Chapter 15

THE COMPACT

After the first meeting of the Somasco Consolidated, Alton was frequently absent from the ranch, and spent most of the nights shut up with bulky books, while he also apparently became involved in an extensive correspondence with the cities. There were, however, times when Miss Deringham surprised him standing still and gazing into vacancy, which was distinctly unusual with him, but the girl, who had once or twice noticed his eyes fixed upon her and signs of an inward conflict in his face, was not displeased. She could arrive at a tolerably accurate deduction as well as most young women.

In the meanwhile Seaforth had gone down to Vancouver, and Deringham still appeared content to linger at Somasco. He had, his daughter knew, been ordered a lengthy rest, and it was evident that the tranquillity of the mountain ranch was benefiting him physically, though now and then the girl noticed that his face was anxious when communications from England reached him. She was also, for no reason she was willing to admit, content to remain a little longer at Somasco.

One night when she was sitting meditatively in the room set apart for her use, Alton passed the half-opened door, and noticing the curious slowness of his pace she signed him to enter. She had, somewhat to the indignation of Mrs. Margery, taken the room in hand, and with the aid of a few sundries surreptitiously brought from Vancouver with Seaforth's connivance, made a transformation in its aspect. A red curtain hung behind the door. There were a few fine furs which Seaforth had collected here and there about the ranch upon the floor, and Alton, who had just returned from a ride of forty miles through the mire and rain, stopped a moment upon the threshold. He was a man of quick perceptions, and all he saw seemed stamped with the personality of its occupant.

It was dainty, and essentially feminine, and he became, for perhaps the first time, uneasily conscious of his own solid masculine proportions and bespattered garments as he glanced deprecatingly at the girl. She lay with lithe gracefulness in a basket chair, very collected and very pretty, while he dimly understood that the fact that she did not move but only smiled at him implied a good deal. A brightness flashed into his eyes and sank out of them again.

"Come in and sit down," she said, "I have seen very little of you lately, and you seem tired. Half-an-hour's casual chatter will do you no harm, although it may appear to you a terrible waste of time."

Alton came in and dropped into a chair which creaked beneath him. His face was somewhat weary, and the girl noticed the stiffness of his movements. He also looked about him with a curious expression which seemed to suggest reverence in his eyes.

"No," he said gravely, "it wouldn't be a waste of time."

Alice Deringham smiled a little, and moved one foot a trifle nearer the stove. It was little, and delicately moulded, and lost nothing from being encased in a very open bronze slipper. Alton, noticing the slight rustle of fabric which accompanied the movement, glanced towards it, and then turned his eyes away.

"You see I have been taking liberties," said the girl. "All this is very tawdry, isn't it?"

Alton's eyes were wistful. "No. Do you know, this place has quite an effect on me. It makes me feel--as if I were in church," said he.

Miss Deringham's face was not responsive. There were times when she was sensible of a curious compunction in this rancher's presence. "A sensation of that kind is apt to become oppressive," she said. "When we have gone you will throw these things away."

The man seemed to wince, as though the contemplation of something was painful to him, but he looked at his companion gravely.

"I think I shall screw the door up tight," he said.

Alice Deringham laughed musically. "Now I think that was very pretty," she said. "It seems commonplace to offer you a cup of coffee after it, and no doubt you will consider the indulgence in such luxuries a sign of weakness. I have reasons for believing that Mrs. Margery does."

Alton smiled somewhat grimly. "I'm just about as fond of good things as most other men," he said. "The difficulty was that I seldom had the chance of getting them."

Miss Deringham busied herself with a spirit lamp, and Alton watched her with a little glint in his eyes. Possibly the girl knew that her movements were graceful as she bent over the lamp, and that the light from the one above her struck a fine sparkle from her hair. She may also have been aware that the picture had its attractions for a man who had lived a grim life of toil and self-denial, as this one had done.

"It has occurred to me that this coffee is not the same that we had when we first came to Somasco," she said.

Alton appeared a trifle embarrassed. "I had to go down and worry Horton about one or two little things," he said. "It's good for him occasionally, and he had been sending me flour we couldn't use lately."

Miss Deringham nodded, though she was quite aware that the storekeeper was scarcely likely to supply axemen and ranchers, whose tastes were simple and dollars scarce, with what she guessed by its bouquet was the finest product of Costa Rica. If she had not been, she was capable of deducing a little from the stamp upon the packets she had seen in Mrs. Margery's store, which showed that they had come direct from Vancouver.

Alton took up the cup handed him, and leaned back in his chair with a little gesture of content, while the girl smiled as she glanced at him.

"You bear it very well," she said.

The man looked at her with a bewildered expression for a moment or two. Then he laughed. "No," he said, "I find it wonderfully nice."

There was an underlying sincerity in his voice, and Alice Deringham driven by curiosity went a step farther.

"The coffee?" she said.

She was almost sorry next moment, for she had at other times called up considerably more than she had expected or desired from the unsounded depths of the man's nature. For a second or two there was a great wistfulness, which changed into a little glow she shrank from, in his eyes. He turned them upon her, and then away, and they were once more grave when he looked back again. Still, she guessed what that effort had cost him.

"No," he said quietly. "I did not mean the coffee. You see, I had never until you came here been used to anything smooth or pretty."

Alice Deringham smiled a little, for she understood. The man, she thought, was willing she should accept the somewhat pointless compliment as the sequence of his former speech, to cover his mistake if he had betrayed more than he thought desirable. It also increased her liking for him, since it appeared that Alton was capable of self-restraint. There was, however, no mistaking what she had seen, and the girl remembered that one of the Winnipeg ladies she travelled with, who had visited one of the weird valleys across the American frontier, described to her the fascination of throwing stones into the basin of a geyser to see how many it would take before it erupted. During her intercourse with rancher Alton, Alice Deringham had experienced the sensation.

"You have been working too hard lately, and worrying, too, I think," she said.

Alton laughed a little, and then glanced at the stove for a while in silence, as though communing with himself. When he looked up again the girl fancied that he had decided something. "Work hurts nobody. It's the worry that leaves the mark," he said, with a smile. "Of course, a good many people will have told you that before. Yes, I've been thinking a good deal lately."

"It is occasionally a solace to tell one's friends one's thoughts," said Miss Deringham.

"Well," said Alton gravely, "there's a thing I feel I should do, and yet I don't want to, because it would stand in the way of my doing something else."

"That is a somewhat common difficulty," said Alice Deringham. "It depends upon the importance to yourself, or others, of the first thing."

Alton nodded. "There are," he said, "men in this district who have worked very hard, not for the bare living the ranch gives them, because some have put a good deal more into the land than they have taken out of it, but for what it will give them presently. Now, unless somebody does the right thing for them, another man will walk right in and take all they have worked for away. I wouldn't like that to happen, because I am one of them, you see."

"No," said Miss Deringham. "Still, surmising that you are the somebody, I wonder if you have a more convincing reason."

A little flush seemed to creep into Alton's bronzed face. "I find I can talk to you as I never did to any one else," he said. "Well, this valley's waiting to feed a host of people, and teeming with riches that somebody is wanting, and I feel it's my task to do the best I can for it. Now, when one feels that, and does nothing, he's putting a load he was meant to carry on other people's shoulders."

"Yes," said Miss Deringham. "Still, isn't it slightly egotistical? There may be other men who could do what is necessary better."

Alton laughed a little. "You get right home every time," he said. "I've been thinking the same thing, but, though I wanted to, I couldn't find the man, and there isn't much use in running away from the work that's set out for you."

Alice Deringham understood him because she was a somewhat intellectual young woman, though she had, and possibly fortunately, but seldom been required to decide between inclination and duty in any affair of importance hitherto. There was also something that touched her in the man's simple faithfulness.

"And you are going to do a good deal?" she said.

"I don't know," said Alton gravely. "I should like to. You see, we want roads and mills, and an office down there in the city."

"And," said the girl, "that means money."

"Yes," said Alton. "When a man goes round borrowing he finds out that the folks who have got the dollars like to keep them. That's why I'm going up to look for Jimmy's silver mine."

Miss Deringham shivered a little. "Winter is coming on," she said. "The last man who looked for it was frozen--and there is Carnaby."

The girl's pulses throbbed a little faster as she spoke, and there was nothing in the man's face which escaped her attention. Again the curious glint became apparent in his eyes, and the warm bronze a little deeper in tint.

"I might raise some dollars on Carnaby, but I don't want to," he said.

Miss Deringham had seen sufficient, and decided to change the topic. "So you intend to find the silver?" she said.

"Yes," said Alton simply. "I feel I have got to do that--first."

There was a significant silence, and the girl leaned back in her chair, conscious without resentment that the man was watching her. Her eyes were softer than usual, the faintest trace of colour showed in her cheek, while the light evening dress emphasized the fine sweep of curve and line that was further accentuated by her pose. The lamp that hung above her smote a track of brightness athwart her red-gold hair, until she slightly moved her head so that while part of the full round neck showed in its snowy whiteness her face was in the shadow.

"I think you will be successful. I hope you will," she said.

It was evident that the man understood all that was meant, but he rose with an apparent effort. "And now I have a good deal to do," he said.

Alice Deringham also rose with a little stateliness, and when he had gone out sank down contemplatively into the chair again. Her hands lay open in her lap, and it is possible that she saw nothing of the sewing they rested on as she grappled with the question why had the man told her what he had done. There were two apparent reasons, for Alice Deringham realized that there was a certain greatness behind his simplicity. Granting that, she could see his standpoint clearly, though it was more difficult to understand why such a man had made it evident to her. He was, she knew, not one to stoop even to win a woman's good opinion, and would have seen that in this direction silence became him best, unless he felt that while so much was due to honour there was something due to her.

He had told her simply that it was not to please himself he was going out to look for the silver just then, and the deduction was that the expedition had no attractions for him because he wished to stay at the ranch. Allowing that, the revelation of his motive had not been purposeless. It was only his responsibility drove him away from her, and there was a vague but effective compliment in the implication that she would recognize it. Still, this train of reasoning had led Alice Deringham far enough, and she sought distraction from it in her embroidery, which during the next hour progressed but indifferently.

It was a day or two later when Alton drew Deringham into his room when he came in bemired all over from the settlement, and the financier noticed that the table and most of the floor was littered with books, survey plans, and miscellaneous papers.

"I'll have to leave this place for a little," he said. "I'm going up to find the silver, but the ranch and all that's in it is at your service just as long as it pleases you. If all goes as I expect it, I shall be back in a month or so, and would be glad to find you still at Somasco. Then, if you are ready, Charley and I will go back to the old country with you. A lawyer in Vancouver has written to an English accountant for me, and with him to help us we can fix up all about Carnaby."

Now Deringham had up to that moment still retained a hope that he could arrive at an understanding with Alton respecting Carnaby on the spot. As it was, unless he could gain time, exposure and even worse things stared him in the face. It had been comparatively simple to hoodwink his co-trustee, but it would be very different with an accountant of reputation, and he had also grown afraid of Alton's instinctive grasp of whatever subject he turned his attention to. There was, of course, much the rancher did not know, but that left him with attention the more concentrated upon issues of importance.

Deringham, however, showed but little evidence of dismay or astonishment. Had he been liable to do so, he would not have held his own so long in the occupation he followed. His breath came a trifle more quickly, and his hand trembled a little, but he rested it upon the table, and all that Alton noticed was a curious little movement about the corner of his eyes. The rancher, however, remembered it.

"Well," said Deringham, "I must endeavour if possible to return to England with you. When you spoke of being away a month you seemed to contemplate a possibility of being absent longer."

Alton nodded. "I did," he said. "The man who found the silver is lying up there still, but I've provided for anything of that kind happening to me, as you will see in a day or two. Now I don't think we need worry any more until we get to Carnaby."

Deringham made a gesture of concurrence, but the grim irony of Alton's speech occurred to him as he went out to grapple with his torturing anxiety. At first he could scarcely think of anything consecutively, and once more the picture of a man hanging by a juniper-bush with a river frothing down the gorge below rose up persistently before his memory. It was replaced by another of a grim silent figure keeping watch with eyes that never ceased their fixed stare beside a frozen trail.

On the second day afterwards he sauntered into Horton's store and found Hallam there. The mining speculator appeared ironically amused, the storekeeper flushed and savage, but when Hallam turned to Deringham there was something in his manner that suggested they had not met by accident.

"I've been telling the storekeeper not to lay in too many Somascos just yet, and have got to put in the time here for an hour or two," he said. "Know any reason why you shouldn't have a drink with me?"

They strolled into an adjoining room, and Horton, who supplied them with a bottle and glasses, came back smiling sardonically. "Now if Hallam hadn't put it that way I mightn't have thought anything," said he. "Still, when a man of his kind takes the trouble to tell one anything it's a blame good reason for not believing him."

In the meanwhile Hallam, who filled the glasses, glanced at Deringham. "You think I can be of some use to you?" he said.

"Yes," said Deringham. "I presume you know Alton is going up to find the silver he needs to help him traverse your schemes?"

"Oh, yes," said Hallam. "Still I should have figured he could have got it out of Carnaby."

"I believe he intends to."

Hallam smiled unpleasantly. "Now I begin to understand you," he said. "You lost a good many dollars over the Peveril."

"I think that is beside the question," said Deringham.

Hallam regarded his companion steadily. "Well, I don't know, but we needn't argue. You don't want him to get those dollars out of Carnaby?"

"And you don't want him to find the silver."

Hallam laughed. "That's quite right," said he. "The same thing would suit both of us."

"I scarcely think so," said Deringham. "In my case, I really do not mind whether he gets the dollars from Carnaby or not."

"No?" said Hallam. "Then you'll have to tell me what you want."

"I don't want him to come over to England too soon. If anything kept him up there among the mountains a month or so longer than he expected, so that I should have time to straighten up things a little, I would not complain."

"And," said Hallam, "you would be ready to pay for it?"

Deringham bent his head. "Yes. To a moderate extent."

Hallam sat silent for a time, and then looked up with a glint in his beady eyes. "It could be done. Well, I don't want him to find that silver, and if he doesn't get through his prospecting in the next month or so he'll not find much of anything under six feet of snow, and I'll have fixed things up as I want them before it's melted. Now you're holding pretty heavy in the Aconada mine, and I've been wanting to get my foot in there for a long while."

Deringham stood up, and thrust aside the bottle Hallam passed him. "Before we go any further I want you to understand that if Alton is held up there until December is over it is all I ask," he said.

Hallam nodded. "Oh, yes," he said. "All I want is so many of those shares transferred to me."

They debated for a while, and then Deringham said, "I would sooner fix it through a third party."

Hallam laughed unpleasantly. "That would suit, but I'd want your cheque to buy them with made out payable to me."

"It would," said Deringham, "not suit me."

"Then we can't make a deal. It's me that's putting this thing through, and if anything goes wrong I'm anxious to have somebody to stand in with me as well as pick up the dollars if it doesn't. I'm talking quite straight. There it is. Take it or leave it."

Deringham was silent again. Then he laughed a little. "Since I cannot apparently do anything else, I'll take it."

Hallam filled up both glasses. "Then that's all," he said. "Here's my respects to the Somasco Consolidated."

Deringham just touched his glass and went out, while Hallam, who sat down and emptied his, smiled ironically. "That man might have kept his dollars, and I'd be quite pleased if Alton stayed up there a good deal more than two months," said he.

Deringham was in the meanwhile hastily writing out telegraphic messages which were to cause a little astonishment on the London stock market, and hamper the working of one or two companies. He would, so far as he could see, be a much poorer man in a few months or so, but he fancied he could gain time to save the reputation that would help him to commence again, and to men of his attainments there are always opportunities. Then he sent off a mounted messenger, and rode slowly back towards Somasco, while Horton spent some time examining a blotting-pad in his back store.

"I'm kind of sorry I can't make anything of that stuff," said he. "What's the use of wiring any one the names of cities?"

During the next day Alton drew Deringham into his room, and laid a document on the table. "I don't know if that's quite the usual thing, but Horton and I have been worrying over a lawyer's book, and I think it will hold," he said.

Deringham took up the paper, and again there was the little movement at the corners of his eye as he read.

"I, Henry Alton, of Somasco ranch, being now in sound health, and as clear of head as usual, but about to start on a journey to which there are risks attached, hereby bequeath in the event of disaster overtaking me the estate of Carnaby, England, with all its rents and revenues of any kind whatever to which I am entitled, to Miss Alice Deringham, daughter of ----. In case of my decease during the next six months, the above-mentioned Ralph Deringham and my partner Charles Seaforth, of Somasco, British Columbia, will, acting as trustees, either dispose of the estate for the benefit of Miss Deringham or install her in possession of it at her discretion."

There was a little more to the purpose, and Deringham read all of it. "This is very generous," he said.

"No," said Alton, "it's only just, and it can't be very generous, because Carnaby wouldn't be much use to me if I don't come back. I could, of course, revoke this thing if I do."

Deringham said nothing. There was a good deal he wished to say, but for once words failed him, and when he went out with the will in his pocket his face had grown a trifle grey. Yet though he suffered grievously in that moment, he was conscious of something in his brain that throbbed in time to the refrain, "Alice Deringham, mistress of Carnaby."