Читать книгу The House of Armour - Saunders Marshall - Страница 11

Vivienne and Judy were in their sitting room reading by the light of a lamp on the table between them when the younger girl suddenly pricked up her ears.

“There’s a puffing, panting sound on the staircase,” she said, “as if a steam-tug were approaching. It must be your Irish friend. I’ll decamp, for I don’t want to see her.” She picked up her crutch and was about to flee to her bedroom when she was arrested by a succession of squeals.

“Holy powers save us,” moaned Mrs. Macartney bursting into the room. “There’s something odd about this house when the devil lives in the top story of it.”

“Thank you,” said Judy smartly; “perhaps you don’t know that these are my apartments.”

Mrs. Macartney did not hear her. Holding Vivienne’s hands, and half laughing, half crying, she was rocking herself to and fro.

“He had on a nightcap and a woman’s gown, and he goggled at me from an open door; and, me dear, his face was like a coal–”

“It’s Mammy Juniper that you’ve seen, dear Mrs. Macartney,” exclaimed Vivienne.

“And who is Mammy Juniper?” inquired her visitor, stopping short to stare at her.

“She’s an old family servant; sit down here and I’ll tell you about her.”

“Ah me; ah me,” wailed the Irish lady dropping on a sofa; “we don’t have people of her color in my peaceful home. Sure, I thought me last hour had come.”

“She is very black,” said Vivienne gravely; “and she despises the other colored people here. Mammy is a Maroon. Have you ever heard of that race?”

“Never, me dear; I didn’t want to.”

“They were a fierce and lawless people living in Jamaica,” said Vivienne; “and they fought the English and would not submit till they heard that they were to be hunted with dogs. Then they gave in and were transported here. They disliked Nova Scotia because they said there were no yams nor cocoanuts and bananas growing here, and no wild hogs to hunt; and the men couldn’t have as many wives as they chose, nor have cock-fighting; so the government sent them all to Africa; all but the parents of Mammy Juniper, and when they died she became a servant in this family.”

“A fearsome body for a servant,” said her hearer; “aren’t you terrified of her, me dear?”

“No,” said Vivienne; “she is more afraid of me than I am of her. I am sorry for her.”

“Don’t talk about her, me child,” said Mrs. Macartney with a shudder. “Talk about yourself. Aren’t you shamming ill with that rosy face?”

“I’m not ill,” said Vivienne lightly. “This is only a feverish cold; but Dr. Camperdown won’t let me go downstairs.”

“I was determined to see you,” said Mrs. Macartney, pulling Vivienne beside her to the sofa. “I thickened the air with hints that I’d like to come up, but Mrs. Colonibel tried to frighten me with tales of the badness of your cold.”

“She doesn’t like me to have callers up here, for some reason,” said Vivienne.

“She likes to be contrary, me dear. ’Tis the breath of life to her, and maybe she’s jealous of your handsome room”—looking admiringly about her—"which is the most elegant of the house. Your whites and golds don’t slap me in the face like the colors downstairs. That’s the lady of the mansion’s good pleasure, I suppose. Ah, but she is a fine woman!"

The inimitable toss of her head as she pronounced this praise of Mrs. Colonibel and the waggish roll of her eyes to the ceiling made Vivienne press her handkerchief to her lips to keep from laughter that she feared might reach Judy’s ears.

“I wish you could have seen her ladyship yesterday when she came to invite us to this dinner, me dear,” said Mrs. Macartney with a twisting of her mouth. “The boy at the hotel brought up her card—Mrs. Colonibel. ‘That’s the Lady Proudface,’ said I, and I went to the drawing room; and there she stood, and rushed at me like this–” and Mrs. Macartney rising from the sofa charged heavily across the room at an unoffending table which staggered on its legs at her onset.

Vivienne half started from her seat then fell back again laughing spasmodically. “Me dear,” said Mrs. Macartney looking over her shoulder at her, “she thought to make up by the warmth of her second greeting for the coldness of her first. She said she wanted us all to come and dine en famille, to celebrate the engagement, so I thought I’d tease her and talk French too; so I said, ‘Wouldn’t we be de trop? and you mustn’t suppose we belonged to the élite of the world, for we were plain people and didn’t care a rap for the opinion of the beau monde.’ You should have seen her face! And then I took pity on her and said we’d come. And come we did; and I’d give a kingdom if you could see Patrick and Geoffrey. They’re sitting beside Mrs. Colonibel, bowing and smirking at everything she says, and she’s thinking she’s mighty entertaining, and when we get home they’ll both growl and say they were bored to death, and why didn’t I tell them you weren’t to be present. Me dear, I didn’t dare to,” in a stage whisper, and looking over her shoulder. “They’d never have come.”

“Is Mrs. Colonibel not at all embarrassed with you?” said Vivienne. “She was not polite to you the other day, though of course it was on my account, not on yours.”

“Embarrassed, did you say, me dear?” replied Mrs. Macartney gayly. “Faith, there’s no such word in society. You must keep a bold front, whatever you do, or you’ll get the gossips after you. Dip your tongue in honey or gall, whichever you like, and hold your head high, and there’s no such thing as quailing before the face of mortal man or woman. Drop your head on your breast and go through the world, and you’ll have the fingers pointed at you. Me Lady Proudface is the woman to get on. If you’d seen the way she took the news of your engagement you’d have fallen at her feet in admiration.”

“She suppressed her disapproval,” said Vivienne.

“Disapproval, me child. ’Twas like salt to her eyeballs; but she never winked. Hasn’t she said anything to you about it?”

“No; we rarely have any conversations.”

“Ah, she’d have but a limited supply of compliments left after her flowery words to me. By the way, did you get the grand bouquet that Geoffrey sent to you?”

“Yes; it is over there by the window.”

“He’s desolated not to see you, as the French people say; but hist, me dear, there’s some one at the door. Maybe it’s her ladyship. I’ll go into this adjacent room.”

“No, no; stay here,” exclaimed Vivienne with an apprehensive glance at the narrow doorway leading to her sleeping apartment. “It does not matter who comes.”

“It’s only I,” said a meek voice, and Dr. Camperdown’s sandy head appeared, shortly followed by the rest of his body.

Mrs. Macartney, not heeding Vivienne’s advice, had tried to enter the next room, and had become firmly wedged in the doorway. Dr. Camperdown was obliged to go to her assistance, and when he succeeded in releasing her she looked at him with such a variety of amusing expressions chasing themselves over her face that he grinned broadly and turned away.

“Who is this gentleman?” said Mrs. Macartney at last breathlessly, with gratitude, and yet with a certain repugnance to the physician on account of his ugly looks.

Vivienne performed the necessary introduction, and Mrs. Macartney ejaculated, “Ah, your doctor. Perhaps,” jocularly, “I may offer myself to him as a patient.” Then as Dr. Camperdown took Vivienne’s wrist in his hand she bent over him with an interested air and said, “It’s me flesh, doctor. I don’t know what to do about it. The heavens seem to rain it down upon me—flake upon flake, layer upon layer. I’ve been rubbed and tubbed, and grilled and stewed, and done Banting, and taken Anti-fats, and yet it goes on increasing. Every morning there’s more of it, and every evening it grows upon me. I have to swing and tumble and surge about me bed to get impetus enough to roll out; it’s awful, doctor!”

Vivienne listened to her in some surprise, for up to this she had not imagined that Mrs. Macartney felt the slightest uneasiness in regard to her encumbrance of flesh. But there was real anxiety in her tones now, and Vivienne listened with interest for the doctor’s reply.

“What do you eat?” he said abruptly, and with a swift glance at her smooth, fair expanse of cheek and chin.

“Three fairish meals a day,” she said, “and a supper at night.”

“How much do you walk?”

“Sure, I never walk at all if I can get a carriage.”

He laughed shortly, and said nothing.

“What do you think about it, doctor—is it a dangerous case?” said Mrs. Macartney, twisting her head so that she could look at his face as he bent over his work. Vivienne saw that she was immensely impressed by his oracular manner of delivering himself.

“Do you want me to prescribe for you?” he asked, straightening himself with a suddenness that made his prospective patient start nervously.

“Ah, yes, doctor, please,” she said.

“Begin then by dropping the supper, avoid fats, sweets, anything starchy. Walk till you are ready to drop; heart’s all right is it?”

“Ah, yes,” pathetically, and with a flicker of her customary waggishness, “my heart’s always been my strong point, doctor.”

“Report to me at my office,” he went on; “come in a week.”

She shuffled to her feet, her face considerably brighter. “You’ve laid me under an obligation, doctor. If you’ll make me a shadow smaller, I’ll pray for the peace of your soul. And now I must go, me dear,” she said, looking at Vivienne, “or I’ll be missed from the drawing room. I crept away you know.”

Vivienne smiled. Mrs. Colonibel had probably watched her climbing the staircase.

“I must go too,” said Dr. Camperdown, rising as Mrs. Macartney left the room. “You’ll be all right in a day or two, Miss Delavigne. Mind, we’re to be friends.”

Vivienne looked up gratefully into his sharp gray eyes. “You are very good to come and see me.”

“Armour asked me to,” he said shortly.

“Judy told him that I was ill,” said Vivienne. “I scolded her a little, because I did not think I really needed a doctor.”

“You are a proud little thing,” he remarked abruptly.

Vivienne’s black eyes sought his face in some surprise.

“You can’t get on in this world without help,” he continued. “Be kind to other people and let others be kind to you. How do you and Mrs. Colonibel agree?”

“Passably.”

“Don’t give in to her too much,” he said. “A snub does some people more good than a sermon. Good-night,” and he disappeared abruptly.