Fordham's Feud

“If you will allow me, sir, I shall be happy to exchange seats. It is perfectly immaterial to me which way I face.”

The trio looked astonished, but the relief on one countenance could hardly dissemble itself.

“Er – you are very kind,” stuttered the veteran. “But – er – really – I hardly like – er – unfair advantage to take of your good-nature.”

“It is kind of you, indeed,” struck in the old lady, somewhat hurriedly, as though she feared the offer would be allowed to drop. “But the fact is the General never can bear to sit with his back to the light. And, if it is really all the same to you – ”

“It is, I assure you. I am delighted to be of service. So I’ll mention the matter to the head waiter, and you may consider it settled.”

The girl was placed between her uncle and aunt. This change would result in Fordham being placed next to her. “What the deuce is the fellow driving at now?” thought Philip, in mingled wrath and alarm. Then it dawned upon him that his friend was driving at nothing less than the securing of that coveted position for him, Philip. “Good old Fordham! What a brick he is!” he mentally resolved, with a glow at his heart. “Best fellow that ever lived, by Jove?”

But the ice thus broken, our two friends and the new arrivals were soon chatting away as if they had known each other for at least some time.

“I noticed you on board the Mont Blanc this afternoon,” said Phil to the old General, with magnificent mendacity – the fact being that he was unaware of that veteran’s very existence. “But you didn’t land at Montreux, did you?”

“No. We went on to Territet. The ladies drove, with the luggage. I took the funicular railway up to Glion and walked the rest.”

“Don’t you think that Glion railway is very dangerous?” struck in Philip’s neighbour, seeing her opportunity.

“Oh, dear no. Perfectly safe, they tell me,” answered the old gentleman. “I daresay, though, it’s rather a trying affair for you ladies, finding yourselves let straight down the steep side of a mountain in a thing for all the world like a bucket in a well.”

“But don’t you think it may one of these days come to grief?” pursued the Infliction.

“But, my dear madam, just consider the number of times it has gone up and down in perfect safety.”

“Ah, but don’t you think it may break down just that one time you may happen to be in it?”

It was dreadful. The octopus-like tenacity of this bore was enough to paralyse the most mercurial. There fell a kind of languid despair upon the countenances of the group, and each looked helplessly at the other, as if to ascertain who was equal to the titanic task of warding off this terrible person. But, meeting the large eyes of his vis-à-vis, Phil at any rate found comfort. They would have something to laugh at between them, anyway.

“Here! I say – you! What are you doing?” called out Fordham, as at that moment a waiter came bustling up and began to shut the window.

“I shut de window, sir. Dere is one German gentleman at de oder end of de room say dat de window must be shut.”

“Oh, indeed! Well, then, give my compliments to the one German gentleman at the other end of the room and tell him the window won’t be shut. We’ll see him in Halifax first.”

The waiter paused a moment, then skipped away to deliver the message.

“Confound the fellow’s cheek!” cried Philip, indignantly. “Likely we are going to have our window bossed by some cadaverous brass-band player at the other end of the room.”

And one and all in the vicinity of the disputed window seconded, in varying terms, his protest.

Just then the waiter reappeared.

“Ver’ sorry, sir; but de German gentleman say it must be shut.”

“Does he?” said Fordham. “Well, look here. Tell him – this time without my compliments – that there are a few people at this end of the room whose convenience is of as much importance as his own, and that they are equally resolved that this window shall stand open. There – leave it alone. If you do shut it we shall open it again at once.”

The waiter paused again very irresolute, shrugged his shoulders, smirked, shrugged his shoulders again, then skipped away. Watching him, they had no difficulty in locating the offender – a lank-haired bespectacled Teuton occupying the remotest possible seat from the window in dispute. He, in wrath, vehemently evoked the proprietor, who, however, at that moment was not on hand.

“That Battle of the Windows is an oft-recurring phase of hotel life out here,” remarked Fordham. “No man is more absolutely unprejudiced against Continental nationalities than myself: yet it is a fact that whenever there is anything like a respectable sprinkling of Germans or Frenchmen in these hotels, they invariably insist upon having the room hermetically sealed all through dinner-time.”

“The deuce they do!” growled the old General. “But do you mean to tell me, sir, that a few of these unbarbered music-masters are going to cram their confounded love of fustiness down our throats?”

“Well, I’ve seen more than one lively episode over that window question,” replied Fordham. “And the fact of that one fellow trying it on just now is sufficient proof that the tradition exists – and exists pretty strongly too.”

“But don’t you think they may perhaps, after all, be more susceptible to cold than we English?” struck in the Infliction.

“Undoubtedly,” assented Fordham, blandly, preparing to beat a retreat from the table under cover of his reply, for the dessert had already gone round, and the room was emptying fast.

“By Jove, Fordham, but isn’t it a deuced rum thing they should have turned up here?” said Phil, as the two made their way to the promenoir for a cigar.

“She, I suppose you mean. No, it isn’t particularly rum. I knew they were bound here all along.”

“What – on board the steamer? No. How did you know?”

“Oh, while you were taking particular stock of the chick, I happened to overhear tags of the old birds’ conversation,” said Fordham, acidly, as if the subject bored him.

“Well, and why didn’t you tell a fellow?”

“Why didn’t I? Hang it all, it’s bad form to repeat what you hear by accident, you know. Besides, it was rather sport to watch your face under the pleasant little surprise.”

“Oh, that be hanged for a yarn?” cried Philip, impatiently. “But I say, who are they, I wonder? What’s their name?”

“Don’t know. Easily found out though.”

“But how?”

“Why, go and look at the arrival book in the bureau. I’ll wait for you here. I’m not interested in the matter.”

Away went Philip without a word. Turning the pages of the book, the last entry of all, freshly made, read:

“Major-General and Mrs Wyatt.”

“Miss Wyatt.”

Chapter Four

Alma

Everybody visiting at Les Avants for the first time while the narcissus is in full bloom, is apt to grow more than enthusiastic over that lovely and fragrant flower, even as in higher localities everybody is bound to gush inordinately over that other blossom which is like unto a gun-wad picked into fluff, and is neither lovely nor fragrant – to wit, the edelweiss. This being so, it is not surprising that Alma Wyatt should have seized the very first opportunity of escaping from the house with intent to cull as huge a bunch of the beautiful blossoms as she could possibly carry.

It was a radiant morning. The sky a deep and dazzling blue, such as is never to be seen over this uncertain and watery England of ours, was unflecked by a single cloud, and the air, mellow and balmy in the early forenoon, distilled a most exquisite perfume. To Alma it seemed as if all the glories of Paradise lay spread around her as she wandered on through the white and shining fields, drinking in the floods of fragrance diffused by the breath of a million snowy petals. Opposite, the great slopes were all aglow with green and gold, relieved by the sombre plumage of shaggy pines straggling up to the frowning scarp of the Dent de Jaman as though they aspired to scale that grim and forbidding wall, and had been forced to yield sullenly in the attempt. A mellow haze rested upon the soaring peaks beyond the fragment of blue lake just visible – blue as the sky above; and from his pent-up prison far down in the deep and wooded gorge the hoarse thunder of the mountain torrent was borne upward in subdued and unending cadence, to mingle with the hum of bees culling their sweet stores from the luscious cells of the narcissus blossoms. Small wonder that to this girl with the large, earnest eyes and poetic temperament – small wonder that to this girl, but two days out from damp and cockneyfied Surbiton, the majesty of the great mountains, the hoary cliffs still flaked with snow towering on high, the black and stately pines, the vernal pastures and the far-away echo of melodious cow-bells, the blue lake and the golden splendour of this radiant Swiss summer, should be as something more than a glimpse of the glories of Paradise.

She was glad that she had come out alone, glad that she had not met any of the other girls with whom she had made acquaintance the evening before. It was delicious to be free to drink in all the wealth of this Elysium without feeling constrained to talk, to reply to commonplaces which should let in the outside world, vulgar by comparison, upon the illimitable charm of this fairy scene. For this was her first experience of Switzerland – almost of the Continent – and it in nowise fell short of the ideal she had formed.

Alma Wyatt had been left fatherless at an early age. Better for her had she been orphaned altogether. Her childhood had been wholly uncared for, and, as far as her mother was concerned, unloved. For she had a younger sister upon whom that mother’s love was concentrated to doting point. All the bitterness of home life had fallen to Alma, all the sweets thereof to her sister. Their mother, a selfish, domineering woman, whose redeeming qualities were infinitesimal even to vanishing point, simply made the elder girl’s life wretched within that semi-detached villa at cockneyfied Surbiton, but for the younger the slender resources of a cramped income were strained to the uttermost. No wonder that the beautiful face was seldom free from a tinge of sadness; no wonder that her character had acquired a concentrativeness and reserve beyond her short twenty years of life.

We said that it would have been better for her were she an orphan indeed, and in saying this we are not exaggerating. Her uncle and aunt, under whose care we first make her acquaintance, looked upon her almost as their own child – would have been only too glad to have adopted her as such, for they were childless. But her mother would not hear of this. Alma was necessary as, figuratively speaking, a whipping-post for Constance, the younger girl. She could not part with her altogether – besides, she was useful in other ways. But the General and his wife managed to have her with them as frequently as they could, and the widow, who could not afford to quarrel with her brother-in-law, dared not oppose his wishes in the matter beyond a certain point. So here was Alma, with a prospect of two months to spend with her dearly-loved and indulgent uncle and aunt; two months of easy travel and varying sojourn among the fairest and most inspiring scenes that this world can show; two months of unconventional life as near to perfect freedom as the trammels of civilisation will allow; and above all, two months of emancipation from home worries and suburban semi-detached pettinesses, and the galling fetter of a show of “duty” towards those whom she could neither love nor honour.