CHAPTER XXVIII
The Gladness
Six days went by. The weather had cleared as if by magic, a brilliant sun shone every day in a cloudless sky, and summer had returned again to cheer the northern land. But never a word had come from across the waste of grey, heaving waters, to let the anxious watchers at Seal Cove know whether the Mary still lived, or whether her crew had really gone to the bottom from the little boat which Oily Dave and his mates had found floating keel upwards.
Mrs. Jenkin still preserved her attitude of determined cheerfulness, and persisted in her belief that no harm had come to the vessel or the men. But she was the only one who still hoped. Mrs. Jones, the wife of Nick Jones, a woman shunned by her neighbours, and of a disposition the reverse of friendly, had already put on black. Her mourning garments were of ancient make, for up-to-date mourning apparel was not regarded as one of the necessaries of life, and so it was not stocked by the store at Roaring Water Portage.
Mr. Selincourt said little, but it was easy to see how much he feared, while Mary went about wearing such a look of bereavement that the folk at Seal Cove were confirmed in their belief that some sort of engagement really had existed between her and the young man who managed the business of the fishing fleet.
Katherine, shielding herself behind this mistaken belief on the part of other people, carried her sore heart bravely through those days of hoping against hope and sick apprehension. The only two people who even suspected her suffering were her brother Miles and Mr. Selincourt; but neither gave any sign of understanding that there might be any personal sorrow hidden under her sympathy for Mrs. Jenkin and the unpleasant Mrs. Jones.
On the sixth day it became necessary for Katherine to do the long portage with supplies for the Indian encampment, which had about doubled in population during the last two or three weeks. There was the usual bustle of getting off—the scampering of dogs back along the portage path for fresh burdens, the shouting of Phil, and all the cheerful accompaniments of busy toil and work willingly done. But Katherine did her part with a mechanical precision, forcing herself to this task and to that, yet feeling no zest or pleasure in anything.
Although the days were so warm and sunny, the nights and early mornings showed already a touch of frostiness, a chilly reminder of the winter that was coming; and Katherine was glad to wear a coat even while she was rowing, until the second portage had been reached. Astor M'Kree met her himself this morning, his first question being the one she most dreaded to hear.
"Any news of the Mary yet, Miss Radford?"
"No," she answered sadly. "Mr. Selincourt's little flag was hanging at half-mast when we started this morning."
"If she has gone down, it is the first boat I've built that has cost a human life, that I know of," he said, "and it makes me feel as if I should never have the courage to build another. I've got one on the stocks, but I haven't touched her since this news came up river."
"But disasters at sea will come, do what you will, and the best boat ever built would go to pieces on those Akimiski rocks," Katherine said, trying to cheer him because he seemed so sad.
"It isn't clear to me why they were on Akimiski at all, when it was the Twins they were making for," he replied, in a gloomy tone. "Mr. Selincourt told me the other day that he believed it would be better if I did my boatbuilding down below the portages; but I said no. There is no difficulty in taking the boats down when the river is in flood, though of course it would not be possible now; and I've got the feeling that I like to take the first risk in them myself. It is a queer sensation, I can tell you, to feel a boat coming to life under your feet, and when I took the Mary over the falls it was just as if she jumped forward in sheer glee, when she felt the swing and the rush of the water swirling round her sides."
Katherine nodded, but did not speak. There was a rugged eloquence about the boatbuilder which always appealed to her, but this morning it was almost more than she could bear.
"Perhaps I will come in and see Mrs. M'Kree as I come back, but I must hurry now, for I am anxious to get my business done and turn my face homeward as soon as I can," she said, after a little pause. "Father did not seem quite so well yesterday, and Nellie thinks it is the gloom of other people which has upset him."
"Very likely: poor man, he'd be bound to be sensitive in unexpected places; afflicted people mostly are. I will tell my wife you may be in later; and look here, could you spare Phil to go to Ochre Lake swan-shooting this evening? My two lads and I are going, and it is always fun for a boy. I've got an old duck rifle he can use, and we'll send him down river in time to make himself useful to-morrow morning."
One glance at Phil's face was sufficient to make Katherine decide she could do quite well without him when she got back over the second portage, and so it was arranged.
The journey that day was got through sooner than usual, owing chiefly to Phil's tendency to "hustle" in order to be back in good time for the swan-shooting. He helped Katherine over the second portage, and tumbled bundles of pelts and packages of dried fish into the boat. Then, uttering a wild whoop of delight, he turned head over heels in the dried grass on the bank, and started back along the portage path to the boatbuilder's house at a run.
Being in good time, Katherine did not trouble to row herself down river, but, pushing the boat out in midstream, let it drift on the current. It was a great luxury to be alone—to let her face take on the saddest expression it could assume, to let her hands drop idly on her lap, while for a brief space she let her grief have sway. She was thinking of the day when Jervis had come over the portage to meet her, and she had been so late that he was obliged to go back before she came. What had he come to say to her that day?
This was the question which had ceaselessly tortured Katherine through the days and nights since Oily Dave had brought the bad news about the Mary. Her heart whispered that he might have come that day to ask her to marry him, but she was not sure. If she could have been certain of this, then it seemed to her the worst of her suffering would have been removed, because then she would have had some shadow of a right to mourn for him.
But there was the portage looming in sight, and she could hear the water rushing round the bend in the river and over the falls. Then she turned round in the boat, and, taking up the oars, prepared to row in to the boathouse.
A figure, partly hidden by the cottonwood and the alders, stepped forward at this moment and prepared to moor the boat for her.
Was it instinct that made her turn her head then, or was she merely looking to see how much farther she had to row in? A frightened cry escaped her at what she saw, and the colour ebbed from her face, leaving it ghastly white.
"Katherine, did you take me for a ghost?" asked the voice of Jervis
Ferrars.
"I think so," she said faintly, then sent the boat with a jerk against the mooring post, where he tied it up for her.
"Did you really think we had gone down, or had you the cheerful faith of Mrs. Jenkin?"
"I—I am afraid that I had no faith at all," she said with an effort, and never guessed how complete was her self-betrayal.
He looked at her keenly, was apparently satisfied with what he saw, then said cheerfully: "Will you row me up to Astor M'Kree's, or, rather, permit me to row you? I want to go and assure him that the Mary is quite safe, and the soundest boat that ever sailed the Bay. Shall we leave this luggage here, or row it up river for the sake of having a load?"
"Rowing is quite sufficient exercise without having an unnecessary load," replied Katherine, with a shake of her head, as she handed him the bundles to place on the bank. She was trembling so that she could hardly trust herself to speak, and was horribly afraid of breaking down like a schoolgirl, and crying from sheer joyfulness.
When the bundles were all out, Jervis got in, took the oars, and sent the boat's head round for up river again, then pulled steadily for a few minutes without speaking.
A boat is an awkward place for a person afflicted with self-consciousness. Katherine would have been thankful for some shelter in which to hide her face just then, but, having none, she rushed into nervous speech instead.
"Were you in danger? Was the Mary wrecked?" she asked, miserably conscious of the unsteadiness of her voice, yet feeling altogether too nervous to remain silent.
"No," he said. "We have had a very easy and prosperous time, though, unfortunately, we lost one of our boats on the way out—the boat picked up by Oily Dave, which has made all the trouble. We fell in with a lot of white porpoises; so the take has been a valuable one, and the men came home very well pleased with the venture: though Nick Jones felt his spirits rather dashed by meeting his wife tricked out in mourning attire, and flying a pennon of widowhood from the back of her bonnet."
Katherine laughed: she could imagine the tragic figure Mrs. Jones must have looked, and the effect the sight would have on the susceptible nerves of a Bay fisherman. Then she said hurriedly: "I shall have great faith in Mrs. Jenkin's judgment after this, although I have wondered how she could be so persistently hopeful in the face of such evidence as we had."
"And you yourself—how did you feel about it? Would it have made any difference to you if I had gone under, dear?" he asked, with a caressing note in his tone that she had never heard there before.
For answer she jerked her head round, staring at the tops of the pine trees, with the blue sky behind them, but seeing nothing and heeding nothing save the world of happiness which had suddenly opened before her astonished eyes.
It seemed a long time before any sound broke the silence save the regular splash of the oars, then Jervis said quietly: "Are you quite sure that you are not afraid to marry a poor man, Katherine?"
She looked at him with only a glance, then asked, a trifle unsteadily: "What do you mean?"
"Well, you might have looked higher, of course. I have told you how miserably poor my people and I have been. Thanks to Mr. Selincourt, things are easier with me now; but there is a streak of modesty in me somewhere, and I have been afraid to ask for what I wanted," he said, with a certain wistfulness of intonation which brought Katherine's glance round again.
"You need not have been afraid," she said softly.
"Because why?" he asked, in the tone of one who meant to be answered.
Katherine looked at the tops of the pine trees again, but, finding no help there, let her gaze drop to the dancing water, and finally faltered in a very low voice: "Because love is better than money, or that sort of thing."
He bent forward until he could look into her downcast face, then said earnestly: "You mean, then, it makes no difference to you what my worldly position may chance to be?"
"Of course not; why should it?" she asked, her glance meeting his now in surprise at his earnestness.
Their progress up river was rather slow after that, and it was something over an hour later before they reached the second portage. Astor M'Kree had started for the swan-shooting by that time, and there was only his delighted wife to scream with joyful relief at the news, that the Mary was riding safely at anchor in the river.
"Poor Astor! He has been that down he could scarcely take his food," said Mrs. M'Kree, wiping away the tears which sheer happiness had brought into her eyes.
"Get an extra big supper ready for him, then, for I expect you will find his appetite has come back with a bounce," said Jervis, laughing. "You can tell him from me to get on with that new boat as fast as he can, and we will name it the Katherine."
"Are you joking?" asked Mrs. M'Kree, who had suddenly become very serious, as she looked from Jervis to Katherine, whose face was a study in blushes.
"No, I am quite in earnest," he answered. "But we must go now, for we dumped a lot of fish out on the portage path, and I should not be surprised if half the dogs in the neighbourhood are there, sampling it, when we get back."
"I hope not, or my trouble in bringing it over the long portage will all have been thrown away," said Katherine, who could not help smiling at the bewilderment on the face of Mrs. M'Kree.
There was no need to row going down the river; they just sat side by side and let the boat drift on the current, while they talked of the present and the future. Katherine remembered her other journey down, earlier in the afternoon, and the bitter, black misery which had kept her company then.
[Illustration: Drifting down the river.]
"What a difference things make in one's outlook!" she exclaimed.
"What things?" he demanded.
"I was thinking of when I let the boat drift down this afternoon," she said. "The pine trees looked so gloomy then, and those great, black spruces yonder on the bank made me think of the decorations on funeral hearses years and years ago, the sort of thing one sees only in pictures; but now——"
"What do they let you think of now?" he asked, holding her hand in a tighter clasp, as the boat swept slowly past the funereal spruces.
"Oh! they make me think of the ornamental grounds in Montreal, or of the Swiss mountains which I see in visions when I dream I am 'doing Europe', as the Yankees say," and she laughed happily at her wild flights of fancy.
"Would you like to do Europe—after we are married?" he asked, a gravity coming into his tone that she could not understand.
"Why worry about the impossible?" she said gently. "Books are cheap, if travel is not, and we will do our European travel sitting by a winter fire."
"It might be possible some day; one never knows quite how things may turn out," he said gravely. Then he asked: "Did anyone tell you that I came up river to see you that afternoon before we sailed for the Twins?"
"Yes," she answered, flushing as she remembered how much his visit and its purpose had been in her mind during those days of keen anxiety.
"I came then to ask you the question I asked just now," he said slowly. "It has been in my heart to ask it ever since that day you helped me across the ice, saving my life at the risk of your own. But I had my mother to support then, in part, and the burden on me was too heavy for me to dare to put my personal happiness first. There was a letter for me in Mr. Selincourt's belated mail, however, that changed my outlook pretty considerably, and left me free to do as I liked; so I came to you directly."
"Do you mean——?" began Katherine, then stopped in some confusion.
"Do I mean that I have only myself to keep now, were you going to ask?" he said, laughing as he shifted his seat and took up the oars to bring the boat in to the mooring post under the boathouse; "because that is just what I do mean. I have only myself to keep until I have the privilege of keeping you; and there will be no more portage work for you then, I promise you."
Katherine sprang ashore, whistled for the dogs, then turned to him with a saucy air. "Don't be too positive about the portage work; fishermen do not exactly come under the heading of the leisured classes, and I may be glad to earn an honest dollar where I can."