Fordham's Feud

“Is it settled that the matter is to proceed, then?” said M. de Verrieux when this was ended. Both principals nodded. “Enfin – à l’affaire,” he went on.

On one side of the glade was a great dead tree trunk blazed by lightning. The seconds had decided to place their men twenty-five paces apart in such wise that the white trunk should be equidistant from either. The weapons were Colt’s revolvers, but each shot was to be fired by word of command.

The gloom of the morning deepened. A spot or two of rain fell upon the weapons as they were handed to the principals, and the wind moaned dismally among the tree-tops. They stood up, facing each other, those two who had been friends. They stood up, silent, motionless as that death which they were about to deal to each other. Again through the murky stillness there tolled forth from the monastery tower that distant dirge-bell.

“Attention, messieurs!” cried M. de Verrieux. “Un – deux – Trois!”

Both pistols cracked simultaneously. The hum of Philip’s ball passed just over his adversary’s head. Fordham, however, without moving his elbow from his side, had pointed his weapon almost vertically in the air, and had pressed the trigger. He stood cool, impassive, and motionless.

“The affair has proceeded with the greatest honour to both sides,” declared M. de Verrieux. “We may now, I presume, consider it closed?”

“I trust so,” said the Major, looking at Philip, whom he was heartily glad to get so well out of it. But the latter, to his dismay, replied shortly —

“By no means. I don’t consider it has begun.”

The seconds looked at each other, then at their principals. M. de Verrieux shrugged his shoulders.

“Enfin! Puisque Monsieur le désire,” he said.

“Take care he isn’t committing suicide,” said Fordham, with a queer flash in his eyes, and his brows met in that extraordinarily forbidding frown of his. But the remark was met by a somewhat sharp protest on the part of Major Fox, who declared that it was contrary to all precedent for one principal even to address the other under the circumstances, let alone utter what sounded uncommonly like a taunt. Fordham recognised frankly this infringement of etiquette, and apologised elaborately.

Again the two stood facing each other.

Never to his dying day would Philip forget that moment, and the still, sepulchral silence of the great forest, the faint earthy smell of moist vegetation, the sighing of the wind in the tree-tops, the mournful toll of the far-away dirge-bell. All the events of his later life swept through his mind in a flash – Alma Wyatt – the sweet, sunlit mountain slopes – the blue lake, and the shining glacier – then that other in her dark beauty – the dance and sparkle of the sea, and the expanse of yellow sand on the low-lying Welsh coast – then the frightful disclosure – his own horror – his father’s agony – the parting – Mrs Daventer’s death. All passed before him in vivid retrospect, as he stood there to receive the fire of the man whom up to a week ago he had reckoned his dearest friend.

The word was given. Again both pistols cracked together. Fordham only moving half his arm, had exactly repeated his former manoeuvre. He had fired straight up at the sky. At the same time he was seen ever so slightly to wince.

“Are you touched?” said the Frenchman, eagerly. “No? Ha – I thought – ”

“It doesn’t seem much like it,” answered Fordham, slowly.

Then the seconds had their innings. On one point they were thoroughly agreed. The affair could be allowed to go no further. It had been conducted in a manner which was to the last degree creditable to both gentlemen concerned, pronounced M. de Verrieux animatedly, and he trusted they would both do each other the honour of shaking hands with each other. After which pleasing ceremony he, the speaker, would be delighted if they and the whole party would do him the honour of breakfasting with him, and doing justice to the best wines the cellar of the country inn could supply. This the Major emphatically seconded, though he knew too well there would be no handshaking or any such friendly parting between his two fellow-countrymen.

Philip, for his part, said nothing. The decision of the seconds was final. Nor could he, whatever his wrongs, bring himself to go on firing at a man who was determined not to return his fire. Even then – so desperately contradictory is human nature – even then, without in anywise detracting from his own wretchedness and desperation, he was conscious of a weakness towards his old friend, a strange sense of relenting. At that moment he rejoiced that he had not the other’s death upon his hands.

“Well, since there is to be no more shooting,” said Fordham, at length, speaking in an easy, careless tone, “I may as well convince you that I was not bragging just now. Look at that knot in the blazed tree – there about four feet from the ground.”

He raised his pistol, and with scarcely a moment’s aim fired. The knot, a flat one, and about the size of a crown piece, was seen to splinter. The ball had made a plumb centre.

“Look again,” he went on, and again his pistol cracked. The knot split into a gaping gash and the splinters flew from it. He had planted his second bullet right upon the first one. Ejaculations broke from the spectators in their respective tongues.

“Well, Mr Fordham,” said the Major, “I think I may say, on behalf of my principal and myself, that we appreciate your courtesy to the full. M. de Verrieux, if you will do me the pleasure of meeting me this evening or to-morrow morning at St. Jean-Pied-de-Port as arranged, we will draw up the usual procés-verbal. Gentlemen, I have the honour to salute you, and to wish you good morning.”

Then, amid much elaborate hat-lifting, Major Fox and his principal walked away, while M. de Verrieux and the doctor lit their cigars and proceeded to put away the pistols. Suddenly a cry escaped the medico. It was echoed by the other. For Fordham was lying on the ground as pale as death. He was in a dead faint.

“And he said he wasn’t hit?” ejaculated the doctor. “I could have sworn I saw him wince. Yes! look there,” pointing to a hole in the fallen man’s trousers just above the left knee. “There it is. He held his hand over it all the time, do you see, very cleverly too. Too proud to give way before the young one. Well, well; he is a man. But it is wonderful – wonderful.”

All this while the speaker had been ripping up the leg of the prostrate man’s trousers.

“Here it is,” he went on triumphantly. “Ah, ça! But there will be no probing required. The ball has gone clean through.”

“Is the wound a dangerous one?” said the other. “It doesn’t seem to bleed much.”

“C’est selon!” replied the doctor, with a shrug of the shoulders. “The haemorrhage is, as you say, slight; but the tendon is badly torn – and —he will carry the mark of this day with him to his grave. He will walk with a limp for the remainder of his life.”

And Fordham waking up just then to consciousness under the influence of the cordial which his second was administering, heard the words, and smiled grimly to himself.

“Poetic justice, with a vengeance!” he thought.

Chapter Thirty Four

At the End of his Life

Midway between Nyon and Rolle, the steamer Mont Blanc was shearing her arrowy course through the blue waters of Lake Léman, heading for the latter place.

Her decks were covered with passengers, mostly of French nationality – light-hearted, chattering, cheerful souls, talking volubly and all at once – talking the harder apparently in inverse ratio to the interest of the topic under consideration.

Right in the stern of the boat, beneath the upper deck, his back against the end of the saloon, sat a solitary Englishman. He was smoking a cigar and pretending to read, but it was patent to the most casual observer that the book before him occupied very little of his attention indeed, for he was gazing out upon the sapphire surface of the lake and its green and gold setting of engirdling mountains, with an expression of settled sadness upon his extremely attractive countenance, which had no business to be seen upon the face of one so young.

Suddenly there was a rush of feet, and a hat came skimming along the lower deck, a broad-brimmed straw hat – a feminine hat. Springing from his seat he caught it, just in time to save it from going overboard, and turned to hand it to its pursuer and owner.

“Thanks so much,” said a sweet voice. Then the speaker stopped short in amazement and changed colour. “Why, it’s Mr Orlebar – pardon me – Sir Philip, I should have said.”

“It used to be ‘Philip’ at one time, Alma,” was the reply, with the ghost of a sad smile. And then these two stood looking into each other’s eyes in silence. Neither seemed able to say a word.

It was as she had implied. Sir Francis Orlebar was no more. Never recovering from the prostration into which he had been thrown by Fordham’s revelation, he had sunk into a decline and had succumbed three months later, tended by his son devotedly to the last. Then Philip, reserving enough for his modest wants, had apportioned the remainder between his stepmother and that other who had a legal claim upon him. This done, he had left Claxby Court and had started upon his travels again.

She who was his wife, in the eye of the law, he had never set eyes on since that fateful night. He had tried by every means in his power to find some channel through which the mystery might be cleared up, but in vain. The only person who could have done so was dead, and her last words, her last look, her last behaviour, conclusively confirmed him in his very darkest conjectures. The bare recollection of the subject was unutterably nauseous and repulsive to him now.

Old Glover had in due course served him with a writ in the threatened breach of promise action. Nothing could be more repellent than to be dragged forth into notoriety thus, yet what could he do? He was too poor to offer any compromise, even if it were not the persistently rancorous intention of that estimable British merchant to exact his pound of flesh in spite of everything, and that pound of flesh the dragging of him – Philip – into notoriety and a court of law. But at the last moment chance had befriended him. For the beauteous Edith had succumbed to the prismatic attractions of a ritualistic parson of fine presence and ample means, and this cleric had, under pain of cancelling his own engagement, laid a stern embargo on his future bride making an exhibition of herself in a public court. So, whereas it is manifestly impossible to bring an action for breach of promise failing the consent of the interesting plaintiff, old Glover was obliged to deny himself the gratification of his rancour, and to console himself characteristically with the sound commercial reflection that, after all, they had got much the better bargain of the two. For the parson was well off, and would very likely be a bishop one day, or, at any rate an archdeacon, whereas Philip Orlebar, though now a baronet, would always have been as poor as Job, and would never have done any good for himself or anybody else. In which conjecture he was probably right.

“It’s an odd thing I should not have seen you all this time,” said Philip at last, realising that it was necessary to say something. “Yet you must have come on board at Geneva.”

“No – at Nyon.”

“At Nyon! That would account for it. I have been sitting here almost ever since we left Geneva, and, of course, I can’t see the gangway from here, or who lands, or who embarks. Have you been staying there?”

“Only a few days. The people I am with were there to see some friends of theirs. But – between ourselves – it was rather slow.”

“You are not with the General then?”

“Oh no! Don’t I wish I was!” she added, with an eager lowering of her voice. “But there, I ought not to say that. These are a very kind sort of people, but a trifle ‘heavy.’ I am only travelling with them, not their guest.”

Now what the deuce did Philip care about the estimability or other idiosyncrasies of the people she was travelling with? He saw only her – her as he remembered her in times past – her as he had seen her many a time since, waking and in his dreams – her as he had seen her the first time of all, here on the deck of this very ship. He detected the sympathetic softening of the great grey eyes, the saddened inflection of that voice, the first note of which had thrilled his whole being, and his heart tightened. For, after all, he was young, and, in spite of the blow which had fallen upon his life, all possibilities for him were not dead.

And she? Knowing something of his history since they parted – though not the exact nature of the grim skeleton so carefully kept locked up – knowing something of his history, we say, for the world is small and tongues are long, she felt her heart go out to him as it had never done before, as she never thought possible that it could have done. The sunny laugh had gone out of his face for ever; leaving an expression, a stamp of hopelessness, which to her was infinitely pathetic. It was all that she could do to keep down the rush of tears which welled to her eyes as they looked up into his sad ones. What, we say, did he, did either of them, care about the heaviness or otherwise of the people she was travelling with? Yet of such trivialities will the lips force themselves to chatter while the heart is bursting.

“Where and how is the dear old General now?” he went on. “And your aunt?”