Fordham's Feud

But this manoeuvre, so far from helping him had precisely the opposite effect; for the old man, with effusive cordiality, at once buttonholed Fordham, leaving the girl free to take possession of Phil.

Well, what then? To all appearances the situation was the very reverse of an unenviable one – indeed, more than one man passing through the hall at the time looked upon the ill-starred Philip with eyes of downright envy as he grumbled to himself, “Is that conceited ass Orlebar going to monopolise every pretty girl who comes near the place?” Poor Phil! how willingly he would have yielded up this one to the attentions of each and all who might choose to offer them.

In one particular they were right. Edith Glover was a very pretty girl. She had large blue eyes, and profuse brown hair falling in a natural wavy fringe around her brows. She had a clear complexion, regular features, and a bright, laughing expression. She was of medium height, had a good figure, and dressed well. But with all these advantages she lacked one thing, in common with her father, and that was the hallmark of birth. There was no mistake about it. With all her engaging prettiness and tasteful attire there was this one thing painfully, obviously lacking. She would have looked far more in keeping – and therefore possibly more attractive – in the cap, apron, and print dress of a housemaid, and her speech would have agreed thereto.

It is an accepted saying that the letter “h” constitutes a crucial shibboleth to the individual of dubious birth and British nationality; but there is another letter to which this applies with almost equal force, and that is the letter “a”. Now the first letter of the alphabet as enunciated by Edith Glover sounded uncommonly like the ninth – to wit, the letter “i.”

“We will sit together at table, dear, of course,” she murmured, sweetly, with a killing glance into his eyes.

“Um – ah – er,” mumbled Philip. “Awful sorry, but afraid our end of the table’s full up – in fact, crowded.”

“Oh, but you can come down to ours.”

“Er – hardly. You see I’m with some people – very jolly party – came up here together. Can’t desert them, don’t you know.”

Edith Glover had a temper, but now she judiciously dropped her eyes so that he should not see the expression which had come into them.

“Oh, well,” she said, with a little pout, and heaving up an attempt at a sob for the occasion; “of course, if you prefer to be with other people, when I have made Pa bring me all this way because I couldn’t bear to be away from you any longer, I – I – ” And the heave became very much more pronounced.

“This is gaudy!” thought Philip to himself. “They have been pretty well giving me away for the benefit of the whole hotel already, and now she is going to scare up a scene pro bono publico. A scene, by Jove!” he reflected, in dismay. And then, at this additional indication of her want of breeding, he felt hardened. Fancy Alma, for instance, making such an exhibition of her feelings in public! and this idea brought with it a dire foreboding – what if he were to undergo some private but unmistakable indication of Alma’s feelings, as a sequel to this abominable contretemps!

Just then the dinner-bell rang.

“There goes the second bell, and I’m still in my nailed boots and climbing gear. We left at six this morning, you know, to go up to the Mountet Hut, and are only just back,” he added, with forced gaiety and unconcern. “I must really go and change. Sha’n’t be down till dinner is half over as it is.”

“Friends of yours, those new arrivals, aren’t they, Philip?” said the General, soon after the latter had taken his seat.

“They are some people I used to know down at Henley. They had a big riverside place there, and gave dances.”

“What a pretty girl!” said Mrs Wyatt, putting up her glasses to look over at the objects under discussion, who were seated at another table at the further end of the room. “Isn’t she, Mr Fordham?”

“I’m afraid I’m not a competent judge on that point,” was the reply.

“Mr Fordham won’t be betrayed into saying anything in favour of any of us,” said Alma, maliciously.

Poor Philip was in a state of mind which even his worst enemy might have commiserated. He had, with quick instinct, grasped the certainty that all was changed. There was a touch of frostiness in Alma’s manner that betokened this only too plainly. Her serenity was absolutely unruffled, she was as brightly conversational as ever; but there was just that in her manner towards himself, imperceptible however to others, which told him only too unmistakably that the barrier was reared between them. Was she not within earshot during the horrible obtrusive suddenness of this most inopportune meeting! Her woman’s wit had been prompt to put two and two together. He was done for.

Still he would not give up without a struggle. He would tell her all. She might see extenuating circumstances, and then – oh, he hardly dared think of a contingency so entrancing. Now was the time. He would dodge those hateful Glovers somehow, and get her to come out with him for that short twilight stroll which they two, in common with nearly everybody in the hotel, were in the habit of taking almost every night after table d’hôte.

“Which way shall we go to-night, Alma?” he said softly, as she rose from the table.

She paused and turned her glance upon him, her eyes full on his.

“Don’t you think you ought to go and do the civil to your – friends? I do,” she said. And without another word she left him – left him quickly and decisively, her very action, her manner of performing it, laying upon him a curt prohibition to follow.

Philip, however, did not obey her injunction as regarded the Glovers. Avoiding those ill-omened persons, he stole away into the darkness, choosing the most hilly, and therefore, to after-dinner promenaders, unfrequented way. There, in company with his pipe and his thoughts, he wandered, and the latter were very bitter. He saw through the situation only too clearly. There was no exaggerating the magnitude of the disaster. The Glovers were not the sort of people to hide their grievance under a bushel. Every one in the hotel would promptly be made free of it. Alma would never forgive him for putting upon her – however unintentionally – the most unpardonable slight of all – a public slight. No. It was the one unpardonable sin. She would never forgive it.

His estimate of the Glovers proved singularly accurate. Stung by his defection, his marked neglect of her – seeing, moreover, with woman’s instinct the real lay of the land – the fair Edith had by no means buried the secret of her relationship towards Philip within her own breast. Before bedtime it was whispered all over the hotel that the pretty girl who had arrived that evening was no other than his fiancée, whom he had heartlessly jilted in favour of Miss Wyatt.

No; assuredly this was not a thing that Alma was likely to forgive.

Chapter Eighteen

Two Heads Better Than One

“Fordham, old man, I’m in a devil of a mess,” announced Philip, dolefully, bursting into his friend’s room the following morning while the latter was shaving.

“I tell you what it is, Sir Philip Orlebar as is to be,” returned Fordham, who was in an abominably bad humour, pausing with his razor arrested. “You’ll be the death of me long before you arrive at that dignity unless you get out of a certain vile habit of crashing in upon a man during such critical moments as this. Do you think I’ve no nerves?”

“Well, I certainly did think so.”

“So it seems. But I have. So would you have if you had been expected to sleep beneath two parsons pounding about overhead in nailed boots half the night, and starting again at four o’clock this morning. The noisiest people in their rooms in these ramshackle hotels are invariably parsons and women; I imagine because the first are supposed to be professionally unselfish and the second traditionally so.”

“How do you know they were parsons?” said Philip. “Sent up the femme de chambre to ask them politely to take their boots off. She came back grinning, ‘Ce sont deux pasteurs anglais, M’sieu, qui viennent de passer le Trift-joch.’ Well, the avalanche that failed to engulph them was an avalanche in the wrong place, decidedly. I might just as well not have sent up; for though I’m not a sufficiently impartial witness to assert that they made more row thereafter, I’m fully prepared to swear that they didn’t make any less.”

“H’m! But I say, Fordham. I was saying, I’m in the very devil’s own mess.”

“That is not infrequently the case, the extent of my acquaintance with you warrants me in asserting. May I ask the nature of it this time?”

“I’ve had a devil of a row with old Glover.”

“The British merchant? Already? And the day so young! What, may I inquire, led to so decided a difference of opinion? Had you been discussing politics, or a rise in sugar?”

“Don’t chaff, Fordham. It’s no laughing matter to me. He says his daughter hasn’t had a wink of sleep all night.”

“No more has he, I should say, since he looses his combative instincts thus early. No more have I – thanks to the nailed boots of the gospel – grinders aforesaid. Well, the only thing I can suggest is that he should send down to Sierre and get her a sleeping draught.”

“He says she has lain awake all night, and is quite ill, and it’s entirely my doing.”

“Ah! I begin to see. Her room is underneath yours, I take it. Well, I always said you had rather a heavy hoof.”

“Fordham, do be serious. Don’t you see, man? You were there when they arrived yesterday – and er – er – he swears he’ll bring an action for breach of promise against me? Now do you see?”

“And he’s just the sort of animal who would do it too,” rejoined the other coolly, spreading a fresh lather upon his chin.

“Well, that’s not all – nor even the worst of it. I’m in a proper sort of hole, I can tell you,” said poor Phil, despairingly dropping into a chair and lighting up a Vevey cheroot.

“Wait a minute, Phil,” said Fordham, turning with his razor in mid-air. “There’s a time for all things and, it might be added, a place. Now I’ve a strong suspicion that the partition walls between these rooms are unconscionably thin, and that being so we had better postpone our council of war until we have got outside of our toast and coffee, and then adjourn with pipes to some sequestered spot where undisturbed we can concert plans for the discomfiture of the enemy. But, look here, you must pull yourself together. You are looking a cross between a scarecrow and a galvanised skull. Man alive, you’ll furnish sport to all the women in the house if they see you going about like this.”

“What a good chap you are, Fordham,” said poor Philip, gratefully. He was looking wretchedly pulled down and haggard, as the other had said, for he had had very little sleep. No one would have recognised the bright, handsome sunny face of yesterday. He looked a dozen years older. Even Alma, burning with outraged pride, must have pitied him.

But the Wyatts were not at table when the two came down, which was perhaps just as well. Old Glover was, but his daughter’s place was vacant. He frowned magnificently at Philip, and nodded in a stiff and patronising way to Fordham as they came in.

“Now Phil,” began Fordham, as having strolled up the meadow path behind the hotel, they sat down among a cluster of rocks and began to smoke, “Now Phil, we can talk to our heart’s content. What a chap you are. You were a semi-lunatic for the space of a week about one ‘skirt,’ and no sooner is that put right than another ‘skirt’ sails in unexpectedly and upsets the coach again.”

“Upsets it, indeed!” muttered poor Phil.

“As I understand the case,” went on Fordham, “and it’s far from an uncommon one, you neglected to throw away your dirty water before you got your clean. Consequently the former has overlapped the latter and damaged it effectually. Do you follow me?”