Part 6 (1/2)

ANTIc.i.p.aTIONS

It was late at night, and outside the prairie lay white and utterly silent under the arctic cold, when Maud Barrington, who glanced at it through the double windows, flung back the curtains with a little s.h.i.+ver, and turning towards the fire sat down on a little velvet footstool beside her aunt's knee. She had shaken out the coils of l.u.s.trous brown hair which flowed about her shoulders glinting in the light of the shaded lamp, and it was with a little gesture of physical content she stretched her hands towards the hearth. A crumbling birch log still gleamed redly amidst the feathery ashes, but its effect was chiefly artistic, for no open fire could have dissipated the cold of the prairie, and a big tiled stove, brought from Teutonic Minnesota, furnished the needful warmth.

The girl's face was partly in shadow, and her figure foreshortened by her pose, which accentuated its rounded outline and concealed its willowy slenderness; but the broad white forehead and straight nose became visible when she moved her head a trifle, and a faintly humorous sparkle crept into the clear brown eyes. Possibly Maud Barrington looked her best just then, for the lower part of the pale-tinted face was a trifle too firm in its modeling.

”No, I am not tired, aunt, and I could not sleep just now,” she said.

”You see, after leaving all that behind one, one feels, as it were, adrift, and it is necessary to realize one's self again.”

The little silver-haired lady who sat in the big basket chair smiled down upon her, and laid a thin white hand that was still beautiful upon the gleaming hair.

”I can understand, my dear, and am glad you enjoyed your stay in the city, because sometimes when I count your birthdays I can't help a fancy that you are not young enough,” she said. ”You have lived out here with two old people who belong to the past too much.”

The girl moved a little, and swept her glance slowly round the room.

It was small and scantily furnished, though great curtains shrouded door and window, and here and there a picture relieved the bareness of the walls, which were paneled with roughly-dressed British-Columbian cedar. The floor was of redwood diligently polished, and adorned, not covered, by one or two skins brought by some of Colonel Barrington's younger neighbors from the Rockies. There were two basket chairs and a plain redwood table; but in contrast to them a cabinet of old French workmans.h.i.+p stood in one corner bearing books in dainty bindings, and two great silver candlesticks. The shaded lamp was also of the same metal, and the whole room with its faint resinous smell conveyed, in a fas.h.i.+on not uncommon on the prairie, a suggestion of taste and refinement held in check by at least comparative poverty. Colonel Barrington was a widower who had been esteemed a man of wealth, but the founding of Silverdale had made a serious inroad on his finances. Even yet, though he occasionally practiced it, he did not take kindly to economy.

”Yes,” said the girl, ”I enjoyed it all--and it was so different from the prairie.”

There was comprehension, and a trace of sympathy, in Miss Barrington's nod. ”Tell me a little, my dear,” she said. ”There was not a great deal about it in your letters.”

Her niece glanced dreamily into the sinking fire as though she would call up the pictures there. ”But you know it all--the life I have only had glimpses of. Well, for the first few months I almost lost my head, and was swung right off my feet by the whirl of it. It was then I was, perhaps, just a trifle thoughtless.”

The white-haired lady laughed softly. ”It is difficult to believe it, Maud.”

The girl shook her head reproachfully. ”I know what you mean, and perhaps you are right, for that was what Toinette insinuated,” she said. ”She actually told me that I should be thankful I had a brain since I had no heart. Still, at first I let myself go, and it was delightful--the opera, the dances, and the covered skating-rink with the music and the black ice flas.h.i.+ng beneath the lights. The whir of the toboggans down the great slide was finer still, and the torchlight meets of the snowshoe clubs on the mountain. Yes, I think I was really young while it lasted.”

”For a month,” said the elder. ”And after?”

”Then,” said the girl slowly, ”it all seemed to grow a trifle purposeless, and there was something that spoiled it. Toinette was quite angry and I know her mother wrote you--but it was not my fault, aunt. How was I, a guileless girl from the prairie, to guess that such a man would fling the handkerchief to me?”

The evenness of tone and entire absence of embarra.s.sment was significant. It also pointed to the fact that there was a closer confidence between Maud Barrington and her aunt than often exists between mother and daughter, and the elder lady stroked the l.u.s.trous head that rested against her knee with a little affectionate pride.

”My dear, you know you are beautiful, and you have the cachet that all the Courthornes wear. Still, you could not like him? Tell me about him.”

Maud Barrington curled herself up further. ”I think I could have liked him, but that was all,” she said. ”He was nice to look at and did all the little things gracefully; but he had never done anything else, never would, and, I fancy, had never wanted to. Now a man of that kind would very soon pall on me, and I should have lost my temper trying to waken him to his responsibilities.”

”And what kind of man would please you?”

Maud Barrington's eyes twinkled, but the fact that she answered at all was a proof of the sympathy between herself and the questioner. ”I do not know that I am anxious any of them should,” she said. ”But since you ask, he would have to be a man first: a toiling, striving animal who could hold his own amidst his fellows wherever he was placed.

Secondly, one would naturally prefer a gentleman, though I do not like the word, and one would fancy the combination a trifle rare, because brains and birth do not necessarily tally, and the man educated by the struggle for existence is apt to be taught more than he ever would be at Oxford or in the army. Still, men of that stamp forget a good deal, and learn so much that is undesirable, you see. In fact, I only know one man who would have suited me, and he is debarred by age and affinity--but, because we are so much alike, I can't help fancying that you once knew another.”

The smile on Miss Barrington's face, which was still almost beautiful as well as patient, became a trifle wistful.

”There are few better men than my brother, though he is not clever,”

she said, and dropped her voice a little. ”As to the other, he died in India--beside his mountain gun--long ago.”

”And you have never forgotten? He must have been worth it--I wonder if loyalty and chivalric faith belong only to the past,” said the girl, reaching up a rounded arm and patting her aunt's thin hand. ”And now we will be practical. I fancied the head of the settlement looked worried when he met me, and he is not very proficient at hiding his feelings.”

Miss Barrington sighed. ”I am afraid that is nothing very new, and with wheat steadily falling and our granaries full, he has cause for anxiety. Then the fact that Lance Courthorne has divided your inheritance and is going to settle here has been troubling him.”