"I believe we are all here now," remarked Fordham, ironically, sending a
significant glance round the little group assembled on the _debarcadere_
at Montreux.
"Better count and make sure," responded Scott, the parson, with an
asinine guffaw.
The first remark was evoked by the recollection that, even as they now
stood watching the swift, shearing approach of the _Mont Blanc_ sweeping
up to the jetty, so had they arrived on that spot some three hours
earlier, just in time to gaze after the steamer preceding, as she
disappeared round the promontory previous to standing in for Territet.
And for having missed their boat, and lost three hours of the day, they
had to thank the Miss Ottleys, or rather the maternal parent of those
young ladies, who, with the usual feminine lack of a sense of the
eternal fitness of things, had instructed them to combine business with
pleasure, and execute sundry commissions for her in Montreux, on the way
to the steamer. Wherefore they--and the parson--had arrived at the pier
in time to find the residue of the party gazing discontentedly after the
receding boat.
But no one would fall in with Fordham's suggestion to return. If they
had lost three hours' the days were long and the evenings moonlight.
All agreed that they would wait for the next boat.
"_En route_!" shouted the skipper, with his lips to the speaking-tube.
The gangway was withdrawn with a bang--the great paddle-wheels churned
the blue water into creamy foam, and the fine vessel, panting and
snorting like a courser impatient of the momentary restraint, plunged
forward as she swung round obedient to the hand of the helmsman.
"What a disagreeable chap that man Fordham is," remarked Scott to the
Miss Ottleys, with whom he had withdrawn to a comfortable corner of the
deck.
"He can be about as rude as any man I ever knew," returned the younger
of the two girls, who had a hazy sort of idea that any man ought to
think it rather an honour than otherwise to have all his arrangements
thrown out by her dilatoriness.
"I don't think we can blame him this time," objected the elder. "It
must have been very provoking to the dear old General as well."
"Ah, he's different," said Scott. "But that fellow Fordham just thinks
the world was made to suit his convenience. By the bye, who asked him
to come to-day?"
"Well, you see, it was Mr Orlebar who suggested the trip, and it isn't
likely he'd leave his friend out."
"Oh, ah--I see! Pity he didn't though. The fellow is a regular wet
blanket."
There was reason in the speaker's venom. Scott, who held the proud
position of English chaplain at Les Avants for that month, was a fair
specimen of the young "masher" parson. He wore a carefully-trimmed
moustache and talked with a drawl. He affected lawn tennis in
preference to any other form of exercise because it enabled him to array
his graceful five foot six of dimensions in faultlessly fitting
flannels, and when so arrayed he was under the impression that Apollo
himself might take a back seat. He was not a gentleman by birth, and,
having all the exuberant assurance of the self-estimating "ranker," was
a standing offence to those who were. Though made much of by a large
section of the ladies, always ready to constitute a pet tame cat of a
young parson, the men abhorred him. His bumptiousness and chronic
infringements of good form met with systematic snubbing, and on more
than one occasion nothing but his "cloth" had saved him from being
incontinently kicked. Now of all the "setting down" he had received
since his arrival at the hotel, that which he had encountered at the
hands of Fordham had been the most merciless and exhaustive.
The latter and General Wyatt were leaning against the taffrail smoking
their cigars.
"Have you known young Orlebar long?" the old man was saying. "I
gathered from what he told me that you had been travelling together for
some years."
"Well, we have only been a couple of months together this summer. Last
autumn, though, we returned from a thirteen months' trip to China and
Japan, then home across the Rockies."
"Indeed! You ought to know of what sort of stuff a fellow is made after
a trip of that kind with him."
"Yes. Phil is a good fellow enough, and he and I suit each other
admirably. He always does what he's told, and can stand being chaffed
for his own good. Not many fellows of his age can do that."
"I like the boy," went on General Wyatt, "like him immensely. He's a
fine fellow--a finer fellow than his father was. But it's a thousand
pities he has no sort of profession, for when he comes into Claxby and
the title he won't have too much to keep up either upon."
"I suppose not," assented Fordham, indifferently. "But then he hasn't
got any expensive tastes or habits."
"That's a very good point about him. Still, if his father had put him
into some profession instead of allowing him ample means to lead an idle
life, it would have been all the better for him. But that's Frank
Orlebar all over. He dotes upon the boy, and so feels bound to indulge
him in every particular. That sort of sentimentality was always a grave
weakness in Frank Orlebar's character. His heart was always stronger
than his head, and it invariably led him into some serious blunder."
"Didn't he come rather to grief once and have to go abroad for a time?"
said Fordham, meditatively trimming the ash of his cigar with his
thumbnail. "Phil never mentioned it, but I seem to remember the case
some twenty years back."
"Oh, you remember it?" said the General, looking furtively around and
lowering his voice. "Well, it wasn't a `case' exactly--never came to
that, luckily. But there was the devil of a scandal, and Orlebar went
abroad for a time. It was said that he went to exchange shots with the
injured party, and I believe he did, but whether either of them winged
his man I'll be hanged if I know."
On one of the benches in the forepart of the hurricane deck, gazing
dreamily at the great wooded slopes sliding by as the steamer passed the
storm-beaten walls of grim Chillon, revelling in the gorgeous
magnificence of the flying scenery while keeping an ear for her
companion's remarks, sat Alma Wyatt.
"Do you know you answered me quite at random?" said Philip, with a
laugh.
"Did I? Oh, how rude of me! But--you must make allowances. I find it
quite impossible to take my attention entirely off these lovely shores
and the mountains changing every minute as we go rushing through the
water. Look at them--all green and gold in this exquisite sunlight!
Look at the dazzling white of the Dent du Midi there, in sharp contrast
to the vivid blue of the sky! And the lake--I have just counted no less
than thirteen different shades on its surface where each tiny catspaw of
wind sweeps it--thirteen, from the richest ultramarine to gold and plum
colour and scarlet. There, I am very gushing--am I not?--and you may
laugh at me accordingly."
"I certainly shall do nothing of the sort," he replied, eagerly. "Do
you suppose I am such a boor, such a Vandal that I can't enter into your
ideas? Perhaps I was thinking just the same things, only could not for
the life of me express myself so beautifully."
She looked him steadily in the face for a moment as though to read his
thoughts, as though to detect the slightest trace of make-believe about
his reply. But his tones rang true and she was satisfied.
"Then I shall proceed with my gush, and really end in making you laugh,"
she resumed. "But I do think that this eastern end of the Lake of
Geneva must have been hewn out of a corner of Paradise."
"And yet, there stands an eternal reminder to the contrary," he replied,
pointing to the grim towers of Chillon which lay mirrored in clear-cut
reflection upon the sapphire waters. "Think of the numberless wretches
racked and thumbscrewed and burnt within those walls in past centuries.
Have you so soon forgotten that ghastly _oubliette_ they were driven
down under a fraudulent promise of liberty? It is said that remains
occasionally come to light even to this day."
"Ah, now you have drawn a sort of black line across my fair picture.
You are upsetting my ideal just as Mr Fordham kept trying to do the
other day when we were going over the castle. Do you remember he
pronounced the torture stake a fraud of the first magnitude, declaring
that it had been renewed since he visited Chillon five years ago, and
that Byron's name on the pillar in Bonivard's dungeon was probably a
despicable sham and the work of some latter-day 'Arry?"
"Yes, but we all agreed that even if it were genuine it was a rank act
of 'Arrydom on the part of the bard, and by no means a thing to fall
down in adoration before."
"So we did. As to the other things I don't like being disturbed in my
illusions. But a visit to these old castles and prisons with their
hideous and varied appliances of torture and mutilation and death
invariably tempts me seriously to wonder whether the world was not for
centuries under the sway of some malignant fiend instead of a beneficent
Ruler. Just think a moment, as you were saying just now, over the
unutterable horrors perpetrated in that castle alone, not to mention our
own Tower of London and thousands of similar places scattered about the
`civilised' world. Why, it seems as if the one thought animating the
mind of every one in authority was how to inflict the greatest and most
ingenious forms of suffering upon his fellow-creatures. Does not that
look as if the world was under Satanic sway? But there, you will be
thinking me a very heterodox, not to say a wicked person."
"I shall think you neither the one nor the other," he protested, warmly.
The sweet seriousness and depth of thought characterising this girl
constituted by no means the least of her attractions, and with all his
sunny spirits and light-hearted susceptibility Philip Orlebar was poles
apart from the ruck of contemporaneous _jeunesse doree_ whose talk is of
the green room and the daily habits of this or that star actress. He
had ideas and a serious side, and could well appreciate the same in
others. And if in others, how much more in this one who was now
exhibiting them.
"But come," she resumed, gaily, changing her tone and manner with a
suddenness as of the sunlight breaking through a cloud, "we had better
turn our backs on gloomy Chillon, and only look upon and remember my
`corner hewn out of Paradise.' There--that little idea is all my own."
Remember it? thought Philip. Would he ever forget it? The radiant
glories of the summer day, the swift gliding movement over the flashing
water, the great mountains around soaring up to the eternal blue, the
sense of exhilaration in the mere delight of living--and tingeing,
gilding all, touching with the fire of the live coal this fairyland of
entrancing glow and sunlight, the magic of a subtle presence here at his
side. And the fire of that live coal was Love.
Yes, it had come to this with him. In spite of his friend's cynical
warnings and more or less envenomed banter; in the teeth of all
prudential considerations, of future advantage, ways and means, and
such; in the face of the awkward fact that his acquaintanceship with her
was one of barely ten days, Philip had come to admit to himself that
life apart from Alma Wyatt would be but a dead and empty pretence at
living.
Barely ten days! Could it be? Less than one brief fortnight since his
glance had first rested upon her, here on this very deck! It seemed
incredible.
But she? Her splendid eyes met his in conversation fully and
fearlessly, their heavy dark lashes never drooping for a moment beneath
his ardent gaze. Never the faintest tinge of colour came into the warm
paleness of the beautiful patrician face; never a tremor shook the
sweetly modulated voice in response to his most eager efforts to please,
in recognition of his most unmistakable "signs of distress." Could she
not guess?
"I think the idea is a very sweet one," he rejoined, earnestly. "A
little corner of Paradise--that's just what it is."
"Ahem! We shall be at Bouveret in five minutes," struck in a drawling
voice, not wholly guiltless of a cockney twang, recognisable as the
property of Scott. "Do you feel prepared to mount Shanks's mare, Miss
Wyatt?"
Alma murmured a very frigid reply, while Philip was obliged to turn away
to conceal the fury which blazed forth from his visage, and further to
quell an overmastering impulse which moved him to take the speaker by
the scruff of his neck and drop him there and then overboard--in front
of the paddle-wheels. The free and easy patronising drawl of this
insufferable cad made his blood surge again.
"By the way, Miss Wyatt," went on the pachydermatous pastor, "I have a
great mind to ask you to arbitrate. I must say Mr Fordham is a pretty
cool hand. What do you think? Here am I with this huge knapsack full
of things to carry, and he positively declines to take his share. That
is--I've hinted to him pretty plainly that he ought to."
"Fordham isn't a man who deals largely in hints," said Philip, facing
round upon the speaker with a fierceness that almost made the latter
recoil. "If he were, he would doubtless hint that one beast of burden
is sufficient for the party."
Scott looked affronted. Then his countenance suddenly cleared. "Oh! we
are going to take a horse with us then?" he said, gleefully.
"No--an ass," returned Philip, quickly.
Even the inflated layer of the other's self-esteem was not proof against
this shaft. It collapsed with its owner, who retired with a scowl to
pour his grievance into haply more sympathising ears. And by that time
the steamer had crossed the broad and turgid belt where the snow-waters
of the Rhone cleft in a sharply defined pathway the blue surface of the
lake, and was slowing down to half-speed as she approached Bouveret
pier.