Читать книгу The House of Armour - Saunders Marshall - Страница 2

A bright-faced lad with dark blue Irish eyes and glossy hair came hurrying down the deck, his hands thrust into the pockets of his long ulster, his whole expression that of one suffering from extreme cold.

“Are you frostproof,” he exclaimed, “that you stand here motionless in this stinging air? I am not surprised at you, Miss Delavigne,” and he made her a low bow, “as you are a Canadian, but I marvel at Geoffrey,” and he glanced at his brother, “fresh from India’s suns as he is. Shall we not have a last promenade, mademoiselle? The cold is biting me like a dog.”

Vivienne laughed and placed herself beside him, while Captain Macartney murmured, “There go our guns; we are announcing ourselves.”

“Will you not tell me, Miss Delavigne,” said the boy in a confidential tone of voice, “about this matter of signaling? I have asked Geoffrey several times, but he only grunts like an Irish pig, and gives me no answer.”

“With all my heart, Mr. Patrick,” said the girl with a businesslike air. “From the outposts at the harbor mouth every vessel is reported to the citadel.”

“What is the citadel?” he asked.

“It is the fort on the hill in the middle of the town.”

“What a quarrelsome set you Halifax people must be,” said the boy, “to require so many fortifications and such a number of redcoats to keep you in order.”

“Not for ourselves do we need them, Mr. Patrick,” she said teasingly, “but for our troublesome guests from the old country.” Then hastily, to avoid the wordy warfare that he was eager to plunge into, she went on. “Up there is an island that is all fort.”

“Shades of my uncle the general!” he said; “can that be so? Let us go forward and see it.”

“A French vice-admiral who ran himself through with his sword is buried on it,” said Vivienne, as they proceeded slowly along the deck.

“Hush!” said the boy. “What is mamma doing?”

Vivienne smiled broadly. Mrs. Macartney, the good-hearted, badly educated daughter of a rich but vulgar Dublin merchant, was a constant source of amusement to her. Just now she was waddling down the deck, driving before her a little dapper Nova Scotian gentleman who had become known to them on the passage as excessively polite, excessively shy, and, like Vivienne, excessively patriotic.

Hovering over her victim like a great good-natured bird she separated him from a group of people standing near, and motioned him into the shadow of a suspended lifeboat.

“Ducky, ducky, come and be killed,” said Patrick wickedly. “Do you know what mamma is going to do, Miss Delavigne?”

“No, I do not.”

“She is going to cross-question that man about Canada in such a ladylike, inane way that he won’t know whether he’s on his head or his heels. Come and listen.”

“Mrs. Macartney may not like it.”

“Yes, she will; the more the merrier. Come along.”

Vivienne laughed and followed him near the Irish lady, who was preposterously and outrageously fat. A living tide was slowly rolling over her, obliterating all landmarks of a comely person. Her ankles were effaced; her waist was gone. Her wrists had disappeared, and her neck had sunk into her shoulders. Cheeks and chin were a wide crimson expanse, yet her lazy, handsome blue eyes looked steadily out, in no wise affrighted by the oncoming sea of flesh.

“Mamma always does this,” said Patrick gleefully. “She doesn’t know any more about geography than a tabby cat, and she won’t learn till she gets to a place. Look at the little man writhing before her. She has called his dear land Nova Zembla six times. Listen to him.”

“Madam,” the Nova Scotian was saying, “this is Nova Scotia. Nova Zembla is situated in the Arctic regions. It is a land of icebergs and polar bears. I scarcely think it has any inhabitants.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Mrs. Macartney, shaking her portly person with a good-natured laugh. “The names are so much alike that they confuse me. I only know that one is a cold place and the other a warm one, that one is in North America and the other in South.”

“Madam,” he said desperately, and shifting his feet about on a coil of rope on which he had taken refuge, “Nova Zembla is in the north of Europe. We are in North America.”

“Are we?” she said amiably; “then we haven’t come to Canada yet?”

“Oh yes, madam, we have. Nova Scotia is in Canada, in the lower southeastern part—nearest England you know. It is the last in the line of provinces that stretch from the Pacific to the Atlantic.”

At the mention of the Pacific, Mrs. Macartney’s lumbering fancy attempted to take flight to the coral groves of Oceanica. “I did not know that Canada bordered on the Pacific,” she returned dubiously. “How near is it?”

“Just three thousand six hundred and sixty-two miles away, madam. The continent lies between us.”

“Oh indeed,” with relief; “and Canada you say extends all the way across.”

“Yes, madam.”

“And it is made up of different provinces?”

“Yes, madam; they have been confederated.”

“And this one is called Nova Scotia?”

“Yes, madam.”

“And how large may it be?” cajolingly; “half as large as one of our Irish provinces?”

“Madam,” trembling with indignation, “Nova Scotia, with the island at its northeastern extremity, has only about ten thousand square miles of area less than all Ireland with every province in it.”

“Bless me!” she exclaimed in unmitigated surprise. Then after a long pause, and with less assurance, “The island, I suppose, is Newfoundland?”

“No, madam,” dejectedly. “Newfoundland is away to the northeast of us—a two days’ voyage from here.”

Mrs. Macartney, a trifle abashed, decided to abandon the somewhat dangerous ground of Canada’s geographical position, and confine herself to general remarks. She started out gallantly on a new career. “This a fine place to live in, I suppose—plenty of sport. You have hunting and fishing all the year round, don’t you?”

Somewhat mollified he assented unqualifiedly to this. Following the law of association, she dragged from some recess in her mind another less pleasing feature of the hunting world in Canada, which she had somewhere and at some time heard mentioned. “Do the Indians cause you very much trouble?” she asked sympathetically.

“No, madam; our aborigines are a very peaceful set.”

“How long may it be since your last massacre?”

“I don’t quite catch your meaning, madam.”

“Don’t you have risings and rebellions? I had some cousins living in Halifax when I was a girl—army people they were, and they told me that they used to shoot Indians from their bedroom windows.”

At this point the little man gave tokens of a general collapse.

“Perhaps they said bears—I really believe they did,” Mrs. Macartney added hastily, by way of restoring his suspended animation; “in fact I am sure they did, and,” confusedly, “I think they said the bears came in from the forests after dark, and went about the streets to pick up the scraps thrown from the houses, and it was quite a common thing to see a night-capped head at a window with a gun in its hand–” she stopped delightedly, for the little man was not only himself again, but was laughing spasmodically.

“Madam,” he gasped at length, “our native Indians fought vigorously when this province was a battleground between England and France. Since the founding of this city they have gradually calmed down, till now they are meeker than sheep. We have only a few thousands of them, and they are scattered all over the province, living in camps in the woods, or in small settlements. They never do anybody any harm.”

“It does my heart good to hear that,” said Mrs. Macartney, with a jovial laugh. “Truth to tell, my scalp has been feeling a trifle loose on my head since we came in sight of this country. And if the Indians don’t worry you now,” insinuatingly, “I daresay you are able to make quite a civilized town of Halifax.”

He stifled a laugh. “We try to, madam.”

This answer was too indefinite to suit Mrs. Macartney. A suspicion was gaining ground in her mind that Halifax was not the military camp and collection of log houses that she had thought it to be.

“How many people are there in the town?” she inquired guilelessly.

“About forty thousand, madam.”

“In Halifax?” she asked hesitatingly, “or in the whole province?”

“In Halifax, madam. There are over four hundred and forty thousand in the province.”

Mrs. Macartney was considerably staggered. “And do you have shops and hotels and churches?”

“All three, madam.”

“I had an idea that Canadians sent to England for all the necessaries of life.”

“Just turn around, madam,” said the Nova Scotian.

Mrs. Macartney had opened her mouth to make another remark, but the words died away on her lips.

Stretching along the western shore a busy, prosperous town presented itself to her gaze. Like all other towns it must be somewhat grimy and dirty in the light of day. At night, with the moon hanging over it and myriad lights flashing from the tiers of buildings rising one above another on the slope of a long hill, it was like a fairy city.

All along the shore were rows of wooden wharves running out into the harbor where there were moored ocean steamers, coasting vessels, fishing boats, ferry steamers, tugboats, and tiny skiffs, some of which darted gayly in and out among the wharves. Some of the ships were brightly lighted, and people could be seen moving about on them.

“Surely, surely,” said Mrs. Macartney, turning to her companion in unfeigned amazement, “I have been misinformed about Canada. One of its provinces is larger than Ireland, and its chief town, if you shut your eyes, would make you think that you were looking at Dublin itself. Sure, I feel like the Queen of Sheba,” and with a comical twinkle in her eye, she turned around to see who had laid a hand on her arm.

Her son Patrick stood before her. “And I feel like King Solomon,” he exclaimed; “so many unruly ladies to take care of. Miss Delavigne won’t come below to look after her traps. Mamma, will you come and point out yours to me?”

“Indeed, no, my son,” said the lady amiably; “you weren’t here just now when I wanted you, and I had to apply to this gentleman,” with a bow to the Nova Scotian. “I’m going to see further sights,” and she waddled toward a better place of observation.