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THE HOUSE OF ARMOUR
[Illustration: A SECTION OF HALIFAX AND THE HARBOR—FROM THE CITADEL.]
THE HOUSE OF ARMOUR
BY
MARSHALL SAUNDERS
AUTHOR OF
“_Beautiful Joe_,” “_Daisy_,” “_Charles and His Lamb_,”
“_For the Other Boy’s Sake_,” _etc._
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA
A. J. ROWLAND—1420 Chestnut Street
MDCCCXCVII
Copyright 1897 by
A. J. ROWLAND
=From the Press of the
American Baptist Publication Society=
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
CONTENTS
I. SCOTLAND THE NEW, 7
II. MRS. MACARTNEY’S IMPRESSIONS OF CANADA, 16
III. HOME AGAIN, 25
IV. MAMMY JUNIPER, 35
V. A CONVERSATION WITH JUDY, 43
VI. MRS. COLONIBEL LOSES HER TEMPER, 54
VII. IN DR. CAMPERDOWN’S OFFICE, 63
VIII. AN INTERVIEW IN THE LIBRARY, 76
IX. THE PAVILION, 87
X. ZEB AND A TEA PARTY, 101
XI. MRS. MACARTNEY GETS A FRIGHT, 115
XII. LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT, 124
XIII. DR. CAMPERDOWN MAKES A MORNING CALL, 141
XIV. THE STOLEN POCKET-BOOK, 152
XV. A LOST MOTHER, 168
XVI. THE COLONIAL COTTAGE, 176
XVII. MACDALY’S DREAM, 194
XVIII. WARM FRIENDS, 207
XIX. BROTHER AND SISTER, 218
XX. CHASED AS A BIRD WITHOUT CAUSE, 236
XXI. A QUIET EVENING, 246
XXII. STARGARDE’S MOTHER, 264
XXIII. ON MARKET DAY, 281
XXIV. AN ANSWERED QUESTION, 302
XXV. ZILLA’S ROSEBUD, 316
XXVI. THE MISERY OF THE WORLD, 328
XXVII. NOT TO BE REPEATED, 343
XXVIII. MISKEPT ACCOUNTS, 351
XXIX. THE MICMAC KEEPS HIS CHARGE, 371
XXX. LOVE WILL BUILD HIS LILY WALLS, 395
XXXI. MACDALY’S LECTURE, 408
XXXII. HE KISSED HER AND PROMISED, 432
XXXIII. A WAYWORN TRAVELER, 447
XXXIV. A FOX CHASE, 456
XXXV. HER WEDDING DAY, 464
XXXVI. BLIND, 477
XXXVII. ADIEU TO FRISPI, 487
XXXVIII. THE GHOST FLOWER, 496
XXXIX. AT LAST, 515
XL. THE FATE THAT PURSUES US, 521
XLI. IN DEEP DESPAIR, 534
XLII. ACROSS THE SEA, 539
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THE HOUSE OF ARMOUR
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CHAPTER I
SCOTLAND THE NEW
In the southeastern extremity of Canada, jutting out into the blue
waters of the Atlantic, holding on to the great mainland of North
America only by one narrow arm or isthmus, is the green and fertile
little peninsula called Acadie, land of abundance, by the French and
Indians, and Nova Scotia, New Scotland, by the baronet Sir William
Alexander, when in 1621 it was ceded to him by his most worshipful
majesty, King James the First of England.
Projected, pushed out from the mainland as it is, the province is
pre-eminently a child of the sea. Her wealth comes from it; her traffic
is over it; it keeps her warm in winter; it cools her in summer. Old
Father Atlantic, savage, boisterous old parent that he is, dashing so
often the dead bodies of her children against her rockbound coasts, is
yet her chief guardian and protector, and the one who loves her most.
He is on all her sides, lapping her grassy shores, breaking against her
frowning cliffs, and running away up into the land, wide, blue tongues
of water, where foreign ships can ride at anchor and give to lovely Nova
Scotia their fairest merchandise.
Among all the harbors, among all the bays—and they are long and
numerous—can none be found to eclipse the chief and prince of them all,
glorious old Chebucto, which hundreds of years ago Indians paddled over
and called the greatest of waters. It lies almost midway between the two
ends of the peninsula and sends up between smiling shores a long, wide,
crystal expanse of water, that is curved like a slightly bent arm and is
six whole miles in length. Clear and shining it comes in from the sea,
washing around its guardian forts, and with a strong, full tide floating
the most ponderous leviathans of the deep right up to the wharves of the
capital town of the province, built along its shores.
At all times white-winged ships sail over its waters. Farther north the
bays skim over and harbors freeze. Here the waters are always blue and
open, and tired ships, bruised and buffeted by the angry winter winds of
the Northern Atlantic, can always steal in and find a safe and pleasant
anchorage. The shores are gently sloping, the hills are wooded, only the
softest breezes blow here. Boreas and all his gang must lurk outside the
harbor mouth.
It is with one of these ships that we have to do. Steadily day by day
plowing the ocean track that leads from England to the little maritime
province, a large passenger steamer had come. Soon she would sight the
harbor lights, would make her way to the desired haven.
The evening was cold and still; the time was early December. A brilliant
moon in a sky of lovely steely blue was in mid-heaven, staring down at
the lighted, busy town, the silent country, the glistening line of the
harbor, and the crystal sea beyond.
The hull of the steamer sat on the waters a large, black mass. Its decks
were white and as bright as day in the moonlight. The captain stood on
the bridge, occasionally speaking, but mostly by signs and gestures
making known his wishes. A few sailors were hurrying about the decks and
officers were directing preparations made for entering port.
The most of the passengers had gone forward and stood in a group at the
bow of the ship, eagerly straining their eyes to catch the first glimpse
of the town they were approaching. A few lingered behind. Among them
were two people, a man of a straight, military figure, and a young girl
with a dark, brilliant face.
The man observed attentively his youthful companion, making, man of the
world that he was, amused comments on her badly suppressed girlish
enthusiasm at being again within sight of her native land.
It was absolutely necessary for her to talk and it charmed him to listen
to her sweet, half-foreign voice. At first she had seemed to him to be
thoroughly French. Then he had found grafted on her extreme Frenchiness
manners and ways so entirely English that she made at the same time an
interesting and an amusing combination to him.
They were still well out at sea when she looked over her shoulder and
made her first salutation.
“There is Thrum Cap,” she exclaimed, “wicked old Thrum Cap, thrusting
his bald, sandy head out of the water, pretending to look at the
moonbeams. What a tale the old villain could tell!” and she shook her
glove so impatiently at him that her companion was moved to ask what
power the barren sand dune had to call forth such a display of emotion.
“There are treacherous ledges beneath his shimmering waves,” said the
girl. “Shall I tell you the tale of the English frigate ‘La Tribune,’
that was wrecked there in 1797?”
“If you will be so kind,” he said gravely, giving her no hint that he
was already acquainted with the story of the disaster.
At the conclusion of her recital he gave her an inscrutable look, which
she did not perceive.
“You seem—ah—to know a vast deal about your native land,” he said
meditatively. “How has all this knowledge been acquired, since you left
here at such an early age?”
“By reading, always reading,” said the girl restlessly.
“And you are fond of your country,” he said.
“Passionately. What else have I to love? Father, mother—both are gone.”
“Your friends, acquaintances——”
“Ah, there are too many. Life has been change to me, always change.
Imagine me in early youth a young and tender plant. I throw out my
tendrils and attach myself to this object—it is snatched away from me;
to that one—it too is snatched away; and finally my tendrils are all
gone. Suppose the most charming object to come within my reach, I have
no tendril to grasp it. Nothing remains but my country.”
“That will all change some day,” said the man sententiously.
“In what manner?” she asked.
“You will meet some man in whom everything will become merged—friends,
country, everything.”
“You mean that I shall fall in love?”
“I do.”
“Possibly,” she said with a gay laugh. “Probably not.”
“Why not?”
“Because, as I have told you, I make few attachments; and if I did I
never stay long enough in one place for one to mature. This winter I
fancied that I was settled in Paris, but you see I am summoned here.”
“Leaving sorrowing admirers behind you,” said her companion
imperturbably.
“According to me—yes.”
“You would not overstate,” he said hastily; “you are not like most
girls.”
“Did you never see any one like me?” she asked vivaciously.
“No,” he said quietly; “you are an anomaly. A Frenchwoman educated among
English people and speaking your own language with a foreign accent—half
of you goes in one direction, half in another.”
“Ah, you understand me, Captain Macartney,” said the girl with an eager
gesture. “You will know what I mean when I say that at times I seem to
feel in my veins the gay French blood running beside the sober English.”
“Yes, I understand you,” he said with a smile, and he fixed his gaze
admiringly on her dark eyes that were wandering restlessly from shore to
shore of the entrance to the beautiful harbor.
“Away down there is the place of wrecks,” she said, waving her hand
toward the western coast. “Some of my countrymen named it Saint Cendre,
and the careless Nova Scotians corrupted it into Sambro. Do you hear
that, Captain Macartney?”
The man’s glance had suddenly dropped to the sea and he was staring at
it as if he were trying to wrest some secret from it. Now he roused
himself. “Yes, Miss Delavigne, I hear.”
“The old name of the harbor was Chebucto,” the girl went on;
“Chebook-took—chief haven. The Indian and French names should still
remain; it was unfair in Englishmen to drive them out. Is not Acadie
more charming than Nova Scotia, and Chebucto than Halifax?”
“Is it not a natural thing that a child should be named after its
father?” asked Captain Macartney.
“After its own father, yes,” said the girl quickly; “after a stepfather,
no. The French owned this province; the English drove them out.”
“They deserved to go,” said Captain Macartney with some show of warmth.
“Ah, yes, they did at last,” said the girl sadly. “But it is a painful
subject; do not let us discuss it.”
“May I ask you one question?” he said eagerly. “Do you approve of the
expulsion of the Acadians?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are the most fair-minded and impartial Frenchwoman that I ever
met.”
“Because I agree with you,” she said. “Ah, Captain Macartney, you are
like the rest of your sex. Now let us see if we can find the forts lying
cunningly concealed among those hills. This is the most strongly
fortified town in Canada, is it not?”
“Yes,” he replied, with an inward malediction on her fervor of
patriotism. “On that island is a battery, a military camp, and a rifle
range.”
The girl surveyed with a passionate glance the wooded points of an
island they were passing. On a narrow spit of land running out from it
was a Martello tower lighthouse.
“It is quite as round and quite as much like a plum pudding as when I
left it,” she said merrily; “and it fixes on me its glittering eye in
the same manner that it did when I, a little child, went down this
harbor to countries that I knew nothing about, and the fog bell seemed
to cry, ‘Adieu, adieu, another gone from the pleasant land.’”
“But you have returned,” said the man, biting his lip to hide a smile.
“I have; many have not. You have read of the ’Cajiens of Louisiana and
other places. They went but did not return; their sore hearts are buried
among strangers.”
“And you,” he said curiously, “are you going to remain in Canada?”
“Yes,” said the girl softly; “I shall never leave it again.”
“But your guardians; suppose they——” he stopped abruptly.
“I shall live and die in my native land. They will not prevent me,” she
said calmly.
He maintained a polite, though an unsatisfied silence.
“We are looking toward the east, we forget the west,” said the girl
turning around. “See, there is York Redoubt, and Sandwich Point, and
Falkland with its chapel—dear little Falkland, ‘a nest for fisher
people’—and there is the entrance to the Northwest Arm.”
For the twentieth time that evening Captain Macartney smiled at the
girl’s enthusiasm. Her eyes were turned lovingly toward the narrow strip
of salt water that runs up like an arm behind the peninsula on which the
city of Halifax is built.
At the extremity of the peninsula is one of the loveliest natural parks
in the world. The girl’s enraptured gaze was turned toward it and she
was just about to launch into an ardent enumeration of its attractions,
when she was interrupted.