Читать книгу The House of Armour - Saunders Marshall - Страница 9

Dr. Camperdown lived in a large, bare stone house a few blocks distant from his office. Late one afternoon he stood at one of the back windows from which he commanded a magnificent view of the harbor.

“Bah! it’s going to be cold to-night,” he said, suddenly banging down the window; “the snow clouds have blown away.”

He looked about his lonely room, where the furniture was ugly and scanty and the general aspect of things cheerless. “Desolate, eh,” he muttered thoughtfully fixing his eyes on the expiring embers of the fire. “I’ll go and see Stargarde. How long since I’ve seen the–?” and some endearing epithet lost itself between his lips and his moustache.

“It is twelve days—nearly a fortnight,” he went on after a pause. “Time for another spree,” and with grim cheerfulness he lighted the gas and seizing a brush and comb began briskly to smooth his towzled head.

After his refractory locks were in order he went to his wardrobe where with many head shakings he turned over his whole stock of coats before he could find one to suit him."

“I guess this will do,” he said at last, shaking out one which was minus one button only. “She’ll be sure to spy that vacant spot,” he went on dubiously. “Where’s that old beldame to sew it on? Hannah! fairy, sylph, beauty, come up here!”

There was no sound from the rooms below. With a quick ejaculation he threw the coat over his arm and went down the staircase two steps at a time. Opening the doors of a dull dining room and a still more dull and comfortless drawing room he looked in to find them tenantless.

“Must be in her lowest den,” he said, vaulting like a boy down a narrower flight of stairs leading to a kitchen. There indeed he found an old woman groveling over a fire.

“Hannah,” he shouted, holding his coat toward her. “There’s a button gone, will you sew on another?”

“Eh, what’s that ye said, Mr. Brian?” queried the old woman. “A button? Yes indeed, ye shall have it; just ye wait till I get my workbasket,” and she started to leave the kitchen, but he restrained her with an impatient, “Where is it?”

“In the right top-hand corner of my second drawer, me boy, if ye’ll be so kind. Hannah’s limbs is gettin’ old.”

He shook off the affectionate hand she laid on his shoulder and leaped upstairs again. When he returned with her basket the old woman slowly lifted the cover. “Did ye no bring the thimble?” she asked in surprise.

“No—confound the thimble! Why don’t you keep it in your basket?”

“Because I always keeps it in the left-hand corner of the window,” she answered mildly, “behind the picture of your sainted father–” but Dr. Camperdown was gone, springing up the steps again in a state of desperate hurry.

“If you don’t sew that button on in five minutes,” he vociferated in her ear when he came back, “I’ll turn you out of the house to-morrow.”

“Sure, Mr. Brian, ye know ye’d do no such thing,” said the old woman throwing him a remonstrating glance. “Ye’d go yourself first.”

He laughed shortly, then exclaimed: “Oh, sew it on—sew it on and don’t talk. I’ll give you a dollar if you’ll have it on in two minutes.”

At this the old woman’s fingers flew, and in a short time the button was in place, the coat on Dr. Camperdown’s back, and with a hasty “I’ll not be back to dinner,” he had hurried out of the kitchen to the floor above, where he rapidly donned a cap and coat and went out into the street.

The air was keen and frosty and he drew great breaths of it into his capacious lungs.

“I could walk twenty miles,” he muttered as he swung himself along by lighted shops and houses.

As he went on the streets became more and more shabby. The gutters about him were dirty and many of the houses were mere wooden shells and a most insufficient protection against the winter winds.

Midway on the dirtiest and least respectable of the streets he stopped in front of a long, clean brick building erected by the charitable people of the town for the better housing of the poor. To the street it presented high walls pierced by windows of good size. Inside was a large yard overlooked by a double row of verandas that ran along the building. Passing through an archway he entered this yard, looked across it at the washhouses, storerooms, and a little eating house with gayly flaunting lights, then turning to his left stepped on a veranda and knocked lightly at a door.

“Come in,” said a voice like a bell, and softly turning the handle he entered a little plainly furnished room where a bright fire blazed merrily.

There was one elegant bit of furniture in the room, an elaborately carved davenport, where sat a tall, magnificently proportioned woman with a white, firm, smooth skin like a baby’s, a pair of deep blue eyes, and a crown of pale golden hair that lay in coils on the top of her head and waved down in little ringlets and circlets over her neck.

Ah, that neck—he would give worlds to touch it; and Brian Camperdown stood trembling like a boy as he looked at it. The woman had her back to him and was writing busily. Presently the pen stopped running over the paper and she thoughtfully leaned her head on a shapely white hand.

“It is cold,” she said suddenly. “Close the door, my friend—ah, Brian, is it you?” turning around and giving him a hand over the back of her chair. “I thought it was one of the people. Wait an instant, won’t you, till I finish my letter? It is so important,” and with an angelic smile and a womanly dimple she turned back to her desk.

“I’m in no hurry,” he said composedly, taking off his coat and hanging it behind the door on a hook with whose location he seemed to be quite well acquainted. Then he arranged his huge limbs in an arm-chair and stared at her.

Though the time was December she had on a cotton gown that had large loose sleeves fitting tightly around her wrists. About her neck and over her breast it was laid in folds that outlined her beautiful form. At her waist it was drawn in by a ribbon, and hung from that downward in a graceful fullness utterly at variance with the sheath-like fit of the prevailing style of dress. Though the gown was cotton there was a bit of fine lace in the neck.

“Some one must have given it to her,” muttered Dr. Camperdown, whose eagle eye soon espied its quality. “She would never buy it. Flora probably, if”—with a sneer—"she could make up her mind to part with it." Then he said aloud and very humbly, “Can’t you talk to me yet?”

“Yes, yes, Brian,” and the woman laughed in her clear, bell-like tones. “I have finished,” and she stood up to put her letter on the mantelpiece.

When she was standing one saw what a superb creature she was. A goddess come down from her pedestal would not be more unlike the average woman in appearance than she. Her draperies being almost as loose and unconfined as those of the ancient Greek and Roman women she was untrammeled, and being untrammeled she was graceful in spite of her great height and comely proportions. She was like a big, beautiful child with her innocent, charming manners and blue unworldly eyes, and yet there was something about her that showed she had lived and suffered. She was a woman and into her life had been crowded the experiences of the lives of a dozen ordinary women.

“It is some time since I have seen you, Brian,” she said in a fresh, joyous voice.

“Yes,” he articulated, “I have been trying to keep away. Had to come now. I want to talk to you about the Delavigne child. She has arrived. Stanton has brought her here.”

“Has he?” and Stargarde clasped her hands. “When did she come?”

“A few days ago.”

“Have you been out to see her?”

“No, I have been busy.”

“And I have been away; but I will go as soon as I can,” and the woman absently let her eyes meet those of her guest till he was obliged to shut his own to get rid of their dazzle and glitter.

Unfortunately for him she noticed what he was doing. “Brian Camperdown,” she exclaimed, “open your eyes. I won’t talk to you if you sit there half asleep,” and she burst into a merry peal of laughter that a baby might have envied.

“I’m not sleepy,” he said hastily; “I was thinking,” and he surveyed her in unwinking attention.

“Well, do not think; listen to me. That little French girl is so often in my thoughts, and lately in particular I have not been able to get her out of my head.”

“I daresay,” he growled. “There are more people than the Delavigne child in your head—a whole colony of them. I wonder they don’t worry you to death.”

“I hope she will let me be kind to her,” said Stargarde earnestly.

“You needn’t worry,” said Dr. Camperdown. “She’s going to be well looked after. I don’t see why every one comes rushing to me. My father began it when he died with his admonition to do something for the Delavigne child if I had a chance. You have always been at me, and yesterday Macartney cornered me.”

“Macartney! not the Irish officer who used to admire Flora!”

“The same.”

“What does he want you to do?”

“To look after her in a general way. He’s in love with her.”

“Oh, Brian!”

“I suppose I’m a simpleton for telling you,” he said eyeing her reluctantly. “You women have men just like wax in your hands. You twist everything out of us.”

“I do not think you mean that,” she said quietly.

He scrambled from his chair and before she knew his intention had her shapely hands in his and was mumbling over them: “Darling, darling, I would trust you with my soul.”

She looked down at him sadly as he passionately kissed her fingers and returned them to her lap. Then she leaned over and stroked softly his tumbled head, and murmuring, “Poor boy!” pointed to the clock.

“I was going to ask you to stay to tea,” she said, “but–”

“I will be good—I will be good,” he ejaculated lifting his flushed face to hers and hurrying back into his chair. “It was a moment of madness; it won’t happen again.”

“That is what you always say, Brian.”

“I will keep my promise this time. I really will.” Then forcing his hands deep down into his pockets, he said insinuatingly: “You can so easily stop my display of devotion, it is a strange thing that you don’t do it.”

“How can I do so?” she asked with an eagerness that was not pleasing to him.

“By marrying me.”

“Marry you to get rid of you,” she said with incredulity. “Ah, Brian, I know you better than that. You will be a good husband to the woman you marry. I can imagine myself married to you,” she went on pensively; “we should be what is almost better than lovers, and that is companions. You would be with me as constantly as Mascerene there,” and she pointed to a huge, black dog lying with watchful head on his paws behind her davenport.

“You will marry me some day,” said the man doggedly. “If I thought you would not, I would tie a stone around my neck and drop into the harbor to-morrow. No, I would not,” he added bitterly. “We don’t do that sort of thing nowadays. I’d have the stone in my heart instead of around my neck and I’d live on, a sour, ugly old man, till God saw fit to rid the world of me. Do you know what love, even hopeless love, does for a man, Stargarde? what my love for you does for me? What have I to remember of my childhood? Painful visions; my father and mother each side of the fire like this sorrowing at the wickedness of the world. Then I met you, a bonny, light-hearted girl. I loved you the first time I saw you. You have been in my thoughts every minute of the time since. In the morning, at night in my dreams. With you I am still an ugly, cross-grained man; without you I should be a devil.”

The woman listened attentively to what he said, shading her eyes from the firelight with her hand, and looking at him compassionately. “Poor old Brian, poor old Brian,” she said when he sank back into his chair and closed his mouth with a snap. “I am so sorry for you. I should never have the heart to marry another man when you love me so much. If I ever marry it will be you. Still, you know how it is. My heart is in my work. It is not with you.”

“If you felt it going out toward me would you stop it?” he said eagerly.

“No, a thousand times no,” she said warmly. “I believe that the noblest and best thing a man or woman can do is to marry. God intended us to do so. If a man loves a woman and she loves him, they should marry if there are no obstacles in the way. Is not that what I am always glorifying, Brian, the family, the family—the noblest of all institutions upon the earth? The one upon which the special blessing of our Creator rests. But,” in a lower voice and looking earnestly at him, “I should never be guilty of that crime of crimes, namely, marrying a man whom I do not love.”

“I know you would not,” he said uneasily.

“You would not wish me to, Brian,” she continued. “You are an honest, God-fearing man. If I could put my hand in yours now and say, ‘Here I am, but I do not love you,’ you would spurn such a gift, would you not? You would say, ‘I prefer to wait till you can give me your whole self, not the least worthy part of yourself.’” He stirred about restlessly in his chair when she paused as if expecting some answer from him. “I do not know,” he murmured at last. “If you gave me the chance, I think I would embrace it. I think, Stargarde, that if you would come out of this and live with me, you would get to like me.”

“Oh, vain and stupid fallacy,” she exclaimed despairingly; “can you not see it?”

He did not answer, and there was a long silence between them, till she began to speak again, regarding him with a lovely smile of pity and affection. “You see what a terrible responsibility has been laid upon women, Brian. Men, by their long habit of indulging themselves in every impulse and giving freer rein to passion than women do, cannot so well control themselves. The woman must stand firm. I, by reason of your great affection for me, which I accept with all gratitude and humility, feel that I have a charge over you. I wish with all my heart that you could transfer your love to some other woman. If you do not and cannot, and I ever have the happiness to regard you with the same affection that you regard me, you may be sure that I shall marry you.”

The light of hope that played over his rugged features almost made them handsome, till Stargarde went on warningly: “But that day I fear will never come. Looking upon you as a dear brother, and having lived to the age of thirty years without falling in love with any man, I fear that I shall never do so.”

“Is that true?” he gasped with the famished eagerness of a dog that snatches for a whole joint and only gets a bone. “Have you never fancied any of the men that have fancied you?”

“Never,” she said with a smile and a shake of her head.

“How many proposals have you had?”

“I forget; about twenty, I think.”

His mouth worked viciously as if he would like to devour her quondam lovers.

“What a long way we have wandered from Vivienne Delavigne,” said Stargarde. “You were saying that Captain Macartney is in love with her. Does she love him?”

“No, though it will probably end in that. He’s very much in earnest, for he vowed to me that he couldn’t marry. When a man does that you may be sure he’s just about to throw everything overboard for some woman.”

“Does he know all about her?”

“Yes; but his stepmother stands behind egging him on. She’s probably promised a generous settlement on ma’m’selle if he marries her. The disgrace was the black beast in the way; but I imagine he’ll make up his mind to hang on to the old marquis and ignore the embezzlement. A decent fellow, Macartney, as those military men go,” he added in the condescending tone in which a civilian in Halifax will allow a few virtues to the military sojourners in the city.

“I like him,” said Stargarde emphatically, “yet Vivienne Delavigne may not. I wish, Brian, that she was a little older, and you a little fickle.”

“Why do you wish that?”

“Because, what a charming wife she would make for you. I am sure she is good and gentle, and she is alone in the world.”

“And you?” he said coolly.

“Oh, I have enough here,” she said, stretching out her arms lovingly as if she could take in her embrace the whole of the large brick building. “My work is my husband.”

He was about to reply to her but was interrupted by a knock at the door.

“Brian,” said Stargarde hurriedly, “I forgot to say that I have other company to tea. I hope you won’t object, and do try not to notice her. She is one of my charges, and oftentimes a troublesome one.” Then turning toward the door she said: “Come in; come in, dear.”