“Upon my word, Mr – ar – Fordham,” replied the other, again bristling up with pomposity, “you seem to treat this matter with strange – ar – levity. Whatever – ar —you may see fit to call it, I look upon this – ar – outrageous trifling with my daughter’s feelings as the act of an unprincipled scoundrel. Yes, sir, an unprincipled scoundrel,” he added, rolling the words, in his delight at having hit upon a good, sounding, double-barrelled epithet. “But what do you want him to do?”
“Well, really – ar – Mr Fordham, that is a strange question to come from a man of your – ar – knowledge of the world. What is the usual – ar – outcome of a young man’s winning a girl’s affection?”
“I am bound in candour to reply that its nature varies. Further it might be as well to approach this matter with caution and common sense. You are doubtless aware that Sir Francis Orlebar is not a rich man – for a man in his position a decidedly poor one, and Philip has not a shilling in the world beyond what his father allows him? Now if his father should disapprove of this – er – engagement – as not having been consulted it is extremely likely he will – he may cut off that allowance summarily.”
“In that case I should be prepared to allow the people – ar – something to go on with.”
“What do you mean precisely by ‘something to go on with,’ Mr Glover?”
“Well – really now – ar – Mr Fordham. You must excuse my saying so, but you are – ar – I mean this is – ”
“Taking a great liberty? I quite understand,” was the perfectly unruffled rejoinder. “But then you must remember this, Mr Glover. You broached the subject. You called me into consultation, so to say. You asked me to use my influence with Philip in this matter. I need hardly tell you I have no interest in it one way or the other. We will drop the subject altogether if you like.”
“I think you mistake me,” said the other, hurriedly. “I did not – ar – say the words you were good enough to put into my mouth.”
“Well, then, you must allow me, Mr Glover, to keep an eye upon my friend’s interests. He is very young, remember, a mere thoughtless boy. Now we, as men of the world, are bound to look at everything from a practical point of view. Let us talk plainly then. How much are you prepared to settle in the event of Philip – er – fulfilling the engagement into which you say he has entered?”
“I should be, as I said before, prepared to make them a fairly liberal allowance,” he jerked forth, with the air of a man who has just had a tooth drawn and has found the process less painful than he had expected.
But Fordham shook his head.
“The ‘allowance’ system is an unsatisfactory one,” he said. “I have known people let into queer quandaries by trusting to it. Allowances may be cut off at the mere caprice of the allower. Now, don’t be offended,” he added, with the shadow of a smile. “We agreed to speak plainly and as men of the world. No – the thing must be a settlement. Now what are you prepared to settle?”
“I think I may say this. I will settle four hundred a year upon them now. At my death of course – Why what is the matter? Is that not enough?”
The last in an astonished and indignant tone. For an almost derisive shake of the head on the part of the other had cut short his words.
“Most certainly not. It is, in fact, ridiculous.”
“Many a young couple has begun life on less.”
“And many a man has ruined his life by beginning on far more. No. I think my young friend will rate himself at a far higher value than that. Why there are shoals of women with six times that income who would jump at him.”
“And are truth and honour to go for nothing?” spluttered old Glover, swelling himself out with virtuous wrath until the expanse of the white waistcoat was so tight that you could hear the seams crack. “Truth and honour and good faith – and a sweet girl’s broken heart?” he repeated, working up a highly effective sniffle.
“My dear sir, you can’t run a household, and a milliner, and a dressmaker, and a butcher and baker, and a pocket doctor, and a lawyer – in fact, an unlimited liability, upon truth and honour; nor can you pay the Queen’s taxes with a sweet girl’s mended heart. Now, can you?”
“You have a most – ar – peculiar way of putting things, I must say, Mr Fordham. Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do – I’ll make it five hundred. There!”
“You might just as well make it five hundred pence, Mr Glover. I can’t advise my friend to throw himself away.”
“I consider five hundred a year ample,” said old Glover, magisterially inserting his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat. “If he wants more let him work for it. Let him go into some business.”
“Why should he? He is young, and has the world at his feet. Why should he grind away at some dingy and uncongenial money-grubbing mill just for the fun of supporting your, or any other man’s, daughter. It isn’t good enough, and I tell you so candidly. And remember this: he has everything to lose and nothing to gain by the transaction, and with yourselves it is the other way about.”
“And what amount would meet your friend’s views, Mr Fordham?” was the rejoinder, quick spoken, and with cutting irony.
“He will have a position and title to keep up by and by,” answered Fordham, tranquilly. “I should say, a capital sum representing three thousand a year – not one farthing less.”
Old Glover sprang to his feet with a snort and an activity one would hardly have credited him with. He stared wildly at Fordham, gasped for breath and snorted again. Then he spluttered forth.
“I never heard anything so monstrous – such an outrageous piece of impertinence in my life.”
“But, my dear sir, surely I’ve put the case plain enough – ”
“Don’t talk to me any more about it, sir,” interrupted the other furiously, “I won’t hear of such a preposterous suggestion.”
“Do I understand that you refuse the condition, then?”
“Most emphatically you may understand that very thing. Three thousand a year – ha – ha! He must be mad! But I tell you what it is, sir,” he blared forth, stung by Fordham’s cool and indifferent demeanour. “That young scoundrel – yes – that young scoundrel, I say,” with a stamp of the foot, “shall be made to fulfil his engagement – shall be made to, I say.”
“Shall he? Excuse my reminding you of the old proverb concerning the horse which may be taken to the water.”
“Sha’n’t he! I’ll sue him for breach of promise. I’ll claim such swinging damages as never were asked for in a court of law yet. I’ll ruin him – yes, I’ll ruin him, by God!”
“You may obtain a few hundreds at the outside. But you said something just now about your daughter’s heart being broken. Do you propose to heal that fractured organ by exposing the young lady to the jeers of a not over particular crowd in a public court, and making her the laughing stock of every newspaper reader in the kingdom for the sake of a few hundred pounds?”
“That’s my business, sir – that’s my business,” was the savage reply.
“Even then you will have to prove any specific promise at all. Under the circumstances this will be a matter of some difficulty, I imagine. Why not think over the terms I have stated?”
“Never, sir I never! Such unheard-of impudence?” And he fairly danced at the idea.
“Well, then, I’ve no more to say. In my opinion a man is a fool who ties himself to any woman. A lion might as well make himself the slave of a cat. But when he is expected to embrace the exhilarating career of a mill-horse in order that the dear creature may own a conveniently supporting slave – if he does so, I say, he deserves to be hung on sight. I shall certainly advise Phil Orlebar not to marry anybody on a cent less than three thousand a year, and I believe he will take my advice.”
“Very well, sir. We shall see – we shall see. And, by the way, Mr – ar – Fordham” – and the trade mind of the successful huckster again rose to the surface – “you are really a most clever advocate, and I must – ar – congratulate you. But ‘nothing for nothing,’ you know. Now how much of this fabulous income was to have found its way into your pocket if obtained? Commission, you understand.”
There was such a lurid look in Fordham’s dark face as he quickly rose to his feet, that even old Glover, dancing with rage, quailed and stepped back a pace or two.
“I must congratulate you, Mr Glover, on your good fortune in being an old man at this moment. However,” and his tone resumed its normal sarcastic ring. “However, there are no witnesses present so we may as well speak our minds to each other. It is abundantly obvious that you have laid yourselves out to hook young Philip Orlebar, and have done it deucedly clumsily too – so clumsily, that luckily for himself the bird has seen the limed twig in time. Anyhow, to rush him as you have done, and bestow the paternal blessing before it was asked for – in public too – is just the way to choke off irrevocably a youngster of his stamp. I don’t know that there’s anything more to be said, except this. Bring your action by all means, but you will find it as hard a matter to prove a specific promise, as you will to persuade any jury that it is not a clear case of trying to entrap the son of a man of position and superior birth.”
To convey any idea of old Glover’s state as he listened to this harangue, would be impossible. At first he was speechless, and Fordham began to think he was on the verge of apoplexy. Eventually he found his tongue, and the great cliff in the background fairly echoed to the sound of a volley of strange and gurgling oaths. Then the full torrent of his wrath burst forth. He would sue the delinquent Phil – would ruin him – would sue them both – for conspiracy, libel – what not. There was nothing, in fact, that he would not do – shooting – horse-whipping – every form of violence was enumerated. He should rue the day – every one concerned should rue the day, etc, etc.
But Fordham, lighting a fresh pipe, leaned comfortably back against the rock, and waited with perfect unconcern until this human boiler should have blown off all its steam – or burst – it didn’t matter which.
Chapter Twenty
On The Summit
A narrow apex of solid rock, surrounded by a little cairn of stones and four human figures. And around – what a panorama! Everywhere rolling billowy summits, snowy and hump-like, or rearing up sharp and defined in craggy pinnacles – everywhere they rise – north, south, east, or west, the eye wanders confused over a vast sea of them. Below, a mighty array of snowfields, great ice rivers flowing silently down between their rock-bound walls – divided, separated from each other by stupendous ramparts of cliff and snow. Further down still – far, far beneath the region of ice and snow – a confused labyrinth of tortuous valleys, green, and sprinkled here and there with clusters of brown specks, haply representing a town or village, the faintly glittering star above which resolves itself under the lens of the telescope into the metal-sheathed cupola of a church tower. The very immensity of the panorama is overwhelming in its bewildering vastness. The eye, the senses, are burdened with it – can hardly take it in. The whole world seems to lie spread out around and beneath, for this apex of rock soaring up in mid-air seems in very truth to tower above the rest of the world. It is the summit of the Rothhorn.
The two guides – good representatives of their class – with their thoughtful bronzed faces and horny hands, their quasi-uniform attire of grey frieze, and black-cock feather adorned hat – are busily engaged in examining the contents of a bottle, which they have extracted from its snug hiding-place in the heart of the cairn aforesaid – not in the hope of finding it to contain liquid refreshment, let us hasten to explain – nor are the contents precisely of a solid nature. They are calculated to appeal to the mind rather than the body, for they happen to consist, for the most part, of an assortment of visiting cards, bearing the names of such climbers as have hitherto gained this altitude, together with those of their guides, and any other remarks their owners may have seen fit to pencil thereon by way of record.
“Well, Phil? Think my prescription was good enough, eh?” says Fordham, cheerfully. “Worth while undergoing something to get such a view as this?”
But there is no cheerfulness about Philip Orlebar to-day, nor does he seem to take any interest in the view. Sprawling on his back, on the hard rock, with his hands behind his head, he is staring up at the sky – a phase of observation equally well undertaken at the bottom of a valley, thinks his companion. He merely growls in reply, and relapses into his abstraction.
It is the second day after the somewhat stormily concluding interview between Fordham and old Glover, but poor Philip’s prospects had in no wise been improved thereby – indeed, he could not but realise that they were hopelessly ruined. The only result achieved was that of, so to say, drawing the teeth of the aggrieved but scheming parent. That crafty plutocrat had been left, in a manner of speaking, on his back. He had been met with a crisp, healthy decisiveness, which had left nothing to be inferred, whereas had Philip himself constituted the other party to the interview, we fear that a tendency to temporise might have wedged him into the morass firmer and deeper than ever. So far Fordham had rendered him yeoman’s service.
But while released from one horn of the dilemma there was another upon which he remained firmly impaled, and whence it was beyond the power of any friend to extricate him, and that was a woman’s outraged pride. Alma Wyatt’s self-contained nature was a fearfully proud one, and it had been wounded to the quick. She, to allow herself to be deceived, fooled, made a plaything of, a mere pastime to add zest to a summer holiday – while all the time this man who had been whispering undying love to her was plighted to some one else! Her face fairly blanched with fierce wrath at the thought. And the insult, the publicity of the insult which he had put upon her – for his attentions were, of course, thoroughly understood by those around! No, she would never forgive him; never as long as he lived – or even on his deathbed!
Even then the natural fairness of her mind moved her to do him what justice she could. Her own heart told her that in his love for herself there was, at any rate, no make-believe. That, at any rate, was genuine. So much the worse. It argued weakness in her eyes, an unpardonable fault in a man. And, again – that he had dared to offer her a mere place in his affections – to suppose that she would share them with anybody, let alone the overdressed, underbred creature to whom he was already plighted, and who had come there and claimed him – publicly claimed him – under her eyes! It was an outrage which she could not bring herself so much as to think of condoning.
The only consolation was that she had all this time steadfastly refused to give him a definite answer – to allow him to give anybody to understand in definite terms that she was engaged to him. But what then? Had she not more than justified by implication such a conclusion on the part of those around her! Even now she was conscious of the exchanged glance, the hastily-stifled smile which her appearance evoked amid this or that group she happened to be passing, but this she could afford to treat with unconcern. Still the sting penetrated – penetrated and rankled. Her bitterness towards the chief offender hardened to white heat.
Nothing had been said between them. She took care to allow him no opportunity for that. No explanations were needed. The situation would admit of none – absolutely none. She made no external difference in her manner towards him – did not even change her place beside him at table. She was too proud to give him or the lookers-on to suppose that she was sorely wounded. But there was a steeliness in her tone when she addressed him or answered any remark of his, which conveyed as severe a punishment as even she could have wished. He was miserable.
Then he wrote to her – a piteous and heartbroken letter – explaining, protesting, and, above all, entreating. To ensure her receipt of this he slipped it himself beneath her door at a time when it could not escape her observation. As a result she did afford him an opportunity of speaking with her alone – an interview of just sufficient duration to allow her deliberately to tear his letter into small fragments before his face, carefully letting him see that it was unopened. Not a word did she speak. She could not trust herself. Her great eyes blazing forth such scorn from her pale face seemed to sear and burn into his. Then she turned and left him.
After that he was desperate. Poor Phil, soft-hearted and sensitive, felt that he had wrecked his whole life. He wished he could get up a corresponding indignation. But he could not, not even the fraction of a semblance of it. His heart seemed turned to water – his brain was ablaze. He would relieve his feelings by undertaking some desperate feat – thank Heaven, it was always easy to break one’s neck. And on this object intent he bounded upstairs three steps at a time in quest of his ice-axe.
But Providence, or his own forgetfulness, stood him in good stead that time, for the implement he sought was not in his room. He must have left it in Fordham’s. Thither he repaired.
“What’s the row, Phil?” said the latter, looking up quickly, taking in at the same time the obvious fact that things were not merely wrong with his unlucky friend, but very much more so than ever.
“Got my axe here? I’m just going for a – er – walk.”
“Well, you can put it off then, for I’ve just been scheming out a promising climb. Got two first-rate Zermatt guides, who turned up last night and want to go back there. Everything is ready. What do you say to doing the Rothhorn? We can start for the Mountet cabin soon after lunch; sleep there, get to the top any time by midday, and go down the other side to Zermatt. What do you say?”
“I’m your man, Fordham. Just the very thing I should like. And, I say – while we are about it – we might stay at Zermatt a few days and do the Matterhorn and two or three others, eh?”
Fordham looked at him curiously.
“Just the very thing I was going to suggest,” he said, “only I doubted whether you’d cotton. A smart shaking up and a change will do you all the good in the world, just now, Phil. We’ll start half an hour after lunch – there goes the second bell! – and go up to the hut quietly.”
This they had done, and now after an excruciatingly early start from that convenient tarrying-place, and about six hours of really difficult climbing, of scrambling from rock to rock, worming round “corners” overhanging dizzy heights – work that called into full play every muscle and braced every nerve – here they were on the summit with the world at their feet.
During the actual process of ascent Philip’s spirits seemed to return. The hard, and, in places, really hazardous, nature of the undertaking demanded all his attention, and whether clinging spreadeagled against the face of the cliff with no real hold to speak of, or balancing with one foot upon a rock projection about the size of a walnut, the other dangling over nothing, what time the next man above should secure a footing, or skirting gingerly the treacherous line of a curling snow cornice, where the thrust of the handle of an ice-axe left a hole through which lay viewed the awful depth of space which it overhung – all this constituted such a strain upon his faculties as to leave room for no other thought. Though strong and active, and in good training all round, Philip, be it remembered, was a novice at this sort of thing, consequently he found enough to do in ensuring his own safety, and, relatively, that of his companions. At one point of their progress a cloud had come over the mountain, rendering the rocks rimy and slippery, throwing out the ridge of ice crowning a sharp arête spectral and drear against the misty murk, magnifying the cliffs to gigantic proportions in their uncertain and ill-defined outlines. Gazing down upon the snow-flecked rocks far, far beneath, losing themselves in the swirling vortex of vapour, Philip felt rather small as he remembered his reckless intentions of the day before. Life, strange to say, seemed still worth having; at any rate such a way of ending it as a sudden dash through space on to those hideous black and white rocks struck him as grim and horrible in the extreme.
But the excitement and physical exertion over, and the summit attained, his depression returned. More over he was tired, for he had hardly slept the night before, was, in fact, just dropping off, when roused by his indefatigable friend at 2 a.m. to make a pretence at devouring the breakfast which the guides were preparing over the weather-beaten stove. Now the magnificence and extent of the view was nothing to him. It seemed to lie outside his gaze. In spirit he was back again at the hotel at Zinal. Was Alma beginning to miss him – to think more kindly of him, now that they would not see each other for some days? Would those execrable Glovers have left by the time he returned? And would all come right again? If only it might!
But if his younger friend’s thoughts were far-away down in the valley they had come up out of, Fordham’s were not. That saturnine individual was, for him, in high spirits. He had got out an excellent map – in the production of such Switzerland stands in the foremost place – and with the guides was busy verifying the topographical details of the stupendous panorama lying beneath and around. The cloud which had overshadowed them during their ascent had long since vanished, and now the sky was blue and clear, and the air like an elixir of life. The only clouds were those from three pipes, for the two guides and Fordham were smoking like chimneys.
But they had been an hour on the summit, and the air, though exhilarating, was uncommonly chill. It became time to start downwards. The guides were beginning to repack the haversacks.
“Have a pull at this, Phil,” said Fordham, handing him a flask. “And – I tell you what it is, man. You don’t know when you’re well off.”
“Oh, I don’t?”
“Rather not. Look at this,” with a comprehensive sweep of the hand. “Think what a splendid climb we had to get up here. Think what a splendid one we are going to have to get down, better, in fact, because less of sheer fag, and then think how many poor devils there are who would give their heads to be here to-day, instead of slaving their hearts out all their lives to support some snarling, ungrateful female, and a mob of more or less dirty and wholly detestable brats.”
“Candidly, my dear chap,” returned Philip, “you are becoming somewhat of the nature of a bore. I seem to have heard something very like that before – not once, nor yet twice. The salutary instructions of the immortal Mr Barlow, of ‘Sandford and Merton’ fame, shine forth as very masterpieces of sparkling pungency when contrasted with your latter-day harangues. I want to know what the devil all this has to do with me.”
“You shall! The gist of the parable is this. You are thinking all this time that Paradise lies at present in the Zinal valley in general, and very particularly in the Hôtel Durand; whereas in actual fact, so far as any semblance of that institution may be said to exist, it lies around and before you. For you are free at present, Phil, free as the air up here which is making us shiver, your freedom is as boundless as this rolling view of half a continent upon which we look down. You have the world at your feet as literally as we have it before us now.”
“Go on, Mr Barlow. Pray proceed.”
“I will. At present you are thinking what a Paradise every moment of life would be if coupled with the charmer down yonder. You are drawing all manner of glowing mental pictures of the bliss of a home illumined by her divine presence. All fustian, my dear fellow, all fustian! These superstitions are encouraged by the women from obvious motives. But they have no foundation in actual fact. Now what I am thinking of is this. I am thinking of you in two or three years’ time, caged up with your charmer in some shabby-genteel suburban semi-detached – for she hasn’t a shilling of her own, I believe – I am thinking of you, I say, the proud possessor of two or three unruly brats – who may or may not be kept clean – thus caged up, with a domineering, bad-tempered woman, who has parted with her illusions, in proportion as she has contributed towards populating this interesting orb. I am thinking of you toiling the day through, week in week out, at some sordid and uncongenial drudgery for a mere pittance. You can never be well off, my dear Phil, for to do you justice, you lack the essential qualities of rascality and sycophancy which are requisite to the manufacture of the ‘successful man.’ And while your scanty leisure is taken up policing a series of ever-changing and refractory domestics, or carrying on epistolary war with your landlord, in re his inevitable refusal to observe the most obvious provisions of his agreement, your much-needed slumbers will be invaded by the piercing and colicky yells of the last overfed cherub, and your night devoted to hospital duties in regard to that same. And then when you look back to – this day, for instance – I am not far out in asserting that you will catch yourself wondering whether such an unparalleled ass is even worth the sixpenny-worth of laudanum which should send him in search of the decisive change which may possibly be for the better, but can hardly be for the worse. There – that’s the other side of the orange, and now you can’t say it hasn’t been shown you.”
“That all, Fordham?”
“Nearly. But think it over, think it over, my dear chap. The gift of freedom is a grand and a glorious one. Don’t throw it away for the traditional mess of pottage – a comestible which may or may not be an excellent thing, but cannot in my humble judgment maintain its savour if subsisted on for the term of one’s natural life to the exclusion of all other articles of diet.”
“I appreciate the point of that highly finished hyperbole – at its true valuation,” returned Philip, ironically. “And, look here, Fordham, I feel it necessary to amend my former comment. A man who will undertake to deliver such an unconscionably prosy preachment, on the very apex of a high Alp, is no longer merely becoming a bore, but has become one – in fact is a bore, and that of the first magnitude.”