A Countess from Canada Part 28

Mr. Selincourt nodded his head thoughtfully, then he answered: "I must say I think you have done wisely; although, of course, it is against my own interest to admit it, because I wanted to buy. But it is a very hard life for a girl."

"It will be easier in a few years, when Miles grows up; and he gets bigger and more capable every day. Oh, I shall have a very easy time, I can a.s.sure you, when my brother is a man!" she said, with a laugh.

"I trust you will, and a good time too, for I am sure that no girl ever deserved it more than you do," he replied warmly. Then he went on: "I had a very hard time myself when I was a young man, an experience so cruelly hard and wearing that sometimes I wonder that I did not lose faith and hope entirely."

"But don't you think that faith and hope are given to us in proportion to our need of them?" asked Katherine, a little unsteadily. Her heart was beating with painful throbs, for she guessed only too well to what period of his life Mr. Selincourt was referring.

"Perhaps so. Yes, indeed I think it must be so, otherwise I don't see how I could have pulled through. I have recalled a good deal about that time since I have been here at Roaring Water Portage, and have seen how you have had to work, and to sacrifice yourself for the good of others; and I have often thought that I should like to tell you the story of my struggle. Would you care to hear it?"

"Yes, very much," Katherine answered faintly, although, much as she wished to know all about it, she dreaded hearing the story of her father's wrong-doing told by other lips than his own.

"When I was a very young man I was clerk in a Bristol business house, taking a good salary, and, as I believed, with an unblemished character. My father was dependent on me, and two young sisters, and I was rather proud of being, as it were, the keystone of the home. Then one day an old friend of my father's came to see me, and paid me fifty pounds, which he said he had owed to my father for twenty years-a gambling debt. He begged and implored me to say no word about it to anyone, especially to my father."

"Why not, if it was your father's debt?" asked Katherine, who was keenly interested.

"Because my father would not have taken it, although twenty years before he had paid the fifty pounds out of his own pocket, to save this friend of his from exposure and ruin. At first I was disposed not to take it either; but, as the man represented to me, I had others dependent on me, and for their sakes I was in duty bound to take it, and to do the best I could for them with it."

"I think so too," murmured Katherine; but Mr. Selincourt continued almost as if he had not heard her speak.

"I took the money and banked it with my other savings, feeling rather proud of having such a nest-egg, and making up my mind that when the summer came I would give the girls and the old man such a holiday as they had never even dreamed of before. Then the blow fell. I was called into the room of the chief one morning, and asked if I were a gambler. Of course I said no, and that with a very clear conscience, for I had never been addicted to betting nor card playing in my life. Then I was asked to explain the lump sum of fifty pounds which I had added to my banking account in the previous week."

"But I thought that banking accounts were very private and confidential things," said Katherine.

"So they are supposed to be; but the private affairs of a fellow in my position would be sure to get closely overhauled, and a shrewd bank manager might deem it only his duty to enquire how anyone with my salary and responsibilities could afford to pay in big sums like that," Mr. Selincourt replied. "Of course I could not explain how I had come by the money, and to my amazement I was curtly dismissed, and without a character."

"How horribly cruel!" panted Katherine, whose hands were pressed against her breast, and whose face was deathly white. No one knew how terribly she suffered then, as she stood there bearing, as it were, the punishment for her father's guilty silence, while she listened to the story of what his victim had had to endure.

"It did seem cruel, as you say, horribly cruel!" Mr. Selincourt said, a grey hardness spreading over his kindly face, as if the memory of the bitter past was more than he could bear. "The two years that followed were crammed with poverty and privation; there was almost constant sickness in the home, and I could get no work except occasional jobs of manual labour, at which any drayman or navvy could have beaten me easily, by reason of superior strength. I left Bristol and went to Cardiff, hoping that I might lose my want of a character in the crowd. But it was of no use. 'Give a dog a bad name and hang him', is one of the truest proverbs we've got. What is the matter, child?" he asked, as an involuntary sob broke from poor Katherine.

"Nothing, nothing; only I am so sorry for you!" she cried, breaking down a little, in spite of her efforts after self-control.

"You need not be, as you will hear in a moment; and, at any rate, I don't look much like an object of pity," he said, with a laugh. "I was on the docks one winter evening, wet, dark, and late, when I saw a man robbed of his purse. I chased the thief, collared the purse, and took it back to its owner, who proved to be one of the richest merchants of the town. He wanted to give me money. I told him that I wanted work. I told him, too, about my damaged reputation, and my inability to clear myself."

"Did he believe you?" she asked eagerly.

"He did; or if he didn't then, he did afterwards. Years later he admitted that for the first twelve months of my time with him he paid to have me watched; but that was really to my advantage, as I came scatheless through the ordeal."

"It was really good of him to take so much interest in you," said Katherine.

"So I have always felt," Mr. Selincourt answered. "Christopher Ray stood to me for employer and friend. In course of time he became still more, for he gave me his daughter, Mary's mother, and when he died he left me his wealth."

"It was not all a misfortune for you, then, that for a time you had to live under a cloud," said Katherine eagerly.

"Rightly speaking it was not misfortune, but good fortune that came to me when I lost position and character at one blow. I have often thought that perhaps I owed my downfall to someone who either said about me what was not true, or kept silent when a word might have put me straight; but, if so, that person was my very good friend, and it is to him, or to her, that I owe the first step to the success which came after."

Poor Katherine! One desperate effort she made after self-control, but it was of no use, and, covering her face with her hands, she burst into tears.

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 foolis.h.!.+ 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 grat.i.tude, 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 suns.h.i.+ne, 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 apprentices.h.i.+p 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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."