A Countess from Canada Part 17

"Softly, softly! How would you like to have your own face rubbed in that fashion?" admonished Katherine; and then, finishing her preparations, she stood up in the boat in readiness to help the poor man through his last stage to safety. "Please throw me that oar," she said.

Phil took up the oar, and pitched it with great dexterity, so that it fell close to the boat.

Katherine picked it up, making a little grimace of disgust at its filthiness; then, wiping the worst of the mud off on the nearest clump of rushes, she proceeded to lash both oars together with the other end of the rope that was tied to Phil.

"Are you ready?" she asked sharply, for the man still knelt gasping and panting, and seemed to have no power to help himself.

Aided by Phil he rose slowly to his feet, then said in a hoa.r.s.e voice: "I don't think I can walk that bridge."

"You will have to do it, or stay where you are until we can row round to Seal Cove to bring a.s.sistance for you. Even then it may be hours before help can reach you, for the fishermen are all out to-day, and Mr. Ferrars is away also, as he has had to go to Akimiski to-day with Mr. Selincourt and his daughter."

There was contempt in Katherine's tone now, and she meant it to be so. If the man had a sc.r.a.p of courage in him, she must fan it into active life, but if he were a poltroon, pure and simple, then she must do the best she could and leave the result.

To her delight, however, he lifted his head with an angry jerk. "I will come, of course, but I shall sink in and you will have to pull me out again," he said.

"Oh, you won't sink very far, and I have you well roped!" she said cheerfully. "But if you are able to spare him, let Phil dance across first, then he will be here to help me to pull if need be."

"Go along, boy, I will follow," said the man, and Katherine saw him breathing deep and hard as Phil bounded lightly across, reaching the boat without any mishap.

"Now is your turn; be quick!" she cried authoritatively, but her heart seemed to fairly stop beating as the poor man took his first step forward and reeled on the sinking oars. "Quick!" she screamed, giving a sharp tug at the cord, which seemed to rouse him, for then he came on sharply enough.

Katherine, standing up in the boat, put out her hands to steady him when he came within reaching distance, and tried not to show how she shrank from his exceeding filthiness.

"There," she said soothingly, as he sank in a limp heap in the seat she had cleared for him, "you are safe now, and you will soon get over the fright."

"Thank you!" he murmured, but seemed incapable of further speech, and sat silent while they dragged up the bridge of oars, which had sunk out of sight.

"It was lucky you tied them together," said Phil, when the oars were dragged up and the handles cleansed on the rushes.

"Yes, if I had not thought of doing that we might have whistled for our oars," said Katherine, with a laugh that had a nervous ring. The man sitting in the boat was, so far as she could see, a stranger, although he was so liberally coated with mud that it was exceedingly difficult to make any guesses about his ident.i.ty, so there was nothing to account for the trembling which seized upon her as she looked at him. It was a hard struggle getting the boat back into the channel, and her hands were so sore with hauling on the rope that it was positive torture to use the paddle. The sun was pouring down with scorching brilliancy, and the flies gathered in black swarms about her face and head as she worked her way into the main channel again. Arriving there, she leaned forward and spoke to the man, who sat silent and apparently dazed in the stern of the boat.

"Are you staying at Seal Cove, and at whose house?" she asked gently, feeling exceedingly pitiful for the poor fellow, who must have lost his life if she had not chosen to bring her boat through the weedy back channel that afternoon.

"No, I have a house at Roaring Water Portage; my name is Selincourt," he answered.

The paddle which Katherine was stowing in the boat dropped from her hands with a clatter, and there was positive terror in her eyes as she gasped: "You are Mr. Selincourt, the Mr. Selincourt?"

"I suppose so; I certainly don't know any other," he said, smiling a little, which had a grotesque effect, for the mud with which his face was so liberally smeared had dried stiff in the sunshine, and the smiling made it crack like a painted mask which has been doubled up.

"But I thought you had gone to Akimiski?" Katherine said, her astonishment still so great that she would hardly have believed even now that the stranger was telling the truth, had it not been for the trembling which was upon her now that she found herself face to face with the man whom her father had so seriously wronged away back in the past.

"I should have been much wiser if I had gone," said Mr. Selincourt. "But at the last moment I decided to stay and survey the land on both sides of the river. I am sending back some of the boatmen with mails to-morrow, and it seemed essential that I should be able to write definitely to my agent in Montreal about land which I might wish to purchase. Then I got Stee Jenkin to put me across the river, and I wandered along the sh.o.r.e, then back along the river bank until I reached these beautiful green meadows, as I thought them. But when I started to walk across I began to sink, so slowly at first that I hardly realized what was wrong."

"That is because the mud is firmer near the bank," said Katherine.

"Right out in the centre it will not bear a duck."

"I should have been under long before, only when I saw what was coming I sat down, so sank more slowly. But it was horrible, horrible!" he exclaimed, with a violent shudder.

"Don't think about it more than you can help, and we shall not be long in getting you home," she said; then bent to her oars and tried to forget how sorely her blistered hands were hurting her.

CHAPTER XVI

"We Must be Friends!"

When her father decided not to go to Akimiski, Mary spent a long morning in roaming about Seal Cove, visiting the various little houses dotted near the fish shed, and making herself thoroughly acquainted with the neighbourhood. But when her father got into Stee Jenkin's boat, and was rowed across the river to survey the land on the farther side, Mary had herself rowed up the river, with the intention of spending the afternoon in arranging the little brown house to suit her own fancy. The afternoon proved so warm that she decided on leaving the arranging to the next day, and sat down to write letters instead. Even this proved a task beyond her powers, for she was more exhausted than she realized by the long journey over river and trail, and the hot day was making the fatigue felt.

One letter, short and sc.r.a.ppy, got itself written, and then weariness had its way. Mary went into her little bedroom, and, lying down, went fast asleep. It was three hours later when she awoke, and, feeling fearfully ashamed of her laziness, she went out to the little kitchen to light a fire for getting a cup of tea ready for her father.

No matter how well-to-do in money and gear people may be, if they leave the beaten tracks of civilization and immure themselves in the wilderness they will have to learn to help themselves or else suffer hardship. So Mary Selincourt, whose father's yearly income was a good way advanced in a four-figured total, found herself compelled to the necessity of lighting her own fire, or going without the tea. There was plenty of kindling wood close to her hand, so the task presented no especial difficulty, but she laughed softly to herself as she watched the leaping flames, and thought how astonished some of her aristocratic friends would be if they could see her doing domestic work amid such humble surroundings.

When the kettle began to sing she went into the little sitting-room to set the table for tea, and was enjoying the work as if it were play and she a child again, when a sound of voices and footsteps brought her in haste to the open door. Two of the boatmen were coming up the path from the river leading a mud-coated figure whom at first Mary did not recognise. But a second glance showed her that it was really her father. With a cry of alarm she met him at the door, full of concern for his uncomfortable plight, yet not for a moment realizing how terrible his danger had been.

"Dear Father, where have you been?" she cried.

"Within a hand-grip of death," he answered, with a quaver of breakdown in his voice, for it had shaken him fearfully, that long, slow torture of being sucked into the green ooze of the muskeg.

"Don't talk about it!" she said hastily. "I will put your clean things ready. There is happily a kettle on the boil; the men will help you to bath, and when you are in bed I will bring you tea."

"Yes," he answered languidly, while she flew to get things ready, and called one of the men to a.s.sist her in putting water into the big tin pan which was the only bath the house afforded.

She was going to put the pan in the bedroom, when the man who was helping stopped her with a suggestion. "You had better leave the pan here in front of the fire, Miss; the poor gentleman is so exhausted, you see, and the fire will be a comfort to him."

"I had not thought of that, but I am quite sure you are right," she said; then got the water to a comfortable temperature, and left the men to do their best.

They were prompt and speedy. In half an hour Mr. Selincourt was lying in bed, spent and faint it is true, but as clean as soap and water could make him. Mary hovered about him with a world of tenderness in face and manner, but she would not let him talk, would not even let him tell her how or where he had come so near to finding his death on that sunny June afternoon. It was not until he was asleep that she ventured to go back to the kitchen. The men had removed all traces of their work by cleaning the splashed floor, and were busy now in the open s.p.a.ce behind the house washing the mud-caked clothes which they had stripped from Mr. Selincourt, for those men who go on portage work must have at least an elementary knowledge of washing, or be content to go without clean shirts most of their time.

Mary beckoned for one of them to come to her.

"What happened to my father?" she asked. "I would not let him tell me, he is too thoroughly upset."

"We don't know, Miss," replied the man who had made the timely suggestion about the bath. "We were down on the bank, getting the boat ready that is to start for the south to-morrow, when a boat rowed by a girl came up the river. She was dripping with perspiration, and looked as if she had been rowing for a wager. Mr. Selincourt was sitting in the stern, and there was a small boy covered with mud too. The girl bade us take Mr. Selincourt and get him to bed, and said that she would send down river for Mr. Ferrars."

"How truly good of her!" cried Mary, with a mist of tears coming into her eyes. "It must have been Miss Radford from the store over the river. I was going to ask one of you to go to Seal Cove for Mr. Ferrars, but if he has been already sent for he may soon be here. So will you please go over to the store instead, give my love to Miss Radford, and ask her to tell you what was wrong?"

The man dried his soapy hands by the simple process of rubbing them on his trousers, and started on his errand, while Mary entered the house again and peeped in at the open door of her father's room, to make sure that he was still sleeping.

There was a good fire in the kitchen, and the kettle was boiling again. Mary had not had her cup of tea yet, although she had made one for her father. But she had forgotten all about that -forgotten, indeed, that she had taken no food, except two hard biscuits, since her early breakfast. It seemed such a long time before the man came back. His comrade was still busy out at the rear of the house, rubbing, pounding, and punching at the mud-stained clothes to get them clean, and as he worked he whistled softly over and over again two or three bars of "The Maple Leaf for Ever". For years afterwards Mary never heard the song without recalling that afternoon, with its keen anxiety, the glorious sunshine, and the steamy, soapy atmosphere of the little kitchen.

From front door to back door she paced, always treading softly through fear of disturbing the sleeper in the room beyond; then paced from back door to front door again, and paused to wait for the messenger whose coming was so delayed. Presently she heard the sound of oars, then a boat grounded, and a moment later the man came up the path, carefully carrying something in a basket which he presented to Mary.

"It is a bottle of ginger posset which Mrs. Burton has sent over for Mr. Selincourt. She says you must give him a teacupful as soon as he wakes, and you ought to make him swallow it even if he objects, as there is quinine in it, which may ward off swamp fever," the man said, with the air of one repeating a lesson.

"Mrs. Burton is very kind," said Mary, as she took basket and bottle. "But did you see Miss Radford, and why should there be danger of swamp fever for my father?"

"Miss Radford had got a party of Indians in the store that were taking all her time to manage," replied the man. "Indeed, I had to chip in and help her a bit myself, for while she showed one lot scarlet flannel and coloured calicoes, the other lot were trying to help themselves to beans, tobacco, and that sort of thing. But by the time I had punched the heads of three men, and slapped two squaws in the face, they seemed to sort of understand that good manners paid best, and acted according; then matters began to move quicker."

Mary clasped her hands in an agony of impatience. Would the man ever tell her, or would she be compelled to shake the information out of him?

"Did Miss Radford tell you what had happened?" she asked, with an emphatic stamp of her foot on the floor.