Fordham's Feud

“Well, his bullet hit me, and I shall never walk straight again. It hit me – exactly where I wounded his father when Philip himself was hardly out of his cradle. But I bore him not the slightest grudge for that – nor do I. My vendetta was accomplished. It had to be done, and it was done. Yet several times I wavered. The chances were even that I would spare him, for I had grown fond of the boy. And, Miss Wyatt, yours is the hand that turned the scale against him.”

“Mine? What do you mean?”

“Yours. I mean just that. You were in such a hurry to send him to the right-about, to condemn him unheard, that you threw him back into my power again. My power against him could not have stood against yours – but you threw yours away. Afterwards it was too late.”

Oh the anguish of her heart as she listened! This man was reiterating word for word what Philip himself had said. Why had she been in such a hurry to condemn him unheard? Well, her whole life now was destined to be an expiation of that one act of hard and merciless pride. Fordham, who had been watching her keenly, with a feeling, half grim, half sorrowful at his heart, continued:

“That marriage of his was brought about solely by me. You may or may not have guessed that, yourself apart, there was every reason why that particular alliance could have been nothing but absolutely disastrous to him. Well, into the particulars I need not go – especially for your enlightenment. Suffice it to say that the measure was brought about for the purposes of my lifelong feud, of which it was the crowning act. And now his wife is dead.”

Every vestige of colour forsook Alma’s cheeks. What infinite possibilities might not the future have opened out?

“Dead?” she echoed. “How? When?”

“Yes – dead. She died suddenly —the day before poor Philip’s own end. But it was a day too late. Had it occurred a day earlier he would have heard of it, and would not have been in the Mont Blanc blow-up.”

“Was she – was she – fond of him?” gasped Alma.

“Passionately, I am told; and that was a factor in the carrying out of my vendetta.” And then, backing against the iron railing of the jetty to rest his lame leg, Fordham continued deliberately, “So you see, if he had landed here at Ouchy, when you did, instead of deciding to go on further, Philip would now be a free man as well as a living one. But that is the way of the world – our blessings, when they come to us, invariably do so a day too late.”

Fordham was right.