IN DR. CAMPERDOWN’S OFFICE
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.
“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.”
“_You_ can’t do anything now,” said Dr. Camperdown pointedly.
“Yes I can—I’m her friend.”
“You’re her lover, as long as you dangle about her.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” said Captain Macartney peevishly and resuming his
seat. “She isn’t in love with me.”
Dr. Camperdown burst into a roar of laughter. “She doesn’t smile upon
you; then why all this agony?”
“It’s easily seen that you’ve not proposed to many women,” said Captain
Macartney coolly. “They never say yes, at first.”
The shaft went home. His ugly _vis-à-vis_ shrugged his shoulders and
made no reply.
“We had a saying about Flora Colonibel in the past,” said Captain
Macartney earnestly, “that she feared neither saint, angel, nor demon,
but that she stood in mortal dread of Brian Camperdown. She will
persecute that girl to a dead certainty. Can’t you hold her in check? My
stepmother will stand by you. She would even take her for a trip
somewhere, or have her visit her.”
“I’ll look after her,” briefly. “By the way, where did you meet her?”
“In Paris, with the French lady who has been traveling with her since
she left school, and who asked my stepmother to take charge of her on
the journey here.”
“Her arrival was a surprise,” said Dr. Camperdown. “Armour didn’t tell
me that she was coming.”
Captain Macartney surveyed him with some jealousy. “So you too have an
eye to her movements?”
“Yes,” said Camperdown impishly. “I don’t care for her antecedents.”
“Oh, indeed; I am glad that you do not,” said the officer, drawing on
his gloves with a smile. “Of course you do not. You have no right to do
so. How is that lady with the charming name?”
“She is well.”
“Is she still in her old quarters?”
“Yes.”
“I must do myself the pleasure of calling on her. She is as remarkable
as ever I suppose?”
“More so.”
“I can well believe it. Now I must leave you. I am due at the South
Barracks at twelve,” and he rose to go.
“Stop, Macartney; there are mitigating circumstances connected with this
affair. I told you that Miss Delavigne’s immediate ancestry was poor. It
is also noble on her mother’s side—formerly rich. You have heard of the
French family the Lacy d’Entrevilles?”
“I have.”
“Ever hear that they sprang from the stock of a prince royal of France?”
“No, I have not.”
“They say they did; one of them, a Marquis Réné Théodore something or
other was a colonel in Louis the Fourteenth’s body-guards—came out to
Quebec in command of a regiment there, then to Acadie and founded this
branch of the family; it is too long a story to tell. I dare say
mademoiselle is as proud as the rest of them.”
“She is,” said his hearer with a short laugh.
“Born aristocrats—and years of noses to the grindstone can’t take it out
of them, and the Delavignes, though hewers of wood and drawers of water,
as compared with the aristocratic Lacy d’Entrevilles, were all high
strung and full of honesty. Seriously, Macartney, I think her father was
a monomaniac. A quiet man immersed in his business wouldn’t start out
all at once on a career of dishonesty after an unblemished record.”
“I am glad to hear this,” said Captain Macartney, “and I am exceedingly
obliged to you. Some other time I shall ask you to favor me with the
whole story,” and he went thoughtfully away.