Fordham's Feud Part 44

This is what had happened. The steam reservoir had exploded, and the ma.s.s of iron covering it had been hurled along the lower deck, sweeping the saloon from end to end, and crashing through the stern of the vessel like the projectile from a piece of ordnance. And then an enormous volume of scalding steam had filled the apartment, and in a moment the light-hearted holiday-seekers, with which it was crowded, wrapped in that h.e.l.l-blast from which there was no escape, were writhing in the throes of the most horrible, the most agonising of deaths.

Alma, recovering her presence of mind, left her friends, and hurried back to the scene of the catastrophe. But the gathering crowd barred her way; it in its turn being kept back by the arm and voice of Authority. Yet she got near enough to see the outside of the wrecked saloon, the twisted girders supporting the upper deck, the jagged breach in the stern where the iron plate had gone through. She saw the panic-stricken crowd swaying and surging. She saw one scalded wretch rush to the side and leap overboard, in the frenzy of his intolerable agony. What she did not see was him whom she sought. She did not see Philip Orlebar.

Not in the terrified, struggling crowd upon the upper deck did her eyes seek him; even at that moment she knew it was not thus he would be found in the hour of peril and alarm. Her anguished gaze, straining upon the spot where she had last seen him, met with no reward. He was not there.

Oh, merciful Heavens! Could he have gone back to his seat in the stern of the boat, to that spot where they had stood together talking for a full hour.

For that spot was now enveloped in a cloud of white steam, which was pouring out through the hole knocked in the end of the saloon by the iron cover of the cistern. Had Philip returned to his seat his back would have rested against that very part of the panelling which was blown away.

It was long before the work of rescue could be begun, long before the fiery breath of that h.e.l.l-blast had sufficiently abated its fury to admit of search. Still Alma stood there, and as each agonising minute of suspense went by she realised more certainly that there was no hope.

She saw body after body--in life or in death--brought away from the fatal ship. She heard the heartrending groans of the sufferers, and the appalling yells of some tortured wretch imploring the boon of death as a termination to his agony. These dreadful sights and sounds which at any other time would well-nigh have killed her with horror, seemed to be something outside her life now. He whom she sought was not among them-- not yet.

She pressed forward. The crowd elbowed her backward. The voice of Authority warned her backward. To Authority she appealed.

Now Authority, even in a blue uniform and a sword, may still possess a heart, and Authority as there embodied, was young and presumably susceptible. The white eager face was pa.s.singly beautiful--the piteous glance and appealing voice correspondingly entrancing. Authority's heart melted. In the result the crowd elbowed her backward no more.

"Mademoiselle had a friend on board? A lady? No? A gentleman--an English gentleman? Good. He should be sought for."

Accordingly Alma learned the worst without undue delay. There was an English gentleman among the injured--a tall, good-looking gentleman with a blonde moustache. "He was hurt--very badly hurt," declared Authority, humanely mendacious, adding, "But he is not burned--oh, no--certainly he is not burned. Wait. They will disembark him in one little moment. Is he dead? Well, Mademoiselle must not give way. He is not burned-- certainly--not in the least burned."

And the force of even that little crumb of well-meant comfort came home to Alma as, a few minutes later, she bent down over what had so recently contained the soul of Philip Orlebar, and regardless of the glances of three pairs of eyes or of three hundred, kissed the calm and placid face, so still and composed in death--kissed those lips hardly cold yet--the warmth of whose parting kiss in life seemed to glow upon hers-- the sad, hopeless echo of whose parting words still seemed to linger in her ears. "_Alma, darling. My lost love. We may never meet again.

Something tells me we shall not_." Well, they had not--in life.

As the _douanier_ had said, Philip Orlebar was not burned, for he had met his death in the open air. He had, as Alma had first conjectured, resumed his seat in the stern of the boat--was on the point of doing so rather, when the explosion occurred, and the iron plate, bursting through the end of the saloon, had struck him on the spine and shattered it, killing him instantaneously--painlessly.

"_I feel as if I had come to the end of my life_," had been his words, twice used during that last sad conversation. Poor Philip! Had he uttered them in sheer bitterness of heart or under the influence of a strange unerring presentiment? Verily it may have been a little of both.

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.

A DAY TOO LATE.

Not less radiantly did the sun shine upon the blue lake, in whose pellucid surface lay mirrored the great feathery slopes of the Savoy Alps; not less joyously did the cheerful sights and sounds of everyday life run their course after the terrible catastrophe of which that fairest of earth's scenes had been the theatre. Pleasure boats skimmed the placid waters; quarry barges, their white triangular sails hanging listless in the still air, were unlading their cargoes of stones brought thither from the Savoy sh.o.r.e; even a steamer swept up to the jetty, and, having discharged and received its human freight, went plashing on its way. The world still went on; but to Alma Wyatt, wandering there alone by the landing-place in the glad sunshine, the golden side of life was clouded over for evermore.

Nearly a month had gone by since poor Philip's remains had been carried back to the home of his fathers for burial. His successor, the new baronet, a distant cousin whom he had known but slightly, had hurried to the scene of the disaster, and much moved by his young kinsman's most lamentable fate had spared no trouble and expense to ensure that every honour and care should surround the last lugubrious arrangements. But the awful strain of that horrible experience had told upon Alma, and for three weeks she was so ill and prostrate that she was forbidden to leave her room.

When, eventually, she was able to appear again, she would not leave the place. With a persistency which her friends more or less strongly condemned as morbid--impressing upon her the thankfulness she ought to feel that the explosion had not taken place a few minutes earlier, while she herself was standing on the fatal spot--she would make her daily pilgrimage to the scene of the disaster, for to her it was holy ground.

To her had been spoken the very last words he ever breathed, and they had been words of love. Her lips had received the last kiss it had been in his power to bestow. "You will never regret it," he had said. And did she? Not for worlds would she barter that sweet sad recollection.

She loved him now--loved him with all her heart and soul and being. And it was too late. Too late! She might go to him, but never more could he return to her.

There in the noontide sunshine she stood, and, whatever way her eyes might turn, the whole scene around her brought back his memory. She could see the little white village of St. Gingolph sleeping beneath the great mountains on the opposite sh.o.r.e; and it brought back that day, when tossing on the furious billows of that sudden tempest, they had reckoned their hours as numbered--and there were times when in the bitterness of her soul she could find it in her heart to wish they had died together then. Again, there rose the green serrated ridges of the Chaine des Verreaux, beneath whose shadow she had received his first declaration of love. She could see the distant _arete_ of the Cape-au-Moine heaved up against the blue sky, could mark the exact spot where they had cowered for shelter when exposed to the wild fury of the blast, up there on those dangerous heights, now so green and smiling in the sunlight, and she could see him in the sweet golden evening of that eventful day, so appealing, so winning in his brave young beauty, as he poured out his love at her feet. Then she hardly knew her own heart.

Now she knew it. But--too late.

"How do you do, Miss Wyatt?"

She started violently. That familiar voice even, fitted with the picture she had been drawing. Turning she encountered the dark, piercing eyes of Fordham.

He had raised his hat, but he did not offer his hand. He stood there contemplating her with grave, saturnine expression as of old.

"Wretched business this," he said, with a jerk of the head in the direction of the spot where the catastrophe had taken place. "Poor fellow, poor fellow! Well, I suppose even I can hardly be held so much as indirectly responsible for it."

"I hardly know whether I am speaking to his friend or his enemy," said Alma, who, while instinctively distrusting this strange being, yet was conscious of being in some degree held spell-bound, even as the historic wedding-guest, together with an unaccountable anxiety to hear what he had to say.

"Both, I suppose," answered Fordham, impa.s.sively. "Formerly that is to say. Now only the first. You have heard of such a thing as a vendetta, I suppose, Miss Wyatt?"

"Of course."

"Well, I come of the race among which that inst.i.tution is pre-eminently supposed to flourish. Philip's father injured me, and I foredoomed the son from his cradle to be the means of avenging that injury upon the father. And when the time came--he did so."

"And you are such a monster as to come here and gloat over it!" said Alma, recoiling from him in a perfect horror of repulsion. But the other was unmoved. A wintry ghost of a smile drooped the corners of his mouth. He looked at her for a moment and went on.

"By no means. I saved his life more than once--and twice after that I _gave_ him his life."

"Gave him his life?"

"Yes. Are you aware that he challenged me, and I met him?"

"I had heard of it."

"Well, we exchanged shots twice; rather, I let him have two shots at me, while I--blazed away at the heavens. He could have had a dozen if he wished, but the seconds did not. I am a dead shot, and I was not going to fire at him. Now, am I such a monster?"

"Go on."

"Well, his bullet hit me, and I shall never walk straight again. It hit me--exactly where I wounded his father when Philip himself was hardly out of his cradle. But I bore him not the slightest grudge for that-- nor do I. My vendetta was accomplished. It had to be done, and it was done. Yet several times I wavered. The chances were even that I would spare him, for I had grown fond of the boy. And, Miss Wyatt, yours is the hand that turned the scale against him."

"Mine? What _do_ you mean?"

"Yours. I mean just that. You were in such a hurry to send him to the right-about, to condemn him unheard, that you threw him back into my power again. My power against him could not have stood against yours-- but you threw yours away. Afterwards it was too late."

Oh the anguish of her heart as she listened! This man was reiterating word for word what Philip himself had said. Why had she been in such a hurry to condemn him unheard? Well, her whole life now was destined to be an expiation of that one act of hard and merciless pride. Fordham, who had been watching her keenly, with a feeling, half grim, half sorrowful at his heart, continued:

"That marriage of his was brought about solely by me. You may or may not have guessed that, yourself apart, there was every reason why that particular alliance could have been nothing but absolutely disastrous to him. Well, into the particulars I need not go--especially for your enlightenment. Suffice it to say that the measure was brought about for the purposes of my lifelong feud, of which it was the crowning act. And now his wife is dead."

Every vestige of colour forsook Alma's cheeks. What infinite possibilities might not the future have opened out?

"Dead?" she echoed. "How? When?"

"Yes--dead. She died suddenly--_the day before_ poor Philip's own end.

But it was a day too late. Had it occurred a day earlier he would have heard of it, and would not have been in the _Mont Blanc_ blow-up."

"Was she--was she--fond of him?" gasped Alma.

"Pa.s.sionately, I am told; and that was a factor in the carrying out of my vendetta." And then, backing against the iron railing of the jetty to rest his lame leg, Fordham continued deliberately, "So you see, if he had landed here at Ouchy, when you did, instead of deciding to go on further, Philip would now be a free man as well as a living one. But that is the way of the world--our blessings, when they come to us, invariably do so a day too late."

Fordham was right.