A Countess from Canada Part 16

The invalid s.h.i.+vered, then said more haltingly than before: "I don't like to think of England, it makes me sad; but Selincourt is a pretty name-a very pretty name indeed!"

CHAPTER XV

Mr. Selincourt is Indiscreet

When Katherine reached home that night after doing the "backache portage" it seemed to be the last straw to her burden of endurance to be told that Mr. Selincourt had arrived. The loss of the supper fish did not trouble her, for she and Phil had brought home a fine salmon, which they had taken from an Indian woman in exchange for a couple of small packets of hairpins, which in England might have fetched perhaps a halfpenny each, but in that remote district were priced at a quarter of a dollar. It was the news of the arrival which upset her so badly. She suffered tortures while she listened to Mrs. Burton's eager talk about the Selincourts, of Mr. Selincourt's kindly manner, and Miss Selincourt's graceful charm.

"Hush, hus.h.!.+" she kept saying. "You will excite and worry Father with all this talk of new people."

"I don't think so," Mrs. Burton replied. "See how peaceful he is, and how little notice he takes of anything outside. He will not remark any difference between Mr. Selincourt and Stee Jenkin, except that he may find the former more interesting to talk to."

But Katherine shook her head, stealing many a glance at her father while she ate her supper, and worrying lest the name of the man he had wronged should stir some dim memory in his clouded mind, and bring up some ghost from the hidden past, to turn his peaceful days into a nightmare of unrest once more. The salmon might have been sawdust for all the taste it had for her that night, and when supper was done she hurried through the work which could not be left, then, pleading weariness, went off to bed quite an hour before her usual time.

Although she went to bed she could not sleep. She heard Jervis come in and stay talking to Mrs. Burton. She also heard him say that he was going to take Mr. and Miss Selincourt across to Akimiski on the following day. Then Jervis left, her father went with slow, faltering steps to his bed, and Nellie came in, but, thinking her sister asleep, moved softly and did not speak, for which Katherine was mutely grateful.

It was very early on the following morning when she saw the boat with Mr. Selincourt and Mary slipping down the river, rowed by some of the men who had brought them up from the lakes. So it would be a day of respite, for the Selincourts would not be back until evening, too late to go visiting among their neighbours, and Katherine's spirits rose immediately, because there was one more day to be happy in.

She had to go to Fort Garry that day, and started an hour before noon, taking Phil with her as usual, and having her boat piled high with skins taken in barter, bags of feathers, and other marketable products. There was a short outlet to the bay from the river, a weedy channel leading through flat meadows of vivid green; only, to use an Iris.h.i.+sm, they were not meadows at all, but stretches of swamp, in Canadian parlance a muskeg: and the unwary creature, human or animal, that set foot thereon was speedily engulfed. Very beautiful these stretches of rich green looked on a bright summer's day, and Katherine exclaimed in delight as she forced the boat through the weedy channel, which became every week more difficult to pa.s.s.

"Oh, Phil, isn't it lovely!" she cried.

"Can't say I admire it," the boy answered grumpily. "The air down here always seems to choke me, and it is twice as much trouble to drive the boat through this narrow, weedy channel as it is to go the longer way round."

"I know we shall have to cease coming this way soon, but it is pretty, and I like it," Katherine answered, and would not admit even to herself that her chief reason in choosing those weedy byways, was the desire to avoid all danger of an encounter with the Selincourts.

The voyage to Fort Garry was without incident, and the interview with the M'Crawneys was of the usual type. Mrs. M'Crawney was low-spirited and homesick, yearning for Ireland, for the smell of the peat reek and the society of her neighbours.

"I shall die if I stay here much longer. It is stagnation, not life at all; indeed, I'd sooner be dead," moaned the poor discontented woman.

"But you have books," said Katherine, pointing to a well-filled shelf in one corner of the room. "And if you are so lonely, why not take some girl from an orphanage for a companion? It would be good for the child and good for you too."

"Books are not satisfying, and I think it a great waste of time to be always reading," Mrs. M'Crawney replied with a touch of asperity. Her husband's love of books and willingness to spend money upon them was always a sore point with her, only Katherine did not know that, "And I wouldn't have a strange girl about the house, not whatever. I never could abide having to do with other people's children."

"Then I am afraid you will have to go lonely," Katherine answered, feeling that it was quite beyond her powers to make any more useful suggestion to the poor unhappy woman, whose ailment consisted more in a discontented mind than a diseased body.

The M'Crawneys were such an ill-matched pair that it always gave her a feeling of irritation to go there, while Peter M'Crawney himself was too much addicted to fulsome compliments to make her willing to face him oftener than need be. There was a cool. breeze creeping over the water as they turned back towards home, and this tempered the heat, making rowing a pure pleasure.

"Let us go the longer way," pleaded Phil, who did not care for the solemn stretches of green swamp on either side of the backwater.

But Katherine had been resting on her oars and looking round, catching sight as she did so of a fis.h.i.+ng boat, with its brown sails set, making for the river mouth. With a fluttering of her pulses she told herself that this was most likely the fleet boat which had taken the new owner out to Akimiski, and was now bringing him back. If this were the case, her little row boat and the fisher would enter the river channel by the fish sheds side by side. She would be hot and untidy with the vigorous exercise of rowing, while Miss Selincourt, cool and calm, would gaze at her with lofty disdain, regarding her merely as a rough working girl. This was not to be endured for a moment, and, setting her hands with a tighter grip on the oars, Katherine said decidedly: "We will go through the swamps to-day. I want to get home as quickly as I can, for there are so many things to see to, and a lot of booking to do."

Phil resigned himself to the inevitable with a rather dour face, and there was silence between them for quite ten minutes, as Katherine, forced by the narrowness of the way, ceased rowing, and, s.h.i.+pping her oars, picked up a paddle which formed part of the boat's equipment, and commenced to paddle her way through the short cut.

"What's that?" asked Phil sharply, jerking up his head to listen again for a sound which would not have caught his ear at all if he had not been so silent just then.

"I heard nothing," said Katherine, pausing in her work, but holding the boat steady by planting her paddle in a group of rushes and holding it fast. "What kind of sound was it, Phil?"

"Something like a fox makes when it is caught in a trap," replied Phil. Then he cried eagerly: "There it is, and I believe it is a man! Ahoy there! where are you, and what is wrong?"

"Help, help!" cried a voice from somewhere, only the trouble was to know where to locate it.

"Yes, we will help you, only we can't think where you are; can't you let us know?" called Katherine, sending her voice in a rea.s.suring shout over the reaches of treacherous green.

"I am here, holding on to some rushes," the voice said, and Katherine fairly gasped with amazement to find the submerged one so close at hand; for the patch of rushes to which she was holding the boat was the only one anywhere near, and a little ridge of solid ground connected it with the river bank, which was perhaps forty yards away.

"Be careful to keep calling out now," she said, preparing to force the boat out of its channel and into the liquid mud of the fatal green meadow.

"Here, here, here!" said the voice, sounding now so thick and hoa.r.s.e that Katherine at once decided it must be one of the fishermen who had risked his life on the treacherous green of the swamp, although she wondered that anyone could have lived at Seal Cove for a week and not known of the danger that lay in the swamps.

"Phil, where can he be?" she cried, her voice sharp now with the terror of having a man in peril of his life at her side, and yet being unable to help him.

"There he is; I saw the rushes move," yelled Phil. "No, not that clump-you are looking wrong; it is the one that has got a lupin blooming in it. Ah, I saw it move again! Keep your spirits up, old fellow, and we will have you out in no time!"

"But how?" groaned Katherine under her breath, for no effort of hers would move the boat a foot farther through that awful slime, and if she got wedged she would be forced to stay there until someone came in search. Then, remembering the horrible danger of the man, she called out: "Please don't struggle at all, only just keep still, and I think we can save you, for we have got rope with us."

"So we have! My word, how fortunate!" exclaimed Phil, tugging a big bundle of stout hempen cord from under the other things of their miscellaneous lading.

"Get the other bundle too; I must have both," said Katherine, and, taking the first, she made a slip knot and a loop which would tighten to a certain extent.

"What are you going to do? You can't throw it over him from here," said the boy.

"Phil, can you be very brave, darling, and walk across on the oars?" Katherine asked, a sob catching in her throat. "I will slip this other rope round you; then, if you slip in, I can drag you out."

"I'll go," said Phil, alert and ready. Then he kicked off his boots, which were stout-and every ounce mattered when one took to walking on muskegs; but as his clothing consisted of only a flannel s.h.i.+rt and serge knickerbockers there were no clothes for him to shed.

Katherine slipped one loop of rope over his shoulders, put the other looped rope into his hand, then laid an oar on the mud. "Now, go; the rushes will hold you when you get there," she said sharply.

With light, cautious movements Phil stepped out on to the oar, balancing himself like a tightrope dancer, and because he was so small and light he pa.s.sed in safety where a heavier person would have been quickly submerged.

Katherine stood up in the boat paying out both coils of rope. Her face was ghastly white, and her heart was beating to suffocation. She had not felt like this that day when she ventured her life on the ice to save Jervis Ferrars in the flood. But that had been her own danger, this was her brother's, and therein lay the difference.

"Landed!" cried Phil, in a quavering tone of triumph, as he planted his bare feet firmly in the rushes, which, happily, were so matted together that they would not let him through. Then he stooped, and Katherine heard him talking to the poor wretch caught in the mud beyond. "Now, let me slip this over your arm. That's right; we've got you safe enough, and they are English ropes, strong enough to pull a carthorse out of a bear pit. You mustn't struggle, though, however much you feel like it."

"Phil, can you reach the oar?" Katherine cried, her voice hoa.r.s.e, for she could hardly endure the strain of the waiting.

"Yes," said the boy, stooping now and touching the perilous bridge which had carried him to the comparative safety of the clump of rushes.

"Then lay it across the clump, and well under the man's hands; keep it as firm as you can for him, while I haul on the rope. Now then--!"

With all her strength Katherine hauled at the rope. She was sitting now with her feet braced against the thwarts, and with every muscle tense she strained and strained until the perspiration streamed down her face, and the hot air of the swamp as it rose up seemed to choke her.

[Ill.u.s.tration: With all her strength Katherine hauled at the rope.]

"Hooray, he's coming!" yelled Phil, and Katherine, who had been almost fainting, gathered her courage for yet another effort.

Phil was helping now, but, best of all, the poor victim of the muskeg was doing his share also, and at the end of a quarter of an hour of pulling, tugging, and straining he was on his knees in the clump of rushes beside Phil, and Katherine was able to rest her bleeding hands and plan the next stage of that perilous journey. But a few moments of rest that poor mud-coated wretch must have before taking any more risks, so she said cheerfully: "Now, stay as you are for five or ten minutes, just to get your strength back a little, and I will s.h.i.+ft my cargo to accommodate you, for you will need a reserved seat, I fancy. Phil, take your handkerchief and wipe the poor man's face. I'm afraid it is rather a dirty one. Your handkerchiefs are never fit to be seen, but it is better than nothing."

Phil took a grimy blue-and-yellow cotton rag from the pocket of his serge nether garments, and proceeded to wipe the rescued man's face with as much force and energy as if he had been polis.h.i.+ng tin pans with a view to making them s.h.i.+ne.