CHAPTER VIII.
CLOSE TO PORT.
I need make but brief mention of the long cruise that followed our escape, of the days that passed slowly while we worked our way down the mighty St. Lawrence, out to the open Atlantic by the rocky gates of Newfoundland, and thence up the coast of Labrador to Hudson Straits. For the most part wind and weather favored us, yet it was a matter of six weeks before we got into the bay and made sail across that inland waste of water toward our destination, Fort York, which was far down in the southwestern corner. The distance from Quebec by land would have been far less. Our course, as a map will show, was along the three sides of a square.
The Speedwell was a sound little ship, and carried a mixed cargo to be delivered at the Hudson Bay posts. We were well fed and snugly berthed, Miss Hatherton having a cozy cabin all to herself. The crew were good fellows, and Hiram Bunker was a typical New England skipper—bluff, honest and popular. I did not see very much of him, for he and Captain Rudstone became boon companions and stuck well together. It was the same with the captain. Indeed, he seemed to take pains to avoid me, except when others were present, thereby causing me some perplexity and chagrin. And if we happened to find ourselves alone he appeared ill at ease, and would look at me in a strange and shifty manner, as though he had something on his mind. But for all that the time did not hang heavily on my hands, nor was the voyage an uneventful one to me, as I shall relate in a few words.
It came about naturally enough that Miss Hatherton and I spent the long days together. In less than a fortnight we were calling each other by our Christian names. Secluded in some nook of the deck, we would talk for hours, or I would read aloud from one of the few volumes that the skipper’s cabin afforded. She told me much of her life in London. Her father had been a gentleman of some means until speculation wrecked him, and later she confided to me the whole of her sad story.
There was more than I had known before, as Captain Rudstone suggested. It seems that prior to her father’s death the only son of Lord Selkirk fell in love with the girl. She did not return his affection, and, indeed, she disliked the young man. But the old lord was either ignorant of this fact or would not believe it. He had higher matrimonial views for his son, and so, in order to get Miss Hatherton out of England, he hatched the plot that resulted in the poor girl making her father a sacred promise that she would go to the Canadas and marry Griffith Hawke. She had no relatives to interfere, and a cruel disadvantage was taken of her helplessness and poverty. She spoke of the matter only on the one occasion, and it did not come up between us again. Nor had I the heart to mention it, since she was clearly resigned to her future.
But I pitied the girl deeply, and I would have been more than human, with the opportunities afforded, had I not fallen a victim to her charms and loveliness. I did not perceive where I was drifting. I did not realize my danger until it was too late. In short, I, who had hitherto felt but contempt for all womankind, suddenly discovered that I was a slave to the great passion. It was a sharp awakening, and it destroyed my peace of mind. To me Flora Hatherton was a divinity, a goddess. It gave me the keenest torture to think that she would soon be the wife of old Griffith Hawke. I knew that she was as far out of my reach as the stars above, and yet I felt that I should love her passionately all my life—that the memory of her sweet face would shatter all the joys of existence for me.
I could have cursed myself for being such a fool, and I hated the factor for sending me on such a mission. It never entered my head to play him false and try to win Flora, nor did I believe there was any chance of doing so. Day after day we were together, and with Spartan courage I hid my feelings—or, at least, I thought I was hiding them. It was a hard task, for every word or look that the girl gave me seemed to turn my blood to fire. That she was indifferent to me—that she regarded me only as a friend—I was convinced. I was a youngster and inexperienced, and so I was blind to the girl’s pretty blushes, to the averting of her eyes when they would meet mine, and to other signs of confusion that I remembered afterward. To remain at Fort Royal, a witness of Griffith Hawke’s domestic happiness, I knew to be impossible. I determined to seek a new post, or to plunge far into the northern wilderness, as soon as I should have delivered Flora at her destination.
The days slipped by fraught with mingled joy and bitterness, and at sunset one chilly August evening I stood alone on deck by the port bulwark. The wind was rising, and there was a clammy mist on the gray, troubled waters. We were nearly across the bay, and in the morning we expected to sight the marshy shores that lay about Fort York. Flora was in her cabin. She had seemed depressed all day and I remembered that an hour before, when the skipper told her how near we were to land, she had smiled at me sadly and gone below. I had no wish for the voyage to end. The thought of the morrow cut me like a knife, and I was lost in gloomy reflections, when a hand clapped me on the shoulder. I turned round with a start, and saw Captain Rudstone.
“A few hours more, Mr. Carew,” he said, “and we shall have dropped anchor under the walls of the fort. Do you expect to meet your factor there?”