“Mr. Courthorne proves obdurate,” he said. “He is, however, by no means the type of man I expected to find, and I venture to surmise that you will eventually discover him to be a less undesirable addition to Silverdale than you are at present inclined to fancy.”
[CHAPTER VIII—WITHAM COMES TO SILVERDALE]
There were warmth and brightness in the cedar-boarded general room of Silverdale Grange, and most of the company gathered there basked in it contentedly after their drive through the bitter night. Those who came from the homesteads lying farthest out had risked frost-nipped hands and feet, for when Colonel Barrington held a levee at the Grange nobody felt equal to refusing his invitation. Neither scorching heat nor utter cold might excuse compliance with the wishes of the founder of Silverdale, and it was not until Dane, the big middle-aged bachelor, had spoken very plainly, that he consented to receive his guests in time of biting frost dressed otherwise than as they would have appeared in England.
Dane was the one man in the settlement who dare remonstrate with its ruler, but it was a painful astonishment to the latter when he said, in answer to one invitation, “I have never been frost-bitten, sir, and I stand the cold well, but one or two of the lads are weak in the chest, and this climate was never intended for bare-shouldered women. Hence, if I come, I shall dress myself to suit it.”
Colonel Barrington stared at him for almost a minute, and then shook his head. “Have it your own way,” he said, “Understand that in itself I care very little for dress, but it is only by holding fast to every traditional nicety we can prevent ourselves sinking into Western barbarism, and I am horribly afraid of the thin end of the wedge.”
Dane having gained his point, said nothing further, for he was one of the wise and silent men who know when to stop, and that evening he sat in a corner watching his leader thoughtfully, for there was anxiety in the Colonel’s face. Barrington sat silent near the ample hearth whose heat would scarcely have kept water from freezing but for the big stove, and disdaining the dispensation made his guests, he was clad conventionally, though the smooth black fabric clung about him more tightly than it had once been intended to do. His sister stood, with the stamp of a not wholly vanished beauty still clinging to her gentle face, talking to one or two matrons from outlying farms, and his niece by a little table turning over Eastern photographs with a few young girls. She, too, wore black in deference to the Colonel’s taste, which was sombre, and the garment she had laughed at as a compromise, left uncovered a narrow strip of ivory shoulder and enhanced the polished whiteness of her neck. A slender string of pearls gleamed softly on the satiny skin, but Maud Barrington wore no other adornment and did not need it. She had inherited the Courthorne comeliness, and the Barringtons she sprang from on her father’s side had always borne the stamp of distinction.
A young girl sat at the piano singing in a thin, reedy voice, while an English lad waited with ill-concealed jealousy of a too officious companion to turn over the music by her side. Other men, mostly young, with weather-bronzed faces, picturesque in embroidered deerskin or velvet lounge jackets, were scattered about the room, and all were waiting for the eight-o’clock dinner, which replaced the usual prairie supper at Silverdale. They were growers of wheat who combined a good deal of amusement with a little not very profitable farming, and most of them possessed a large share of insular English pride and a somewhat depleted exchequer.
Presently Dane crossed over, and sat down by Colonel Barrington. “You are silent, sir, and not looking very well to-night,” he said.
Barrington nodded gravely, for he had a respect for the one man who occasionally spoke plain truth to him. “The fact is, I am growing old,” he said, and then added, with what was only an apparent lack of connexion, “Wheat is down three cents, and money tighter than ever.”
Dane looked thoughtful, and noticed the older man’s glance in his niece’s direction, as he said, “I am afraid there are difficult times before us.”