CHAPTER XXVI
Fighting the Storm
The summer had been one of such almost unvarying fine weather that the next morning's outlook came as a disagreeable surprise to Katherine. The sun shone with a pale, watery gleam, grey clouds were piled along the horizon, and a moaning wind crept through the pine trees, made the birch leaves quiver, and thinned the foliage of the alders at the foot of the rapids.
"Phil, we shall have to be quick this morning, or we shall have to come crawling home round the shore instead of rowing straight across the bay," Katherine said, as she piled bundles of pelts into the boat, and tied over them a canvas sheet, for security from any chance wave.
"Oh, we can hustle, and very likely the storm won't break before night!" Phil said easily.
"More likely that it will break before noon," retorted Miles, who was helping to bring out the pelts from the stockroom. "Don't go to-day, Katherine; it is fearful work crossing from Fort Garry when there is a strong north-east wind. I came across with Father once, when we thought we must have been swamped every minute."
"Do not worry yourself, my dear boy," laughed Katherine, "I shall not attempt to cross if the weather is very rough; I shall skirt the shore all the way. It is miles farther, of course, but it is safe, and that is the main thing."
"I wish you were not going, or that I could come with you," Miles said in a worried tone. "Look here; couldn't Phil manage the store for one day with Nellie's help, then we would take an extra pair of oars, and I would help to row?"
Katherine shook her head. "It is not to be thought of, dear. I expect some of those Indians from Nackowasset Creek will be over the portage to-day; then Wise Eye is in the neighbourhood, I know, and if he as much as caught a glimpse of both of us going down river in a boat he would fairly haunt the store until we came back, and Phil would have a tottering time of it."
"That Nackowasset lot are a horrible set of thieves," said Miles.
"Yes, and neither Phil nor Nellie would be up to all their tricks; so, you see, you will be quite indispensable. I shall get on very well; don't worry about me in any case, for if the storm should prove terrifically bad we could even stay at Fort Garry all night," Katherine replied.
The last pelt was tucked away under the canvas sheet, Phil scrambled aboard and crouched down in the most convenient place he could find, and Katherine nodded a bright farewell to Miles, who lingered on the bank with a very dissatisfied look on his face; then the boat moved out into the current and began to slip quickly down river. At present they felt little or nothing of the wind, but when the hut of Oily Dave was in line with them they began to feel the influence of the freshening puffs of wind on their progress, and Katherine decided to take a middle course across the open water to the fort; that is, she would not venture so far out as usual, nor would she hug the shore entirely.
But although the wind came sighing and moaning over the water, it was nothing more at present than a fairly stiff breeze, and, finding it so much better than she had expected, Katherine took heart again, and was glad that she had persevered in her undertaking; for she was anxious to get the furs off her hands. Every place at the store was so crowded now, from the shipments which had recently come in, that it was really a relief to get these bundles of pelts cleared out of the way.
"Oily Dave's hotel is closed, so I suppose the proprietor has cleared off out to the fishing," Phil said, as the little brown hut on the left shore slid by, and they began to rock on the open water of the river's mouth.
"I expect he has," replied Katherine, who was pulling with long, steady strokes, the exercise and the wind between them bringing a bright glow into her face. "Do you know, I am sure he has worked harder and more honestly this summer than for many a year past; I believe he is beginning to be a reformed character."
"How long will it take to reform him?" asked Phil, laughing; but
Katherine could only shake her head and say she did not know.
The gulls were riding on the crests of the waves, or skimming so closely down on the water that it was hard to know whether they were swimming or flying; and long strings of geese overhead all headed southward showed plainly that summer was on the wane. All these things Katherine took note of as she pulled across the choppy water to Fort Garry, only now they did not sadden her as two days ago they would have done. Hope had shone into her life again, a heavy burden had been lifted, and it seemed to her that she could never again feel quite so sorrowful and worn down as she had done sometimes during the last few months.
"Hurrah! Safely arrived!" she exclaimed, as the boat grounded on the pebbly beach in front of the old blockhouse, which looked even grimmer and uglier on this grey day than when the sun shone down upon it.
"Good morning, Miss Radford! Now, I wonder who told you how badly I needed a woman of some sort to happen along this morning?" said Peter M'Crawney, coming out from the stockade on which the house was built, and advancing to meet Katherine, who was coming up from the shore with a great bundle of pelts on each shoulder, while Phil, laden in similar fashion, walked behind.
"Does that mean that Mrs. M'Crawney is ill again?" Katherine asked.
Peter shrugged his shoulders. "She is desperate uneasy in her mind, poor lass, and as hard to live with as a houseful of mosquitoes, which it is lucky I haven't got, or I should be forced to drown myself to keep from going out of my mind."
"Not so bad as that, I hope," Katherine said with a laugh, and instantly resolved that it would be her duty to stay an hour with the poor woman, who pined so much because of the solitude in which her life was cast.
"It is pretty bad anyhow," he growled, a frown coming over his face. He was a fairly patient man, all things considered, but his domestic tribulations were greater than anyone knew or even guessed at.
Katherine turned an anxious eye towards the sky before going in at the house door. If she could start back in anything under a quarter of an hour she might hope to go as she had come, with not much extra labour nor fatigue; but an hour or perhaps an hour and a half hence it would be very different. The storm was coming slowly, but when rough weather came like that it had a trick of lasting sometimes for several days. However, if the worst came to the worst, she could always skirt the shore, and, consoling herself with this thought, she entered the house, leaving M'Crawney and Phil to unload the pelts and bring them up from the boat.
The miserable, neglected look of the house struck Katherine first. Peter was not great at housework, while the half-breed, Simon, who lived with them, helped with the trapping in winter, and did a little of all sorts of work, was rather less clean and tidy in his ways than even Peter. The sight of the dusty, ill-kept room irritated Katherine. Last night's supper dishes still littered the table, and had probably served for breakfast dishes as well. What was the use of wasting her time in trying to console a woman who so neglected her home, and the privileges of home-making that came with it? For a few minutes she felt disposed to turn back with only a five minutes' civil talk. But there was one's duty to one's neighbour—and that is a more important duty in isolated places than in more crowded centres.
Then an idea flashed into her mind. If by any means she could contrive to make Mrs. M'Crawney ashamed of herself, it might be more useful than medicine, might even work a cure, in fact; and that would be something worth doing, even though it entailed skirting the shore all the way home. To think was to act. Whisking off her coat and hat, she rolled up her sleeves, and for want of an apron pinned a big towel round her; a very dirty towel it was too, but something she must have to protect her frock, and it had to be the towel or nothing.
First, with plenty of noise and clatter, she piled the dirty crockery ready for washing, and, filling the stove with wood, set a kettle of water on to get hot. This done, she flung door and window wide, and proceeded to sweep the room. By the amount of dust she raised she judged that it must have been at least a week, perhaps a fortnight, since it was swept last.
Of all the work in the world she hated sweeping most, declaring to herself that doing a portage in blazing sunshine, with a load of furs on one's back, was play to sweeping. The dust got on her face, it walked up her nostrils and down her throat, making her feel as if she must in self-defence throw down her broom and fly outside, where the clean, strong wind was blowing. But it was not like her to give up, when once she had set her hand to anything; so she finished the sweeping, then fled outside to let the dust blow away from her face and hair while the thick atmosphere in the room she had left cleared enough to admit of the next set of operations.
Peter M'Crawney was talking to Phil on the other side of the fence, and from several inarticulate growls which reached her ears she judged that Simon must be there too. Then she heard Phil start on a description of what had taken place at the captain's reception on the ocean-going steamer, and judged herself safe for another ten minutes, for well she knew that he would not spare them full details, especially of the monkey trick he had played on Nick Jones.
In ten minutes one could do a great deal if one tried; so back again she hurried, and set to work dusting the furniture with an old cotton jacket of Peter's, because she could find no duster. The buttons got in the way sometimes, but that was a minor detail, and it did not do to be over-particular about trifles when one was in a hurry. The dusting was done, and she had started work on the dirty dishes, when the door of the inner room came open with a jerk, and Mrs. M'Crawney, very much in undress, poked her head out.
"Miss Radford, is it you?" she cried in profound astonishment. "I couldn't think what the noise was out here. If it had been night I should have settled it in my own mind that Peter and Simon had been having too much to drink, though no two men could be more sober than they are."
"A good thing they are, for there must be terrible temptations for men living in such discomfort to drown their troubles in strong drink," Katherine answered severely. Then she asked in a more kindly tone: "Do you feel better this morning?"
"Oh, I am well enough, thank you! It isn't my body; bodies don't matter unless they ache, which mine doesn't, the saints be praised!" Mrs. M'Crawney exclaimed with pious fervour, as she emerged from her bedroom and seated herself in all her squalid untidiness on the nearest chair.
"If it is not your body, what is it, then? Do you think you are going out of your mind?" demanded Katherine sharply; and turning from her dish-washing, she treated the woman to a calm appraising stare, which took in every detail, from the unbrushed hair straggling over the ragged nightdress to the unwashed, naked feet.
"Going out of my mind?" screamed Mrs. M'Crawney in furious indignation. "Indeed no! I've got my wits as well as you've got your own, Miss Katherine Radford; more so, I should say, for I have a deal too much sense to go slaving myself to death doing work that no one is likely to say 'thank you' for."
Katherine laughed merrily: "Don't be too sure of that. I expect that you will be saying 'thank you' presently, when you are washed and dressed; it makes such a difference when one's hair is tidy! If you will go into your room again I will bring you some hot water in a minute. But I can hear my brother Phil coming, and he is such a dreadful mimic that he will be taking you off for the benefit of Seal Cove to-morrow, in spite of all that I can do to stop him."
Mrs. M'Crawney vanished with all speed, the hint about being made fun of being more powerful to move her than anything else would have been.
Katherine carried in the hot water and tried not to see how badly the bedroom needed sweeping also. She had no more time for heavy housework that day, nor did she deem it a duty to waste her strength on labour which the Irishwoman was equally well able to perform. Peter had come in when she returned to the outer room, and was looking about him as if scarcely able to believe the evidence of his own eyes.
"Well, if it don't beat everything!" he exclaimed, then strode over to the shelf and examined the books, which Katherine had been careful to dust. "You've taken the dust off the books too! I expect you found it rather thick on 'em, didn't you? I don't think it has been rubbed off 'em these six months past."
"Just what I thought!" she retorted, scrubbing the table with great energy. "But I hope you don't expect me to pity you for that. A man who can read books ought to know how to dust them."
"I hadn't thought of doing it myself, that's a fact; but they look real nice now," he said admiringly. And he was wheeling round to pay Katherine a compliment from another direction, when the bedroom door opened again, and a surprised: "Hullo! what's up?" burst from him.
Even Katherine looked amazed, the transformation had been so rapid. Ten minutes ago a tousled, unclean creature, in a ragged night garment had disappeared, and now a clean-faced woman in a tidy frock, and with tidy hair, came from the inner room.
"It is like your impudence to be asking such personal questions as that," Mrs. M'Crawney retorted lightly, with a smile which showed her good-looking when she was not peevish. "But it is better I'm feeling in myself, which is sure to come to the outside sooner or later. Now, Miss Radford, dear, there's no call for you to go blacking that stove; I'll do it myself after you are gone. I'm just dreadful obliged to you for what you've done, especially for sweeping the floor. I've a soul above sweeping, I have, and I can't be always lowering myself to dirty work of that sort; it is damaging to the morals, I find."
Katherine laughed until the tears came into her eyes, then gasped out in jerky tones: "It would be very bad for my morals to live with floors unswept, and I think that is how most people feel."
"Perhaps they do, but I was never the ordinary kind of woman; my mother always said I was sort of one by meself, and she was right. When Mrs. Burton was staying here, with them two blessed babies, I used to marvel how she could laugh and carry on as she did, while the hungry sea as drowned her husband rocked at the very door of the house. Now, if it had been me, and my husband lay somewhere out there under the grey, heaving water, I could not have sung and danced and played hop-scotch, blindman's buff, and things of that sort, the same as she did."
Katherine's lips took on a scornful curl, and there was an indignant light in her eyes as she retorted: "No, I expect if Mr. M'Crawney died you would wear crape a yard deep all round your frocks, and talk morning, noon, and night of how much you loved him. But I am quite sure that he would love you a great deal more if you took the trouble to give him tidy rooms and well-cooked meals. If I were a man I should just hate a woman who treated me as badly as you treat Mr. M'Crawney."
"Hooray, you've got it now, and no mistake, old woman!" interjected Peter, rubbing his hands in huge enjoyment of the scene. Katherine had forgotten all about him, or it is possible she would not have spoken so plainly; as it was, at the sound of his laugh, she turned with a swift apology to Mrs. M'Crawney.
"Please forgive me, I have no right to meddle in your concerns; but it just makes me feel wrathful to see you throwing away the happiness you might have, and existing in such dirt and discomfort, when everything about you might be clean, sweet, and wholesome."
Mrs. M'Crawney dropped into a rocking-chair and laughed in great amusement. "Sure, it is as good as going to a theaytre to see you a-carrying on and lecturing me with the stormlight in your eyes. You are a very pretty girl anyhow, but when you are angry it is downright lovely that you are. I'd forgive ye for a deal more than telling the truth, if you'd only come a bit oftener and row me."
"I say, Katherine, are you nearly ready to start?" asked Phil, putting his head in at the door. He had been with Simon to inspect some tame wolf cubs; but, seeing that the weather was growing more threatening, had decided that the sooner they got away from Fort Garry the better.
"Yes, I will be ready in two minutes," Katherine answered; and, receiving payment for the pelts in a written order upon the Company, which she tied in a bag round her neck for safety, she drew on her coat, tied her hat securely on her head, and declared herself ready to start.
A fine rain was beginning to blur the sea like a fog, and she realized that the journey before her might be a great deal worse than she had expected.
"Good-bye, my dear; a safe journey to you, and the best of luck always!" exclaimed Mrs. M'Crawney, following her to the door. Then, seizing her in a bearlike embrace, the Irishwoman whispered: "It is downright ashamed of myself you've made me; and if I don't do better in future, then my name is not Juliana Kathleen M'Crawney, and never has been!"
"Good-bye! We shall get home all right; don't worry about us,"
Katherine answered bravely.
"There is one comfort: we shan't need to wash our faces any more to-day, though we may need a little drying," remarked Phil, as they rounded an angle of the coast and caught the full force of the wind.
"It might be worse, for we are being blown along," Katherine replied, as she tugged at her oars and faced the driving rain.
For three hours they toiled on, working their way from point to point, skirting the swamps, and keeping in close under the alders.
There was never real actual danger close inshore for anyone who understood the management of a boat, but the work was fearful, and Katherine was so near to exhaustion when she at last pulled round past the shut-up house of Oily Dave, that she was thankful to let Phil take the oars and pull up the quieter waters of the river to Roaring Water Portage.
"I wonder how Oily Dave likes being at the fishing to-day?" said Phil, swaying himself to and fro and jerking the boat fearfully with his short, uneven strokes.
But Katherine, sitting in a huddled, wet heap on the opposite seat, did not answer. She was thinking of someone else who was at the fishing, and praying that he might be kept in safety and brought back unharmed.