MRS. MACARTNEY GETS A FRIGHT
Vivienne and Judy were in their sitting room reading by the light of a
lamp on the table between them when the younger girl suddenly pricked up
her ears.
“There’s a puffing, panting sound on the staircase,” she said, “as if a
steam-tug were approaching. It must be your Irish friend. I’ll decamp,
for I don’t want to see her.” She picked up her crutch and was about to
flee to her bedroom when she was arrested by a succession of squeals.
“Holy powers save us,” moaned Mrs. Macartney bursting into the room.
“There’s something odd about this house when the devil lives in the top
story of it.”
“Thank you,” said Judy smartly; “perhaps you don’t know that these are
my apartments.”
Mrs. Macartney did not hear her. Holding Vivienne’s hands, and half
laughing, half crying, she was rocking herself to and fro.
“He had on a nightcap and a woman’s gown, and he goggled at me from an
open door; and, me dear, his face was like a coal——”
“It’s Mammy Juniper that you’ve seen, dear Mrs. Macartney,” exclaimed
Vivienne.
“And who is Mammy Juniper?” inquired her visitor, stopping short to
stare at her.
“She’s an old family servant; sit down here and I’ll tell you about
her.”
“Ah me; ah me,” wailed the Irish lady dropping on a sofa; “we don’t have
people of her color in my peaceful home. Sure, I thought me last hour
had come.”
“She is very black,” said Vivienne gravely; “and she despises the other
colored people here. Mammy is a Maroon. Have you ever heard of that
race?”
“Never, me dear; I didn’t want to.”
“They were a fierce and lawless people living in Jamaica,” said
Vivienne; “and they fought the English and would not submit till they
heard that they were to be hunted with dogs. Then they gave in and were
transported here. They disliked Nova Scotia because they said there were
no yams nor cocoanuts and bananas growing here, and no wild hogs to
hunt; and the men couldn’t have as many wives as they chose, nor have
cock-fighting; so the government sent them all to Africa; all but the
parents of Mammy Juniper, and when they died she became a servant in
this family.”
“A fearsome body for a servant,” said her hearer; “aren’t you terrified
of her, me dear?”
“No,” said Vivienne; “she is more afraid of me than I am of her. I am
sorry for her.”
“Don’t talk about her, me child,” said Mrs. Macartney with a shudder.
“Talk about yourself. Aren’t you shamming ill with that rosy face?”
“I’m not ill,” said Vivienne lightly. “This is only a feverish cold; but
Dr. Camperdown won’t let me go downstairs.”
“I was determined to see you,” said Mrs. Macartney, pulling Vivienne
beside her to the sofa. “I thickened the air with hints that I’d like to
come up, but Mrs. Colonibel tried to frighten me with tales of the
badness of your cold.”
“She doesn’t like me to have callers up here, for some reason,” said
Vivienne.
“She likes to be contrary, me dear. ’Tis the breath of life to her, and
maybe she’s jealous of your handsome room”—looking admiringly about
her—"which is the most elegant of the house. Your whites and golds don’t
slap me in the face like the colors downstairs. That’s the lady of the
mansion’s good pleasure, I suppose. Ah, but she is a fine woman!"
The inimitable toss of her head as she pronounced this praise of Mrs.
Colonibel and the waggish roll of her eyes to the ceiling made Vivienne
press her handkerchief to her lips to keep from laughter that she feared
might reach Judy’s ears.
“I wish you could have seen her ladyship yesterday when she came to
invite us to this dinner, me dear,” said Mrs. Macartney with a twisting
of her mouth. “The boy at the hotel brought up her card—Mrs. Colonibel.
‘That’s the Lady Proudface,’ said I, and I went to the drawing room; and
there she stood, and rushed at me like this——” and Mrs. Macartney rising
from the sofa charged heavily across the room at an unoffending table
which staggered on its legs at her onset.
Vivienne half started from her seat then fell back again laughing
spasmodically. “Me dear,” said Mrs. Macartney looking over her shoulder
at her, “she thought to make up by the warmth of her second greeting for
the coldness of her first. She said she wanted us all to come and dine
_en famille_, to celebrate the engagement, so I thought I’d tease her
and talk French too; so I said, ‘Wouldn’t we be _de trop_? and you
mustn’t suppose we belonged to the _élite_ of the world, for we were
plain people and didn’t care a rap for the opinion of the _beau monde_.’
You should have seen her face! And then I took pity on her and said we’d
come. And come we did; and I’d give a kingdom if you could see Patrick
and Geoffrey. They’re sitting beside Mrs. Colonibel, bowing and smirking
at everything she says, and she’s thinking she’s mighty entertaining,
and when we get home they’ll both growl and say they were bored to
death, and why didn’t I tell them you weren’t to be present. Me dear, I
didn’t dare to,” in a stage whisper, and looking over her shoulder.
“They’d never have come.”
“Is Mrs. Colonibel not at all embarrassed with you?” said Vivienne. “She
was not polite to you the other day, though of course it was on my
account, not on yours.”
“Embarrassed, did you say, me dear?” replied Mrs. Macartney gayly.
“Faith, there’s no such word in society. You must keep a bold front,
whatever you do, or you’ll get the gossips after you. Dip your tongue in
honey or gall, whichever you like, and hold your head high, and there’s
no such thing as quailing before the face of mortal man or woman. Drop
your head on your breast and go through the world, and you’ll have the
fingers pointed at you. Me Lady Proudface is the woman to get on. If
you’d seen the way she took the news of your engagement you’d have
fallen at her feet in admiration.”
“She suppressed her disapproval,” said Vivienne.
“Disapproval, me child. ’Twas like salt to her eyeballs; but she never
winked. Hasn’t she said anything to you about it?”
“No; we rarely have any conversations.”
“Ah, she’d have but a limited supply of compliments left after her
flowery words to me. By the way, did you get the grand bouquet that
Geoffrey sent to you?”
“Yes; it is over there by the window.”
“He’s desolated not to see you, as the French people say; but hist, me
dear, there’s some one at the door. Maybe it’s her ladyship. I’ll go
into this adjacent room.”
“No, no; stay here,” exclaimed Vivienne with an apprehensive glance at
the narrow doorway leading to her sleeping apartment. “It does not
matter who comes.”
“It’s only I,” said a meek voice, and Dr. Camperdown’s sandy head
appeared, shortly followed by the rest of his body.
Mrs. Macartney, not heeding Vivienne’s advice, had tried to enter the
next room, and had become firmly wedged in the doorway. Dr. Camperdown
was obliged to go to her assistance, and when he succeeded in releasing
her she looked at him with such a variety of amusing expressions chasing
themselves over her face that he grinned broadly and turned away.
“Who is this gentleman?” said Mrs. Macartney at last breathlessly, with
gratitude, and yet with a certain repugnance to the physician on account
of his ugly looks.
Vivienne performed the necessary introduction, and Mrs. Macartney
ejaculated, “Ah, your doctor. Perhaps,” jocularly, “I may offer myself
to him as a patient.” Then as Dr. Camperdown took Vivienne’s wrist in
his hand she bent over him with an interested air and said, “It’s me
flesh, doctor. I don’t know what to do about it. The heavens seem to
rain it down upon me—flake upon flake, layer upon layer. I’ve been
rubbed and tubbed, and grilled and stewed, and done Banting, and taken
Anti-fats, and yet it goes on increasing. Every morning there’s more of
it, and every evening it grows upon me. I have to swing and tumble and
surge about me bed to get impetus enough to roll out; it’s awful,
doctor!”
Vivienne listened to her in some surprise, for up to this she had not
imagined that Mrs. Macartney felt the slightest uneasiness in regard to
her encumbrance of flesh. But there was real anxiety in her tones now,
and Vivienne listened with interest for the doctor’s reply.
“What do you eat?” he said abruptly, and with a swift glance at her
smooth, fair expanse of cheek and chin.
“Three fairish meals a day,” she said, “and a supper at night.”
“How much do you walk?”
“Sure, I never walk at all if I can get a carriage.”
He laughed shortly, and said nothing.
“What do you think about it, doctor—is it a dangerous case?” said Mrs.
Macartney, twisting her head so that she could look at his face as he
bent over his work. Vivienne saw that she was immensely impressed by his
oracular manner of delivering himself.
“Do you want me to prescribe for you?” he asked, straightening himself
with a suddenness that made his prospective patient start nervously.
“Ah, yes, doctor, please,” she said.
“Begin then by dropping the supper, avoid fats, sweets, anything
starchy. Walk till you are ready to drop; heart’s all right is it?”
“Ah, yes,” pathetically, and with a flicker of her customary
waggishness, “my heart’s always been my strong point, doctor.”
“Report to me at my office,” he went on; “come in a week.”
She shuffled to her feet, her face considerably brighter. “You’ve laid
me under an obligation, doctor. If you’ll make me a shadow smaller, I’ll
pray for the peace of your soul. And now I must go, me dear,” she said,
looking at Vivienne, “or I’ll be missed from the drawing room. I crept
away you know.”
Vivienne smiled. Mrs. Colonibel had probably watched her climbing the
staircase.
“I must go too,” said Dr. Camperdown, rising as Mrs. Macartney left the
room. “You’ll be all right in a day or two, Miss Delavigne. Mind, we’re
to be friends.”
Vivienne looked up gratefully into his sharp gray eyes. “You are very
good to come and see me.”
“Armour asked me to,” he said shortly.
“Judy told him that I was ill,” said Vivienne. “I scolded her a little,
because I did not think I really needed a doctor.”
“You are a proud little thing,” he remarked abruptly.
Vivienne’s black eyes sought his face in some surprise.
“You can’t get on in this world without help,” he continued. “Be kind to
other people and let others be kind to you. How do you and Mrs.
Colonibel agree?”
“Passably.”
“Don’t give in to her too much,” he said. “A snub does some people more
good than a sermon. Good-night,” and he disappeared abruptly.