Fordham's Feud

“Darling love – love of my life – my only love!” he uttered, in heartbroken tones, “what am I to say? Why – why were you so hasty? And now it is too late.”

“Yes, I was hasty; I know it now,” she replied. “But I tried to make amends. Oh, Philip! why did you not answer – take some notice of my letter?”

“Your – what?”

His face had turned deathly white. Already he saw that some horrible contretemps had served to divert from him a life’s happiness.

“My letter? I wrote to you at Zermatt directly I heard of your accident. You took no notice, so I concluded you did not want to hear of me any more.”

“Alma, as sure as I stand here a living man, I have never received a line of your writing in my life.”

It was her turn to grow pale now.

“But I did write. I directed to your hotel at Zermatt. What can it mean? You never received it?”

He burst into a harsh laugh – a laugh infinitely more moving than tears.

“What can it mean?” he repeated. “It means this: it is part of the whole hellish plot. That letter was intercepted by the hand that for its owner’s vile purposes lured me to my ruin. But that hand is burning now for that act of wickedness – that one act alone – that act which ruined my life. It is burning in another world – if there be another world – for the woman, its owner, is dead.”

“I begin to see,” she said, her eyes brimming with love and pity. “Yes, I can see it all now.”

The bell rang again, and the paddles slackened. The Mont Blanc was sweeping up to the débarcadère at Morges. The next stoppage would be Ouchy, and there they must part.

“Do you remember that day we were crossing over to Bouveret on this very boat?” he went on. “Do you remember our conversation as we passed Chillon Castle? You remarked then, à propos of all its mediaeval horrors, instruments of torture, and so forth – that there seemed a time when the world must have been under Satanic rule instead of under that of a good Providence. Do you remember that?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, the same thing holds good now. What have I done that those whom I have never harmed should lay themselves out to ruin my life – to render my days a hell and a curse to me? For it is a curse – a lifelong curse.”

“Not that – not that, God grant. Philip, be brave; you are young yet. Better days will dawn, dear.”

“But they will not bring me – you. No, something tells me it is not so – it never will be so. Nothing better will dawn for me but the grave. I told you before; I tell you again. I feel as if I had come to the end of my life.”

“Hush – hush,” she said, soothingly. “Your life is still your own; you are your own master. You must make an object in life for yourself. That is the only remedy.”

But he shook his head.

“No, no. The Satanic influence is everywhere. Was it not abroad that day on the river when one glimpse of you would have saved me? Had your parasol been held but a few inches higher I should have seen you, and the sight of you would have brought me back to you, back to myself, in time. Yet it was not to be.”

Again the bell rang, again the paddles slowed down. The massive red-tiled tower of Ouchy drew nearer and nearer. The Mont Blanc glided proudly up to the pier.

“Alma, darling – my lost love – we may never meet again. Something tells me we shall not. Give me – one kiss.”

His hands were holding hers. His sad eyes were full upon hers. And she loved him. What could she do?

“Would it be right?” she said, hesitatingly.

“Right or wrong, give it me. You will never regret it.”

Her lips met his, in one sweet, warm, clinging kiss. Then with a murmured, “God bless you, Philip, dear!” she had torn herself away, and was gone.

There was the usual stir and bustle of landing. Then as they were wending their way from the débarcadère in the wake of their luggage, which an hotel porter was hauling before them on a truck, one of Alma’s friends said —

“Who was the other party to the tête-à-tête, Alma? I declare your behaviour is positively scandalous, my dear girl. Do you know you were rather more than a whole hour hobnobbing with him? Come, who was he?”

“An old friend of mine,” she answered, trying to do so lightly, but of course failing abjectly.

“Why don’t you say a dear friend?” said another of the girls, maliciously. “Why, he was standing there on the lower deck as we landed, simply devouring the last of you with his eyes. And they were eyes, too. Come, now, his name? You are not going to get out of that, don’t think it. Who was he?”

“Sir Philip Orlebar.”

“Sir Philip Orlebar?” repeated the last who had spoken and who was by way of being the wag of the party. “And you did not bring him up and introduce him. A whole, real, live baronet – and such a good-looking one, too! Oh, Alma, I should never have thought it of – Gracious goodness!”

The last words were little better than a shriek. For a frightful sound had drowned the speaker’s utterance – a loud, vibrating, strident roar, and a crash as of a heavy missile tearing through planks and rafters. Turning towards it, the faces of the girls blanched with terror and their knees trembled under them, so that they could hardly stand. Those around behaved variously, but all were in a state of the wildest consternation and dismay.

“Mais il éclate – le bateau-à-vapeur!” cried one of the bystanders.

The Mont Blanc was still at the jetty. At first it was difficult to make out what had happened. Then dense masses of steam were seen to be issuing from the centre of the ship, and from the whole outside of the saloon spurted white, hissing jets.

The upper deck was the scene of a wild and frenzied panic. A mob of terror-stricken passengers surged to the gangway, fighting, shouting, swarming over each other and everything, at imminent peril of being precipitated into the water. And over and above this chaos, this rout and tumult, there arose a succession of the most appalling screams that ever human ear was condemned to listen to, for they issued from the throats of so many human beings shut up within the death-trap below – so many human beings, for whom all escape was cut off, and who were being literally parboiled alive.

This is what had happened. The steam reservoir had exploded, and the mass of iron covering it had been hurled along the lower deck, sweeping the saloon from end to end, and crashing through the stern of the vessel like the projectile from a piece of ordnance. And then an enormous volume of scalding steam had filled the apartment, and in a moment the light-hearted holiday-seekers, with which it was crowded, wrapped in that hell-blast from which there was no escape, were writhing in the throes of the most horrible, the most agonising of deaths.

Alma, recovering her presence of mind, left her friends, and hurried back to the scene of the catastrophe. But the gathering crowd barred her way; it in its turn being kept back by the arm and voice of Authority. Yet she got near enough to see the outside of the wrecked saloon, the twisted girders supporting the upper deck, the jagged breach in the stern where the iron plate had gone through. She saw the panic-stricken crowd swaying and surging. She saw one scalded wretch rush to the side and leap overboard, in the frenzy of his intolerable agony. What she did not see was him whom she sought. She did not see Philip Orlebar.

Not in the terrified, struggling crowd upon the upper deck did her eyes seek him; even at that moment she knew it was not thus he would be found in the hour of peril and alarm. Her anguished gaze, straining upon the spot where she had last seen him, met with no reward. He was not there. Oh, merciful Heavens! Could he have gone back to his seat in the stern of the boat, to that spot where they had stood together talking for a full hour.

For that spot was now enveloped in a cloud of white steam, which was pouring out through the hole knocked in the end of the saloon by the iron cover of the cistern. Had Philip returned to his seat his back would have rested against that very part of the panelling which was blown away.

It was long before the work of rescue could be begun, long before the fiery breath of that hell-blast had sufficiently abated its fury to admit of search. Still Alma stood there, and as each agonising minute of suspense went by she realised more certainly that there was no hope. She saw body after body – in life or in death – brought away from the fatal ship. She heard the heartrending groans of the sufferers, and the appalling yells of some tortured wretch imploring the boon of death as a termination to his agony. These dreadful sights and sounds which at any other time would well-nigh have killed her with horror, seemed to be something outside her life now. He whom she sought was not among them – not yet.

She pressed forward. The crowd elbowed her backward. The voice of Authority warned her backward. To Authority she appealed.

Now Authority, even in a blue uniform and a sword, may still possess a heart, and Authority as there embodied, was young and presumably susceptible. The white eager face was passingly beautiful – the piteous glance and appealing voice correspondingly entrancing. Authority’s heart melted. In the result the crowd elbowed her backward no more.

“Mademoiselle had a friend on board? A lady? No? A gentleman – an English gentleman? Good. He should be sought for.”

Accordingly Alma learned the worst without undue delay. There was an English gentleman among the injured – a tall, good-looking gentleman with a blonde moustache. “He was hurt – very badly hurt,” declared Authority, humanely mendacious, adding, “But he is not burned – oh, no – certainly he is not burned. Wait. They will disembark him in one little moment. Is he dead? Well, Mademoiselle must not give way. He is not burned – certainly – not in the least burned.”

And the force of even that little crumb of well-meant comfort came home to Alma as, a few minutes later, she bent down over what had so recently contained the soul of Philip Orlebar, and regardless of the glances of three pairs of eyes or of three hundred, kissed the calm and placid face, so still and composed in death – kissed those lips hardly cold yet – the warmth of whose parting kiss in life seemed to glow upon hers – the sad, hopeless echo of whose parting words still seemed to linger in her ears. “Alma, darling. My lost love. We may never meet again. Something tells me we shall not.” Well, they had not – in life.

As the douanier had said, Philip Orlebar was not burned, for he had met his death in the open air. He had, as Alma had first conjectured, resumed his seat in the stern of the boat – was on the point of doing so rather, when the explosion occurred, and the iron plate, bursting through the end of the saloon, had struck him on the spine and shattered it, killing him instantaneously – painlessly.

“I feel as if I had come to the end of my life,” had been his words, twice used during that last sad conversation. Poor Philip! Had he uttered them in sheer bitterness of heart or under the influence of a strange unerring presentiment? Verily it may have been a little of both.