Harold Bindloss - Alton of Somasco

Deringham only nodded again, because this type of man was new to him, and he had learned to keep silent when in doubt; but Alton’s big right hand closed into a fist.

“And now, when I have Somasco, the man who had not a dollar for his only son leaves me Carnaby,” he said. “There. Look out and see. Timber, lake and clearing, cattle, mills, and crops, the finest ranch in the district. My father commenced it, and I have finished. The Almighty made him a man, and he wouldn’t sell his birthright to loaf his days away, overfed, at Carnaby.”

Alton dropped his cigar, and laughed a little. “Well, I’m talking like a fool again. There are times when I can’t help it. It’s a way of mine.”

Deringham sat still smoking, and thinking rapidly. He had never had dealings with a man of this description before, but while he surmised that Alton of Somasco might under some conditions prove himself a headstrong fool, it was evident that there were limits to his folly. The man’s handiwork spoke for him, and his energy and intentness had not escaped Deringham’s attentions, while the occasional utterances that might have appeared bombastic coming from other men were redeemed in his case by the tone of naive sincerity and imperious ring. Deringham was becoming conscious of a vague respect for and fear of his companion.

“We are apparently no nearer the answer to my question,” he said at length.

“No,” said Alton, smiling. “This thing will take some thinking over. Carnaby isn’t exactly what you call a rich property?”

“It is heavily encumbered,” said Deringham, almost too eagerly.

Alton nodded, “Still, it must be worth a little, and would give the folks who lived there a standing in the old country?”

“Yes,” said Deringham thoughtfully, and was once more astonished by his companion’s answer.

“Well,” he said slowly. “I was thinking about your daughter. All this, it seems to me, is mighty rough on her. It would hurt her to be turned out of Carnaby?”

“Isn’t that beside the question?” said Deringham with a trace of stiffness.

Alton took up another cigar and lighted it. “I don’t quite know that it is,” he said. “You see, I remember a good deal what my mother had to put up with, and it has made me kind of sorry for women who have to do without the things they have been used to. Now Miss Deringham has had a pretty good time in the old country?”

Deringham moved his head very slightly. “I scarcely think we need go into that, but it is incontrovertible that the loss of Carnaby would make a difference to her,” he said.

Alton sat silent a space, and then while Deringham wondered, smiled a little. “And she might have kept it but for a very little thing that happened a month or two ago,” he said. “If the juniper-twigs had broken it would have saved considerable trouble to everybody. I was back there in the mountains looking for a silver lead, you see.”

“Silver mines are, I understand, not always profitable to the man who finds them, and I should have fancied you had already sufficient scope for your energies,” said Deringham dryly.

Alton laughed, but there was a trace of grimness in his voice. “If I once get my stakes in on the lead this one’s going to be, and if I could get the dollars I could do a good deal for Somasco,” he said. “We want roads and mills, the biggest orchard in the province, and a fruit cannery, and we’re going to have them presently. That’s why I wanted the silver.”

“You did not find it then?” said Deringham, who was not unwilling to follow his companion from the former topic.

“No,” said Alton, “not that time, but I will by and by. Well, there was a good deal of snow up in the ranges, and my feet got away from me one evening when we were crawling along the edge of a gully. There was a river and big boulders some five hundred feet below, and I slipped down, clawing at the snow, until I grabbed a little bunch of juniper just on the edge. Part of it tore up, but I got a grip of a better handful, and hung on to it, with most of me swinging over the gully. Charley was stripping off the pack-rope on the slope above, and he was mighty quick, but I knew that bush was coming away with me, and didn’t think he could be fast enough. I didn’t feel exactly happy, but while I’ve read that folks think of some astonishing things when they’re starting out on the long trail, it wasn’t that way with me. I could only remember there was a man I’d never got even with who’d badly cheated me.”

Deringham felt a little shiver run through him, for there was a grim vindictiveness in the speaker’s tone, and he felt that Alton of Somasco would not lightly forgive an injury.

“You managed to crawl up?” he said.

“No,” said Alton simply, “I didn’t. I lay there watching Charley, and felt the bush drawing out, until the rope came down and Charley hauled me up. It would have made a big difference to Miss Deringham if he’d been a second or two longer. Well, we’ll have lots of time for talking, because you’re out for your health, and we’ll keep you right here until we see what Somasco can do for you, and just now I see Miss Deringham alone on the verandah.”

He rose, and left Deringham sitting by the window. The moon had swung higher now, and the lake was a blaze of silver, but Deringham scarcely noticed it or the ethereal line of snow. In place of it he saw a shadowy figure hanging between earth and heaven with tense fingers gripping a little bush, while a river frothed down the black hollow five hundred feet below, and remembered that even in that moment the man who hung there regretted he could not repay somebody who had cheated him. Then he rose and moved once or twice up and down the room, his fancy still dwelling upon the picture. If the juniper-twigs had yielded it would have made a great difference to him as well as his daughter. He sat down again presently and stared at the valley, seeing nothing as he remembered that Alton of Somasco might go back to the ranges again, and then with an effort shook the fancies from him. They were not wholesome for a man hemmed in by difficulties as he was then.

In the meanwhile his daughter stood with one hand on the verandah balustrade, listening to the song of the river which came sonorously through the shadows of the bush. She also breathed in the scent of the firs, and found it pleasant, but it was instinctively she did so, for her thoughts were also busy. Alice Deringham had noticed her father’s fits of abstraction as well as the anxiety in his face, and had no great difficulty in connecting them with the loss of Carnaby. She was also fond of him, for Deringham had shown only his better side to her, and sensible of a very bitter feeling towards the man who had supplanted him. In addition to this, she remembered the faint amusement in his eyes when he noticed the glint of a silver coin she held half-covered in her hand, and her pulses throbbed a little faster. The man had placed her in a ridiculous position, and had he guessed her feelings towards him he would probably not have made his appearance as he did just then.

The boards creaked behind her, and turning partly round she straightened herself with a slow sinuous gracefulness, and stood drawn up to her full height looking at the newcomer. He stood still a moment with veiled admiration in his eyes, and this was not altogether surprising in one who had dwelt for the most part far remote from civilization in the lonely bush. Alice Deringham had been considered somewhat of a beauty in London, and it was possible that she knew the pale moonlight and the harmonies of blue and silver she stood out against enhanced the symmetry of her outline. The man stood watching her with his head bent a trifle, but Miss Deringham evinced a fine indifference. She had formed a somewhat mistaken estimate of him already.