Fordham's Feud Part 9

But he derived no modic.u.m of solace from his investigation, for there was a great deal more of it coming--in fact, the whole seven sheets full. Seven sheets of the sort of stuff that sets the court in a roar, and melts the collective heart of the dozen empanelled grocers and ironmongers gathered there to mulct the unwary of the substantial salve which should heal the wounds of the lovely and disconsolate--if slightly intriguing--plaintiff. And, as he read, an uncomfortable misgiving that it might ultimately come to this, invaded his mind more than once.

With a sigh of relief he turned the last page, but the feeling was promptly nipped in the bud as he read:--

"I've been at Pa again and again to take us abroad this year; how jolly it would be if we were to meet again in that love of a Switzerland, wouldn't it, dear boy? But no such luck, he won't, and we are going to St. Swithins instead, and it's the next best thing, and I do _love_ St.

Swithins, and I shall think the blue sea is the Lake of Geneva and you are there. But we will go all over it together soon, you and I alone, won't we, Phil, darling, you and your little Edie." Then followed half a dozen lines of appropriate drivel, and a postscript:--"Be sure you send me a big bunch of adleweis from the top of the Matterhorn."

If ever a man felt nauseated with himself and all the world, a.s.suredly that man was Philip Orlebar, as he sat staring at this effusion. Its fearful style--or rather utter lack of it--its redundancy of conjunctions, its far from infrequent mis-spellings, its middle-cla.s.s vulgarity of gush, would at any other time have been amusing, if painfully so; now it was all absolutely revolting. He took it up again.

"'Adleweis!' (why couldn't the girl borrow a dictionary), and 'from the _top_ of the Matterhorn' (ugh!) And St. Swithins, staring, c.o.c.kneyfied, yahoo-ridden St. Swithins, with its blazer-clad 'Arries and shrimp-devouring 'Arriets, its n.i.g.g.e.r minstrels and beach conjurers!

(faugh!) What sort of a mind--what sort of ideas had the girl got?

Then again, 'dear boy'! Fancy Alma--" and at this suggestion he dropped the missive, and, starting up, began to pace the room.

"'We will go all over it together soon!' Will we, though!" he muttered bitterly. And then, with a savageness begotten of a feeling of being cornered, trapped, run to earth, he began to wonder whether he should suffer himself to be taken possession of in this slap-dash fashion. Had he really given himself away beyond recall! Old Glover entertained splendidly, and the sparkling burgundy was more than first-rate. What a fool he had been. Still it seemed impossible that Edith should have taken seriously all he said--impossible and preposterous! Yes, preposterous--if all that a man said while sitting out with a pretty girl, in a deliciously cool and secluded corner of the conservatory-- after that first-rate sparkling burgundy too--was to be twisted into a downright proposal--an engagement. By Jove, it was--preposterous!

But through all his self-evolved indignation Philip could not disguise from himself that he had acted like a lunatic, had, in fact, given himself away. Between his susceptibility to feminine admiration and his _laisser faire_ disposition, he had allowed his relations with Edith Glover to attain that stage where the boundary between the ordinary flirtatious society acquaintance and the affianced lover has touched vanishing point. The girl was pretty, and adored his n.o.ble self. Old Glover, who was a merchant-prince of some sort or other and rolling in money, would be sure to "come down" liberally. On the whole he might do worse. So he had reasoned. But now?

Throughout his perusal of that trying effusion his mind's eye had been more than half absorbed in a vision of Alma Wyatt--Alma as he had last seen her--the sweet, patrician face, the grey earnest eyes, the exquisite tastefulness of her cool white apparel, the grace and poetry of her every movement, the modulated music of her voice. It seemed a profanation to contrast her--to place her on the same level with this other girl--this girl with her middle-cla.s.s ideas, vile orthography, and exuberant gush.

What was he to do? that was the thing. Should he send a reply--one so chilling and decisive as to leave room for no further misapprehension?

That would never do, he decided. The Glovers were just the sort of people to come straight over there and raise such a clamour about his ears that he might safely wish himself in a hornets' nest by contrast.

This they might do, and welcome, were it not for Alma. But then, were it not for Alma it is probable to the last degree that he would have drifted on, contented enough with the existing state of things.

"Heavens and earth, I believe old Fordham is right after all?" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed at last. "Women are the devil--the very devil, one and all of them. I'll adopt his theory. Shot if I don't!"

But profession and faith are not necessarily a synonym. Between our would-be misogynist and the proposed mental transformation stood that bright and wholly alluring potentiality whose name was Alma Wyatt.

With an effort he locked away the obnoxious missive, wishing to Heaven he could lock up the dilemma he was in as easily and indefinitely.

Should he consult Fordham? No, that wouldn't help matters; besides, he shrank from having to own that he had made a consummate a.s.s of himself, nor did he feel disposed just then to open his heart even to Fordham.

How beastly hot it had become! He would stay up in his room and take it easy--have a read and a smoke. Hang everybody! And with a growl he kicked off his boots, and, picking up a Tauchnitz novel, flung himself on the bed and lighted his pipe.

Rat-tat-tat-tat! Then a voice. "You there, Phil? The first dinner-bell has gone!"

He started up. The knock and the voice were Fordham's. It was a quarter-past six, and he had been asleep just three hours.

"We were afraid you had heard bad news, Mr Orlebar," said Mrs Wyatt, as he slid into his seat a quarter of an hour late. "You haven't, have you?"

"Oh, no," he answered, with splendid mendacity. "I've been feeling a little pulled down to-day, and dropped off to sleep without knowing it."

"The thunder in the air, I suppose," said Alma, with a bright, mischievous glance. "We had such a nice walk up to the Cubly, when it began to get cool."

"The Cubly?"

"Yes. Uncle was looking for you everywhere, but, as it happens, it was lucky we didn't disturb you. Besides, we feared you might have had bad news."

This was what he had missed then--all through that infernal letter too.

He felt more savage than ever. Bad news? Yes he had, and no mistake.

But the next moment he was destined to hear worse.

"I'm sorry to say we are obliged to cut short our stay here," General Wyatt was saying to Fordham. "Some friends whom we had arranged to meet have wired us to join them at the Grindelwald--an old brother officer and his family. They have turned up sooner than we expected, and, reckoning on our promise to join them, have already engaged our rooms.

In fact they could not have got them otherwise, for the hotel is filling up rapidly."

"Sorry to hear that, General--very sorry. When do you leave?"

"Not later than Tuesday, I'm afraid. That'll give this young person a day clear for a final walk or climb."

Here was a bolt from the blue with a vengeance, thought Philip.

"I don't want to go in the least," said Alma. "Don't you think," she added, with a flash of merriment, "it's hateful to leave a place just as you have become fond of it?"

"Hateful isn't the word for it," replied Philip, with savage vehemence.

"But don't you think you may become just as fond of where you're going?"

struck in the eternal female opposite.

"I'm perfectly sure you won't in this case," said Fordham, speaking to, and answering for, the Wyatts at the same time. "The Grindelwald is about the most noisy, crowded, and cheap-tripper-ridden resort in the Alps. A chronic dust cloud overhangs the whole Lutschinen Thal by reason of a perennial string of vehicles ascending from and descending to Interlaken with scarce a break of fifty yards. You can't go on a glacier without paying gate-money--a franc a head. Fancy that! Fancy reducing a glacier to the level of a c.o.c.kney tea-garden! Then between the village and either of the said glaciers is an ever-moving stream of the personally conducted, mostly mounted on mules and holding umbrellas aloft."

"But don't you think you are painting poor Grindelwald in very unattractive colours?" expostulated the Infliction.

"Think? No, I'm sure of it," was the short reply. "And I haven't done yet. The place swarms with beggars and cadgers. Go where you will, you are beset by small ragam.u.f.fins pestering you to purchase evil-looking edelweiss blossoms or mobbing your heels to be allowed to show you the way, which you know a vast deal better than they do. Every fifty yards or so you come upon the Alpine horn fiend, prepared to make hideous melody for a consideration; or wherever a rock occurs which can by any chance produce an echo, there lurks a vagabond ready to explode a howitzer upon receipt of a franc. No. Taking it all in all, I don't think one is far out in defining Grindelwald as the Rosherville of Switzerland."

"That sounds truly dreadful," said Alma. "But were it the reverse I should still be sorry to leave here--very sorry."

"We must get up a jolly long walk to-morrow," said Philip, eagerly.

"It'll be the last time, and we ought to have a good one. Let's go up the Cape au Moine."

"But isn't that a very dangerous climb?" objected Mrs Wyatt.

"Oh, no. At least, I believe not. Wentworth, who has been up ever so many times, says it's awfully over-rated. But we'll get him to come along and to show us the way."

Fordham looked quickly up, intending to throw cold water on the whole scheme. But Philip's boot coming in violent and significant contact with a rather troublesome corn, stifled in a vehement scowl the remark he was about to make, as his friend intended it should.

"That'll be delightful," a.s.sented Alma, gleefully. "Now who shall we ask to go? Mr Wentworth, the two Ottleys--they are sure to ask Mr Scott."

"Should have thought that boat experience would have choked _him_ off any further enterprise," grunted Fordham.

"That'll be four," went on Alma, not heeding the interruption. "Then you two, uncle and myself--eight altogether. We ought to be roped.

It's a real climb, isn't it?"

"Oh, very," said Fordham. "So real that not half of us will reach the top."

"Well, I mean to for one," declared Alma. "And oh, I do hope it'll be fine."

CHAPTER TEN.

ON THE CAPE AU MOINE.