"BEST TO BE OFF WITH THE OLD LOVE, BEFORE..."
Philip was not up to his usual form during luncheon. Any one in the
secret would have said that that letter was burning a hole in his
pocket. It seemed to affect his appetite; it certainly affected his
conversational powers. More than once he answered at random; more than
once he relapsed into a spell of silence, almost of gloom, wholly
foreign to his breezy and light-hearted temperament. Yet he was still
in ignorance of its contents. He might have mastered them when he went
up to his room at the ringing of the bell, yet he did not. Now,
however, he wished that he had.
Fordham, glancing sharply at him across the table, more than three parts
made up his mind as to the cause of this abnormal gravity and
abstraction on the part of his volatile friend. He knew he had been
wandering about with Alma Wyatt--the old lady had not been with them all
the time--and was inclined to believe that the impulsive Phil had,
contrary to his own advice, both hinted and outspoken, committed
himself. At the same time he recognised that if that was so the answer
had not been altogether satisfactory. In short, he decided that Master
Phil had received a "facer," and chuckled internally thereat.
The lunch at last over, Philip gained his room. The first thing he did
was to lock the door. Then, drawing the obnoxious missive from his
pocket, he tore it open, with something that sounded very like a
"cussword," and spread the sheet out on the table before him. The
sheet? There were seven of them, all of the flimsiest paper, all
closely written over on every side, in that thin, pointed, ill-formed
hand. Well, he had got to go through them, so with a sort of effort he
began.
"My own dear, dear old darling Phil,--It is just ages, months, years,
centuries, since poor little I heard from you, you dreadfully awfully
naughty, naughty boy!"
"Oh, Lord!" he ejaculated, turning the sheets over, in a kind of
despair, as if to see how much more of this sort of thing was coming.
But he derived no modicum of solace from his investigation, for there
was a great deal more of it coming--in fact, the whole seven sheets
full. Seven sheets of the sort of stuff that sets the court in a roar,
and melts the collective heart of the dozen empanelled grocers and
ironmongers gathered there to mulct the unwary of the substantial salve
which should heal the wounds of the lovely and disconsolate--if slightly
intriguing--plaintiff. And, as he read, an uncomfortable misgiving that
it might ultimately come to this, invaded his mind more than once.
With a sigh of relief he turned the last page, but the feeling was
promptly nipped in the bud as he read:--
"I've been at Pa again and again to take us abroad this year; how jolly
it would be if we were to meet again in that love of a Switzerland,
wouldn't it, dear boy? But no such luck, he won't, and we are going to
St. Swithins instead, and it's the next best thing, and I do _love_ St.
Swithins, and I shall think the blue sea is the Lake of Geneva and you
are there. But we will go all over it together soon, you and I alone,
won't we, Phil, darling, you and your little Edie." Then followed half
a dozen lines of appropriate drivel, and a postscript:--"Be sure you
send me a big bunch of adleweis from the top of the Matterhorn."
If ever a man felt nauseated with himself and all the world, assuredly
that man was Philip Orlebar, as he sat staring at this effusion. Its
fearful style--or rather utter lack of it--its redundancy of
conjunctions, its far from infrequent mis-spellings, its middle-class
vulgarity of gush, would at any other time have been amusing, if
painfully so; now it was all absolutely revolting. He took it up again.
"`Adleweis!' (why couldn't the girl borrow a dictionary), and `from
the _top_ of the Matterhorn' (ugh!) And St. Swithins, staring,
cockneyfied, yahoo-ridden St. Swithins, with its blazer-clad 'Arries and
shrimp-devouring 'Arriets, its nigger minstrels and beach conjurers!
(faugh!) What sort of a mind--what sort of ideas had the girl got?
Then again, `dear boy'! Fancy Alma--" and at this suggestion he dropped
the missive, and, starting up, began to pace the room.
"`We will go all over it together soon!' Will we, though!" he muttered
bitterly. And then, with a savageness begotten of a feeling of being
cornered, trapped, run to earth, he began to wonder whether he should
suffer himself to be taken possession of in this slap-dash fashion. Had
he really given himself away beyond recall! Old Glover entertained
splendidly, and the sparkling burgundy was more than first-rate. What a
fool he had been. Still it seemed impossible that Edith should have
taken seriously all he said--impossible and preposterous! Yes,
preposterous--if all that a man said while sitting out with a pretty
girl, in a deliciously cool and secluded corner of the conservatory--
after that first-rate sparkling burgundy too--was to be twisted into a
downright proposal--an engagement. By Jove, it was--preposterous!
But through all his self-evolved indignation Philip could not disguise
from himself that he had acted like a lunatic, had, in fact, given
himself away. Between his susceptibility to feminine admiration and his
_laisser faire_ disposition, he had allowed his relations with Edith
Glover to attain that stage where the boundary between the ordinary
flirtatious society acquaintance and the affianced lover has touched
vanishing point. The girl was pretty, and adored his noble self. Old
Glover, who was a merchant-prince of some sort or other and rolling in
money, would be sure to "come down" liberally. On the whole he might do
worse. So he had reasoned. But now?
Throughout his perusal of that trying effusion his mind's eye had been
more than half absorbed in a vision of Alma Wyatt--Alma as he had last
seen her--the sweet, patrician face, the grey earnest eyes, the
exquisite tastefulness of her cool white apparel, the grace and poetry
of her every movement, the modulated music of her voice. It seemed a
profanation to contrast her--to place her on the same level with this
other girl--this girl with her middle-class ideas, vile orthography, and
exuberant gush.
What was he to do? that was the thing. Should he send a reply--one so
chilling and decisive as to leave room for no further misapprehension?
That would never do, he decided. The Glovers were just the sort of
people to come straight over there and raise such a clamour about his
ears that he might safely wish himself in a hornets' nest by contrast.
This they might do, and welcome, were it not for Alma. But then, were
it not for Alma it is probable to the last degree that he would have
drifted on, contented enough with the existing state of things.
"Heavens and earth, I believe old Fordham is right after all?" he
ejaculated at last. "Women are the devil--the very devil, one and all
of them. I'll adopt his theory. Shot if I don't!"
But profession and faith are not necessarily a synonym. Between our
would-be misogynist and the proposed mental transformation stood that
bright and wholly alluring potentiality whose name was Alma Wyatt.
With an effort he locked away the obnoxious missive, wishing to Heaven
he could lock up the dilemma he was in as easily and indefinitely.
Should he consult Fordham? No, that wouldn't help matters; besides, he
shrank from having to own that he had made a consummate ass of himself,
nor did he feel disposed just then to open his heart even to Fordham.
How beastly hot it had become! He would stay up in his room and take it
easy--have a read and a smoke. Hang everybody! And with a growl he
kicked off his boots, and, picking up a Tauchnitz novel, flung himself
on the bed and lighted his pipe.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rat-tat-tat-tat! Then a voice. "You there, Phil? The first
dinner-bell has gone!"
He started up. The knock and the voice were Fordham's. It was a
quarter-past six, and he had been asleep just three hours.
"We were afraid you had heard bad news, Mr Orlebar," said Mrs Wyatt,
as he slid into his seat a quarter of an hour late. "You haven't, have
you?"
"Oh, no," he answered, with splendid mendacity. "I've been feeling a
little pulled down to-day, and dropped off to sleep without knowing it."
"The thunder in the air, I suppose," said Alma, with a bright,
mischievous glance. "We had such a nice walk up to the Cubly, when it
began to get cool."
"The Cubly?"
"Yes. Uncle was looking for you everywhere, but, as it happens, it was
lucky we didn't disturb you. Besides, we feared you might have had bad
news."
This was what he had missed then--all through that infernal letter too.
He felt more savage than ever. Bad news? Yes he had, and no mistake.
But the next moment he was destined to hear worse.
"I'm sorry to say we are obliged to cut short our stay here," General
Wyatt was saying to Fordham. "Some friends whom we had arranged to meet
have wired us to join them at the Grindelwald--an old brother officer
and his family. They have turned up sooner than we expected, and,
reckoning on our promise to join them, have already engaged our rooms.
In fact they could not have got them otherwise, for the hotel is filling
up rapidly."
"Sorry to hear that, General--very sorry. When do you leave?"
"Not later than Tuesday, I'm afraid. That'll give this young person a
day clear for a final walk or climb."
Here was a bolt from the blue with a vengeance, thought Philip.
"I don't want to go in the least," said Alma. "Don't you think," she
added, with a flash of merriment, "it's hateful to leave a place just as
you have become fond of it?"
"Hateful isn't the word for it," replied Philip, with savage vehemence.
"But don't you think you may become just as fond of where you're going?"
struck in the eternal female opposite.
"I'm perfectly sure you won't in this case," said Fordham, speaking to,
and answering for, the Wyatts at the same time. "The Grindelwald is
about the most noisy, crowded, and cheap-tripper-ridden resort in the
Alps. A chronic dust cloud overhangs the whole Lutschinen Thal by
reason of a perennial string of vehicles ascending from and descending
to Interlaken with scarce a break of fifty yards. You can't go on a
glacier without paying gate-money--a franc a head. Fancy that! Fancy
reducing a glacier to the level of a cockney tea-garden! Then between
the village and either of the said glaciers is an ever-moving stream of
the personally conducted, mostly mounted on mules and holding umbrellas
aloft."
"But don't you think you are painting poor Grindelwald in very
unattractive colours?" expostulated the Infliction.
"Think? No, I'm sure of it," was the short reply. "And I haven't done
yet. The place swarms with beggars and cadgers. Go where you will, you
are beset by small ragamuffins pestering you to purchase evil-looking
edelweiss blossoms or mobbing your heels to be allowed to show you the
way, which you know a vast deal better than they do. Every fifty yards
or so you come upon the Alpine horn fiend, prepared to make hideous
melody for a consideration; or wherever a rock occurs which can by any
chance produce an echo, there lurks a vagabond ready to explode a
howitzer upon receipt of a franc. No. Taking it all in all, I don't
think one is far out in defining Grindelwald as the Rosherville of
Switzerland."
"That sounds truly dreadful," said Alma. "But were it the reverse I
should still be sorry to leave here--very sorry."
"We must get up a jolly long walk to-morrow," said Philip, eagerly.
"It'll be the last time, and we ought to have a good one. Let's go up
the Cape au Moine."
"But isn't that a very dangerous climb?" objected Mrs Wyatt.
"Oh, no. At least, I believe not. Wentworth, who has been up ever so
many times, says it's awfully over-rated. But we'll get him to come
along and to show us the way."
Fordham looked quickly up, intending to throw cold water on the whole
scheme. But Philip's boot coming in violent and significant contact
with a rather troublesome corn, stifled in a vehement scowl the remark
he was about to make, as his friend intended it should.
"That'll be delightful," assented Alma, gleefully. "Now who shall we
ask to go? Mr Wentworth, the two Ottleys--they are sure to ask Mr
Scott."
"Should have thought that boat experience would have choked _him_ off
any further enterprise," grunted Fordham.
"That'll be four," went on Alma, not heeding the interruption. "Then
you two, uncle and myself--eight altogether. We ought to be roped.
It's a real climb, isn't it?"
"Oh, very," said Fordham. "So real that not half of us will reach the
top."
"Well, I mean to for one," declared Alma. "And oh, I do hope it'll be
fine."