CHAPTER XXV
The Rift in the Clouds
"My dear child, I can never forgive myself for having made you cry like this!" exclaimed Mr. Selincourt; for Katherine was sobbing as vigorously as she did most other things, and he was genuinely distressed.
"Oh, I am glad to cry! I mean, I am so happy, because it came out all right. And oh, please do forgive me for having been so foolish! I wonder whatever you must think of me!" and, heaving a deep sigh of relief, Katherine sat up and wiped her eyes.
"I think you are a very charming and tender-hearted young lady. But I shall have to be very careful how I tell you sad things, if this is the way you are going to receive my confidences," he said, with a rather rueful air; for she was by no means the sort of girl he would have expected to indulge in the weakness of tears.
Katherine laughed. She was desperately ashamed of having been so foolish; but those words of gratitude, spoken by Mr. Selincourt about the person who had wronged him were like balm to her sore heart. It was as if her father had confessed his fault, and had been forgiven on earth as well as in heaven.
"You must pay the penalty of your eloquence by seeing your audience drowned in tears," she said lightly. Then, rolling up the remainder of the furs, she left the stockroom and returned to the store, whither Mr. Selincourt followed her; and as there were no customers he sat on a box and talked on, as if it were a real pleasure to have found a sympathetic listener.
"Those two years of struggle, of disappointment and bitter poverty, have had their uses," he said, in a meditative fashion, as he sat looking out through the door, which Katherine had unlocked again. His gaze was on the river, which sparkled and gleamed in the sunshine, but his thoughts were far away.
Katherine answered only by a splitting, rending noise, as she tore a piece of calico. But that did not matter, because he was too much absorbed in his own thoughts to need other speech just then.
"Perhaps if I had not been poor myself I should not have had sympathy with other men who were in the slough and couldn't get out," he said, speaking as much to himself as to Katherine.
"It is fine to be able to help other people," she replied, cutting the next piece of calico to avoid making so much noise.
"Yes, but I think no one realizes the full blessing of it who has not known in his own person what it is to be in trouble and to be helped himself," he said, his tone still dreamy, and his gaze on the hurrying water.
"Have you helped a great many?" she asked softly.
"A few," he answered. "Some have been disappointments, of course, and once or twice I have been robbed for my pains; but I have had my compensations, especially in Archie Raymond and Jervis Ferrars."
"Who is Archie Raymond?" demanded Katherine, who was measuring calico as rapidly, and with as much dexterity, as if she had served an apprenticeship behind a drapery counter, instead of having been trained for teaching.
Mr. Selincourt brought his gaze from the river, jerking his head round to get a good view of Katherine; then he asked, in a surprised tone: "Hasn't Mary told you about him? I thought girls always talked to each other about such things."
"What things?" asked Katherine.
"Why, sweethearts, and all that sort of stuff," he answered vaguely.
Katherine flushed, caught her breath in a little gasp, and, clenching the hand which held the calico, said rather unsteadily: "Mary and I have certainly not discussed sweethearts and that sort of stuff, as you call it."
Mr. Selincourt laughed in great amusement, then said more gravely: "Mary has been very much spoiled, and in all her life she has never been denied anything save one, as I told you before, and I am hoping very much that it will all come right for her yet, when she has learned her lesson of patient waiting."
Katherine dropped her calico, and, nerving herself for a great effort of endurance, said: "Won't you tell me what you mean? I never could understand hints and vague suggestions about things."
"It is like this," began Mr. Selincourt, who was only too pleased to get a listener as sympathetic as Katherine: "a year ago last winter Mary fell in love with Archie Raymond, or else he fell in love with her; anyhow they became engaged, although I demurred a little, on account of his inability to support a wife. But I gave way in time, for he was a thoroughly good fellow, and one of the sort who was bound to rise when he got a chance. Mary was exacting, however—I told you she had been spoiled—and Archie wasn't the sort to be led about on a string like a lapdog; so naturally they quarrelled."
"Poor Mary!" exclaimed Katherine softly.
"And poor Archie too, I guess," returned Mr. Selincourt. "It was his misfortune that he cared so much for her. I believe she would have treated him better if he had not been so much her slave; but even slaves can't endure too much, so he revolted after a time. Jervis Ferrars, who was Archie's friend, came to Mary and begged that she would see Archie, if only for ten minutes, because there was something to be said between them which could not be put into a letter. But my girl is made of obstinate stuff that crops up in awkward places sometimes; so she sent word by Jervis that if Archie liked to send her a letter of apology she would read it, but she would not see him until that had been done."
"Did he do it?" asked Katherine eagerly. A white light of illumination had suddenly flashed into her mind concerning the nature of the boon which Jervis Ferrars had begged at the hands of Mary, and been denied.
Mr. Selincourt laughed. "I told you that he was a man and not a lapdog. That sort don't go crawling round asking pardon for wrongs they have not committed. The next we heard of Archie Raymond was that he had joined Max Bohrnsen's Arctic Expedition in place of a man who had fallen out through sickness, and that he had sailed for the Polar Seas on a two years' absence."
"Poor Mary!" sighed Katherine again, then immediately felt ashamed of her own secret light-heartedness.
"Yes, it was poor Mary then," replied Mr. Selincourt, a shade coming over his pleasant face. "The worst of it was that she had only herself to thank for all the trouble that had come upon her, and as it was not a thing to be talked about, it had to be borne without any outside sympathy to make it easier."
"Has she never heard from him since?" asked Katherine softly, and now there were tears in her eyes, and a whole world of pity in her heart for this girl who had deliberately flung away the love she wanted, from pure obstinacy and self-will.
"Only once. Directly she knew that he had gone beyond recall she began to repent in good earnest, and sent him a cable to the only port where his vessel would be likely to stop, something to this effect; 'It is I who apologize; will you forgive?' And after weeks and weeks of waiting this answer came back: 'Yes, in two years' time'."
Katherine drew a long breath, and her eyes were still misty. "How long the waiting time must seem to Mary, and the months can bring her no tidings of what she most wants to know."
"That is true; but I am quite sure it is good for her," Mr. Selincourt answered. "Never before has there been anything in her life which called for waiting or patience, and it is the lessons which are hardest to learn which do us most good."
"Won't Mary be displeased because you have told me all this?" asked
Katherine.
"It will make no difference to her if she does not know, and you are not the sort of girl to go about bragging of the things you have been told. But it seemed to me that it might help you to an understanding of Mary's character if you knew," Mr. Selincourt replied rather awkwardly.
Katherine flushed a sudden, uncomfortable red, and began measuring calico in a great hurry; only, as she had turned her work round, and was doing it all over again, it was rather wasted labour. A thought had flashed into her mind that perhaps this good, kindly man had heard some of the talk which was coupling the names of Miss Selincourt and Jervis Ferrars, and so had told her this about Mary of set purpose.
"Thank you for telling me," she said; then went on hurriedly: "I am so glad to know. It explains why sometimes Mary does not look happy. I had thought it just boredom and discontent."
"Most people would think so, but that is just because they don't understand her. She is made of fine, good stuff at the bottom, only sometimes it is rather hard to get at. This week she will be perfectly happy and charming to live with, because she will have to be at the fish sheds all the time, checking the incoming boats; and next week she will be down in the dumps, because she has nothing in the world to do."
"That at least is a complaint that I am in no danger of suffering from," laughed Katherine, as, realizing that she had been working twice on the calico, she folded it up and started on another length.
"And I have been wasting your time in a fearful fashion; but perhaps you will forgive me, because I like talking to you so much," he said, rising from his seat and laughing, as he looked at his watch, to think how the morning had flown. "Now I will go and talk to your good father for a little while, and then I will whistle for Pierre to come over and row me down to Seal Cove for lunch with Mary, to round off the morning."
Katherine rushed about the store with great vigour and much bustling energy after the visitor had betaken himself outside. Of course he had wasted her morning to a serious extent, but what mattered arrears of work compared with the peace of mind the talk had brought her? Never once since the day on which her father had confided to her the secret trouble which was weighing him down had Katherine been so light-hearted. Now, at least so far as she was concerned, that trouble, even the remembrance of it, might be put away for ever. Mr. Selincourt had said that he owed a debt of gratitude to the person who had wronged him; so plainly there was no question of making up to him for any loss that he had suffered. True, the wrong was there, and nothing could undo the sin which had been committed; but it was the sinner who had suffered, not the sinned against. Katherine looked out through the open door of the store and saw her father walking up and down beside the man he had wronged, and a sharp pang of pity for the invalid smote her heart. His punishment was very heavy; but even she, his daughter, who loved him so well, could not deny that it was just that he who did the wrong should pay the penalty thereof.
"Poor darling Father!" she murmured. "But no one need ever know. Nothing could be gained by dragging the old, bad past to light, and so it shall be buried for ever." Then, covering her face with her hands, she prayed that the forgiveness of Heaven might rest upon the poor sinner, whose punishment had come to him on earth.
The hours of that day flew as if every one of them were holiday time, instead of being crammed to the full with even harder work than usual. The other matter of which Mr. Selincourt had spoken, Mary's engagement to the unknown Archie Raymond, Katherine buried deep in her heart, a thing to be gloated over in secret, a cause for happiness which she did not care to be frank over, even to herself. So the long, busy day went on to evening, and, in spite of all the work there had been to get through, Katherine found herself with half an hour of leisure before bedtime.
She was standing outside, fighting the mosquitoes, and wondering if she had sufficient energy left to go up the portage path to the high ground, to see the moon rise, when she saw the Selincourt boat shoot out from under the alder trees on the other side of the river, and make across for the store.
"It is Mary!" she whispered to herself; and Mary it was, with a weary, white face, and a fleecy white shawl wrapped about her head and shoulders.
"Will you come up the hill, Katherine, and see the moon rise?" she asked, in a tired tone.
"I was just thinking of doing so, only it seemed hardly worth the effort to go up alone; now you have come it will be pleasant," Katherine answered, and, although she knew it not, there was more friendliness in her tone than Mary had ever found there before.
"Do you know, I tried going up the hill on my side, a better hill than yours, and with a better view, but it was so lonely! Isn't it funny what a difference companionship makes?"
"Sometimes, and in some moods. But there are other times and other moods in which companionship is a nuisance, and solitude the only thing to be desired. At least, that is how I have felt," said Katherine. Then she added hastily: "To-night I felt as if I wanted someone to see the moon rise with me, so I am very glad you came."
They walked up the hill in silence, despite the desire for company which both had felt, and stood together at the top, watching the silver glory of the moon coming up over the black pine trees, with no speech at all until Mary asked with a ring of envy in her tone: "What has come to you to-night?"
Katherine flushed, answering in quick apology: "Please forgive me.
It is fearfully rude of me to be so silent and abstracted."
"It wasn't that. Speech is only one way of expressing one's thoughts, and very often not the most eloquent way either. But you look so light-hearted to-night; it shines from your eyes, and—and—well, it is awkward to express what I mean, but it is visible in every gesture. To put it briefly, you look like a person to be envied."
"I believe I am to be envied," Katherine answered, flushing again under the amused scrutiny in Mary's glance. "Everyone who has health and vigour, with an infinite capacity for enjoyment, should surely be envied by those not equally blessed, don't you think?"
Mary sighed. "I have health and vigour too. I am not so sure about the infinite capacity for enjoyment; but I like work, and plenty of it. Do you know, I thoroughly enjoyed myself at Seal Cove to-day. I went out on the landing wharf to help the men to count the take, then I entered it, wrote out the tokens, and worked as hard as if I were doing it for a weekly wage."
"Well?" There was gentle questioning in Katherine's tone, but no curiosity; happily there was need for none. She could understand something of Mary's moods without explanation now, and could give the sympathy, which was also better expressed without words.
"It isn't well; that is the trouble of it," Mary said wistfully. "The work is all very well while it lasts, but when it is done, one is tired, and there is nothing left but weariness and moods again—just these and nothing more."
"Oh yes, there is! You are leaving out the most important thing; there is rest. And when one is rested, really rested, the world is all new again for a time," Katherine answered brightly. She was speaking now from her own experience, for that was how she had felt when her trouble was at its blackest.
"I had forgotten rest; but then it won't always come, sometimes sleep is impossible." Mary sighed again, for to-night her mood verged on the morbid.
"Sometimes, but not often, when people are as healthy as we are," Katherine replied with a laugh; then, slipping her hand through Mary's arm, with a persuasive touch she drew her homeward. "Come! People who have to get up and work in the morning must go to bed at night, or suffer next day. I am fearfully sleepy, and to-morrow I have to go over to Fort Garry with all those furs which your father did not buy."
"I too must be at work in good time, for I want to be at Seal Cove before ten o'clock, and that does not leave much space for one's housekeeping duties," Mary said, in a brighter tone, as the two came down the hill together.
"Let Mr. Selincourt keep house while you are so busy, or, better still, get Nellie to do what you want; she will be delighted," urged Katherine, who was disposed to the belief that Mary's morbid mood was largely the result of fatigue.
"Oh, Mrs. Burton is more than kind in making bread for me, and all that sort of thing; while, as everyone knows, my father spoils me all the time! But I like work, and just now I feel as if I could hardly have too much of it; so I don't mind how long Mr. Ferrars stays away at the fishing at the Twins," Mary said. Then, bidding Katherine good night at the foot of the hill, she got into her boat and was rowed across the river.
Katherine shook her head a little doubtfully as she went indoors; for in her heart she did not echo the other's last words.