Оценить:
 Рейтинг: 0

Fordham's Feud

Год написания книги
2017
<< 1 ... 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 ... 41 >>
На страницу:
13 из 41
Настройки чтения
Размер шрифта
Высота строк
Поля

“Hear, hear!” sung out Gedge, lustily, stamping with his feet in such wise as to upset a whole heap of sandwiches and the residue of Fordham’s beverage. But Wentworth shook his head.

“It’s very kind of you to put it that way, Miss Wyatt. Still the fact remains that it oughtn’t to have happened; and perhaps the best side of the affair is that it happened to me after all, and not to one of yourselves. By Jove! though,” he added, with a laugh. “Friend Dufour will score off me now for all time. We are always having arguments about the Cape au Moine. I always say it is an over-rated climb, and for the matter of that I say so still.”

“That may easily be,” struck in Philip. “I suppose any mountain is dangerous with a gale of five hundred hurricane power blowing.”

“Of course. But where I blame myself, Orlebar, is in not starting to come down sooner. And I fancy that is the line Miss Wyatt’s advocacy will take when she finds herself laid up with a bad cold after getting wet through up there.”

“It will take nothing of the kind, Mr Wentworth,” replied Alma, “for I am not going to be laid up with any cold at all. The walk down here almost dried my things, and this splendid fire has done the rest.”

Luncheon over pipes were produced, indeed the suggestion to that effect originated with the representatives of the softer sex there present, who preferred the, at other times much-decried, narcotic to the somewhat rancid odour emanating from sundry tubs used in cheese-making, which stood in the corner of the room. The rain beat hard upon the roof without, but nothing could have been more snug than the interior of the châlet in its semi-darkness, the firelight dancing upon the beams and quaint appointments of this rough but picturesque habitation.

“Now, Gedge, you’re by way of being a logician,” said Wentworth, blowing out a cloud of smoke. “Can you tell us why a man can’t keep his head just as well over a drop of a thousand feet as over one of six?”

“Do you mean when the wind is blowing,” answered Gedge, suspecting a “catch.”

“No. I mean when there’s no apparent reason why he shouldn’t.”

“Because he gets confoundedly dizzy, I suppose.”

“But why should he? He has the same foothold. Take that arête up there. If the drop on each side were only six feet, no fellow would hesitate to run along it like a cat along a wall.”

“Not even Scott,” muttered Fordham, in a tone just audible to Alma, who at the picture thus conjured up of the unfortunate chaplain straddling the arête, and screaming to be taken off, could hardly restrain herself from breaking forth into a peal of laughter.

“It’s a clear case of the triumph of mind over matter, I take it,” answered Gedge. “What do you say, Scott?”

“Oh, I’m no authority,” mumbled the latter hastily. “Don’t appeal to me. My head seems going round still.”

“Scott is no authority on matters outside the smoking-room,” said Fordham, mercilessly – thereby nearly causing Alma to choke again, and begetting inextinguishable resentment in the breast of the youngest Miss Ottley, who had taken the parson under her own especial wing. “Within those sacred precincts we all bow to him as supreme.”

“I don’t quite see where that comes in,” rejoined Wentworth, in answer to Gedge. “If anything it would be the other way about – triumph of matter over mind: the matter being represented by several hundred feet of perpendicularity, before, or rather above, which the ‘mind’ takes a back seat; or, in plainer English, gets in a funk.”

“That very fact proves the mind to be paramount; proves its triumph, paradoxical as it may sound,” argued Gedge. “An idiot, for instance, wouldn’t care twopence whether the drop was six feet or six hundred. As long as there was firm ground under him, he’d shuffle along it gaily. Why? Because he is incapable of thought – deficient in mind.”

“Upon that showing,” said General Wyatt, with a twinkle in his eye – “upon that showing, the Miss Ottleys and myself must be the most sensible people of the lot; for, unlike your hypothetical idiot, Gedge, we emphatically did care twopence whether the drop was six feet or six hundred. In other words, we funked it egregiously and stayed behind. Our minds, you see triumphed over matter in the most practical way of all.”

“I guess this argument’s going to end in a clean draw,” said Philip. “Hallo! the sun’s out again, and, by Jove, there isn’t a cloud in the sky,” he added, flinging the door open and going outside. “The day is young yet. How would it be to go over the Col de Falvay and work round home again by way of the Alliaz? It’s a lovely walk.”

But this, after some discussion, was voted too large an undertaking. At Alma’s suggestion it was decided that the party should stroll over the col into the next valley and pick flowers.

“It is our last day here, uncle,” she urged, in answer to the old General’s somewhat half-hearted objection that they would have had about enough walking by the time they reached home. “It is our last day, so we ought to make the most of it. And look how lovely it has turned out!”

It had. No sign was left now of the dour mist curtain which had swept the heavens but a short while before. Wandering in the golden sunshine, among fragrant pine woods and pastures, knee-deep in narcissus, the party soon split up as such parties will. Fordham and the General took it very easily; strolling a little, sitting down a little, they chatted and smoked many pipes, and were happy. Scott and his fair admirer paired off in search of floral and botanical specimens, and were also happy. The residue of the crowd assimilated themselves in like harmonious fashion, or did not – as they chose. Two units of it at any rate did, for crafty Phil seized an early opportunity of carrying off Alma to a spot where he knew they would find lilies of the valley. As a matter of fact they did not find any, but this was of no consequence to him. What was of consequence was the blissful fact that he had got her all to himself for the afternoon. And this was her last afternoon, their last afternoon together. And in consideration of this, the light-hearted, easy-going Phil became seized with an abnormal melancholy.

“You are a rank deceiver,” said Alma, some three hours later, as, in obedience to a shout of recall, they turned to rejoin the rest of the party now taking the homeward way, but as yet some distance off. “You told me you knew we should find the lilies there – you knew, mind, not you thought. Then when we found none at the first place, you knew we should at another; and you dragged me from place to place, but yet I haven’t found one. And now I must be content with the bundle of bell-gentians I gathered this morning. Poor things! how they have faded,” she added, undoing a corner of the handkerchief containing them. “Ah! here is some water. I must freshen them up a bit.”

“What a day this has been,” said Philip, regretfully, as Alma stooped down to freshen the gentians with water from the tiny runnel which, dripping from the mossy undergrowth beneath the shadowy pines, sped at their feet with a bell-like tinkle. There was a moist fragrance as of crushed blossoms in the air, and the unearthly glow of a cloudless evening was upon the sunlit slopes, and the grey solemn faces of the cliffs across the valley.

“Yes, indeed,” she answered, her wet, tapering hands plunged lightly among the rich blue blossoms of the bell-gentians.

“And it is your last!”

“Unfortunately it is. But – who would have thought, to look around now – who would have believed the awful time we went through up there only this morning! When Mr Wentworth was drawn up again safe and unhurt, I could not help crying for joy. Poor fellow! What must he have gone through all that time, with nothing but a rhododendron bush between him and a frightful death!”

“I reverse the usual order and begin to think I’d rather it was me than him,” said Philip, gruffly. “May I ask whether, in that case, you would have manifested the same delight?”

There was a flash of mischievous mirth in Alma’s great grey eyes as she looked up at him.

“You foolish boy! I sha’n’t answer that question. But, if you had been down there, how could you have taken such splendid care of me?”

“Oh, I did take care of you then?” he said quickly. “You did, indeed.”

“Let me take care of you for life then, Alma.” Just those few words, curt even to lameness. But there was a very volume of pent-up feeling in their tone as he stood there, his face a trifle paler, his fine frame outlined against the black background of the pines, his eyes dilated and fixed upon hers, as though to read there his answer.

She started. Her face flushed, then grew pale again. Released by the tremor of her hand, another corner of the handkerchief fell, and the bell-gentians poured down into her lap and on the ground. She did not answer immediately, and a troubled look came over her face. Yet the question could not have been such a surprising one. Reading every changing expression of the lovely face eagerly, hungrily, Philip continued, and there was a quaver of forestalled despair in his voice.

“Not to be – is it?” with a ghastly attempt at a laugh. “I’m a presumptuous idiot, and had better go my way rejoicing – especially rejoicing. Isn’t that it?”

But a radiantly killing smile was the answer now, scattering his despondency as the sun-ray had dispelled the dark storm-cloud which had overshadowed them up there on the arête.

“You are in a great hurry to answer your own question,” she said. “Doesn’t it strike you that I am the right person to do that – Phil?”

The very tone was a caress. The half-timid, half-mischievous way in which his Christian name – abbreviated too – escaped her was maddening, entrancing. Hardly knowing what he said in his incoherent transport of delight, he cast himself upon the bank beside her, regardless of bristling pine needles and the outpost prowlers of a large nest of red ants hard by. But Alma was not yet prepared to allow herself to be taken by storm in any such impetuous fashion.

“Now wait a minute, you supremely foolish creature,” holding up a hand warningly as he flung himself at her side – and her face flushed again; but there was a sunny light in her eyes, and a very sweet smile playing around her lips. “What I was going to say is this. You can’t decide any important question out of hand. It requires talking over – and – thinking over.”

“You darling! you tantalising enchantress!” he cried passionately. “Let us talk over it then, as much as you like. As for thinking over it – why, we’ve done enough of that already.”

“You have, you mean,” she corrected, archly. “Never mind. But – now listen, Phil. You think you are very, very fond of my unworthy self. Wait – don’t interrupt,” as the expression “you think” brought to his lips an indignant protest. “Yet you hardly know me.”

“I know you to be perfection,” he broke in hotly.

“That’s foolish,” she rejoined, but with a by no means displeased smile. “But, I say it again, you hardly know me. We meet here and see each other at our best, where everything is conducive to enjoyment and absolute freedom from worry, and then you tell me I am perfection – ”

“So you are,” he interrupted emphatically.

“Well, we meet under the most favourable circumstances, wherein we show at our best. But that isn’t life. It is a mere idyll. Life is a far more serious thing than that.”

“Why, that’s just how that fellow Fordham talks,” exclaimed Philip, aghast.

“Mr Fordham is an extremely sensible man then,” she rejoined, with a queer smile. “No. What I want you to consider is, how do you know I could make you happy, only meeting as we do, up here and in this way? We must not fall into the fatal error of mistaking a mere summer idyllic existence for a sample of stern, hard life.”

“Oh, darling! you cannot really care for me if you can reason so coldly, so deliberately!” he exclaimed, in piteous consternation. “I am afraid you don’t know me yet, if you think me so shallow as all that.”

“I do know you, Phil, and I don’t think you shallow at all – know you better than you think – better, perhaps, than you know yourself,” she answered, placing her hand upon his, which promptly closed over it in emblematical would-be possession of its owner. “I am a bit of a character-student, and I have studied you – among others.”

“Oh! only among others?”

She laughed.
<< 1 ... 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 ... 41 >>
На страницу:
13 из 41