virtue for men and women.”

“Not thorny, Brian.”

“Sometimes I’ve found it so. Just think of all the pleasant little dissipations I might have had if you hadn’t been watching me with that lynx eye of yours. No use to come to you and say, ‘Dear creature, will you take a tenth place in my affections, after cards, wine, and other things not worth mentioning?’ I know what’s in your mind now. You’re a true woman and have a sneaking fondness for vagabonds. You love Stanton; but you think he’s a strong man and can stand alone. You adore Valentine, and if either brother gets ma’m’selle, you think it should be the weakling, whose tottering footsteps need guidance. Come now, tell me, would you give the French girl to Valentine if it depended on you?”

She hesitated. “Not as he is now; but we are commanded to forgive those who repent.”

“Repent; nonsense, my dar—my dear Miss Turner. Can repentance change the corpuscles in a man’s blood? He sha’n’t have her, dissipated young scamp that he is. You wouldn’t allow it yourself if it came to the pinch. No; let ma’m’selle shake him out of his abominable state of self-complacency, if you will, but no marriage. A sisterly affection is what she must bestow upon him. She’ll tell him some wholesome truths if she gets to know him better. I hope she may. He’s been stepping over thorns all his life. I’d like to see him lie down now, and have a good roll in them.”

“Brian!” and Stargarde looked appealingly into the piercing eyes of her tormentor and lover.

“It would do him good,” he said, “and we’d help to dress his wounds afterward. And the little French girl would be amiable enough to help to give consolation.”

Stargarde sighed. “Why do you so often call her little? She is tall.”

“Oh, it’s a mannish façon de parler. Men always say that about women they like.”

“Do they?” wonderingly. “I haven’t noticed it.”

“I dare say not. Men as a rule don’t like big women.”

“Indeed!”

“No; they do not. I heard a man the other day speaking of a lovely creature, ‘But,’ he said, ‘she is too big to love.’”

Stargarde looked disturbed. “Was I the woman, Brian?” she said sweetly, almost childishly.

“Well—I would have throttled him if he had said anything else.”

“And do you find me so—so immense?” drawing herself up to the full height of her charming and exquisitely proportioned figure.

“Immense; yes. Quite immense.”

She scanned his face with an intentness that gave him the keenest pleasure, though he deceitfully pretended to be very much absorbed by a passing sleigh.

“Stargarde,” he said, when the sleigh had passed them, “you were criticising me just now, will you allow me to perform the same kind office for you?”

“Certainly,” with the utmost cheerfulness in tone and manner.

“You said that I am getting frivolous. In your character too, I see signs of weakening. There is rather an alarming symptom showing itself, of deference to the opinions of other people who are very much less clever than you, myself for example. You have always been so strong, Stargarde; have stood alone. Now you are becoming weak, deteriorating, getting to be like other women. I would check it, if I were you, this inclination toward the commonplace, the—the childish, if I may mention the word in your connection. Perhaps, though, the mental weakness follows upon a physical one. Aren’t you well and happy?”

She was very much discomposed. “Yes, Brian, I am well and happy; yet, I don’t know what it is lately, there seems to be a vague disquiet about me. Perhaps I have been doing more than I should.”