Alton of Somasco | Page 6

somewhat unusual things an old red velvet jacket, and there was a little cup of black coffee and a single cigar of exceptional quality on the table beside him.
Townshead was, in fact, somewhat of an anachronism in a country whose inhabitants exhibit at least a trace of primitive and wholesome barbarity. One could have fancied him at home among men of leisure and cultivated tastes, but he seemed out of place in a log-built ranch in the snow-wrapped wilderness swept by the bitter wind. Perhaps he realized it, for his voice was querulous as he said, "I wonder if you have forgotten, Nellie, that we were sitting warm and safe in England five years ago tonight."
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.
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