When Philip at length managed to leave his room and hobble downstairs
with the aid of a stick and one of the hotel porters he realised to the
full that it was high time he did.
He realised further that all thoughts of mountain climbing, for this
season at any rate, must be abandoned. Not that he cared about that,
however; for after more than a week of confinement to his room, and that
in the loveliest of summer weather, all inclination towards the reaping
of further mountaineering laurels seemed to have left him. His main
ambition now was to get well as soon as possible and move away to fresh
scenes. The lovely aspect of mountain and glacier shining in the golden
summer sun was now as gall to him, intertwined as it was with
recollections of Eden before his wholly unexpected and crushing
expulsion therefrom. The bright laughter and cheerful voices of parties
setting forth or returning--on sightseeing bent--grated irritably on his
nerves, for it brought back to him the time so recent, but now divided
by such an impassable gulf, when he himself was among the cheeriest of
the cheery. So now as he sat in his comfortable cane chair--his injured
foot propped up on another--in a sunny spot outside the hotel, his
thoughts were very bitter.
Needless to say they ran upon the subject which had afforded him ample
food for reflection during these long days of his irksome and enforced
stagnation. To the first blank and heart-wrung sense of his loss had
succeeded by degrees a feeling of angry resentment. Alma had meted out
to him very harsh measure. She had allowed him no opportunity of
explanation, and surely he was entitled to that amount of consideration,
not to say fair play. But no. She had condemned him unheard. After
all Fordham was right. The less one had to do with the other sex the
better. It was all alike. And a very unwonted sneer clouded the beauty
of the ordinarily bright and sunny face.
This, no doubt, was very good reasoning--would have been had the
reasoner but numbered a dozen or so more years of life. In that case it
would doubtlessly have afforded him abundant consolation. As things
were, however, he was fain to own to himself that it afforded him very
little indeed. However he might pretend to himself that Alma was not
worth wrecking his life over, the poor fellow knew perfectly well that
were she to appear at that moment before him with but one kind word on
her lips, all his rankling resentment and cynical communings would be
scattered to the winds. Those wretched Glovers--underbred, shop-keeping
adventurers as they were--to come there wrecking his life by their
infernal malice! And then as in a mental flash he compared the two
girls, the pendulum swung back again, and he reflected that however
harsh and peremptory had been Alma's way of looking at things, he had
got no more than he had deserved. But this idea, while it brushed aside
the flimsy attempts he had been making to harden his heart towards her,
left him rather more unhappy than before.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Well, Mr Orlebar, I am glad to see you down at last," said a very
pleasing feminine voice, whose owner suddenly appeared round an angle of
the house.
"You're awfully good, Mrs Daventer," he replied. "But if you're only
half as glad to see me down as I am to be down, why then you're--
you're--er--still more good."
"It must be delightful to feel yourself out of doors again, after being
shut up all that time," she went on. "Still, it won't do to hurry
matters. You must make up your mind to have a little patience."
"Just what I'm doing. Job isn't in it with me for that quality."
She laughed--and a very attractive laugh it was. So Phil thought, and
he reckoned himself a judge. "A devilish nice woman, and a devilish
nice-looking one," had been his verdict to Fordham, and he saw no reason
to retract any part of it now.
"I shouldn't give you credit for much of the quality at any rate," she
said. "You seem far too impulsive. For instance, just now you were
looking anything but philosophical. However, it is slow work being a
prisoner, and a lonely prisoner too. What has become of your friend?"
"Who? Fordham? Oh, he's away for a few days. He and Wentworth have
gone over to Chamounix by the glacier route. I miss the chap no end. I
believe he'd have put it off if I had wanted him to, but, as it is, I've
been feeling a selfish dog keeping him in the best part of the day
yarning to me, when he might have been having a high old time on his own
account. I tell you what it is, Mrs Daventer, he's a rare good chap is
Fordham."
This was amusing--rich, in fact. She did not even turn away her head to
conceal a bitter curl of the lips, for she flattered herself she was
past showing the faintest sign of feeling. But a ruling passion is
difficult to conceal entirely, especially when it consists of a surging,
deadly hatred.
"Is he?" she said vacantly.
"Rather. I see you don't believe it though. But, between ourselves, he
is a good bit of a woman-hater. So I suppose the sex instinctively
reciprocates the compliment. But, I say, Mrs Daventer. It was awfully
good of you to come and see me as you did--and the other people too,"
added Phil, in the half-shamefaced way in which nineteen men out of
twenty are wont to express their thanks or appreciation as regards a
kindness rendered.
"That was nothing. Mrs Wharton's very nice, isn't she? I'm very sorry
they're leaving to-morrow."
"Are they? I hope I shall see them again before they go. Wharton's a
rare good sort although he's a parson. Don't look shocked. I'm afraid
I don't get on with `the cloth' over well. I daresay it's my own fault
though."
"I daresay it is," she returned with a laugh.
During the latter days of his captivity Philip had not been without
visitors. The British subject, when outside his (or her) native land,
is the proprietor of a far more abundant and spontaneous fount of
the milk of human kindness than when hedged around by the
stovepipe-hat-cum-proper-introductions phase of respectability within
the confines of the same. Several of the people sojourning in the hotel
had looked in upon the weary prisoner to lighten the irksomeness of his
confinement with a little friendly chat, and foremost among them had
been Mrs Daventer.
"Are you doing anything particular this morning, Mrs Daventer?
Because, if not, I wish you'd get a chair--I can't get one for you, you
see--and sit and talk to me," said Phil, in that open, taking manner of
his that rendered him almost as attractive to the other sex as his
handsome face and fine physique.
"Well, I suppose I must," she answered with a smile.
"It would be a real act of Christian charity. And--"
He broke off in confused amazement, caused by the arrival of a third
person upon the scene. "A good-looking girl," was his mental verdict.
"Wentworth was right, by Jove!"
"Laura, dear, see if there are any chairs in the hall," said Mrs
Daventer. "Thanks, love," she went on, as her daughter returned,
bearing a light garden-chair. "Mr Orlebar claims that it is a
Christian duty on our part to sit and gossip with him. I suppose one
must concede him the privileges of an invalid."
"I am glad your ankle is so much better," said the girl, quite
unaffectedly, but with the slightest possible tinge of shyness, which
added an indescribable piquancy to her rich Southern type of beauty.
"It must be so hideously trying to see every one else going about
enjoying themselves, while you feel yourself literally chained."
"That's just how it is," assented Philip. "And they say it's the best
climbing season that has been known for ten years."
"You are a great climber, I suppose?"
"No. A rank greenhorn, in fact. The Rothhorn was the first--the first
real high thing--I've done, and it seems likely to be the last."
"We heard about your accident the morning after we arrived. It made
quite a little excitement."
"I suppose so," said Philip, with a laugh. "`Terrible tragedy. A cow
fell over the bridge and broke one horn,' as the country reporter put
it."
"Get yourself a chair, dear," said Mrs Daventer. And as the girl moved
away with that intent, Philip could not, for the life of him, keep his
glance from following the graceful, lithe gait. She was a
splendid-looking girl, he told himself.
"How is it you are not away among the glaciers this lovely day, Miss
Daventer?" he asked, when she had returned.
"I don't know. I suppose I felt lazy. Some of the people near us at
table have gone up to the Theodule to-day, and wanted me to go with
them. But I should have had to decide last night; besides, they were
going to make such a woefully early start. So I didn't want to tie
myself."
"Quite right," said Philip. "That early start side of the question
takes half the edge off the fun of any undertaking here. Still, once
you are squarely out it's all right, and you feel all the better for
it."
"Always provided you have had a fair night's rest. But these big hotels
are apt to be very noisy--people getting up at all hours and taking
abundant pains to render the whole house aware of the fact."
"Rather," said Philip. "Every one turns in ridiculously early, but
what's the good of that when just as you are dropping off to sleep
somebody comes into the room above you and practices for the next day's
walk during about two hours, in a pair of regulation nail boots? I've
been having a bad time of late. Getting no exercise in the daytime, I
find it hard to sleep at night, and there's always some one stumping
about overhead. I was obliged to ring up the night porter at last and
send him up to inform the gentleman overhead that I should take it as
very kind of him if he would defer his rehearsal of step-cutting,
jumping crevasses, etc, until he could practise upon real ice the next
day. Well, the porter went, for I heard his voice through the floor. I
asked him in the morning if the gentleman had sworn a great deal or only
a little. `Gentleman?' he said, in mild surprise. `It was not a
gentleman, it was a lady.'"
"Wasn't she awfully sorry?" said Laura.
"She may have been, but she didn't seem so. By way of impressing me
with the honour I ought to consider it to be lulled to sleep by the
tread of her fairy feet, I am bound to record that she made rather more
row than before."
"Who was it? Do you know?"
"I don't. I had my suspicions, but they were only suspicions."
"Well, it couldn't have been either of us," laughed Mrs Daventer, "for
we happen to be on the same floor. But to whom do your suspicions
point?"
"I fancy it must have been one of those two grim spinsters who have been
keeping me supplied with sacred literature."
"No--have they?" said the girl, a swift laugh darting from her dark
eyes. "I know who you mean, though I don't know their names. They are
dreadful old people. I notice at table they never have the same
next-door neighbours two days running. I suppose they force their ideas
on that head upon everybody, judging from the scraps of conversation
that float across."
"I ought to be grateful to them," went on Philip. "Every day I found a
fresh tract slipped under my door. The titles, too, were uniformly
appropriated to the sojourner in Zermatt. `Where are you going to climb
to-day?' or `Looking Upward.' `The Way that is Dark and Slippery,'
which reminded me of that high moraine coming down from the Rothhorn the
other night. But what really did hurt my feelings was one labelled,
`_On whomsoever it Shall Fall it shall Grind him to Powder_.' It seemed
too personal. I felt that they were poking fun at my misfortune, don't
you know, and it didn't seem kind. But it occurred to me that they
meant well. They meant to amuse me, and assuredly they succeeded. By
the way, these interesting documents bore the injunction: `When done
with, pass this on to a friend.' Wherefore, Miss Daventer, I shall feel
it my duty to endow you with the whole lot."
"I must decline the honour. I couldn't think of depriving you of so
valuable a possession," was the laughing reply. "But we are wandering
dreadfully from the point. Why do you think it was one of those old
things who was walking about over your head?"
"It is only bare suspicion, mind, and founded upon circumstantial
evidence--acreage, I mean. I have become observant since my enforced
detention, and while contemplating the populace--from a three-storey
window--I have noticed that nobody else could show such an acreage of
shoeleather."
"Your imprisonment has rendered you satirical, Mr Orlebar," said Mrs
Daventer, in mild reproof, though at heart joining in the laugh
wherewith the remark was received by her daughter, as, indeed, nineteen
women out of twenty are sure to do whenever a man makes a joke at the
expense of another member of their own sex.
Thus they sat, exchanging the airiest of gossip, laughing over mere
nothings. Then the luncheon bell rang. Philip's countenance fell. It
was surprising how soon the morning had fled. He said as much--but
dolefully.
"Why, what's the matter?" said the elder lady, as she rose to go
indoors.
"Oh, nothing. Only that I shall be left all alone again."
"Poor thing!" said Laura, mischievously. "But perhaps, if you promise
to be very entertaining, we'll come and take care of you again. Shall
we, mother?"
"Perhaps. And now, Mr Orlebar, is there anything you want? Anything I
can tell them to do for you--or to bring you out?"
"You're awfully good, Mrs Daventer. They know they've got to bring me
something to pick at out here; but they may have forgotten. Yes, if you
don't mind just sending Alphonse here. And--I say--Mrs Daventer--
you'll--you'll come around again presently yourselves--won't you?"
"Perhaps--only perhaps!" answered Laura for her mother, with a
mischievous, tantalising glance, which, however, said as plainly as
possible, "Why, you old goose, you know we will."
His face brightened. "Thanks awfully," he mumbled. And then, as they
left him, the sun did not seem to shine quite so brightly as before.
However, he would not be left alone for long.
What had become of all the dismal and bitter reflections which had been
crowding in upon him when he first took up his position in that chair
barely two hours ago? Well, the cause of them existed still, but
somehow, however reluctant to own it he might be, there was no
disguising altogether a sneaking idea that the sting might be dulled.
Somehow, too, his anxiety to be able to get about had become greatly
enhanced, but not so his eagerness to seek out fresh scenes. That,
curiously enough, had proportionately abated.