Fordham's Feud Part 38

There was no mistaking the gesture as he moved towards the door. The bluntness of the request--the insult of it--thought Lady Orlebar as she swept majestically out. For the second time that evening she was turned out of the room. Well, let them talk over their infamous secrets. They need look for no help from her, she determined, fairly shaking with rage.

Sir Francis did not meet his son's gaze as he extended one trembling hand. The other still clutched mechanically the packet which Fordham had thrust into it. Philip's heart smote him, and all the brightness went out of his face. Had his father already heard the news which he had come to break?

"I say, dad, what's the row? Dear old dad," he went on, obtaining no answer but a sigh--bending down and placing his arm round his father's shoulders--"you're looking deucedly cut up. Have you been--er--hearing anything?"

"Hearing anything?" echoed Sir Francis, in a hollow, far-away tone, and turning to his son with a wild stare. "Hearing anything? Philip, I have heard that which I--which we had both better have died than have lived to see happen."

"Come, come dad, don't take on about it like that! It was playing rather low down, I know, doing things all on the quiet. Still--I couldn't help it. Wait until you see my Laura--that's all! Why you'll fall in love with her yourself, and we'll all be as jolly as sandboys together. But, how did you hear about it? Who told you?"

For answer Sir Francis pointed to the telegram which Fordham had left on the table either by inadvertence or as not worth taking away.

"Hallo! So Fordham has been here?" cried Phil. "Hang it, I never authorised the old chap to break the news. I suppose, though, he thought you knew it already, and came to congratulate you. Still--it's odd--deuced odd. It isn't like him, anyhow."

"He left this for you," holding forth the bulky missive. "Philip, take it to your own room, where you will be quite alone, lock the door, and read it through from beginning to end. Oh, G.o.d! It is horrible-- horrible?"

"Horrible! Fordham!" echoed Philip, in blank amazement. "Father, I don't understand. Tell me in a word--what's it all about? Why make me wade through twenty pages of Fordham's rigmarole when half-a-dozen words will do it?"

"Oh, I can't--I can't!" moaned poor Sir Francis. "Read it, Phil--read it! That will tell you." And with almost frantic gesture he waved his son from the room.

Philip's heart beat strangely as he went to seek the privacy enjoined.

What on earth had Fordham to communicate that concerned himself--that availed to throw his father into so pitiable a state of agitation?

Under ordinary circ.u.mstances he would have suspected the package, so elaborately sealed and directed to himself, to contain a string of stale and would-be cynical plat.i.tudes on the situation, for which he felt in no sort of mood just then. Now a strange eerie foreboding of evil was upon him.

He gained his room, which was fireless, and cold and uncheery of aspect.

Then, by the light of the solitary candle, he broke the seals and drew forth the contents of the envelope. These would keep him busy for some time in all conscience, he decided, noticing how closely written were the numerous sheets. But almost with the first glance, as he began to read, a start and a wild e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n escaped him. Then, as he read on, a deathly paleness spread over his countenance, and his hand clenched convulsively upon the rail of his chair. His att.i.tude became rigid and his features hardened. His eyes dilated with a stare of intense horror and surprise as they travelled down each successive sheet of the fateful paper.

Where is the sunny, light-hearted youth, rejoicing in the strength of health and happiness and love, who entered this house such a short while ago? Not surely to be found in this being, whose ashy features are stamped with the set, grey look of a stricken despair; the frozen horror in whose eyes, as they seek alternately the shadowed objects around the half-darkened room and the rigidly grasped paper, is that of a man who suddenly realises that he has all involuntarily committed some appalling crime.

His dry lips move half unconsciously, and in husky, laboured gasps, frame the well-nigh inarticulate words--

"O G.o.d! such a hideous thing could never be! G.o.d in Heaven, it can't be true! It can't be true!"

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

WHAT WAS REVEALED.

"There is a good deal of a surprise before you, Philip," began the paper, "but nevertheless, go patiently through this, from start to finish, and don't look at the end first, after the manner of the average woman reading a novel, for it would only detract from the full bearing of the narrative, and probably cloud and obfuscate the same at every issue.

"My real name is not Richard Fordham, but Richard Cecil Garcia. It suited me--no matter how--to take the other, to drop my real name, with which I was thoroughly sickened and disgusted. With what show of reason you will learn as you read on. But it is a strange, foreign-sounding name, is it not? Well, it is a foreign name, for I am of Corsican origin. That being so, it follows I have the hot, vindictive temperament of a Southern race in addition to a fair share of British tenacity of purpose. No man ever injured me but was requited sooner or later--requited to the full--requited, in fact, tenfold. The bearing of this upon what follows you will all too soon grasp.

"You and I have known each other now for something less than two years; but have known each other better, more intimately, than we should have done under ordinary circ.u.mstances in about half a lifetime. You thought our first meeting entirely a fortuitous one.

It was not. It was deliberately brought about by me in pursuance of a matured and long-set plan.

"You have often wondered at my unutterable detestation of, contempt for, the other s.e.x. It has amused you, and you have laughed at it as a 'crank.' You are young, and think that a very large percentage of angel abides within the average petticoat. Very good. I can't say I ever held that belief, for I always despised and distrusted the dear creatures from the very earliest time I can remember.

"'Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall,' may be only Scripture, but it is remarkably sound human nature. My 'fall'

came--and an uncommonly far and hard one it was destined to prove.

There is no need to go into all the sickening details--the how, or the when, or the where. Suffice it to say that the creature was well endowed with all the attractiveness (so-called) and the devilish arts and wizardry of her species. For a few months I thought myself in Paradise--had found the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life.

"In this disastrous mania, mind you, it was not I who took the initiative. For every reason on the face of the earth it was to this woman's advantage that my name and what modest competence I possessed should become hers. It suited her vanity, too, that she alone should be the one to penetrate my armour-coat of invulnerable mail. And in those days when the blood ran hot such beauty as hers was calculated to bring down even my defences--though now I can look back to that hideous mockery of a time with nothing but horror and unmitigated disgust--can look upon the actress in that shameful travesty with loathing and unquenchable hate. And now at this day I hold her very life in the hollow of my hand. Some day I will close my fingers and crush it--but not yet--not yet.

"For some months, as I have said, I thought myself in Paradise. Then came disillusion--speedy when it did come. I knew myself then to be in _inferno_. Heavens! the life that she-devil led me--she of whom I had practically been the salvation! She slandered my character, and dragged my name in the mud. She ruined my chances in life and caused every friend I owned in the world to flee as from the plague. She did worse than that, for she sapped and well-nigh destroyed even my sense of self-respect. I often wondered, at the time, I did not kill her; looking back now I wonder still more.

"Mind you, it was not on account of this one creature alone that I have always held the whole of its s.e.x in such intense abhorrence. But I have studied it--studied it carefully. I have thought, 'No one shall say that I, the thinker, the character-reader, the student of human nature all the world over, has judged a whole from a unit.' But the result of my observation is that in a greater or less degree it is wonderfully alike. You get the same littleness--the same gratuitous malice--the same eager, scheming, unscrupulous grasping after individual advantage--above all the same domineering spirit, the same utter disregard of truth, the entire absence of any sense of moral rect.i.tude. If it were possible to roll the tiger, the ape, and the snake into one animal, you would get a perfect embodiment of the average civilised and Christian woman of the nineteenth century. The _gentle_ s.e.x! Pah! it sickens one!

"Now and again, but rarely, I think I find an exceptional unit. But then I thought so once before, to my ultimate disaster. And, Philip, the last instance in which I thought to discover such an exception was that of the girl named Alma Wyatt. Well, it is too late to think of that now--for you at any rate. You have gone further and fared infinitely worse. Yet I warned you--warned you plainly and unmistakably. My very last words to you were those of warning. And now let us return to my own record.

"'When things are at their worst, they mend,' says the proverb.

Things were certainly at their worst with me. I had committed social and financial suicide, all but mental--and even seriously contemplated actual and physical. When I had reached that point; when every conscious moment of the twenty-four hours was absorbed in marvelling what besotted affliction of mania could have induced me to wreck my life by legally chaining it to this demon, then, I say, came the proverbial 'mend.' It came in the shape of a third party.

"Why dwell upon circ.u.mstances and detail? The story was an utterly commonplace and ordinary one. She played off the whole stale bag of tricks upon the new man, who must have been nearly as great a fool as myself--in fact was. To cut the matter short, one fine day they went off together, levanted--also in the most commonplace and ordinary style. Then I sat down and chuckled--laughed as I had never laughed since I was idiot enough to forge my chain.

"But I was a curious tempered devil in those days--am so still you will no doubt say--and although I could not feel any serious resentment against one who had relieved me of an intolerable burden, by reason of that relief, still the act in itself was a deadly insult to me. I left the man alone for a few days, then I dropped down upon him when he least expected it. I raised no scene--not I. There was a better way of settling matters than that. It was easy enough if judiciously worked--is still at this very day. A meeting was arranged.

"It came off--in a wild out-of-the-way spot just across the Spanish border. We stood up, one lowering drizzling morning, when the clouds were sweeping the tree-tops of the beech-forests covering the Roncevalles plateau. We exchanged shots. I could have killed my man easily, but didn't. I was only playing with him. He wasn't a bad shot either, but I knew the game was entirely in my hands. I could have killed him, I say, but I never intended to do that. It occurred to me--knowing the man and having read off his character and temperament fairly accurately--that life itself would avenge me upon him far more than would his death. I would put my mark upon him, however. So when we stood up again to each other's fire I planted my ball in the tendons of his left leg, just above the knee. My adversary dropped, and the seconds p.r.o.nounced the affair at an end.

But he was not dead; not even, with ordinary care, dangerously wounded. He would recover, but he would carry my mark--a mark apparent to all--with him to his grave. He would walk with a limp during the remainder of his life.

"No doubt, Philip, you will now have guessed this man's ident.i.ty. To avoid all chance of mistake, however, I will say that it was your own father.

"Now we will come to Act 2 in the drama.

"He soon had enough of the woman; very much more than enough, as, of course, was sure to be the case. But he found he had strapped a burden upon his back which it was in the last degree difficult to shake off. She, of course, fully expected I was going to free her, in which case she would undoubtedly have succeeded in marrying your father; for he never was a strong man, Philip, and I believe he would have been weak enough even for that. But I merely sat still and laughed. Heavens! how I did laugh! For the joke was all on my side.

To be sure, if I had taken action which should have enabled Francis Orlebar to marry her, I should have wreaked a far direr retribution upon him than ever I could have done at the pistol's mouth. But then I hated her far more than I did him, and I was not going to play into her hands. Not, however, that I had done with him, as you will, to your sorrow, learn. So no fees out of my pocket went to fatten the Divorce Court lawyers, and I sat still and laughed--laughed harder than ever. There was another consideration which militated against my taking any steps to free myself. Once legally free, I reasoned, so great a fool is man, who knows but that I might be tempted again to rivet that loathsome and degraded chain upon my emanc.i.p.ated limbs! So I resolved deliberately to leave it beyond my power again to perpetrate such an act of suicidal folly, and accordingly I have done so.

"Although, if empowered to do so, your father would, as I say, have been weak enough to give this woman the legal right to his name, when he--when they both--saw that such could never be the case while I lived, he mustered up sufficient resolution to break with her. Then she tried it on with me; took up a high-handed line, declaring that her legal right was to live with me; and that whereas nothing short of legal process could quash that right, and whereas I had taken no such process, she should a.s.sert her rights to the very uttermost. Again I only laughed, and--started off upon my travels.

"Then she tried another tack. A child was born to her--a daughter-- whose paternity I, of course, denied. She initiated proceedings against me for maintenance, but these I stopped by pretending to fall in with her claim. It stipulated, however, that she should cease to use my name. This she promised; but of course the promise was not kept. So I cut off every shilling I allowed her, having previously placed my means beyond the jurisdiction of the British courts--a matter easily effected by secret and scattered investments in all parts of the world; and she and her child were reduced to absolute want. That brought her to her knees; that tamed the she-devil. I had things all my own way then. It was my prerogative to impose terms, and I did so most rigidly. She was to keep me regularly informed as to her place of residence, and not to make any radical change in the latter without my sanction, and under no circ.u.mstances was she to use my name, or let it be known that I had any acquaintanceship with her whatever. She was also to behave herself, and that thoroughly.

Failing the observance of these conditions, I would inexorably cut off the supplies, and remove the child from her care in such wise that she should never set eyes on it again.

"Did she revolt? Of course she did--tried to, rather, more than once.

But it didn't answer; no, not for a moment. She found that my eye was ever upon her, that not a movement of hers pa.s.sed unknown to me.

So she had the gumption to see that nothing was gained by kicking, and that the wisest--in fact the only--plan was to make the best of it.

But I hadn't done with her.

"For years things went on quietly enough. The child grew and throve; and for this child the woman seemed to entertain an extraordinary affection. This I did nothing to lessen; for I saw therein a weapon ready to hand whenever I should choose to require it. So I sat still and laughed; for I had not done with her, remember. She had wrecked my whole life and its chances, nor during the process, nor ever since, had she shown one single redeeming point in her character, one single sign of regret.

"All this took place many years ago, while you were hardly out of the cradle, certainly not out of the nursery, for I am a great deal older than you think, Philip. To a certain extent, I watched you grow up, unknown to your father or to yourself, for, I repeat, our meeting and subsequent acquaintanceship was the outcome of no mere chance. And this brings us to the third act of the drama.

"Years went by, and your father, never having seen nor of late heard of me since the day we stood up to each other's fire, ceased even to think of me as other than a somewhat tragical incident in the past history of his life. He little dreamed, however, that all this time I was watching him--was watching you. Yes, I watched you as you grew up. I knew that you were as the very apple of your father's eye.

Through you I intended to strike him once more--to crush him.

"We met, you and I, as you remember. You thought it a chance meeting, but it was not. In a week I had read off your character thoroughly, exhaustively. I knew you a great deal better than you knew yourself.

"Well, we went globe-trotting together. And as you look back on it you will recollect more than one occasion upon which, but for my intervention, your father would have been rendered childless. Why did I intervene, you will say? Well, for two reasons. First, I chose to pull the wires myself. I intended to close my vendetta by a plan that should be perfectly unique. The hunter's instinct doesn't move him to say, 'No matter how the quarry falls, as long as it does fall.' No; he must bring it down himself, in his own way. So it was with me.

The other reason will strike you as strange and incredible to the last degree. I had taken a liking to you.

"Yes, paradoxical as it may sound, paradoxical as it is, the fact remains. I had a sneaking weakness for you, Philip. You were so open-hearted, so ingenuous, so utterly helpless--in short, such an a.s.s. It seemed to devolve on me to be ever pulling you out of some tangle. I began to waver in my purpose. There were times when I thought I would leave the whole thing, and had it been a matter concerning your father alone I think I should have done so. But there was the woman. She was in my hand now. The time for her to feel its weight was near. She was living at ease, happy and contented, for, as I said before, she was entirely wrapped up in her daughter. She, happy and contented after having poisoned my life, ruined me, dragged my name in the mud--I don't mean in the mere act of relieving me of her presence--but more in the shameful scandal, the horrible h.e.l.l she made of life while she was with me, so that wherever I went it was rendered impossible--she happy and contented! Decidedly the time had come to strike.