Fordham's Feud

The last word came out with a jerk of relief.

“Sion? I believe it is,” replied Fordham, blandly. “We shall have a quarter of an hour to wait, if not longer.”

If ever a man looked a thorough fool, it was the first speaker. The faultless and polished English of the reply! Here had they – his wife rather – been abusing these two men in their own tongue and in her usually loud key for upwards of half an hour. He turned red and began to stammer.

But the poor man’s confusion was by no means shared by his spouse. That imposing matron came bustling across the carriage as if nothing had happened.

“Perhaps you can tell us,” she said, “which is the best way of getting to Evolena? There is a diligence, is there not?”

Philip, who had all a young man’s aversion for a fussy and domineering matron, would have returned a very short and evasive reply. The woman had been abusing them like pickpockets all the way, and now had the cheek to come and ask for information. But to Fordham her sublime impudence was diverting in the extreme.

“There is a diligence,” he answered, “and I should say you’ll still be in time for it. But I should strongly recommend you to charter a private conveyance. Coach passengers are apt to beguile the tedium of the road with tobacco.”

This was said so equably and with such an utter absence of resentment that the lady with all her assertiveness was dumbfoundered. Then, glaring at the speaker, she flounced away without a word, though, amid the bustle and flurry attendant upon the collecting of wraps and bundles, the offenders could catch such jerked-out phrases as “Abominable rudeness?”

“Most insulting fellow!” and so forth.

“Great Scott! What do you think of that for a zoological specimen, Phil?” said Fordham, as the train steamed slowly away from the platform where their late fellow-passengers still stood bustling around a pile of boxes and bundles. “The harridan deliberately and of her own free will gets into a tobacco cart – out of sheer cussedness, in fact, for there stands the non-smoker stark empty – and then has the unparalleled face to try and boss us out of it. And there are idiots with whom she would have succeeded too.”

“Well, you know, it’s beastly awkward when a woman keeps on swearing she can’t stand smoke, even though you know she has no business there. What the deuce are you to do?”

“Politely ask her to step into the next compartment, whose door stands yearningly open to receive her. Even the parson had wit enough to see that.”

“Yes, that’s so. But, I say, what an infernally slow train this is?”

“This little incident,” went on Fordham, “which has served to break the monotony of our journey, reminds me of a somewhat similar joke which occurred last year on my way back to England. We fetched Pontarlier pretty late at night, and of course had to turn out and undergo the Customs ordeal. Well, I was sharp about the business, and got back into my carriage and old corner first. It was an ordinary compartment – five a side – not like this. Almost immediately after in comes a large and assertive female with an eighteen-year-old son, a weedy, unlicked cub as ever you saw in your life, and both calmly took the other end seats. Now I knew that one of these seats belonged to a Frenchman who was going through, so sat snug in my corner waiting to enjoy the fun. It came in the shape of the Frenchman. Would madame be so kind, but – the seat was his? No, madame would not be so kind – not if she knew it. Possibly if madame had been young and pretty the outraged Gaul might have subsided more gracefully, for subside he had to – but her aggressiveness about equalled her unattractiveness, which is saying much. So a wordy war ensued, in the course of which the door was banged and the deposed traveller shot with more vehemence than grace half-way across the compartment, and the train started. He was mad, I can tell you. Instead of his snug corner for the night, there the poor devil was, propped up on end, lurching over every time he began to nod.

“Well, we’d finished our feed – we’d got a chicken and some first-rate Burgundy on board – and were looking forward to a comfortable smoke. In fact, we’d each got a cigar in our teeth, and the chap who was with me – whom we’ll call Smith – was in the act of lighting up, when —

“‘I object to smoke. This isn’t a smoking-carriage, and I won’t have it.’

“We looked at the aggressive female, then at each other. Her right was unassailable. It was not a tobacco cart, but on French lines they are not generally too particular. Still, in the face of that protest we were floored.

“Smith was awfully mad. He cursed like a trooper under his breath – swore he’d be even with the harridan yet – and I believed him.

“Some twenty minutes went by in this way, Smith licking his unlit cigar and cursing roundly to himself. Presently she beckoned him over. He had half a mind not to go; however, he went.

“‘I don’t mind your smoking,’ says she – ‘out of the window.’

“‘Oh, thanks,’ he says. ‘It’s rather too cold to stand outside on the footboard. Besides, it’s risky.’

“‘Well, I mean I don’t mind if you have part of the window open. But I can’t stand the place full of smoke and no outlet. And’ – she hurries up to add – ‘I hope you won’t mind if I draw the curtain over the lamp so that my boy can go to sleep.’

“Smith was on the point of answering that he preferred not to smoke, but intended to read the night through, and could on no account consent to the lamp being veiled, when it occurred to him that it was of no use cutting off his nose to spite his face. He was just dying for a smoke. So the bargain was struck, and we were soon puffing away like traction engines.

“Now the Frenchman who had been turned out of his seat was no fool of a Gaul. Whether suggested by the settling of our little difference or originating with himself, the idea seemed to strike him that he too might just as well obtain terms from the enemy to his own advantage. The unlicked cub aforesaid was slumbering peacefully in his corner, his long legs straight across the compartment, for we were three on that side, and there was no room to put them on the seat. The first station we stop at, up gets the Frenchman, flings open the door, letting in a sort of young hurricane, and of course stumbling over the sleeper’s legs. Aggressive female looks daggers. But when this had happened several times – for the stoppages were pretty frequent, and even though but for a minute the Frenchman took good care to tumble out – she began to expostulate.

“‘It was cruel to disturb her poor boy’s slumbers continually like that. Surely there was no necessity to get out at every station.’

“That Frenchman’s grin was something to see. He was désolé; but enfin! What would madame? He had been turned out of his corner seat, and could not sleep sitting bolt upright. It was absolutely necessary for him to get a mouthful of fresh air and stretch his legs at every opportunity. But the remedy was in madame’s hands. Let monsieur change places with him. Monsieur was young, whereas he was – well, not so young as he used to be. Otherwise he was sorry to say it, but his restlessness would compel him to take exercise at every station they stopped at.

“Heavens! that old termagant looked sick. But she was thoroughly bested. If she refused the enemy would be as good as his word, and her whelp might make up his mind to stay awake all night. So she caved in, sulkily enough, and with much bland bowing and smiling the Frenchman got back his corner seat, or one as good, and the cub snored on his dam’s shoulder. Thus we all regained our rights again, and everybody was happy.”

“Devilish good yarn, Fordham,” said Phil. “But you be hanged with your Smith, old man. Why, that was you – you all over.”

“Was it? I said it was Smith. But the point is immaterial, especially at this time of day. And now, Phil, own up, as you contemplate this howling, hungry crowd of the alpenstock contingent, that you bless my foresight which coerced you into posting on every stick and stone you possess, bar your trusty knapsack. If you don’t now, you will when we get to Visp and tranquilly make our way through a frantic mob all shouting for its luggage at once. Here we are at Sierre. Sure to be a wait. I wonder if there’s a buffet. Hallo! What now?”

For his companion, whose head was half through the window, suddenly withdrew it with a wild ejaculation, then rushed from the carriage like a lunatic, vouchsafing no word of explanation as to the phenomenon – or apology for having stamped Fordham’s pet corn as flat as though a steam roller had passed over it. The latter, scowling, looked cautiously forth, and then the disturbing element became apparent. There, on the platform, in a state of more than all his former exuberance, stood Philip, talking – with all his eyes – to Alma Wyatt, and with all his might to her uncle and aunt, who had just stepped out of the train to join her. And at the sight Fordham dropped back into his seat with a saturnine guffaw.

But the next words uttered by his volatile friend caused him to sit up and attend.

“This is a most unexpected pleasure, General,” Philip was saying. “Why I thought you were a fixture at the Grindelwald for the rest of your time.”

“Couldn’t stand it. Far too much bustle and noise. No. Some one told us of a place called Zinal, and we are going there now.”

“What an extraordinary coincidence!” cried Phil, delightedly. “The fact is we are bound for that very place.”

“The devil we are!” growled Fordham to himself at this astounding piece of intelligence. “I have hitherto been under the impression, friend Phil, that we were bound for Visp —en route for Zermatt.”

“But – where’s Mr Fordham? Is he with you?” went on Mrs Wyatt.

“Rather. He’s – er – just kicking together our traps. I’ll go and see after him. Fordham, old chap, come along,” he cried, bursting into the carriage again.

“Eh?” was the provokingly cool reply.

“Don’t you see?” went on Phil, hurriedly. “Now be a good old chap, and tumble to my scheme. Let’s go to Zinal instead.”

“I don’t care. How about our traps though? They’re posted to t’other place.”

“Hang that. We can send for ’em. And er – I say, Fordham, don’t let on we weren’t going there all along. I sort of gave them to understand we were. You know?”

“I do. I overheard you imperil your immortal soul just now, Philip Orlebar. And you want me to abet you in the utter loss thereof? It is a scandalous proposal, but – Here, hurry up if you’re going to get out. The train is beginning to move on again.”

“Delighted to meet you again, Fordham,” said the old General, shaking the latter heartily by the hand. “What are your plans? They tell us we ought to sleep here, in Sierre, to-night and go on early in the morning.”

“That’s what we are going to do.”

“A good idea. We might all go on together. They tell me there’s a capital hotel here. Which is it,” he went on, glancing at the caps of two rival commissionaires.

“The ‘Belle Vue.’ But it’s only a step. Hardly worth while getting into the omnibus.”

Chapter Fifteen

In the Val d’Anniviers

There are few more beautiful and romantic scenes than the lower end of the Val d’Anniviers as, having after a long and tedious ascent by very abrupt zig-zags reached Niouc, you leave the Rhone Valley with its broad, snake-like river and numberless watch-towers, its villages and whitewashed churches, and Sion with its cathedral and dominated by its castled rock in the distance – you leave all this behind and turn your face mountainwards.

Far below, glimpsed like a thread from the road, the churning waters of the Navigenze course through their rocky channel with a sullen roar, their hoarse raving, now loud, now deadened, as a bend of the steep mountain-side opens or shuts out the view beneath, and with it the sound. From the river the slopes shoot skyward in one grand sweep – abrupt, unbroken, well-nigh precipitous. Pine forests, their dark-green featheriness looking at that height like a different growth of grass upon the lighter hue of the pastures – huge rocks and boulders lying in heaped-up profusion even as when first hurled from the mountain-side above, seeming mere pebble heaps —châlets, too, in brown groups like toy chocolate houses or standing alone perched on some dizzy eyrie among their tiny patches of yellow cornland – all testify to the stupendous vastness of Nature’s scale. And at the head of the valley the forking cone of the Besso, and beyond it, rising from its amphitheatre of snow, the white crest of the Rothhorn soaring as it were to the very heavens in its far-away altitude. And the air! It is impossible to exaggerate its clear exhilaration. It is like drinking in the glow of sunshine even as golden wine – it is like bathing in the entrancing blue of the firmament above.