Marshall Saunders - The House of Armour

Vivienne watched the Irish lady gratefully drinking her tea, then she helped her on with her wraps and saw her depart.

Mrs. Colonibel had yet to have her brush with Vivienne, and the opportunity came at the dinner table. She seized the moment when the three men were engaged in a political discussion, and leaning over, said in a low voice: “Who was that fat, vulgar looking woman that was calling on you this afternoon?”

Vivienne held up her head and looked her well in the eyes. “Oh, you mean the lady for whom I got the tea; Mrs. Macartney is her name.”

“Mrs. Macartney—where did you meet her?”

“In Paris.”

“She is Irish, I judge by her brogue.”

“Oh yes,” said Vivienne mischievously; “one would know by her tongue that she is Irish, just as one would know by yours that you are Canadian.”

Mrs. Colonibel cast down her eyes. Vivienne had noticed her affected manner of speech, and realized that she shared in the ambition of many of her women friends in Halifax who strove to catch the accent of the English within their gates in order that they too might be taken for English people rather than Canadians.

Presently she went on with a slight sneer. “Mrs. Macartney—an Irish woman—no relation I suppose to Captain Macartney, of the Ninetieth, who was stationed here five years ago?”

“She is his stepmother.”

“His stepmother!” and Mrs. Colonibel raised her voice to such a pitch that Colonel Armour and his sons broke off their discussion, and Judy exclaimed in peevish surprise, “What is the matter with you, mamma?”

Mrs. Colonibel paid no attention to any of them but Vivienne. “His stepmother, did you say?” she repeated, fixing the girl with angry eyes.

“I did,” replied Vivienne calmly.

“Why did you not tell me so? how is it that you—You did it on purpose!”

Mrs. Colonibel was in a temper. Sitting at the head of her own table, apparently at peace with herself and all mankind, she had flown into a fit of wrath about something which no one in the least understood.

Vivienne disdained to reply to her.

Mrs. Colonibel half rose from the table, her face crimson, her whole frame shaking. “Stanton,” she cried, “she”—pointing a trembling finger at Vivienne—"has deliberately insulted me in your house; I will not endure it," and bursting into a flood of tears she hurried from the room.

An extremely awkward silence followed Mrs. Colonibel’s departure, which was broken at last by a laugh from Judy.

“Don’t be shocked, Miss Delavigne,” she said; “mamma has been known to do that before. She is tired I think. What is the trouble, anyway? Fortunately the servants have left the room. Pass me the nuts, Val.”

Vivienne’s black eyes were resting on her plate, and she did not speak until she found that every one at the table was waiting for her answer.

“Mrs. Macartney called on me to-day,” she said, addressing Mr. Armour. “I sat with her in the front drawing room. Mrs. Colonibel passed us, but so quickly that I did not introduce her. Later on she gave me a cup of tea for Mrs. Macartney. That is all,” and Vivienne half shrugged her shoulders and closed her lips.

“Macartney, did you say?” exclaimed Mr. Valentine. “Not Geoffrey Macartney’s mother?”

“Yes.”

“What a joke!” said the young man. “Macartney used to be a frequent visitor here. Indeed, he once spent two months with us when he broke his leg while tobogganing down our slide with Mrs. Colonibel. She was a great friend of his in those days—a great friend. Naturally she would have liked to meet his mother. Did not Mrs. Macartney mention all this to you?”

“She does not know it,” said Vivienne; “of that I am sure. Captain Macartney is a reticent man. By the way,” she went on vivaciously, “you saw Captain Macartney on the steamer last evening, Mr. Armour; why did you not tell Mrs. Colonibel that his mother had chaperoned me?”

Mr. Valentine burst into low, rippling, and intensely amused laughter. “Ha, ha! old man, there is one for you. We shall see that you are the one to be blamed.”

“I never thought of it,” said Mr. Armour heavily, and with the ghost of a smile.

“You might have told us,” went on Mr. Valentine complainingly. “You know we all liked Macartney. I thought he was in India. Poor Flora! It’s a lucky thing for you, Miss Delavigne, that you kept that bit of information till she got out of the room. What is he doing here?”

“He has exchanged into another regiment,” said Vivienne. “His young brother is with him too.”

“Indeed, we must call; and now cannot we leave the table? I want to go to town.”

The principal hotels of the town of Halifax are situated on Hollis Street, and Hollis Street is next Water Street, and Water Street is next the harbor.

On a dull, windless morning, when the snow clouds hung low in the air, Captain Macartney, encased in a dark uniform and looking exceedingly trim and soldierlike, stepped out of one of these hotels, where he had been to see his stepmother and brother, and walking slowly along the street looked up at the high buildings on each side of him, attentively scrutinizing doorplates and signs as he did so.

There at last was the name he wanted, on the door of a large building that looked rusty and shabby between its smart brick and stone neighbors—Dr. Camperdown, Surgeon. He repeated the words with a satisfied air, then making his way up a dark staircase, pushed open a door that had the polite invitation “Walk in” on it in staring letters. He found himself in a large, bare room, with a row of chairs set about its walls. Unfortunately for him, he was not the first on the field. Six of the chairs were occupied. Three old women, two young ones, and an old man, all poorly dressed and looking in their shabby clothes only half protected from the cold, eyed with small approval the smartly dressed officer who might prove to be a first claimant of the doctor’s attention. To their joy he took a seat at the back of the room, thereby giving notice that he was prepared to wait his turn.

They all looked up when the door of an inner apartment was opened. An ugly, sandy head appeared, and a sharp “Next” was flung into the room. One of the old women meekly prepared to enter, stripping off some outer wrap which she dropped on the chair behind her.

“Take your cloud with you,” said one of the younger women kindly; “he’ll let you out by another door into the hall.”

After what seemed to Captain Macartney an unconscionably long time, the door was again opened, and another “Next” was ejaculated. His jaws ached with efforts to suppress his yawns. He longed in vain for a paper.

Finally, after long, weary waiting and much internal grumbling, all his fellow-sufferers had one by one disappeared, and he had the room to himself. The last to go, the old man, stayed in the inner office a longer time than all the others combined, and Captain Macartney, fretting and chafing with impatience, sprang to his feet, and walking up and down the room, stared at everything in it, singly and collectively. He found out how many chairs were there. He counted the cobwebs, big and little, high up in the corners. He discovered that one leg of the largest press was gone, and that a block of wood had been stuck in its place, thereby rendering it exceedingly shaky and unsteady. He speculated on the number of weeks that had elapsed since the windows had been washed. He wondered why they should be so dirty and the floor so clean, when suddenly, to his immense relief, the door opened and Dr. Camperdown stood before him.

His hair was shaggy and unkempt, his sharp gray eyes, hiding under the huge eyebrows, were fixed piercingly on the military figure which he came slowly toward, the more closely to examine. His long arms, almost as long as those of the redoubtable Rob Roy—who, Sir Walter Scott tells us, could, without stooping, tie the garters of his Highland hose placed two inches below the knee—were pressed against his sides, and his hands were rammed down into the pockets of an old coffee-colored, office coat, on which a solitary button lingered.