Bertram Mitford - Fordham's Feud

“I think the idea is a very sweet one,” he rejoined, earnestly. “A little corner of Paradise – that’s just what it is.”

“Ahem! We shall be at Bouveret in five minutes,” struck in a drawling voice, not wholly guiltless of a cockney twang, recognisable as the property of Scott. “Do you feel prepared to mount Shanks’s mare, Miss Wyatt?”

Alma murmured a very frigid reply, while Philip was obliged to turn away to conceal the fury which blazed forth from his visage, and further to quell an overmastering impulse which moved him to take the speaker by the scruff of his neck and drop him there and then overboard – in front of the paddle-wheels. The free and easy patronising drawl of this insufferable cad made his blood surge again.

“By the way, Miss Wyatt,” went on the pachydermatous pastor, “I have a great mind to ask you to arbitrate. I must say Mr Fordham is a pretty cool hand. What do you think? Here am I with this huge knapsack full of things to carry, and he positively declines to take his share. That is – I’ve hinted to him pretty plainly that he ought to.”

“Fordham isn’t a man who deals largely in hints,” said Philip, facing round upon the speaker with a fierceness that almost made the latter recoil. “If he were, he would doubtless hint that one beast of burden is sufficient for the party.”

Scott looked affronted. Then his countenance suddenly cleared. “Oh! we are going to take a horse with us then?” he said, gleefully.

“No – an ass,” returned Philip, quickly.

Even the inflated layer of the other’s self-esteem was not proof against this shaft. It collapsed with its owner, who retired with a scowl to pour his grievance into haply more sympathising ears. And by that time the steamer had crossed the broad and turgid belt where the snow-waters of the Rhone cleft in a sharply defined pathway the blue surface of the lake, and was slowing down to half-speed as she approached Bouveret pier.

“Is there absolutely no way of getting on to St. Gingolph, Mr Fordham?” said the eldest Miss Ottley, ruefully.

“You may put it in that way,” was the tranquil reply. “Unless we walk.”

The party, gathered round Fordham on the wooden pier, were not a little disappointed. They had reckoned on changing steamers and going straight on without delay, for the Mont Blanc went no further than Bouveret. Now they discovered that there was no steamer to change on to.

“That’s what comes of missing the early boat,” resumed Fordham, mercilessly. “You will kindly remember that I warned you I doubted the accuracy of my horaire , and that we should probably not find any steamer on this side, when you elected to come on by the Mont Blanc .”

This was undeniable, but it didn’t seem to mend matters.

“And now two courses lie open to us,” he went on. “We can either walk to St. Gingolph along the high road, or take a short cut round the base of the Grammont for Novèl. I should recommend the latter. What do you say, General?”

“Oh, I’m entirely in your hands. What do the ladies think?”

But the ladies voting unanimously for this plan it was carried forthwith. Then suddenly it occurred to them that nobody knew the way. But they reckoned without Fordham. He had never been over that identical ground, but he undertook to act as guide, and fulfilled his undertaking with admirable accuracy. But they were not to reach their original destination, and it came about in this wise.

The day was hot, and the path winding upward round the mountain-side, though charming as it led through beech and oakwoods, affording many a glimpse of the blue lake below, was both steep and rugged. After about an hour the Miss Ottleys suggested a halt – and lunch.

“This is a very tiring way, Mr Fordham,” said one of them, “and it seems a very long one. Are you quite sure we are going right?”

“I see,” was the short reply. “You want me to say I am not quite sure. Well, what do you want to do – that’s the point?”

They looked at each other.

“I think we had almost better have our picnic here,” said the one who had first spoken.

“I believe we had,” said the other sister. “This is a lovely spot.”

“If we stop here now we sha’n’t get on to Novèl at all,” said Fordham.

“Oh, hang Novèl!” cut in Scott. “I’m for stopping here. What do you say, Miss Wyatt?”

“I am perfectly ready to do what every one else wishes,” answered Alma.

“Fordham, old man, I believe we none of us want to go any further,” said Philip. “It’s awfully hot, you know, and it’ll be no end of a grind. It’s a mistake, too, to make a toil of a pleasure. I propose that we bivouac here, feed, and poke a smipe, and drop down quietly on St. Jingo – or whatever you call it – afterwards. Let’s put it to the vote.”

“All right,” said Fordham, serenely. “It’s all one to me.”

Philip was right, the fact being that every one had had enough of it. So they ate their luncheon in the cool shade, and took their ease and were happy; and after a couple of hours or so started downward for the village, where they were to embark for the return voyage across the lake.

“We might have had some difficulty in getting a boat,” remarked Fordham. “As it happens, though, I saw my commissionaire, François Berthod, in Montreux, and he has a brother at St. Gingolph who owns one. So I made him wire him to look out for us.”

But when they reached St. Gingolph a fresh deadlock seemed likely to arise. There was not much demand for boatmen at the out-of-the-way, seldom-visited little village. Accordingly those amphibious worthies were, one and all, absent, following their other avocations, and among them Jules Berthod. To the whereabouts of the latter nobody seemed able to furnish a clue. The woman who managed the wineshop opined that he had gone over to Bouveret, and would not return till late; but in any case it didn’t matter, she being perfectly certain that neither Jules nor any other boat-owner would cross the lake that afternoon – an opinion abundantly backed up in unintelligible patois by more than one blue-bloused boozer lounging on the wooden seats.

But Fordham knew better, and he was right. For, as luck would have it, who should arrive at that very moment but the missing Jules – a cheery, copper-faced athlete, who, recognising Fordham, made no great difficulty about the undertaking. He glanced at the party, then at his boat; remarked dubiously that it was rather late in the day for crossing, and he should hardly get back that night; then shrugged his shoulders, ejaculated “ Enfin ,” and straightway set off to haul in his craft.

The latter, though roomy, was somewhat narrow of beam, and not so heavy as it looked. There were seats for three rowers, each pulling a pair of sculls.

“I’ll take stroke, if it’s all the same to everybody,” said Philip.

Fordham was about to demur, Philip being the heaviest man of the party, except perhaps the boatman, and there was abundance of weight in the stem; but remembering that Alma had been voted coxswain, he refrained. So Berthod was constituted bow, and Scott, eager to distinguish himself, took the remaining pair.

It was five o’clock when they pushed off. From St. Gingolph to Vevey the distance is about eight miles; therefore they reckoned upon barely two hours of easy pulling. Another two hours’ walk in the cool of the evening would bring them back to Les Avants almost before it was dark.

“I don’t think much of this sort of rowing,” grumbled Scott, for about the third time as, with a final effort to scrape down some of the stars of heaven, he violently fouled Philip’s oar. “They don’t seem to know what it is in this country. Fancy having your oars hitched on to an iron peg, instead of running free in rowlocks. Why, you can’t even feather.”