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 assure 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 assume 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 pass 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 embarrassing 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 passed 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 circumstances 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 shore 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 attitude 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 passed with never a word from the outside world reaching the little isolated colony on the bay shore, 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 quantity 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.
The Indians had remained there all the winter, so they said, because there was such an abundance of fish for food. Their winter quarters consisted of holes, about four feet deep, dug in the earth, roofed over with spruce branches heaped with snow. Fires were kindled in these lairs, and the people rarely came out save when driven to it by the necessity to catch fish for food.
The day Katherine and Miles went to the encampment it was gloriously fine, and for the first time that year the sun had real warmth in it. This had induced some of the miserable creatures to crawl out to the daylight, who perhaps had not been outside the holes for weeks. There was quite a crowd of children visible, and Katherine, whose heart always warmed to the pitiable little objects, with their mournful black eyes, produced a packet of sweets, which speedily brought a swarm of youngsters round her.
Doling the sweets out with strict impartiality, she noticed that one child had a fragment of paper in its skinny hand. This was puzzling, for the Indians were not given to education or culture in any shape or form, and the paper looked like a fragment from a letter, for she could plainly see writing upon it.
With a sign to Miles to keep the elders busy, Katherine proceeded to bribe the child to give up his dirty fragment of paper in exchange for the bag, which still had some sweets in it.
When this was done, she told Miles to cut the business short, and then they started for home. She had thrust the fragment of paper in her glove, and did not venture to look at it until they were miles away from the lake, because she did not wish the Indians to know that her curiosity had been aroused. But when the dogs had dropped into a walk, and were coming slowly up the hill at some distance behind, she pulled off her glove and proceeded to examine the dirty fragment.
It was part of a letter, and directly she saw it she recognized the handwriting as that of Mrs. Ferrars, the mother of Jervis. He had shown her some of his mother's letters, and there was no mistaking the regular, delicate handwriting. The paper was only written on on one side, and only two lines of the writing were legible:
"—is very ill; you may be sent for now at any time."
Katherine pondered over the dirty fragment with a very puzzled expression. There were three ways of explaining the presence of that bit of paper at the encampment on Ochre Lake: it might have been stolen from Jervis by the Indians, when they came down to the Cove; or the Indians coming up from Maxohama might have been robbed of the mails they were bringing by other Indians; or they might have perished in one of the winter storms, and the bags might have been found afterwards, and appropriated as justifiable treasure trove.
Katherine said nothing of all this to Miles; she wanted to speak to Jervis about it first, for, of course, it might be only part of an old letter that he had lost, and of no importance at all to anyone else. If this were proved to be the case she would be greatly relieved. A whole host of misgivings had arisen in her heart on reading the words: "You may be sent for now at any time". If Jervis were to go away, what a blank it would make in her life! Of course he would come back again, but the dreary months of his absence would be very hard to live through.
She did not see Jervis that day until evening. He came in as usual when night school was over. Then all the family were gathered in the one sitting-room the house contained, which left little chance for private conversation of any kind; the boys went away to bed after a time, taking their father with them, and then Mrs. Burton went to put her little girls to bed, and the lovers were alone for the brief half-hour which was all the time they could get for uninterrupted talk on most days. Then Katherine produced the fragment, stated how she had discovered it, and asked a little shyly if it were part of an old letter, or a bit of one he had never received.
"I have never had it, of that I am quite certain," he said, with a very grave look on his face.
"Then who is ill? Is it one of your brothers?" she asked, with a painful throb at her heart; for something in his looks and his expression made her certain that if the summons came he would have to go.
"No, George and Fred are hard as nails; nothing is likely to ail them, nor would their illness necessitate my going home. I expect it is Cousin Samuel who is ill," Jervis answered, with a curious hesitancy of manner and a sort of constraint which made Katherine's heart heavy as lead, although she held her head high and looked prouder than ever.
"What will you do?" she asked, and her tone was breathless, despite her efforts to make her voice have merely a casual sound.
"If Cousin Samuel dies I shall have to go to England, I suppose. He is the well-to-do member of our family, and his death would mean business affairs to look after," Jervis answered, as he surveyed the scrap of paper, turning it over and over, as if to see if there were anything on it that might have been missed.
"Is he your cousin or your father's?" she asked. "Neither; he is my grandfather's first cousin, a hard, cruel old man, with not an ounce of charity, nor even ordinary kind-heartedness, in his whole composition," Jervis answered in a hard tone. "I asked his help for my mother when she was left a widow, but he turned a deaf ear to the plea, and left her to struggle on, to sink or swim as best she could."
"I see," said Katherine, and now it was her voice which was constrained. Then she asked timidly: "If you go to England, when will you have to start?"
"That will depend upon you; for of course I am not going to England to leave you behind, that goes without saying," he answered, in a masterful tone that set her heart throbbing wildly, only now it was joy, and not sorrow, that caused the emotion. "I must see what I can do about getting a minister up here to marry us," he went on; "then we should be ready to start directly the waters are open, if need should arise."
"Wouldn't it be wiser to put off our wedding until you come back? It will cost you such a fearful lot to take me too," she said, feeling that she must take a common-sense, prudent view of the situation, although the prospect of going with him set her nerves tingling with delight.
"No, no, sweetheart, I am not going to leave you behind," he said, holding her hand in a pressure that hurt her. "If I go to England I will take my wife along with me; if that can't be managed I will stay where I am."
Katherine laughed. "It is all very well to be so positive, but I don't see how it is to be managed. It is one thing for me to marry and just go over the river to live, because then I can always come to help when I am wanted," she said, the mirth dying out of her face, and leaving it with a troubled look; "but it is quite another matter to marry and go straight away to England."
"Nevertheless, it may have to be done," he said; adding, with a smile: "Don't be so conceited as to think the world can't turn round without your help in pushing it. Here comes Mrs. Burton; let us ask her opinion."
"Upon what?" said Nellie, who came out from the bedroom at that moment.
"Upon our getting married at the very earliest opportunity and going to England afterwards on a honeymoon trip, if we feel so inclined," replied Jervis promptly.
Mrs. Burton looked considerably surprised, but she said quickly: "The trip would do Katherine a lot of good, if you can afford the time and the expense, and we could spare her somehow."
"Just my own opinion," he answered, with a laugh.