Chapter Twenty Two
A Weapon to Hand
“Hallo, Wentworth?”
“Hallo, Fordham!”
“Hot, isn’t it?”
“Beastly hot.”
Thus characteristically did these two Britons greet each other, meeting unexpectedly on the steps of one of the hotels at Zermatt. The bell was ringing for table d’hôte luncheon, and the sojourners in that extensive caravanserai were dropping in by twos and threes; ladies – ruddy of countenance, the result of sunburn – sketch-book and alpenstock in hand; spectacled Teutons in long black coats with the inevitable opera-glass slung around them; English youths armed with butterfly net or tennis racket, and a sprinkling of the ubiquitous Anglican parson whose nondescript holiday attire, which its wearer flattered himself savoured of the real mountaineer while not entirely disguising his “cloth,” imparted to him very much the aspect of a raffish undertaker in attenuated circumstances. The usual line of guides, taciturn and melancholy, roosted upon the low wall just outside the hotel, or stood in a knot in front of the wood-carving shop opposite, their normal stolidity just awakened into a gleam of speculative interest by the appearance of a string of vehicles heaving in sight amid a cloud of dust, upon the road which leads up from St. Nicolas. For this was before the days of the railway, and Zermatt, still uncockneyfied, retained most of its pristine picturesqueness in spite of the monster hotels dominating its quaint brown chalets. And then the majestic cone of the Matterhorn, towering up from its plinth of rock and glacier.
“Are you staying in this house, Wentworth?” pursued Fordham. “I thought the ‘Monte Rosa’ was the hotel patronised by all you regular climbing fellows.”
“It is, as a rule. But I thought I’d come here for a change. Besides, when I’m not climbing I like to be among ordinary people. One gets a little sick of hearing nothing but guide-and-rope ‘shop’ talked. Where have you turned up from now?”
“Zinal. Came viâ the top of the Rothhorn. Orlebar got rather a nasty whack from a falling stone. He’ll have to lie by for a day or two.”
“Did he? By Jove! Now you mention it, I heard there had been a one-horse kind of accident yesterday. I think they said it was on the Trift-joch. But I didn’t believe it, and then, you see, I started early this morning to walk up to the Stockje hut and am only just back. Poor chap! I say, though, is he badly hit?”
“Between you and me and yonder mule, he is rather. Badly enough to knock him out of any more climbing this season. He’ll have to get all the brag he can out of the Rothhorn alone until next year, at any rate. It’s rough on him, too, as he was keen on doing a few of the bigger things.”
“Rough it is. Poor chap! I must go upstairs and see him after tiffin. But, come along, Fordham, we had better go in. You can sit by me; there are a lot of empty places around my end of the room.”
From their place at table – a remote corner – they could watch the room filling. The bulk of the people were of the order already referred to, but there were some new arrivals, mostly uninteresting – a parson or two; a thick-set Scotchman with a blowsy wife and a whole tribe of wooden-faced, flaxen-haired children; a couple of undergraduates in neckties of vivid hue, presumably their college colours; item, a pair of grim spinsters of uncertain age and tract-disseminating principles; in short, the average ruck of our fellow-countrymen abroad.
“Rather a pretty girl, that,” murmured Wentworth.
Fordham, who was critically inspecting the wine-list, looked up. Two ladies had just entered the room, and it was to the younger of these that Wentworth had referred. Both were dark, and the elder bore traces of having been at one time strikingly handsome – the younger was so. In their remarkable duplication of each other Nature had unmistakably ticketed them mother and daughter.
Upon Fordham the entry of these two produced an astonishing effect. All the colour faded from his swarthy cheek, leaving a sallow livid paleness. His lips were drawn tightly against his teeth, and his black piercing eyes, half-closed, seemed to dart forth lurid lightnings, as he watched the unconscious pair moving down the long room towards their seat. Would they discover his presence? Surely there was something magnetic in that burning glance – a something to which the objects of it could hardly remain unconscious. Yet they did.
He saw them take their places. His back was to the light. They had not seen him. But had they caught the devilish, awful, surging hate expressed in that fearful scrutiny it is doubtful whether they would have eaten their luncheon with so tranquil an appetite.
“Good-looking, isn’t she?” pursued Wentworth, too intent on his own observation to perceive the change that had come over his friend. “For the matter of that, so is the mother – if it is her mother. They might easily be sisters. What do you think, Fordham?”
“So they might,” replied the latter tranquilly, sticking up his eyeglass. He had entirely recovered his self-possession, although there lurked within his glance a snake-like glitter. “Older one needn’t be a day more than forty, and the girl half that. But I say, Wentworth, I thought you were past admiring that sort of cattle.”
“Well, I am in a general way. But that’s a splendid-looking girl. Even you must admit that.”
If a slight shrug of the shoulders amounted to admission, Wentworth was welcome to it. The object of his eulogy had all the dazzling “points” of a perfect brunette. Hair and eyelashes dark as night – and abundance of both – large clear eyes, and regular, white teeth which gleamed every now and then in a bewitching smile as their owner responded to some remark on the part of her right-hand neighbour with whom she had entered into conversation. While she was in full view of the two men her mother was not, being screened by the ample dimensions and exuberant cap strings of a portly British matron opposite.
The confused clatter and buzz of a babel of tongues at length began to suffer abatement, then gave way to the rasping pandemonium of chairs pushed back by the dozen along the polished wooden floor. Fordham, watching his opportunity, left the room under cover of two large groups of people already flitting from his neighbourhood. As he did so, a sidelong glance towards the two new arrivals satisfied him that his identity was still unperceived by them, which, for reasons of his own, he particularly desired. Having thus effected his retreat undiscovered, he paused and took up his position in the passage within a few yards of the dining-room door as if awaiting the exit of somebody.
The passage, unlighted by windows, was in shade – in a grateful and refreshing gloom, deepened and intensified by the glare of the midday sunshine in the room beyond. As he thus stood, his back to the wall, that expression of deadly vindictive hatred returned to his face. Standing back in the semi-gloom, he resembled some lurking beast of prey in the diabolical passions impacted upon his countenance.
“What an exceedingly disagreeable-looking man,” had remarked more than one of the passers by who had noted this expression. “Whoever he is waiting for will have an unpleasant surprise, anyhow.” This was true, but not in the superficial and commonplace sense in which it was enunciated.
Nearly everybody had left the room but those two. Would they sit there all day? Ah! Now!
They were advancing up the room, the glowing and graceful beauty of the girl in striking contrast to the maturer and time-worn charms of the matron, who was still wonderfully handsome. It was a pleasing picture to look upon.
But the effect upon him now standing there was assuredly far from a pleasing one. The expression of his countenance had become positively devilish. The two were in the doorway now – the girl making some light laughing remark to her mother.
But just then the latter looked up – looked up full into Fordham’s face, into the burning, sunken eyes glowering in the shadow, and the effect was startling. A look of the most awful terror came over her face, and she put up her hands wildly as if to ward off some appalling object. Then with a quick, gasping shriek, she fell heavily to the floor in a dead faint.
The shriek was echoed by another, as the girl flung herself wildly down beside her mother, adjuring the latter by every endearing name. But the poor woman lay in a ghastly and livid unconsciousness that was more like death.
The lounging, chatting groups – mostly ladies – which had been scattered about the hall, startled by the shrieking, came crowding up in dubious, half-frightened fashion. Waiters came pouring out of the dining-room door. To the head of these Fordham spoke.
“Is there a doctor staying in the house, Alphonse? The lady seems to be rather unwell. And – I say, Alphonse,” he added, “is Mr Wentworth still in the dining-room? I’ve been waiting for him ever so long.”
“Here I am, Fordham,” answered a voice behind him. “Why, man, I’ve been out for at least ten minutes. But what’s the row?”
Meanwhile the sufferer was being cared for by several of her own sex. As it happened, too, there was an English doctor staying in the house, who now appeared on the scene.
“Stand back, please,” he ordered, authoritatively. “She’ll soon come round. But give her some air at any rate. What caused it?” he added to the sobbing, frightened girl. “She has had a shock of some sort.”
“She couldn’t have,” was the answer. “She – she – screamed and fell down. There was n-n-nothing to startle her – in fact, there was a strange gentleman standing there as if waiting for somebody. But he was a perfect stranger.”
All this Fordham – who had drawn out of the crowd and was out of sight, but not of hearing – caught. The doctor made no direct reply to the statement, though on the point of the utter unfamiliarity of the stranger’s appearance it is highly probable that he formed his own opinion.
“Let’s go and look at the visitors’ book,” suggested Wentworth. “I want to see if there’s any one I know.”
They strolled into the bureau and the book was produced. While Wentworth ran his eye attentively down the list of names, Fordham, standing behind him, hardly seemed to look at it. Anyhow, he evinced no interest whatever in the identity of anybody. But in reality the fact was the other way.
“The same name,” he said to himself. “The same name! That simplifies matters all round. Now I see daylight. At last – at last!”
Half an hour later Fordham strolled round to the village post-office and mailed a batch of letters. This was not in itself an extraordinary circumstance. But in the midst of that batch was one addressed to ‘Mrs Daventer,’ and he knew it would be delivered that same afternoon.
“What sort of a crowd at lunch, Fordham?” said Philip, as the door of his room opened to admit that worthy. “Any one new? Hullo, Wentworth! Where have you dropped from?”
“Oh, I’ve been around here about a week. But I say, Orlebar, it’s rather hard lines getting yourself knocked out of time this way.”
“Hard lines isn’t the word for it. And – what do you think? That confounded ass of a doctor says I sha’n’t be able to do any climbing this season. But he’s only a Swiss,” he added, with the youthful John Bull’s lordly contempt for talent or attainments encased in other than an Anglo-Saxon skull.
“You may depend upon it he knows his business,” responded Wentworth. “But you do as he tells you and keep your hoof up, old man, or you may be pinned up in this lively chamber for a month.”
“I suppose you’ve been doing some big climbs?” said Philip, wistfully.
“Not yet. Been taking it easy. I started to do the Deut Blanche the day after I came here, but the weather worked up bad and we had to turn back. I say, Orlebar, you’d better look sharp and get right. There was a deuced pretty girl at table d’hôte. Her mother fainted in the passage directly after, and there was a devil of an uproar. I believe Fordham made faces at her and scared her into a fit. He was the only person there at the time – ”
“Ha! ha!” laughed Philip. “Scowled at her ‘like a devil,’ as Peter would say. Eh, Fordham?”
But the latter, who was lighting a cigar, made no reply.
“By the way, Orlebar,” said Wentworth. “Seen anything more of that girl you were so gone on at Les Avants, Miss – Miss – ”
The speaker broke off with a start that was comical, for Fordham, while endeavouring to convey a mild and warning kick unseen of the third party – a thing which nobody ever succeeded in doing yet, and in all probability never will – had brought his hoof in contact with a corn, imparting to poor Wentworth the sensation as of a red-hot needle suddenly driven into his toe. In a measure it served him right, for his blundering had touched poor Philip on a very sore place. Lying there all the morning – with the prospect of a good many mornings and afternoons too, destined to be similarly spent – the poor fellow had found ample time for thought.
“What a chap you are, Wentworth!” he retorted, irritably. “Here is a poor devil tied by the leg in an infernal room for Heaven knows how long, and you can find nothing better to liven him up with than a lot of feeble and second-hand chaff. Let’s have something a little more amusing. Tell us some mountaineering lies for instance.”
And Wentworth spent the best part of the afternoon telling him some.
Chapter Twenty Three
Forging the Link
A pile of rocks overgrown with stunted rhododendron bushes and shaggy, weather-beaten pines, also stunted. Among these a foaming mountain torrent cleft its way, dashing through the deep, narrow chasm which walled it in some fifty feet below. A seldom-frequented path wound around the base of the rocks, passing over a crazy wooden bridge.
On the morning subsequent to the events just detailed Richard Fordham sat among the rocks aforesaid, smoking a cigar. He had lighted it on first arriving at this sequestered spot, and now the glowing end was almost burning his fingers. This showed that he had been waiting there for some time – half an hour at least.
Waiting? That was just what he was doing. But there was no impatience attendant on the process. His gaze had scarcely wandered from the stretch of open meadowland lying between his position and the brown roofs of Zermatt nearly a mile away – yet in it there was no concern, no anxiety.
An object was approaching along the path – a grey sunshade. Beneath this was a human figure – a female figure. Watching its approach, the expression of his countenance underwent a change; but in it there was still no impatience. The expression of that dark, saturnine countenance was one of exultant ferocity, such as might animate that of the concealed leopard as it watches the unsuspecting antelope advance step by step within easy springing distance of its lurking-place.
The new arrival continued to advance slowly until she had reached the rickety wooden bridge. There she paused and looked around as though puzzled.
At the sound of a cough above she started and changed colour, then catching sight of another path, began to ascend to where he stood. This was a platform of rock on the edge of the chasm. It was shut in by the trees in such fashion that any one standing there would be scarcely discernible from without, while commanding the approaches from the quarter whence any one would be in the least likely to advance.
The new-comer was an extremely well-preserved woman of middle age. She was slightly above the medium height, and her dark, flashing eyes and strongly marked brows gave her an imperious look which it needed not the firm jaw and erect figure to confirm. But the expression stamped upon her pale features at that moment was not that of power, rather it was one of apprehension – of undisguisable dread, dashed with strong abhorrence. As she stood there, panting with the exertion of the ascent, or agitation, or both, a chance observer might have discovered in her countenance a curious likeness to that of Fordham himself.
The latter made no gesture, uttered no word of greeting. The evil expression in his face was qualified by a thin, cold sneer. Thus they confronted each other – the one pale, apprehensive, yet with strong aversion and defiance in her eyes; the other self-possessed, thoroughly conscious of power, and returning hate for hate in fullest measure.
“Well?” broke from her at last, to the accompaniment of a half-checked stamp of the foot.
“Well?”
“What have you got to say to me?” she said curtly; adding, in a repressed volcano-storm of wrath and bitterness. “I have obeyed orders, you see.”
“You could not have done otherwise. Even you have the sense thoroughly to realise that.”
“But I didn’t know you were here,” she went on; “not yet, anyhow. When I saw you I got something of a shock, for my system is not what it was. You quite took me by surprise.”
“I believe you – for once. Finished actress as you are, even you could hardly have counterfeited the tragic effect produced by my unexpected appearance yesterday. The devil himself could hardly have scared you more.”
“Of the two it is the devil himself that I should have preferred to see.”
“Undoubtedly. But the malevolent powers commonly attributed to that functionary are nothing to those I shall bring to bear on you if you neglect to carry out my instructions implicitly. On you and yours, I should have said.”
Was it there that the secret of his power lay? An involuntary spasm passed through her frame as if she had received a stab.
“Perhaps, then, you will oblige me by communicating them,” she hastened to reply. “For it happens I have made arrangements to leave here this very day – or to-morrow at latest.”
“Those arrangements you will have the trouble of cancelling, then.”
“Indeed! And may I ask why?”
“Certainly. Your appearance here yesterday is going to supply the weapon I have been working to forge for years. Nothing is now wanting to complete the chain. Yours is the hand that shall do so. To that end you will remain here – as long as I require your presence.”
“That is a very odd turn for events to take – that you should require my presence,” she said, with a bitter sneer.
“Very. In fact, the irony of the situation is unique. And yet there are people who say there is no such thing as poetic justice.”
“But now, suppose you begin by giving one some idea as to the nature of this wonderful plan of yours. I take for granted it is for nobody’s good, anyhow.”
“You are wrong there. It will tend most distinctly to the good of two people. And – calm your amazement – one of those people is yourself.”
“Your warning is wholly needed. The idea that any action of yours could tend to my advantage is sufficient to justify the wildest amazement, were there room for any other emotion than complete incredulity,” she answered, with a scornful smile.
“You shall see directly. But, first of all, let me congratulate you on the extremely fascinating appearance of – your daughter. It really does you the greatest credit – ”
“We will leave her out of the question, if you please,” she interrupted, speaking quickly.
“But I don’t please – and that for the best possible reason. I said just now that the scheme in which I require your aid will tend to the advantage of two persons, one of them being yourself. The other is – your daughter.”
“Then you will certainly not obtain my aid. In anything that tends to involve my child in co-operation – however indirect – with yourself, I flatly refuse to have any hand.”
The sardonic smile deepened around Fordham’s mouth. He opened his cigar-case, took out a fresh cigar, and lighted it with the greatest deliberation.
“It is always a pity to commit oneself to a rash statement,” he said. “The determination just expressed you will directly see reason to reconsider – certainly before you leave this delightful spot.”
“Never!”
“Oh, but you will! You are, to do you justice, far too much a woman of the world – life has been far too comfortable, too prosperous for you – for you both – during, we’ll say, the last twenty years, for you to face the alternative now.”
“Has it? I will risk anything – face any alternative.”
“Even that of starvation?”
“Even that. But it will not come to that. Poverty it may be – but – we can work – we can live somehow.”
“Ha! ha! ha! Can you? Only try it. I see I was giving you undue credit just now when I defined you as a woman of the world. Those who talk airily of poverty are always the ones who have spent life in luxury. Think of it in all its aspects – of being on the very verge of starvation, of the fireless grate, and weeks of north-east wind and snowstorm, of the foul, insanitary den – kennel rather – covered by the same roof as that which shelters the most debased two-legged animals which ever bore semblance to the stamp of humanity. Think of the sights and sounds, the mad-drunk ruffians, and the fighting, clawing, screaming, harpies; the ‘language of the people,’ and nights made hideous with the yells of some one being murdered. This is what poverty is going to mean in your case. This is what you and your – child will come to. Stay a moment. You think I am exaggerating? You think, no doubt, you have friends who will help you – who will never see you come to this? But don’t flatter yourself. I will prevent them from helping you. I will cause them to spurn you from their doors – both of you. In fact, I will hunt you down into utter and complete ruin – both of you. Both of you – mark it well! Why do I not do so in any case? I don’t know. But oppose me in the slightest particular – neglect in the minutest detail the scheme I am going to set you to carry out – and this – and more than all this shall come upon you – shall come upon you both – as sure as I am a living man.”
Her face was as white as a sheet, and in her flashing eyes there was the look of a tigress whose whelps are menaced, as she advanced a step nearer to him, her breast heaving violently.
“Dare you boast that you are a living man?” she panted, clenching and unclenching her hands. “Are you not afraid I shall kill you where you stand? I shall some day – I know it!”
“Do – if you can. And, by the way, this would have been an excellent opportunity. In the first place, you would be entirely free from interruption, for I have already scouted the whole of this covert to ensure the absence of the regulation dauber intent on evolving the pictorial presentment of a dissipated-looking sugar-loaf, under the impression that he or she is sketching the Matterhorn. In the next, this country has practically abolished the death penalty, so that you would get a dozen years at most, and your child would have the honour of being the daughter of a convict as well as – But drop these melodramatics, and return to sound sense. Heavens, woman! I wonder you dare talk to me like this.” And as his memory leaped back his deep voice took the snarling rumble of an enraged wild beast.
Man and Nature are ever offering the most vivid and jarring contrasts. The brown roofs of the village, dominated by the white cubes of the great hotels, lay nestling amid the green meadows, against a background of stately mountains. The hoarse rush of the torrent, pent up in the narrow fissure at their feet, joined with the deeper roar of the churning Visp, gathering hourly in volume as the midday sun told in power upon its feeder, the great Gorner glacier, whose sheeny séracs reared their dazzling battlements in a blue and white line above the vernal pastures at the head of the valley, while the stately monolith of the giant Matterhorn towered aloft into the vivid blue of the cloudless heavens. Yet there, amid the sequestered solitude of the jagged pines, stood these two, confronting each other with deadly rage in their hearts, with bitterest hate and defiance flashing from their set faces and burning eyes – a very hell of evil passions surging alike in both.
“Now take your choice,” he went on. “Carry out my plan as I am about to lay it before you, and you will benefit yourself in doing so. Refuse, or mar it in the slightest detail, either by bungling or of set design, and I will utterly crush you both, beginning from this day. You know me.”
She made no answer. She never removed her eyes from his, and her breath came in quick, hard gasps. Her aspect was that of some dangerous animal cornered, driven to bay. Barely a couple of yards behind him was the brink of the narrow fissure by which the churning torrent cleft its way through the heart of the rocks. The sneering, mocking smile which came into his face as he read her thoughts was devilish in its maddening provocation.
“No go,” he said. “You couldn’t do it. I am much too firm on my pins. You would be extremely likely to go over yourself, and then what would become of Laura, left to my tender mercies?”
“You fiend! I think Satan himself must be a god compared with you.”
“Am I to take that as a compliment? Well, now to business. Sit down.”
“Thank you. I prefer to stand.”
“I don’t,” seating himself upon a boulder and puffing deliberately at his cigar. “Please yourself, however. And now kindly give me your best attention.”
Then for the next twenty minutes he did all the talking, though every now and then an ejaculation of anger, disgust, or dissidence would escape her. This, however, affected him not in the slightest degree. The cold, cutting, sarcastic tones flowed evenly on, laying down the details of what was to her a strange and startling plan. Not until he had unfolded it in all its bearings did he pause, as though to invite comment.
But by that time it was noticeable that the horror and decisiveness in her refusal to co-operate with which the woman had first received his suggestion had undergone a very marked abatement. She could even bring herself to discuss the scheme in some of its details.
“Now,” he concluded – “now you see I am practically proposing to be Laura’s greatest benefactor; yours, too, in a secondary degree, for the event will render you, to a large extent, free from my bondage.”
“That indeed would be to benefit me,” she answered, with a return of the old, rancorous aversion. “But even now the motive you have given is not above suspicion. It is too inadequate.”
“Not so. If you look at it all round you will perceive it is complete. I am of a revengeful disposition, and now, after half a lifetime, I see my opportunity for taking a most sweeping revenge. But I like my retribution to be as original as it is far-reaching. This one is. In fact, it is unique.”
How unique it was even she could not at the moment fathom. But she was destined to learn it later, in all its grim and undreamed-of horror.
“I hope I may be allowed to change my mind,” said Mrs Daventer, sweetly, as she entered the bureau of the hotel that afternoon. “I wish to counter-order the arrangements I made for leaving to-morrow. It can be managed, I hope?”
“I will see immediately, madame,” said the civil employé, looking up from the pile of letters he was sorting, and which had just come in. “I tink de mules are already ordered. One moment – I will just inquire.”
He went out, leaving Mrs Daventer alone in the bureau. She turned over some of the letters. Among the uppermost in the half-sorted pile was one addressed “Philip Orlebar, Esq.” The handwriting was rather large and bold, but distinctly feminine, and the envelope bore the Zinal postmark. At sight of this Mrs Daventer’s pulses quickened and her eyes dilated. Then she heard the employé’s steps returning.
“It will be all right, madame,” he said. “Another party is going down who will be very glad of de mules.”
She thanked him, entered into a few pleasant commonplaces as to the attractions of the locality, the number of people abroad that year, the fineness of the season, and so forth, and expressing a little disappointment at the man’s reply that the pile of letters just delivered contained none for her or her daughter, she went out.
Philip Orlebar received several letters that afternoon, but they did not comprise one bearing the Zinal postmark, which circumstance, however, conveyed no disappointment, inasmuch as he had never expected they would.