Читать книгу Alton of Somasco - Harold Bindloss - Страница 7

The morning was still and warm when the driver of the wagon pulled up his team where four trails met in the shadow of the bush. Miss Deringham had somewhat to her astonishment passed the night very comfortably and enjoyed the breakfast their companion provided. The bracing cold of sunrise, when all the bush was steeped in fragrance and a wonderful freshness came down from the snow, had also brought her a curious exhilaration, as well as a tinge of colour into her cheeks, and now she was sensible of a faint regret and irritation when the man glanced towards her deprecatingly.

“It would please me to drive you straight through to the settlement, but there’s a load of things I want at Calhoun’s up yonder,” he said.

He pointed to a trail that turned off sharply, and the girl glanced at her father somewhat blankly. “And what are we to do?” said she.

“Well,” said the man, “you can wait here until Barscombe comes along. He’ll be riding in to the settlement presently, and would be glad to take you for a dollar or two.”

“But we might have to wait a long time,” said the girl with a trace of imperiousness. “It would suit us considerably better to go on with you.”

“Sorry!” said the man gravely. “I can’t take you. Calhoun’s a busy man, and he’ll be waiting up at the ranch for me. I told him I was coming.”

There was now no doubt about the colour in Miss Deringham’s face. Few of her wishes bad been denied her hitherto, and most of the men she had met had been eager to do her bidding, while the scarcely qualified refusal of this one came as a painful astonishment. The fact that she should be left in the lonely forest to avoid keeping some rude rancher waiting was distinctly exasperating.

Deringham, however, smiled a little as he took a wallet from his pocket. “I can understand it, because I am also a busy man when I’m at home,” he said. “It is a question of the value of your time and Mr. Calhoun’s apparently?”

Though he possibly did not realize it Deringham’s tone was a trifling condescending, and there was something in it which suggested that he believed anything could be bought with money. He was, however, a little astonished when the man regarded him gravely out of eyes that closed a trifle.

“That’s just where you’re wrong,” said he. “If I could have taken you on to save the lady waiting it would have pleased me. As it is, I can’t, you see.”

He said nothing more, but dismounting pulled the boxes out of the wagon and laid some travelling wraps upon one of them, while Miss Deringham affected not to see what he was doing. “And how long will it be before Barscombe passes?” said she.

“It can’t be more than two hours,” said the teamster quietly. “All you have to do is to sit there and wait for him.”

He took off his broad hat when the others alighted, and Miss Deringham noticed there was a trace of courtliness in his simplicity. Then he strode past her father, who was taking something out of his wallet, and swung himself lightly into the wagon. He spoke to the team, there was a creak and rattle, and next moment the vehicle was lurching down the trail. Deringham stood still a moment, his fingers inside the wallet and mild wonder in his eyes, and then smiled a little as his daughter turned towards him. There was a faint pink flush of anger in her cheeks.

“The dollar does not appear to retain its usual influence in this part of Canada,” he said dryly. “Possibly, however, the man was too embarrassed by your evident displeasure to remember his hire.”

Miss Deringham saw the twinkle in her father’s eyes and laughed a little. “I don’t think he was,” she said. “Had that been the case one could have forgiven him more easily. Well, I wonder how long Barscombe will keep us waiting.”

Deringham made a whimsical gesture of resignation. “In the meantime I notice that our late conductor has arranged a comfortable seat for you,” he said.

The girl sat down, and looked about her. It was very still in the bush, and the sound of running water drifted musically out of the silence. From somewhere in the distance there also came a curious drumming which she did not know then was made by an axe, but it presently ceased, and the song of the river rose alone in long drowsy pulsations. In front of and behind her stretched the rows of serried trunks which had grown to vastness of girth and stateliness with the centuries, and the girl, who was of quick perceptions, felt instinctively the influence of their age and silence. There was, it seemed, something intangible but existent in this still land of shadow which reacted upon her pleasantly after the artificial gaieties and glitter of surface civilization. Her impatience and irritation seemed to melt, and the time slipped by, until she was almost drowsy when with an increasing rattle another wagon came jolting down the trail.

Its driver pulled up, and regarded them with placid astonishment, but he was amenable to the influence of Deringham’s wallet, and they took their places in the vehicle. There was nothing remarkable about the man, and he ruminated gravely when as they stopped to let the horses drink Deringham asked him a question concerning their late companion.

“It might have been Thomson,” he said. “A big man, kind of solid and homely?”

“No,” said Miss Deringham reflectively. “I should scarcely describe him as homely.”

“Well,” said the other, “if you told me the kind of wagon I might guess at him.”

Deringham described the vehicle as well as he was able, and the stranger nodded. “That’s Jimmy Thomson’s outfit all right,” said he. “What did he charge you?”

Miss Dillingham laughed. “It is curious that he charged us nothing,” said she.

“Well,” said the stranger gravely, “that was blame unlike Jimmy. There’s only one man in this country would do that kind of thing, and as he hasn’t a wagon to fit what you’re telling me, it couldn’t he him.”

Miss Deringham had purposed asking who the man in question was, but the driver started his team just then, and an hour later drove them into the sleepy settlement and carried their boxes into Horton’s hotel. He gravely invited Deringham to drink with him, and appearing mildly astonished went about his business when the latter declined. Deringham smiled at his daughter.

“There are, as one might expect, men of somewhat different type in this country, but I prefer the first one,” said he.

Miss Deringham also fancied that she did so, though she did not admit it, and that evening was made acquainted with yet another and more different one. Horton as usual served supper at six o’clock, and all his guests were expected to partake of reasty pork, potatoes, flapjacks, green tea and fruits at the same table. To this he made no exception, and would not have done so for the premier, and when a small company of axemen and free prospectors filed in Deringham and his daughter took their places amidst the rest.

The room was long and bare, boarded with rough-sawn cedar, and furnished chiefly by the benches that ran down either side of the plain table; but the aromatic smell of the wood was stronger than that of stale tobacco, and the company avoided more than quietly respectful glances at the daintily-dressed Englishwoman.

They were quiet men with grave and steady eyes, and though they ate as if feeding was a serious business, and they had no time to waste, there was nothing in their converse that jarred upon the girl. Indeed, she saw one break off in a story whose conclusion she fancied might not have pleased her when a comrade glanced at him deprecatingly. In another ten minutes they filed out again, and Deringham smiled at his daughter. “What do you think of them?” he said.

The girl laughed. “Ostriches,” she said. “Of course, I guess your thoughts. You were wondering if my kinsman resembles them. How long do we stay here?”

Deringham glanced at her covertly, and noticed the faint sparkle in her eyes and the scornful set of her lips. “That depends,” he said, “partly upon our kinsman’s attitude, for if he offered us hospitality we should probably stay a little. You were also right, my dear, as usual.”

The girl’s pose grew a trifle more rigid, and the fingers of one hand seemed to close vindictively. “It is grotesque—almost horrible, isn’t it?” she said.

Her father nodded. “It might be,” he said. “Still, as you know, the Carnaby affairs are involved, and there is a possibility of contesting his claim under the somewhat extravagant will. It is not altogether improbable that I shall find means of persuading him to stay here with his cows and pigs.”

Deringham slightly accentuated part of the sentence, and again a faint tinge of colour crept into the face of the girl and vindictiveness into her eyes, for she understood him. The man who had on his deathbed bequeathed Carnaby to his grandson had driven out the young man’s father years ago, and approaching dissolution had possibly somewhat clouded his faculties when he made the will. Deringham, who had married into the Alton family, and figured as a legatee, was, with the exception of the disinherited, the nearest of kin, and it had been generally expected that Carnaby would fall to his daughter; but perhaps in an endeavour to treat both sides fairly, its dying owner had, in the face of his lawyer’s protests, inserted one clause which, for financial reasons, rendered a second union between the houses of Alton and Deringham distinctly advisable. There was, however, a high spirit in the girl, and she looked at her father steadily.

“But you were left the money, or most of it?” she said.

“Yes,” said Deringham grimly. “I was left the money.”

The girl asked nothing further, for there was something in the man’s face which warned her not to press that subject. She knew that her father had long acted as financial adviser to the late owner of Carnaby, but it was not astonishing that Deringham had not told her he had exceeded the discretion allowed him, and been singularly unfortunate in his speculations.

She rose, and a man who like themselves had finished his meal leisurely followed them outside into the verandah. He smiled as he drew out a chair for the girl, and then sat down opposite her father with a card in his hand.

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Deringham. I’ll introduce myself,” said he.

Deringham took the card handed him, and glanced with an air of quiet indifference at the stranger, while his daughter looked apparently straight past him towards the climbing pines. Nevertheless, she had seen the man, and was not pleased with him. He had a somewhat fleshy face, beady black eyes with a boldness in them that was more akin to insolence than courage, and a full-lipped, mobile mouth. His dress was correct enough, though he wore a somewhat ample ring with a diamond in it, and his watchchain was too heavy and prominent, but there was a suggestion of coarseness about him. Her father, leaning forward in his chair with an air of languid curiosity, the card in his slender fingers, appeared his antithesis, and yet the girl fancied there was a resemblance in the expression of the two faces. She also felt her dislike for the stranger increased when she saw for the first time the look of greed and cunning in his face reflected in that of her father. She had hitherto only pictured him as a skilful financier, but now she saw qualities she had never suspected in him revealed as by a daring caricature.

“Willard Hallam,” Deringham read aloud. “Hallam and Vose. Land and mining agents. Advances made on mineral claims.”

“Yes,” said the stranger, smiling. “That’s me.”

Deringham made no comment, but laid the card down beside him. “I wonder,” he said indifferently, “how you came to know me.”

The chilling evenness of his voice seemed to irritate the other man, and Alice Deringham was conscious of a faint amusement as she glanced at them. Deringham in his tweed travelling attire, which, worn with apparent carelessness, seemed to hang with every fold just where it should be, was wholly at his ease, and there was a trace of half-expressed toleration in his thin, finely-cut face, while Hallam appeared to become coarse and embarrassed by comparison. He probably did not feel so, for diffidence of any kind is not common in the West, but he may have realized that in any delicate fencing the advantage would lie with Deringham. Both, producing nothing and living upon the toil of their fellows, played the same game, but, while the stakes and counters are very similar, one played it in Vancouver and the other in London, where a more subtle finesse is demanded from the players.

Hallam, however, smiled. “I don’t know that you will be pleased when I tell you, but this should explain things,” he said. “Of course, since your company took hold out here I have heard of you.”

Deringham took the Colonial Journal handed him, glanced down a paragraph, and passed it to his daughter. “Your maid!” he said. “I fancied it was a mistake to part with her, my dear. It is evident she has not gone home.”

Alice Deringham unconsciously drew herself up a trifle, as her eyes ran down the column. It was headed “Another missing heir,” and ran: “We are getting used to having our railroad-shovelling and trail-cutting done by scions of the British aristocracy, and seldom ask them what they did in the old country so long as they behave themselves decently in this one. Twice recently, as mentioned in these columns, the successor to an English property of some value was discovered, in the one case peddling oranges, and in the other digging a rancher’s ditches, while now we have another instance in the Somasco valley. It appears that long ago there was a family quarrel at Carnaby, England, and though we do not know what it was all about, the owner of what we understand is an encumbered estate turned out his son, who had the good sense to come out to this country, where he did pretty well. He died and left a son, Mr. Henry Alton, well known in the Somasco district, who appears to be a credit to the country which took his father in. The owner of Carnaby dying later, left the ancestral property to him, and, as in this case there does not seem to be a wicked uncle, Mr. Deringham, the next of kin and a distinguished London financier who has, we believe, had some dealings in local mines, has come out to look for him. Mr. Alton of Somasco will probably stop right where he is if he is the sensible man his neighbours seem to think him.”

“That’s correct?” said Hallam, glancing at Deringham.

“I knew who you were when I saw you.”

“Yes,” said Deringham. “The taste is questionable, but I can’t deny its comparative accuracy.”

“Then,” said Hallam, “Alton stands between you and this Carnaby property?”

“I believe so,” said Deringham quietly.

“It’s a big estate?” said Hallam, and Alice Deringham, who knew his capabilities, wondered when her father would effectually silence this presumptuous stranger. In the meanwhile he, however, showed no intention of doing so.

“No,” he said languidly. “It is a small one, and heavily in debt. I presume you know rancher Alton by the interest you show in him?”

“Yes,” said Hallam, “and I don’t like him.”

Deringham scarcely glanced at his daughter, but she realized that her presence was not especially desired, and when she rose and went back into the building her father glanced steadily at Hallam.

“I wonder why you told me that,” he said.

Hallam laughed. “Well, I generally talk straight, and I feel like that,” he said. “Now, they don’t keep anything that doesn’t burn a hole in you here, and I’ve a bottle of English whisky. Don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t take a drink with me?”

“No,” said Deringham indifferently. “I am, however, a somewhat abstemious man.”

Hallam went into the building and returned with a cigar-case and a bottle. The contents of both were good, and Deringham sat languidly glancing over the curling smoke towards the glimmering snow. It towered white and cold against a pale green, shining high above climbing pines and dusky valley, while the fleecy mist crept higher and higher athwart the serried waves of trees that fell to the river hollow. Alice Deringham saw it, and drinking in the wonderful freshness that came down from the peaks and permeated the silence of the valley, realized a little of that great white rampart’s awful serenity. She also wondered vacantly what the two men on the verandah were talking about; but in this she was wrong, for Hallam, overcharged with Western vivacity, was talking, and her father waiting quietly.

“No,” said the former, returning to the subject with an affectation of naive directness. “I don’t like Alton, and I figure he don’t like me. Nothing wrong with the man that I know of, but I’m not fond of anybody who gets in my way, and Alton of Somasco has taken out timber rights all over the valley where we’re running the Tyee. He got in with his claim a day or two ahead of me.”

“A capable man?” said Deringham quietly.

“Oh, yes,” said the other. “He’s capable, so far as he sees, but the trouble is he doesn’t see quite far enough. Now, there’s not room enough for two men with notions round about Somasco, and a one-horse rancher can’t fight men with money, so Alton’s got hold of a good deal bigger contract than he can carry through. Anyway, now I’ve told you what I think of your relation, you can if you feel like that let right go of me.”

Deringham smiled a little. “This,” he said, “is the best whisky I have tasted in Canada.”

Hallam laughed. “Well,” he said, “I’m glad I met you, especially as you’ll no doubt stop here a little, and size up the mineral resources of the country. There’s lots of information lying round that should be useful to you. Anyway, you made a big mistake when you took up the Peveril. Dropped a good many dollars that time, didn’t you?”

Deringham’s face grew a trifle grim. “As you probably know just what the mistake cost us there is no use in me denying it,” said he.

“Well,” said Hallam sympathetically, “one can’t always come out on top, and if you’re stopping down at Vancouver I may be of some use to you, and you to me. If you’ll come up to-morrow I’ll show you the Tyee, and I’ve something better still up the valley.”

“I’m sorry,” said Deringham indifferently; “I’m going through to Somasco!”

Hallam glanced at him steadily. “Of course you are,” said he. “Well, I’ve told you nothing Alton doesn’t know, and I’ve letters to answer. You’ll excuse me?”

Deringham rose with him, and strolling along the verandah together they stopped a moment at the door, close by where Alice Deringham sat at an open window. It was growing dark now, but the last of the afterglow was flung down into their faces by the snow, and it seemed to the girl that the resemblance between them had grown stronger. Her father’s appeared a trifle less refined in its chiselling than it had been, and there was a look which did not please her in his eyes. It suggested cupidity and cunning in place of intellectuality.

“Well,” said Hallam, “you’ll call on me at Vancouver anyway, and it’s possible we may be some use to each other.”

The hint of a confidence or understanding between them which the man’s tone conveyed irritated the girl, but she saw that her father did not resent it. “Yes,” he said. “If I think I can benefit by your co-operation in any way I will not fail to let you know.”

Hallam went in, and Deringham leaned upon the verandah balustrade smoking tranquilly while the shadows that left the rolling mist behind crept higher and higher up the climbing pines until at last they touched and smeared into dimness the ethereal snow. Then the girl rose with a shiver and turned towards her father as Horton lighted the big lantern at the door. Deringham’s face was, she fancied, a trifle haggard.

“I wonder why you have borne with that man so long,” she said.

Deringham smiled a little. “There are many kinds of men, and presumably all of them are useful in their place,” said he.