BROTHER AND SISTER
Armour, after hanging up his coat, sat down in a corner of the little
room.
“You don’t often come to town in the evening, Stanton,” said Stargarde.
“No; I had to see some merchants who are going away early in the
morning. The sleigh was sent in for me, so I thought I would call for
you and Miss Delavigne.”
“Are you going out to Pinewood?” asked Dr. Camperdown of his hostess.
“Yes; to spend the night and a part of tomorrow.”
“It will do you good,” he returned; “I suppose you are sorry to have her
go, Miss Delavigne?”
“More sorry than I can tell you,” said Vivienne.
“You saucy little girl!” and he frowned ominously at her. Then in a
lower key, and making sure that Stargarde and Mr. Armour were deep in
conversation, “Has she been talking to you?”
“Oh, yes, of many things.”
“Good; let her advise you. What do you think of her?”
“I—I think that she is magnificent,” said Vivienne, trying to speak
calmly.
“Better still,” said the physician in deep satisfaction. “Be with her
all you can; she’s a rock for strength and an angel for sweetness.”
“Vivienne,” said Stargarde, “Stanton wishes to go; are you ready?”
“Yes,” said she, rising and going for her wraps.
“Don’t drive home,” said Camperdown a few minutes later, when they stood
looking at the heaped-up rugs in the sleigh standing before the door.
“There’s no room for me, anyway. Let’s walk. It’s a fine night. Look at
the stars and the moon,” and he pointed up to the blue vault of the sky.
“Are we not going to be rid of you yet, Brian?” said Stargarde, with a
comical face.
“A medical man does not desert his patients. I’ve two to see home.
Stanton, I forbid your driving. A walk will make you sleep better. Take
Miss Delavigne on ahead of us. If you go too fast I’ll say that you are
trying to outwit me. Now one, two, three, and away. Send your man home.”
“Not till I find out whether these ladies prefer to walk,” said Mr.
Armour.
“Of course they do. I asked them.”
“Oh, well, if it is arranged”—and turning to the sleigh he said to the
coachman, “We shall walk; do not wait for us.”
Vivienne glanced at Armour’s face as they went under the gateway. She
wished to know if he was annoyed at Dr. Camperdown’s persistence in
giving them the long walk out to Pinewood, and so coolly foisting her
upon him as a companion, when he would so much rather have had
Stargarde.
He did not seem annoyed. There was even, she fancied, a look of cold,
placid satisfaction on his face as he walked along soberly by her side,
his hands in the pockets of his coat, his head bent slightly forward.
However, he did not speak to her, and seemed to be in one of his usual
reveries, or listening to the conversation of Stargarde and Camperdown,
who were close behind them.
Passing quietly by one door after another they came suddenly upon
MacDaly, who was sneaking guiltily away from home.
Armour and Vivienne passed him, Camperdown stared at him without
speaking, but Stargarde drew up before him with a pained and
remonstrating, “Why, MacDaly, I thought you were in your room?”
MacDaly was too much overcome to speak, but he seemed to be touched by
the distress of the only person in the world that he cared for besides
his own unworthy self, and bowing low he laid a bottle at her feet.
Camperdown promptly broke the neck of the bottle and threw it in the
gutter, and calling to Vivienne and Armour not to wait, he and Stargarde
retraced their footsteps in order that they might see the wandering lamb
safely within the shelter of the Pavilion.
Vivienne looked at Mr. Armour, who was gazing fixedly at her. “Stargarde
is an ideal woman; I did not think that in real life there were any like
her.”
“Her moral character is one of great beauty,” he said, “and she is
utterly fearless; yet what is the use?”
“The use?” repeated Vivienne with vivacity; “has she not stopped MacDaly
from spending the night in some saloon?”
“For to-night, yes; for to-morrow, no. He is an inveterate drunkard.”
“But he promises her to do better. He may reform some day.”
“How can he reform when inherited tendencies are crying out in an
opposite direction?”
“Stargarde does not believe in heredity,” said Vivienne.
“She does, but to a limited degree only. That is where she makes a
mistake. Yet in her case every theory with regard to heredity has been
thrown to the winds. One might almost say she was born damned.” Vivienne
looked him severely in the face. “I have shocked you,” he said
irritably. “Yet if you knew everything——”
“Stargarde says,” began Vivienne, “that one should look after little
children, give them good food and wholesome surroundings, and God will
take care of the rest.”
“What about the ancestors?” he said. “Children are helpless there, and
that is where the mischief comes in. I wish I had had the choosing of
mine,” he added under his breath. “I should have been a happier man.”
A swift and intense compassion took possession of Vivienne, which,
though she gave no expression to it, he seemed to understand perfectly
and to slightly resent.
“I am not so unhappy as you imagine,” he observed, “and I beg your
pardon for talking to you so freely; I don’t know why I do it.”
His tone was as sulky as that of a boy, and Vivienne wisely forebore to
answer him. For a long time they walked on without speaking; then to
break the awkward silence she said, “Stargarde has saved many children.”
Mr. Armour smiled faintly. “You are coming under her influence; if it
weren’t for your engagement I daresay you would make a Stargarde the
second.”
“I am going to break my engagement,” said Vivienne quickly. “Mr. Armour,
I cannot——”
He stopped short and looked down at her. “What is this?”
“Stargarde has been talking to me—she told me to explain to you. There
were some things that I did not understand; and I think with her that
one should love deeply the person that one marries.”
Mr. Armour concealed his astonishment. There was about the girl at his
side a gentleness and frankness that always enveloped her like an
atmosphere when she was fresh from Stargarde’s influence. He could not
speak harshly to her, yet he was annoyed.
“I think,” he said gravely, “that you had better give this matter some
further thought. There is a precipitancy about your entering into
engagements and breaking them that I do not like.”
“Don’t you understand?” she said, with an eager little gesture. “It is
this way: You have a calm and clear judgment, and much experience. You
form your opinions slowly. I am young and rash, and, as Stargarde says,
I have made a mistake that many another woman has made. It is a good
thing to be married, but I did not think long enough about the
suitability of, of——”
“Of Captain Macartney, I suppose,” said Mr. Armour dryly. “What will he
say to this abrupt dismissal?”
“He will understand,” said Vivienne; “he is good and kind. I do not
dread telling him half as much as, as—you might fancy I would.”
Mr. Armour noted her confusion of thought. “Or half as much as you
dreaded telling me,” he said; “am I right?”
“You are,” said Vivienne vivaciously; “yet, if I may say a word in my
own defense, it is that my haste in entering into this engagement was to
please you.”
“Indeed,” curtly; “then I am to be made the scapegoat?”
Vivienne was wounded by his tone, and made no reply to him.
“And what are your plans for the future, may I ask?”
“Stargarde wishes me to live with her.”
“You will get tired of that life in a week.”
“Then I will do something else,” bravely; “but I really think that you
are mistaken in me.”
“I am not mistaken in thinking you are an irrepressible worry,” he
communed with himself, just as Vivienne said,
“May I ask just how much control you exercise over my movements?”
Armour stared at her. “What do you mean?”
“When shall I become mistress of my own affairs?”
“Your own affairs,” he said, with an involuntary smile. “Well, I should
say that you were managing them yourself just now.”
“I do not think that you understand me. You or your father was legally
appointed my guardian.”
“There was no legal appointment,” he said, pushing his fur cap farther
back on his head. “We took charge of you on our own responsibility.”
“But my father—when he died did he not ask you to take charge of my
money and educate me?”
“What money?” and Mr. Armour’s eyes grew colder as he fixed them on her.
“Whatever my father left me,” said Vivienne patiently. “I don’t know
anything about it, except that it is safe in your hands, and that I want
to give some of it to Stargarde if I go to live with her.”
Mr. Armour’s gaze wandered all about him before he answered her. Then he
said quietly: “Where would your father—a clerk on a salary—accumulate
money to leave you?”
“But what have I been living on?” said Vivienne in surprise.
“I leave that to your imagination.”
“Have you been supporting me all these years?” she asked, her face
suffused with color.
“Again I reply that I leave that to your imagination,” he said, twisting
an icicle off a window that they were passing.
She stopped suddenly and covered her eyes with her hands. Mr. Armour
scanned her narrowly. Was she trying to impress him? No; her emotion was
genuine. Her gloved fingers, held like bars over her crimson, almost
purple cheeks, were outward and mute signs of inward suffering.
“I would have undeceived you if I had known of this delusion of yours,”
he said kindly.
“Do I owe you everything—everything?” said the girl, dropping her hands
and fixing her glittering eyes on him.
He bowed gravely.
“And you have thought me extravagant, I dare say.”
“That is hardly a fair question,” he said, with an approving glance at
her fur-lined jacket and richly trimmed gown. “I wished you to dress
like a lady.”
“A lady!” repeated the girl bitterly, “yes; a fine lady. Now I shall
have to support myself.”
“Why so?”
“I am grown up now. You have given me a good education. I shall take no
more favors from you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I am too proud to be dependent.”
“That is exactly why you should go on with your dependence. What can you
do to support yourself?”
“If I cannot support myself by assisting Stargarde, I will teach.”
“What can you teach?”
“Everything that I have been taught.”
“Pardon me—a smattering of everything. You have received an ordinary
boarding-school education, which is about the worst possible preparation
for a teaching career. If I had intended you to teach I would have put
you in a public school or a college.”
Vivienne looked steadfastly at him without speaking.
“Be content to do as I tell you,” he said, walking on and clasping his
hands behind his back. “Your father served us well. As a lad I worshiped
him. I plan to support you until the day of your death. If I die first,
suitable provision will be made for you. As I told you I want you to
remain at Pinewood for a time. Then you may go where you will. You are
getting on well now. I detest those scenes that Flora delights in; you
women know how to put a stop to such things, and I am glad that you have
done so. I am glad too that Judy likes you—she leads a lonely life.”
Vivienne was not listening to him. To his surprise he found that she had
dropped behind him and had struck an attitude of distress against a
snowbank.
“She looks like the picture of her ancestress, Madame La Tour, defending
her husband’s fort,” he muttered, hastening back to her.
“I am not faint,” said Vivienne feebly. “I am coming right on; but I
have had a blow—such a blow, but”—proudly—"you will not see me break
down again."
She spoke with a remnant of her old spirit, and Armour smiled
encouragingly at her. “Take my arm, you foolish child. You have not
broken down. Now let us set out again, and have no further
interruptions. See, there are some people coming—friends of ours too, I
believe. Try to get some color in your face.”
Vivienne held her head well up till they had passed, then it sank on her
breast again. Armour glanced at the little, clenched hand that lay on
his arm and said gently and yet a trifle disdainfully:
“Do not imagine that you are suffering.”
“I do not imagine it. I know that I am.”
“Your disturbance is purely a thing of sentiment,” he said. “I do not
say that you are not troubled—I dare say you are; but you will get over
it. You are young; you do not know the meaning of the word sorrow.”
“What is it then to suffer?” she asked.
“To suffer”—and he drew a long breath and cast a glance about him like
one taking his last look on earth and sky—"ah, I will not tell you."
Vivienne shuddered; in the midst of her own preoccupation she realized
that there were depths in the unhappy nature of the man beside her that
she could not fathom, even if she were allowed to look into them.
“Do you know anything of astronomy?” asked Mr. Armour suddenly.
“No, nothing,” she replied; “we did not have it in any of the schools
that you sent me to.”
He paid no attention to the sob in her voice, and in tones as cool and
passionless as if there were no such things as sorrow and unhappiness in
the world, he pointed out some of the constellations to her. In a short
time they were beyond the outlying houses of the city, and with lagging
steps and upturned faces passed slowly along a snowy road, from which
they had an extended and uninterrupted view of the blue sky spread above
them, where countless stars shone and sparkled like priceless jewels,
set far above the unworthy earth below.
“I used to devote a good deal of my time to the study of the heavens,”
said Mr. Armour, when they stepped slowly under the murmuring pines of
the avenue, and their view of the sky was shut off. “I still have a
telescope in the cupola, and occasionally I go up. Do you ever hear me?”
Yes; she had heard his heavy step passing her door, often late at night,
and had surmised that the strange, self-contained man, who was such an
enigma himself, was about to engage in a study of the mysteries of the
celestial bodies.
“Star-gazing ruined Palinurus,” interposed Camperdown, who came rolling
up to the broad stone doorstep, looking like one of the good-natured
men-of-war sailors who are so frequently seen about the streets of
Halifax.
He had evidently caught some scraps of their conversation, for he went
on: “See the Æneid, Book V., line something or other. Palinurus directed
his eyes to the stars; the god shook over him a branch dripping with
Lethean dew; and rendered sleepy by Stygian power, over he went into the
clear waters. Poor Palinurus.”
“What is the matter with Camperdown this evening,” said Armour,
addressing Stargarde, who at that moment came sauntering out from under
the pines.
“I don’t know,” she returned, glancing uneasily at the subject of their
remarks. “I never saw him like this before. His tongue rattled so fast
that I had to send him on ahead in order that I might enjoy the quiet
beauty of this evening.”
“Hear a parable, O friends,” said Camperdown, without raising his eyes,
and scraping the snow about with his foot. “Once a certain man sat under
a plum tree, where he looked and longed exceedingly for a beautiful
young plum that hung just over him. The plum grew and ripened, but being
the most obstinate plum that ever lived, would not fall into the man’s
mouth. One day being weak with impatience and with waiting for the plum,
he opened his mouth to yawn, when straightway the plum fell into his
mouth and choked him——”
“So that he never spoke again,” said Stargarde, with a stifled laugh.
“No,” said Camperdown, lifting his eyes and surveying her with
preternatural gravity; “loosened his tongue and gave him an unwonted
flow of language.”
“Good-night, Camperdown,” said Armour; “I’m going in.”
“So am I,” said Dr. Camperdown agreeably, “as far as the pantry. I’m
ravenous, Stanton. Stargarde offered me no supper this evening. Pity a
poor, starving man.”
“Come in,” said Armour shortly, unlocking the door and ushering his
guests into the hall, which was dimly lighted. “Now, Camperdown, don’t
make a noise, or you’ll have Flora down upon us.”
“That isn’t the way to the pantry, man,” said Camperdown, pushing him
aside. “That’s the china closet. It’s too hot there to keep food. Here,
follow me,” and taking a box of matches from his pocket he led the small
party—for he insisted upon bringing Stargarde and Vivienne along—into a
room whose shelves were lined with a goodly supply of tempting meats and
dainties.
“Cold goose and apple sauce!” he ejaculated, setting aside a large dish.
“You mustn’t touch that, ladies, nor you, Stanton. ’Twill give you
indigestion. Mayonnaise of celery—I’ll have some of that with it. Here
is some jelly for you, Miss Delavigne—lemon, I think, and custard, and
cake. Stargarde, you may have those mashed chestnuts. Stanton, you’d
better try a soda biscuit. Now ‘fall to,’ as old Hannah says, and don’t
make a noise.”
Vivienne was not in a humor for frolicking, and excusing herself went
upstairs, her hands full of pieces of sponge cake that Dr. Camperdown
had bidden her take with her. When she reached the staircase leading to
the upper flat, she found that Mammy Juniper was, as Judy graphically
expressed it, “on a prowl,” and had started it by one of her favorite
occupations, laying a curse on Vivienne.
The old woman’s face was terribly distorted, and she had pushed her
white nightcap far on the back of her grizzled wool. Her candlestick she
held in her hand, waving it back and forth across Vivienne’s door panels
as if she were making mystic signs.
Vivienne listened for a few instants to the anathemas called down upon
her innocent head, which this evening seemed to take the form of bodily
afflictions. “Make her like Job, Lord,” the old woman was praying; “give
her boils and no potsherd to scrape them. Cover her with sores. Let her
be racked with pain——”
Such expressions were not pleasant to listen to, and too weary and
disheartened this evening to disturb the old woman, who was apt to
become belligerent if interrupted in her ravings, Vivienne retreated
noiselessly to the hall below. There she sat down on the top step of the
staircase and watched for Stargarde to come from the pantry.
In a few minutes Camperdown, chuckling amiably to himself, came through
the lower hall and passed out of the house. Some time elapsed before the
other two appeared. Then they came sauntering along together, Stargarde
with her hand on Mr. Armour’s shoulder, and looking fondly into his
eyes. When they reached the middle of the hall, she drew his head to her
and kissed his forehead repeatedly: “Good-night, my dear boy. May all
good angels guard your sleep.”
Vivienne in her bewilderment and distress almost cried out. She had
become very much attached to the eccentric physician, whom Stargarde
tolerated so good-naturedly, and she fondly hoped that some day
Stargarde would marry him. And now she was bestowing caresses on another
man, which from a woman such as she was, could mean only one thing, that
she loved Mr. Armour and would marry him.
Some movement that Vivienne involuntarily made, attracted the attention
of the two people below; Stargarde looked up hastily and on seeing the
disturbed face peering down at her, grew first pale and then red, but
did not release her hold on Mr. Armour. “Vivienne,” she said quietly,
“come here, dear child.”
Slowly and most unwillingly Vivienne went down step by step, till at
last she stood in the lower hall.
Stargarde led Mr. Armour up to one of the panel mirrors with which Flora
was fond of decorating the house. There she threw one arm around his
neck, and with her hand covered his moustache. A quick motion of her
other hand brushed back the yellow curls from her face. The exposed
forehead in her case, the hidden moustache in his, heightened the strong
resemblance between them that Vivienne was intensely astonished to
perceive, and yet wondered at herself for not noticing before.
The two heads were of the same classical shape, the straight noses were
alike, both had a clear, healthful pallor of skin and faint coloring of
the cheek; but Armour’s thick, light hair was straight and waveless, and
several shades paler than Stargarde’s yellow, curling locks.
In troubled confusion Vivienne gazed at them, thankful that their backs
were to her, and that Stargarde had been thoughtful enough to present
their faces to her in the mirror. They were brother and sister. She did
not understand it, nor know what to say about it, and it was an immense
relief when Stargarde turned to her with one of her quick motions,
kissed her lovingly, and going upstairs with her murmured, “Don’t worry
over it, dear; it is all right.”
When they reached the turn in the staircase, Vivienne looked over her
shoulder. Mr. Armour was going about the hall, putting out the lights,
with the same dull, unmoved expression of countenance that he had worn
ever since he came into the house. Under his own roof there always
seemed a heavier shadow upon him than when he was away from it.
“Oh, Stargarde,” said Vivienne, clasping her friend’s hand to her
breast, “I am so miserable!”
“I know it, darling; your face is pitiful. Go and undress and get into
your little white bed, and I will come and sit beside you, and you shall
tell me all about it. I want to speak to Mammy first.”
Late that night, long after Stargarde had watched Vivienne lay her black
head on her pillow and had kissed her, murmuring sweetly in French,
“_Bonne nuit; dormez bien, mon ange_,” old Mammy Juniper crept to the
sleeping apartment of the stranger under the roof. Noticing that there
were tears on the lovely cheeks, she wiped them away, and with fierce
mutterings looked in the direction of Vivienne’s room and called down a
curse upon her, if she had been the one to bring them there.