Marshall Saunders - The House of Armour

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.

All of Vivienne’s unhappiness passed away with her night’s sleep. On waking up to the bright, still beauty of a clear December morning her naturally high spirits rose again.

“The Armours have really little power to afflict me,” she said, getting out of bed with a gay laugh. “My attachment to them is altogether a thing of duty, not affection. If they do not care for me I will leave them. That is a simple matter,” and going to the window she drew in a long breath of the fresh morning air and noted with delight the blueness of the sky, the whiteness of the snow, and the darkness of the sombre evergreens before the house, where a number of solemn crows sat cawing harshly as if asking for some breakfast.

“Ah, it is cold,” she exclaimed, drawing her gown about her, “and I am late. I must hurry.”

When she at last left her room the breakfast bell had long since rung. She speedily made her way down the staircase, glancing critically through open doors as she passed them.

“The furnishings are too gorgeous, too tropical,” she murmured; “and flaming colors are everywhere. Evidently the person who furnished this house had a barbaric fondness for bright shades.”

On arriving in the lower hall she paused before the dining-room door. She could hear the tinkling of china and murmur of voices within. Then with a composure not assumed but real she drew aside the curtain and entered the room.

Mrs. Colonibel, handsome and imposing in a bright blue morning gown, sat behind the silver coffee urn at the head of the table. She knew that Vivienne had entered yet she took up a cream jug and gazed as steadfastly into its depths as though she expected to find a treasure there.

The corners of Vivienne’s lips drooped mischievously. “For all exquisite torture to which one can be subjected,” she reflected, “commend me to that inflicted on woman number two who enters the house of woman number one who does not want her.”

Beside Mrs. Colonibel sat her daughter—a small misshapen girl, with peering black eyes and elfish locks that straggled down each side of her little wizened face and that she kept tossing back in a vain endeavor to make them hide the lump on her deformed back.

“What a contrast,” thought Vivienne with a shudder, “between that poor child and her blonde prosperous-looking mother.”

Colonel Armour, tall and stately, but looking not quite so young as he had in the lamplight of the night before, sat—as if in compensation for not occupying the seat at the foot of the table—on Mrs. Colonibel’s right hand. Holding himself bolt upright and stirring his coffee gently, he was addressing some suave and gracious remarks to the table in general.

Stanton Armour, who sat opposite Mrs. Colonibel, made no pretense of listening to him. Plunged in deep reflection he seemed to be eating and drinking whatever came to hand.

Valentine, gay and careless, alternately listened to his father and tried to balance a piece of toast on the edge of a fork.

“A happy family party,” murmured Vivienne; “what a pity to disturb it!”

The table maid, who was slipping noiselessly around the room, saw her but said nothing. Mr. Valentine raising his eyes caught the maid’s curious glances and turned around. Then he hurriedly got up.

“Good-morning. Flora, where is Miss Delavigne to sit?”

In some confusion she ejaculated: “I do not know; Jane bring another chair.”

“Is there no place for Miss Delavigne?” said Mr. Armour in cold displeasure. “Put the things beside me,” and he turned to the maid, who with the greatest alacrity was bringing from the cupboard plates, knives, and forks, enough for two or three people.