Marshall Saunders - The House of Armour

“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.”

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.