Marshall Saunders - The House of Armour

“Macartney, is it you,” he said doubtfully, “or your double?”

“Myself,” said the officer with a smile and extending his hand.

“Come in, come in,” said Dr. Camperdown, passing into the other room. “Sit down,” dragging forward a leather chair on which the dust lay half an inch thick. “Afraid of the dust? Finicky as ever. Wait, I’ll clean it for you—where’s my handkerchief? Gave it to that old woman. Stop a bit—here’s a towel. Now for a talk.” Sprawled out across two chairs, and biting and gnawing at his moustache as if he would uproot it, he gazed with interest at his visitor. “What are you doing in Halifax? Are you in the new regiment?”

“Yes; I arrived three days ago in the ‘Acadian.’”

“Same hot-headed Irishman as ever?”

“No; I have cooled considerably since the old subaltern days. India and fevers and accidents have taken the life out of me. How are you getting on? You have a number of charity patients I see.”

“Oh Lord, yes; the leeches!”

“Why don’t you shake them off?”

Camperdown grunted disapprovingly.

“You encourage them, I fancy,” said the officer in his smooth, polished tones. “They would not come if you did not do so. I hope you have others, rich ones, to counterbalance them.”

“Yes,” gruffly, “I have.”

“And you bleed them to make up for the losses you sustain through penniless patients. Ha, ha, Camperdown,” and Captain Macartney laughed the pleasant, mellifluous laugh of a man of culture and fashion.

Camperdown looked benevolently at him. “Never mind me. Talk about yourself. What are you making of your life? You’re getting older. Have you married?”

“No, but I am thinking of it,” gravely and with the faintest shade of conceit. “My stepmother urges me to it, and the advice is agreeable, for I have fallen in love.”

“Does she reciprocate?” and Dr. Camperdown bit his moustache more savagely than ever in order to restrain a smile.

“Not entirely; but—you remember the time I broke my leg, Camperdown, five years ago?”

“Yes, a compound fracture.”

“The time,” scornfully, “that I was fool enough to let Flora Colonibel twist me ’round her little finger.”

“Exactly.”

“I was taken to the Armours’ house you remember, and was fussed over and petted till I loathed the sight of her.”

“Yes,” dryly, “as much as you had previously admired it.”

“By Jove, yes,” said the other with a note of lazy contempt in his voice; “and but for that broken leg, Flora Colonibel would have been Flora Macartney now.”

“Very likely,” said Camperdown grimly; “but what are you harking back to that old story for?”

“It is an odd thing,” went on Captain Macartney with some show of warmth, “that, tame cat as I became out at Pinewood, and bored to death as I was with confidences and family secrets, from the old colonial days down, that one thing only was never revealed to me.”

“What was that?”

“The fact that the family possessed a kind of ward or adopted daughter, who was being educated abroad.”

“So—they did not tell you that?”

“Not a syllable of it,” and Captain Macartney eyed keenly the uncommunicative face before him.

“Why should they have told you?” said Dr. Camperdown.

“Why—why,” echoed his visitor in some confusion, his face growing furiously red, “for the very good reason that that is the girl with whom I have chosen to fall in love.”

Camperdown shrugged his huge shoulders. “How did they know you’d fall in love with the daughter of their poor devil of a bookkeeper?”

Captain Macartney half rose from his seat. “Camperdown,” he said haughtily, “in the old days we were friends; you and your father before you were deep in the secrets of the house of Armour. I come to you for information which I am not willing to seek at the club or in the hotels. Who is Miss Vivienne Delavigne?”

“Sit down, sit down,” said Camperdown surlily and impatiently. “Scratch a Russian and you’ll find a Tartar, and scratch an Irishman and you’ll find a fire-eater, and every sensible man is a fool when he falls in love. What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

“You love the girl—isn’t that everything?”

“No.”

“You didn’t propose to her?”

“No.”

“Did you ask her about her family?”

“I did not,” loftily.

“You wish to know what her station in life is, and whether she can with propriety be taken into the aristocratic family of the Macartneys?”

“Yes,” shortly; “if you will be so kind as to tell me.”

“Here’s the matter in a nutshell then. Her father was French, mother ditto, grandfathers and grandmothers the same—all poorest of the poor, and tillers of the soil. Her father got out of the peasant ring, became confidential man for Colonel Armour, and when he reached years of discretion, which was before I did, I believe that he embezzled largely, burnt the Armours’ warehouse, and not being arrested, decamped—the whole thing to the tune of some thousands of dollars. That is her father’s record.”

Captain Macartney was visibly disturbed. “How long ago did this take place?”

“Twenty years.”

“Is it well known—much talked of?”

“No, you know how things are dropped in a town. The story’s known, but no one speaks of it. Now the girl has come back, I suppose Dame Rumor will set it flying again.”

Captain Macartney relapsed into a chagrined silence. Camperdown sucking in both his cheeks till he was a marvel of ugliness, watched him sharply, and with wicked enjoyment. “You’ll have to give her up, Macartney.”

“By Jove, I will,” said the officer angrily. “My uncle would cut me off with a ha’penny.”

“Bah!” said his companion contemptuously. “I would not give her up for all the uncles in Christendom.”

“You know nothing about the duty of renunciation,” said the other sarcastically. “I’ve not drunk a glass of wine for a twelve-month.”

“What’s wrong?” said the physician with professional curiosity.

“Indigestion,” shortly. Then slowly, “Suppose I married the girl—she could not live on air.”

“Your pay.”

“Is not enough for myself.”

“You hoped to find her a rich girl,” said Dr. Camperdown sharply.

“I will not deny that I had some such expectation,” said the other raising his head, and looking at him coolly, but with honest eyes. “Her dress and appearance—her whole entourage is that of a person occupying a higher station in life than she does.”

“Fiddle-de-dee, what does it matter? She’s a lady. What do you care about her ancestors?”

“We don’t look upon things on the other side of the Atlantic as you do here,” said Captain Macartney half regretfully. “And it is not that alone. It is the disgrace connected with her name that makes the thing impossible.”

“Bosh—give her an honest name. You’re not half a man, Macartney.”

The officer sprang from his seat. His Irish blood was “up.” Camperdown chuckled wickedly to himself as he watched him pacing up and down the narrow apartment, holding up his sword with one hand and clasping the other firmly behind his back. From time to time he threw a wrathful glance in the surgeon’s direction and after he had succeeded in controlling himself, he said doggedly: “I shall not marry her, but I will do what I can for her; she ought to be got out of that house.”

“Why?” said his friend inanely.

“Beg pardon, Camperdown, but your questions infuriate me,” said his companion in a low voice. “You know that is no place for a young, innocent girl to be happy. Begin with the head of the house, Colonel Armour. I’ll sketch his career for you in six words; young devil, middle-aged devil, old devil. Flora Colonibel is a painted peacock. Stanton an iceberg. Judy an elf, imp, tigress, anything you will. Valentine a brainless fop. If you’re a man, you’ll help me get her out of it.”