Harold Bindloss - Alton of Somasco

Nellie Townshead looked up quickly over her sewing from the other side of the stove, and for a moment there was something akin to pain in her eyes. They were clear brown eyes, and it was characteristic that they almost immediately brightened into a smile, for while the girl’s face resembled her father’s in its refinement, there was courage in it in place of weariness.

“I am afraid I do, though I try not to, and am generally able,” she said.

Townshead sighed. “The young are fortunate, for they can forget,” he said. “Even that small compensation is, however, denied to me, while the man I called my friend is living in luxury on what was yours and mine. Had it been any one but Charters I might have borne it better, but it was the one man I had faith in who sent us out here to penury.”

Townshead was wrong in one respect, for it was the weakness of an over-sensitive temperament which, while friends were ready to help him, had driven him to hide himself in Western Canada when, as the result of unwise speculations, financial disaster overtook him. His daughter, however, did not remind him of this, as some daughters would have done, though she understood it well enough, and a memory out of keeping with the patter of the snow and moaning of the wind rose up before her as she looked into the twinkling stove. She could recall that night five years ago very well, for she had spent most of it amidst lights and music, as fresh and bright herself as the flowers that nestled against her first ball dress. It was a night of triumph and revelation, in which she had first felt the full power of her beauty and her sex, and she had returned with the glamour of it all upon her to find her father sitting with his head in his hands at a table littered with business papers. His face had frightened her, and it had never wholly lost the look she saw upon it then, for Townshead was lacking in fibre, and had found that a fondness for horses and some experience of amateur cattle-breeding on a small and expensive scale was a very poor preparation for the grim reality of ranching in Western Canada.

Presently his daughter brushed the memories from her, and stood, smiling at the man, straight and willowy in her faded cotton dress with a partly finished garment in her hands, which frost and sun had not wholly turned rough and red.

“Your coffee will be getting cold. Shall I put it on the stove?” she said.

Townshead made a little grimace. “One may as well describe things correctly, and that is chickory,” he said. “Still, you may warm it if it pleases you, but I might point out that, indifferent as it is, preserved milk which has gone musty does not improve its flavour.”

The girl laughed a little, though there was something more pathetic than heartsome in her merriment. “I am afraid we shall have none to-morrow unless Mr. Seaforth gets through,” she said. “I suppose you have not a few dollars you could give me, father?”

“No,” said Townshead, with somewhat unusual decisiveness; “I have not. You are always asking for dollars. What do you want them for?”

“Mr. Seaforth has packed our stores in for a long while, and we have paid him nothing,” said the girl, while a little colour crept into her face.

Townshead made a gesture of weariness. “The young man seems willing to do it out of friendship for us, and I see no reason why we should not allow him, unless he presumes upon the trifling service,” he said. “To do him justice, however, he and his comrade have always shown commendable taste.”

The girl smiled a little, for considering their relative positions in a country where a man takes his station according to his usefulness the word “presume” appeared incongruous. “Still, I should prefer not to be in their debt,” she said.

“Then we will free ourselves of the obligation with the next remittance Jack sends in,” said Townshead impatiently.

The girl’s face grew troubled. “I am afraid that will not be for some little time,” she said. “Poor Jack. You surely remember he is lying ill?”

“It is especially inconvenient just now,” said Townshead querulously. “It has also been a sore point with me that a son of mine should hire himself out as a labourer. I am sorry I let him go, the more so because the work upon the ranch is getting too much for me.”

Nellie Townshead said nothing, though she sighed as she pictured the young lad, who had been stricken by rheumatic fever as a result of toiling waist-deep in icy, water, lying uncared for in the mining camp amidst the snows of Caribou. She did not, however, remind her father that it was she who had in the meanwhile done most of the indispensable work upon the ranch, and Townshead would not in any case have believed her, for he had a fine capacity for deceiving himself.

In place of it she spread out some masculine garments about the stove and coloured a trifle when her father glanced at her inquiringly. “The creek must be running high and Mr. Alton and his partner will be very wet,” she said. “I am warming a few of Jack’s old things for them. They cannot go back to Somasco to-night, you know.”

“I confess that it did not occur to me,” said Townshead languidly. “No, I suppose one could scarcely expect them to, and we shall have to endure their company.”

A faint sparkle that had nothing to do with laughter crept into the girl’s eyes, for there were times when her father tried her patience. “I wonder if it occurred to you that we shall probably starve to-morrow unless Mr. Alton, who is apparently not to be paid for it, makes what must be a very arduous march to-night?” she said.

“I’m afraid it did not,” said Townshead, with a fine unconcern. “I think you understand, my dear, that I leave the commissariat to you, and you have a way of putting things which jars upon one occasionally.”

A little trace of colour crept into the girl’s cheek, but it faded again as she sat down beside the stove. Still, now and then she pricked her fingers with the needle, which she had not done before, and finally laid down the fabric and laughed softly. “There is,” she said, “something distinctly humorous in the whole position.”

“You,” said her father, “had always a somewhat peculiar sense of humour.”

“Well,” said his daughter with a slight quiver of her lips, “I feel that I must either cry or laugh to-night. Do you know there is scarcely enough for breakfast in the house, and that I am dreadfully hungry now?”

Townshead glanced at her reproachfully. “Either one or the other would be equally distasteful to me,” he said.

The girl sighed, and turned away to thrust a few small billets into the stove. She chose them carefully, for the big box whose ugliness she had hidden by a strip of cheap printed cotton was almost empty. The hired man, seeing no prospect of receiving his wages, had departed after a stormy interview, and shortly after his son followed him. Townshead discovered that sawing wood was especially unsuited to his constitution. Then the girl increased the draught a little and endeavoured to repress a shiver. The house was damp for want of proper packing, and the cold wind that came down from the high peaks moaned about it eerily. It was also very lonely, and the girl, who was young, felt a great longing for human fellowship.

Her father presently took up a book, and there was silence only broken by the rattle of loose shingles overhead and the soft thud against the windows of driving snow, while the girl sat dreaming over her sewing of the brighter days in far-off England which had slipped away from her for ever. Five years was not a very long time, but during it her English friends had forgotten her, and one who had scarcely left her side that memorable night had, though she read of the doings of his regiment now and then, sent her no word or token. A little flush crept into her cheek as, remembering certain words of his, she glanced at her reddened wrists and little toil-hardened hands. She who had been a high-spirited girl with the world at her feet then, was now one of the obscure toilers whose work was never done. Still, because it was only on rare occasions that work left her leisure to think about herself, it had not occurred to her that she had lost but little by the change. The hands that had once been soft and white were now firm and brown, the stillness of the great firs and cedars had given her a calm tranquillity in place of restless haste, and frost and sun the clear, warm-tinted complexion, while a look of strength and patience had replaced the laughter in her hazel eyes.