A Countess from Canada Part 33

A boat is an awkward place for a person afflicted with self-consciousness. Katherine would have been thankful for some shelter in which to hide her face just then, but, having none, she rushed into nervous speech instead.

"Were you in danger? Was the Mary wrecked?" she asked, miserably conscious of the unsteadiness of her voice, yet feeling altogether too nervous to remain silent.

"No," he said. "We have had a very easy and prosperous time, though, unfortunately, we lost one of our boats on the way out-the boat picked up by Oily Dave, which has made all the trouble. We fell in with a lot of white porpoises; so the take has been a valuable one, and the men came home very well pleased with the venture: though Nick Jones felt his spirits rather dashed by meeting his wife tricked out in mourning attire, and flying a pennon of widowhood from the back of her bonnet."

Katherine laughed: she could imagine the tragic figure Mrs. Jones must have looked, and the effect the sight would have on the susceptible nerves of a Bay fisherman. Then she said hurriedly: "I shall have great faith in Mrs. Jenkin's judgment after this, although I have wondered how she could be so persistently hopeful in the face of such evidence as we had."

"And you yourself-how did you feel about it? Would it have made any difference to you if I had gone under, dear?" he asked, with a caressing note in his tone that she had never heard there before.

For answer she jerked her head round, staring at the tops of the pine trees, with the blue sky behind them, but seeing nothing and heeding nothing save the world of happiness which had suddenly opened before her astonished eyes.

It seemed a long time before any sound broke the silence save the regular splash of the oars, then Jervis said quietly: "Are you quite sure that you are not afraid to marry a poor man, Katherine?"

She looked at him with only a glance, then asked, a trifle unsteadily: "What do you mean?"

"Well, you might have looked higher, of course. I have told you how miserably poor my people and I have been. Thanks to Mr. Selincourt, things are easier with me now; but there is a streak of modesty in me somewhere, and I have been afraid to ask for what I wanted," he said, with a certain wistfulness of intonation which brought Katherine's glance round again.

"You need not have been afraid," she said softly.

"Because why?" he asked, in the tone of one who meant to be answered.

Katherine looked at the tops of the pine trees again, but, finding no help there, let her gaze drop to the dancing water, and finally faltered in a very low voice: "Because love is better than money, or that sort of thing."

He bent forward until he could look into her downcast face, then said earnestly: "You mean, then, it makes no difference to you what my worldly position may chance to be?"

"Of course not; why should it?" she asked, her glance meeting his now in surprise at his earnestness.

Their progress up river was rather slow after that, and it was something over an hour later before they reached the second portage. Astor M'Kree had started for the swan-shooting by that time, and there was only his delighted wife to scream with joyful relief at the news, that the Mary was riding safely at anchor in the river.

"Poor Astor! He has been that down he could scarcely take his food," said Mrs. M'Kree, wiping away the tears which sheer happiness had brought into her eyes.

"Get an extra big supper ready for him, then, for I expect you will find his appet.i.te has come back with a bounce," said Jervis, laughing. "You can tell him from me to get on with that new boat as fast as he can, and we will name it the Katherine."

"Are you joking?" asked Mrs. M'Kree, who had suddenly become very serious, as she looked from Jervis to Katherine, whose face was a study in blushes.

"No, I am quite in earnest," he answered. "But we must go now, for we dumped a lot of fish out on the portage path, and I should not be surprised if half the dogs in the neighbourhood are there, sampling it, when we get back."

"I hope not, or my trouble in bringing it over the long portage will all have been thrown away," said Katherine, who could not help smiling at the bewilderment on the face of Mrs. M'Kree.

There was no need to row going down the river; they just sat side by side and let the boat drift on the current, while they talked of the present and the future. Katherine remembered her other journey down, earlier in the afternoon, and the bitter, black misery which had kept her company then.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Drifting down the river.]

"What a difference things make in one's outlook!" she exclaimed.

"What things?" he demanded.

"I was thinking of when I let the boat drift down this afternoon," she said. "The pine trees looked so gloomy then, and those great, black spruces yonder on the bank made me think of the decorations on funeral hea.r.s.es years and years ago, the sort of thing one sees only in pictures; but now--"

"What do they let you think of now?" he asked, holding her hand in a tighter clasp, as the boat swept slowly past the funereal spruces.

"Oh! they make me think of the ornamental grounds in Montreal, or of the Swiss mountains which I see in visions when I dream I am 'doing Europe', as the Yankees say," and she laughed happily at her wild flights of fancy.

"Would you like to do Europe-after we are married?" he asked, a gravity coming into his tone that she could not understand.

"Why worry about the impossible?" she said gently. "Books are cheap, if travel is not, and we will do our European travel sitting by a winter fire."

"It might be possible some day; one never knows quite how things may turn out," he said gravely. Then he asked: "Did anyone tell you that I came up river to see you that afternoon before we sailed for the Twins?"

"Yes," she answered, flushing as she remembered how much his visit and its purpose had been in her mind during those days of keen anxiety.

"I came then to ask you the question I asked just now," he said slowly. "It has been in my heart to ask it ever since that day you helped me across the ice, saving my life at the risk of your own. But I had my mother to support then, in part, and the burden on me was too heavy for me to dare to put my personal happiness first. There was a letter for me in Mr. Selincourt's belated mail, however, that changed my outlook pretty considerably, and left me free to do as I liked; so I came to you directly."

"Do you mean--?" began Katherine, then stopped in some confusion.

"Do I mean that I have only myself to keep now, were you going to ask?" he said, laughing as he shifted his seat and took up the oars to bring the boat in to the mooring post under the boathouse; "because that is just what I do mean. I have only myself to keep until I have the privilege of keeping you; and there will be no more portage work for you then, I promise you."

Katherine sprang ash.o.r.e, whistled for the dogs, then turned to him with a saucy air. "Don't be too positive about the portage work; fishermen do not exactly come under the heading of the leisured cla.s.ses, and I may be glad to earn an honest dollar where I can."

CHAPTER XXIX

Winter Again

Never had there been such excitement in Seal Cove and at Roaring Water Portage as when, following close on the safe return of the Mary, the tidings leaked out that Jervis Ferrars was going to marry Katherine Radford. With a very few exceptions everyone was disappointed, for common consent had given him to Mary Selincourt, and Dame Rumour does not care to make mistakes. Some there were who insisted that Mary Selincourt took the news badly, and looked pale for days afterwards; but these were the very wise ones, who always knew everything without any telling, whom nothing surprised, and who were never taken unawares.

Mr. Selincourt had himself rowed across the river directly the tidings reached him; for he was anxious to offer his congratulations, and to inform Katherine that he had expected it ever since he had been at Roaring Water Portage. Katherine's eyes grew suspiciously dim when he had gone: she was thinking of the day when he had taken her into his confidence about Mary's love affair with Archie Raymond, and she guessed that he had told her on purpose to prevent her putting any belief in the rumours flying about concerning Jervis and Mary.

The person who was most surprised was Mrs. Burton. So keenly remorseful was she, too, because of all the advice she had given her sister about standing aside, that Katherine had to turn comforter, and a.s.sure the poor little woman that the well-meant counsel had done no serious harm. But she shivered at the remembrance of how she had suffered; for the pain is always most wearing that has to be crushed down out of sight of other people's eyes.

It was the last week in September when the Selincourts sailed from Seal Cove. Mary wanted to go south by river and trail, as they had come; but the weather was so stormy that it seemed better to get to Montreal with dry feet, if they could manage to do so. They were coming back next summer to settle permanently; but before then a bigger house would have to be built, and many changes were to take place on both sides of the river from Seal Cove to Roaring Water Portage.

Jervis had begged Katherine to marry him before the winter began, so that he might take the heaviest of her burdens on his own shoulders. He was to live in Mr. Selincourt's house during the winter, and it seemed to him an ideal arrangement, if only Katherine had been willing to live there too. But she could not selfishly take her own happiness while the others needed her so much, and she steadily refused to even think of marriage until the spring came again. By that time Miles would be old enough to a.s.sume the government of affairs, and her father would not miss her presence from the house so much when the bright, long days came round again.

Finding that he could not alter her resolution, and secretly admiring her all the more because of it, Jervis set himself to pa.s.s the months of waiting as best he could. This winter it was he who taught the night school, thus relieving Katherine of what had been a heavy and sometimes very embarra.s.sing burden. There were more scholars this year; for the river was crowded with boats, so many fishermen who had formerly wintered at Marble Island preferring to come south in order to begin work earlier in the spring.

The snow came early, shutting them in a full two weeks sooner than usual. But "early come early go" was the legend at Seal Cove, and, since the winter had to come, the sooner it was over and done with the better.

Idleness for the fishermen had been the rule in previous winters, and, as idleness is usually only another word for mischief and dissipation, the morals of the men had suffered seriously. But next summer had to be prepared for, and as there was money in plenty to pay for the work which had to be done, it seemed probable that Mr. Selincourt's plans would be pushed forward as fast as he desired.

Astor M'Kree had set up a team of dogs and a sledge painted a brilliant blue, and in this equipage, or on snowshoes, he was up and down between his house and the bay several times in most days. Some of the fishermen were fairly expert carpenters, and these found the winter brought them as much work as the summer had done, with less risk and better pay.

To Katherine the weeks of winter pa.s.sed like a dream. Sometimes she contrasted them with the dark, anxious weeks of the previous winter, when the nightmare trouble about her father had first descended upon her. She was a keener business woman now than then, readier at buying and selling, quicker to see what was the right thing to do under the circ.u.mstances of the moment; but her chief aim this winter was to stand back and push Miles forward so that other people might understand who was to be business chief of the establishment in the future. Whenever Jervis could spare time to come over the river and help Phil in the store, Katherine had Miles for companion on the long journeys which were still necessary here and there.

It was pure comedy now when they went to the Indian encampment. The Indians of the bay sh.o.r.e could not be brought to believe that a person could have any sound, reliable judgment on any subject whatever until he had done growing; so, when Katherine appealed to Miles regarding every skin offered in barter, the red men first mocked. Then, however, they grew doubtful, and finally they veered round to a respectful att.i.tude towards the young tradesman which Miles found very soothing.

Mr. Selincourt had arranged for an intermittent postal service between Maxohama and Seal Cove, to be carried on by Indians, during the winter. Two mails had safely reached the post office at Roaring Water Portage in this way; then three months pa.s.sed with never a word from the outside world reaching the little isolated colony on the bay sh.o.r.e, and the people thus cut off could not understand the reason why no tidings reached them. Then one day when Katherine and Miles had gone up to Ochre Lake, where a company of Indians had made themselves winter quarters, they came upon a clue to the mystery of the missing mails.

Ochre Lake was, as usual, frozen solid, except at one end, where an enormous quant.i.ty of fish was to be found. It was nearly the end of March, but as yet there was not the slightest prospect of the frost breaking up. The nights were getting shorter, and the days were brilliant with sunshine, but it was only a cold brilliance as yet.