Read Ebook: The House of Armour by Saunders Marshall

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Ebook has 3374 lines and 120029 words, and 68 pages

"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."

"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.

A bright-faced lad with dark blue Irish eyes and glossy hair came hurrying down the deck, his hands thrust into the pockets of his long ulster, his whole expression that of one suffering from extreme cold.

"Are you frostproof," he exclaimed, "that you stand here motionless in this stinging air? I am not surprised at you, Miss Delavigne," and he made her a low bow, "as you are a Canadian, but I marvel at Geoffrey," and he glanced at his brother, "fresh from India's suns as he is. Shall we not have a last promenade, mademoiselle? The cold is biting me like a dog."

Vivienne laughed and placed herself beside him, while Captain Macartney murmured, "There go our guns; we are announcing ourselves."

"Will you not tell me, Miss Delavigne," said the boy in a confidential tone of voice, "about this matter of signaling? I have asked Geoffrey several times, but he only grunts like an Irish pig, and gives me no answer."

"With all my heart, Mr. Patrick," said the girl with a businesslike air. "From the outposts at the harbor mouth every vessel is reported to the citadel."

"What is the citadel?" he asked.

"It is the fort on the hill in the middle of the town."

"What a quarrelsome set you Halifax people must be," said the boy, "to require so many fortifications and such a number of redcoats to keep you in order."

"Not for ourselves do we need them, Mr. Patrick," she said teasingly, "but for our troublesome guests from the old country." Then hastily, to avoid the wordy warfare that he was eager to plunge into, she went on. "Up there is an island that is all fort."

"Shades of my uncle the general!" he said; "can that be so? Let us go forward and see it."

"A French vice-admiral who ran himself through with his sword is buried on it," said Vivienne, as they proceeded slowly along the deck.

"Hush!" said the boy. "What is mamma doing?"

Vivienne smiled broadly. Mrs. Macartney, the good-hearted, badly educated daughter of a rich but vulgar Dublin merchant, was a constant source of amusement to her. Just now she was waddling down the deck, driving before her a little dapper Nova Scotian gentleman who had become known to them on the passage as excessively polite, excessively shy, and, like Vivienne, excessively patriotic.

Hovering over her victim like a great good-natured bird she separated him from a group of people standing near, and motioned him into the shadow of a suspended lifeboat.

"Ducky, ducky, come and be killed," said Patrick wickedly. "Do you know what mamma is going to do, Miss Delavigne?"

"No, I do not."

"She is going to cross-question that man about Canada in such a ladylike, inane way that he won't know whether he's on his head or his heels. Come and listen."

"Mrs. Macartney may not like it."

"Yes, she will; the more the merrier. Come along."

Vivienne laughed and followed him near the Irish lady, who was preposterously and outrageously fat. A living tide was slowly rolling over her, obliterating all landmarks of a comely person. Her ankles were effaced; her waist was gone. Her wrists had disappeared, and her neck had sunk into her shoulders. Cheeks and chin were a wide crimson expanse, yet her lazy, handsome blue eyes looked steadily out, in no wise affrighted by the oncoming sea of flesh.

"Mamma always does this," said Patrick gleefully. "She doesn't know any more about geography than a tabby cat, and she won't learn till she gets to a place. Look at the little man writhing before her. She has called his dear land Nova Zembla six times. Listen to him."

"Madam," the Nova Scotian was saying, "this is Nova Scotia. Nova Zembla is situated in the Arctic regions. It is a land of icebergs and polar bears. I scarcely think it has any inhabitants."

"I beg your pardon," said Mrs. Macartney, shaking her portly person with a good-natured laugh. "The names are so much alike that they confuse me. I only know that one is a cold place and the other a warm one, that one is in North America and the other in South."

"Madam," he said desperately, and shifting his feet about on a coil of rope on which he had taken refuge, "Nova Zembla is in the north of Europe. We are in North America."

"Are we?" she said amiably; "then we haven't come to Canada yet?"

"Oh yes, madam, we have. Nova Scotia is in Canada, in the lower southeastern part--nearest England you know. It is the last in the line of provinces that stretch from the Pacific to the Atlantic."

At the mention of the Pacific, Mrs. Macartney's lumbering fancy attempted to take flight to the coral groves of Oceanica. "I did not know that Canada bordered on the Pacific," she returned dubiously. "How near is it?"

"Just three thousand six hundred and sixty-two miles away, madam. The continent lies between us."

"Oh indeed," with relief; "and Canada you say extends all the way across."

"Yes, madam."

"And it is made up of different provinces?"

"Yes, madam; they have been confederated."

"And this one is called Nova Scotia?"

"Yes, madam."

"And how large may it be?" cajolingly; "half as large as one of our Irish provinces?"

"Madam," trembling with indignation, "Nova Scotia, with the island at its northeastern extremity, has only about ten thousand square miles of area less than all Ireland with every province in it."

"Bless me!" she exclaimed in unmitigated surprise. Then after a long pause, and with less assurance, "The island, I suppose, is Newfoundland?"

"No, madam," dejectedly. "Newfoundland is away to the northeast of us--a two days' voyage from here."

Mrs. Macartney, a trifle abashed, decided to abandon the somewhat dangerous ground of Canada's geographical position, and confine herself to general remarks. She started out gallantly on a new career. "This a fine place to live in, I suppose--plenty of sport. You have hunting and fishing all the year round, don't you?"

Somewhat mollified he assented unqualifiedly to this. Following the law of association, she dragged from some recess in her mind another less pleasing feature of the hunting world in Canada, which she had somewhere and at some time heard mentioned. "Do the Indians cause you very much trouble?" she asked sympathetically.

"No, madam; our aborigines are a very peaceful set."

"How long may it be since your last massacre?"

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