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.
Chapter Thirty Five.
A Day Too Late.
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.