A Countess from Canada Part 36

The day was as gloriously fine as the most exacting of brides could have wished for, and by noon the company were beginning to a.s.semble.

Some of the fishing boats were away, which was disappointing for the crews, although it is a little difficult to imagine how one extra person could have been squeezed into the congregation which later on crowded the store.

Jervis came over the river very early in the morning, and, with the help of Miles and Phil, got the store ready to serve as a church for the occasion. Pails of lard with boards laid across served for seats in the centre of the floor; barrels of pork, of beans, and of flour made a sort of dais or high seat all round the walls, on which the boys and the younger men might be accommodated. Rather a precarious kind of seat this was, as barrel heads were apt to give way, and then the luckless individual would be smothered with flour or bespattered with brine.

Mary also came across early, to help to dress the bride, and her mood was so wildly hilarious that Mrs. Burton felt it necessary to gently reprove her.

"Of course it is right to be happy and cheerful at a wedding, but there is always a strain of sadness somewhere to keep our spirits even. And we can't forget that Katherine is to go to England next week."

"But she will be glad to go, and glad to come back; no one wants to stay in one place all her life, in these gadabout days," Mary answered. Then she produced a box and bade Katherine admire what she had brought her.

"I felt when I bought it that it was shockingly unsuitable," Mary said, laughing, as from the folds of soft white paper she lifted out a square of exquisite lace for a bridal veil, and flung it over Katherine's hair. "But plainly I have the eye of a seer, and I imagined you standing up to be married in a sailor hat, or something equally unsuitable, and it was not to be endured."

"How lovely!" sighed Mrs. Burton, in an ecstasy of admiration. But Katherine said nothing at all; her heart was too full for speech, and she was thinking of last summer, when it had seemed right that she should stand aside to let Mary have the happiness she wanted for herself. Things had changed so much since then that it seemed scarcely possible that she could have had to bear so many heartaches.

At this moment one of the twins burst into the room with the information that the bishop had arrived, and Katherine, walking like one in a dream, went out from her chamber and crossed the homely kitchen to the store.

A murmur went round the crowded place as she entered. Heretofore she had been to them a good, hard-working girl, with pleasant manners and a pretty face. They had seen her staggering along the portage paths laden with heavy burdens; they had seen her struggling to row a boat up river against a strong current; they had met her dripping with wet, or covered with frost, like an Esquimaux: but this stately girl with the beautiful face, clad in her white bridal robe, and with Mary's veil over her shining hair, was a revelation to them, and it was Oily Dave who voiced the opinion of the a.s.sembly when he exclaimed in a very audible tone: "My word, but ain't she a stunner!"

He was sitting in the very front row, as if he were the most intimate and faithful friend the family possessed. He held his treasured "top" hat carefully in front of him, as if it were a collecting bag, and he were about to take the offertory. For the rest, his costume was something of a mixture: a football sweater with broad stripes, a Norfolk jacket, dungaree trousers, and a fisherman's long boots made him a striking figure even in that company of mixed costumes. He was as self-satisfied and complacent as if he had never planned evil deeds and tried to carry them out, while the benevolence with which he smiled upon the wedding party might have led one to suppose they had no more tried or trusted friend than he.

Katherine was conscious of the critical, appraising glances of the trim little gentleman who stood by the side of Jervis, and they made her vaguely uncomfortable, coming between her and the mellow utterances of the bishop in his opening address. But she forgot Mr. Clay and his searching looks after a time, and was sensible only of the love which wrapped her round when Miles, at a sign from the bishop, took Katherine's hand, and, placing it in that of his father, whispered to him to give it to Jervis.

'Duke Radford, standing erect, his fine figure head and shoulders taller than those around him, except the bridegroom, smiled round on the a.s.sembly, stood holding Katherine's ungloved hand, softly stroking and patting it, until Jervis reached forward to take it, when he relinquished it with a smile and a nod, quite satisfied to have it so.

The register was signed in the kitchen, and it was there that the revelation took place which came as a thunderclap of surprise to everyone concerned, except Jervis and Mr. Clay, the latter of whom, when the bishop's part of the ceremony was done, took the remainder upon himself, and proceeded to make his explanations in a voice which Mary declared made her think of musty parchments and red tape.

He addressed himself to Katherine, bowing so profoundly that it was wonderful he was able to return to a perpendicular position without catching hold of something with which to pull himself up. "I have to congratulate you on becoming the Countess of Compton, and I am quite certain the t.i.tle was never worn by one more worthy to adorn it."

Katherine shrank a step nearer to her husband, and there was a look of positive fear in her eyes, for privately she thought Mr. Clay must be mad. "I do not understand you," she said gently, and the silence in the kitchen was so profound, as they waited for Mr. Clay's reply, that the buzz of talk which had broken out in the crowded store seemed tremendously loud by contrast.

Mr. Clay cleared his throat with a dry little cough, intended to emphasize the importance of the remarks which he had to make, then he said: "Lord Compton insisted last night that no word should be spoken concerning his accession to the t.i.tle until after the ceremony of to-day; but now it must be known, and I have to inform you that your husband has been seventh Earl of Compton since the 18th of February last, only it seems he did not know of his cousin's death until yesterday, when I arrived with papers for him to sign."

Katherine became very pale, and turned with a quick movement to Jervis, who stood looking down upon her with a smile. "Even now I do not understand; please tell me," she said, with a bewildered expression.

"My cousin Samuel was the sixth earl," said Jervis, taking his wife's hand and talking to her in the same quietly confidential tone that he might have used had they two been alone, instead of the centre figures of a crowded room. "My father was the son of the younger son, with three lives between him and the t.i.tle. As I have told you, Samuel, old Lord Compton, was very cruel to my mother in her widowhood, and I hotly determined never to have anything to do with him. Then his son and his grandson died within a few weeks of each other, and Mr. Clay, who is the family lawyer, wrote to me telling me that I was the next heir, and Cousin Samuel wanted me to go home and take up the duties of my new position. That letter came last summer, but I would not go, and I would not accept an allowance for myself; but I asked for one for my mother, and education for my brothers. I have not deceived you, my dearest. I have only withheld from you facts which did not matter until now."

Katherine flushed and then grew pale; she knew that all eyes were upon her, but there was one thing she must know, and her voice had an anxious ring as she asked: "Did you-did you know this, I mean that you were the next heir, when you asked me to marry you?"

"Yes, I knew," he answered cheerfully, and now his voice had got back its old confident ring, for the shadow of constraint which Katherine had noticed in him last night had been owing to this knowledge which he was holding back, and which had troubled him more than he cared to confess. "But even then there was no great certainty of my succeeding. Cousin Samuel might have married again, and left another son to come after him. I was just a working man, and I looked to support my wife by the labour of my hands. You must forgive me that I did not tell you I was going to make a great lady of you, because, you see, I did not know until yesterday, though the sc.r.a.p of paper you discovered at Ochre Lake warned me that the t.i.tle might not be far off; so I was not greatly surprised when Mr. Clay introduced himself to me yesterday."

"Mr. Clay is evidently a lawyer by nature as well as by profession, since he was able to keep a secret of such magnitude through so many miles of travel," interposed the bishop, anxious to break the strain for Katherine, whose colour was still coming and going, and whose eyes had the frightened look of a trapped wild creature.

"I was sure there must be some story of greatness behind, when it became necessary for a family lawyer to take such a journey as this," Mary Selincourt said, with an easy laugh, doing her best to second the bishop's efforts to draw off attention from Katherine for a time. "And now, don't you think we might as well start feeding the mult.i.tude, Nellie? or they will not be in a proper frame of mind to appreciate the bishop's sermon presently."

The diversion was effectual; everyone poured outside to where tables were spread under the trees by the river. Tea, coffee, cakes, and lemonade became the concern of the moment. And in the kitchen the two who had been made husband and wife were left alone.

"Am I forgiven, your ladyship?" Jervis asked; but there was a note of anxiety in his bantering tone, for Katherine's head was averted, and held at an angle which made him apprehensive.

"Jervis, why did you not tell me while there was time to draw back?

For I-I am not fit to be a great lady!" she burst out pa.s.sionately.

"I did not tell you because I was so horribly afraid you would want to draw back," he admitted candidly, "and I wanted you so badly that I could not afford to take the risk. You are quite as fit to be a great lady as I am to be a great gentleman; that goes without saying."

"But think of the work I have had to do?" she faltered, shrinking and shivering at the prospect before her.

"Work is no degradation," he answered hastily, "or my days in the Nantucket whaler might easily rise up in judgment against me; for I am certain there can be no more filthy or disgusting work on the face of the earth than I did then. Perhaps it is better for us that we have had to toil so hard; we shall be better able to sympathize with other workers, and to help them."

"I shall not know how to manage a houseful of servants," she said, with such a comical air of distress that he had to laugh again.

"You need not have more servants than you like, and if you can't manage them, why, we must pay someone to manage them for us," he said gaily. Then his voice grew graver as he asked: "When are you going to tell me that I am forgiven, Katherine?"

Something in the look on his face reminded her of the day when she had risked her life to save him from the flood, and the memory broke down the rampart of offended pride which had sprung up in her heart when Mr. Clay made his astounding revelation.

"I don't suppose it really matters what our position is as long as we love each other," she said unsteadily. "And so-and so you are forgiven; but don't do it again."

"My dear, there are no more t.i.tles in our family that I know of," he answered, as he lifted her veil to kiss her; "so there is not the remotest chance that you will ever have higher rank than a countess's."

"I don't want to have higher rank than a countess's," she answered soberly. "But I mean, don't keep things back in future, Jervis, or I shall always be in fear. I want to know the bad as well as the good!"

"Do you call it bad to find yourself a countess?" he asked, with an air of mock horror.

"I find it difficult to get used to the idea," she said, with a rather watery smile; for the greatness thrust upon her was by no means to her mind.

Later on, when she came out with her husband to drink a cup of coffee with the group under the trees, although she was the same Katherine, quick to smile, and with a pleasant word for everyone, there was already a difference, and she carried herself with an added stateliness which caused Mrs. Jenkin to remark with a sentimental air that greatness had eaten into her soul.

But it was Oily Dave who took the chief credit for the whole business, and, having succeeded in cornering the bishop and Mr. Clay, he proceeded to inform them of the manner in which he had helped the match along. "If it hadn't been for me there wouldn't have been no interesting occasion such as this here to-day," he said, standing before them, the fishing boots planted wide apart, the "top" hat carefully held in his left hand: for of course he could not have his head covered in presence of a bishop; moreover, the hat, being too big for him, had a trick of coming down over his face like an extinguisher.

"Pray, what was it that you did to help the business forward?" asked the bishop, with a twinkle in his eye, whilst Mr. Clay's stiff black hair nearly curled with horror at the thought of a low-cla.s.s person like Oily Dave having anything to do with making the marriage of his client, the Earl of Compton.

"I gave the girl, I mean her ladyship, the chance to save the young man's life, and that, I take it, was the starting-point of the whole affair."

"Without doubt it helped the process," replied the bishop with a laugh; and then Mr. Selincourt intervened by saying it was time for the bishop's service to begin, so Oily Dave was promptly hustled to his proper place in the background.

The bishop was more than ordinarily eloquent that evening; but the bride, in her white robe, sitting beside her husband, heard only the words of the text: "He shall choose our inheritance for us".