Читать книгу The House of Armour - Saunders Marshall - Страница 3

One of the long wharves was sprinkled with people watching the “Acadian” come in from the sea. Custom-house officials were there, wharf laborers, sailors, loafers, and at the very end of the wharf was a group of fur-clad individuals who were laughing, joking, stamping their feet, or pacing briskly up and down while waiting to welcome the friends and relatives drawing so near to them.

With them, yet a little apart from them, stood a man who did not move from his place and who seemed indifferent to the extreme cold. He was wrapped in a black fur coat, and a cap of the same material—a fine and costly Persian lamb—was pulled down over his brows.

His pale, cold face was turned toward the “Acadian,” and his blue eyes scanned without emotion the people hurrying to and fro on her decks.

When the steamer swung around toward the wharf, he watched the gangways being thrown out and the living tide pouring down them and overflowing in all directions. The air was full of greetings. Mothers and fathers, lovers and friends, were looking into each others’ eyes, and embracing one another tenderly. Then the first gush of salutation over their thoughts reverted to business. In a mass the passengers precipitated themselves upon the custom officials and eagerly watched for and identified their luggage as it was rapidly hoisted from the hold of the steamer to the wharf.

The man in the fur coat pressed his way through the throng of people and gained the deck of the steamer. The Macartneys and Vivienne Delavigne stood together.

The girl saw him coming, went to meet him, and putting out her hand said, “How do you do, Mr. Armour?”

Composed as his face usually was she yet caught an almost instantly repressed look of repulsion. Unspeakably chilled by it and the brevity and stiffness of his greeting, yet too proud and philosophical to show the slightest sign of disappointment, she said steadily:

“This is Mrs. Macartney, who has been kind enough to chaperon me across the Atlantic.”

Mr. Armour bowed politely, his cap in his hand. Captain Macartney she found to her surprise he already knew, though he spoke to him almost as formally as if they had never met before.

Patrick, after a searching glance at Mr. Armour, turned away muttering, “Iceberg!”

When Mr. Armour in a few brief sentences thanked Mrs. Macartney for her kindness to his ward, she said cheerfully: “She’s one of the right sort is Miss Delavigne. She is the only girl I have ever seen that would have satisfied my old grandmother. I was the one that never could please her.” Mr. Armour stared slightly at her as if he did not understand what she was saying, then turning to Vivienne he said shortly, “What luggage have you?”

“Four boxes,” she replied; “black ones with V. D. on the covers.”

“Will you come with me to find them?” he said, and after a brief leavetaking of the Macartneys he preceded her to the gangway.

Vivienne looked regretfully over her shoulders. Mrs. Macartney waved her hand good-naturedly, Captain Macartney smiled and lifted his cap, and Patrick blew a kiss from the tips of his fingers and exclaimed, "Au revoir, mademoiselle."

However they met again. After a time, borne to and fro in the surgings of the crowd, they found themselves in the shed where the luggage had been taken to be examined. Vivienne was a short distance from Mrs. Macartney, who had seated herself on a box that she recognized as her own. Neither Captain Macartney nor Patrick was in sight and she was surveying in huge amusement the scene of civilized confusion so different from the picture of their arrival that her fancy had conjured up—a few logs thrown out in the water, their descent thereupon, and welcome by swarms of half-clad savages dancing around, their tomahawks in hand.

With an amiable interest in the affairs of every one with whom she came in contact, the Irish lady gazed attentively at a custom-house official near her with whom a Halifax maiden was reasoning, vainly endeavoring to persuade him that there was nothing dutiable in her half a dozen open trunks, which looked suspiciously like containing a wedding trousseau.

Mrs. Macartney at intervals took a hand in the argument, and looking sympathetically at a heap of new kid gloves that the officer had just drawn from some hidden recess, she remarked in a wheedling voice: “What’s the good of being under the English flag if one is so particular about bits of things like that. Come now, officer, let them pass. I’m sure the duty on them is a mere trifle.”

“Thirty-five per cent,” he said, throwing up his head to look at her.

Her thoughts reverted to herself and she exclaimed: “Faith, I’ll be ruined! Have I got to pay you that for the privilege of covering my hands in cold weather?”

“Yes’m,” he said smartly, “that is if your gloves have not been worn.” Then fixing her with his appraising eye, as if he gathered from her comfortable appearance that she might be one to indulge in soft raiment and fine linen, he rattled off a list of articles which she would have done well to have left behind her.

“We’ve got to protect our merchants, madam. If you’ve brought any description of silk gloves, kid gloves, mitts, silk plush, netting used for manufacture of gloves, we’ll assess you. If you’ve any silk cords, tassel girdles, silk velvets except church vestments–”

“That’s a very likely thing for me to have,” she interrupted indignantly.

“Silk manufactures,” he said, “including gros grains, satins, sarcenet, Persians, poplins, ribbons, shawls, ties, scarfs, bows, handkerchiefs, mantillas,–” and he gabbled on till his breath failed him.

Mrs. Macartney was speechless for the first time in her life. She turned from him with a shudder, as if to say, you are a dangerous man, and hailed an agile young official who was pursuing a comet-like career over trunks and boxes and leaving a trail of white chalk marks behind him.

At her signal he bore down upon her box with bewildering rapidity, opened it, and with long cunning fingers extracted therefrom every dutiable article. The new gloves still stitched together, the silk and linen and dainty trifles still in the wrappers in which they had come from the Dublin shops, lay in a heap before him.

“Twenty dollars,” he ejaculated, and she had with his assistance mechanically abstracted from her purse a sufficient amount of the foreign currency to pay him, and he had given her box the pass mark and was away before she realized the extent of the weakness which she had displayed in not uttering one word of protest.

With a sigh of dismay she turned and met Vivienne’s eye. They had had many jokes together and with a simultaneous impulse they began to laugh.

“’Tis a country of surprises, me dear girl,” said Mrs. Macartney wagging her head. “Ah, Geoffrey, hear a tale of distress,” and looking at Captain Macartney, who suddenly appeared before them, she poured her troubles in his always sympathetic ear.

Vivienne was listening with interest when amid all the bustle and excitement she felt her guardian’s cold eye upon her.

“Your boxes are marked,” he said; “will you come now?”

With a hasty good-bye to her friends the girl followed him from the building.

A few sleighs and cabs were drawn up in the shadow of a square warehouse that stood at the head of the wharf. Before one of these sleighs Mr. Armour stopped. A coachman in an enormous fur cape and with his head half hidden in a heavy cap hurried from his seat and went to the horse’s head.

Mr. Armour assisted Vivienne into the sleigh, then gathered up the reins in his hands and placed himself beside her. The coachman sprang to the back seat and they passed slowly under a black archway and emerged into long Water Street that follows closely the line of wharves running from one end of the old colonial town to the other.

Once upon the street the horse, a beautiful black creature, impatient from his long time of waiting and feeling lively in the keen frosty air, struck into a quicker pace. Smoothly and swiftly they slipped over the snowy streets, sometimes between rows of lighted shops whose windows sparkled with frost, and sometimes by dwelling houses whose partly closed curtains afforded tantalizing glimpses of light and good cheer within.

The girl’s heart beat rapidly. Home—home—the magic word was ringing in her ears. Earnestly peering out from her wraps to observe what changes had taken place during her absence, she scarcely noticed the silence of the man beside her, except when some eager question leaped to her lips and was instantly repressed by an upward glance at his frigid face.

Cold as a statue, dumb as a mummy, he sat. One might have thought him a dead man but for his handling of the whip and reins. He seemed to be plunged in a profound and painful reverie, and did not once break the silence from the time of their leaving the wharf until their arrival within sight of his own house.

They had passed beyond the city limits and on each side of them stretched wide snowy fields bounded by low stone walls. They were approaching the shores of the Arm, where many of the merchants of the town had erected substantial, comfortable houses for themselves.

When they stopped before a gate and the man jumped out to open it, Mr. Armour pulled himself together with an effort and looked down at Vivienne with a confused, “I beg your pardon.”

“I did not speak,” she said calmly.

“I thought you did,” he replied; then touching his horse with the whip they again set out on their way, this time along a winding road bordered by evergreens.

“It was kind in you to come and meet me,” said Vivienne when they drew up before a large, square white house with brilliantly lighted windows.

Mr. Armour murmured some unintelligible reply that convinced her he had not heard what she said.

“What curious behavior,” she reflected. “He must be ill.”

Mr. Armour was looking at the closed sleigh standing before the door.

“Who is going out to-night?” he asked of the man.

“Mrs. Colonibel and Colonel Armour, sir,” said the coachman touching his cap. “There is a ball at Government House.”

Mr. Armour turned to Vivienne and extended a helping hand, then drawing a latchkey from his pocket he threw open a large inner door.

Vivienne stepped in—stepped from the bitter cold of a Canadian winter night to the warmth and comfort of tropical weather. The large square hall was full of a reddish light. Heavy curtains, whose prevailing color was red, overhung each doorway. A group of tall palms stood in one corner and against them was placed the tinted statue of a lacrosse player. Pictures of Canadian scenery hung on the walls and over two of the doorways hung the heads and branching antlers of Nova Scotian moose.

Her quiet scrutiny of the hall over she found Mr. Armour was regarding her with a look of agitation on his usually impassive face.

“Will you be kind enough to take off your hat?” he said; “it shades your face.”

The girl looked at him in surprise and removed the large felt hat that she wore. Somewhat to her amusement she discovered a huge mirror mounted on a marble bracket at her elbow. A passing glance at it showed that her smooth black hair was not dishevelled, but was coiled in the symmetrical rolls imperiously demanded by Dame Fashion as she reigned in Paris. Her face beneath was dark and glowing, her eyes composed as she would have them, and her resemblance to her dead father was extraordinary.

She looked expectantly at Mr. Armour. He bit his lip and without speaking drew aside a velvet portière with a hand shaking from some strong and overmastering emotion and signed to her to enter the drawing room.