The House of Armour

The night wore on and Vivienne, undisturbed by Mammy Juniper’s mutterings, still slept. There was no sound to break the deathly stillness inside and outside the house, till shortly after one o‘clock the girl started up with a low cry of “Stanton!”

Mammy Juniper went over to her. “Awake, my princess, the hour of the Lord is at hand.”

Vivienne’s dazed glance took in the black figure standing over her, the bright lamps of the room, the darkness outside, then she shuddered. “I have had a distressing dream. Is Mr. Armour here? I thought that he was hurt.”

“Mourn not for the elder but for the younger branch, O princess,” chanted the old woman. “Ephraim is a proud man. He transgresseth by wine, neither keepeth at home. He enlargeth his desire as hell and as death, that cannot be satisfied.”

“Hush, Mammy,” said Vivienne.

“Can you not hear the feet of him that bringeth bad tidings?” rejoined the woman. “Howl, O fir trees, for the lofty cedar has fallen—howl, ye oaks of Bashan, for the forest of the vintage has come down. Woe, woe to him that buildeth a house with blood!”

Vivienne shuddered again, and to avoid looking at the blending of wrath and suffering on Mammy’s ugly face, leaned far out of the window. Down in the direction of the cottage a sudden confused noise had arisen, followed a few seconds later by a sound of footsteps hurrying over the walk to the house. She listened intently till the person below came up to the veranda steps and rattled a key in the door of the back hall. “There must be something wrong at the cottage,” she said, getting up and walking across the room, “and that is Joe.”

“Joe goes as a snake by the way, my princess,” said Mammy seizing a lamp and following her. “It is Vincent.”

Vivienne went out into the hall and looked down over the railing of the circular opening at the night-light burning outside Armour’s door.

Vincent was coming quietly upstairs. His feet made no sound in passing over the thick carpet and he had only to tap at Mr. Armour’s door to have it thrown open to him.

He said a few words in a low voice that they could not hear, then disappeared as quickly as he had come. In a very few minutes Armour emerged from his room, thrusting his arms into his coat as he hurried after his servant.

“O Ephraim, he that dasheth in pieces is come up before thy face,” mumbled Mammy Juniper in a choking voice. “Keep the munitions, watch the way!”

“What is it?” exclaimed Vivienne; “what has happened? You speak knowingly.”

The old woman suddenly became calm. “Come and see,” she said quietly.

Vivienne followed her down the staircase. The house was intensely still. No other persons were stirring. When they reached the lowest hall Vivienne paused. “Mammy, I shall not go down there among those men. Do you go and bring me back news of what has happened.”

Mammy looked at her regretfully. “The Assyrians led by Ephraim bring reproach upon themselves. Only a princess of the house can warn and deliver.”

“I know what you mean,” said the girl proudly; “but I cannot be sensational. I will speak to your master. Now go and see if you can be of any use.”

She walked into the dining room, and the old servant carefully placing the lamp in the middle of the long table, left her alone.

There was a clock on the mantelpiece, and with a dull and heavy sense of apprehension Vivienne watched the hands scarcely moving over its face. Twenty, thirty, forty minutes passed, and still Mammy did not come.

At the end of that time there was a step in the hall and she hurried to the door to be confronted by Stanton Armour.

“Are you here, Vivienne?” he asked in a kind of subdued surprise.

“Yes,” and she anxiously scanned his gloomy, dispirited face.

“You had better go to bed. Why did you get up?”

“I had not gone to bed. I fell asleep by my window after I came home, and waked up when I heard Vincent coming for you.”

He made no reply and she went on: “What was the trouble, Stanton?”

“Valentine got himself into a scrape.”

“That unhappy boy!” she said mournfully.

“Do not worry,” said Mr. Armour, trying to clear his face, “it may not be so bad as we think.”

“How bad is it? why do you hesitate?” she said in a low, disturbed voice.

“I do not like to tell you disagreeable things, Vivienne.”

“Am I a doll or a child that I can endure nothing? I do not like to be so treated, Stanton. What was Valentine doing?”

“You know that he has been drinking lately?”

“Yes.”

“This evening when my father and his guests were at supper Valentine came in and made some remarks that they considered insulting.”

“Indeed!”

“And they drove him into a corner, and some one threw a wineglass at him; I hate to tell you this, Vivienne.”

“That is no surprise to me.”

“They had all been drinking,” he went on a little doggedly; “and in some way or other they have hurt Valentine’s eyes. I fancy that he continued to be irritating, as he knows well how to be, and they continued shying wineglasses at him. They didn’t mean to hurt him.”

“And Vincent heard them and came for you to break up this pleasant party?”

“Yes.”

“How are they leaving here?”

“Vincent is driving them.”

“And he is taken from his rest to do so?”

“Yes, unavoidably so.”

“Have you sent for Dr. Camperdown?”

“I have.”

“And Mammy Juniper is with Valentine?”

“She is.”

“And you are half annoyed with me for coming down,” she said, seizing a handful of her long, hanging hair and pushing it back from her face.

“No, only worried about Valentine.”

“Is there nothing more than that?”

“Nothing more that I care to tell you,” he said evasively.

“You are pale, you suffer,” she said in a low voice.

He gently put back her masses of perfumed hair so that he might see her face more distinctly.

“What a simpleton I used to be,” she suddenly exclaimed; “so young, so deplorably ignorant!”

“Why do you say this?”

“Because I thought that engaged people entered upon a dream of bliss; while you—the more intimately I know you the higher rises some dreadful, dreadful barrier between us. Stanton, tell me, tell me why you are so moody and restless with me lately? Do you not wish to marry me?”

He stooped and kissed her lustrous eyes. “You are mine, mine,” he repeated in accents of repressed passion. “Would to God that you were my wife now.”

“I feel like a restless wave beating against a rock,” she said mournfully. “Am I never to share your troubles?”

The hand resting on her shoulder trembled, and she saw that he was wavering in his hitherto fixed resolve not to confide in her.

“Now—now,” she said eagerly; “tell me tonight. If you love me, trust me.”

“I am racked with anxiety,” he muttered. “What you ask me to do is the right thing, yet you may shrink from me; you may never marry me.”

“Have you ever done anything dishonorable yourself?”

“No; but I have shielded my own flesh and blood; more from instinct than from affection, perhaps, I have done it.”

“Then I will never give you up,” she murmured.

Her beseeching arms were around his neck and he could no longer resist. In halting accents, that were sometimes angry, sometimes ashamed, he told her all she wished to know, and she listened, still clinging to him, but with her hair bound about her face so that he could not see its expression.

When he finished she drew a long sigh, and he found that she was crying.

“Well,” he said, “are we to be husband and wife, or must we separate?”

“We shall never separate, if it rests with me,” she said gently. “But why, oh, why did you dislike my mother?”

“I will make it up to the daughter,” he said, and vehemently. “Can you not see, Vivienne, that if things had not been as they were I would have been spared my worst anxiety?”

“I am so shocked at the wickedness of the world,” she said, “so shocked! I never dreamed of it when I was at school.”

“Yes,” he said gloomily, “it is a bad world.”

“But there is much goodness,” she went on with a sudden radiance of face; “and I am not one to say that the world becomes worse instead of better.”

His face brightened. “Yes, men and women do each other good as well as a frightful amount of evil.”

“And you feel better for telling me this, do you not?”

“Yes; I have been carrying on a wearisome struggle these last few weeks. You will preserve my confidence. There is no one else to whom I talk; no one who knows me. You, my dear innocent lamb,” and he suddenly became loverlike and tender, “are the only being in the world that understands me.”

“You will find my father for me?” she said softly.

“If it is a possible thing; there is no news yet.”

“And when he comes you will try to clear him? Yet stay, Stanton; can you do nothing in his absence?”

“I scarcely think so.”

“Is there no one who knows? What about Mammy Juniper and MacDaly, who talk so strangely about your father? You are silent. Remember, Stanton, I too have a father. Tell me, would you clear him to-morrow if you could, though at the expense of disgracing your own parent?”

“Yes, I would,” he said.

“That is enough,” she said in a low, intense voice. “Have no more scruples about marrying me. I take the responsibility.”

She gave him her hand like a princess, and leaving him standing, a lonely figure in the half-lighted room, went toward the hall to Mammy Juniper, who was waiting for her.

He stood for some time after her departure, staring at the floor, till he heard in abrupt language:

“Where is Mammy Juniper?”

“She is upstairs,” and he lifted his head to see Camperdown pawing the hall carpet like an impatient horse.

“I want some linen, and I wish that she would come down to the cottage. By the way, Stanton,” and he paused as he was about to fling himself out of the doorway, “how much longer are you going to let this thing run on? Fristram and Shelly were here this evening gambling with your worthy sire; the young scamps ought to have been at home with their wives.”

“I know,” wearily; “but what can a man do? I am reproached now with having thrust my father out of doors.”

“Nobody that understood the facts would blame you,” said Camperdown seriously. “But can’t you hedge him around with restrictions?”

“If I draw too sharp a line he will leave here.”

“And you don’t want him injuring the family reputation elsewhere. But isn’t there any way you can devise of keeping these silly young flies from him? Let him amuse himself with old spiders like himself.”

“He must do it in future,” said Armour.

“Who made you promise?” asked Camperdown curiously.

“Vivienne.”

“I thought so; good little girl!”

“I have decided to send Valentine away till after our marriage,” said Armour; “can you suggest any one to go with him?”

Camperdown frowned, hesitated, and muttered: “Better wait a bit.”

“You do not think that his eyes are seriously injured, do you?” said Armour quickly.

“I think nothing, and what I know I’ll keep to myself,” and Camperdown again made an attempt to leave the room, but turned on his heel to come back and say, “Your ancestors were Puritans, weren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“Strictest of the strict and fastidious about Sundays, and would scarcely smile on week days?”

“Yes.”

“And they grew rich and were high in favor with God and man?”

“So the family history assures us.”

“Then they waxed self-indulgent. Your great-grandfather began a merry dance that is culminating with your father and Valentine, and you—poor, dull, and misanthropic clod—would dry up and sterilize but for that lovely little simpleton upstairs, who is probably dreaming that you are a Prince Charming.”

An indescribable air of animation took possession of Armour’s heavy, handsome features. “She probably is,” he said with a smile.

“If you‘ve any sense at all,” continued Camperdown with assumed disdain, “if you‘ve any idea of perpetuating a decent family line, agree to anything she says. In her fine-spun, aristocratic, philanthropic notions, which are strictly opposed to all that is earthly, sensual, and devilish, is your only salvation.” And with a volley of menacing glances he vanished, and shortly afterward crunched under foot the gravel below as he walked toward the cottage muttering: “Blind, blind! Poor fools, how will they stand it? Better Puritans than Sybarites!”

CHAPTER XXXIII

A WAYWORN TRAVELER

For eight weary weeks Stargarde had, in the opinion of her friends, been afflicted by the terrible being who undoubtedly was her mother. But to Stargarde it was no affliction. From the night that she had taken the miserable creature in her arms, washed and fed her and laid her on her own bed, it had seemed rather a joy and privilege than a duty, to wait upon her. Cheerfully and uncomplainingly she placed herself at the disposal of her unworthy parent, guarding and restraining her as far as she possibly could, and making no ado when she was missing, but patiently seeking her in the lowest haunts of the town as a shepherd would seek a lost sheep and return it to the sheepfold.

After Mrs. Frispi had been with Stargarde for four weeks her wanderings suddenly ceased. Her evil genius might prompt her to roam, but it was no longer in her power to do so. Her frame, strong as it had been, suddenly yielded to the effects of disease brought on by her irregular life. She lay on her back in Stargarde’s bed with no thought in her guilty soul of preparing for that longer, more mysterious flight than any she had yet taken, but raving day by day in obscene and abominable language that made Camperdown look in despair and admiration at Stargarde, who in an agony of compassion hung over the unhappy woman and urged her to repent.

Day by day he entered the sick-room, sometimes greeted sullenly by the sufferer, at others hailed by a torrent of abuse that made him turn from her with a shudder of disgust; but gradually there came a change. During the past ten days his patient had lain in a sullen, stoical silence, apparently indifferent alike to her sufferings and to Stargarde’s tender ministrations. That she used no more reckless language was something to be thankful for, and with a sense of relief to think that he was no longer in the den of a wild beast, Camperdown stepped into the room one Sunday morning.

He held his fiancée’s> hand one instant in his own, then went to the bed and glanced sharply over Mrs. Frispi’s attenuated features. She did not look at him, even when he laid his fingers on her bony wrist, for her big blue eyes, slowly revolving in their sunken sockets, were following Stargarde as she moved about the room.

“Let me take your temperature,” he said.

Mrs. Frispi shook her head impatiently.

“Mother,” murmured Stargarde appealingly, coming to stand beside her.

At this the woman submitted, and when she turned her head toward Camperdown he noticed that a softened look had overspread her features, and that tears were stealing down her cheeks.

In order to give her time to compose herself he affected to be busy with his instrument case.

A side glance presently cast in her direction showed him that the tears were still on her cheeks and also that she was not anxious to avoid his scrutiny.

“Are you going to throw her over?” she asked quietly.

Camperdown stared at her.

“Are you going to throw her over on account of me?” asked Mrs. Frispi, again indicating Stargarde by a motion of her head.

“No, I am not,” he said decidedly.

She made a sound of satisfaction in her throat and went on coolly: “She forgives me, but you will not. You would have kicked me back in the mud. She pitied me. She reminds me of the good people that I was with in New York for a little while when I was a girl. No one has cared for me since. I couldn’t help myself. Suppose she had been brought up where I was.”

Camperdown frowned at the horrible possibilities suggested. Yet he took comfort in the sturdy character of his betrothed. “She would have been good anywhere,” he said stoutly.

“Have you lived in the slums?” said the woman with a sneer. “Could an angel be good with a thousand devils after her?”

He did not reply to her otherwise than by a shrug of his shoulders.

“And you won’t forgive me for disgracing you,” she went on in a kind of languid surprise; “and you call yourself a Christian.”

“Brian,” said Stargarde with a passion of entreaty in her voice.

“I do forgive you,” he said not unkindly, and after a short struggle with himself; “but you can’t expect me to admire you.”

“Admire me!” she exclaimed, burying her face in the pillow. “Oh, my God!”

A few minutes later he left the Pavilion and went to his home.

The next day and the next and the next Camperdown saw Mrs. Frispi, but she did not speak to him. He saw that she was becoming weaker, and also that she was in a quieter, calmer mood.

“To-night she will probably die,” he said on the evening of the third day, “and I shall take Mrs. Trotley and go to Stargarde.”

While he was at dinner a message came from the Pavilion for him and for Zilla. The end was coming sooner than they had imagined it would.

Zilla hesitated about going; not that she feared death, for she had seen many people die, but from purely selfish motives. It was a rainy evening, and she would rather stay at home and read one of her beautiful books than to go out to witness the end of a person who was utterly uninteresting to her.

“I cannot wait,” said Camperdown, “and I think that you ought to come with me. There is a cab at the door; you won’t have to walk.”

Zilla flashed him a swift glance, darted upstairs for her cloak, and went with him.

It was certainly not a hateful sight that they witnessed when they left the rain and darkness of the street and entered Stargarde’s cheerful rooms. Every light was shining brightly. Mrs. Frispi’s sight was almost gone, and to enable her to see some objects in the room that she dearly prized, Stargarde had even had additional lights brought in.

The woman lay quietly among the pillows of her snow-white bed, the gaunt framework of her bones almost piercing through the thin covering of skin. Stargarde sat by the bed and in a recess was a girl dressed in the uniform of the Salvation Army.

“It is no use,” Mrs. Frispi was uttering in short gasping breaths, as Camperdown and Zilla paused in the doorway; “I can’t see them—tell me.”

Around Stargarde’s room hung a number of paintings illustrating an old hymn that she was fond of singing. Two years before an English artist, poor and drunken and expelled from his native land, had found a shelter till his death in the Pavilion. In gratitude for Stargarde’s kindness to him, he had painted a series of pictures for her, representing the adventures of the wayworn traveler that he had so often heard her singing about to a quaint, wild tune.

On these paintings hanging around her bed Mrs. Frispi’s eyes had often rested, and Stargarde, thinking that no more applicable story could be framed to suit her mother’s circumstances, had, in talking to her, woven biblical truths with the progress of the weary traveler. The striking pictures and the graphic words had impressed themselves upon the sin-worn mind. Even now, when her earthly vision was dulled, the dying one had before her mental gaze the representations of the traveler toiling up the mountain, his garments worn and dusty, his step slow, his eyes turned resolutely from the enchanting arbors where sweet songsters invited his delay to the top of the mountain, beyond which were the heavenly vale and the golden city.

“While gazing on that city,”

repeated Stargarde gently,

“Just o’er the narrow flood,A band of holy angelsCame from the throne of God.They bore him on their pinionsSafe o’er the dashing foam,And joined him in his triumph;‘Deliverance will come.’”

Her voice died away, and Zilla sank into a chair while Camperdown stepped softly to the bedside. There was nothing that he could do for his patient; the shadow of death was already upon her face.

Yet she lay quietly, as quietly as a child about to fall asleep, and giving no sign of distress or emotion except in the hurried and labored rise and fall of her chest.

“I believe in God now,” she said solemnly, and moving her almost sightless eyes toward him. “I believe in everything. Oh,” with a sudden great and bitter cry, and straining her gaze in Stargarde’s direction, “what a wrong I have done her!”

Stargarde held one of her mother’s hands in her own. At her despairing words she seized the other and folded them both between her strong, fair palms with a consoling clasp.

“I wish to go to heaven because she will be there,” said the woman, starting up in bed with a last exertion of strength. “I cast her off when she was a baby, and she kisses me!”

Camperdown hastily pushed more pillows behind her and moistened her lips with drops of a stimulant beside him.

“I can see plainly now,” she went on, opening wide her blue eyes with their strange and touching expression. “Zeb, mind what she says and don’t vex her. Take good care of her, you,” she continued, addressing Camperdown. “I forgive you now; I could have killed you before. I hated every man. I forgive all”—brokenly—"as I hope to be forgiven—even him."

Her breath fluttered convulsively for a few minutes, then she sprang forward: “I hear them—the song of triumph they sing upon that shore. Jesus hath redeemed us—to suffer nevermore,” she added. “O Jesus, do not despise me—I am sorry.”

Her last words were spoken. She fell back in Camperdown’s arms and he laid her head on the pillows.

Stargarde’s face was shining like that of an angel. For many days he had seen her kneeling by that sick-bed, had heard her pleading voice, “O God, give me this soul; save my mother and take her to heaven.” Now her heart’s desire was gratified, and he feared that after the long weeks of watching and confinement to the house a collapse would come; but there was no sign of it yet. Very calmly she asked Zilla if she would care to stay in the room while Camperdown left it. Zilla remained; and Stargarde, while performing the last tender offices for her mother in which she would receive only a small amount of assistance from her friend of the Salvation Army, talked sweetly to the child of the triumphant entry of their mother’s spirit into heaven, and of the putting away of the deserted body under the grass and the flowers where it would lie till the joyful resurrection.

Death had before this been connected with all that was squalid and mysterious and unlovely in the child’s mind—not a thing to be feared among people who led reckless lives, but rather to be hated and shunned.

When she at last left the Pavilion and put her hand in Camperdown’s for him to take her home, she remarked sagely, “I shall not mind dying, now that I am rich.”

CHAPTER XXXIV

A FOX CHASE

It was just dinner time at Pinewood. All the house doors and windows were open, and the sound of the gong reached the ears of a man who was mincing down the avenue. “Ha,” he said stopping short, “the honorable lady will be partaking of some comestibles. It will be advisable that I dally away the time till she shall be lured without by the refreshing delightsomeness of the evening.” And skirting the edge of the lawn and perceiving Joe he made his way down to the sunny slope.

“A handsome day, Mr. Lo,” he said, saluting the Indian, who raised his head to stare at him.

Joe responded by an “Ugh!” and bent again over a small rent in his upturned canoe. After a short silence his curiosity got the better of his reserve, and he said, “Why you call me Lo? I Joe.”

“‘Lo, the poor Indian,’ don’t you know the poetry?” asked MacDaly. “With me it is the generic and epidemic name for the aborigines of this province.”

Joe gave him a sleepy look from his dark eyes in which there was no hint of displeasure. “What you want?” he asked bluntly.

“I am about to enter upon, or in some way engage in a private interview with a certain favorably disposed personage distinguished by many gifts and graces, but whose name I will not take upon my unworthy lips,” said MacDaly; “but what have we here? The honorable Lady Stargarde must be in the vicinity, judging by the appearance of her scout.”

Mascarene, delighted as only a city dog who is kept in a close street can be when removed to open fields, came frisking and jumping down the incline. His frolic over, he fawned on Joe, who was intensely fond of him but scarcely glanced at him, and sniffed in a friendly manner around MacDaly who, while lauding him to the skies as a captivating canine, cared for him not at all.