However indulgent might be Fordham with regard to his younger friend's disorder, secretly he hugged himself with mirth, and enjoyed the joke hugely in his own saturnine fashion as he read off the symptoms. How well he knew them all. How many and many a one had he seen go through them, and live to laugh at his own abject, if helpless, imbecility--to laugh in not a few instances with almost as much bitterness as he himself might do. He believed that it was in his power to comfort poor Phil, up to a certain point. As a looker on at the game, and a keen-sighted one, he felt pretty sure that Alma Wyatt was far more tenderly disposed towards her adorer than the latter dreamed. But it was not in accordance with his principles to do this. Richard Fordham turned matchmaker! More likely patchmaker! he thought, with a diabolical guffaw as the whimsicality of the idea and the jingle thereof struck him; for like the proverbial patching of the old garment with the new cloth would be the lifelong alliance of his friend with Alma Wyatt-- or any other woman. No. His mission was, if anything, to bring about a contrary result, and thus save the guileless Philip from riveting upon his yet free limbs the iron fetters of a degrading and fraudulent bondage--for such, we grieve to say, was Fordham's definition of the estate of holy matrimony.

"Well, Phil," he said, as the latter, returned from a recent and solitary climb, tired and listless, took his seat a quarter of an hour late at _table d'hote_, "does the world present a more propitious aspect from the giddy summit of the Corbex?"

"Oh, hang it, no! But, I say, Fordham--what a deuced slow crowd there is here now. Just look at that table over there."

"Nine old maids--no, eleven--in a row," said the other, putting up his eyegla.s.s. "Four parsons--poor specimens of the breed, too. That is to say, three old maids and a devil-dodger; then three more ditto and two devil-dodgers; finally the balance, with the remaining sky-pilot mixed among them somewhere. Truly an interesting crowd!"

"By Jove, rather!" growled Philip. "And just look at that infernal tailor's boy over there laying down the law."

Following his glance, Fordham beheld a carroty-headed sn.o.bling fresh from the counter or the cutting-board, who, in all the exuberance of his hard-earned holiday and the enterprising spirit which had prompted him to enjoy the same among Alpine sublimities in preference to the more homely and raffish attractions of shrimp-producing Margate, was delivering himself on Church and State, the House of Peers and the Const.i.tution in general, with a freedom which left nothing to be desired, for the edification of his appreciative neighbours--only they didn't look appreciative. Philip contemplated this natural product of an age of progress and the Rights of Man with unconcealed disgust.

"Faugh! Are we going to be overrun with bounders of that description?"

he growled.

"Later on we may drop across a sprinkling of the species," said Fordham.

"Even the Alps are no longer sacred against the invasion of the modern Hun."

"Well, it's no longer any fun sticking here, and I'm sick of it," went on Phil.

"All right. Let's adjourn to Zermatt or somewhere, and begin climbing.

You want shaking up a bit."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

FORDHAM PROVES ACCOMMODATING.

"Dear me--how very disagreeable (sniff-sniff)--how exceedingly unpleasant this smoking is?"

The afternoon train was crawling up the Rhone valley, wending its leisurely way over the flat and low-lying bottom as though to afford its pa.s.sengers, mostly foreigners, every opportunity of admiring its native marsh. In the corner of a second-cla.s.s smoking-carriage sat the typical British matron whom her feelings had moved to unburden herself as above.

Beside her, half effaced by her imposing personality, sat her spouse, a mild country parson. A great number of bundles and a great number of wraps completed the outfit.

"I must say it is _most_ disagreeable," went on the lady, with renewed sniffs. "And how ill-mannered these foreigners are, smoking in the presence of ladies." This with a dagger-glance at the other two occupants of the carriage, who each, with a knapsack on the rack above his head and clad in serviceable walking attire, were lounging back on the comfortable seats, placidly blowing clouds.

"Hush, my dear!" expostulated the parson. "It's a smoking-carriage, you know. I told you so before we got in at Martigny. Why not go into the other compartment? It's quite empty."

It was. On the Swiss lines the carriages are generally built on American principles; you can walk the entire length of them, and indeed of the whole train. They are, however, divided into two compartments, the smaller being reserved for the convenience of non-smokers, the other way about, as with us.

"No, I shall certainly not take the trouble to move," replied the offended matron. "Smoking-carriage or not, those two men are most unmannerly. Suppose, Augustus, you go over to them and ask them to put out their cigars? Remind them that it is not usual in England to smoke in the presence of ladies."

But the Rev Augustus was not quite such a fool as that.

"Not a bit of use, my dear," he said wearily. "They'd certainly retort that we are not in England--probably request us to step into the non-smoking compartment."

Fordham, who at the first remonstrance had rapidly signalled his friend not to talk and thus betray their nationality, was leaning back enjoying the situation thoroughly.

"Que diable allait _elle_ faire dans cette galere?" he murmured, rightly judging the other travellers' command of modern languages to be of the limited order. Phil for his part was obliged to put his head out of the window in order to laugh undetected. Meanwhile the aggrieved British matron in her corner continued to fume and sniff and inveigh against the abominable manners of those foreigners, and otherwise behave after the manner of her kind when, by virtue of honouring it with their presence, they have taken some continental country under their august wing. Then the crawl of the train settled down to an imperceptible creep as it drew nearer and nearer to the old-world and picturesque capital of the Valais.

There was whispering between the pair. Then, in obedience to a conjugal mandate, the mild parson diffidently approached our two friends.

"Pardong, mossoor. Ais-ker-say See-ong?"

The last word came out with a jerk of relief.

"Sion? I believe it is," replied Fordham, blandly. "We shall have a quarter of an hour to wait, if not longer."

If ever a man looked a thorough fool, it was the first speaker. The faultless and polished English of the reply! Here had they--his wife rather--been abusing these two men in their own tongue and in her usually loud key for upwards of half an hour. He turned red and began to stammer.

But the poor man's confusion was by no means shared by his spouse. That imposing matron came bustling across the carriage as if nothing had happened.

"Perhaps you can tell us," she said, "which is the best way of getting to Evolena? There is a diligence, is there not?"

Philip, who had all a young man's aversion for a fussy and domineering matron, would have returned a very short and evasive reply. The woman had been abusing them like pickpockets all the way, and now had the cheek to come and ask for information. But to Fordham her sublime impudence was diverting in the extreme.

"There is a diligence," he answered, "and I should say you'll still be in time for it. But I should strongly recommend you to charter a private conveyance. Coach pa.s.sengers are apt to beguile the tedium of the road with tobacco."

This was said so equably and with such an utter absence of resentment that the lady with all her a.s.sertiveness was dumbfoundered. Then, glaring at the speaker, she flounced away without a word, though, amid the bustle and flurry attendant upon the collecting of wraps and bundles, the offenders could catch such jerked-out phrases as "Abominable rudeness?"

"Most insulting fellow!" and so forth.

"Great Scott! What do you think of that for a zoological specimen, Phil?" said Fordham, as the train steamed slowly away from the platform where their late fellow-pa.s.sengers still stood bustling around a pile of boxes and bundles. "The harridan deliberately and of her own free will gets into a tobacco cart--out of sheer cussedness, in fact, for there stands the non-smoker stark empty--and then has the unparalleled face to try and boss us out of it. And there are idiots with whom she would have succeeded too."

"Well, you know, it's beastly awkward when a woman keeps on swearing she can't stand smoke, even though you know she has no business there. What the deuce are you to do?"

"Politely ask her to step into the next compartment, whose door stands yearningly open to receive her. Even the parson had wit enough to see that."

"Yes, that's so. But, I say, what an infernally slow train this is?"

"This little incident," went on Fordham, "which has served to break the monotony of our journey, reminds me of a somewhat similar joke which occurred last year on my way back to England. We fetched Pontarlier pretty late at night, and of course had to turn out and undergo the Customs ordeal. Well, I was sharp about the business, and got back into my carriage and old corner first. It was an ordinary compartment--five a side--not like this. Almost immediately after in comes a large and a.s.sertive female with an eighteen-year-old son, a weedy, unlicked cub as ever you saw in your life, and both calmly took the other end seats.

Now I knew that one of these seats belonged to a Frenchman who was going through, so sat snug in my corner waiting to enjoy the fun. It came in the shape of the Frenchman. Would madame be so kind, but--the seat was his? No, madame would not be so kind--not if she knew it. Possibly if madame had been young and pretty the outraged Gaul might have subsided more gracefully, for subside he had to--but her aggressiveness about equalled her unattractiveness, which is saying much. So a wordy war ensued, in the course of which the door was banged and the deposed traveller shot with more vehemence than grace half-way across the compartment, and the train started. He was mad, I can tell you.

Instead of his snug corner for the night, there the poor devil was, propped up on end, lurching over every time he began to nod.

"Well, we'd finished our feed--we'd got a chicken and some first-rate Burgundy on board--and were looking forward to a comfortable smoke. In fact, we'd each got a cigar in our teeth, and the chap who was with me-- whom we'll call Smith--was in the act of lighting up, when--

"'I object to smoke. This isn't a smoking-carriage, and I won't have it.'

"We looked at the aggressive female, then at each other. Her right was una.s.sailable. It was not a tobacco cart, but on French lines they are not generally too particular. Still, in the face of that protest we were floored.

"Smith was awfully mad. He cursed like a trooper under his breath-- swore he'd be even with the harridan yet--and I believed him.

"Some twenty minutes went by in this way, Smith licking his unlit cigar and cursing roundly to himself. Presently she beckoned him over. He had half a mind not to go; however, he went.

"'I don't mind your smoking,' says she--'out of the window.'

"'Oh, thanks,' he says. 'It's rather too cold to stand outside on the footboard. Besides, it's risky.'

"'Well, I mean I don't mind if you have part of the window open. But I can't stand the place full of smoke and no outlet. And'--she hurries up to add--'I hope you won't mind if I draw the curtain over the lamp so that my boy can go to sleep.'