Not less radiantly did the sun shine upon the blue lake, in whose
pellucid surface lay mirrored the great feathery slopes of the Savoy
Alps; not less joyously did the cheerful sights and sounds of everyday
life run their course after the terrible catastrophe of which that
fairest of earth's scenes had been the theatre. Pleasure boats skimmed
the placid waters; quarry barges, their white triangular sails hanging
listless in the still air, were unlading their cargoes of stones brought
thither from the Savoy shore; even a steamer swept up to the jetty, and,
having discharged and received its human freight, went plashing on its
way. The world still went on; but to Alma Wyatt, wandering there alone
by the landing-place in the glad sunshine, the golden side of life was
clouded over for evermore.
Nearly a month had gone by since poor Philip's remains had been carried
back to the home of his fathers for burial. His successor, the new
baronet, a distant cousin whom he had known but slightly, had hurried to
the scene of the disaster, and much moved by his young kinsman's most
lamentable fate had spared no trouble and expense to ensure that every
honour and care should surround the last lugubrious arrangements. But
the awful strain of that horrible experience had told upon Alma, and for
three weeks she was so ill and prostrate that she was forbidden to leave
her room.
When, eventually, she was able to appear again, she would not leave the
place. With a persistency which her friends more or less strongly
condemned as morbid--impressing upon her the thankfulness she ought to
feel that the explosion had not taken place a few minutes earlier, while
she herself was standing on the fatal spot--she would make her daily
pilgrimage to the scene of the disaster, for to her it was holy ground.
To her had been spoken the very last words he ever breathed, and they
had been words of love. Her lips had received the last kiss it had been
in his power to bestow. "You will never regret it," he had said. And
did she? Not for worlds would she barter that sweet sad recollection.
She loved him now--loved him with all her heart and soul and being. And
it was too late. Too late! She might go to him, but never more could
he return to her.
There in the noontide sunshine she stood, and, whatever way her eyes
might turn, the whole scene around her brought back his memory. She
could see the little white village of St. Gingolph sleeping beneath the
great mountains on the opposite shore; and it brought back that day,
when tossing on the furious billows of that sudden tempest, they had
reckoned their hours as numbered--and there were times when in the
bitterness of her soul she could find it in her heart to wish they had
died together then. Again, there rose the green serrated ridges of the
Chaine des Verreaux, beneath whose shadow she had received his first
declaration of love. She could see the distant _arete_ of the
Cape-au-Moine heaved up against the blue sky, could mark the exact spot
where they had cowered for shelter when exposed to the wild fury of the
blast, up there on those dangerous heights, now so green and smiling in
the sunlight, and she could see him in the sweet golden evening of that
eventful day, so appealing, so winning in his brave young beauty, as he
poured out his love at her feet. Then she hardly knew her own heart.
Now she knew it. But--too late.
"How do you do, Miss Wyatt?"
She started violently. That familiar voice even, fitted with the
picture she had been drawing. Turning she encountered the dark,
piercing eyes of Fordham.
He had raised his hat, but he did not offer his hand. He stood there
contemplating her with grave, saturnine expression as of old.
"Wretched business this," he said, with a jerk of the head in the
direction of the spot where the catastrophe had taken place. "Poor
fellow, poor fellow! Well, I suppose even I can hardly be held so much
as indirectly responsible for it."
"I hardly know whether I am speaking to his friend or his enemy," said
Alma, who, while instinctively distrusting this strange being, yet was
conscious of being in some degree held spell-bound, even as the historic
wedding-guest, together with an unaccountable anxiety to hear what he
had to say.
"Both, I suppose," answered Fordham, impassively. "Formerly that is to
say. Now only the first. You have heard of such a thing as a vendetta,
I suppose, Miss Wyatt?"
"Of course."
"Well, I come of the race among which that institution is pre-eminently
supposed to flourish. Philip's father injured me, and I foredoomed the
son from his cradle to be the means of avenging that injury upon the
father. And when the time came--he did so."
"And you are such a monster as to come here and gloat over it!" said
Alma, recoiling from him in a perfect horror of repulsion. But the
other was unmoved. A wintry ghost of a smile drooped the corners of his
mouth. He looked at her for a moment and went on.
"By no means. I saved his life more than once--and twice after that I
_gave_ him his life."
"Gave him his life?"
"Yes. Are you aware that he challenged me, and I met him?"
"I had heard of it."
"Well, we exchanged shots twice; rather, I let him have two shots at me,
while I--blazed away at the heavens. He could have had a dozen if he
wished, but the seconds did not. I am a dead shot, and I was not going
to fire at him. Now, am I such a monster?"
"Go on."
"Well, his bullet hit me, and I shall never walk straight again. It hit
me--exactly where I wounded his father when Philip himself was hardly
out of his cradle. But I bore him not the slightest grudge for that--
nor do I. My vendetta was accomplished. It had to be done, and it was
done. Yet several times I wavered. The chances were even that I would
spare him, for I had grown fond of the boy. And, Miss Wyatt, yours is
the hand that turned the scale against him."
"Mine? What _do_ you mean?"
"Yours. I mean just that. You were in such a hurry to send him to the
right-about, to condemn him unheard, that you threw him back into my
power again. My power against him could not have stood against yours--
but you threw yours away. Afterwards it was too late."
Oh the anguish of her heart as she listened! This man was reiterating
word for word what Philip himself had said. Why had she been in such a
hurry to condemn him unheard? Well, her whole life now was destined to
be an expiation of that one act of hard and merciless pride. Fordham,
who had been watching her keenly, with a feeling, half grim, half
sorrowful at his heart, continued:
"That marriage of his was brought about solely by me. You may or may
not have guessed that, yourself apart, there was every reason why that
particular alliance could have been nothing but absolutely disastrous to
him. Well, into the particulars I need not go--especially for your
enlightenment. Suffice it to say that the measure was brought about for
the purposes of my lifelong feud, of which it was the crowning act. And
now his wife is dead."
Every vestige of colour forsook Alma's cheeks. What infinite
possibilities might not the future have opened out?
"Dead?" she echoed. "How? When?"
"Yes--dead. She died suddenly--_the day before_ poor Philip's own end.
But it was a day too late. Had it occurred a day earlier he would have
heard of it, and would not have been in the _Mont Blanc_ blow-up."
"Was she--was she--fond of him?" gasped Alma.
"Passionately, I am told; and that was a factor in the carrying out of
my vendetta." And then, backing against the iron railing of the jetty
to rest his lame leg, Fordham continued deliberately, "So you see, if he
had landed here at Ouchy, when you did, instead of deciding to go on
further, Philip would now be a free man as well as a living one. But
that is the way of the world--our blessings, when they come to us,
invariably do so a day too late."
Fordham was right.