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Title: The World For Sale, Volume 3.
Author: Gilbert Parker
Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6283]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on December 5, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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THE WORLD FOR SALE
By Gilbert Parker
BOOK III
XX. TWO LIFE PIECES
XXI. THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER
XXII. THE SECRET MAN
XXIII. THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS
XXIV. AT LONG LAST
XXV. MAN PROPOSES
XXVI. THE SLEEPER
XXVII. THE WORLD FOR SALE
CHAPTER XX
TWO LIFE PIECES
"It's a fine day."
"Yes, it's beautiful."
Fleda wanted to ask how he knew, but hesitated from feelings of delicacy.
Ingolby seemed to understand. A faint reflection of the old whimsical
smile touched his lips, and his hands swept over the coverlet as though
smoothing out a wrinkled map.
"The blind man gets new senses," he said dreamily. "I feel things where
I used to see them. How did I know it was a fine day? Simple enough.
When the door opened there was only the lightest breath of wind, and the
air was fresh and crisp, and I could smell the sun. One sense less, more
degree of power to the other senses. The sun warms the air, gives it a
flavour, and between it and the light frost, which showed that it was dry
outside, I got the smell of a fine Fall day. Also, I heard the cry of
the wild fowl going South, and they wouldn't have made a sound if it
hadn't been a fine day. And also, and likewise, and besides, and
howsomever, I heard Jim singing, and that nigger never sings in bad
weather. Jim's a fair-weather raven, and this morning he was singing
like a 'lav'rock in the glen.'"
Being blind, he could not see that, suddenly, a storm of emotion swept
over her face.
His cheerfulness, his boylike simplicity, his indomitable spirit, which
had survived so much, and must still face so much, his almost childlike
ways, and the naive description of a blind man's perception, waked in her
an almost intolerable yearning. It was not the yearning of a maid for a
man. It was the uncontrollable woman in her, the mother-thing, belonging
to the first woman that ever was-protection of the weak, hovering love
for the suffering, the ministering spirit.
Since Ingolby had been brought to the house in the pines, Madame Bulteel
and herself, with Jim, had nursed him through the Valley of the Shadow.
They had nursed him through brain-fever, through agonies which could not
have been borne with consciousness. The tempest of the mind and the
pains of misfortune went on from hour to hour, from day to day, almost
without ceasing, until at last, a shadow of his former self, but with a
wonderful light on his face which came from something within, he waited
patiently for returning strength, propped up with pillows in the bed
which had been Fleda's own, in the room outside which Jethro Fawe had
sung his heathen serenade.
It was the room of the house which, catching the morning sun, was best
suited for an invalid. So she had given it to him with an eagerness
behind which was the feeling that somehow it made him more of the inner
circle of her own life; for apart from every other feeling she had, there
was in her a deep spirit of comradeship belonging to far-off times when
her life was that of the open road, the hillside and the vale. In those
days no man was a stranger; all belonged.
To meet, and greet, and pass was the hourly event, but the meeting and
the greeting had in it the familiarity of a common wandering, the
sympathy of the homeless. Had Ingolby been less to her than he was,
there would still have been the comradeship which made her the great
creature she was fast becoming. It was odd that, as Ingolby became
thinner and thinner, and ever more wan, she, in spite of her ceaseless
nursing, appeared to thrive physically. She had even slightly increased
the fulness of her figure. The velvet of her cheeks had grown richer,
and her eyes deeper with warm fire. It was as though she flourished on
giving: as though a hundred nerves of being and feeling had opened up
within her and had expanded her life like some fine flower.
Gazing at Ingolby now there was a great hungering desire in her heart.
She looked at the sightless eyes, and a passionate protest sprang to her
lips which, in spite of herself, broke forth in a sort of moan.
"What is it?" Ingolby asked, with startled face.
"Nothing," she answered, "nothing. I pricked my finger badly, that's
all."
And, indeed, she had done so, but that would not have brought the moan to
her lips.
"Well, it didn't sound like a pricked finger complaint," he remarked.
"It was the kind of groan I'd give if I had a bad pain inside."
"Ah, but you're a man!" she remarked lightly, though two tears fell down
her cheeks.
With an effort she recovered herself. "It's time for your tonic," she
added, and she busied herself with giving it to him. "As soon as you
have taken it, I'm going for a walk, so you must make up your mind to
have some sleep."
"Am I to be left alone?" he asked, with an assumed grievance in his
voice.
"Madame Bulteel will stay with you," she replied.
"Do you need a walk so very badly?" he asked presently.
"I don't suppose I need it, but I want it," she answered. "My feet and
the earth are very friendly."
"Where do you walk?" he asked.
"Just anywhere," was her reply. "Sometimes up the river, sometimes down,
sometimes miles away in the woods."
"Do you never take a gun with you?"
"Of course," she answered, nodding, as though he could see. "I get wild
pigeons and sometimes a wild duck or a prairie-hen."
"That's right," he remarked; "that's right."
"I don't believe in walking just for the sake of walking," she continued.
"It doesn't do you any good, but if you go for something and get it,
that's what puts the mind and the body right."
Suddenly his face grew grave. "Yes, that's it," he remarked.
"To go for something you want, a long way off. You don't feel the fag
when you're thinking of the thing at the end; but you've got to have the
thing at the end, to keep making for it, or there's no good going--none
at all. That's life; that's how it is. It's no good only walking--
you've got to walk somewhere. It's no good simply going--you've got to
go somewhere. You've got to fight for something. That's why, when they
take the something you fight for away--when they break you and cripple
you, and you can't go anywhere for what you want badly, life isn't worth
living."
An anxious look came into her face. This was the first time, since
recovering consciousness, that he had referred, even indirectly, to all
that had happened. She understood him well--ah, terribly well! It was
the tragedy of the man stopped in his course because of one mistake,
though he had done ten thousand wise things. The power taken from his
hands, the interrupted life, the dark future, the beginning again, if
ever his sight came back: it was sickening, heartbreaking.
She saw it all in his face, but as if some inward voice had spoken to
him, his face cleared, the swift-moving hands clasped in front of him,
and he said quietly: "But because it's life, there it is. You have to
take it as it comes."
He stopped a moment, and in the pause she reached out her hand with a
sudden passionate gesture, to touch his shoulder, but she restrained
herself in time.
He seemed to feel what she was doing, and turned his face towards her,
a slight flush coming to his cheeks. He smiled, and then he said: "How
wonderful you are! You look--"
He checked himself, then added with a quizzical smile:
"You are looking very well to-day, Miss Fleda Druse, very well indeed.
I like that dark-red dress you're wearing."
An almost frightened look came into her eyes. It was as though he could
see, for she was wearing a dark-red dress--"wine-coloured," her father
called it, "maroon," Madame Bulteel called it. Could he then see, after
all?
"How did you know it was dark-red?" she asked, her voice shaking.
"Guessed it! Guessed it!" he answered almost gleefully. "Was I right?
Is it dark-red?"
"Yes, dark-red," she answered. "Was it really a guess?"
"Ah, but the guessiest kind of a guess," he replied. "But who can tell?
I couldn't see it, but is there any reason why the mind shouldn't see
when the eyes are no longer working? Come now," he added, "I've a
feeling that I can tell things with my mind just as if I saw them. I do
see. I'll guess the time now--with my mind's eye."
Concentration came into his face. "It's three minutes to twelve
o'clock," he said decisively.
She took up the watch which lay on the table beside the bed.
"Yes, it's just three minutes to twelve," she declared in an awe-struck
voice. "That's marvellous--how wonderful you are!"
"That's what I said of you a minute ago," he returned. Then, with a
swift change of voice and manner, he added, "How long is it?"
"You mean, since you came here?" she asked, divining what was in his
mind.
"Exactly. How long?"
"Six weeks," she answered. "Six weeks and three days."
"Why don't you add the hour, too," he urged half-plaintively, though he
smiled.
"Well, it was three o'clock in the morning to the minute," she answered.
"Old Father Time ought to make you his chief of staff," he remarked
gaily. "Now, I want to know," he added, with a visible effort of
determination, "what has happened since three o'clock in the morning,
six weeks and three days ago. I want you to tell me what has happened
to my concerns--to the railways, and also to the towns. I don't want you
to hide anything, because, if you do, I'll have Jim in, and Jim, under
proper control, will tell me the whole truth, and perhaps more than the
truth. That's the way with Jim. When he gets started he can't stop.
Tell me exactly everything."
Anxiety drove the colour from her cheeks. She shrank back.
"You must tell me," he urged. "I'd rather hear it from you than from
Dr. Rockwell, or Jim, or your father. Your telling wouldn't hurt as much
as anybody else's, if there has to be any hurt. Don't you understand--
but don't you understand?" he urged.
She nodded to herself in the mirror on the wall opposite. "I'll try to
understand," she replied presently; "Tell me, then: have they put someone
in my place?"
"I understand so," she replied.
He remained silent for a moment, his face very pale. "Who is running the
show?" he asked.
She told him.
"Oh, him!" he exclaimed. "He's dead against my policy. He'll make a
mess."
"They say he's doing that," she remarked.
He asked her a series of questions which she tried to answer frankly, and
he came to know that the trouble between the two towns, which, after the
Orange funeral and his own disaster had subsided, was up again; that the
railways were in difficulties; that there had been several failures in
the town; that one of the banks--the Regent-had closed its doors; that
Felix Marchand, having recovered from the injury he had received from
Gabriel Druse on the day of the Orange funeral, had gone East for a month
and had returned; that the old trouble was reviving in the mills, and
that Marchand had linked himself with the enemies of the group
controlling the railways hitherto directed by himself.
For a moment after she had answered his questions, there was strong
emotion in his face, and then it cleared.
He reached out a hand towards her. How eagerly she clasped it! It was
cold, and hers was so warm and firm and kind.
"True friend o' mine!" he said with feeling. "How wonderful it is that
somehow it all doesn't seem to matter so much. I wonder why? I wonder--
Tell me about yourself, about your life," he added abruptly, as though it
had been a question he had long wished to ask. In the tone was a quiet
certainty suggesting that she would not hesitate to answer.
"We have both had big breaks in our lives," he went on. "I know that.
I've lost everything, in a way, by the break in my life, and I've an idea
that you gained everything when the break in yours came. I didn't
believe the story Jethro Fawe told me, but still I knew there was some
truth in it; something that he twisted to suit himself. I started life
feeling I could conquer the world like another Alexander or Napoleon.
I don't know that it was all conceit. It was the wish to do, to see how
far this thing on my shoulders"--he touched his head--"and this great
physical machine"--he touched his breast with a thin hand--"would carry
me. I don't believe the main idea was vicious. It was wanting to work
a human brain to its last volt of capacity, and to see what it could do.
I suppose I became selfish as I forged on. I didn't mean to be, but
concentration upon the things I had to do prevented me from being the
thing I ought to be. I wanted, as they say, to get there. I had a lot
of irons in the fire--too many--but they weren't put there deliberately.
One thing led to another, and one thing, as it were, hung upon another,
until they all got to be part of the scheme. Once they got there, I had
to carry them all on, I couldn't drop any of them; they got to be my
life. It didn't matter that it all grew bigger and bigger, and the risks
got greater and greater. I thought I could weather it through, and so I
could have done, if it hadn't been for a mistake and an accident; but the
mistake was mine. That's where the thing nips--the mistake was mine.
I took too big a risk. You see, I'd got so used to being lucky, it
seemed as if I couldn't go wrong. Everything had come my way. Ever
since I began in that Montreal railway office, after leaving college,
I hadn't a single setback. I pulled things off. I made money, and I
plumped it all into my railways and the Regent Bank; and as you said
a minute ago, the Regent Bank has closed down. That cuts me clean out
of the game. What was the matter with the bank? The manager?"
His voice was almost monotonous in its quietness. It was as though he
told the story of something which had passed beyond chance or change.
As it unfolded to her understanding, she had seated herself near to his
bed. The door of the room was open, and in view outside on the landing
sat Madame Bulteel reading. She was not, however, near enough to hear
the conversation.
Ingolby's voice was low, but it sounded as loud as a waterfall in the
ears of the girl, who, in a few weeks, had travelled great distances on
the road called Experience, that other name for life.
"It was the manager?" he repeated.
"Yes, they say so," she answered. "He speculated with bank money."
"In what?"
"In your railways," she answered hesitatingly. "Curious--I dreamed
that," Ingolby remarked quietly, and leaned down and stroked the dog
lying at his feet. It had been with him through all his sickness.
"It must have been part of my delirium, because, now that I've got my
senses back, it's as though someone had told me about it. Speculated in
my railways, eh? Chickens come home to roost, don't they? I suppose I
ought to be excited over it all," he continued. "I suppose I ought. But
the fact is, you only have just the one long, big moment of excitement
when great trouble and tragedy come, or else it's all excitement, all the
time, and then you go mad. That's the test, I think. When you're struck
by Fate, as a hideous war-machine might strike you, and the whole terror
of loss and ruin bears down on you, you're either swept away in an
excitement that hasn't any end, or you brace yourself, and become
master of the shattering thing."
"You are a master," she interposed. "You are the Master Man," she
repeated admiringly.
He waved a hand deprecatingly. "Do you know, when we talked together in
the woods soon after you ran the Rapids--you remember the day--if you had
said that to me then, I'd have cocked my head and thought I was a jim-
dandy, as they say. A Master Man was what I wanted to be. But it's a
pretty barren thing to think, or to feel, that you're a Master Man;
because, if you are--if you've had a 'scoop' all the way, as Jowett calls
it, you can be as sure as anything that no one cares a rap farthing what
happens to you. There are plenty who pretend they care, but it's only
because they're sailing with the wind, and with your even keel. It's
only the Master Man himself that doesn't know in the least he's that who
gets anything out of it all."
"Aren't you getting anything out of it?" she asked softly. "Aren't you
--Chief?"
At the familiar word--Jowett always called him Chief--a smile slowly
stole across his face. "I really believe I am, thanks to you," he said
nodding.
He was going to say, "Thanks to you, Fleda," but he restrained himself.
He had no right to be familiar, to give an intimate turn to things. His
game was over; his journey of ambition was done. He saw this girl with
his mind's eye--how much he longed to see her with the eyes of the body
--in all her strange beauty; and he knew that even if she cared for him,
such a sacrifice as linking her life with his was impossible. Yet her
very presence there was like a garden of bloom to him: a garden full of
the odour of life, of vital things, of sweet energy and happy being.
Somehow, he and she were strangely alike. He knew it. From the time
he held her in his arms at Carillon, he knew it. The great adventurous
spirit which was in him belonged also to her. That was as sure as light
and darkness.
"No, there's no master man in me, but I think I know what one could be
like," he remarked at last. He straightened himself against the pillows.
The old look of power came to a face hardly strong enough to bear it.
It was so fine and thin now, and the spirit in him was so prodigious.
"No one cares what happens to the man who always succeeds; no one loves
him," he continued. "Do you know, in my trouble I've had more out of
nigger Jim's affection than I've ever had in my life. Then there's
Rockwell, Osterhaut and Jowett, and there's your father. It was worth
while living to feel the real thing." His hands went out as though
grasping something good and comforting. "I don't suppose every man needs
to be struck as hard as I've been to learn what's what, but I've learned
it. I give you my word of honour, I've learned it."
Her face flushed and her eyes kindled greatly. "Jim, Rockwell,
Osterhaut, Jowett, and my father!" she exclaimed. "Of course trouble
wouldn't do anything but make them come closer round you. Poor people
live so near to misfortune all the time--I mean poor people like Jim,
Osterhaut, and Jowett--that changes of fortune are just natural things to
them. As for my father, he has had to stretch out his hands so often to
those in trouble--"
"That he carried me home on his shoulders from the bridge six weeks and
three days ago, at three o'clock in the morning," interjected Ingolby
with a quizzical smile.
"Why did you omit Madame Bulteel and myself when you mentioned those who
showed their--friendship?" she asked, hesitating at the last word.
"Haven't we done our part?"
"I was talking of men," he answered. "One knows what women do. They may
leave you in the bright days, not in the dark days. On the majority of
them you couldn't rely in prosperity, but in misfortune you couldn't do
anything else. They are there with you. They're made that way. The
best life can give you in misfortune is a woman. It's the great
beginning-of-the-world thing in them. Men can't stand prosperity, but
women can stand misfortune. Why, if Jim and Osterhaut and Jowett and all
the men of Lebanon and Manitou had deserted me, I shouldn't have been
surprised; but I'd have had to recast my philosophy if Fleda Druse had
turned her bonny brown head away."
It was evident he was making an effort to conquer emotions which were
rising in him; that he was playing on the surface to prevent his deep
feelings from breaking forth. "Instead of which," he added jubilantly,
"here I am, in the nicest room in the world, in a fine bed with springs
like an antelope's heels."
He laughed, and hunched his back into the mattress. It was the laugh of
the mocker, but he was mocking himself. She did not misunderstand. It
was a nice room, as he said. He had never seen it with his eyes, but if
he had seen it he would have realized how like herself it was--adorably
fresh, happily coloured, sumptuous and fine. It had simple curtains,
white sheets, and a warm carpet on the floor; and yet with something,
too, that struck the note of a life outside. A pennant of many colours
hung where two soft pink curtains joined, and at the window and over the
door was an ancient cross in bronze and gold. It was not the simple
Christian cross of the modern world, but an ancient one which had become
a symbol of the Romanys, a sign to mark the highways, the guide of the
wayfarers. The pennant had been on the pole of the Ry's tent in far-off
days in the Roumelian country. In the girl herself there was that which
corresponded to the gorgeous pennant and the bronze cross. It was not in
dress or in manner, for there was no sign of garishness, of the unusual
anywhere--in manner she was as well controlled as any woman of fashion,
in dress singularly reserved--but in the depths of the eyes there was
some restless, unsettled thing, some flicker of strange banners akin to
the pennant at the joining of the pink curtains. There had been
something of the same look in Ingolby's eyes in the past, only with him
it was the sense of great adventure, intrepid enterprise, a touch of
vision and the beckoning thing. That look was not in his eyes now.
Nothing was there; no life, no soul; only darkness. But did that look
still inhabit the eyes of the soul?
He answered the question himself. "I'd start again in a different way if
I could," he said musingly, his face towards the girl. "It's easy to say
that, but I would. It isn't only the things you get, it's how you use
them. It isn't only the things you do, it's why you do them. But I'll
never have a chance now; I'll never have a chance to try the new way.
I'm done."
Something almost savage leaped into her eyes--a wild, bitter protest, for
it was her tragedy, too, if he was not to regain his sight. The great
impulse of a nature which had been disciplined into reserve broke forth.
"It isn't so," she said with a tremor in her voice. All that he--and
she--was in danger of losing came home to her. "It isn't so. You shall
get well again. Your sight will come back. To-morrow; perhaps to-day,
Hindlip, the great oculist comes from New York. Mr. Warbeck, the
Montreal man, holds out hopes. If the New York man says the same,
why despair? Perhaps in another month you will be on your feet again,
out in the world, fighting, working, mastering, just as you used to do."
A sudden stillness seemed to take possession of him. His lips parted;
his head was thrust forwards slightly as though he saw something in the
distance. He spoke scarcely above a whisper.
"I didn't know the New York man was coming. I didn't know there was any
hope at all," he said with awe in his tones.
"We told you there was," she answered.
"Yes, I know. But I thought you were all only trying to make it easier
for me, and I heard Warbeck say to Rockwell, when they thought I was
asleep, 'It's ten to one against him.'"
"Did you hear that?" she said sorrowfully. "I'm so sorry; but Mr.
Warbeck said afterwards--only a week ago--that the chances were even.
That's the truth. On my soul and honour it's the truth. He said the
chances were even. It was he suggested Mr. Hindlip, and Hindlip is
coming now. He's on the way. He may be here to-day. Oh, be sure, be
sure, be sure, it isn't all over. You said your life was broken. It
isn't. You said my life had been broken. It wasn't. It was only the
wrench of a great change. Well, it's only the wrench of a great change
in your life. You said I gained everything in the great change of my
life. I did; and the great change in your life won't be lost, it will be
gain, too. I know it; in my heart I know it."
With sudden impulse she caught his hand in both of hers, and then with
another impulse, which she could not control, she caught his head to her
bosom. For one instant her arms wrapped him round, and she murmured
something in a language he did not understand--the language of the
Roumelian country. It was only one swift instant, and then with shocked
exclamation she broke away from him, dropped into a chair, and buried her
face in her hands.
He blindly reached out his hand towards her as if to touch her. "Mother-
girl, dear mother-girl--that's what you are," he said huskily. "What a
great, kind heart you've got!"
She did not reply, but sat with face hidden in her hands, rocking
backwards and forwards. He understood; he tried to help her. There was
a great joy in his heart, but he dared not give it utterance.
"Please tell me about your life--about that great change in it," he said
at last in a low voice. "Perhaps it would help me. Anyhow, I'd like to
know, if you feel you can tell me."
For a moment she was silent. Then she said to him with an anxious note
in her voice: "What do you know about my life-about the 'great change,'
as you call it?"
He reached out over the coverlet, felt for a sock which he had been
learning to knit and, slowly plying the needles, replied: "I only know
what Jethro Fawe told me, and he was a promiscuous liar."
"I don't think he lied about me," she answered quietly. "He told you I
was a Gipsy; he told you that I was married to him. That was true. I
was a Gipsy. I was married to him in the Romany way, when I was a child
of three, and I never saw him again until here, the other day, on the
Sagalac."
"You were married to him as much as I am," he interjected scornfully.
"That was a farce. It was only a promise to pay on the part of your
father. There was nothing in that. Jethro Fawe could not claim on
that."
"He has tried to do so," she answered, "and if I were still a Gipsy he
would have the right to do so from his standpoint."
"That sounds silly to me," Ingolby remarked, his fingers moving now more
quickly with the needles. "No, it isn't silly," she said, her voice
almost as softly monotonous as his had been when he told her of his life
a little while before. It was as though she was looking into her own
mind and heart and speaking to herself. "It isn't silly," she repeated.
"I don't think you understand. Just because a race like the Gipsies have
no country and no home, so they must have things that bind them which
other people don't need in the same way. Being the vagrants of the
earth, so they must have things that hold them tighter than any written
laws made by King or Parliament. Unless the Gipsies kept their laws
sacred they couldn't hold together at all. They're iron and steel, the
Gipsy laws. They can't be stretched, and they can't be twisted. They
can only be broken, and then there's no argument about it. When they are
broken, there's the penalty, and it has to be met."
Ingolby stopped knitting for a moment. "You don't mean that a penalty
could touch you?" he asked incredulously.
"Not for breaking a law," she answered. "I'm not a Gipsy any more.
I gave my word about that, and so did my father; and I'll keep it."
"Please tell me about it," he urged. "Tell me, so that I can understand
everything."
There was a long pause in which Ingolby inspected carefully with his
fingers the work which he was doing, but at last Fleda's voice came to
him, as it seemed out of a great distance, while she began to tell of her
first memories: of her life by the Danube and the Black Sea, and drew
for him a picture, so far as she could recall it, of her marriage with
Jethro, and of the years that followed. Now and again as she told of
some sordid things, of the challenge of the law in different countries,
of the coarse vagabondage of the Gipsy people in this place or in that,
and some indignity put upon her father, or some humiliating incident, her
voice became low and pained. It seemed as if she meant that he should
see all she had been in that past, which still must be part of the
present and have its place in the future, however far away all that
belonged to it would be. She appeared to search her mind to find that
which would prejudice him against her. While speaking with slow scorn
of the life which she had lived as a Gipsy, yet she tried to make him
understand, too, that, in the days when she belonged to it, it all seemed
natural to her, and that its sordidness, its vagabondage did not produce
repugnance in her mind when she was part of it. Unwittingly she over-
coloured the picture, and he knew she did.
In spite of herself, however, some aspects of the old life called forth
pictures of happy Nature, of busy animal life of wood and glen and stream
and footpath which was exquisite in its way. She was in spirit at one
with the multitudinous world of nature among which so many men and women
lived, without seeing or knowing. It was all undesignedly a part of
herself, and she was one of a population in a universal nation whose
devout citizen she was. Sometimes, in response to an interjection from
Ingolby, deftly made, she told of some incident which revealed as great a
poetic as dramatic instinct. As she talked, Ingolby in his imagination
pictured her as a girl of ten or twelve, in a dark-red dress, brown curls
falling in profusion on her shoulders, with a clear, honest, beautiful
eye, and a face that only spoke of a joy of living, in which the small
things were the small things and the great things were the great: the
perfect proportion of sane life in a sane world.
Now and again, carried away by the history of things remembered, she
visualized scenes for him with the ardour of an artist and a lover of
created things. He realized how powerful a hold the old life still had
upon her. She understood it, too, for when at last she told of the great
event in England which changed her life, and made her a deserter from
Gipsy life; when she came to the giving of the pledge to a dying woman,
and how she had kept that pledge, and how her father had kept it,
sternly, faithfully, in spite of all it involved, she said to him:
"It may seem strange to you, living as I live now in one spot, with
everything to make life easy, that I should long sometimes for that old
life. I hate it in my heart of hearts, yet there's something about it
that belongs to me, that's behind me, if that tells you anything. It's
as though there was some other self in me which reached far, far back
into centuries, that wills me to do this and wills me to do that. It
sounds mad to you of course, but there have been times when I have had a
wild longing to go back to it all, to what some Gorgio writers call the
pariah world--the Ishmaelites."
More than once Ingolby's heart throbbed heavily against his breast as he
felt the passion of her nature, its extraordinary truthfulness, making it
clear to him by indirect phrases that even Jethro Fawe, whom she
despised, still had a hateful fascination for her. It was all at
variance to her present self, but it summoned her through the long
avenues of ancestry, predisposition; through the secret communion of
those who, being dead, yet speak.
"It's a great story told in a great way," he said, when she had finished.
"It's the most honest thing I ever heard, but it's not the most truthful
thing I ever heard. I don't think we can tell the exact truth about
ourselves. We try to be honest; we are savagely in earnest about it,
and so we exaggerate the bad things we do, and we often show distrust of
the good things we do. That's not a fair picture. I believe you've told
me the truth as you see it and feel it, but I don't think it's the real
truth. In my mind I sometimes see an oriel window in the college where I
spent three years. I used to work and think for hours in that oriel
window, and in the fights I've been having lately I've looked back and
thought I wanted it again; wanted to be there in the peace of it all,
with the books, and the lectures, and the drone of history, and the
drudgery of examinations; but if I did go back to it, three days'd sicken
me, and if you went back to the Gipsy life three days'd sicken you."
"Yes, I know. Three hours would sicken me. But what might not happen in
those three hours! Can't you understand?"
Suddenly she got to her feet with a passionate exclamation, her
clenched hands went to her temples in an agony of emotion. "Can't you
understand?" she repeated. "It's the going back at all for three days,
for three hours, for three minutes that counts. It might spoil
everything; it might kill my life."
His face flushed, crimsoned, then became pale; his hands ceased moving;
the knitting lay still on his knee. "Maybe, but you aren't going back
for three minutes, any more than I'm going back to the oriel window for
three seconds," he said. "We dreamers have a lot of agony in thinking
about the things we're never going to do--just as much agony as in
thinking about the things we've done. Every one of us dreamers ought to
be insulated. We ought to wear emotional lightning-rods to carry off the
brain-waves into the ground.
"I've never heard such a wonderful story," he added, after an instant,
with an intense longing to hold out his arms to her, and a still more
intense will to do no such wrong. A blind man had no right or title to
be a slave-owner, for that was what marriage to him would be. A wife
would be a victim. He saw himself, felt himself being gradually
devitalized, with only the placid brain left, considering only the
problem of hourly comfort, and trying to neutralize the penalties of
blindness. She must not be sacrificed to that, for apart from all else
she had greatness of a kind in her. He knew far better than he had said
of the storm of emotion in her, and he knew that she had not exaggerated
the temptation which sang in her ears. Jethro Fawe--the thought of the
man revolted him; and yet there was something about the fellow,
a temperamental power, the glamour and garishness of Nature's gifts,
prostituted though they were, finding expression in a striking
personality, in a body of athletic grace--a man-beauty.
"Have you seen Jethro Fawe lately?" he asked. "Not since"--she was
going to say not since the morning her father had passed the sentence of
the patrin upon him; but she paused in time. "Not since everything
happened to you," she added presently.
"He knows the game is up," Ingolby remarked with forced cheerfulness.
"He won't be asking for any more."
"It's time for your milk and brandy," she said suddenly, emotion
subsiding and a look of purpose coming into her face. She poured out the
liquid, and gave the glass into his hand. His fingers touched hers.
"Your hands are cold," she said to him. "Cold hands, warm heart," he
chattered.
A curious, wilful, rebellious look came into her eyes. "I shouldn't
have thought it in your case," she said, and with sudden resolve turned
towards the door. "I'll send Madame Bulteel," she added. "I'm going for
a walk."
She had betrayed herself so much, had shown so recklessly what she felt,
and yet, yet why did he not--she did not know what she wanted him to do.
It was all a great confusion. Vaguely she realized what had been working
in him, but yet the knowledge was dim indeed. She was a woman. In her
heart of hearts she knew that he did care for her, and yet in her heart
of hearts she denied that he cared.
She was suddenly angry with herself, angry with him, the poor blind man,
back from the Valley of the Shadow. She had not reached the door,
however, when Madame Bulteel entered the room.
"The doctor from New York has come," she said, holding out a note from
Dr. Rockwell. "He will be here in a couple of hours."
Fleda turned back towards the bed.
"Good luck!" she said. "You'll see, it will be all right."
"Certainly I'll see if it's all right," he said cheerfully. "Am I tidy?
Have I used Pears' soap?" He would have his joke at his own funeral if
possible.
"There are two hours to get you fit to be seen," she rejoined with
raillery, infected by his cheerfulness in spite of herself. "Madame
Bulteel is very brave. Nothing is too hard for her!"
An instant later she was gone, with her heart telling her to go back to
him, not to leave him, but yet with a longing stronger still driving her
to the open world, to which she could breathe her trouble in great gasps,
as she sped onward through the woods and by the river. To love a blind
man was sheer madness, but in her was a superstitious belief that he
would see again. It prevailed against the doubts and terrors. It made
her resent his own sense of fatality, his own belief that he would be in
darkness all his days.
In the room where he awaited the verdict of the expert, he kept saying to
himself:
"She would have made everything else look cheap--if it could have been."
CHAPTER XXI
THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER
The last rays of the setting sun touched the gorgeous Autumn woods with
a loving, bright glow, and the day stole pensively away into a purple bed
beyond the sight of the eyes. From a lonely spot by the river, Fleda
watched the westering gleam until it vanished, her soul alive to the
melancholy beauty of it all. Not a human being seemed to be within the
restricted circle of her vision. There were only to be seen the deep
woods, in myriad tints of bronze and red and saffron, and the swift-
flowing river. Overhead was the Northern sky, so clear, so thrilling,
and the stars were beginning to sparkle in the incredibly swift twilight
which links daytime and nighttime in that Upper Land. Lonely and
delicately sad it all looked, but there was no feeling of loneliness
among those who lived the life of the Sagalac. Many a man has stood on a
wide plain of snow, white to the uttermost horizon, or in the yellow-
brown grass of the Summer prairie, empty of all human life so far as eye
could see, and yet has felt no solitude. It is as though the air itself
is inhabited by a throng of happy comrades whispering in the communion of
the invisible world.
As a child Fleda had often gazed upon just such scenes, lonely and
luminous, but she was only conscious then of a vague and pleasant awe,
a kindly confusion, which, like the din of innumerable bees, lulled
wonder to sleep. Even as a child, however, something of what it meant
had pierced her awe and wonder. Once as she crossed a broken, bare
mountain of Roumania she had seen a wild ass perched upon a high summit
gazing, as it were, over the wide valley, where beneath, among the rocks,
other wild asses wandered. There was something so statue-like in this
immovable wild creature that Fleda had watched it till it was hid from
her view by a jutting rock. But the thing which made a lasting
impression, drawing her nearer to nature-life than all that had chanced
since she was born, was the fact that on returning, hours after, the wild
ass was still standing upon the summit of the hill, still gazing across
the valley. Or was it gazing across the valley? Was there some other
vision commanding its sight?
So a young wife not yet a mother loses herself for hours together in a
vista of unexplored experience. Fleda had passed on, out of sight of the
wild ass on the hills, but for ever after the memory of it remained with
her and the picture of it sprang to her eye innumerable times. The
hypnotized wild thing--hypnotized by its own vague instincts, or by
something outside itself-became to her as the Sphinx to the Egyptian, the
everlasting question of existence.
Now, as she watched the day fleeing, and night with swift stealthiness
coming on, that unforgettable picture of the Roumanian hills came to her
again. The instinct of those far-off days which had been little removed
from the finest animal intelligence had now developed into thought.
Brain and soul strove to grasp what it all meant, and what the revelation
was between Nature and herself. Nature was so vast; she was so
insignificant; changes in its motionless inorganic life were
imperceptible save through the telescopes of years; but she, like the
wind, the water, and the clouds, was variable, inconstant. Was there any
real relation between the vast, imperturbable earth, its seas, its
forests, its mountains and its plains, its life of tree and plant and
flower and the men and women dotted on its surface? Did they belong to
each other, or were mankind only, as it were, vermin infesting the
desirable world? Did they belong to each other? It meant so much if
they did belong, and she loved to think they did. Many a time she kissed
the smooth bole of a maple or whispered to it; or laid her cheek against
a mossy rock and murmured a greeting in the spirit of a companionship as
old as the making of the world.
On the evening of this day of her destiny--carrying the story of her own
fate within its twenty-four hours--she was in a mood of detachment from
life's routine. As at a great opera, a sensitive spirit loses itself in
visions alien to the music and yet born of it, so she, lost in this
primeval scene before her, saw visions of things to be.
If Ingolby's sight came back! In her abstraction she saw him with sight
restored and by her side, and even in that joy her mind felt a hovering
sense of invasion, no definite, visible thing, but a presence which made
shadow. Suddenly oppressed by it, she turned back into the woods from
the river-bank to make for home. She had explored nearly every portion
of this river-country for miles up and down, but on this evening, lost in
her dreams, she had wandered into less familiar regions. There was no
chance of her being lost, so long as she kept near to the river, and
indeed by instinct and not by thought or calculation she made her way
about at all times. Turned homeward, she walked for about a quarter of a
mile, retreading the path by which she had come. It was growing darker,
and, being in unfamiliar surroundings, she hurried on, though she knew
well what course to take. Following the bank of the river she would have
increased her walk greatly, as the stream made a curve at a point above
Manitou, and then came back again to its original course; so she cut
across the promontory, taking the most direct line homeward.
Presently, however, she became conscious of other people in the wood
besides herself. She saw no one, but she heard breaking twigs, the stir
of leaves, the flutter of a partridge which told of human presence. The
underbrush was considerable, darkness was coming on, and she had a sense
of being surrounded. It agitated her, but she pulled herself together,
stood still and admonished herself. She called herself a fool; she asked
herself if she was going to be a coward. She laughed out loud at her own
apprehension; but a chill stole into her blood when she heard near by--
there was no doubt about it now--mockery of her own laughter. Then
suddenly, before she could organize her senses, a score of men seemed to
rise up from the ground around her, to burst out from the bushes, to drop
from the trees, and to storm upon her. She had only time to realize that
they were Romanys, before scarfs were thrown around her head, bound
around her body, and, unconscious, she was carried away into the deep
woods.
When she regained consciousness Fleda found herself in a tent, set in a
kind of prairie amphitheatre valanced by shrubs and trees. Bright fires
burned here and there, and dark-featured men squatted upon the ground,
cared for their horses, or busied themselves near two large caravans, at
the doors or on the steps of which now and again appeared a woman.
She had waked without moving, had observed the scene without drawing the
attention of a man--a sentry--who sat beside the tent-door. The tent was
empty save for herself. There was little in it besides the camp-bed
against the tent wall, upon which she lay, and the cushions supporting
her head. She had waked carefully, as it were: as though some inward
monitor had warned her of impending danger. She realized that she had
been kidnapped by Romanys, and that the hand behind the business was that
of Jethro Fawe. The adventurous and reckless Fawe family had its many
adherents in the Romany world, and Jethro was its head, the hereditary
claimant for its leadership.
Notwithstanding the Ry of Rys' prohibition, there had drawn nearer and
ever nearer to him, from the Romany world he had abandoned, many of his
people, never, however, actually coming within his vision till the
appearance of Jethro Fawe. Here and there on the prairie, to a point
just beyond Gabriel Druse's horizon, they had come from all parts of the
world; and Jethro, reckless and defiant under the Sentence, and knowing
that the chances against his life were a million to one, had determined
on one bold stroke which, if it failed, would make his fate no worse,
and, if it succeeded, would give him his wife and, maybe, headship over
all the Romany world. For weeks he had planned, watched and waited,
filling the woods with his adherents, secretly following Fleda day by
day, until, at last, the place, the opportunity, seemed perfect; and here
she lay in a Romany tan once more, with the flickering fires outside in
the night, and the sentry at her doorway. This watchman was not Jethro
Fawe, but she knew well that Jethro was not far off.
Through the open door of the tent, for some minutes, her eyes studied the
segment of the circle within her vision, and she realized that here was
an organized attempt to force her back into the Romany world. If she
repudiated the Gorgio life and acknowledged herself a Romany once again,
she knew her safety would be secured; but in truth she had no fear for
her life, for no one would dare to defy the Ry of Rys so far as to kill
his daughter. But she was in danger of another kind--in deep and
terrible danger; and she knew it well. As the thought of it took
possession of her, her heart seemed almost to burst. Not fear, but anger
and emotion possessed her. All the Romany in her stormed back again from
the past. It sent her to her feet with a scarcely smothered cry. She
was not quicker, however, than was the figure at the tent door, which,
with a half-dozen others, sprang up as she appeared. A hand was raised,
and, as if by magic, groups of Gipsies, some sitting, some standing, some
with the Gipsy fiddle, one or two with flutes, began a Romany chant in a
high, victorious key, and women threw upon the fire powders from which
flamed up many coloured lights.
In a moment the camp was transformed. From the woods around came
swarthy-faced men, with great gold rings in their ears and bright scarfs
around their necks or waists, some of them handsome, dirty and insolent;
others ugly, watchful, and quiet in manner and face; others still most
friendly and kind in face and manner. All showed instant respect for
Fleda. They raised their hands in a gesture of salutation as a Zulu
chief thrusts up a long arm and shouts "Inkoos!" to one whom he honours.
Some, however, made the sweeping Oriental gesture of the right hand, palm
upward, and almost touching the ground--a sign of obedience and infinite
respect. It had all been well arranged. Skilfully managed as it was,
however, there was something in it deeper than theatrical display or
dramatic purpose.
It was clear that many of them were deeply moved at being in the presence
of the daughter of the Ry of Rys, who had for so long exiled himself.
Racial, family, clan feeling spoke in voice and gesture, in look and
attitude; but yet there were small groups of younger men whose
salutations were perfunctory, not to say mocking. These were they who
resented deeply Fleda's defection, and truthfully felt that she had
passed out of their circle for ever; that she despised them, and looked
down on them from another sphere. They were all about the age of Jethro
Fawe, but were of a less civilized type, and had semi-barbarism written
all over them. Unlike Jethro they had never known the world of cities.
They repudiated Fleda, because their ambition could not reach to her.
They recognized the touch of fashion and of form, of a worldly education,
of a convention which lifted her away from the tan and the caravan, from
the everlasting itinerary. They had not had Jethro's experiences in
fashionable hotels of Europe, at midnight parties, at gay suppers, at
garish dances, where Gorgio ladies answered the amorous looks of the
ambitious Romany with the fiddle at his chin. Because these young
Romanys knew they dare not aspire, they were resentful; but Jethro,
the head of the rival family and the son of the dead claimant to the
headship, had not such compulsory modesty. He had ranged far and wide,
and his expectations were extensive. He was nowhere to be seen in the
groups which sang and gestured in the light of the many coloured fires,
though once or twice Fleda's quickened ear detected his voice, exulting,
in the chorus of song.
Presently, as she stood watching, listening, and strangely moved in spite
of herself by the sudden dramatic turn which things had taken, a seat was
brought to her. It was a handsome stool, looted perhaps from some
chateau in the Old World, and over it was thrown a dark-red cloth which
gave a semblance of dignity to the seat of authority, which it was meant
to be.
Fleda did not refuse the honour. She had choked back the indignant words
which had rushed to her lips as she left the tent where she had been
lying. Prudence had bade her await developments. She could not yet make
up her mind what to do. It was clear that a bold and deep purpose lay
behind it all, and she could not tell how far-reaching it was, nor what
it represented of rebellion against her father's authority. That it did
represent rebellion she had no doubt. She was well enough aware of the
claims of Jethro's dead father to the leadership, abandoned for three
thousand pounds and marriage with herself; and she was also aware that
while her father's mysterious isolation might possibly have developed a
reverence for him, yet active pressure and calumny might well have done
its work. Also, if the marriage was repudiated, Jethro would be
justified in resuming the family claim to the leadership.
She seated herself upon the scarlet seat with a gesture of thanks, while
the salutations and greetings increased; then she awaited events,
thrilled by the weird and pleasant music, with its touches of Eastern
fantasy. In spite of herself she was moved, as Romanys, men and women,
ran forward in excitement with arms raised towards her as though they
meant to strike her, then suddenly stopped short, made obeisance, called
a greeting, and ran backwards to their places.
Presently a group of men began a ceremony or ritual, before which the
spectators now and again covered their eyes, or bent their heads low,
or turned their backs, and raised their hands in a sort of ascription.
As the ceremony neared its end, with its strange genuflections, a woman
dressed in white was brought forward, her hands bound behind her, her
hair falling over her shoulders, and after a moment of apparent
denunciation on the part of the head of the ceremony, she was suddenly
thrown to the ground, and the pretence of drawing a knife across her
throat was made. As Fleda watched it she shuddered, but presently braced
herself, because she knew that this ritual was meant to show what the end
must be of those who, like herself, proved traitor to the traditions of
race.
It was at this point, when fifty knives flashed in the air, with vengeful
exclamations, that Jethro Fawe appeared in the midst of the crowd. He
was dressed in the well-known clothes which he had worn since the day he
first declared himself at Gabriel Druse's home, and, compared with his
friends around him, he showed to advantage. There was command in his
bearing, and experience of life had given him primitive distinction.
For a moment he stood looking at Fleda in undisguised admiration, for
she made a remarkable picture. Animal beauty was hers, too. There was a
delicate, athletic charm in her body and bearing; but it added to, rather
than took away from, the authority of her presence, so differing from
Jethro. She had never compared herself with others, and her passionate
intelligence would have rebelled against the supremacy of the body. She
had no physical vanity, but she had some mental vanity, and it placed
mind so far above matter that her beauty played no part in her
calculations. At sight of him, Fleda's blood quickened, but in
indignation and in no other sense. As he came towards her, however,
despising his vanity as she did, she felt how much he was above all those
by whom he was surrounded. She realized his talent, and it almost made
her forget his cunning and his loathsomeness. As he came near to her he
made a slight gesture to someone in the crowd, and a chorus of
salutations rose.
Composed and still she waited for him to come quite close to her, and the
look in her face was like that of one who was scarcely conscious of what
was passing around her, whose eyes saw distant things of infinite moment.
A few feet away from her he spoke.
"Daughter of the Ry of Rys, you are among your own people once again,"
he said. "From everywhere in the world they have come to show their love
for you. You would not have come to them of your own free will, because
a madness 'got hold of you, and so they came to you. You cut yourself
off from them and told yourself you had become a Gorgio. But that was
only your madness; and madness can be cured. We are the Fawes, the
ancient Fawes, who ruled the Romany people before the Druses came to
power. We are of the ancient blood, yet we are faithful to the Druse
that rules over us. His word prevails, although his daughter is mad.
Daughter of the Ry of Rys, you have seen us once again. We have sung to
you; we have spoken to you; we have told you what is in our hearts; we
have shown you how good is the end of those who are faithful, and how
terrible is the end of the traitor. Do not forget it. Speak to us."
Fleda had a fierce desire to spring to her feet and declare to them all
that the sentence of the patrin had been passed upon Jethro Fawe, but she
laid a hand upon herself. She knew they were unaware that the Sentence
had been passed, else they would not have been with Jethro. In that case
none would give him food or shelter or the hand of friendship; none dare
show him any kindness; and it was the law that any one against whom he
committed an offence, however small, might take his life. The Sentence
had been like a cloud upon her mind ever since her father had passed it;
she could not endure the thought of it. She could not bring herself to
speak of it--to denounce him. Sooner or later the Sentence would reach
every Romany everywhere, and Jethro would pass into the darkness of
oblivion, not in his own time nor in the time of Fate. The man was
abhorrent to her, yet his claim was there. Mad and bad as it was, he
made his claim of her upon ancient rights, and she was still enough a
Romany to see his point of view.
Getting to her feet slowly, she ignored Jethro, looked into the face of
the crowd, and said:
"I am the daughter of the Ry of Rys still, though I am a Romany no
longer. I made a pledge to be no more a Romany and I will keep it; yet
you and all Romany people are dear to me because through long generations
the Druses have been of you. You have brought me here against my will.
Do you think the Ry of Rys will forgive that? In your words you have
been kind to me, but yet you have threatened me. Do you think that a
Druse has any fear? Did a Druse ever turn his cheek to be smitten? You
know what the Druses are. I am a Druse still. I will not talk longer,
I have nothing to say to you all except that you must take me back to my
father, and I will see that he forgives you. Some of you have done this
out of love; some of you have done it out of hate; yet set me free again
upon the path to my home, and I shall forget it, and the Ry of Rys will
forget it."
At that instant there suddenly came forward from the doorway of a tent
on the outskirts of the crowd a stalwart woman, with a strong face and
a self-reliant manner. She was still young, but her slightly pockmarked
countenance showed the wear and tear of sorrow of some kind. She had,
indeed, lost her husband and her father in the Montenegrin wars.
Hastening forward to Fleda she reached out a hand.
"Come with me," she said; "come and sleep in my tent to-night. To-morrow
you shall go back to the Ry of Rys, perhaps. Come with me."
There was a sudden murmuring in the crowd, which was stilled by a motion
of Jethro Fawe's hand, and a moment afterwards Fleda gave her hand to the
woman.
"I will go with you," Fleda said. Then she turned to Jethro: "I wish to
speak to you alone, Jethro Fawe," she added.
He laughed triumphantly. "The wife of Jethro Fawe wishes to speak with
him," he bombastically cried aloud to the assembled people, and he
prepared to follow Fleda.
As Fleda entered the woman's tent a black-eyed girl, with tousled hair
and a bold, sensual face, ran up to Jethro, and in an undertone of evil
suggestion said to him:
"To-night is yours, Jethro. You can make tomorrow sure."
CHAPTER XXII
THE SECRET MAN
"You are wasting your time."
Fleda said the words with a quiet determination, and yet in the tone was
a slight over-emphasis which was like a call upon reserve forces within
herself.
"Time is nothing to me," was the complete reply, clothed in a tone of
soft irony. "I'm young enough to waste it. I've plenty of it in my
knapsack."
"Have you forgotten the Sentence of the Patrin?" Fleda asked the
question in a voice which showed a sudden access of determination.
"He will have to wipe it out after to-morrow," replied the other with a
gleam of sulky meaning and furtive purpose in his eyes.
"If you mean that I will change my mind to-morrow, and be your wife, and
return to the Gipsy life, it is the thought of a fool. I asked you to
come here to speak with me because I was sure I could make you see things
as they truly are. I wanted to explain why I did not tell the Romanys
outside there that the Sentence had been passed on you. I did not tell
them because I can't forget that your people and my people have been sib
for hundreds of years; that you and I were children together; that we
were sealed to one another when neither of us could have any say about
it. If I had remained a Gipsy, who can tell--my mind might have
become like yours! I think there must be something rash and bad in me
somewhere, because I tell you frankly now that a chord in my heart rang
when you made your wild speeches to me there in the hut in the Wood
months ago, even when I hated you, knowing you for what you are."
"That was because there was another man," interjected Jethro.
She inclined her head. "Yes, it was partly because of another man,"
she replied. "It is a man who suffers because of you. When he was alone
among his foes, a hundred to one, you betrayed him. That itself would
have made me despise you to the end of my life, even if the man had been
nothing at all to me.
"It was a low, cowardly thing to do. You did it; and if you were my
brother, I would hate you for it; if you were my father, I should leave
your house; if you were my husband, I should kill you. I asked you to
speak with me now because I thought that if you would go away--far away--
promising never to cross my father's path, or my path, again, I could get
him to withdraw the Sentence. You have kidnapped me. Where do you think
you are? In Mesopotamia? You can't break the law of this country and
escape as you would there. They don't take count of Romany custom here.
Not only you, but every one of the Fawes here will be punished if the law
reaches for your throat. I want you to escape, and I tell you to go now.
Go back to Europe. I advise you this for your own sake--because you are
a Fawe and of the clan."
The blood mounted to Jethro's forehead, and he made an angry gesture.
"And leave you here for him! 'Mi Duvel!' I can only die once, and I
would rather die near you than far away," he exclaimed.
His eyes had a sardonic look, there was a savage edge to his tongue, yet
his face was flushed with devouring emotion and he was quivering with
hope. That which he called love was flooding the field of his feelings,
and the mad thing--the toxic impulse which is deep in the brain of
Eastern races bled into his brain now. He was reckless, rebellious
against fate, insanely wilful, and what she had said concerning Ingolby
had roused in him the soul of Cain.
She realized it, and she was apprehensive of some desperate act; yet she
had no physical fear of him. Something seemed to tell her that, no
matter what happened, Ingolby would not wait for her in vain, and that
he would yet see her enter to him again with the love-light in her eyes.
"But listen to me," Jethro said, with an unnatural shining in his eyes,
his voice broken in its passion. "You think you can come it over me with
your Gorgio talk and the clever things you've learned in the Gorgio
world. You try to look down on me. I'm as well born or as ill born as
you. The only difference between us is the way you dress, the way you
live and use your tongue. All that belongs to the life of the cities.
Anyone can learn it. Anyone well born like you and me, with a little
practice, can talk like Gorgio dukes and earls. I've been among them and
I know. I've had my friends among them, too. I've got the hang of it
all. It's no good to me, and I don't want it. It's all part of a set
piece. There's no independence in that life; you live by rule. Diable!
I know. I've been in palaces; I've played my fiddle to the women in high
places who can't blush. It's no good; it brings nothing in the end.
It's all hollow. Look at our people there." He swept a hand to the tent
door.
"They're tanned and rough, as all out-door things are rough, but they've
got their share of happiness, and every day has its pleasures. Listen to
them!" he cried with a gesture of exultation. "Listen to that!"
The colour slowly left Fleda's face. Outside in the light of the dying
fires, under the glittering stars, in the shade of the trees, groups of
Romanys were singing the Romany wedding melody, called "The Song of the
Sealing." It was not like the ringing of wedding bells alone, it sealed
blessing upon the man and the woman. It was a poem in praise of marriage
passion; it was a paean proclaiming the accomplishment of life. Crude,
primitive, it thrilled with Eastern feeling; a weird charm was showered
from its notes.
"Listen!" exclaimed Jethro again, a fire burning in his face. "That's
for you and me. To them you are my wife, and I am your man. 'Mi Duvel'
--it shall be so! I know women. For an hour you will hate me; for a day
you will resent me, and then you will begin to love me. You will fight
me, but I will conquer. I know you--I know you--all you women. But no,
it will not be I that will conquer. It's my love that will do it. It's
a den of tigers. When it breaks loose it will have its way. Here it is.
Can't you see it in my face? Can't you hear it in my voice? Don't you
hear my heart beating? Every throb says, 'Fleda--Fleda--Fleda, come to
me.' I have loved you since you were three. I want you now. We can be
happy. Every night we will make a new home. The world will be ours; the
best that is in it will come to us. We will tap the trees of happiness
--they're hid from the Gorgio world. You and I will know where to find
them. Every land shall be ours; every gift of paradise within our reach
--riches, power, children. Come back to your own people; be a true
daughter of the Ry of Rys; live with your Romany chal. You will never be
at home anywhere else. It's in your bones; it's in your blood; it's
deeper than all. Here, now, come to me--my wife."
He flung the flap of the tent door across the opening, shutting out the
camp-fires and the people. "Here--now--come. Be mine while they sing."
For one swift moment the great passion and eloquence of the man lifted
her off her feet; for one instant the Romany in her triumphed, and a
thrill of passion passed through her, storming her senses, like a mist
shutting out all the rest of the world. This Romany was right; there was
in her the wild thing--the everlasting strain of race and years breaking
down all the defences which civilized life had built up within her. Just
for one instant so--and then there flashed before her a face with two
blind eyes.
Like a stream of ether playing upon warm flesh, making it icy cold, so
something of the ineradicable good in her swept like a frozen spray upon
the elements of emotion, and with both hands she made a gesture of
repulsion.
His eyes with their reddish glow burned nearer and nearer to her. He
bulked over her, driving her back against the couch by the tent wall.
For an instant like that--and then, with clenched hand, she struck him in
the face.
Swift as had been the change in her, so a change like a cyclone swept
over him. The hysterical passion which had possessed him suddenly
passed, and a dark, sullen determination swept into his eyes and over his
face. His lips parted in a savage smile.
"Hell, so that's what you've learned in the Gorgio world, is it?" he
asked malevolently. "Then I'll teach you what they do in the Romany
world; and to-morrow you can put the two together and see what they look
like."
With a Romany expletive, he flung back the curtain of the tent and passed
out into the night.
For a long time Fleda sat stunned and overcome by the side of the
couch, her brain tortured by a thousand thoughts. She knew there was no
immediate escape from the encampment. She could only rely upon the hue
and cry which would be raised and the certain hunt which would be made
for her. But what might not happen before any rescue came? The ancient
grudge of the Fawes against the Druses had gained power and activity by
the self-imposed exile of Gabriel Druse; and Jethro had worked upon it.
The veiled threats which Jethro had made she did not despise. He was a
barbarian. He would kill what he loved; he would have his way with what
he loved, whether or not it was the way of law or custom or right.
Outside, the wedding song still made musical the night. Women's voices,
shrill, and with falsetto notes, made the trees ring with it; low, bass
voices gave it a kind of solemnity. The view which the encampment took
of her captivity was clear. Where was the woman that brought her to the
tent--whose tent it was? She seemed kind. Though her face had a hard
look, surely she meant to be friendly. Or did she only mean to betray
her; to give her a fancied security, and leave her to Jethro--and the
night? She looked round for some weapon. There was nothing available
save two brass candlesticks. Though the door of the tent was closed, she
knew that there were watchers outside; that any break for liberty would
only mean defeat, and yet she was determined to save herself.
As she tried to take the measure of the situation and plan what she would
do, the noise of the music suddenly ceased, and she heard a voice, though
low in tone, give some sort of command. Then there was a cry, and what
seemed the chaotic noise of a struggle followed; then a voice a little
louder speaking, a voice of someone she remembered, though she could not
place it. Something vital was happening outside, something punctuated by
sharp, angry exclamations; afterwards a voice speaking soothingly,
firmly, prevailed; and then there was silence. As she listened there was
a footstep at the door of the tent, a voice called to her softly, and a
hand drew aside the tent curtain. The woman who had brought her to this
place entered.
"You are all safe now," she said, reaching out both hands to Fleda. "By
long and by last, but it was a close shave! He meant to make you his
wife to-night, whether you would or no. I'm a Fawe, but I'd have none of
that. I was on my way to your father's house when I met someone--someone
that you know. He carries your father's voice in his mouth."
She stepped to the tent door and beckoned; and out of the darkness, only
faintly lightened by the dying fires, there entered one whom Fleda had
seen not more than fifty times in her life, and never but twice since she
had ceased to be a Romany. It was her father's secret agent, Rhodo, the
Roumelian, now grizzled and gaunt, but with the same vitality which had
been his in the days when she was a little child.
Here and there in the world went Rhodo, the voice of the Ry of Rys to do
his bidding, to say his say. No minister of a Czar was ever more dreaded
or loved. His words were ever few, but his deeds had been many. Now, as
he looked at Fleda, his old eyes gleamed, and he showed a double row of
teeth, not one of which was imperfect, though he was seventy years of
age.
"Would you like to come?" he asked. "Would you like to come home to the
Ry?"
With a cry she flung herself upon him. "Rhodo! Rhodo!" she exclaimed,
and now the tears broke forth, and her body shook with sobs.
A few moments later he said to her: "It's fifteen years since you kissed
me last. I thought you were ashamed of old Rhodo."
She did not answer, but looked at him with eyes streaming, drawing back
from him. Her embrace was astonishing even to herself, for as a child
Rhodo had been a figure of awe to her, and the feeling had deepened as
the years had gone on, knowing as she did his work throughout the world
for the Ry of Rys. In his face was secrecy, knowledge, and some tragic
underthing which gave him, apart from his office, a singular loneliness
of figure and manner. He was so closely knit in form; there was such
concentration in face, bearing and gesture, that the isolation of his
position was greatly deepened.
"No, you never kissed me after you were old enough to like or dislike,"
he said with mournful and ironical reflection.
There crept into his face a kind of yearning such as one might feel who
beheld afar off a promised land, and yet was denied its joys. Rhodo was
wifeless, childless, and had been so for forty years. He had had no
intimates among the Romany people. His life he lived alone. That the
daughter of the Ry of Rys should kiss him was a thing of which he would
dream when deeds were done and over and the shadows threatened.
"I will kiss you again in another fifteen years," she said half-smiling
through her tears. "But tell me--tell me what has happened."
"Jethro Fawe has gone," he answered with a sweeping outward gesture.
"Where has he gone?" she asked, apprehension seizing her.
"A journey into the night," responded the old man with scorn and wrath in
his tone, and his lips were set.
"Is he going far?" she asked.
"The road you might think long would be short to him," he answered.
Her hands became cold; her heart seemed to stop beating.
"What road is that?" she asked. She knew, but she must ask.
"Everybody knows it; everybody goes it some time or another," he answered
darkly.
"What was it you said to all of them outside?"--she made a gesture towards
the doorway. "There were angry cries, and I heard Jethro Fawe's voice."
"Yes, he was blaspheming," remarked the old man grimly.
"Tell me what it was you said, and tell me what has happened," she
persisted.
The old man hesitated a moment, then said grimly: "I told them they must
go one way and Jethro Fawe another. I told them the Ry of Rys had said
no patrins should mark the road Jethro Fawe's feet walked. I had heard
of this gathering here, and I was on my way to bid them begone, for in
following the Ry they have broken his command. As I came, I met the
woman of this tent who has been your friend. She is a good woman; she
has suffered. Her people are gone, but she has a heart for others. I
met her. She told me of what that rogue and devil had done and would do.
He is the head of the Fawes, but the Ry of Rys is the head of all the
Romanys of the world. He has spoken the Word against Jethro, and the
Word shall prevail. The Word of the Ry when it is given cannot be
withdrawn. It is like the rock on which the hill rests."
"They did not go with him?" she asked.
"It is not the custom," he answered sardonically. "That is a path a
Romany walks alone."
Her face was white. "But he has not come to the end of the path--has
he?" she asked tremulously. "Who can tell? This day, or twenty years
from now, or to-morrow, or next moon, he will come to the end of the
path. No one knows, he least of all. He will not see the end, because
the road is dark. I don't think it will be soon," he added, because he
saw how haggard her face had grown. "No, I don't think it will be soon.
He is a Fawe, at the head of all the Fawes; so perhaps there will be time
for him to think, and no doubt it will not be soon."
"Perhaps it will not be at all. My father spoke, but he can withdraw his
word," she urged.
Suddenly the old Gipsy's face hardened. A look of dark resolve and iron
force came into it.
"The Ry will not withdraw. He has spoken, and it must be. If he spoke
lightly he is not fit to rule. Unless the word of the Ry of Rys is good
against breaking, then the Romanys are no more than scattered leaves at
the will of the wind. It is the word of the Ry that holds our folk
together. It shall not bless, and it shall not curse in vain."
Pitying the girl's face, however, and realizing that the Gorgio life had
given her a new view of things; angry with her because it was so, but
loving her for herself, he added:
"But the night road may be long, though it is lonely, and if it should be
that the Ry should pass before the end of the road comes to Jethro, then
is Jethro freed, since the Word is gone which binds his feet for the
pitfall."
"He must not die," she insisted.
"Then the Ry of Rys must not live," he rejoined sternly. With a kindly
gesture, however, he stretched out his hand. "Come, we shall reach the
house of the Ry before the morning," he added. "He is not returned from
his journey, and so will not be troubled by having missed you. There
will be an hour for beauty-sleep before the sun rises," he continued with
the same wide smile with which he greeted her first. Then he lifted up
the curtain and passed out into the night.
Following him, Fleda saw that the Romanys had broken camp, and only a
small handful remained, among them the woman who had befriended her.
Fleda went up to her:
"I will never forget you," she said. "Will you wear this for me?" she
added, and she took from her throat a brooch which she had worn ever
since her first days in England, after her great illness there. The
woman accepted the brooch. "Lady love," she said, "you've lost your
sleep to-night, but that's a loss you can make good. If there's a
night's sleep owing you, you can collect the debt some time. No, a
night's sleep lost in a tent is nothing, if you're the only one in the
tent. But if you're not alone, and you lose a night's sleep, someone
else may pick it up, and you might never get it again!"
A flush slowly stole over Fleda's face, and a look of horror came into
her eyes. She read the parable aright.
"Will you let me kiss you?" she said to the woman, and now it was the
woman's turn to flush.
"You are the daughter of the Ry of Rys," she said almost shyly, yet
proudly.
"I'm a girl with a debt to pay and can never pay it," Fleda answered,
putting her arms impulsively around the woman's neck and kissing her.
Then she took the brooch from the woman's hand, and pinned it at her
throat.
"Think of Fleda of the Druses sometimes," she said, and she laid a hand
upon the woman's breast. "Lady love--lady love," said the blunt woman
with the pockmarked face, "you've had the worst fright to-night that
you'll ever have." She caught Fleda's hand and peered into it. "Yes,
it's happiness for you now, and on and on," she added exultingly, and
with the fortune-teller's air. "You've passed the danger place, and
there'll be wealth and a man who's been in danger, too; and there's
children, beautiful children--I see them."
In confusion, Fleda snatched her hand away. "Good-bye, you fool-woman,"
she said impatiently, yet gently, too. "You talk such sense and such
nonsense. Good-bye," she added brusquely, but yet she smiled at the
woman as she turned away.
A moment later she was on her way back to Manitou, but she did not get to
her father's house before the break of day; and in the doorway she met
Madame Bulteel, whose pale, drawn face proclaimed a sleepless night.
"Tell me what has happened? Tell me what has happened?" she asked in
distress.
Fleda took both her hands. "Before I answer, tell me what has happened
here," she said breathlessly. "What news?"
Madame Bulteel's face lighted. "Good news," she exclaimed eagerly.
"He will see--he will see again?" Fleda asked in great agitation.
"The Montreal doctor said that the chances were even," answered Madame
Bulteel. "This man from the States says it is a sure thing."
With a murmur Fleda sank into a chair, and a faintness came over her.
"That's not like a Romany," remarked old Rhodo. "No, it's certainly not
like a Romany," remarked Madame Bulteel meaningly.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS
Grey days in the prairie country do not come very often, but they are
very depressing when they arrive. The landscape is not of the luscious
kind; it has no close correspondence with a picture by Corot or
Constable; sunlight is needed to give it the touch of the habitable and
the homelike. It was, therefore, unfortunate for the spirits of the
Lebanon people that the meeting summoned by local agitators to discuss
with asperity affairs on both sides of the Sagalac should, while starting
with fitful sunlight in the early morning, have developed to a bleak
greyness by three o'clock in the afternoon, the time set for the meeting.
Another strike was imminent in the factories at Manitou and in the
railway-shops at Lebanon, due to the stupidity of the policy of Ingolby's
successor as to the railways and other financial and manufacturing
interests. If he had planned a campaign of maladroitness he could not
have more happily fulfilled his object. It was not a good time for
reducing wages, or for quarrelling with the Town Councils of Manitou and
Lebanon concerning assessments and other matters. November and May
always found Manitou, as though to say, "upset." In the former month,
men were pouring through the place on their way to the shanties for their
Winter's work, and generally celebrating their coming internment by
"irrigation"; in the latter month, they were returning from their
Winter's imprisonment, thirsty for excitement, and with memories of
Winter quarrels inciting them to "have it out of someone."
And it was in October, when the shantyman was passing through on his way
to the woods--a natural revolutionary, loving trouble as a coyote loves
his hole--that labour discontent was practically whipped into action, and
the Councils of the two towns were stung into bitterness against the new
provocative railway policy. Things looked dark enough. The trouble
between the two towns and the change of control and policy of the
railways, due to Ingolby's downfall, had greatly shaken land and building
values in Lebanon, and a black eye, as it were, had been given to the
whole district for the moment.
So serious had the situation been regarded that the Mayor of Lebanon,
with Halliday the lawyer and another notable citizen, all friends of
Ingolby, had "gone East"--as a journey to Montreal, Toronto, or Quebec
was generally called--to confer with and make appeal to the directorate
of the great railways. They went with some elation and hope, for they
had arguments of an unexpected kind in their possession, carefully hidden
from the rest of the population. They had returned only the day before
the meeting which was to be held in the square in front of the Town Hall,
to find that a platform had been built at the very steps of the Town Hall
with the assent of the Chief Constable, now recovered from illness and
returned to duty. To the Deputy Mayor and the Council, the Chief
Constable, on the advice of Gabriel Druse, had said that it was far
better to have the meeting in front of the Town Hall where he could,
on the instant, summon special constables from within if necessary, while
the influence of a well-built platform and the orderly arrangement of a
regular meeting were better than a mob oration from the tops of ash-
barrels.
The signs were ominous. In a day of sunshine the rebellious and
discontented spirit does not thrive; on a wet day it is apt to take
shelter; on a bleak, grey day men are prone to huddle together in their
anger with consequent stimulation of their passions.
It was a grey enough day at Lebanon, and dark-faced visitors from Manitou
felt the need of Winter clothing as they shiveringly crossed the Sagalac
by Ingolby's bridge. The air was raw and searching; Nature was sulky.
In the sharp wind the trees shook themselves angrily free of leaves. The
taverns were greatly frequented, which was not good for Manitou and
Lebanon. Up to the time of the meeting, however, the expected strike had
not occurred. This was mainly due to the fact that Felix Marchand, the
evil genius of Manitou, had not been seen in the town or in the district
for over a week. It was not generally known that he was absent because a
man by the name of Dennis, whose wife he had wronged, was dogging him
with no good intent. Marchand had treated the woman's warning with
contempt, but at sight of her injured husband he had himself withdrawn
from the scene of his dark enterprises. His malign influence was
therefore not at work at the moment.
The tactics of the Lebanon Town Council had been careful and wise. So
that the meeting should not be composed only of the roughest elements,
they privately urged all responsible citizens to attend, and if possible
capture the meeting for law and order and legitimate agitation. That was
why Osterhaut, the town-crier, went about with a large dinner-bell
announcing the hour of the meeting and admonishing all "good folks" to
attend. No one had ever seen Osterhaut quite so cheerful--and he had a
bonny cheerfulness on occasion--as on this grisly October day when Nature
was very sour and the spirit of the winds was in a "scratchy" mood. But
Osterhaut was not more cheerful than Jowett who, in a very undignified
way, described the state of his feelings, on receiving a certain
confidence from Halliday, the lawyer, and Gabriel Druse, by turning a
cart-wheel in the Mayor's office; which certainly was an unusual thing
in a man of fifty years of age.
It was a people's meeting. No local official was on the platform.
Under the influence of alien elements who, though their co-operation was
directed against the common enemy, were intensely irritating, the meeting
became disorderly. One or two wise men, however, were able to secure
order long enough to have the resolution passed for forming a Local
Interests Committee whose duty it would be to see that the people were
not sacrificed to a "soulless plutocracy." While the names of those who
were to form the Committee were being selected, in a storm of disorder
arising from the Manitou section of the crowd, the sky overhead grew
suddenly brighter and the sun came out, bringing an instant change. It
was as though a hand, which had hypnotized them into anger, restored them
to good-humour once again.
At this moment, to the astonishment of all, there appeared at the back
of the platform between Jowett and Halliday the lawyer, the man with a
tragic history who had been as one buried for weeks past, who had
vanished from their calculations. It was their old champion, Ingolby.
Slowly a hush came over the vast assembly as, apparently guided by his
friends on the platform, he was given a seat on the right of the
Chairman's table.
A strange sensation, partly pleasure, partly resentment, passed through
the crowd. Why did Ingolby come to remind them of better days gone--of
his own rashness, of what they had lost through that rashness? Why had
he come? They could not say and do all that they wanted with him
present. It was like having a row in the presence of a corpse. He had
been a hero to all in Lebanon, but he was not in the picture now. His
day was done. It was no place for him. Yet it was a pleasant omen that
the sun broke clear and shining over the platform as Ingolby took his
seat. Presently in the silence he half-turned his head, murmured
something to the Chairman, and then got to his feet, stretching out a
hand towards the crowd.
For one moment there was silence, a little awestricken, a little painful,
and then as from one man a great cheer went up. For a moment they had
thought him inconsiderate to come among them in this crisis, for he was
no longer of their scheme of things, and must be counted out, a beaten,
battered, blind bankrupt. Yet the sight of him on his feet was too much
for them. Blind he might be, but there was the personality which had
conquered them in the past brave, adroit, reckless, renowned. None of
them, or very few of them, had seen him since that night at Barbazon's
Tavern, yet in spite of his tragedy there seemed little change in him.
There was the same quirk at the corner of the mouth, the same humour in
the strong face, not so ruddy now; and strangely enough the eyes were
neither guarded by spectacles, nor were they shrunken, glazed, or
diseased, so far as could be seen.
Stretching out a hand, Ingolby gave a crisp laugh and said: "So there's
been trouble since I've been gone, has there?" The corner of his mouth
quirked, his eyelids drooped in the old quizzical way, and the crowd
laughed in spite of themselves. What a spirit he had to take it all that
way!
"Got a little deeper in the mire, have you, boys?" he added. "They tell
me the town's a frost just now, but it seems nice and warm here in the
sun. Yes, boys, it's nice and warm here among you all--the same good old
crowd that's made the two towns what they are. The same good old crowd,"
he repeated, "--and up to the same old games!"
At this point he could scarcely proceed for laughter. "Like true
pioneers," he went on, "not satisfied with what you've got, but wanting
such a lot more--if I might say so in the language of the dictionary, a
deuce of a lot more."
Almost every sentence had been punctuated by cheers. His personality
dominated them as aforetime with some new accent to it; his voice was
like that of one given up from the dead, yet come back from the wars
alive and loving. They never knew what a figure he was until now when
they saw and heard him again, and realized that he was one of the few
whom the world calls leaders, because they have in them that immeasurable
sympathy which is understanding of men and matters. Yet in the old days
there never had been the something that was in his voice now, and in his
face there was a great friendliness, a sense of companionship, a Jonathan
and David something. He was like a comrade talking to a thousand other
comrades. There was a new thing in him and they felt it stir them. They
thought he had been made softer by his blindness; and they were not
wrong. Even the Manitou section were stilled into sympathy with him.
Many of them had heard his speech in Barbazon's Tavern just before the
horseshoe struck him down, and they heard him now, much simpler in manner
and with that something in his voice and face. Yet it made them shrink
a little, too, to see his blind eyes looking out straight before him.
It was uncanny. Their idea was that the eyes were as before, but seeing
nothing-blank to the world.
Presently his hand shot out again. "The same old crowd!" he said.
"Just the same--after the same old thing, wanting what we all want: these
two places, Manitou and Lebanon, to be boosted till they rule the West
and dominate the North. It's good to see you all here again"--he spoke
very slowly--"to see you all here together looking for trouble--looking
for trouble. There you are, Jim Barager; there you are, Bill Riley;
there you are, Mr. William John Thomas McLeary." The last named was the
butt of every tavern and every street corner. "There you are, Berry--old
brown Berry, my barber."
At first the crowd did not quite understand, did not realize that he was
actually pointing to the people whom he named, but presently, as Berry
the barber threw up his hands with a falsetto cry of understanding, there
was a simultaneous, wild rush forward to the platform.
"He sees, boys--he sees!" they shouted.
Ingolby's hand shot up above them with a gesture of command.
"Yes, boys, I see--I see you all. I'm cured. My sight's come back, and
what's more"--he snatched from his pocket a folded sheet of paper and
held it aloft "what's more, I've got my commission to do the old job
again; to boss the railways, to help the two towns. The Mayor brought it
back from Montreal yesterday; and together, boys, together, we'll make
Manitou and Lebanon the fulcrum of the West, the swivel by which to swing
prosperity round our centre."
The platform swayed with the wild enthusiasm of the crowd storming it to
shake hands with him, when suddenly a bell rang out across the river,
wildly, clamorously. A bell only rang like that for a fire. Those on
the platform could see a horseman galloping across the bridge.
A moment later someone shouted, "It's the Catholic church at Manitou on
fire!"
CHAPTER XXIV
AT LONG LAST
Originally the Catholic church at Manitou had stood quite by itself,
well back from the river, but as the town grew its dignified isolation
was invaded and houses kept creeping nearer and nearer to it. So that
when it caught fire there was general danger, because the town possessed
only a hand fire-engine. Since the first settlement of the place there
had been but few fires, and these had had pretty much their own way.
When one broke out the plan was to form a long line of men, who passed
buckets of water between the nearest pump, well, or river, and the
burning building. It had been useful in incipient fires, but it was
child's play in a serious outburst. The mournful fact that Manitou had
never equipped itself with a first-class fire-engine or a fire-brigade
was now to play a great part in the future career of the two towns.
Osterhaut put the thing in a nutshell as he slithered up the main street
of Lebanon on his way to the manning of the two fire-engines at the
Lebanon fire-brigade station.
"This thing is going to link up Lebanon and Manitou like a trace-chain,"
he declared with a chuckle. "Everything's come at the right minute.
Here's Ingolby back on the locomotive, running the good old train of
Progress, and here's Ingolby's fire-brigade, which cost Lebanon twenty
thousand dollars and himself five thousand, going to put out the fires
of hate consuming two loving hamulets. Out with Ingolby's fire-brigade!
This is the day the doctor ordered! Hooray!"
Osterhaut had a gift of being able to do two things at one time. Nothing
prevented him from talking, and though it had probably never been tested,
it is quite certain he could have talked under water. His words had been
addressed to Jowett, who drew to him on all great occasions like the
drafts of a regiment to the main body. Jowett was often very critical of
Osterhaut's acts, words and views, but on this occasion they were of one
mind.
"I guess it's Ingolby's day all right," answered Jowett. "When you say
'Hooray!' Osterhaut, I agree, but you've got better breath'n I have. I
can't talk like I used to, but I'm going to ride that fire-engine to save
the old Monseenoor's church--or bust."
Both Jowett and Osterhaut belonged to the Lebanon fire-brigade, which
was composed of only a few permanent professionals, helped by capable
amateurs. The two cronies had their way, and a few moments later,
wearing brass helmets, they were away with the engine and the hose,
leaving the less rapid members of the brigade to follow with the ladders.
"What did the Chief do?" asked Osterhaut. "Did you see what happened to
him?"
Jowett snorted. "What do you think Mr. Max Ingolby, Esquire, would do?
He commandeered my sulky and that rawbone I bought from the Reverend
Tripple, and away he went like greased lightning over the bridge. I
don't know why I drove that trotter to-day, nor why I went on that sulky,
for I couldn't hear good where I was, on the outskirts of the meeting;
but I done it like as if the Lord had told me. The Chief spotted me soon
as the fire-bell rung. In a second he bundled me off, straddled the
sulky, and was away 'fore you could say snakes."
"I don't believe he's strong enough for all this. He ain't got back to
where he was before the war," remarked Osterhaut sagely.
"War--that business at Barbazon's! You call that war! It wasn't war,"
declared Jowett spasmodically, grasping the rail of the fire-engine as
the wheel struck a stone and nearly shot them from their seats. "It
wasn't war. It was terrible low-down treachery. That Gipsy gent, Fawe,
pulled the lever, but Marchand built the scaffold."
"Heard anything more about Marchand--where he is?" asked Osterhaut, as
the hoofs of the horses clattered on the bridge.
"Yes, I've heard--there's news," responded Jowett. "He's been lying
drunk at Gautry's caboose ever since yesterday morning at five o'clock,
when he got off the West-bound train. Nice sort of guy he is. What's
the good of being rich, if you can't be decent Some men are born low.
They always find their level, no matter what's done for them, and
Marchand's level is the ditch."
"Gautry's tavern--that joint!" exclaimed Osterhaut with repulsion.
"Well, that ranchman, Dennis What's-his-name, is looking for him, and
Felix can't go home or to the usual places. I dunno why he comes back at
all till this Dennis feller gits out."
"Doesn't make any bones about it, does he? Dennis Doane's the name,
ain't it? Marchand spoiled his wife-run away with her up along the Wind
River, eh?" asked Osterhaut.
Jowett nodded: "Yes, that's it, and Mr. Dennis Doane ain't careful;
that's the trouble. He's looking for Marchand, and blabbing what he
means to do when he finds him. That ain't good for Dennis. If he kills
Marchand, it's murder, and even if the lawyers plead unwritten law, and
he ain't hung, and his wife ain't a widow, you can't have much married
life in gaol. It don't do you any good to be punished for punishing
someone else. Jonas George Almighty--look! Look, Osterhaut!"
Jowett's hand was pointing towards the Catholic church, from a window
of which smoke was rolling. "There's going to be something to do there.
It ain't a false alarm, Snorty."
"Well, this engine'll do anything you ask it," rejoined Osterhaut. "When
did you have a fire last, Billy?" he shouted to the driver of the
engine, as the horses' feet caught the dusty road of Manitou.
"Six months," was the reply, "but she's working smooth as music. She's
as good as anything 'twixt here and the Atlantic."
"It ain't time for Winter fires. I wonder what set it going," said
Jowett, shaking his head ominously. "Something wrong with the furnace,
I s'pose," returned Osterhaut. "Probably trying the first heatup of the
Fall."
Osterhaut was right. No one had set the church on fire. The sexton had
lighted the furnace for the first time to test it for the Winter's
working, but had not stayed to see the result. There was a defect in the
furnace, the place had caught fire, and some of the wooden flooring had
been burnt before the aged Monseigneur Lourde discovered it. It was he
who had given the alarm and had rescued the silver altar-vessels from the
sacristy.
Manitou offered brute force, physical energy, native athletics, muscle
and brawn; but it was of no avail. Five hundred men, with five hundred
buckets of water would have had no effect upon the fire at St. Michael's
Church at Manitou; willing hands and loving Christian hearts would have
been helpless to save the building without the scientific aid of the
Lebanon fire-brigade. Ingolby, on founding the brigade, had equipped it
to the point where it could deal with any ordinary fire. The work it had
to do at St. Michael's was critical. If the church could not be saved,
then the wooden houses by which it was surrounded would be swept away,
and the whole town would be ablaze; for though it was Autumn, everything
was dry, and the wind was sufficient to fan and spread the flames.
Lebanon took command of the whole situation, and for the first time in
the history of the two towns men worked together under one control like
brothers. The red-shirted river-driver from Manitou and the lawyer's
clerk from Lebanon; the Presbyterian minister and a Christian brother of
the Catholic school; a Salvation Army captain and a black-headed Catholic
shantyman; the President of the Order of Good Templars and a switchman
member of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament slaved together on
the hand-engine, to supplement the work of the two splendid engines of
the Lebanon fire-brigade; or else they climbed the roofs of houses, side
by side, to throw on the burning shingles the buckets of water handed up
to them.
For some time it seemed as though the church could not be saved. The
fire had made good headway with the flooring, and had also made progress
in the chancel and the altar. Skill and organization, combined with good
luck, conquered, however. Though a portion of the roof was destroyed and
the chancel gutted, the church was not beyond repair, and a few thousand
dollars would put it right. There was danger, however, among the smaller
houses surrounding the church, and there men from both towns worked with
great gallantry. By one of those accidents which make fatality, a small
wooden house some distance away, with a roof as dry as wool, caught fire
from a flying cinder. As everybody had fled from their own homes and
shops to the church, this fire was not noticed until it had made headway.
Then it was that the cries of Madame Thibadeau, who was confined to her
bed in the house opposite, were heard, and the crowd poured down towards
the burning building. It was Gautry's "caboose." Gautry himself had
been among the crowd at the church.
As Gautry came reeling and plunging down the street, someone shouted,
"Is there anyone in the house, Gautry?"
Gautry was speechless with drink. He threw his hands up in the air with
a gesture of maudlin despair, and shouted something which no one
understood. The crowd gathered like magic in the wide street before the
house--the one wide street in Manitou--from the roof and upper windows of
which flames were bursting. Far up the street was heard the noisy
approach of the fire-engine, which now would be able to do little more
than save adjoining buildings. Gautry, reeling, mumbling and whining,
gestured and wept.
A man shook him roughly by the shoulder. "Brace up, get steady, you
damned old geezer! Is there any body in the house? Do you hear? Is
there anybody in the house?" he roared.
Madame Thibadeau, who had dragged herself from her bed, was now at the
window of the house opposite. Seeing Fleda Druse passing beneath, she
called to her.
"Ma'mselle, Felix Marchand is in Gautry's house--drunk!" she cried.
"He'll burn to death--but yes, burn to death."
In agitation Fleda hastened to where the stranger stood shaking old
Gautry.
"There's a man asleep inside the house," she said to the stranger, and
then all at once she realized who he was. It was Dennis Doane, whose
wife was staying in Gabriel Druse's home: it was the husband of
Marchand's victim.
"A man in there, is there?" exclaimed Dennis. "Well, he's got to be
saved." He made a rush for the door. Men called to him to come back,
that the roof would fall in. In the smoking doorway he looked back.
"What floor?" he shouted.
From the window opposite, her fat old face lighted by the blazing roof,
Madame Thibadeau called out, "Second floor! It's the second floor!"
In an instant Dennis was lost in the smoke and flame.
One, two, three minutes passed. A fire-engine arrived; in a moment the
hose was paid out to the river near by, and as a fireman seized the
nozzle to train the water upon the building the roof fell in with a
crash. At that instant Dennis stumbled out of the house, blind with
smoke, his clothes aflame, carrying a man in his arms. A score of hands
caught them, coats smothered Dennis's burning clothes, and the man he had
rescued was carried across the street and laid upon the pavement.
"Great glory, it's Marchand! It's Felix Marchand!" someone shouted.
"Is he dead?" asked another.
"Dead drunk," was the comment of Osterhaut, who had helped to carry him
across the street.
At that moment Ingolby appeared on the scene. "What's all this?" he
asked. Then he recognized Marchand. "He's been playing with fire
again," he added sarcastically, and there was a look of contempt on his
face.
As he said it, Dennis broke through the crowd and made for Marchand.
Stooping over, he looked into Marchand's face.
"Hell and damnation--you!" he growled. "I risked my life to save you!"
With a sudden access of rage his hand suddenly went to his hip-pocket,
but another hand was quicker. It was that of Fleda Druse.
"No--no," she said, her fingers on his wrist. "You have had your
revenge. For the rest of his life he will have to bear his punishment
--that you have saved him. Leave him alone. It was to be. It is fate."
Dennis Doane was not a man of great thinking capacity. If he got a
matter into his head it stayed there till it was dislodged, and
dislodging was a real business with him.
"If you want her to live with you again, you had better let this be as it
is," whispered Fleda, for the crowd were surging round and cheering the
new hero. "Just escaped the roof falling in," said one.
"Got the strength of two, for a drunk man weighs twice as heavy as a
sober one!" exclaimed another admiringly.
"Marchand's game is up on the Sagalac," declared a third decisively.
The excitement was so great, however, that only a very few of them knew
what they were saying, and fewer still knew that Dennis Doane had risked
his life to save the man he had been stalking for weeks past. Marchand
had been lying on his face in the smoke-filled room when Dennis broke
into it, and he had been carried down the stairs without his face being
seen at all.
To Dennis it was as though he had been made a fool of by Fate or
Providence, or whatever controlled the destinies of men; as though the
dangerous episode had been arranged to trap him into this situation.
Ingolby drew near and laid a hand upon Dennis's arm. Fleda's hand was on
the other arm.
"You can't kill a man and save him too," said Ingolby quietly, and
holding the abashed blue eyes of Dennis. "There were two ways to punish
him; taking away his life at great cost, or giving it him at great cost.
If you'd taken away his life, the cost would probably have been your own
life; in giving him his life you only risked your own; you had a chance
to save it. You're a bit scorched-hair, eyebrows, moustache, clothes
too, but he'll have brimstone inside him. Come along. Your wife would
rather have it this way; and so will you, to-morrow. Come along."
Dennis suddenly swung round with a gesture of fury. "He spoiled her-
treated her like dirt!" he cried huskily.
With savage purpose he made a movement towards where Marchand had lain;
but Marchand was gone. With foresight Ingolby had quickly and quietly
accomplished that while Dennis's back was turned.
"You'd be treating her like a brute if you went to prison for killing
Marchand," urged Ingolby. "Give her a chance. She's fretting her heart
out."
"She wants to go back to Elk Mountain with you," pleaded Fleda gently.
"She couldn't do that if the law took hold of you."
"Ain't there to be any punishment for men like him?" demanded Dennis,
stubbornly yet helplessly. "Why didn't I let him burn! I'd have been
willing to burn myself to have seen him sizzling. Ain't men like that to
be punished at all?"
"When he knows who has saved him, he'll sizzle inside for the rest of his
life," remarked Ingolby. "Don't think he hasn't got a heart. He's done
wrong and gone wrong; he has belonged to the sewer, but he isn't all bad,
and maybe this is the turning-point. Drink'll make a man do anything."
"His kind are never sorry for what they do," commented Dennis bitterly.
"They're sorry for what comes from what they do, but not for the doing of
it. I can't think the thing out. It makes me sick. I was hunting for
him to kill him; I was watching this town like a lynx, and I've been and
gone and saved his body from Hell on earth."
"Well, perhaps you've saved his soul from Hell below," said Fleda. "Ah,
come! Your face and hands are burned, your hair is scorched--your
clothes need mending. Arabella is waiting for you. Come home with
me to Arabella."
With sudden resolve Dennis squared his shoulders. "All right," he said.
"This thing's too much for me. I can't get the hang of it. I've lost my
head."
"No, I won't come, I can't come now," said Ingolby, in response to an
inquiring look from Fleda.
"Not now, but before sundown, please."
As Fleda and Dennis disappeared, Ingolby looked back towards the fire.
"How good it is to see again even a sight like that," he said. "Nothing
that the eyes see is so horrible as the pictures that come to the mind
when the eyes don't see. As Dennis said, I can't get the hang of it, but
I'll try--I'll try."
The burning of Gautry's tavern had been conquered, though not before it
was a shell; and the houses on either side had been saved. Lebanon had
shown itself masterful in organization, but it had also shown that that
which makes enemies is not so deep or great a thing as that which makes
friends. Jealous, envious, narrow and bitter Manitou had been, but she
now saw Lebanon in a new light. It was a strange truth that if Lebanon
had saved the whole town of Manitou, it would not have been the same to
the people as the saving of the church. Beneath everything in Manitou--
beneath its dirt and its drunkenness, its irresponsibility and the signs
of primeval savagery which were part of its life, there was the tradition
of religion, the almost fanatical worship of that which was their master,
first and last, in spite of all--the Church. Not one of its citizens but
would have turned with horror from the man who cursed his baptism; not
one but would want the last sacrament when his time came. Lebanon had
saved the Catholic church, the temple of their faith, and in an hour was
accomplished what years had not wrought.
The fire at the church was out. A few houses had been destroyed, and
hundreds of others had been saved. The fire-brigade of Lebanon, with its
two engines, had performed prodigies of valour. The work done, the men
marched back, but with Osterhaut sitting on one fire-engine and Jowett on
the other, through crowds of cheering, roaring workmen, rivermen,
shantymen, and black-eyed habitants. When Ingolby walked past Barbazon's
Tavern arm in arm with Monseigneur Lourde, to the tiny house where the
good priest lived, the old man's face beaming with gratitude, and with a
piety which was his very life, the jubilant crowd followed them to the
very door. There the sainted pioneer expressed the feeling of the moment
when he raised his hands in benediction over them and said:
"Peace be unto you and the blessings of peace; and the Lord make his face
to shine upon you and give you peace now and for ever more."
CHAPTER XXV
MAN PROPOSES
Before sunset, as Ingolby had promised, he made his way towards Gabriel
Druse's house. A month had gone since he had left its hospitality
behind. What had happened between that time and this day of fate for
Lebanon and Manitou?
It is not a long story, and needs but a brief backward look. This had
happened:
The New York expert performed the operation upon Ingolby's eyes,
announced it successful, declared that his sight would be restored, and
then vanished with a thousand dollars in his pocket. For days thereafter
the suspense was almost more than Fleda could bear. She grew suddenly
thin and a little worn, and her big eyes had that look of yearning which
only comes to those whose sorrow is for another. Old Gabriel Druse was
emphatic in his encouragement, but his face reflected the trouble in that
of his daughter. He knew well that if Ingolby remained blind he would
never marry Fleda, though he also knew well that, with her nature, almost
fanatical in its convictions, she would sacrifice herself, if sacrifice
was the name for it. The New York expert had prophesied and promised,
but who could tell! There was the chance of failure, and the vanished
eye-surgeon had the thousand dollars in his pocket.
Two people, however, were cheerful; they were Ingolby and Jim. Jim went
about the place humming a nigger melody to himself, and twice he brought
Berry the barber to play to his Chief on the cottonfield fiddle. Nigger
Jim, though it was two generations gone which linked him with the wilds
of the Gold Coast, was the slave of fanatical imagination, and in
Ingolby's own mind there was the persistent superstition that all would
be well, because of a dream he had had. He dreamed he heard his dead
mother's voice in the room, where he lay. She had called him by name,
and had said: "Look at me, Max," and he had replied, "I cannot see," and
she had said again,
"Look at me, my son!" Then he thought that he had looked at her, had
seen her face clearly, and it was as the last time they parted, shining
and sweet and good. She had said to him in days long gone, that if she
could ever speak to him across the Void, she would; and he had the
fullest belief now that she had done so.
So it was that this dreadnought of industry and organization, in dock for
repairs, cheerfully awaited the hour when he would be launched again upon
the tide of work-healthy, healed and whole. At last there came the day
when, for an instant, the bandages could be removed. There were present,
Rockwell, Fleda, and Jim--Jim, pale but grinning, at the foot of the bed;
Fleda, with her back against the door and her hands clenched behind her
as though to shut out the invading world. Never had her heart beat as it
beat now, but her eyes were steady and bright. There was in them,
however, a kind of pleading look. She could not see Ingolby's face; did
not want to see it when the bandages were taken off; but at the critical
moment she shut her eyes and her back held the door, as though a thousand
were trying to force an entrance.
The first words after the bandages were removed came from Ingolby.
"Well, Jim, you look all right!" he said.
Swaying as she went, Fleda half-blindly moved towards a chair near by and
sank into it. She scarcely heard Jim's reply.
"Looking all right yourself, Chief. You won't see much change in this
here old town."
Ingolby's hand was in Rockwell's. "It's all right, isn't it?" he asked.
"You can see it is," answered Rockwell with a chuckle in his voice, and
then suddenly he put the bandages round Ingolby's eyes again. "That's
enough for today," he said.
A moment later the bandages were secured and Rockwell stood back from the
bed.
"In another week you'll see as well as ever you did," Rockwell said.
"I'm proud of you."
"Well, I hope I'll see a little better than ever I did," remarked Ingolby
meaningly. "I was pretty short-sighted before."
At that instant he heard Fleda's footstep approaching the bed. His
senses had grown very acute since the advent of his blindness. He held
out his hand into space.
"What a nice room this is!" he said as her fingers slid into his. "It's
the nicest room I was ever in. It's too nice for me. In a few days I'll
hand the lease over again to its owner, and go back to the pigsty Jim
keeps in Stormont Street."
"Well, there ain't any pigs in that sty now, Chief; but it's all ready,"
said Jim, indignant and sarcastic.
It was a lucky speech. It broke the spell of emotion which was greatly
straining everybody's endurance.
"That's one in the eye for somebody," remarked Rockwell drily.
"What would you like for lunch?" asked Fleda, letting go Ingolby's hand,
but laying her fingers on his arm for a moment.
What would he like for lunch! Here was a man back from the Shadows, from
broken hopes and shattered career, from the helplessness and eternal
patience of the blind; here he was on the hard, bright highroad again,
with a procession of restored things coming towards him, with life and
love within his grasp; and the woman to whom it mattered most of all, who
was worth it all, and more than all where he was concerned, said to him
in this moment of revelation, "What would you like for lunch?"
With an air as casually friendly as her own, he put another hand on the
fingers lying on his arm, patted them, and said gaily, "Anything I can
see. As a drover once said to me, 'I can clean as fur as I can reach.'"
In just such a temper also they had parted when he went back to his
"pigsty" with Jim. To Gabriel Druse he had said all that one man might
say to another without excess of feeling; to Madame Bulteel he had given
a gold pencil which he had always worn; to Fleda he gave nothing, said
little, but the few words he did say told the story, if not the whole
story.
"It's a nice room," he said, and she had flushed at his words, "and I've
had the best time of my life in it. I'd like to buy it, but I know it's
not for sale. Love and money couldn't buy it--isn't that so?"
Then had--come days in his own home, still with bandaged eyes, but with
the bandages removed for increasing hours every day; yet no one at all in
the town knowing the truth except the Mayor, Halliday the lawyer, and one
or two others who kept the faith until Ingolby gave them the word to
speak. Then had come the Mayor's visit to Montreal, the great meeting,
the fire at Manitou, and now Ingolby on the way to his tryst with Fleda.
They had met twice only since he had left Gabriel Druse's house, and on
the last occasion they had looked each other full in the eyes, and
Ingolby had said to her in the moment they had had alone:
"I'm going to get back, but I can't do it without you."
To this her reply had been, "I hope it's not so bad as that," and she had
looked provokingly in his eyes. Now she knew beyond peradventure that he
cared for her, and she was almost provoked at herself that when he was in
such danger of losing his sight for ever she had caught his head to her
breast in the passion of the moment. Many a time when he had been
asleep, with gentle fingers she had caressed his hands, his head, his
face; but that did not count, because he did not know. He did, however,
know of that moment when her passionate heart broke over him in
tenderness; and she tried to make him think, by things said since,
that it was only pity for his sufferings which made her do it.
Ingolby thought of all these things, but in a spirit of understanding,
as he went to his tryst with her at sunset on the day when Lebanon and
Manitou were reconciled.
.........................
He met her walking among the trees, very near the place where they had
had their first long talk, months before, when Jethro Fawe was a prisoner
in the Hut in the Woods. Then it was warm, singing Summer; now, beneath
the feet the red and brown leaves rustled, the trees were stretching up
gaunt arms to the Winter, the woods were no longer vocal, and the singing
birds had fled, though here and there a black squirrel, not yet gone to
Winter quarters, was busy and increasing his stores. A hedgehog scuttled
across his path. He smiled as he remembered telling Fleda that once,
when he was a little boy, he had eaten hedgehog, and she had asked him if
he remembered the Gipsy name for hedgehog--hotchewitchi was the word.
Now, as the shapeless creature made for its hole, it was significant of
the history of his life during the past Summer. How long it seemed since
that day when love first peeped forth from their hearts like a young face
at the lattice of a sunlit window. Fleda had warned him of trouble, and
that trouble had come!
In his mind she was a woman like none he had ever known; she could
think greatly, act largely, give tremendously. As he stood waiting, the
wonderful, ample life of her seemed to come like a wave towards him. In
his philosophy, intellect alone had never been the governing influence.
Intellect must find its play through the senses, be vitalized by the
elements of physical life, or it could not prevail. There was not one
sensual strain in him, but with a sensuous mind he loved the vital thing.
He was sure that presently Gabriel Druse would disappear, leaving her
behind with him. That was what he meant to ask her to-day--to be and
stay with him always. He knew that the Romanys were gathering in the
prairie. They had been heard of here and there, and some of them
had been seen along the Sagalac, though he knew nothing of that dramatic
incident in the woods when Fleda was kidnapped and Jethro Fawe vanished
from the scene.
As Fleda came towards him, under the same trees which had shielded her
from the sun months ago--now nearly naked and bare--something in her look
and bearing sharply caught his interest. He asked himself what it was.
So often a face familiar over half a lifetime perhaps, suddenly at some
new angle, or because, by chance, one has looked at it searchingly, shows
a new expression, a new contour never before observed, giving fresh
significance to the character. There was that in Ingolby's mind, a depth
of desire, a resolve to stake two lives against the chances of Fate,
which made him look at Fleda now with a revealing intensity. What was
the new thing in her carriage which captured his eye? Presently it
flashed upon him--memories of Mexico and the Southern United States;
native women with jars of water upon their heads; the erect, well-
balanced form; the sure, sinuous movement; the step measured, yet free;
the dignity come of carrying the head as though it were a pillar of an
Athenian temple, one of the beautiful Caryatides yonder by the AEgean
Sea.
It smote him as a sudden breath of warm air strikes a face in the night
coolness of the veldt. His pulses quickened, he flushed with the soft
shock of it. There she was, refined, civilized, gowned like other women,
with all the manners and details of civilization and social life about
her; yet, in spite of it all, she did not belong; there was about her
still something remote and alien. It had not to do with appearance
alone, though her eyes were so vivid, and her expression so swift and
varying; it was to be found in the whole presence--something mountain-
like and daring, something Eastern and reserved and secret, something
remote--brooding like a Sphinx, and prophetic like a Sibyl. But suppose
that in days to come the thing that did not belong, which was of the
East, of the tan, of the River Starzke; suppose that it should--
With a great effort he drove apprehension and the instant's confused
wonder far away, and when, come close to him, she smiled, showing the
perfect white teeth, and her eyes softened to a dreamy regard of him, all
he had ever felt for her in the past months seemed concentrated into this
one moment. Yet he did not look like a languishing lover; rather like
one inflamed with a great idea or stirred to a great resolve.
For quite a minute they stood gazing as though they would read the whole
truth in each other's eyes. She was all eager, yet timorous; he was
resolved; yet now, when the great moment had come, as it were, like a
stammerer fearing the sound of his own voice. There was so much to say
that he could not speak.
She broke the spell. "I am here. Can't you see me?" she asked in a
quizzical, playful tone, her lips trembling a little, but with a smile in
her eyes which she vainly tried to veil.
She had said the one thing which above all others could have lifted the
situation to its real significance. A few weeks ago the eyes now looking
into hers and telling a great story were sealed with night, and the mind
behind was fretted by the thought of a perpetual darkness. All the
tragedy of the past rushed into his mind now, and gave all that was
between them, or was to be between them, its real meaning. A beautiful
woman is dear to man simply as woman, and not as the woman; virtue has
slain its thousands, but physical charm has slain its tens of thousands!
Whatever Ingolby's defects, however, infinitely more than the girl's
beauty, more than the palpitating life in her, than red lips and bright
eye, than warm breast and clasping hand, was something beneath all which
would last, or should last, when the hand was palsied and the eye was
dim.
"I am here. Can't you see me?"
All that he had regained in life in her little upper room rushed upon
him, and with outstretched arms and in a voice choked with feeling, he
said:
"See you! Dear God--To see you and all the world once more! It is being
born again to me. I haven't learned to talk in my new world yet; but I
know three words of the language. I love you. Come--I'll be good to
you."
She drew back from him, and her look said that she would read him to the
uttermost word in his life's book, would see the heart of this wonderful
thing; and then with a hungry cry, she flung her arms around his neck and
pressed her wet eyes against his flushed cheek.
A half-hour later, as they wandered back to the house he suddenly
stopped, put his hands on her shoulders, looked earnestly in her eyes,
and said:
"God's good to me. I hope I'll remember that."
"You won't be so blind as to forget," she answered, and she wound her
fingers in his with a feeling which was more than the simple love of
woman for man. "I've got much more to remember than you have,"
she added. Suddenly she put both hands upon his breast. "You don't
understand; you can't understand, but I tell you that I shall have to
fight hard if I am to be all you want me to be. I have got a past to
forget; you have a past you want to remember--that's the difference.
I must tell you the truth: it's in my veins, that old life, in spite of
all. Listen. I ought to have told you, and I meant to tell you before
this happened, but when I saw you there, and you held out your arms to
me, I forgot everything. Yet still I must tell you now, though perhaps
you will hate me when you know. The old life--I hate it, but it calls
me, and I have an impulse to go back to it even though I hate it.
Listen. I'll tell you what happened the other day. It's terrible, but
it's true. I was walking in the woods--"
Thereupon she told him of her being seized and carried to the Gipsy camp,
and of all that happened there to the last detail. She even had the
courage to tell of all she felt there; but when she had finished, with a
half-frightened look in her eyes, her face pale, and her hands clasped
before her, he did not speak for a minute. Suddenly, however, he seemed
to tower over her, his two big hands were raised as though they would
strike, and then the palms spread out and enclosed her cheeks lovingly,
and his eyes fastened upon hers.
"I know," he said gently. "I always understood--everything; but you'll
never have the same fight again, because I'll be with you. You
understand, Fleda--I'll be with you."
With an exclamation of gratitude she nestled into his arms.
Before the thrill of his embrace had passed from their pulses, they heard
the breaking of twigs under a quick footstep, and Rhodo stood before
them. "Come," he said to Fleda. His voice was as solemn and strange as
his manner. "Come!" he repeated peremptorily.
Fleda sprang to his side. "Is it my father? What has happened?" she
cried.
The old man waved her aside, and pointed toward the house.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE SLEEPER
The Ry of Rys sat in his huge armchair, his broad-brimmed hat on his knee
in front of him. One hand rested on the chair-arm, the other clasped the
hat as though he would put it on, but his head was fallen forward on his
breast.
It was a picture of profound repose, but it was the repose of death.
It was evident that the Ry had prepared to leave the house, had felt a
sudden weakness, and had taken to his chair to recover himself. As was
evident from the normal way in which his fingers held his hat, and his
hand rested on the chair-arm, death had come as gently as a beam of
light. With his stick lying on the table beside him, and his hat on his
knee, he was like one who rested a moment before renewing a journey.
There could not have been a pang in his passing. He had gone as most men
wish to go--in the midst of the business of life, doing the usual things,
and so passing into the sphere of Eternity as one would go from this room
to that. Only a few days before had he yielded up his temporary position
as chief constable, and had spent almost every hour since in conference
with Rhodo. What he had planned would never be known to his daughter
now. It was Rhodo himself who had found his master with head bowed
before the Master of all men.
Before Fleda entered the room she knew what awaited her; a merciful
intuition had blunted the shock to her senses. Yet when she saw the Ry
on his throne of death a moan broke from her lips like that of one who
sees for the last time someone indelibly dear, and turns to face strange
paths with uncertain feet. She did not go to the giant figure seated in
the chair. In what she did there was no panic or hysteria of lacerated
heart and shocked sense; she only sank to her knees in the room a few
feet away from him, and looked at him.
"Father! Oh, Ry! Oh, my Ry!" she whispered in agony and admiration,
too, and kept on whispering.
Fleda had whispered to him in such awe, not only because he was her
father, but because he was so much a man among men, a giant, with a
great, lumbering mind, slow to conceive, but moving in a large,
impressive way when once conception came. To her he had been more than
father; he had been a patriarch, a leader, a viking, capable of the fury
of a Scythian lord, but with the tenderness of a peasant father to his
first child.
"My Ry! My father! Oh, my Ry of Rys!" she kept murmuring to herself.
On either side of her, but a few feet behind, stood Rhodo and Ingolby.
Presently in a low, firm voice Rhodo spoke.
"The Ry of Rys is dead, but his daughter must stand upon her feet, and in
his place speak for him. Is it not well with him? He sleeps. Sleep is
better than pain. Let his daughter speak."
Slowly Fleda arose. Not so much what Rhodo had said as the meaning in
his voice, aroused her to a situation which she must face. Rhodo had
said that she must speak for her father. What did it mean?
"What is it you wish to say to me, Rhodo?" she asked.
"What I have to say is for your ears only," was the low reply.
"I will go," said Ingolby. "But is it a time for talk?" He made a
motion towards the dead man. "There are things to be said which can only
be said now, and things to be done which can only be done according to
what is said now," grimly remarked Rhodo.
"I wish you to remain," said Fleda to Ingolby with resolution in her
bearing as she placed herself beside the chair where the dead man sat.
"What is it you want to say to me?" she asked Rhodo again.
"Must a Romany bare his soul before a stranger?" replied Rhodo. "Must a
man who has been the voice of the Ry of Rys for the long years have no
words face to face with the Ry's daughter now that he is gone? Must the
secret of the dead be spoken before the robber of the dead--"
It was plain that some great passion was working in the man, that it was
wise and right to humour him, and Ingolby intervened.
"I will not remain," he said to Fleda. To Rhodo he added: "I am not a
robber of the dead. That's high-faluting talk. What I have of his was
given to me by him. She was for me if I could win her. He said so.
This is a free country. I will wait outside," he added to Fleda.
She made a gesture as though she would detain him, but she realized that
the hour of her fate was at hand, and that the old life and the new were
face to face, Rhodo standing for one and she for the other. When they
were alone, Rhodo's eyes softened, and he came near to her. "You asked
me what I wished to tell you," he said. "See then, I want to tell you
that it is for you to take the place of the dead Ry. Everywhere in the
world where the Romanys wander they will rejoice to hear that a Druse
rules us still. The word of the Ry of Rys was law; what he wished to be
done was done; what he wished to be undone was undone. Because of you he
hid himself from his people; because of you I was for ever wandering,
keeping the peace by lies for love of the Ry and for love of you."
His voice shook. "Since your mother died--and she was kin of mine--you
were to me the soul of the Romany people everywhere. As a barren woman
loves a child, so I loved you. I loved you for the sake of your mother.
I gave her to the Ry, who was the better man, that she might be great and
well placed. So it is I would have you be ruler over us, and I would
serve you as I served your father until I, also, fall asleep."
"It is too late," Fleda answered, and there was great emotion in her
voice now. "I am no longer a Romany. I am my father's daughter, but
I have not been a Romany since I was ill in England. I will not go back;
I shall go with the man I love, to be his wife, here, in the Gorgio
world. You believed my father when he spoke; well, believe me--I speak
the truth. It was my father's will that I should be what I am, and do
what I am now doing. Nothing can alter me."
"If it be that Jethro Fawe is still alive he is free from the Sentence of
the Patrin, and he will become the Ry of Rys," said the old man with
sudden passion.
"It may be so. I hope it is so. He is of the blood, and I pray that
Jethro has escaped the sentence which my father passed," answered Fleda.
"By the River Starzke it was ordained that he should succeed my father,
marrying me. Let him succeed."
The old man raised both hands, and made a gesture as though he would
drive her from his sight.
"My life has been wasted," he said. "I wish I were also in death beside
him." He gazed at the dead man with the affection of a clansman for his
chief.
Fleda came up close to him. "Rhodo! Rhodo!" she said gently and sadly.
"Think of him and all he was, and not of me. Suppose I had died in
England--think of it in that way. Let me be dead to you and to all
Romanys, and then you will think no evil."
The old man drew himself up. "Let no more be said," he replied. "Let it
end here. The Ry of Rys is dead. His body and all things that are his
belong now to his people. Say farewell to him," he added, with
authority.
"You will take him away?" Fleda asked.
Rhodo inclined his head. "When the doctors have testified, we will take
him with us. Say your farewells," he added, with gesture of command.
A cry of protest rose from Fleda's soul, and yet she knew it was what the
Ry would have wished, that he should be buried by his own people where
they would.
Slowly she drew near to the dead man, and leaned over and kissed his
shaggy head. She did not seek to look into the sightless eyes; the
illusion of sleep was so great that she wished to keep this picture of
him while she lived; but she touched the cold hand which held the hat
upon the knee and the other that lay upon the chair-arm. Then, with a
mist before her eyes, she passed from the room.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE WORLD FOR SALE
As though by magic, like the pictures of a dream, out of the horizon,
in caravans, by train, on horseback, the Romany people gathered to the
obsequies of their chief and king. For months, hundreds of them had not
been very far away. Unobtrusive, silent, they had waited, watched, till
the Ry of Rys should come back home again. Home to them was the open
road where Romanys trailed or camped the world over.
A clot of blood in the heart had been the verdict of the doctors; and
Lebanon and Manitou had watched the Ry of Rys carried by his own people
to the open prairie near to Tekewani's reservation. There, in the hours
between the midnight and the dawn, all Gabriel Druse's personal
belongings--the clothes, the chair in which he sat, the table at which he
ate, the bed in which he slept, were brought forth and made into a pyre,
as was the Romany way. Nothing personal of his chattels remained behind.
The walking-stick which lay beside him in the moment of his death was the
last thing placed upon the pyre. Then came the match, and the flames
made ashes of all those things which once he called his own. Standing
apart, Tekewani and his braves watched the ceremonial of fire with a
sympathy born of primitive custom. It was all in tune with the
traditions of their race.
As dawn broke, and its rosy light valanced the horizon, a great
procession moved away from the River Sagalac towards the East, to which
all wandering and Oriental peoples turn their eyes. With it, all that
was mortal of Gabriel Druse went to its hidden burial. Only to the
Romany people would his last resting-place be known; it would be as
obscure as the grave of him who was laid:
"By Nebo's lonely mountain, On this side Jordan's wave."
Many people from Manitou and Lebanon watched the long procession pass,
and two remained until the last wagon had disappeared over the crest of
the prairie. Behind them were the tents of the Indian reservation;
before them was the alert morn and the rising sun; and ever moving on to
the rest his body had earned was the great chief lovingly attended by his
own Romany folk; while his daughter, forbidden to share in the ceremonial
of race, remained with the stranger.
With a face as pale and cold as the western sky, the desolation of this
last parting and a tragic renunciation giving her a deathly beauty, Fleda
stood beside the man who must hereafter be, to her, father, people, and
all else. Shuddering with the pain of this hour, yet resolved to begin
the new life here and now, as the old life faded before her eyes, she
turned to him, and, with the passing of the last Romany over the crest of
the hill, she said bravely:
"I want to help you do the big things. They will be yours. The world is
all for you yet."
Ingolby shook his head. He had had his Moscow.
His was the true measure of things now; his lesson had been learned;
values were got by new standards; he knew in a real sense the things that
mattered.
"I have you--the world for sale!" he said, with the air of one
discarding a useless thing.
GLOSSARY OF ROMANY WORDS
Bosh----fiddle, noise, music.
Bor----an exclamation (literally, a hedge).
Chal----lad, fellow.
Chi----child, daughter, girl.
Dadia----an exclamation.
Dordi----an exclamation.
Hotchewitchi----hedgehog.
Kek----no, none.
Koppa----blanket.
Mi Duvel----My God.
Patrin----small heaps of grass, or leaves, or twigs, or string, laid at
cross-roads to indicate the route that must be followed.
Pral----brother or friend.
Rinkne rakli----pretty girl.
Ry----King or ruler.
Tan----tent, camp.
Vellgouris----fair.
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