Chapter Nineteen.
Fighting the Devil with Fire.
Philip was only too ready to follow his friend’s advice, and accordingly started away there and then—whither he did not care. His only thought was to get through the day somehow.
He had no wish to encounter old Glover again. In saying that he had had a considerable row with that worthy he had in no wise overstated matters. His marked abstention from the fair Edith’s society the previous evening had been quite sufficient, and the old man had got up with the fixed determination of having it out with the defaulting swain, and withal giving the latter a very large piece of his mind. This was all very well. But old Glover, not being a gentleman himself, did not in the very least understand how to deal with gentlemen, and his method of handling his grievance was so much that of the triumphant trickster who has bested his neighbour over a bargain that it revolted Philip, unconsciously strengthening a resolve which was forming in his mind to avoid an alliance with connections of this sort at all costs and hazards.
Now, as he made his way up the mountain path with the quick elastic step of perfect physical condition, Philip began to feel more sanguine. Fordham would get him out of the mess somehow. From where he was he could make out two figures strolling out from the hotel. He had no glasses with him, but felt sure they were Fordham and old Glover. They were at it already. Fordham was a wonderful fellow, and could do anything if he chose. It would not be surprising if he were to succeed in getting rid of the obnoxious Glovers altogether, and he—Philip—were to find the field clear again when he returned that evening. He felt quite hopeful.
Not for long, however. For he remembered there was another horn to the dilemma. He might free himself from the awkward position in which circumstances and his own thoughtlessness had combined to land him; but the new sweet relationship with Alma—ah! that was a thing of the past, and this he recognised with a keen unerring instinct hardly to be looked for in his easy-going nature. This he recognised with a despairing pang, and again his heart was heavy as lead within him.
The first person Fordham encountered on returning to the hotel was old Glover himself. The latter was seated on a pile of saw-planks stacked against a chalet, smoking the pipe of solitude and sweet and bitter fancies—probably the latter, if the expression of his countenance was aught to go by. So far from being prepared to resent his intervention, there was an eager look in the old man’s eyes as he perceived Fordham, which was by no means lost upon that astute reader of human nature.
“Er—er—Mr Fordham?” he called out, the other having passed him with a commonplace remark in re the weather.
Fordham turned with just a gleam of well-feigned astonishment in his face.
“Ar—Mr Fordham,” went on old Glover now more eagerly, “would you—ar—mind accompanying me for a short stroll? I should—ar—like to have a few words with you.”
“Certainly,” was the reply, and an additional touch was thrown into the well-feigned astonishment. “I am quite at your disposal. Doing nothing this morning. We might stroll along the level towards the head of the valley.”
The other assented with alacrity, and they started, Fordham keeping the conversation to strict commonplace until they had got clear of the clusters of châlets lining the path on either side. Then the valley opened out into wide, level meadows, and, crossing the log bridge over the swirling, rushing mountain torrent, Fordham led the way into one of these.
“Er—ar”—began old Glover, who had with difficulty restrained his eagerness up till now, “have you, may I ask, known young Orlebar for a considerable length of time?”
“A goodish while.”
“Do you—ar—considar—that you know him well—er—I may say intimately?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Er—now, Mr Fordham—you will—ar—excuse the question, I’m sure. Have you always found him—ar—straightforward?”
“Invariably. Too much so, in fact, for his own interests.”
“Ar—r!” The representative of British commerce drew himself up with a sidelong stare at his neighbour. This was a quality quite outside his comprehension. He began to suspect the other was making game of him. The expanse of waistcoat swelled, and the folds of a truly magnificent pomposity deepened around its wearer as he went on. “Ar—I am sorry I cannot agree with you, Mr—ar—Fordham—very sorry indeed. In his dealings with me—with me and mine—young Orlebar has, I regret to say, shown the—ar—very reverse of straightforwardness. Are you aware, sir, that he is engaged to my daughter?”
“I can’t say I am.”
The old man halted, turned round upon Fordham, and looked him full in the face as though he could hardly believe in his own sense of hearing.
“I—ar—beg your pardon, Mr—ar—Fordham. Did I—ar—understand you to say you were not aware of it?”
“Certainly, Mr Glover. I intended you to understand precisely that.”
Old Glover was nonplussed. He began to feel small and at a decided disadvantage, a most unwonted feeling with him. He stared wonderingly, inquiringly, distrustfully, into the dark, saturnine visage confronting him, but could read nothing there.
“It is an odd thing that Phil should not have informed me of the fact,” went on Fordham. “He is usually openness itself—indeed, too much so, as I said just now. Wears his heart on his sleeve, I always tell him. However, I shall have to congratulate him the next time I see him. By the way, I suppose his father is delighted? Philip is an only son, you know.”
Nothing could be more innocent than Fordham’s tone, nothing more unsuspecting than the look of half-amused wonder with which he received the intelligence. But his keen perception noted the disconcerted wave which passed over his interlocutor’s face at this allusion to Sir Francis Orlebar.
“Fathers have different ways of taking news of that kind,” he continued, innocently. “Now, partly as a student of character, partly by reason of some slight acquaintance with Sir Francis himself, I am curious to know how he took the news of his son’s engagement. How did he?”
The question was put with blunt and cruel directness. No slippery commercial instincts could avail here. It must be answered. Poor old Glover felt unprecedentedly small in the hands of his wily opponent. Those piercing dark eyes penetrated his poor coating of pomposity as a lance-head might penetrate the rind of a pumpkin.
“I am not aware how Sir Francis took the news,” he answered, stiffly.
“He was informed, of course?” pursued Fordham, remorselessly. “Really—ar—Mr Fordham. Your tone is—ar—very strange. I am at a loss to—ar—”
“Oh, a thousand pardons. I merely asked the question because I thought I understood you to say that Philip was engaged to your daughter. If I was mistaken—But I quite understand. Of course the affair is no business of mine. At the same time allow me to remind you, Mr Glover, that the topic was broached by yourself, and, moreover, that you requested me to accompany you for a stroll with that object. It is naturally of far greater interest to you than to me, but if it is distasteful to you, we will drop it at once. So let us talk of something more congenial.”
His manner was the perfection of ingenuous indifference. Thorough cynic as he was, Fordham was enjoying the embarrassment of this inflated old schemer, who he well knew had not brought him thus far in order to “drop the subject” at any such early stage of the conversation. And the next words proved it.
“You were not mistaken, sir. He is engaged to my daughter. And—ar—when you come to look at the matter in its right light, Mr Fordham, you will, I am sure, agree with me that he has acted with very great want of straightforwardness.”
“Perhaps. But you know, Mr Glover, Philip is an only son. It does, I confess, appear strange to me that no reference should have been made to his father at the time he asked for your consent to the engagement. He did ask for it, I suppose?”
“Hang it, sir!” blared forth the other, goaded to fury by his own helpless flounderings, which only served to entangle him deeper and deeper within the net. “Hang it, sir! You know as well as I do that in these days young people don’t trouble their heads about their fathers in matters of this kind. They take it all into their own hands—arrange it between themselves.”
The expression of astonished disapproval upon Fordham’s face as he received this announcement would have delighted the heart of the most confirmed stickler for the old-fashioned proprieties.
“Do they? I was not aware of it,” he said, “Pardon my ignorance, but I still can’t help thinking that, whatever may be the general rule, for the only son of a man of Sir Francis Orlebar’s position to be allowed to drift into a tacit engagement without consulting either the young lady’s father or his own, is—pardon me again—somewhat of an odd proceeding.”
“What is a beggarly baronet?” cried old Glover, the coarse huckstering blood showing through the veneer of a would-be stately pomposity in his blind rage at finding himself outwitted at every point. “Pooh! I could buy up a dozen of them.”
“True. I was not thinking so much, though, about what was due to a ‘beggarly baronet’ as to a gentleman and the son of a gentleman. However,” he resumed, after a pause just perceptible enough to carry that last shaft home, “let us now be frank with each other—talk as men of the world, in fact. I presume you had some object in seeking this interview with me, Mr Glover?”
Their stroll had brought them to a large rock which at some period more or less remote had fallen from above and embedded itself in the meadow. In the shade formed by this Fordham proposed that they should sit down. A beetling cliff sheered up behind to a great height, but in front and around the approaches to the place were open.
“You are right in your surmise, Mr—ar—Fordham. As an intimate friend of young Orlebar, a man, I believe, considerably older than himself, it occurred to me that you would be—ar—likely to have some influence over him—and—ar—might exert that influence towards inducing him to do what is right.”
“You may command any influence I may possess in that direction, Mr Glover,” said Fordham, suavely, though inwardly chuckling over the cool impudence of the proposal and the opacity of the mind which could propound it.
“I was sure of it—sure of it,” reiterated the other, much mollified at the prospect of so welcome an alliance. “As I said before, he is not behaving straightforwardly, and you will—ar—agree with me. Well, now, some months ago it was that he came first to my place. I’ve got a little crib down at Henley, you know, Mr Fordham—shall be happy to see you there if you are returning to England—very happy. Well, we had plenty of fun going on—parties and picnics and rowing and all that. I’m a man that likes to see young folks enjoying themselves. I don’t stint them—not I. Let them enjoy themselves when they are young, say I. Don’t you agree with me?”
“Undoubtedly,” murmured Fordham.
“Well, among other young fellows who came sparking around was this young Orlebar,” went on old Glover, forgetting his stilted pomposity in the thread of his narrative. “I was always glad to see him—ask him if I wasn’t. Soon it seemed to me that he was taking a fancy to my Edie. She’s my eldest, you know, as good a girl as ever was. She’s a pretty girl, too, and looks at home anywhere—in the Park, or wherever she may be. Now doesn’t she?”
“I quite agree with you on the subject of Miss Glover’s attractions,” said Fordham, gravely. “She would, as you say, look thoroughly at home in the Park—with a perambulator and a soldier,” he added to himself.
“All day and every day he made some excuse or other to run down. He’d take her out on the river by the hour, sit about the garden with her, be sending her flowers and things and all that. If that don’t mean intentions, I’d like to know what does. Well, I didn’t feel called upon to step in. I don’t believe in interfering with young folks’ inclinations. I liked the young fellow—we all did—and it seemed he was old enough to know his own mind. This went on for some time—some months. Then suddenly we heard he’d gone abroad, and from that day on heard no more about him by word or line. My poor Edie felt it dreadfully. She didn’t say anything at first, nor for a long time, and at last I got it all out of her. Now, that isn’t the way a girl should be treated, is it, Mr Fordham? If you had daughters of your own you would not like to see them treated like that, would you?”
“Certainly not. But pray go on—I am interested.”
He was—but in reading between the lines of this very ingenuous and pathetic tale of base and black hearted treachery. To the narrator his sympathetic tone and attitude conveyed the liveliest satisfaction, but that hoary plutocrat little guessed at what a dismally primitive hour it was requisite to rise in order to get the blind side of saturnine Richard Fordham.
“I’d taken the girls to the seaside for their summer outing,” continued the narrator—“a thing they generally go wild with delight over. But poor Edie this time said she hated the sea. She wanted to go abroad. Would I take her abroad? At first I wouldn’t, till she grew quite thin and pale. Then I knew why she wanted to go, and she told me. If she could find him out herself—make up a pleasant little surprise, she said—it would all come right. It would all be as before, and they would be as jolly as grigs. I hadn’t the heart to refuse her, and so we came. We found out where young Orlebar was, and dropped down on him with the pleasant little surprise we’d planned. But—it didn’t seem a pleasant surprise at all.”
“No, by Jove, it didn’t!” said the listener to himself, putting up his hand to hide a sardonic grin.
“You saw that it didn’t. You saw how he behaved. Didn’t seem at all glad to see us, hardly spoke to us. And that girl had been breaking her heart about him—yes, breaking her heart—and he’s never been near her since the moment she arrived. But I see how it is—he’s got another string to his bow. That high and mighty young woman that was sitting near you—Miss—what’s her name?—Miss Wyatt, isn’t it? Well—”
“Excuse me if I remind you, Mr Glover, that among ourselves it is not usual to drag ladies’ names into other people’s differences in that free-and-easy sort of fashion,” said Fordham, stiffly, though inwardly convulsed with mirth at the idea of finding himself, of all people, taking up the cudgels on behalf of one of the detested sex.
“Eh—what? Why, they told me he was engaged to her.”
“Who told you he was?”
“Why, let me see—some of the people last night. I don’t quite recollect which of them. But perhaps you can tell me for certain. Is he?”
“Not that I am aware of.”
“Not—eh?” with a very distrustful look into Fordham’s face, and in no wise convinced; for to this representative of British commerce a man was bound to be lying, provided any adequate motive existed for mendacity, and here such motive undoubtedly did exist. “Well, they told me the pair of them were never apart, out together all day, sitting together all the evening—never apart, except at bedtime.”
“Pooh! that means nothing. Here you see, and in places like this, society is a pretty happy-go-lucky assortment, and the harmonious elements gravitate towards each other. And while we are on this subject, Mr Glover, I may as well remind you that Philip is young, a great favourite with women, and consequently a devil of a fellow to flirt. He’s always over head and ears in some flirtation or other—always has been ever since I’ve known him. But he means nothing by it, and it always comes to nothing.”
“Upon my word, Mr—ar—Fordham,” replied the other, again bristling up with pomposity, “you seem to treat this matter with strange—ar—levity. Whatever—ar—you may see fit to call it, I look upon this—ar—outrageous trifling with my daughter’s feelings as the act of an unprincipled scoundrel. Yes, sir, an unprincipled scoundrel,” he added, rolling the words, in his delight at having hit upon a good, sounding, double-barrelled epithet. “But what do you want him to do?”
“Well, really—ar—Mr Fordham, that is a strange question to come from a man of your—ar—knowledge of the world. What is the usual—ar—outcome of a young man’s winning a girl’s affection?”
“I am bound in candour to reply that its nature varies. Further it might be as well to approach this matter with caution and common sense. You are doubtless aware that Sir Francis Orlebar is not a rich man—for a man in his position a decidedly poor one, and Philip has not a shilling in the world beyond what his father allows him? Now if his father should disapprove of this—er—engagement—as not having been consulted it is extremely likely he will—he may cut off that allowance summarily.”
“In that case I should be prepared to allow the people—ar—something to go on with.”
“What do you mean precisely by ‘something to go on with,’ Mr Glover?”
“Well—really now—ar—Mr Fordham. You must excuse my saying so, but you are—ar—I mean this is—”
“Taking a great liberty? I quite understand,” was the perfectly unruffled rejoinder. “But then you must remember this, Mr Glover. You broached the subject. You called me into consultation, so to say. You asked me to use my influence with Philip in this matter. I need hardly tell you I have no interest in it one way or the other. We will drop the subject altogether if you like.”
“I think you mistake me,” said the other, hurriedly. “I did not—ar—say the words you were good enough to put into my mouth.”
“Well, then, you must allow me, Mr Glover, to keep an eye upon my friend’s interests. He is very young, remember, a mere thoughtless boy. Now we, as men of the world, are bound to look at everything from a practical point of view. Let us talk plainly then. How much are you prepared to settle in the event of Philip—er—fulfilling the engagement into which you say he has entered?”
“I should be, as I said before, prepared to make them a fairly liberal allowance,” he jerked forth, with the air of a man who has just had a tooth drawn and has found the process less painful than he had expected.
But Fordham shook his head.
“The ‘allowance’ system is an unsatisfactory one,” he said. “I have known people let into queer quandaries by trusting to it. Allowances may be cut off at the mere caprice of the allower. Now, don’t be offended,” he added, with the shadow of a smile. “We agreed to speak plainly and as men of the world. No—the thing must be a settlement. Now what are you prepared to settle?”
“I think I may say this. I will settle four hundred a year upon them now. At my death of course—Why what is the matter? Is that not enough?”
The last in an astonished and indignant tone. For an almost derisive shake of the head on the part of the other had cut short his words.
“Most certainly not. It is, in fact, ridiculous.”
“Many a young couple has begun life on less.”
“And many a man has ruined his life by beginning on far more. No. I think my young friend will rate himself at a far higher value than that. Why there are shoals of women with six times that income who would jump at him.”
“And are truth and honour to go for nothing?” spluttered old Glover, swelling himself out with virtuous wrath until the expanse of the white waistcoat was so tight that you could hear the seams crack. “Truth and honour and good faith—and a sweet girl’s broken heart?” he repeated, working up a highly effective sniffle.
“My dear sir, you can’t run a household, and a milliner, and a dressmaker, and a butcher and baker, and a pocket doctor, and a lawyer—in fact, an unlimited liability, upon truth and honour; nor can you pay the Queen’s taxes with a sweet girl’s mended heart. Now, can you?”
“You have a most—ar—peculiar way of putting things, I must say, Mr Fordham. Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do—I’ll make it five hundred. There!”
“You might just as well make it five hundred pence, Mr Glover. I can’t advise my friend to throw himself away.”
“I consider five hundred a year ample,” said old Glover, magisterially inserting his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat. “If he wants more let him work for it. Let him go into some business.”
“Why should he? He is young, and has the world at his feet. Why should he grind away at some dingy and uncongenial money-grubbing mill just for the fun of supporting your, or any other man’s, daughter. It isn’t good enough, and I tell you so candidly. And remember this: he has everything to lose and nothing to gain by the transaction, and with yourselves it is the other way about.”
“And what amount would meet your friend’s views, Mr Fordham?” was the rejoinder, quick spoken, and with cutting irony.
“He will have a position and title to keep up by and by,” answered Fordham, tranquilly. “I should say, a capital sum representing three thousand a year—not one farthing less.”
Old Glover sprang to his feet with a snort and an activity one would hardly have credited him with. He stared wildly at Fordham, gasped for breath and snorted again. Then he spluttered forth.
“I never heard anything so monstrous—such an outrageous piece of impertinence in my life.”
“But, my dear sir, surely I’ve put the case plain enough—”
“Don’t talk to me any more about it, sir,” interrupted the other furiously, “I won’t hear of such a preposterous suggestion.”
“Do I understand that you refuse the condition, then?”
“Most emphatically you may understand that very thing. Three thousand a year—ha—ha! He must be mad! But I tell you what it is, sir,” he blared forth, stung by Fordham’s cool and indifferent demeanour. “That young scoundrel—yes—that young scoundrel, I say,” with a stamp of the foot, “shall be made to fulfil his engagement—shall be made to, I say.”
“Shall he? Excuse my reminding you of the old proverb concerning the horse which may be taken to the water.”
“Sha’n’t he! I’ll sue him for breach of promise. I’ll claim such swinging damages as never were asked for in a court of law yet. I’ll ruin him—yes, I’ll ruin him, by God!”
“You may obtain a few hundreds at the outside. But you said something just now about your daughter’s heart being broken. Do you propose to heal that fractured organ by exposing the young lady to the jeers of a not over particular crowd in a public court, and making her the laughing stock of every newspaper reader in the kingdom for the sake of a few hundred pounds?”
“That’s my business, sir—that’s my business,” was the savage reply.
“Even then you will have to prove any specific promise at all. Under the circumstances this will be a matter of some difficulty, I imagine. Why not think over the terms I have stated?”
“Never, sir I never! Such unheard-of impudence?” And he fairly danced at the idea.
“Well, then, I’ve no more to say. In my opinion a man is a fool who ties himself to any woman. A lion might as well make himself the slave of a cat. But when he is expected to embrace the exhilarating career of a mill-horse in order that the dear creature may own a conveniently supporting slave—if he does so, I say, he deserves to be hung on sight. I shall certainly advise Phil Orlebar not to marry anybody on a cent less than three thousand a year, and I believe he will take my advice.”
“Very well, sir. We shall see—we shall see. And, by the way, Mr—ar—Fordham”—and the trade mind of the successful huckster again rose to the surface—“you are really a most clever advocate, and I must—ar—congratulate you. But ‘nothing for nothing,’ you know. Now how much of this fabulous income was to have found its way into your pocket if obtained? Commission, you understand.”
There was such a lurid look in Fordham’s dark face as he quickly rose to his feet, that even old Glover, dancing with rage, quailed and stepped back a pace or two.
“I must congratulate you, Mr Glover, on your good fortune in being an old man at this moment. However,” and his tone resumed its normal sarcastic ring. “However, there are no witnesses present so we may as well speak our minds to each other. It is abundantly obvious that you have laid yourselves out to hook young Philip Orlebar, and have done it deucedly clumsily too—so clumsily, that luckily for himself the bird has seen the limed twig in time. Anyhow, to rush him as you have done, and bestow the paternal blessing before it was asked for—in public too—is just the way to choke off irrevocably a youngster of his stamp. I don’t know that there’s anything more to be said, except this. Bring your action by all means, but you will find it as hard a matter to prove a specific promise, as you will to persuade any jury that it is not a clear case of trying to entrap the son of a man of position and superior birth.”
To convey any idea of old Glover’s state as he listened to this harangue, would be impossible. At first he was speechless, and Fordham began to think he was on the verge of apoplexy. Eventually he found his tongue, and the great cliff in the background fairly echoed to the sound of a volley of strange and gurgling oaths. Then the full torrent of his wrath burst forth. He would sue the delinquent Phil—would ruin him—would sue them both—for conspiracy, libel—what not. There was nothing, in fact, that he would not do—shooting—horse-whipping—every form of violence was enumerated. He should rue the day—every one concerned should rue the day, etc, etc.
But Fordham, lighting a fresh pipe, leaned comfortably back against the rock, and waited with perfect unconcern until this human boiler should have blown off all its steam—or burst—it didn’t matter which.