A Countess from Canada Part 31

"What are you staring at?" she asked lightly.

"Someone in oilskins has just rowed up and stopped over the river at Mr. Selincourt's. It looked like Oily Dave, but Phil said last night that he was away at the fishing," Miles answered, as he turned back into the store.

"So he was," said Katherine. "There was the usual legend in his dirty windows that all drinks must wait until he came back, which is a fearful temptation to temperance people to wish that he would never come back at all."

"His sort is sure to turn up safe and sound, no matter how great the danger; it is the best and worthiest that never come back," Miles said, so gloomily that Katherine took instant alarm.

"What do you mean? Has any bad news come?" she asked, gripping at the rough deal counter for support, and wondering how she would be able to bear it if he said yes.

"Mr. Selincourt went down to Seal Cove this morning and looked in here on his way back," said Miles. "He wanted to see you, but we told him that he could not; then he said that there was a good bit of worry about the boats. One was blown clean into the swamps last night, and will have to stick there until the weather is fine enough for her to be towed off, and another came ash.o.r.e, badly damaged, at the fish sheds; and he is afraid that some of the other boats may have been driven on to the rocks."

"The boats right out in the bay would be safe, wouldn't they?"

Katherine asked, with fear in her eyes.

"You never can say what will be safe in weather such as we had last night," Miles answered; then he moved restlessly towards the door of the store again, and stood looking out, eager to catch the man whose boat was moored under the alders on the opposite bank of the river, and to learn from him if there was news from the sea.

Katherine sat down suddenly. It was as if someone had already been in to say that a boat was wrecked. Disasters which were expected always came, so she told herself, and sat leaning her head against a box of soap, the smell of which ever after suggested shipwreck to her.

Ten minutes went past, then twenty minutes, and nearly half an hour had gone before Miles cried out excitedly: "Here he comes down the path; Mr. Selincourt is there too, without any hat, and it is raining hard! Yes, it is Oily Dave, and there goes his hand up to his mouth, just as if he were drinking!"

Katherine was at work by this time, packing stores into boxes, bags, and bundles, which would have to be carried over the long portage next day; but she left her task now and came round to the door, where she stood behind Miles and looked over his shoulder.

"If Mr. Selincourt were not there I would go down and call to the fellow to come over," said Miles impatiently.

"No need," rejoined Katherine quietly, "he is coming without any calling; don't you see that he is turning his boat across the river?"

Neither spoke after that until the boat grounded, and Oily Dave stepped out on to the bank.

"Miles, you must serve him with what he wants: don't call me; I-I am going to be busy," Katherine said hastily, then beat a rapid retreat from the door. But she only went to the corner where a lot of gay-coloured rugs were hanging, and stood there waiting to hear what Oily Dave might have to tell.

How slowly he walked up from the bank! She could hear his heavy seaboots squelching through the mud, then the deep, grunting noise which always accompanied any of his movements.

"Good morning!" said Miles curtly, as the squelching boots crossed the threshold.

"I don't call it a good morning," snarled Oily Dave.

Katherine drew yet closer into the shadow of the rugs, and clenched her hands tightly to keep from screaming; something bad had got to be told, she was sure, and she doubted her ability to bear it.

"What is wrong?" asked Miles.

"A good deal more than will ever be put right in this world, or the next either, perhaps," replied Oily Dave. "We are afraid the Mary has gone down."

"Ah!" The involuntary moan escaped the listener who was out of sight, but Oily Dave did not hear, or at any rate he did not heed, and, after a brief pause, he went on:

"We was off Akimiski yesterday after walrus, but when it came on to blow we turned home, for there is no anchorage to run to there in dirty weather, but plenty of rocks to fall foul of, which are not quite so pleasant. But we couldn't get home for a while, being blown along the east coast of the island, with a lively chance of being wrecked at any minute. We were beating along under the lee of the island when we saw a boat drifting bottom up, and when we hooked her we found she was the Mary's boat."

"It sounds bad, but it does not spell disaster quite, because, don't you see? they might have lost their boat on the way out," retorted Miles, in a defiant tone, which meant that he did not intend to believe bad news until it was proved beyond a doubt.

"There was a water jar and a bag of biscuits tied to the thwarts," replied Oily Dave. "It's true there wasn't nothing of the jar but the handle, and the biscuits was pap, as was to be expected, but the signs wasn't wanting of what had been taking place, don't you see? If we'd found the boat with nothing in it we could have hoped that it had just been washed adrift, and, though we should have been anxious, there would have been room left for hope, which in common sense and reason there ain't now."

"There is always room for hope until we know," objected Miles. "Besides, Akimiski isn't the Twins by any means; why, they must be fifty miles away, if not more."

"Nearer seventy. But who is to say that they ever got so far as the Twins? If they'd run into any sign of walrus on Akimiski on the way out, they would stop there for certain, a bird in hand being worth two in a bush any day in the week, and though all is fish that comes to our net, it is walrus we're keenest on, as everyone knows. I've been to Mr. Selincourt with the news, and it has about corked him up, poor gentleman! But the young lady was worse still; she turned on me as spiteful as if I'd gone and drowned the Mary's crew myself."

There was a deeply injured note in Oily Dave's tone now. He evidently resented keenly the fact that his bad tidings had not received a more sympathetic hearing.

"Who was on the Mary?" asked Miles.

"The usual lot: Nick Jones, master, Stee Jenkin, Bobby Poole, and Mr. Ferrars. A perfect Jonah that man is, and disaster follows wherever he goes," said Oily Dave, with a melancholy shake of his head.

"What do you mean?" demanded Miles, with a stare of surprise.

"What I say," retorted Oily Dave. "Mr. Selincourt sent him to me as a lodger; the river came down in flood and tried to drown him, and spoiled my house something fearful. Then he gets caught in a tidehole, when out walking with his sweetheart, which Miss Selincourt is, I suppose, though it pa.s.ses me why a young lady with dollars same as she has got don't look higher than a fisherman. But the thing that strikes me is that the man must have done something pretty bad, somewhere back behind, for the waters to be following him round like this."

"Look here! don't you think it is a pretty low-down thing to be taking a man's character away, directly there's a rumour going round that he is dead?" asked Miles stormily.

"I ain't taking away his character. I'm only saying that if he was fated to drown it is a great pity that he wasn't left to drown in the first place, seeing that it would have saved a lot of bother, and other precious lives also," replied Oily Dave, with the look and pose of a man who is bitterly misunderstood.

"Why, you must be stark, staring mad to talk like this!" exclaimed Miles, in doubt whether to heave the nearest article on which he could lay hands at the head of Oily Dave, or to pity him as a lunatic.

"I'm no more mad than you are, young 'un; but there's a deal of what scholars call practical economy in me, and I can't bear waste of no sort or kind, I can't. Why, when customers come to my hotel and leaves any liquor in their mugs, which is but seldom, I always goes and drains 'em down my own neck, to stop waste. And so I says that if Mr. Ferrars hadn't been saved that first time, we should have been spared trouble since."

"What trouble have you ever taken in the matter?" demanded Miles.

"Didn't I risk my life, and wet myself to the skin, pulling him and Miss Selincourt out of the tidehole?" asked Oily Dave. "If you mis...o...b.. my word, ask your sister, who was there and helped as well as a gal could, which isn't much anyhow. Well, there was three lives in danger that time, him, and me, and Miss Selincourt, and I dare say your sister got dampish at the feet. Now, this third and last time, matters is a deal more serious still. Nick Jones leaves a widow, though she don't much count. Stee Jenkin leaves a widow, nice little woman too. Then there's the children, poor things, orphans afore they are big enough to earn a penny for themselves. Bobby Poole hadn't a wife certainly, but he would have had by and by, most likely. It is a bad business altogether. And now I want some tobacco."

Oily Dave jerked out this last statement with a swift change of tone from mournful regret to cheerful business complacency, and Miles served him in silence, too saddened by the heavy tidings from the sea to break into resentful angry speech with this man, who appeared devoid of either heart or feeling. Then the heavy boots squelched out again, going towards the river bank, where the waiting boat was tied to the mooring post. A moment of waiting to make sure he did not return, and then Katherine, pale now as a ghost, glided out from the shadow of the rugs.

"Miles, dear, can you do without me for the rest of the day if need be? I am going down river to poor Mrs. Jenkin," she said, her voice steady though strained.

"I can manage; but look at the rain!" he exclaimed, swinging his hand towards the open door.

"All the more reason why I should go to her, poor little woman," Katherine answered, then pa.s.sed with a quick step into the house, in search of garments to keep out the weather.

Mrs. Burton was preparing the early dinner, and Katherine told her of the news Oily Dave had brought, speaking in quiet, mournful tones which yet lacked any note of personal loss. Not even to herself would she admit the sorrow at this time, or it would have broken her down completely. Her instinct of going to comfort someone else was the outcome of the strife she was having not to collapse in a miserable, selfish breakdown.

Mrs. Burton turned white and shivered. Just so had her heavy news come to her, and in her sympathy for Mrs. Jenkin her own wounds bled afresh. But Katherine could not stay to comfort her, the other poor woman needed it so much more.

"Nellie, I am going down to Seal Cove, and if Mrs. Jenkin needs me I shall stay until the morning," she said hurriedly.

"That is good of you, dear," sobbed the elder sister, and would have said something more, only Katherine went out of the room so hastily that there was no chance.

Poor Katherine had fled so precipitately through fear that Nellie should say some word about Jervis, with possibly some commiseration for Mary, and that just now would be a thing too hard to bear. Wrapping herself from neck to heels in a mackintosh coat, with a cap of the same, Katherine got into her boat and pulled down river through the driving rain. She rowed as fast as she could, not so much from haste to be at the end of her journey as from a desire to have no time to think.

Tying her boat up at the foot of the path leading to Mrs. Jenkin's house, she climbed to the house door, slipping at every step. A moment she paused before knocking, expecting to hear sobs and wailing from the inside; but instead there came a burst of childish laughter and a great stamping of little feet, and then she heard Mrs. Jenkin singing in a cheerful, if not very musical, voice: "My love is a soldier dressed in red".

Katherine stood appalled. Was it possible that Oily Dave had not told this poor woman of the trouble which had come to her? In that case she would have to break the heavy news herself, and at the thought she turned coward, and would gladly have slipped away again by the way she had come.

Mrs. Jenkin reached the end of the verse, and shrill, childish voices took up the chorus:

"In red, in red, he's all in red, My love is a soldier dressed in red".