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.

[Illustration: Alton leaned back with a little gesture of content.]

"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."