"Even then I found myself still wavering on your account. I wavered to the last. I honestly did my best to get you out of that Glover hobble, and I believe I succeeded. Had not chance upset your relations with Alma Wyatt I believe I should have spared you, for I should have been powerless against her counter-influence--or, at any rate, I should have preferred to think so, if only as a pretext for throwing up the whole scheme. Then we went over to Zermatt, and here chance stepped in again and took the reins a good deal out of my hands. But for your accident you could have returned to Zinal in a few days. Time and absence would have been all in your favour, and you would have been saved.
"It was part of my design to bring you to Zermatt. You remember we were going there in the first instance, but chance diverted our plan.
Now, however, the time had come for me to draw in the circle of the net. I wavered no longer.
"We will touch briefly upon what followed. The Daventers arrived, and, caught at the rebound, you transferred your susceptible heart.
Even then I warned you. You cannot say I did not give you every chance. My last words to you were words of warning. But they were utterly thrown away, as I knew they would be. Well, there is very little more to be said. You walked into the trap with your eyes open and--were caught.
"Do you know who this woman is who calls herself Mrs Daventer? She is no other than the woman whose infamies I have been detailing--she who was and still is legally bound to me by the marriage laws of the land. And her daughter--_your bride_--do you guess now whose child she is? Mine--you will say. No, you are wrong. _Her father is your father_, Philip Orlebar, and if you doubt me ask _him_."
At this stage the paper fell from Philip"s hand. The whole world seemed going round with him. It was as if he had received a stunning blow, a numbing shock. The dead grim horror of the situation had not yet fully broken upon him.
With an effort he picked up the paper again and read on:--
"You will remember that earlier in my narrative I said I disputed the paternity of this child at the time of its birth. Well, before letting the matter go into court I obtained more than one opinion from eminent counsel. But every opinion was substantially in accord--to the effect that the question of time rendered the matter such a very near thing that I could not hope to contest the claim with the slightest chance of success. How does this affect you now, Philip Orlebar? Why, exactly as it affected me then. Your chances of obtaining a decree of nullity are so remote as to be practically non-existent--even if you care to throw the case open to the public-- for remember, by the time you get this you will have been married two whole days, and a court of law is a pretty scathing ordeal. Nor will the plea of fraud avail you, while I know for a fact that Laura was totally unaware of the circ.u.mstances of her parentage, or that the name under which she was married--her surname, to wit, was rightly any other than Daventer.
"Well, you must accept the situation in all its bearings, and if you cannot--as I firmly believe--break the tie by which you are legally, but only legally, bound, you can console yourself, as I did, with the reflection that it is now out of your power ever again to make a fool of yourself. Nothing further remains to be said, except that I suppose never before did the strands of Fate weave together so complete a web of what is commonly called poetic justice, so unique an instance of retribution. And remember this. If your father ate sour grapes and your teeth are set on edge, you must blame him--not me.
"Should you wish to meet me to talk over anything, I am still to be found at my old quarters. Of course, I am using the name by which you have always known me.
"Richard Fordham."
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.
"THAT STING EACH OTHER HERE IN THE DUST."
Father and son had the house to themselves, for the servants had long since gone to bed, and Lady Orlebar had done likewise, in a towering pa.s.sion. Softly Philip returned to the library, where he had left his father, and then for a few moments they stood silently gazing into each other"s faces, the expression of each equally wretched, equally blank, equally hopeless.
"He has told you--that infernal villain!" said Philip, at length. "I can see it." Sir Francis nodded. He could not speak just then. "And this," went on Philip, drawing forth Fordham"s communication. "You know what he says here? Oh, father, for G.o.d"s sake, is it true?"
"It is impossible to say for certain," gasped the baronet, in a strange, jerky tone, after several futile attempts to speak. "It is impossible to--prove anything--either way."
He did not upbraid his son, as many a father might and would have done.
He did not say, "If you _will_ go and throw your life away upon your own weak and foolish judgment, if you _will_ go and do things in such hurried and hole-and-corner fashion, if you _will_ go and buy a pig in a poke, you have got no more than you deserve--you have only yourself to thank?" But he did think--and that bitterly--that but for the hurry and secrecy on the part of Philip in the matter, the weight of this horror would never have fallen upon them at all.
"Father, what do _you_ think--candidly? Do you think that scoundrel Fordham spoke the truth?"
It was the bitterest moment in Sir Francis"s life. To answer in the negative would be but to perpetuate the horror; besides he could not so answer. His glance avoided that of his son, and his head drooped forward on his chest, as he faltered, like a man who talks in his sleep--
"I believe he did. I cannot say otherwise--I believe he did."
And then Philip knew that his life was ruined at the outset--wrecked almost before leaving port.
"Father!" he said, at last, breaking the terrible silence which had fallen between them. "What does this villain mean when he says, "Remember by the time you get this you will have been married two whole days..."? Has he given it me two days sooner than he meant to?"
"Oh no--oh no. This would make it just about the time," muttered Sir Francis, drearily.
"But how do you make that out? How can I have been married two whole days when I was only married this morning?"
The change in Sir Francis"s demeanour was in the last degree startling.
"What?" he almost shrieked. "What"s that you say, Phil? You were only married this morning?"
"Of course I was. I left Lau--I left _her_--almost at the church door."
And then he went on to detail Mrs Daventer"s inexorable insistence upon his breaking the news to his father at once.
"But the telegram, Phil? What of the telegram?" cried Sir Francis, wildly. "Look--look at the date. The 22nd--that was yesterday. And it says "this morning.""
Philip had caught up the slip of paper and was staring at it with a puzzled look. "It"s as you say, father," he said. "The office stamp does give the 22nd. Well, it is a mistake, and Fordham has been so far sold, for the most awful side of his ghastly, diabolical plot has been spared me. What an infernal fiend, in the literal sense of the word, the man must be!"
"Oh, thank G.o.d! thank G.o.d?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed poor Sir Francis, falling back in his chair. "So you parted at the church door. Oh, thank G.o.d! that unutterable horror is spared us. But the rest. My poor boy--my poor boy! You can never see them again--it would be too fearful."
"Once, father--once I must," was the reply, accompanied by a hard-set frown. "Once--but once only."
Fordham"s chambers were situated in a quiet street just off Park Lane.
They were comfortable, but not luxurious, as became one who was a confirmed wanderer--here to-day, there to-morrow. He never cared to acc.u.mulate a collection of things, for that very reason. Here on the day after Philip"s meeting with his father did Fordham sit. He was writing--answering a letter from Wentworth urging him to join the latter at Les Avants the following week--a suggestion which rather fell in with his own inclinations--for London at the end of September was insufferably close, abominably dusty, and blatantly vulgar. He hardly knew himself why he had stayed so long.
Well, that was not quite accurate either. He did know. He wanted to watch the explosion of the infernal machine he had so craftily pieced together, to note its results.
His letter finished, he pushed his chair from the table and began to think. He was in one of his worst moods that morning--cool, cynical, utterly without ruth. As he thought on his interview of the previous evening he laughed at himself because of the temporary softening he had undergone. When others had got the drop on him, did they relent? Not they. Now he had got the drop on them, why should he feel any compunction? He would not. While in this vein he heard steps quickly ascending the stairs. The door opened and there entered--Philip.
The latter stopped short. At first it seemed as if he could not speak.
His broad chest was heaving, and a red spot burned in each of his livid cheeks. Then, slowly, he brought out three words--
"You--infernal villain!"
Fordham slightly shrugged his shoulders, and the expression of his face was not goodly to look upon.
"Is that all you came here to say? Well, at any rate you can"t say I didn"t warn you--didn"t give you every chance. Why, man, I did nothing but warn you."
"Yes--by the rule of contraries. And now what have _you_ got to say?
Putting myself aside for the present, for what you have done to my father you shall answer to me. Yes, to me!"
His tone had attained a loud and threatening pitch, and he made a step forward. Fordham, who had risen when he first came in, drew himself together with a nearly imperceptible movement which reminded one of nothing so much as a snake ready to strike. Thus they confronted each other, these two who had been such close, such intimate friends.
"What have I got to say?" repeated Fordham, dropping out his words with a steely deliberation. "The question ought rather to come from me. No; stop! Stand back!" he added, warningly, as the other made towards him, a move whose nature was unmistakably aggressive. "You"ll do no good in that line, I promise you. Why remember, boy, all the best tricks you know with your hands I taught you, and there remain a great many better ones for you to learn. I"m the best man of the two in that way."
None knew this better than Philip, tall, powerful, and in good training as he himself was. The other was a splendid boxer, and all wire and whipcord. He would stand no chance against him.
"Will you meet me in the old-fashioned way, then?" he said, with difficulty restraining his rage. "We can cross the Channel and exchange a few shots. What! You won"t!" for the other had burst into a derisive chuckle. "Hang it, Fordham, you may pretend to laugh, but I never thought you were such an infernal coward!"
"You may well talk about hanging," replied Fordham, with that same sardonic chuckle. "Do you know, you young fool--do you know that all this time you have been bellowing out enough to hang you a dozen times over in this happy contingency for which you are thirsting? Do you know, also, that in the event of my being the one to go under, one single word construable into an arrangement of the meeting, uttered by you over here would be enough to hang you as surely as if you had cut a man"s throat to steal his watch?"