Fordham's Feud

“I don’t care to undertake anything of the kind, Phil, and so I tell you candidly,” answered Fordham.

“Why not, old chap?” was the doleful rejoinder.

“Because it is dead in the teeth of every ruling principle of my life to poke my nose into what doesn’t concern me. You may say I have already done so in advising you at all. So I have, and to that extent I plead guilty to having been inconsistent. But two wrongs don’t make a right, which we may take to mean that I don’t see why I should violate my principles still further. Were I to undertake what you want me to, old Glover would begin by asking what the devil business it was of mine, anyhow. And the worst of it is, he would be right – quite right.”

“Not of necessity,” rejoined Philip, eagerly. “Surely you have a right to act for a friend; and for all he knows you may be my legal adviser. I believe you must have been a lawyer once, you’re so devilish coldblooded and logical. Now, say you’ll do it.”

Fordham’s dark brows met, and he smoked silently for a few minutes. “Coldblooded – logical,” had said this careless youngster, who was merely paltering with the very outskirts of the grim web of circumstances which go to make up the tragedies – and travesties – of the serious side of life. “Coldblooded” was he now pronounced; yet could he remember when his blood ran hot, surging and seething like the boiling and bubbling pitch. Now it lay still within his veins, cool and acrid as vinegar.

“And if I don’t bring it off all right, or as you think all right, you’ll turn round and abuse me,” he said at last.

“You needn’t be in the least afraid of that,” answered Phil. “I’ll give you a free hand to act as you think right.”

“You will?”

“Of course.”

“Now you’re talking, as they say in the States. Well, Phil, I’ll do what I can for you. But mind, you must leave everything in my hands unreservedly. None of your insane scruples about ‘form,’ or anything of that kind. Do you agree to this?”

“I do, unreservedly.”

“Well, it’s dead contrary to my principles, as I told you before; but for this once I’ll throw judgment overboard, especially as it is to turn the flank of an infernal scheming, crafty female creature,” added this misogynist, an acrid ring coming into his tone. “And now, Phil, you had better not go back to the hotel. Start off from here and walk somewhere till lunch-time – if you could make it till dinner-time, all the better. By then I shall have knocked what change I can out of the exasperated but knowing British parent.”

Chapter Nineteen

Fighting the Devil with Fire

Philip was only too ready to follow his friend’s advice, and accordingly started away there and then – whither he did not care. His only thought was to get through the day somehow.

He had no wish to encounter old Glover again. In saying that he had had a considerable row with that worthy he had in no wise overstated matters. His marked abstention from the fair Edith’s society the previous evening had been quite sufficient, and the old man had got up with the fixed determination of having it out with the defaulting swain, and withal giving the latter a very large piece of his mind. This was all very well. But old Glover, not being a gentleman himself, did not in the very least understand how to deal with gentlemen, and his method of handling his grievance was so much that of the triumphant trickster who has bested his neighbour over a bargain that it revolted Philip, unconsciously strengthening a resolve which was forming in his mind to avoid an alliance with connections of this sort at all costs and hazards.

Now, as he made his way up the mountain path with the quick elastic step of perfect physical condition, Philip began to feel more sanguine. Fordham would get him out of the mess somehow. From where he was he could make out two figures strolling out from the hotel. He had no glasses with him, but felt sure they were Fordham and old Glover. They were at it already. Fordham was a wonderful fellow, and could do anything if he chose. It would not be surprising if he were to succeed in getting rid of the obnoxious Glovers altogether, and he – Philip – were to find the field clear again when he returned that evening. He felt quite hopeful.

Not for long, however. For he remembered there was another horn to the dilemma. He might free himself from the awkward position in which circumstances and his own thoughtlessness had combined to land him; but the new sweet relationship with Alma – ah! that was a thing of the past, and this he recognised with a keen unerring instinct hardly to be looked for in his easy-going nature. This he recognised with a despairing pang, and again his heart was heavy as lead within him.

The first person Fordham encountered on returning to the hotel was old Glover himself. The latter was seated on a pile of saw-planks stacked against a chalet, smoking the pipe of solitude and sweet and bitter fancies – probably the latter, if the expression of his countenance was aught to go by. So far from being prepared to resent his intervention, there was an eager look in the old man’s eyes as he perceived Fordham, which was by no means lost upon that astute reader of human nature.

“Er – er – Mr Fordham?” he called out, the other having passed him with a commonplace remark in re the weather.

Fordham turned with just a gleam of well-feigned astonishment in his face.

“Ar – Mr Fordham,” went on old Glover now more eagerly, “would you – ar – mind accompanying me for a short stroll? I should – ar – like to have a few words with you.”

“Certainly,” was the reply, and an additional touch was thrown into the well-feigned astonishment. “I am quite at your disposal. Doing nothing this morning. We might stroll along the level towards the head of the valley.”

The other assented with alacrity, and they started, Fordham keeping the conversation to strict commonplace until they had got clear of the clusters of châlets lining the path on either side. Then the valley opened out into wide, level meadows, and, crossing the log bridge over the swirling, rushing mountain torrent, Fordham led the way into one of these.

“Er – ar” – began old Glover, who had with difficulty restrained his eagerness up till now, “have you, may I ask, known young Orlebar for a considerable length of time?”

“A goodish while.”

“Do you – ar – considar – that you know him well – er – I may say intimately?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Er – now, Mr Fordham – you will – ar – excuse the question, I’m sure. Have you always found him – ar – straightforward?”

“Invariably. Too much so, in fact, for his own interests.”

“Ar – r!” The representative of British commerce drew himself up with a sidelong stare at his neighbour. This was a quality quite outside his comprehension. He began to suspect the other was making game of him. The expanse of waistcoat swelled, and the folds of a truly magnificent pomposity deepened around its wearer as he went on. “Ar – I am sorry I cannot agree with you, Mr – ar – Fordham – very sorry indeed. In his dealings with me – with me and mine – young Orlebar has, I regret to say, shown the – ar – very reverse of straightforwardness. Are you aware, sir, that he is engaged to my daughter?”

“I can’t say I am.”

The old man halted, turned round upon Fordham, and looked him full in the face as though he could hardly believe in his own sense of hearing.

“I – ar – beg your pardon, Mr – ar – Fordham. Did I – ar – understand you to say you were not aware of it?”

“Certainly, Mr Glover. I intended you to understand precisely that.”

Old Glover was nonplussed. He began to feel small and at a decided disadvantage, a most unwonted feeling with him. He stared wonderingly, inquiringly, distrustfully, into the dark, saturnine visage confronting him, but could read nothing there.

“It is an odd thing that Phil should not have informed me of the fact,” went on Fordham. “He is usually openness itself – indeed, too much so, as I said just now. Wears his heart on his sleeve, I always tell him. However, I shall have to congratulate him the next time I see him. By the way, I suppose his father is delighted? Philip is an only son, you know.”

Nothing could be more innocent than Fordham’s tone, nothing more unsuspecting than the look of half-amused wonder with which he received the intelligence. But his keen perception noted the disconcerted wave which passed over his interlocutor’s face at this allusion to Sir Francis Orlebar.

“Fathers have different ways of taking news of that kind,” he continued, innocently. “Now, partly as a student of character, partly by reason of some slight acquaintance with Sir Francis himself, I am curious to know how he took the news of his son’s engagement. How did he?”

The question was put with blunt and cruel directness. No slippery commercial instincts could avail here. It must be answered. Poor old Glover felt unprecedentedly small in the hands of his wily opponent. Those piercing dark eyes penetrated his poor coating of pomposity as a lance-head might penetrate the rind of a pumpkin.

“I am not aware how Sir Francis took the news,” he answered, stiffly.

“He was informed, of course?” pursued Fordham, remorselessly. “Really – ar – Mr Fordham. Your tone is – ar – very strange. I am at a loss to – ar – ”

“Oh, a thousand pardons. I merely asked the question because I thought I understood you to say that Philip was engaged to your daughter. If I was mistaken – But I quite understand. Of course the affair is no business of mine. At the same time allow me to remind you, Mr Glover, that the topic was broached by yourself, and, moreover, that you requested me to accompany you for a stroll with that object. It is naturally of far greater interest to you than to me, but if it is distasteful to you, we will drop it at once. So let us talk of something more congenial.”

His manner was the perfection of ingenuous indifference. Thorough cynic as he was, Fordham was enjoying the embarrassment of this inflated old schemer, who he well knew had not brought him thus far in order to “drop the subject” at any such early stage of the conversation. And the next words proved it.

“You were not mistaken, sir. He is engaged to my daughter. And – ar – when you come to look at the matter in its right light, Mr Fordham, you will, I am sure, agree with me that he has acted with very great want of straightforwardness.”

“Perhaps. But you know, Mr Glover, Philip is an only son. It does, I confess, appear strange to me that no reference should have been made to his father at the time he asked for your consent to the engagement. He did ask for it, I suppose?”

“Hang it, sir!” blared forth the other, goaded to fury by his own helpless flounderings, which only served to entangle him deeper and deeper within the net. “Hang it, sir! You know as well as I do that in these days young people don’t trouble their heads about their fathers in matters of this kind. They take it all into their own hands – arrange it between themselves.”

The expression of astonished disapproval upon Fordham’s face as he received this announcement would have delighted the heart of the most confirmed stickler for the old-fashioned proprieties.

“Do they? I was not aware of it,” he said, “Pardon my ignorance, but I still can’t help thinking that, whatever may be the general rule, for the only son of a man of Sir Francis Orlebar’s position to be allowed to drift into a tacit engagement without consulting either the young lady’s father or his own, is – pardon me again – somewhat of an odd proceeding.”

“What is a beggarly baronet?” cried old Glover, the coarse huckstering blood showing through the veneer of a would-be stately pomposity in his blind rage at finding himself outwitted at every point. “Pooh! I could buy up a dozen of them.”