A Countess from Canada Part 4

CHAPTER V

A Sacred Confidence

'Duke Radford was very ill. For a week he hovered between life and death, and Mrs. Burton's skill was taxed to the uttermost. There was no doctor within at least a hundred miles. One of the fishers at Seal Cove had set the broken collar bone, the work being very well done too, although the man was only an amateur in the art of bone-setting. But it was not the broken bone, nor any of his bruises and abrasions, which made 'Duke Radford's peril during that black week of care and anxiety. He was ill in himself, so ill in fact that Mrs. Burton lost heart, declaring that her father's const.i.tution had broken up, and that half a dozen doctors could not pull him through if his time had come.

Katherine would not share this gloomy view, and was always hoping against hope. If only the waters had been open, a doctor might have been procured from somewhere; but in winter time, when the small lakes and many of the lesser rivers were all frozen, nothing in the way of outside help was available, and the dwellers in remote places had to depend upon their own skill, making up in nursing what was lacking in medicine.

By the time the second Sunday came, the sick man showed signs of mending. Mrs. Burton grew hopeful again, while Katherine was nearly beside herself with joy. It had been a fearfully hard week for them all, though the neighbours had been as kind as possible. Stee Jenkin's wife came up from Seal Cove one day, and, after doing as much work as she could find to do, carried the twins off with her to her little house at the Cove, which was a great relief to Mrs. Burton and Katherine. Mrs. M'Kree was ill herself, so could do no more than send a kindly message; but even that was better than nothing, for sympathy is one of the sweetest things on earth when one is in trouble.

Sunday was a blessed relief to them at the end of their troubled week. Finding her father so much better, Mrs. Burton betook herself to bed at noon for the first real untroubled rest she had enjoyed for many days. The boys were stretched in luxurious idleness before the glowing fire in the kitchen, and Katherine was in charge of the sickroom. She was half-asleep herself; the place was so warm and her father lay in such a restful quiet. It had been so terrible all the week because no rest had seemed possible to him. But since last night his symptoms had changed, and now he lay quietly dozing, only rousing to take nourishment. Presently he stirred uneasily, as if the old restlessness were coming back, then asked in a feeble tone:

"Are you there, Nellie?"

"Nellie has gone to lie down, Father; but I will call her if you want her," Katherine said, coming forward to where the sick man could see her.

"No, I don't want her; it is you I want to talk to, only I didn't know whether she was here," he replied.

"I don't think you ought to talk at all," she said, in a doubtful tone. "Drink this broth, dear, and then try to sleep again."

"I will drink the broth, but I don't want to go to sleep again just yet," he said, in a stronger voice.

Katherine fed him as if he were a baby, and indeed he was almost as weak as an infant. But she did not encourage his talking, although she could not prevent it, as he seemed so much better.

"There is something that has been troubling me a great deal, and I want to tell you about it," he said. "I could not speak of it to anyone else, and I don't want you to do so either. But it will be a certain comfort to me that you know it, for you are strong and more fitted for bearing burdens than Nellie, who has had more than her share of sorrow already."

Katherine shivered. There was a longing in her heart to tell her father that she wanted no more burdens, that life was already so hard as to make her shrink from any more responsibility. But, looking at him as he lay there in his weakness, she could not say such words as these.

"What is it you want to tell me, Father?" she asked. Her voice was tender and caressing; he should never have to guess how she shrank from the confidence he wanted to give her, because her instinct told her that it was something which she would not want to hear.

"Do you remember the day we went up to Astor M'Kree's with the last mail which came through before the waters closed?" he said abruptly, and again Katherine shivered, knowing for a certainty that her father's trouble was proving too big for him alone.

"Yes, I remember," she replied very softly,

"That was a black day for me, for it brought dead things to life in a way that I had thought impossible. I used to know that Oswald Selincourt who has bought the fishing fleet."

"That one? Are you sure it is the same?" she asked in surprise. "The name is uncommon, still it is within the bounds of probability that there might be two, and you said the one you knew was a poor man."

"I fancy there is no manner of doubt that it is the same," 'Duke Radford said slowly. "The day we went to Fort Garry, M'Crawney told me he had a letter from Mr. Selincourt too, in which the new owner said he was a Bristol man, and that he had known what it was to be poor, so did not mean to risk money on ventures he had no chance of controlling, and that was why he was coming here next summer to boss the fleet."

"Poor Father!" Katherine murmured softly. "Ah, you may well say poor!" he answered bitterly. "If it were not for you, the boys, poor Nellie, and her babies, I'd just be thankful to know that I'd never get up from this bed again, for I don't feel that I have courage to face life now."

"Father, you must not talk nor think like that, indeed you must not!" she exclaimed, in an imploring tone. "Think how we need you and how we love you. Think, too, how desolate we should be without you."

"That is what I tell myself every hour in the twenty-four, and I shall make as brave a fight for it as I can for your sakes," he said in a regretful tone, as if his family cares were holding him to life against his will. Then he went on: "Oswald Selincourt and I were in the same business house in Bristol years ago, and I did him a great wrong."

Katherine had a sensation that was almost akin to what she would have felt if someone had dashed a bucket of ice-cold water in her face. But she did not move nor cry out, did not even gasp, only sat still with the dumb horror of it all filling her heart, until she felt as if she would never feel happy again. Her father had always seemed to her the n.o.blest of men, and she had revered him so, because he always stood for what was right and true. Then some instinct told her that he must be suffering horribly too, and because she could not speak she slid her warm fingers into his trembling hand and held it fast.

"Thank you, dear, I felt I could trust you," he said simply, and the words braced Katherine for bearing what had to come, more than anything else could have done.

"What is it you want me to know?" she asked, for he had lain for some minutes without speech, as if the task he had set himself was harder than he could perform.

"I wanted to tell you about the wrong I did Selincourt," the sick man said in a reluctant tone. He had brought himself to the point of confiding in his daughter, yet even now he shrank from it as if fearing to lower himself in her eyes. "We were clerks in one business house, only Selincourt was above me, and taking a much higher salary; but if anything happened to move him, I knew that his desk would be offered to me. I was poor, but he in a sense was poorer still, because he had an invalid father and young sisters dependent on him."

"Father, surely there is no need to tell me of this dead-and-buried action, unless you wish it, for the telling can do no good now," burst out Katherine, who could not bear to see the pain in her father's face.

"A wrong is never dead and buried while the man lives who did it," 'Duke Radford answered with a wan smile, "for his conscience has a trick of rounding on him when he least expects it, and then there is trouble, at least that is how it has been with me. One day a complaint was lodged with our business chiefs that one of the clerks had been gambling, was an habitual gambler in fact. I was not the one, and I was not suspected, but I knew very well which one it was; but when suspicion fell on Selincourt, I just kept silent. For some reason he could not clear himself, was dismissed, and I was promoted. But the promotion did me little good; the firm went bankrupt in the following year, and I was adrift myself."

"What became of Selincourt?" asked Katherine, and was instantly sorry she had spoken, because of the pain in her father's face.

"I don't know. I never heard of him from the day he left the counting-house until Astor M'Kree read his name from that letter, but I thought of him a good bit. It is hard enough for a man to do well with an unblemished character, but to be thrown out of a situation branded as a gambler is ruin, and nothing short of it."

"What became of the other man-the one who was a gambler?" asked Katherine.

"I don't know. He remained with the firm until the crash came. I fancy Selincourt's fate made a great impression on him, for I never heard of his gambling after Selincourt's dismissal," answered her father.

"How strange that he could not clear himself! Do you expect he had been gambling really, as well as the other one?" Katherine said quickly.

"I am sure he had not," replied 'Duke Radford. "He was not that sort at all. But the thing that bowled him over was that he was known to have money in his possession, a considerable amount, for which he could not or would not account."

"Still, I don't see that you were so much to blame," said Katherine soothingly. "If the man was accused and could not clear himself, then plainly there was something wrong somewhere: and after all you simply held your tongue; it was not as if you had stolen anything, letting the blame fall on him, or had falsely accused him in any way."

"Just the arguments with which I comforted myself when I kept silent and profited by the downfall of a man who was blameless," 'Duke Radford replied. "But though there may be a sort of truth in them, it is not real truth, and I have been paying the price ever since of that guilty silence of mine."

"Father, why do you tell me all this now?" cried Katherine protestingly. Never in her heart would she have quite so much admiration for her father again, and the knowledge brought keen suffering with it.

He drew a long breath that was like a sobbing sigh; only too well did he understand what he had done, but he had counted the cost, and was not going to shirk the consequences.

"Because I've got the feeling that you will be able in some way to make the wrong right. I don't know how, and I can't see what can be done, only somehow the conviction has grown to a certainty in my mind, and now I can rest about it," he replied slowly.

"Has this trouble made you so restless and ill?" she asked, thinking that his burden of mental suffering had grown beyond his powers of endurance since he had been keeping his bed.

"I suppose it may have helped. I have suffered horribly, but since I made up my mind to tell you, things have seemed easier, and I have been able to sleep," he answered with a heavy sigh.

"Will you tell me just what you want me to do, if-if--?" she began, but broke off abruptly, for she could not put in words the dread which had come into her heart that her father might be dead before the summer, when Mr. Selincourt was expected in Keewatin.

"If I am alive and well when the summer comes there will be no need for you to do anything; I shall be able to face the consequences of my own wrong-doing. But if not, I leave it to you to do the very best you can. You can't make up for all the man may have had to suffer, but at least you can tell him that I was sorry."

Katherine shuddered. It was bad enough to be compelled to hear that her father had been guilty of such meanness as to keep silent, in order that he might profit by the downfall of an innocent man; but when, in addition to this, she was expected to tell that man of how her father had acted, and, as it were, ask pardon for it, the ordeal appeared beyond her strength to face. Not a word of this did she say, however, for it was quite plain to her that the invalid had already over-excited himself, and she rather dreaded what Mrs. Burton would say presently.

"You must go to sleep, Father, and we will talk about this again another day," she said firmly.

"No, we will not speak of it again, for it is not a pleasant subject for discussion," he replied. "Only tell me that you will take my burden and bear it for me as best you can, if I am not able to bear it myself, and then I can be at peace."

Katherine bent over him, gathering his feeble hands in a close clasp, and the steadfast light in her eyes was beautiful to see. "Dear Father, I will do my very best to make the wrong as right as it can be made. Now try to rest, and get better as fast as you can."

He smiled, shook his head a little at her talk of getting better speedily, then to her great relief he shut his eyes and went to sleep. The burden had fallen from him upon her, and it had fallen so heavily that just at first she was stunned by the blow. There was no sound in the quiet room except the regular breathing of the sleeper. Outside the brief winter day merged into the long northern night; the stars came out, shining with frosty brilliancy, but Katherine sat by the bedside, and never once did her gaze wander to the window. Mrs. Burton came in presently, bringing a lamp, and scolding softly because the room was in darkness. But when she saw how quietly her father was sleeping, her gentle complaining turned into murmurs of pleased satisfaction.

"Really, Katherine, you are a better nurse than I thought. I was so afraid of the restlessness coming on again, as it has done about this time every day since his accident. But now he is sleeping most beautifully, so I feel sure he has taken a turn, and that we shall pull him through."