Читать книгу The House of Armour - Saunders Marshall - Страница 8

At ten o’clock on the evening of the day that Captain Macartney made his call on Dr. Camperdown Judy was restlessly hitching herself up and down the big front hall at Pinewood.

“Oh, that crutch!” ejaculated Mrs. Colonibel, who was playing cards with Valentine in the drawing room; “how I hate to hear it.”

“Don’t you like to hear your offspring taking a little exercise?” he asked tantalizingly.

“Not when she’s waiting for that detestable French girl,” said Mrs. Colonibel. “I do wish Stanton would send her away.”

“Everything comes to her who waits,” said Valentine. “The trouble is with you women that you won’t wait. Play, cousin.”

“Here she is,” exclaimed Judy, and she flung open the door with a joyful, “Welcome home.”

Vivienne was just getting out of a sleigh. “Ah, Judy, how kind of you to wait for me,” she said. “Did you get my note?”

“Yes; but nobody asked where you were except mamma.”

Vivienne’s face clouded slightly, then it brightened again. “Where is Mr. Armour?”

“In the library; he always spends his evenings there.”

“I wish to speak to him. Do you think I could go in.”

“Yes; what do you want to say?”

“I will tell you afterward,” and with a smile Vivienne let her cloak slip from her shoulders and knocked at a near door.

Judy with her head on one side like a little cat listened to the brief “Come in,” then as Vivienne disappeared from view she spun round and round the hall in a kind of dance.

“What is the matter with you?” asked her mother, coming from the drawing room.

Judy stopped. “I have a pain in my mind.”

“What kind of a pain, Judy?” asked Valentine, looking over Mrs. Colonibel’s shoulder.

“A joyful pain.”

“Miss Delavigne has gone upstairs, has she?” asked Mrs. Colonibel.

“Yes, she came in,” said Judy evasively.

“Why don’t you go to bed?” continued her mother.

“Because I choose to stay here and read,” and Judy seizing a book flung herself on a divan.

“Well, I am going,” said Mrs. Colonibel; “goodnight,” and she turned toward the staircase.

Valentine tossed a cap on his black head and opening a door leading to a veranda ran swiftly down a snowy path to the cottage.

When Vivienne entered the library Mr. Armour looked up in some surprise and with a faint trace of annoyance.

“I hope I am not disturbing you,” she said politely.

“Not at all,” and he turned his back on the table bestrewn with papers and invited her by a wave of the hand to sit down.

He stood himself leaning one elbow on the mantel, and looked curiously down at her as she sat glancing about at the book-cases and the rose and ashen hangings of his handsome room.

What a strangely self-possessed girl she was. Could he think of another who would come boldly into his presence and demand an interview with his own dignified self? No, he could not. Well, she was a foreigner. How he hated the type; the smooth black bands of hair, the level heavy eyebrows, the burning eyes. What havoc a face like this had already wrought in his family, and he shaded his eyes with his hand and averted them from her as she ejaculated:

“I beg your pardon for keeping you. I will say what I wish very shortly. I have just come from dining with the Macartneys.”

“At their hotel?”

“Yes.”

“I wish that you had consulted me,” he said in his most chilling manner. “Hotels are public places for young girls.”

“Not when they are under proper chaperonage,” she said gently; “and really I did not suppose that you took any interest in my movements.”

He glanced suspiciously at her, but saw that there was no hint of fault-finding in her manner.

“I have come in this evening to tell you something that I know will please you,” she said.

Something to please him—he wondered in a dull way what it was.

“Captain Macartney wishes to marry me,” she said.

He stared incredulously at her. “Captain Macartney!”

“Yes; he asked me this evening.”

He pondered over the news for some instants in silence, then he said, “Why do you say that this will please me?”

Vivienne looked steadily at him. “Mr. Armour, you cannot conceal the fact from me that I am a great burden to you.”

“A great burden,” he repeated frigidly. “Surely you forget yourself, Miss Delavigne.”

“No, no,” she replied with animation. “Do not be vexed with me, Mr. Armour; I am just beginning to understand things. You know that I have no father and mother. When I was a little girl away across the sea, and the other children went home for their holidays, I used to cry to think that I had no home. When I got older I found out from your letters that you did not wish me to come. I was surprised that you at last sent for me, but yet delighted, for I thought, even if the Armours do not care for me I shall be in my native land, I shall never leave it; yet, yet–”

She paused for an instant and seemed to be struggling with some emotion. Mr. Armour raised his heavy eyelids just long enough to glance at her, then dropped them again. His eyes carried the picture to the reddish-brown tiles of the hearth—the pretty graceful figure of the half girl, half woman, before him, her little foreign gestures, the alluring softness of her dark eyes. Yet the picture possessed no attraction for him. It only appealed slightly to his half-deadened sensibilities. He was doing wrong to dislike her so intensely. He must keep his feelings under better control.

“Well,” he said less coldly, “you were going to say something else.”

“I was going to say,” remarked Vivienne, a bright impatient color coming and going in her cheeks, “that one cannot live on patriotism. I thought that I would not miss my friends—the people who have been good to me. I find that I do. In this house I feel that I am an intruder–”

“And the Macartneys adore you,” he said, a steely gleam of amusement coming into his eyes, “and consequently you wish to be with them.”

“That is a slight exaggeration,” said Vivienne composedly; “yet we will let it pass. With your permission I will marry Captain Macartney.”

“Suppose I withhold my permission.”

Vivienne glanced keenly at him. Was this man of marble capable of a jest? Yes, he was. “If you do,” she said coolly, “I will run away.” Then she laughed with the ease and gayety of girlhood and Mr. Armour watching her smiled gravely.

“I suppose the Macartneys have been much touched by your stories of our cruel treatment of you,” he said sarcastically.

Vivienne tapped her foot impatiently on the floor. Did he really think that she was a tell-tale?

“Ah yes,” she said nonchalantly; “I have told them that you detest me and allow me only bread and water, that I sleep in a garret, and your father and Mrs. Colonibel run away whenever they see me, small Judy being my only friend in the house.”

Mr. Armour smiled more broadly. How quick she was to follow his lead! “Does my father really avoid you?” he asked.

There was some complacency in his tone and Vivienne holding her head a trifle higher responded: “I make no complaint of members of your family to you or to any other person, Mr. Armour.”

He frowned irritably and with one of the peremptory hand gestures that Vivienne so much disliked he went on: “Why did not Macartney speak to me himself about this affair?”

“He will do so to-morrow. I wished to see you first.”

“Why?”

“Will you be kind enough to excuse me from telling you?”

“No,” said Mr. Armour unexpectedly; “I wish to know.”

Vivienne shook her head in an accession of girlish independence that was highly distasteful to him.

“I cannot endure a mystery,” he said sternly.

“Nor I,” said Vivienne demurely; “but really, Mr. Armour, I do not wish to tell you.”

“Those Irish people are spoiling her,” he reflected. Vivienne was watching him and after a time she said relentingly:

“However, it is a slight thing—you may think it worse than it is if I do not tell you. I”—proudly—"did not wish Captain Macartney to be the first to tell you lest, lest–"

“Lest what?”

“Lest you should seem too glad to get rid of me,” she concluded.

“What do you mean?” he asked haughtily.

Vivienne pushed back her chair and stepped a little farther away from him. “You may think that because I am young, Mr. Armour, I have no pride; I have. I bitterly, bitterly resent your treatment of me. I have tried to please you; never a word of praise have you given me all these years. I come back to you to be treated like an outcast. My father was a gentleman, if he was poor, and of a family superior to that of the Armours. You will be glad, glad, glad to throw me off–”

She stopped to dash away an angry tear from her cheek while Mr. Armour surveyed her in the utmost astonishment.

“You think because I am a girl I do not care,” she went on, her fine small nostrils dilating with anger. “Girls care as well as men.”

“How old are you?” ejaculated Mr. Armour stupidly.

“You do not even know my age,” she retorted, “you—my guardian,” and with a glance of sublime displeasure she tried to put her hand on the door handle.

“Stop a moment,” said Mr. Armour confusedly.

“I have talked long enough to you,” she responded. “You have made me lose my temper; a thing I seldom do,” and with this parting shaft she left the room.

Mr. Armour stood holding the door open for some time after she left him. Then he stooped down and picked a crumpled handkerchief from the floor.

“What irrepressibility!” he muttered; “a most irritating girl. I shall be glad to have her taken off my hands, and she is angry about it. Well, it cannot be helped,” and he seated himself in a quiet, dull fashion by the fire. Worry, annoyance, dread, and unutterable weariness oppressed him, yet through it all his face preserved its expression of icy calm. A stranger looking into the room would have said: “A quiet, handsome man meditating in the solitude of his library;” not by any means, a poor, weary pilgrim to whom life was indeed no joyous thing but a grievous, irksome burden that he longed to, yet dared not, lay down.

Vivienne went slowly upstairs resting one hand on the railing as she did so.

“Well, my dear,” said Judy, meeting her halfway, “what makes your face so red? Have you had an exhibition of Grand-Turkism?”

“Judy,” said Vivienne, stopping short, “I knew before I went to that room to-night that Mr. Armour likes to have his own way.”

“You are a match for him,” said Judy dryly; “now tell me what you wanted to say to him.”

“I wished to announce my engagement to Captain Macartney.”

“Oh, you bad, bad girl,” exclaimed Judy; “oh, you bad girl!”

“A bad girl!” exclaimed Vivienne.

“Come along,” said Judy, dragging her upstairs. “Come to our room. Oh, I am so disappointed! I had other plans for you.”

“Indeed—what were they?”

“I don’t know. I must forget them, I suppose. But don’t be too hard on Stanton, Vivienne.”

“What do you mean by being too hard? You have never heard me say a word against him.”

“No, but you look things with those big eyes of yours. He has a detestable time with Uncle Colonel and Val.”

“In what way?” asked Vivienne feebly.

“Because they are demons; regular dissipated demons, and he is their keeper. They lead him a life; that’s why he’s so solemn. What did he say about your engagement?”

“I fancy that it meets with his approbation.”

“Approbation—fiddlesticks! Do you love your fiancé, Vivienne?”

“No, certainly not. He is a gentleman; I like him, and he is very good to his stepmother.”

“What an excellent reason for marrying him,” said Judy sarcastically; “he is good to his stepmother.”

“Therefore he will be good to me.”

“Well, you’re about half right. Let us go to bed. I don’t feel like discussing this engagement of yours.”

Vivienne looked wistfully after the little elfish figure limping away from her. “Judy,” she said, “Judy.”

The girl stopped.

“Don’t you think it is nauseating to hear some girls gushing about their dear darling lovers?”

“Yes, perfectly so.”

“So many of those terrible enthusiastic marriages turn out badly.”

“A great many; I must get Stargarde to talk to you about the marriage question.”

“Who is Stargarde?” asked Vivienne curiously.

“Stargarde is Stargarde,” said Judy enigmatically; “wait till you see her. Good-night.”