Kitobni o'qish: «Fordham's Feud»

Chapter One
At First Sight

The steamer Mont Blanc was sweeping round the rather dangerous promontory just beyond La Tour de Peilz.

The fine vessel was a brave sight as she sped arrowlike over the turquoise breast of Lake Léman, her straight stem shearing up a great scintillating blade of water on either side, her powerful paddles lashing up a long line of creaming rollers, hissing and curving away in her wake. From stem to stern she was gay with bunting, for this was but her second trip after being laid up through the winter season, and there was a spick-and-span newness about everything, from the whiteness of her commodious hurricane deck to the dazzling glass and luxurious lounges of her airy and spacious saloon.

The day was perfect. Not a cloud was in the arching heavens, not a ripple on the blue surface of the lake, which mirrored forth the hoary crowns of the Savoy Alps as though they were cut in steel. The great forest-clad slopes were rich in their velvety verdure, rising from the water’s edge on the Savoy side; and a dazzling snow shroud still covered the Dent du Midi half-way down to its base. On the Swiss shore the straggling towns and multitudinous villas lying among the fresh greenery of vineyards looked mere pigmy toys beneath the slopes of the great mountains. And from the same bosky slopes came ever and anon the glad, joyous shout of the cuckoo. It was June – but only just June – and the air, balmy and life-giving, knew no suspicion of sultriness.

“I say, Phil, my boy, it’s about time to collect our traps. We go off at the next stage but one – Hallo! What has become of the fellow?” broke off the speaker, turning to discover that his friend had left his side. “Ah! there he is. At it again too. By George, the dog’s irreclaimable!”

The said “dog” had withdrawn some yards from the speaker, and was standing with his back against the bulwarks apparently lost in contemplation of the scenery of the Savoy side. But he had chosen a very odd place for his study of Nature, for between the latter and himself, in the direction of his gaze, were multifold heads – and hats, and between these heads – and hats – and the canvas awning was a space of barely half a yard. Yet he seemed to gaze with rapt attention at something – or somebody. “I say, Phil, who is she, this time?” The suddenness of the question, the dry chuckle, the faintly sneering intonation, produced much the same effect on the gazer as the lash upon the half-broken thoroughbred. He started.

“Confound it, Fordham, you needn’t make a fellow jump so,” he retorted petulantly, with a slight flush. “Can’t a fellow look around him, I should like to know?”

“Oh, certainly he can. This is a free country – in fact ‘Liberté et Patrie’ is the Cantonal motto. You may even see it displayed at this moment – in triplicate too – among the bunting adorning this gallant craft. Ah – I see the point of attraction now – and this time, ’pon my life, Phil, I think there’s some excuse – for you,” he added, sticking his glass into his eye and sending a critical look into an apparently unconscious group opposite.

Philip Orlebar laughed, his good-humour quite restored. Indeed, it was never for long that he and that enviable attribute parted company.

Although the regular tourist season had not yet set in, the steamer’s decks still contained a sprinkling of all those nationalities which you would be sure to find represented there at that time of the day and of the year. Keen-faced Americans “doing” Europe with infinite zest and a Gladstone bag apiece; stolid Germans in long black coats – a duplicate of the latter invariably slung through the strap of their double field-glasses; a stray Muscovite noble, of refined manner and slightly blasé aspect; a group of English youths equipped with knapsack and alpenstock, bound for some mountain expedition with their Swiss tutor; and last but not least – in their own estimation at any rate – great in the importance of their somewhat aggressive sense of nationality, a muster of Britons numerically equalling all the other races and kindreds put together. There was the inevitable clergyman with his inevitable wife – the latter austere of visage, as became a good Evangelical in a land where the shops were kept open on the Sabbath. There was the British matron clucking around with her posse of daughters – which guileless damsels were being convoyed about the Continent to a like end as that which caused their mammas and grandmammas to be shipped off on the voyage round the Cape in the days of good old John Company. There were the regulation old maids, of the blue-stocking persuasion, Byron in hand, gazing yearningly upon the distant but gradually nearing walls of classic Chillon. And here and there, elderly but erect, natty of attire, and countenance darkly sunburnt beneath the turbanlike puggaree enshrouding his summit, stalked unmistakably the half-pay Anglo-Indian.

Upon one face in the group Fordham’s eyeglass, following his companion’s gaze, critically if somewhat contemptuously, came to a standstill. It was in profile at that moment, but whether in profile or full it was a face bound to attract attention. The regular features and short upper lip fully satisfied every requirement exacted by the canons of beauty. The eyes, large and earnest, now blue, now grey, according to the light under which they shone, rather imparted the idea that their possessor was inclined to take life seriously, and there was character in the strongly marked arching brows. A sheen of dark-brown hair rippled back in waves beneath a broad-brimmed sailor hat to roll into a heavy knot over the back of the neck.

“Well, you cynical old humbug,” said Orlebar, emphasising his words with an almost imperceptible nudge of the elbow. “Isn’t that about good enough to meet with even your approval?”

“H’m! No doubt. But what I wanted to impress upon you was that in less than ten minutes we shall have to quit this ship. So that if you’ve any loose gear among your traps – and I believe you have – now is the time to make it fast.”

The bell hanging in the steamer’s bows now began to peal, to the accompaniment of the slackening beat of her paddles as, slowing down to half-speed, she glided majestically up to the Clarens landing-stage. Philip Orlebar, turning a deaf ear to his companion’s warning, had left that mentor’s side, and was strolling with finely assumed carelessness towards the gangway – for the object of his attention, and already more than incipient adoration, had risen and was moving in the same direction. If she was about to land there, as seemed probable, might he not, by standing nigh at hand, obtain some chance clue as to her identity and destination?

But they met face to face in the little crowd – met with a suddenness which brought a slightly disconcerted look to his somewhat speaking countenance. Her large eyes encountered his, however, fearlessly and with an air of surprised inquiry, for in his eagerness she might be excused for thinking him on the point of addressing her.

There were few passengers to be landed at Clarens, and she was not one of them; fewer still to embark, and in barely a couple of minutes the Mont Blanc was speeding on her way again.

“Heavens alive, man?” said Fordham, veiling the faint sneer with which he had been watching the movements of his impressionable friend. “If you don’t collect your traps the chances are all in favour of half of them being left on board. We shall be at Montreux in three minutes.”

Again the bell gave forth its warning note, again the beat of the paddles slackened, as the Mont Blanc– sweeping so close in shore that any one of the groups lounging about in the gardens of the villa-like pensions, sloping down to the water’s edge, could have chucked a walnut on to her decks as she sped by – rapidly neared the poplar-fringed landing-stage. Then a great splashing of paddle-wheels as the engines were reversed, a throwing of warps and a mighty bustling, and the vessel was stationary.

“Confound that fellow!” grumbled Fordham, as his friend did not appear. “Directly his eye lights upon a fresh ‘skirt’ his wits are off woolgathering on the spot.”

“Embarquement!” sung out the bronzed skipper from the bridge. “Allons, allons, messieurs et mesdames! Dépêchez vous, s’il vous plaît. Nous sommes déjà en retard!” he added, testily.

The last embarking passenger was on board, and while the gangway plank was in the act of withdrawal the defaulter emerged from below, laden with loose luggage. He was not slow about his movements then. A couple of leaps and he stood panting and flurried on the pier beside his companion, who had taken the precaution of landing everything that he could lay hands on.

“I s-say, old man,” stuttered Philip Orlebar, relinquishing to the care of mother earth – or rather the pavement of the landing-stage – the impedimenta which he had rescued at the cost of such flurry and risk. “W-w-what became of her? Did she come ashore?”

“What became of her? Why by this time she’s half-way to Territet, laughing fit to die over the ridiculous figure you cut; in short, the wholly astonishing attitudes you struck, hurtling through the air with a Gladstone under each arm and half a score of telescopes and bundles and flying straps dancing about you like a kettle of beans tied to a dog’s tail.”

“Did I look such a fool as that? Hang it, I suppose I must have looked a bit grotesque though, eh, Fordham?”

“Infernally so,” was the consoling reply. “In fact, I noticed her looking over the side, taking particular stock of you in your admirably acted rôle of escaped lunatic. Ah, bonjour, François! Ca va bien, hein!” broke off the speaker in response to the smiling commissionaire who stepped forward at that moment to take charge of their luggage.

“Tenez, François,” went on Fordham, at the conclusion of the string of hearty inquiries with which the man had greeted him, for they were old acquaintances. “Vous allez nous emballer ces colis là sur la poste des Avants. Faut qu’ils nous réjoignent demain. Sans faute, mon brave, n’est ce pas?”

“Mais oui, Monsieur Fordhamme. Restez seulment tranquille. Vous pouvez y compter. Ah, vous allez monter par le Chauderon? Et bien – belle promenade, messieurs, et je vous remercie bien. Au revoir, messieurs!”

“That seems a good sort of chap,” began Philip Orlebar, dubiously, as they turned away. “But, hang it all, is it safe – don’t cher know?”

“What? The luggage? Rather. You may trust François to see a matter of this kind through. He is a good chap – most of these fellows are. They have a name among the British for being keen on pourboires– in a word, grasping. But show me the true-born Briton of the same class who in a race for gratuities couldn’t give them long odds, and beat them at that. It’s not to be done, I tell you. And now, Phil, we’ve plenty of time. First a cool lager at yonder café, then for our stroll up the Chauderon. And that said stroll on an afternoon like this is enough to make a man feel the pleasure of living, if anything is.”

Chapter Two
Two Unlikes

In his eulogy of the beauties of that fairy glen, the Gorge du Chauderon, Fordham was not exaggerating one whit; and while our two friends are pursuing their way along its winding path, under the cool shelter of a wealth of luxuriant greenery meeting overhead, and the roar and rush of the mountain stream leaping through a succession of black, rock-girt caldrons in their ears, we will take the opportunity of improving their acquaintance.

Philip Orlebar was a tall, fair, well-built young fellow of six and twenty, who had devoted the four years which had elapsed since he left college to sowing his wild oats; though, in justice to him, we must say that his crop was of the most moderate dimensions, in spite of his opportunities, for a sunny lightheadedness of manner, combined with a more than ordinarily prepossessing exterior, rendered him popular with everybody. This especially held good as regarded the other sex, and was bad both for it and for himself; in fact, his susceptibility in that line was a source of chronic misgiving to his friends, who never knew into what sort of entanglement it might plunge him.

He was the only son of a baronet, who doted on him. But his expectations were not great, for Sir Francis Orlebar, who had been a widower since a year or two after Philip’s birth, had recently endowed himself with a second wife, and taking this with the fact that his income did not exceed by a shilling 2,000 pounds per annum, it follows that a superfluity of spare cash was never a distinguishing feature in the Orlebar household.

But if Sir Francis doted on his son, his new spouse did not. She grudged the allowance of five hundred a year which that fortunate youth enjoyed. She would have grudged it just as much if it had been fifty. Two thousand a year to keep up the title and the house upon was a mere pittance, declared Lady Orlebar the Second – who, by the way, had never possessed a shilling of her own – and a quarter of that was to be thrown away upon an idle young man, who squandered it all on his own selfish pleasures. But on this point Sir Francis was firm. He refused to reduce his son’s allowance by one single penny.

So Philip came and went as he chose, and took life easily. He had no expensive tastes, and with a sufficiency of cash, good looks, excellent spirits, and an unlimited capacity for enjoyment, little is it to be wondered at if he found the process of “seeing the world” a very pleasant experience indeed. And he did so find it.

Richard Fordham was the exact antipodes to his friend both in appearance and disposition, which may have accounted for the excellent relations existing between the two. Externally he was of medium height and well-proportioned. His dark, almost swarthy countenance was handsome too, for his features were good and regular. But there was something sinister in his expression, something ruthless in the glitter of his keen black eyes as he emitted one of his pungent sarcasms; and he was a man to whom sarcasm was as the very breath of life. One peculiarity about him was that, though possessed of an abnormal sense of humour, he never laughed. At most he would break into a short dry guffaw which had more of a sneer in it than of mirth; and although he could send a roomful of people into roars whenever he chose, not a muscle of his own saturnine countenance would relax.

He was a good many years older than his travelling companion – how many it would have puzzled most people to determine, for he was one of those men whose ages are hard to guess. And what constituted the bond of union between them was also a poser, unless their utter dissimilarity. Anyhow, light-hearted Phil was wont enthusiastically to declare that “Old Fordham was the best fellow in the world. Only wanted knowing a bit. Why, there never was a fellow easier to get on with, by Jove – once you knew him.”

It is only fair to say that in his own experience the encomium was wholly deserved. They had been travelling companions for some time now, and yet had never had a difference, which is something to be able to say. The dry, caustic sparkle of the older man’s conversation had a great charm for the younger. “He could take any amount of chaff from Fordham,” the latter was wont to declare; “for he was a chap whose head was screwed on the right way, and, moreover, thoroughly knew his way about,” a qualification sure to inspire respect in the young.

We have said that Philip Orlebar was more than popular with the other sex, and here again the dissimilarity between the friends held good. Women detested Fordham uniformly and instinctively. There is something in the theory of reciprocity; Fordham, for his part, cordially and unaffectedly detested women.

“By Jove!” cried Philip, when they had covered rather more than half their distance – “By Jove! but this place is well named – ‘Kettle,’ isn’t it, eh, Fordham?”

“No, ‘Caldron,’ to be accurate.”

“Well, it’s pretty steamy just here. Let’s call a halt under that big rock and poke a smipe. What d’you say?”

“Just as you like,” was the tranquil reply. They had reached that part of the gorge where two great perpendicular cliffs, their black surface thickly grown with ferns and trailers, form a huge natural portal, narrowing the way to the road itself and the brawling, leaping mountain torrent which skirts it. A delightfully cool resting-place – almost too cool – for the whirl of the spray reached them even there. Soon the blue curl from a brace of pipes mingled fragrantly with the scent of pine resin and damp fern.

Hardly were they seated than a sound of approaching voices was heard, and two girls appeared in sight round the bend in the path. One carried a basket filled with wild flowers, eke a large handful of the same; the other a bag of sketching materials. Both shot a rapid glance at the two smokers as they walked swiftly by.

“Rather good-looking, eh?” said Phil, as soon as they were out of sight. “English, of course?”

“No mistake. The whole lake-side from Lausanne eastwards simply grows Britishers. I predict we shall soon be for annexing it.”

“They’re bound in the same direction as ourselves,” went on Philip. “At least there’s no other place than Les Avants up this way, is there?”

The other’s mouth drew down at the corners in a faint sneer.

“Don’t be alarmed, Phil. They’re bound there all right – in fact they’re quartered there. They’ve just been down into the gorge; one to pick a lot of daisies and buttercups, over which she and a pet parson will enjoy a not altogether scientific tête-à-tête this evening – the other to execute a hideous libel on the existing scenery.”

“Now how the deuce do you know all this, Fordham?”

“Oh, I know all their little ways. I know something more, viz, that in forty-eight hours’ time you will be the chosen and privileged bearer of the truss of hay and the daubing bag – I mean the wild flowers and the sketching gear.”

“Oh, you don’t know everything, old chap,” cried Philip, with a laugh.

“Don’t I? By the bye, if you’re not eager to catch a chill, we’d better start again. I know this much: there will be a flutter of rejoicing in the dovecote when those two arrive, brimful of the intelligence that a couple of new men – one, rather, for I don’t count – are ascending to Les Avants, for at this time of year our estimable sex is almost exclusively represented in these hotels by invalids, parsons, or half-pay veterans. With some of whom, by the way, I shall have to fraternise, unless I want to do my expeditions alone, for you will be in such demand as universal porter in the matter of shawls and wraps and lunch-baskets, up the Rochers de Naye or the Dent de Jaman, or any other point of altitude to which the ambition of the enterprising fair may aspire, that we had better take a formal and affecting farewell of each other as soon as we arrive at the door.”

“Shut up, you old fraud,” was the jolly retort. “At present all my aspirations are of the earth earthy, for they are of the cellar. I hope they keep a good brew up there, for I feel like breeding a drought in the hotel the moment we arrive.”

“Well, the brew’s first-rate, and now the sooner we get over this bit of heavy collar-work the sooner we shall reach it.”

“Right. Excelsior’s the word,” assented Phil, with a glance at the steep and rugged path zigzagging above at a frightfully laborious angle.

There may be more attractive spots than Les Avants as you arrive there within an hour or two of sunset in the early summer, but there cannot be many. The golden rays of the sinking sun light up the frowning Rochers de Naye and the mighty precipice which constitutes the face of the Dent de Jaman with a fiery glow. The quiet reposeful aspect of the hollow, which the aforesaid sunbeams have now abandoned, lying in its amphitheatre of bold sweeping slopes crowned with black pine forests, is soothing, tranquillising of effect; and the handsome, plentifully gabled hotel, rearing up among a sprinkling of modest chalets, is suggestive of comfort and abundance. But what is this milk-white carpet spread in snowy sheen over the meadows, covering the green of the adjoining slopes to a considerable height? Is it snow? Not it. That white and dazzling expanse consists of nothing less than a mass of the most magnificent narcissus blossoms, growing in serried profusion, distilling in heavy fumes a fragrance of paradise upon the balmy evening air. Such was the aspect of Les Avants as our two friends arrived there on that evening in early June.

“By Jove, Fordham, but this is a sweet place!” cried Philip Orlebar, moved to real earnestness as they emerged from the wooded path suddenly upon the beautiful scene. “A perfect Eden!”

“Plenty of Eves, anyhow?” was the characteristic and laconic retort.

But Philip had already noted a flutter of light dresses, though still some little distance off. Tennis racket in hand, a number of girls in groups of twos and threes, here and there a male form interspersed, were wending along a gravel path leading from the tennis-court towards the hotel, for the first dinner-bell was just ringing. The sight called up a sneer to Fordham’s lip.

“Look at that, Phil, and note the vagaries of the British idiot abroad. Fancy coming to the Swiss mountains to play lawn tennis.”

“Well, old man, and if they like it?”

“Ah, yes, quite so; I forgot!” was the significant answer.