Fordham's Feud Part 41

"Certainly not," was the brief, determined answer. "I am going to do my level best to rid the world of the most inhuman, d.a.m.nable monster that ever disgraced it."

"You will have to be as cool as--as this air, then, Orlebar. Your friend--your enemy I should say rather--is something like a dead shot.

By the way, your story is one of the strangest I ever heard in my life; and not the oddest part of it to me is that you should still persist in choosing this place."

"Because it _is_ this place. You were here at the time of--of that other affair, Major. You will be able to place us upon the exact spot.

I have a presentiment. On the very spot where that villain wounded my father I shall kill him. That is why I have chosen it."

The other shook his head gravely. He was an older man than he looked-- and he looked past middle age. Major Fox's own career had been an eventful one. He had seen active service under the flag of two foreign powers severally, and, moreover, was reckoned an authority on hostile meetings of a private nature, at many of which he had a.s.sisted, not always in the character of second. That the object of this early drive was a hostile meeting the above fragment of conversation will clearly show.

Where is the sunny-tempered, light-hearted Philip Orlebar of old?

Dead--dead and buried. He who now sits here, pale, stern, gloomy, with the aspect of a man upon whose life a great blow has fallen--whom that blow has aged a dozen years at least--surely these two personalities can have nothing in common?

Onward and upward, higher and higher wends the carriage. Then the acclivity ends, and surmounting the roll of its brow a great flat wooded s.p.a.ce, with here and there the distant hump of a mountain jutting against the sky, lies spread out in front. It is the Roncevalles plateau.

A bell clangs forth, slow and sepulchral upon the raw morning air. Its measured, intermittent toll, heard beneath the gloomy lour of the overcast heavens, would be depressing enough under ordinary circ.u.mstances. But now it strikes the hearers as immeasurably ominous, for it is the death-toll.

Standing up, the Major, speaking in fluent French, impresses a few directions upon the Basque driver. The latter nods and whips up his horses. As they trot past the quaint, old-world monastery, with its red roofs lying against an appropriate background of foliage, dark hooded figures could be seen gliding about.

"That changes the scene again, Orlebar," remarked Major Fox. "A few minutes ago one might almost have expected to meet Caesar and his legions emerging from the great beech-forests. Now this brings us to more mediaeval times again. Hallo! What is it?"

For the horses had been suddenly reined in. Then the driver drew them up to the side of the road.

A mournful, wailing, dirgelike sound was heard in front. Standing up in the vehicle, its occupants made out a number of white-clad figures advancing round a bend in the road. The dark-covered horizontal burden borne in the midst; the glitter of the crucifix moving slowly in front; the measured and solemn chant; the clang of the bell from the tower--all told the nature of that procession advancing along the desolate and lonely wooded plateau. Its errand was one of death; and they, the unlooked-for spectators, they, too, were bound upon an errand of death.

"_Requiem aeternum dona ei Domine: et lux perpetua luceat ei_" chanted the singers. The Basque driver doffed his _beret_ and bent his head devoutly as the _cortege_ went by, and the Major and Philip lifted their hats. But the words, the chant, struck upon the tatter's ear with indescribable import, for they brought back a very different scene. He saw again the arching blue of the cloudless heavens above the Val d'Anniviers, the rugged cliff and the feathery pine forest, the vernal slopes and the flower-strewn graves. Again the dull roar of the mountain torrent rose upon the air, and Alma Wyatt's voice was in his ears as upon that glowing morning in the churchyard at Vissoye. And now he heard it again, that chant for the dead, here in the wild solitudes of this Pyrenean forest country, swelling through the murk of the lowering heavens. And he himself was going forth to death--to meet death or to deal it out to another.

"_Si iniquitates observaveris Domine: Domine quis sustinebit_!" The chant rolled on, now sinking fainter as the funeral procession receded.

Heavens! here was a comment on the errand of hate and vengeance--the errand of blood which had brought these two abroad that morning.

"If I were inclined to be superst.i.tious, I should take that incident to be unlucky," said the Major, with a jerk of his thumb in the direction followed by the receding _cortege_, "but I'm not, so it doesn't matter.

_En avant, Michel_."

But the driver as he obeyed turned half round on his box to ask for directions, with the result that the carriage turned abruptly off into a bypath which penetrated deeper into the forest. A few hundred yards along this and the Major called a halt.

"We will leave the trap here, Orlebar. The place is close at hand, and the other party is sure to be on the spot."

"You seem to know it well, Major," said Philip. "Why, I couldn't have ferretted it out to save my life."

"My dear fellow, I have been here before--in times past," was the answer, given with a touch of dryness.

Voices were now heard just ahead of them, and as they emerged into a sequestered open glade three figures were standing in a group chatting.

They belonged to Fordham and two strangers--one mustachioed and grizzled, the other mustachioed and dark.

"Good morning--good morning," said the Major, briskly, raising his hat as he stepped forward.

"M. le docteur Etchegaray--M. le Major Fox," introduced Fordham.

The dark stranger bowed, and the Major bowed, and there was elaborate hat-lifting on both sides. Then the Major pa.s.sed on the introduction to his princ.i.p.al, to whom he further effected that of the other stranger, who was Fordham's second, and whom he named as "M. de Verrieux."

Beyond a slight raising of the hat such as etiquette demanded, no recognition pa.s.sed between the two princ.i.p.als. The seconds and the medical man drew apart for a few moments' conference.

"Is it settled that the matter is to proceed, then?" said M. de Verrieux when this was ended. Both princ.i.p.als nodded. "_Enfin--a l'affaire_,"

he went on.

On one side of the glade was a great dead tree trunk blazed by lightning. The seconds had decided to place their men twenty-five paces apart in such wise that the white trunk should be equidistant from either. The weapons were Colt's revolvers, but each shot was to be fired by word of command.

The gloom of the morning deepened. A spot or two of rain fell upon the weapons as they were handed to the princ.i.p.als, and the wind moaned dismally among the tree-tops. They stood up, facing each other, those two who had been friends. They stood up, silent, motionless as that death which they were about to deal to each other. Again through the murky stillness there tolled forth from the monastery tower that distant dirge-bell.

"_Attention, messieurs_!" cried M. de Verrieux. "_Un--deux--Trois_!"

Both pistols cracked simultaneously. The hum of Philip's ball pa.s.sed just over his adversary's head. Fordham, however, without moving his elbow from his side, had pointed his weapon almost vertically in the air, and had pressed the trigger. He stood cool, impa.s.sive, and motionless.

"The affair has proceeded with the greatest honour to both sides,"

declared M. de Verrieux. "We may now, I presume, consider it closed?"

"I trust so," said the Major, looking at Philip, whom he was heartily glad to get so well out of it. But the latter, to his dismay, replied shortly--

"By no means. I don't consider it has begun."

The seconds looked at each other, then at their princ.i.p.als. M. de Verrieux shrugged his shoulders.

"_Enfin! Puisque Monsieur le desire_," he said.

"Take care he isn't committing suicide," said Fordham, with a queer flash in his eyes, and his brows met in that extraordinarily forbidding frown of his. But the remark was met by a somewhat sharp protest on the part of Major Fox, who declared that it was contrary to all precedent for one princ.i.p.al even to address the other under the circ.u.mstances, let alone utter what sounded uncommonly like a taunt. Fordham recognised frankly this infringement of etiquette, and apologised elaborately.

Again the two stood facing each other.

Never to his dying day would Philip forget that moment, and the still, sepulchral silence of the great forest, the faint earthy smell of moist vegetation, the sighing of the wind in the tree-tops, the mournful toll of the far-away dirge-bell. All the events of his later life swept through his mind in a flash--Alma Wyatt--the sweet, sunlit mountain slopes--the blue lake, and the s.h.i.+ning glacier--then that other in her dark beauty--the dance and sparkle of the sea, and the expanse of yellow sand on the low-lying Welsh coast--then the frightful disclosure--his own horror--his father's agony--the parting--Mrs Daventer's death. All pa.s.sed before him in vivid retrospect, as he stood there to receive the fire of the man whom up to a week ago he had reckoned his dearest friend.

The word was given. Again both pistols cracked together. Fordham only moving half his arm, had exactly repeated his former manoeuvre. He had fired straight up at the sky. At the same time he was seen ever so slightly to wince.

"Are you touched?" said the Frenchman, eagerly. "No? Ha--I thought--"

"It doesn't seem much like it," answered Fordham, slowly.

Then the seconds had their innings. On one point they were thoroughly agreed. The affair could be allowed to go no further. It had been conducted in a manner which was to the last degree creditable to both gentlemen concerned, p.r.o.nounced M. de Verrieux animatedly, and he trusted they would both do each other the honour of shaking hands with each other. After which pleasing ceremony he, the speaker, would be delighted if they and the whole party would do him the honour of breakfasting with him, and doing justice to the best wines the cellar of the country inn could supply. This the Major emphatically seconded, though he knew too well there would be no handshaking or any such friendly parting between his two fellow-countrymen.

Philip, for his part, said nothing. The decision of the seconds was final. Nor could he, whatever his wrongs, bring himself to go on firing at a man who was determined not to return his fire. Even then--so desperately contradictory is human nature--even then, without in anywise detracting from his own wretchedness and desperation, he was conscious of a weakness towards his old friend, a strange sense of relenting. At that moment he rejoiced that he had not the other's death upon his hands.

"Well, since there is to be no more shooting," said Fordham, at length, speaking in an easy, careless tone, "I may as well convince you that I was not bragging just now. Look at that knot in the blazed tree--there about four feet from the ground."

He raised his pistol, and with scarcely a moment's aim fired. The knot, a flat one, and about the size of a crown piece, was seen to splinter.

The ball had made a plumb centre.

"Look again," he went on, and again his pistol cracked. The knot split into a gaping gash and the splinters flew from it. He had planted his second bullet right upon the first one. e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns broke from the spectators in their respective tongues.

"Well, Mr Fordham," said the Major, "I think I may say, on behalf of my princ.i.p.al and myself, that we appreciate your courtesy to the full. M.

de Verrieux, if you will do me the pleasure of meeting me this evening or to-morrow morning at St. Jean-Pied-de-Port as arranged, we will draw up the usual _proces-verbal_. Gentlemen, I have the honour to salute you, and to wish you good morning."