Читать книгу The House of Armour - Saunders Marshall - Страница 4

Vivienne advanced a few paces and looked into a luxuriously furnished apartment, whose prevailing glimmer of red caught and held her eye painfully.

Two gentlemen, the one old, the other young, were seated in arm-chairs drawn up on each side of the blazing fire. They were both in evening dress and both held newspapers in their hands. The younger man lifted up his eyes, threw a glance of unmitigated astonishment, first at Mr. Armour then at Vivienne, and rose hurriedly from his seat.

Vivienne scarcely noticed him. Her attention was directed to Colonel Armour, who looked for an instant not the well-preserved man of sixty that he aspired to be, but the much older man that he really was.

He started nervously, his face turned a sickly yellow, and he clutched the arms of his chair as if unable to raise himself. But it was only for a brief space of time. He regained his composure and stood up, towering a whole head above his sons, who were by no means short men. Leaning one hand heavily on the back of his chair he fixed his eye-glass in place and staring at his elder son said with emphasis: “One of your pleasant surprises, eh, Stanton? Will you introduce me to this young lady?”

The pleading, almost agonized expression with which Mr. Armour had regarded his father died away.

“Do you not know her?” he said in a harsh, sad voice.

“H’m—judging from a faint resemblance” (and here the suspicion of a sneer passed over Colonel Armour’s features), “I should say that she might be related to a young man once in my employ.”

Vivienne watched the two men with breathless interest. At last she stood face to face with her guardians, and to Colonel Armour, as head of the house, some acknowledgment was due. Therefore when Mr. Armour turned to her with the words, “Allow me to present to you, Miss Delavigne, my father, Colonel Armour, and my brother Valentine,” she made them each a pretty salutation and said gracefully that she was rejoiced to have the opportunity of thanking them for their kindness to her through so many years.

Colonel Armour stared at her through his gold-rimmed glass and Mr. Valentine, after making her a profound bow, stood bolt upright and confided to his moustache: “No raw schoolgirl this; a most self-possessed young person. What will Flora say? Merciful heaven, here she is!”

A portly, golden-headed woman, whose beauty was beginning to wane, stood motionless in the doorway. One hand was clutched in the shining satin folds of her dress, while with the other she held up an ostrich fan, over which her large blue eyes peered wrathfully at the girl’s slim, graceful figure.

“Flora!” ejaculated Mr. Armour warningly.

The lady started, dropped her fan to her side, and burst into an hysterical laugh. “How you startled me! I did not know that there was a stranger present. Who is this young lady?”

“You know who she is,” said Mr. Armour severely, while Mr. Valentine muttered wickedly, “Ananias and Sapphira.”

“It is Miss Delavigne, I suppose,” she replied peevishly; “but why did you not let us know that she was coming by this steamer? I was unprepared. How do you do?” and she extended her finger tips to Vivienne. “Did you have a good passage? You must have some tea. I will speak to the servants,” and she disappeared.

In a few minutes she returned, a shining, sparkling vision, and quite mistress of herself. “I have spoken to the table maid; she will see that you are attended to. Will you excuse us if we leave you? We have an engagement for this evening, and I have to pick up a friend on the way.”

“I should be sorry to keep you,” said Vivienne calmly; “and I am tired and would like to go to bed.”

“A room is being made ready for you,” said Mrs. Colonibel graciously. “I hope that you may sleep well. Come Uncle and Valentine, we are late.”

Colonel Armour and Mr. Valentine came from the room, drew on fur topcoats, and with a polite good-night to Mr. Armour and Vivienne left them standing in the hall.

At their departure Mr. Armour fell into a kind of reverie that lasted some minutes. Then he pulled himself together, apologetically ushered Vivienne into the dining room, and bowed himself away.

Vivienne sat at the table drinking tea and eating bread and butter and wondering languidly what Mrs. Colonibel had said to the fat maid-servant, who was waiting on her in great curiosity and some slight disrespect.

“I have finished,” she said at length, fixing her large, dark eyes on the woman who was trotting aimlessly between the table and the sideboard. “Will you show me to my room?”

“Yes, miss,” said the woman shortly, and gathering together Vivienne’s wraps she conducted her up a broad, easy staircase to a second square hall, also luxuriously furnished and having a circular opening which looked down on the one below it.

“The pink room’s been got ready for you, miss,” said the woman, throwing open the door of a chamber blazing with rose color.

Vivienne half shut her dazzled eyes and walked into it.

“The coachman’s going to bring up your boxes when he comes from the stable,” said the maid. “Can I do anything for you?”

“No, thank you,” said Vivienne; “you may bring me some hot water in the morning.”

“It’s here,” said the woman briefly, and walking behind a screen she pointed to a basin with shining faucets.

“That is nice, to have hot water pipes in one’s room,” said Vivienne.

“It’s all over the house,” said the woman, and after hanging Vivienne’s cloak in a closet she withdrew.

The girl walked to the window and looked out at the snow-laden trees. “It seems I wasn’t expected,” she murmured sadly. “It seems to me I’m lonely,” she continued, and putting up her hands to her eyes she tried to check the tears falling from them.

A few hours later she was sleeping a light, unhappy sleep in her huge pink bed, her mother’s portrait pressed to her breast. Suddenly the portrait seemed to turn to a tombstone, that was crushing her to death.

She awoke, gasping for breath, and lifting her heavy eyelids saw that some one was standing over her and that a heavy hand was laid on her breast. She pushed the hand aside and sat up.

Such an ugly, grotesque figure of a black woman as stood over her; her face like midnight, her features large and protruding, a white nightcap perched on the top of her grizzled tufts of hair, bunches of white cotton wool sticking out of her ears, a padded dressing-gown enveloping her shaky limbs, her trembling fingers shading her candle.

“You are dropping wax on my bed,” said the girl coolly.

The old woman’s face contracted with rage, and drawing back she looked as if she were about to hurl her brass candlestick at the occupant of the bed.

“You cannot frighten me,” said Vivienne proudly; “do not try it.”

The black woman burst into a series of revilings and imprecations mixed with references to fire and brimstone, coffins, murderers, fiery chariots, and burning in torment, to which Vivienne listened with curled lip.

“You are a capital hater, Mammy Jupiter,” she said ironically, “and I suppose the vials of your wrath have been filling up all these years. But I really wish you would not disturb me in the middle of the night.”

The colored woman glared at her. Then depositing her candlestick on the floor she knelt on a small rug and began to sway and groan, bending herself almost double in her paroxysm of wrath.

“Poor soul,” said Vivienne, turning her head aside, “her attention has wandered from me. I suppose it is a shock to her to find the daughter of Étienne Delavigne in one of the beds of the sacred house of Armour. But I must be firm.”

Mammy Juniper was apostrophizing some absent person under the name of Ephraim. In spite of the coldness of the room where Vivienne had thrown open the window, the perspiration streamed down her face. In a fierce, low voice and with a wildly swaying body she chanted dismally, “O Ephraim, thou art oppressed and broken in judgment. Because Ephraim hath made many altars to sin altars shall be unto him to sin. Thy glory shall fly away like a bird. Ephraim shall receive shame—shall receive shame.”

“I wonder who Ephraim is?” murmured Vivienne.

Mammy Juniper was wringing her hands with an appearance of the greatest agony. “Though they bring up their children, yet will I bereave them, that there shall not be a man left. Ephraim shall bring forth his children to the murderer—to the murderer! oh, my God!” Her voice sank to a husky whisper. She fell forward and pressed for an instant the knotted veins of her throbbing forehead to the cold floor.

Then she sprang to her feet, and extending her clasped hands and in a voice rising to the tones of passionate entreaty exclaimed, “Take with you words and turn to the Lord. He shall grow as the lily and cast forth his roots like as Lebanon; his beauty shall be as the olive tree. Ephraim shall say, ‘What have I to do any more with idols?’”

“Mammy Juniper,” said Vivienne, “this is enough. If you want to recite any more passages from the Bible go to your own room.”

The old woman paid no attention to her.

“Go!” said Vivienne, springing from the bed and pointing to the candlestick.

Mammy Juniper mowed horribly at her, yet like a person fascinated by a hated object, she stretched out her hand, took the light, and began to retreat backward from the room.

Vivienne gazed steadily at her. “See, I shall not lock my door,” she said nonchalantly, “and I shall be asleep in ten minutes; but don’t you come back again. Do you hear?”

The old woman made an inarticulate sound of rage.

“You understand me,” said Vivienne. “Now go to bed,” and waving the disturber of her peace over the threshold she noiselessly closed the door.