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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/6284-0.txt b/6284-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dbfa3d2 --- /dev/null +++ b/6284-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11485 @@ +Project Gutenberg’s The World For Sale, Complete, by Gilbert Parker + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The World For Sale, Complete + +Author: Gilbert Parker + +Release Date: October 18, 2006 [EBook #6284] +Last Updated: August 27, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD FOR SALE, COMPLETE *** + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +THE WORLD FOR SALE + +By Gilbert Parker + + + +CONTENTS: + + PRELUDE + + BOOK I + I. “THE DRUSES ARE UP!” + II. THE WHISPER FROM BEYOND + III. CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNS + IV. THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWE + V. “BY THE RIVER STARZKE... IT WAS SO DONE” + VI. THE UNGUARDED FIRES + VII. IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE + + BOOK II + VIII. THE SULTAN + IX. MATTER AND MIND AND TWO MEN + X. FOR LUCK + XI. THE SENTENCE OF THE PATRIN + XII. “LET THERE BE LIGHT” + XIII. THE CHAIN OF THE PAST + XIV. SUCH THINGS MAY NOT BE + XV. THE WOMAN FROM WIND RIVER + XVI. THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE + XVII. THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMAD + XVIII. THE BEACONS + XIX. THE BEEPER OF THE BRIDGE + + 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 + + + + +INTRODUCTION + +‘The World for Sale’ is a tale of the primitive and lonely West and +North, but the primitiveness and loneliness is not like that to be found +in ‘Pierre and His People’. Pierre’s wanderings took place in a period +when civilization had made but scant marks upon the broad bosom of the +prairie land, and towns and villages were few and far scattered. The +Lebanon and Manitou of this story had no existence in the time of +Pierre, except that where Manitou stands there was a Hudson’s Bay +Company’s post at which Indians, half-breeds, and chance settlers +occasionally gathered for trade and exchange-furs, groceries, clothing, +blankets, tobacco, and other things; and in the long winters the post +was as isolated as an oasis in the Sahara. + +That old life was lonely and primitive, but it had its compensating +balance of bright sun, wild animal life, and an air as vivid and virile +as ever stirred the veins of man. Sometimes the still, bright cold was +broken by a terrific storm, which ravaged, smothered, and entombed the +stray traveller in ravines of death. That was in winter; but in +summer, what had been called, fifty years ago, an alkali desert was an +everlasting stretch of untilled soil, with unsown crops, and here +and there herds of buffalo, which were stalked by alert Red Indians, +half-breeds, and white pioneer hunters. + +The stories in ‘Pierre and His People’ were true to the life of that +time; the incidents in ‘The World for Sale’, and the whole narrative, +are true to the life of a very few years ago. Railways have pierced +and opened up lonely regions of the Sagalae, and there are two thriving +towns where, in the days of Pierre, only stood a Hudson’s Bay Company’s +post with its store. Now, as far as eye can see, vast fields of grain +greet the eye, and houses and barns speckle the greenish brown or Tuscan +yellow of the crop-covered lands, while towns like Lebanon and Manitou +provide for the modern settler all the modern conveniences which science +has given to civilized municipalities. Today the motor-car and the +telephone are as common in such places as they are in a thriving town +of the United Kingdom. After the first few days of settlement two things +always appear--a school-house and a church. Probably there is no country +in the world where elementary education commands the devotion and +the cash of the people as in English Canada; that is why the towns of +Lebanon and Manitou had from the first divergent views. Lebanon +was English, progressive, and brazenly modern; Manitou was slow, +reactionary, more or less indifferent to education, and strenuously +Catholic, and was thus opposed to the militant Protestantism of Lebanon. + +It was my idea to picture a situation in the big new West where destiny +is being worked out in the making of a nation and the peopling of the +wastes. I selected a very modern and unusual type of man as the central +figure of my story. He was highly educated, well born, and carefully +brought up. He possessed all the best elements of a young man in a new +country--intelligent self-dependence, skill, daring, vision. He had an +original turn of mind, and, as men are obliged to do in new countries, +he looked far ahead. Yet he had to face what pioneers and reformers in +old countries have to face, namely the disturbance of rooted interests. +Certainly rooted interests in towns but a generation old cannot be +extensive or remarkable, but if they are associated with habits and +principles, they may be as deadly as those which test the qualities +and wreck the careers of men in towns as old as London. The difference, +however, between the old European town and the new Western town is that +differences in the Western town are more likely to take physical form, +as was the case in the life of Ingolby. In order to accentuate the +primitive and yet highly civilized nature of the life I chose my heroine +from a race and condition more unsettled and more primitive than that of +Lebanon or Manitou at any time. I chose a heroine from the gipsy race, +and to heighten the picture of the primitive life from which she had +come I made her a convert to the settled life of civilization. I had +known such a woman, older, but with the same characteristics, the same +struggles, temptations, and suffering the same restriction of her life +and movements by the prejudice in her veins--the prejudice of racial +predilection. + +Looking at the story now after its publication, I am inclined to think +that the introduction of the gipsy element was too bold, yet I believe +it was carefully worked out in construction, and was a legitimate, +intellectual enterprise. The danger of it was that it might detract from +the reality and vividness of the narrative as a picture of Western life. +Most American critics of the book seem not to have been struck by this +doubt which has occurred to me. They realize perhaps more faithfully +than some of the English critics have done that these mad contrasts are +by no means uncommon in the primitive and virile life of the West and +North. Just as California in the old days, just as Ballaret in Australia +drew the oddest people from every corner of the world, so Western towns, +with new railways, brought strange conglomerations into the life. For +instance, a town like Winnipeg has sections which represent the life of +nearly every race of Europe, and towns like Lebanon and Manitou, with +English and French characteristics controlling them mainly, are still as +subject to outside racial influences as to inside racial antagonisms. + +I believe The World for Sale shows as plainly as anything can show +the vexed and conglomerate life of a Western town. It shows how racial +characteristics may clash, disturb, and destroy, and yet how wisdom, +tact, and lucky incident may overcome almost impossible situations. The +antagonisms between Lebanon and Manitou were unwillingly and unjustly +deepened by the very man who had set out to bring them together, as one +of the ideals of his life, and as one of the factors of his success. +Ingolby, who had everything to gain by careful going, almost wrecked his +own life, and he injured the life of the two towns by impulsive acts. + +The descriptions of life in the two towns are true, and the chief +characters in the book are lifted out of the life as one has seen it. +Men like Osterhaut and Jowett, Indians like Tekewani, doctors like +Rockwell, priests like Monseigneur Fabre, ministers like Mr. Tripple, +and ne’er-do-weels like Marchand may be found in many a town of the West +and North. Naturally the book must lack in something of that magnetic +picturesqueness and atmosphere which belongs to the people in the +Province of Quebec. Western and Northern life has little of the settled +charm which belongs to the old civilization of the French province. The +only way to recapture that charm is to place Frenchmen in the West, +and have them act and live--or try to act and live--as they do in old +Quebec. + +That is what I did with Pierre in my first book of fiction, Pierre and +His People, but with the exception of Monseigneur Fabre there is no +Frenchman in this book who fulfils, or could fulfil, the temperamental +place which I have indicated. Men like Monseigneur Fabre have lived +in the West, and worked and slaved like him, blest and beloved by all +classes, creeds, and races. Father Lacombe was one of them. The part he +played in the life of Western Canada will be written some day by one who +understands how such men, celibate, and dedicated to religious life, may +play a stupendous part in the development of civilization. Something of +him is to be found in my description of Monseigneur Fabre. + + + + +NOTE + +This book was begun in 1911 and finished in 1913, a year before war +broke out. It was published serially in the year 1915 and the beginning +of 1916. It must, therefore, go to the public on the basis of its merits +alone, and as a picture of the peace-life of the great North West. + + + + +PRELUDE + +Harvest-time was almost come, and the great new land was resting under +coverlets of gold. From the rise above the town of Lebanon, there +stretched out ungarnered wheat in the ear as far as sight could reach, +and the place itself and the neighbouring town of Manitou on the other +side of the Sagalac River were like islands washed by a topaz sea. + +Standing upon the Rise, lost in the prospect, was an old, white-haired +man in the cassock of a priest, with grey beard reaching nearly to the +waist. + +For long he surveyed the scene, and his eyes had a rapt look. + +At last he spoke aloud: + + “There shall be an heap of corn in the earth, high upon the hills; + his fruit shall shake like Libanus, and shall be green in the city + like grass upon the earth.” + +A smile came to his lips--a rare, benevolent smile. He had seen this +expanse of teeming life when it was thought to be an alkali desert, fit +only to be invaded by the Blackfeet and the Cree and the Blood Indians +on a foray for food and furs. Here he had come fifty years before, and +had gone West and North into the mountains in the Summer season, when +the land was tremulous with light and vibrating to the hoofs of herds of +buffalo as they stampeded from the hunters; and also in the Winter time, +when frost was master and blizzard and drift its malignant servants. + +Even yet his work was not done. In the town of Manitou he still said +mass now and then, and heard the sorrows and sins of men and women, and +gave them “ghostly comfort,” while priests younger than himself took the +burden of parish-work from his shoulders. + +For a lifetime he had laboured among the Indians and the few whites and +squaw-men and half-breeds, with neither settlement nor progress. Then, +all at once, the railway; and people coming from all the world, +and cities springing up! Now once more he was living the life of +civilization, exchanging raw flesh of fish and animals and a meal of +tallow or pemmican for the wheaten loaf; the Indian tepee for the warm +house with the mansard roof; the crude mass beneath the trees for the +refinements of a chancel and an altar covered with lace and white linen. + +A flock of geese went honking over his head. His eyes smiled in memory +of the countless times he had watched such flights, had seen thousands +of wild ducks hurrying down a valley, had watched a family of herons +stretching away to some lonely water-home. And then another sound +greeted his ear. It was shrill, sharp and insistent. A great serpent was +stealing out of the East and moving down upon Lebanon. It gave out puffs +of smoke from its ungainly head. It shrieked in triumph as it came. It +was the daily train from the East, arriving at the Sagalac River. + +“These things must be,” he said aloud as he looked. While he lost +himself again in reminiscence, a young man came driving across the +plains, passing beneath where he stood. The young man’s face and figure +suggested power. In his buggy was a fishing-rod. + +His hat was pulled down over his eyes, but he was humming cheerfully +to himself. When he saw the priest, he raised his hat respectfully, yet +with an air of equality. + +“Good day, Monseigneur” (this honour of the Church had come at last to +the aged missionary), he said warmly. “Good day--good day!” + +The priest raised his hat and murmured the name, “Ingolby.” As the +distance grew between them, he said sadly: “These are the men who change +the West, who seize it, and divide it, and make it their own-- + + “‘I will rejoice, and divide Sichem: and mete out the valley of + Succoth.’ + +“Hush! Hush!” he said to himself in reproach. “These things must be. The +country must be opened up. That is why I came--to bring the Truth before +the trader.” + +Now another traveller came riding out of Lebanon towards him, galloping +his horse up-hill and down. He also was young, but nothing about him +suggested power, only self-indulgence. He, too, raised his hat, or +rather swung it from his head in a devil-may-care way, and overdid his +salutation. He did not speak. The priest’s face was very grave, if not a +little resentful. His salutation was reserved. + +“The tyranny of gold,” he murmured, “and without the mind or energy that +created it. Felix was no name for him. Ingolby is a builder, perhaps a +jerry-builder; but he builds.” + +He looked across the prairie towards the young man in the buggy. + +“Sure, he is a builder. He has the Cortez eye. He sees far off, and +plans big things. But Felix Marchand there--” + +He stopped short. + +“Such men must be, perhaps,” he added. Then, after a moment, as he gazed +round again upon the land of promise which he had loved so long, he +murmured as one murmurs a prayer: + + “Thou suferedst men to ride over our heads: we went through fire and + water, and Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place.” + + + + +CHAPTER I. “THE DRUSES ARE UP!” + +“Great Scott, look at her! She’s goin’ to try and take ‘em!” exclaimed +Osterhaut, the Jack-of-all-trades at Lebanon. + +“She ain’t such a fool as all that. Why, no one ever done it alone. +Low water, too, when every rock’s got its chance at the canoe. But, my +gracious, she is goin’ to ride ‘em!” + +Jowett, the horse-dealer, had a sportsman’s joy in a daring thing. + +“See, old Injun Tekewani’s after her! He’s calling at her from the bank. +He knows. He done it himself years ago when there was rips in the tribe +an’ he had to sew up the tears. He run them Rapids in his canoe--” + +“Just as the Druse girl there is doin’--” + +“An’ he’s done what he liked with the Blackfeet ever since.” + +“But she ain’t a chief--what’s the use of her doin’ it? She’s goin’ +straight for them. She can’t turn back now. She couldn’t make the bank +if she wanted to. She’s got to run ‘em. Holy smoke, see her wavin’ the +paddle at Tekewani! Osterhaut, she’s the limit, that petticoat--so quiet +and shy and don’t-look-at-me, too, with eyes like brown diamonds.” + +“Oh, get out, Jowett; she’s all right! She’ll make this country sit up +some day-by gorry, she’ll make Manitou and Lebanon sit up to-day if she +runs the Carillon Rapids safe!” + +“She’s runnin’ ‘em all right, son. She’s--by jee, well done, Miss Druse! +Well done, I say--well done!” exclaimed Jowett, dancing about and waving +his arms towards the adventurous girl. + +The girl had reached the angry, thrashing waters where the rocks rent +and tore into white ribbons the onrushing current, and her first trial +had come on the instant the spitting, raging panthers of foam struck the +bow of her canoe. The waters were so low that this course, which she +had made once before with her friend Tekewani the Blackfeet chief, +had perils not met on that desperate journey. Her canoe struck a rock +slantwise, shuddered and swung round, but by a dexterous stroke she +freed the frail craft. It righted and plunged forward again into fresh +death-traps. + +It was these new dangers which had made Tekewani try to warn her from +the shore--he and the dozen braves with him: but it was characteristic +of his race that, after the first warning, when she must play out the +game to the bitter end, he made no further attempt to stop her. The +Indians ran down the river-bank, however, with eyes intent on her +headlong progress, grunting approval as she plunged safely from danger +to danger. + +Osterhaut and Jowett became silent, too, and, like the Indians, ran +as fast as they could, over fences, through the trees, stumbling and +occasionally cursing, but watching with fascinated eyes this adventuress +of the North, taking chances which not one coureur-de-bois or +river-driver in a thousand would take, with a five thousand-dollar prize +as the lure. Why should she do it? + +“Women folks are sick darn fools when they git goin’,” gasped Osterhaut +as he ran. “They don’t care a split pea what happens when they’ve got +the pip. Look at her--my hair’s bleachin’.” + +“She’s got the pip all right,” stuttered Jowett as he plunged along; +“but she’s foreign, and they’ve all got the pip, foreign men and women +both--but the women go crazy.” + +“She keeps pretty cool for a crazy loon, that girl. If I owned her, +I’d--” + +Jowett interrupted impatiently. “You’d do what old man Druse does--you’d +let her be, Osterhaut. What’s the good of havin’ your own way with one +that’s the apple of your eye, if it turns her agin you? You want her +to kiss you on the high cheek-bone, but if you go to play the +cat-o’-nine-tails round her, the high cheek-bone gets froze. Gol blast +it, look at her, son! What are the wild waves saying? They’re sayin’, +‘This is a surprise, Miss Druse. Not quite ready for ye, Miss Druse.’ +My, ain’t she got the luck of the old devil!” + +It seemed so. More than once the canoe half jammed between the rocks, +and the stern lifted up by the force of the wild current, but again the +paddle made swift play, and again the cockle-shell swung clear. But now +Fleda Druse was no longer on her feet. She knelt, her strong, slim +brown arms bared to the shoulder, her hair blown about her forehead, +her daring eyes flashing to left and right, memory of her course at work +under such a strain as few can endure without chaos of mind in the end. +A hundred times since the day she had run these Rapids with Tekewani, +she had gone over the course in her mind, asleep and awake, forcing her +brain to see again every yard of that watery way; because she knew that +the day must come when she would make the journey alone. Why she would +make it she did not know; she only knew that she would do it some day; +and the day had come. For long it had been an obsession with her--as +though some spirit whispered in her ear--“Do you hear the bells ringing +at Carillon? Do you hear the river singing towards Carillon? Do you +see the wild birds flying towards Carillon? Do you hear the Rapids +calling--the Rapids of Carillon?” + +Night and day since she had braved death with Tekewani, giving him a +gun, a meerschaum pipe, and ten pounds of beautiful brown “plug” tobacco +as a token of her gratitude--night and day she had heard this spirit +murmuring in her ear, and always the refrain was, “Down the stream to +Carillon! Shoot the Rapids of Carillon!” + +Why? How should she know? Wherefore should she know? This was of the +things beyond the why of the human mind. Sometimes all our lives, if we +keep our souls young, and see the world as we first saw it with eyes and +heart unsoiled, we hear the murmuring of the Other Self, that Self +from which we separated when we entered this mortal sphere, but which +followed us, invisible yet whispering inspiration to us. But sometimes +we only hear It, our own soul’s oracle, while yet our years are few, +and we have not passed that frontier between innocence and experience, +reality and pretence. Pretence it is which drives the Other Self away +with wailing on its lips. Then we hear It cry in the night when, because +of the trouble of life, we cannot sleep; or at the play when we are +caught away from ourselves into another air than ours; when music pours +around us like a soft wind from a garden of pomegranates; or when a +child asks a question which brings us back to the land where everything +is so true that it can be shouted from the tree-tops. + +Why was Fleda Druse tempting death in the Carillon Rapids? + +She had heard a whisper as she wandered among the pine-trees there at +Manitou, and it said simply the one word, “Now!” She knew that she must +do it; she had driven her canoe out into the resistless current to ride +the Rapids of Carillon. Her Other Self had whispered to her. + +Yonder, thousands of miles away in Syria, there were the Hills of +Lebanon; and there was one phrase which made every Syrian heart beat +faster, if he were on the march. It was, “The Druses are up!” When +that wild tribe took to the saddle to war upon the Caravans and against +authority, from Lebanon to Palmyra, from Jerusalem to Damascus men +looked anxiously about them and rode hard to refuge. + +And here also in the Far North where the River Sagalac ran a wild race +to Carillon, leaving behind the new towns of Lebanon and Manitou, “the +Druses were up.” + +The daughter of Gabriel Druse, the giant, was riding the Rapids of the +Sagalac. The suspense to her and to those who watched her course--to +Tekewani and his braves, to Osterhaut and Jowett--could not be long. It +was a matter of minutes only, in which every second was a miracle and +might be a catastrophe. + +From rock to rock, from wild white water to wild white water she sped, +now tossing to death as it seemed, now shooting on safely to the next +test of skill and courage--on, on, till at last there was only one +passage to make before the canoe would plunge into the smooth water +running with great swiftness till it almost reached Carillon. + +Suddenly, as she neared the last dangerous point, round which she must +swing between jagged and unseen barriers of rock, her sight became for +an instant dimmed, as though a cloud passed over her eyes. She had never +fainted in her life, but it seemed to her now that she was hovering on +unconsciousness. Commending the will and energy left, she fought the +weakness down. It was as though she forced a way through tossing, +buffeting shadows; as though she was shaking off from her shoulders +shadowy hands which sought to detain her; as though smothering things +kept choking back her breath, and darkness like clouds of wool gathered +about her face. She was fighting for her life, and for years it seemed +to be; though indeed it was only seconds before her will reasserted +itself, and light broke again upon her way. Even on the verge of the +last ambushed passage her senses came back; but they came with a stark +realization of the peril ahead: it looked out of her eyes as a face +shows itself at the window of a burning building. + +Memory shook itself free. It pierced the tumult of waters, found the +ambushed rocks, and guided the lithe brown arms and hands, so that the +swift paddle drove the canoe straight onward, as a fish drives itself +through a flume of dragon’s teeth beneath the flood. The canoe quivered +for an instant at the last cataract, then responding to Memory and Will, +sped through the hidden chasm, tossed by spray and water, and swept into +the swift current of smooth water below. + +Fleda Druse had run the Rapids of Carillon. She could hear the bells +ringing for evening service in the Catholic Church of Carillon, and +bells-soft, booming bells-were ringing in her own brain. Like muffled +silver these brain-bells were, and she was as one who enters into a deep +forest, and hears far away in the boscage the mystic summons of +forest deities. Voices from the banks of the river behind called to +her--hilarious, approving, agitated voices of her Indian friends, and of +Osterhaut and Jowett, those wild spectators of her adventure: but they +were not wholly real. Only those soft, booming bells in her brain were +real. + +Shooting the Rapids of Carillon was the bridge by which she passed from +the world she had left to this other. Her girlhood was ended--wondering, +hovering, unrealizing girlhood. This adventure was the outward sign, the +rite in the Lodge of Life which passed her from one degree of being to +another. + +She was safe; but now as her canoe shot onward to the town of Carillon, +her senses again grew faint. Again she felt the buffeting mist, again +her face was muffled in smothering folds; again great hands reached out +towards her; again her eyes were drawn into a stupefying darkness; but +now there was no will to fight, no energy to resist. The paddle lay +inert in her fingers, her head drooped. She slowly raised her head once, +twice, as though the call of the exhausted will was heard, but suddenly +it fell heavily upon her breast. For a moment so, and then as the canoe +shot forward on a fresh current, the lithe body sank backwards in the +canoe, and lay face upward to the evening sky. + +The canoe sped on, but presently it swung round and lay athwart the +current, dipping and rolling. + +From the banks on either side, the Indians of the Manitou Reservation +and the two men from Lebanon called out and hastened on, for they saw +that the girl had collapsed, and they knew only too well that her danger +was not yet past. The canoe might strike against the piers of the bridge +at Carillon and overturn, or it might be carried to the second cataract +below the town. They were too far away to save her, but they kept +shouting as they ran. + +None responded to their call, but that defiance of the last cataract of +the Rapids of Carillon had been seen by one who, below an eddy on the +Lebanon side of the river, was steadily stringing upon maple-twigs black +bass and long-nosed pike. As he sat in the shade of the trees, he had +seen the plunge of the canoe into the chasm, and had held his breath in +wonder and admiration. Even at that distance he knew who it was. He had +seen Fleda only a few times before, for she was little abroad; but when +he had seen her he had asked himself what such a face and form were +doing in the Far North. It belonged to Andalusia, to the Carpathians, to +Syrian villages. + +“The pluck of the very devil!” he had exclaimed, as Fleda’s canoe swept +into the smooth current, free of the dragon’s teeth; and as he had +something of the devil in himself, she seemed much nearer to him than +the hundreds of yards of water intervening. Presently, however, he saw +her droop and sink away out of sight. + +For an instant he did not realize what had happened, and then, with +angry self-reproach, he flung the oars into the rowlocks of his skiff +and drove down and athwart the stream with long, powerful strokes. + +“That’s like a woman!” he said to himself as he bent to the oars, and +now and then turned his head to make sure that the canoe was still safe. +“Do the trick better than a man, and then collapse like a rabbit.” + +He was Max Ingolby, the financier, contractor, manager of great +interests, disturber of the peace of slow minds, who had come to Lebanon +with the avowed object of amalgamating three railways, of making the +place the swivel of all the trade and interests of the Western North; +but also with the declared intention of uniting Lebanon and Manitou in +one municipality, one centre of commercial and industrial power. + +Men said he had bitten off more than he could chew, but he had replied +that his teeth were good, and he would masticate the meal or know the +reason why. He was only thirty-three, but his will was like nothing the +West had seen as yet. It was sublime in its confidence, it was free from +conceit, and it knew not the word despair, though once or twice it had +known defeat. + +Men cheered him from the shore as his skiff leaped through the water. +“It’s that blessed Ingolby,” said Jowett, who had tried to “do” the +financier in a horsedeal, and had been done instead, and was now a +devout admirer and adherent of the Master Man. “I saw him driving down +there this morning from Lebanon. He’s been fishing at Seely’s Eddy.” + +“When Ingolby goes fishing, there’s trouble goin’ on somewhere and he’s +stalkin’ it,” rejoined Osterhaut. “But, by gol, he’s goin’ to do this +trump trick first; he’s goin’ to overhaul her before she gits to the +bridge. Look at him swing! Hell, ain’t it pretty! There you go, old +Ingolby. You’re right on it, even when you’re fishing.” + +On the other-the Manitou-shore Tekewani and his braves were less +talkative, but they were more concerned in the incident than Osterhaut +and Jowett. They knew little or nothing of Ingolby the hustler, but they +knew more of Fleda Druse and her father than all the people of Lebanon +and Manitou put together. Fleda had won old Tekewani’s heart when she +had asked him to take her down the Rapids, for the days of adventure +for him and his tribe were over. The adventure shared with this girl +had brought back to the chief the old days when Indian women tanned +bearskins and deerskins day in, day out, and made pemmican of the +buffalo-meat; when the years were filled with hunting and war and +migrant journeyings to fresh game-grounds and pastures new. + +Danger faced was the one thing which could restore Tekewani’s +self-respect, after he had been checked and rebuked before his tribe by +the Indian Commissioner for being drunk. Danger faced had restored it, +and Fleda Druse had brought the danger to him as a gift. + +If the canoe should crash against the piers of the bridge, if it should +drift to the cataract below, if anything should happen to this white +girl whom he worshipped in his heathen way, nothing could preserve his +self-respect; he would pour ashes on his head and firewater down his +throat. + +Suddenly he and his braves stood still. They watched as one would watch +an enemy a hundred times stronger than one’s self. The white man’s skiff +was near the derelict canoe; the bridge was near also. Carillon now +lined the bank of the river with its people. They ran upon the bridge, +but not so fast as to reach the place where, in the nick of time, +Ingolby got possession of the rolling canoe; where Fleda Druse lay +waiting like a princess to be waked by the kiss of destiny. + +Only five hundred yards below the bridge was the second cataract, and +she would never have waked if she had been carried into it. + +To Ingolby she was as beautiful as a human being could be as she lay +with white face upturned, the paddle still in her hand. + +“Drowning isn’t good enough for her,” he said, as he fastened her canoe +to his skiff. + +“It’s been a full day’s work,” he added; and even in this human crisis +he thought of the fish he had caught, of “the big trouble,” he had been +thinking out as Osterhaut had said, as well as of the girl that he was +saving. + +“I always have luck when I go fishing,” he added presently. “I can take +her back to Lebanon,” he continued with a quickening look. “She’ll be +all right in a jiffy. I’ve got room for her in my buggy--and room for +her in any place that belongs to me,” he hastened to reflect with a +curious, bashful smile. + +“It’s like a thing in a book,” he murmured, as he neared the waiting +people on the banks of Carillon, and the ringing of the vesper bells +came out to him on the evening air. + +“Is she dead?” some one whispered, as eager hands reached out to secure +his skiff to the bank. + +“As dead as I am,” he answered with a laugh, and drew Fleda’s canoe up +alongside his skiff. + +He had a strange sensation of new life, as, with delicacy and +gentleness, he lifted her up in his strong arms and stepped ashore. + + + + +CHAPTER II. THE WHISPER FROM BEYOND + +Ingolby had a will of his own, but it had never been really tried +against a woman’s will. It was, however, tried sorely when Fleda came +to consciousness again in his arms and realized that a man’s face was +nearer to hers than any man’s had ever been except that of her own +father. Her eyes opened slowly, and for the instant she did not +understand, but when she did, the blood stole swiftly back to her neck +and face and forehead, and she started in dismay. + +“Put me down,” she whispered faintly. + +“I’m taking you to my buggy,” he replied. “I’ll drive you back to +Lebanon.” He spoke as calmly as he could, for there was a strange +fluttering of his nerves, and the crowd was pressing him. + +“Put me down at once,” she said peremptorily. She trembled on her feet, +and swayed, and would have fallen but that Ingolby and a woman in black, +who had pushed her way through the crowd with white, anxious face, +caught her. + +“Give her air, and stand back!” called the sharp voice of the constable +of Carillon, and he heaved the people back with his powerful shoulders. + +A space was cleared round the place where Fleda sat with her head +against the shoulder of the stately woman in black who had come to her +assistance. A dipper of water was brought, and when she had drunk it she +raised her head slowly and her eyes sought those of Ingolby. + +“One cannot pay for such things,” she said to him, meeting his look +firmly and steeling herself to thank him. Though deeply grateful, it was +a trial beyond telling to be obliged to owe the debt of a life to any +one, and in particular to a man of the sort to whom material gifts could +not be given. + +“Such things are paid for just by accepting them,” he answered quickly, +trying to feel that he had never held her in his arms, as she evidently +desired him to feel. He had intuition, if not enough of it, for the +regions where the mind of Fleda Druse dwelt. + +“I couldn’t very well decline, could I?” she rejoined, quick humour +shooting into her eyes. “I was helpless. I never fainted before in my +life.” + +“I am sure you will never faint again,” he remarked. “We only do such +things when we are very young.” + +She was about to reply, but paused reflectively. Her half-opened lips +did not frame the words she had been impelled to speak. + +Admiration was alive in his eyes. He had never seen this type of +womanhood before--such energy and grace, so amply yet so lithely +framed; such darkness and fairness in one living composition; such +individuality, yet such intimate simplicity. Her hair was a very light +brown, sweeping over a broad, low forehead, and lying, as though with +a sense of modesty, on the tips of the ears, veiling them slightly. The +forehead was classic in its intellectual fulness; but the skin was so +fresh, even when pale as now, and with such an underglow of vitality, +that the woman in her, sex and the possibilities of sex, cast a glamour +over the intellect and temperament showing in every line of her contour. +In contrast to the light brown of the hair was the very dark brown of +the eyes and the still darker brown of the eyelashes. The face shone, +the eyes burned, and the piquancy of the contrast between the soft +illuminating whiteness of the skin and the flame in the eyes had +fascinated many more than Ingolby. + +Her figure was straight yet supple, somewhat fuller than is modern +beauty, with hints of Juno-like stateliness to come; and the curves +of her bust, the long lines of her limbs, were not obscured by her +absolutely plain gown of soft, light-brown linen. She was tall, but not +too commanding, and, as her hand was raised to fasten back a wisp of +hair, there was the motion of as small a wrist and as tapering a bare +arm as ever made prisoner of a man’s neck. + +Impulse was written in every feature, in the passionate eagerness of +her body; yet the line from the forehead to the chin, and the firm +shapeliness of the chin itself, gave promise of great strength of will. +From the glory of the crown of hair to the curve of the high instep of +a slim foot it was altogether a personality which hinted at history--at +tragedy, maybe. + +“She’ll have a history,” Madame Bulteel, who now stood beside the girl, +herself a figure out of a picture by Velasquez, had said of her sadly; +for she saw in Fleda’s rare qualities, in her strange beauty, happenings +which had nothing to do with the life she was living. So this duenna of +Gabriel Druse’s household, this aristocratic, silent woman was ever +on the watch for some sudden revelation of a being which had not found +itself, and which must find itself through perils and convulsions. + +That was why, to-day, she had hesitated to leave Fleda alone and come +to Carillon, to be at the bedside of a dying, friendless woman whom by +chance she had come to know. In the street she had heard of what was +happening on the river, and had come in time to receive Fleda from the +arms of her rescuer. + +“How did you get here?” Fleda asked her. + +“How am I always with you when I am needed, truant?” said the other with +a reproachful look. “Did you fly? You are so light, so thin, you could +breathe yourself here,” rejoined the girl, with a gentle, quizzical +smile. “But, no,” she added, “I remember, you were to be here at +Carillon.” + +“Are you able to walk now?” asked Madame Bulteel. + +“To Manitou--but of course,” Fleda answered almost sharply. + +After the first few minutes the crowd had fallen back. They watched her +with respectful admiration from a decent distance. They had the chivalry +towards woman so characteristic of the West. There was no vulgarity in +their curiosity, though most of them had never seen her before. All, +however, had heard of her and her father, the giant greybeard who moved +and lived in an air of mystery, and apparently secret wealth, for +more than once he had given large sums--large in the eyes of folks of +moderate means, when charity was needed; as in the case of the floods +the year before, and in the prairie-fire the year before that, when so +many people were made homeless, and also when fifty men had been injured +in one railway accident. On these occasions he gave disproportionately +to his mode of life. + +Now, when they saw that Fleda was about to move away, they drew just +a little nearer, and presently one of the crowd could contain his +admiration no longer. He raised a cheer. + +“Three cheers for Her,” he shouted, and loud hurrahs followed. + +“Three cheers for Ingolby,” another cried, and the noise was boisterous +but not so general. + +“Who shot Carillon Rapids?” another called in the formula of the West. + +“She shot the Rapids,” was the choral reply. “Who is she?” came the +antiphon. + +“Druse is her name,” was the gay response. “What did she do?” + +“She shot Carillon Rapids--shot ‘em dead. Hooray!” + +In the middle of the cheering, Osterhaut and Jowett arrived in a wagon +which they had commandeered, and, about the same time, from across the +bridge, came running Tekewani and his braves. + +“She done it like a kingfisher,” cried Osterhaut. “Manitou’s got the +belt.” + +Fleda Druse’s friendly eyes were given only for one instant to Osterhaut +and his friend. Her gaze became fixed on Tekewani who, silent, and with +immobile face, stole towards her. In spite of the civilization which +controlled him, he wore Indian moccasins and deerskin breeches, though +his coat was rather like a shortened workman’s blouse. He did not belong +to the life about him; he was a being apart, the spirit of vanished and +vanishing days. + +“Tekewani--ah, Tekewani, you have come,” the girl said, and her eyes +smiled at him as they had not smiled at Ingolby or even at the woman in +black beside her. + +“How!” the chief replied, and looked at her with searching, worshipping +eyes. + +“Don’t look at me that way, Tekewani,” she said, coming close to him. “I +had to do it, and I did it.” + +“The teeth of rock everywhere!” he rejoined reproachfully, with a +gesture of awe. + +“I remembered all--all. You were my master, Tekewani.” + +“But only once with me it was, Summer Song,” he persisted. Summer Song +was his name for her. + +“I saw it--saw it, every foot of the way,” she insisted. “I thought +hard, oh, hard as the soul thinks. And I saw it all.” There was +something singularly akin in the nature of the girl and the Indian. She +spoke to him as she never spoke to any other. + +“Too much seeing, it is death,” he answered. “Men die with too much +seeing. I have seen them die. To look hard through deerskin curtains, +to see through the rock, to behold the water beneath the earth, and the +rocks beneath the black waters, it is for man to see if he has a soul, +but the seeing--behold, so those die who should live!” + +“I live, Tekewani, though I saw the teeth of rocks beneath the black +water,” she urged gently. + +“Yet the half-death came--” + +“I fainted, but I was not to die--it was not my time.” + +He shook his head gloomily. “Once it may be, but the evil spirits tempt +us to death. It matters not what comes to Tekewani; he is as the leaf +that falls from the stem; but for Summer Song that has far to go, it is +the madness from beyond the Hills of Life.” + +She took his hand. “I will not do it again, Tekewani.” + +“How!” he said, with hand upraised, as one who greets the great in this +world. + +“I don’t know why I did it,” she added meaningly. “It was selfish. I +feel that now.” + +The woman in black pressed her hand timidly. + +“It is so for ever with the great,” Tekewani answered. “It comes, also, +from beyond the Hills--the will to do it. It is the spirit that whispers +over the earth out of the Other Earth. No one hears it but the great. +The whisper only is for this one here and that one there who is of the +Few. It whispers, and the whisper must be obeyed. So it was from the +beginning.” + +“Yes, you understand, Tekewani,” she answered softly. “I did it because +something whispered from the Other Earth to me.” + +Her head drooped a little, her eyes had a sudden shadow. + +“He will understand,” answered the Indian; “your father will +understand,” as though reading her thoughts. He had clearly read her +thought, this dispossessed, illiterate Indian chieftain. Yet, was he so +illiterate? Had he not read in books which so few have learned to read? +His life had been broken on the rock of civilization, but his simple +soul had learned some elemental truths--not many, but the essential +ones, without which there is no philosophy, no understanding. He +knew Fleda Druse was thinking of her father, wondering if he would +understand, half-fearing, hardly hoping, dreading the moment when she +must meet him face to face. She knew she had been selfish, but would +Gabriel Druse understand? She raised her eyes in gratitude to the +Blackfeet chief. + +“I must go home,” she said. + +She turned to go, but as she did so, a man came swaggering down the +street, broke through the crowd, and made towards her with an arm +raised, a hand waving, and a leer on his face. He was a thin, rather +handsome, dissolute-looking fellow of middle height and about forty, in +dandified dress. His glossy black hair fell carelessly over his smooth +forehead from under a soft, wide-awake hat. + +“Manitou for ever!” he cried, with a flourish of his hand. “I salute the +brave. I escort the brave to the gates of Manitou. I escort the brave. +I escort the brave. Salut! Salut! Salut! Well done, Beauty +Beauty--Beauty--Beauty, well done again!” + +He held out his hand to Fleda, but she drew back with disgust. Felix +Marchand, the son of old Hector Marchand, money-lender and capitalist of +Manitou, had pressed his attentions upon her during the last year since +he had returned from the East, bringing dissoluteness and vulgar pride +with him. Women had spoiled him, money had corrupted and degraded him. + +“Come, beautiful brave, it’s Salut! Salut! Salut!” he said, bending +towards her familiarly. + +Her face flushed with anger. + +“Let me pass, monsieur,” she said sharply. + +“Pride of Manitou--” he apostrophized, but got no farther. + +Ingolby caught him by the shoulders, wheeled him round, and then flung +him at the feet of Tekewani and his braves. + +At this moment Tekewani’s eyes had such a fire as might burn in +Wotan’s smithy. He was ready enough to defy the penalty of the law for +assaulting a white man, but Felix Marchand was in the dust, and that +would do for the moment. + +With grim face Ingolby stood over the begrimed figure. “There’s the +river if you want more,” he said. “Tekewani knows where the water’s +deepest.” Then he turned and followed Fleda and the woman in black. +Felix Marchand’s face was twisted with hate as he got slowly to his +feet. + +“You’ll eat dust before I’m done,” he called after Ingolby. Then, amid +the jeers of the crowd, he went back to the tavern where he had been +carousing. + + + + +CHAPTER III. CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNS + +A word about Max Ingolby. + +He was the second son of four sons, with a father who had been a +failure; but with a mother of imagination and great natural strength +of brain, yet whose life had been so harried in bringing up a family on +nothing at all, that there only emerged from her possibilities a great +will to do the impossible things. From her had come the spirit which +would not be denied. + +In his boyhood Max could not have those things which lads +prize--fishing-rods, cricket-bats and sleds, and all such things; but +he could take most prizes at school open to competition; he could win in +the running-jump, the high-jump, and the five hundred yards’ race; and +he could organize a picnic, or the sports of the school or town--at +no cost to himself. His finance in even this limited field had been +brilliant. Other people paid, and he did the work; and he did it with +such ease that the others intriguing to crowd him out, suffered failure +and came to him in the end to put things right. + +He became the village doctor’s assistant and dispenser at seventeen +and induced his master to start a drug-store. He made the drug-store a +success within two years, and meanwhile he studied Latin and Greek +and mathematics in every spare hour he had--getting up at five in the +morning, and doing as much before breakfast as others did in a whole +day. His doctor loved him and helped him; a venerable Archdeacon, an +Oxford graduate, gave him many hours of coaching, and he went to the +University with three scholarships. These were sufficient to carry him +through in three years, and there was enough profit-sharing from the +drug-business he had founded on terms to shelter his mother and his +younger brothers, while he took honours at the University. + +There he organized all that students organize, and was called in at last +by the Bursar of his college to reorganize the commissariat, which he +did with such success that the college saved five thousand dollars a +year. He had genius, the college people said, and after he had taken +his degree with honours in classics and mathematics they offered him a +professorship at two thousand dollars a year. + +He laughed ironically, but yet with satisfaction, when the professorship +was offered. It was all so different from what was in his mind for +the future. As he looked out of the oriel window in the sweet gothic +building, to the green grass and the maples and elms which made the +college grounds like an old-world park, he had a vision of himself +permanently in these surroundings of refinement growing venerable with +years, seeing pass under his influence thousands of young men directed, +developed and inspired by him. + +He had, however, shaken himself free of this modest vision. He knew +that such a life would act like a narcotic to his real individuality. +He thirsted for contest, for the control of brain and will; he wanted +to construct; he was filled with the idea of simplifying things, of +economizing strength; he saw how futile was much competition, and how +the big brain could command and control with ease, wasting no force, +saving labour, making the things controlled bigger and better. + +So it came that his face was seen no more in the oriel window. With +a mere handful of dollars, and some debts, he left the world of +scholarship and superior pedagogy, and went where the head offices of +railways were. Railways were the symbol of progress in his mind. The +railhead was the advance post of civilization. It was like Cortez and +his Conquistadores overhauling and appropriating the treasures of long +generations. So where should he go if not to the Railway? + +His first act, when he got to his feet inside the offices of the +President of a big railway, was to show the great man how two “outside” + proposed lines could be made one, and then further merged into the +company controlled by the millionaire in whose office he sat. He got his +chance by his very audacity--the President liked audacity. In attempting +this merger, however, he had his first failure, but he showed that he +could think for himself, and he was made increasingly responsible. After +a few years of notable service, he was offered the task of building a +branch line of railway from Lebanon and Manitou north, and northwest, +and on to the Coast; and he had accepted it, at the same time planning +to merge certain outside lines competing with that which he had in hand. +For over four years he worked night and day, steadily advancing towards +his goal, breaking down opposition, manoeuvring, conciliating, fighting. + +Most men loved his whimsical turn of mind, even those who were the +agents of the financial clique which had fought him in their efforts +to get control of the commercial, industrial, transport and banking +resources of the junction city of Lebanon. In the days when vast markets +would be established for Canadian wheat in Shanghai and Tokio, then +these two towns of Manitou and Lebanon on the Sagalac would be like the +swivel to the organization of trade of a continent. + +Ingolby had worked with this end in view. In doing so he had tried to +get what he wanted without trickery; to reach his goal by playing the +game according to the rules, and this policy nonplussed his rivals and +associates. They expected secret moves, and he laid his cards on the +table. Sharp, quick, resolute and ruthless he was, however, if he knew +that he was being tricked. Then he struck, and struck hard. The war of +business was war and not “gollyfoxing,” as he said. Selfish, stubborn +and self-centred he was in much, but he had great joy in the natural and +sincere, and he had a passionate love of Nature. To him the flat +prairie was never ugly. Its very monotony had its own individuality. +The Sagalac, even when muddy, had its own deep interest, and when it was +full of logs drifting down to the sawmills, for which he had found the +money by interesting capitalists in the East, he sniffed the stinging +smell of the pines with elation. As the great saws in the mills, for +which he had secured the capital, throwing off the spray of mangled +wood, hummed and buzzed and sang, his mouth twisted in the droll smile +it always wore when he talked with such as Jowett and Osterhaut, whose +idiosyncrasies were like a meal to him; as he described it once to some +of the big men from the East who had been behind his schemes, yet who +cavilled at his ways. He was never diverted from his course by such men, +and while he was loyal to those who had backed him, he vowed that he +would be independent of these wooden souls in the end. They and the +great bankers behind them were for monopoly; he was for organization and +for economic prudence. So far they were necessary to all he did; but it +was his intention to shake himself free of all monopoly in good time. +One or two of his colleagues saw the drift of his policy and would have +thrown him over if they could have replaced him by a man as capable, who +would, at the time, consent to grow rich on their terms. + +They could not understand a man who would stand for a half-hour watching +a sunset, or a morning sky dappled with all the colours that shake from +a prism; they were suspicious of a business-mind which could gloat over +the light falling on snow-peaked mountains, while it planned a great +bridge across a gorge in the same hour; of a man who would quote a verse +of poetry while a flock of wild pigeons went whirring down a pine-girt +valley in the shimmer of the sun. + +On the occasion when he had quoted a verse of poetry to them, one of +them said to him with a sidelong glance: “You seem to be dead-struck on +Nature, Ingolby.” + +To that, with a sly quirk of the mouth, and meaning to mystify his +wooden-headed questioner still more, he answered: “Dead-struck? +Dead-drunk, you mean. I’m a Nature’s dipsomaniac--as you can see,” he +added with a sly note of irony. + +Then instantly he had drawn the little circle of experts into a +discussion upon technical questions of railway-building and finance, +which made demands upon all their resources and knowledge. In that +conference he gave especial attention to the snub-souled financier who +had sneered at his love of Nature. He tied his critic up in knots of +self-assertion and bad logic which presently he deftly, deliberately and +skilfully untied, to the delight of all the group. + +“He’s got as much in his ten years in the business as we’ve got out +of half a life-time,” said the chief of his admirers. This was the +President who had first welcomed him into business, and introduced him +to his colleagues in enterprise. + +“I shouldn’t be surprised if the belt flew off the wheel some day,” + savagely said Ingolby’s snub-souled critic, whose enmity was held in +check by the fact that on Ingolby, for the moment, depended the safety +of the hard cash he had invested. + +But the qualities which alienated an expert here and there caught the +imagination of the pioneer spirits of Lebanon. Except those who, +for financial reasons, were opposed to him, and must therefore pit +themselves against him, as the representatives of bigger forces behind +them, he was a leader of whom Lebanon was combatively proud. At last he +came to the point where his merger was practically accomplished, and a +problem arising out of it had to be solved. It was a problem which taxed +every quality of an able mind. The situation had at last become acute, +and Time, the solvent of most complications, had not quite eased the +strain. Indeed, on the day that Fleda Druse had made her journey down +the Carillon Rapids, Time’s influence had not availed. So he had gone +fishing, with millions at stake--to the despair of those who were +risking all on his skill and judgment. + +But that was Ingolby. Thinking was the essence of his business, not +Time. As fishing was the friend of thinking, therefore he fished in +Seely’s Eddy, saw Fleda Druse run the Carillon Rapids, saved her from +drowning, and would have brought her in pride and peace to her own home, +but that she decreed otherwise. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWE + +Gabriel Druse’s house stood on a little knoll on the outskirts of the +town of Manitou, backed by a grove of pines. Its front windows faced the +Sagalac, and the windows behind looked into cool coverts where in old +days many Indian tribes had camped; where Hudson’s Bay Company’s men had +pitched their tents to buy the red man’s furs. But the red man no longer +set up his tepee in these secluded groves; the wapiti and red deer had +fled to the north never to return, the snarling wolf had stolen into +regions more barren; the ceremonial of the ancient people no longer +made weird the lonely nights; the medicine-man’s incantations, the +harvest-dance, the green-corn-dance, the sun-dance had gone. The braves, +their women, and their tepees had been shifted to reservations where +Governments solemnly tried to teach them to till the field, and grow +corn, and drive the cart to market; while yet they remembered the herds +of buffalo which had pounded down the prairie like storm-clouds and +given their hides for the tepee; and the swift deer whose skins made the +wigwam luxurious. + +Originally Manitou had been the home of Icelanders, Mennonites, +and Doukhobors; settlers from lands where the conditions of earlier +centuries prevailed, who, simple as they were in habits and in life, +were ignorant, primitive, coarse, and none too cleanly. + +They had formed an unprogressive polyglot settlement, and the place +assumed a still more primeval character when the Indian Reservation +was formed near by. When French Canadian settlers arrived, however, the +place became less discordant to the life of a new democracy, though +they did little to make it modern in the sense that Lebanon, across the +river, where Ingolby lived, was modern from the day the first shack was +thrown up. + +Manitou showed itself antagonistic to progress; it was old-fashioned, +and primitively agricultural. It looked with suspicion on the factories +built after Ingolby came and on the mining propositions, which circled +the place with speculation. Unlike other towns of the West, it was +insanitary and uneducated; it was also given to nepotism and a primitive +kind of jobbery; but, on the whole, it was honest. It was a settlement +twenty years before Lebanon had a house, though the latter exceeded +the population of Manitou in five years, and became the home of all +adventuring spirits--land agents, company promoters, mining prospectors, +railway men, politicians, saloon keepers, and up to-date dissenting +preachers. Manitou was, however, full of back-water people, religious +fanatics, little farmers, guides, trappers, old coureurs-de-bois, +Hudson’s Bay Company factors and ex-factors, half-breeds; and all the +rest. + +The real feud between the two towns began about the time of the arrival +of Gabriel Druse, his daughter, and Madame Bulteel, the woman in black, +and it had grown with great rapidity and increasing intensity. Manitou +condemned the sacrilegiousness of the Protestants, whose meeting-houses +were used for “socials,” “tea-meetings,” “strawberry festivals,” and +entertainments of many kinds; while comic songs were sung at the table +where the solemn Love Feast was held at the quarterly meetings. At last +when attempts were made to elect to Parliament an Irish lawyer who added +to his impecuniousness, eloquence, a half-finished University education, +and an Orangeman’s prejudices of the best brand of Belfast or Derry, +inter-civic strife took the form of physical violence. The great bridge +built by Ingolby between the two towns might have been ten thousand +yards long, so deep was the estrangement between the two places. They +had only one thing in common--a curious compromise--in the person of +Nathan Rockwell, an agnostic doctor, who had arrived in Lebanon with a +reputation for morality somewhat clouded; though, where his patients in +Manitou and Lebanon were concerned, he had been the “pink of propriety.” + +Rockwell had arrived in Lebanon early in its career, and had remained +unimportant until a railway accident occurred at Manitou and the +resident doctors were driven from the field of battle, one by death, +and one by illness. Then it was that the silent, smiling, dark-skinned, +cool-headed and cool-handed Rockwell stepped in, and won for himself the +gratitude of all--from Monseigneur Lourde, the beloved Catholic priest, +to Tekewani, the chief. This accident was followed by an epidemic. + +That was at the time, also, when Fleda Druse returned from Winnipeg +where she had been at school for one memorable and terrible six months, +pining for her father, defying rules, and crying the night through for +“the open world,” as she called it. So it was that, to her father’s +dismay and joy in one, she had fled from school, leaving all her things +behind her; and had reached home with only the clothes on her back and a +few cents in her pocket. + +Instantly on her return she had gone among the stricken people as +fearlessly as Rockwell had done, but chiefly among the women and +children; and it was said that the herbal medicine she administered +was marvellous in its effect--so much so that Rockwell asked for the +prescription, which she declined to give. + +Thus it was that the French Canadian mothers with daughters of their +own, bright-eyed brunettes, ready for the man-market, regarded with +toleration the girl who took their children away for picnics down the +river or into the woods, and brought them back safe and sound at the end +of the day. Not that they failed to be shocked sometimes, when, on her +wild Indian pony, Fleda swept through Manitou like a wind and out into +the prairie, riding, as it were, to the end of the world. Try as they +would, these grateful mothers of Manitou, they could not get as near to +Fleda Druse as their children did, and they were vast distances from her +father. + +“There, there, look at him,” said old Madame Thibadeau to her neighbour +Christine Brisson--“look at him with his great grey-beard, and his eyes +like black fires, and that head of hair like a bundle of burnt flax! He +comes from the place no man ever saw, that’s sure.” + +“Ah, surelee, men don’t grow so tall in any Christian country,” + announced Christine Brisson, her head nodding sagely. “I’ve seen the +pictures in the books, and there’s nobody so tall and that looks like +him--not anywhere since Adam.” + +“Nom de pipe, sometimes-trulee, sometimes, I look up there at where he +lives, and I think I see a thousand men on horses ride out of the woods +behind his house and down here to gobble us all up. That’s the way I +feel. It’s fancy, but I can’t help that.” Dame Thibadeau rested her +hands--on her huge stomach as though the idea had its origin there. + +“I’ve seen a lot of fancies come to pass,” gloomily returned her friend. +“It’s a funny world. I don’t know what to make of its sometimes.” + +“And that girl of his, the strangest creature, as proud as a peacock, +but then as kind as kind to the children--of a good heart, surelee. They +say she has plenty of gold rings and pearls and bracelets, and all like +that. Babette Courton, she saw them when she went to sew. Why doesn’t +Ma’m’selle wear them?” + +Christine looked wise and smoothed out her apron as though it was a +parchment. “With such queer ones, who knows? But, yes, as you say, she +has a kind heart. The children, well, they follow her everywhere.” + +“Not the children only,” sagely added the other. “From Lebanon they +come, the men, and plenty here, too; and there’s that Felix Marchand, +the worst of all in Manitou or anywhere.” + +“I’d look sharp if Felix Marchand followed me,” remarked Christine. +“There are more papooses at the Reservation since he come back, and +over in Lebanon--!” She whispered darkly to her friend, and they nodded +knowingly. + +“If he plays pranks in Manitou he’ll get his throat cut, for sure. Even +with Protes’ants and Injuns it’s bad enough,” remarked Dame Thibadeau, +panting with the thought of it. + +“He doesn’t even leave the Doukhobors alone. There’s--” Again Christine +whispered, and again that ugly look came to their faces which belongs to +the thought of forbidden things. + +“Felix Marchand’ll have much money--bad penny as he is,” continued +Christine in her normal voice. “He’ll have more money than he can put +in all the trouser legs he has. Old Hector, his father, has enough for a +gover’ment. But that M’sieu’ Felix will get his throat cut if he follows +Ma’m’selle Druse about too much. She hates him--I’ve seen when they met. +Old man Druse’ll make trouble. He don’t look as he does for nothing.” + +“Ah, that’s so. One day, we shall see what we shall see,” murmured +Christine, and waved a hand to a friend in the street. + +This conversation happened on the evening of the day that Fleda Druse +shot the Carillon Rapids alone. An hour after the two gossips had had +their say Gabriel Druse paced up and down the veranda of his house, +stopping now and then to view the tumbling, hurrying Sagalac, or to +dwell upon the sunset which crimsoned and bronzed the western sky. His +walk had an air of impatience; he seemed disturbed of mind and restless +of body. + +He gave an impression of great force. He would have been picked out of +a multitude, not alone because of his remarkable height, but because +he had an air of command and the aloofness which shows a man sufficient +unto himself. + +As he stood gazing reflectively into the sunset, a strange, plaintive, +birdlike note pierced the still evening air. His head lifted quickly, +yet he did not look in the direction of the sound, which came from the +woods behind the house. He did not stir, and his eyes half-closed, as +though he hesitated what to do. The call was not that of a bird familiar +to the Western world. It had a melancholy softness like that of the +bell-bird of the Australian bush. Yet, in the insistence of the note, it +was, too, a challenge or a summons. + +Three times during the past week he had heard it--once as he went by the +market-place of Manitou; once as he returned in the dusk from Tekewani’s +Reservation, and once at dawn from the woods behind the house. His +present restlessness and suppressed agitation had been the result. + +It was a call he knew well. It was like a voice from a dead world. It +asked, he knew, for an answering call, yet he had not given it. It was +seven days since he first heard it in the market-place, and in that +seven days he had realized that nothing in this world which has ever +been, really ceases to be. Presently, the call was repeated. On the +three former occasions there had been no repetition. The call had +trembled in the air but once and had died away into unbroken silence. +Now, however, it rang out with an added poignancy. It was like a bird +calling to its vanished mate. + +With sudden resolution Druse turned. Leaving the veranda, he walked +slowly behind the house into the woods and stood still under the +branches of a great cedar. Raising his head, a strange, solemn note came +from his lips; but the voice died away in a sharp broken sound which was +more human than birdlike, which had the shrill insistence of authority. +The call to him had been almost ventriloquial in its nature. His lips +had not moved at all. + +There was silence for a moment after he had called into the void, as it +were, and then there appeared suddenly from behind a clump of juniper, +a young man of dark face and upright bearing. He made a slow obeisance +with a gesture suggestive of the Oriental world, yet not like the usual +gesture of the East Indian, the Turk or the Persian; it was composite of +all. + +He could not have been more than twenty-five years of age. He was so +sparely made, and his face being clean-shaven, he looked even younger. +His clothes were the clothes of the Western man; and yet there was a +manner of wearing them, there were touches which were evidence to the +watchful observer that he was of other spheres. His wide, felt, Western +hat had a droop on one side and a broken treatment of the crown, which +of itself was enough to show him a stranger to the prairie, while his +brown velveteen jacket, held by its two lowest buttons, was reminiscent +of an un-English life. His eyes alone would have announced him as of +some foreign race, though he was like none of the foreigners who had +been the pioneers of Manitou. Unlike as he and Gabriel Druse were in +height, build, and movement, still there was something akin in them +both. + +After a short silence evidently disconcerting to him, “Blessing and +hail, my Ry,” he said in a low tone. He spoke in a strange language and +with a voice rougher than his looks would have suggested. + +The old man made a haughty gesture of impatience. “What do you want with +me, my Romany ‘chal’?” he asked sharply.--[A glossary of Romany words +will be found at the end of the book.] + +The young man replied hastily. He seemed to speak by rote. His manner +was too eager to suit the impressiveness of his words. “The sheep are +without a shepherd,” he said. “The young men marry among the Gorgios, +or they are lost in the cities and return no more to the tents and +the fields and the road. There is disorder in all the world among the +Romanys. The ancient ways are forgotten. Our people gather and settle +upon the land and live as the Gorgios live. They forget the way beneath +the trees, they lose their skill in horses. If the fountain is choked, +how shall the water run?” + +A cold sneer came to the face of Gabriel Druse. “The way beneath the +trees!” he growled. “The way of the open road is enough. The way beneath +the trees is the way of the thief, and the skill of the horse is the +skill to cheat.” + +“There is no other way. It has been the way of the Romany since the time +of Timur Beg and centuries beyond Timur, so it is told. One man and all +men must do as the tribe has done since the beginning.” + +The old man pulled at his beard angrily. “You do not talk like a Romany, +but like a Gorgio of the schools.” + +The young man’s manner became more confident as he replied. “Thinking on +what was to come to me, I read in the books as the Gorgio reads. I sat +in my tent and worked with a pen; I saw in the printed sheets what the +world was doing every day. This I did because of what was to come.” + +“And have you read of me in the printed sheets? Did they tell you where +I was to be found?” Gabriel Druse’s eyes were angry, his manner was +authoritative. + +The young man stretched out his hands eloquently. “Hail and blessing, my +Ry, was there need of printed pages to tell me that? Is not everything +known of the Ry to the Romany people without the written or printed +thing? How does the wind go? How does the star sweep across the sky? +Does not the whisper pass as the lightning flashes? Have you forgotten +all, my Ry? Is there a Romany camp at Scutari? Shall it not know what is +the news of the Bailies of Scotland and the Caravans by the Tagus? It is +known always where my lord is. All the Romanys everywhere know it, and +many hundreds have come hither from overseas. They are east, they are +south, they are west.” + +He made gesture towards these three points of the compass. A dark frown +came upon the old man’s forehead. “I ordered that none should seek to +follow, that I be left in peace till my pilgrimage was done. Even as +the first pilgrims of our people in the days of Timur Beg in India, so I +have come forth from among you all till the time be fulfilled.” + +There was a crafty look in the old man’s eyes as he spoke, and ages of +dubious reasoning and purpose showed in their velvet depths. + +“No one has sought me but you in all these years,” he continued. “Who +are you that you should come? I did not call, and there was my command +that none should call to me.” + +A bolder look grew in the other’s face. His carriage gained in ease. +“There is trouble everywhere--in Italy, in Spain, in France, in England, +in Russia, in mother India”--he made a gesture of salutation and bowed +low--“and our rites and mysteries are like water spilt upon the ground. +If the hand be cut off, how shall the body move? That is how it is. You +are vanished, my lord, and the body dies.” + +The old man plucked his beard again fiercely and his words came with +guttural force. “That is fool’s talk. In the past I was never everywhere +at once. When I was in Russia, I was not in Greece; when I was in +England, I was not in Portugal. I was always ‘vanished’ from one place +to another, yet the body lived.” + +“But your word was passed along the roads everywhere, my Ry. Your tongue +was not still from sunrise to the end of the day. Your call was heard +always, now here, now there, and the Romanys were one; they held +together.” + +The old man’s face darkened still more and his eyes flashed fire. “These +are lies you are telling, and they will choke you, my Romany ‘chal’. Am +I deceived, I who have known more liars than any man under the sky? Am +I to be fooled, who have seen so many fools in their folly? There is +roguery in you, or I have never seen roguery.” + +“I am a true Romany, my Ry,” the other answered with an air of courage +and a little defiance also. + +“You are a rogue and a liar, that is sure. These wailings are your own. +The Romany goes on his way as he has gone these hundreds of years. If I +am silent, my people will wait until I speak again; if they see me not +they will wait till I enter their camps once more. Why are you here? +Speak, rogue and liar.” The wrathful old man, sure in his reading of +the youth, towered above him commandingly. It almost seemed as though he +would do him bodily harm, so threatening was his attitude, but the young +Romany raised his head, and with a note of triumph said: + +“I have come for my own, as it is my right.” + +“What is your own?” + +“What has been yours until now, my Ry.” + +A grey look stole slowly up the strong face of the exiled leader, for +his mind suddenly read the truth behind the young man’s confident words. + +“What is mine is always mine,” he answered roughly. “Speak! What is it I +have that you come for?” + +The young man braced himself and put a hand upon his lips. “I come for +your daughter, my Ry.” The old man suddenly regained his composure, and +authority spoke in his bearing and his words. “What have you to do with +my daughter?” + +“She was married to me when I was seven years of age, as my Ry knows. +I am the son of Lemuel Fawe--Jethro Fawe is my name. For three thousand +pounds it was so arranged. On his death-bed three thousand pounds did +my father give to you for this betrothal. I was but a child, yet I +remembered, and my kinsmen remembered, for it is their honour also. I am +the son of Lemuel Fawe, the husband of Fleda, daughter of Gabriel Druse, +King and Duke and Earl of all the Romanys; and I come for my own.” + +Something very like a sigh of relief came from Gabriel Druse’s lips, but +the anger in his face did not pass, and a rigid pride made the distance +between them endless. He looked like a patriarch giving judgment as he +raised his hand and pointed with a menacing finger at Jethro Fawe, his +Romany subject--and, according to the laws of the Romany tribes, his +son-in-law. It did not matter that the girl--but three years of age when +it happened--had no memory of the day when the chiefs and great people +assembled outside the tent of Lemuel Fawe when he lay dying, and, by +the simple act of stepping over a branch of hazel, the two children were +married: if Romany law and custom were to abide, then the two now were +man and wife. Did not Lemuel Fawe, the old-time rival of Gabriel Druse +for the kinship of the Romanys, the claimant whose family had been +rulers of the Romanys for generations before the Druses gained +ascendancy--did not Fawe, dying, seek to secure for his son by marriage +what he had failed to get for himself by other means? + +All these things had at one time been part of Gabriel Druse’s covenant +of life, until one year in England, when Fleda, at twelve years of age, +was taken ill and would have died, but that a great lady descended upon +their camp, took the girl to her own house, and there nursed and tended +her, giving her the best medical aid the world could produce, so that +the girl lived, and with her passionate nature loved the Lady Barrowdale +as she might have loved her own mother, had that mother lived and she +had ever known her. And when the Lady Barrowdale sickened and died of +the same sickness which had nearly been her own death, the promise she +made then overrode all other covenants made for her. She had promised +the great lady who had given her own widowed, childless life for her +own, that she would not remain a Gipsy, that she would not marry a +Gipsy, but that if ever she gave herself to any man it would be to a +Gorgio, a European, who travelled oftenest “the open road” leading to +his own door. The years which had passed since those tragic days in +Gloucestershire had seen the shadows of that dark episode pass, but the +pledge had remained; and Gabriel Druse had kept his word to the dead, +because of the vow made to the woman who had given her life for the life +of a Romany lass. + +The Romany tribes of all the nations did not know why their Ry had +hidden himself in the New World; they did not know that the girl had +for ever forsworn their race, and would never become head of all the +Romanys, solving the problem of the rival dynasties by linking her life +with that of Jethro Fawe. But Jethro Fawe had come to claim his own. + +Now Gabriel Druse’s eyes followed his own menacing finger with sharp +insistence. In the past such a look had been in his eyes when he had +sentenced men to death. They had not died by the gallows or the sword or +the bullet, but they had died as commanded, and none had questioned his +decree. None asked where or how the thing was done when a fire sprang +up in a field, or a quarry, or on a lonely heath or hill-top, and on the +pyre were all the belongings of the condemned, being resolved into dust +as their owner had been made earth again. + +“Son of Lemuel Fawe,” the old man said, his voice rough with +authority, “but that you are of the Blood, you should die now for this +disobedience. When the time is fulfilled, I will return. Until then, my +daughter and I are as those who have no people. Begone! Nothing that is +here belongs to you. Begone, and come no more!” + +“I have come for my own--for my Romany ‘chi’, and I will not go without +her. I am blood of the Blood, and she is mine.” + +“You have not seen her,” said the old man craftily, and fighting hard +against the wrath consuming him, though he liked the young man’s spirit. +“She has changed. She is no longer Romany.” + +“I have seen her, and her beauty is like the rose and the palm.” + +“When have you seen her since the day before the tent of Lemuel Fawe now +seventeen years ago?” There was an uneasy note in the commanding tone. + +“I have seen her three times of late, and the last time I saw her was an +hour or so since, when she rode the Rapids of Carillon.” + +The old man started, his lips parted, but for a moment he did not speak. +At last words came. “The Rapids--speak. What have you heard, Jethro, son +of Lemuel?” + +“I did not hear, I saw her shoot the Rapids. I ran to follow. +At Carillon I saw her arrive. She was in the arms of a Gorgio of +Lebanon--Ingolby is his name.” + +A malediction burst from Gabriel Druse’s lips, words sharp and terrible +in their intensity. For the first time since they had met the young man +blanched. The savage was alive in the giant. + +“Speak. Tell all,” Druse said, with hands clenching. + +Swiftly the young man told all he had seen, and described how he had run +all the way--four miles--from Carillon, arriving before Fleda and her +Indian escort. + +He had hardly finished his tale, shrinking, as he told it, from the +fierceness of his chief, when a voice called from the direction of the +house. + +“Father--father,” it cried. + +A change passed over the old man’s face. It cleared as the face of the +sun clears when a cloud drives past and is gone. The transformation was +startling. Without further glance at his companion, he moved swiftly +towards the house. Once more Fleda’s voice called, and before he could +answer they were face to face. + +She stood radiant and elate, and seemed not apprehensive of disfavour or +reproach. Behind her was Tekewani and his braves. + +“You have heard?” she asked reading her father’s face. + +“I have heard. Have you no heart?” he answered. “If the Rapids had +drowned you!” + +She came close to him and ran her fingers through his beard tenderly. “I +was not born to be drowned,” she said softly. + +Now that she was a long distance from Ingolby, the fact that a man had +held her in his arms left no shadow on her face. Ingolby was now only +part of her triumph of the Rapids. She tossed a hand affectionately +towards Tekewani and his braves. + +“How!” said Gabriel Druse, and made a gesture of salutation to the +Indian chief. + +“How!” answered Tekewani, and raised his arm high in response. An +instant afterwards Tekewani and his followers were gone their ways. + +Suddenly Fleda’s eyes rested on the young Romany who was now standing +at a little distance away. Apprehension came to her face. She felt her +heart stand still and her hands grow cold, she knew not why. But she saw +that the man was a Romany. + +Her father turned sharply. A storm gathered in his face once more, and a +murderous look came into his eyes. + +“Who is he?” Fleda asked, scarce above a whisper, and she noted the +insistent, amorous look of the stranger. + +“He says he is your husband,” answered her father harshly. + + + + +CHAPTER V. “BY THE RIVER STARZKE... IT WAS SO DONE” + +There was absolute silence for a moment. The two men fixed their +gaze upon the girl. The fear which had first come to her face passed +suddenly, and a will, new-born and fearless, possessed it. Yesterday +this will had been only a trembling, undisciplined force, but since then +she had been passed through the tests which her own soul, or +Destiny, had set for her, and she had emerged a woman, confident and +understanding, if tremulous. In days gone by her adventurous, lonely +spirit had driven her to the prairies, savagely riding her Indian pony +through the streets of Manitou and out on the North Trail, or south +through coulees, or westward into the great woods, looking for what: she +never found. + +Her spirit was no longer the vague thing driving here and there with +pleasant torture. It had found freedom and light; what the Romany folk +call its own ‘tan’, its home, though it be but home of each day’s trek. +That wild spirit was now a force which understood itself in a new if +uncompleted way. It was a sword free from its scabbard. + +The adventure of the Carillon Rapids had been a kind of deliverance of +an unborn thing which, desiring the overworld, had found it. A few hours +ago the face of Ingolby, as she waked to consciousness in his arms, had +taught her something suddenly; and the face of Felix Marchand had taught +her even more. Something new and strange had happened to her, and her +father’s uncouth but piercing mind saw the change in her. Her quick, +fluttering moods, her careless, undirected energy, her wistful +waywardness, had of late troubled and vexed him, called on capacities in +him which he did not possess; but now he was suddenly aware that she had +emerged from passionate inconsistencies and in some good sense had found +herself. + +Like a wind she had swept out of childhood into a woman’s world where +the eyes saw things unseen before, a world how many thousand leagues in +the future; and here in a flash, also, she was swept like a wind back +again to a time before there was even conscious childhood--a dim, +distant time when she lived and ate and slept for ever in the field +or the vale, in the quarry, beside the hedge, or on the edge of +harvest-fields; when she was carried in strong arms, or sat in the +shelter of a man’s breast as a horse cantered down a glade, under an +ardent sky, amid blooms never seen since then. She was whisked back +into that distant, unreal world by the figure of a young Romany standing +beside a spruce-tree, and by her father’s voice which uttered the +startling words: “He says he is your husband!” + +Indignation and a bitter pride looked out of her eyes, as she heard the +preposterous claim--as though she were some wild dweller of the jungle +being called by her savage mate back to the lair she had forsaken. + +“Since when were you my husband?” she asked Jethro Fawe composedly. + +Her quiet scorn brought a quiver to his spirit; for he was of a people +to whom anger and passion were part of every relationship of life, its +stimulus and its recreation, its expression of the individual. + +His eyelids trembled, but he drew himself together. “Seventeen years +ago by the River Starzke in the Roumelian country, it was so done,” he +replied stubbornly. “You were sealed to me, as my Ry here knows, and as +you will remember, if you fix your mind upon it. It was beyond the city +of Starzke three leagues, under the brown scarp of the Dragbad Hills. +It was in the morning when the sun was by a quarter of its course. It +happened before my father’s tent, the tent of Lemuel Fawe. There you and +I were sealed before our Romany folk. For three thousand pounds which my +father gave to your father, you--” + +With a swift gesture she stopped him. Walking close up to him, she +looked him full in the eyes. There was a contemptuous pride in her face +which forced him to lower his eyelids sulkily. + +He would have understood a torrent of words--to him that would have +regulated the true value of the situation; but this disdainful composure +embarrassed him. He had come prepared for trouble and difficulty, but he +had rather more determination than most of his class and people, and his +spirit of adventure was high. Now that he had seen the girl who was +his own according to Romany law, he felt he had been a hundred times +justified in demanding her from her father, according to the pledge and +bond of so many years ago. He had nothing to lose but his life, and he +had risked that before. This old man, the head of the Romany folk, had +the bulk of the fortune which had been his own father’s and he had the +logic of lucre which is the most convincing of all logic. Yet with the +girl holding his eyes commandingly, he was conscious that he was asking +more than a Romany lass to share his ‘tan’, to go wandering from Romany +people to Romany people, king and queen of them all when Gabriel Druse +had passed away. Fleda Druse would be a queen of queens, but there was +that queenliness in her now which was not Romany--something which was +Gorgio, which was caste, which made a shivering distance between them. + +As he had spoken, she saw it all as he described it. Vaguely, cloudily, +the scene passed before her. Now and again in the passing years had +filmy impressions floated before her mind of a swift-flowing river and +high crags, and wooded hills and tents and horsemen and shouting, and +a lad that held her hand, and banners waved over their heads, and +galloping and shouting, and then a sudden quiet, and many men and women +gathered about a tent, and a wailing thereafter. After which, in +her faint remembrance, there seemed to fall a mist, and a space of +blankness, and then a starting up from a bed, and looking out of the +doors of a tent, where many people gathered about a great fire, whose +flames licked the heavens, and seemed to devour a Romany tent standing +alone with a Romany wagon full of its household things. + +As Jethro Fawe had spoken, the misty, elusive visions had become living +memories, and she knew that he had spoken the truth, and that these +fleeting things were pictures of her sealing to Jethro Fawe and the +death of Lemuel Fawe, and the burning of all that belonged to him in +that last ritual of Romany farewell to the dead. + +She knew now that she had been bargained for like any slave--for three +thousand pounds. How far away it all seemed, how barbaric and revolting! +Yet here it all was rolling up like a flood to her feet, to bear her +away into a past with its sordidness and vagabondage, however gilded and +graded above the lowest vagabondage. + +Here at Manitou she had tasted a free life which was not vagabondage, +the passion of the open road which was not an elaborate and furtive +evasion of the law and a defiance of social ostracism. Here she and her +father moved in an atmosphere of esteem touched by mystery, but not +by suspicion; here civilization in its most elastic organization and +flexible conventions, had laid its hold upon her, had done in this +expansive, loosely knitted social system what could never have been +accomplished in a great city--in London, Vienna, Rome, or New York. She +had had here the old free life of the road, so full of the scent of deep +woods--the song of rivers, the carol of birds, the murmuring of trees, +the mysterious and devout whisperings of the night, the happy communings +of stray peoples meeting and passing, the gaiety and gossip of the +market-place, the sound of church bells across a valley, the storms and +wild lightnings and rushing torrents, the cries of frightened beasts, +the wash and rush of rain, the sharp pain of frost, and the agonies of +some lost traveller rescued from the wide inclemency, the soft starlight +after, the balm of the purged air, and “rosy-fingered morn” blinking +blithely at the world. The old life of the open road she had had here +without anything of its shame, its stigma, and its separateness, its +discordance with the stationary forces of law and organized community. + +Wild moments there had been of late years when she longed for the faces +of Romany folk gathered about the fire, while some Romany ‘pral’ drew +all hearts with the violin or the dulcimer. When Ambrose or Gilderoy or +Christo responded to the pleadings of some sentimental lass, and sang to +the harpist’s strings: + + “Cold blows the wind over my true love, + Cold blow the drops of rain; + I never, never had but one sweetheart; + In the green wood he was slain,” + +and to cries of “Again! ‘Ay bor’! again!” the blackeyed lover, +hypnotizing himself into an ecstasy, poured out race and passion and war +with the law, in the true Gipsy rant which is sung from Transylvania to +Yetholm or Carnarvon or Vancouver: + + “Time was I went to my true love, + Time was she came to me--” + +The sharp passion which moved her now as she stood before Jethro Fawe +would not have been so acute yesterday; but to-day--she had lain in a +Gorgio’s arms to-day; and though he was nothing to her, he was still a +Gorgio of Gorgios; and this man before her--her husband--was at best but +a man of the hedges and the byre and the clay-pit, the quarry and the +wood; a nomad with no home, nothing that belonged to what she was now a +part of--organized, collective existence, the life of the house-dweller, +not the life of the ‘tan’, the ‘koppa’, and the ‘vellgouris’--the tent, +the blanket, and the fair. + +“I was never bought, and I was never sold,” she said to Jethro Fawe at +last “not for three thousand pounds, not in three thousand years. Look +at me well, and see whether you think it was so, or ever could be so. +Look at me well, Jethro Fawe.” + +“You are mine--it was so done seventeen years ago,” he answered, +defiantly and tenaciously. + +“I was three years old, seventeen years ago,” she returned quietly, +but her eyes forced his to look at her, when they turned away as though +their light hurt him. + +“It is no matter,” he rejoined. “It is the way of our people. It has +been so, and it will be so while there is a Romany tent standing or +moving on.” + +In his rage Gabriel Druse could keep silence no longer. + +“Rogue, what have you to say of such things?” he growled. “I am the head +of all. I pass the word, and things are so and so. By long and by last, +if I pass the word that you shall sleep the sleep, it will be so, my +Romany ‘chal’.” + +His daughter stretched out her hand to stop further speech from her +father--“Hush!” she said maliciously, “he has come a long way for +naught. It will be longer going back. Let him have his say. It is his +capital. He has only breath and beauty.” + +Jethro shrank from the sharp irony of her tongue as he would not have +shrunk before her father’s violence. Biting rejection was in her tones. +He knew dimly that the thing he shrank from belonged to nothing Romany +in her, but to that scornful pride of the Gorgios which had kept the +Romany outside the social pale. + +“Only breath and beauty!” she had said, and that she could laugh at his +handsomeness was certain proof that it was not wilfulness which rejected +his claims. Now there was rage in his heart greater than had been in +that of Gabriel Druse. + +“I have come a long way for a good thing,” he said with head thrown +back, “and if ‘breath and beauty’ is all I bring, yet that is because +what my father had in his purse has made my ‘Ry’ rich”--he flung a hand +out towards Gabriel Druse--“and because I keep to the open road as +my father did, true to my Romany blood. The wind and the sun and the +fatness of the field have made me what I am, and never in my life had I +an ache or a pain. You have the breath and the beauty, too, but you have +the gold also; and what you are and what you have is mine by the Romany +law, and it will come to me, by long and by last.” + +Fleda turned quietly to her father. “If it is true concerning the three +thousand pounds, give it to him and let him go. It will buy him what he +would never get by what he is.” + +The old man flashed a look of anger upon her. “He came empty, he shall +go empty. Against my commands, his insolence has brought him here. And +let him keep his eyes skinned, or he shall have no breath with which to +return. I am Gabriel Druse, lord over all the Romany people in all the +world from Teheran to San Diego, and across the seas and back again; and +my will shall be done.” + +He paused, reflecting for a moment, though his fingers opened and shut +in anger. “This much I will do,” he added. “When I return to my people +I will deal with this matter in the place where Lemuel Fawe died. By the +place called Starzke, I will come to reckoning, and then and then only.” + +“When?” asked the young man eagerly. + +Gabriel Druse’s eyes flashed. “When I return as I will to return.” Then +suddenly he added: “This much I will say, it shall be before--” + +The girl stopped him. “It shall be when it shall be. Am I a chattel to +be bartered by any will except my own? I will have naught to do with any +Romany law. Not by Starzke shall the matter be dealt with, but here by +the River Sagalac. This Romany has no claim upon me. My will is my own; +I myself and no other shall choose my husband, and he will never be a +Romany.” + +The young man’s eyes suddenly took on a dreaming, subtle look, +submerging the sulkiness which had filled him. Twice he essayed to +speak, but faltered. At last, with an air, he said: + +“For seventeen years I have kept the faith. I was sealed to you, and +I hold by the sealing. Wherever you went, it was known to me. In my +thoughts I followed. I read the Gorgio books; I made ready for this day. +I saw you as you were that day by Starzke, like the young bird in the +nest; and the thought of it was with me always. I knew that when I saw +you again the brown eyes would be browner, the words at the lips would +be sweeter--and so it is. All is as I dreamed for these long years. I +was ever faithful. By night and day I saw you as you were when Romany +law made you mine for ever. I looked forward to the day when I would +take you to my ‘tan’, and there we two would--” + +A flush sprang suddenly to Fleda Druse’s face, then slowly faded, +leaving it pale and indignant. Sharply she interrupted him. + +“They should have called you Ananias,” she said scornfully. “My father +has called you a rogue, and now I know you are one. I have not heard, +but I know--I know that you have had a hundred loves, and been true +to none. The red scarfs you have given to the Romany and the Gorgio +fly-aways would make a tent for all the Fawes in all the world.” + +At first he flung up his head in astonishment at her words, then, as she +proceeded, a flush swept across his face and his eyes filled up again +with sullenness. She had read the real truth concerning him. He had gone +too far. He had been convincing while he had said what was true, but her +instinct had suddenly told her what he was. Her perception had pierced +to the core of his life--a vagabondage, a little more gilded than was +common among his fellows, made possible by his position as the successor +to her father, and by the money of Lemuel Fawe which he had dissipated. + +He had come when all his gold was gone to do the one bold thing which +might at once restore his fortunes. He had brains, and he knew now that +his adventure was in grave peril. + +He laughed in his anger. “Is only the Gorgio to embrace the Romany lass? +One fondled mine to-day in his arms down there at Carillon. That’s the +way it goes! The old song tells the end of it: + + “‘But the Gorgio lies ‘neath the beech-wood tree; + He’ll broach my tan no more; + And my love she sleeps afar from me, + But near to the churchyard door. + + ‘Time was I went to my true love, + Time was she came to me--’” + +He got no farther. Gabriel Druse was on him, gripping his arms so tight +to his body that his swift motion to draw a weapon was frustrated. The +old man put out all his strength, a strength which in his younger days +was greater than any two men in any Romany camp, and the “breath and +beauty” of Jethro Fawe grew less and less. His face became purple and +distorted, his body convulsed, then limp, and presently he lay on the +ground with a knee on his chest and fierce, bony hands at his throat. + +“Don’t kill him--father, don’t!” cried the girl, laying restraining +hands on the old man’s shoulders. He withdrew his hands and released the +body from his knee. Jethro Fawe lay still. + +“Is he dead?” she whispered, awestricken. “Dead?” The old man felt the +breast of the unconscious man. He smiled grimly. “He is lucky not to be +dead.” + +“What shall we do?” the girl asked again with a white face. + +The old man stooped and lifted the unconscious form in his arms +as though it was that of a child. “Where are you going?” she asked +anxiously, as he moved away. + +“To the hut in the juniper wood,” he answered. She watched till he had +disappeared with his limp burden into the depths of the trees. Then she +turned and went slowly towards the house. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. THE UNGUARDED FIRES + +The public knew well that Ingolby had solved his biggest business +problem, because three offices of three railways--one big and two +small--suddenly became merged under his control. At which there was +rejoicing at Lebanon, followed by dismay and indignation at Manitou, for +one of the smaller merged railways had its offices there, and it was +now removed to Lebanon; while several of the staff, having proved +cantankerous, were promptly retired. As they were French Canadians, +their retirement became a public matter in Manitou and begot fresh +quarrel between the rival towns. + +Ingolby had made a tactical mistake in at once removing the office +of the merged railway from Manitou, and he saw it quickly. It was not +possible to put the matter right at once, however. + +There had already been collision between his own railway-men and the +rivermen from Manitou, whom Felix Marchand had bribed to cause trouble: +two Manitou men had been seriously hurt, and feeling ran high. Ingolby’s +eyes opened wide when he saw Marchand’s ugly game. He loathed the +dissolute fellow, but he realized now that his foe was a factor to be +reckoned with, for Marchand had plenty of money as well as a bad nature. +He saw he was in for a big fight with Manitou, and he had to think it +out. + +So this time he went pigeon-shooting. + +He got his pigeons, and the slaughter did him good. As though in keeping +with the situation, he shot on both sides of the Sagalac with great good +luck, and in the late afternoon sent his Indian lad on ahead to Lebanon +with the day’s spoil, while he loitered through the woods, a gun slung +in the hollow of his arm. He had walked many miles, but there was still +a spring to his step and he hummed an air with his shoulders thrown back +and his hat on the back of his head. He had had his shooting, he had +done his thinking, and he was pleased with himself. He had shaped his +homeward course so that it would bring him near to Gabriel Druse’s +house. + +He had seen Fleda only twice since the episode at Carillon, and met her +only once, and that was but for a moment at a Fete for the hospital +at Manitou, and with other people present--people who lay in wait for +crumbs of gossip. + +Since the running of the Rapids, Fleda had filled a larger place in the +eyes of Manitou and Lebanon. She had appealed to the Western mind: +she had done a brave physical thing. Wherever she went she was made +conscious of a new attitude towards herself, a more understanding +feeling. At the Fete when she and Ingolby met face to face, people +had immediately drawn round them curious and excited. These could not +understand why the two talked so little, and had such an every-day +manner with each other. Only old Mother Thibadeau, who had a heart +that sees, caught a look in Fleda’s eyes, a warm deepening of colour, a +sudden embarrassment, which she knew how to interpret. + +“See now, monseigneur,” she said to Monseigneur Lourde, nodding towards +Fleda and Ingolby, “there would be work here soon for you or Father +Bidette if they were not two heretics.” + +“Is she a heretic, then, madame?” asked the old white-headed priest, his +eyes quizzically following Fleda. + +“She is not a Catholic, and she must be a heretic, that’s certain,” was +the reply. + +“I’m not so sure,” mused the priest. Smiling, he raised his hat as he +caught Fleda’s eyes. He made as if to go towards her, but something in +her look held him back. He realized that Fleda did not wish to speak +with him, and that she was even hurrying away from her father, who +lumbered through the crowd as though unconscious of them all. + +Presently Monseigneur Lourde saw Fleda leave the Fete and take the road +towards home. There was a sense of excitement in her motions, and he +also had seen that tremulous, embarrassed look in her eyes. It puzzled +him. He did not connect it wholly with Ingolby as Madame Thibadeau +had done. He had lived so long among primitive people that he was more +accustomed to study faces than find the truth from words, and he had +always been conscious that this girl, educated and even intellectual, +was at heart as primitive as the wildest daughter of the tepees of the +North. There was also in her something of that mystery which belongs to +the universal itinerary--that cosmopolitan something which is the native +human. + +“She has far to go,” the priest said to himself as he turned to greet +Ingolby with a smile, bright and shy, but gravely reproachful, too. + +This happened on the day before the collision between the railway-men +and the river-drivers, and the old priest already knew what trouble was +afoot. + +There was little Felix Marchand did which was hidden from him. He made +his way to Ingolby to warn him. + +As Ingolby now walked in the woods towards Gabriel Druse’s house, he +recalled one striking phrase used by the aged priest in reference to the +closing of the railway offices. + +“When you strike your camp, put out the fires,” was the aphorism. + +Ingolby stopped humming to himself as the words came to his memory +again. Bending his head in thought for a moment, he stood still, +cogitating. + +“The dear old fellow was right,” he said presently aloud with uplifted +head. “I struck camp, but I didn’t put out the fires. There’s a lot of +that in life.” + +That is what had happened also to Gabriel Druse and his daughter. They +had struck camp, but had not put out the camp-fires. That which had +been done by the River Starzke came again in its appointed time. The +untended, unguarded fire may spread devastation and ruin, following with +angry freedom the marching feet of those who builded it. + +“Yes, you’ve got to put out your fires when you quit the bivouac,” + continued Ingolby aloud, as he gazed ahead of him through the opening +greenery, beyond which lay Gabriel Druse’s home. Where he was the +woods were thick, and here and there on either side it was almost +impenetrable. Few people ever came through this wood. It belonged in +greater part to Gabriel Druse, and in lesser part to the Hudson’s Bay +Company and the Government; and as the land was not valuable till it +was cleared, and there was plenty of prairie land to be had, from which +neither stick nor stump must be removed, these woods were very lonely. +Occasionally a trapper or a sportsman wandered through them, but just +here where Ingolby was none ever loitered. It was too thick for game, +there was no roadway leading anywhere, but only an overgrown path, used +in the old days by Indians. It was this path which Ingolby trod with +eager steps. + +Presently, as he stood still at sight of a ground-hog making for its +hiding-place, he saw a shadow fall across the light breaking through the +trees some distance in front of him. It was Fleda. She had not seen +him, and she came hurrying towards where he was with head bent, a +brightly-ribboned hat swinging in her fingers. She seemed part of the +woods, its wild simplicity, its depth, its colour-already Autumn was +crimsoning the leaves, touching them with amber tints, making the +woodland warm and kind. She wore a dress of golden brown which matched +her hair, and at her throat was a black velvet ribbon with a brooch of +antique paste which flashed the light like diamonds, but more softly. + +Suddenly, as she came on, she stopped and raised her head in a listening +attitude, her eyes opening wide as if listening, too--it was as though +she heard with them as well; alive to catch sounds which evaded capture. +She was like some creature of an ancient wood with its own secret and +immemorial history which the world could never know. There was that in +her face which did not belong to civilization or to that fighting world +of which Ingolby was so eager a factor. All the generations of the wood +and road, the combe and the river, the quarry and the secluded boscage +were in her look. There was that about her which was at once elusive and +primevally real. + +She was not of those who would be lost in the dust of futility. +Whatever she was, she was an independent atom in the mass of the world’s +breeding. Perhaps it was consciousness of the dynamic quality in the +girl, her nearness to naked nature, which made Madame Bulteel say that +she would “have a history.” + +If she got twisted as she came wayfaring, if her mind became possessed +of a false passion or purpose which she thought a true one, then tragedy +would await her. Yet in this quiet wood so near to the centuries that +were before Adam was, she looked like a spirit of comedy listening till +the Spirit of the Wood should break the silence. + +Ingolby felt his blood beat faster. He had a feeling that he was looking +at a wood-nymph who might flash out of his vision as a mere fantasy of +the mind. There shot through him the strangest feeling that if she were +his, he would be linked with something alien to the world of which he +was. + +Yet, recalling the day at Carillon when her cheek lay on his shoulder +and her warm breast was pressed unresistingly against him, as he lifted +her from his boat, he knew that he would have to make the hardest +fight of his life if he meant not to have more of her than this brief +acquaintance, so touched by sensation and romance. He was, maybe, +somewhat sensational; his career had, even in its present restricted +compass, been spectacular; but romance, with its reveries and its +moonshinings, its impulses and its blind adventures, had not been any +part of his existence. + +Hers were not the first red lips which, voluntarily or involuntarily, +had invited him; nor hers the first eyes which had sparkled to his +glances; and this triumphant Titian head of hers was not the only one he +had seen. + +When he had taken her hand at the Hospital Fete, her fingers, long and +warm and fine, had folded round his own with a singular confidence, +an involuntary enclosing friendliness; and now as he watched her +listening--did she hear something?--he saw her hand stretch out as +though commanding silence, the “hush!” of an alluring gesture. + +This assuredly was not the girl who had run the Carillon Rapids, for +that adventuress was full of a vital force like a man’s, and this girl +had the evanishing charm of a dryad. + +Suddenly a change passed over her. She was as one who had listened and +had caught the note of song for which she waited; but her face clouded, +and the rapt look gave way to an immediate distress. The fantasy of the +wood-nymph underwent translation in Ingolby’s mind; she was now like a +mortal, who, having been transformed, at immortal dictate was returning +to mortal state again. + +To heighten the illusion, he thought he heard faint singing in the +depths of the wood. He put his hands to his ears for a moment, and took +them away again to make sure that it was really singing and not his +imagination; and when he saw Fleda’s face again, there was fresh +evidence that his senses had not deceived him. After all, it was not +strange that some one should be singing in that deepest wood beyond. + +Now Fleda moved forward towards where he stood, quickening her footsteps +as though remembering something she must do. He stepped out into the +path and came to meet her. She heard his footsteps, saw him, and stood +still abruptly. + +She did not make a sound, but a hand went to her bosom quickly, as +though to quiet her heart or to steady herself. He had broken suddenly +upon her intent thoughts, he had startled her as she had been +seldom startled, for all her childhood training had been towards +self-possession before surprise and danger. + +“This is not your side of the Sagalac,” she said with a half-smile, +regaining composure. + +“That is in dispute,” he answered gaily. “I want to belong to both sides +of the Sagalac, I want both sides to belong to each other so that either +side shall not be my side or your side, or--” + +“Or Monsieur Felix Marchand’s side,” she interrupted meaningly. + +“Oh, he’s on the outside!” snapped the fighter, with a hardening mouth. + +She did not reply at once, but put her hat on, and tied the ribbons +loosely under her chin, looking thoughtfully into the distance. + +“Is that the Western slang for saying he belongs nowhere?” she asked. + +“Nowhere here,” he answered with a grim twist to the corner of his +mouth, his eyes half-closing with sulky meaning. “Won’t you sit down?” + he added quickly, in a more sprightly tone, for he saw she was about to +move on. He motioned towards a log lying beside the path and kicked some +branches out of the way. + +After slight hesitation she sat down, burying her shoes in the fallen +leaves. + +“You don’t like Felix Marchand?” she remarked presently. + +“No. Do you?” + +She met his eyes squarely--so squarely that his own rather lost their +courage, and he blinked more quickly than is needed with a healthy eye. +He had been audacious, but he had not surprised the garrison. + +“I have no deep reason for liking or disliking him, and you have,” she +answered firmly; yet her colour rose slightly, and he thought he had +never seen skin that looked so like velvet-creamy, pink velvet. + +“You seemed to think differently at Carillon not long ago,” he returned. + +“That was an accident,” she answered calmly. “He was drunk, and that is +for forgetting--always.” + +“Always! Have you seen many men drunk?” he asked quickly. He did not +mean to be quizzical, but his voice sounded so, and she detected it. + +“Yes, many,” she answered with a little ring of defiance in her +tone--“many, often.” + +“Where?” he queried recklessly. + +“In Lebanon,” she retorted. “In Lebanon--your side.” + +How different she seemed from a few moments ago when she stood listening +like a nymph for the song of the Spirit of the Wood! Now she was gay, +buoyant, with a chamois-like alertness and a beaming vigour. + +“Now I know what ‘blind drunk’ means,” he replied musingly. “In Manitou +when men get drunk, the people get astigmatism and can’t see the +tangledfooted stagger.” + +“It means that the pines of Manitou are straighter than the cedars of +Lebanon,” she remarked. + +“And the pines of Manitou have needles,” he rejoined, meaning to give +her the victory. + +“Is my tongue as sharp as that?” she asked, amusement in her eyes. + +“So sharp I can feel the point when I can’t see it,” he retorted. + +“I’m glad of that,” she replied with an affectation of conceit. “Of +course if you live in Lebanon you need surgery to make you feel a +point.” + +“I give in--you have me,” he remarked. + +“You give in to Manitou?” she asked provokingly. “Certainly not--only to +you. I said, ‘You have me.’” + +“Ah, you give in to that which won’t hurt you--” + +“Wouldn’t you hurt me?” he asked in a softening tone. + +“You only play with words,” she answered with sudden gravity. “Hurt you? +I owe you what I can not pay back. I owe you my life; but as nothing can +be given in exchange for a life, I cannot pay you.” + +“But like may be given for like,” he rejoined in a tone suddenly full of +meaning. + +“Again you are playing with words--and with me,” she answered brusquely, +and a little light of anger dawned in her eyes. Did he think that he +could say a thing of that sort to her--when he pleased? Did he think +that because he had done her a great service, he could say casually what +belonged only to the sacred moments of existence? She looked at him with +rising indignation, but there suddenly came to her the conviction that +he had not spoken with affronting gallantry, but that for him the moment +had a gravity not to be marred by the place or the circumstance. + +“I beg your pardon if I spoke hastily,” he answered presently. “Yet +there’s many a true word spoken in jest.” + +There was a moment’s silence. She realized that he was drawn to her, +and that the attraction was not alone due to his having saved her at +Carillon; that he was not taking advantage of the thing which must ever +be a bond between them, whatever came of life. When she had seen him at +the Hospital Fete, a feeling had rushed over her that he had got nearer +to her than any man had ever done. Then--even then, she felt the thing +which all lovers, actual, or in the making, feel--that they must do +something for the being who to them is more than all else and all +others. She was not in love with Ingolby. How could she be in love with +this man she had seen but a few times--this Gorgio. Why was it that even +as they talked together now, she felt the real, true distance between +them--of race, of origin, of history, of life, of circumstance? The hut +in the wood where Gabriel Druse had carried Jethro Fawe was not three +hundred yards away. + +She sighed, stirred, and a wild look came in her eyes--a look of +rebellion or of protest. Presently she recovered herself. She was a +creature of sudden moods. + +“What is it you want to do with Manitou and Lebanon?” she asked after a +pause in which the thoughts of both had travelled far. + +“You really wish to know--you don’t know?” he asked with sudden +intensity. + +She regarded him frankly, smiled, then she laughed outright, showing her +teeth very white and regular and handsome. The boyish eagerness of his +look, the whimsical twist of his mouth, which always showed when he was +keenly roused--as though everything that really meant anything was part +of a comet-like comedy--had caused her merriment. All the hidden things +in his face seemed to open out into a swift shrewdness and dry candour +when he was in his mood of “laying all the cards upon the table.” + +“I don’t know,” she answered quietly. “I have heard things, but I should +like to learn the truth from you. What are your plans?” + +Her eyes were burning with inquiry. She was suddenly brought to the +gateways of a new world. Plans--what had she or her people to do with +plans! What Romany ever constructed anything? What did the building of +a city or a country mean to a Romany ‘chal’ or a Romany ‘chi’, they who +lived from field to field, from common to moor, from barn to city +wall. A Romany tent or a Romany camp, with its families, was the whole +territory of their enterprise, designs and patriotism. They saw the +thousand places where cities could be made, and built their fires on the +sites of them, and camped a day, and were gone, leaving them waiting and +barren as before. They travelled through the new lands in America from +the fringe of the Arctic to Patagonia, but they raised no roof-tree; +they tilled no acre, opened no market, set up no tabernacle: they had +neither home nor country. + +Fleda was the heir of all this, the product of generations of such +vagabondage. Had the last few years given her the civic sense, the home +sense? From the influence of the Englishwoman, who had made her forsake +the Romany life, had there come habits of mind in tune with the women +of the Sagalac, who were helping to build so much more than their homes? +Since the incident of the Carillon Rapids she had changed, but what the +change meant was yet in her unopened Book of Revelations. Yet something +stirred in her which she had never felt before. She had come of a race +of wayfarers, but the spirit of the builders touched her now. + +“What are my plans?” Ingolby drew along breath of satisfaction. “Well, +just here where we are will be seen a great thing. There’s the Yukon +and all its gold; there’s the Peace River country and all its unploughed +wheat-fields; there’s the whole valley of the Sagalac, which alone can +maintain twenty millions of people; there’s the East and the British +people overseas who must have bread; there’s China and Japan going to +give up rice, and eat the wheaten loaf; there’s the U. S. A. with +its hundred millions of people--it’ll be that in a few years--and its +exhausted wheat-fields; and here, right here, is the bread-basket for +all the hungry peoples; and Manitou and Lebanon are the centre of it. +They will be the distributing centre. I want to see the base laid right. +I’m not going to stay here till it all happens, but I want to plan +it all so that it will happen, then I’ll go on and do a bigger thing +somewhere else. These two towns have got to come together; they must +play one big game. I want to lay the wires for it. That’s why I’ve got +capitalists to start paper-works, engineering works, a foundry, and a +sash-door-and-blind factory--just the beginning. That’s why I’ve put two +factories on one side of the river and two on the other.” + +“Was it really you who started those factories?” she asked +incredulously. + +“Of course! It was part of my plans. I wasn’t foolish enough to build +and run them myself. I looked for the right people that had the money +and the brains, and I let them sweat--let them sweat it out. I’m not a +manufacturer; I’m an inventor and a builder. I built the bridge over the +river; and--” + +She nodded. “Yes, the bridge is good; but they say you are a schemer,” + she added suggestively. + +“Certainly. But if I have schemes which’ll do good, I ought to be +supported. I don’t mind what they call me, so long as they don’t call me +too late for dinner.” + +They both laughed. It was seldom he talked like this, and never had he +talked to such a listener before. “The merging of the three railways +was a good scheme, and I was the schemer,” he continued. “It might mean +monopoly, but it won’t work out that way. It will simply concentrate +energy and: save elbow-grease. It will set free capital and capacity for +other things.” + +“They say there will be fewer men at work, not only in the offices but +on the whole railway system, and they don’t like that in Manitou--ah, +no, they don’t!” she urged. + +“They’re right in a sense,” he answered. “But the men will be employed +at other things, which won’t represent waste and capital overlapping. +Overlapping capital hits everybody in the end. But who says all that? +Who raises the cry of ‘wolf’ in Manitou?” + +“A good many people say it now,” she answered, “but I think Felix +Marchand said it first. He is against you, and he is dangerous.” + +He shrugged a shoulder. “Oh, if any fool said it, it would be the same!” + he answered. “That’s a fire easily lighted; though it sometimes burns +long and hard.” He frowned, and a fighting look came into his face. + +“Then you know all that is working against you in Manitou--working +harder than ever before?” + +“I think I do, but I probably don’t know all. Have you any special news +about it?” + +“Felix Marchand is spending money among the men. They are going on +strike on your railways and in the mills.” + +“What mills--in Manitou?” he asked abruptly. “In both towns.” + +He laughed harshly. “That’s a tall order,” he said sharply. “Both +towns--I don’t think so, not yet.” + +“A sympathetic strike is what he calls it,” she rejoined. + +“Yes, a row over some imagined grievance on the railway, and all the men +in all the factories to strike--that’s the new game of the modern +labour agitator! Marchand has been travelling in France,” he added +disdainfully, “but he has brought his goods to the wrong shop. What do +the priests--what does Monseigneur Lourde say to it all?” + +“I am not a Catholic,” she replied gravely. “I’ve heard, though, that +Monseigneur is trying to stop the trouble. But--” She paused. + +“Yes--but?” he asked. “What were you going to say?” + +“But there are many roughs in Manitou, and Felix Marchand makes friends +with them. I don’t think the priests will be able to help much in the +end, and if it is to be Manitou against Lebanon, you can’t expect a +great deal.” + +“I never expect more than I get--generally less,” he answered grimly; +and he moved the gun about on his knees restlessly, fingering the lock +and the trigger softly. + +“I am sure Felix Marchand means you harm,” she persisted. + +“Personal harm?” + +“Yes.” + +He laughed sarcastically again. “We are not in Bulgaria or Sicily,” he +rejoined, his jaw hardening; “and I can take care of myself. What makes +you say he means personal harm? Have you heard anything?” + +“No, nothing, but I feel it is so. That day at the Hospital Fete he +looked at you in a way that told me. I think such instincts are given to +some people and some races. You read books--I read people. I wanted +to warn you, and I do so. This has been lucky in a way, this meeting. +Please don’t treat what I’ve said lightly. Your plans are in danger and +you also.” Was the psychic and fortune-telling instinct of the Romany +alive in her and working involuntarily, doing that faithfully which her +people did so faithlessly? The darkness which comes from intense feeling +had gathered underneath her eyes, and gave them a look of pensiveness +not in keeping with the glow of her perfect health, the velvet of her +cheek. + +“Would you mind telling me where you got your information?” he asked +presently. + +“My father heard here and there, and I, also, and some I got from old +Madame Thibadeau, who is a friend of mine. I talk with her more than +with any one else in Manitou. First she taught me how to crochet, but +she teaches me many other things, too.” + +“I know the old girl by sight. She is a character. She would know a lot, +that woman.” + +He paused, seemed about to speak, hesitated, then after a moment hastily +said: “A minute ago you spoke of having the instinct of your race, or +something like that. What is your race? Is it Irish, or--do you mind my +asking? Your English is perfect, but there is something--something--” + +She turned away her head, a flush spreading over her face. She was +unprepared for the question. No one had ever asked it directly of her +since they had come to Manitou. Whatever speculation there had been, she +had never been obliged to tell any one of what race she was. She spoke +English with no perceptible accent, as she spoke Spanish, Italian, +French, Hungarian and Greek; and there was nothing in her speech marking +her as different from the ordinary Western woman. Certainly she would +have been considered pure English among the polyglot population of +Manitou. + +What must she say? What was it her duty to say? She was living the life +of a British woman, she was as much a Gorgio in her daily existence as +this man be side her. Manitou was as much home--nay, it was a thousand +times more home--than the shifting habitat of the days when they +wandered from the Caspians to John o’ Groat’s. + +For years all traces of the past had been removed as completely as +though the tide had washed over them; for years it had been so, until +the fateful day when she ran the Carillon Rapids. That day saw her whole +horizon alter; that day saw this man beside her enter on the stage of +her life. And on that very day, also, came Jethro Fawe out of the Past +and demanded her return. + +That had been a day of Destiny. The old, panting, unrealized, +tempestuous longing was gone. She was as one who saw danger and faced +it, who had a fight to make and would make it. + +What would happen if she told this man that she was a Gipsy--the +daughter of a Gipsy ruler, which was no more than being head of a clan +of the world’s transients, the leader of the world’s nomads. Money--her +father had that, at least--much money; got in ways that could not bear +the light at times, yet, as the world counts things, not dishonestly; +for more than one great minister in a notable country in Europe had +commissioned him, more than one ruler and crowned head had used him +when “there was trouble in the Balkans,” or the “sick man of Europe” + was worse, or the Russian Bear came prowling. His service had ever +been secret service, when he lived the life of the caravan and the open +highway. He had no stable place among the men of all nations, and yet +secret rites and mysteries and a language which was known from Bokhara +to Wandsworth, and from Waikiki to Valparaiso, gave him dignity of a +kind, clothed him with importance. + +Yet she wanted to tell this man beside her the whole truth, and see +what he would do. Would he turn his face away in disgust? What had she +a right to tell? She knew well that her father would wish her to keep +to that secrecy which so far had sheltered them--at least until Jethro +Fawe’s coming. + +At last she turned and looked him in the eyes, the flush gone from her +face. + +“I’m not Irish--do I look Irish?” she asked quietly, though her heart +was beating unevenly. + +“You look more Irish than anything else, except, maybe, Slav or +Hungarian--or Gipsy,” he said admiringly and unwittingly. + +“I have Gipsy blood in me,” she answered slowly, “but no Irish or +Hungarian blood.” + +“Gipsy--is that so?” he said spontaneously, as she watched him so +intently that the pulses throbbed at her temples. + +A short time ago Fleda might have announced her origin defiantly, now +her courage failed her. She did not wish him to be prejudiced against +her. + +“Well, well,” he added, “I only just guessed at it, because there’s +something unusual and strong in you, not because your eyes are so dark +and your hair so brown.” + +“Not because of my ‘wild beauty’--I thought you were going to say that,” + she added ironically and a little defiantly. “I got some verses by post +the other day from one of your friends in Lebanon--a stock-rider I think +he was, and they said I had a ‘wild beauty’ and a ‘savage sweetness.’” + +He laughed, yet he suddenly saw her sensitive vigilance, and by instinct +he felt that she was watching for some sign of shock or disdain on his +part; yet in truth he cared no more whether she had Gipsy blood in her +than he would have done if she had said she was a daughter of the Czar. + +“Men do write that kind of thing,” he added cheerfully, “but it’s quite +harmless. There was a disease at college we called adjectivitis. Your +poet friend had it. He could have left out the ‘wild’ and ‘savage’ and +he’d have been pleasant, and truthful too--no, I apologize.” + +He had seen her face darken under the compliment, and he hastened to put +it right. + +“I loved a Gipsy once,” he added whimsically to divert attention from +his mistake, and with so genuine a sympathy in his voice that she was +disarmed. “I was ten and she was fifty at least. Oh, a wonderful woman! +I had a boy friend, a fat, happy, little joker he was; his name was +Charley Long. Well, this woman was his aunt. When she moved through +the town people looked twice. She was tall and splendidly made, and her +manner--oh, as if she owned the place. She did own a lot--she had more +money than any one else thereabouts, anyhow. It was the tallest kind of +a holiday when Charley and I walked out to the big white house-golly, +but it was white--to visit her! We didn’t eat much the day before we +went to see her; and we didn’t eat much the day after, either. She used +to feed us--I wish I could eat like that now! I can see her brown eyes +following us about, full of fire, but soft and kind, too. She had a +great temper, they said, but everybody liked her, and some loved her. +She’d had one girl, but she died of consumption, got camping out in +bad weather. Aunt Cynthy--that was what we called her, her name being +Cynthia--never got over her girl’s death. She blamed herself for it. She +had had those fits of going back to the open-for weeks at a time. The +girl oughtn’t to have been taken to camp out. She was never strong, and +it was the wrong place and the wrong time of year--all right in August +and all wrong in October. + +“Well, always after her girl’s death Aunt Cynthy was as I knew her, +being good to us youngsters as no one else ever was, or could be. Her +tea-table was a sight; and the rest of the meals were banquets. The +first time I ever ate hedgehog was at her place. A little while ago, +just before you came, I thought of her. A hedgehog crossed the path +here, and it brought those days back to me--Charley Long and Aunt Cynthy +and all. Yes, the first time I ever ate hedgehog; was in Aunt Cynthy’s +house. Hi-yi, as old Tekewani says, but it was good!” + +“What is the Romany word for hedgehog?” Fleda asked in a low tone. + +“Hotchewitchi,” he replied instantly. “That’s right, isn’t it?” + +“Yes, it is right,” she answered, and her eyes had a far-away look, but +there was a kind of trouble at her mouth. + +“Do you speak Romany?” she added a little breathlessly. + +“No, no. I only picked up words I heard Aunt Cynthy use now and then +when she was in the mood.” + +“What was the history of Aunt Cynthy?” + +“I only know what Charley Long told me. Aunt Cynthy was the daughter +of a Gipsy--they say the only Gipsy in that part of the country at +the time--who used to buy and sell horses, and travel in a big van +as comfortable as a house. The old man suddenly died on the farm of +Charley’s uncle. In a month the uncle married the girl. She brought him +thirty thousand dollars.” + +Fleda knew that this man who had fired her spirit for the first time had +told his childhood story to show her the view he took of her origin; but +she did not like him less for that, though she seemed to feel a chasm +between them still. The new things moving in her were like breezes that +stir the trees, not like the wind turning the windmill which grinds the +corn. She had scarcely yet begun to grind the corn of life. + +She did not know where she was going, what she would find, or where the +new trail would lead her. The Past dogged her footsteps, hung round her +like the folds of a garment. Even as she rejected it, it asserted its +power, troubled her, angered her, humiliated her, called to her. + +She was glad of this meeting with Ingolby. It had helped her. She had +set out to do a thing she dreaded, and it was easier now than it would +have been if they had not met. She had been on her way to the Hut in the +Wood, and now the dread of the visit to Jethro Fawe had diminished. The +last voice she would hear before she entered Jethro Fawe’s prison was +that of the man who represented to her, however vaguely, the life which +must be her future--the settled life, the life of Society and not of the +Saracen. + +After he had told his boyhood story they sat in silence for a moment +or two, then she rose, and, turning to him, was about to speak. At that +instant there came distinctly through the wood a faint, trilling sound. +Her face paled a little, and the words died upon her lips. Ingolby, +having turned his head as though to listen, did not see the change in +her face, and she quickly regained her self-control. + +“I heard that sound before,” he said, “and I thought from your look you +heard it, too. It’s funny. It is singing, isn’t it?” + +“Yes, it’s singing,” she answered. + +“Who is it--some of the heathen from the Reservation?” + +“Yes, some of the heathen,” she answered. + +“Has Tekewani got a lodge about here?” + +“He had one here in the old days.” + +“And his people go to it still-was that where you were going when I +broke in on you?” + +“Yes, I was going there. I am a heathen, also, you know.” + +“Well, I’ll be a heathen, too, if you’ll show me how; if you think I’d +pass for one. I’ve done a lot of heathen things in my time.” + +She gave him her hand to say good-bye. “Mayn’t I go with you?” he asked. + +“‘I must finish my journey alone,’” she answered slowly, repeating a +line from the first English book she had ever read. + +“That’s English enough,” he responded with a laugh. “Well, if I mustn’t +go with you I mustn’t, but my respects to Robinson Crusoe.” He slung +the gun into the hollow of his arm. “I’d like much to go with you,” he +urged. + +“Not to-day,” she answered firmly. + +Again the voice came through the woods, a little louder now. + +“It sounds like a call,” he remarked. + +“It is a call,” she answered--“the call of the heathen.” + +An instant after she had gone on, with a look half-smiling, +half-forbidding, thrown over her shoulder at him. + +“I’ve a notion to follow her,” he said eagerly, and he took a step in +her direction. + +Suddenly she turned and came back to him. “Your plans are in +danger--don’t forget Felix Marchand,” she said, and then turned from him +again. + +“Oh, I’ll not forget,” he answered, and waved his cap after her. “No, +I’ll not forget monsieur,” he added sharply, and he stepped out with a +light of battle in his eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE + +As Fleda wound her way through the deeper wood, remembering the things +which had just been said between herself and Ingolby, the colour +came and went in her face. To no man had she ever talked so long and +intimately, not even in the far-off days when she lived the Romany life. + +Then, as daughter of the head of all the Romanys, she had her place +apart; and the Romany lads had been few who had talked with her even as +a child. Her father had jealously guarded her until the time when she +fell under the spell and influence of Lady Barrowdale. Here, by the +Sagalac, she had moved among this polyglot people with an assurance of +her own separateness which was the position of every girl in the West, +but developed in her own case to the nth degree. + +Never before had she come so near--not to a man, but to what concerned +a man; and never had a man come so near to her or what concerned her +inmost life. It was not a question of opportunity or temptation--these +always attend the footsteps of those who would adventure; but for long +she had fenced herself round with restrictions of her own making; and +the secrecy and strangeness of her father’s course had made this not +only possible, but in a sense imperative. + +The end to that had come. Gaiety, daring, passion, elation, depression, +were alive in her now, and in a sense had found an outlet in a handful +of days--indeed since the day when Jethro Fawe and Max Ingolby had come +into her life, each in his own way, for good or for evil. If Ingolby +came for good, then Jethro Fawe came for evil. She would have revolted +at the suggestion that Jethro Fawe came for good. + +Yet, during the last few days, she had been drawn again and again +towards the hut in the wood. It was as though a power stronger than +herself had ordered her not to wander far from where the Romany claimant +of herself awaited his fate. As though Jethro knew she was drawn towards +him, he had sung the Gipsy songs which she and Ingolby had heard in the +distance. He might have shouted for relief in the hope of attracting the +attention of some passer-by, and so found release and brought confusion +and perhaps punishment to Gabriel Druse; but that was not possible to +him. First and last he was a Romany, good or bad; and it was his duty to +obey his Ry of Rys, the only rule which the Romany acknowledged. “Though +he slay me, yet will I trust him,” he would have said, if he had ever +heard the phrase; but in his stubborn way he made the meaning of the +phrase the pivot of his own action. If he could but see Fleda face to +face, he made no doubt that something would accrue to his advantage. He +would not give up the hunt without a struggle. + +Twice a day Gabriel Druse had placed food and water inside the door of +the hut and locked him fast again, but had not spoken to him save once, +and then but to say that his fate had not yet been determined. Jethro’s +reply had been that he was in no haste, that he could wait for what he +came to get; that it was his own--‘ay bor’! it was his own, and God or +devil could not prevent the thing meant to be from the beginning of the +world. + +He did not hear Fleda approach the hut; he was singing to himself a song +he had learned in Montenegro. There the Romany was held in high regard, +because of the help his own father had given to the Montenegrin +people, fighting for their independence, by admirable weapons of Gipsy +workmanship, setting all the Gipsies in that part of the Balkans at work +to supply them. + +This was the song he sang + + “He gave his soul for a thousand days, + The sun was his in the sky, + His feet were on the neck of the world + He loved his Romany chi. + + “He sold his soul for a thousand days, + By her side to walk, in her arms to lie; + His soul might burn, but her lips were his, + And the heart of his Romany chi.” + +He repeated the last two lines into a rising note of exultation: + + “His soul might burn, but her lips were his, + And the heart of his Romany chi.” + +The key suddenly turned in the lock, the door opened on the last words +of the refrain, and, without hesitation, Fleda stepped inside, closing +the door behind her. + +“‘Mi Duvel’, but who would think--ah, did you hear me call then?” he +asked, rising from the plank couch where he had been sitting. He showed +his teeth in a smile which was meant to be a welcome, but it had an +involuntary malice. + +“I heard you singing,” she answered composedly, “but I do not come here +because I’m called.” + +“But I do,” he rejoined. “You called me from over the seas, and I came. +I was in the Balkans; there was trouble--Servia, Montenegro, and Austria +were rattling the fire-irons again, and there was I as my father was +before me. But I heard you calling, and I came.” + +“You never heard me call, Jethro Fawe,” she returned quietly. “My +calling of you is as silent as the singing of the stars, where you are +concerned. And the stars do not sing.” + +“But the stars do sing, and you call just the same,” he responded with +a twist to his moustache, and posing against the wall. “I’ve heard +the stars sing. What’s the noise they make in the heart, if it’s not +singing? You don’t hear with the ears only. The heart hears. It’s only +a manner of speaking, this talk about the senses. One sense can do the +same as all can do and a Romany ought to know how to use one or all. +When your heart called I heard it, and across the seas I came. And by +long and by last, but I was right in coming.” + +His impudence at once irritated her and provoked her admiration. She +knew by instinct how false he was, and how a lie was as common with him +as the truth; but his submission to her father, his indifference to his +imprisonment, forced her interest, even as she was humiliated by the +fact that he was sib to her, bound by ties of clan and blood apart from +his monstrous claim of marriage. He was indeed such a man as a brainless +or sensual woman could yield to with ease. He had an insinuating animal +grace, that physical handsomeness which marks so many of the Tziganies +who fill the red coats of a Gipsy musical sextette! He was not +distinguished, yet there was an intelligence in his face, a daring at +his lips and chin, which, in the discipline and conventions of +organized society, would have made him superior. Now, with all his +sleek handsomeness, he looked a cross between a splendid peasant and a +chevalier of industry. + +She compared him instinctively with Ingolby the Gorgio, as she looked at +him. What was it made the difference between the two? It was the world +in a man--personality, knowledge of life, the culture of the thousand +things which make up civilization: it was personality got from life and +power in contest with the ordered world. + +Yet was this so after all? Tekewani was only an Indian brave who lived +on the bounty of a government, and yet he had presence and an air of +command. Tekewani had been a nomad; he had not been bound to one place, +settled in one city, held subservient to one flag. But, no, she was +wrong: Tekewani had been the servant and child of a system which was as +fixed and historical as that of Russia or Spain. He belonged to a people +who had traditions and laws of their own; organized communities moving +here and there, but carrying with them their system, their laws and +their national feeling. + +There was the difference. This Romany was the child of irresponsibility, +the being that fed upon life, that did not feed life; that left one +place in the world to escape into another; that squeezed one day dry, +threw it away, and then went seeking another day to bleed; for ever +fleeing from yesterday, and using to-day only as a camping-ground. +Suddenly, however, she came to a stop in her reflections. Her father, +Gabriel Druse, was of the same race as this man, the same unorganized, +irresponsible, useless race, with no weight of civic or social duty upon +its shoulders--where did he stand? Was he no better than such as Jethro +Fawe? Was he inferior to such as Ingolby, or even Tekewani? + +She realized that in her father’s face there was the look of one who had +no place in the ambitious designs of men, who was not a builder, but +a wayfarer. She had seen the look often of late, and had never read +it until now, when Jethro Fawe stared at her with the boldness of +possession, with the insolence of a soul of lust which had had its +victories. + +She read his look, and while one part of her shrank from him as +from some noisome thing, another part of her--to her dismay and +anger--understood him, and did not resent him. It was the Past dragging +at her life. It was inherited predisposition, the unregulated passions +of her forebears, the mating of the fields, the generated dominance of +the body, which was not to be commanded into obscurity, but must taunt +and tempt her while her soul sickened. She put a hand on herself. She +must make this man realize once and for all that they were as far apart +as Adam and Cagliostro. “I never called to you,” she said at last. +“I did not know of your existence, and, if I had, then I certainly +shouldn’t have called.” + +“The Gorgios have taken away your mind, or you’d understand,” he replied +coolly. “Your soul calls and those that understand come. It isn’t that +you know who hears or who is coming--till he comes.” + +“A call to all creation!” she answered disdainfully. “Do you think you +can impress me by saying things like that?” + +“Why not? It’s true. Wherever you went in all these years the memory of +you kept calling me, my little ‘rinkne rakli’--my pretty little girl, +made mine by the River Starzke over in the Roumelian country.” + +“You heard what my father said--” + +“I heard what the Duke Gabriel said--‘Mi Duvel’, I heard enough what he +said, and I felt enough what he did!” + +He laughed, and began to roll a cigarette mechanically, keeping his eyes +fixed on her, however. + +“You heard what my father said and what I said, and you will learn that +it is true, if you live long enough,” she added meaningly. + +A look of startled perception flashed into his eyes. “If I live long +enough, I’ll turn you, my mad wife, into my Romany queen and the +blessing of my ‘tan’.” + +“Don’t mistake what I mean,” she urged. “I shall never be ruler of the +Romanys. I shall never hear--” + +“You’ll hear the bosh played-fiddle, they call it in these heathen +places--at your second wedding with Jethro Fawe,” he rejoined +insolently, lighting his cigarette. “Home you’ll come with me soon--‘ay +bor’!” + +“Listen to me,” she answered with anger tingling in every nerve and +fibre. “I come of your race, I was what you are, a child of the hedge +and the wood and the road; but that is all done. Home, you say! Home--in +a tent by the roadside or--” + +“As your mother lived--where you were bornwell, well, but here’s a +Romany lass that’s forgot her cradle!” + +“I have forgotten nothing. I have only moved on. I have only seen that +there is a better road to walk than that where people, always looking +behind lest they be followed, and always looking in front to find +refuge, drop the patrin in the dust or the grass or the bushes for +others to follow after--always going on and on because they dare not go +back.” + +Suddenly he threw his cigarette on the ground, and put his heel upon it +in fury real or assumed. “Great Heaven and Hell,” he exclaimed, “here’s +a Romany has sold her blood to the devil! And this is the daughter of +Gabriel Druse, King and Duke of all the Romanys, him with ancestor King +Panuel, Duke of Little Egypt, who had Sigismund, and Charles the Great, +and all the kings for friends. By long and by last, but this is a tale +to tell to the Romanys of the world!” For reply she went to the door +and opened it wide. “Then go and tell it, Jethro Fawe, to all the world. +Tell them I am the renegade daughter of Gabriel Druse, ruler of them +all. Tell them there is no fault in him, and that he will return to +his own people in his own time, but that I, Fleda Druse, will never +return--never! Now, get you gone from here.” + +The sunlight broke through the trees, and fell in a narrow path of light +upon the doorway. A little grey bird fluttered into the radiance +and came tripping across the threshold; a whippoorwill called in the +ashtrees; and the sweet smell of the thick woodland, of the bracken and +fern, crept into the room. The balm of a perfect evening of Summer was +upon the face of nature. The world seemed untroubled and serene; but in +this hidden but two stormy spirits broke the peace to which the place +and the time were all entitled. + +After Fleda’s scornful words of release and dismissal, Jethro stood for +a moment confounded and dismayed. He had not reckoned with this. During +their talk it had come to him how simple it would be to overpower +any check to his exit, how devilishly easy to put the girl at a +disadvantage; but he drove the thought from him. In the first place, +he was by no means sure that escape was what he wanted--not yet, at any +rate; in the second place, if Gabriel Druse passed the word along the +subterranean wires of the Romany world that Jethro Fawe should vanish, +he would not long cumber the ground. + +Yet it was not cowardice or fear of consequences which had held him +back; it was a staggering admiration for this girl who had been given +to him in marriage so many years ago. He had fared far and wide in his +adventures and amours when he had gold in plenty; and he had swung more +than one Gorgio woman in the wild dance of sentiment, dazzling them by +the splendour of his passion. The fire gleaming in his dark eyes lighted +a face which would have made memorable a picture by Guido. He had +fared far and wide, but he had never seen a woman who had seized his +imagination as this girl was doing; who roused in him, not the old +hot desire, but the hungry will to have a ‘tan’ of his own, and go +travelling down the world with one who alone could satisfy him for all +his days. + +As he sat in this improvised woodland prison he had had visions of a +hundred glades and valleys through which he had passed in days gone +by--in England, in Spain, in Italy, in Roumania, in Austria, in +Australia, in India--where his camp-fires had burned. In his visions he +had seen her--Fleda Fawe, not Fleda Druse--laying the cloth and bringing +out the silver cups, or stretching the Turkey rugs upon the ground to +make a couch for two bright-eyed lovers to whom the night was as the +day, radiant and full of joy. He had shut his eyes and beheld hillsides +where abandoned castles stood, and the fox and the squirrel and the hawk +gave shade and welcome to the dusty pilgrims of the road; or, when the +wild winds blew in winter, gave shelter and wood for the fire, and a +sense of homeliness among the companionable trees. + +He had seen himself and this beautiful Romany ‘chi’ at some village +fair, while the lesser Romany folk told fortunes, or bought and sold +horses, and the lesser still tinkered or worked in gold or brass; he had +seen them both in a great wagon with bright furnishings and brass-girt +harness on their horses, lording it over all, rich, dominant and +admired. In his visions he had even seen a Romany babe carried in his +arms to a Christian church and there baptized in grandeur as became the +child of the head of the people. His imagination had also seen his own +tombstone in some Christian churchyard near to the church porch, where +he would not be lonely when he was dead, but could hear the gossip of +the people as they went in and out of church; and on the tombstone some +such inscription as he had seen once at Pforzheim--“To the high-born +Lord Johann, Earl of Little Egypt, to whose soul God be gracious and +merciful.” + +To be sure, it was a strange thing for a Romany to be buried in a +Gorgio churchyard; but it was what had chanced to many great men of the +Romanys, such as the high-born Lord Panuel at Steinbrock, and Peter of +Kleinschild at Mantua--all of whom had great emblazoned monuments +in Christian churches, just to show that in all-levelling death they +condescended from high estate to mingle their ashes with the dust of the +Gorgio. + +He had sought out his chieftain here in the new world in a spirit of +adventure, cupidity and desire. He had come like one who betrays, but he +acknowledged to a higher force than his own and to superior rights when +Gabriel Druse’s strong arm brought him low; and, waking to life and +consciousness again, he was aware that another force also had levelled +him to the earth. That force was this woman’s spirit which now gave him +his freedom so scornfully; who bade him begone and tell their people +everywhere that she was no longer a Romany, while she would go, no +doubt--a thousand times without doubt unless he prevented it--to the +swaggering Gorgio who had saved her on the Sagalac. + +She stood waiting for him to go, as though he could not refuse his +freedom. As a bone is tossed to a dog, she gave it to him. + +“You have no right to set me free,” he said coolly now. “I am not your +prisoner. You tell me to take that word to the Romany people--that you +leave them for ever. I will not do it. You are a Romany, and a Romany +you must stay. You belong nowhere else. If you married a Gorgio, you +would still sigh for the camp beneath the stars, for the tambourine and +the dance--” + +“And the fortune-telling,” she interjected sharply, “and the snail-soup, +and the dirty blanket under the hedge, and the constable on the road +behind, always just behind, watching, waiting, and--” + +“The hedge is as clean as the dirty houses where the low-class Gorgios +sleep. In faith, you are a long way from the River Starzke!” he added. +“But you are my mad wife, and I must wait till you’ve got sense again.” + +He sat down on the plank couch, and began to roll a cigarette once more. + +“You come fitted out like a Gorgio lass now, and you look like a +Gorgio countess, and you have the manners of an Archduchess; but that’s +nothing; it will peel off like a blister when it’s pricked. Underneath +is the Romany. It’s there, and it will show red and angry when we’ve +stripped off the Gorgio. It’s the way with a woman, always acting, +always imagining herself something else than what she is--if she’s a +beggar fancying herself a princess; if she’s a princess fancying herself +a flower-girl. ‘Mi Duvel’, but I know you all!” + +Every word he said went home. She knew that there was truth in what +he said, and that beneath all was the Romany blood; but she meant to +conquer it. She had made her vow to one in England that she loved, and +she would not change. Whatever happened, she had finished with Romany +life, and to go back would only mean black tragedy in the end. A month +ago it was a vow and an inner desire which made her determined; to-day +it was the vow and a man--a Gorgio whom she had but now left in the +woods, gazing after her with the look which a woman so well interprets. + +“You mean you won’t go free from here? Because I was a Romany, and wish +you no harm, I have come here to-day to let you go where you will--to go +back to the place where the patrins show where your people travel. I set +you free, and you say what you think will hurt and shame me. You have +a cruel soul. You would torture any woman till she died. You shall not +torture me. You are as far from me as the River Starzke. I could have +let you stay here for my father to deal with, but I have set you free. I +open the door for you, though you are nothing to me, and I am no more to +you than one of the women you have fooled and left to eat the vile bread +of the forsaken. You have been, you are a wolf--a wolf.” + +He got to his feet again, and the blood rushed to his face, so that it +seemed almost black. A torrent of mad words gathered in his throat, but +they choked him, and in the pause his will asserted itself. He became +cool and deliberate. + +“You are right, my girl, I have sucked the orange and thrown the skin +away, and I’ve picked flowers and cast them by, but that was before the +first day I saw you as you now are. You were standing by the Sagalac +looking out to the west where the pack-trains were travelling into the +sun over the mountains, and you had your hand on the neck of your pony. +I was not ten feet away from you, behind a juniper-bush. I looked at +you, and I wished that I had never seen a woman before and could look at +the world as you did then--it was like water from a spring, that look. +You are right in what you say. By long and by last I had a hard hand, +and when I left what I’d struck down I never looked back. But I saw you, +and I wished I had never seen a woman before. You have been here alone +with me with that door shut. Have I said or done anything that a Gorgio +duke wouldn’t do? Ah, God’s love, but you were bold to come! I married +you by the River Starzke; I looked upon you as my wife; and here you +were alone with me! I had my rights, and I had been trampled underfoot +by your father--” + +“By your Chief.” + +“‘Ay bor’, by my Chief! I had my wrongs, and I had my rights, and you +were mine by Romany law. It was for me here to claim you--here where a +Romany and his wife were alone together!” + +His eyes were fixed searchingly on hers, as though he would read the +effect of his words before he replied, and his voice had a curious, +rough note, as though with difficulty he quelled the tempest within him. +“I have my rights, and you had spat upon me,” he said with ferocious +softness. + +She did not blench, but looked him steadily in the eyes. + +“I knew what would be in your mind,” she answered, “but that did not +keep me from coming. You would not bite the hand that set you free.” + +“You called me a wolf a minute ago.” + +“But a wolf would not bite the hand that freed it from the trap. Yet if +such shame could be, I still would have had no fear, for I should have +shot you as wolves are shot that come too near the fold.” + +He looked at her piercingly, and the pupils of his eyes narrowed to a +pin-point. “You would have shot me--you are armed?” he questioned. + +“Am I the only woman that has armed herself against you and such as you? +Do you not see?” + +“Mi Duvel, but I do see now with a thousand eyes!” he said hoarsely. + +His senses were reeling. Down beneath everything had been the thought +that, as he had prevailed with other women, he could prevail with her; +that she would come to him in the end. He had felt, but he had declined +to see, the significance of her bearing, of her dress, of her speech, +of her present mode of life, of its comparative luxury, its social +distinction of a kind which lifted her above even the Gorgios by whom +she was surrounded. A fatuous belief in himself and in his personal +powers had deluded him. He had told the truth when he said that no woman +had ever appealed to him as she did; that she had blotted out all other +women from the book of his adventurous and dissolute life; and he had +dreamed a dream of conquest of her when Fortune should hand out to him +the key of the situation. Did not the beautiful Russian countess on the +Volga flee from her liege lord and share his ‘tan’? When he played +his fiddle to the Austrian princess, did she not give him a key to +the garden where she walked of an evening? And this was a Romany lass, +daughter of his Chieftain, as he was son of a great Romany chief; and +what marvel could there be that she who had been made his child wife, +should be conquered as others had been! + +“‘Mi Duvel’, but I see!” he repeated in a husky fierceness. “I am your +husband, but you would have killed me if I had taken a kiss from your +lips, sealed to me by all our tribes and by your father and mine.” + +“My lips are my own, my life is my own, and when I marry, I shall marry +a man of my own choosing, and he will not be a Romany,” she replied with +a look of resolution which her beating heart belied. “I’m not a pedlar’s +basket.” + +“‘Kek! Kek’! That’s plain,” he retorted. “But the ‘wolf’ is no lamb +either! I said I would not go till your father set me free, since you +had no right to do so, but a wife should save her husband, and her +husband should set himself free for his wife’s sake”--his voice rose in +fierce irony--“and so I will now go free. But I will not take the word +to the Romany people that you are no more of them. I am a true Romany. I +disobeyed my ‘Ry’ in coming here because my wife was here, and I wanted +her. I am a true Romany husband who will not betray his wife to her +people; but I will have my way, and no Gorgio shall take her to his +home. She belongs to my tent, and I will take her there.” + +Her gesture of contempt, anger and negation infuriated him. “If I do +not take you to my ‘tan’, it will be because I’m dead,” he said, and his +white teeth showed fiercely. + +“I have set you free. You had better go,” she rejoined quietly. + +Suddenly he turned at the doorway. A look of passion burned in his eyes. +His voice became soft and persuasive. “I would put the past behind me, +and be true to you, my girl,” he said. “I shall be chief over all the +Romany people when Duke Gabriel dies. We are sib; give me what is mine. +I am yours--and I hold to my troth. Come, beloved, let us go together.” + +A sigh broke from her lips, for she saw that, bad as he was, there was +a moment’s truth in his words. “Go while you can,” she said. “You are +nothing to me.” + +For an instant he hesitated, then, with a muttered oath, sprang out into +the bracken, and was presently lost among the trees. + +For a long time she sat in the doorway, and again and again her eyes +filled with tears. She felt a cloud of trouble closing in upon her. At +last there was the sound of footsteps, and a moment later Gabriel Druse +came through the trees towards her. His eyes were sullen and brooding. + +“You have set him free?” he asked. + +She nodded. “It was madness keeping him here,” she said. + +“It is madness letting him go,” he answered morosely. “He will do harm. +‘Ay bor’, he will! I might have known--women are chicken-hearted. I +ought to have put him out of the way, but I have no heart any more--no +heart; I have the soul of a rabbit.” + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. THE SULTAN + +Ingolby’s square head jerked forwards in stern inquiry and his eyes +fastened those of Jowett, the horsedealer. “Take care what you’re +saying, Jowett,” he said. “It’s a penitentiary job, if it can be proved. +Are you sure you got it right?” + +Jowett had unusual shrewdness, some vanity and a humorous tongue. He +was a favourite in both towns, and had had the better of both in +horse-dealing a score of times. + +That did not make him less popular. However, it was said he liked low +company, and it was true that though he had “money in the bank,” and +owned a corner lot or so, he seemed to care little what his company was. +His most constant companion was Fabian Osterhaut, who was the common +property of both towns, doing a little of everything for a living, from +bill-posting to the solicitation of an insurance agent. + +For any casual work connected with public functions Osterhaut was +indispensable, and he would serve as a doctor’s assistant and help cut +off a leg, be the majordomo for a Sunday-school picnic, or arrange a +soiree at a meeting-house with equal impartiality. He had been known to +attend a temperance meeting and a wake in the same evening. Yet no one +ever questioned his bona fides, and if he had attended mass at Manitou +in the morning, joined a heathen dance in Tekewani’s Reserve in the +afternoon, and listened to the oleaginous Rev. Reuben Tripple in the +evening, it would have been taken as a matter of course. + +He was at times profane and impecunious, and he had been shifted from +one boarding-house to another till at last, having exhausted credit in +Lebanon, he had found a room in the house of old Madame Thibadeau in +Manitou. She had taken him in because, in years gone by, he had nursed +her only son through an attack of smallpox on the Siwash River, and +somehow Osterhaut had always paid his bills to her. He was curiously +exact where she was concerned. If he had not enough for his week’s board +and lodging, he borrowed it, chiefly of Jowett, who used him profitably +at times to pass the word about a horse, or bring news of a possible +deal. + +“It’s a penitentiary job, Jowett,” Ingolby repeated. “I didn’t think +Marchand would be so mad as that.” + +“Say, it’s all straight enough, Chief,” answered Jowett, sucking his +unlighted cigar. “Osterhaut got wind of it--he’s staying at old Mother +Thibadeau’s, as you know. He moves round a lot, and he put me on to +it. I took on the job at once. I got in with the French toughs over at +Manitou, at Barbazon’s Tavern, and I gave them gin--we made it a gin +night. It struck their fancy--gin, all gin! ‘Course there’s nothing in +gin different from any other spirit; but it fixed their minds, and took +away suspicion. + +“I got drunk--oh, yes, of course, blind drunk, didn’t I? Kissed me, +half a dozen of the Quebec boys did--said I was ‘bully boy’ and +‘hell-fellow’; said I was ‘bon enfant’; and I said likewise in my best +patois. They liked that. I’ve got a pretty good stock of monkey-French, +and I let it go. They laughed till they cried at some of my mistakes, +but they weren’t no mistakes, not on your life. It was all done +a-purpose. They said I was the only man from Lebanon they wouldn’t have +cut up and boiled, and they was going to have the blood of the Lebanon +lot before they’d done. I pretended to get mad, and I talked wild. I +said that Lebanon would get them first, that Lebanon wouldn’t +wait, but’d have it out; and I took off my coat and staggered +about--blind-fair blind boozy. I tripped over some fool’s foot +purposely, just beside a bench against the wall, and I come down on that +bench hard. They laughed--Lord, how they laughed! They didn’t mind my +givin’ ‘em fits--all except one or two. That was what I expected. The +one or two was mad. They begun raging towards me, but there I was asleep +on the bench-stony blind, and then they only spit fire a bit. Some one +threw my coat over me. I hadn’t any cash in the pockets, not much--I +knew better than that--and I snored like a sow. Then it happened what I +thought would happen. They talked. And here it is. They’re going to have +a strike in the mills, and you’re to get a toss into the river. That’s +to be on Friday. But the other thing--well, they all cleared away but +two. They were the two that wanted to have it out with me. They stayed +behind. There was I snoring like a locomotive, but my ears open all +right. + +“Well, they give the thing away. One of ‘em had just come from Felix +Marchand and he was full of it. What was it? Why, the second night of +the strike your new bridge over the river was to be blown up. Marchand +was to give these two toughs three hundred dollars each for doing it.” + +“Blown up with what?” Ingolby asked sharply. + +“Dynamite.” + +“Where would they get it?” + +“Some left from blasting below the mills.” + +“All right! Go on.” + +“There wasn’t much more. Old Barbazon, the landlord, come in and they +quit talking about it; but they said enough to send ‘em to gaol for ten +years.” + +Ingolby blinked at Jowett reflectively, and his mouth gave a twist that +lent to his face an almost droll look. + +“What good would it do if they got ten years--or one year, if the bridge +was blown up? If they got skinned alive, and if Marchand was handed over +to a barnful of hungry rats to be gnawed to death, it wouldn’t help. +I’ve heard and seen a lot of hellish things, but there’s nothing to +equal that. To blow up the bridge--for what? To spite Lebanon, and +to hurt me; to knock the spokes out of my wheel. He’s the dregs, is +Marchand.” + +“I guess he’s a shyster by nature, that fellow,” interposed Jowett. “He +was boilin’ hot when he was fifteen. He spoiled a girl I knew when he +was twenty-two, not fourteen she was--Lil Sarnia; and he got her away +before--well, he got her away East; and she’s in a dive in Winnipeg +now. As nice a girl--as nice a little girl she was, and could ride any +broncho that ever bucked. What she saw in him--but there, she was only a +child, just the mind of a child she had, and didn’t understand. He’d ha’ +been tarred and feathered if it’d been known. But old Mick Sarnia said +hush, for his wife’s sake, and so we hushed, and Sarnia’s wife doesn’t +know even now. I thought a lot of Lil, as much almost as if she’d been +my own; and lots o’ times, when I think of it, I sit up straight, and +the thing freezes me; and I want to get Marchand by the scruff of the +neck. I got a horse, the worst that ever was--so bad I haven’t had the +heart to ride him or sell him. He’s so bad he makes me laugh. There’s +nothing he won’t do, from biting to bolting. Well, I’d like to tie Mr. +Felix Marchand, Esquire, to his back, and let him loose on the prairie, +and pray the Lord to save him if he thought fit. I fancy I know what the +Lord would do. And Lil Sarnia’s only one. Since he come back from +the States, he’s the limit, oh, the damnedest limit. He’s a pest all +round-and now, this!” + +Ingolby kept blinking reflectively as Jowett talked. He was doing two +things at once with a facility quite his own. He was understanding all +Jowett was saying, but he was also weighing the whole situation. His +mind was gone fishing, figuratively speaking. He was essentially a man +of action, but his action was the bullet of his mind; he had to be quiet +physically when he was really thinking. Then he was as one in a dream +where all physical motion was mechanical, and his body was acting +automatically. His concentration, and therefore his abstraction, was +phenomenal. Jowett’s reminiscences at a time so critical did not disturb +him--did not, indeed, seem to be irrelevant. It was as though Felix +Marchand was being passed in review before him in a series of aspects. +He nodded encouragement to Jowett to go on. + +“It’s because Marchand hates you, Chief. The bump he got when you +dropped him on the ground that day at Carillon hurts still. It’s a +chronic inflammation. Closing them railway offices at Manitou, and +dislodging the officials give him his first good chance. The feud +between the towns is worse now than it’s ever been. Make no mistake. +There’s a whole lot of toughs in Manitou. Then there’s religion, +and there’s race, and there’s a want-to-stand-still and +leave-me-alone-feeling. They don’t want to get on. They don’t want +progress. They want to throw the slops out of the top windows into the +street; they want their cesspools at the front door; they think that +everybody’s got to have smallpox some time or another, and the sooner +they have it the better; they want to be bribed; and they think that if +a vote’s worth having it’s worth paying for--and yet there’s a bridge +between these two towns! A bridge--why, they’re as far apart as the +Yukon and Patagonia.” + +“What’d buy Felix Marchand?” Ingolby asked meditatively. “What’s his +price?” + +Jowett shifted with impatience. “Say, Chief, I don’t know what you’re +thinking about. Do you think you could make a deal with Felix Marchand? +Not much. You’ve got the cinch on him. You could send him to quod, and +I’d send him there as quick as lightning. I’d hang him, if I could, for +what he done to Lil Sarnia. Years ago when he was a boy he offered me +a gold watch for a mare I had. The watch looked as right as could +be--solid fourteen-carat, he said it was. He got my horse, and I got his +watch. It wasn’t any more gold than he was. It was filled--just plated +with nine-carat gold. It was worth about ten dollars.” + +“What was the mare worth?” asked Ingolby, his mouth twisting again with +quizzical meaning. + +“That mare--she was all right.” + +“Yes, but what was the matter with her?” + +“Oh, a spavin--she was all right when she got wound up--go like Dexter +or Maud S.” + +“But if you were buying her what would you have paid for her, Jowett? +Come now, man to man, as they say. How much did you pay for her?” + +“About what she was worth, Chief, within a dollar or two.” + +“And what was she worth?” + +“What I paid for her-ten dollars.” + +Then the two men looked at each other full in the eyes, and Jowett threw +back his head and laughed outright--laughed loud and hard. “Well, you +got me, Chief, right under the guard,” he observed. + +Ingolby did not laugh outright, but there was a bubble of humour in his +eyes. “What happened to the watch?” he asked. + +“I got rid of it.” + +“In a horse-trade?” + +“No, I got a town lot with it.” + +“In Lebanon?” + +“Well, sort of in Lebanon’s back-yard.” + +“What’s the lot worth now?” + +“About two thousand dollars!” + +“Was it your first town lot?” + +“The first lot of Mother Earth I ever owned.” + +“Then you got a vote on it?” + +“Yes, my first vote.” + +“And the vote let you be a town-councillor?” + +“It and my good looks.” + +“Indirectly, therefore, you are a landowner, a citizen, a public +servant, and an instrument of progress because of Felix Marchand. If you +hadn’t had the watch you wouldn’t have had that town lot.” + +“Well, mebbe, not that lot.” + +Suddenly Ingolby got to his feet and squared himself, and his face +became alight with purpose. His mind had come back from fishing, and he +was ready now for action. His plans were formed. He was in for a fight, +and he had made up his mind how, with the new information to his hand, +he would develop his campaign further. + +“You didn’t make a fuss about the watch, Jowett. You might have gone to +Felix Marchand or to his father and proved him a liar, and got even that +way. You didn’t; you got a corner lot with it. That’s what I’m going to +do. I can have Felix Marchand put in the jug, and make his old father, +Hector Marchand, sick; but I like old Hector Marchand, and I think +he’s bred as bad a pup as ever was. I’m going to try and do with this +business as you did with that watch. I’m going to try and turn it to +account and profit in the end. Felix Marchand’s profiting by a mistake +of mine--a mistake in policy. It gives him his springboard; and there’s +enough dry grass in both towns to get a big blaze with a very little +match. I know that things are seething. The Chief Constable keeps me +posted as to what’s going on here, and pretty fairly as to what’s going +on in Manitou. The police in Manitou are straight enough. That’s +one comfort. I’ve done Felix Marchand there. I guess that the Chief +Constable of Manitou and Monseigneur Lourde and old Mother Thibadeau are +about the only people that Marchand can’t bribe. I see I’ve got to face +a scrimmage before I can get what I want.” + +“What you want you’ll have, I bet,” was the admiring response. + +“I’m going to have a good try. I want these two towns to be one. That’ll +be good for your town lots, Jowett,” he added whimsically. “If my policy +is carried out, my town lot’ll be worth a pocketful of gold-plated +watches or a stud of spavined mares.” He chuckled to himself, and his +fingers reached towards a bell on the table, but he paused. “When was it +they said the strike would begin?” he asked. + +“Friday.” + +“Did they say what hour?” + +“Eleven in the morning.” + +“Third of a day’s work and a whole day’s pay,” he mused. “Jowett,” he +added, “I want you to have faith. I’m going to do Marchand, and I’m +going to do him in a way that’ll be best in the end. You can help as +much if not more than anybody--you and Osterhaut. And if I succeed, +it’ll be worth your while.” + +“I ain’t followin’ you because it’s worth while, but because I want to, +Chief.” + +“I know; but a man--every man--likes the counters for the game.” He +turned to the table, opened a drawer, and took out a folded paper. +He looked it through carefully, wrote a name on it, and handed it to +Jowett. + +“There’s a hundred shares in the Northwest Railway, with my regards, +Jowett. Some of the counters of the game.” + +Jowett handed it back at once with a shake of the head. “I don’t live in +Manitou,” he said. “I’m almost white, Chief. I’ve never made a deal with +you, and don’t want to. I’m your man for the fun of it, and because I’d +give my life to have your head on my shoulders for one year.” + +“I’d feel better if you’d take the shares, Jowett. You’ve helped me, and +I can’t let you do it for nothing.” + +“Then I can’t do it at all. I’m discharged.” Suddenly, however, a +humorous, eager look shot into Jowett’s face. “Will you toss for it?” he +blurted out. “Certainly, if you like,” was the reply. + +“Heads I win, tails it’s yours?” + +“Good.” + +Ingolby took a silver dollar from his pocket, and tossed. It came down +tails. Ingolby had won. + +“My corner lot against double the shares?” Jowett asked sharply, his +face flushed with eager pleasure. He was a born gambler. + +“As you like,” answered Ingolby with a smile. Ingolby tossed, and they +stooped over to look at the dollar on the floor. It had come up heads. +“You win,” said Ingolby, and turning to the table, took out another +hundred shares. In a moment they were handed over. + +“You’re a wonder, Jowett,” he said. “You risked a lot of money. Are you +satisfied?” + +“You bet, Chief. I come by these shares honestly now.” + +He picked up the silver dollar from the floor, and was about to put it +in his pocket. + +“Wait--that’s my dollar,” said Ingolby. + +“By gracious, so it is!” said Jowett, and handed it over reluctantly. + +Ingolby pocketed it with satisfaction. + +Neither dwelt on the humour of the situation. They were only concerned +for the rules of the game, and both were gamesters in their way. + +After a few brief instructions to Jowett, and a message for Osterhaut +concerning a suit of workman’s clothes, Ingolby left his offices and +walked down the main street of the town with his normal rapidity, +responding cheerfully to the passers-by, but not encouraging evident +desire for talk with him. Men half-started forward to him, but he held +them back with a restraining eye. They knew his ways. He was responsive +in a brusque, inquisitive, but good-humoured and sometimes very droll +way; but there were times when men said to themselves that he was to be +left alone; and he was so much master of the place that, as Osterhaut +and Jowett frequently remarked, “What he says goes!” It went even with +those whom he had passed in the race of power. + +He had had his struggles to be understood in his first days in Lebanon. +He had fought intrigue and even treachery, had defeated groups which +were the forces at work before he came to Lebanon, and had compelled the +submission of others. All these had vowed to “get back at him,” but when +it became a question of Lebanon against Manitou they swung over to his +side and acknowledged him as leader. The physical collision between the +rougher elements of the two towns had brought matters to a head, and +nearly every man in Lebanon felt that his honour was at stake, and was +ready “to have it out with Manitou.” + +As he walked along the main street after his interview with Jowett, +his eyes wandered over the buildings rising everywhere; and his mind +reviewed as in a picture the same thinly inhabited street five years ago +when he first came. Now farmers’ wagons clacked and rumbled through the +prairie dust, small herds of cattle jerked and shuffled their way to +the slaughter-yard, or out to the open prairie, and caravans of settlers +with their effects moved sturdily forward to the trails which led to a +new life beckoning from three points of the compass. That point which +did not beckon was behind them. Flaxen-haired Swedes and Norwegians; +square-jawed, round-headed North Germans; square-shouldered, +loose-jointed Russians with heavy contemplative eyes and long hair, +looked curiously at each other and nodded understandingly. Jostling them +all, with a jeer and an oblique joke here and there, and crude chaff on +each other and everybody, the settler from the United States asserted +himself. He invariably obtruded himself, with quizzical inquiry, half +contempt and half respect, on the young Englishman, who gazed round with +phlegm upon his fellow adventurers, and made up to the sandy-faced +Scot or the cheerful Irishman with his hat on the back of his head, who +showed in the throng here and there. This was one of the days when the +emigrant and settlers’ trains arrived both from the East and from “the +States,” and Front Street in Lebanon had, from early morning, been alive +with the children of hope and adventure. + +With hands plunged deep in the capacious pockets of his grey jacket, +Ingolby walked on, seeing everything; yet with his mind occupied +intently, too, on the trouble which must be faced before Lebanon and +Manitou would be the reciprocating engines of his policy. Coming to a +spot where a great gap of vacant land showed in the street-land which +he had bought for the new offices of his railway combine--he stood +and looked at it abstractedly. Beyond it, a few blocks away, was the +Sagalac, and beyond the Sagalac was Manitou, and a little way to the +right was the bridge which was the symbol of his policy. His eyes gazed +almost unconsciously on the people and the horses and wagons coming and +going upon the bridge. Then they were lifted to the tall chimneys rising +at two or three points on the outskirts of Manitou. + +“They don’t know a good thing when they get it,” he said to himself. “A +strike--why, wages are double what they are in Quebec, where most of ‘em +come from! Marchand--” + +A hand touched his arm. “Have you got a minute to spare, kind sir?” a +voice asked. + +Ingolby turned and saw Nathan Rockwell, the doctor. “Ah, Rockwell,” he +responded cheerfully, “two minutes and a half, if you like! What is it?” + +The Boss Doctor, as he was familiarly called by every one, to identify +him from the newer importations of medical men, drew from his pocket a +newspaper. + +“There’s an infernal lie here about me,” he replied. “They say that I--” + +He proceeded to explain the misstatement, as Ingolby studied the paper +carefully, for Rockwell was a man worth any amount of friendship. + +“It’s a lie, of course,” Ingolby said firmly as he finished the +paragraph. “Well?” + +“Well, I’ve got to deal with it.” + +“You mean you’re going to deny it in the papers?” + +“Exactly.” + +“I wouldn’t, Rockwell.” + +“You wouldn’t?” + +“No. You never can really overtake a newspaper lie. Lots of the people +who read the lie don’t see the denial. Your truth doesn’t overtake the +lie--it’s a scarlet runner.” + +“I don’t see that. When you’re lied about, when a lie like that--” + +“You can’t overtake it, Boss. It’s no use. It’s sensational, it runs too +fast. Truth’s slow-footed. When a newspaper tells a lie about you, don’t +try to overtake it, tell another.” + +He blinked with quizzical good-humour. Rockwell could not resist the +audacity. “I don’t believe you’d do it just the same,” he retorted +decisively, and laughing. + +“I don’t try the overtaking anyhow; I get something spectacular in my +own favour to counteract the newspaper lie.” + +“In what way?” + +“For instance, if they said I couldn’t ride a moke at a village +steeplechase, I’d at once publish the fact that, with a jack-knife, I’d +killed two pumas that were after me. Both things would be lies, but the +one would neutralize the other. If I said I could ride a moke, nobody +would see it, and if it were seen it wouldn’t make any impression; but +to say I killed two mountain-lions with a jack-knife on the edge of a +precipice, with the sun standing still to look at it, is as good as the +original lie and better; and I score. My reputation increases.” + +Nathan Rockwell’s equilibrium was restored. “You’re certainly a wonder,” + he declared. “That’s why you’ve succeeded.” + +“Have I succeeded?” + +“Thirty-three-and what you are!” + +“What am I?” + +“Pretty well master here.” + +“Rockwell, that’d do me a lot of harm if it was published. Don’t say +it again. This is a democratic country. They’d kick at my being called +master of anything, and I’d have to tell a lie to counteract it.” + +“But it’s the truth, and it hasn’t to be overtaken.” + +A grim look came into Ingolby’s face. “I’d like to be master-boss of +life and death, holder of the sword and balances, the Sultan, here just +for one week. I’d change some things. I’d gag some people that are doing +terrible harm. It’s a real bad business. The scratch-your-face period is +over, and we’re in the cut-your-throat epoch.” + +Rockwell nodded assent, opened the paper again, and pointed to a column. +“I expect you haven’t seen that. To my mind, in the present state of +things, it’s dynamite.” + +Ingolby read the column hastily. It was the report of a sermon delivered +the evening before by the Rev. Reuben Tripple, the evangelical minister +of Lebanon. It was a paean of the Scriptures accompanied by a crazy +charge that the Roman Church forbade the reading of the Bible. It had a +tirade also about the Scarlet Woman and Popish idolatry. + +Ingolby made a savage gesture. “The insatiable Christian beast!” he +growled in anger. “There’s no telling what this may do. You know what +those fellows are over in Manitou. The place is full of them going to +the woods, besides the toughs at the mills and in the taverns. They’re +not psalm-singing, and they don’t keep the Ten Commandments, but they’re +savagely fanatical, and--” + +“And there’s the funeral of an Orangeman tomorrow. The Orange Lodge +attends in regalia.” + +Ingolby started and looked at the paper again. “The sneaking, praying +liar,” he said, his jaw setting grimly. “This thing’s a call to riot. +There’s an element in Lebanon as well that’d rather fight than eat. It’s +the kind of lie that--” + +“That you can’t overtake,” said the Boss Doctor appositely; “and I +don’t know that even you can tell another that’ll neutralize it. Your +prescription won’t work here.” + +An acknowledging smile played at Ingolby’s mouth. “We’ve got to have a +try. We’ve got to draw off the bull with a red rag somehow.” + +“I don’t see how myself. That Orange funeral will bring a row on to us. +I can just see the toughs at Manitou when they read this stuff, and know +about that funeral.” + +“It’s announced?” + +“Yes, here’s an invitation in the Budget to Orangemen to attend the +funeral of a brother sometime of the banks of the Boyne!” + +“Who’s the Master of the Lodge?” asked Ingolby. Rockwell told him, +urging at the same time that he see the Chief Constable as well, and +Monseigneur Lourde at Manitou. + +“That’s exactly what I mean to do--with a number of other things. +Between ourselves, Rockwell, I’d have plenty of lint and bandages ready +for emergencies if I were you.” + +“I’ll see to it. That collision the other day was serious enough, +and it’s gradually becoming a vendetta. Last night one of the Lebanon +champions lost his nose.” + +“His nose--how?” + +“A French river-driver bit a third of it off.” + +Ingolby made a gesture of disgust. “And this is the twentieth century!” + +They had moved along the street until they reached a barber-shop, from +which proceeded the sound of a violin. “I’m going in here,” Ingolby +said. “I’ve got some business with Berry, the barber. You’ll keep me +posted as to anything important?” + +“You don’t need to say it. Shall I see the Master of the Orange Lodge +or the Chief Constable for you?” Ingolby thought for a minute. “No, I’ll +tackle them myself, but you get in touch with Monseigneur Lourde. He’s +grasped the situation, and though he’d like to have Tripple boiled in +oil, he doesn’t want broken heads and bloodshed.” + +“And Tripple?” + +“I’ll deal with him at once. I’ve got a hold on him. I never wanted +to use it, but I will now without compunction. I have the means in my +pocket. They’ve been there for three days, waiting for the chance.” + +“It doesn’t look like war, does it?” said Rockwell, looking up the +street and out towards the prairie where the day bloomed like a flower. +Blue above--a deep, joyous blue, against which a white cloud rested or +slowly travelled westward; a sky down whose vast cerulean bowl flocks of +wild geese sailed, white and grey and black, while the woods across the +Sagalac were glowing with a hundred colours, giving tender magnificence +to the scene. The busy eagerness of a pioneer life was still a quiet, +orderly thing, so immense was the theatre for effort and movement. In +these wide streets, almost as wide as a London square, there was room +to move; nothing seemed huddled, pushing, or inconvenient. Even +the disorder of building lost its ugly crudity in the space and the +sunlight. + +“The only time I get frightened in life is when things look like that,” + Ingolby answered. “I go round with a life-preserver on me when it seems +as if ‘all’s right with the world.’” + +The violin inside the barber-shop kept scraping out its cheap music--a +coon-song of the day. + +“Old Berry hasn’t much business this morning,” remarked Rockwell. “He’s +in keeping with this surface peace.” + +“Old Berry never misses anything. What we’re thinking, he’s thinking. +I go fishing when I’m in trouble; Berry plays his fiddle. He’s a +philosopher and a friend.” + +“You don’t make friends as other people do.” + +“I make friends of all kinds. I don’t know why, but I’ve always had a +kind of kinship with the roughs, the no-accounts, and the rogues.” + +“As well as the others--I hope I don’t intrude!” + +Ingolby laughed. “You? Oh, I wish all the others were like you. It’s the +highly respectable members of the community I’ve always had to watch.” + +The fiddle-song came squeaking out upon the sunny atmosphere. It +arrested the attention of a man on the other side of the street--a +stranger in strange Lebanon. He wore a suit of Western clothes as a +military man wears mufti, if not awkwardly, yet with a manner not wholly +natural--the coat too tight across the chest, too short in the body. +However, the man was handsome and unusual in his leopard way, with his +brown curling hair and well-cared-for moustache. It was Jethro Fawe. + +Attracted by the sound of the violin, he stayed his steps and smiled +scornfully. Then his look fell on the two figures at the door of the +barber-shop, and his eyes flashed. + +Here was the man he wished to see--Max Ingolby, the man who stood +between him and his Romany lass. Here was a chance of speaking face to +face with the man who was robbing him. What he should do when they met +must be according to circumstances. That did not matter. There was the +impulse storming in his brain, and it drove him across the street as +the Boss Doctor walked away, and Ingolby entered the shop. All Jethro +realized was that the man who stood in his way, the big, rich, masterful +Gorgio was there. + +He entered the shop after Ingolby, and stood for an instant unseen. The +old negro barber with his curly white head, slave-black face, and large, +shrewd, meditative eyes was standing in a corner with a violin under his +chin, his cheek lovingly resting against it, as he drew his bow through +the last bars of the melody. He had smiled in welcome as Ingolby +entered, instantly rising from his stool, but continuing to play. He +would not have stopped in the middle of a tune for an emperor, and he +put Ingolby higher than an emperor. For one who had been born a slave, +and had still the scars of the overseer’s whip on his back, he was very +independent. He cut everybody’s hair as he wanted to cut it, trimmed +each beard as he wished to trim it, regardless of its owner’s wishes. If +there was dissent, then his customer need not come again, that was all. +There were other barbers in the place, but Berry was the master barber. +To have your head massaged by him was never to be forgotten, especially +if you found your hat too small for your head in the morning. Also he +singed the hair with a skill and care, which had filled many a thinly +covered scalp with luxuriant growth, and his hair-tonic, known as +“Smilax,” gave a pleasant odour to every meeting-house or church or +public hall where the people gathered. Berry was an institution even in +this new Western town. He kept his place and he forced the white man, +whoever he was, to keep his place. + +When he saw Jethro Fawe enter the shop he did not stop playing, but his +eyes searched the newcomer. Following his glance, Ingolby turned round +and saw the Romany. His first impression was one of admiration, but +suspicion was quickly added. He was a good judge of men, and there +was something secluded about the man which repelled him. Yet he was +interested. The dark face had a striking racial peculiarity. + +The music died away, and old Berry lowered the fiddle from his chin and +gave his attention to the Romany. + +“Yeth-’ir?” he said questioningly. + +For an instant Jethro was confused. When he entered the shop he had not +made up his mind what he should do. It had been mere impulse and the +fever of his brain. As old Berry spoke, however, his course opened out. + +“I heard. I am a stranger. My fiddle is not here. My fingers itch for +the cat-gut. Eh?” + +The look in old Berry’s face softened a little. His instinct had been +against his visitor, and he had been prepared to send him to another +shop-besides, not every day could he talk to the greatest man in the +West. + +“If you can play, there it is,” he said after a slight pause, and handed +the fiddle over. + +It was true that Jethro Fawe loved the fiddle. He had played it in +many lands. Twice, in order to get inside the palace of a monarch for +a purpose--once in Berlin and once in London--he had played the second +violin in a Tzigany orchestra. He turned the fiddle slowly round, +looking at it with mechanical intentness. Through the passion of emotion +the sure sense of the musician was burning. His fingers smoothed the +oval brown breast of the instrument with affection. His eyes found joy +in the colour of the wood, which had all the graded, merging tints of +Autumn leaves. + +“It is old--and strange,” he said, his eyes going from Berry to Ingolby +and back again with a veiled look, as though he had drawn down blinds +before his inmost thoughts. “It was not made by a professional.” + +“It was made in the cotton-field by a slave,” observed old Berry +sharply, yet with a content which overrode antipathy to his visitor. + +Jethro put the fiddle to his chin, and drew the bow twice or thrice +sweepingly across the strings. Such a sound had never come from Berry’s +violin before. It was the touch of a born musician who certainly had +skill, but who had infinitely more of musical passion. + +“Made by a slave in the cotton-fields!” Jethro said with a veiled look, +and as though he was thinking of something else: “‘Dordi’, I’d like to +meet a slave like that!” + +At the Romany exclamation Ingolby swept the man with a searching look. +He had heard the Romany wife of Ruliff Zaphe use the word many years ago +when he and Charley Long visited the big white house on the hill. Was +the man a Romany, and, if so, what was he doing here? Had it anything to +do with Gabriel Druse and his daughter? But no--what was there strange +in the man being a Romany and playing the fiddle? Here and there in the +West during the last two years, he had seen what he took to be Romany +faces. He looked to see the effect of the stranger’s remark on old +Berry. + +“I was a slave, and I was like that. My father made that fiddle in the +cotton-fields of Georgia,” the aged barber said. + +The son of a race which for centuries had never known country or flag +or any habitat, whose freedom was the soul of its existence, if it had +a soul; a freedom defying all the usual laws of social order--the son +of that race looked at the negro barber with something akin to awe. Here +was a man who had lived a life which was the staring antithesis of his +own, under the whip as a boy, confined to compounds; whose vision was +constricted to the limits of an estate; who was at the will of one man, +to be sold and trafficked with like a barrel of herrings, to be worked +at another’s will--and at no price! This was beyond the understanding of +Jethro Fawe. But awe has the outward look of respect, and old Berry who +had his own form of vanity, saw that he had had a rare effect on the +fellow, who evidently knew all about fiddles. Certainly that was a +wonderful sound he had produced from his own cotton-field fiddle. + +In the pause Ingolby said to Jethro Fawe, “Play something, won’t you? +I’ve got business here with Mr. Berry, but five minutes of good music +won’t matter. We’d like to hear him play--wouldn’t we, Berry?” + +The old man nodded assent. “There’s plenty of music in the thing,” he +said, “and a lot could come out in five minutes, if the right man played +it.” + +His words were almost like a challenge, and it reached to Jethro’s +innermost nature. He would show this Gorgio robber what a Romany could +do, and do as easily as the birds sing. The Gorgio was a money-master, +they said, but he would find that a Romany was a master, too, in his own +way. He thought of one of the first pieces he had ever heard, a rhapsody +which had grown and grown, since it was first improvised by a Tzigany in +Hungary. He had once played it to an English lady at the Amphitryon Club +in London, and she had swooned in the arms of her husband’s best friend. +He had seen men and women avert their heads when he had played it, +daring not to look into each other’s eyes. He would play it now--a +little of it. He would play it to her--to the girl who had set him free +in the Sagalac woods, to the ravishing deserter from her people, to the +only woman who had told him the truth in all his life, and who insulated +his magnetism as a ground-wire insulates lightning. He would summon her +here by his imagination, and tell her to note how his soul had caught +the music of the spheres. He would surround himself with an atmosphere +of his own. His rage, his love, and his malignant hate, his tenderness +and his lust should fill the barber’s shop with a flood which would +drown the Gorgio raider. He laughed to himself, almost unconsciously. +Then suddenly he leaned his cheek to the instrument and drew the bow +across the strings with a savage softness. The old cottonfield fiddle +cried out with a thrilling, exquisite pain, but muffled, as a hand at +the lips turns agony into a tender moan. Some one--some spirit--in the +fiddle was calling for its own. + +Five minutes later-a five minutes in which people gathered at the +door of the shop, and heads were thrust inside in ravished wonder--the +palpitating Romany lowered the fiddle from his chin, and stood for a +minute looking into space, as though he saw a vision. + +He was roused by old Berry’s voice. “Das a fiddle I wouldn’t sell for +a t’ousand dollars. If I could play like dat I wouldn’t sell it for ten +t’ousand. You kin play a fiddle to make it worth a lot--you.” + +The Romany handed back the instrument. “It’s got something inside it +that makes it better than it is. It’s not a good fiddle, but it has +something--ah, man alive, it has something!” It was as though he was +talking to himself. + +Berry made a quick, eager gesture. “It’s got the cotton-fields and the +slave days in it. It’s got the whip and the stocks in it; it’s got the +cry of the old man that’d never see his children ag’in. That’s what the +fiddle’s got in it.” + +Suddenly, in an apparent outburst of anger, he swept down on the front +door and drove the gathering crowd away. + +“Dis is a barber-shop,” he said with an angry wave of his hand; “it +ain’t a circuse.” + +One man protested. “I want a shave,” he said. He tried to come inside, +but was driven back. + +“I ain’t got a razor that’d cut the bristle off your face,” the old +barber declared peremptorily; “and, if I had, it wouldn’t be busy on +you. I got two customers, and that’s all I’m going to take befo’ I have +my dinner. So you git away. There ain’t goin’ to be no more music.” + +The crowd drew off, for none of them cared to offend this autocrat of +the shears and razor. + +Ingolby had listened to the music with a sense of being swayed by a wind +which blew from all quarters of the compass at once. He loved music; it +acted as a clearing-house to his mind; and he played the piano himself +with the enthusiasm of a wilful amateur, who took liberties with every +piece he essayed. There was something in this fellow’s playing which the +great masters, such as Paganini, must have had. As the music ceased, he +did not speak, but remained leaning against the great red-plush barber’s +chair looking reflectively at the Romany. Berry, however, said to the +still absorbed musician: “Where did you learn to play?” + +The Romany started, and a flush crossed his face. “Everywhere,” he +answered sullenly. + +“You’ve got the thing Sarasate had,” Ingolby observed. “I only heard him +play but once--in London years ago: but there’s the same something in +it. I bought a fiddle of Sarasate. I’ve got it now.” + +“Here in Lebanon?” The eyes of the Romany were burning. An idea had just +come into his brain. Was it through his fiddling that he was going to +find a way to deal with this Gorgio, who had come between him and his +own? + +“Only a week ago it came,” Ingolby replied. “They actually charged me +Customs duty on it. I’d seen it advertised, and I made an offer and got +it at last.” + +“You have it here--at your house here?” asked old Berry in surprise. + +“It’s the only place I’ve got. Did you think I’d put it in a museum? I +can’t play it, but there it is for any one that can play. How would you +like to try it?” he added to Jethro in a friendly tone. “I’d give a good +deal to see it under your chin for an hour. Anyhow, I’d like to show it +to you. Will you come?” + +It was like him to bring matters to a head so quickly. + +The Romany’s eyes glistened. “To play the Sarasate alone to you?” he +asked. + +“That’s it-at nine o’clock to-night, if you can.” + +“I will come--yes, I will come,” Jethro answered, the lids drooping over +his eyes in which were the shadows of the first murder of the created +world. + +“Here is my address, then.” Ingolby wrote something on his +visiting-card. “My man’ll let you in, if you show that. Well, good-bye.” + +The Romany took the card, and turned to leave. He had been dismissed by +the swaggering Gorgio, as though he was a servant, and he had not even +been asked his name, of so little account was he! He could come and play +on the Sarasate to the masterful Gorgio at the hour which the masterful +Gorgio fixed--think of that! He could be--a servant to the pleasure +of the man who was stealing from him the wife sealed to him in the +Roumelian country. But perhaps it was all for the best--yes, he would +make it all for the best! As he left the shop, however, and passed down +the street his mind remained in the barber-shop. He saw in imagination +the masterful Gorgio in the red-plush chair, and the negro barber +bending over him, with black fingers holding the Gorgio’s chin, and +an open razor in the right hand lightly grasped. A flash of malicious +desire came into his eyes as the vision shaped itself in his +imagination, and he saw himself, instead of the negro barber, holding +the Gorgio chin and looking down at the Gorgio throat with the razor, +not lightly, but firmly grasped in his right hand. How was it that more +throats were not cut in that way? How was it that while the scissors +passed through the beard of a man’s face the points did not suddenly +slip up and stab the light from helpless eyes? How was it that men did +not use their chances? He went lightly down the street, absorbed in +a vision which was not like the reality; but it was evidence that his +visit to Max Ingolby’s house was not the visit of a virtuoso alone, but +of an evil spirit. + +As the Romany disappeared, Max Ingolby had his hand on the old +barber’s shoulder. “I want one of the wigs you made for that theatrical +performance of the Mounted Police, Berry,” he said. “Never mind what +it’s for. I want it at once--one with the long hair of a French-Canadian +coureur-de-bois. Have you got one?” + +“Suh, I’ll send it round-no, I’ll bring it round as I come from dinner. +Want the clothes, too?” + +“No. I’m arranging for them with Osterhaut. I’ve sent word by Jowett.” + +“You want me to know what it’s for?” + +“You can know anything I know--almost, Berry. You’re a friend of the +right sort, and I can trust you.” + +“Yeth-’ir, I bin some use to you, onct or twict, I guess.” + +“You’ll have a chance to be of use more than ever presently.” + +“Suh, there’s gain’ to be a bust-up, but I know who’s comin’ out on the +top. That Felix Marchand and his roughs can’t down you. I hear and see +a lot, and there’s two or three things I was goin’ to put befo’ you; +yeth-’ir.” + +He unloaded his secret information to his friend, and was rewarded by +Ingolby suddenly shaking his hand warmly. + +“That’s the line,” Ingolby said decisively. “When do you go over to +Manitou again to cut old Hector Marchand’s hair? Soon?” + +“To-day is his day--this evening,” was the reply. + +“Good. You wanted to know what the wig and the habitant’s clothes are +for, Berry--well, for me to wear in Manitou. In disguise I’m going there +tonight among them all, among the roughs and toughs. I want to find out +things for myself. I can speak French as good as most of ‘em, and I can +chew tobacco and swear with the best.” + +“You suhly are a wonder,” said the old man admiringly. “How you fin’ the +time I got no idee.” + +“Everything in its place, Berry, and everything in its time. I’ve got a +lot to do to-day, but it’s in hand, and I don’t have to fuss. You’ll not +forget the wig--you’ll bring it round yourself?” + +“Suh. No snoopin’ into the parcel then. But if you go to Manitou +to-night, how can you have that fiddler?” + +“He comes at nine o’clock. I’ll go to Manitou later. Everything in its +own time.” + +He was about to leave the shop when some one came bustling in. Berry was +between Ingolby and the door, and for an instant he did not see who it +was. Presently he heard an unctuous voice: “Ah, good day, good day, Mr. +Berry. I want to have my hair cut, if you please,” it said. + +Ingolby smiled. The luck was with him to-day so far. The voice belonged +to the Rev. Reuben Tripple, and he would be saved a journey to the +manse. Accidental meetings were better than planned interviews. Old +Berry’s grizzled beard was bristling with repugnance, and he was about +to refuse Mr. Tripple the hospitality of the shears when Ingolby said: +“You won’t mind my having a word with Mr. Tripple first, will you, +Berry? May we use your back parlour?” + +A significant look from Ingolby’s eyes gave Berry his cue. + +“Suh, Mr. Ingolby. I’m proud.” He opened the door of another room. + +Mr. Tripple had not seen Ingolby when he entered, and he recognized him +now with a little shock of surprise. There was no reason why he should +not care to meet the Master Man, but he always had an uncanny feeling +when his eye met that of Ingolby. His apprehension had no foundation +in any knowledge, yet he had felt that Ingolby had no love for him, and +this disturbed the egregious vanity of a narrow nature. His slouching, +corpulent figure made an effort to resist the gesture with which +Ingolby drew him to the door, but his will succumbed, and he shuffled +importantly into the other room. + +Ingolby shut the door quietly behind him, and motioned the minister to a +chair beside the table. Tripple sank down, mechanically smiling, placed +his hat on the floor, and rested his hands on the table. Ingolby could +not help but notice how coarse the hands were--with fingers suddenly +ending as though they had been cut off, and puffy, yellowish skin that +suggested fat foods, or worse. + +Ingolby came to grips at once. “You preached a sermon last night which +no doubt was meant to do good, but will only do harm,” he said abruptly. + +The flabby minister flushed, and then made an effort to hold his own. + +“I speak as I am moved,” he said, puffing out his lips. “You spoke +on this occasion before you were moved--just a little while before,” + answered Ingolby grimly. “The speaking was last night, the moving comes +today.” + +“I don’t get your meaning,” was the thick rejoinder. The man had a +feeling that there was some real danger ahead. + +“You preached a sermon last night which might bring riot and bloodshed +between these two towns, though you knew the mess that’s brewing.” + +“My conscience is my own. I am responsible to my Lord for words which I +speak in His name, not to you.” + +“Your conscience belongs to yourself, but your acts belong to all of +us. If there is trouble at the Orange funeral to-morrow it will be your +fault. The blame will lie at your door.” + +“The sword of the Spirit--” + +“Oh, you want the sword, do you? You want the sword, eh?” Ingolby’s jaw +was set now like a millstone. “Well, you can have it, and have it now. +If you had taken what I said in the right way, I would not have done +what I’m going to do. I’m going to send you out of Lebanon. You’re a bad +and dangerous element here. You must go.” + +“Who are you to tell me I must go?” + +The fat hands quivered on the table with anger and emotion, but also +with fear of something. “You may be a rich man and own railways, but--” + +“But I am not rich and I don’t own railways. Lately bad feeling has been +growing on the Sagalac, and only a spark was needed to fire the ricks. +You struck the spark in your sermon last night. I don’t see the end of +it all. One thing is sure--you’re not going to take the funeral service +to-morrow.” + +The slack red lips of the man of God were gone dry with excitement, the +loose body swayed with the struggle to fight it out. + +“I’ll take no orders from you,” the husky voice protested. “My +conscience alone will guide me. I’ll speak the truth as I feel it, and +the people will stand by me.” + +“In that case you WILL take orders from me. I’m going to save the town +from what hurts it, if I can. I’ve got no legal rights over you, but I +have moral rights, and I mean to enforce them. You gabble of conscience +and truth, but isn’t it a new passion with you--conscience and truth?” + +He leaned over the table and fastened the minister’s eyes with his own. +“Had you the same love of conscience and truth at Radley?” + +A whiteness passed over the flabby face, and the beady eyes took on a +glazed look. Fight suddenly died out of them. + +“You went on a missionary tour on the Ottawa River. At Radley you +toiled and rested from your toil--and feasted. The girl had no father or +brother, but her uncle was a railway-man. He heard where you were, and +he hired with my company to come out here as a foreman. He came to drop +on you. The day after he came he had a bad accident. I went to see him. +He told me all; his nerves were unstrung, you observe. He meant to ruin +you, as you ruined the girl. He had proofs enough. The girl herself is +in Winnipeg. Well, I know life, and I know man and man’s follies and +temptations. I thought it a pity that a career and a life like yours +should be ruined--” + +A groan broke from the twitching lips before him, and a heavy sweat +stood out on the round, rolling forehead. + +“If the man spoke, I knew it would be all up with you, for the world +is very hard on men of God who fall. I’ve seen men ruined before this, +because of an hour’s passion and folly. I said to myself that you were +only human, and that maybe you had paid heavy in remorse and fear. Then +there was the honour of the town of Lebanon. I couldn’t let the thing +take its course. I got the doctor to tell the man that he must go for +special treatment to a hospital in Montreal, and I--well, I bought +him off on his promising to keep his mouth shut. He was a bit stiff +in terms, because he said the girl needed the money. The child died, +luckily for you. Anyhow I bought him off, and he went. That was a year +ago. I’ve got all the proofs in my pocket, even to the three silly +letters you wrote her when your senses were stronger than your judgment. +I was going to see you about them to-day.” + +He took from his pocket a small packet, and held them before the +other’s face. “Have a good look at your own handwriting, and see if you +recognize it,” Ingolby continued. + +But the glazed, shocked eyes did not see. Reuben Tripple had passed the +several stages of horror during Ingolby’s merciless arraignment, and he +had nearly collapsed before he heard the end of the matter. When he +knew that Ingolby had saved him, his strength gave way, and he trembled +violently. Ingolby looked round and saw a jug of water. Pouring out a +glassful, he thrust it into the fat, wrinkled fingers. + +“Drink and pull yourself together,” he said sternly. The shaken figure +straightened itself, and the water was gulped down. “I thank you,” he +said in a husky voice. + +“You see I treated you fairly, and that you’ve been a fool?” Ingolby +asked with no lessened determination. + +“I have tried to atone, and--” + +“No, you haven’t had the right spirit to atone. You were fat with vanity +and self-conceit. I’ve watched you.” + +“In future I will--” + +“Well, that rests with yourself, but your health is bad, and you’re not +going to take the funeral tomorrow. You’ve had a sudden breakdown, and +you’re going to get a call from some church in the East--as far East +as Yokohama or Bagdad, I hope; and leave here in a few weeks. You +understand? I’ve thought the thing out, and you’ve got to go. You’ll do +no good to yourself or others here. Take my advice, and wherever you go, +walk six miles a day at least, work in a garden, eat half as much as +you do, and be good to your wife. It’s bad enough for any woman to be a +parson’s wife, but to be a parson’s wife and your wife, too, wants a lot +of fortitude.” + +The heavy figure lurched to the upright, and steadied itself with a +force which had not yet been apparent. + +“I’ll do my best--so help me God!” he said and looked Ingolby squarely +in the face for the first time. + +“All right, see you keep your word,” Ingolby replied, and nodded +good-bye. + +The other went to the door, and laid a hand on the knob. + +Suddenly Ingolby stopped him, and thrust a little bundle of bills +into his hand. “There’s a hundred dollars for your wife. It’ll pay the +expense of moving,” he said. + +A look of wonder, revelation and gratitude crept into Tripple’s face. “I +will keep my word, so help me God!” he said again. + +“All right, good-bye,” responded Ingolby abruptly, and turned away. + +A moment afterwards the door closed behind the Rev. Reuben Tripple +and his influence in Lebanon. “I couldn’t shake hands with him,” said +Ingolby to himself, “but I’m glad he didn’t sniffle. There’s some stuff +in him--if it only has a chance.” + +“I’ve done a good piece of business, Berry,” he said cheerfully as he +passed through the barber-shop. “Suh, if you say so,” said the barber, +and they left the shop together. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. MATTER AND MIND AND TWO MEN + +Promptly at nine o’clock Jethro Fawe knocked at Ingolby’s door, and was +admitted by the mulatto man-servant Jim Beadle, who was to Ingolby like +his right hand. It was Jim who took command of his house, “bossed” + his two female servants, arranged his railway tours, superintended his +kitchen--with a view to his own individual tastes; valeted him, kept his +cigars within a certain prescribed limit by a firm actuarial principle +which transferred any surplus to his own use; gave him good advice, +weighed up his friends and his enemies with shrewd sense; and protected +him from bores and cranks, borrowers and “dead-beats.” + +Jim was accustomed to take a good deal of responsibility, and had more +than once sent people to the right-about who had designs on his master, +even though they came accredited. On such occasions he did not lie +to protect himself when called to account, but told the truth +pertinaciously. He was obstinate in his vanity, and carried off his +mistakes with aplomb. When asked by Ingolby what he called the Governor +General when he took His Excellency over the new railway in Ingolby’s +private car, he said, “I called him what everybody called him. I called +him ‘Succelency.’” And “Succelency” for ever after the Governor General +was called in the West. Jim’s phonetic mouthful gave the West a roar of +laughter and a new word to the language. On another occasion Jim gave +the West a new phrase to its vocabulary which remains to this day. +Having to take the wife of a high personage of the neighbouring Republic +over the line in the private car, he had astounded his master by +presenting a bill for finger-bowls before the journey began. Ingolby +said to him, “Jim, what the devil is this--finger-bowls in my private +car? We’ve never had finger-bowls before, and we’ve had everybody as was +anybody to travel with us.” Jim’s reply was final. “Say,” he replied, +“we got to have ‘em. Soon’s I set my eyes on that lady I said: ‘She’s a +finger-bowl lady.’” + +“‘Finger-bowl lady’ be hanged, Jim, we don’t--” Ingolby protested, but +Jim waved him down. + +“Say,” he said decisively, “she’ll ask for them finger-bowls--she’ll ask +for ‘em, and what’d I do if we hadn’t got ‘em.” + +She did ask for them; and henceforth the West said of any woman who put +on airs and wanted what she wasn’t born to: “She’s a finger-bowl lady.” + +It was Jim who opened the door to Jethro Fawe, and his first glance was +one of prejudice. His quick perception saw that the Romany wore clothes +not natural to him. He felt the artificial element, the quality of +disguise. He was prepared to turn the visitor away, no matter what he +wanted, but Ingolby’s card handed to him by the Romany made him pause. +He had never known his master give a card like that more than once +or twice in the years they had been together. He fingered the +card, scrutinized it carefully, turned it over, looked heavenward +reflectively, as though the final permission for the visit remained with +him, and finally admitted the visitor. + +“Mr. Ingolby ain’t in,” he said. “He went out a little while back. You +got to wait,” he added sulkily, as he showed the Romany into Ingolby’s +working-room. + +As Jim did so, he saw lying on a chair a suit of clothes on top of which +were a wig and false beard and moustache. Instantly he got between the +visitor and the make-up. The parcel was closed when he was in the room a +half-hour before. Ingolby had opened it since, had been called out, and +had forgotten to cover the things up or put them away. + +“Sit down,” Jim said to the Romany, still covering the disguise. Then +he raised them in his arms, and passed with them into another room, +muttering angrily to himself. + +The Romany had seen, however. They were the first things on which his +eyes had fallen when he entered the room. A wig, a false beard, and +workman’s clothes! What were they for? Were these disguises for the +Master Gorgio? Was he to wear them? If so, he--Jethro Fawe--would +watch and follow him wherever he went. Had these disguises to do with +Fleda--with his Romany lass? + +His pulses throbbed; he was in an overwrought mood. He was ready for any +illusion, susceptible to any vagary of the imagination. + +He looked round the room. So this was the way the swaggering, masterful +Gorgio lived? + +Here were pictures and engravings which did not seem to belong to a new +town in a new land, where everything was useful or spectacular. Here +was a sense of culture and refinement. Here were finished and unfinished +water-colours done by Ingolby’s own hand or bought by him from some +hard-up artist earning his way mile by mile, as it were. Here were +books, not many, but well-bound and important-looking, covering fields +in which Jethro Fawe had never browsed, into which, indeed, he had +never entered. If he had opened them he would have seen a profusion of +marginal notes in pencil, and slips of paper stuck in the pages to mark +important passages. + +He turned from them to the welcome array of weapons on the walls-rifles, +shotguns, Indian bows, arrows and spears, daggers, and great +sheath-knives such as are used from the Yukon to Bolivia, and a sabre +with a faded ribbon of silk tied to the handle. This was all that Max +Ingolby had inherited from his father--that artillery sabre which he +had worn in the Crimea and in the Indian Mutiny. Jethro’s eyes wandered +eagerly over the weapons, and, in imagination, he had each one in his +hand. From the pained, angry confusion he felt when he looked at the +books had emerged a feeling of fanaticism, of feud and war, in which his +spirit regained its own kind of self-respect. In looking at the weapons +he was as good a man as any Gorgio. Brains and books were one thing, but +the strong arm, the quick eye, and the deft lunge home with the sword +or dagger were better; they were of a man’s own skill, not the acquired +skill of another’s brains which books give. He straightened his +shoulders till he looked like a modern actor playing the hero in a +romantic drama, and with quick vain motions he stroked and twisted his +brown moustache, and ran his fingers through his curling hair. In truth +he was no coward; and his conceit would not lessen his courage when the +test of it came. + +As his eyes brightened from gloom and sullenness to valiant enmity, they +suddenly fell on a table in a corner where lay a black coffin-shaped +thing of wood. In this case, he knew, was the Sarasate violin. +Sarasate--once he had paid ten lira to hear Sarasate play the fiddle in +Turin, and the memory of it was like the sun on the clouds to him now. +In music such of him as was real found a home. It fed everything in +him--his passion, his vanity; his vagabond taste, his emotions, his +self-indulgence, his lust. It was the means whereby he raised himself to +adventure and to pilgrimage, to love and license and loot and spying +and secret service here and there in the east of Europe. It was the +flagellation of these senses which excited him to do all that man may do +and more. + +He was going to play to the masterful Gorgio, and he would play as he +had never played before. He would pour the soul of his purpose into the +music--to win back or steal back, the lass sealed to him by the Starzke +River. + +“Kismet!” he said aloud, and he rose from the chair to go to the violin, +but as he did so the door opened and Ingolby entered. + +“Oh, you’re here, and longing to get at it,” he said pleasantly. + +He had seen the look in the eyes of the Romany as he entered, and noted +which way his footsteps were tending. “Well, we needn’t lose any time, +but will you have a drink and a smoke first?” he added. + +He threw his hat in a corner, and opened a spirittable where shone a +half dozen cut-glass, tumblers and several well-filled bottles, while +boxes of cigars and cigarettes flanked them. It was the height of modern +luxury imported from New York, and Jethro eyed it with envious inward +comment. The Gorgio had the world on his key-chain! Every door would +open to him--that was written on his face--unless Fate stepped in and +closed all doors! + +The door of Fleda’s heart had already been opened, but he had not yet +made his bed in it, and there was still time to help Fate, if her mystic +finger beckoned. + +Jethro nodded in response to Ingolby’s invitation to drink. “But I do +not drink much when I play,” he remarked. “There’s enough liquor in the +head when the fiddle’s in the hand. ‘Dadia’, I do not need the spirit to +make the pulses go!” + +“As little as you like then, if you’ll only play as well as you did this +afternoon,” Ingolby said cheerily. “I will play better,” was the reply. + +“On Sarasate’s violin--well, of course.” + +“Not only because it is Sarasate’s violin, ‘Kowadji’!” + +“Kowadji! Oh, come now, you may be a Gipsy, but that doesn’t mean that +you’re an Egyptian or an Arab. Why Arabic--why ‘kowadji’?” + +The other shrugged his shoulders. “Who can tell I speak many languages. +I do not like the Mister. It is ugly in the ear. Monsieur, signor, +effendi, kowadji, they have some respect in them.” + +“You wanted to pay me respect, eh?” + +“You have Sarasate’s violin!” + +“I have a lot of things I could do without.” + +“Could you do without the Sarasate?” + +“Long enough to hear you play it, Mr.--what is your name, may I ask?” + +“My name is Jethro Fawe.” + +“Well, Jethro Fawe, my Romany ‘chal’, you shall show me what a violin +can do.” + +“You know the Romany lingo?” Jethro asked, as Ingolby went over to the +violin-case. + +“A little--just a little.” + +“When did you learn it?” There was a sudden savage rage in Jethro’s +heart, for he imagined Fleda had taught Ingolby. + +“Many a year ago when I could learn anything and remember anything and +forget anything.” Ingolby sighed. “But that doesn’t matter, for I know +only a dozen words or so, and they won’t carry me far.” + +He turned the violin over in his hands. “This ought to do a bit more +than the cotton-field fiddle,” he said dryly. + +He snapped the strings, looking at it with the love of the natural +connoisseur. “Finish your drink and your cigarette. I can wait,” he +added graciously. “If you like the cigarettes, you must take some away +with you. You don’t drink much, that’s clear, therefore you must smoke. +Every man has some vice or other, if it’s only hanging on to virtue too +tight.” + +He laughed eagerly. Strange that he should have a feeling of greater +companionship for a vagabond like this than for most people he met. +Was it some temperamental thing in him? “Dago,” as he called the Romany +inwardly, there was still a bond between them. They understood the glory +of a little instrument like this, and could forget the world in the +light on a great picture. There was something in the air they breathed +which gave them easier understanding of each other and of the world. + +Suddenly with a toss Jethro drained the glass of spirit, though he had +not meant to do so. He puffed the cigarette an instant longer, then +threw it on the floor, and was about to put his foot on it, when Ingolby +stopped him. + +“I’m a slave,” he said. “I’ve got a master. It’s Jim. Jim’s a hard +master, too. He’d give me fits if we ground our cigarette ashes into the +carpet.” + +He threw the refuse into a flower-pot. + +“That squares Jim. Now let’s turn the world inside out,” he proceeded. +He handed the fiddle over. “Here’s the little thing that’ll let you do +the trick. Isn’t it a beauty, Jethro Fawe?” + +The Romany took it, his eyes glistening with mingled feelings. Hatred +was in his soul, and it showed in the sidelong glance as Ingolby turned +to place a chair where he could hear and see comfortably; yet he had the +musician’s love of the perfect instrument, and the woods and the streams +and the sounds of night and the whisperings of trees and the ghosts that +walked in lonely places and called across the glens--all were pouring +into his brain memories which made his pulses move far quicker than the +liquor he had drunk could do. + +“What do you wish?” he asked as he tuned the fiddle. + +Ingolby laughed good-humouredly. “Something Eastern; something you’d +play for yourself if you were out by the Caspian Sea. Something that has +life in it.” + +Jethro continued to tune the fiddle carefully and abstractedly. His eyes +were half-closed, giving them a sulky look, and his head was averted. He +made no reply to Ingolby, but his head swayed from side to side in +that sensuous state produced by self-hypnotism, so common among the +half-Eastern races. By an effort of the will they send through the +nerves a flood of feeling which is half-anaesthetic, half-intoxicant. +Carried into its fullest expression it drives a man amok or makes of +him a howling dervish, a fanatic, or a Shakir. In lesser intensity it +produces the musician of the purely sensuous order, or the dancer that +performs prodigies of abandoned grace. Suddenly the sensuous exaltation +had come upon Jethro Fawe. It was as though he had discharged into his +system from some cells of his brain a flood which coursed like a stream +of soft fire. + +In the pleasurable pain of such a mood he drew his bow across the +strings with a sweeping stroke, and then, for an instant, he ran hither +and thither on the strings testing the quality and finding the range +and capacity of the instrument. It was a scamper of hieroglyphics which +could only mean anything to a musician. + +“Well, what do you think of him?” Ingolby asked as the Romany lowered +the bow. “Paganini--Joachim--Sarasate--any one, it is good enough,” was +the half-abstracted reply. + +“It is good enough for you--almost, eh?” + +Ingolby meant his question as a compliment, but an evil look shot into +the Romany’s face, and the bow twitched in his hand. He was not Paganini +or Sarasate, but that was no reason why he should be insulted. + +Ingolby’s quick perception saw, however, what his words had done, and +he hastened to add: “I believe you can get more out of that fiddle than +Sarasate ever could, in your own sort of music anyhow. I’ve never heard +any one play half so well the kind of piece you played this afternoon. +I’m glad I didn’t make a fool of myself buying the fiddle. I didn’t, did +I? I gave five thousand dollars for it.” + +“It’s worth anything to the man that loves it,” was the Romany’s +response. He was mollified by the praise he had received. + +He raised the fiddle slowly to his chin, his eyes wandering round +the room, then projecting themselves into space, from which they only +returned to fix themselves on Ingolby with the veiled look which +sees but does not see--such a look as an oracle, or a death-god, or a +soulless monster of some between-world, half-Pagan god would wear. Just +such a look as Watts’s “Minotaur” wears in the Tate Gallery in London. + +In an instant he was away in a world which was as far off from this +world as Jupiter is from Mars. It was the world of his soul’s origin--a +place of beautiful and yet of noisome creations also; of white mountains +and green hills, and yet of tarns in which crawled evil things; a place +of vagrant, hurricanes and tidal-waves and cloud-bursts, of forests +alive with quarrelling! and affrighted beasts. It was a place where +birds sang divinely, yet where obscene fowls of prey hovered in the +blue or waited by the dying denizens of the desert or the plain; where +dark-eyed women heard, with sidelong triumph, the whispers of passion; +where sweet-faced children fled in fear from terrors undefined; where +harpies and witch-women and evil souls waited in ambush; or scurried +through the coverts where men brought things to die; or where they fled +for futile refuge from armed foes. It was a world of unbridled will, +this, where the soul of Jethro Fawe had its origin; and to it his senses +fled involuntarily when he put Sarasate’s fiddle to his chin this Autumn +evening. + +From that well of the First Things--the first things of his own +life, the fount from which his forebears drew, backwards through the +centuries, Jethro Fawe quickly drank his fill; and then into the violin +he poured his own story--no improvisation, but musical legends and +classic fantasies and folk-breathings and histories of anguished or +joyous haters or lovers of life; treated by the impressionist who +made that which had been in other scenes to other men the thing of the +present and for the men who are. That which had happened by the Starzke +River was now of the Sagalac River. The passions and wild love and +irresponsible deeds of the life he had lived in years gone by were here. + +It was impossible for Ingolby to resist the spell of the music. Such +abandonment he had never seen in any musician, such riot of musical +meaning he had never heard. He was conscious of the savagery and the +bestial soul of vengeance which spoke through the music, and drowned +the joy and radiance and almost ghostly and grotesque frivolity of the +earlier passages; but it had no personal meaning to him, though at times +it seemed when the Romany came near and bent over him with the ecstatic +attack of the music, as though there was a look in the black eyes like +that of a man who kills. It had, of course, nothing to do with him; it +was the abandonment of a highly emotional nature, he thought. + +It was only after he had been playing, practically without ceasing, +for three-quarters of an hour, that there came to Ingolby the true +interpretation of the Romany mutterings through the man’s white, +wolf-like teeth. He did not shrink, however, but kept his head and +watched. + +Once, as the musician flung his body round in a sweep of passion, +Ingolby saw the black eyes flash to the weapons on the wall with a +malign look which did not belong to the music alone, and he took a +swift estimate of the situation. Why the man should have any intentions +against him, he could not guess, except that he might be one of the +madmen who have a vendetta against the capitalist. Or was he a tool +of Felix Marchand? It did not seem possible, and yet if the man was +penniless and an anarchist maybe, there was the possibility. Or--the +blood rushed to his face--or it might be that the Gipsy’s presence here, +this display of devilish antipathy, as though it were all part of the +music, was due, somehow, to Fleda Druse. + +The music swelled to a swirling storm, crashed and flooded the feelings +with a sense of shipwreck and chaos, through which a voice seemed to +cry-the quiver and delicate shrillness of one isolated string--and then +fell a sudden silence, as though the end of all things had come; and on +the silence the trembling and attenuated note which had quivered on +the lonely string, rising, rising, piercing the infinite distance and +sinking into silence again. + +In the pause which followed the Romany stood panting, his eyes fixed on +Ingolby with an evil exaltation which made him seem taller and bigger +than he was, but gave him, too, a look of debauchery like that on the +face of a satyr. Generations of unbridled emotion, of license of the +fields and the covert showed in his unguarded features. + +“What did the single cry--the motif--express?” Ingolby asked coolly. “I +know there was catastrophe, the tumblings of avalanches, but the voice +that cried-the soul of a lover, was it?” + +The Romany’s lips showed an ugly grimace. “It was the soul of one that +betrayed a lover, going to eternal tortures.” + +Ingolby laughed carelessly. “It was a fine bit of work. Sarasate would +have been proud of his fiddle if he could have heard. Anyhow he couldn’t +have played that. Is it Gipsy music?” + +“It is the music of a ‘Gipsy,’ as you call it.” + +“Well, it’s worth a year’s work to hear,” Ingolby replied admiringly, +yet acutely conscious of danger. “Are you a musician by trade?” he +asked. + +“I have no trade.” The glowing eyes kept scanning the wall where the +weapons hung, and as though without purpose other than to get a pipe +from the rack on the wall, Ingolby moved to where he could be prepared +for any rush. It seemed absurd that there should be such a possibility; +but the world was full of strange things. + +“What brought you to the West?” he asked as he filled a pipe, his back +almost against the wall. + +“I came to get what belonged to me.” + +Ingolby laughed ironically. “Most of us are here for that purpose. We +think the world owes us such a lot.” + +“I know what is my own.” + +Ingolby lit his pipe, his eyes reflectively scanning the other. + +“Have you got it again out here--your own?” + +“Not yet, but I will.” + +Ingolby took out his watch, and looked at it. “I haven’t found it easy +getting all that belongs to me.” + +“You have found it easier getting what belongs to some one else,” was +the snarling response. + +Ingolby’s jaw hardened. What did the fellow mean? Did he refer to money, +or--was it Fleda Druse? “See here,” he said, “there’s no need to say +things like that. I never took anything that didn’t belong to me, that I +didn’t win, or earn or pay for--market price or ‘founder’s shares’”--he +smiled grimly. “You’ve given me the best treat I’ve had in many a day. +I’d walk fifty miles to hear you play my Sarasate--or even old Berry’s +cotton-field fiddle. I’m as grateful as I can be, and I’d like to pay +you for it; but as you’re not a professional, and it’s one gentleman +to another as it were, I can only thank you--or maybe help you to get +what’s your own, if you’re really trying to get it out here. Meanwhile, +have a cigar and a drink.” + +He was still between the Romany and the wall, and by a movement forward +sought to turn Jethro to the spirit-table. Probably this manoeuvring was +all nonsense, that he was wholly misreading the man; but he had always +trusted his instincts, and he would not let his reason rule him entirely +in such a situation. He could also ring the bell for Jim, or call to +him, for while he was in the house Jim was sure to be near by; but he +felt he must deal with the business alone. + +The Romany did not move towards the spirit-table, and Ingolby became +increasingly vigilant. + +“No, I can’t pay you anything, that’s clear,” he said; “but to get your +own--I’ve got some influence out here--what can I do? A stranger is up +against all kinds of things if he isn’t a native, and you’re not. Your +home and country’s a good way from here, eh?” + +Suddenly the Romany faced him. “Yes. I come from places far from here. +Where is the Romany’s home? It is everywhere in the world, but it +is everywhere inside his tent. Because his country is everywhere and +nowhere, his home is more to him than it is to any other. He is alone +with his wife, and with his own people. Yes, and by long and by last, +he will make the man pay who spoils his home. It is all he has. Good or +bad, it is all he has. It is his own.” + +Ingolby had a strange, disturbing premonition that he was about to hear +what would startle him, but he persisted. “You said you had come here to +get your own--is your home here?” + +For a moment the Romany did not answer. He had worked himself into a +great passion. He had hypnotized himself, he had acted for a while as +though he was one of life’s realities; but suddenly there passed through +his veins the chilling sense of the unreal, that he was only acting +a part, as he had ever done in his life, and that the man before him +could, with a wave of the hand, raise the curtain on all his disguises +and pretences. It was only for an instant, however, for there swept +through him the feeling that Fleda had roused in him--the first real +passion, the first true love--if what such as he felt can be love--that +he had ever known; and he saw her again as she was in the but in the +wood defying him, ready to defend herself against him. All his erotic +anger and melodramatic fervour were alive in him once more. + +He was again a man with a wrong, a lover dispossessed. On the instant +his veins filled with passionate blood. The Roscian strain in him had +its own tragic force and reality. + +“My home is where my own is, and you, have taken my own from me, as I +said,” he burst out. “There was all the world for you, but I had only my +music and my wife, and you have taken my wife from me. ‘Mi Duvel’, you +have taken, but you shall give back again, or there will be only one of +us in the world! The music I have played for you--that has told you all: +the thing that was music from the beginning of Time, the will of the +First of All. Fleda Druse, she was mine, she is my wife, and you, the +Gorgio, come between, and she will not return to me.” + +A sudden savage desire came to Ingolby to strike the man in the +face--this Gipsy vagabond the husband of Fleda Druse! It was too +monstrous. It was an evil lie, and yet she had said she was a Romany, +and had said it with apparent shame or anxiety. She had given him no +promise, had pledged no faith, had admitted no love, and yet already in +his heart of hearts he thought upon her as his own. Ever since the day +he had held her in his arms at the Carillon Rapids her voice had sounded +in his ears, and a warmth was in his heart which had never been there +in all his days. This waif of barbarism even to talk of Fleda Druse as +though he was of the same sphere as herself invited punishment-but to +claim her as his wife! It was shameless. An ugly mood came on him, +the force that had made him what he was filled all his senses. He +straightened himself; contempt of the Ishmael showed at his lips. + +“I think you lie, Jethro Fawe,” he said quietly, and his eyes were hard +and piercing. “Gabriel Druse’s daughter is not--never was--any wife of +yours. She never called you husband. She does not belong to the refuse +of the world.” + +The Romany made a sudden rush towards the wall where the weapons hung, +but two arms of iron were flung out and caught him, and he was hurled +across the room. He crashed against a table, swayed, missed a chair +where rested the Sarasate violin, then fell to the floor; but he +staggered to his feet again, all his senses in chaos. + +“You almost fell on the fiddle. If you had hurt it I’d have hurt you, +Mr. Fawe,” Ingolby said with a grim smile. “That fiddle’s got too much +in it to waste it.” + +“Mi Duvel! Mi Duvel!” gasped the Romany in his fury. + +“You can say that as much as you like, but if you play any more of +your monkey tricks here, my Paganini, I will wring your neck,” Ingolby +returned, his six feet of solid flesh making a movement of menace. + +“And look,” he added, “since you are here, and I said what I meant, +that I’d help you to get your own, I’ll keep my word. But don’t talk in +damned riddles. Talk white men’s language. You said that Gabriel Druse’s +daughter was your wife. Explain what you meant, and no nonsense.” + +The Romany made a gesture of acquiescence. “She was made mine according +to Romany law by the River Starzke seventeen years ago. I was the son of +Lemuel Fawe, rightful King of all the Romanys. Gabriel Druse seized the +headship, and my father gave him three thousand pounds that we should +marry, she and I, and so bring the headship to the Fawes again when +Gabriel Druse should die; and so it was done by the River Starzke in the +Roumelian country.” + +Ingolby winced, for the man’s words rang true. A cloud came over his +face, but he said nothing. Jethro saw the momentary advantage. “You did +not know?” he asked. “She did not tell you she was made my wife those +years ago? She did not tell you she was the daughter of the Romany King? +So it is, you see, she is afraid to tell the truth.” + +Ingolby’s knitted bulk heaved with desire to injure. “Your wife--you +melodious sinner! Do you think such tomfoolery has any effect in this +civilized country? She is about as much your wife as I am your brother. +Don’t talk your heathenish rot here. I said I’d help you to get your +own, because you played the fiddle as few men can play it, and I owe you +a lot for that hour’s music; but there’s nothing belonging to Gabriel +Druse that belongs to you, and his daughter least of all. Look +out--don’t sit on the fiddle, damn you!” + +The Romany had made a motion as if to sit down on the chair where the +fiddle was, but stopped short at Ingolby’s warning. For an instant +Jethro had an inclination to seize the fiddle and break it across his +knees. It would be an exquisite thing to destroy five thousand dollars’ +worth of this man’s property at a single wrench and blow. But the spirit +of the musician asserted itself before the vengeful lover could carry +out his purpose; as Ingolby felt sure it would. Ingolby had purposely +given the warning about the fiddle, in the belief that it might break +the unwelcome intensity of the scene. He detested melodrama, and the +scene came precious near to it. Men had been killed before his eyes more +than once, but there had been no rodomontade even when there had been a +woman in the case. + +This Romany lover, however, seemed anxious to make a Sicilian drama out +of his preposterous claim, and it sickened him. Who was the fellow that +he should appear in the guise of a rival to himself! It was humiliating +and offensive. Ingolby had his own kind of pride and vanity, and they +were both hurt now. He would have been less irritable if this rival had +been as good a man as himself or better. He was so much a gamester that +he would have said, “Let the best man win,” and have taken his chances. + +His involuntary strategy triumphed for the moment. The Romany looked at +the fiddle for an instant with murderous eyes, but the cool, quiet voice +of Ingolby again speaking sprayed his hot virulence. + +“You can make a good musician quite often, but a good fiddle is a +prize-packet from the skies,” Ingolby said. “When you get a good +musician and a good fiddle together it’s a day for a salute of a hundred +guns.” + +Half-dazed with unregulated emotion, Jethro acted with indecision for +a moment, and the fiddle was safe. But he had suffered the indignity +of being flung like a bag of bones across the room, and the microbe of +insane revenge was in him. It was not to be killed by the cold humour of +the man who had worsted him. He returned to the attack. + +“She is mine, and her father knows it is so. I have waited all these +years, and the hour has come. I will--” + +Ingolby’s eyes became hard and merciless again. “Don’t talk your Gipsy +rhetoric. I’ve had enough. No hour has come that makes a woman do what +she doesn’t want to do in a free country. The lady is free to do what +she pleases here within British law, and British law takes no heed of +Romany law or any other law. You’ll do well to go back to your Roumelian +country or whatever it is. The lady will marry whom she likes.” + +“She will never marry you,” the Romany said huskily and menacingly. + +“I have never asked her, but if I do, and she said yes, no one could +prevent it.” + +“I would prevent it.” + +“How?” + +“She is a Romany: she belongs to the Romany people; I will find a way.” + +Ingolby had a flash of intuition. + +“You know well that if Gabriel Druse passed the word, your life wouldn’t +be worth a day’s purchase. The Camorra would not be more certain or more +deadly. If you do anything to hurt the daughter of Gabriel Druse, you +will pay the full price, and you know it. The Romanys don’t love you +better than their rightful chief.” + +“I am their rightful chief.” + +“Maybe, but if they don’t say so, too, you might as well be their +rightful slave. You are a genius in your way. Take my advice and return +to the trail of the Gipsy. Or, there’s many an orchestra would give you +a good salary as leader. You’ve got no standing in this country. You +can’t do anything to hurt me except try to kill me, and I’ll take my +chance of that. You’d better have a drink now and go quietly home to +bed. Try and understand that this is a British town, and we don’t settle +our affairs by jumping from a violin rhapsody to a knife or a gun.” + He jerked his head backwards towards the wall. “Those things are for +ornament, not for use. Come, Fawe, have a drink and go home like a good +citizen for one night only.” + +The Romany hesitated, then shook his head and muttered chaotically. + +“Very well,” was the decisive reply. Ingolby pressed a bell, and, in +an instant, Jim Beadle was in the room. He had evidently been at the +keyhole. “Jim,” he said, “show the gentleman out.” + +But suddenly he caught up a box of cigars from the table and thrust +it into the Romany’s hands. “They’re the best to be got this side of +Havana,” he said cheerily. “They’ll help you put more fancy still into +your playing. Good night. You never played better than you’ve done +during the last hour, I’ll stake my life on that. Good night. Show Mr. +Fawe out, Jim.” + +The Romany had not time to thrust back the cigars upon his host, and +dazed by the strategy of the thing, by the superior force and mind +of the man who a moment ago he would have killed, he took the box and +turned towards the door, taking his hat dazedly from Jim. + +At the door, however, catching sight of the sly grin on the mulatto +servant’s face, his rage and understanding returned to him, and he faced +the masterful Gorgio once again. + +“By God, I’ll have none of it!” he exclaimed roughly and threw the box +of cigars on the floor of the room. Ingolby was not perturbed. “Don’t +forget there’s an east-bound train every day,” he said menacingly, and +turned his back as the door closed. + +In another minute Jim entered the room. “Get the clothes and the wig and +things, Jim. I must be off,” he said. + +“The toughs don’t get going till about this time over at Manitou,” + responded Jim. Then he told his master about the clothes having been +exposed in the room when the Romany arrived. “But I don’t think he seen +them,” Jim added with approval of his own conduct. “I got ‘em out quick +as lightning. I covered ‘em like a blanket.” + +“All right, Jim; it doesn’t matter. That fellow’s got other things to +think of than that.” + +He was wrong, however. The Romany was waiting outside in the darkness +not far away--watching and waiting. + + + + +CHAPTER X. FOR LUCK + +Felix Marchand was in the highest spirits. His clean-shaven face was +wrinkled with smiles and sneers. His black hair was flung in waves of +triumph over his heavily-lined forehead; one hand was on his hip with +brave satisfaction, the other with lighted cigarette was tossed upwards +in exultation. + +“I’ve got him. I’ve got him--like that!” he said transferring the +cigarette to his mouth, and clenching his right hand as though it could +not be loosed by an earthquake. “For sure, it’s a thing finished as the +solder of a pannikin--like that.” + +He caught up a tin quart-pot from the bar-counter and showed the +soldered bottom of it. + +He was alone in the bar of Barbazon’s Hotel except for one person--the +youngest of the officials who had been retired from the offices of the +railways when Ingolby had merged them. This was a man who had got his +position originally by nepotism, and represented the worst elements of a +national life where the spoils system is rooted in the popular mind. He +had, however, a little residue of that discipline which, working in a +great industrial organization, begets qualms as to extreme courses. + +He looked reflectively at the leaden pot and said in reply: “I’d never +believe in anything where that Ingolby is concerned till I had it in +the palm of my hand. He’s as deep as a well, and when he’s quietest it’s +good to look out. He takes a lot of skinning, that badger.” + +“He’s skinned this time all right,” was Marchand’s reply. “To-morrow’ll +be the biggest day Manitou’s had since the Indian lifted his wigwam and +the white man put down his store. Listen--hear them! They’re coming!” + +He raised a hand for silence, and a rumbling, ragged roar of voices +could be heard without. + +“The crowd have gone the rounds,” he continued. “They started at +Barbazon’s and they’re winding up at Barbazon’s. They’re drunk enough +to-night to want to do anything, and to-morrow when they’ve got sore +heads they’ll do anything. They’ll make that funeral look like a +squeezed orange; they’ll show Lebanon and Master Ingolby that we’re to +be bosses of our own show. The strike’ll be on after the funeral, and +after the strike’s begun there’ll be--eh, bien sur!” + +He paused sharply, as though he had gone too far. “There’ll be what?” + whispered the other; but Marchand made no reply, save to make a warning +gesture, for Barbazon, the landlord, had entered behind the bar. + +“They’re coming back, Barbazon,” Marchand said to the landlord, jerking +his head towards the front door. The noise of the crowd was increasing, +the raucous shouts were so loud that the three had to raise their +voices. “You’ll do a land-office business to-night,” he declared. + +Barbazon had an evil face. There were rumours that he had been in gaol +in Quebec for robbery, and that after he had served his time he had +dug up the money he had stolen and come West. He had started the first +saloon at Manitou, and had grown with the place in more senses than one. +He was heavy and thick-set, with huge shoulders, big hands, and beady +eyes that looked out of a stolid face where long hours, greed and vices +other than drink had left their mark. He never drank spirits, and was +therefore ready to take advantage of those who did drink. More than one +horse and canoe and cow and ox, and acre of land, in the days when land +was cheap, had come to him across the bar-counter. He could be bought, +could Barbazon, and he sold more than wine and spirits. He had a wife +who had left him twice because of his misdemeanours, but had returned +and straightened out his house and affairs once again; and even when +she went off with Lick Baldwin, a cattle-dealer, she was welcomed back +without reproaches by Barbazon, chiefly because he had no morals, and +her abilities were of more value to him than her virtue. On the whole, +Gros Barbazon was a bad lot. + +At Marchand’s words Barbazon shrugged his shoulders. “The more spent +to-night, the less to spend to-morrow,” he growled. + +“But there’s going to be spending for a long time,” Marchand answered. +“There’s going to be a riot to-morrow, and there’s going to be a strike +the next day, and after that there’s going to be something else.” + +“What else?” Barbazon asked, his beady eyes fastened on Marchand’s face. + +“Something worth while-better than all the rest.” Barbazon’s low +forehead seemed to disappear almost, as he drew the grizzled shock of +hair down, by wrinkling his forehead with a heavy frown. + +“It’s no damn good, m’sieu’,” he growled. “Am I a fool? They’ll spend +money to-night, and tomorrow, and the next day, and when the row is on; +and the more they spend then, the less they’ll have to spend by-and-by. +It’s no good. The steady trade for me--all the time. That is my idee. +And the something else--what? You think there’s something else that’ll +be good for me? Nom de Dieu, there’s nothing you’re doing, or mean to +do, but’ll hurt me and everybody.” + +“That’s your view, is it, Barbazon?” exclaimed Marchand loudly, for the +crowd was now almost at the door. “You’re a nice Frenchman and patriot. +That crowd’ll be glad to hear you think they’re fools. Suppose they took +it into their heads to wreck the place?” + +Barbazon’s muddy face got paler, but his eyes sharpened, and he leaned +over the bar-counter, and said with a snarl: “Go to hell, and say what +you like; and then I’ll have something to say about something else, +m’sieu’.” + +Marchand was about to reply angrily, but he instantly changed his mind, +and before Barbazon could stop him, he sprang over the counter and +disappeared into the office behind the bar. + +“I won’t steal anything, Barbazon,” he said over his shoulder as he +closed the door behind him. + +“I’ll see to that,” Barbazon muttered stolidly, but with malicious eyes. + +The front door was flung open now, and the crowd poured into the room, +boisterous, reckless, though some were only sullen, watchful and angry. +These last were mostly men above middle age, and of a fanatical and +racially bitter type. They were not many, but in one sense they were the +backbone and force of the crowd, probably the less intelligent but the +more tenacious and consistent. They were black spots of gathering storm +in an electric atmosphere. + +All converged upon the bar. Two assistants rushed the drinks along the +counter with flourishes, while Barbazon took in the cash and sharply +checked the rougher element, who were inclined to treat the bar as +a place for looting. Most of them, however, had a wholesome fear of +Barbazon, and also most of them wished to stand well with him--credit +was a good thing, even in a saloon. + +For a little time the room was packed, then some of the more restless +spirits, their thirst assuaged, sallied forth to taste the lager and +old rye elsewhere, and “raise Cain” in the streets. When they went, it +became possible to move about more freely in the big bar-room, at the +end of which was a billiard-table. It was notable, however, that the +more sullen elements stayed. Some of them were strangers to each other. +Manitou was a distributing point for all radiations of the compass, and +men were thrown together in its streets who only saw one another once +or twice a year-when they went to the woods in the Fall or worked the +rivers in the Summer. Some were Mennonites, Doukhobors and Finlanders, +some Swedes, Norwegians and Icelanders. Others again were birds of +passage who would probably never see Manitou in the future, but they +were mostly French, and mostly Catholic, and enemies of the Orange +Lodges wherever they were, east or west or north or south. They all had +a common ground of unity--half-savage coureurs-de-bois, river-drivers, +railway-men, factory hands, cattlemen, farmers, labourers; they had a +gift for prejudice, and taking sides on something or other was as the +breath of the nostrils to them. + +The greater number of the crowd were, however, excitable, good-natured +men, who were by instinct friendly, save when their prejudices were +excited; and their oaths and exclamations were marvels of droll +ingenuity. Most of them were still too good-humoured with drink to be +dangerous, but all hoped for trouble at the Orange funeral on principle, +and the anticipated strike had elements of “thrill.” They were of a +class, however, who would swing from what was good-humour to deadly +anger in a minute, and turn a wind of mere prejudice into a hurricane of +life and death with the tick of a clock. They would all probably go to +the Orange funeral to-morrow in a savage spirit. Some of them were loud +in denunciation of Ingolby and “the Lebanon gang”; they joked coarsely +over the dead Orangeman, but their cheerful violence had not yet the +appearance of reality. + +One man suddenly changed all that. He was a river-driver of stalwart +proportions, with a red handkerchief round his neck, and with loose +corded trousers tucked into his boots. He had a face of natural ugliness +made almost repulsive by marks of smallpox. Red, flabby lips and an +overhanging brow made him a figure which men would avoid on a dark +night. + +“Let’s go over to Lebanon to-night and have it out,” he said in French. +“That Ingolby--let’s go break his windows and give him a dip in the +river. He’s the curse of this city. Holy, once Manitou was a place to +live in, now it’s a place to die in! The factories, the mills, they’re +full of Protes’ants and atheists and shysters; the railway office is +gone to Lebanon. Ingolby took it there. Manitou was the best town in the +West; it’s no good now. Who’s the cause? Ingolby’s the cause. Name of +God, if he was here I’d get him by the throat as quick as winkin’.” + +He opened and shut his fingers with spasmodic malice, and glared round +the room. “He’s going to lock us out if we strike,” he added. “He’s +going to take the bread out of our mouths; he’s going to put his heel on +Manitou, and grind her down till he makes her knuckle to Lebanon--to a +lot of infidels, Protes’ants, and thieves. Who’s going to stand it? I +say-bagosh, I say, who’s going to stand it!” + +“He’s a friend of the Monseigneur,” ventured a factory-hand, who had a +wife and children to support, and however partisan, was little ready for +that which would stop his supplies. + +“Sacre bapteme! That’s part of his game,” roared the big river-driver +in reply. “I’ll take the word of Felix Marchand about that. Look at +him! That Felix Marchand doesn’t try to take the bread out of people’s +mouths. He gives money here, he gives it there. He wants the old town to +stay as it is and not be swallowed up.” + +“Three cheers for Felix Marchand!” cried some one in the throng. All +cheered loudly save one old man with grizzled hair and beard, who leaned +against the wall half-way down the room smoking a corncob pipe. He was a +French Canadian in dress and appearance, and he spat on the floor like +a navvy--he had filled his pipe with the strongest tobacco that one man +ever offered to another. As the crowd cheered for Felix Marchand, he +made his way up towards the bar slowly. He must have been tall when he +was young; now he was stooped, yet there was still something very sinewy +about him. + +“Who’s for Lebanon?” cried the big river-driver with an oath. “Who’s for +giving Lebanon hell, and ducking Ingolby in the river?” + +“I am--I am--I am--all of us!” shouted the crowd. “It’s no good waiting +for to-morrow. Let’s get the Lebs by the scruff to-night. Let’s break +Ingolby’s windows and soak him in the Sagalac. Allons--allons gai!” + +Uproar and broken sentences, threats, oaths, and objurgations sounded +through the room. There was a sudden movement towards the door, but +the exit of the crowd was stopped by a slow but clear voice speaking in +French. + +“Wait a minute, my friends!” it cried. “Wait a minute. Let’s ask a few +questions first.” + +“Who’s he?” asked a dozen voices. “What’s he going to say?” The mob +moved again towards the bar. + +The big river-driver turned on the grizzled old man beside the +bar-counter with bent shoulders and lazy, drawling speech. + +“What’ve you got to say about it, son?” he asked threateningly. + +“Well, to ask a few questions first--that’s all,” the old man replied. + +“You don’t belong here, old cock,” the other said roughly. + +“A good many of us don’t belong here,” the old man replied quietly. “It +always is so. This isn’t the first time I’ve been to Manitou. You’re a +river-driver, and you don’t live here either,” he continued. + +“What’ve you got to say about it? I’ve been coming and going here for +ten years. I belong--bagosh, what do you want to ask? Hurry up. We’ve +got work to do. We’re going to raise hell in Lebanon.” + +“And give hell to Ingolby,” shouted some one in the crowd. + +“Suppose Ingolby isn’t there?” questioned the old man. + +“Oh, that’s one of your questions, is it?” sneered the big river-driver. +“Well, if you knew him as we do, you’d know that it’s at night-time he +sits studyin’ how he’ll cut Lebanon’s throat. He’s home, all right. He’s +in Lebanon anyhow, and we’ll find him.” + +“Well, but wait a minute--be quiet a bit,” said the old man, his eyes +blinking slowly at the big riverdriver. “I’ve been ‘round a good deal, +and I’ve had some experience in the world. Did you ever give that +Ingolby a chance to tell you what his plans were? Did you ever get close +to him and try to figure what he was driving at? There’s no chance of +getting at the truth if you don’t let a man state his case--but no. If +he can’t make you see his case then is the time to jib, not before.” + +“Oh, get out!” cried a rowdy English road-maker in the crowd. “We know +all right what Ingolby’s after.” + +“Eh, well, what is he after?” asked the old man looking the other in the +eye. + +“What’s he after? Oof-oof-oof, that’s what he’s after. He’s for his own +pocket, he’s for being boss of all the woolly West. He’s after keeping +us poor and making himself rich. He’s after getting the cinch on two +towns and three railways, and doing what he likes with it all; and we’re +after not having him do it, you bet. That’s how it is, old hoss.” + +The other stroked his beard with hands which, somehow, gave little +indication of age, and then, with a sudden jerk forward of his head, he +said: “Oh, it’s like that, eh? Is that what M’sieu’ Marchand told you? +That’s what he said, is it?” + +The big river-driver, eager to maintain his supreme place as leader, +lunged forward a step, and growled a challenge. + +“Who said it? What does it matter if M’sieu’ Marchand said it--it’s +true. If I said it, it’s true. All of us in this room say it, and it’s +true. Young Marchand says what Manitou says.” + +The old man’s eyes grew brighter--they were exceedingly sharp for one so +old, and he said quite gently now: + +“M. Marchand said it first, and you all say it afterwards--ah, bah! But +listen to me; I know Max Ingolby that you think is such a villain; I +know him well. I knew him when he was a little boy and--” + +“You was his nurse, I suppose!” cried the Englishman’s voice amid a roar +of laughter. + +“Taught him his A-B-C-was his dear, kind teacher, eh?” hilariously cried +another. + +The old man appeared not to hear. “I have known him all the years since. +He has only been in the West a few years, but he has lived in the world +exactly thirty-three years. He never willingly did anybody harm--never. +Since he came West, since he came to the Sagalac, he’s brought work +to Lebanon and to Manitou. There are hundreds more workmen in both the +towns than there were when he came. It was he made others come with much +money and build the factories and the mills. Work means money, money +means bread, bread means life--so.” + +The big river-driver, seeing the effect of the old man’s words upon the +crowd, turned to them with an angry gesture and a sneer. + +“I s’pose Ingolby has paid this old skeesicks for talking this swash. +We know all right what Ingolby is, and what he’s done. He’s made war +between the two towns--there’s hell to pay now on both sides of the +Sagalac. He took away the railway offices from here, and threw men out +of work. He’s done harm to Manitou--he’s against Manitou every time.” + +Murmurs of approval ran through the crowd, though some were silent, +looking curiously at the forceful and confident old man. Even his bent +shoulders seemed to suggest driving power rather than the weight of +years. He suddenly stretched out a hand in command as it were. + +“Comrades, comrades,” he said, “every man makes mistakes. Even if it was +a mistake for Ingolby to take away the offices from Manitou, he’s done a +big thing for both cities by combining the three railways.” + +“Monopoly,” growled a voice from the crowd. “Not monopoly,” the old man +replied with a ring to his voice, which made it younger, fresher. “Not +monopoly, but better management of the railways, with more wages, more +money to spend on things to eat and drink and wear, more dollars in the +pocket of everybody that works in Manitou and Lebanon. Ingolby works, he +doesn’t loaf.” + +“Oh, gosh all hell, he’s a dynamo,” shouted a voice from the crowd. +“He’s a dynamo running the whole show-eh!” + +The old man seemed to grow shorter, but as he thrust his shoulders +forward, it was like a machine gathering energy and power. + +“I’ll tell you, friends, what Ingolby is trying to do,” he said in a low +voice vibrating with that force which belongs neither to age nor youth, +but is the permanent activity uniting all ages of a man. “Of course, +Ingolby is ambitious and he wants power. He tries to do the big things +in the world because there is the big thing to do--for sure. Without +such men the big things are never done, and other men have less work +to do, and less money and poorer homes. They discover and construct and +design and invent and organize and give opportunities. I am a working +man, but I know what Ingolby thinks. I know what men think who try to do +the big things. I have tried to do them.” + +The crowd were absolutely still now, but the big river-driver shook +himself free of the eloquence, which somehow swayed them all, and said: + +“You--you look as if you’d tried to do big things, you do, old +skeesicks. I bet you never earned a hundred dollars in your life.” He +turned to the crowd with fierce gestures. “Let’s go to Lebanon and make +the place sing,” he roared. “Let’s get Ingolby out to talk for himself, +if he wants to talk. We know what we want to do, and we’re not going to +be bossed. He’s for Lebanon and we’re for Manitou. Lebanon means to boss +us, Lebanon wants to sit on us because we’re Catholics, because we’re +French, because we’re honest.” + +Again a wave of revolution swept through the crowd. The big river-driver +represented their natural instincts, their native fanaticism, their +prejudices. But the old man spoke once more. + +“Ingolby wants Lebanon and Manitou to come together, not to fall apart,” + he declared. “He wants peace. If he gets rich here he won’t get rich +alone. He’s working for both towns. If he brings money from outside, +that’s good for both towns. If he--” + +“Shut your mouth, let Ingolby speak for himself,” snarled the big +river-driver. “Take his dollars out of your pocket and put them on the +bar, the dollars Ingolby gives you to say all this. Put them dollars of +Ingolby’s up for drinks, or we’ll give you a jar that’ll shake you, old +wart-hog.” + +At that instant a figure forced itself through the crowd, and broke into +the packed circle which was drawing closer upon the old man. + +It was Jethro Fawe. He flung a hand out towards the old man. + +“You want Ingolby--well, that’s Ingolby,” he shouted. + +Like lightning the old man straightened himself, snatched the wig and +beard away from his head and face, and with quiet fearlessness said: + +“Yes, I am Ingolby.” + +For an instant there was absolute silence, in which Ingolby weighed his +chances. He was among enemies. He had meant only to move among the +crowd to discover their attitude, to find things out for himself. He +had succeeded, and his belief that Manitou could be swayed in the right +direction if properly handled, was correct. Beneath the fanaticism and +the racial spirit was human nature; and until Jethro Fawe had appeared, +he had hoped to prevent violence and the collision at to-morrow’s +funeral. + +Now the situation was all changed. It was hard to tell what sharp turn +things might take. He was about to speak, but suddenly from the crowd +there was spat out at him the words, “Spy! Sneak! Spy!” + +Instantly the wave of feeling ran against him. He smiled frankly, +however, with that droll twist of his mouth which had won so many, and +the raillery of his eyes was more friendly than any appeal. + +“Spy, if you like, my friends,” he said firmly and clearly. “Moses sent +spies down into the Land of Promise, and they brought back big bunches +of grapes. Well, I’ve come down into a land of promise. I wanted to know +just how you all feel without being told it by some one else. I knew if +I came here as Max Ingolby I shouldn’t hear the whole truth; I wouldn’t +see exactly how you see, so I came as one of you, and you must admit, my +French is as good as yours almost.” + +He laughed and nodded at them. + +“There wasn’t one of you that knew I wasn’t a Frenchman. That’s in my +favour. If I know the French language as I do, and can talk to you in +French as I’ve done, do you think I don’t understand the French people, +and what you want and how you feel? I’m one of the few men in the West +that can talk your language. I learned it when I was a boy, so that I +might know my French fellow-countrymen under the same flag, with the +same King and the same national hope. As for your religion, God knows, I +wish I was as good a Protestant as lots of you are good Catholics. And +I tell you this, I’d be glad to have a minister that I could follow and +respect and love as I respect and love Monseigneur Lourde of Manitou. I +want to bring these two towns together, to make them a sign of what +this country is, and what it can do; to make hundreds like ourselves in +Manitou and Lebanon work together towards health, wealth, comfort and +happiness. Can’t you see, my friends, what I’m driving at? I’m for peace +and work and wealth and power--not power for myself alone, but power +that belongs to all of us. If I can show I’m a good man at my job, maybe +better than others, then I have a right to ask you to follow me. If I +can’t, then throw me out. I tell you I’m your friend--Max Ingolby is +your friend.” + +“Spy! Spy! Spy!” cried a new voice. + +It came from behind the bar. An instant after, the owner of the voice +leaped up on the counter. It was Felix Marchand. He had entered by the +door behind the bar into Barbazon’s office. + +“When I was in India,” Marchand cried, “I found a snake in the bed. +I killed it before it stung me. There’s a snake in the bed of +Manitou--what are you going to do with it?” + +The men swayed, murmured, and shrill shouts of “Marchand! Marchand! +Marchand!” went up. The crowd heaved upon Ingolby. “One minute!” + he called with outstretched arm and commanding voice. They paused. +Something in him made him master of them even then. + +At that moment two men were fiercely fighting their way through the +crowd towards where Ingolby was. They were Jowett and Osterhaut. Ingolby +saw them coming. + +“Go back--go back!” he called to them. + +Suddenly a drunken navvy standing on a table in front of and to the left +of Ingolby seized a horseshoe hanging on the wall, and flung it with an +oath. + +It caught Ingolby in the forehead, and he fell to the floor without a +sound. + +A minute afterwards the bar was empty, save for Osterhaut, Jowett, old +Barbazon, and his assistants. + +Barbazon and Jowett lifted the motionless figure in their arms, and +carried it into a little room. + +Then Osterhaut picked up the horseshoe tied with its gay blue ribbons, +now stained with blood, and put it in his pocket. + +“For luck,” he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. THE SENTENCE OF THE PATRIN + +Fleda waked suddenly, but without motion; just a wide opening of the +eyes upon the darkness, and a swift beating of the heart, but not the +movement of a muscle. It was as though some inward monitor, some gnome +of the hidden life had whispered of danger to her slumbering spirit. The +waking was a complete emergence, a vigilant and searching attention. + +There was something on her breast weighing it down, yet with a pressure +which was not weight alone, and maybe was not weight at all as weight +is understood. Instantly there flashed through her mind the primitive +belief that a cat will lie upon the breasts of children and suck their +breath away. Strange and even absurd as it was, it seemed to her that +a cat was pressing and pressing down upon her breast. There could be no +mistaking the feline presence. Now with a sudden energy of the body, she +threw the Thing from her, and heard it drop, with the softness of feline +feet, on the Indian rug upon the floor. + +Then she sprang out of bed, and, feeling for the matches, lit a candle +on the small table beside her bed, and moved it round searching for what +she thought to be a cat. It was not to be seen. She looked under the +bed; it was not there: under the washstand, under the chest of drawers, +under the improvised dressing-table; and no cat was to be found. She +173 looked under the chair over which hung her clothes, even behind the +dresses and the Indian deerskin cape hanging on the door. + +There was no life of any kind save her own in the room, so far as she +could see. She laughed nervously, though her heart was still beating +hard. That it should beat hard was absurd, for what had she to fear--she +who had lived the wild open-air life of many lands, had slept among +hills infested by animals the enemy of man, and who when a little girl +had faced beasts of prey alone. Yet here in her own safe room on the +Sagalac, with its four walls, but its unlocked doors--for Gabriel Druse +said that he could not bear that last sign of his exile--here in the +fortress of the town-dweller there was a strange trembling of her pulses +in the presence of a mere hallucination or nightmare--the first she had +had ever. Her dreams in the past had always been happy and without the +black fancies of nightmare. On the night that Jethro Fawe had first +confronted her father and herself, and he had been carried to the hut in +the Wood, her sleep had been disturbed and restless, but dreamless; in +her sleep on the night of the day of his release, she had been tossed +upon vague clouds of mental unrest; but that was the first really +disordered sleep she had ever known. + +Holding the candle above her head, she looked in the mirror on her +dressing-table, and laughed nervously at the shocked look in her +eyes, at the hand pressed upon the bosom whose agitations troubled +the delicate linen at her breast. The pale light of the candle, +the reflection from the white muslin of her dressing-table and her +nightwear, the strange, deep darkness of her eyes, the ungathered tawny +hair falling to her shoulders, gave an unusual paleness to her face. + +“What a ninny I am!” she said aloud as she looked at herself, her tongue +chiding her apprehensive eyes, her laugh contemptuously adding its +comment on her tremulousness. “It was a real nightmare--a waking +nightmare, that’s what it was.” + +She searched the room once more, however-every corner, under the bed, +the chest of drawers and the dressing-table, before she got into bed +again, her feet icily cold. And yet again before settling down she +looked round, perplexed and inquiring. Placing the matches beside the +candlestick, she blew out the light. Then, half-turning on her side with +her face to the wall, she composed herself to sleep. + +Resolutely putting from her mind any sense of the supernatural, she shut +her eyes with confidence of coming sleep. While she was, however, still +within the borders of wakefulness, and wholly conscious, she felt the +Thing jump from the floor upon her legs, and crouch there with that +deadening pressure which was not weight. Now with a start of anger +she raised herself, and shot out a determined hand to seize the Thing, +whatever it was. Her hand grasped nothing, and again she distinctly +heard a soft thud as of something jumping on the floor. Exasperated, she +drew herself out of bed, lit the candle again, and began another search. +Nothing was to be seen; but she had now the curious sense of an unseen +presence. She went to the door, opened it, and looked out into the +narrow hall. Nothing was to be seen there. Then she closed the door +again, and stood looking at it meditatively for a moment. It had a lock +and key; yet it had never been locked in the years they had lived on the +Sagalac. She did not know whether the key would turn in the lock. After +a moment’s hesitation, she shrugged her shoulders and turned the key. +It rasped, proved stubborn, but at last came home with a click. Then she +turned to the window. It was open about three inches at the bottom. She +closed it tight, and fastened it, then stood for a moment in the middle +of the room looking at both door and window. + +She was conscious of a sense of suffocation. Never in her life had she +slept with door or window or tentflap entirely closed. Never before had +she been shut in all night behind closed doors and sealed windows. Now, +as the sense of imprisonment was felt, her body protested; her spirit +resented the funereal embrace of security. It panted for the freedom +which gives the challenge to danger and the courage to face it. + +She went to the window and opened it slightly at the top, and then +sought her bed again; but even as she lay down, something whispered to +her mind that it was folly to lock the door and yet leave the window +open, if it was but an inch. With an exclamation of self-reproach, and +a vague indignation at something, she got up and closed the window once +more. + +Again she composed herself to sleep, lying now with her face turned to +the window and the door. She was still sure that she had been the victim +of a hallucination which, emerging from her sleep, had invaded the +borders of wakefulness, and then had reproduced itself in a waking +illusion--an imitation of its original existence. + +Resolved to conquer any superstitious feeling, she invoked sleep, and +was on its borders once more when she was startled more violently than +before. + +The Thing had sprung again upon her feet and was crouched there. Wide +awake, she waited for a moment to make sure that she was not mad, or +that she was not asleep or in a half-dream. In the pause, she felt the +Thing draw up towards her knees, dragging its body along with tiger-like +closeness, and with that strange pressure which was not weight but +power. + +With a cry which was no longer doubt, but agonized apprehension, she +threw the Thing from her with a motion of both hands and feet; and, +as she did so, she felt a horrible cold air breathing from a bloodless +body, chill her hand. + +In another instant she was on her feet again. With shaking fingers +she lighted the candle yet once more, after which she lighted a lamp +standing upon the chest of drawers. The room was almost brilliantly +bright now. With a gesture of incredulity she looked round. The doors +and windows were sealed tight, and there was nothing to be seen; yet she +was more than ever conscious of a presence grown more manifest. For +a moment she stood staring straight before her at the place where it +seemed to be. She realized its malice and its hatred, and an intense +anger and hatred took possession of her. She had always laughed at such +things even when thrilled by wonder and manufactured terrors. But now +there was a sense of conflict, of evil, of the indefinable things in +which so many believed. + +Suddenly she remembered an ancient Sage of her tribe, who, proficient in +mysteries and secret rites gathered from nations as old as Phoenicia +and Egypt and as modern as Switzerland, held the Romanys of the world in +awe, for his fame had travelled where he could not follow. To Fleda in +her earliest days he had been like one inspired, and as she now stood +facing the intangible Thing, she recalled an exorcism which the Sage had +recited to her, when he had sufficiently startled her senses by tales of +the Between World. This exorcism was, as he had told her, more powerful +than that which the Christian exorcists used, and the symbol of exorcism +was not unlike the sign of the Cross, to which was added genuflection of +Assyrian origin. + +At any other time Fleda would have laughed at the idea of using the +exorcism; but all the ancient superstition of the Romany people latent +in her now broke forth and held her captive. Standing with candle raised +above her head, her eyes piercing the space before her, she recalled +every word of the exorcism which had caught the drippings from the +fountains of Chaldean, Phoenician, and Egyptian mystery. + +Solemnly and slowly the exorcism came from her lips, and at the end her +right hand made the cabalistic sign; then she stood like one transfixed +with her arm extended towards the Thing she could not see. + +Presently there passed from her a sense of oppression. The air seemed +to grow lighter, restored self-possession came; there was a gentle +breathing in the room like that of a sleeping child. It was a moment +before she realized that the breathing was her own, and she looked round +her like one who had come out of a trance. + +“It is gone,” she said aloud. “It is gone.” A great sigh came from her. + +Mechanically she put down the candle, smoothed the pillows of her bed, +adjusted the coverings, and prepared to lie down; but, with a sudden +impulse, she turned to the window and the door. + +“It is gone,” she said again. With a little laugh of hushed triumph, she +turned and made again the cabalistic sign at the bed, where the Thing +had first assaulted her, and then at that point in the room near the +door where she had felt it crouching. + +“Oh, Ewie Gal,” she added, speaking to that Romany Sage long since laid +to rest in the Roumelian country, “you did not talk to me for nothing. +You were right--yes, you were right, old Ewie Gal. It was there,”--she +looked again at the place where the Thing had been--“and your curse +drove it away.” + +With confidence she went to the door and unlocked it. Going to the +window she opened it also, but she compromised sufficiently to open it +at the top instead of at the bottom. Presently she laid her head on her +pillow with a sigh of content. + +Once again she composed herself to sleep in the darkness. But now there +came other invasions, other disturbers of the night. In her imagination +a man came who had held her in his arms one day on the Sagalac River, +who had looked into her eyes with a masterful but respectful tenderness. +As she neared the confines of sleep, he was somehow mingled with visions +of things which her childhood had known--moonlit passes in the Bosnian, +Roumelian, and Roumanian hills, green fields by the Danube, with peasant +voices drowsing in song before the lights went out; a gallop after dun +deer far away up the Caspian mountains, over waste places, carpeted +with flowers after a benevolent rain; mornings in Egypt, when the camels +thudded and slid with melancholy ease through the sands of the desert, +while the Arab drivers called shrilly for Allah to curse or bless; a +tender sunset in England seen from the top of a castle when all the +western sky was lightly draped with saffron, gold and mauve and delicate +green and purple. + +Now she slept again, with the murmur of the Sagalac in her ears, and +there was a smile at her lips. If one could have seen her through the +darkness, one would have said that she was like some wild creature of +a virgin world, whom sleep had captured and tamed; for, behind the +refinement which education and the vigilant influence with which Madame +Bulteel had surrounded her, there was in her the spirit of primitive +things: of the open road and the wilderness, of the undisciplined and +vagrant life, however marked by such luxury as the ruler of all the +Romanys could buy and use in pilgrimage. There was that in her which +would drag at her footsteps in this new life. + +For a full hour or more she slept, then there crept through the +fantasies of sleep something that did not belong to sleep--again +something from the wakeful world, strange, alien, troubling. At first +it was only as though a wind stirred the air of dreams, then it was like +the sounds that gather behind the coming rage of a storm, and again +it was as though a night-prowler plucked at the sleeve of a home-goer. +Presently, with a stir of fright and a smothered cry, she waked to a +sound which was not of the supernatural or of the mind’s illusions, +but no less dreadful to her because of that. In some cryptic way it +was associated with the direful experience through which she had just +passed. + +What she heard in the darkness was a voice which sang there by her +window--at it or beneath it--the words of a Romany song. + +It was a song of violence, which she had heard but a short time before +in the trees behind her father’s house, when a Romany claimed her as his +wife: + + “Time was I went to my true love, + Time was she came to me--” + +Only one man would sing that song at her window, or anywhere in this +Western world. This was no illusion of her overwrought senses. There, +outside her window, was Jethro Fawe. + +She sat up and listened, leaning on one arm, and staring into the +half-darkness beyond the window, the blind of which she had not drawn +down. There was no moon, but the stars were shining brightly, relieving +the intensity of the dark. Through the whispering of the trees, and +hushing the melancholy of a night-bird’s song, came the wild low note of +the Romany epic of vengeance. It had a thrill of exultation. Something +in the voice, insistent, vibrating, personal, made every note a thrust +of victory. In spite of her indignation at the insolent serenade, +she thrilled; for the strain of the Past was in her, and it had been +fighting with her all night, breaking in upon the Present, tugging at +the cords of youth. + +The man’s daring roused her admiration, even as her anger mounted. If +her father heard the singing, there could be no doubt that Jethro Fawe’s +doom would be sealed. Gabriel Druse would resent this insolence to +the daughter of the Ry of Rys. Word would be passed as silently as the +electric spark flies, and one day Jethro Fawe would be found dead, with +no clue to his slayer, and maybe no sign of violence upon him; for while +the Romany people had remedies as old as Buddha, they had poisons as old +as Sekhet. + +Suddenly the song ceased, and for a moment there was silence save for +the whispering trees and the night-bird’s song. Fleda rose from her bed, +and was about to put on her dressing-gown, when she was startled by a +voice loudly whispering her name at her window, as it seemed. + +“Daughter of the Ry of Rys!” it called. + +In anger she started forward to the window, then, realizing that she was +in her nightgown, caught up her red dressing-gown and put it on. As she +did so she understood why the voice had sounded so near. Not thirty feet +from her window there was a solitary oak-tree among the pines, in which +was a seat among the branches, and, looking out, she could see a figure +that blackened the starlit duskiness. + +“Fleda--daughter of the Ry of Rys,” the voice called again. + +She gathered her dressing-gown tight about her, and, going to the +window, raised it high and leaned out. + +“What do you want?” she asked sharply. + +“Wife of Jethro Fawe, I bring you news,” the voice said, and she saw a +hat waved with mock courtesy. In spite of herself, Fleda felt a shiver +of premonition pass through her. The Thing which had threatened her in +the night seemed to her now like the soul of this dark spirit in the +trees. + +Resentment seized her. “I have news for you, Jethro Fawe,” she replied. +“I set you free, and I gave my word that no harm should come to you, if +you went your ways and did not come again. You have come, and I shall do +nothing now to save you from the Ry’s anger. Go at once, or I will wake +him.” + +“Will a wife betray her husband?” he asked in soft derision. + +Stung by his insolence, “I would not throw a rope to you, if you were +drowning,” she declared. “I am a Gorgio, and the thing that was done by +the Starzke River is nothing to me. Now, go.” + +“You have forgotten my news,” he said: “It is bad news for the Gorgio +daughter of the Romany Ry.” She was silent in apprehension. He waited, +but she did not speak. + +“The Gorgio of Gorgios of the Sagalac has had a fall,” he said. + +Her heart beat fast for an instant, and then the presentiment came to +her that the man spoke the truth. In the presence of the accomplished +thing, she became calm. + +“What has happened?” she asked quietly. + +“He went prowling in Manitou, and in Barbazon’s Tavern they struck him +down.” + +“Who struck him down?” she asked. It seemed to her that the night-bird +sang so loud that she could scarcely hear her own voice. + +“A drunken Gorgio,” he replied. “The horseshoe is for luck all the world +over, and it brought its luck to Manitou to-night. It struck down a +young Master Gorgio who in white beard and long grey hair went spying.” + +She knew in her heart that he spoke the truth. “He is dead?” she asked +in a voice that had a strange quietness. + +“Not yet,” he answered. “There is time to wish him luck.” + +She heard the ribald laugh with a sense of horror and loathing. “The +hand that brought him down may have been the hand of a Gorgio, but +behind the hand was Jethro Fawe,” she said in a voice grown passionate +again. “Where is he?” she added. + +“At his own house. I watched them take him there. It is a nice +house--good enough for a Gorgio house-dweller. I know it well. Last +night I played his Sarasate fiddle for him there, and I told him all +about you and me, and what happened at Starzke, and then--” + +“You told him I was a Romany, that I was married to you?” she asked in a +low voice. + +“I told him that, and asked him why he thought you had deceived him, had +held from him the truth. He was angry and tried to kill me.” + +“That is a lie,” she answered. “If he had tried to kill you he would +have done so.” + +Suddenly she realized the situation as it was--that she was standing +at her window in the night, scantily robed, talking to a man in a tree +opposite her window; and that the man had done a thing which belonged to +the wild places which she had left so far behind. + +It flashed into her mind--what would Max Ingolby think of such a thing? +She flushed. The new Gorgio self of her flushed, and yet the old Romany +self, the child of race and heredity had taken no exact account of the +strangeness of this situation. It had not seemed unnatural. Even if he +had been in her room itself, she would have felt no tithe of the shame +that she felt now in asking herself what the Master Gorgio would think, +if he knew. It was not that she had less modesty, that any stir of sex +was in her veins where the Romany chal was concerned; but in the life +she had once lived less delicate cognizance was taken of such things, +and something of it stayed. + +“Listen,” Jethro said with sudden lowering of the voice, and imparting +into his tones an emotion which was in part an actor’s gift, but also in +large degree a passion now eating at his heart, “you are my wife by all +the laws of our people. Nothing can change it. I have waited for you, +and I will wait, but you shall be mine in the end. You see to-night--‘Mi +Duvel’, you see that fate is with me! The Gorgio has bewitched you. He +goes down to-night in that tavern there by the hand of a Gorgio, and the +Romany has his revenge. Fate is always with me, and I will be the gift +of the gods to the woman that takes me. The luck is mine always. It will +be always with me. I am poor to-day, I shall be rich to-morrow. I was +rich, and I lost it all; and I was poor, and became rich again. Ah, yes, +there are ways! Sometimes it is a Government, sometimes a prince that +wants to know, and Jethro Fawe, the Romany, finds it out, and money +fills his pockets. I am here, poor, because last year when I lost all, +I said, ‘It is because my Romany lass is not with me. I have not brought +her to my tan, but when she comes then the gold will be here as before, +and more when it is wanted.’ So, I came, and I hear the road calling, +and all the camping places over all the world, and I see the patrins in +every lane, and my heart is lifted up. I am glad. I rejoice. My heart +burns with love. I will forget everything, and be true to the queen of +my soul. Men die, and Gabriel Druse, he will die one day, and when the +time comes, then it would be that you and I would beckon, and all the +world would come to us.” + +He stretched out a hand to her in the half-darkness. “I send the blood +of my heart to you,” he continued. “I am a son of kings. Fleda, daughter +of the Ry of Rys, come to me. I have been bad, but I can be good. I have +killed, but I will live at peace. I have cursed, but I will speak the +word of blessing. I have trespassed, but I will keep to my own, if you +will come to me.” + +Suddenly he dropped to the ground, lighting on his feet like an animal +with a soft rebound. Stretching up his arms, he made soft murmuring of +endearment. + +She had listened, fascinated in spite of herself by the fire and meaning +of his words. She felt that in most part it was true, that it was meant; +and, whatever he was, he was yet a man offering his heart and life, +offering a love that she despised, and yet which was love and passion of +a kind. It was a passion natural to the people from whom she came, and +to such as Jethro Fawe it was something more than sensual longing and +the aboriginal desire of possession. She realized it, and was not wholly +revolted by it, even while her mind was fleeing to where the Master +Gorgio lay wounded, it might be unto death; even while she knew that +this man before her, by some means, had laid Ingolby low. She was all at +once a human being torn by contending forces. + +Jethro’s drop to the ground broke the sudden trance into which his words +had thrown her. She shook herself as with an effort of control. Then +leaning over the window-sill, and, looking down at him, now grown so +distinct that she could see his features, her eyes having become used to +the half-light of the approaching dawn, she said with something almost +like gentleness: + +“Once more I say, you must go and come no more. You are too far off +from me. You belong to that which is for the ignorant, or the low, the +vicious and the bad. Behind the free life of the Romany is only the +thing that the beasts of the field have. I have done with it for ever. +Find a Romany who will marry you. As for me, I would rather die than +do so, and I should die before it could come to pass. If you stay here +longer I will call the Ry.” + +Presently the feeling that he had been responsible for the disaster +to Ingolby came upon her with great force, and as suddenly as she had +softened towards this man she hardened again. + +“Go, before there comes to you the death you deserve,” she added, and +turned away. + +At that moment footsteps sounded near, and almost instantly there +emerged from a pathway which made a short cut to the house, the figure +of old Gabriel Druse. They had not heard him till he was within a few +feet of where Jethro Fawe stood. His walking had been muffled in the +dust of the pathway. + +The Ry started when he saw Jethro Fawe; then he made a motion as though +he would seize the intruder, who was too dumbfounded to flee; but he +recovered himself, and gazed up at the open window. + +“Fleda!” he called. + +She came to the window again. + +“Has this man come here against your will?” he asked, not as though +seeking information, but confirmation of his own understanding. + +“He is not here by my will,” she answered. “He came to sing the Song of +Hate under my window, to tell me that he had--” + +“That I had brought the Master Gorgio to the ground,” said Jethro, who +now stood with sullen passiveness looking at Gabriel Druse. + +“From the Master Gorgio, as you call him, I have just come,” returned +the old man. “When I heard the news, I went to him. It was you who +betrayed him to the mob, and--” + +“Wait, wait,” Fleda cried in agitation. “Is--is he dead?” + +“He is alive, but terribly hurt; and he may die,” was the reply. + +Then the old man turned to the Romany with a great anger and +determination in his face. He stretched out an arm, making a sign as +cabalistic as that which Fleda had used against her invisible foe in the +bedroom. + +“Go, Jethro Fawe of all the Fawes,” he said. “Go, and may no patrins +mark your road!” + +Jethro Fawe shrank back, and half raised his arm, as though to fend +himself from a blow. + +The patrin is the clue which Gipsies leave behind them on the road they +go, that other Gipsies who travel in it may know they have gone before. +It may be a piece of string, a thread of wool, a twig, or in the dust +the ancient cross of the Romany, which preceded the Christian cross and +belonged to the Assyrian or Phoenician world. The invocation that no +patrins shall mark the road of a Romany is to make him an outcast, and +for the Ry of Rys to utter the curse is sentence of death upon a Romany, +for thenceforward every hand of his race is against him, free to do him +harm. + +It was that which made Jethro Fawe shrink and cower for a moment. Fleda +raised her hand suddenly in protest to Gabriel Druse. + +“No, no, not that,” Fleda murmured brokenly to her father, with eyes +that looked the pain and horror she felt. Though she repudiated the bond +by which the barbarian had dared to call her wife, she heard an inner +voice that said to her: “What was done by the Starzke River was the seal +of blood and race, and this man must be nearer than the stranger, dearer +than the kinsman, forgiven of his crimes like a brother, saved from +shame, danger or death when she who was sealed to him can save him.” + +She shuddered as she heard the inner voice. She felt that this Other +Self of her, the inner-seeing soul which had the secret of the far +paths, had spoken truly. Even as she begged her father to withdraw the +sentence, it flashed into her mind that the grim Thing of the night +was the dark spirit of hatred between Jethro Fawe and the Master Gorgio +seeking embodiment, as though Jethro’s evil soul detached itself from +his body to persecute her. + +At her appeal, Jethro raised his head. His courage came back, the old +insolent self-possession took hold of him again. The sentence which the +Ry had passed was worse than death (and it meant death, too), for it +made him an outcast from his people, and to be outcast was to be thrown +into the abyss. It was as though a man without race or country +was banished into desolate space. In a vague way he felt its full +significance, and the shadow of it fell on him. + +“No, no, no,” Fleda repeated hoarsely, with that new sense of +responsibility where Jethro was concerned. + +Jethro’s eyes were turned upon her now. In the starlit night, just +yielding to the dawn, she could faintly see his burning look, could +feel, as it were, his hands reach out to claim her; and she felt that +while he lived she was not wholly free. She realized that the hand of +nomad, disorderly barbarism was dragging her with a force which was +inhuman, or, maybe, superhuman. + +Gabriel Druse could know nothing of the elements fighting in his +daughter’s soul; he only knew that her interest in the Master Gorgio was +one he had never seen before, and that she abhorred the Romany who had +brought Ingolby low. He had shut his eyes to the man’s unruliness and +his daughter’s intervention to free him; but now he was without pity. He +had come from Ingolby’s bedside, and had been told a thing which shook +his rugged nature to its centre--a thing sad as death itself, which he +must tell his daughter. + +To Fleda’s appeal he turned a stony face. There was none of that rage +in his words which had marked the scene when Jethro Fawe first came to +claim what he could not have. There was something in him now more deadly +and inevitable. It made him like some figure of mythology, implacable, +fateful. His great height, his bushy beard and stormy forehead, the eyes +over which shaggy eyebrows hung like the shrubs on a cliff-edge, his +face lined and set like a thing in bronze--all were signs of a power +which, in passion, would be like that of OEdipus: in the moment of +justice or doom would, with unblinking eyes, slay and cast aside as +debris is tossed upon the dust-heap. + +As he spoke now his voice was toneless. His mind was flint, and his +tongue was but the flash of the flint. He looked at his daughter for a +moment with no light of fatherhood in his face, then turned from her +to Jethro Fawe with slow decision and a gesture of authority. His eyes +fastened on the face of the son of Lemuel Fawe, as though it was that +old enemy himself. + +“I have said what I have said, and there is no more to be spoken. The +rule of the Ry will be as water for ever after if these things may be +done to him and his. For generations have the Rys of all the Rys been +like the trees that bend only to the whirlwind; and when they speak +there is no more to be said. When it ceases to be so, then the Rys will +vanish from the world, and be as stubble of the field ready for the +burning. I have spoken. Go! And no patrins shall lie upon your road.” + +A look of savage obedience and sullen acquiescence came into Jethro +Fawe’s face, and he took off his hat as one who stands in the presence +of his master. The strain of generations, the tradition of the race +without a country was stronger than the revolt in his soul. He was +young, his blood was hot and brawling in his veins, he was all carnal, +with the superior intelligence of the trained animal, but custom was +stronger than all. He knew now that whatever he might do, some time, not +far, his doom would fall upon him suddenly, as a wind shoots up a ravine +from the desert, or a nightbird rises from the dark. + +He set his feet stubbornly, and raised his sullen face and fanatical +eyes. The light of morning was creeping through the starshine, and his +features showed plainly. + +“I am your daughter’s husband,” he said. “Nothing can change that. It +was done by the River Starzke, and it was the word of the Ry of Rys. It +stands for ever. There is no divorce except death for the Romany.” + +“The patrins cease to mark the way,” returned the old man with a swift +gesture. “The divorce of death will come.” + +Jethro’s face grew still paler, and he opened his lips to speak, but +paused, seeing Fleda, with a backward look of pity and of horror, draw +back into the darkness of her room. + +He made a motion of passion and despair. His voice was almost shrill +when he spoke. “Till that divorce comes, the daughter of the Ry of Rys +is mine!” he cried sharply. “I will not give my wife to a Gorgio thief. +His hands shall not caress her, his eyes shall not feed upon her--” + +“His eyes will not feed upon her,” interrupted the old man, “So cease +the prattle which can alter nothing. Begone.” + +For a moment Jethro Fawe stood like one who did not understand what was +said to him, but suddenly a look of triumph and malice came into his +face, and his eyes lighted with a reckless fire. He threw back his head, +and laughed with a strange, offensive softness. Then, waving a hand to +the window from which Fleda had gone, he swung his cap on his head and +plunged into the trees. + +A moment afterwards his voice came back exultingly, through the morning +air: + + “But a Gorgio sleeps ‘neath the greenwood tree + He’ll broach my tan no more: + And my love, she sleeps afar from me + But near to the churchyard door.” + +As the old man turned heavily towards the house, and opened the outer +door, Fleda met him. + +“What did you mean when you said that Ingolby’s eyes would not feed upon +me?” she asked in a low tone of fear. + +A look of compassion came into the old man’s face. He took her hand. + +“Come and I will tell you,” he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. “LET THERE BE LIGHT” + +In Ingolby’s bedroom, on the night of the business at Barbazon’s Tavern, +Dr. Rockwell received a shock. His face, naturally colourless, was +almost white, and his eyes were moist. He had what the West called +nerve. That the crisis through which he had passed was that of a +friend’s life did not lessen the poignancy of the experience. He had a +singularly reserved manner and a rare economy of words; also, he had +the refinement and distinction of one who had, oforetime, moved on the +higher ranges of social life. He was always simply and comfortably and +in a sense fashionably dressed, yet there was nothing of the dude about +him, and his black satin tie gave him an air of old-worldishness which +somehow compelled an extra amount of respect. This, in spite of the fact +that he had been known as one who had left the East and come into the +wilds because of a woman not his wife. + +It was not, however, strictly true to say that he had come West +because of a woman, for it was on account of three women, who by sudden +coincidence or collusion sprang a situation from which the only relief +was flight. In that he took refuge, not because he was a coward, but +because it was folly to fight a woman, or three women, and because it +was the only real solution of an ungovernable situation. At first he +had drifted from one town to another, dissolute and reckless, apparently +unable to settle down, or to forget the unwholesome three. But one +day there was a terrible railway accident on a construction train, and +Lebanon and Manitou made a call upon his skill, and held him in bondage +to his profession for one whole month. During this time he performed +two operations which the surgeons who had been sent out by the Railway +Directors at Montreal declared were masterpieces. + +When that month was up he was a changed man, and he opened an office in +Lebanon. Men trusted him despite his past, and women learned that there +was never a moment when his pulses beat unevenly in their presence. +Nathan Rockwell had had his lesson and it was not necessary to learn it +again. To him, woman, save as a subject of his skill, was a closed book. +He regarded them as he regarded himself, with a kindly cynicism. He +never forgot that his own trouble could and would have been avoided had +it not been for woman’s vanity and consequent cruelty. The unwholesome +three had shared his moral lapse with wide-open eyes, and were in no +sense victims of his; but, disregarding their responsibility, they had, +from sheer jealousy, wrecked his past, and, to their own surprise, had +wrecked themselves as well. They were of those who act first and then +think--too late. + +Thus it was that both men and women called Rockwell a handsome man, but +thought of him as having only a crater of exhausted fires in place of a +heart. They came to him with their troubles--even the women of Manitou +who ought to have gone to the priest. + +He moved about Lebanon as one who had authority, and desired not to use +it; as one to whom life was like a case in surgery to be treated with +scientific, coolness, with humanity, but not with undue sympathy; yet +the early morning of the day after Ingolby had had his accident at +Barbazon’s Hotel found him the slave of an emotion which shook him +from head to foot. He had saved his friend’s life by a most skilful +operation, but he had been shocked beyond control when, an hour after +the operation was over, and consciousness returned to the patient in the +brilliantly lighted room, Ingolby said: + +“Why don’t you turn on the light?” + +It was thus Rockwell knew that the Master Man, the friend of Lebanon +and Manitou, was stone blind. When Ingolby’s voice ceased, a horrified +silence filled the room for a moment. Even Jim Beadle, his servant, +standing at the foot of the bed, clapped a hand to his mouth to stop a +cry, and the nurse turned as white as the apron she wore. + +Dumbfounded as Rockwell was, with instant professional presence of mind +he said: + +“No, Ingolby, you must be kept in darkness a while yet.” Then he whipped +out a silk handkerchief from his pocket. “We will have light,” he +continued, “but we must bandage you first to keep out the glare and +prevent pain. The nerves of the eyes have been injured.” + +Hastily and tenderly he bound the handkerchief round the sightless eyes. +Having done so, he said to the nurse with unintentional quotation from +the Gospel of St. John, and a sad irony: “Let there be light.” + +It all gave him time to pull himself together and prepare for the moment +when he must tell Ingolby the truth. In one sense the sooner it was +told the better, lest Ingolby should suddenly discover it for himself. +Surprise and shock must be avoided. So now he talked in his low, +soothing voice, telling Ingolby that the operation had put him out of +danger, that the pain now felt came chiefly from the nerves of the +eye, and that quiet and darkness were necessary. He insisted on Ingolby +keeping silent, and he gave a mild opiate which induced several hours’ +sleep. + +During this time Rockwell prepared himself for the ordeal which must +be passed as soon as possible; gave all needed directions, and had a +conference with the assistant Chief Constable to whom he confided the +truth. He suggested plans for preserving order in excited Lebanon, which +was determined to revenge itself on Manitou; and he gave some careful +and specific instructions to Jowett the horse-dealer. Also, he had +conferred with Gabriel Druse, who had helped bear the injured man to +his own home. He had noted with admiration the strange gentleness of the +giant Romany as he, alone, carried Ingolby in his arms, and laid him +on the bed from which he was to rise with all that he had fought for +overthrown, himself the blind victim of a hard fate. He had noticed the +old man straighten himself with a spring and stand as though petrified +when Ingolby said: “Why don’t you turn on the light?” As he looked round +in that instant of ghastly silence he had observed almost mechanically +that the old man’s lips were murmuring something. Then the thought of +Fleda Druse shot into Rockwell’s mind, and it harassed him during the +hours Ingolby slept, and after the giant Gipsy had taken his departure +just before the dawn. + +“I’m afraid it will mean more there than anywhere else,” he said sadly +to himself. “There was evidently something between those two; and she +isn’t the kind to take it philosophically. Poor girl! Poor girl! It’s a +bitter dose, if there was anything in it,” he added. + +He watched beside the sick-bed till the dawn stared in and his patient +stirred and waked, then he took Ingolby’s hand, grown a little cooler, +in both his own. “How are you feeling, old man?” he asked cheerfully. +“You’ve had a good sleep-nearly three and a half hours. Is the pain in +the head less?” + +“Better, Sawbones, better,” Ingolby replied cheerfully. “They’ve +loosened the tie that binds--begad, it did stretch the nerves. I had +gripes of colic once, but the pain I had in my head was twenty times +worse, till you gave the opiate.” + +“That’s the eyes,” said Rockwell. “I had to lift a bit of bone, and the +eyes saw it and felt it, and cried out-shrieked, you might say. They’ve +got a sensitiveness all their own, have the eyes.” + +“It’s odd there aren’t more accidents to them,” answered Ingolby--“just +a little ball of iridescent pulp with strings tied to the brain.” + +“And what hurts the head may destroy the eyes sometimes,” Rockwell +answered cautiously. “We know so little of the delicate union between +them, that we can’t be sure we can put the eyes right again when, +because of some blow to the head, the ricochet puts the eyes out of +commission.” + +“That’s what’s the matter with me, then?” asked Ingolby, feeling the +bandage on his eyes feverishly, and stirring in his bed with a sense of +weariness. + +“Yes, the ricochet got them, and has put them out of commission,” + replied Rockwell, carefully dwelling upon each word, and giving a note +of meaning to his tone. + +Ingolby raised himself in bed, but Rockwell gently forced him down +again. “Will my eyes have to be kept bandaged long? Shall I have to give +up work for any length of time?” Ingolby asked. + +“Longer than you’ll like,” was the enigmatical reply. “It’s the devil’s +own business,” was the weary answer. “Every minute’s valuable to me now. +I ought to be on deck morning, noon, and night. There’s all the trouble +between the two towns; there’s the strike on hand; there’s that business +of the Orange funeral, and more than all a thousand times, there’s--” he +paused. + +He was going to say, “There’s that devil Marchand’s designs on my +bridge,” but he thought better of it and stopped. It had been his +intention to deal with Marchand directly, to get a settlement of their +differences without resort to the law, to prevent the criminal act +without deepening a feud which might keep the two towns apart for years. +Bad as Marchand was, to prevent his crime was far better than punishing +him for it afterwards. To have Marchand arrested for conspiracy to +commit a crime was a business which would gravely interfere with his +freedom of motion in the near future, would create complications which +might cripple his own purposes in indirect ways. That was why he had +declared to Jowett that even Felix Marchand had his price, and that he +would try negotiations first. + +But what troubled him now, as he lay with eyes bandaged and a knowledge +that to-morrow was the day fixed for the destruction of the bridge, was +his own incapacity. It was unlikely that his head or his eyes would be +right by to-morrow, or that Rockwell would allow him to get up. He felt +in his own mind that the injury he had received was a serious one, and +that the lucky horseshoe had done Maxchand’s work for him all too well. +This thought shook him. Rockwell could see his chest heave with an +excitement gravely injurious to his condition; yet he must be told the +worst, or the shock of discovery by himself that he was blind might give +him brain fever. Rockwell felt that he must hasten the crisis. + +“Rockwell,” Ingolby suddenly asked, “is there any chance of my +discarding this and getting out to-morrow?” He touched the handkerchief +round his eyes. “It doesn’t matter about the head bandages, but the +eyes--can’t I slough the wraps to-morrow? I feel scarcely any pain now.” + +“Yes, you can get rid of the bandages to-morrow--you can get rid of them +to-day, if you really wish,” Rockwell answered, closing in on the last +defence. + +“But I don’t mind being in the dark to-day if it’ll make me fitter for +to-morrow and get me right sooner. I’m not a fool. There’s too much +carelessness about such things. People often don’t give themselves a +chance to get right by being in too big a hurry. So, keep me in darkness +to-day, if you want to, old man. For a hustler I’m not in too big a +hurry, you see. I’m for holding back to get a bigger jump.” + +“You can’t be in a big hurry, even if you want to, Ingolby,” rejoined +Rockwell, gripping the wrist of the sick man, and leaning over him. + +Ingolby grew suddenly very still. It was as though vague fear had seized +him and held him in a vice. “What is it? What do you want to say to me?” + he asked in a low, nerveless tone. + +“You’ve been hit hard, Chief. The ricochet has done you up for some +time. The head will soon get well, but I’m far from sure about your +eyes. You’ve got to have a specialist about them. You’re in the dark, +and as for making you see, so am I. Your eyes and you are out of +commission for some time, anyhow.” + +He leaned over hastily, but softly and deftly undid the bandages over +the eyes and took them off. “It’s seven in the morning, and the sun’s +up, Chief, but it doesn’t do you much good, you see.” + +The last two words were the purest accident, but it was a strange, +mournful irony, and Rockwell flushed at the thought of it. He saw +Ingolby’s face turn grey, and then become white as death itself. + +“I see,” came from the bluish-white lips, as the stricken man made call +on all the will and vital strength in him. + +For a long minute Rockwell held the cold hand in the grasp of one who +loves and grieves, but even so the physician and surgeon in him were +uppermost, as they should be, in the hour when his friend was standing +on the brink of despair, maybe of catastrophe irremediable. He did not +say a word yet, however. In such moments the vocal are dumb and the +blind see. + +Ingolby heaved himself in the bed and threw up his arms, wresting them +from Rockwell’s grasp. + +“My God--oh, my God-blind!” he cried in agony. Rockwell drew the head +with the sightless eyes to his shoulder. + +For a moment he laid one hand on the heart, that, suddenly still, now +went leaping under his fingers. “Steady,” he said firmly. “Steady. It +may be only temporary. Keep your head up to the storm. We’ll have a +specialist, and you must not get mired till then. Steady, Chief.” + +“Chief! Chief!” murmured Ingolby. “Dear God, what a chief! I risked +everything, and I’ve lost everything by my own vanity. Barbazon’s--the +horseshoe--among the wolves, just to show I could do things better than +any one else--as if I had the patent for setting the world right. And +now--now--” + +The thought of the bridge, of Marchand’s devilish design, shot into +his mind, and once more he was shaken. “The bridge! Blind! Mother!” he +called in a voice twisted in an agony which only those can feel to whom +life’s purposes are even more than life itself. Then, with a moan, he +became unconscious, and his head rolled over against Rockwell’s cheek. +The damp of his brow was as the damp of death as Rockwell’s lips touched +it. + +“Old boy, old boy!” Rockwell said tenderly, “I wish it had been me +instead. Life means so much to you--and so little to me. I’ve seen too +much, and you’ve only just begun to see.” + +Laying him gently down, Rockwell summoned the nurse and Jim Beadle and +spoke to them in low tones. “He knows now, and it has hit him hard, but +not so hard that he won’t stiffen to it. It might have been worse.” + +He gave instructions as to the care that should be taken, and replaced +the bandages on the eyes. It was, however, long before Ingolby was +restored to consciousness, and when it came, Rockwell put to his lips +a cooling drink containing a powerful opiate. Ingolby drank it without +protest and in silence. He was like one whose sense of life was +automatic and of an inner rather than an outer understanding. But when +he lay back on the pillow again, he said slowly: + +“I want the Chief Constable to come here to-night at eight o’clock. It +will be dark then. He must come. It is important. Will you see to it, +Rockwell?” + +He thrust out a hand as though to find Rockwell’s, and there was a +gratitude and an appeal in the pressure of his fingers which went to +Rockwell’s heart. + +“All right, Chief. I’ll have him here,” Rockwell answered briskly, but +with tears standing in his eyes. Ingolby had, as it were, been stricken +out of the active, sentient, companionable world into a world where +he was alone, detached, solitary. His being seemed suspended in an +atmosphere of misery and helplessness. + +“Blind! I am blind!” That was the phrase which kept beating with the +pulses in Ingolby’s veins, that throbbed, and throbbed, and throbbed +like engines in a creaking ship which the storm was shaking and pounding +in the vast seas between the worlds. Here was the one incomprehensible, +stupefying fact: nothing else mattered. Every plan he had ever had, +every design which he had made his own by an originality that even his +foes acknowledged, were passing before his brain in swift procession, +shining, magnified, and magnificent, and in that sudden clear-seeing +of his soul he beheld their full value, their exact concrete force +and ultimate effect. Yet he knew himself detached from them, inactive, +incapable, because he could not see with the eyes of the body. The great +essential thing to him was that one thing he had lost. A man might be a +cripple and still direct the great concerns of life and the business of +life. He might be shorn of limb and scarred of body, but with eye sight +still direct the courses of great schemes, in whatever sphere of life +his purposes were at work. He might be deaf to every sound and forever +dumb, but seeing enabled him still to carry forward every enterprise. +In darkness, however, those things were naught, because judgment must +depend on the eyes and senses of others. The report might be true or +false, the deputy might deceive, and his blind chief might never know +the truth unless some other spectator of his schemes should report it; +and the truth could not surely be checked, save by some one, perhaps, +whose life was joined to his, by one that truly loved him, whose fate +was his. + +His brain was afire. By one that truly loved him! Who was there that +loved him? Who was there at one with him in all his deep designs, in all +he had done and meant to do? Neither brother, nor sister, nor friend, +nor any other. None of his blood was there who could share with him the +constructive work he had set out to do. There was no friend whose fate +was part of his own. There was the Boss Doctor: but Rockwell was tied to +his own responsibilities, and he could not give up, of course, would not +give up his life to the schemes of another. There were a dozen men whom +he had helped to forge ahead by his own schemes, but their destinies +were not linked with his. Only one whose life was linked with his could +be trusted to be his eyes, to be the true reporter of all he did, had +done, or planned to do. Only one who loved him. + +But even one who loved him could not carry through his incompleted +work against the assaults of his enemies, who were powerful, watchful, +astute, and merciless; who had a greed which set money higher than +all else in the world. They were of the new order of things in the +New World. The business of life was to them not a system of barter and +exchange, a giving something of value to get something of value, with a +margin of profit for each, and a sense of human equity behind; it was +a cockpit where one man sought to get what another man had--and get it +almost anyhow. + +It was the work of the faro-bank man, whose sleight of hand deceived the +man that carried the gun. + +All the old humanity and good-fellowship of the trader, the man who +exchanged, as it was in the olden days of the world and continued in +greater or less degree till the present generation--all that was gone. +It was held in contempt. It had prevailed when men were open robbers and +filibusters and warriors, giving their lives, if need be, to get what +they wanted, making force their god. It had triumphed over the violence +and robbery of the open road until the dying years of one century +and the young years of a new century. Then the day of the trickster +came--and men laughed at the idea of fair exchange and strove to give +an illusive value for a thing of real value--the remorseless sleight of +hand which the law could not reach. The desire to get profit by honest +toiling was dying down to ashes. + +Against such men had Ingolby worked--the tricksters, the manipulators. +At the basis of his schemes was organization and the economy which +concentrated and conserved energy begets, together with its profit. He +had been the enemy of waste, the apostle of frugality and thrift; and +it was that which had enabled him, in his short career, to win the +confidence of the big men behind him in Montreal, to make good every +step of the way. He had worked for profit out of legitimate product and +industry and enterprise, out of the elimination of waste. It was his +theory (and his practice) that no bit of old iron, no bolt or screw, no +scrap of paper should be thrown away; that the cinders of the engines +could and should be utilized for that which they would make; and that +was why there was a paper-mill and foundry on the Sagalac at Manitou. +That was why and how, so far, he had beaten the tricksters. + +But while his schemes flashed before his mind, as the opiate suspended +him in the middle heaven between sleep and waking, the tricksters and +manipulators came hurrying after him like marauders that waited for the +moment when they could rush the camp in the watches of the night. His +disordered imagination saw the ruin and wreck of his work, the seizure +of what was his own--the place of control on his railways, the place of +the Master Man who cared infinitely more to see his designs accomplished +than for the profit they would bring to himself. Yesterday he had been +just at the top of the hill. The key in his fingers was turning in the +lock which would make safe the securities of his life and career, when +it snapped, and the world grew dark as the black curtain fell and shut +out the lighted room from the wayfarer in the gloom. Then, it was, +came the opaque blackness which could be felt, and his voice calling in +despair: “Blind! I am blind!” + +He did not know that he had taken an opiate, that his friend had +mercifully atrophied his rebellious nerves. These visions he was seeing +were terribly true, but they somehow gave him no physical torture. It +was as though one saw an operation performed upon one’s body with the +nerves stilled and deadened by ether. Yet he was cruelly conscious of +the disaster which had come to him. For a time at least. Then his mind +seemed less acute, the visions came, then without seeing them go, +they went. And others came in broken patches, shreds, and dreams, +phantasmagoria of the brain, and at last all were mingled and confused; +but as they passed they seemed to burn his sight. How he longed for a +cool bandage over his eyes, for a soft linen which would shut out the +cumuli of broken hopes and designs, life’s goals obliterated! He had had +enough of the black procession of futile things. + +His longing was not denied, for even as he roused himself from the +oblivion coming on him, as though by a last effort to remember his dire +misfortune, maybe his everlasting tragedy, something soothing and soft +like linen dipped in dew was laid upon his forehead. A cool, delicious +hand covered his eyes caressingly; a voice from spheres so far away that +worlds were the echoing points of the sound, came whispering to him like +a stir of wings in a singing grove. With a last effort to remain in the +waking world, he raised his head so very little, but fell gently back +again with one sighing word on his lips: + +“Fleda!” + +It was no illusion. Fleda had come from her own night of trouble to his +motherless, wifeless home, and would not be denied admittance by the +nurse. It was Jim Beadle who admitted her. + +“He’d be mad if he knew we wouldn’t let her come,” Jim had said to the +nurse. + +It was Fleda who had warned Ingolby of the dangers that surrounded +him--the physical as well as business dangers. She came now to serve the +blind victim of that Fate which she had seen hovering over him. + +The renegade daughter of the Romanys, as Jethro Fawe had called her, +was, for the first time, in the house of her master Gorgio. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. THE CHAIN OF THE PAST + +For once in its career, Lebanon was absolutely united. The blow that had +brought down the Master Man had also struck the town between the eyes, +and there was no one--friend or foe of Ingolby--who did not regard it as +an insult and a challenge. It was now known that the roughs of Manitou, +led by the big river-driver, were about to start on a raid upon Lebanon +and upon Ingolby at the very moment the horseshoe did its work. All +night there were groups of men waiting outside Ingolby’s house. They +were of all classes-carters, railway workers, bartenders, lawyers, +engineers, bankers, accountants, merchants, ranchmen, carpenters, +insurance agents, manufacturers, millers, horse-dealers, and so on. + +Some prayed for Ingolby’s life, others swore viciously; and those who +swore had no contempt for those who prayed, while those who prayed were +tolerant of those who swore. It was a union of incongruous elements. +Men who had nothing in common were one in the spirit of faction; and +all were determined that the Orangeman, whose funeral was fixed for this +memorable Saturday, should be carried safely to his grave. Civic pride +had almost become civic fanaticism in Lebanon. One of the men beaten by +Ingolby in the recent struggle for control of the railways said to the +others shivering in the grey dawn: “They were bound to get him in the +back. They’re dagos, the lot of ‘em. Skunks are skunks, even when you +skin ‘em.” + +When, just before dawn, old Gabriel Druse issued from the house into +which he had carried Ingolby the night before, they questioned him +eagerly. He had been a figure apart from both Lebanon and Manitou, and +they did not regard him as a dago, particularly as it was more than +whispered that Ingolby “had a lien” on his daughter. In the grey light, +with his long grizzled beard and iron-grey, shaggy hair, Druse looked +like a mystic figure of the days when the gods moved among men like +mortals. His great height, vast proportions, and silent ways gave him +a place apart, and added to the superstitious feeling by which he was +surrounded. + +“How is he?” they asked whisperingly, as they crowded round him. + +“The danger is over,” was the slow, heavy reply. “He will live, but he +has bad days to face.” + +“What was the danger?” they asked. “Fever--maybe brain fever,” he +replied. “We’ll see him through,” someone said. + +“Well, he cannot see himself through,” rejoined the old man solemnly. +The enigmatical words made them feel there was something behind. + +“Why can’t he see himself through?” asked Osterhaut the universal, who +had just arrived from the City Hall. + +“He can’t see himself through because he is blind,” was the heavy +answer. + +There was a moment of shock, of hushed surprise, and then a voice burst +forth: “Blind--they’ve blinded him, boys! The dagos have killed his +sight. He’s blind, boys!” + +A profane and angry muttering ran through the crowd, who were thirsty, +hungry, and weary with watching. + +Osterhaut held up the horseshoe which had brought Ingolby down. “Here it +is, the thing that done it. It’s tied with a blue ribbon-for luck,” + he added ironically. “It’s got his blood on it. I’m keeping it till +Manitou’s paid the price of it. Then I’ll give it to Lebanon for keeps.” + +“That’s the thing that did it, but where’s the man behind the thing?” + snarled a voice. + +Again there was a moment’s silence, and then Billy Kyle, the veteran +stage-driver, said: “He’s in the jug, but a gaol has doors, and doors’ll +open with or without keys. I’m for opening the door, boys.” + +“What for?” asked a man who knew the answer, but who wanted the thing +said. + +“I spent four years in Arizona, same as Jowett,” Billy Kyle answered, +“and I got in the way of thinking as they do there, and acting just as +quick as you think. I drove stage down in the Verde Valley. Sometimes +there wasn’t time to bring a prisoner all the way to a judge and jury, +and people was busy, and hadn’t time to wait for the wagon; so they done +what was right, and there was always a tree that would carry that kind +o’ fruit for the sake of humanity. It’s the best way, boys.” + +“This isn’t Arizona or any other lyncher’s country,” said Halliday, +the lawyer, making his way to the front. “It isn’t the law, and in this +country it’s the law that counts. It’s the Gover’ment’s right to attend +to that drunken dago that threw the horseshoe, and we’ve got to let the +Gover’ment do it. No lynching on my plate, thank you. If Ingolby could +speak to us, you can bet your boots it’s what he’d say.” + +“What’s your opinion, boss?” asked Billy Kyle of Gabriel Druse, who had +stood listening, his chin on his breast, his sombre eyes fixed on them +abstractedly. + +At Kyle’s question his eyes lighted up with a fire that was struck from +a flint in other spheres, and he answered: “It is for the ruler to take +life, not the subject. If it is a man that rules, it is for him; if it +is the law that rules, it is for the law. Here, it is the law. Then it +is not for the subject, and it is not for you.” + +“If he was your son?” asked Billy Kyle. + +“If he was my son, I should be the ruler, not the law,” was the grim, +enigmatic reply, and the old man stalked away from them towards the +bridge. + +“I’d bet he’d settle the dago’s hash that done to his son what the +Manitou dagos done to Ingolby--and settle it quick,” remarked Lick +Farrelly, the tinsmith. + +“I bet he’s been a ruler or something somewhere,” remarked Billy Kyle. + +“I bet I’m going home to breakfast,” interposed Halliday, the lawyer. +“There’s a straight day’s work before us, gentlemen,” he added, “and we +can’t do anything here. Orangemen, let’s hoof it.” + +Twenty Orangemen stepped out from the crowd. Halliday was a past master +of their lodge, and they all meant what he meant. They marched away in +procession--to breakfast and to a meeting of the lodge. Others straggled +after, but a few waited for the appearance of the doctor. When the sun +came up and Rockwell, pale and downcast, issued forth, they gathered +round him, and walked with him through the town, questioning, listening +and threatening. + +A few still remained behind at Ingolby’s house. They were of the devoted +slaves of Ingolby who would follow him to the gates of Hades and back +again, or not back if need be. + +The nigger barber, Berry, was one; another was the Jack-of-all-trades, +Osterhaut, a kind of municipal odd-man, with the well-known red hair, +the face that constantly needed shaving, the blue serge shirt with a +scarf for a collar, the suit of canvas in the summer and of Irish frieze +in the winter; the pair of hands which were always in his own pocket, +never in any one else’s; the grey eye, doglike in its mildness, and the +long nose which gave him the name of Snorty. Of the same devoted class +also was Jowett who, on a higher plane, was as wise and discerning a +scout as any leader ever had. + +While old Berry and Osterhaut and all the others were waiting at +Ingolby’s house, Jowett was scouting among the Manitou roughs for the +Chief Constable of Lebanon, to find out what was forward. What he had +found was not reassuring, because Manitou, conscious of being in the +wrong, realized that Lebanon would try to make her understand her +wrong-doing; and that was intolerable. It was clear to Jowett that, in +spite of all, there would be trouble at the Orange funeral, and that +the threatened strike would take place at the same time in spite of +Ingolby’s catastrophe. Already in the early morning revengeful spirits +from Lebanon had invaded the outer portions of Manitou and had taken +satisfaction out of an equal number of “Dogans,” as they called the +Roman Catholic labourers, one of whom was carried to the hospital with +an elbow out of joint and a badly injured back. + +With as much information as he needed, Jowett made his way back to +Lebanon, when, at the approach to the bridge, he met Fleda hurrying with +bent head and pale, distressed face in his own direction. Of all Western +men none had a better appreciation of the sex that takes its toll of +every traveller after his kind than Aaron Jowett. He had been a real +buck in his day among those of his own class, and though the storm of +his romances had become but a faint stirring of leaves which had tinges +of days that are sear, he still had an eye unmatched for female beauty. +The sun which makes that northern land a paradise in summer caught +the gold-brown hair of Gabriel Druse’s daughter, and made it glint and +shine. It coquetted with the umber of her eyes and they grew luminous as +a jewel; it struck lightly across the pale russet of her cheek and made +it like an apple that one’s lips touch lovingly, when one calls it “too +good to eat.” It made an atmosphere of half-silver and half-gold with a +touch of sunrise crimson for her to walk in, translating her form into +melting lines of grace. + +Jowett knew that Druse’s daughter was on her way to the man who had +looked once, looked twice, looked thrice into her eyes and had seen +there his own image; and that she had done the same; and that the man, +it might be, would never look into their dark depths again. He might +speak once, he might speak twice, he might speak thrice, but would it +ever be the same as the look that needed no words? + +When he crossed Fleda Druse’s pathway she stopped short. She knew that +Jowett was Ingolby’s true friend. She had seen him often, and he was +intimately associated with that day when she had run the Carillon Rapids +and had lain (for how long she never dared to think) in Ingolby’s arms +in the sight of all the world. First among those who crowded round her +at Carillon that day were Jowett and Osterhaut, who had tried to warn +her. + +“You are going to him?” she said now with confidence in her eyes, and by +the intimacy of the phrase (as though she could speak of Ingolby only as +him) their own understanding was complete. + +“To see how he is and then to do other things,” Jowett answered. + +There was silence for a moment in which they moved slowly forward, and +then she said: “You were at Barbazon’s last night?” + +“When that Gipsy son of a dog gave him away!” he assented. “I never +heard anything like the speech Ingolby made. He had them in the throat. +The Gipsy would have had nothing out of it, if it hadn’t been for the +horseshoe. But in spite of the giveaway, Ingolby was getting them where +they were soft-fairly drugging them with good news. You never heard such +dope. My, he was smooth! The golden, velvet truth it was, too. That’s +the only kind he has in stock; and they were sort of stupefied and +locoed as they chewed his word-plant. Cicero must have been a saucy +singer of the dictionary, and Paul the Apostle had a dope of his own you +couldn’t buy, but the gay gamut that Ingolby run gives them all the cold +good-bye.” + +She held herself very still as he spoke. There was, however, a strange, +lonely look in her eyes. The man lying asleep in the darkness of body +and mind yonder was not really her lover, for he had said no word direct +of love to her, and she knew him so little, how could she love him? +Yet there was something between them which had its authority over their +lives, overcoming even that maiden modesty which was in contrast to the +bold, physical thing she had done in running the Carillon Rapids those +centuries ago when she was young and glad-wistfully glad. So much had +come since that day, she had travelled so far on the highway of Fate, +that she looked back from peak to peak of happening to an almost +invisible horizon. So much had occurred and she felt so old this +morning; and yet there was in her heart the undefined feeling that she +must keep her radiant Spring of life for the blind Gorgio if he needed +it-if he needed it. Would he need it, robbed of sight and with his +life-work murdered? + +She shuddered as she thought of what it meant to him. If a man is to +work, he must have eyes to see. Yet what had she to do with it, after +all? She had no right to go to him even as she was going. Yet had she +not the right of common humanity? This Gorgio was her friend. Did not +the world know that he had saved her life? + +As they came to the Lebanon end of the bridge, Fleda turned to Jowett +and, commenting on his description of the scene at Barbazon, said: “He +is a great man, but he trusts too much and risks too much. That was no +place for him.” + +“Big men like him think they can do anything,” Jowett replied, a little +ironically, subtly trying to force a confession of her preference for +Ingolby. + +He succeeded. Her eye lighted with indignation. She herself might +challenge him, but she would not allow another to do so. + +“It is not the truth,” she rejoined sharply. “He does not measure +himself against the world so. He is like--like a child,” she added. + +“It seems to me all big men are like that,” Jowett rejoined; “and he’s +the biggest man the West has seen. He knows about every man’s business +as though it was his own. I can get a margin off most any man in the +West on a horse-trade, but I’d look shy about doing a trade with him. +You can’t dope a horse so he won’t know. He’s on to it, sees it-sees +it like as if it was in glass. Sees anything and everything, and--” He +stopped short. The Master Gorgio could no longer see, and his henchman +flushed like a girl at his “break”; though, as a horse-dealer, he had in +his time listened without shame to wilder, angrier reproaches than most +men living. + +She glanced at him, saw his confusion, forgave and understood him. + +“It was not the horseshoe, it was not the Gipsy,” she returned. “They +did not set it going. It would not have happened but for one man.” + +“Yes, it’s Marchand, right enough,” answered Jowett, “but we’ll get him +yet. We’ll get him with the branding-iron hot.” + +“That will not put things right if--” she paused, then with a great +effort she added: “Does the doctor think he will get it back and that--” + +She stopped suddenly in an agitation he did not care to see and he +turned away his head. + +“Doctor doesn’t know,” he answered. “There’s got to be an expert. It’ll +take time before he gets here, but--” he could not help but say it, +seeing how great her distress was--“but it’s going to come back. I’ve +seen cases--I saw one down on the Border”--how easily he lied!--“just +like his. It was blasting that done it--the shock. But the sight come +back all right, and quick too--like as I’ve seen a paralizite get up +all at once and walk as though he’d never been locoed. Why, God +Almighty don’t let men like Ingolby be done like that by reptiles same’s +Marchand.” + +“You believe in God Almighty?” she said half-wonderingly, yet with +gratitude in her tone. “You understand about God?” + +“I’ve seen too many things not to try and deal fair with Him and not try +to cheat Him,” he answered. “I see things lots of times that wasn’t ever +born on the prairie or in any house. I’ve seen--I’ve seen enough,” he +said abruptly, and stopped. + +“What have you seen?” she asked eagerly. “Was it good or bad?” + +“Both,” he answered quickly. “I was stalked once--stalked I was by night +and often in the open day, by some sickly, loathsome thing, that even +made me fight it with my hands--a thing I couldn’t see. I used to fire +buckshot at it, enough to kill an army, till I near went mad. I was +really and truly getting loony. Then I took to prayin’ to the best woman +I ever knowed. I never had a mother, but she looked after me--my sister, +Sara, it was. She brought me up, and then died and left me without +anything to hang on to. I didn’t know all I’d lost till she was gone. +But I guess she knew what I thought of her; for she come back--after I’d +prayed till I couldn’t see. She come back into my room one night when +the cursed ‘haunt’ was prowling round me, and as plain as I see you, +I saw her. ‘Be at peace,’ she said, and I spoke to her, and said, +‘Sara-why, Sara’ and she smiled, and went away into nothing--like a bit +o’ cloud in the sun.” + +He stopped, and was looking straight before him as though he saw a +vision. + +“It went?” she asked breathlessly. + +“It went like that--” He made a swift, outward gesture. “It went and it +never came back; and she didn’t either--not ever. My idee is,” he added, +“that there’s evil things that mebbe are the ghost-shapes of living men +that want to do us harm; though, mebbe, too, they’re the ghost-shapes +of men that’s dead, but that can’t get on Over There. So they try to get +back to us here; and they can make life Hell while they’re stalking us.” + +“I am sure you are right,” she said. + +She was thinking of the loathsome thing which haunted her room last +night. Was it the embodied second self of Jethro Fawe, doing the +evil that Jethro Fawe, the visible corporeal man, wished to do? She +shuddered, then bent her head and fixed her mind on Ingolby, whose house +was not far away. She felt strangely, miserably alone this morning. She +was in that fluttering state which follows a girl’s discovery that she +is a woman, and the feeling dawns that she must complete herself by +joining her own life with the life of another. + +She showed no agitation, but her repression gave an almost statuesque +character to her face and figure. The adventurous nature of her early +life had given her a power to meet shock and danger with coolness, and +though the news of Ingolby’s tragedy had seemed to freeze the vital +forces in her, and all the world became blank for a moment, she had +controlled herself and had set forth to go to him, come what might. + +As she entered the street where Ingolby lived, she suddenly realized the +difficulty before her. She might go to him, but by only one right could +she stay and nurse him, and that right she did not possess. He would, +she knew, understand her, no matter how the world babbled. Why should +the world babble? What woman could have designs upon a blind man? Was +not humanity alone sufficient warrant for staying by his side? Yet would +he wish it? Suddenly her heart sank; but again she remembered their last +parting, and once more she was sure he would be glad to have her with +him. + +It flashed upon her how different it would have been, if he and she had +been Romanys, and this thing had happened over there in the far lands +she knew so well. Who would have hinted at shame, if she had taken him +to her father’s tan or gone to his tan and tended him as a man might +tend a man? Humanity would have been the only convention; there would +have been no sex, no false modesty, no babble, no reproach. If it had +been a man as old as the oldest or as young as Jethro Fawe it would have +made no difference. + +As young as Jethro Fawe! Why was it that now she could never think of +the lost and abandoned Romany life without thinking also of Jethro Fawe? +Why should she hate him, despise him, revolt against him, and yet feel +that, as it were by invisible cords, he drew her back to that which she +had forsworn, to the Past which dragged at her feet? The Romany was +not dead in her; her real struggle was yet to come; and in a vague but +prophetic way she realized it. She was not yet one with the settled +western world. + +As they came close to Ingolby’s house she heard marching footsteps, and +in the near distance she saw fourscore or more men tramping in military +order. “Who are they?” she asked of Jowett. + +“Men that are going to see law and order kept in Lebanon,” he answered. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. SUCH THINGS MAY NOT BE + +A few hours later Fleda slowly made her way homeward through the woods +on the Manitou side of the Sagalac. Leaving Ingolby’s house, she had +seen men from the ranches and farms and mines beyond Lebanon driving +or riding into the town, as though to a fair or fete-day. Word of +anticipated troubles had sped through the countryside, and the innate +curiosity of a race who greatly love a row brought in sensation-lovers. +Some were skimming along in one-horse gigs, a small bag of oats dangling +beneath like the pendulum of a great clock. Others were in double or +triple-seated light wagons--“democrats” they were called. Women had +a bit of colour in their hats or at their throats, and the men had on +clean white collars and suits of “store-clothes”--a sign of being on +pleasure bent. Young men and girls on rough but serviceable mounts +cantered past, laughing and joking, and their loud talking grated on the +ear of the girl who had seen a Napoleon in the streets of his Moscow. + +Presently there crossed her path a gruesomely ugly hearse, with glass +sides and cheap imitation ostrich plumes drawn by gorged ravens of +horses with egregiously long tails, and driven by an undertaker’s +assistant, who, with a natural gaiety of soul, displayed an idiotic +solemnity by dragging down the corners of the mouth. She turned away in +loathing. + +Her mind fled to a scene far away in the land of the Volga when she was +a child, where she had seen buried two men, who had fought for their +insulted honour till both had died of their wounds. She remembered the +white and red sashes and the gay scarfs worn by the women at the +burial, the jackets with great silver buttons worn by the men, and the +silver-mounted pistols and bright steel knives in the garish belts. She +saw again the bodies of the two gladiators, covered with crimson robes, +carried shoulder-high on a soft bed of interlaced branches to the +graves beneath the trees. There, covered with flowers and sprigs and +evergreens, ribbons and favours, the kindly earth hid them, cloaked for +their long sleep, while women wept, and men praised the dead, and went +back to the open road again cheerily, as the dead would have them do. + +If he had died--the man she had just left behind in that torpid sleep +which opiates bring--his body would have been carried to his last home +in just such a hideous equipage as this hearse. A shiver of revolt went +through her frame, and her mind went to him as she had seen him lying +between the white sheets of his bed, his hands, as they had lain +upon the coverlet, compact of power and grace, knit and muscular and +vital--not the hand for a violin but the hand for a sword. + +As she had laid her hand upon his hot forehead and over his eyes, he had +unconsciously spoken her name. That had told her more of what really was +between them than she had ever known. In the presence of the catastrophe +that must endanger, if not destroy the work he had done, the career he +had made, he thought of her, spoke her name. + +What could she do to prevent his ruin? She must do something, else she +had no right to think of him. As though her thoughts had summoned him, +she came suddenly upon Felix Marchand at a point where her path resolved +itself into two, one leading to Manitou, the other to her own home. + +There was a malicious glint in the greenish eyes of the dissolute +demagogue as he saw her. His hat made a half-circle before it found his +head again. + +“You pay early visits, mademoiselle,” he said, his teeth showing +rat-like. + +“And you late ones?” she asked meaningly. + +“Not so late that I can’t get up early to see what’s going on,” he +rejoined in a sour voice. + +“Is it that those who beat you have to get up early?” she asked +ironically. + +“No one has got up earlier than me lately,” he sneered. + +“All the days are not begun,” she remarked calmly. + +“You have picked up quite an education since you left the road and the +tan,” he said with the look of one who delivers a smashing blow. + +“I am not yet educated enough to know how you get other people to commit +your crimes for you,” she retorted. + +“Who commits my crimes for me?” His voice was sharp and even anxious. + +“The man who told you I was once a Gipsy--Jethro Fawe.” + +Her instinct had told her this was so. But had Jethro told all? She +thought not. It would need some catastrophe which threw him off his +balance to make him speak to a Gorgio of the inner things of Romany +life; and child--marriage was one of them. + +He scoffed. “Once a Gipsy always a Gipsy. Race is race, and you can’t +put it off and on like--your stocking.” + +He was going to say chemise, but race was race, and vestiges of native +French chivalry stayed the gross simile on the lips of the degenerate. +Fleda’s eyes, however, took on a dark and brooding look which, more +than anything else, showed the Romany in her. With a murky flood of +resentment rising in her veins, she strove to fight back the half-savage +instincts of a bygone life. She felt as though she could willingly +sentence this man to death as her father had done Jethro Fawe that very +morning. Another thought, however, was working and fighting in her--that +Marchand was better as a friend than an enemy; and that while Ingolby’s +fate was in the balance, while yet the Orange funeral had not taken +place and the strikes had not yet come, it might be that he could be won +over to Ingolby. Her mind was thus involuntarily reproducing Ingolby’s +policy, as he had declared it to Jowett and Rockwell. It was to find +Felix Marchand’s price, and to buy off his enmity--not by money, for +Marchand did not need that, but by those other coins of value which are +individual to each man’s desires, passions and needs. + +“Once a Frenchman isn’t always a Frenchman,” she replied coolly, +disregarding the coarse insolence of his last utterance. “You yourself +do not now swear faith to the tricolour or the fleur-de-lis.” + +He flushed. She had touched a tender nerve. + +“I am a Frenchman always,” he rejoined angrily. “I hate the English. I +spit on the English flag.” + +“Yes, I’ve heard you are an anarchist,” she rejoined. “A man with no +country and with a flag that belongs to no country--quelle affaire et +quelle drolerie!” + +She laughed. Taken aback in spite of his anger, he stared at her. How +good her French accent was! If she would only speak altogether in +that beloved language, he could smother much malice. She was beautiful +and--well, who could tell? Ingolby was wounded and blind, maybe for +ever, and women are always with the top dog--that was his theory. +Perhaps her apparent dislike of him was only a mood. Many women that +he had conquered had been just like that. They had begun by disliking +him--from Lil Sarnia down--and had ended by being his. This girl +would never be his in the way that the others had been, but--who could +tell?--perhaps he would think enough of her to marry her? Anyway, it was +worth while making such a beauty care for him. The other kind of women +were easy enough to get, and it would be a piquant thing to have one +irreproachable affaire. He had never had one; he was not sure that any +girl or woman he had ever known had ever loved him, and he was certain +that he had never loved any girl or woman. To be in love would be a new +and piquant experience for him. He did not know love, but he knew what +passion was. He had ever been the hunter. This trail might be dangerous, +too, but he would take his chances. He had seen her dislike of him +whenever they had met in the past, and he had never tried to soften her +attitude towards him. He had certainly whistled, but she had not come. +Well, he would whistle again--a different tune. + +“You speak French much?” he asked almost eagerly, the insolence gone +from his tone. “Why didn’t I know that?” + +“I speak French in Manitou,” she replied, “but nearly all the French +speak English there, and so I speak more English than French.” + +“Yes, that’s it,” he rejoined almost angrily again. “The English will +not learn French, will not speak French. They make us learn English, +and--” + +“If you don’t like the flag and the country, why don’t you leave it?” + she interrupted, hardening, though she had meant to try and win him over +to Ingolby’s side. + +His eyes blazed. There was something almost real in the man after all. + +“The English can kill us, they can grind us to the dust,” he rejoined in +French, “but we will not leave the land which has always been ours. We +settled it; our fathers gave their lives for it in a thousand places. +The Indians killed them, the rivers and the storms, the plague and the +fire, the sickness and the cold wiped them out. They were burned alive +at the stake, they were flayed; their bones were broken to pieces by +stones--but they blazed trails with their blood in the wilderness from +New Orleans to Hudson’s Bay. They paid for the land with their lives. +Then the English came and took it, and since that time--one hundred and +fifty years--we have been slaves.” + +“You do not look like a slave,” she answered, “and you have not acted +like a slave. If you were to do the things in France that you’ve done +here, you wouldn’t be free as you are to-day.” + +“What have I done?” he asked darkly. + +“You were the cause of what happened at Barbazon’s last night,”--he +smiled evilly--“you are egging on the roughs to break up the Orange +funeral to-day; and there is all the rest you know so well.” + +“What is the rest I know so well?” He looked closely at her, his long, +mongrel eyes half-closing with covert scrutiny. + +“Whatever it is, it is all bad and it is all yours.” + +“Not all,” he retorted coolly. “You forget your Gipsy friend. He did his +part last night, and he’s still free.” + +They had entered the last little stretch of wood in which her home lay, +and she slackened her footsteps slightly. She felt that she had been +unwise in challenging him; that she ought to try persistently to win +him over. It was repugnant to her, still it must be done even yet. She +mastered herself for Ingolby’s sake and changed her tactics. + +“As you glory in what you have done, you won’t mind being responsible +for all that’s happened,” she replied in a more friendly tone. + +She made an impulsive gesture towards him. + +“You have shown what power you have--isn’t that enough?” she asked. “You +have made the crowd shout, ‘Vive Marchand!’ You can make everything +as peaceful as it is now upset. If you don’t do so, there will be much +misery. If peace must be got by force, then the force of government will +get it in the end. You have the gift of getting hold of the worst men +here, and you have done it; but won’t you now master them again in +the other way? You have money and brains; why not use them to become a +leader of those who will win at last, no matter what the game may be?” + +He came close to her. She shrank inwardly, but she did not move. His +greenish eyes were wide open in the fulness of eloquence and desire. + +“You have a tongue like none I ever heard,” he said impulsively. “You’ve +got a mind that thinks, you’ve got dash and can take risks. You took +risks that day on the Carillon Rapids. It was only the day before that +I’d met you by the old ford of the Sagalac, and made up to you. You +choked me off as though I was a wolf or a devil on the loose. The next +day when I saw Ingolby hand you out to the crowd from his arms, I got +nasty--I have fits like that sometimes, when I’ve had a little too much +liquor. I felt it more because you’re the only kind of woman that could +ever get a real hold on me. It was you made me get the boys rampaging +and set the toughs moving. As you say, I can get hold of a crowd. It’s +not hard--with money and drink. You can buy human nature cheap. Every +man has his price they say--and every woman too--bien sur! The thing +is to find out what is the price, and then how to buy. You can’t buy +everyone in the same way, even if you use a different price. You’ve got +to find out how they want the price--whether it’s to be handed over the +counter, so to speak, or to be kept on the window-sill, or left in a +pocket, or dropped in a path, or dug up like a potato, with a funny +make-believe that fools nobody, but just plays to the hypocrite in +everyone everywhere. I’m saying this to you because you’ve seen more of +the world, I bet, than one in a million, even though you’re so young. I +don’t see why we can’t come together. I’m to be bought. I don’t say +that my price isn’t high. You’ve got your price, too. You wouldn’t +fuss yourself about things here in Manitou and Lebanon, if there wasn’t +something you wanted to get. Tout ca! Well, isn’t it worth while making +the bargain? You’ve got such gift of speech that I’m just as if I’d +been drugged, and all round, face, figure, eyes, hair, foot, and girdle, +you’re worth giving up a lot for. I’ve seen plenty of your sex, and I’ve +heard crowds of them talk, but they never had anything for me beyond the +minute. You’ve got the real thing. You’re my fancy. You’ve been thinking +and dreaming of Ingolby. He’s done. He’s a back number. There’s nothing +he’s done that isn’t on the tumble since last night. The financial gang +that he downed are out already against him. They’ll have his economic +blood. He made a splash while he was at it, but the alligator’s got him. +It’s ‘Exit Ingolby,’ now.” + +She made a passionate gesture, and seemed about to speak, but he went +on: “No, don’t say anything. I know how you feel. You’ve had your face +turned his way, and you can’t look elsewhere all at once. But Time cures +quick, if you’re a good healthy human being. Ingolby was the kind likely +to draw a girl. He’s a six-footer and over; he spangled a lot, and he +smiled pretty--comme le printemps, and was sharp enough to keep clear of +women that could hurt him. That was his strongest point after all, for +a little, sly sprat of a woman that’s made eyes at you and led you on, +till you sent her a note in a hurry some time with some loose hot words +in it, and she got what she’d wanted, will make you pay a hundred times +for the goods you get. Ingolby was sharp enough to walk shy, until you +came his way, and then he lost his underpinning. But last night got him +in the vitals--hit him between the eyes; and his stock’s not worth ten +cents in the dollar to-day. But though the pumas are out, and he’s done, +and’ll never see his way out of the hole he’s in”--he laughed at his +grisly joke”--it’s natural to let him down easy. You’ve looked his way; +he did you a good turn at the Carillon Rapids, and you’d do one for him +if you could. I’m the only one can stop the worst from happening. You +want to pay your debt to him. Good. I can help you do it. I can stop +the strikes on the railways and in the mills. I can stop the row at +the Orange funeral. I can stop the run on his bank and the drop in his +stock. I can fight the gang that’s against him--I know how. I’m the man +that can bring things to pass.” + +He paused with a sly, mean smile of self-approval and conceit, and his +tongue licked the corners of his mouth in a way that drunkards have in +the early morning when the effect of last night’s drinking has worn off. +He spread out his hands with the air of a man who had unpacked his +soul, but the chief characteristic of his manner was egregious belief in +himself. + +At first, in her desire to find a way to meet the needs of Ingolby, +Fleda had listened to him with fortitude and even without revolt. But +as he began to speak of women, and to refer to herself with a look of +gloating which men of his breed cannot hide, her angry pulses beat hard. +She did not quite know where he was leading, but she was sure he meant +to say something which would vex her beyond bearing. At one moment she +meant to cut short his narrative, but he prevented her, and when at last +he ended, she was almost choking with agitation. It had been borne in +upon her as his monologue proceeded, that she would rather die than +accept anything from this man--anything of any kind. To fight him was +the only thing. Nothing else could prevail in the end. His was the +service of the unpenitent thief. + +“And what is it you want to buy from me?” she asked evenly. + +He did not notice, and he could not realize that ominous thing in her +voice and face. “I want to be friends with you. I want to see you here +in the woods, to meet you as you met Ingolby. I want to talk with you, +to hear you talk; to learn things from you I never learned before; to--” + +She interrupted him with a swift gesture. “And then--after that? What do +you want at the end of it all? One cannot spend one’s time talking and +wandering in the woods and teaching and learning. After that, what?” + +“I have a house in Montreal,” he said evasively. “I don’t want to live +there alone.” He laughed. “It’s big enough for two, and at the end it +might be us two, if--” + +With sharp anger, yet with coolness and dignity, she broke in on his +words. “Might be us two!” she exclaimed. “I have never thought of making +my home in a sewer. Do you think--but, no, it isn’t any use talking! You +don’t know how to deal with man or woman. You are perverted.” + +“I did not mean what you mean; I meant that I should want to marry you,” + he protested. “You think the worst of me. Someone has poisoned your mind +against me.” + +“Everyone has poisoned my mind against you,” she returned, “and yourself +most of all. I know you will try to injure Mr. Ingolby; and I know that +you will try to injure me; but you will not succeed.” + +She turned and moved away from him quickly, taking the path towards her +own front door. He called something after her, but she did not or would +not hear. + +As she entered the open space in front of the house, she heard footsteps +behind her and turned quickly, not without apprehension. A woman came +hurrying towards her. She was pale, agitated, haggard with fatigue. + +“May I speak with you?” she asked in French. “Surely,” replied Fleda. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. THE WOMAN FROM WIND RIVER + +“What is it?” asked Fleda, opening the door of the house. + +“I want to speak to you about m’sieu’,” replied the sad-faced woman. +She made a motion of her head backwards towards the wood. “About M’sieu’ +Marchand.” + +Fleda’s face hardened; she had had more than enough of “M’sieu’ +Marchand.” She was bitterly ashamed that she had, even for a moment, +thought of using diplomacy with him. But this woman’s face was so +forlorn, apart, and lonely, that the old spirit of the Open Road worked +its will. In far-off days she had never seen a human being turned away +from a Romany tent, or driven from a Romany camp. She opened the door +and stood aside to admit the wayfarer. + +A few moments later, the woman, tidied and freshened, sat at the ample +breakfast which was characteristic of Romany home-life. The woman’s +plate was bountifully supplied by Fleda, and her cup filled more than +once by Madame Bulteel, while old Gabriel Druse bulked friendly over +all. His face now showed none of the passion and sternness which had +been present when he passed the Sentence of the Patrin upon Jethro Fawe; +nothing of the gloom filling his eyes as he left Ingolby’s house. The +gracious, bountiful look of the patriarch, of the head of the clan, was +upon him. + +The husband of one wife, the father of one child, yet the Ry of Rys had +still the overlooking, protective sense of one who had the care of great +numbers of people. His keen eyes foresaw more of the story the woman was +to tell presently than either of the women of his household. He had +seen many such women as this, and had inflexibly judged between them and +those who had wronged them. + +“Where have you come from?” he asked, as the meal drew to a close. + +“From Wind River and under Elk Mountain,” the woman answered with a +look of relief. Her face was of those who no longer can bear the soul’s +secrets. + +There was silence while the breakfast things were cleared away, and the +window was thrown wide to the full morning sun. It broke through the +branches of pine and cedar and juniper; it made translucent the leaves +of the maples; it shimmered on Fleda’s brown hair as she pulled a rose +from the bush at the window, and gave it to the forlorn creature in the +grey “linsey-woolsey” dress and the loose blue flannel jacket, whose +skin was coarsened by outdoor life, but who had something of real beauty +in the intense blue of her eyes. She had been a very comely figure in +her best days, for her waist was small, her bosom gently and firmly +rounded, and her hands were finer than those of most who live and work +much in the open air. + +“You said there was something you wished to tell me,” said Fleda, at +last. + +The woman gazed slowly round at the three, as though with puzzled +appeal. There was the look of the Outlander in her face; of one who had +been exiled from familiar things and places. In manner she was like a +child. Her glance wandered over the faces of the two women, then her +eyes met those of the Ry, and stayed there. + +“I am old and I have seen many sorrows,” said Gabriel Druse, divining +what was in her mind. “I will try to understand.” + +“I have known all the bitterness of life,” interposed the low, soft +voice of Madame Bulteel. + +“All ears are the same here,” Fleda added, looking the woman in the +eyes. + +“I will tell everything,” was the instant reply. Her fingers twined and +untwined in her lap with a nervousness shown by neither face nor body. +Her face was almost apathetic in its despair, but her body had an +upright courage. + +She sighed heavily and began. + +“My name is Arabella Stone. I was married from my home over against Wind +River by the Jumping Sandhills. + +“My father was a lumberman. He was always captain of the gang in the +woods, and captain of the river in the summer. My mother was deaf and +dumb. It was very lonely at times when my father was away. I loved +a boy--a good boy, and he was killed breaking horses. When I was +twenty-one years old my mother died. It was not good for me to be alone, +my father said, so he must either give up the woods and the river, or +he or I must marry. Well, I saw he would not marry, for my mother’s face +was one a man could not forget.” + +The old man stirred in his seat. “I have seen such,” he said in his deep +voice. + +“So it was I said to myself I would marry,” she continued, “though I +had loved the Boy that died under the hoofs of the black stallion. There +weren’t many girls at the Jumping Sandhills, and so there were men, now +one, now another, to say things to me which did not touch my heart; but +I did not laugh, because I understood that they were lonely. Yet I liked +one of them more than all the others. + +“So, for my father’s sake, I came nearer to Dennis, and at last it +seemed I could bear to look at him any time of the day or night he came +to me. He was built like a pine-tree, and had a playful tongue, and also +he was a ranchman like the Boy that was gone. It all came about on the +day he rode in from the range the wild wicked black stallion which all +range-riders had tried for years to capture. It was like a brother of +the horse which had killed my Boy, only bigger. When Dennis mastered him +and rode him to my door I made up my mind, and when he whispered to me +over the dipper of buttermilk I gave him, I said, ‘Yes.’ I was proud of +him. He did things that a woman likes, and said the things a woman loves +to hear, though they be the same thing said over and over again.” + +Madame Bulteel nodded her head as though in a dream, and the Ry of Rys +sat with his two great hands on the chair-arm and his chin dropped on +his chest. Fleda’s hands were clasped in her lap, and her big eyes never +left the woman’s face. + +“Before a month was gone I had married him,” the low, tired voice went +on. “It was a gay wedding; and my father was very happy, for he thought +I had got the desire of a woman’s life--a home of her own. For a time +all went well. Dennis was gay and careless and wilful, but he was easy +to live with, too, except when he came back from the town where he sold +his horses. Then he was different, because of the drink, and he was +quarrelsome with me--and cruel, too. + +“At last when he came home with the drink upon him, he would sleep on +the floor and not beside me. This wore upon my heart. I thought that +if I could only put my hand on his shoulder and whisper in his ear, he +would get better of his bad feeling; but he was sulky, and he would not +bear with me. Though I never loved him as I loved my Boy, still I tried +to be a good wife to him, and never turned my eyes to any other man.” + +Suddenly she stopped as though the pain of speaking was too great. +Madame Bulteel murmured something, but the only word that reached the +ears of the others was the Arabic word ‘mafish’. Her pale face was +suffused as she said it. + +Two or three times the woman essayed to speak again, but could not. +At last, however, she overcame her emotion and said: “So it was when +M’sieu’ Felix Marchand came up from the Sagalac.” + +The old man started and muttered harshly, but Fleda had foreseen the +entrance of the dissolute Frenchman into the tale, and gave no sign of +surprise. + +“M’sieu’ Marchand bought horses,” the sad voice trailed on. “One day he +bought the mining-claims Dennis had been holding till he could develop +them or sell them for good money. When Dennis went to town again he +brought me back a present of a belt with silver clasps; but yet again +that night he slept upon the floor alone. So it went on. M. Marchand, +he goes on to the mountains and comes back; and he buys more horses, +and Dennis takes them to Yargo, and M. Marchand goes with him, but comes +back before Dennis does. It was then M’sieu’ begun to talk to me; to say +things that soothe a woman when she is hurt. I knew now Dennis did not +want me as when he first married me. He was that kind of man--quick to +care and quicker to forget. He was weak, he could not fasten where he +stood. It pleased him to be gay and friendly with me when he was sober, +but there was nothing behind it--nothing, nothing at all. At last I +began to cry when I thought of it, for it went on and on, and I was too +much alone. I looked at myself in the glass, and I saw I was not old +or lean. I sang in the trees beside the brook, and my voice was even +a little better than in the days when Dennis first came to my father’s +house. I looked to my cooking, and I knew that it was as good as ever. I +thought of my clothes, and how I did my hair, and asked myself if I +was as fresh to see as when Dennis first came to me. I could see no +difference. There was a clear pool not far away under the little hills +where the springs came together. I used to bathe in it every morning and +dry myself in the sun; and my body was like a child’s. That being so, +should my own man turn his head away from me day or night? What had I +done to be used so, less than two years after I had married!” + +She paused and hung her head, weeping gently. “Shame stings a woman like +nothing else,” Madame Bulteel said with a sigh. + +“It was so with me,” continued Dennis’s wife. “Then at last the thought +came that there was another woman. And all the time M. Marchand kept +coming and going, at first when Dennis was there, and always with some +good reason for coming--horses, cattle, shooting, or furs bought of the +Indians. When Dennis was not there, he came at first for an hour or two, +as if by chance, then for a whole day, because he said he knew I was +lonely. One day, I was sitting by the pool--it was in the evening. I +was crying because of the thought that followed me of another woman +somewhere, who made Dennis turn from me. Then it was M’sieu’ came and +put a hand on my shoulder--he came so quietly that I did not hear him +till he touched me. He said he knew why I cried, and it saddened his +soul.” + +“His soul--the jackal!” growled the old man in his beard. + +The woman nodded wearily and went on. “For all of ten days I had been +alone, except for the cattlemen camping a mile away and an old Indian +helper who slept in his tepee within call. Loneliness makes you weak +when there’s something tearing at the heart. So I let M’sieu’ Marchand +talk to me. At last he told me that there was a woman at Yargo--that +Dennis did not go there for business, but to her. Everyone knew it +except me, he said. He told me to ask old Throw Hard, the Indian helper, +if he had spoken the truth. I was shamed, and angry and crazy, too, I +think, so I went to old Throw Hard and asked him. He said he could not +tell the truth, and that he would not lie to me. So I knew it was all +true. + +“How do I know what was in my mind? Is a woman not mad at such a time! +There I was, tossed aside for a flyaway, who was for any man that would +come her way. Yes, I think I was mad. The pride in me was hurt--as only +a woman can understand.” She paused and looked at the two women who +listened to her. Fleda’s eyes were on the world beyond the window of the +room. + +“Surely we understand,” whispered Madame Bulteel. + +The woman’s courage returned, and she continued: “I could not go to my +father, for he was riding the river scores of miles away. I was terribly +alone. It was then that M’sieu’ Marchand, who had bribed the woman to +draw Dennis away, begged me to go away with him. He swore I should marry +him as soon as I could be free of Dennis. I scarcely knew what I said +or thought; but the place I had loved was hateful to me, so I went away +with him.” + +A sharp, pained exclamation broke from the lips of Madame Bulteel, but +presently she reached out and laid a hand upon the woman’s arm. “Of +course you went with him,” she said. “You could not stay where you were +and face the return of Dennis. There was no child to keep you, and the +man that tempted you said he adored you?” + +The woman looked gratefully at her. “That was what he said,” she +answered. “He said he was tired of wandering, and that he wanted a +home-and there was a big house in Montreal.” + +She stopped suddenly upon an angry, smothered word from Fleda’s lips. +A big house in Montreal! Fleda’s first impulse was to break in upon the +woman’s story and tell her father what had happened just now outside +their own house; but she waited. + +“Yes, there was a big house in Montreal?” said Fleda, her eyes now +resting sadly upon the woman. + +“He said it should be mine. But that did not count. To be far away from +all that had been was more than all else. I was not thinking of the man, +or caring for him, I was flying from my shame. I did not see then the +shame to which I was going. I was a fool, and I was mad and bad also. +When I waked--and it was soon--there was quick understanding between us. +The big house in Montreal--that was never meant for me. He was already +married.” + +The old man stretched heavily to his feet, leaned both hands on the +table, and looked at the woman with glowering eyes, while Fleda’s heart +seemed to stop beating. + +“Married!” growled Gabriel Druse, with a blur of passion in his voice. +He knew that Felix Marchand had followed his daughter as though he were +a single man. + +Fleda saw what was working in his mind. Since her father suspected, he +should know all. + +“He almost offered me the big house in Montreal this morning,” she said +evenly and coldly. + +A malediction broke from the old man’s lips. + +“He almost thought he wanted me to marry him,” Fleda added scornfully. + +“And what did you say?” Druse asked. + +“There could only be one thing to say. I told him I had never thought of +making my home in a sewer.” A grim smile broke over the old man’s face, +and he sat down again. + +“Because I saw him with you I wanted to warn you,” the woman continued. +“Yesterday, I came to warn him of his danger, and he laughed at me. From +Madame Thibadeau I heard he had said he would make you sing his song. +When I came to tell you, there he was with you. But when he left you +I was sure there was no need to speak. Still I felt I must tell +you--perhaps because you are rich and strong, and will stop him from +doing more harm.” + +“How do you know we are rich?” asked Druse in a rough tone. + +“It is what the world says,” was the reply. “Is there harm in that? In +any case it was right to tell you all; so that one who had herded with a +woman like me should not be friends with you.” + +“I have seen worse women than you,” murmured the old man. + +“What danger did you come to warn M. Marchand about?” asked Fleda. + +“To his life,” answered the woman. + +“Do you want to save his life?” asked the old man. + +“Ah, is it not always so?” intervened Madame Bulteel in a low, sad +voice. “To be wronged like that does not make a woman just.” + +“I am just,” answered the woman. “He deserves to die, but I want to save +the man that will kill him when they meet.” + +“Who will kill him?” asked Fleda. “Dennis--he will kill Marchand if he +can.” + +The old man leaned forward with puzzled, gloomy interest. “Why? Dennis +left you for another. You say he had grown cold. Was that not what he +wanted--that you should leave him?” + +The woman looked at him with tearful eyes. “If I had known Dennis +better, I should have waited. What he did is of the moment only. A man +may fall and rise again, but it is not so with a woman. She thinks and +thinks upon the scar that shows where she wounded herself; and she never +forgets, and so her life becomes nothing--nothing.” + +No one saw that Madame Bulteel held herself rigidly, and was so white +that even the sunlight was gold beside her look. Yet the strangest, +saddest smile played about her lips; and presently, as the eyes of the +others fastened on the woman and did not leave her, she regained her +usual composure. + +The woman kept looking at Gabriel Druse. “When Dennis found that I had +gone, and knew why--for I left word on a sheet of paper--he went mad +like me. Trailing to the south, to find M’sieu’ Marchand, he had an +accident, and was laid up in a shack for weeks on the Tanguishene River, +and they could not move him. But at last a ranchman wrote to me, and the +letter found me on the very day I left M’sieu’. When I got that letter +begging me to go to the Tanguishene River, to nurse Dennis who loved me +still, my heart sank. I said to myself I could not go; and Dennis and +I must be apart always to the end of time. But then I thought again. He +was ill, and his body was as broken as his mind. Well, since I could do +his mind no good, I would try to help his body. I could do that much for +him. So I went. But the letter to me had been long on the way, and when +I got to the Tanguishene River he was almost well.” + +She paused and rocked her body to and fro for a moment as though in +pain. + +“He wanted me to go back to him then. He said he had never cared for the +woman at Yargo, and that what he felt for me now was different from what +it had ever been. When he had settled accounts we could go back to the +ranch and be at peace. I knew what he meant by settling accounts, and it +frightened me. That is why I am here. I came to warn the man, Marchand, +for if Dennis kills him, then they will hang Dennis. Do you not see? +This is a country of law. I saw that Dennis had the madness in his +brain, and so I left him again in the evening of the day I found him, +and came here--it is a long way. Yesterday, M’sieu’ Marchand laughed at +me when I warned him. He said he could take care of himself. But such +men as Dennis stop at nothing; there will be killing, if M’sieu’ stays +here.” + +“You will go back to Dennis?” asked Fleda gently. “Some other woman will +make him happy when he forgets me,” was the cheerless, grey reply. + +The old man got up and, coming over, laid a hand upon her shoulder. + +“Where did you think of going from here?” he asked. + +“Anywhere--I don’t know,” was the reply. + +“Is there no work here for her?” he asked, turning to Madame Bulteel. + +“Yes, plenty,” was the reply. “And room also?” he asked again. + +“Was ever a tent too full, when the lost traveller stumbled into camp +in the old days?” rejoined Fleda. The woman trembled to her feet, a +glad look in her eyes. “I ought to go, but I am tired and I will gladly +stay,” she said and swayed against the table. + +Madame Bulteel and Fleda put their arms round her, steadying her. + +“This is not the way to act,” said Fleda with a touch of sharp reproof. +Had she not her own trouble to face? + +The stricken woman drew herself up and looked Fleda in the eyes. “I will +find the right way, if I can,” she said with courage. + +A half-hour later, as the old man sat alone in the room where he had +breakfasted, a rifle-shot rang out in the distance. + +“The trouble begins,” he said, as he rose and hastened into the hallway. + +Another shot rang out. He caught up his wide felt hat, reached for a +great walking-stick in the corner, and left the house hurriedly. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE + +It was a false alarm which had startled Gabriel Druse, but it had +significance. The Orange funeral was not to take place until eleven +o’clock, and it was only eight o’clock when the Ry left his home. A +rifle-shot had, however, been fired across the Sagalac from the Manitou +side, and it had been promptly acknowledged from Lebanon. There was a +short pause, and then came another from the Lebanon side. It was merely +a warning and a challenge. The only man who could have controlled the +position was blind and helpless. + +As Druse walked rapidly towards the bridge, he met Jowett. Jowett was +one of the few men in either town for whom the Ry had regard, and the +friendliness had had its origin in Jowett’s knowledge of horseflesh. +This was a field in which the Ry was himself a master. He had ever been +too high-placed among his own people to trade and barter horses except +when, sending a score of Romanys on a hunt for wild ponies on the hills +of Eastern Europe, he had afterwards sold the tamed herd to the highest +bidders in some Balkan town; but he had an infallible eye for a horse. + +It was a curious anomaly also that the one man in Lebanon who would +not have been expected to love and pursue horse-flesh was the Reverend +Reuben Tripple to whom Ingolby had given his conge, but who loved a +horse as he loved himself. + +He was indeed a greater expert in horses than in souls. One of the +sights of Lebanon had been the appearance in the field of the “Reverend +Tripple,” who owned a great, raw-boned bay mare of lank proportions, the +winner of a certain great trotting-race which had delighted the mockers. + +For two years Jowett had eyed Mr. Tripple’s rawbone with a piratical +eye. + +Though it had won only a single great race, that, in Jowett’s view, +was its master’s fault. As the Arabs say, however, Allah is with the +patient; and so it was that on the evening of the day in which Ingolby +met disaster, Mr. Tripple informed Jowett that he was willing to sell +his rawbone. + +He was mounted on the gawky roadster when he met Gabriel Druse making +for the bridge. Their greeting was as cordial as hasty. Anxious as was +the Ry to learn what was going on in the towns, Jowett’s mount caught +his eye. It was but a little time since they had met at Ingolby’s +house, and they were both full of the grave events afoot, but here was a +horse-deal of consequence, and the bridle-rein was looseflung. + +“Yes, I got it,” said Jowett, with a chuckle, interpreting the old +man’s look. “I got it for good--a wonder from Wonderville. Damned +queer-looking critter, but there, I guess we know what I’ve got. +Outside like a crinoline, inside like a pair of ankles of the Lady Jane +Plantagenet. Yes, I got it, Mr. Druse, got it dead-on!” + +“How?” asked the Ry, feeling the clean fetlocks with affectionate +approval. + +“He’s off East, so he says,” was the joyous reply; “sudden but sure, +and I dunno why. Anyway, he’s got the door-handle offered, and he’s off +without his camel.” He stroked the neck of the bay lovingly. “How much?” + +Jowett held up his fingers. The old man lifted his eyebrows quizzically. +“That-h’m! Does he preach as well as that?” he asked. + +Jowett chuckled. “He knows the horse-country better than the New +Jerusalem, I guess; and I wasn’t off my feed, nor hadn’t lost my head +neither. I wanted that dust-hawk, and he knew it; but I got in on him +with the harness and the sulky. The bridle he got from a Mexican that +come up here a year ago, and went broke and then went dead; and there +being no padre, Tripple did the burying, and he took the bridle as his +fee, I s’pose. It had twenty dollars’ worth of silver on it--look at +these conchs.” + +He trifled with the big beautiful buttons on the head-stall. “The +sulky’s as good as new, and so’s the harness almost; and there’s the +nose-bag and the blankets, and a saddle and a monkey-wrench and two +bottles of horse-liniment, and odds and ends. I only paid that”--and he +held up his fingers again as though it was a sacred rite--“for the lot. +Not bad, I want to say. Isn’t he good for all day, this one?” + +The old man nodded, then turned towards the bridge. “The +gun-shots--what?” he asked, setting forward at a walk which taxed the +rawbone’s stride. + +“An invite--come to the wedding; that’s all. Only it’s a funeral this +time, and, if something good doesn’t happen, there’ll be more than one +funeral on the Sagalac to-morrow. I’ve had my try, but I dunno how it’ll +come out. He’s not a man of much dictionary is the Monseenoor.” + +“The Monseigneur Lourde? What does he say?” + +“He says what we all say, that he is sorry. ‘But why have the Orange +funeral while things are as they are?’ he says, and he asks for the red +flag not to be shook in the face of the bull.” + +“That is not the talk of a fool, as most priests are,” growled the +other. + +“Sure. But it wants a real wind-warbler to make them see it in Lebanon. +They’ve got the needle. They’ll pray to-day with the taste of blood in +their mouths. It’s gone too far. Only a miracle can keep things right. +The Mayor has wired for the mounted police--our own battalion of militia +wouldn’t serve, and there’d be no use ordering them out--but the Riders +can’t get here in time. The train’s due the very time the funeral’s to +start, but that train’s always late, though they say the ingine-driver +is an Orangeman! And the funeral will start at the time fixed, or I +don’t know the boys that belong to the lodge. So it’s up to We, Us & Co. +to see the thing through, or go bust. It don’t suit me. It wouldn’t have +been like this, if it hadn’t been for what happened to the Chief last +night. There’s no holding the boys in. One thing’s sure, the Gipsy that +give Ingolby away has got to lie low if he hasn’t got away, or there’ll +be one less of his tribe to eat the juicy hedgehog. Yes, sir-ee!” + +To the last words of Jowett the Ry seemed to pay no attention, though +his lips shut tight and a menacing look came into his eyes. They were +now upon the bridge, and could see what was forward on both sides of the +Sagalac. There was unusual bustle and activity in the streets and on the +river-bank of both towns. It was noticeable also that though the mills +were running in Manitou, there were fewer chimneys smoking, and far +more men in the streets than usual. Tied up to the Manitou shore were +a half-dozen cribs or rafts of timber which should be floating eastward +down the Sagalac. + +“If the Monseenoor can’t, or don’t, step in, we’re bound for a shindy +over a corpse,” continued Jowett after a moment. + +“Can the Monseigneur cast a spell over them all?” remarked the Ry +ironically, for he had little faith in priests, though he had for this +particular one great respect. + +“He’s a big man, that preelate,” answered Jowett quickly and forcibly. +“He kept the Crees quiet when they was going to rise. If they’d got up, +there’d have been hundreds of settlers massacreed. He risked his life +to do that--went right into the camp in face of levelled rifles, and +sat down and begun to talk. A minute afterwards all the chiefs was +squatting, too. Then the tussle begun between a man with a soul and +a heathen gang that eat dog, kill their old folks, their cripples and +their deformed children, and run sticks of wood through their bleeding +chests, just to show that they’re heathens. But he won out, this +Jesueete friend o’ man. That’s why I’m putting my horses and my land +and my pants and my shirt and the buff that’s underneath on the little +preelate.” + +Gabriel Druse’s face did not indicate the same confidence. “It is not an +age of miracles; the priest is not enough,” he said sceptically. + +By twos, by threes, by tens, men from Manitou came sauntering across the +bridge into Lebanon, until a goodly number were scattered at different +points through the town. They seemed to distribute themselves by a +preconceived plan, and they were all habitants. There were no Russians, +Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, or Germans among them. They were low-browed, +sturdy men, dressed in red or blue serge shirts, some with sashes around +their waists, some with ear-rings in their ears, some in knee-boots, and +some with the heavy spiked boots of the river-driver. None appeared +to carry any weapon that would shoot, yet in their belts was the +sheath-knife, the invariable equipment of their class. It would have +seemed more suspicious if they had not carried them. The railwaymen, +miners, carters, mill-hands, however, appeared to carry nothing save +their strong arms and hairy hands, and some were as hairy as animals. +These backwoodsmen also could, without weapons, turn a town into a +general hospital. In battle they fought not only with hands but also +with teeth and hoofs like wild stallions. Teeth tore off an ear or +sliced away a nose, hands smote like hammers or gouged out eyes, +and their nailed boots were weapons of as savage a kind as could be +invented. They could spring and strike an opponent with one foot in the +chest or in the face, and spoil the face for many a day, or for ever. It +was a gift of the backwoods and the lumber-camps, practised in hours of +stark monotony when the devils which haunt places of isolation devoid of +family life, where men herd together like dogs in a kennel, break loose. +There the man that dips his fingers “friendly-like” in the dish of his +neighbour one minute wants the eye of that neighbour the next not +so much in innate or momentary hatred, as in innate savagery and the +primeval sense of combat, the war which was in the blood of the first +man. + +The unarmed appearance of these men did not deceive the pioneer folk +of Lebanon. To them the time had come when the reactionary forces +of Manitou must receive a check. Even those who thought the funeral +fanatical and provocative were ready to defend it. + +The person who liked the whole business least was Rockwell. He was +subject to the same weariness of the flesh and fatigue of the spirit as +all men; yet it was expected of him that at any hour he should be at +the disposal of suffering humanity--of criminal or idiotic +humanity--patient, devoted, calm, nervestrung, complete. He was the one +person in the community who was the universal necessity, and yet for +whom the community had no mercy in its troubles or out of them. There +were three doctors in Lebanon, but none was an institution, none had +prestige save Rockwell, and he often wished that he had less prestige, +since he cared nothing for popularity. + +He had made his preparations for possible “accidents” in no happy mood. +Fresh from the bedside of Ingolby, having had no sleep, and with many +sick people on his list, he inwardly damned the foolishness of +both towns. He even sharply rebuked the Mayor, who urged surgical +preparations upon him, for not sending sooner to the Government for a +force which could preserve order or prevent the procession. + +It was while he was doing so that Jowett appeared with Gabriel Druse to +interview the Mayor. + +“It’s like this,” said Jowett. “In another hour the funeral will start. +There’s a lot of Manitou huskies in Lebanon now, and their feet is +loaded, if their guns ain’t. They’re comin’ by driblets, and by-and-bye, +when they’ve all distributed themselves, there’ll be a marching column +of them from Manitou. It’s all arranged to make trouble and break the +law. It’s the first real organized set-to we’ve had between the towns, +and it’ll be nasty. If the preelate doesn’t dope them, there’ll be +pertikler hell to pay.” + +He then gave the story of his visit to Monseigneur Lourde, and the +details of what was going forward in Manitou so far as he had learned. +Also the ubiquitous Osterhaut had not been idle, and his bulletin had +just been handed to Jowett. + +“There’s one thing ought to be done and has got to be done,” Jowett +added, “if the Monseenoor don’t pull if off. The leaders have to be +arrested, and it had better be done by one that, in a way, don’t belong +to either Lebanon or Manitou.” + +The Mayor shook his head. “I don’t see how I can authorize Marchand’s +arrest--not till he breaks the law, in any case.” + +“It’s against the law to conspire to break the law,” replied Jowett. +“You’ve been making a lot of special constables. Make Mr. Gabriel Druse +here a special constable, then if the law’s broke, he can have a right +to take a hand in.” + +The giant Ry had stood apart, watchful and ruminant, but he now stepped +forward, as the Mayor turned to him and stretched out a hand. + +“I am for peace,” the old man said. “To keep the peace the law must be +strong.” + +In spite of the gravity of the situation the Mayor smiled. “You wouldn’t +need much disguise to stand for the law, Mr. Druse,” he remarked. “When +the law is seven feet high, it stands well up.” + +The Ry did not smile. “Make me the head of the constables, and I will +keep the peace,” he said. There was a sudden silence. The proposal had +come so quietly, and it was so startling, that even the calm Rockwell +was taken aback. But his eye and the eye of the Mayor met, and the look +in both their faces was the same. + +“That’s bold play,” the Mayor said, “but I guess it goes. Yesterday +it couldn’t be done. To-day it can. The Chief Constable’s down with +smallpox. Got it from an Injun prisoner days ago. He’s been bad for +three days, but hung on. Now he’s down, and there’s no Chief. I was +going to act myself, but the trouble was, if anything happened to me, +there’d be no head of anything. It’s better to have two strings to +your bow. It’s a go-it’s a straight go, Mr. Druse. Seven foot of Chief +Constable ought to have its weight with the roughnecks.” + +A look of hopefulness came into his face. This sage, huge, commanding +figure would have a good moral effect on the rude elements of disorder. + +“I’ll have you read the Riot Act instead of doing it myself,” added +the Mayor. “It’ll be a good introduction for you, and as you live in +Manitou, it’ll be a knock-out blow to the toughs. Sometimes one man is +as good as a hundred. Come on to the Courthouse with me,” he continued +cheerfully. “We’ll fix the whole thing. All the special constables are +waiting there with the regular police. An extra foot on a captain’s +shoulders is as good as a battery of guns.” + +“You’re sure it’s according to Hoyle?” asked Jowett quizzically. + +He was so delighted that he felt he must “make the Mayor show off self,” + as he put it afterwards. He did not miscalculate; the Mayor rose to his +challenge. + +“I’m boss of this show,” he said, “and I can go it alone if necessary +when the town’s in danger and the law’s being hustled. I’ve had a +meeting of the Council and I’ve got the sailing-orders I want. I’m boss +of the place, and Mr. Druse is my--” he stopped, because there was a +look in the eyes of the Ry which demanded consideration--“And Mr. Druse +is lawboss,” he added. + +The old ineradicable look of command shone in the eyes of Gabriel Druse. +Leadership was written all over him. Power spoke in every motion. The +square, unbowed shoulders, the heavily lined face, with the patriarchal +beard, the gnarled hands, the rough-hewn limbs, the eye of bright, +brooding force proclaimed authority. + +Indeed in that moment there came into the face of the old Nomad the look +it had not worn for many a day. The self-exiled ruler had paid a heavy +price for his daughter’s vow, though he had never acknowledged it to +himself. His self-ordained impotency, in a camp that was never moved, +within walls which never rose with the sunset and fell with the morning; +where his feet trod the same roadway day after day; where no man asked +for justice or sought his counsel or fell back on his protection; where +he drank from the same spring and tethered his horse in the same paddock +from morn to morn: all these things had eaten at his heart and bowed his +spirit in spite of himself. + +He was not now of the Romany world, and he was not of the Gorgio world; +but here at last was the old thing come back to him in a new way, and +his bones rejoiced. He would entitle his daughter to her place among the +Gorgios. Perhaps also it would be given him, in the name of the law, to +deal with a man he hated. + +“We’ve got Mister Marchand now,” said Jowett softly to the old +chieftain. + +The Ry’s eyes lighted and his jaw set. He did not speak, but his hands +clenched, opened and clenched again. Jowett saw and grinned. + +“The Mayor and the law-boss’ll win out, I guess,” he said to himself. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMAD + +Even more than Dr. Rockwell, Berry, the barber, was the most troubled +man in Lebanon on the day of the Orange funeral. Berry was a good +example of an unreasoning infatuation. The accident which had come to +his idol, with the certain fall of his fortunes, hit him so hard, that, +for the first time since he became a barber, his razor nipped the flesh +of more than one who sat in his red-upholstered chair. + +In his position, Berry was likely to hear whatever gossip was going. Who +shall have perfect self-control with a giant bib under the chin, tipped +back on a chair that cannot be regulated, with a face covered by lather, +and two plantation fingers holding the nose? In these circumstances, +with much diplomacy, Berry corkscrewed his way into confidence, and when +he dipped a white cloth in bay-rum and eau-de-cologne, and laid it over +the face of the victim, with the finality of a satisfied inquisitor, it +was like giving the last smother to human individuality. An artist after +his kind, he no sooner got what he wanted than he carefully coaxed his +victim away from thoughts of the disclosures into the vague distance of +casual gossip once more. + +Gradually and slowly he shepherded his patient back to the realms of +self-respect and individual personality. The border-line was at the +point where the fingers of his customer fluttered at a collar-button; +for Berry, who realized the power that lies in making a man look +ridiculous, never allowed a customer to be shaved or have his hair cut +with a collar on. When his customers had corns, off came the boots +also, and then Berry’s triumph over the white man was complete. To call +attention to an exaggerated bunion when the odorous towel lay upon the +hidden features of what once was a “human,” was the last act in the +drama of the Unmaking of Man. + +Only when the client had felt in his pocket for the price of the +flaying, and laid it, with a ten-cent fee, on the ledge beneath the +mirror, where all the implements of the inquisition and the restoration +were assembled, did he feel manhood restored. If, however, he tried to +keep a vow of silence in the chair of execution, he paid a heavy price; +for Berry had his own methods of punishment. A little tighter grasp of +the nose; a little rougher scrape of the razor, and some sharp, stinging +liquid suddenly slapped with a cold palm on the excoriated spot, with +the devilish hypocrisy of healing it; a longer smothering-period under +the towel, when the corners of it were tucked behind the ears and a +crease of it in the mouth-all these soon induced vocal expression again, +and Berry started on his inquisition with gentle certainty. When at last +he dusted the face with a little fine flour of oatmeal, “to heal the +cuticle and ‘manoor’ the roots,” and smelled with content the hands +which had embalmed the hair in verbena-scented oil, a man left his +presence feeling that he was ready for the wrath to come. + +Such was Berry when he had under his razor one of Ingolby’s business +foes of Manitou, who had of late been in touch with Felix Marchand. Both +were working for the same end, but with different intentions. Marchand +worked with that inherent devilishness which sometimes takes possession +of low minds; but the other worked as he would have done against his own +brother, for his own business success; and it was his view that one man +could only succeed by taking the place of another, as though the Age of +Expansion had ceased and the Age of Smother had begun. + +From this client while in a state of abject subjection, Berry, whose +heart was hard that day, but whose diplomacy was impeccable, discovered +a thing of moment. There was to be a procession of strikers from two +factories in Manitou, who would throw down their tools or leave their +machines at a certain moment. Falling into line these strikers would +march across the bridge between the towns at such time as would bring +them into touch with the line of the Orange funeral--two processions +meeting at right angles. If neither procession gave way, the Orange +funeral could be broken up, ostensibly not from religious fanaticism, +but from the “unhappy accident” of two straight lines colliding. It was +a juicy plot; and in a few minutes the Mayor and Gabriel Druse knew of +it from the faithful Berry. + +The bell of the meeting-house began to toll as the Orangeman whose death +had caused such commotion was carried to the waiting carriage where he +would ride alone. Almost simultaneously with the starting of the gaudy +yet sombre Orange cortege, with its yellow scarfs, glaring banners, +charcoal plumes and black clothes, the labour procession approached the +Manitou end of the Sagalac bridge. The strikers carried only three or +four banners, but they had a band of seven pieces, with a drum and +a pair of cymbals. With frequent discord, but with much spirit, the +Bleaters, as these musicians were called in Lebanon, inspired the steps +of the Manitou fanatics and toughs. As they came upon the bridge they +were playing a gross paraphrase of The Marseillaise. + +At the head of the Orange procession was a silver-cornet band which the +enterprise of Lebanon had made possible. Its leader was a ne’er-do-well +young Welshman, who had been dismissed from leadership after leadership +of bands in the East till at last he had drifted into Lebanon. Here, +strange to say, he had never been drunk but once; and that was the night +before he married the widow of a local publican, who had a nice little +block of stock in one of Ingolby’s railways, which yielded her seven +per cent., and who knew how to handle the citizens of the City of Booze. +When she married Tom Straker, her first husband, he drank on an average +twenty whiskies a day. She got him down to one; and then he died and had +as fine a funeral as a judge. There were those who said that if Tom’s +whiskies hadn’t been cut down so--but there it was: Tom was in the bosom +of Abraham, and William Jones, who was never called anything else than +Willy Welsh, had been cut down from his unrecorded bibulations to none +at all; but he smoked twenty-cent cigars at the ex-widow’s expense. + +To-day Willy Welsh played with heart and courage, “I’m Going Home to +Glory,” at the head of the Orange procession; for who that has faced +such a widow as was his for one whole year could fear the onset of +faction fighters! Besides, as the natives of the South Seas will never +eat a Chinaman, so a Western man will never kill a musician. Senators, +magistrates, sheriffs, police, gamblers, horse-stealers, bankers, and +broncho-riders all die unnatural deaths at times, but a musician in the +West is immune from all except the hand of Fate. Not one can be spared. +Even a tough convicted of cheating at cards, or breaking a boom on a +river, has escaped punishment because he played the concertina. + +The discord and jangle between the two bands was the first collision +of this fateful day. While yet there was a space between the two +processions, the bands broke into furious contest. It was then that, +through the long funeral line, men with hard-set faces came closer up +together, and forty, detaching themselves from the well-kept run of +marching lodgemen, closed up around the horses and the hearse, making a +solid flanking force. At stated intervals also, outside the lodgemen +in the lines, were special constables, many of whom had been the +stage-drivers, hunters, cattlemen, prospectors, and pioneers of the +early days. Most of them had come of good religious stock-Presbyterians, +Baptists, Methodists, Unitarians; and though they had little piety, and +had never been able to regain the religious customs and habits of their +childhood, they “Stood for the Thing the Old Folks stand for.” They were +in a mood which would tear cotton, as the saying was. There was not one +of them but expected that broken heads and bloodshed would be the order +of the day, and they were stonily, fearlessly prepared for the worst. + +Since the appearance of Gabriel Druse on the scene, the feeling had +grown that the luck would be with them. When he started at the head +of the cortege, they could scarce forbear to cheer. Such a champion in +appearance had never been seen in the West, and, the night before, he +had proved his right to the title by shaking a knot of toughs into spots +of disconcerted humanity. + +As they approached the crossroads of the bridge, his voice, clear and +sonorous, could be heard commanding the Orange band to cease playing. + +When the head of the funeral procession was opposite the bridge--the +band, the hearse, the bodyguard of the hearse--Gabriel Druse stood +aside, and took his place at the point where the lines of the two +processions would intersect. + +It was at this moment that the collision came. There were only about +sixty feet of space between the two processions, when a voice rang out +in a challenge so offensive, that the men of Manitou got their cue for +attack without creating it themselves. Every Orangeman of the Lodge of +Lebanon afterwards denied that he had raised the cry; and the chances +are that every one spoke the truth. It was like Felix Marchand +to arrange for just such an episode, and so throw the burden of +responsibility on the Orangemen. + +“To hell with the Pope! To hell with the Pope!” the voice rang out, and +it had hardly ceased before the Manitou procession made a rush forward. +The apparent leader of the Manitou roughs was a blackbearded man of +middle height, who spoke raucously to the crowd behind him. + +Suddenly a powerful voice rang out. + +“Halt, in the name of the Queen!” it called. Surprise is the very +essence of successful war. The roughs of Manitou had not looked for +this. They had foreseen the appearance of the official Chief Constable +of Lebanon; they had expected his challenge and warning in +the vernacular; but here was something which struck them with +consternation--first, the giant of Manitou in the post of command, +looking like some berserker; and then the formal reading of that stately +document in the name of the Queen. + +Far back in the minds of every French habitant present was the old +monarchical sense. He makes, at worst, a poor anarchist, though he is +a good revolutionist; and the French colonials had never been divorced +from monarchical France. + +In the eyes of the most forward of those on the Sagalac bridge, there +was a sudden wonderment and confusion. To the dramatic French mind, +ceremonial is ever welcome; and for a moment it had them in its grip, +as old Gabriel Druse read out in his ringing voice, the trenchant royal +summons. + +It was a strange and dramatic scene--the Orange funeral standing still, +garish yet solemn, with hundreds of men, rough and coarse, quiet +and refined, dissolute and careless, sober and puritanic, broad and +tolerant, sharp and fanatical; the labour procession, polyglot +in appearance, but with Gallic features and looseness of dress +predominating; excitable, brutish, generous, cruel; without intellect, +but with an intelligence which in the lowest was acute, and with +temperaments responsive to drama. + +As Druse read, his eyes now and then flashed, at first he knew not why, +to the slim, bearded figure of the apparent leader. At length he caught +the feverish eye of the man, and held it for a moment. It was familiar, +but it eluded him; he could not place it. + +He heard, however, Jowett’s voice say to him, scarce above a whisper: + +“It’s Felix Marchand, boss!” + +Jowett also had been puzzled at first by the bearded figure, but it +suddenly flashed upon him that the beard and wig were a disguise, that +Marchand had resorted to Ingolby’s device. It might prove as dangerous a +stratagem with him as it had to Ingolby. + +There was a moment’s hesitation after Druse had finished reading--as +though the men of Manitou had not quite recovered from their +surprise--then the man with the black beard said something to those +nearest him. There was a start forward, and someone cried, “Down with +the Orangemen--et bas l’Orange!” + +Like a well-disciplined battalion the Orangemen rolled up quickly into a +compact mass, showing that they had planned their defence well, and +the moment was black with danger, when, suddenly, Druse strode forward. +Flinging right and left two or three river-drivers, he caught the man +with the black beard, snatched him out from among the oncoming crowd, +and tore off the black beard and wig. Felix Marchand stood exposed. + +A cry of fury rang out from the Orangemen behind, and a dozen men rushed +forward, but Gabriel Druse acted with the instant decision of a real +commander. Seeing that it would be a mistake to arrest Marchand at that +moment, he raised the struggling figure of the wrecker above his head +and, with Herculean effort, threw him up over the heads of the Frenchmen +in front of him. + +So extraordinary was the sight that, as if fascinated, the crowd before +and behind followed the action with staring eyes and tense bodies. The +faces of all the contending forces were as concentrated for the instant, +as though the sun were falling out of the sky. It was so great a feat, +one so much in consonance with the spirit of the frontier world, that +gasps of praise broke from both crowds. As though it were a thunderbolt, +the Manitou roughs standing where Marchand was like to fall, instead +of trying to catch him, broke away from beneath the bundle of falling +humanity, and Marchand fell on the dusty cement of the bridge with a +dull thud, like a bag of bones. + +For a moment there was no motion on the part of either procession. +Banners drooped and swayed as the men holding them were lost in the +excitement. + +Time had only been gained, however. There was no reason to think that +the trouble was over, or that the special constables who had gathered +close behind Gabriel Druse would not have to strike heavy blows for the +cause of peace. + +The sudden appearance of a new figure in the narrow, open space between +the factions in that momentary paralysis was not a coincidence. It +was what Jowett had planned for, the factor for peace in which he most +believed. + +A small, spare man in a scarlet cassock, white chasuble, and black +biretta, suddenly stole out from the crowd on the Lebanon side of the +bridge, carrying the elements of the Mass. His face was shining white, +and in the eyes was an almost unearthly fire. It was the beloved +Monseigneur Lourde. + +Raising the elements before him toward his own people on the bridge, he +cried in a high, searching voice: + +“I prayed with you, I begged you to preserve the peace. Last night I +asked you in God’s name to give up your disorderly purposes. I thought +then I had done my whole duty; but the voice of God has spoken to me. +An hour ago I carried the elements to a dying woman here in Lebanon, and +gave her peace. As I did so the funeral bell rang out, and it came to +me, as though the One above had spoken, that peace would be slain and +His name insulted by all of you--by all of you, Catholic and Protestant. +God’s voice bade me come to you from the bed of one who has gone hence +from peace to Peace. In the name of Christ, peace, I say! Peace, in the +name of Christ!” + +He raised the sacred vessel high above his head, so that his eyes looked +through the walls of his uplifted arms. “Kneel!” he called in a clear, +ringing voice which yet quavered with age. + +There was an instant’s hush, and then great numbers of the crowd in +front of him, toughs and wreckers, blasphemers, turbulent ones and +evil-livers, yet Catholics all, with the ancient root of the Great Thing +in them, sank down; and the banners of the labour societies drooped +before the symbol of peace won by sacrifice. + +Even the Orangemen bared their heads in the presence of that Popery +which was anathema to them, which they existed to combat, and had been +taught to hate. Some, no doubt, would rather have fought than have had +peace at the price; but they could not free their minds from the sacred +force which had brought most of the crowd of faction-fighters to their +knees. + +With a wave of the hand, Gabriel Druse ordered the cortege forward, and +silently the procession with its yellow banners and its sable, drooping +plumes moved on. + +Once on its way again, Willy Welsh and his silver-cornet band struck up +the hymn, “Lead, Kindly Light.” It was the one real coincidence of the +day that this moving hymn was written by a cardinal of the Catholic +Church. It was also an irony that, as the crowd of sullen Frenchmen +turned back to Manitou, the train bearing the Mounted Police, for whom +the Mayor had sent to the capital, steamed noisily in, and redcoats +showed at its windows and on the steps of the cars. + +The only casualty that the day saw was the broken arm and badly bruised +body of Felix Marchand, who was gloomily helped back to his home across +the Sagalac. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. THE BEACONS + +There were few lights showing in Lebanon or Manitou; but here and +there along the Sagalac was the fading glimmer of a camp-fire, and in +Tekewani’s reservation one light glowed softly like a star. It came +from a finely-made and chased safety-lantern given to Tekewani by the +Government, as a symbol of honour for having kept the braves quiet when +an Indian and half-breed rising was threatened; and to the powerless +chief it had become a token of his authority, the sign of the Great +White Mother’s approval. By day a spray of eagle’s feathers waved over +his tepee, but the gleam of the brass lantern every night was like a +sentry at the doorway of a monarch. + +It was a solace to his wounded spirit; it allayed the smart of +subjection; made him feel himself a ruler in retirement, even as Gabriel +Druse was a self-ordained exile. + +These two men, representing the primitive nomad life, had been drawn +together in friendship. So much so, that to Tekewani alone of all the +West, Druse gave his confidence and told his story. It came in the +springtime, when the blood of the young bucks was simmering and, the +ancient spell was working. There had preceded them generations of +hunters who had slain their thousands and their tens of thousands of +wild animals and the fowls of the air; had killed their enemies in +battle; had seized the comely women of their foes and made them their +own. No thrill of the hunter’s trail now drew off the overflow of +desire. In the days of rising sap, there were only the young maidens or +wives of their own tribe to pursue, and it lacked in glory. Also in the +springtime, Tekewani himself had his own trials, for in his blood the +old medicine stirred. His face turned towards the prairie North and the +mountain West where yet remained the hunter’s quarry; and he longed to +be away with rifle and gun, with his squaw and the papooses trailing +after like camp-followers, to eat the fruits of victory. But that could +not be; he must remain in the place the Great White Mother had reserved +for him; he and his braves must assemble, and draw their rations at the +appointed times and seasons, and grunt thanks to those who ruled over +them. + +It was on one of these virginal days, when there was a restless stirring +among the young bucks, who smelled the wide waters, the pines and the +wild shrubs; who heard the cry of the loon on the lonely lake and +the whir of the wild duck’s wings, who answered to the phantom cry +of ancient war; it was on such a day that the two chiefs opened their +hearts to each other. + +Near to the boscage on a little hill overlooking the great river, +Gabriel Druse had come upon Tekewani seated in the pine-dust, rocking to +and fro, and chanting a low, sorrowful refrain, with eyes fixed on the +setting sun. And the Ry of Rys understood, with the understanding +which only those have who live close to the earth, and also near to the +heavens of their own gods. He sat down beside the forlorn chief, and in +the silence their souls spoke to each other. There swept into the veins +of the Romany ruler something of the immitigable sadness of the Indian +chief; and, with a sudden premonition that he also was come to the +sunset of his life, his big nomad eyes sought the westering rim of the +heavens, and his breast heaved. + +In that hour the two men declared themselves to each other, and Gabriel +Druse told Tekewani all that he had hidden from the people of the +Sagalac, and was answered in kind. It seemed to them that they were as +brothers who were one and who had parted in ages long gone; and having +met were to part and disappear once more, beginning still another trail +in an endless reincarnation. + +“Brother,” said Tekewani, “it was while there was a bridge of land +between the continents at the North that we met. Again I see it. I +forgot it, but again I see. There was war, and you went upon one path +and I upon another, and we met no more under all the moons till now.” + +“‘Dordi’, so it was and at such a time,” answered the Ry of Rys. “And +once more we will follow after the fire-flies which give no light to the +safe places but only lead farther into the night.” + +Tekewani rocked to and fro again, muttering to himself, but presently he +said: + +“We eat from the hands of those who have driven away the buffalo, the +deer, and the beaver; and the young bucks do naught to earn the joy of +women. They are but as lusting sheep, not as the wild-goat that chases +its mate over the places of death, till it comes upon her at last, and +calls in triumph over her as she kneels at his feet. So it is. Like tame +beasts we eat from the hand of the white man, and the white man leaves +his own camp where his own women are, and prowls in our camps, so that +not even our own women are left to us.” + +It was then that Gabriel Druse learned of the hatred of Tekewani for +Felix Marchand, because of what he had done in the reservation, prowling +at night like a fox or a coyote in the folds. + +They parted that hour, believing that the epoch of life in which they +were and the fortunes of time which had been or were to come, were but +turns of a wheel that still went on turning; and that whatever chanced +of good or bad fortune in the one span of being, might be repaired in +the next span, or the next, or the next; so, through their creed of +reincarnation, taking courage to face the failure of the life they now +lived. Not by logic or the teaching of any school had they reached +this revelation, but through an inner sense. They were not hopeful +and wondering and timid; they were only sure. Their philosophy, their +religion, whether heathen or human, was inborn. They had comfort in it +and in each other. + +After that day Gabriel Druse always set a light in his window which +burned all night, answering to the lantern-light at the door of +Tekewani’s home--the lights of exile and of an alliance which had behind +it the secret influences of past ages and vanished peoples. + +There came a night, however, when the light at the door of Tekewani’s +tepee did not burn. At sunset it was lighted, but long before midnight +it was extinguished. Looking out from the doorway of his home (it was +the night after the Orange funeral), Gabriel Druse, returned from his +new duties at Lebanon, saw no light in the Indian reservation. With +anxiety, he set forth in the shine of the moon to visit it. + +Arrived at the chief’s tepee, he saw that the lantern of honour was +gone, and waking Tekewani, he brought him out to see. When the old +Indian knew his loss, he gave a harsh cry and stooped, and, gathering +a handful of dust from the ground, sprinkled it on his head. Then with +arms outstretched he cursed the thief who had robbed him of what had +been to him like a never-fading mirage, an illusion blinding his eyes to +the bitter facts of his condition. + +To his mind all the troubles come to Lebanon and Manitou had had one +source; and now the malign spirit had stretched its hand to spoil those +already dispossessed of all but the right to live. One name was upon the +lips of both men, as they stood in the moonlight by Tekewani’s tepee. + +“There shall be an end of this,” growled the Romany. + +“I will have my own,” said Tekewani, with malediction on the thief who +had so shamed him. + +Black anger was in the heart of Gabriel Druse as he turned again towards +his own home, and he was glad of what he had done to Felix Marchand at +the Orange funeral. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. THE KEEPER OF THE BRIDGE + + “Like the darkness of the grave, which is darkness itself--” + +Most of those who break out of the zareba of life, who lay violent hands +upon themselves, do so with a complete reasoning, which in itself is +proof of their insanity. It may be domestic tragedy, or ill-health, +or crime, or broken faith, or shame, or insomnia, or betrayed +trust--whatever it is, many a one who suffers from such things, tries to +end it all with that deliberation, that strategy, and that cunning which +belong only to the abnormal. + +A mind which has known a score or more of sleepless nights acquires +an invincible clearness of its own, seeing an end which is without +peradventure. It finds a hundred perfect reasons for not going on, every +one of which is in itself sufficient; every one of which knits into the +other ninety and nine with inevitable affinity. + +To the mind of Ingolby came a hundred such reasons for breaking out of +life’s enclosure, as the effect of the opiate Rockwell had given him +wore off, and he regained consciousness. As he did so, someone in +the room was telling of that intervention of Gabriel Druse and the +Monseigneur at the Orange funeral, which had saved the situation. At +first he listened to what was said--it was the nurse talking to Jim +Beadle with no sharp perception of the significance of the story; though +it slowly pierced the lethargy of his senses, and he turned over in the +bed to face the watchers. + +“What time is it, Jim?” he asked heavily. They told him it was sunset. + +“Is it quiet in both towns?” he asked after a pause. They told him that +it was. + +“Any telegrams for me?” he asked. + +There was an instant’s hesitation. They had had no instructions on this +point, and they hardly knew what to say; but Jim’s mind had its own +logic, and the truth seemed best to him now. He answered that there were +several wires, but that they “didn’t amount to nothin’.” + +“Have they been opened?” Ingolby asked with a frown, half-raising +himself. It was hard to resign the old masterfulness and self-will. + +“I’d like to see anybody open ‘em ‘thout my pe’mision,” answered Jim +imperiously. “When you’s asleep, Chief, I’m awake; and I take care of +you’ things, same as ever I done. There ain’t no wires been opened, and +there ain’t goin’ to be whiles I’m runnin’ the show for you.” + +“Open and read them to me,” commanded Ingolby. Again Ingolby was +conscious of hesitation on Jim’s part. Already the acuteness of the +blind was possessing him, sharpening the senses left unimpaired. +Although Jim moved, presumably, towards the place where the telegrams +lay, Ingolby realized that his own authority was being crossed by that +of the doctor and the nurse. + +“You will leave the room for a moment, nurse,” he said with a brassy +vibration in the voice--a sign of nervous strain. With a smothered +protest the nurse left, and Jim stood beside the bed with the telegrams. + +“Read them to me, Jim,” Ingolby repeated irritably. “Be quick.” + +They were not wires which Ingolby should have heard at the time, when +his wound was still inflamed, when he was still on the outer circle +of that artificial sleep which the opiates had secured. They were from +Montreal and New York, and, resolved from their half-hidden suggestion +into bare elements, they meant that henceforth others would do the work +he had done. They meant, in effect, that save for the few scores of +thousand dollars he had made, he was now where he was when he came West. + +When Jim had finished reading them, Ingolby sank back on the pillows and +said quietly: + +“All right, Jim. Put them in the drawer of the table and I’ll answer +them to-morrow. I want to get a little more sleep, so give me a drink, +and then leave me alone--both nurse and you--till I ring the bell. +There’s a bell on the table, isn’t there?” + +He stretched out a hand towards the table beside the bed, and Jim softly +pushed the bell under his fingers. + +“That’s right,” he added. “Now, I’m not to be disturbed unless the +doctor comes. I’m all right, and I want to be alone and quiet. No one at +all in the room is what I want. You understand, Jim?” + +“My head’s just as good to get at what you want as ever it was, and you +goin’ have what you want, I guess, while I’m on deck,” was Jim’s reply. + +Jim put a glass of water into his hand. He drank very slowly, was indeed +only mechanically conscious that he was drinking, for his mind was far +away. + +After he had put the glass down, Jim still stood beside the bed, looking +at him. + +“Why don’t you go, as I tell you, Jim?” Ingolby asked wearily. + +“I’m goin’”--Jim tucked the bedclothes in carefully--“I’m goin’, but, +boss, I jes’ want to say dat dis thing goin’ to come out all right +bime-by. There ain’t no doubt ‘bout dat. You goin’ see everything, come +jes’ like what you want--suh!” + +Ingolby did not reply. He held out his hand, and black fingers shot over +and took it. A moment later the blind man was alone in the room. + +The light of day vanished, and the stars came out. There was no moon, +but it was one of those nights of the West when millions of stars +glimmer in the blue vault above, and every planet and every star and +cluster of stars are so near that it might almost seem they could be +caught by an expert human hand. The air was very still, and a mantle of +peace was spread over the tender scene. The window and the glass doors +that gave from Ingolby’s room upon the veranda on the south side of the +house, were open, and the air was warm as in Midsummer. Now and then the +note of a night-bird broke the stillness, but nothing more. + +It was such a night as Ingolby loved; it was such a night as often +found him out in the restful gloom of the trees, thinking and brooding, +planning, revelling in memories of books he had read, and in dreaming of +books he might write-if there were time. Such a night insulated the dark +moods which possessed him occasionally almost as effectively as fishing +did; and that was saying much. + +But the darkest mood of all his days was upon him now. When Rockwell +came, soon after Jim and the nurse left him, he simulated sleep, for he +had no mind to talk; and the doctor, deceived by his even breathing, had +left, contented. At last he was wholly alone with his own thoughts, as +he desired. From the moment Jim had read him the wires, which were +the real revelation of the situation to which he had come, he had been +travelling hard on the road leading to a cul-de-sac, from which there +was no egress save by breaking through the wall. Never, it might have +seemed, had his mind been clearer, but it was a clearness belonging to +the abnormal. It was a straight line of thought which, in its intensity, +gathered all other thoughts into its wake, reduced them to the control +of an obsession. It was borne in on his mind that his day was done, that +nothing could right the disorder which had strewn his path with +broken hopes and shattered ambitions. No life-work left, no schemes to +accomplish, no construction to achieve, no wealth to gain, no public +good to be won, no home to be his, no woman, his very own, to be his +counsellor and guide in the natural way! + +As myriad thoughts drove through his brain on this Indian-summer night, +they all merged into the one obsession that he could no longer stay. The +irresistible logic of the brain stretched to an abnormal tenuity, and +an intolerable brightness was with him. He was in the throes of that +intense visualization which comes with insomnia, when one is awake yet +apart from the waking world, where nothing is really real and nothing +normal. He had a call to go hence, and he must go. Minute after minute +passed, hours passed, and the fight of the soul to maintain itself +against the disordered mind went on. All his past seemed but part of a +desert, lonely and barren and strange. + +In the previous year he had made a journey to Arizona with Jowett, to +see some railway construction there, and at a ranch he had visited +he came upon some verses which had haunted his mind ever since. They +fastened upon his senses now. They were like a lonesome monotone which +at length gave calm to his torturing reflections. In his darkness the +verses kept repeating themselves: + + “I heard the desert calling, and my heart stood still + There was Winter in my world and in my heart: + A breath came from the mesa and a message stirred my will, + And my soul and I arose up to depart. + + I heard the desert calling; and I knew that over there, + In an olive-sheltered garden where the mesquite grows, + Was a woman of the sunrise, with the starshine in her hair, + And a beauty that the almond-blossom blows. + + In the night-time when the ghost-trees glimmered in the moon, + Where the mesa by the watercourse was spanned, + Her loveliness enwrapped me like the blessedness of June, + And all my life was thrilling in her hand. + + I hear the desert calling, and my heart stands still; + There is Summer in my world and in my heart; + A breath comes from the mesa, and a will beyond my will + Binds my footsteps as I rise up to depart.” + +This strange, half-mystic song of the mesa and the olive-groves, of the +ghost-trees and the moon, kept playing upon his own heated senses like +the spray from a cooling stream, and at last it quieted him. The dark +spirit of self-destruction loosened its hold. + +His brain had been strained beyond the normal, almost unconsciously his +fingers had fastened on the pistol in the drawer of the table by his +bed. It had been there since the day when he had travelled down from +Alaska--loaded as it had been when he had carried it down the southern +trail. But as his fingers tightened on the little engine of death, +from the words which had been ringing in his brain came the flash of a +revelation: + + “... And a will beyond my will + Binds my footsteps as I rise up to depart.” + +A will beyond his will! It was as though Fleda’s fingers were laid upon +his own; as though she whispered in his ear and her breath swept his +cheek; as though she was there in the room beside him, making the +darkness light, tempering the wind of chastisement to his naked soul. +In the overstrain of his nervous system the illusion was powerful. He +thought he heard her voice. The pistol slipped from his fingers, and he +fell back on the pillow with a sigh. The will beyond his will bound his +footsteps. + +Who can tell? The grim, malign experience of Fleda in her bedroom with +the Thing she thought was from beyond the bounds of her own life; the +voice that spoke to Ingolby, and the breath that swept over his cheek +were, perhaps, as real in a sense as would have been the corporeal +presence of Jethro Fawe in one case and of Fleda Druse in the other. +It may be that in very truth Fleda Druse’s spirit with its poignant +solicitude controlled his will as he “rose up to depart.” But if it was +only an illusion, it was not less a miracle. Some power of suggestion +bound his fleeing footsteps, drew him back from the Brink. + +He slept. Once the nurse came and looked at him and returned to the +other room; and twice Jim stole in silently for a moment and retired +again to his own chamber. The stars shone in at the doors that opened +out from the quiet room into the night, the watch beside the bed ticked +on, the fox-terrier which always slept on a mat at the foot of the bed +sighed in content, while his master breathed heavily in a sleep full of +dreams that hurried past like phantasmagoria--of a hundred things that +had been in his life, and that had never been; of people he had known, +distorted, ridiculous and tremendous. There were dreams of fiddlers +and barbers, of crowds writhing in passion in a room where there was a +billiard-table and a lucky horseshoe on the wall. There were dreams +that tossed and mingled in one whirlpool vision; and then at last came a +dream which was so cruel and clear that it froze his senses. + +It was the dream of a great bridge over a swiftflowing river; of his own +bridge over the Sagalacof that bridge being destroyed by men who crept +through the night with dynamite in their hands. + +With a hoarse, smothered cry he awoke. His eyes opened wide. His heart +was beating like a hammer against his side. Only the terrier at his feet +heard the muttered agony. With an instinct all its own, it slipped to +the floor. + +It watched its master get out of bed, cross the room and feel for a coat +along the wall--an overcoat which he used as a dressing-gown at times. +Putting it on hastily, with outstretched hands Ingolby felt his way to +the glass doors opening on the veranda. The dog, as though to let him +know he was there, rubbed against his legs. Ingolby murmured a soft, +unintelligible word, and, in his bare feet, passed out on to the +veranda, and from there to the garden and towards the gate at the front +of the house. + +The nurse heard the gate click lightly, but she was only half-awake, +and as all was quiet in the next room, she composed herself in her chair +again with the vain idea that she was not sleeping. And Jim the faithful +one, as though under a narcotic of fate, was snoring softly beside the +vacant room. The streets were still. No lights burned anywhere so far +as eye could see. But now and then, in the stillness through which the +river flowed on, murmuring and rhythmic, there rose the distant sounds +of disorderly voices. Ingolby was in a state which was neither sleep nor +waking, which was in part delirium, in part oblivion to all things +in the world save one--an obsession so complete, that he moved +automatically through the street in which he lived towards that which +led to the bridge. + +His terrier, as though realizing exactly what he wished, seemed to guide +him by rubbing against his legs, and even pressing hard against them +when he was in any danger of losing the middle of the road, or swerving +towards a ditch or some obstruction. Only once did they pass any human +being, and that was when they came upon a camp of road-builders, where a +red light burned, and two men slept in the open by a dying fire. One +of them raised his head when Ingolby passed, but being more than +half-asleep, and seeing only a man and a dog, thought nothing of it, and +dropped back again upon his rough pillow. He was a stranger to +Lebanon, and there was little chance of his recognizing Ingolby in the +semi-darkness. + +As they neared the river, Ingolby became deeply agitated. He moved with +his hands outstretched. Had it not been for his dog he would probably +have walked into the Sagalac; for though he seemed to have an instinct +that was extra-natural, he swayed and staggered in the delirium driving +him on. There was one dreadful moment when, having swerved from the road +leading on to the bridge, he was within a foot of the river-bank. +One step farther, and he would have plunged down thirty feet into the +stream, to be swept to the Rapids below. + +But for the first time the terrier made a sound. He gave a whining +bark almost human in its meaning, and threw himself at the legs of his +master, pushing him backwards and over towards the road leading upon the +bridge, as a collie guides sheep. Presently Ingolby felt the floor of +the bridge under his feet; and now he hastened on, with outstretched +arms and head bent forward, listening intently, the dog trotting beside, +with what knowledge working in him Heaven alone knew. + +The roar of the Rapids below was a sonorous accompaniment to Ingolby’s +wild thoughts. One thing only he felt, one thing only heard--the men +in Barbazon’s Tavern saying that the bridge should be blown up on +the Saturday night; and this was Saturday night--the night of the day +following that of the Orange funeral. He had heard the criminal hireling +of Felix Marchand say that it should be done at midnight, and that the +explosive should be laid under that part of the bridge which joined the +Manitou bank of the Sagalac. As though in very truth he saw with his +eyes, he stopped short not far from the point where the bridge joined +the land, and stood still, listening. + +For several minutes he was motionless, intent, as an animal waiting for +its foe. At last his newly-sensitive ears heard footsteps approaching +and low voices. The footsteps came nearer, the voices, though so low, +became more distinct. They were now not fifty feet away, but to the +delirious Ingolby they were as near as death had been when his fingers +closed on the pistol in his room. + +He took a step forward, and with passionate voice and arms outstretched, +he cried: + + “You shall not do it-by God, you shall not touch my bridge! + I built it. You shall not touch it. Back, you devils-back!” + +The terrier barked loudly. + +The two men in the semi-darkness in front of him cowered at the sight +of this weird figure holding the bridge they had come to destroy. His +words, uttered in so strange and unnatural a voice, shook their nerves. +They shrank away from the ghostly form with the outstretched arms. + +In the minute’s pause following on his words, a giant figure suddenly +appeared behind the dynamiters. It was the temporary Chief Constable of +Lebanon, returning from his visit to Tekewani. He had heard Ingolby’s +wild words, and he realized the situation. + +“Ingolby--steady there, Ingolby!” he called. “Steady! Steady! Gabriel +Druse is here. It’s all right.” + +At the first sound of Druse’s voice the two wreckers turned and ran. + +As they did so, Ingolby’s hands fell to his side, and he staggered +forward. + +“Druse--Fleda,” he murmured, then swayed, trembled and fell. + +With words that stuck in his throat Gabriel Druse stooped and lifted +him up in his arms. At first he turned towards the bridge, as though to +cross over to Lebanon, but the last word Ingolby had uttered rang in his +ears, and he carried him away into the trees towards his own house, the +faithful terrier following. “Druse--Fleda!” They were the words of one +who had suddenly emerged from the obsession of delirium into sanity, and +then had fallen into as sudden unconsciousness. + +“Fleda! Fleda!” called Gabriel Druse outside the door of his house a +quarter of an hour later, and her voice in reply was that of one who +knew that the feet of Fate were at her threshold. + + + + +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. + + + + ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE “WORLD FOR SALE”: + + Agony in thinking about the things we’re never going to do + I don’t believe in walking just for the sake of walking + It’s no good simply going--you’ve got to go somewhere + Most honest thing I ever heard, but it’s not the most truthful + Saw how futile was much competition + They think that if a vote’s worth having it’s worth paying for + When you strike your camp, put out the fires + Women may leave you in the bright days + You never can really overtake a newspaper lie + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg’s The World For Sale, Complete, by Gilbert Parker + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD FOR SALE, COMPLETE *** + +***** This file should be named 6284-0.txt or 6284-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/6/2/8/6284/ + +Produced by David Widger + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The World For Sale, Complete + +Author: Gilbert Parker + +Release Date: October 18, 2006 [EBook #6284] +Last Updated: August 27, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD FOR SALE, COMPLETE *** + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +</pre> + + <h1> + THE WORLD FOR SALE + </h1> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <h2> + By Gilbert Parker + </h2> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <blockquote> + <p class="toc"> + <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big> + </p> + <p> + <br /> <a href="#link2H_INTR"> INTRODUCTION </a><br /><br /> <a + href="#link2H_4_0002"> NOTE </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> + PRELUDE </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. </a> "THE + DRUSES ARE UP!” <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. </a> THE + WHISPER FROM BEYOND <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. + </a> CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNS <br /><br /> <a + href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. </a> THE COMING OF JETHRO + FAWE <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. </a> "BY + THE RIVER STARZKE... IT WAS SO DONE” <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0006"> + CHAPTER VI. </a> THE UNGUARDED FIRES <br /><br /> <a + href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. </a> IN WHICH THE PRISONER + GOES FREE <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. </a> THE + SULTAN <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. </a> MATTER + AND MIND AND TWO MEN <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. </a> FOR + LUCK <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. </a> THE + SENTENCE OF THE PATRIN <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. + </a> "LET THERE BE LIGHT” <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0013"> + CHAPTER XIII. </a> THE CHAIN OF THE PAST <br /><br /> <a + href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV. </a> SUCH THINGS MAY NOT + BE <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV. </a> THE + WOMAN FROM WIND RIVER <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI. + </a> THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE <br /><br /> <a + href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII. </a> THE MONSEIGNEUR AND + THE NOMAD <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII. </a> THE + BEACONS <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX. </a> THE + KEEPER OF THE BRIDGE <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX. + </a> TWO LIFE PIECES <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0021"> + CHAPTER XXI. </a> THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER <br /><br /> <a + href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII. </a> THE SECRET MAN <br /><br /> + <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII. </a> THE + RETURN OF BELISARIUS <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV. + </a> AT LONG LAST <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER + XXV. </a> MAN PROPOSES <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0026"> + CHAPTER XXVI. </a> THE SLEEPER <br /><br /> <a + href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER XXVII. </a> THE WORLD FOR SALE + <br /><br /> + </p> + </blockquote> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_INTR" id="link2H_INTR"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <h2> + INTRODUCTION + </h2> + <p> + ‘The World for Sale’ is a tale of the primitive and lonely West and North, + but the primitiveness and loneliness is not like that to be found in + ‘Pierre and His People’. Pierre’s wanderings took place in a period when + civilization had made but scant marks upon the broad bosom of the prairie + land, and towns and villages were few and far scattered. The Lebanon and + Manitou of this story had no existence in the time of Pierre, except that + where Manitou stands there was a Hudson’s Bay Company’s post at which + Indians, half-breeds, and chance settlers occasionally gathered for trade + and exchange-furs, groceries, clothing, blankets, tobacco, and other + things; and in the long winters the post was as isolated as an oasis in + the Sahara. + </p> + <p> + That old life was lonely and primitive, but it had its compensating + balance of bright sun, wild animal life, and an air as vivid and virile as + ever stirred the veins of man. Sometimes the still, bright cold was broken + by a terrific storm, which ravaged, smothered, and entombed the stray + traveller in ravines of death. That was in winter; but in summer, what had + been called, fifty years ago, an alkali desert was an everlasting stretch + of untilled soil, with unsown crops, and here and there herds of buffalo, + which were stalked by alert Red Indians, half-breeds, and white pioneer + hunters. + </p> + <p> + The stories in ‘Pierre and His People’ were true to the life of that time; + the incidents in ‘The World for Sale’, and the whole narrative, are true + to the life of a very few years ago. Railways have pierced and opened up + lonely regions of the Sagalae, and there are two thriving towns where, in + the days of Pierre, only stood a Hudson’s Bay Company’s post with its + store. Now, as far as eye can see, vast fields of grain greet the eye, and + houses and barns speckle the greenish brown or Tuscan yellow of the + crop-covered lands, while towns like Lebanon and Manitou provide for the + modern settler all the modern conveniences which science has given to + civilized municipalities. Today the motor-car and the telephone are as + common in such places as they are in a thriving town of the United + Kingdom. After the first few days of settlement two things always appear—a + school-house and a church. Probably there is no country in the world where + elementary education commands the devotion and the cash of the people as + in English Canada; that is why the towns of Lebanon and Manitou had from + the first divergent views. Lebanon was English, progressive, and brazenly + modern; Manitou was slow, reactionary, more or less indifferent to + education, and strenuously Catholic, and was thus opposed to the militant + Protestantism of Lebanon. + </p> + <p> + It was my idea to picture a situation in the big new West where destiny is + being worked out in the making of a nation and the peopling of the wastes. + I selected a very modern and unusual type of man as the central figure of + my story. He was highly educated, well born, and carefully brought up. He + possessed all the best elements of a young man in a new country—intelligent + self-dependence, skill, daring, vision. He had an original turn of mind, + and, as men are obliged to do in new countries, he looked far ahead. Yet + he had to face what pioneers and reformers in old countries have to face, + namely the disturbance of rooted interests. Certainly rooted interests in + towns but a generation old cannot be extensive or remarkable, but if they + are associated with habits and principles, they may be as deadly as those + which test the qualities and wreck the careers of men in towns as old as + London. The difference, however, between the old European town and the new + Western town is that differences in the Western town are more likely to + take physical form, as was the case in the life of Ingolby. In order to + accentuate the primitive and yet highly civilized nature of the life I + chose my heroine from a race and condition more unsettled and more + primitive than that of Lebanon or Manitou at any time. I chose a heroine + from the gipsy race, and to heighten the picture of the primitive life + from which she had come I made her a convert to the settled life of + civilization. I had known such a woman, older, but with the same + characteristics, the same struggles, temptations, and suffering the same + restriction of her life and movements by the prejudice in her veins—the + prejudice of racial predilection. + </p> + <p> + Looking at the story now after its publication, I am inclined to think + that the introduction of the gipsy element was too bold, yet I believe it + was carefully worked out in construction, and was a legitimate, + intellectual enterprise. The danger of it was that it might detract from + the reality and vividness of the narrative as a picture of Western life. + Most American critics of the book seem not to have been struck by this + doubt which has occurred to me. They realize perhaps more faithfully than + some of the English critics have done that these mad contrasts are by no + means uncommon in the primitive and virile life of the West and North. + Just as California in the old days, just as Ballaret in Australia drew the + oddest people from every corner of the world, so Western towns, with new + railways, brought strange conglomerations into the life. For instance, a + town like Winnipeg has sections which represent the life of nearly every + race of Europe, and towns like Lebanon and Manitou, with English and + French characteristics controlling them mainly, are still as subject to + outside racial influences as to inside racial antagonisms. + </p> + <p> + I believe The World for Sale shows as plainly as anything can show the + vexed and conglomerate life of a Western town. It shows how racial + characteristics may clash, disturb, and destroy, and yet how wisdom, tact, + and lucky incident may overcome almost impossible situations. The + antagonisms between Lebanon and Manitou were unwillingly and unjustly + deepened by the very man who had set out to bring them together, as one of + the ideals of his life, and as one of the factors of his success. Ingolby, + who had everything to gain by careful going, almost wrecked his own life, + and he injured the life of the two towns by impulsive acts. + </p> + <p> + The descriptions of life in the two towns are true, and the chief + characters in the book are lifted out of the life as one has seen it. Men + like Osterhaut and Jowett, Indians like Tekewani, doctors like Rockwell, + priests like Monseigneur Fabre, ministers like Mr. Tripple, and + ne’er-do-weels like Marchand may be found in many a town of the West and + North. Naturally the book must lack in something of that magnetic + picturesqueness and atmosphere which belongs to the people in the Province + of Quebec. Western and Northern life has little of the settled charm which + belongs to the old civilization of the French province. The only way to + recapture that charm is to place Frenchmen in the West, and have them act + and live—or try to act and live—as they do in old Quebec. + </p> + <p> + That is what I did with Pierre in my first book of fiction, Pierre and His + People, but with the exception of Monseigneur Fabre there is no Frenchman + in this book who fulfils, or could fulfil, the temperamental place which I + have indicated. Men like Monseigneur Fabre have lived in the West, and + worked and slaved like him, blest and beloved by all classes, creeds, and + races. Father Lacombe was one of them. The part he played in the life of + Western Canada will be written some day by one who understands how such + men, celibate, and dedicated to religious life, may play a stupendous part + in the development of civilization. Something of him is to be found in my + description of Monseigneur Fabre. + </p> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <h2> + NOTE + </h2> + <p> + This book was begun in 1911 and finished in 1913, a year before war broke + out. It was published serially in the year 1915 and the beginning of 1916. + It must, therefore, go to the public on the basis of its merits alone, and + as a picture of the peace-life of the great North West. + </p> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <h2> + PRELUDE + </h2> + <p> + Harvest-time was almost come, and the great new land was resting under + coverlets of gold. From the rise above the town of Lebanon, there + stretched out ungarnered wheat in the ear as far as sight could reach, and + the place itself and the neighbouring town of Manitou on the other side of + the Sagalac River were like islands washed by a topaz sea. + </p> + <p> + Standing upon the Rise, lost in the prospect, was an old, white-haired man + in the cassock of a priest, with grey beard reaching nearly to the waist. + </p> + <p> + For long he surveyed the scene, and his eyes had a rapt look. + </p> + <p> + At last he spoke aloud: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “There shall be an heap of corn in the earth, high upon the hills; + his fruit shall shake like Libanus, and shall be green in the city + like grass upon the earth.” + </pre> + <p> + A smile came to his lips—a rare, benevolent smile. He had seen this + expanse of teeming life when it was thought to be an alkali desert, fit + only to be invaded by the Blackfeet and the Cree and the Blood Indians on + a foray for food and furs. Here he had come fifty years before, and had + gone West and North into the mountains in the Summer season, when the land + was tremulous with light and vibrating to the hoofs of herds of buffalo as + they stampeded from the hunters; and also in the Winter time, when frost + was master and blizzard and drift its malignant servants. + </p> + <p> + Even yet his work was not done. In the town of Manitou he still said mass + now and then, and heard the sorrows and sins of men and women, and gave + them “ghostly comfort,” while priests younger than himself took the burden + of parish-work from his shoulders. + </p> + <p> + For a lifetime he had laboured among the Indians and the few whites and + squaw-men and half-breeds, with neither settlement nor progress. Then, all + at once, the railway; and people coming from all the world, and cities + springing up! Now once more he was living the life of civilization, + exchanging raw flesh of fish and animals and a meal of tallow or pemmican + for the wheaten loaf; the Indian tepee for the warm house with the mansard + roof; the crude mass beneath the trees for the refinements of a chancel + and an altar covered with lace and white linen. + </p> + <p> + A flock of geese went honking over his head. His eyes smiled in memory of + the countless times he had watched such flights, had seen thousands of + wild ducks hurrying down a valley, had watched a family of herons + stretching away to some lonely water-home. And then another sound greeted + his ear. It was shrill, sharp and insistent. A great serpent was stealing + out of the East and moving down upon Lebanon. It gave out puffs of smoke + from its ungainly head. It shrieked in triumph as it came. It was the + daily train from the East, arriving at the Sagalac River. + </p> + <p> + “These things must be,” he said aloud as he looked. While he lost himself + again in reminiscence, a young man came driving across the plains, passing + beneath where he stood. The young man’s face and figure suggested power. + In his buggy was a fishing-rod. + </p> + <p> + His hat was pulled down over his eyes, but he was humming cheerfully to + himself. When he saw the priest, he raised his hat respectfully, yet with + an air of equality. + </p> + <p> + “Good day, Monseigneur” (this honour of the Church had come at last to the + aged missionary), he said warmly. “Good day—good day!” + </p> + <p> + The priest raised his hat and murmured the name, “Ingolby.” As the + distance grew between them, he said sadly: “These are the men who change + the West, who seize it, and divide it, and make it their own— + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “‘I will rejoice, and divide Sichem: and mete out the valley of + Succoth.’ +</pre> + <p> + “Hush! Hush!” he said to himself in reproach. “These things must be. The + country must be opened up. That is why I came—to bring the Truth + before the trader.” + </p> + <p> + Now another traveller came riding out of Lebanon towards him, galloping + his horse up-hill and down. He also was young, but nothing about him + suggested power, only self-indulgence. He, too, raised his hat, or rather + swung it from his head in a devil-may-care way, and overdid his + salutation. He did not speak. The priest’s face was very grave, if not a + little resentful. His salutation was reserved. + </p> + <p> + “The tyranny of gold,” he murmured, “and without the mind or energy that + created it. Felix was no name for him. Ingolby is a builder, perhaps a + jerry-builder; but he builds.” + </p> + <p> + He looked across the prairie towards the young man in the buggy. + </p> + <p> + “Sure, he is a builder. He has the Cortez eye. He sees far off, and plans + big things. But Felix Marchand there—” + </p> + <p> + He stopped short. + </p> + <p> + “Such men must be, perhaps,” he added. Then, after a moment, as he gazed + round again upon the land of promise which he had loved so long, he + murmured as one murmurs a prayer: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Thou suferedst men to ride over our heads: we went through fire and + water, and Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place.” + </pre> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <h2> + CHAPTER I. “THE DRUSES ARE UP!” + </h2> + <p> + “Great Scott, look at her! She’s goin’ to try and take ‘em!” exclaimed + Osterhaut, the Jack-of-all-trades at Lebanon. + </p> + <p> + “She ain’t such a fool as all that. Why, no one ever done it alone. Low + water, too, when every rock’s got its chance at the canoe. But, my + gracious, she is goin’ to ride ‘em!” + </p> + <p> + Jowett, the horse-dealer, had a sportsman’s joy in a daring thing. + </p> + <p> + “See, old Injun Tekewani’s after her! He’s calling at her from the bank. + He knows. He done it himself years ago when there was rips in the tribe + an’ he had to sew up the tears. He run them Rapids in his canoe—” + </p> + <p> + “Just as the Druse girl there is doin’—” + </p> + <p> + “An’ he’s done what he liked with the Blackfeet ever since.” + </p> + <p> + “But she ain’t a chief—what’s the use of her doin’ it? She’s goin’ + straight for them. She can’t turn back now. She couldn’t make the bank if + she wanted to. She’s got to run ‘em. Holy smoke, see her wavin’ the paddle + at Tekewani! Osterhaut, she’s the limit, that petticoat—so quiet and + shy and don’t-look-at-me, too, with eyes like brown diamonds.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, get out, Jowett; she’s all right! She’ll make this country sit up + some day-by gorry, she’ll make Manitou and Lebanon sit up to-day if she + runs the Carillon Rapids safe!” + </p> + <p> + “She’s runnin’ ‘em all right, son. She’s—by jee, well done, Miss + Druse! Well done, I say—well done!” exclaimed Jowett, dancing about + and waving his arms towards the adventurous girl. + </p> + <p> + The girl had reached the angry, thrashing waters where the rocks rent and + tore into white ribbons the onrushing current, and her first trial had + come on the instant the spitting, raging panthers of foam struck the bow + of her canoe. The waters were so low that this course, which she had made + once before with her friend Tekewani the Blackfeet chief, had perils not + met on that desperate journey. Her canoe struck a rock slantwise, + shuddered and swung round, but by a dexterous stroke she freed the frail + craft. It righted and plunged forward again into fresh death-traps. + </p> + <p> + It was these new dangers which had made Tekewani try to warn her from the + shore—he and the dozen braves with him: but it was characteristic of + his race that, after the first warning, when she must play out the game to + the bitter end, he made no further attempt to stop her. The Indians ran + down the river-bank, however, with eyes intent on her headlong progress, + grunting approval as she plunged safely from danger to danger. + </p> + <p> + Osterhaut and Jowett became silent, too, and, like the Indians, ran as + fast as they could, over fences, through the trees, stumbling and + occasionally cursing, but watching with fascinated eyes this adventuress + of the North, taking chances which not one coureur-de-bois or river-driver + in a thousand would take, with a five thousand-dollar prize as the lure. + Why should she do it? + </p> + <p> + “Women folks are sick darn fools when they git goin’,” gasped Osterhaut as + he ran. “They don’t care a split pea what happens when they’ve got the + pip. Look at her—my hair’s bleachin’.” + </p> + <p> + “She’s got the pip all right,” stuttered Jowett as he plunged along; “but + she’s foreign, and they’ve all got the pip, foreign men and women both—but + the women go crazy.” + </p> + <p> + “She keeps pretty cool for a crazy loon, that girl. If I owned her, I’d—” + </p> + <p> + Jowett interrupted impatiently. “You’d do what old man Druse does—you’d + let her be, Osterhaut. What’s the good of havin’ your own way with one + that’s the apple of your eye, if it turns her agin you? You want her to + kiss you on the high cheek-bone, but if you go to play the + cat-o’-nine-tails round her, the high cheek-bone gets froze. Gol blast it, + look at her, son! What are the wild waves saying? They’re sayin’, ‘This is + a surprise, Miss Druse. Not quite ready for ye, Miss Druse.’ My, ain’t she + got the luck of the old devil!” + </p> + <p> + It seemed so. More than once the canoe half jammed between the rocks, and + the stern lifted up by the force of the wild current, but again the paddle + made swift play, and again the cockle-shell swung clear. But now Fleda + Druse was no longer on her feet. She knelt, her strong, slim brown arms + bared to the shoulder, her hair blown about her forehead, her daring eyes + flashing to left and right, memory of her course at work under such a + strain as few can endure without chaos of mind in the end. A hundred times + since the day she had run these Rapids with Tekewani, she had gone over + the course in her mind, asleep and awake, forcing her brain to see again + every yard of that watery way; because she knew that the day must come + when she would make the journey alone. Why she would make it she did not + know; she only knew that she would do it some day; and the day had come. + For long it had been an obsession with her—as though some spirit + whispered in her ear—“Do you hear the bells ringing at Carillon? Do + you hear the river singing towards Carillon? Do you see the wild birds + flying towards Carillon? Do you hear the Rapids calling—the Rapids + of Carillon?” + </p> + <p> + Night and day since she had braved death with Tekewani, giving him a gun, + a meerschaum pipe, and ten pounds of beautiful brown “plug” tobacco as a + token of her gratitude—night and day she had heard this spirit + murmuring in her ear, and always the refrain was, “Down the stream to + Carillon! Shoot the Rapids of Carillon!” + </p> + <p> + Why? How should she know? Wherefore should she know? This was of the + things beyond the why of the human mind. Sometimes all our lives, if we + keep our souls young, and see the world as we first saw it with eyes and + heart unsoiled, we hear the murmuring of the Other Self, that Self from + which we separated when we entered this mortal sphere, but which followed + us, invisible yet whispering inspiration to us. But sometimes we only hear + It, our own soul’s oracle, while yet our years are few, and we have not + passed that frontier between innocence and experience, reality and + pretence. Pretence it is which drives the Other Self away with wailing on + its lips. Then we hear It cry in the night when, because of the trouble of + life, we cannot sleep; or at the play when we are caught away from + ourselves into another air than ours; when music pours around us like a + soft wind from a garden of pomegranates; or when a child asks a question + which brings us back to the land where everything is so true that it can + be shouted from the tree-tops. + </p> + <p> + Why was Fleda Druse tempting death in the Carillon Rapids? + </p> + <p> + She had heard a whisper as she wandered among the pine-trees there at + Manitou, and it said simply the one word, “Now!” She knew that she must do + it; she had driven her canoe out into the resistless current to ride the + Rapids of Carillon. Her Other Self had whispered to her. + </p> + <p> + Yonder, thousands of miles away in Syria, there were the Hills of Lebanon; + and there was one phrase which made every Syrian heart beat faster, if he + were on the march. It was, “The Druses are up!” When that wild tribe took + to the saddle to war upon the Caravans and against authority, from Lebanon + to Palmyra, from Jerusalem to Damascus men looked anxiously about them and + rode hard to refuge. + </p> + <p> + And here also in the Far North where the River Sagalac ran a wild race to + Carillon, leaving behind the new towns of Lebanon and Manitou, “the Druses + were up.” + </p> + <p> + The daughter of Gabriel Druse, the giant, was riding the Rapids of the + Sagalac. The suspense to her and to those who watched her course—to + Tekewani and his braves, to Osterhaut and Jowett—could not be long. + It was a matter of minutes only, in which every second was a miracle and + might be a catastrophe. + </p> + <p> + From rock to rock, from wild white water to wild white water she sped, now + tossing to death as it seemed, now shooting on safely to the next test of + skill and courage—on, on, till at last there was only one passage to + make before the canoe would plunge into the smooth water running with + great swiftness till it almost reached Carillon. + </p> + <p> + Suddenly, as she neared the last dangerous point, round which she must + swing between jagged and unseen barriers of rock, her sight became for an + instant dimmed, as though a cloud passed over her eyes. She had never + fainted in her life, but it seemed to her now that she was hovering on + unconsciousness. Commending the will and energy left, she fought the + weakness down. It was as though she forced a way through tossing, + buffeting shadows; as though she was shaking off from her shoulders + shadowy hands which sought to detain her; as though smothering things kept + choking back her breath, and darkness like clouds of wool gathered about + her face. She was fighting for her life, and for years it seemed to be; + though indeed it was only seconds before her will reasserted itself, and + light broke again upon her way. Even on the verge of the last ambushed + passage her senses came back; but they came with a stark realization of + the peril ahead: it looked out of her eyes as a face shows itself at the + window of a burning building. + </p> + <p> + Memory shook itself free. It pierced the tumult of waters, found the + ambushed rocks, and guided the lithe brown arms and hands, so that the + swift paddle drove the canoe straight onward, as a fish drives itself + through a flume of dragon’s teeth beneath the flood. The canoe quivered + for an instant at the last cataract, then responding to Memory and Will, + sped through the hidden chasm, tossed by spray and water, and swept into + the swift current of smooth water below. + </p> + <p> + Fleda Druse had run the Rapids of Carillon. She could hear the bells + ringing for evening service in the Catholic Church of Carillon, and + bells-soft, booming bells-were ringing in her own brain. Like muffled + silver these brain-bells were, and she was as one who enters into a deep + forest, and hears far away in the boscage the mystic summons of forest + deities. Voices from the banks of the river behind called to her—hilarious, + approving, agitated voices of her Indian friends, and of Osterhaut and + Jowett, those wild spectators of her adventure: but they were not wholly + real. Only those soft, booming bells in her brain were real. + </p> + <p> + Shooting the Rapids of Carillon was the bridge by which she passed from + the world she had left to this other. Her girlhood was ended—wondering, + hovering, unrealizing girlhood. This adventure was the outward sign, the + rite in the Lodge of Life which passed her from one degree of being to + another. + </p> + <p> + She was safe; but now as her canoe shot onward to the town of Carillon, + her senses again grew faint. Again she felt the buffeting mist, again her + face was muffled in smothering folds; again great hands reached out + towards her; again her eyes were drawn into a stupefying darkness; but now + there was no will to fight, no energy to resist. The paddle lay inert in + her fingers, her head drooped. She slowly raised her head once, twice, as + though the call of the exhausted will was heard, but suddenly it fell + heavily upon her breast. For a moment so, and then as the canoe shot + forward on a fresh current, the lithe body sank backwards in the canoe, + and lay face upward to the evening sky. + </p> + <p> + The canoe sped on, but presently it swung round and lay athwart the + current, dipping and rolling. + </p> + <p> + From the banks on either side, the Indians of the Manitou Reservation and + the two men from Lebanon called out and hastened on, for they saw that the + girl had collapsed, and they knew only too well that her danger was not + yet past. The canoe might strike against the piers of the bridge at + Carillon and overturn, or it might be carried to the second cataract below + the town. They were too far away to save her, but they kept shouting as + they ran. + </p> + <p> + None responded to their call, but that defiance of the last cataract of + the Rapids of Carillon had been seen by one who, below an eddy on the + Lebanon side of the river, was steadily stringing upon maple-twigs black + bass and long-nosed pike. As he sat in the shade of the trees, he had seen + the plunge of the canoe into the chasm, and had held his breath in wonder + and admiration. Even at that distance he knew who it was. He had seen + Fleda only a few times before, for she was little abroad; but when he had + seen her he had asked himself what such a face and form were doing in the + Far North. It belonged to Andalusia, to the Carpathians, to Syrian + villages. + </p> + <p> + “The pluck of the very devil!” he had exclaimed, as Fleda’s canoe swept + into the smooth current, free of the dragon’s teeth; and as he had + something of the devil in himself, she seemed much nearer to him than the + hundreds of yards of water intervening. Presently, however, he saw her + droop and sink away out of sight. + </p> + <p> + For an instant he did not realize what had happened, and then, with angry + self-reproach, he flung the oars into the rowlocks of his skiff and drove + down and athwart the stream with long, powerful strokes. + </p> + <p> + “That’s like a woman!” he said to himself as he bent to the oars, and now + and then turned his head to make sure that the canoe was still safe. “Do + the trick better than a man, and then collapse like a rabbit.” + </p> + <p> + He was Max Ingolby, the financier, contractor, manager of great interests, + disturber of the peace of slow minds, who had come to Lebanon with the + avowed object of amalgamating three railways, of making the place the + swivel of all the trade and interests of the Western North; but also with + the declared intention of uniting Lebanon and Manitou in one municipality, + one centre of commercial and industrial power. + </p> + <p> + Men said he had bitten off more than he could chew, but he had replied + that his teeth were good, and he would masticate the meal or know the + reason why. He was only thirty-three, but his will was like nothing the + West had seen as yet. It was sublime in its confidence, it was free from + conceit, and it knew not the word despair, though once or twice it had + known defeat. + </p> + <p> + Men cheered him from the shore as his skiff leaped through the water. + “It’s that blessed Ingolby,” said Jowett, who had tried to “do” the + financier in a horsedeal, and had been done instead, and was now a devout + admirer and adherent of the Master Man. “I saw him driving down there this + morning from Lebanon. He’s been fishing at Seely’s Eddy.” + </p> + <p> + “When Ingolby goes fishing, there’s trouble goin’ on somewhere and he’s + stalkin’ it,” rejoined Osterhaut. “But, by gol, he’s goin’ to do this + trump trick first; he’s goin’ to overhaul her before she gits to the + bridge. Look at him swing! Hell, ain’t it pretty! There you go, old + Ingolby. You’re right on it, even when you’re fishing.” + </p> + <p> + On the other-the Manitou-shore Tekewani and his braves were less + talkative, but they were more concerned in the incident than Osterhaut and + Jowett. They knew little or nothing of Ingolby the hustler, but they knew + more of Fleda Druse and her father than all the people of Lebanon and + Manitou put together. Fleda had won old Tekewani’s heart when she had + asked him to take her down the Rapids, for the days of adventure for him + and his tribe were over. The adventure shared with this girl had brought + back to the chief the old days when Indian women tanned bearskins and + deerskins day in, day out, and made pemmican of the buffalo-meat; when the + years were filled with hunting and war and migrant journeyings to fresh + game-grounds and pastures new. + </p> + <p> + Danger faced was the one thing which could restore Tekewani’s + self-respect, after he had been checked and rebuked before his tribe by + the Indian Commissioner for being drunk. Danger faced had restored it, and + Fleda Druse had brought the danger to him as a gift. + </p> + <p> + If the canoe should crash against the piers of the bridge, if it should + drift to the cataract below, if anything should happen to this white girl + whom he worshipped in his heathen way, nothing could preserve his + self-respect; he would pour ashes on his head and firewater down his + throat. + </p> + <p> + Suddenly he and his braves stood still. They watched as one would watch an + enemy a hundred times stronger than one’s self. The white man’s skiff was + near the derelict canoe; the bridge was near also. Carillon now lined the + bank of the river with its people. They ran upon the bridge, but not so + fast as to reach the place where, in the nick of time, Ingolby got + possession of the rolling canoe; where Fleda Druse lay waiting like a + princess to be waked by the kiss of destiny. + </p> + <p> + Only five hundred yards below the bridge was the second cataract, and she + would never have waked if she had been carried into it. + </p> + <p> + To Ingolby she was as beautiful as a human being could be as she lay with + white face upturned, the paddle still in her hand. + </p> + <p> + “Drowning isn’t good enough for her,” he said, as he fastened her canoe to + his skiff. + </p> + <p> + “It’s been a full day’s work,” he added; and even in this human crisis he + thought of the fish he had caught, of “the big trouble,” he had been + thinking out as Osterhaut had said, as well as of the girl that he was + saving. + </p> + <p> + “I always have luck when I go fishing,” he added presently. “I can take + her back to Lebanon,” he continued with a quickening look. “She’ll be all + right in a jiffy. I’ve got room for her in my buggy—and room for her + in any place that belongs to me,” he hastened to reflect with a curious, + bashful smile. + </p> + <p> + “It’s like a thing in a book,” he murmured, as he neared the waiting + people on the banks of Carillon, and the ringing of the vesper bells came + out to him on the evening air. + </p> + <p> + “Is she dead?” some one whispered, as eager hands reached out to secure + his skiff to the bank. + </p> + <p> + “As dead as I am,” he answered with a laugh, and drew Fleda’s canoe up + alongside his skiff. + </p> + <p> + He had a strange sensation of new life, as, with delicacy and gentleness, + he lifted her up in his strong arms and stepped ashore. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER II. THE WHISPER FROM BEYOND + </h2> + <p> + Ingolby had a will of his own, but it had never been really tried against + a woman’s will. It was, however, tried sorely when Fleda came to + consciousness again in his arms and realized that a man’s face was nearer + to hers than any man’s had ever been except that of her own father. Her + eyes opened slowly, and for the instant she did not understand, but when + she did, the blood stole swiftly back to her neck and face and forehead, + and she started in dismay. + </p> + <p> + “Put me down,” she whispered faintly. + </p> + <p> + “I’m taking you to my buggy,” he replied. “I’ll drive you back to + Lebanon.” He spoke as calmly as he could, for there was a strange + fluttering of his nerves, and the crowd was pressing him. + </p> + <p> + “Put me down at once,” she said peremptorily. She trembled on her feet, + and swayed, and would have fallen but that Ingolby and a woman in black, + who had pushed her way through the crowd with white, anxious face, caught + her. + </p> + <p> + “Give her air, and stand back!” called the sharp voice of the constable of + Carillon, and he heaved the people back with his powerful shoulders. + </p> + <p> + A space was cleared round the place where Fleda sat with her head against + the shoulder of the stately woman in black who had come to her assistance. + A dipper of water was brought, and when she had drunk it she raised her + head slowly and her eyes sought those of Ingolby. + </p> + <p> + “One cannot pay for such things,” she said to him, meeting his look firmly + and steeling herself to thank him. Though deeply grateful, it was a trial + beyond telling to be obliged to owe the debt of a life to any one, and in + particular to a man of the sort to whom material gifts could not be given. + </p> + <p> + “Such things are paid for just by accepting them,” he answered quickly, + trying to feel that he had never held her in his arms, as she evidently + desired him to feel. He had intuition, if not enough of it, for the + regions where the mind of Fleda Druse dwelt. + </p> + <p> + “I couldn’t very well decline, could I?” she rejoined, quick humour + shooting into her eyes. “I was helpless. I never fainted before in my + life.” + </p> + <p> + “I am sure you will never faint again,” he remarked. “We only do such + things when we are very young.” + </p> + <p> + She was about to reply, but paused reflectively. Her half-opened lips did + not frame the words she had been impelled to speak. + </p> + <p> + Admiration was alive in his eyes. He had never seen this type of womanhood + before—such energy and grace, so amply yet so lithely framed; such + darkness and fairness in one living composition; such individuality, yet + such intimate simplicity. Her hair was a very light brown, sweeping over a + broad, low forehead, and lying, as though with a sense of modesty, on the + tips of the ears, veiling them slightly. The forehead was classic in its + intellectual fulness; but the skin was so fresh, even when pale as now, + and with such an underglow of vitality, that the woman in her, sex and the + possibilities of sex, cast a glamour over the intellect and temperament + showing in every line of her contour. In contrast to the light brown of + the hair was the very dark brown of the eyes and the still darker brown of + the eyelashes. The face shone, the eyes burned, and the piquancy of the + contrast between the soft illuminating whiteness of the skin and the flame + in the eyes had fascinated many more than Ingolby. + </p> + <p> + Her figure was straight yet supple, somewhat fuller than is modern beauty, + with hints of Juno-like stateliness to come; and the curves of her bust, + the long lines of her limbs, were not obscured by her absolutely plain + gown of soft, light-brown linen. She was tall, but not too commanding, + and, as her hand was raised to fasten back a wisp of hair, there was the + motion of as small a wrist and as tapering a bare arm as ever made + prisoner of a man’s neck. + </p> + <p> + Impulse was written in every feature, in the passionate eagerness of her + body; yet the line from the forehead to the chin, and the firm shapeliness + of the chin itself, gave promise of great strength of will. From the glory + of the crown of hair to the curve of the high instep of a slim foot it was + altogether a personality which hinted at history—at tragedy, maybe. + </p> + <p> + “She’ll have a history,” Madame Bulteel, who now stood beside the girl, + herself a figure out of a picture by Velasquez, had said of her sadly; for + she saw in Fleda’s rare qualities, in her strange beauty, happenings which + had nothing to do with the life she was living. So this duenna of Gabriel + Druse’s household, this aristocratic, silent woman was ever on the watch + for some sudden revelation of a being which had not found itself, and + which must find itself through perils and convulsions. + </p> + <p> + That was why, to-day, she had hesitated to leave Fleda alone and come to + Carillon, to be at the bedside of a dying, friendless woman whom by chance + she had come to know. In the street she had heard of what was happening on + the river, and had come in time to receive Fleda from the arms of her + rescuer. + </p> + <p> + “How did you get here?” Fleda asked her. + </p> + <p> + “How am I always with you when I am needed, truant?” said the other with a + reproachful look. “Did you fly? You are so light, so thin, you could + breathe yourself here,” rejoined the girl, with a gentle, quizzical smile. + “But, no,” she added, “I remember, you were to be here at Carillon.” + </p> + <p> + “Are you able to walk now?” asked Madame Bulteel. + </p> + <p> + “To Manitou—but of course,” Fleda answered almost sharply. + </p> + <p> + After the first few minutes the crowd had fallen back. They watched her + with respectful admiration from a decent distance. They had the chivalry + towards woman so characteristic of the West. There was no vulgarity in + their curiosity, though most of them had never seen her before. All, + however, had heard of her and her father, the giant greybeard who moved + and lived in an air of mystery, and apparently secret wealth, for more + than once he had given large sums—large in the eyes of folks of + moderate means, when charity was needed; as in the case of the floods the + year before, and in the prairie-fire the year before that, when so many + people were made homeless, and also when fifty men had been injured in one + railway accident. On these occasions he gave disproportionately to his + mode of life. + </p> + <p> + Now, when they saw that Fleda was about to move away, they drew just a + little nearer, and presently one of the crowd could contain his admiration + no longer. He raised a cheer. + </p> + <p> + “Three cheers for Her,” he shouted, and loud hurrahs followed. + </p> + <p> + “Three cheers for Ingolby,” another cried, and the noise was boisterous + but not so general. + </p> + <p> + “Who shot Carillon Rapids?” another called in the formula of the West. + </p> + <p> + “She shot the Rapids,” was the choral reply. “Who is she?” came the + antiphon. + </p> + <p> + “Druse is her name,” was the gay response. “What did she do?” + </p> + <p> + “She shot Carillon Rapids—shot ‘em dead. Hooray!” + </p> + <p> + In the middle of the cheering, Osterhaut and Jowett arrived in a wagon + which they had commandeered, and, about the same time, from across the + bridge, came running Tekewani and his braves. + </p> + <p> + “She done it like a kingfisher,” cried Osterhaut. “Manitou’s got the + belt.” + </p> + <p> + Fleda Druse’s friendly eyes were given only for one instant to Osterhaut + and his friend. Her gaze became fixed on Tekewani who, silent, and with + immobile face, stole towards her. In spite of the civilization which + controlled him, he wore Indian moccasins and deerskin breeches, though his + coat was rather like a shortened workman’s blouse. He did not belong to + the life about him; he was a being apart, the spirit of vanished and + vanishing days. + </p> + <p> + “Tekewani—ah, Tekewani, you have come,” the girl said, and her eyes + smiled at him as they had not smiled at Ingolby or even at the woman in + black beside her. + </p> + <p> + “How!” the chief replied, and looked at her with searching, worshipping + eyes. + </p> + <p> + “Don’t look at me that way, Tekewani,” she said, coming close to him. “I + had to do it, and I did it.” + </p> + <p> + “The teeth of rock everywhere!” he rejoined reproachfully, with a gesture + of awe. + </p> + <p> + “I remembered all—all. You were my master, Tekewani.” + </p> + <p> + “But only once with me it was, Summer Song,” he persisted. Summer Song was + his name for her. + </p> + <p> + “I saw it—saw it, every foot of the way,” she insisted. “I thought + hard, oh, hard as the soul thinks. And I saw it all.” There was something + singularly akin in the nature of the girl and the Indian. She spoke to him + as she never spoke to any other. + </p> + <p> + “Too much seeing, it is death,” he answered. “Men die with too much + seeing. I have seen them die. To look hard through deerskin curtains, to + see through the rock, to behold the water beneath the earth, and the rocks + beneath the black waters, it is for man to see if he has a soul, but the + seeing—behold, so those die who should live!” + </p> + <p> + “I live, Tekewani, though I saw the teeth of rocks beneath the black + water,” she urged gently. + </p> + <p> + “Yet the half-death came—” + </p> + <p> + “I fainted, but I was not to die—it was not my time.” + </p> + <p> + He shook his head gloomily. “Once it may be, but the evil spirits tempt us + to death. It matters not what comes to Tekewani; he is as the leaf that + falls from the stem; but for Summer Song that has far to go, it is the + madness from beyond the Hills of Life.” + </p> + <p> + She took his hand. “I will not do it again, Tekewani.” + </p> + <p> + “How!” he said, with hand upraised, as one who greets the great in this + world. + </p> + <p> + “I don’t know why I did it,” she added meaningly. “It was selfish. I feel + that now.” + </p> + <p> + The woman in black pressed her hand timidly. + </p> + <p> + “It is so for ever with the great,” Tekewani answered. “It comes, also, + from beyond the Hills—the will to do it. It is the spirit that + whispers over the earth out of the Other Earth. No one hears it but the + great. The whisper only is for this one here and that one there who is of + the Few. It whispers, and the whisper must be obeyed. So it was from the + beginning.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, you understand, Tekewani,” she answered softly. “I did it because + something whispered from the Other Earth to me.” + </p> + <p> + Her head drooped a little, her eyes had a sudden shadow. + </p> + <p> + “He will understand,” answered the Indian; “your father will understand,” + as though reading her thoughts. He had clearly read her thought, this + dispossessed, illiterate Indian chieftain. Yet, was he so illiterate? Had + he not read in books which so few have learned to read? His life had been + broken on the rock of civilization, but his simple soul had learned some + elemental truths—not many, but the essential ones, without which + there is no philosophy, no understanding. He knew Fleda Druse was thinking + of her father, wondering if he would understand, half-fearing, hardly + hoping, dreading the moment when she must meet him face to face. She knew + she had been selfish, but would Gabriel Druse understand? She raised her + eyes in gratitude to the Blackfeet chief. + </p> + <p> + “I must go home,” she said. + </p> + <p> + She turned to go, but as she did so, a man came swaggering down the + street, broke through the crowd, and made towards her with an arm raised, + a hand waving, and a leer on his face. He was a thin, rather handsome, + dissolute-looking fellow of middle height and about forty, in dandified + dress. His glossy black hair fell carelessly over his smooth forehead from + under a soft, wide-awake hat. + </p> + <p> + “Manitou for ever!” he cried, with a flourish of his hand. “I salute the + brave. I escort the brave to the gates of Manitou. I escort the brave. I + escort the brave. Salut! Salut! Salut! Well done, Beauty Beauty—Beauty—Beauty, + well done again!” + </p> + <p> + He held out his hand to Fleda, but she drew back with disgust. Felix + Marchand, the son of old Hector Marchand, money-lender and capitalist of + Manitou, had pressed his attentions upon her during the last year since he + had returned from the East, bringing dissoluteness and vulgar pride with + him. Women had spoiled him, money had corrupted and degraded him. + </p> + <p> + “Come, beautiful brave, it’s Salut! Salut! Salut!” he said, bending + towards her familiarly. + </p> + <p> + Her face flushed with anger. + </p> + <p> + “Let me pass, monsieur,” she said sharply. + </p> + <p> + “Pride of Manitou—” he apostrophized, but got no farther. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby caught him by the shoulders, wheeled him round, and then flung him + at the feet of Tekewani and his braves. + </p> + <p> + At this moment Tekewani’s eyes had such a fire as might burn in Wotan’s + smithy. He was ready enough to defy the penalty of the law for assaulting + a white man, but Felix Marchand was in the dust, and that would do for the + moment. + </p> + <p> + With grim face Ingolby stood over the begrimed figure. “There’s the river + if you want more,” he said. “Tekewani knows where the water’s deepest.” + Then he turned and followed Fleda and the woman in black. Felix Marchand’s + face was twisted with hate as he got slowly to his feet. + </p> + <p> + “You’ll eat dust before I’m done,” he called after Ingolby. Then, amid the + jeers of the crowd, he went back to the tavern where he had been + carousing. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER III. CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNS + </h2> + <h3> + A word about Max Ingolby. + </h3> + <p> + He was the second son of four sons, with a father who had been a failure; + but with a mother of imagination and great natural strength of brain, yet + whose life had been so harried in bringing up a family on nothing at all, + that there only emerged from her possibilities a great will to do the + impossible things. From her had come the spirit which would not be denied. + </p> + <p> + In his boyhood Max could not have those things which lads prize—fishing-rods, + cricket-bats and sleds, and all such things; but he could take most prizes + at school open to competition; he could win in the running-jump, the + high-jump, and the five hundred yards’ race; and he could organize a + picnic, or the sports of the school or town—at no cost to himself. + His finance in even this limited field had been brilliant. Other people + paid, and he did the work; and he did it with such ease that the others + intriguing to crowd him out, suffered failure and came to him in the end + to put things right. + </p> + <p> + He became the village doctor’s assistant and dispenser at seventeen and + induced his master to start a drug-store. He made the drug-store a success + within two years, and meanwhile he studied Latin and Greek and mathematics + in every spare hour he had—getting up at five in the morning, and + doing as much before breakfast as others did in a whole day. His doctor + loved him and helped him; a venerable Archdeacon, an Oxford graduate, gave + him many hours of coaching, and he went to the University with three + scholarships. These were sufficient to carry him through in three years, + and there was enough profit-sharing from the drug-business he had founded + on terms to shelter his mother and his younger brothers, while he took + honours at the University. + </p> + <p> + There he organized all that students organize, and was called in at last + by the Bursar of his college to reorganize the commissariat, which he did + with such success that the college saved five thousand dollars a year. He + had genius, the college people said, and after he had taken his degree + with honours in classics and mathematics they offered him a professorship + at two thousand dollars a year. + </p> + <p> + He laughed ironically, but yet with satisfaction, when the professorship + was offered. It was all so different from what was in his mind for the + future. As he looked out of the oriel window in the sweet gothic building, + to the green grass and the maples and elms which made the college grounds + like an old-world park, he had a vision of himself permanently in these + surroundings of refinement growing venerable with years, seeing pass under + his influence thousands of young men directed, developed and inspired by + him. + </p> + <p> + He had, however, shaken himself free of this modest vision. He knew that + such a life would act like a narcotic to his real individuality. He + thirsted for contest, for the control of brain and will; he wanted to + construct; he was filled with the idea of simplifying things, of + economizing strength; he saw how futile was much competition, and how the + big brain could command and control with ease, wasting no force, saving + labour, making the things controlled bigger and better. + </p> + <p> + So it came that his face was seen no more in the oriel window. With a mere + handful of dollars, and some debts, he left the world of scholarship and + superior pedagogy, and went where the head offices of railways were. + Railways were the symbol of progress in his mind. The railhead was the + advance post of civilization. It was like Cortez and his Conquistadores + overhauling and appropriating the treasures of long generations. So where + should he go if not to the Railway? + </p> + <p> + His first act, when he got to his feet inside the offices of the President + of a big railway, was to show the great man how two “outside” proposed + lines could be made one, and then further merged into the company + controlled by the millionaire in whose office he sat. He got his chance by + his very audacity—the President liked audacity. In attempting this + merger, however, he had his first failure, but he showed that he could + think for himself, and he was made increasingly responsible. After a few + years of notable service, he was offered the task of building a branch + line of railway from Lebanon and Manitou north, and northwest, and on to + the Coast; and he had accepted it, at the same time planning to merge + certain outside lines competing with that which he had in hand. For over + four years he worked night and day, steadily advancing towards his goal, + breaking down opposition, manoeuvring, conciliating, fighting. + </p> + <p> + Most men loved his whimsical turn of mind, even those who were the agents + of the financial clique which had fought him in their efforts to get + control of the commercial, industrial, transport and banking resources of + the junction city of Lebanon. In the days when vast markets would be + established for Canadian wheat in Shanghai and Tokio, then these two towns + of Manitou and Lebanon on the Sagalac would be like the swivel to the + organization of trade of a continent. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby had worked with this end in view. In doing so he had tried to get + what he wanted without trickery; to reach his goal by playing the game + according to the rules, and this policy nonplussed his rivals and + associates. They expected secret moves, and he laid his cards on the + table. Sharp, quick, resolute and ruthless he was, however, if he knew + that he was being tricked. Then he struck, and struck hard. The war of + business was war and not “gollyfoxing,” as he said. Selfish, stubborn and + self-centred he was in much, but he had great joy in the natural and + sincere, and he had a passionate love of Nature. To him the flat prairie + was never ugly. Its very monotony had its own individuality. The Sagalac, + even when muddy, had its own deep interest, and when it was full of logs + drifting down to the sawmills, for which he had found the money by + interesting capitalists in the East, he sniffed the stinging smell of the + pines with elation. As the great saws in the mills, for which he had + secured the capital, throwing off the spray of mangled wood, hummed and + buzzed and sang, his mouth twisted in the droll smile it always wore when + he talked with such as Jowett and Osterhaut, whose idiosyncrasies were + like a meal to him; as he described it once to some of the big men from + the East who had been behind his schemes, yet who cavilled at his ways. He + was never diverted from his course by such men, and while he was loyal to + those who had backed him, he vowed that he would be independent of these + wooden souls in the end. They and the great bankers behind them were for + monopoly; he was for organization and for economic prudence. So far they + were necessary to all he did; but it was his intention to shake himself + free of all monopoly in good time. One or two of his colleagues saw the + drift of his policy and would have thrown him over if they could have + replaced him by a man as capable, who would, at the time, consent to grow + rich on their terms. + </p> + <p> + They could not understand a man who would stand for a half-hour watching a + sunset, or a morning sky dappled with all the colours that shake from a + prism; they were suspicious of a business-mind which could gloat over the + light falling on snow-peaked mountains, while it planned a great bridge + across a gorge in the same hour; of a man who would quote a verse of + poetry while a flock of wild pigeons went whirring down a pine-girt valley + in the shimmer of the sun. + </p> + <p> + On the occasion when he had quoted a verse of poetry to them, one of them + said to him with a sidelong glance: “You seem to be dead-struck on Nature, + Ingolby.” + </p> + <p> + To that, with a sly quirk of the mouth, and meaning to mystify his + wooden-headed questioner still more, he answered: “Dead-struck? + Dead-drunk, you mean. I’m a Nature’s dipsomaniac—as you can see,” he + added with a sly note of irony. + </p> + <p> + Then instantly he had drawn the little circle of experts into a discussion + upon technical questions of railway-building and finance, which made + demands upon all their resources and knowledge. In that conference he gave + especial attention to the snub-souled financier who had sneered at his + love of Nature. He tied his critic up in knots of self-assertion and bad + logic which presently he deftly, deliberately and skilfully untied, to the + delight of all the group. + </p> + <p> + “He’s got as much in his ten years in the business as we’ve got out of + half a life-time,” said the chief of his admirers. This was the President + who had first welcomed him into business, and introduced him to his + colleagues in enterprise. + </p> + <p> + “I shouldn’t be surprised if the belt flew off the wheel some day,” + savagely said Ingolby’s snub-souled critic, whose enmity was held in check + by the fact that on Ingolby, for the moment, depended the safety of the + hard cash he had invested. + </p> + <p> + But the qualities which alienated an expert here and there caught the + imagination of the pioneer spirits of Lebanon. Except those who, for + financial reasons, were opposed to him, and must therefore pit themselves + against him, as the representatives of bigger forces behind them, he was a + leader of whom Lebanon was combatively proud. At last he came to the point + where his merger was practically accomplished, and a problem arising out + of it had to be solved. It was a problem which taxed every quality of an + able mind. The situation had at last become acute, and Time, the solvent + of most complications, had not quite eased the strain. Indeed, on the day + that Fleda Druse had made her journey down the Carillon Rapids, Time’s + influence had not availed. So he had gone fishing, with millions at stake—to + the despair of those who were risking all on his skill and judgment. + </p> + <p> + But that was Ingolby. Thinking was the essence of his business, not Time. + As fishing was the friend of thinking, therefore he fished in Seely’s + Eddy, saw Fleda Druse run the Carillon Rapids, saved her from drowning, + and would have brought her in pride and peace to her own home, but that + she decreed otherwise. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER IV. THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWE + </h2> + <p> + Gabriel Druse’s house stood on a little knoll on the outskirts of the town + of Manitou, backed by a grove of pines. Its front windows faced the + Sagalac, and the windows behind looked into cool coverts where in old days + many Indian tribes had camped; where Hudson’s Bay Company’s men had + pitched their tents to buy the red man’s furs. But the red man no longer + set up his tepee in these secluded groves; the wapiti and red deer had + fled to the north never to return, the snarling wolf had stolen into + regions more barren; the ceremonial of the ancient people no longer made + weird the lonely nights; the medicine-man’s incantations, the + harvest-dance, the green-corn-dance, the sun-dance had gone. The braves, + their women, and their tepees had been shifted to reservations where + Governments solemnly tried to teach them to till the field, and grow corn, + and drive the cart to market; while yet they remembered the herds of + buffalo which had pounded down the prairie like storm-clouds and given + their hides for the tepee; and the swift deer whose skins made the wigwam + luxurious. + </p> + <p> + Originally Manitou had been the home of Icelanders, Mennonites, and + Doukhobors; settlers from lands where the conditions of earlier centuries + prevailed, who, simple as they were in habits and in life, were ignorant, + primitive, coarse, and none too cleanly. + </p> + <p> + They had formed an unprogressive polyglot settlement, and the place + assumed a still more primeval character when the Indian Reservation was + formed near by. When French Canadian settlers arrived, however, the place + became less discordant to the life of a new democracy, though they did + little to make it modern in the sense that Lebanon, across the river, + where Ingolby lived, was modern from the day the first shack was thrown + up. + </p> + <p> + Manitou showed itself antagonistic to progress; it was old-fashioned, and + primitively agricultural. It looked with suspicion on the factories built + after Ingolby came and on the mining propositions, which circled the place + with speculation. Unlike other towns of the West, it was insanitary and + uneducated; it was also given to nepotism and a primitive kind of jobbery; + but, on the whole, it was honest. It was a settlement twenty years before + Lebanon had a house, though the latter exceeded the population of Manitou + in five years, and became the home of all adventuring spirits—land + agents, company promoters, mining prospectors, railway men, politicians, + saloon keepers, and up to-date dissenting preachers. Manitou was, however, + full of back-water people, religious fanatics, little farmers, guides, + trappers, old coureurs-de-bois, Hudson’s Bay Company factors and + ex-factors, half-breeds; and all the rest. + </p> + <p> + The real feud between the two towns began about the time of the arrival of + Gabriel Druse, his daughter, and Madame Bulteel, the woman in black, and + it had grown with great rapidity and increasing intensity. Manitou + condemned the sacrilegiousness of the Protestants, whose meeting-houses + were used for “socials,” “tea-meetings,” “strawberry festivals,” and + entertainments of many kinds; while comic songs were sung at the table + where the solemn Love Feast was held at the quarterly meetings. At last + when attempts were made to elect to Parliament an Irish lawyer who added + to his impecuniousness, eloquence, a half-finished University education, + and an Orangeman’s prejudices of the best brand of Belfast or Derry, + inter-civic strife took the form of physical violence. The great bridge + built by Ingolby between the two towns might have been ten thousand yards + long, so deep was the estrangement between the two places. They had only + one thing in common—a curious compromise—in the person of + Nathan Rockwell, an agnostic doctor, who had arrived in Lebanon with a + reputation for morality somewhat clouded; though, where his patients in + Manitou and Lebanon were concerned, he had been the “pink of propriety.” + </p> + <p> + Rockwell had arrived in Lebanon early in its career, and had remained + unimportant until a railway accident occurred at Manitou and the resident + doctors were driven from the field of battle, one by death, and one by + illness. Then it was that the silent, smiling, dark-skinned, cool-headed + and cool-handed Rockwell stepped in, and won for himself the gratitude of + all—from Monseigneur Lourde, the beloved Catholic priest, to + Tekewani, the chief. This accident was followed by an epidemic. + </p> + <p> + That was at the time, also, when Fleda Druse returned from Winnipeg where + she had been at school for one memorable and terrible six months, pining + for her father, defying rules, and crying the night through for “the open + world,” as she called it. So it was that, to her father’s dismay and joy + in one, she had fled from school, leaving all her things behind her; and + had reached home with only the clothes on her back and a few cents in her + pocket. + </p> + <p> + Instantly on her return she had gone among the stricken people as + fearlessly as Rockwell had done, but chiefly among the women and children; + and it was said that the herbal medicine she administered was marvellous + in its effect—so much so that Rockwell asked for the prescription, + which she declined to give. + </p> + <p> + Thus it was that the French Canadian mothers with daughters of their own, + bright-eyed brunettes, ready for the man-market, regarded with toleration + the girl who took their children away for picnics down the river or into + the woods, and brought them back safe and sound at the end of the day. Not + that they failed to be shocked sometimes, when, on her wild Indian pony, + Fleda swept through Manitou like a wind and out into the prairie, riding, + as it were, to the end of the world. Try as they would, these grateful + mothers of Manitou, they could not get as near to Fleda Druse as their + children did, and they were vast distances from her father. + </p> + <p> + “There, there, look at him,” said old Madame Thibadeau to her neighbour + Christine Brisson—“look at him with his great grey-beard, and his + eyes like black fires, and that head of hair like a bundle of burnt flax! + He comes from the place no man ever saw, that’s sure.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, surelee, men don’t grow so tall in any Christian country,” announced + Christine Brisson, her head nodding sagely. “I’ve seen the pictures in the + books, and there’s nobody so tall and that looks like him—not + anywhere since Adam.” + </p> + <p> + “Nom de pipe, sometimes-trulee, sometimes, I look up there at where he + lives, and I think I see a thousand men on horses ride out of the woods + behind his house and down here to gobble us all up. That’s the way I feel. + It’s fancy, but I can’t help that.” Dame Thibadeau rested her hands—on + her huge stomach as though the idea had its origin there. + </p> + <p> + “I’ve seen a lot of fancies come to pass,” gloomily returned her friend. + “It’s a funny world. I don’t know what to make of its sometimes.” + </p> + <p> + “And that girl of his, the strangest creature, as proud as a peacock, but + then as kind as kind to the children—of a good heart, surelee. They + say she has plenty of gold rings and pearls and bracelets, and all like + that. Babette Courton, she saw them when she went to sew. Why doesn’t + Ma’m’selle wear them?” + </p> + <p> + Christine looked wise and smoothed out her apron as though it was a + parchment. “With such queer ones, who knows? But, yes, as you say, she has + a kind heart. The children, well, they follow her everywhere.” + </p> + <p> + “Not the children only,” sagely added the other. “From Lebanon they come, + the men, and plenty here, too; and there’s that Felix Marchand, the worst + of all in Manitou or anywhere.” + </p> + <p> + “I’d look sharp if Felix Marchand followed me,” remarked Christine. “There + are more papooses at the Reservation since he come back, and over in + Lebanon—!” She whispered darkly to her friend, and they nodded + knowingly. + </p> + <p> + “If he plays pranks in Manitou he’ll get his throat cut, for sure. Even + with Protes’ants and Injuns it’s bad enough,” remarked Dame Thibadeau, + panting with the thought of it. + </p> + <p> + “He doesn’t even leave the Doukhobors alone. There’s—” Again + Christine whispered, and again that ugly look came to their faces which + belongs to the thought of forbidden things. + </p> + <p> + “Felix Marchand’ll have much money—bad penny as he is,” continued + Christine in her normal voice. “He’ll have more money than he can put in + all the trouser legs he has. Old Hector, his father, has enough for a + gover’ment. But that M’sieu’ Felix will get his throat cut if he follows + Ma’m’selle Druse about too much. She hates him—I’ve seen when they + met. Old man Druse’ll make trouble. He don’t look as he does for nothing.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, that’s so. One day, we shall see what we shall see,” murmured + Christine, and waved a hand to a friend in the street. + </p> + <p> + This conversation happened on the evening of the day that Fleda Druse shot + the Carillon Rapids alone. An hour after the two gossips had had their say + Gabriel Druse paced up and down the veranda of his house, stopping now and + then to view the tumbling, hurrying Sagalac, or to dwell upon the sunset + which crimsoned and bronzed the western sky. His walk had an air of + impatience; he seemed disturbed of mind and restless of body. + </p> + <p> + He gave an impression of great force. He would have been picked out of a + multitude, not alone because of his remarkable height, but because he had + an air of command and the aloofness which shows a man sufficient unto + himself. + </p> + <p> + As he stood gazing reflectively into the sunset, a strange, plaintive, + birdlike note pierced the still evening air. His head lifted quickly, yet + he did not look in the direction of the sound, which came from the woods + behind the house. He did not stir, and his eyes half-closed, as though he + hesitated what to do. The call was not that of a bird familiar to the + Western world. It had a melancholy softness like that of the bell-bird of + the Australian bush. Yet, in the insistence of the note, it was, too, a + challenge or a summons. + </p> + <p> + Three times during the past week he had heard it—once as he went by + the market-place of Manitou; once as he returned in the dusk from + Tekewani’s Reservation, and once at dawn from the woods behind the house. + His present restlessness and suppressed agitation had been the result. + </p> + <p> + It was a call he knew well. It was like a voice from a dead world. It + asked, he knew, for an answering call, yet he had not given it. It was + seven days since he first heard it in the market-place, and in that seven + days he had realized that nothing in this world which has ever been, + really ceases to be. Presently, the call was repeated. On the three former + occasions there had been no repetition. The call had trembled in the air + but once and had died away into unbroken silence. Now, however, it rang + out with an added poignancy. It was like a bird calling to its vanished + mate. + </p> + <p> + With sudden resolution Druse turned. Leaving the veranda, he walked slowly + behind the house into the woods and stood still under the branches of a + great cedar. Raising his head, a strange, solemn note came from his lips; + but the voice died away in a sharp broken sound which was more human than + birdlike, which had the shrill insistence of authority. The call to him + had been almost ventriloquial in its nature. His lips had not moved at + all. + </p> + <p> + There was silence for a moment after he had called into the void, as it + were, and then there appeared suddenly from behind a clump of juniper, a + young man of dark face and upright bearing. He made a slow obeisance with + a gesture suggestive of the Oriental world, yet not like the usual gesture + of the East Indian, the Turk or the Persian; it was composite of all. + </p> + <p> + He could not have been more than twenty-five years of age. He was so + sparely made, and his face being clean-shaven, he looked even younger. His + clothes were the clothes of the Western man; and yet there was a manner of + wearing them, there were touches which were evidence to the watchful + observer that he was of other spheres. His wide, felt, Western hat had a + droop on one side and a broken treatment of the crown, which of itself was + enough to show him a stranger to the prairie, while his brown velveteen + jacket, held by its two lowest buttons, was reminiscent of an un-English + life. His eyes alone would have announced him as of some foreign race, + though he was like none of the foreigners who had been the pioneers of + Manitou. Unlike as he and Gabriel Druse were in height, build, and + movement, still there was something akin in them both. + </p> + <p> + After a short silence evidently disconcerting to him, “Blessing and hail, + my Ry,” he said in a low tone. He spoke in a strange language and with a + voice rougher than his looks would have suggested. + </p> + <p> + The old man made a haughty gesture of impatience. “What do you want with + me, my Romany ‘chal’?” he asked sharply.—[A glossary of Romany words + will be found at the end of the book.] + </p> + <p> + The young man replied hastily. He seemed to speak by rote. His manner was + too eager to suit the impressiveness of his words. “The sheep are without + a shepherd,” he said. “The young men marry among the Gorgios, or they are + lost in the cities and return no more to the tents and the fields and the + road. There is disorder in all the world among the Romanys. The ancient + ways are forgotten. Our people gather and settle upon the land and live as + the Gorgios live. They forget the way beneath the trees, they lose their + skill in horses. If the fountain is choked, how shall the water run?” + </p> + <p> + A cold sneer came to the face of Gabriel Druse. “The way beneath the + trees!” he growled. “The way of the open road is enough. The way beneath + the trees is the way of the thief, and the skill of the horse is the skill + to cheat.” + </p> + <p> + “There is no other way. It has been the way of the Romany since the time + of Timur Beg and centuries beyond Timur, so it is told. One man and all + men must do as the tribe has done since the beginning.” + </p> + <p> + The old man pulled at his beard angrily. “You do not talk like a Romany, + but like a Gorgio of the schools.” + </p> + <p> + The young man’s manner became more confident as he replied. “Thinking on + what was to come to me, I read in the books as the Gorgio reads. I sat in + my tent and worked with a pen; I saw in the printed sheets what the world + was doing every day. This I did because of what was to come.” + </p> + <p> + “And have you read of me in the printed sheets? Did they tell you where I + was to be found?” Gabriel Druse’s eyes were angry, his manner was + authoritative. + </p> + <p> + The young man stretched out his hands eloquently. “Hail and blessing, my + Ry, was there need of printed pages to tell me that? Is not everything + known of the Ry to the Romany people without the written or printed thing? + How does the wind go? How does the star sweep across the sky? Does not the + whisper pass as the lightning flashes? Have you forgotten all, my Ry? Is + there a Romany camp at Scutari? Shall it not know what is the news of the + Bailies of Scotland and the Caravans by the Tagus? It is known always + where my lord is. All the Romanys everywhere know it, and many hundreds + have come hither from overseas. They are east, they are south, they are + west.” + </p> + <p> + He made gesture towards these three points of the compass. A dark frown + came upon the old man’s forehead. “I ordered that none should seek to + follow, that I be left in peace till my pilgrimage was done. Even as the + first pilgrims of our people in the days of Timur Beg in India, so I have + come forth from among you all till the time be fulfilled.” + </p> + <p> + There was a crafty look in the old man’s eyes as he spoke, and ages of + dubious reasoning and purpose showed in their velvet depths. + </p> + <p> + “No one has sought me but you in all these years,” he continued. “Who are + you that you should come? I did not call, and there was my command that + none should call to me.” + </p> + <p> + A bolder look grew in the other’s face. His carriage gained in ease. + “There is trouble everywhere—in Italy, in Spain, in France, in + England, in Russia, in mother India”—he made a gesture of salutation + and bowed low—“and our rites and mysteries are like water spilt upon + the ground. If the hand be cut off, how shall the body move? That is how + it is. You are vanished, my lord, and the body dies.” + </p> + <p> + The old man plucked his beard again fiercely and his words came with + guttural force. “That is fool’s talk. In the past I was never everywhere + at once. When I was in Russia, I was not in Greece; when I was in England, + I was not in Portugal. I was always ‘vanished’ from one place to another, + yet the body lived.” + </p> + <p> + “But your word was passed along the roads everywhere, my Ry. Your tongue + was not still from sunrise to the end of the day. Your call was heard + always, now here, now there, and the Romanys were one; they held + together.” + </p> + <p> + The old man’s face darkened still more and his eyes flashed fire. “These + are lies you are telling, and they will choke you, my Romany ‘chal’. Am I + deceived, I who have known more liars than any man under the sky? Am I to + be fooled, who have seen so many fools in their folly? There is roguery in + you, or I have never seen roguery.” + </p> + <p> + “I am a true Romany, my Ry,” the other answered with an air of courage and + a little defiance also. + </p> + <p> + “You are a rogue and a liar, that is sure. These wailings are your own. + The Romany goes on his way as he has gone these hundreds of years. If I am + silent, my people will wait until I speak again; if they see me not they + will wait till I enter their camps once more. Why are you here? Speak, + rogue and liar.” The wrathful old man, sure in his reading of the youth, + towered above him commandingly. It almost seemed as though he would do him + bodily harm, so threatening was his attitude, but the young Romany raised + his head, and with a note of triumph said: + </p> + <p> + “I have come for my own, as it is my right.” + </p> + <p> + “What is your own?” + </p> + <p> + “What has been yours until now, my Ry.” + </p> + <p> + A grey look stole slowly up the strong face of the exiled leader, for his + mind suddenly read the truth behind the young man’s confident words. + </p> + <p> + “What is mine is always mine,” he answered roughly. “Speak! What is it I + have that you come for?” + </p> + <p> + The young man braced himself and put a hand upon his lips. “I come for + your daughter, my Ry.” The old man suddenly regained his composure, and + authority spoke in his bearing and his words. “What have you to do with my + daughter?” + </p> + <p> + “She was married to me when I was seven years of age, as my Ry knows. I am + the son of Lemuel Fawe—Jethro Fawe is my name. For three thousand + pounds it was so arranged. On his death-bed three thousand pounds did my + father give to you for this betrothal. I was but a child, yet I + remembered, and my kinsmen remembered, for it is their honour also. I am + the son of Lemuel Fawe, the husband of Fleda, daughter of Gabriel Druse, + King and Duke and Earl of all the Romanys; and I come for my own.” + </p> + <p> + Something very like a sigh of relief came from Gabriel Druse’s lips, but + the anger in his face did not pass, and a rigid pride made the distance + between them endless. He looked like a patriarch giving judgment as he + raised his hand and pointed with a menacing finger at Jethro Fawe, his + Romany subject—and, according to the laws of the Romany tribes, his + son-in-law. It did not matter that the girl—but three years of age + when it happened—had no memory of the day when the chiefs and great + people assembled outside the tent of Lemuel Fawe when he lay dying, and, + by the simple act of stepping over a branch of hazel, the two children + were married: if Romany law and custom were to abide, then the two now + were man and wife. Did not Lemuel Fawe, the old-time rival of Gabriel + Druse for the kinship of the Romanys, the claimant whose family had been + rulers of the Romanys for generations before the Druses gained ascendancy—did + not Fawe, dying, seek to secure for his son by marriage what he had failed + to get for himself by other means? + </p> + <p> + All these things had at one time been part of Gabriel Druse’s covenant of + life, until one year in England, when Fleda, at twelve years of age, was + taken ill and would have died, but that a great lady descended upon their + camp, took the girl to her own house, and there nursed and tended her, + giving her the best medical aid the world could produce, so that the girl + lived, and with her passionate nature loved the Lady Barrowdale as she + might have loved her own mother, had that mother lived and she had ever + known her. And when the Lady Barrowdale sickened and died of the same + sickness which had nearly been her own death, the promise she made then + overrode all other covenants made for her. She had promised the great lady + who had given her own widowed, childless life for her own, that she would + not remain a Gipsy, that she would not marry a Gipsy, but that if ever she + gave herself to any man it would be to a Gorgio, a European, who travelled + oftenest “the open road” leading to his own door. The years which had + passed since those tragic days in Gloucestershire had seen the shadows of + that dark episode pass, but the pledge had remained; and Gabriel Druse had + kept his word to the dead, because of the vow made to the woman who had + given her life for the life of a Romany lass. + </p> + <p> + The Romany tribes of all the nations did not know why their Ry had hidden + himself in the New World; they did not know that the girl had for ever + forsworn their race, and would never become head of all the Romanys, + solving the problem of the rival dynasties by linking her life with that + of Jethro Fawe. But Jethro Fawe had come to claim his own. + </p> + <p> + Now Gabriel Druse’s eyes followed his own menacing finger with sharp + insistence. In the past such a look had been in his eyes when he had + sentenced men to death. They had not died by the gallows or the sword or + the bullet, but they had died as commanded, and none had questioned his + decree. None asked where or how the thing was done when a fire sprang up + in a field, or a quarry, or on a lonely heath or hill-top, and on the pyre + were all the belongings of the condemned, being resolved into dust as + their owner had been made earth again. + </p> + <p> + “Son of Lemuel Fawe,” the old man said, his voice rough with authority, + “but that you are of the Blood, you should die now for this disobedience. + When the time is fulfilled, I will return. Until then, my daughter and I + are as those who have no people. Begone! Nothing that is here belongs to + you. Begone, and come no more!” + </p> + <p> + “I have come for my own—for my Romany ‘chi’, and I will not go + without her. I am blood of the Blood, and she is mine.” + </p> + <p> + “You have not seen her,” said the old man craftily, and fighting hard + against the wrath consuming him, though he liked the young man’s spirit. + “She has changed. She is no longer Romany.” + </p> + <p> + “I have seen her, and her beauty is like the rose and the palm.” + </p> + <p> + “When have you seen her since the day before the tent of Lemuel Fawe now + seventeen years ago?” There was an uneasy note in the commanding tone. + </p> + <p> + “I have seen her three times of late, and the last time I saw her was an + hour or so since, when she rode the Rapids of Carillon.” + </p> + <p> + The old man started, his lips parted, but for a moment he did not speak. + At last words came. “The Rapids—speak. What have you heard, Jethro, + son of Lemuel?” + </p> + <p> + “I did not hear, I saw her shoot the Rapids. I ran to follow. At Carillon + I saw her arrive. She was in the arms of a Gorgio of Lebanon—Ingolby + is his name.” + </p> + <p> + A malediction burst from Gabriel Druse’s lips, words sharp and terrible in + their intensity. For the first time since they had met the young man + blanched. The savage was alive in the giant. + </p> + <p> + “Speak. Tell all,” Druse said, with hands clenching. + </p> + <p> + Swiftly the young man told all he had seen, and described how he had run + all the way—four miles—from Carillon, arriving before Fleda + and her Indian escort. + </p> + <p> + He had hardly finished his tale, shrinking, as he told it, from the + fierceness of his chief, when a voice called from the direction of the + house. + </p> + <p> + “Father—father,” it cried. + </p> + <p> + A change passed over the old man’s face. It cleared as the face of the sun + clears when a cloud drives past and is gone. The transformation was + startling. Without further glance at his companion, he moved swiftly + towards the house. Once more Fleda’s voice called, and before he could + answer they were face to face. + </p> + <p> + She stood radiant and elate, and seemed not apprehensive of disfavour or + reproach. Behind her was Tekewani and his braves. + </p> + <p> + “You have heard?” she asked reading her father’s face. + </p> + <p> + “I have heard. Have you no heart?” he answered. “If the Rapids had drowned + you!” + </p> + <p> + She came close to him and ran her fingers through his beard tenderly. “I + was not born to be drowned,” she said softly. + </p> + <p> + Now that she was a long distance from Ingolby, the fact that a man had + held her in his arms left no shadow on her face. Ingolby was now only part + of her triumph of the Rapids. She tossed a hand affectionately towards + Tekewani and his braves. + </p> + <p> + “How!” said Gabriel Druse, and made a gesture of salutation to the Indian + chief. + </p> + <p> + “How!” answered Tekewani, and raised his arm high in response. An instant + afterwards Tekewani and his followers were gone their ways. + </p> + <p> + Suddenly Fleda’s eyes rested on the young Romany who was now standing at a + little distance away. Apprehension came to her face. She felt her heart + stand still and her hands grow cold, she knew not why. But she saw that + the man was a Romany. + </p> + <p> + Her father turned sharply. A storm gathered in his face once more, and a + murderous look came into his eyes. + </p> + <p> + “Who is he?” Fleda asked, scarce above a whisper, and she noted the + insistent, amorous look of the stranger. + </p> + <p> + “He says he is your husband,” answered her father harshly. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER V. “BY THE RIVER STARZKE... IT WAS SO DONE” + </h2> + <p> + There was absolute silence for a moment. The two men fixed their gaze upon + the girl. The fear which had first come to her face passed suddenly, and a + will, new-born and fearless, possessed it. Yesterday this will had been + only a trembling, undisciplined force, but since then she had been passed + through the tests which her own soul, or Destiny, had set for her, and she + had emerged a woman, confident and understanding, if tremulous. In days + gone by her adventurous, lonely spirit had driven her to the prairies, + savagely riding her Indian pony through the streets of Manitou and out on + the North Trail, or south through coulees, or westward into the great + woods, looking for what: she never found. + </p> + <p> + Her spirit was no longer the vague thing driving here and there with + pleasant torture. It had found freedom and light; what the Romany folk + call its own ‘tan’, its home, though it be but home of each day’s trek. + That wild spirit was now a force which understood itself in a new if + uncompleted way. It was a sword free from its scabbard. + </p> + <p> + The adventure of the Carillon Rapids had been a kind of deliverance of an + unborn thing which, desiring the overworld, had found it. A few hours ago + the face of Ingolby, as she waked to consciousness in his arms, had taught + her something suddenly; and the face of Felix Marchand had taught her even + more. Something new and strange had happened to her, and her father’s + uncouth but piercing mind saw the change in her. Her quick, fluttering + moods, her careless, undirected energy, her wistful waywardness, had of + late troubled and vexed him, called on capacities in him which he did not + possess; but now he was suddenly aware that she had emerged from + passionate inconsistencies and in some good sense had found herself. + </p> + <p> + Like a wind she had swept out of childhood into a woman’s world where the + eyes saw things unseen before, a world how many thousand leagues in the + future; and here in a flash, also, she was swept like a wind back again to + a time before there was even conscious childhood—a dim, distant time + when she lived and ate and slept for ever in the field or the vale, in the + quarry, beside the hedge, or on the edge of harvest-fields; when she was + carried in strong arms, or sat in the shelter of a man’s breast as a horse + cantered down a glade, under an ardent sky, amid blooms never seen since + then. She was whisked back into that distant, unreal world by the figure + of a young Romany standing beside a spruce-tree, and by her father’s voice + which uttered the startling words: “He says he is your husband!” + </p> + <p> + Indignation and a bitter pride looked out of her eyes, as she heard the + preposterous claim—as though she were some wild dweller of the + jungle being called by her savage mate back to the lair she had forsaken. + </p> + <p> + “Since when were you my husband?” she asked Jethro Fawe composedly. + </p> + <p> + Her quiet scorn brought a quiver to his spirit; for he was of a people to + whom anger and passion were part of every relationship of life, its + stimulus and its recreation, its expression of the individual. + </p> + <p> + His eyelids trembled, but he drew himself together. “Seventeen years ago + by the River Starzke in the Roumelian country, it was so done,” he replied + stubbornly. “You were sealed to me, as my Ry here knows, and as you will + remember, if you fix your mind upon it. It was beyond the city of Starzke + three leagues, under the brown scarp of the Dragbad Hills. It was in the + morning when the sun was by a quarter of its course. It happened before my + father’s tent, the tent of Lemuel Fawe. There you and I were sealed before + our Romany folk. For three thousand pounds which my father gave to your + father, you—” + </p> + <p> + With a swift gesture she stopped him. Walking close up to him, she looked + him full in the eyes. There was a contemptuous pride in her face which + forced him to lower his eyelids sulkily. + </p> + <p> + He would have understood a torrent of words—to him that would have + regulated the true value of the situation; but this disdainful composure + embarrassed him. He had come prepared for trouble and difficulty, but he + had rather more determination than most of his class and people, and his + spirit of adventure was high. Now that he had seen the girl who was his + own according to Romany law, he felt he had been a hundred times justified + in demanding her from her father, according to the pledge and bond of so + many years ago. He had nothing to lose but his life, and he had risked + that before. This old man, the head of the Romany folk, had the bulk of + the fortune which had been his own father’s and he had the logic of lucre + which is the most convincing of all logic. Yet with the girl holding his + eyes commandingly, he was conscious that he was asking more than a Romany + lass to share his ‘tan’, to go wandering from Romany people to Romany + people, king and queen of them all when Gabriel Druse had passed away. + Fleda Druse would be a queen of queens, but there was that queenliness in + her now which was not Romany—something which was Gorgio, which was + caste, which made a shivering distance between them. + </p> + <p> + As he had spoken, she saw it all as he described it. Vaguely, cloudily, + the scene passed before her. Now and again in the passing years had filmy + impressions floated before her mind of a swift-flowing river and high + crags, and wooded hills and tents and horsemen and shouting, and a lad + that held her hand, and banners waved over their heads, and galloping and + shouting, and then a sudden quiet, and many men and women gathered about a + tent, and a wailing thereafter. After which, in her faint remembrance, + there seemed to fall a mist, and a space of blankness, and then a starting + up from a bed, and looking out of the doors of a tent, where many people + gathered about a great fire, whose flames licked the heavens, and seemed + to devour a Romany tent standing alone with a Romany wagon full of its + household things. + </p> + <p> + As Jethro Fawe had spoken, the misty, elusive visions had become living + memories, and she knew that he had spoken the truth, and that these + fleeting things were pictures of her sealing to Jethro Fawe and the death + of Lemuel Fawe, and the burning of all that belonged to him in that last + ritual of Romany farewell to the dead. + </p> + <p> + She knew now that she had been bargained for like any slave—for + three thousand pounds. How far away it all seemed, how barbaric and + revolting! Yet here it all was rolling up like a flood to her feet, to + bear her away into a past with its sordidness and vagabondage, however + gilded and graded above the lowest vagabondage. + </p> + <p> + Here at Manitou she had tasted a free life which was not vagabondage, the + passion of the open road which was not an elaborate and furtive evasion of + the law and a defiance of social ostracism. Here she and her father moved + in an atmosphere of esteem touched by mystery, but not by suspicion; here + civilization in its most elastic organization and flexible conventions, + had laid its hold upon her, had done in this expansive, loosely knitted + social system what could never have been accomplished in a great city—in + London, Vienna, Rome, or New York. She had had here the old free life of + the road, so full of the scent of deep woods—the song of rivers, the + carol of birds, the murmuring of trees, the mysterious and devout + whisperings of the night, the happy communings of stray peoples meeting + and passing, the gaiety and gossip of the market-place, the sound of + church bells across a valley, the storms and wild lightnings and rushing + torrents, the cries of frightened beasts, the wash and rush of rain, the + sharp pain of frost, and the agonies of some lost traveller rescued from + the wide inclemency, the soft starlight after, the balm of the purged air, + and “rosy-fingered morn” blinking blithely at the world. The old life of + the open road she had had here without anything of its shame, its stigma, + and its separateness, its discordance with the stationary forces of law + and organized community. + </p> + <p> + Wild moments there had been of late years when she longed for the faces of + Romany folk gathered about the fire, while some Romany ‘pral’ drew all + hearts with the violin or the dulcimer. When Ambrose or Gilderoy or + Christo responded to the pleadings of some sentimental lass, and sang to + the harpist’s strings: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Cold blows the wind over my true love, + Cold blow the drops of rain; + I never, never had but one sweetheart; + In the green wood he was slain,” + </pre> + <p> + and to cries of “Again! ‘Ay bor’! again!” the blackeyed lover, hypnotizing + himself into an ecstasy, poured out race and passion and war with the law, + in the true Gipsy rant which is sung from Transylvania to Yetholm or + Carnarvon or Vancouver: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Time was I went to my true love, + Time was she came to me—” + </pre> + <p> + The sharp passion which moved her now as she stood before Jethro Fawe + would not have been so acute yesterday; but to-day—she had lain in a + Gorgio’s arms to-day; and though he was nothing to her, he was still a + Gorgio of Gorgios; and this man before her—her husband—was at + best but a man of the hedges and the byre and the clay-pit, the quarry and + the wood; a nomad with no home, nothing that belonged to what she was now + a part of—organized, collective existence, the life of the + house-dweller, not the life of the ‘tan’, the ‘koppa’, and the + ‘vellgouris’—the tent, the blanket, and the fair. + </p> + <p> + “I was never bought, and I was never sold,” she said to Jethro Fawe at + last “not for three thousand pounds, not in three thousand years. Look at + me well, and see whether you think it was so, or ever could be so. Look at + me well, Jethro Fawe.” + </p> + <p> + “You are mine—it was so done seventeen years ago,” he answered, + defiantly and tenaciously. + </p> + <p> + “I was three years old, seventeen years ago,” she returned quietly, but + her eyes forced his to look at her, when they turned away as though their + light hurt him. + </p> + <p> + “It is no matter,” he rejoined. “It is the way of our people. It has been + so, and it will be so while there is a Romany tent standing or moving on.” + </p> + <p> + In his rage Gabriel Druse could keep silence no longer. + </p> + <p> + “Rogue, what have you to say of such things?” he growled. “I am the head + of all. I pass the word, and things are so and so. By long and by last, if + I pass the word that you shall sleep the sleep, it will be so, my Romany + ‘chal’.” + </p> + <p> + His daughter stretched out her hand to stop further speech from her father—“Hush!” + she said maliciously, “he has come a long way for naught. It will be + longer going back. Let him have his say. It is his capital. He has only + breath and beauty.” + </p> + <p> + Jethro shrank from the sharp irony of her tongue as he would not have + shrunk before her father’s violence. Biting rejection was in her tones. He + knew dimly that the thing he shrank from belonged to nothing Romany in + her, but to that scornful pride of the Gorgios which had kept the Romany + outside the social pale. + </p> + <p> + “Only breath and beauty!” she had said, and that she could laugh at his + handsomeness was certain proof that it was not wilfulness which rejected + his claims. Now there was rage in his heart greater than had been in that + of Gabriel Druse. + </p> + <p> + “I have come a long way for a good thing,” he said with head thrown back, + “and if ‘breath and beauty’ is all I bring, yet that is because what my + father had in his purse has made my ‘Ry’ rich”—he flung a hand out + towards Gabriel Druse—“and because I keep to the open road as my + father did, true to my Romany blood. The wind and the sun and the fatness + of the field have made me what I am, and never in my life had I an ache or + a pain. You have the breath and the beauty, too, but you have the gold + also; and what you are and what you have is mine by the Romany law, and it + will come to me, by long and by last.” + </p> + <p> + Fleda turned quietly to her father. “If it is true concerning the three + thousand pounds, give it to him and let him go. It will buy him what he + would never get by what he is.” + </p> + <p> + The old man flashed a look of anger upon her. “He came empty, he shall go + empty. Against my commands, his insolence has brought him here. And let + him keep his eyes skinned, or he shall have no breath with which to + return. I am Gabriel Druse, lord over all the Romany people in all the + world from Teheran to San Diego, and across the seas and back again; and + my will shall be done.” + </p> + <p> + He paused, reflecting for a moment, though his fingers opened and shut in + anger. “This much I will do,” he added. “When I return to my people I will + deal with this matter in the place where Lemuel Fawe died. By the place + called Starzke, I will come to reckoning, and then and then only.” + </p> + <p> + “When?” asked the young man eagerly. + </p> + <p> + Gabriel Druse’s eyes flashed. “When I return as I will to return.” Then + suddenly he added: “This much I will say, it shall be before—” + </p> + <p> + The girl stopped him. “It shall be when it shall be. Am I a chattel to be + bartered by any will except my own? I will have naught to do with any + Romany law. Not by Starzke shall the matter be dealt with, but here by the + River Sagalac. This Romany has no claim upon me. My will is my own; I + myself and no other shall choose my husband, and he will never be a + Romany.” + </p> + <p> + The young man’s eyes suddenly took on a dreaming, subtle look, submerging + the sulkiness which had filled him. Twice he essayed to speak, but + faltered. At last, with an air, he said: + </p> + <p> + “For seventeen years I have kept the faith. I was sealed to you, and I + hold by the sealing. Wherever you went, it was known to me. In my thoughts + I followed. I read the Gorgio books; I made ready for this day. I saw you + as you were that day by Starzke, like the young bird in the nest; and the + thought of it was with me always. I knew that when I saw you again the + brown eyes would be browner, the words at the lips would be sweeter—and + so it is. All is as I dreamed for these long years. I was ever faithful. + By night and day I saw you as you were when Romany law made you mine for + ever. I looked forward to the day when I would take you to my ‘tan’, and + there we two would—” + </p> + <p> + A flush sprang suddenly to Fleda Druse’s face, then slowly faded, leaving + it pale and indignant. Sharply she interrupted him. + </p> + <p> + “They should have called you Ananias,” she said scornfully. “My father has + called you a rogue, and now I know you are one. I have not heard, but I + know—I know that you have had a hundred loves, and been true to + none. The red scarfs you have given to the Romany and the Gorgio fly-aways + would make a tent for all the Fawes in all the world.” + </p> + <p> + At first he flung up his head in astonishment at her words, then, as she + proceeded, a flush swept across his face and his eyes filled up again with + sullenness. She had read the real truth concerning him. He had gone too + far. He had been convincing while he had said what was true, but her + instinct had suddenly told her what he was. Her perception had pierced to + the core of his life—a vagabondage, a little more gilded than was + common among his fellows, made possible by his position as the successor + to her father, and by the money of Lemuel Fawe which he had dissipated. + </p> + <p> + He had come when all his gold was gone to do the one bold thing which + might at once restore his fortunes. He had brains, and he knew now that + his adventure was in grave peril. + </p> + <p> + He laughed in his anger. “Is only the Gorgio to embrace the Romany lass? + One fondled mine to-day in his arms down there at Carillon. That’s the way + it goes! The old song tells the end of it: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “‘But the Gorgio lies ‘neath the beech-wood tree; + He’ll broach my tan no more; + And my love she sleeps afar from me, + But near to the churchyard door. + + ‘Time was I went to my true love, + Time was she came to me—‘” + </pre> + <p> + He got no farther. Gabriel Druse was on him, gripping his arms so tight to + his body that his swift motion to draw a weapon was frustrated. The old + man put out all his strength, a strength which in his younger days was + greater than any two men in any Romany camp, and the “breath and beauty” + of Jethro Fawe grew less and less. His face became purple and distorted, + his body convulsed, then limp, and presently he lay on the ground with a + knee on his chest and fierce, bony hands at his throat. + </p> + <p> + “Don’t kill him—father, don’t!” cried the girl, laying restraining + hands on the old man’s shoulders. He withdrew his hands and released the + body from his knee. Jethro Fawe lay still. + </p> + <p> + “Is he dead?” she whispered, awestricken. “Dead?” The old man felt the + breast of the unconscious man. He smiled grimly. “He is lucky not to be + dead.” + </p> + <p> + “What shall we do?” the girl asked again with a white face. + </p> + <p> + The old man stooped and lifted the unconscious form in his arms as though + it was that of a child. “Where are you going?” she asked anxiously, as he + moved away. + </p> + <p> + “To the hut in the juniper wood,” he answered. She watched till he had + disappeared with his limp burden into the depths of the trees. Then she + turned and went slowly towards the house. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER VI. THE UNGUARDED FIRES + </h2> + <p> + The public knew well that Ingolby had solved his biggest business problem, + because three offices of three railways—one big and two small—suddenly + became merged under his control. At which there was rejoicing at Lebanon, + followed by dismay and indignation at Manitou, for one of the smaller + merged railways had its offices there, and it was now removed to Lebanon; + while several of the staff, having proved cantankerous, were promptly + retired. As they were French Canadians, their retirement became a public + matter in Manitou and begot fresh quarrel between the rival towns. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby had made a tactical mistake in at once removing the office of the + merged railway from Manitou, and he saw it quickly. It was not possible to + put the matter right at once, however. + </p> + <p> + There had already been collision between his own railway-men and the + rivermen from Manitou, whom Felix Marchand had bribed to cause trouble: + two Manitou men had been seriously hurt, and feeling ran high. Ingolby’s + eyes opened wide when he saw Marchand’s ugly game. He loathed the + dissolute fellow, but he realized now that his foe was a factor to be + reckoned with, for Marchand had plenty of money as well as a bad nature. + He saw he was in for a big fight with Manitou, and he had to think it out. + </p> + <p> + So this time he went pigeon-shooting. + </p> + <p> + He got his pigeons, and the slaughter did him good. As though in keeping + with the situation, he shot on both sides of the Sagalac with great good + luck, and in the late afternoon sent his Indian lad on ahead to Lebanon + with the day’s spoil, while he loitered through the woods, a gun slung in + the hollow of his arm. He had walked many miles, but there was still a + spring to his step and he hummed an air with his shoulders thrown back and + his hat on the back of his head. He had had his shooting, he had done his + thinking, and he was pleased with himself. He had shaped his homeward + course so that it would bring him near to Gabriel Druse’s house. + </p> + <p> + He had seen Fleda only twice since the episode at Carillon, and met her + only once, and that was but for a moment at a Fete for the hospital at + Manitou, and with other people present—people who lay in wait for + crumbs of gossip. + </p> + <p> + Since the running of the Rapids, Fleda had filled a larger place in the + eyes of Manitou and Lebanon. She had appealed to the Western mind: she had + done a brave physical thing. Wherever she went she was made conscious of a + new attitude towards herself, a more understanding feeling. At the Fete + when she and Ingolby met face to face, people had immediately drawn round + them curious and excited. These could not understand why the two talked so + little, and had such an every-day manner with each other. Only old Mother + Thibadeau, who had a heart that sees, caught a look in Fleda’s eyes, a + warm deepening of colour, a sudden embarrassment, which she knew how to + interpret. + </p> + <p> + “See now, monseigneur,” she said to Monseigneur Lourde, nodding towards + Fleda and Ingolby, “there would be work here soon for you or Father + Bidette if they were not two heretics.” + </p> + <p> + “Is she a heretic, then, madame?” asked the old white-headed priest, his + eyes quizzically following Fleda. + </p> + <p> + “She is not a Catholic, and she must be a heretic, that’s certain,” was + the reply. + </p> + <p> + “I’m not so sure,” mused the priest. Smiling, he raised his hat as he + caught Fleda’s eyes. He made as if to go towards her, but something in her + look held him back. He realized that Fleda did not wish to speak with him, + and that she was even hurrying away from her father, who lumbered through + the crowd as though unconscious of them all. + </p> + <p> + Presently Monseigneur Lourde saw Fleda leave the Fete and take the road + towards home. There was a sense of excitement in her motions, and he also + had seen that tremulous, embarrassed look in her eyes. It puzzled him. He + did not connect it wholly with Ingolby as Madame Thibadeau had done. He + had lived so long among primitive people that he was more accustomed to + study faces than find the truth from words, and he had always been + conscious that this girl, educated and even intellectual, was at heart as + primitive as the wildest daughter of the tepees of the North. There was + also in her something of that mystery which belongs to the universal + itinerary—that cosmopolitan something which is the native human. + </p> + <p> + “She has far to go,” the priest said to himself as he turned to greet + Ingolby with a smile, bright and shy, but gravely reproachful, too. + </p> + <p> + This happened on the day before the collision between the railway-men and + the river-drivers, and the old priest already knew what trouble was afoot. + </p> + <p> + There was little Felix Marchand did which was hidden from him. He made his + way to Ingolby to warn him. + </p> + <p> + As Ingolby now walked in the woods towards Gabriel Druse’s house, he + recalled one striking phrase used by the aged priest in reference to the + closing of the railway offices. + </p> + <p> + “When you strike your camp, put out the fires,” was the aphorism. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby stopped humming to himself as the words came to his memory again. + Bending his head in thought for a moment, he stood still, cogitating. + </p> + <p> + “The dear old fellow was right,” he said presently aloud with uplifted + head. “I struck camp, but I didn’t put out the fires. There’s a lot of + that in life.” + </p> + <p> + That is what had happened also to Gabriel Druse and his daughter. They had + struck camp, but had not put out the camp-fires. That which had been done + by the River Starzke came again in its appointed time. The untended, + unguarded fire may spread devastation and ruin, following with angry + freedom the marching feet of those who builded it. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, you’ve got to put out your fires when you quit the bivouac,” + continued Ingolby aloud, as he gazed ahead of him through the opening + greenery, beyond which lay Gabriel Druse’s home. Where he was the woods + were thick, and here and there on either side it was almost impenetrable. + Few people ever came through this wood. It belonged in greater part to + Gabriel Druse, and in lesser part to the Hudson’s Bay Company and the + Government; and as the land was not valuable till it was cleared, and + there was plenty of prairie land to be had, from which neither stick nor + stump must be removed, these woods were very lonely. Occasionally a + trapper or a sportsman wandered through them, but just here where Ingolby + was none ever loitered. It was too thick for game, there was no roadway + leading anywhere, but only an overgrown path, used in the old days by + Indians. It was this path which Ingolby trod with eager steps. + </p> + <p> + Presently, as he stood still at sight of a ground-hog making for its + hiding-place, he saw a shadow fall across the light breaking through the + trees some distance in front of him. It was Fleda. She had not seen him, + and she came hurrying towards where he was with head bent, a + brightly-ribboned hat swinging in her fingers. She seemed part of the + woods, its wild simplicity, its depth, its colour-already Autumn was + crimsoning the leaves, touching them with amber tints, making the woodland + warm and kind. She wore a dress of golden brown which matched her hair, + and at her throat was a black velvet ribbon with a brooch of antique paste + which flashed the light like diamonds, but more softly. + </p> + <p> + Suddenly, as she came on, she stopped and raised her head in a listening + attitude, her eyes opening wide as if listening, too—it was as + though she heard with them as well; alive to catch sounds which evaded + capture. She was like some creature of an ancient wood with its own secret + and immemorial history which the world could never know. There was that in + her face which did not belong to civilization or to that fighting world of + which Ingolby was so eager a factor. All the generations of the wood and + road, the combe and the river, the quarry and the secluded boscage were in + her look. There was that about her which was at once elusive and + primevally real. + </p> + <p> + She was not of those who would be lost in the dust of futility. Whatever + she was, she was an independent atom in the mass of the world’s breeding. + Perhaps it was consciousness of the dynamic quality in the girl, her + nearness to naked nature, which made Madame Bulteel say that she would + “have a history.” + </p> + <p> + If she got twisted as she came wayfaring, if her mind became possessed of + a false passion or purpose which she thought a true one, then tragedy + would await her. Yet in this quiet wood so near to the centuries that were + before Adam was, she looked like a spirit of comedy listening till the + Spirit of the Wood should break the silence. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby felt his blood beat faster. He had a feeling that he was looking + at a wood-nymph who might flash out of his vision as a mere fantasy of the + mind. There shot through him the strangest feeling that if she were his, + he would be linked with something alien to the world of which he was. + </p> + <p> + Yet, recalling the day at Carillon when her cheek lay on his shoulder and + her warm breast was pressed unresistingly against him, as he lifted her + from his boat, he knew that he would have to make the hardest fight of his + life if he meant not to have more of her than this brief acquaintance, so + touched by sensation and romance. He was, maybe, somewhat sensational; his + career had, even in its present restricted compass, been spectacular; but + romance, with its reveries and its moonshinings, its impulses and its + blind adventures, had not been any part of his existence. + </p> + <p> + Hers were not the first red lips which, voluntarily or involuntarily, had + invited him; nor hers the first eyes which had sparkled to his glances; + and this triumphant Titian head of hers was not the only one he had seen. + </p> + <p> + When he had taken her hand at the Hospital Fete, her fingers, long and + warm and fine, had folded round his own with a singular confidence, an + involuntary enclosing friendliness; and now as he watched her listening—did + she hear something?—he saw her hand stretch out as though commanding + silence, the “hush!” of an alluring gesture. + </p> + <p> + This assuredly was not the girl who had run the Carillon Rapids, for that + adventuress was full of a vital force like a man’s, and this girl had the + evanishing charm of a dryad. + </p> + <p> + Suddenly a change passed over her. She was as one who had listened and had + caught the note of song for which she waited; but her face clouded, and + the rapt look gave way to an immediate distress. The fantasy of the + wood-nymph underwent translation in Ingolby’s mind; she was now like a + mortal, who, having been transformed, at immortal dictate was returning to + mortal state again. + </p> + <p> + To heighten the illusion, he thought he heard faint singing in the depths + of the wood. He put his hands to his ears for a moment, and took them away + again to make sure that it was really singing and not his imagination; and + when he saw Fleda’s face again, there was fresh evidence that his senses + had not deceived him. After all, it was not strange that some one should + be singing in that deepest wood beyond. + </p> + <p> + Now Fleda moved forward towards where he stood, quickening her footsteps + as though remembering something she must do. He stepped out into the path + and came to meet her. She heard his footsteps, saw him, and stood still + abruptly. + </p> + <p> + She did not make a sound, but a hand went to her bosom quickly, as though + to quiet her heart or to steady herself. He had broken suddenly upon her + intent thoughts, he had startled her as she had been seldom startled, for + all her childhood training had been towards self-possession before + surprise and danger. + </p> + <p> + “This is not your side of the Sagalac,” she said with a half-smile, + regaining composure. + </p> + <p> + “That is in dispute,” he answered gaily. “I want to belong to both sides + of the Sagalac, I want both sides to belong to each other so that either + side shall not be my side or your side, or—” + </p> + <p> + “Or Monsieur Felix Marchand’s side,” she interrupted meaningly. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, he’s on the outside!” snapped the fighter, with a hardening mouth. + </p> + <p> + She did not reply at once, but put her hat on, and tied the ribbons + loosely under her chin, looking thoughtfully into the distance. + </p> + <p> + “Is that the Western slang for saying he belongs nowhere?” she asked. + </p> + <p> + “Nowhere here,” he answered with a grim twist to the corner of his mouth, + his eyes half-closing with sulky meaning. “Won’t you sit down?” he added + quickly, in a more sprightly tone, for he saw she was about to move on. He + motioned towards a log lying beside the path and kicked some branches out + of the way. + </p> + <p> + After slight hesitation she sat down, burying her shoes in the fallen + leaves. + </p> + <p> + “You don’t like Felix Marchand?” she remarked presently. + </p> + <p> + “No. Do you?” + </p> + <p> + She met his eyes squarely—so squarely that his own rather lost their + courage, and he blinked more quickly than is needed with a healthy eye. He + had been audacious, but he had not surprised the garrison. + </p> + <p> + “I have no deep reason for liking or disliking him, and you have,” she + answered firmly; yet her colour rose slightly, and he thought he had never + seen skin that looked so like velvet-creamy, pink velvet. + </p> + <p> + “You seemed to think differently at Carillon not long ago,” he returned. + </p> + <p> + “That was an accident,” she answered calmly. “He was drunk, and that is + for forgetting—always.” + </p> + <p> + “Always! Have you seen many men drunk?” he asked quickly. He did not mean + to be quizzical, but his voice sounded so, and she detected it. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, many,” she answered with a little ring of defiance in her tone—“many, + often.” + </p> + <p> + “Where?” he queried recklessly. + </p> + <p> + “In Lebanon,” she retorted. “In Lebanon—your side.” + </p> + <p> + How different she seemed from a few moments ago when she stood listening + like a nymph for the song of the Spirit of the Wood! Now she was gay, + buoyant, with a chamois-like alertness and a beaming vigour. + </p> + <p> + “Now I know what ‘blind drunk’ means,” he replied musingly. “In Manitou + when men get drunk, the people get astigmatism and can’t see the + tangledfooted stagger.” + </p> + <p> + “It means that the pines of Manitou are straighter than the cedars of + Lebanon,” she remarked. + </p> + <p> + “And the pines of Manitou have needles,” he rejoined, meaning to give her + the victory. + </p> + <p> + “Is my tongue as sharp as that?” she asked, amusement in her eyes. + </p> + <p> + “So sharp I can feel the point when I can’t see it,” he retorted. + </p> + <p> + “I’m glad of that,” she replied with an affectation of conceit. “Of course + if you live in Lebanon you need surgery to make you feel a point.” + </p> + <p> + “I give in—you have me,” he remarked. + </p> + <p> + “You give in to Manitou?” she asked provokingly. “Certainly not—only + to you. I said, ‘You have me.’” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, you give in to that which won’t hurt you—” + </p> + <p> + “Wouldn’t you hurt me?” he asked in a softening tone. + </p> + <p> + “You only play with words,” she answered with sudden gravity. “Hurt you? I + owe you what I can not pay back. I owe you my life; but as nothing can be + given in exchange for a life, I cannot pay you.” + </p> + <p> + “But like may be given for like,” he rejoined in a tone suddenly full of + meaning. + </p> + <p> + “Again you are playing with words—and with me,” she answered + brusquely, and a little light of anger dawned in her eyes. Did he think + that he could say a thing of that sort to her—when he pleased? Did + he think that because he had done her a great service, he could say + casually what belonged only to the sacred moments of existence? She looked + at him with rising indignation, but there suddenly came to her the + conviction that he had not spoken with affronting gallantry, but that for + him the moment had a gravity not to be marred by the place or the + circumstance. + </p> + <p> + “I beg your pardon if I spoke hastily,” he answered presently. “Yet + there’s many a true word spoken in jest.” + </p> + <p> + There was a moment’s silence. She realized that he was drawn to her, and + that the attraction was not alone due to his having saved her at Carillon; + that he was not taking advantage of the thing which must ever be a bond + between them, whatever came of life. When she had seen him at the Hospital + Fete, a feeling had rushed over her that he had got nearer to her than any + man had ever done. Then—even then, she felt the thing which all + lovers, actual, or in the making, feel—that they must do something + for the being who to them is more than all else and all others. She was + not in love with Ingolby. How could she be in love with this man she had + seen but a few times—this Gorgio. Why was it that even as they + talked together now, she felt the real, true distance between them—of + race, of origin, of history, of life, of circumstance? The hut in the wood + where Gabriel Druse had carried Jethro Fawe was not three hundred yards + away. + </p> + <p> + She sighed, stirred, and a wild look came in her eyes—a look of + rebellion or of protest. Presently she recovered herself. She was a + creature of sudden moods. + </p> + <p> + “What is it you want to do with Manitou and Lebanon?” she asked after a + pause in which the thoughts of both had travelled far. + </p> + <p> + “You really wish to know—you don’t know?” he asked with sudden + intensity. + </p> + <p> + She regarded him frankly, smiled, then she laughed outright, showing her + teeth very white and regular and handsome. The boyish eagerness of his + look, the whimsical twist of his mouth, which always showed when he was + keenly roused—as though everything that really meant anything was + part of a comet-like comedy—had caused her merriment. All the hidden + things in his face seemed to open out into a swift shrewdness and dry + candour when he was in his mood of “laying all the cards upon the table.” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t know,” she answered quietly. “I have heard things, but I should + like to learn the truth from you. What are your plans?” + </p> + <p> + Her eyes were burning with inquiry. She was suddenly brought to the + gateways of a new world. Plans—what had she or her people to do with + plans! What Romany ever constructed anything? What did the building of a + city or a country mean to a Romany ‘chal’ or a Romany ‘chi’, they who + lived from field to field, from common to moor, from barn to city wall. A + Romany tent or a Romany camp, with its families, was the whole territory + of their enterprise, designs and patriotism. They saw the thousand places + where cities could be made, and built their fires on the sites of them, + and camped a day, and were gone, leaving them waiting and barren as + before. They travelled through the new lands in America from the fringe of + the Arctic to Patagonia, but they raised no roof-tree; they tilled no + acre, opened no market, set up no tabernacle: they had neither home nor + country. + </p> + <p> + Fleda was the heir of all this, the product of generations of such + vagabondage. Had the last few years given her the civic sense, the home + sense? From the influence of the Englishwoman, who had made her forsake + the Romany life, had there come habits of mind in tune with the women of + the Sagalac, who were helping to build so much more than their homes? + Since the incident of the Carillon Rapids she had changed, but what the + change meant was yet in her unopened Book of Revelations. Yet something + stirred in her which she had never felt before. She had come of a race of + wayfarers, but the spirit of the builders touched her now. + </p> + <p> + “What are my plans?” Ingolby drew along breath of satisfaction. “Well, + just here where we are will be seen a great thing. There’s the Yukon and + all its gold; there’s the Peace River country and all its unploughed + wheat-fields; there’s the whole valley of the Sagalac, which alone can + maintain twenty millions of people; there’s the East and the British + people overseas who must have bread; there’s China and Japan going to give + up rice, and eat the wheaten loaf; there’s the U. S. A. with its hundred + millions of people—it’ll be that in a few years—and its + exhausted wheat-fields; and here, right here, is the bread-basket for all + the hungry peoples; and Manitou and Lebanon are the centre of it. They + will be the distributing centre. I want to see the base laid right. I’m + not going to stay here till it all happens, but I want to plan it all so + that it will happen, then I’ll go on and do a bigger thing somewhere else. + These two towns have got to come together; they must play one big game. I + want to lay the wires for it. That’s why I’ve got capitalists to start + paper-works, engineering works, a foundry, and a sash-door-and-blind + factory—just the beginning. That’s why I’ve put two factories on one + side of the river and two on the other.” + </p> + <p> + “Was it really you who started those factories?” she asked incredulously. + </p> + <p> + “Of course! It was part of my plans. I wasn’t foolish enough to build and + run them myself. I looked for the right people that had the money and the + brains, and I let them sweat—let them sweat it out. I’m not a + manufacturer; I’m an inventor and a builder. I built the bridge over the + river; and—” + </p> + <p> + She nodded. “Yes, the bridge is good; but they say you are a schemer,” she + added suggestively. + </p> + <p> + “Certainly. But if I have schemes which’ll do good, I ought to be + supported. I don’t mind what they call me, so long as they don’t call me + too late for dinner.” + </p> + <p> + They both laughed. It was seldom he talked like this, and never had he + talked to such a listener before. “The merging of the three railways was a + good scheme, and I was the schemer,” he continued. “It might mean + monopoly, but it won’t work out that way. It will simply concentrate + energy and: save elbow-grease. It will set free capital and capacity for + other things.” + </p> + <p> + “They say there will be fewer men at work, not only in the offices but on + the whole railway system, and they don’t like that in Manitou—ah, + no, they don’t!” she urged. + </p> + <p> + “They’re right in a sense,” he answered. “But the men will be employed at + other things, which won’t represent waste and capital overlapping. + Overlapping capital hits everybody in the end. But who says all that? Who + raises the cry of ‘wolf’ in Manitou?” + </p> + <p> + “A good many people say it now,” she answered, “but I think Felix Marchand + said it first. He is against you, and he is dangerous.” + </p> + <p> + He shrugged a shoulder. “Oh, if any fool said it, it would be the same!” + he answered. “That’s a fire easily lighted; though it sometimes burns long + and hard.” He frowned, and a fighting look came into his face. + </p> + <p> + “Then you know all that is working against you in Manitou—working + harder than ever before?” + </p> + <p> + “I think I do, but I probably don’t know all. Have you any special news + about it?” + </p> + <p> + “Felix Marchand is spending money among the men. They are going on strike + on your railways and in the mills.” + </p> + <p> + “What mills—in Manitou?” he asked abruptly. “In both towns.” + </p> + <p> + He laughed harshly. “That’s a tall order,” he said sharply. “Both towns—I + don’t think so, not yet.” + </p> + <p> + “A sympathetic strike is what he calls it,” she rejoined. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, a row over some imagined grievance on the railway, and all the men + in all the factories to strike—that’s the new game of the modern + labour agitator! Marchand has been travelling in France,” he added + disdainfully, “but he has brought his goods to the wrong shop. What do the + priests—what does Monseigneur Lourde say to it all?” + </p> + <p> + “I am not a Catholic,” she replied gravely. “I’ve heard, though, that + Monseigneur is trying to stop the trouble. But—” She paused. + </p> + <p> + “Yes—but?” he asked. “What were you going to say?” + </p> + <p> + “But there are many roughs in Manitou, and Felix Marchand makes friends + with them. I don’t think the priests will be able to help much in the end, + and if it is to be Manitou against Lebanon, you can’t expect a great + deal.” + </p> + <p> + “I never expect more than I get—generally less,” he answered grimly; + and he moved the gun about on his knees restlessly, fingering the lock and + the trigger softly. + </p> + <p> + “I am sure Felix Marchand means you harm,” she persisted. + </p> + <p> + “Personal harm?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes.” + </p> + <p> + He laughed sarcastically again. “We are not in Bulgaria or Sicily,” he + rejoined, his jaw hardening; “and I can take care of myself. What makes + you say he means personal harm? Have you heard anything?” + </p> + <p> + “No, nothing, but I feel it is so. That day at the Hospital Fete he looked + at you in a way that told me. I think such instincts are given to some + people and some races. You read books—I read people. I wanted to + warn you, and I do so. This has been lucky in a way, this meeting. Please + don’t treat what I’ve said lightly. Your plans are in danger and you + also.” Was the psychic and fortune-telling instinct of the Romany alive in + her and working involuntarily, doing that faithfully which her people did + so faithlessly? The darkness which comes from intense feeling had gathered + underneath her eyes, and gave them a look of pensiveness not in keeping + with the glow of her perfect health, the velvet of her cheek. + </p> + <p> + “Would you mind telling me where you got your information?” he asked + presently. + </p> + <p> + “My father heard here and there, and I, also, and some I got from old + Madame Thibadeau, who is a friend of mine. I talk with her more than with + any one else in Manitou. First she taught me how to crochet, but she + teaches me many other things, too.” + </p> + <p> + “I know the old girl by sight. She is a character. She would know a lot, + that woman.” + </p> + <p> + He paused, seemed about to speak, hesitated, then after a moment hastily + said: “A minute ago you spoke of having the instinct of your race, or + something like that. What is your race? Is it Irish, or—do you mind + my asking? Your English is perfect, but there is something—something—” + </p> + <p> + She turned away her head, a flush spreading over her face. She was + unprepared for the question. No one had ever asked it directly of her + since they had come to Manitou. Whatever speculation there had been, she + had never been obliged to tell any one of what race she was. She spoke + English with no perceptible accent, as she spoke Spanish, Italian, French, + Hungarian and Greek; and there was nothing in her speech marking her as + different from the ordinary Western woman. Certainly she would have been + considered pure English among the polyglot population of Manitou. + </p> + <p> + What must she say? What was it her duty to say? She was living the life of + a British woman, she was as much a Gorgio in her daily existence as this + man be side her. Manitou was as much home—nay, it was a thousand + times more home—than the shifting habitat of the days when they + wandered from the Caspians to John o’ Groat’s. + </p> + <p> + For years all traces of the past had been removed as completely as though + the tide had washed over them; for years it had been so, until the fateful + day when she ran the Carillon Rapids. That day saw her whole horizon + alter; that day saw this man beside her enter on the stage of her life. + And on that very day, also, came Jethro Fawe out of the Past and demanded + her return. + </p> + <p> + That had been a day of Destiny. The old, panting, unrealized, tempestuous + longing was gone. She was as one who saw danger and faced it, who had a + fight to make and would make it. + </p> + <p> + What would happen if she told this man that she was a Gipsy—the + daughter of a Gipsy ruler, which was no more than being head of a clan of + the world’s transients, the leader of the world’s nomads. Money—her + father had that, at least—much money; got in ways that could not + bear the light at times, yet, as the world counts things, not dishonestly; + for more than one great minister in a notable country in Europe had + commissioned him, more than one ruler and crowned head had used him when + “there was trouble in the Balkans,” or the “sick man of Europe” was worse, + or the Russian Bear came prowling. His service had ever been secret + service, when he lived the life of the caravan and the open highway. He + had no stable place among the men of all nations, and yet secret rites and + mysteries and a language which was known from Bokhara to Wandsworth, and + from Waikiki to Valparaiso, gave him dignity of a kind, clothed him with + importance. + </p> + <p> + Yet she wanted to tell this man beside her the whole truth, and see what + he would do. Would he turn his face away in disgust? What had she a right + to tell? She knew well that her father would wish her to keep to that + secrecy which so far had sheltered them—at least until Jethro Fawe’s + coming. + </p> + <p> + At last she turned and looked him in the eyes, the flush gone from her + face. + </p> + <p> + “I’m not Irish—do I look Irish?” she asked quietly, though her heart + was beating unevenly. + </p> + <p> + “You look more Irish than anything else, except, maybe, Slav or Hungarian—or + Gipsy,” he said admiringly and unwittingly. + </p> + <p> + “I have Gipsy blood in me,” she answered slowly, “but no Irish or + Hungarian blood.” + </p> + <p> + “Gipsy—is that so?” he said spontaneously, as she watched him so + intently that the pulses throbbed at her temples. + </p> + <p> + A short time ago Fleda might have announced her origin defiantly, now her + courage failed her. She did not wish him to be prejudiced against her. + </p> + <p> + “Well, well,” he added, “I only just guessed at it, because there’s + something unusual and strong in you, not because your eyes are so dark and + your hair so brown.” + </p> + <p> + “Not because of my ‘wild beauty’—I thought you were going to say + that,” she added ironically and a little defiantly. “I got some verses by + post the other day from one of your friends in Lebanon—a stock-rider + I think he was, and they said I had a ‘wild beauty’ and a ‘savage + sweetness.’” + </p> + <p> + He laughed, yet he suddenly saw her sensitive vigilance, and by instinct + he felt that she was watching for some sign of shock or disdain on his + part; yet in truth he cared no more whether she had Gipsy blood in her + than he would have done if she had said she was a daughter of the Czar. + </p> + <p> + “Men do write that kind of thing,” he added cheerfully, “but it’s quite + harmless. There was a disease at college we called adjectivitis. Your poet + friend had it. He could have left out the ‘wild’ and ‘savage’ and he’d + have been pleasant, and truthful too—no, I apologize.” + </p> + <p> + He had seen her face darken under the compliment, and he hastened to put + it right. + </p> + <p> + “I loved a Gipsy once,” he added whimsically to divert attention from his + mistake, and with so genuine a sympathy in his voice that she was + disarmed. “I was ten and she was fifty at least. Oh, a wonderful woman! I + had a boy friend, a fat, happy, little joker he was; his name was Charley + Long. Well, this woman was his aunt. When she moved through the town + people looked twice. She was tall and splendidly made, and her manner—oh, + as if she owned the place. She did own a lot—she had more money than + any one else thereabouts, anyhow. It was the tallest kind of a holiday + when Charley and I walked out to the big white house-golly, but it was + white—to visit her! We didn’t eat much the day before we went to see + her; and we didn’t eat much the day after, either. She used to feed us—I + wish I could eat like that now! I can see her brown eyes following us + about, full of fire, but soft and kind, too. She had a great temper, they + said, but everybody liked her, and some loved her. She’d had one girl, but + she died of consumption, got camping out in bad weather. Aunt Cynthy—that + was what we called her, her name being Cynthia—never got over her + girl’s death. She blamed herself for it. She had had those fits of going + back to the open-for weeks at a time. The girl oughtn’t to have been taken + to camp out. She was never strong, and it was the wrong place and the + wrong time of year—all right in August and all wrong in October. + </p> + <p> + “Well, always after her girl’s death Aunt Cynthy was as I knew her, being + good to us youngsters as no one else ever was, or could be. Her tea-table + was a sight; and the rest of the meals were banquets. The first time I + ever ate hedgehog was at her place. A little while ago, just before you + came, I thought of her. A hedgehog crossed the path here, and it brought + those days back to me—Charley Long and Aunt Cynthy and all. Yes, the + first time I ever ate hedgehog; was in Aunt Cynthy’s house. Hi-yi, as old + Tekewani says, but it was good!” + </p> + <p> + “What is the Romany word for hedgehog?” Fleda asked in a low tone. + </p> + <p> + “Hotchewitchi,” he replied instantly. “That’s right, isn’t it?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, it is right,” she answered, and her eyes had a far-away look, but + there was a kind of trouble at her mouth. + </p> + <p> + “Do you speak Romany?” she added a little breathlessly. + </p> + <p> + “No, no. I only picked up words I heard Aunt Cynthy use now and then when + she was in the mood.” + </p> + <p> + “What was the history of Aunt Cynthy?” + </p> + <p> + “I only know what Charley Long told me. Aunt Cynthy was the daughter of a + Gipsy—they say the only Gipsy in that part of the country at the + time—who used to buy and sell horses, and travel in a big van as + comfortable as a house. The old man suddenly died on the farm of Charley’s + uncle. In a month the uncle married the girl. She brought him thirty + thousand dollars.” + </p> + <p> + Fleda knew that this man who had fired her spirit for the first time had + told his childhood story to show her the view he took of her origin; but + she did not like him less for that, though she seemed to feel a chasm + between them still. The new things moving in her were like breezes that + stir the trees, not like the wind turning the windmill which grinds the + corn. She had scarcely yet begun to grind the corn of life. + </p> + <p> + She did not know where she was going, what she would find, or where the + new trail would lead her. The Past dogged her footsteps, hung round her + like the folds of a garment. Even as she rejected it, it asserted its + power, troubled her, angered her, humiliated her, called to her. + </p> + <p> + She was glad of this meeting with Ingolby. It had helped her. She had set + out to do a thing she dreaded, and it was easier now than it would have + been if they had not met. She had been on her way to the Hut in the Wood, + and now the dread of the visit to Jethro Fawe had diminished. The last + voice she would hear before she entered Jethro Fawe’s prison was that of + the man who represented to her, however vaguely, the life which must be + her future—the settled life, the life of Society and not of the + Saracen. + </p> + <p> + After he had told his boyhood story they sat in silence for a moment or + two, then she rose, and, turning to him, was about to speak. At that + instant there came distinctly through the wood a faint, trilling sound. + Her face paled a little, and the words died upon her lips. Ingolby, having + turned his head as though to listen, did not see the change in her face, + and she quickly regained her self-control. + </p> + <p> + “I heard that sound before,” he said, “and I thought from your look you + heard it, too. It’s funny. It is singing, isn’t it?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, it’s singing,” she answered. + </p> + <p> + “Who is it—some of the heathen from the Reservation?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, some of the heathen,” she answered. + </p> + <p> + “Has Tekewani got a lodge about here?” + </p> + <p> + “He had one here in the old days.” + </p> + <p> + “And his people go to it still-was that where you were going when I broke + in on you?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, I was going there. I am a heathen, also, you know.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I’ll be a heathen, too, if you’ll show me how; if you think I’d + pass for one. I’ve done a lot of heathen things in my time.” + </p> + <p> + She gave him her hand to say good-bye. “Mayn’t I go with you?” he asked. + </p> + <p> + “‘I must finish my journey alone,’” she answered slowly, repeating a line + from the first English book she had ever read. + </p> + <p> + “That’s English enough,” he responded with a laugh. “Well, if I mustn’t go + with you I mustn’t, but my respects to Robinson Crusoe.” He slung the gun + into the hollow of his arm. “I’d like much to go with you,” he urged. + </p> + <p> + “Not to-day,” she answered firmly. + </p> + <p> + Again the voice came through the woods, a little louder now. + </p> + <p> + “It sounds like a call,” he remarked. + </p> + <p> + “It is a call,” she answered—“the call of the heathen.” + </p> + <p> + An instant after she had gone on, with a look half-smiling, + half-forbidding, thrown over her shoulder at him. + </p> + <p> + “I’ve a notion to follow her,” he said eagerly, and he took a step in her + direction. + </p> + <p> + Suddenly she turned and came back to him. “Your plans are in danger—don’t + forget Felix Marchand,” she said, and then turned from him again. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, I’ll not forget,” he answered, and waved his cap after her. “No, I’ll + not forget monsieur,” he added sharply, and he stepped out with a light of + battle in his eyes. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER VII. IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE + </h2> + <p> + As Fleda wound her way through the deeper wood, remembering the things + which had just been said between herself and Ingolby, the colour came and + went in her face. To no man had she ever talked so long and intimately, + not even in the far-off days when she lived the Romany life. + </p> + <p> + Then, as daughter of the head of all the Romanys, she had her place apart; + and the Romany lads had been few who had talked with her even as a child. + Her father had jealously guarded her until the time when she fell under + the spell and influence of Lady Barrowdale. Here, by the Sagalac, she had + moved among this polyglot people with an assurance of her own separateness + which was the position of every girl in the West, but developed in her own + case to the nth degree. + </p> + <p> + Never before had she come so near—not to a man, but to what + concerned a man; and never had a man come so near to her or what concerned + her inmost life. It was not a question of opportunity or temptation—these + always attend the footsteps of those who would adventure; but for long she + had fenced herself round with restrictions of her own making; and the + secrecy and strangeness of her father’s course had made this not only + possible, but in a sense imperative. + </p> + <p> + The end to that had come. Gaiety, daring, passion, elation, depression, + were alive in her now, and in a sense had found an outlet in a handful of + days—indeed since the day when Jethro Fawe and Max Ingolby had come + into her life, each in his own way, for good or for evil. If Ingolby came + for good, then Jethro Fawe came for evil. She would have revolted at the + suggestion that Jethro Fawe came for good. + </p> + <p> + Yet, during the last few days, she had been drawn again and again towards + the hut in the wood. It was as though a power stronger than herself had + ordered her not to wander far from where the Romany claimant of herself + awaited his fate. As though Jethro knew she was drawn towards him, he had + sung the Gipsy songs which she and Ingolby had heard in the distance. He + might have shouted for relief in the hope of attracting the attention of + some passer-by, and so found release and brought confusion and perhaps + punishment to Gabriel Druse; but that was not possible to him. First and + last he was a Romany, good or bad; and it was his duty to obey his Ry of + Rys, the only rule which the Romany acknowledged. “Though he slay me, yet + will I trust him,” he would have said, if he had ever heard the phrase; + but in his stubborn way he made the meaning of the phrase the pivot of his + own action. If he could but see Fleda face to face, he made no doubt that + something would accrue to his advantage. He would not give up the hunt + without a struggle. + </p> + <p> + Twice a day Gabriel Druse had placed food and water inside the door of the + hut and locked him fast again, but had not spoken to him save once, and + then but to say that his fate had not yet been determined. Jethro’s reply + had been that he was in no haste, that he could wait for what he came to + get; that it was his own—‘ay bor’! it was his own, and God or devil + could not prevent the thing meant to be from the beginning of the world. + </p> + <p> + He did not hear Fleda approach the hut; he was singing to himself a song + he had learned in Montenegro. There the Romany was held in high regard, + because of the help his own father had given to the Montenegrin people, + fighting for their independence, by admirable weapons of Gipsy + workmanship, setting all the Gipsies in that part of the Balkans at work + to supply them. + </p> + <p> + This was the song he sang + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “He gave his soul for a thousand days, + The sun was his in the sky, + His feet were on the neck of the world + He loved his Romany chi. + + “He sold his soul for a thousand days, + By her side to walk, in her arms to lie; + His soul might burn, but her lips were his, + And the heart of his Romany chi.” + </pre> + <p> + He repeated the last two lines into a rising note of exultation: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “His soul might burn, but her lips were his, + And the heart of his Romany chi.” + </pre> + <p> + The key suddenly turned in the lock, the door opened on the last words of + the refrain, and, without hesitation, Fleda stepped inside, closing the + door behind her. + </p> + <p> + “‘Mi Duvel’, but who would think—ah, did you hear me call then?” he + asked, rising from the plank couch where he had been sitting. He showed + his teeth in a smile which was meant to be a welcome, but it had an + involuntary malice. + </p> + <p> + “I heard you singing,” she answered composedly, “but I do not come here + because I’m called.” + </p> + <p> + “But I do,” he rejoined. “You called me from over the seas, and I came. I + was in the Balkans; there was trouble—Servia, Montenegro, and + Austria were rattling the fire-irons again, and there was I as my father + was before me. But I heard you calling, and I came.” + </p> + <p> + “You never heard me call, Jethro Fawe,” she returned quietly. “My calling + of you is as silent as the singing of the stars, where you are concerned. + And the stars do not sing.” + </p> + <p> + “But the stars do sing, and you call just the same,” he responded with a + twist to his moustache, and posing against the wall. “I’ve heard the stars + sing. What’s the noise they make in the heart, if it’s not singing? You + don’t hear with the ears only. The heart hears. It’s only a manner of + speaking, this talk about the senses. One sense can do the same as all can + do and a Romany ought to know how to use one or all. When your heart + called I heard it, and across the seas I came. And by long and by last, + but I was right in coming.” + </p> + <p> + His impudence at once irritated her and provoked her admiration. She knew + by instinct how false he was, and how a lie was as common with him as the + truth; but his submission to her father, his indifference to his + imprisonment, forced her interest, even as she was humiliated by the fact + that he was sib to her, bound by ties of clan and blood apart from his + monstrous claim of marriage. He was indeed such a man as a brainless or + sensual woman could yield to with ease. He had an insinuating animal + grace, that physical handsomeness which marks so many of the Tziganies who + fill the red coats of a Gipsy musical sextette! He was not distinguished, + yet there was an intelligence in his face, a daring at his lips and chin, + which, in the discipline and conventions of organized society, would have + made him superior. Now, with all his sleek handsomeness, he looked a cross + between a splendid peasant and a chevalier of industry. + </p> + <p> + She compared him instinctively with Ingolby the Gorgio, as she looked at + him. What was it made the difference between the two? It was the world in + a man—personality, knowledge of life, the culture of the thousand + things which make up civilization: it was personality got from life and + power in contest with the ordered world. + </p> + <p> + Yet was this so after all? Tekewani was only an Indian brave who lived on + the bounty of a government, and yet he had presence and an air of command. + Tekewani had been a nomad; he had not been bound to one place, settled in + one city, held subservient to one flag. But, no, she was wrong: Tekewani + had been the servant and child of a system which was as fixed and + historical as that of Russia or Spain. He belonged to a people who had + traditions and laws of their own; organized communities moving here and + there, but carrying with them their system, their laws and their national + feeling. + </p> + <p> + There was the difference. This Romany was the child of irresponsibility, + the being that fed upon life, that did not feed life; that left one place + in the world to escape into another; that squeezed one day dry, threw it + away, and then went seeking another day to bleed; for ever fleeing from + yesterday, and using to-day only as a camping-ground. Suddenly, however, + she came to a stop in her reflections. Her father, Gabriel Druse, was of + the same race as this man, the same unorganized, irresponsible, useless + race, with no weight of civic or social duty upon its shoulders—where + did he stand? Was he no better than such as Jethro Fawe? Was he inferior + to such as Ingolby, or even Tekewani? + </p> + <p> + She realized that in her father’s face there was the look of one who had + no place in the ambitious designs of men, who was not a builder, but a + wayfarer. She had seen the look often of late, and had never read it until + now, when Jethro Fawe stared at her with the boldness of possession, with + the insolence of a soul of lust which had had its victories. + </p> + <p> + She read his look, and while one part of her shrank from him as from some + noisome thing, another part of her—to her dismay and anger—understood + him, and did not resent him. It was the Past dragging at her life. It was + inherited predisposition, the unregulated passions of her forebears, the + mating of the fields, the generated dominance of the body, which was not + to be commanded into obscurity, but must taunt and tempt her while her + soul sickened. She put a hand on herself. She must make this man realize + once and for all that they were as far apart as Adam and Cagliostro. “I + never called to you,” she said at last. “I did not know of your existence, + and, if I had, then I certainly shouldn’t have called.” + </p> + <p> + “The Gorgios have taken away your mind, or you’d understand,” he replied + coolly. “Your soul calls and those that understand come. It isn’t that you + know who hears or who is coming—till he comes.” + </p> + <p> + “A call to all creation!” she answered disdainfully. “Do you think you can + impress me by saying things like that?” + </p> + <p> + “Why not? It’s true. Wherever you went in all these years the memory of + you kept calling me, my little ‘rinkne rakli’—my pretty little girl, + made mine by the River Starzke over in the Roumelian country.” + </p> + <p> + “You heard what my father said—” + </p> + <p> + “I heard what the Duke Gabriel said—‘Mi Duvel’, I heard enough what + he said, and I felt enough what he did!” + </p> + <p> + He laughed, and began to roll a cigarette mechanically, keeping his eyes + fixed on her, however. + </p> + <p> + “You heard what my father said and what I said, and you will learn that it + is true, if you live long enough,” she added meaningly. + </p> + <p> + A look of startled perception flashed into his eyes. “If I live long + enough, I’ll turn you, my mad wife, into my Romany queen and the blessing + of my ‘tan’.” + </p> + <p> + “Don’t mistake what I mean,” she urged. “I shall never be ruler of the + Romanys. I shall never hear—” + </p> + <p> + “You’ll hear the bosh played-fiddle, they call it in these heathen places—at + your second wedding with Jethro Fawe,” he rejoined insolently, lighting + his cigarette. “Home you’ll come with me soon—‘ay bor’!” + </p> + <p> + “Listen to me,” she answered with anger tingling in every nerve and fibre. + “I come of your race, I was what you are, a child of the hedge and the + wood and the road; but that is all done. Home, you say! Home—in a + tent by the roadside or—” + </p> + <p> + “As your mother lived—where you were bornwell, well, but here’s a + Romany lass that’s forgot her cradle!” + </p> + <p> + “I have forgotten nothing. I have only moved on. I have only seen that + there is a better road to walk than that where people, always looking + behind lest they be followed, and always looking in front to find refuge, + drop the patrin in the dust or the grass or the bushes for others to + follow after—always going on and on because they dare not go back.” + </p> + <p> + Suddenly he threw his cigarette on the ground, and put his heel upon it in + fury real or assumed. “Great Heaven and Hell,” he exclaimed, “here’s a + Romany has sold her blood to the devil! And this is the daughter of + Gabriel Druse, King and Duke of all the Romanys, him with ancestor King + Panuel, Duke of Little Egypt, who had Sigismund, and Charles the Great, + and all the kings for friends. By long and by last, but this is a tale to + tell to the Romanys of the world!” For reply she went to the door and + opened it wide. “Then go and tell it, Jethro Fawe, to all the world. Tell + them I am the renegade daughter of Gabriel Druse, ruler of them all. Tell + them there is no fault in him, and that he will return to his own people + in his own time, but that I, Fleda Druse, will never return—never! + Now, get you gone from here.” + </p> + <p> + The sunlight broke through the trees, and fell in a narrow path of light + upon the doorway. A little grey bird fluttered into the radiance and came + tripping across the threshold; a whippoorwill called in the ashtrees; and + the sweet smell of the thick woodland, of the bracken and fern, crept into + the room. The balm of a perfect evening of Summer was upon the face of + nature. The world seemed untroubled and serene; but in this hidden but two + stormy spirits broke the peace to which the place and the time were all + entitled. + </p> + <p> + After Fleda’s scornful words of release and dismissal, Jethro stood for a + moment confounded and dismayed. He had not reckoned with this. During + their talk it had come to him how simple it would be to overpower any + check to his exit, how devilishly easy to put the girl at a disadvantage; + but he drove the thought from him. In the first place, he was by no means + sure that escape was what he wanted—not yet, at any rate; in the + second place, if Gabriel Druse passed the word along the subterranean + wires of the Romany world that Jethro Fawe should vanish, he would not + long cumber the ground. + </p> + <p> + Yet it was not cowardice or fear of consequences which had held him back; + it was a staggering admiration for this girl who had been given to him in + marriage so many years ago. He had fared far and wide in his adventures + and amours when he had gold in plenty; and he had swung more than one + Gorgio woman in the wild dance of sentiment, dazzling them by the + splendour of his passion. The fire gleaming in his dark eyes lighted a + face which would have made memorable a picture by Guido. He had fared far + and wide, but he had never seen a woman who had seized his imagination as + this girl was doing; who roused in him, not the old hot desire, but the + hungry will to have a ‘tan’ of his own, and go travelling down the world + with one who alone could satisfy him for all his days. + </p> + <p> + As he sat in this improvised woodland prison he had had visions of a + hundred glades and valleys through which he had passed in days gone by—in + England, in Spain, in Italy, in Roumania, in Austria, in Australia, in + India—where his camp-fires had burned. In his visions he had seen + her—Fleda Fawe, not Fleda Druse—laying the cloth and bringing + out the silver cups, or stretching the Turkey rugs upon the ground to make + a couch for two bright-eyed lovers to whom the night was as the day, + radiant and full of joy. He had shut his eyes and beheld hillsides where + abandoned castles stood, and the fox and the squirrel and the hawk gave + shade and welcome to the dusty pilgrims of the road; or, when the wild + winds blew in winter, gave shelter and wood for the fire, and a sense of + homeliness among the companionable trees. + </p> + <p> + He had seen himself and this beautiful Romany ‘chi’ at some village fair, + while the lesser Romany folk told fortunes, or bought and sold horses, and + the lesser still tinkered or worked in gold or brass; he had seen them + both in a great wagon with bright furnishings and brass-girt harness on + their horses, lording it over all, rich, dominant and admired. In his + visions he had even seen a Romany babe carried in his arms to a Christian + church and there baptized in grandeur as became the child of the head of + the people. His imagination had also seen his own tombstone in some + Christian churchyard near to the church porch, where he would not be + lonely when he was dead, but could hear the gossip of the people as they + went in and out of church; and on the tombstone some such inscription as + he had seen once at Pforzheim—“To the high-born Lord Johann, Earl of + Little Egypt, to whose soul God be gracious and merciful.” + </p> + <p> + To be sure, it was a strange thing for a Romany to be buried in a Gorgio + churchyard; but it was what had chanced to many great men of the Romanys, + such as the high-born Lord Panuel at Steinbrock, and Peter of Kleinschild + at Mantua—all of whom had great emblazoned monuments in Christian + churches, just to show that in all-levelling death they condescended from + high estate to mingle their ashes with the dust of the Gorgio. + </p> + <p> + He had sought out his chieftain here in the new world in a spirit of + adventure, cupidity and desire. He had come like one who betrays, but he + acknowledged to a higher force than his own and to superior rights when + Gabriel Druse’s strong arm brought him low; and, waking to life and + consciousness again, he was aware that another force also had levelled him + to the earth. That force was this woman’s spirit which now gave him his + freedom so scornfully; who bade him begone and tell their people + everywhere that she was no longer a Romany, while she would go, no doubt—a + thousand times without doubt unless he prevented it—to the + swaggering Gorgio who had saved her on the Sagalac. + </p> + <p> + She stood waiting for him to go, as though he could not refuse his + freedom. As a bone is tossed to a dog, she gave it to him. + </p> + <p> + “You have no right to set me free,” he said coolly now. “I am not your + prisoner. You tell me to take that word to the Romany people—that + you leave them for ever. I will not do it. You are a Romany, and a Romany + you must stay. You belong nowhere else. If you married a Gorgio, you would + still sigh for the camp beneath the stars, for the tambourine and the + dance—” + </p> + <p> + “And the fortune-telling,” she interjected sharply, “and the snail-soup, + and the dirty blanket under the hedge, and the constable on the road + behind, always just behind, watching, waiting, and—” + </p> + <p> + “The hedge is as clean as the dirty houses where the low-class Gorgios + sleep. In faith, you are a long way from the River Starzke!” he added. + “But you are my mad wife, and I must wait till you’ve got sense again.” + </p> + <p> + He sat down on the plank couch, and began to roll a cigarette once more. + </p> + <p> + “You come fitted out like a Gorgio lass now, and you look like a Gorgio + countess, and you have the manners of an Archduchess; but that’s nothing; + it will peel off like a blister when it’s pricked. Underneath is the + Romany. It’s there, and it will show red and angry when we’ve stripped off + the Gorgio. It’s the way with a woman, always acting, always imagining + herself something else than what she is—if she’s a beggar fancying + herself a princess; if she’s a princess fancying herself a flower-girl. + ‘Mi Duvel’, but I know you all!” + </p> + <p> + Every word he said went home. She knew that there was truth in what he + said, and that beneath all was the Romany blood; but she meant to conquer + it. She had made her vow to one in England that she loved, and she would + not change. Whatever happened, she had finished with Romany life, and to + go back would only mean black tragedy in the end. A month ago it was a vow + and an inner desire which made her determined; to-day it was the vow and a + man—a Gorgio whom she had but now left in the woods, gazing after + her with the look which a woman so well interprets. + </p> + <p> + “You mean you won’t go free from here? Because I was a Romany, and wish + you no harm, I have come here to-day to let you go where you will—to + go back to the place where the patrins show where your people travel. I + set you free, and you say what you think will hurt and shame me. You have + a cruel soul. You would torture any woman till she died. You shall not + torture me. You are as far from me as the River Starzke. I could have let + you stay here for my father to deal with, but I have set you free. I open + the door for you, though you are nothing to me, and I am no more to you + than one of the women you have fooled and left to eat the vile bread of + the forsaken. You have been, you are a wolf—a wolf.” + </p> + <p> + He got to his feet again, and the blood rushed to his face, so that it + seemed almost black. A torrent of mad words gathered in his throat, but + they choked him, and in the pause his will asserted itself. He became cool + and deliberate. + </p> + <p> + “You are right, my girl, I have sucked the orange and thrown the skin + away, and I’ve picked flowers and cast them by, but that was before the + first day I saw you as you now are. You were standing by the Sagalac + looking out to the west where the pack-trains were travelling into the sun + over the mountains, and you had your hand on the neck of your pony. I was + not ten feet away from you, behind a juniper-bush. I looked at you, and I + wished that I had never seen a woman before and could look at the world as + you did then—it was like water from a spring, that look. You are + right in what you say. By long and by last I had a hard hand, and when I + left what I’d struck down I never looked back. But I saw you, and I wished + I had never seen a woman before. You have been here alone with me with + that door shut. Have I said or done anything that a Gorgio duke wouldn’t + do? Ah, God’s love, but you were bold to come! I married you by the River + Starzke; I looked upon you as my wife; and here you were alone with me! I + had my rights, and I had been trampled underfoot by your father—” + </p> + <p> + “By your Chief.” + </p> + <p> + “‘Ay bor’, by my Chief! I had my wrongs, and I had my rights, and you were + mine by Romany law. It was for me here to claim you—here where a + Romany and his wife were alone together!” + </p> + <p> + His eyes were fixed searchingly on hers, as though he would read the + effect of his words before he replied, and his voice had a curious, rough + note, as though with difficulty he quelled the tempest within him. “I have + my rights, and you had spat upon me,” he said with ferocious softness. + </p> + <p> + She did not blench, but looked him steadily in the eyes. + </p> + <p> + “I knew what would be in your mind,” she answered, “but that did not keep + me from coming. You would not bite the hand that set you free.” + </p> + <p> + “You called me a wolf a minute ago.” + </p> + <p> + “But a wolf would not bite the hand that freed it from the trap. Yet if + such shame could be, I still would have had no fear, for I should have + shot you as wolves are shot that come too near the fold.” + </p> + <p> + He looked at her piercingly, and the pupils of his eyes narrowed to a + pin-point. “You would have shot me—you are armed?” he questioned. + </p> + <p> + “Am I the only woman that has armed herself against you and such as you? + Do you not see?” + </p> + <p> + “Mi Duvel, but I do see now with a thousand eyes!” he said hoarsely. + </p> + <p> + His senses were reeling. Down beneath everything had been the thought + that, as he had prevailed with other women, he could prevail with her; + that she would come to him in the end. He had felt, but he had declined to + see, the significance of her bearing, of her dress, of her speech, of her + present mode of life, of its comparative luxury, its social distinction of + a kind which lifted her above even the Gorgios by whom she was surrounded. + A fatuous belief in himself and in his personal powers had deluded him. He + had told the truth when he said that no woman had ever appealed to him as + she did; that she had blotted out all other women from the book of his + adventurous and dissolute life; and he had dreamed a dream of conquest of + her when Fortune should hand out to him the key of the situation. Did not + the beautiful Russian countess on the Volga flee from her liege lord and + share his ‘tan’? When he played his fiddle to the Austrian princess, did + she not give him a key to the garden where she walked of an evening? And + this was a Romany lass, daughter of his Chieftain, as he was son of a + great Romany chief; and what marvel could there be that she who had been + made his child wife, should be conquered as others had been! + </p> + <p> + “‘Mi Duvel’, but I see!” he repeated in a husky fierceness. “I am your + husband, but you would have killed me if I had taken a kiss from your + lips, sealed to me by all our tribes and by your father and mine.” + </p> + <p> + “My lips are my own, my life is my own, and when I marry, I shall marry a + man of my own choosing, and he will not be a Romany,” she replied with a + look of resolution which her beating heart belied. “I’m not a pedlar’s + basket.” + </p> + <p> + “‘Kek! Kek’! That’s plain,” he retorted. “But the ‘wolf’ is no lamb + either! I said I would not go till your father set me free, since you had + no right to do so, but a wife should save her husband, and her husband + should set himself free for his wife’s sake”—his voice rose in + fierce irony—“and so I will now go free. But I will not take the + word to the Romany people that you are no more of them. I am a true + Romany. I disobeyed my ‘Ry’ in coming here because my wife was here, and I + wanted her. I am a true Romany husband who will not betray his wife to her + people; but I will have my way, and no Gorgio shall take her to his home. + She belongs to my tent, and I will take her there.” + </p> + <p> + Her gesture of contempt, anger and negation infuriated him. “If I do not + take you to my ‘tan’, it will be because I’m dead,” he said, and his white + teeth showed fiercely. + </p> + <p> + “I have set you free. You had better go,” she rejoined quietly. + </p> + <p> + Suddenly he turned at the doorway. A look of passion burned in his eyes. + His voice became soft and persuasive. “I would put the past behind me, and + be true to you, my girl,” he said. “I shall be chief over all the Romany + people when Duke Gabriel dies. We are sib; give me what is mine. I am + yours—and I hold to my troth. Come, beloved, let us go together.” + </p> + <p> + A sigh broke from her lips, for she saw that, bad as he was, there was a + moment’s truth in his words. “Go while you can,” she said. “You are + nothing to me.” + </p> + <p> + For an instant he hesitated, then, with a muttered oath, sprang out into + the bracken, and was presently lost among the trees. + </p> + <p> + For a long time she sat in the doorway, and again and again her eyes + filled with tears. She felt a cloud of trouble closing in upon her. At + last there was the sound of footsteps, and a moment later Gabriel Druse + came through the trees towards her. His eyes were sullen and brooding. + </p> + <p> + “You have set him free?” he asked. + </p> + <p> + She nodded. “It was madness keeping him here,” she said. + </p> + <p> + “It is madness letting him go,” he answered morosely. “He will do harm. + ‘Ay bor’, he will! I might have known—women are chicken-hearted. I + ought to have put him out of the way, but I have no heart any more—no + heart; I have the soul of a rabbit.” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER VIII. THE SULTAN + </h2> + <p> + Ingolby’s square head jerked forwards in stern inquiry and his eyes + fastened those of Jowett, the horsedealer. “Take care what you’re saying, + Jowett,” he said. “It’s a penitentiary job, if it can be proved. Are you + sure you got it right?” + </p> + <p> + Jowett had unusual shrewdness, some vanity and a humorous tongue. He was a + favourite in both towns, and had had the better of both in horse-dealing a + score of times. + </p> + <p> + That did not make him less popular. However, it was said he liked low + company, and it was true that though he had “money in the bank,” and owned + a corner lot or so, he seemed to care little what his company was. His + most constant companion was Fabian Osterhaut, who was the common property + of both towns, doing a little of everything for a living, from + bill-posting to the solicitation of an insurance agent. + </p> + <p> + For any casual work connected with public functions Osterhaut was + indispensable, and he would serve as a doctor’s assistant and help cut off + a leg, be the majordomo for a Sunday-school picnic, or arrange a soiree at + a meeting-house with equal impartiality. He had been known to attend a + temperance meeting and a wake in the same evening. Yet no one ever + questioned his bona fides, and if he had attended mass at Manitou in the + morning, joined a heathen dance in Tekewani’s Reserve in the afternoon, + and listened to the oleaginous Rev. Reuben Tripple in the evening, it + would have been taken as a matter of course. + </p> + <p> + He was at times profane and impecunious, and he had been shifted from one + boarding-house to another till at last, having exhausted credit in + Lebanon, he had found a room in the house of old Madame Thibadeau in + Manitou. She had taken him in because, in years gone by, he had nursed her + only son through an attack of smallpox on the Siwash River, and somehow + Osterhaut had always paid his bills to her. He was curiously exact where + she was concerned. If he had not enough for his week’s board and lodging, + he borrowed it, chiefly of Jowett, who used him profitably at times to + pass the word about a horse, or bring news of a possible deal. + </p> + <p> + “It’s a penitentiary job, Jowett,” Ingolby repeated. “I didn’t think + Marchand would be so mad as that.” + </p> + <p> + “Say, it’s all straight enough, Chief,” answered Jowett, sucking his + unlighted cigar. “Osterhaut got wind of it—he’s staying at old + Mother Thibadeau’s, as you know. He moves round a lot, and he put me on to + it. I took on the job at once. I got in with the French toughs over at + Manitou, at Barbazon’s Tavern, and I gave them gin—we made it a gin + night. It struck their fancy—gin, all gin! ‘Course there’s nothing + in gin different from any other spirit; but it fixed their minds, and took + away suspicion. + </p> + <p> + “I got drunk—oh, yes, of course, blind drunk, didn’t I? Kissed me, + half a dozen of the Quebec boys did—said I was ‘bully boy’ and + ‘hell-fellow’; said I was ‘bon enfant’; and I said likewise in my best + patois. They liked that. I’ve got a pretty good stock of monkey-French, + and I let it go. They laughed till they cried at some of my mistakes, but + they weren’t no mistakes, not on your life. It was all done a-purpose. + They said I was the only man from Lebanon they wouldn’t have cut up and + boiled, and they was going to have the blood of the Lebanon lot before + they’d done. I pretended to get mad, and I talked wild. I said that + Lebanon would get them first, that Lebanon wouldn’t wait, but’d have it + out; and I took off my coat and staggered about—blind-fair blind + boozy. I tripped over some fool’s foot purposely, just beside a bench + against the wall, and I come down on that bench hard. They laughed—Lord, + how they laughed! They didn’t mind my givin’ ‘em fits—all except one + or two. That was what I expected. The one or two was mad. They begun + raging towards me, but there I was asleep on the bench-stony blind, and + then they only spit fire a bit. Some one threw my coat over me. I hadn’t + any cash in the pockets, not much—I knew better than that—and + I snored like a sow. Then it happened what I thought would happen. They + talked. And here it is. They’re going to have a strike in the mills, and + you’re to get a toss into the river. That’s to be on Friday. But the other + thing—well, they all cleared away but two. They were the two that + wanted to have it out with me. They stayed behind. There was I snoring + like a locomotive, but my ears open all right. + </p> + <p> + “Well, they give the thing away. One of ‘em had just come from Felix + Marchand and he was full of it. What was it? Why, the second night of the + strike your new bridge over the river was to be blown up. Marchand was to + give these two toughs three hundred dollars each for doing it.” + </p> + <p> + “Blown up with what?” Ingolby asked sharply. + </p> + <p> + “Dynamite.” + </p> + <p> + “Where would they get it?” + </p> + <p> + “Some left from blasting below the mills.” + </p> + <p> + “All right! Go on.” + </p> + <p> + “There wasn’t much more. Old Barbazon, the landlord, come in and they quit + talking about it; but they said enough to send ‘em to gaol for ten years.” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby blinked at Jowett reflectively, and his mouth gave a twist that + lent to his face an almost droll look. + </p> + <p> + “What good would it do if they got ten years—or one year, if the + bridge was blown up? If they got skinned alive, and if Marchand was handed + over to a barnful of hungry rats to be gnawed to death, it wouldn’t help. + I’ve heard and seen a lot of hellish things, but there’s nothing to equal + that. To blow up the bridge—for what? To spite Lebanon, and to hurt + me; to knock the spokes out of my wheel. He’s the dregs, is Marchand.” + </p> + <p> + “I guess he’s a shyster by nature, that fellow,” interposed Jowett. “He + was boilin’ hot when he was fifteen. He spoiled a girl I knew when he was + twenty-two, not fourteen she was—Lil Sarnia; and he got her away + before—well, he got her away East; and she’s in a dive in Winnipeg + now. As nice a girl—as nice a little girl she was, and could ride + any broncho that ever bucked. What she saw in him—but there, she was + only a child, just the mind of a child she had, and didn’t understand. + He’d ha’ been tarred and feathered if it’d been known. But old Mick Sarnia + said hush, for his wife’s sake, and so we hushed, and Sarnia’s wife + doesn’t know even now. I thought a lot of Lil, as much almost as if she’d + been my own; and lots o’ times, when I think of it, I sit up straight, and + the thing freezes me; and I want to get Marchand by the scruff of the + neck. I got a horse, the worst that ever was—so bad I haven’t had + the heart to ride him or sell him. He’s so bad he makes me laugh. There’s + nothing he won’t do, from biting to bolting. Well, I’d like to tie Mr. + Felix Marchand, Esquire, to his back, and let him loose on the prairie, + and pray the Lord to save him if he thought fit. I fancy I know what the + Lord would do. And Lil Sarnia’s only one. Since he come back from the + States, he’s the limit, oh, the damnedest limit. He’s a pest all round-and + now, this!” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby kept blinking reflectively as Jowett talked. He was doing two + things at once with a facility quite his own. He was understanding all + Jowett was saying, but he was also weighing the whole situation. His mind + was gone fishing, figuratively speaking. He was essentially a man of + action, but his action was the bullet of his mind; he had to be quiet + physically when he was really thinking. Then he was as one in a dream + where all physical motion was mechanical, and his body was acting + automatically. His concentration, and therefore his abstraction, was + phenomenal. Jowett’s reminiscences at a time so critical did not disturb + him—did not, indeed, seem to be irrelevant. It was as though Felix + Marchand was being passed in review before him in a series of aspects. He + nodded encouragement to Jowett to go on. + </p> + <p> + “It’s because Marchand hates you, Chief. The bump he got when you dropped + him on the ground that day at Carillon hurts still. It’s a chronic + inflammation. Closing them railway offices at Manitou, and dislodging the + officials give him his first good chance. The feud between the towns is + worse now than it’s ever been. Make no mistake. There’s a whole lot of + toughs in Manitou. Then there’s religion, and there’s race, and there’s a + want-to-stand-still and leave-me-alone-feeling. They don’t want to get on. + They don’t want progress. They want to throw the slops out of the top + windows into the street; they want their cesspools at the front door; they + think that everybody’s got to have smallpox some time or another, and the + sooner they have it the better; they want to be bribed; and they think + that if a vote’s worth having it’s worth paying for—and yet there’s + a bridge between these two towns! A bridge—why, they’re as far apart + as the Yukon and Patagonia.” + </p> + <p> + “What’d buy Felix Marchand?” Ingolby asked meditatively. “What’s his + price?” + </p> + <p> + Jowett shifted with impatience. “Say, Chief, I don’t know what you’re + thinking about. Do you think you could make a deal with Felix Marchand? + Not much. You’ve got the cinch on him. You could send him to quod, and I’d + send him there as quick as lightning. I’d hang him, if I could, for what + he done to Lil Sarnia. Years ago when he was a boy he offered me a gold + watch for a mare I had. The watch looked as right as could be—solid + fourteen-carat, he said it was. He got my horse, and I got his watch. It + wasn’t any more gold than he was. It was filled—just plated with + nine-carat gold. It was worth about ten dollars.” + </p> + <p> + “What was the mare worth?” asked Ingolby, his mouth twisting again with + quizzical meaning. + </p> + <p> + “That mare—she was all right.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, but what was the matter with her?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, a spavin—she was all right when she got wound up—go like + Dexter or Maud S.” + </p> + <p> + “But if you were buying her what would you have paid for her, Jowett? Come + now, man to man, as they say. How much did you pay for her?” + </p> + <p> + “About what she was worth, Chief, within a dollar or two.” + </p> + <p> + “And what was she worth?” + </p> + <p> + “What I paid for her-ten dollars.” + </p> + <p> + Then the two men looked at each other full in the eyes, and Jowett threw + back his head and laughed outright—laughed loud and hard. “Well, you + got me, Chief, right under the guard,” he observed. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby did not laugh outright, but there was a bubble of humour in his + eyes. “What happened to the watch?” he asked. + </p> + <p> + “I got rid of it.” + </p> + <p> + “In a horse-trade?” + </p> + <p> + “No, I got a town lot with it.” + </p> + <p> + “In Lebanon?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, sort of in Lebanon’s back-yard.” + </p> + <p> + “What’s the lot worth now?” + </p> + <p> + “About two thousand dollars!” + </p> + <p> + “Was it your first town lot?” + </p> + <p> + “The first lot of Mother Earth I ever owned.” + </p> + <p> + “Then you got a vote on it?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, my first vote.” + </p> + <p> + “And the vote let you be a town-councillor?” + </p> + <p> + “It and my good looks.” + </p> + <p> + “Indirectly, therefore, you are a landowner, a citizen, a public servant, + and an instrument of progress because of Felix Marchand. If you hadn’t had + the watch you wouldn’t have had that town lot.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, mebbe, not that lot.” + </p> + <p> + Suddenly Ingolby got to his feet and squared himself, and his face became + alight with purpose. His mind had come back from fishing, and he was ready + now for action. His plans were formed. He was in for a fight, and he had + made up his mind how, with the new information to his hand, he would + develop his campaign further. + </p> + <p> + “You didn’t make a fuss about the watch, Jowett. You might have gone to + Felix Marchand or to his father and proved him a liar, and got even that + way. You didn’t; you got a corner lot with it. That’s what I’m going to + do. I can have Felix Marchand put in the jug, and make his old father, + Hector Marchand, sick; but I like old Hector Marchand, and I think he’s + bred as bad a pup as ever was. I’m going to try and do with this business + as you did with that watch. I’m going to try and turn it to account and + profit in the end. Felix Marchand’s profiting by a mistake of mine—a + mistake in policy. It gives him his springboard; and there’s enough dry + grass in both towns to get a big blaze with a very little match. I know + that things are seething. The Chief Constable keeps me posted as to what’s + going on here, and pretty fairly as to what’s going on in Manitou. The + police in Manitou are straight enough. That’s one comfort. I’ve done Felix + Marchand there. I guess that the Chief Constable of Manitou and + Monseigneur Lourde and old Mother Thibadeau are about the only people that + Marchand can’t bribe. I see I’ve got to face a scrimmage before I can get + what I want.” + </p> + <p> + “What you want you’ll have, I bet,” was the admiring response. + </p> + <p> + “I’m going to have a good try. I want these two towns to be one. That’ll + be good for your town lots, Jowett,” he added whimsically. “If my policy + is carried out, my town lot’ll be worth a pocketful of gold-plated watches + or a stud of spavined mares.” He chuckled to himself, and his fingers + reached towards a bell on the table, but he paused. “When was it they said + the strike would begin?” he asked. + </p> + <p> + “Friday.” + </p> + <p> + “Did they say what hour?” + </p> + <p> + “Eleven in the morning.” + </p> + <p> + “Third of a day’s work and a whole day’s pay,” he mused. “Jowett,” he + added, “I want you to have faith. I’m going to do Marchand, and I’m going + to do him in a way that’ll be best in the end. You can help as much if not + more than anybody—you and Osterhaut. And if I succeed, it’ll be + worth your while.” + </p> + <p> + “I ain’t followin’ you because it’s worth while, but because I want to, + Chief.” + </p> + <p> + “I know; but a man—every man—likes the counters for the game.” + He turned to the table, opened a drawer, and took out a folded paper. He + looked it through carefully, wrote a name on it, and handed it to Jowett. + </p> + <p> + “There’s a hundred shares in the Northwest Railway, with my regards, + Jowett. Some of the counters of the game.” + </p> + <p> + Jowett handed it back at once with a shake of the head. “I don’t live in + Manitou,” he said. “I’m almost white, Chief. I’ve never made a deal with + you, and don’t want to. I’m your man for the fun of it, and because I’d + give my life to have your head on my shoulders for one year.” + </p> + <p> + “I’d feel better if you’d take the shares, Jowett. You’ve helped me, and I + can’t let you do it for nothing.” + </p> + <p> + “Then I can’t do it at all. I’m discharged.” Suddenly, however, a + humorous, eager look shot into Jowett’s face. “Will you toss for it?” he + blurted out. “Certainly, if you like,” was the reply. + </p> + <p> + “Heads I win, tails it’s yours?” + </p> + <p> + “Good.” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby took a silver dollar from his pocket, and tossed. It came down + tails. Ingolby had won. + </p> + <p> + “My corner lot against double the shares?” Jowett asked sharply, his face + flushed with eager pleasure. He was a born gambler. + </p> + <p> + “As you like,” answered Ingolby with a smile. Ingolby tossed, and they + stooped over to look at the dollar on the floor. It had come up heads. + “You win,” said Ingolby, and turning to the table, took out another + hundred shares. In a moment they were handed over. + </p> + <p> + “You’re a wonder, Jowett,” he said. “You risked a lot of money. Are you + satisfied?” + </p> + <p> + “You bet, Chief. I come by these shares honestly now.” + </p> + <p> + He picked up the silver dollar from the floor, and was about to put it in + his pocket. + </p> + <p> + “Wait—that’s my dollar,” said Ingolby. + </p> + <p> + “By gracious, so it is!” said Jowett, and handed it over reluctantly. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby pocketed it with satisfaction. + </p> + <p> + Neither dwelt on the humour of the situation. They were only concerned for + the rules of the game, and both were gamesters in their way. + </p> + <p> + After a few brief instructions to Jowett, and a message for Osterhaut + concerning a suit of workman’s clothes, Ingolby left his offices and + walked down the main street of the town with his normal rapidity, + responding cheerfully to the passers-by, but not encouraging evident + desire for talk with him. Men half-started forward to him, but he held + them back with a restraining eye. They knew his ways. He was responsive in + a brusque, inquisitive, but good-humoured and sometimes very droll way; + but there were times when men said to themselves that he was to be left + alone; and he was so much master of the place that, as Osterhaut and + Jowett frequently remarked, “What he says goes!” It went even with those + whom he had passed in the race of power. + </p> + <p> + He had had his struggles to be understood in his first days in Lebanon. He + had fought intrigue and even treachery, had defeated groups which were the + forces at work before he came to Lebanon, and had compelled the submission + of others. All these had vowed to “get back at him,” but when it became a + question of Lebanon against Manitou they swung over to his side and + acknowledged him as leader. The physical collision between the rougher + elements of the two towns had brought matters to a head, and nearly every + man in Lebanon felt that his honour was at stake, and was ready “to have + it out with Manitou.” + </p> + <p> + As he walked along the main street after his interview with Jowett, his + eyes wandered over the buildings rising everywhere; and his mind reviewed + as in a picture the same thinly inhabited street five years ago when he + first came. Now farmers’ wagons clacked and rumbled through the prairie + dust, small herds of cattle jerked and shuffled their way to the + slaughter-yard, or out to the open prairie, and caravans of settlers with + their effects moved sturdily forward to the trails which led to a new life + beckoning from three points of the compass. That point which did not + beckon was behind them. Flaxen-haired Swedes and Norwegians; square-jawed, + round-headed North Germans; square-shouldered, loose-jointed Russians with + heavy contemplative eyes and long hair, looked curiously at each other and + nodded understandingly. Jostling them all, with a jeer and an oblique joke + here and there, and crude chaff on each other and everybody, the settler + from the United States asserted himself. He invariably obtruded himself, + with quizzical inquiry, half contempt and half respect, on the young + Englishman, who gazed round with phlegm upon his fellow adventurers, and + made up to the sandy-faced Scot or the cheerful Irishman with his hat on + the back of his head, who showed in the throng here and there. This was + one of the days when the emigrant and settlers’ trains arrived both from + the East and from “the States,” and Front Street in Lebanon had, from + early morning, been alive with the children of hope and adventure. + </p> + <p> + With hands plunged deep in the capacious pockets of his grey jacket, + Ingolby walked on, seeing everything; yet with his mind occupied intently, + too, on the trouble which must be faced before Lebanon and Manitou would + be the reciprocating engines of his policy. Coming to a spot where a great + gap of vacant land showed in the street-land which he had bought for the + new offices of his railway combine—he stood and looked at it + abstractedly. Beyond it, a few blocks away, was the Sagalac, and beyond + the Sagalac was Manitou, and a little way to the right was the bridge + which was the symbol of his policy. His eyes gazed almost unconsciously on + the people and the horses and wagons coming and going upon the bridge. + Then they were lifted to the tall chimneys rising at two or three points + on the outskirts of Manitou. + </p> + <p> + “They don’t know a good thing when they get it,” he said to himself. “A + strike—why, wages are double what they are in Quebec, where most of + ‘em come from! Marchand—” + </p> + <p> + A hand touched his arm. “Have you got a minute to spare, kind sir?” a + voice asked. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby turned and saw Nathan Rockwell, the doctor. “Ah, Rockwell,” he + responded cheerfully, “two minutes and a half, if you like! What is it?” + </p> + <p> + The Boss Doctor, as he was familiarly called by every one, to identify him + from the newer importations of medical men, drew from his pocket a + newspaper. + </p> + <p> + “There’s an infernal lie here about me,” he replied. “They say that I—” + </p> + <p> + He proceeded to explain the misstatement, as Ingolby studied the paper + carefully, for Rockwell was a man worth any amount of friendship. + </p> + <p> + “It’s a lie, of course,” Ingolby said firmly as he finished the paragraph. + “Well?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I’ve got to deal with it.” + </p> + <p> + “You mean you’re going to deny it in the papers?” + </p> + <p> + “Exactly.” + </p> + <p> + “I wouldn’t, Rockwell.” + </p> + <p> + “You wouldn’t?” + </p> + <p> + “No. You never can really overtake a newspaper lie. Lots of the people who + read the lie don’t see the denial. Your truth doesn’t overtake the lie—it’s + a scarlet runner.” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t see that. When you’re lied about, when a lie like that—” + </p> + <p> + “You can’t overtake it, Boss. It’s no use. It’s sensational, it runs too + fast. Truth’s slow-footed. When a newspaper tells a lie about you, don’t + try to overtake it, tell another.” + </p> + <p> + He blinked with quizzical good-humour. Rockwell could not resist the + audacity. “I don’t believe you’d do it just the same,” he retorted + decisively, and laughing. + </p> + <p> + “I don’t try the overtaking anyhow; I get something spectacular in my own + favour to counteract the newspaper lie.” + </p> + <p> + “In what way?” + </p> + <p> + “For instance, if they said I couldn’t ride a moke at a village + steeplechase, I’d at once publish the fact that, with a jack-knife, I’d + killed two pumas that were after me. Both things would be lies, but the + one would neutralize the other. If I said I could ride a moke, nobody + would see it, and if it were seen it wouldn’t make any impression; but to + say I killed two mountain-lions with a jack-knife on the edge of a + precipice, with the sun standing still to look at it, is as good as the + original lie and better; and I score. My reputation increases.” + </p> + <p> + Nathan Rockwell’s equilibrium was restored. “You’re certainly a wonder,” + he declared. “That’s why you’ve succeeded.” + </p> + <p> + “Have I succeeded?” + </p> + <p> + “Thirty-three-and what you are!” + </p> + <p> + “What am I?” + </p> + <p> + “Pretty well master here.” + </p> + <p> + “Rockwell, that’d do me a lot of harm if it was published. Don’t say it + again. This is a democratic country. They’d kick at my being called master + of anything, and I’d have to tell a lie to counteract it.” + </p> + <p> + “But it’s the truth, and it hasn’t to be overtaken.” + </p> + <p> + A grim look came into Ingolby’s face. “I’d like to be master-boss of life + and death, holder of the sword and balances, the Sultan, here just for one + week. I’d change some things. I’d gag some people that are doing terrible + harm. It’s a real bad business. The scratch-your-face period is over, and + we’re in the cut-your-throat epoch.” + </p> + <p> + Rockwell nodded assent, opened the paper again, and pointed to a column. + “I expect you haven’t seen that. To my mind, in the present state of + things, it’s dynamite.” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby read the column hastily. It was the report of a sermon delivered + the evening before by the Rev. Reuben Tripple, the evangelical minister of + Lebanon. It was a paean of the Scriptures accompanied by a crazy charge + that the Roman Church forbade the reading of the Bible. It had a tirade + also about the Scarlet Woman and Popish idolatry. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby made a savage gesture. “The insatiable Christian beast!” he + growled in anger. “There’s no telling what this may do. You know what + those fellows are over in Manitou. The place is full of them going to the + woods, besides the toughs at the mills and in the taverns. They’re not + psalm-singing, and they don’t keep the Ten Commandments, but they’re + savagely fanatical, and—” + </p> + <p> + “And there’s the funeral of an Orangeman tomorrow. The Orange Lodge + attends in regalia.” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby started and looked at the paper again. “The sneaking, praying + liar,” he said, his jaw setting grimly. “This thing’s a call to riot. + There’s an element in Lebanon as well that’d rather fight than eat. It’s + the kind of lie that—” + </p> + <p> + “That you can’t overtake,” said the Boss Doctor appositely; “and I don’t + know that even you can tell another that’ll neutralize it. Your + prescription won’t work here.” + </p> + <p> + An acknowledging smile played at Ingolby’s mouth. “We’ve got to have a + try. We’ve got to draw off the bull with a red rag somehow.” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t see how myself. That Orange funeral will bring a row on to us. I + can just see the toughs at Manitou when they read this stuff, and know + about that funeral.” + </p> + <p> + “It’s announced?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, here’s an invitation in the Budget to Orangemen to attend the + funeral of a brother sometime of the banks of the Boyne!” + </p> + <p> + “Who’s the Master of the Lodge?” asked Ingolby. Rockwell told him, urging + at the same time that he see the Chief Constable as well, and Monseigneur + Lourde at Manitou. + </p> + <p> + “That’s exactly what I mean to do—with a number of other things. + Between ourselves, Rockwell, I’d have plenty of lint and bandages ready + for emergencies if I were you.” + </p> + <p> + “I’ll see to it. That collision the other day was serious enough, and it’s + gradually becoming a vendetta. Last night one of the Lebanon champions + lost his nose.” + </p> + <p> + “His nose—how?” + </p> + <p> + “A French river-driver bit a third of it off.” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby made a gesture of disgust. “And this is the twentieth century!” + </p> + <p> + They had moved along the street until they reached a barber-shop, from + which proceeded the sound of a violin. “I’m going in here,” Ingolby said. + “I’ve got some business with Berry, the barber. You’ll keep me posted as + to anything important?” + </p> + <p> + “You don’t need to say it. Shall I see the Master of the Orange Lodge or + the Chief Constable for you?” Ingolby thought for a minute. “No, I’ll + tackle them myself, but you get in touch with Monseigneur Lourde. He’s + grasped the situation, and though he’d like to have Tripple boiled in oil, + he doesn’t want broken heads and bloodshed.” + </p> + <p> + “And Tripple?” + </p> + <p> + “I’ll deal with him at once. I’ve got a hold on him. I never wanted to use + it, but I will now without compunction. I have the means in my pocket. + They’ve been there for three days, waiting for the chance.” + </p> + <p> + “It doesn’t look like war, does it?” said Rockwell, looking up the street + and out towards the prairie where the day bloomed like a flower. Blue + above—a deep, joyous blue, against which a white cloud rested or + slowly travelled westward; a sky down whose vast cerulean bowl flocks of + wild geese sailed, white and grey and black, while the woods across the + Sagalac were glowing with a hundred colours, giving tender magnificence to + the scene. The busy eagerness of a pioneer life was still a quiet, orderly + thing, so immense was the theatre for effort and movement. In these wide + streets, almost as wide as a London square, there was room to move; + nothing seemed huddled, pushing, or inconvenient. Even the disorder of + building lost its ugly crudity in the space and the sunlight. + </p> + <p> + “The only time I get frightened in life is when things look like that,” + Ingolby answered. “I go round with a life-preserver on me when it seems as + if ‘all’s right with the world.’” + </p> + <p> + The violin inside the barber-shop kept scraping out its cheap music—a + coon-song of the day. + </p> + <p> + “Old Berry hasn’t much business this morning,” remarked Rockwell. “He’s in + keeping with this surface peace.” + </p> + <p> + “Old Berry never misses anything. What we’re thinking, he’s thinking. I go + fishing when I’m in trouble; Berry plays his fiddle. He’s a philosopher + and a friend.” + </p> + <p> + “You don’t make friends as other people do.” + </p> + <p> + “I make friends of all kinds. I don’t know why, but I’ve always had a kind + of kinship with the roughs, the no-accounts, and the rogues.” + </p> + <p> + “As well as the others—I hope I don’t intrude!” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby laughed. “You? Oh, I wish all the others were like you. It’s the + highly respectable members of the community I’ve always had to watch.” + </p> + <p> + The fiddle-song came squeaking out upon the sunny atmosphere. It arrested + the attention of a man on the other side of the street—a stranger in + strange Lebanon. He wore a suit of Western clothes as a military man wears + mufti, if not awkwardly, yet with a manner not wholly natural—the + coat too tight across the chest, too short in the body. However, the man + was handsome and unusual in his leopard way, with his brown curling hair + and well-cared-for moustache. It was Jethro Fawe. + </p> + <p> + Attracted by the sound of the violin, he stayed his steps and smiled + scornfully. Then his look fell on the two figures at the door of the + barber-shop, and his eyes flashed. + </p> + <p> + Here was the man he wished to see—Max Ingolby, the man who stood + between him and his Romany lass. Here was a chance of speaking face to + face with the man who was robbing him. What he should do when they met + must be according to circumstances. That did not matter. There was the + impulse storming in his brain, and it drove him across the street as the + Boss Doctor walked away, and Ingolby entered the shop. All Jethro realized + was that the man who stood in his way, the big, rich, masterful Gorgio was + there. + </p> + <p> + He entered the shop after Ingolby, and stood for an instant unseen. The + old negro barber with his curly white head, slave-black face, and large, + shrewd, meditative eyes was standing in a corner with a violin under his + chin, his cheek lovingly resting against it, as he drew his bow through + the last bars of the melody. He had smiled in welcome as Ingolby entered, + instantly rising from his stool, but continuing to play. He would not have + stopped in the middle of a tune for an emperor, and he put Ingolby higher + than an emperor. For one who had been born a slave, and had still the + scars of the overseer’s whip on his back, he was very independent. He cut + everybody’s hair as he wanted to cut it, trimmed each beard as he wished + to trim it, regardless of its owner’s wishes. If there was dissent, then + his customer need not come again, that was all. There were other barbers + in the place, but Berry was the master barber. To have your head massaged + by him was never to be forgotten, especially if you found your hat too + small for your head in the morning. Also he singed the hair with a skill + and care, which had filled many a thinly covered scalp with luxuriant + growth, and his hair-tonic, known as “Smilax,” gave a pleasant odour to + every meeting-house or church or public hall where the people gathered. + Berry was an institution even in this new Western town. He kept his place + and he forced the white man, whoever he was, to keep his place. + </p> + <p> + When he saw Jethro Fawe enter the shop he did not stop playing, but his + eyes searched the newcomer. Following his glance, Ingolby turned round and + saw the Romany. His first impression was one of admiration, but suspicion + was quickly added. He was a good judge of men, and there was something + secluded about the man which repelled him. Yet he was interested. The dark + face had a striking racial peculiarity. + </p> + <p> + The music died away, and old Berry lowered the fiddle from his chin and + gave his attention to the Romany. + </p> + <p> + “Yeth-’ir?” he said questioningly. + </p> + <p> + For an instant Jethro was confused. When he entered the shop he had not + made up his mind what he should do. It had been mere impulse and the fever + of his brain. As old Berry spoke, however, his course opened out. + </p> + <p> + “I heard. I am a stranger. My fiddle is not here. My fingers itch for the + cat-gut. Eh?” + </p> + <p> + The look in old Berry’s face softened a little. His instinct had been + against his visitor, and he had been prepared to send him to another + shop-besides, not every day could he talk to the greatest man in the West. + </p> + <p> + “If you can play, there it is,” he said after a slight pause, and handed + the fiddle over. + </p> + <p> + It was true that Jethro Fawe loved the fiddle. He had played it in many + lands. Twice, in order to get inside the palace of a monarch for a purpose—once + in Berlin and once in London—he had played the second violin in a + Tzigany orchestra. He turned the fiddle slowly round, looking at it with + mechanical intentness. Through the passion of emotion the sure sense of + the musician was burning. His fingers smoothed the oval brown breast of + the instrument with affection. His eyes found joy in the colour of the + wood, which had all the graded, merging tints of Autumn leaves. + </p> + <p> + “It is old—and strange,” he said, his eyes going from Berry to + Ingolby and back again with a veiled look, as though he had drawn down + blinds before his inmost thoughts. “It was not made by a professional.” + </p> + <p> + “It was made in the cotton-field by a slave,” observed old Berry sharply, + yet with a content which overrode antipathy to his visitor. + </p> + <p> + Jethro put the fiddle to his chin, and drew the bow twice or thrice + sweepingly across the strings. Such a sound had never come from Berry’s + violin before. It was the touch of a born musician who certainly had + skill, but who had infinitely more of musical passion. + </p> + <p> + “Made by a slave in the cotton-fields!” Jethro said with a veiled look, + and as though he was thinking of something else: “‘Dordi’, I’d like to + meet a slave like that!” + </p> + <p> + At the Romany exclamation Ingolby swept the man with a searching look. He + had heard the Romany wife of Ruliff Zaphe use the word many years ago when + he and Charley Long visited the big white house on the hill. Was the man a + Romany, and, if so, what was he doing here? Had it anything to do with + Gabriel Druse and his daughter? But no—what was there strange in the + man being a Romany and playing the fiddle? Here and there in the West + during the last two years, he had seen what he took to be Romany faces. He + looked to see the effect of the stranger’s remark on old Berry. + </p> + <p> + “I was a slave, and I was like that. My father made that fiddle in the + cotton-fields of Georgia,” the aged barber said. + </p> + <p> + The son of a race which for centuries had never known country or flag or + any habitat, whose freedom was the soul of its existence, if it had a + soul; a freedom defying all the usual laws of social order—the son + of that race looked at the negro barber with something akin to awe. Here + was a man who had lived a life which was the staring antithesis of his + own, under the whip as a boy, confined to compounds; whose vision was + constricted to the limits of an estate; who was at the will of one man, to + be sold and trafficked with like a barrel of herrings, to be worked at + another’s will—and at no price! This was beyond the understanding of + Jethro Fawe. But awe has the outward look of respect, and old Berry who + had his own form of vanity, saw that he had had a rare effect on the + fellow, who evidently knew all about fiddles. Certainly that was a + wonderful sound he had produced from his own cotton-field fiddle. + </p> + <p> + In the pause Ingolby said to Jethro Fawe, “Play something, won’t you? I’ve + got business here with Mr. Berry, but five minutes of good music won’t + matter. We’d like to hear him play—wouldn’t we, Berry?” + </p> + <p> + The old man nodded assent. “There’s plenty of music in the thing,” he + said, “and a lot could come out in five minutes, if the right man played + it.” + </p> + <p> + His words were almost like a challenge, and it reached to Jethro’s + innermost nature. He would show this Gorgio robber what a Romany could do, + and do as easily as the birds sing. The Gorgio was a money-master, they + said, but he would find that a Romany was a master, too, in his own way. + He thought of one of the first pieces he had ever heard, a rhapsody which + had grown and grown, since it was first improvised by a Tzigany in + Hungary. He had once played it to an English lady at the Amphitryon Club + in London, and she had swooned in the arms of her husband’s best friend. + He had seen men and women avert their heads when he had played it, daring + not to look into each other’s eyes. He would play it now—a little of + it. He would play it to her—to the girl who had set him free in the + Sagalac woods, to the ravishing deserter from her people, to the only + woman who had told him the truth in all his life, and who insulated his + magnetism as a ground-wire insulates lightning. He would summon her here + by his imagination, and tell her to note how his soul had caught the music + of the spheres. He would surround himself with an atmosphere of his own. + His rage, his love, and his malignant hate, his tenderness and his lust + should fill the barber’s shop with a flood which would drown the Gorgio + raider. He laughed to himself, almost unconsciously. Then suddenly he + leaned his cheek to the instrument and drew the bow across the strings + with a savage softness. The old cottonfield fiddle cried out with a + thrilling, exquisite pain, but muffled, as a hand at the lips turns agony + into a tender moan. Some one—some spirit—in the fiddle was + calling for its own. + </p> + <p> + Five minutes later-a five minutes in which people gathered at the door of + the shop, and heads were thrust inside in ravished wonder—the + palpitating Romany lowered the fiddle from his chin, and stood for a + minute looking into space, as though he saw a vision. + </p> + <p> + He was roused by old Berry’s voice. “Das a fiddle I wouldn’t sell for a + t’ousand dollars. If I could play like dat I wouldn’t sell it for ten + t’ousand. You kin play a fiddle to make it worth a lot—you.” + </p> + <p> + The Romany handed back the instrument. “It’s got something inside it that + makes it better than it is. It’s not a good fiddle, but it has something—ah, + man alive, it has something!” It was as though he was talking to himself. + </p> + <p> + Berry made a quick, eager gesture. “It’s got the cotton-fields and the + slave days in it. It’s got the whip and the stocks in it; it’s got the cry + of the old man that’d never see his children ag’in. That’s what the + fiddle’s got in it.” + </p> + <p> + Suddenly, in an apparent outburst of anger, he swept down on the front + door and drove the gathering crowd away. + </p> + <p> + “Dis is a barber-shop,” he said with an angry wave of his hand; “it ain’t + a circuse.” + </p> + <p> + One man protested. “I want a shave,” he said. He tried to come inside, but + was driven back. + </p> + <p> + “I ain’t got a razor that’d cut the bristle off your face,” the old barber + declared peremptorily; “and, if I had, it wouldn’t be busy on you. I got + two customers, and that’s all I’m going to take befo’ I have my dinner. So + you git away. There ain’t goin’ to be no more music.” + </p> + <p> + The crowd drew off, for none of them cared to offend this autocrat of the + shears and razor. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby had listened to the music with a sense of being swayed by a wind + which blew from all quarters of the compass at once. He loved music; it + acted as a clearing-house to his mind; and he played the piano himself + with the enthusiasm of a wilful amateur, who took liberties with every + piece he essayed. There was something in this fellow’s playing which the + great masters, such as Paganini, must have had. As the music ceased, he + did not speak, but remained leaning against the great red-plush barber’s + chair looking reflectively at the Romany. Berry, however, said to the + still absorbed musician: “Where did you learn to play?” + </p> + <p> + The Romany started, and a flush crossed his face. “Everywhere,” he + answered sullenly. + </p> + <p> + “You’ve got the thing Sarasate had,” Ingolby observed. “I only heard him + play but once—in London years ago: but there’s the same something in + it. I bought a fiddle of Sarasate. I’ve got it now.” + </p> + <p> + “Here in Lebanon?” The eyes of the Romany were burning. An idea had just + come into his brain. Was it through his fiddling that he was going to find + a way to deal with this Gorgio, who had come between him and his own? + </p> + <p> + “Only a week ago it came,” Ingolby replied. “They actually charged me + Customs duty on it. I’d seen it advertised, and I made an offer and got it + at last.” + </p> + <p> + “You have it here—at your house here?” asked old Berry in surprise. + </p> + <p> + “It’s the only place I’ve got. Did you think I’d put it in a museum? I + can’t play it, but there it is for any one that can play. How would you + like to try it?” he added to Jethro in a friendly tone. “I’d give a good + deal to see it under your chin for an hour. Anyhow, I’d like to show it to + you. Will you come?” + </p> + <p> + It was like him to bring matters to a head so quickly. + </p> + <p> + The Romany’s eyes glistened. “To play the Sarasate alone to you?” he + asked. + </p> + <p> + “That’s it-at nine o’clock to-night, if you can.” + </p> + <p> + “I will come—yes, I will come,” Jethro answered, the lids drooping + over his eyes in which were the shadows of the first murder of the created + world. + </p> + <p> + “Here is my address, then.” Ingolby wrote something on his visiting-card. + “My man’ll let you in, if you show that. Well, good-bye.” + </p> + <p> + The Romany took the card, and turned to leave. He had been dismissed by + the swaggering Gorgio, as though he was a servant, and he had not even + been asked his name, of so little account was he! He could come and play + on the Sarasate to the masterful Gorgio at the hour which the masterful + Gorgio fixed—think of that! He could be—a servant to the + pleasure of the man who was stealing from him the wife sealed to him in + the Roumelian country. But perhaps it was all for the best—yes, he + would make it all for the best! As he left the shop, however, and passed + down the street his mind remained in the barber-shop. He saw in + imagination the masterful Gorgio in the red-plush chair, and the negro + barber bending over him, with black fingers holding the Gorgio’s chin, and + an open razor in the right hand lightly grasped. A flash of malicious + desire came into his eyes as the vision shaped itself in his imagination, + and he saw himself, instead of the negro barber, holding the Gorgio chin + and looking down at the Gorgio throat with the razor, not lightly, but + firmly grasped in his right hand. How was it that more throats were not + cut in that way? How was it that while the scissors passed through the + beard of a man’s face the points did not suddenly slip up and stab the + light from helpless eyes? How was it that men did not use their chances? + He went lightly down the street, absorbed in a vision which was not like + the reality; but it was evidence that his visit to Max Ingolby’s house was + not the visit of a virtuoso alone, but of an evil spirit. + </p> + <p> + As the Romany disappeared, Max Ingolby had his hand on the old barber’s + shoulder. “I want one of the wigs you made for that theatrical performance + of the Mounted Police, Berry,” he said. “Never mind what it’s for. I want + it at once—one with the long hair of a French-Canadian + coureur-de-bois. Have you got one?” + </p> + <p> + “Suh, I’ll send it round-no, I’ll bring it round as I come from dinner. + Want the clothes, too?” + </p> + <p> + “No. I’m arranging for them with Osterhaut. I’ve sent word by Jowett.” + </p> + <p> + “You want me to know what it’s for?” + </p> + <p> + “You can know anything I know—almost, Berry. You’re a friend of the + right sort, and I can trust you.” + </p> + <p> + “Yeth-’ir, I bin some use to you, onct or twict, I guess.” + </p> + <p> + “You’ll have a chance to be of use more than ever presently.” + </p> + <p> + “Suh, there’s gain’ to be a bust-up, but I know who’s comin’ out on the + top. That Felix Marchand and his roughs can’t down you. I hear and see a + lot, and there’s two or three things I was goin’ to put befo’ you; + yeth-’ir.” + </p> + <p> + He unloaded his secret information to his friend, and was rewarded by + Ingolby suddenly shaking his hand warmly. + </p> + <p> + “That’s the line,” Ingolby said decisively. “When do you go over to + Manitou again to cut old Hector Marchand’s hair? Soon?” + </p> + <p> + “To-day is his day—this evening,” was the reply. + </p> + <p> + “Good. You wanted to know what the wig and the habitant’s clothes are for, + Berry—well, for me to wear in Manitou. In disguise I’m going there + tonight among them all, among the roughs and toughs. I want to find out + things for myself. I can speak French as good as most of ‘em, and I can + chew tobacco and swear with the best.” + </p> + <p> + “You suhly are a wonder,” said the old man admiringly. “How you fin’ the + time I got no idee.” + </p> + <p> + “Everything in its place, Berry, and everything in its time. I’ve got a + lot to do to-day, but it’s in hand, and I don’t have to fuss. You’ll not + forget the wig—you’ll bring it round yourself?” + </p> + <p> + “Suh. No snoopin’ into the parcel then. But if you go to Manitou to-night, + how can you have that fiddler?” + </p> + <p> + “He comes at nine o’clock. I’ll go to Manitou later. Everything in its own + time.” + </p> + <p> + He was about to leave the shop when some one came bustling in. Berry was + between Ingolby and the door, and for an instant he did not see who it + was. Presently he heard an unctuous voice: “Ah, good day, good day, Mr. + Berry. I want to have my hair cut, if you please,” it said. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby smiled. The luck was with him to-day so far. The voice belonged to + the Rev. Reuben Tripple, and he would be saved a journey to the manse. + Accidental meetings were better than planned interviews. Old Berry’s + grizzled beard was bristling with repugnance, and he was about to refuse + Mr. Tripple the hospitality of the shears when Ingolby said: “You won’t + mind my having a word with Mr. Tripple first, will you, Berry? May we use + your back parlour?” + </p> + <p> + A significant look from Ingolby’s eyes gave Berry his cue. + </p> + <p> + “Suh, Mr. Ingolby. I’m proud.” He opened the door of another room. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Tripple had not seen Ingolby when he entered, and he recognized him + now with a little shock of surprise. There was no reason why he should not + care to meet the Master Man, but he always had an uncanny feeling when his + eye met that of Ingolby. His apprehension had no foundation in any + knowledge, yet he had felt that Ingolby had no love for him, and this + disturbed the egregious vanity of a narrow nature. His slouching, + corpulent figure made an effort to resist the gesture with which Ingolby + drew him to the door, but his will succumbed, and he shuffled importantly + into the other room. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby shut the door quietly behind him, and motioned the minister to a + chair beside the table. Tripple sank down, mechanically smiling, placed + his hat on the floor, and rested his hands on the table. Ingolby could not + help but notice how coarse the hands were—with fingers suddenly + ending as though they had been cut off, and puffy, yellowish skin that + suggested fat foods, or worse. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby came to grips at once. “You preached a sermon last night which no + doubt was meant to do good, but will only do harm,” he said abruptly. + </p> + <p> + The flabby minister flushed, and then made an effort to hold his own. + </p> + <p> + “I speak as I am moved,” he said, puffing out his lips. “You spoke on this + occasion before you were moved—just a little while before,” answered + Ingolby grimly. “The speaking was last night, the moving comes today.” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t get your meaning,” was the thick rejoinder. The man had a feeling + that there was some real danger ahead. + </p> + <p> + “You preached a sermon last night which might bring riot and bloodshed + between these two towns, though you knew the mess that’s brewing.” + </p> + <p> + “My conscience is my own. I am responsible to my Lord for words which I + speak in His name, not to you.” + </p> + <p> + “Your conscience belongs to yourself, but your acts belong to all of us. + If there is trouble at the Orange funeral to-morrow it will be your fault. + The blame will lie at your door.” + </p> + <p> + “The sword of the Spirit—” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, you want the sword, do you? You want the sword, eh?” Ingolby’s jaw + was set now like a millstone. “Well, you can have it, and have it now. If + you had taken what I said in the right way, I would not have done what I’m + going to do. I’m going to send you out of Lebanon. You’re a bad and + dangerous element here. You must go.” + </p> + <p> + “Who are you to tell me I must go?” + </p> + <p> + The fat hands quivered on the table with anger and emotion, but also with + fear of something. “You may be a rich man and own railways, but—” + </p> + <p> + “But I am not rich and I don’t own railways. Lately bad feeling has been + growing on the Sagalac, and only a spark was needed to fire the ricks. You + struck the spark in your sermon last night. I don’t see the end of it all. + One thing is sure—you’re not going to take the funeral service + to-morrow.” + </p> + <p> + The slack red lips of the man of God were gone dry with excitement, the + loose body swayed with the struggle to fight it out. + </p> + <p> + “I’ll take no orders from you,” the husky voice protested. “My conscience + alone will guide me. I’ll speak the truth as I feel it, and the people + will stand by me.” + </p> + <p> + “In that case you WILL take orders from me. I’m going to save the town + from what hurts it, if I can. I’ve got no legal rights over you, but I + have moral rights, and I mean to enforce them. You gabble of conscience + and truth, but isn’t it a new passion with you—conscience and + truth?” + </p> + <p> + He leaned over the table and fastened the minister’s eyes with his own. + “Had you the same love of conscience and truth at Radley?” + </p> + <p> + A whiteness passed over the flabby face, and the beady eyes took on a + glazed look. Fight suddenly died out of them. + </p> + <p> + “You went on a missionary tour on the Ottawa River. At Radley you toiled + and rested from your toil—and feasted. The girl had no father or + brother, but her uncle was a railway-man. He heard where you were, and he + hired with my company to come out here as a foreman. He came to drop on + you. The day after he came he had a bad accident. I went to see him. He + told me all; his nerves were unstrung, you observe. He meant to ruin you, + as you ruined the girl. He had proofs enough. The girl herself is in + Winnipeg. Well, I know life, and I know man and man’s follies and + temptations. I thought it a pity that a career and a life like yours + should be ruined—” + </p> + <p> + A groan broke from the twitching lips before him, and a heavy sweat stood + out on the round, rolling forehead. + </p> + <p> + “If the man spoke, I knew it would be all up with you, for the world is + very hard on men of God who fall. I’ve seen men ruined before this, + because of an hour’s passion and folly. I said to myself that you were + only human, and that maybe you had paid heavy in remorse and fear. Then + there was the honour of the town of Lebanon. I couldn’t let the thing take + its course. I got the doctor to tell the man that he must go for special + treatment to a hospital in Montreal, and I—well, I bought him off on + his promising to keep his mouth shut. He was a bit stiff in terms, because + he said the girl needed the money. The child died, luckily for you. Anyhow + I bought him off, and he went. That was a year ago. I’ve got all the + proofs in my pocket, even to the three silly letters you wrote her when + your senses were stronger than your judgment. I was going to see you about + them to-day.” + </p> + <p> + He took from his pocket a small packet, and held them before the other’s + face. “Have a good look at your own handwriting, and see if you recognize + it,” Ingolby continued. + </p> + <p> + But the glazed, shocked eyes did not see. Reuben Tripple had passed the + several stages of horror during Ingolby’s merciless arraignment, and he + had nearly collapsed before he heard the end of the matter. When he knew + that Ingolby had saved him, his strength gave way, and he trembled + violently. Ingolby looked round and saw a jug of water. Pouring out a + glassful, he thrust it into the fat, wrinkled fingers. + </p> + <p> + “Drink and pull yourself together,” he said sternly. The shaken figure + straightened itself, and the water was gulped down. “I thank you,” he said + in a husky voice. + </p> + <p> + “You see I treated you fairly, and that you’ve been a fool?” Ingolby asked + with no lessened determination. + </p> + <p> + “I have tried to atone, and—” + </p> + <p> + “No, you haven’t had the right spirit to atone. You were fat with vanity + and self-conceit. I’ve watched you.” + </p> + <p> + “In future I will—” + </p> + <p> + “Well, that rests with yourself, but your health is bad, and you’re not + going to take the funeral tomorrow. You’ve had a sudden breakdown, and + you’re going to get a call from some church in the East—as far East + as Yokohama or Bagdad, I hope; and leave here in a few weeks. You + understand? I’ve thought the thing out, and you’ve got to go. You’ll do no + good to yourself or others here. Take my advice, and wherever you go, walk + six miles a day at least, work in a garden, eat half as much as you do, + and be good to your wife. It’s bad enough for any woman to be a parson’s + wife, but to be a parson’s wife and your wife, too, wants a lot of + fortitude.” + </p> + <p> + The heavy figure lurched to the upright, and steadied itself with a force + which had not yet been apparent. + </p> + <p> + “I’ll do my best—so help me God!” he said and looked Ingolby + squarely in the face for the first time. + </p> + <p> + “All right, see you keep your word,” Ingolby replied, and nodded good-bye. + </p> + <p> + The other went to the door, and laid a hand on the knob. + </p> + <p> + Suddenly Ingolby stopped him, and thrust a little bundle of bills into his + hand. “There’s a hundred dollars for your wife. It’ll pay the expense of + moving,” he said. + </p> + <p> + A look of wonder, revelation and gratitude crept into Tripple’s face. “I + will keep my word, so help me God!” he said again. + </p> + <p> + “All right, good-bye,” responded Ingolby abruptly, and turned away. + </p> + <p> + A moment afterwards the door closed behind the Rev. Reuben Tripple and his + influence in Lebanon. “I couldn’t shake hands with him,” said Ingolby to + himself, “but I’m glad he didn’t sniffle. There’s some stuff in him—if + it only has a chance.” + </p> + <p> + “I’ve done a good piece of business, Berry,” he said cheerfully as he + passed through the barber-shop. “Suh, if you say so,” said the barber, and + they left the shop together. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER IX. MATTER AND MIND AND TWO MEN + </h2> + <p> + Promptly at nine o’clock Jethro Fawe knocked at Ingolby’s door, and was + admitted by the mulatto man-servant Jim Beadle, who was to Ingolby like + his right hand. It was Jim who took command of his house, “bossed” his two + female servants, arranged his railway tours, superintended his kitchen—with + a view to his own individual tastes; valeted him, kept his cigars within a + certain prescribed limit by a firm actuarial principle which transferred + any surplus to his own use; gave him good advice, weighed up his friends + and his enemies with shrewd sense; and protected him from bores and + cranks, borrowers and “dead-beats.” + </p> + <p> + Jim was accustomed to take a good deal of responsibility, and had more + than once sent people to the right-about who had designs on his master, + even though they came accredited. On such occasions he did not lie to + protect himself when called to account, but told the truth pertinaciously. + He was obstinate in his vanity, and carried off his mistakes with aplomb. + When asked by Ingolby what he called the Governor General when he took His + Excellency over the new railway in Ingolby’s private car, he said, “I + called him what everybody called him. I called him ‘Succelency.’” And + “Succelency” for ever after the Governor General was called in the West. + Jim’s phonetic mouthful gave the West a roar of laughter and a new word to + the language. On another occasion Jim gave the West a new phrase to its + vocabulary which remains to this day. Having to take the wife of a high + personage of the neighbouring Republic over the line in the private car, + he had astounded his master by presenting a bill for finger-bowls before + the journey began. Ingolby said to him, “Jim, what the devil is this—finger-bowls + in my private car? We’ve never had finger-bowls before, and we’ve had + everybody as was anybody to travel with us.” Jim’s reply was final. “Say,” + he replied, “we got to have ‘em. Soon’s I set my eyes on that lady I said: + ‘She’s a finger-bowl lady.’” + </p> + <p> + “‘Finger-bowl lady’ be hanged, Jim, we don’t—” Ingolby protested, + but Jim waved him down. + </p> + <p> + “Say,” he said decisively, “she’ll ask for them finger-bowls—she’ll + ask for ‘em, and what’d I do if we hadn’t got ‘em.” + </p> + <p> + She did ask for them; and henceforth the West said of any woman who put on + airs and wanted what she wasn’t born to: “She’s a finger-bowl lady.” + </p> + <p> + It was Jim who opened the door to Jethro Fawe, and his first glance was + one of prejudice. His quick perception saw that the Romany wore clothes + not natural to him. He felt the artificial element, the quality of + disguise. He was prepared to turn the visitor away, no matter what he + wanted, but Ingolby’s card handed to him by the Romany made him pause. He + had never known his master give a card like that more than once or twice + in the years they had been together. He fingered the card, scrutinized it + carefully, turned it over, looked heavenward reflectively, as though the + final permission for the visit remained with him, and finally admitted the + visitor. + </p> + <p> + “Mr. Ingolby ain’t in,” he said. “He went out a little while back. You got + to wait,” he added sulkily, as he showed the Romany into Ingolby’s + working-room. + </p> + <p> + As Jim did so, he saw lying on a chair a suit of clothes on top of which + were a wig and false beard and moustache. Instantly he got between the + visitor and the make-up. The parcel was closed when he was in the room a + half-hour before. Ingolby had opened it since, had been called out, and + had forgotten to cover the things up or put them away. + </p> + <p> + “Sit down,” Jim said to the Romany, still covering the disguise. Then he + raised them in his arms, and passed with them into another room, muttering + angrily to himself. + </p> + <p> + The Romany had seen, however. They were the first things on which his eyes + had fallen when he entered the room. A wig, a false beard, and workman’s + clothes! What were they for? Were these disguises for the Master Gorgio? + Was he to wear them? If so, he—Jethro Fawe—would watch and + follow him wherever he went. Had these disguises to do with Fleda—with + his Romany lass? + </p> + <p> + His pulses throbbed; he was in an overwrought mood. He was ready for any + illusion, susceptible to any vagary of the imagination. + </p> + <p> + He looked round the room. So this was the way the swaggering, masterful + Gorgio lived? + </p> + <p> + Here were pictures and engravings which did not seem to belong to a new + town in a new land, where everything was useful or spectacular. Here was a + sense of culture and refinement. Here were finished and unfinished + water-colours done by Ingolby’s own hand or bought by him from some + hard-up artist earning his way mile by mile, as it were. Here were books, + not many, but well-bound and important-looking, covering fields in which + Jethro Fawe had never browsed, into which, indeed, he had never entered. + If he had opened them he would have seen a profusion of marginal notes in + pencil, and slips of paper stuck in the pages to mark important passages. + </p> + <p> + He turned from them to the welcome array of weapons on the walls-rifles, + shotguns, Indian bows, arrows and spears, daggers, and great sheath-knives + such as are used from the Yukon to Bolivia, and a sabre with a faded + ribbon of silk tied to the handle. This was all that Max Ingolby had + inherited from his father—that artillery sabre which he had worn in + the Crimea and in the Indian Mutiny. Jethro’s eyes wandered eagerly over + the weapons, and, in imagination, he had each one in his hand. From the + pained, angry confusion he felt when he looked at the books had emerged a + feeling of fanaticism, of feud and war, in which his spirit regained its + own kind of self-respect. In looking at the weapons he was as good a man + as any Gorgio. Brains and books were one thing, but the strong arm, the + quick eye, and the deft lunge home with the sword or dagger were better; + they were of a man’s own skill, not the acquired skill of another’s brains + which books give. He straightened his shoulders till he looked like a + modern actor playing the hero in a romantic drama, and with quick vain + motions he stroked and twisted his brown moustache, and ran his fingers + through his curling hair. In truth he was no coward; and his conceit would + not lessen his courage when the test of it came. + </p> + <p> + As his eyes brightened from gloom and sullenness to valiant enmity, they + suddenly fell on a table in a corner where lay a black coffin-shaped thing + of wood. In this case, he knew, was the Sarasate violin. Sarasate—once + he had paid ten lira to hear Sarasate play the fiddle in Turin, and the + memory of it was like the sun on the clouds to him now. In music such of + him as was real found a home. It fed everything in him—his passion, + his vanity; his vagabond taste, his emotions, his self-indulgence, his + lust. It was the means whereby he raised himself to adventure and to + pilgrimage, to love and license and loot and spying and secret service + here and there in the east of Europe. It was the flagellation of these + senses which excited him to do all that man may do and more. + </p> + <p> + He was going to play to the masterful Gorgio, and he would play as he had + never played before. He would pour the soul of his purpose into the music—to + win back or steal back, the lass sealed to him by the Starzke River. + </p> + <p> + “Kismet!” he said aloud, and he rose from the chair to go to the violin, + but as he did so the door opened and Ingolby entered. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, you’re here, and longing to get at it,” he said pleasantly. + </p> + <p> + He had seen the look in the eyes of the Romany as he entered, and noted + which way his footsteps were tending. “Well, we needn’t lose any time, but + will you have a drink and a smoke first?” he added. + </p> + <p> + He threw his hat in a corner, and opened a spirittable where shone a half + dozen cut-glass, tumblers and several well-filled bottles, while boxes of + cigars and cigarettes flanked them. It was the height of modern luxury + imported from New York, and Jethro eyed it with envious inward comment. + The Gorgio had the world on his key-chain! Every door would open to him—that + was written on his face—unless Fate stepped in and closed all doors! + </p> + <p> + The door of Fleda’s heart had already been opened, but he had not yet made + his bed in it, and there was still time to help Fate, if her mystic finger + beckoned. + </p> + <p> + Jethro nodded in response to Ingolby’s invitation to drink. “But I do not + drink much when I play,” he remarked. “There’s enough liquor in the head + when the fiddle’s in the hand. ‘Dadia’, I do not need the spirit to make + the pulses go!” + </p> + <p> + “As little as you like then, if you’ll only play as well as you did this + afternoon,” Ingolby said cheerily. “I will play better,” was the reply. + </p> + <p> + “On Sarasate’s violin—well, of course.” + </p> + <p> + “Not only because it is Sarasate’s violin, ‘Kowadji’!” + </p> + <p> + “Kowadji! Oh, come now, you may be a Gipsy, but that doesn’t mean that + you’re an Egyptian or an Arab. Why Arabic—why ‘kowadji’?” + </p> + <p> + The other shrugged his shoulders. “Who can tell I speak many languages. I + do not like the Mister. It is ugly in the ear. Monsieur, signor, effendi, + kowadji, they have some respect in them.” + </p> + <p> + “You wanted to pay me respect, eh?” + </p> + <p> + “You have Sarasate’s violin!” + </p> + <p> + “I have a lot of things I could do without.” + </p> + <p> + “Could you do without the Sarasate?” + </p> + <p> + “Long enough to hear you play it, Mr.—what is your name, may I ask?” + </p> + <p> + “My name is Jethro Fawe.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, Jethro Fawe, my Romany ‘chal’, you shall show me what a violin can + do.” + </p> + <p> + “You know the Romany lingo?” Jethro asked, as Ingolby went over to the + violin-case. + </p> + <p> + “A little—just a little.” + </p> + <p> + “When did you learn it?” There was a sudden savage rage in Jethro’s heart, + for he imagined Fleda had taught Ingolby. + </p> + <p> + “Many a year ago when I could learn anything and remember anything and + forget anything.” Ingolby sighed. “But that doesn’t matter, for I know + only a dozen words or so, and they won’t carry me far.” + </p> + <p> + He turned the violin over in his hands. “This ought to do a bit more than + the cotton-field fiddle,” he said dryly. + </p> + <p> + He snapped the strings, looking at it with the love of the natural + connoisseur. “Finish your drink and your cigarette. I can wait,” he added + graciously. “If you like the cigarettes, you must take some away with you. + You don’t drink much, that’s clear, therefore you must smoke. Every man + has some vice or other, if it’s only hanging on to virtue too tight.” + </p> + <p> + He laughed eagerly. Strange that he should have a feeling of greater + companionship for a vagabond like this than for most people he met. Was it + some temperamental thing in him? “Dago,” as he called the Romany inwardly, + there was still a bond between them. They understood the glory of a little + instrument like this, and could forget the world in the light on a great + picture. There was something in the air they breathed which gave them + easier understanding of each other and of the world. + </p> + <p> + Suddenly with a toss Jethro drained the glass of spirit, though he had not + meant to do so. He puffed the cigarette an instant longer, then threw it + on the floor, and was about to put his foot on it, when Ingolby stopped + him. + </p> + <p> + “I’m a slave,” he said. “I’ve got a master. It’s Jim. Jim’s a hard master, + too. He’d give me fits if we ground our cigarette ashes into the carpet.” + </p> + <p> + He threw the refuse into a flower-pot. + </p> + <p> + “That squares Jim. Now let’s turn the world inside out,” he proceeded. He + handed the fiddle over. “Here’s the little thing that’ll let you do the + trick. Isn’t it a beauty, Jethro Fawe?” + </p> + <p> + The Romany took it, his eyes glistening with mingled feelings. Hatred was + in his soul, and it showed in the sidelong glance as Ingolby turned to + place a chair where he could hear and see comfortably; yet he had the + musician’s love of the perfect instrument, and the woods and the streams + and the sounds of night and the whisperings of trees and the ghosts that + walked in lonely places and called across the glens—all were pouring + into his brain memories which made his pulses move far quicker than the + liquor he had drunk could do. + </p> + <p> + “What do you wish?” he asked as he tuned the fiddle. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby laughed good-humouredly. “Something Eastern; something you’d play + for yourself if you were out by the Caspian Sea. Something that has life + in it.” + </p> + <p> + Jethro continued to tune the fiddle carefully and abstractedly. His eyes + were half-closed, giving them a sulky look, and his head was averted. He + made no reply to Ingolby, but his head swayed from side to side in that + sensuous state produced by self-hypnotism, so common among the + half-Eastern races. By an effort of the will they send through the nerves + a flood of feeling which is half-anaesthetic, half-intoxicant. Carried + into its fullest expression it drives a man amok or makes of him a howling + dervish, a fanatic, or a Shakir. In lesser intensity it produces the + musician of the purely sensuous order, or the dancer that performs + prodigies of abandoned grace. Suddenly the sensuous exaltation had come + upon Jethro Fawe. It was as though he had discharged into his system from + some cells of his brain a flood which coursed like a stream of soft fire. + </p> + <p> + In the pleasurable pain of such a mood he drew his bow across the strings + with a sweeping stroke, and then, for an instant, he ran hither and + thither on the strings testing the quality and finding the range and + capacity of the instrument. It was a scamper of hieroglyphics which could + only mean anything to a musician. + </p> + <p> + “Well, what do you think of him?” Ingolby asked as the Romany lowered the + bow. “Paganini—Joachim—Sarasate—any one, it is good + enough,” was the half-abstracted reply. + </p> + <p> + “It is good enough for you—almost, eh?” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby meant his question as a compliment, but an evil look shot into the + Romany’s face, and the bow twitched in his hand. He was not Paganini or + Sarasate, but that was no reason why he should be insulted. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby’s quick perception saw, however, what his words had done, and he + hastened to add: “I believe you can get more out of that fiddle than + Sarasate ever could, in your own sort of music anyhow. I’ve never heard + any one play half so well the kind of piece you played this afternoon. I’m + glad I didn’t make a fool of myself buying the fiddle. I didn’t, did I? I + gave five thousand dollars for it.” + </p> + <p> + “It’s worth anything to the man that loves it,” was the Romany’s response. + He was mollified by the praise he had received. + </p> + <p> + He raised the fiddle slowly to his chin, his eyes wandering round the + room, then projecting themselves into space, from which they only returned + to fix themselves on Ingolby with the veiled look which sees but does not + see—such a look as an oracle, or a death-god, or a soulless monster + of some between-world, half-Pagan god would wear. Just such a look as + Watts’s “Minotaur” wears in the Tate Gallery in London. + </p> + <p> + In an instant he was away in a world which was as far off from this world + as Jupiter is from Mars. It was the world of his soul’s origin—a + place of beautiful and yet of noisome creations also; of white mountains + and green hills, and yet of tarns in which crawled evil things; a place of + vagrant, hurricanes and tidal-waves and cloud-bursts, of forests alive + with quarrelling! and affrighted beasts. It was a place where birds sang + divinely, yet where obscene fowls of prey hovered in the blue or waited by + the dying denizens of the desert or the plain; where dark-eyed women + heard, with sidelong triumph, the whispers of passion; where sweet-faced + children fled in fear from terrors undefined; where harpies and + witch-women and evil souls waited in ambush; or scurried through the + coverts where men brought things to die; or where they fled for futile + refuge from armed foes. It was a world of unbridled will, this, where the + soul of Jethro Fawe had its origin; and to it his senses fled + involuntarily when he put Sarasate’s fiddle to his chin this Autumn + evening. + </p> + <p> + From that well of the First Things—the first things of his own life, + the fount from which his forebears drew, backwards through the centuries, + Jethro Fawe quickly drank his fill; and then into the violin he poured his + own story—no improvisation, but musical legends and classic + fantasies and folk-breathings and histories of anguished or joyous haters + or lovers of life; treated by the impressionist who made that which had + been in other scenes to other men the thing of the present and for the men + who are. That which had happened by the Starzke River was now of the + Sagalac River. The passions and wild love and irresponsible deeds of the + life he had lived in years gone by were here. + </p> + <p> + It was impossible for Ingolby to resist the spell of the music. Such + abandonment he had never seen in any musician, such riot of musical + meaning he had never heard. He was conscious of the savagery and the + bestial soul of vengeance which spoke through the music, and drowned the + joy and radiance and almost ghostly and grotesque frivolity of the earlier + passages; but it had no personal meaning to him, though at times it seemed + when the Romany came near and bent over him with the ecstatic attack of + the music, as though there was a look in the black eyes like that of a man + who kills. It had, of course, nothing to do with him; it was the + abandonment of a highly emotional nature, he thought. + </p> + <p> + It was only after he had been playing, practically without ceasing, for + three-quarters of an hour, that there came to Ingolby the true + interpretation of the Romany mutterings through the man’s white, wolf-like + teeth. He did not shrink, however, but kept his head and watched. + </p> + <p> + Once, as the musician flung his body round in a sweep of passion, Ingolby + saw the black eyes flash to the weapons on the wall with a malign look + which did not belong to the music alone, and he took a swift estimate of + the situation. Why the man should have any intentions against him, he + could not guess, except that he might be one of the madmen who have a + vendetta against the capitalist. Or was he a tool of Felix Marchand? It + did not seem possible, and yet if the man was penniless and an anarchist + maybe, there was the possibility. Or—the blood rushed to his face—or + it might be that the Gipsy’s presence here, this display of devilish + antipathy, as though it were all part of the music, was due, somehow, to + Fleda Druse. + </p> + <p> + The music swelled to a swirling storm, crashed and flooded the feelings + with a sense of shipwreck and chaos, through which a voice seemed to + cry-the quiver and delicate shrillness of one isolated string—and + then fell a sudden silence, as though the end of all things had come; and + on the silence the trembling and attenuated note which had quivered on the + lonely string, rising, rising, piercing the infinite distance and sinking + into silence again. + </p> + <p> + In the pause which followed the Romany stood panting, his eyes fixed on + Ingolby with an evil exaltation which made him seem taller and bigger than + he was, but gave him, too, a look of debauchery like that on the face of a + satyr. Generations of unbridled emotion, of license of the fields and the + covert showed in his unguarded features. + </p> + <p> + “What did the single cry—the motif—express?” Ingolby asked + coolly. “I know there was catastrophe, the tumblings of avalanches, but + the voice that cried-the soul of a lover, was it?” + </p> + <p> + The Romany’s lips showed an ugly grimace. “It was the soul of one that + betrayed a lover, going to eternal tortures.” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby laughed carelessly. “It was a fine bit of work. Sarasate would + have been proud of his fiddle if he could have heard. Anyhow he couldn’t + have played that. Is it Gipsy music?” + </p> + <p> + “It is the music of a ‘Gipsy,’ as you call it.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, it’s worth a year’s work to hear,” Ingolby replied admiringly, yet + acutely conscious of danger. “Are you a musician by trade?” he asked. + </p> + <p> + “I have no trade.” The glowing eyes kept scanning the wall where the + weapons hung, and as though without purpose other than to get a pipe from + the rack on the wall, Ingolby moved to where he could be prepared for any + rush. It seemed absurd that there should be such a possibility; but the + world was full of strange things. + </p> + <p> + “What brought you to the West?” he asked as he filled a pipe, his back + almost against the wall. + </p> + <p> + “I came to get what belonged to me.” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby laughed ironically. “Most of us are here for that purpose. We + think the world owes us such a lot.” + </p> + <p> + “I know what is my own.” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby lit his pipe, his eyes reflectively scanning the other. + </p> + <p> + “Have you got it again out here—your own?” + </p> + <p> + “Not yet, but I will.” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby took out his watch, and looked at it. “I haven’t found it easy + getting all that belongs to me.” + </p> + <p> + “You have found it easier getting what belongs to some one else,” was the + snarling response. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby’s jaw hardened. What did the fellow mean? Did he refer to money, + or—was it Fleda Druse? “See here,” he said, “there’s no need to say + things like that. I never took anything that didn’t belong to me, that I + didn’t win, or earn or pay for—market price or ‘founder’s shares’”—he + smiled grimly. “You’ve given me the best treat I’ve had in many a day. I’d + walk fifty miles to hear you play my Sarasate—or even old Berry’s + cotton-field fiddle. I’m as grateful as I can be, and I’d like to pay you + for it; but as you’re not a professional, and it’s one gentleman to + another as it were, I can only thank you—or maybe help you to get + what’s your own, if you’re really trying to get it out here. Meanwhile, + have a cigar and a drink.” + </p> + <p> + He was still between the Romany and the wall, and by a movement forward + sought to turn Jethro to the spirit-table. Probably this manoeuvring was + all nonsense, that he was wholly misreading the man; but he had always + trusted his instincts, and he would not let his reason rule him entirely + in such a situation. He could also ring the bell for Jim, or call to him, + for while he was in the house Jim was sure to be near by; but he felt he + must deal with the business alone. + </p> + <p> + The Romany did not move towards the spirit-table, and Ingolby became + increasingly vigilant. + </p> + <p> + “No, I can’t pay you anything, that’s clear,” he said; “but to get your + own—I’ve got some influence out here—what can I do? A stranger + is up against all kinds of things if he isn’t a native, and you’re not. + Your home and country’s a good way from here, eh?” + </p> + <p> + Suddenly the Romany faced him. “Yes. I come from places far from here. + Where is the Romany’s home? It is everywhere in the world, but it is + everywhere inside his tent. Because his country is everywhere and nowhere, + his home is more to him than it is to any other. He is alone with his + wife, and with his own people. Yes, and by long and by last, he will make + the man pay who spoils his home. It is all he has. Good or bad, it is all + he has. It is his own.” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby had a strange, disturbing premonition that he was about to hear + what would startle him, but he persisted. “You said you had come here to + get your own—is your home here?” + </p> + <p> + For a moment the Romany did not answer. He had worked himself into a great + passion. He had hypnotized himself, he had acted for a while as though he + was one of life’s realities; but suddenly there passed through his veins + the chilling sense of the unreal, that he was only acting a part, as he + had ever done in his life, and that the man before him could, with a wave + of the hand, raise the curtain on all his disguises and pretences. It was + only for an instant, however, for there swept through him the feeling that + Fleda had roused in him—the first real passion, the first true love—if + what such as he felt can be love—that he had ever known; and he saw + her again as she was in the but in the wood defying him, ready to defend + herself against him. All his erotic anger and melodramatic fervour were + alive in him once more. + </p> + <p> + He was again a man with a wrong, a lover dispossessed. On the instant his + veins filled with passionate blood. The Roscian strain in him had its own + tragic force and reality. + </p> + <p> + “My home is where my own is, and you, have taken my own from me, as I + said,” he burst out. “There was all the world for you, but I had only my + music and my wife, and you have taken my wife from me. ‘Mi Duvel’, you + have taken, but you shall give back again, or there will be only one of us + in the world! The music I have played for you—that has told you all: + the thing that was music from the beginning of Time, the will of the First + of All. Fleda Druse, she was mine, she is my wife, and you, the Gorgio, + come between, and she will not return to me.” + </p> + <p> + A sudden savage desire came to Ingolby to strike the man in the face—this + Gipsy vagabond the husband of Fleda Druse! It was too monstrous. It was an + evil lie, and yet she had said she was a Romany, and had said it with + apparent shame or anxiety. She had given him no promise, had pledged no + faith, had admitted no love, and yet already in his heart of hearts he + thought upon her as his own. Ever since the day he had held her in his + arms at the Carillon Rapids her voice had sounded in his ears, and a + warmth was in his heart which had never been there in all his days. This + waif of barbarism even to talk of Fleda Druse as though he was of the same + sphere as herself invited punishment-but to claim her as his wife! It was + shameless. An ugly mood came on him, the force that had made him what he + was filled all his senses. He straightened himself; contempt of the + Ishmael showed at his lips. + </p> + <p> + “I think you lie, Jethro Fawe,” he said quietly, and his eyes were hard + and piercing. “Gabriel Druse’s daughter is not—never was—any + wife of yours. She never called you husband. She does not belong to the + refuse of the world.” + </p> + <p> + The Romany made a sudden rush towards the wall where the weapons hung, but + two arms of iron were flung out and caught him, and he was hurled across + the room. He crashed against a table, swayed, missed a chair where rested + the Sarasate violin, then fell to the floor; but he staggered to his feet + again, all his senses in chaos. + </p> + <p> + “You almost fell on the fiddle. If you had hurt it I’d have hurt you, Mr. + Fawe,” Ingolby said with a grim smile. “That fiddle’s got too much in it + to waste it.” + </p> + <p> + “Mi Duvel! Mi Duvel!” gasped the Romany in his fury. + </p> + <p> + “You can say that as much as you like, but if you play any more of your + monkey tricks here, my Paganini, I will wring your neck,” Ingolby + returned, his six feet of solid flesh making a movement of menace. + </p> + <p> + “And look,” he added, “since you are here, and I said what I meant, that + I’d help you to get your own, I’ll keep my word. But don’t talk in damned + riddles. Talk white men’s language. You said that Gabriel Druse’s daughter + was your wife. Explain what you meant, and no nonsense.” + </p> + <p> + The Romany made a gesture of acquiescence. “She was made mine according to + Romany law by the River Starzke seventeen years ago. I was the son of + Lemuel Fawe, rightful King of all the Romanys. Gabriel Druse seized the + headship, and my father gave him three thousand pounds that we should + marry, she and I, and so bring the headship to the Fawes again when + Gabriel Druse should die; and so it was done by the River Starzke in the + Roumelian country.” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby winced, for the man’s words rang true. A cloud came over his face, + but he said nothing. Jethro saw the momentary advantage. “You did not + know?” he asked. “She did not tell you she was made my wife those years + ago? She did not tell you she was the daughter of the Romany King? So it + is, you see, she is afraid to tell the truth.” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby’s knitted bulk heaved with desire to injure. “Your wife—you + melodious sinner! Do you think such tomfoolery has any effect in this + civilized country? She is about as much your wife as I am your brother. + Don’t talk your heathenish rot here. I said I’d help you to get your own, + because you played the fiddle as few men can play it, and I owe you a lot + for that hour’s music; but there’s nothing belonging to Gabriel Druse that + belongs to you, and his daughter least of all. Look out—don’t sit on + the fiddle, damn you!” + </p> + <p> + The Romany had made a motion as if to sit down on the chair where the + fiddle was, but stopped short at Ingolby’s warning. For an instant Jethro + had an inclination to seize the fiddle and break it across his knees. It + would be an exquisite thing to destroy five thousand dollars’ worth of + this man’s property at a single wrench and blow. But the spirit of the + musician asserted itself before the vengeful lover could carry out his + purpose; as Ingolby felt sure it would. Ingolby had purposely given the + warning about the fiddle, in the belief that it might break the unwelcome + intensity of the scene. He detested melodrama, and the scene came precious + near to it. Men had been killed before his eyes more than once, but there + had been no rodomontade even when there had been a woman in the case. + </p> + <p> + This Romany lover, however, seemed anxious to make a Sicilian drama out of + his preposterous claim, and it sickened him. Who was the fellow that he + should appear in the guise of a rival to himself! It was humiliating and + offensive. Ingolby had his own kind of pride and vanity, and they were + both hurt now. He would have been less irritable if this rival had been as + good a man as himself or better. He was so much a gamester that he would + have said, “Let the best man win,” and have taken his chances. + </p> + <p> + His involuntary strategy triumphed for the moment. The Romany looked at + the fiddle for an instant with murderous eyes, but the cool, quiet voice + of Ingolby again speaking sprayed his hot virulence. + </p> + <p> + “You can make a good musician quite often, but a good fiddle is a + prize-packet from the skies,” Ingolby said. “When you get a good musician + and a good fiddle together it’s a day for a salute of a hundred guns.” + </p> + <p> + Half-dazed with unregulated emotion, Jethro acted with indecision for a + moment, and the fiddle was safe. But he had suffered the indignity of + being flung like a bag of bones across the room, and the microbe of insane + revenge was in him. It was not to be killed by the cold humour of the man + who had worsted him. He returned to the attack. + </p> + <p> + “She is mine, and her father knows it is so. I have waited all these + years, and the hour has come. I will—” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby’s eyes became hard and merciless again. “Don’t talk your Gipsy + rhetoric. I’ve had enough. No hour has come that makes a woman do what she + doesn’t want to do in a free country. The lady is free to do what she + pleases here within British law, and British law takes no heed of Romany + law or any other law. You’ll do well to go back to your Roumelian country + or whatever it is. The lady will marry whom she likes.” + </p> + <p> + “She will never marry you,” the Romany said huskily and menacingly. + </p> + <p> + “I have never asked her, but if I do, and she said yes, no one could + prevent it.” + </p> + <p> + “I would prevent it.” + </p> + <p> + “How?” + </p> + <p> + “She is a Romany: she belongs to the Romany people; I will find a way.” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby had a flash of intuition. + </p> + <p> + “You know well that if Gabriel Druse passed the word, your life wouldn’t + be worth a day’s purchase. The Camorra would not be more certain or more + deadly. If you do anything to hurt the daughter of Gabriel Druse, you will + pay the full price, and you know it. The Romanys don’t love you better + than their rightful chief.” + </p> + <p> + “I am their rightful chief.” + </p> + <p> + “Maybe, but if they don’t say so, too, you might as well be their rightful + slave. You are a genius in your way. Take my advice and return to the + trail of the Gipsy. Or, there’s many an orchestra would give you a good + salary as leader. You’ve got no standing in this country. You can’t do + anything to hurt me except try to kill me, and I’ll take my chance of + that. You’d better have a drink now and go quietly home to bed. Try and + understand that this is a British town, and we don’t settle our affairs by + jumping from a violin rhapsody to a knife or a gun.” He jerked his head + backwards towards the wall. “Those things are for ornament, not for use. + Come, Fawe, have a drink and go home like a good citizen for one night + only.” + </p> + <p> + The Romany hesitated, then shook his head and muttered chaotically. + </p> + <p> + “Very well,” was the decisive reply. Ingolby pressed a bell, and, in an + instant, Jim Beadle was in the room. He had evidently been at the keyhole. + “Jim,” he said, “show the gentleman out.” + </p> + <p> + But suddenly he caught up a box of cigars from the table and thrust it + into the Romany’s hands. “They’re the best to be got this side of Havana,” + he said cheerily. “They’ll help you put more fancy still into your + playing. Good night. You never played better than you’ve done during the + last hour, I’ll stake my life on that. Good night. Show Mr. Fawe out, + Jim.” + </p> + <p> + The Romany had not time to thrust back the cigars upon his host, and dazed + by the strategy of the thing, by the superior force and mind of the man + who a moment ago he would have killed, he took the box and turned towards + the door, taking his hat dazedly from Jim. + </p> + <p> + At the door, however, catching sight of the sly grin on the mulatto + servant’s face, his rage and understanding returned to him, and he faced + the masterful Gorgio once again. + </p> + <p> + “By God, I’ll have none of it!” he exclaimed roughly and threw the box of + cigars on the floor of the room. Ingolby was not perturbed. “Don’t forget + there’s an east-bound train every day,” he said menacingly, and turned his + back as the door closed. + </p> + <p> + In another minute Jim entered the room. “Get the clothes and the wig and + things, Jim. I must be off,” he said. + </p> + <p> + “The toughs don’t get going till about this time over at Manitou,” + responded Jim. Then he told his master about the clothes having been + exposed in the room when the Romany arrived. “But I don’t think he seen + them,” Jim added with approval of his own conduct. “I got ‘em out quick as + lightning. I covered ‘em like a blanket.” + </p> + <p> + “All right, Jim; it doesn’t matter. That fellow’s got other things to + think of than that.” + </p> + <p> + He was wrong, however. The Romany was waiting outside in the darkness not + far away—watching and waiting. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER X. FOR LUCK + </h2> + <p> + Felix Marchand was in the highest spirits. His clean-shaven face was + wrinkled with smiles and sneers. His black hair was flung in waves of + triumph over his heavily-lined forehead; one hand was on his hip with + brave satisfaction, the other with lighted cigarette was tossed upwards in + exultation. + </p> + <p> + “I’ve got him. I’ve got him—like that!” he said transferring the + cigarette to his mouth, and clenching his right hand as though it could + not be loosed by an earthquake. “For sure, it’s a thing finished as the + solder of a pannikin—like that.” + </p> + <p> + He caught up a tin quart-pot from the bar-counter and showed the soldered + bottom of it. + </p> + <p> + He was alone in the bar of Barbazon’s Hotel except for one person—the + youngest of the officials who had been retired from the offices of the + railways when Ingolby had merged them. This was a man who had got his + position originally by nepotism, and represented the worst elements of a + national life where the spoils system is rooted in the popular mind. He + had, however, a little residue of that discipline which, working in a + great industrial organization, begets qualms as to extreme courses. + </p> + <p> + He looked reflectively at the leaden pot and said in reply: “I’d never + believe in anything where that Ingolby is concerned till I had it in the + palm of my hand. He’s as deep as a well, and when he’s quietest it’s good + to look out. He takes a lot of skinning, that badger.” + </p> + <p> + “He’s skinned this time all right,” was Marchand’s reply. “To-morrow’ll be + the biggest day Manitou’s had since the Indian lifted his wigwam and the + white man put down his store. Listen—hear them! They’re coming!” + </p> + <p> + He raised a hand for silence, and a rumbling, ragged roar of voices could + be heard without. + </p> + <p> + “The crowd have gone the rounds,” he continued. “They started at + Barbazon’s and they’re winding up at Barbazon’s. They’re drunk enough + to-night to want to do anything, and to-morrow when they’ve got sore heads + they’ll do anything. They’ll make that funeral look like a squeezed + orange; they’ll show Lebanon and Master Ingolby that we’re to be bosses of + our own show. The strike’ll be on after the funeral, and after the + strike’s begun there’ll be—eh, bien sur!” + </p> + <p> + He paused sharply, as though he had gone too far. “There’ll be what?” + whispered the other; but Marchand made no reply, save to make a warning + gesture, for Barbazon, the landlord, had entered behind the bar. + </p> + <p> + “They’re coming back, Barbazon,” Marchand said to the landlord, jerking + his head towards the front door. The noise of the crowd was increasing, + the raucous shouts were so loud that the three had to raise their voices. + “You’ll do a land-office business to-night,” he declared. + </p> + <p> + Barbazon had an evil face. There were rumours that he had been in gaol in + Quebec for robbery, and that after he had served his time he had dug up + the money he had stolen and come West. He had started the first saloon at + Manitou, and had grown with the place in more senses than one. He was + heavy and thick-set, with huge shoulders, big hands, and beady eyes that + looked out of a stolid face where long hours, greed and vices other than + drink had left their mark. He never drank spirits, and was therefore ready + to take advantage of those who did drink. More than one horse and canoe + and cow and ox, and acre of land, in the days when land was cheap, had + come to him across the bar-counter. He could be bought, could Barbazon, + and he sold more than wine and spirits. He had a wife who had left him + twice because of his misdemeanours, but had returned and straightened out + his house and affairs once again; and even when she went off with Lick + Baldwin, a cattle-dealer, she was welcomed back without reproaches by + Barbazon, chiefly because he had no morals, and her abilities were of more + value to him than her virtue. On the whole, Gros Barbazon was a bad lot. + </p> + <p> + At Marchand’s words Barbazon shrugged his shoulders. “The more spent + to-night, the less to spend to-morrow,” he growled. + </p> + <p> + “But there’s going to be spending for a long time,” Marchand answered. + “There’s going to be a riot to-morrow, and there’s going to be a strike + the next day, and after that there’s going to be something else.” + </p> + <p> + “What else?” Barbazon asked, his beady eyes fastened on Marchand’s face. + </p> + <p> + “Something worth while-better than all the rest.” Barbazon’s low forehead + seemed to disappear almost, as he drew the grizzled shock of hair down, by + wrinkling his forehead with a heavy frown. + </p> + <p> + “It’s no damn good, m’sieu’,” he growled. “Am I a fool? They’ll spend + money to-night, and tomorrow, and the next day, and when the row is on; + and the more they spend then, the less they’ll have to spend by-and-by. + It’s no good. The steady trade for me—all the time. That is my idee. + And the something else—what? You think there’s something else + that’ll be good for me? Nom de Dieu, there’s nothing you’re doing, or mean + to do, but’ll hurt me and everybody.” + </p> + <p> + “That’s your view, is it, Barbazon?” exclaimed Marchand loudly, for the + crowd was now almost at the door. “You’re a nice Frenchman and patriot. + That crowd’ll be glad to hear you think they’re fools. Suppose they took + it into their heads to wreck the place?” + </p> + <p> + Barbazon’s muddy face got paler, but his eyes sharpened, and he leaned + over the bar-counter, and said with a snarl: “Go to hell, and say what you + like; and then I’ll have something to say about something else, m’sieu’.” + </p> + <p> + Marchand was about to reply angrily, but he instantly changed his mind, + and before Barbazon could stop him, he sprang over the counter and + disappeared into the office behind the bar. + </p> + <p> + “I won’t steal anything, Barbazon,” he said over his shoulder as he closed + the door behind him. + </p> + <p> + “I’ll see to that,” Barbazon muttered stolidly, but with malicious eyes. + </p> + <p> + The front door was flung open now, and the crowd poured into the room, + boisterous, reckless, though some were only sullen, watchful and angry. + These last were mostly men above middle age, and of a fanatical and + racially bitter type. They were not many, but in one sense they were the + backbone and force of the crowd, probably the less intelligent but the + more tenacious and consistent. They were black spots of gathering storm in + an electric atmosphere. + </p> + <p> + All converged upon the bar. Two assistants rushed the drinks along the + counter with flourishes, while Barbazon took in the cash and sharply + checked the rougher element, who were inclined to treat the bar as a place + for looting. Most of them, however, had a wholesome fear of Barbazon, and + also most of them wished to stand well with him—credit was a good + thing, even in a saloon. + </p> + <p> + For a little time the room was packed, then some of the more restless + spirits, their thirst assuaged, sallied forth to taste the lager and old + rye elsewhere, and “raise Cain” in the streets. When they went, it became + possible to move about more freely in the big bar-room, at the end of + which was a billiard-table. It was notable, however, that the more sullen + elements stayed. Some of them were strangers to each other. Manitou was a + distributing point for all radiations of the compass, and men were thrown + together in its streets who only saw one another once or twice a year-when + they went to the woods in the Fall or worked the rivers in the Summer. + Some were Mennonites, Doukhobors and Finlanders, some Swedes, Norwegians + and Icelanders. Others again were birds of passage who would probably + never see Manitou in the future, but they were mostly French, and mostly + Catholic, and enemies of the Orange Lodges wherever they were, east or + west or north or south. They all had a common ground of unity—half-savage + coureurs-de-bois, river-drivers, railway-men, factory hands, cattlemen, + farmers, labourers; they had a gift for prejudice, and taking sides on + something or other was as the breath of the nostrils to them. + </p> + <p> + The greater number of the crowd were, however, excitable, good-natured + men, who were by instinct friendly, save when their prejudices were + excited; and their oaths and exclamations were marvels of droll ingenuity. + Most of them were still too good-humoured with drink to be dangerous, but + all hoped for trouble at the Orange funeral on principle, and the + anticipated strike had elements of “thrill.” They were of a class, + however, who would swing from what was good-humour to deadly anger in a + minute, and turn a wind of mere prejudice into a hurricane of life and + death with the tick of a clock. They would all probably go to the Orange + funeral to-morrow in a savage spirit. Some of them were loud in + denunciation of Ingolby and “the Lebanon gang”; they joked coarsely over + the dead Orangeman, but their cheerful violence had not yet the appearance + of reality. + </p> + <p> + One man suddenly changed all that. He was a river-driver of stalwart + proportions, with a red handkerchief round his neck, and with loose corded + trousers tucked into his boots. He had a face of natural ugliness made + almost repulsive by marks of smallpox. Red, flabby lips and an overhanging + brow made him a figure which men would avoid on a dark night. + </p> + <p> + “Let’s go over to Lebanon to-night and have it out,” he said in French. + “That Ingolby—let’s go break his windows and give him a dip in the + river. He’s the curse of this city. Holy, once Manitou was a place to live + in, now it’s a place to die in! The factories, the mills, they’re full of + Protes’ants and atheists and shysters; the railway office is gone to + Lebanon. Ingolby took it there. Manitou was the best town in the West; + it’s no good now. Who’s the cause? Ingolby’s the cause. Name of God, if he + was here I’d get him by the throat as quick as winkin’.” + </p> + <p> + He opened and shut his fingers with spasmodic malice, and glared round the + room. “He’s going to lock us out if we strike,” he added. “He’s going to + take the bread out of our mouths; he’s going to put his heel on Manitou, + and grind her down till he makes her knuckle to Lebanon—to a lot of + infidels, Protes’ants, and thieves. Who’s going to stand it? I say-bagosh, + I say, who’s going to stand it!” + </p> + <p> + “He’s a friend of the Monseigneur,” ventured a factory-hand, who had a + wife and children to support, and however partisan, was little ready for + that which would stop his supplies. + </p> + <p> + “Sacre bapteme! That’s part of his game,” roared the big river-driver in + reply. “I’ll take the word of Felix Marchand about that. Look at him! That + Felix Marchand doesn’t try to take the bread out of people’s mouths. He + gives money here, he gives it there. He wants the old town to stay as it + is and not be swallowed up.” + </p> + <p> + “Three cheers for Felix Marchand!” cried some one in the throng. All + cheered loudly save one old man with grizzled hair and beard, who leaned + against the wall half-way down the room smoking a corncob pipe. He was a + French Canadian in dress and appearance, and he spat on the floor like a + navvy—he had filled his pipe with the strongest tobacco that one man + ever offered to another. As the crowd cheered for Felix Marchand, he made + his way up towards the bar slowly. He must have been tall when he was + young; now he was stooped, yet there was still something very sinewy about + him. + </p> + <p> + “Who’s for Lebanon?” cried the big river-driver with an oath. “Who’s for + giving Lebanon hell, and ducking Ingolby in the river?” + </p> + <p> + “I am—I am—I am—all of us!” shouted the crowd. “It’s no + good waiting for to-morrow. Let’s get the Lebs by the scruff to-night. + Let’s break Ingolby’s windows and soak him in the Sagalac. Allons—allons + gai!” + </p> + <p> + Uproar and broken sentences, threats, oaths, and objurgations sounded + through the room. There was a sudden movement towards the door, but the + exit of the crowd was stopped by a slow but clear voice speaking in + French. + </p> + <p> + “Wait a minute, my friends!” it cried. “Wait a minute. Let’s ask a few + questions first.” + </p> + <p> + “Who’s he?” asked a dozen voices. “What’s he going to say?” The mob moved + again towards the bar. + </p> + <p> + The big river-driver turned on the grizzled old man beside the bar-counter + with bent shoulders and lazy, drawling speech. + </p> + <p> + “What’ve you got to say about it, son?” he asked threateningly. + </p> + <p> + “Well, to ask a few questions first—that’s all,” the old man + replied. + </p> + <p> + “You don’t belong here, old cock,” the other said roughly. + </p> + <p> + “A good many of us don’t belong here,” the old man replied quietly. “It + always is so. This isn’t the first time I’ve been to Manitou. You’re a + river-driver, and you don’t live here either,” he continued. + </p> + <p> + “What’ve you got to say about it? I’ve been coming and going here for ten + years. I belong—bagosh, what do you want to ask? Hurry up. We’ve got + work to do. We’re going to raise hell in Lebanon.” + </p> + <p> + “And give hell to Ingolby,” shouted some one in the crowd. + </p> + <p> + “Suppose Ingolby isn’t there?” questioned the old man. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, that’s one of your questions, is it?” sneered the big river-driver. + “Well, if you knew him as we do, you’d know that it’s at night-time he + sits studyin’ how he’ll cut Lebanon’s throat. He’s home, all right. He’s + in Lebanon anyhow, and we’ll find him.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, but wait a minute—be quiet a bit,” said the old man, his eyes + blinking slowly at the big riverdriver. “I’ve been ‘round a good deal, and + I’ve had some experience in the world. Did you ever give that Ingolby a + chance to tell you what his plans were? Did you ever get close to him and + try to figure what he was driving at? There’s no chance of getting at the + truth if you don’t let a man state his case—but no. If he can’t make + you see his case then is the time to jib, not before.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, get out!” cried a rowdy English road-maker in the crowd. “We know all + right what Ingolby’s after.” + </p> + <p> + “Eh, well, what is he after?” asked the old man looking the other in the + eye. + </p> + <p> + “What’s he after? Oof-oof-oof, that’s what he’s after. He’s for his own + pocket, he’s for being boss of all the woolly West. He’s after keeping us + poor and making himself rich. He’s after getting the cinch on two towns + and three railways, and doing what he likes with it all; and we’re after + not having him do it, you bet. That’s how it is, old hoss.” + </p> + <p> + The other stroked his beard with hands which, somehow, gave little + indication of age, and then, with a sudden jerk forward of his head, he + said: “Oh, it’s like that, eh? Is that what M’sieu’ Marchand told you? + That’s what he said, is it?” + </p> + <p> + The big river-driver, eager to maintain his supreme place as leader, + lunged forward a step, and growled a challenge. + </p> + <p> + “Who said it? What does it matter if M’sieu’ Marchand said it—it’s + true. If I said it, it’s true. All of us in this room say it, and it’s + true. Young Marchand says what Manitou says.” + </p> + <p> + The old man’s eyes grew brighter—they were exceedingly sharp for one + so old, and he said quite gently now: + </p> + <p> + “M. Marchand said it first, and you all say it afterwards—ah, bah! + But listen to me; I know Max Ingolby that you think is such a villain; I + know him well. I knew him when he was a little boy and—” + </p> + <p> + “You was his nurse, I suppose!” cried the Englishman’s voice amid a roar + of laughter. + </p> + <p> + “Taught him his A-B-C-was his dear, kind teacher, eh?” hilariously cried + another. + </p> + <p> + The old man appeared not to hear. “I have known him all the years since. + He has only been in the West a few years, but he has lived in the world + exactly thirty-three years. He never willingly did anybody harm—never. + Since he came West, since he came to the Sagalac, he’s brought work to + Lebanon and to Manitou. There are hundreds more workmen in both the towns + than there were when he came. It was he made others come with much money + and build the factories and the mills. Work means money, money means + bread, bread means life—so.” + </p> + <p> + The big river-driver, seeing the effect of the old man’s words upon the + crowd, turned to them with an angry gesture and a sneer. + </p> + <p> + “I s’pose Ingolby has paid this old skeesicks for talking this swash. We + know all right what Ingolby is, and what he’s done. He’s made war between + the two towns—there’s hell to pay now on both sides of the Sagalac. + He took away the railway offices from here, and threw men out of work. + He’s done harm to Manitou—he’s against Manitou every time.” + </p> + <p> + Murmurs of approval ran through the crowd, though some were silent, + looking curiously at the forceful and confident old man. Even his bent + shoulders seemed to suggest driving power rather than the weight of years. + He suddenly stretched out a hand in command as it were. + </p> + <p> + “Comrades, comrades,” he said, “every man makes mistakes. Even if it was a + mistake for Ingolby to take away the offices from Manitou, he’s done a big + thing for both cities by combining the three railways.” + </p> + <p> + “Monopoly,” growled a voice from the crowd. “Not monopoly,” the old man + replied with a ring to his voice, which made it younger, fresher. “Not + monopoly, but better management of the railways, with more wages, more + money to spend on things to eat and drink and wear, more dollars in the + pocket of everybody that works in Manitou and Lebanon. Ingolby works, he + doesn’t loaf.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, gosh all hell, he’s a dynamo,” shouted a voice from the crowd. “He’s + a dynamo running the whole show-eh!” + </p> + <p> + The old man seemed to grow shorter, but as he thrust his shoulders + forward, it was like a machine gathering energy and power. + </p> + <p> + “I’ll tell you, friends, what Ingolby is trying to do,” he said in a low + voice vibrating with that force which belongs neither to age nor youth, + but is the permanent activity uniting all ages of a man. “Of course, + Ingolby is ambitious and he wants power. He tries to do the big things in + the world because there is the big thing to do—for sure. Without + such men the big things are never done, and other men have less work to + do, and less money and poorer homes. They discover and construct and + design and invent and organize and give opportunities. I am a working man, + but I know what Ingolby thinks. I know what men think who try to do the + big things. I have tried to do them.” + </p> + <p> + The crowd were absolutely still now, but the big river-driver shook + himself free of the eloquence, which somehow swayed them all, and said: + </p> + <p> + “You—you look as if you’d tried to do big things, you do, old + skeesicks. I bet you never earned a hundred dollars in your life.” He + turned to the crowd with fierce gestures. “Let’s go to Lebanon and make + the place sing,” he roared. “Let’s get Ingolby out to talk for himself, if + he wants to talk. We know what we want to do, and we’re not going to be + bossed. He’s for Lebanon and we’re for Manitou. Lebanon means to boss us, + Lebanon wants to sit on us because we’re Catholics, because we’re French, + because we’re honest.” + </p> + <p> + Again a wave of revolution swept through the crowd. The big river-driver + represented their natural instincts, their native fanaticism, their + prejudices. But the old man spoke once more. + </p> + <p> + “Ingolby wants Lebanon and Manitou to come together, not to fall apart,” + he declared. “He wants peace. If he gets rich here he won’t get rich + alone. He’s working for both towns. If he brings money from outside, + that’s good for both towns. If he—” + </p> + <p> + “Shut your mouth, let Ingolby speak for himself,” snarled the big + river-driver. “Take his dollars out of your pocket and put them on the + bar, the dollars Ingolby gives you to say all this. Put them dollars of + Ingolby’s up for drinks, or we’ll give you a jar that’ll shake you, old + wart-hog.” + </p> + <p> + At that instant a figure forced itself through the crowd, and broke into + the packed circle which was drawing closer upon the old man. + </p> + <p> + It was Jethro Fawe. He flung a hand out towards the old man. + </p> + <p> + “You want Ingolby—well, that’s Ingolby,” he shouted. + </p> + <p> + Like lightning the old man straightened himself, snatched the wig and + beard away from his head and face, and with quiet fearlessness said: + </p> + <p> + “Yes, I am Ingolby.” + </p> + <p> + For an instant there was absolute silence, in which Ingolby weighed his + chances. He was among enemies. He had meant only to move among the crowd + to discover their attitude, to find things out for himself. He had + succeeded, and his belief that Manitou could be swayed in the right + direction if properly handled, was correct. Beneath the fanaticism and the + racial spirit was human nature; and until Jethro Fawe had appeared, he had + hoped to prevent violence and the collision at to-morrow’s funeral. + </p> + <p> + Now the situation was all changed. It was hard to tell what sharp turn + things might take. He was about to speak, but suddenly from the crowd + there was spat out at him the words, “Spy! Sneak! Spy!” + </p> + <p> + Instantly the wave of feeling ran against him. He smiled frankly, however, + with that droll twist of his mouth which had won so many, and the raillery + of his eyes was more friendly than any appeal. + </p> + <p> + “Spy, if you like, my friends,” he said firmly and clearly. “Moses sent + spies down into the Land of Promise, and they brought back big bunches of + grapes. Well, I’ve come down into a land of promise. I wanted to know just + how you all feel without being told it by some one else. I knew if I came + here as Max Ingolby I shouldn’t hear the whole truth; I wouldn’t see + exactly how you see, so I came as one of you, and you must admit, my + French is as good as yours almost.” + </p> + <p> + He laughed and nodded at them. + </p> + <p> + “There wasn’t one of you that knew I wasn’t a Frenchman. That’s in my + favour. If I know the French language as I do, and can talk to you in + French as I’ve done, do you think I don’t understand the French people, + and what you want and how you feel? I’m one of the few men in the West + that can talk your language. I learned it when I was a boy, so that I + might know my French fellow-countrymen under the same flag, with the same + King and the same national hope. As for your religion, God knows, I wish I + was as good a Protestant as lots of you are good Catholics. And I tell you + this, I’d be glad to have a minister that I could follow and respect and + love as I respect and love Monseigneur Lourde of Manitou. I want to bring + these two towns together, to make them a sign of what this country is, and + what it can do; to make hundreds like ourselves in Manitou and Lebanon + work together towards health, wealth, comfort and happiness. Can’t you + see, my friends, what I’m driving at? I’m for peace and work and wealth + and power—not power for myself alone, but power that belongs to all + of us. If I can show I’m a good man at my job, maybe better than others, + then I have a right to ask you to follow me. If I can’t, then throw me + out. I tell you I’m your friend—Max Ingolby is your friend.” + </p> + <p> + “Spy! Spy! Spy!” cried a new voice. + </p> + <p> + It came from behind the bar. An instant after, the owner of the voice + leaped up on the counter. It was Felix Marchand. He had entered by the + door behind the bar into Barbazon’s office. + </p> + <p> + “When I was in India,” Marchand cried, “I found a snake in the bed. I + killed it before it stung me. There’s a snake in the bed of Manitou—what + are you going to do with it?” + </p> + <p> + The men swayed, murmured, and shrill shouts of “Marchand! Marchand! + Marchand!” went up. The crowd heaved upon Ingolby. “One minute!” he called + with outstretched arm and commanding voice. They paused. Something in him + made him master of them even then. + </p> + <p> + At that moment two men were fiercely fighting their way through the crowd + towards where Ingolby was. They were Jowett and Osterhaut. Ingolby saw + them coming. + </p> + <p> + “Go back—go back!” he called to them. + </p> + <p> + Suddenly a drunken navvy standing on a table in front of and to the left + of Ingolby seized a horseshoe hanging on the wall, and flung it with an + oath. + </p> + <p> + It caught Ingolby in the forehead, and he fell to the floor without a + sound. + </p> + <p> + A minute afterwards the bar was empty, save for Osterhaut, Jowett, old + Barbazon, and his assistants. + </p> + <p> + Barbazon and Jowett lifted the motionless figure in their arms, and + carried it into a little room. + </p> + <p> + Then Osterhaut picked up the horseshoe tied with its gay blue ribbons, now + stained with blood, and put it in his pocket. + </p> + <p> + “For luck,” he said. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XI. THE SENTENCE OF THE PATRIN + </h2> + <p> + Fleda waked suddenly, but without motion; just a wide opening of the eyes + upon the darkness, and a swift beating of the heart, but not the movement + of a muscle. It was as though some inward monitor, some gnome of the + hidden life had whispered of danger to her slumbering spirit. The waking + was a complete emergence, a vigilant and searching attention. + </p> + <p> + There was something on her breast weighing it down, yet with a pressure + which was not weight alone, and maybe was not weight at all as weight is + understood. Instantly there flashed through her mind the primitive belief + that a cat will lie upon the breasts of children and suck their breath + away. Strange and even absurd as it was, it seemed to her that a cat was + pressing and pressing down upon her breast. There could be no mistaking + the feline presence. Now with a sudden energy of the body, she threw the + Thing from her, and heard it drop, with the softness of feline feet, on + the Indian rug upon the floor. + </p> + <p> + Then she sprang out of bed, and, feeling for the matches, lit a candle on + the small table beside her bed, and moved it round searching for what she + thought to be a cat. It was not to be seen. She looked under the bed; it + was not there: under the washstand, under the chest of drawers, under the + improvised dressing-table; and no cat was to be found. She 173 looked + under the chair over which hung her clothes, even behind the dresses and + the Indian deerskin cape hanging on the door. + </p> + <p> + There was no life of any kind save her own in the room, so far as she + could see. She laughed nervously, though her heart was still beating hard. + That it should beat hard was absurd, for what had she to fear—she + who had lived the wild open-air life of many lands, had slept among hills + infested by animals the enemy of man, and who when a little girl had faced + beasts of prey alone. Yet here in her own safe room on the Sagalac, with + its four walls, but its unlocked doors—for Gabriel Druse said that + he could not bear that last sign of his exile—here in the fortress + of the town-dweller there was a strange trembling of her pulses in the + presence of a mere hallucination or nightmare—the first she had had + ever. Her dreams in the past had always been happy and without the black + fancies of nightmare. On the night that Jethro Fawe had first confronted + her father and herself, and he had been carried to the hut in the Wood, + her sleep had been disturbed and restless, but dreamless; in her sleep on + the night of the day of his release, she had been tossed upon vague clouds + of mental unrest; but that was the first really disordered sleep she had + ever known. + </p> + <p> + Holding the candle above her head, she looked in the mirror on her + dressing-table, and laughed nervously at the shocked look in her eyes, at + the hand pressed upon the bosom whose agitations troubled the delicate + linen at her breast. The pale light of the candle, the reflection from the + white muslin of her dressing-table and her nightwear, the strange, deep + darkness of her eyes, the ungathered tawny hair falling to her shoulders, + gave an unusual paleness to her face. + </p> + <p> + “What a ninny I am!” she said aloud as she looked at herself, her tongue + chiding her apprehensive eyes, her laugh contemptuously adding its comment + on her tremulousness. “It was a real nightmare—a waking nightmare, + that’s what it was.” + </p> + <p> + She searched the room once more, however-every corner, under the bed, the + chest of drawers and the dressing-table, before she got into bed again, + her feet icily cold. And yet again before settling down she looked round, + perplexed and inquiring. Placing the matches beside the candlestick, she + blew out the light. Then, half-turning on her side with her face to the + wall, she composed herself to sleep. + </p> + <p> + Resolutely putting from her mind any sense of the supernatural, she shut + her eyes with confidence of coming sleep. While she was, however, still + within the borders of wakefulness, and wholly conscious, she felt the + Thing jump from the floor upon her legs, and crouch there with that + deadening pressure which was not weight. Now with a start of anger she + raised herself, and shot out a determined hand to seize the Thing, + whatever it was. Her hand grasped nothing, and again she distinctly heard + a soft thud as of something jumping on the floor. Exasperated, she drew + herself out of bed, lit the candle again, and began another search. + Nothing was to be seen; but she had now the curious sense of an unseen + presence. She went to the door, opened it, and looked out into the narrow + hall. Nothing was to be seen there. Then she closed the door again, and + stood looking at it meditatively for a moment. It had a lock and key; yet + it had never been locked in the years they had lived on the Sagalac. She + did not know whether the key would turn in the lock. After a moment’s + hesitation, she shrugged her shoulders and turned the key. It rasped, + proved stubborn, but at last came home with a click. Then she turned to + the window. It was open about three inches at the bottom. She closed it + tight, and fastened it, then stood for a moment in the middle of the room + looking at both door and window. + </p> + <p> + She was conscious of a sense of suffocation. Never in her life had she + slept with door or window or tentflap entirely closed. Never before had + she been shut in all night behind closed doors and sealed windows. Now, as + the sense of imprisonment was felt, her body protested; her spirit + resented the funereal embrace of security. It panted for the freedom which + gives the challenge to danger and the courage to face it. + </p> + <p> + She went to the window and opened it slightly at the top, and then sought + her bed again; but even as she lay down, something whispered to her mind + that it was folly to lock the door and yet leave the window open, if it + was but an inch. With an exclamation of self-reproach, and a vague + indignation at something, she got up and closed the window once more. + </p> + <p> + Again she composed herself to sleep, lying now with her face turned to the + window and the door. She was still sure that she had been the victim of a + hallucination which, emerging from her sleep, had invaded the borders of + wakefulness, and then had reproduced itself in a waking illusion—an + imitation of its original existence. + </p> + <p> + Resolved to conquer any superstitious feeling, she invoked sleep, and was + on its borders once more when she was startled more violently than before. + </p> + <p> + The Thing had sprung again upon her feet and was crouched there. Wide + awake, she waited for a moment to make sure that she was not mad, or that + she was not asleep or in a half-dream. In the pause, she felt the Thing + draw up towards her knees, dragging its body along with tiger-like + closeness, and with that strange pressure which was not weight but power. + </p> + <p> + With a cry which was no longer doubt, but agonized apprehension, she threw + the Thing from her with a motion of both hands and feet; and, as she did + so, she felt a horrible cold air breathing from a bloodless body, chill + her hand. + </p> + <p> + In another instant she was on her feet again. With shaking fingers she + lighted the candle yet once more, after which she lighted a lamp standing + upon the chest of drawers. The room was almost brilliantly bright now. + With a gesture of incredulity she looked round. The doors and windows were + sealed tight, and there was nothing to be seen; yet she was more than ever + conscious of a presence grown more manifest. For a moment she stood + staring straight before her at the place where it seemed to be. She + realized its malice and its hatred, and an intense anger and hatred took + possession of her. She had always laughed at such things even when + thrilled by wonder and manufactured terrors. But now there was a sense of + conflict, of evil, of the indefinable things in which so many believed. + </p> + <p> + Suddenly she remembered an ancient Sage of her tribe, who, proficient in + mysteries and secret rites gathered from nations as old as Phoenicia and + Egypt and as modern as Switzerland, held the Romanys of the world in awe, + for his fame had travelled where he could not follow. To Fleda in her + earliest days he had been like one inspired, and as she now stood facing + the intangible Thing, she recalled an exorcism which the Sage had recited + to her, when he had sufficiently startled her senses by tales of the + Between World. This exorcism was, as he had told her, more powerful than + that which the Christian exorcists used, and the symbol of exorcism was + not unlike the sign of the Cross, to which was added genuflection of + Assyrian origin. + </p> + <p> + At any other time Fleda would have laughed at the idea of using the + exorcism; but all the ancient superstition of the Romany people latent in + her now broke forth and held her captive. Standing with candle raised + above her head, her eyes piercing the space before her, she recalled every + word of the exorcism which had caught the drippings from the fountains of + Chaldean, Phoenician, and Egyptian mystery. + </p> + <p> + Solemnly and slowly the exorcism came from her lips, and at the end her + right hand made the cabalistic sign; then she stood like one transfixed + with her arm extended towards the Thing she could not see. + </p> + <p> + Presently there passed from her a sense of oppression. The air seemed to + grow lighter, restored self-possession came; there was a gentle breathing + in the room like that of a sleeping child. It was a moment before she + realized that the breathing was her own, and she looked round her like one + who had come out of a trance. + </p> + <p> + “It is gone,” she said aloud. “It is gone.” A great sigh came from her. + </p> + <p> + Mechanically she put down the candle, smoothed the pillows of her bed, + adjusted the coverings, and prepared to lie down; but, with a sudden + impulse, she turned to the window and the door. + </p> + <p> + “It is gone,” she said again. With a little laugh of hushed triumph, she + turned and made again the cabalistic sign at the bed, where the Thing had + first assaulted her, and then at that point in the room near the door + where she had felt it crouching. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, Ewie Gal,” she added, speaking to that Romany Sage long since laid to + rest in the Roumelian country, “you did not talk to me for nothing. You + were right—yes, you were right, old Ewie Gal. It was there,”—she + looked again at the place where the Thing had been—“and your curse + drove it away.” + </p> + <p> + With confidence she went to the door and unlocked it. Going to the window + she opened it also, but she compromised sufficiently to open it at the top + instead of at the bottom. Presently she laid her head on her pillow with a + sigh of content. + </p> + <p> + Once again she composed herself to sleep in the darkness. But now there + came other invasions, other disturbers of the night. In her imagination a + man came who had held her in his arms one day on the Sagalac River, who + had looked into her eyes with a masterful but respectful tenderness. As + she neared the confines of sleep, he was somehow mingled with visions of + things which her childhood had known—moonlit passes in the Bosnian, + Roumelian, and Roumanian hills, green fields by the Danube, with peasant + voices drowsing in song before the lights went out; a gallop after dun + deer far away up the Caspian mountains, over waste places, carpeted with + flowers after a benevolent rain; mornings in Egypt, when the camels + thudded and slid with melancholy ease through the sands of the desert, + while the Arab drivers called shrilly for Allah to curse or bless; a + tender sunset in England seen from the top of a castle when all the + western sky was lightly draped with saffron, gold and mauve and delicate + green and purple. + </p> + <p> + Now she slept again, with the murmur of the Sagalac in her ears, and there + was a smile at her lips. If one could have seen her through the darkness, + one would have said that she was like some wild creature of a virgin + world, whom sleep had captured and tamed; for, behind the refinement which + education and the vigilant influence with which Madame Bulteel had + surrounded her, there was in her the spirit of primitive things: of the + open road and the wilderness, of the undisciplined and vagrant life, + however marked by such luxury as the ruler of all the Romanys could buy + and use in pilgrimage. There was that in her which would drag at her + footsteps in this new life. + </p> + <p> + For a full hour or more she slept, then there crept through the fantasies + of sleep something that did not belong to sleep—again something from + the wakeful world, strange, alien, troubling. At first it was only as + though a wind stirred the air of dreams, then it was like the sounds that + gather behind the coming rage of a storm, and again it was as though a + night-prowler plucked at the sleeve of a home-goer. Presently, with a stir + of fright and a smothered cry, she waked to a sound which was not of the + supernatural or of the mind’s illusions, but no less dreadful to her + because of that. In some cryptic way it was associated with the direful + experience through which she had just passed. + </p> + <p> + What she heard in the darkness was a voice which sang there by her window—at + it or beneath it—the words of a Romany song. + </p> + <p> + It was a song of violence, which she had heard but a short time before in + the trees behind her father’s house, when a Romany claimed her as his + wife: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Time was I went to my true love, + Time was she came to me—” + </pre> + <p> + Only one man would sing that song at her window, or anywhere in this + Western world. This was no illusion of her overwrought senses. There, + outside her window, was Jethro Fawe. + </p> + <p> + She sat up and listened, leaning on one arm, and staring into the + half-darkness beyond the window, the blind of which she had not drawn + down. There was no moon, but the stars were shining brightly, relieving + the intensity of the dark. Through the whispering of the trees, and + hushing the melancholy of a night-bird’s song, came the wild low note of + the Romany epic of vengeance. It had a thrill of exultation. Something in + the voice, insistent, vibrating, personal, made every note a thrust of + victory. In spite of her indignation at the insolent serenade, she + thrilled; for the strain of the Past was in her, and it had been fighting + with her all night, breaking in upon the Present, tugging at the cords of + youth. + </p> + <p> + The man’s daring roused her admiration, even as her anger mounted. If her + father heard the singing, there could be no doubt that Jethro Fawe’s doom + would be sealed. Gabriel Druse would resent this insolence to the daughter + of the Ry of Rys. Word would be passed as silently as the electric spark + flies, and one day Jethro Fawe would be found dead, with no clue to his + slayer, and maybe no sign of violence upon him; for while the Romany + people had remedies as old as Buddha, they had poisons as old as Sekhet. + </p> + <p> + Suddenly the song ceased, and for a moment there was silence save for the + whispering trees and the night-bird’s song. Fleda rose from her bed, and + was about to put on her dressing-gown, when she was startled by a voice + loudly whispering her name at her window, as it seemed. + </p> + <p> + “Daughter of the Ry of Rys!” it called. + </p> + <p> + In anger she started forward to the window, then, realizing that she was + in her nightgown, caught up her red dressing-gown and put it on. As she + did so she understood why the voice had sounded so near. Not thirty feet + from her window there was a solitary oak-tree among the pines, in which + was a seat among the branches, and, looking out, she could see a figure + that blackened the starlit duskiness. + </p> + <p> + “Fleda—daughter of the Ry of Rys,” the voice called again. + </p> + <p> + She gathered her dressing-gown tight about her, and, going to the window, + raised it high and leaned out. + </p> + <p> + “What do you want?” she asked sharply. + </p> + <p> + “Wife of Jethro Fawe, I bring you news,” the voice said, and she saw a hat + waved with mock courtesy. In spite of herself, Fleda felt a shiver of + premonition pass through her. The Thing which had threatened her in the + night seemed to her now like the soul of this dark spirit in the trees. + </p> + <p> + Resentment seized her. “I have news for you, Jethro Fawe,” she replied. “I + set you free, and I gave my word that no harm should come to you, if you + went your ways and did not come again. You have come, and I shall do + nothing now to save you from the Ry’s anger. Go at once, or I will wake + him.” + </p> + <p> + “Will a wife betray her husband?” he asked in soft derision. + </p> + <p> + Stung by his insolence, “I would not throw a rope to you, if you were + drowning,” she declared. “I am a Gorgio, and the thing that was done by + the Starzke River is nothing to me. Now, go.” + </p> + <p> + “You have forgotten my news,” he said: “It is bad news for the Gorgio + daughter of the Romany Ry.” She was silent in apprehension. He waited, but + she did not speak. + </p> + <p> + “The Gorgio of Gorgios of the Sagalac has had a fall,” he said. + </p> + <p> + Her heart beat fast for an instant, and then the presentiment came to her + that the man spoke the truth. In the presence of the accomplished thing, + she became calm. + </p> + <p> + “What has happened?” she asked quietly. + </p> + <p> + “He went prowling in Manitou, and in Barbazon’s Tavern they struck him + down.” + </p> + <p> + “Who struck him down?” she asked. It seemed to her that the night-bird + sang so loud that she could scarcely hear her own voice. + </p> + <p> + “A drunken Gorgio,” he replied. “The horseshoe is for luck all the world + over, and it brought its luck to Manitou to-night. It struck down a young + Master Gorgio who in white beard and long grey hair went spying.” + </p> + <p> + She knew in her heart that he spoke the truth. “He is dead?” she asked in + a voice that had a strange quietness. + </p> + <p> + “Not yet,” he answered. “There is time to wish him luck.” + </p> + <p> + She heard the ribald laugh with a sense of horror and loathing. “The hand + that brought him down may have been the hand of a Gorgio, but behind the + hand was Jethro Fawe,” she said in a voice grown passionate again. “Where + is he?” she added. + </p> + <p> + “At his own house. I watched them take him there. It is a nice house—good + enough for a Gorgio house-dweller. I know it well. Last night I played his + Sarasate fiddle for him there, and I told him all about you and me, and + what happened at Starzke, and then—” + </p> + <p> + “You told him I was a Romany, that I was married to you?” she asked in a + low voice. + </p> + <p> + “I told him that, and asked him why he thought you had deceived him, had + held from him the truth. He was angry and tried to kill me.” + </p> + <p> + “That is a lie,” she answered. “If he had tried to kill you he would have + done so.” + </p> + <p> + Suddenly she realized the situation as it was—that she was standing + at her window in the night, scantily robed, talking to a man in a tree + opposite her window; and that the man had done a thing which belonged to + the wild places which she had left so far behind. + </p> + <p> + It flashed into her mind—what would Max Ingolby think of such a + thing? She flushed. The new Gorgio self of her flushed, and yet the old + Romany self, the child of race and heredity had taken no exact account of + the strangeness of this situation. It had not seemed unnatural. Even if he + had been in her room itself, she would have felt no tithe of the shame + that she felt now in asking herself what the Master Gorgio would think, if + he knew. It was not that she had less modesty, that any stir of sex was in + her veins where the Romany chal was concerned; but in the life she had + once lived less delicate cognizance was taken of such things, and + something of it stayed. + </p> + <p> + “Listen,” Jethro said with sudden lowering of the voice, and imparting + into his tones an emotion which was in part an actor’s gift, but also in + large degree a passion now eating at his heart, “you are my wife by all + the laws of our people. Nothing can change it. I have waited for you, and + I will wait, but you shall be mine in the end. You see to-night—‘Mi + Duvel’, you see that fate is with me! The Gorgio has bewitched you. He + goes down to-night in that tavern there by the hand of a Gorgio, and the + Romany has his revenge. Fate is always with me, and I will be the gift of + the gods to the woman that takes me. The luck is mine always. It will be + always with me. I am poor to-day, I shall be rich to-morrow. I was rich, + and I lost it all; and I was poor, and became rich again. Ah, yes, there + are ways! Sometimes it is a Government, sometimes a prince that wants to + know, and Jethro Fawe, the Romany, finds it out, and money fills his + pockets. I am here, poor, because last year when I lost all, I said, ‘It + is because my Romany lass is not with me. I have not brought her to my + tan, but when she comes then the gold will be here as before, and more + when it is wanted.’ So, I came, and I hear the road calling, and all the + camping places over all the world, and I see the patrins in every lane, + and my heart is lifted up. I am glad. I rejoice. My heart burns with love. + I will forget everything, and be true to the queen of my soul. Men die, + and Gabriel Druse, he will die one day, and when the time comes, then it + would be that you and I would beckon, and all the world would come to us.” + </p> + <p> + He stretched out a hand to her in the half-darkness. “I send the blood of + my heart to you,” he continued. “I am a son of kings. Fleda, daughter of + the Ry of Rys, come to me. I have been bad, but I can be good. I have + killed, but I will live at peace. I have cursed, but I will speak the word + of blessing. I have trespassed, but I will keep to my own, if you will + come to me.” + </p> + <p> + Suddenly he dropped to the ground, lighting on his feet like an animal + with a soft rebound. Stretching up his arms, he made soft murmuring of + endearment. + </p> + <p> + She had listened, fascinated in spite of herself by the fire and meaning + of his words. She felt that in most part it was true, that it was meant; + and, whatever he was, he was yet a man offering his heart and life, + offering a love that she despised, and yet which was love and passion of a + kind. It was a passion natural to the people from whom she came, and to + such as Jethro Fawe it was something more than sensual longing and the + aboriginal desire of possession. She realized it, and was not wholly + revolted by it, even while her mind was fleeing to where the Master Gorgio + lay wounded, it might be unto death; even while she knew that this man + before her, by some means, had laid Ingolby low. She was all at once a + human being torn by contending forces. + </p> + <p> + Jethro’s drop to the ground broke the sudden trance into which his words + had thrown her. She shook herself as with an effort of control. Then + leaning over the window-sill, and, looking down at him, now grown so + distinct that she could see his features, her eyes having become used to + the half-light of the approaching dawn, she said with something almost + like gentleness: + </p> + <p> + “Once more I say, you must go and come no more. You are too far off from + me. You belong to that which is for the ignorant, or the low, the vicious + and the bad. Behind the free life of the Romany is only the thing that the + beasts of the field have. I have done with it for ever. Find a Romany who + will marry you. As for me, I would rather die than do so, and I should die + before it could come to pass. If you stay here longer I will call the Ry.” + </p> + <p> + Presently the feeling that he had been responsible for the disaster to + Ingolby came upon her with great force, and as suddenly as she had + softened towards this man she hardened again. + </p> + <p> + “Go, before there comes to you the death you deserve,” she added, and + turned away. + </p> + <p> + At that moment footsteps sounded near, and almost instantly there emerged + from a pathway which made a short cut to the house, the figure of old + Gabriel Druse. They had not heard him till he was within a few feet of + where Jethro Fawe stood. His walking had been muffled in the dust of the + pathway. + </p> + <p> + The Ry started when he saw Jethro Fawe; then he made a motion as though he + would seize the intruder, who was too dumbfounded to flee; but he + recovered himself, and gazed up at the open window. + </p> + <p> + “Fleda!” he called. + </p> + <p> + She came to the window again. + </p> + <p> + “Has this man come here against your will?” he asked, not as though + seeking information, but confirmation of his own understanding. + </p> + <p> + “He is not here by my will,” she answered. “He came to sing the Song of + Hate under my window, to tell me that he had—” + </p> + <p> + “That I had brought the Master Gorgio to the ground,” said Jethro, who now + stood with sullen passiveness looking at Gabriel Druse. + </p> + <p> + “From the Master Gorgio, as you call him, I have just come,” returned the + old man. “When I heard the news, I went to him. It was you who betrayed + him to the mob, and—” + </p> + <p> + “Wait, wait,” Fleda cried in agitation. “Is—is he dead?” + </p> + <p> + “He is alive, but terribly hurt; and he may die,” was the reply. + </p> + <p> + Then the old man turned to the Romany with a great anger and determination + in his face. He stretched out an arm, making a sign as cabalistic as that + which Fleda had used against her invisible foe in the bedroom. + </p> + <p> + “Go, Jethro Fawe of all the Fawes,” he said. “Go, and may no patrins mark + your road!” + </p> + <p> + Jethro Fawe shrank back, and half raised his arm, as though to fend + himself from a blow. + </p> + <p> + The patrin is the clue which Gipsies leave behind them on the road they + go, that other Gipsies who travel in it may know they have gone before. It + may be a piece of string, a thread of wool, a twig, or in the dust the + ancient cross of the Romany, which preceded the Christian cross and + belonged to the Assyrian or Phoenician world. The invocation that no + patrins shall mark the road of a Romany is to make him an outcast, and for + the Ry of Rys to utter the curse is sentence of death upon a Romany, for + thenceforward every hand of his race is against him, free to do him harm. + </p> + <p> + It was that which made Jethro Fawe shrink and cower for a moment. Fleda + raised her hand suddenly in protest to Gabriel Druse. + </p> + <p> + “No, no, not that,” Fleda murmured brokenly to her father, with eyes that + looked the pain and horror she felt. Though she repudiated the bond by + which the barbarian had dared to call her wife, she heard an inner voice + that said to her: “What was done by the Starzke River was the seal of + blood and race, and this man must be nearer than the stranger, dearer than + the kinsman, forgiven of his crimes like a brother, saved from shame, + danger or death when she who was sealed to him can save him.” + </p> + <p> + She shuddered as she heard the inner voice. She felt that this Other Self + of her, the inner-seeing soul which had the secret of the far paths, had + spoken truly. Even as she begged her father to withdraw the sentence, it + flashed into her mind that the grim Thing of the night was the dark spirit + of hatred between Jethro Fawe and the Master Gorgio seeking embodiment, as + though Jethro’s evil soul detached itself from his body to persecute her. + </p> + <p> + At her appeal, Jethro raised his head. His courage came back, the old + insolent self-possession took hold of him again. The sentence which the Ry + had passed was worse than death (and it meant death, too), for it made him + an outcast from his people, and to be outcast was to be thrown into the + abyss. It was as though a man without race or country was banished into + desolate space. In a vague way he felt its full significance, and the + shadow of it fell on him. + </p> + <p> + “No, no, no,” Fleda repeated hoarsely, with that new sense of + responsibility where Jethro was concerned. + </p> + <p> + Jethro’s eyes were turned upon her now. In the starlit night, just + yielding to the dawn, she could faintly see his burning look, could feel, + as it were, his hands reach out to claim her; and she felt that while he + lived she was not wholly free. She realized that the hand of nomad, + disorderly barbarism was dragging her with a force which was inhuman, or, + maybe, superhuman. + </p> + <p> + Gabriel Druse could know nothing of the elements fighting in his + daughter’s soul; he only knew that her interest in the Master Gorgio was + one he had never seen before, and that she abhorred the Romany who had + brought Ingolby low. He had shut his eyes to the man’s unruliness and his + daughter’s intervention to free him; but now he was without pity. He had + come from Ingolby’s bedside, and had been told a thing which shook his + rugged nature to its centre—a thing sad as death itself, which he + must tell his daughter. + </p> + <p> + To Fleda’s appeal he turned a stony face. There was none of that rage in + his words which had marked the scene when Jethro Fawe first came to claim + what he could not have. There was something in him now more deadly and + inevitable. It made him like some figure of mythology, implacable, + fateful. His great height, his bushy beard and stormy forehead, the eyes + over which shaggy eyebrows hung like the shrubs on a cliff-edge, his face + lined and set like a thing in bronze—all were signs of a power + which, in passion, would be like that of OEdipus: in the moment of justice + or doom would, with unblinking eyes, slay and cast aside as debris is + tossed upon the dust-heap. + </p> + <p> + As he spoke now his voice was toneless. His mind was flint, and his tongue + was but the flash of the flint. He looked at his daughter for a moment + with no light of fatherhood in his face, then turned from her to Jethro + Fawe with slow decision and a gesture of authority. His eyes fastened on + the face of the son of Lemuel Fawe, as though it was that old enemy + himself. + </p> + <p> + “I have said what I have said, and there is no more to be spoken. The rule + of the Ry will be as water for ever after if these things may be done to + him and his. For generations have the Rys of all the Rys been like the + trees that bend only to the whirlwind; and when they speak there is no + more to be said. When it ceases to be so, then the Rys will vanish from + the world, and be as stubble of the field ready for the burning. I have + spoken. Go! And no patrins shall lie upon your road.” + </p> + <p> + A look of savage obedience and sullen acquiescence came into Jethro Fawe’s + face, and he took off his hat as one who stands in the presence of his + master. The strain of generations, the tradition of the race without a + country was stronger than the revolt in his soul. He was young, his blood + was hot and brawling in his veins, he was all carnal, with the superior + intelligence of the trained animal, but custom was stronger than all. He + knew now that whatever he might do, some time, not far, his doom would + fall upon him suddenly, as a wind shoots up a ravine from the desert, or a + nightbird rises from the dark. + </p> + <p> + He set his feet stubbornly, and raised his sullen face and fanatical eyes. + The light of morning was creeping through the starshine, and his features + showed plainly. + </p> + <p> + “I am your daughter’s husband,” he said. “Nothing can change that. It was + done by the River Starzke, and it was the word of the Ry of Rys. It stands + for ever. There is no divorce except death for the Romany.” + </p> + <p> + “The patrins cease to mark the way,” returned the old man with a swift + gesture. “The divorce of death will come.” + </p> + <p> + Jethro’s face grew still paler, and he opened his lips to speak, but + paused, seeing Fleda, with a backward look of pity and of horror, draw + back into the darkness of her room. + </p> + <p> + He made a motion of passion and despair. His voice was almost shrill when + he spoke. “Till that divorce comes, the daughter of the Ry of Rys is + mine!” he cried sharply. “I will not give my wife to a Gorgio thief. His + hands shall not caress her, his eyes shall not feed upon her—” + </p> + <p> + “His eyes will not feed upon her,” interrupted the old man, “So cease the + prattle which can alter nothing. Begone.” + </p> + <p> + For a moment Jethro Fawe stood like one who did not understand what was + said to him, but suddenly a look of triumph and malice came into his face, + and his eyes lighted with a reckless fire. He threw back his head, and + laughed with a strange, offensive softness. Then, waving a hand to the + window from which Fleda had gone, he swung his cap on his head and plunged + into the trees. + </p> + <p> + A moment afterwards his voice came back exultingly, through the morning + air: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “But a Gorgio sleeps ‘neath the greenwood tree + He’ll broach my tan no more: + And my love, she sleeps afar from me + But near to the churchyard door.” + </pre> + <p> + As the old man turned heavily towards the house, and opened the outer + door, Fleda met him. + </p> + <p> + “What did you mean when you said that Ingolby’s eyes would not feed upon + me?” she asked in a low tone of fear. + </p> + <p> + A look of compassion came into the old man’s face. He took her hand. + </p> + <p> + “Come and I will tell you,” he said. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XII. “LET THERE BE LIGHT” + </h2> + <p> + In Ingolby’s bedroom, on the night of the business at Barbazon’s Tavern, + Dr. Rockwell received a shock. His face, naturally colourless, was almost + white, and his eyes were moist. He had what the West called nerve. That + the crisis through which he had passed was that of a friend’s life did not + lessen the poignancy of the experience. He had a singularly reserved + manner and a rare economy of words; also, he had the refinement and + distinction of one who had, oforetime, moved on the higher ranges of + social life. He was always simply and comfortably and in a sense + fashionably dressed, yet there was nothing of the dude about him, and his + black satin tie gave him an air of old-worldishness which somehow + compelled an extra amount of respect. This, in spite of the fact that he + had been known as one who had left the East and come into the wilds + because of a woman not his wife. + </p> + <p> + It was not, however, strictly true to say that he had come West because of + a woman, for it was on account of three women, who by sudden coincidence + or collusion sprang a situation from which the only relief was flight. In + that he took refuge, not because he was a coward, but because it was folly + to fight a woman, or three women, and because it was the only real + solution of an ungovernable situation. At first he had drifted from one + town to another, dissolute and reckless, apparently unable to settle down, + or to forget the unwholesome three. But one day there was a terrible + railway accident on a construction train, and Lebanon and Manitou made a + call upon his skill, and held him in bondage to his profession for one + whole month. During this time he performed two operations which the + surgeons who had been sent out by the Railway Directors at Montreal + declared were masterpieces. + </p> + <p> + When that month was up he was a changed man, and he opened an office in + Lebanon. Men trusted him despite his past, and women learned that there + was never a moment when his pulses beat unevenly in their presence. Nathan + Rockwell had had his lesson and it was not necessary to learn it again. To + him, woman, save as a subject of his skill, was a closed book. He regarded + them as he regarded himself, with a kindly cynicism. He never forgot that + his own trouble could and would have been avoided had it not been for + woman’s vanity and consequent cruelty. The unwholesome three had shared + his moral lapse with wide-open eyes, and were in no sense victims of his; + but, disregarding their responsibility, they had, from sheer jealousy, + wrecked his past, and, to their own surprise, had wrecked themselves as + well. They were of those who act first and then think—too late. + </p> + <p> + Thus it was that both men and women called Rockwell a handsome man, but + thought of him as having only a crater of exhausted fires in place of a + heart. They came to him with their troubles—even the women of + Manitou who ought to have gone to the priest. + </p> + <p> + He moved about Lebanon as one who had authority, and desired not to use + it; as one to whom life was like a case in surgery to be treated with + scientific, coolness, with humanity, but not with undue sympathy; yet the + early morning of the day after Ingolby had had his accident at Barbazon’s + Hotel found him the slave of an emotion which shook him from head to foot. + He had saved his friend’s life by a most skilful operation, but he had + been shocked beyond control when, an hour after the operation was over, + and consciousness returned to the patient in the brilliantly lighted room, + Ingolby said: + </p> + <p> + “Why don’t you turn on the light?” + </p> + <p> + It was thus Rockwell knew that the Master Man, the friend of Lebanon and + Manitou, was stone blind. When Ingolby’s voice ceased, a horrified silence + filled the room for a moment. Even Jim Beadle, his servant, standing at + the foot of the bed, clapped a hand to his mouth to stop a cry, and the + nurse turned as white as the apron she wore. + </p> + <p> + Dumbfounded as Rockwell was, with instant professional presence of mind he + said: + </p> + <p> + “No, Ingolby, you must be kept in darkness a while yet.” Then he whipped + out a silk handkerchief from his pocket. “We will have light,” he + continued, “but we must bandage you first to keep out the glare and + prevent pain. The nerves of the eyes have been injured.” + </p> + <p> + Hastily and tenderly he bound the handkerchief round the sightless eyes. + Having done so, he said to the nurse with unintentional quotation from the + Gospel of St. John, and a sad irony: “Let there be light.” + </p> + <p> + It all gave him time to pull himself together and prepare for the moment + when he must tell Ingolby the truth. In one sense the sooner it was told + the better, lest Ingolby should suddenly discover it for himself. Surprise + and shock must be avoided. So now he talked in his low, soothing voice, + telling Ingolby that the operation had put him out of danger, that the + pain now felt came chiefly from the nerves of the eye, and that quiet and + darkness were necessary. He insisted on Ingolby keeping silent, and he + gave a mild opiate which induced several hours’ sleep. + </p> + <p> + During this time Rockwell prepared himself for the ordeal which must be + passed as soon as possible; gave all needed directions, and had a + conference with the assistant Chief Constable to whom he confided the + truth. He suggested plans for preserving order in excited Lebanon, which + was determined to revenge itself on Manitou; and he gave some careful and + specific instructions to Jowett the horse-dealer. Also, he had conferred + with Gabriel Druse, who had helped bear the injured man to his own home. + He had noted with admiration the strange gentleness of the giant Romany as + he, alone, carried Ingolby in his arms, and laid him on the bed from which + he was to rise with all that he had fought for overthrown, himself the + blind victim of a hard fate. He had noticed the old man straighten himself + with a spring and stand as though petrified when Ingolby said: “Why don’t + you turn on the light?” As he looked round in that instant of ghastly + silence he had observed almost mechanically that the old man’s lips were + murmuring something. Then the thought of Fleda Druse shot into Rockwell’s + mind, and it harassed him during the hours Ingolby slept, and after the + giant Gipsy had taken his departure just before the dawn. + </p> + <p> + “I’m afraid it will mean more there than anywhere else,” he said sadly to + himself. “There was evidently something between those two; and she isn’t + the kind to take it philosophically. Poor girl! Poor girl! It’s a bitter + dose, if there was anything in it,” he added. + </p> + <p> + He watched beside the sick-bed till the dawn stared in and his patient + stirred and waked, then he took Ingolby’s hand, grown a little cooler, in + both his own. “How are you feeling, old man?” he asked cheerfully. “You’ve + had a good sleep-nearly three and a half hours. Is the pain in the head + less?” + </p> + <p> + “Better, Sawbones, better,” Ingolby replied cheerfully. “They’ve loosened + the tie that binds—begad, it did stretch the nerves. I had gripes of + colic once, but the pain I had in my head was twenty times worse, till you + gave the opiate.” + </p> + <p> + “That’s the eyes,” said Rockwell. “I had to lift a bit of bone, and the + eyes saw it and felt it, and cried out-shrieked, you might say. They’ve + got a sensitiveness all their own, have the eyes.” + </p> + <p> + “It’s odd there aren’t more accidents to them,” answered Ingolby—“just + a little ball of iridescent pulp with strings tied to the brain.” + </p> + <p> + “And what hurts the head may destroy the eyes sometimes,” Rockwell + answered cautiously. “We know so little of the delicate union between + them, that we can’t be sure we can put the eyes right again when, because + of some blow to the head, the ricochet puts the eyes out of commission.” + </p> + <p> + “That’s what’s the matter with me, then?” asked Ingolby, feeling the + bandage on his eyes feverishly, and stirring in his bed with a sense of + weariness. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, the ricochet got them, and has put them out of commission,” replied + Rockwell, carefully dwelling upon each word, and giving a note of meaning + to his tone. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby raised himself in bed, but Rockwell gently forced him down again. + “Will my eyes have to be kept bandaged long? Shall I have to give up work + for any length of time?” Ingolby asked. + </p> + <p> + “Longer than you’ll like,” was the enigmatical reply. “It’s the devil’s + own business,” was the weary answer. “Every minute’s valuable to me now. I + ought to be on deck morning, noon, and night. There’s all the trouble + between the two towns; there’s the strike on hand; there’s that business + of the Orange funeral, and more than all a thousand times, there’s—” + he paused. + </p> + <p> + He was going to say, “There’s that devil Marchand’s designs on my bridge,” + but he thought better of it and stopped. It had been his intention to deal + with Marchand directly, to get a settlement of their differences without + resort to the law, to prevent the criminal act without deepening a feud + which might keep the two towns apart for years. Bad as Marchand was, to + prevent his crime was far better than punishing him for it afterwards. To + have Marchand arrested for conspiracy to commit a crime was a business + which would gravely interfere with his freedom of motion in the near + future, would create complications which might cripple his own purposes in + indirect ways. That was why he had declared to Jowett that even Felix + Marchand had his price, and that he would try negotiations first. + </p> + <p> + But what troubled him now, as he lay with eyes bandaged and a knowledge + that to-morrow was the day fixed for the destruction of the bridge, was + his own incapacity. It was unlikely that his head or his eyes would be + right by to-morrow, or that Rockwell would allow him to get up. He felt in + his own mind that the injury he had received was a serious one, and that + the lucky horseshoe had done Maxchand’s work for him all too well. This + thought shook him. Rockwell could see his chest heave with an excitement + gravely injurious to his condition; yet he must be told the worst, or the + shock of discovery by himself that he was blind might give him brain + fever. Rockwell felt that he must hasten the crisis. + </p> + <p> + “Rockwell,” Ingolby suddenly asked, “is there any chance of my discarding + this and getting out to-morrow?” He touched the handkerchief round his + eyes. “It doesn’t matter about the head bandages, but the eyes—can’t + I slough the wraps to-morrow? I feel scarcely any pain now.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, you can get rid of the bandages to-morrow—you can get rid of + them to-day, if you really wish,” Rockwell answered, closing in on the + last defence. + </p> + <p> + “But I don’t mind being in the dark to-day if it’ll make me fitter for + to-morrow and get me right sooner. I’m not a fool. There’s too much + carelessness about such things. People often don’t give themselves a + chance to get right by being in too big a hurry. So, keep me in darkness + to-day, if you want to, old man. For a hustler I’m not in too big a hurry, + you see. I’m for holding back to get a bigger jump.” + </p> + <p> + “You can’t be in a big hurry, even if you want to, Ingolby,” rejoined + Rockwell, gripping the wrist of the sick man, and leaning over him. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby grew suddenly very still. It was as though vague fear had seized + him and held him in a vice. “What is it? What do you want to say to me?” + he asked in a low, nerveless tone. + </p> + <p> + “You’ve been hit hard, Chief. The ricochet has done you up for some time. + The head will soon get well, but I’m far from sure about your eyes. You’ve + got to have a specialist about them. You’re in the dark, and as for making + you see, so am I. Your eyes and you are out of commission for some time, + anyhow.” + </p> + <p> + He leaned over hastily, but softly and deftly undid the bandages over the + eyes and took them off. “It’s seven in the morning, and the sun’s up, + Chief, but it doesn’t do you much good, you see.” + </p> + <p> + The last two words were the purest accident, but it was a strange, + mournful irony, and Rockwell flushed at the thought of it. He saw + Ingolby’s face turn grey, and then become white as death itself. + </p> + <p> + “I see,” came from the bluish-white lips, as the stricken man made call on + all the will and vital strength in him. + </p> + <p> + For a long minute Rockwell held the cold hand in the grasp of one who + loves and grieves, but even so the physician and surgeon in him were + uppermost, as they should be, in the hour when his friend was standing on + the brink of despair, maybe of catastrophe irremediable. He did not say a + word yet, however. In such moments the vocal are dumb and the blind see. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby heaved himself in the bed and threw up his arms, wresting them + from Rockwell’s grasp. + </p> + <p> + “My God—oh, my God-blind!” he cried in agony. Rockwell drew the head + with the sightless eyes to his shoulder. + </p> + <p> + For a moment he laid one hand on the heart, that, suddenly still, now went + leaping under his fingers. “Steady,” he said firmly. “Steady. It may be + only temporary. Keep your head up to the storm. We’ll have a specialist, + and you must not get mired till then. Steady, Chief.” + </p> + <p> + “Chief! Chief!” murmured Ingolby. “Dear God, what a chief! I risked + everything, and I’ve lost everything by my own vanity. Barbazon’s—the + horseshoe—among the wolves, just to show I could do things better + than any one else—as if I had the patent for setting the world + right. And now—now—” + </p> + <p> + The thought of the bridge, of Marchand’s devilish design, shot into his + mind, and once more he was shaken. “The bridge! Blind! Mother!” he called + in a voice twisted in an agony which only those can feel to whom life’s + purposes are even more than life itself. Then, with a moan, he became + unconscious, and his head rolled over against Rockwell’s cheek. The damp + of his brow was as the damp of death as Rockwell’s lips touched it. + </p> + <p> + “Old boy, old boy!” Rockwell said tenderly, “I wish it had been me + instead. Life means so much to you—and so little to me. I’ve seen + too much, and you’ve only just begun to see.” + </p> + <p> + Laying him gently down, Rockwell summoned the nurse and Jim Beadle and + spoke to them in low tones. “He knows now, and it has hit him hard, but + not so hard that he won’t stiffen to it. It might have been worse.” + </p> + <p> + He gave instructions as to the care that should be taken, and replaced the + bandages on the eyes. It was, however, long before Ingolby was restored to + consciousness, and when it came, Rockwell put to his lips a cooling drink + containing a powerful opiate. Ingolby drank it without protest and in + silence. He was like one whose sense of life was automatic and of an inner + rather than an outer understanding. But when he lay back on the pillow + again, he said slowly: + </p> + <p> + “I want the Chief Constable to come here to-night at eight o’clock. It + will be dark then. He must come. It is important. Will you see to it, + Rockwell?” + </p> + <p> + He thrust out a hand as though to find Rockwell’s, and there was a + gratitude and an appeal in the pressure of his fingers which went to + Rockwell’s heart. + </p> + <p> + “All right, Chief. I’ll have him here,” Rockwell answered briskly, but + with tears standing in his eyes. Ingolby had, as it were, been stricken + out of the active, sentient, companionable world into a world where he was + alone, detached, solitary. His being seemed suspended in an atmosphere of + misery and helplessness. + </p> + <p> + “Blind! I am blind!” That was the phrase which kept beating with the + pulses in Ingolby’s veins, that throbbed, and throbbed, and throbbed like + engines in a creaking ship which the storm was shaking and pounding in the + vast seas between the worlds. Here was the one incomprehensible, + stupefying fact: nothing else mattered. Every plan he had ever had, every + design which he had made his own by an originality that even his foes + acknowledged, were passing before his brain in swift procession, shining, + magnified, and magnificent, and in that sudden clear-seeing of his soul he + beheld their full value, their exact concrete force and ultimate effect. + Yet he knew himself detached from them, inactive, incapable, because he + could not see with the eyes of the body. The great essential thing to him + was that one thing he had lost. A man might be a cripple and still direct + the great concerns of life and the business of life. He might be shorn of + limb and scarred of body, but with eye sight still direct the courses of + great schemes, in whatever sphere of life his purposes were at work. He + might be deaf to every sound and forever dumb, but seeing enabled him + still to carry forward every enterprise. In darkness, however, those + things were naught, because judgment must depend on the eyes and senses of + others. The report might be true or false, the deputy might deceive, and + his blind chief might never know the truth unless some other spectator of + his schemes should report it; and the truth could not surely be checked, + save by some one, perhaps, whose life was joined to his, by one that truly + loved him, whose fate was his. + </p> + <p> + His brain was afire. By one that truly loved him! Who was there that loved + him? Who was there at one with him in all his deep designs, in all he had + done and meant to do? Neither brother, nor sister, nor friend, nor any + other. None of his blood was there who could share with him the + constructive work he had set out to do. There was no friend whose fate was + part of his own. There was the Boss Doctor: but Rockwell was tied to his + own responsibilities, and he could not give up, of course, would not give + up his life to the schemes of another. There were a dozen men whom he had + helped to forge ahead by his own schemes, but their destinies were not + linked with his. Only one whose life was linked with his could be trusted + to be his eyes, to be the true reporter of all he did, had done, or + planned to do. Only one who loved him. + </p> + <p> + But even one who loved him could not carry through his incompleted work + against the assaults of his enemies, who were powerful, watchful, astute, + and merciless; who had a greed which set money higher than all else in the + world. They were of the new order of things in the New World. The business + of life was to them not a system of barter and exchange, a giving + something of value to get something of value, with a margin of profit for + each, and a sense of human equity behind; it was a cockpit where one man + sought to get what another man had—and get it almost anyhow. + </p> + <p> + It was the work of the faro-bank man, whose sleight of hand deceived the + man that carried the gun. + </p> + <p> + All the old humanity and good-fellowship of the trader, the man who + exchanged, as it was in the olden days of the world and continued in + greater or less degree till the present generation—all that was + gone. It was held in contempt. It had prevailed when men were open robbers + and filibusters and warriors, giving their lives, if need be, to get what + they wanted, making force their god. It had triumphed over the violence + and robbery of the open road until the dying years of one century and the + young years of a new century. Then the day of the trickster came—and + men laughed at the idea of fair exchange and strove to give an illusive + value for a thing of real value—the remorseless sleight of hand + which the law could not reach. The desire to get profit by honest toiling + was dying down to ashes. + </p> + <p> + Against such men had Ingolby worked—the tricksters, the + manipulators. At the basis of his schemes was organization and the economy + which concentrated and conserved energy begets, together with its profit. + He had been the enemy of waste, the apostle of frugality and thrift; and + it was that which had enabled him, in his short career, to win the + confidence of the big men behind him in Montreal, to make good every step + of the way. He had worked for profit out of legitimate product and + industry and enterprise, out of the elimination of waste. It was his + theory (and his practice) that no bit of old iron, no bolt or screw, no + scrap of paper should be thrown away; that the cinders of the engines + could and should be utilized for that which they would make; and that was + why there was a paper-mill and foundry on the Sagalac at Manitou. That was + why and how, so far, he had beaten the tricksters. + </p> + <p> + But while his schemes flashed before his mind, as the opiate suspended him + in the middle heaven between sleep and waking, the tricksters and + manipulators came hurrying after him like marauders that waited for the + moment when they could rush the camp in the watches of the night. His + disordered imagination saw the ruin and wreck of his work, the seizure of + what was his own—the place of control on his railways, the place of + the Master Man who cared infinitely more to see his designs accomplished + than for the profit they would bring to himself. Yesterday he had been + just at the top of the hill. The key in his fingers was turning in the + lock which would make safe the securities of his life and career, when it + snapped, and the world grew dark as the black curtain fell and shut out + the lighted room from the wayfarer in the gloom. Then, it was, came the + opaque blackness which could be felt, and his voice calling in despair: + “Blind! I am blind!” + </p> + <p> + He did not know that he had taken an opiate, that his friend had + mercifully atrophied his rebellious nerves. These visions he was seeing + were terribly true, but they somehow gave him no physical torture. It was + as though one saw an operation performed upon one’s body with the nerves + stilled and deadened by ether. Yet he was cruelly conscious of the + disaster which had come to him. For a time at least. Then his mind seemed + less acute, the visions came, then without seeing them go, they went. And + others came in broken patches, shreds, and dreams, phantasmagoria of the + brain, and at last all were mingled and confused; but as they passed they + seemed to burn his sight. How he longed for a cool bandage over his eyes, + for a soft linen which would shut out the cumuli of broken hopes and + designs, life’s goals obliterated! He had had enough of the black + procession of futile things. + </p> + <p> + His longing was not denied, for even as he roused himself from the + oblivion coming on him, as though by a last effort to remember his dire + misfortune, maybe his everlasting tragedy, something soothing and soft + like linen dipped in dew was laid upon his forehead. A cool, delicious + hand covered his eyes caressingly; a voice from spheres so far away that + worlds were the echoing points of the sound, came whispering to him like a + stir of wings in a singing grove. With a last effort to remain in the + waking world, he raised his head so very little, but fell gently back + again with one sighing word on his lips: + </p> + <p> + “Fleda!” + </p> + <p> + It was no illusion. Fleda had come from her own night of trouble to his + motherless, wifeless home, and would not be denied admittance by the + nurse. It was Jim Beadle who admitted her. + </p> + <p> + “He’d be mad if he knew we wouldn’t let her come,” Jim had said to the + nurse. + </p> + <p> + It was Fleda who had warned Ingolby of the dangers that surrounded him—the + physical as well as business dangers. She came now to serve the blind + victim of that Fate which she had seen hovering over him. + </p> + <p> + The renegade daughter of the Romanys, as Jethro Fawe had called her, was, + for the first time, in the house of her master Gorgio. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XIII. THE CHAIN OF THE PAST + </h2> + <p> + For once in its career, Lebanon was absolutely united. The blow that had + brought down the Master Man had also struck the town between the eyes, and + there was no one—friend or foe of Ingolby—who did not regard + it as an insult and a challenge. It was now known that the roughs of + Manitou, led by the big river-driver, were about to start on a raid upon + Lebanon and upon Ingolby at the very moment the horseshoe did its work. + All night there were groups of men waiting outside Ingolby’s house. They + were of all classes-carters, railway workers, bartenders, lawyers, + engineers, bankers, accountants, merchants, ranchmen, carpenters, + insurance agents, manufacturers, millers, horse-dealers, and so on. + </p> + <p> + Some prayed for Ingolby’s life, others swore viciously; and those who + swore had no contempt for those who prayed, while those who prayed were + tolerant of those who swore. It was a union of incongruous elements. Men + who had nothing in common were one in the spirit of faction; and all were + determined that the Orangeman, whose funeral was fixed for this memorable + Saturday, should be carried safely to his grave. Civic pride had almost + become civic fanaticism in Lebanon. One of the men beaten by Ingolby in + the recent struggle for control of the railways said to the others + shivering in the grey dawn: “They were bound to get him in the back. + They’re dagos, the lot of ‘em. Skunks are skunks, even when you skin ‘em.” + </p> + <p> + When, just before dawn, old Gabriel Druse issued from the house into which + he had carried Ingolby the night before, they questioned him eagerly. He + had been a figure apart from both Lebanon and Manitou, and they did not + regard him as a dago, particularly as it was more than whispered that + Ingolby “had a lien” on his daughter. In the grey light, with his long + grizzled beard and iron-grey, shaggy hair, Druse looked like a mystic + figure of the days when the gods moved among men like mortals. His great + height, vast proportions, and silent ways gave him a place apart, and + added to the superstitious feeling by which he was surrounded. + </p> + <p> + “How is he?” they asked whisperingly, as they crowded round him. + </p> + <p> + “The danger is over,” was the slow, heavy reply. “He will live, but he has + bad days to face.” + </p> + <p> + “What was the danger?” they asked. “Fever—maybe brain fever,” he + replied. “We’ll see him through,” someone said. + </p> + <p> + “Well, he cannot see himself through,” rejoined the old man solemnly. The + enigmatical words made them feel there was something behind. + </p> + <p> + “Why can’t he see himself through?” asked Osterhaut the universal, who had + just arrived from the City Hall. + </p> + <p> + “He can’t see himself through because he is blind,” was the heavy answer. + </p> + <p> + There was a moment of shock, of hushed surprise, and then a voice burst + forth: “Blind—they’ve blinded him, boys! The dagos have killed his + sight. He’s blind, boys!” + </p> + <p> + A profane and angry muttering ran through the crowd, who were thirsty, + hungry, and weary with watching. + </p> + <p> + Osterhaut held up the horseshoe which had brought Ingolby down. “Here it + is, the thing that done it. It’s tied with a blue ribbon-for luck,” he + added ironically. “It’s got his blood on it. I’m keeping it till Manitou’s + paid the price of it. Then I’ll give it to Lebanon for keeps.” + </p> + <p> + “That’s the thing that did it, but where’s the man behind the thing?” + snarled a voice. + </p> + <p> + Again there was a moment’s silence, and then Billy Kyle, the veteran + stage-driver, said: “He’s in the jug, but a gaol has doors, and doors’ll + open with or without keys. I’m for opening the door, boys.” + </p> + <p> + “What for?” asked a man who knew the answer, but who wanted the thing + said. + </p> + <p> + “I spent four years in Arizona, same as Jowett,” Billy Kyle answered, “and + I got in the way of thinking as they do there, and acting just as quick as + you think. I drove stage down in the Verde Valley. Sometimes there wasn’t + time to bring a prisoner all the way to a judge and jury, and people was + busy, and hadn’t time to wait for the wagon; so they done what was right, + and there was always a tree that would carry that kind o’ fruit for the + sake of humanity. It’s the best way, boys.” + </p> + <p> + “This isn’t Arizona or any other lyncher’s country,” said Halliday, the + lawyer, making his way to the front. “It isn’t the law, and in this + country it’s the law that counts. It’s the Gover’ment’s right to attend to + that drunken dago that threw the horseshoe, and we’ve got to let the + Gover’ment do it. No lynching on my plate, thank you. If Ingolby could + speak to us, you can bet your boots it’s what he’d say.” + </p> + <p> + “What’s your opinion, boss?” asked Billy Kyle of Gabriel Druse, who had + stood listening, his chin on his breast, his sombre eyes fixed on them + abstractedly. + </p> + <p> + At Kyle’s question his eyes lighted up with a fire that was struck from a + flint in other spheres, and he answered: “It is for the ruler to take + life, not the subject. If it is a man that rules, it is for him; if it is + the law that rules, it is for the law. Here, it is the law. Then it is not + for the subject, and it is not for you.” + </p> + <p> + “If he was your son?” asked Billy Kyle. + </p> + <p> + “If he was my son, I should be the ruler, not the law,” was the grim, + enigmatic reply, and the old man stalked away from them towards the + bridge. + </p> + <p> + “I’d bet he’d settle the dago’s hash that done to his son what the Manitou + dagos done to Ingolby—and settle it quick,” remarked Lick Farrelly, + the tinsmith. + </p> + <p> + “I bet he’s been a ruler or something somewhere,” remarked Billy Kyle. + </p> + <p> + “I bet I’m going home to breakfast,” interposed Halliday, the lawyer. + “There’s a straight day’s work before us, gentlemen,” he added, “and we + can’t do anything here. Orangemen, let’s hoof it.” + </p> + <p> + Twenty Orangemen stepped out from the crowd. Halliday was a past master of + their lodge, and they all meant what he meant. They marched away in + procession—to breakfast and to a meeting of the lodge. Others + straggled after, but a few waited for the appearance of the doctor. When + the sun came up and Rockwell, pale and downcast, issued forth, they + gathered round him, and walked with him through the town, questioning, + listening and threatening. + </p> + <p> + A few still remained behind at Ingolby’s house. They were of the devoted + slaves of Ingolby who would follow him to the gates of Hades and back + again, or not back if need be. + </p> + <p> + The nigger barber, Berry, was one; another was the Jack-of-all-trades, + Osterhaut, a kind of municipal odd-man, with the well-known red hair, the + face that constantly needed shaving, the blue serge shirt with a scarf for + a collar, the suit of canvas in the summer and of Irish frieze in the + winter; the pair of hands which were always in his own pocket, never in + any one else’s; the grey eye, doglike in its mildness, and the long nose + which gave him the name of Snorty. Of the same devoted class also was + Jowett who, on a higher plane, was as wise and discerning a scout as any + leader ever had. + </p> + <p> + While old Berry and Osterhaut and all the others were waiting at Ingolby’s + house, Jowett was scouting among the Manitou roughs for the Chief + Constable of Lebanon, to find out what was forward. What he had found was + not reassuring, because Manitou, conscious of being in the wrong, realized + that Lebanon would try to make her understand her wrong-doing; and that + was intolerable. It was clear to Jowett that, in spite of all, there would + be trouble at the Orange funeral, and that the threatened strike would + take place at the same time in spite of Ingolby’s catastrophe. Already in + the early morning revengeful spirits from Lebanon had invaded the outer + portions of Manitou and had taken satisfaction out of an equal number of + “Dogans,” as they called the Roman Catholic labourers, one of whom was + carried to the hospital with an elbow out of joint and a badly injured + back. + </p> + <p> + With as much information as he needed, Jowett made his way back to + Lebanon, when, at the approach to the bridge, he met Fleda hurrying with + bent head and pale, distressed face in his own direction. Of all Western + men none had a better appreciation of the sex that takes its toll of every + traveller after his kind than Aaron Jowett. He had been a real buck in his + day among those of his own class, and though the storm of his romances had + become but a faint stirring of leaves which had tinges of days that are + sear, he still had an eye unmatched for female beauty. The sun which makes + that northern land a paradise in summer caught the gold-brown hair of + Gabriel Druse’s daughter, and made it glint and shine. It coquetted with + the umber of her eyes and they grew luminous as a jewel; it struck lightly + across the pale russet of her cheek and made it like an apple that one’s + lips touch lovingly, when one calls it “too good to eat.” It made an + atmosphere of half-silver and half-gold with a touch of sunrise crimson + for her to walk in, translating her form into melting lines of grace. + </p> + <p> + Jowett knew that Druse’s daughter was on her way to the man who had looked + once, looked twice, looked thrice into her eyes and had seen there his own + image; and that she had done the same; and that the man, it might be, + would never look into their dark depths again. He might speak once, he + might speak twice, he might speak thrice, but would it ever be the same as + the look that needed no words? + </p> + <p> + When he crossed Fleda Druse’s pathway she stopped short. She knew that + Jowett was Ingolby’s true friend. She had seen him often, and he was + intimately associated with that day when she had run the Carillon Rapids + and had lain (for how long she never dared to think) in Ingolby’s arms in + the sight of all the world. First among those who crowded round her at + Carillon that day were Jowett and Osterhaut, who had tried to warn her. + </p> + <p> + “You are going to him?” she said now with confidence in her eyes, and by + the intimacy of the phrase (as though she could speak of Ingolby only as + him) their own understanding was complete. + </p> + <p> + “To see how he is and then to do other things,” Jowett answered. + </p> + <p> + There was silence for a moment in which they moved slowly forward, and + then she said: “You were at Barbazon’s last night?” + </p> + <p> + “When that Gipsy son of a dog gave him away!” he assented. “I never heard + anything like the speech Ingolby made. He had them in the throat. The + Gipsy would have had nothing out of it, if it hadn’t been for the + horseshoe. But in spite of the giveaway, Ingolby was getting them where + they were soft-fairly drugging them with good news. You never heard such + dope. My, he was smooth! The golden, velvet truth it was, too. That’s the + only kind he has in stock; and they were sort of stupefied and locoed as + they chewed his word-plant. Cicero must have been a saucy singer of the + dictionary, and Paul the Apostle had a dope of his own you couldn’t buy, + but the gay gamut that Ingolby run gives them all the cold good-bye.” + </p> + <p> + She held herself very still as he spoke. There was, however, a strange, + lonely look in her eyes. The man lying asleep in the darkness of body and + mind yonder was not really her lover, for he had said no word direct of + love to her, and she knew him so little, how could she love him? Yet there + was something between them which had its authority over their lives, + overcoming even that maiden modesty which was in contrast to the bold, + physical thing she had done in running the Carillon Rapids those centuries + ago when she was young and glad-wistfully glad. So much had come since + that day, she had travelled so far on the highway of Fate, that she looked + back from peak to peak of happening to an almost invisible horizon. So + much had occurred and she felt so old this morning; and yet there was in + her heart the undefined feeling that she must keep her radiant Spring of + life for the blind Gorgio if he needed it-if he needed it. Would he need + it, robbed of sight and with his life-work murdered? + </p> + <p> + She shuddered as she thought of what it meant to him. If a man is to work, + he must have eyes to see. Yet what had she to do with it, after all? She + had no right to go to him even as she was going. Yet had she not the right + of common humanity? This Gorgio was her friend. Did not the world know + that he had saved her life? + </p> + <p> + As they came to the Lebanon end of the bridge, Fleda turned to Jowett and, + commenting on his description of the scene at Barbazon, said: “He is a + great man, but he trusts too much and risks too much. That was no place + for him.” + </p> + <p> + “Big men like him think they can do anything,” Jowett replied, a little + ironically, subtly trying to force a confession of her preference for + Ingolby. + </p> + <p> + He succeeded. Her eye lighted with indignation. She herself might + challenge him, but she would not allow another to do so. + </p> + <p> + “It is not the truth,” she rejoined sharply. “He does not measure himself + against the world so. He is like—like a child,” she added. + </p> + <p> + “It seems to me all big men are like that,” Jowett rejoined; “and he’s the + biggest man the West has seen. He knows about every man’s business as + though it was his own. I can get a margin off most any man in the West on + a horse-trade, but I’d look shy about doing a trade with him. You can’t + dope a horse so he won’t know. He’s on to it, sees it-sees it like as if + it was in glass. Sees anything and everything, and—” He stopped + short. The Master Gorgio could no longer see, and his henchman flushed + like a girl at his “break”; though, as a horse-dealer, he had in his time + listened without shame to wilder, angrier reproaches than most men living. + </p> + <p> + She glanced at him, saw his confusion, forgave and understood him. + </p> + <p> + “It was not the horseshoe, it was not the Gipsy,” she returned. “They did + not set it going. It would not have happened but for one man.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, it’s Marchand, right enough,” answered Jowett, “but we’ll get him + yet. We’ll get him with the branding-iron hot.” + </p> + <p> + “That will not put things right if—” she paused, then with a great + effort she added: “Does the doctor think he will get it back and that—” + </p> + <p> + She stopped suddenly in an agitation he did not care to see and he turned + away his head. + </p> + <p> + “Doctor doesn’t know,” he answered. “There’s got to be an expert. It’ll + take time before he gets here, but—” he could not help but say it, + seeing how great her distress was—“but it’s going to come back. I’ve + seen cases—I saw one down on the Border”—how easily he lied!—“just + like his. It was blasting that done it—the shock. But the sight come + back all right, and quick too—like as I’ve seen a paralizite get up + all at once and walk as though he’d never been locoed. Why, God Almighty + don’t let men like Ingolby be done like that by reptiles same’s Marchand.” + </p> + <p> + “You believe in God Almighty?” she said half-wonderingly, yet with + gratitude in her tone. “You understand about God?” + </p> + <p> + “I’ve seen too many things not to try and deal fair with Him and not try + to cheat Him,” he answered. “I see things lots of times that wasn’t ever + born on the prairie or in any house. I’ve seen—I’ve seen enough,” he + said abruptly, and stopped. + </p> + <p> + “What have you seen?” she asked eagerly. “Was it good or bad?” + </p> + <p> + “Both,” he answered quickly. “I was stalked once—stalked I was by + night and often in the open day, by some sickly, loathsome thing, that + even made me fight it with my hands—a thing I couldn’t see. I used + to fire buckshot at it, enough to kill an army, till I near went mad. I + was really and truly getting loony. Then I took to prayin’ to the best + woman I ever knowed. I never had a mother, but she looked after me—my + sister, Sara, it was. She brought me up, and then died and left me without + anything to hang on to. I didn’t know all I’d lost till she was gone. But + I guess she knew what I thought of her; for she come back—after I’d + prayed till I couldn’t see. She come back into my room one night when the + cursed ‘haunt’ was prowling round me, and as plain as I see you, I saw + her. ‘Be at peace,’ she said, and I spoke to her, and said, ‘Sara-why, + Sara’ and she smiled, and went away into nothing—like a bit o’ cloud + in the sun.” + </p> + <p> + He stopped, and was looking straight before him as though he saw a vision. + </p> + <p> + “It went?” she asked breathlessly. + </p> + <p> + “It went like that—” He made a swift, outward gesture. “It went and + it never came back; and she didn’t either—not ever. My idee is,” he + added, “that there’s evil things that mebbe are the ghost-shapes of living + men that want to do us harm; though, mebbe, too, they’re the ghost-shapes + of men that’s dead, but that can’t get on Over There. So they try to get + back to us here; and they can make life Hell while they’re stalking us.” + </p> + <p> + “I am sure you are right,” she said. + </p> + <p> + She was thinking of the loathsome thing which haunted her room last night. + Was it the embodied second self of Jethro Fawe, doing the evil that Jethro + Fawe, the visible corporeal man, wished to do? She shuddered, then bent + her head and fixed her mind on Ingolby, whose house was not far away. She + felt strangely, miserably alone this morning. She was in that fluttering + state which follows a girl’s discovery that she is a woman, and the + feeling dawns that she must complete herself by joining her own life with + the life of another. + </p> + <p> + She showed no agitation, but her repression gave an almost statuesque + character to her face and figure. The adventurous nature of her early life + had given her a power to meet shock and danger with coolness, and though + the news of Ingolby’s tragedy had seemed to freeze the vital forces in + her, and all the world became blank for a moment, she had controlled + herself and had set forth to go to him, come what might. + </p> + <p> + As she entered the street where Ingolby lived, she suddenly realized the + difficulty before her. She might go to him, but by only one right could + she stay and nurse him, and that right she did not possess. He would, she + knew, understand her, no matter how the world babbled. Why should the + world babble? What woman could have designs upon a blind man? Was not + humanity alone sufficient warrant for staying by his side? Yet would he + wish it? Suddenly her heart sank; but again she remembered their last + parting, and once more she was sure he would be glad to have her with him. + </p> + <p> + It flashed upon her how different it would have been, if he and she had + been Romanys, and this thing had happened over there in the far lands she + knew so well. Who would have hinted at shame, if she had taken him to her + father’s tan or gone to his tan and tended him as a man might tend a man? + Humanity would have been the only convention; there would have been no + sex, no false modesty, no babble, no reproach. If it had been a man as old + as the oldest or as young as Jethro Fawe it would have made no difference. + </p> + <p> + As young as Jethro Fawe! Why was it that now she could never think of the + lost and abandoned Romany life without thinking also of Jethro Fawe? Why + should she hate him, despise him, revolt against him, and yet feel that, + as it were by invisible cords, he drew her back to that which she had + forsworn, to the Past which dragged at her feet? The Romany was not dead + in her; her real struggle was yet to come; and in a vague but prophetic + way she realized it. She was not yet one with the settled western world. + </p> + <p> + As they came close to Ingolby’s house she heard marching footsteps, and in + the near distance she saw fourscore or more men tramping in military + order. “Who are they?” she asked of Jowett. + </p> + <p> + “Men that are going to see law and order kept in Lebanon,” he answered. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XIV. SUCH THINGS MAY NOT BE + </h2> + <p> + A few hours later Fleda slowly made her way homeward through the woods on + the Manitou side of the Sagalac. Leaving Ingolby’s house, she had seen men + from the ranches and farms and mines beyond Lebanon driving or riding into + the town, as though to a fair or fete-day. Word of anticipated troubles + had sped through the countryside, and the innate curiosity of a race who + greatly love a row brought in sensation-lovers. Some were skimming along + in one-horse gigs, a small bag of oats dangling beneath like the pendulum + of a great clock. Others were in double or triple-seated light wagons—“democrats” + they were called. Women had a bit of colour in their hats or at their + throats, and the men had on clean white collars and suits of + “store-clothes”—a sign of being on pleasure bent. Young men and + girls on rough but serviceable mounts cantered past, laughing and joking, + and their loud talking grated on the ear of the girl who had seen a + Napoleon in the streets of his Moscow. + </p> + <p> + Presently there crossed her path a gruesomely ugly hearse, with glass + sides and cheap imitation ostrich plumes drawn by gorged ravens of horses + with egregiously long tails, and driven by an undertaker’s assistant, who, + with a natural gaiety of soul, displayed an idiotic solemnity by dragging + down the corners of the mouth. She turned away in loathing. + </p> + <p> + Her mind fled to a scene far away in the land of the Volga when she was a + child, where she had seen buried two men, who had fought for their + insulted honour till both had died of their wounds. She remembered the + white and red sashes and the gay scarfs worn by the women at the burial, + the jackets with great silver buttons worn by the men, and the + silver-mounted pistols and bright steel knives in the garish belts. She + saw again the bodies of the two gladiators, covered with crimson robes, + carried shoulder-high on a soft bed of interlaced branches to the graves + beneath the trees. There, covered with flowers and sprigs and evergreens, + ribbons and favours, the kindly earth hid them, cloaked for their long + sleep, while women wept, and men praised the dead, and went back to the + open road again cheerily, as the dead would have them do. + </p> + <p> + If he had died—the man she had just left behind in that torpid sleep + which opiates bring—his body would have been carried to his last + home in just such a hideous equipage as this hearse. A shiver of revolt + went through her frame, and her mind went to him as she had seen him lying + between the white sheets of his bed, his hands, as they had lain upon the + coverlet, compact of power and grace, knit and muscular and vital—not + the hand for a violin but the hand for a sword. + </p> + <p> + As she had laid her hand upon his hot forehead and over his eyes, he had + unconsciously spoken her name. That had told her more of what really was + between them than she had ever known. In the presence of the catastrophe + that must endanger, if not destroy the work he had done, the career he had + made, he thought of her, spoke her name. + </p> + <p> + What could she do to prevent his ruin? She must do something, else she had + no right to think of him. As though her thoughts had summoned him, she + came suddenly upon Felix Marchand at a point where her path resolved + itself into two, one leading to Manitou, the other to her own home. + </p> + <p> + There was a malicious glint in the greenish eyes of the dissolute + demagogue as he saw her. His hat made a half-circle before it found his + head again. + </p> + <p> + “You pay early visits, mademoiselle,” he said, his teeth showing rat-like. + </p> + <p> + “And you late ones?” she asked meaningly. + </p> + <p> + “Not so late that I can’t get up early to see what’s going on,” he + rejoined in a sour voice. + </p> + <p> + “Is it that those who beat you have to get up early?” she asked + ironically. + </p> + <p> + “No one has got up earlier than me lately,” he sneered. + </p> + <p> + “All the days are not begun,” she remarked calmly. + </p> + <p> + “You have picked up quite an education since you left the road and the + tan,” he said with the look of one who delivers a smashing blow. + </p> + <p> + “I am not yet educated enough to know how you get other people to commit + your crimes for you,” she retorted. + </p> + <p> + “Who commits my crimes for me?” His voice was sharp and even anxious. + </p> + <p> + “The man who told you I was once a Gipsy—Jethro Fawe.” + </p> + <p> + Her instinct had told her this was so. But had Jethro told all? She + thought not. It would need some catastrophe which threw him off his + balance to make him speak to a Gorgio of the inner things of Romany life; + and child—marriage was one of them. + </p> + <p> + He scoffed. “Once a Gipsy always a Gipsy. Race is race, and you can’t put + it off and on like—your stocking.” + </p> + <p> + He was going to say chemise, but race was race, and vestiges of native + French chivalry stayed the gross simile on the lips of the degenerate. + Fleda’s eyes, however, took on a dark and brooding look which, more than + anything else, showed the Romany in her. With a murky flood of resentment + rising in her veins, she strove to fight back the half-savage instincts of + a bygone life. She felt as though she could willingly sentence this man to + death as her father had done Jethro Fawe that very morning. Another + thought, however, was working and fighting in her—that Marchand was + better as a friend than an enemy; and that while Ingolby’s fate was in the + balance, while yet the Orange funeral had not taken place and the strikes + had not yet come, it might be that he could be won over to Ingolby. Her + mind was thus involuntarily reproducing Ingolby’s policy, as he had + declared it to Jowett and Rockwell. It was to find Felix Marchand’s price, + and to buy off his enmity—not by money, for Marchand did not need + that, but by those other coins of value which are individual to each man’s + desires, passions and needs. + </p> + <p> + “Once a Frenchman isn’t always a Frenchman,” she replied coolly, + disregarding the coarse insolence of his last utterance. “You yourself do + not now swear faith to the tricolour or the fleur-de-lis.” + </p> + <p> + He flushed. She had touched a tender nerve. + </p> + <p> + “I am a Frenchman always,” he rejoined angrily. “I hate the English. I + spit on the English flag.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, I’ve heard you are an anarchist,” she rejoined. “A man with no + country and with a flag that belongs to no country—quelle affaire et + quelle drolerie!” + </p> + <p> + She laughed. Taken aback in spite of his anger, he stared at her. How good + her French accent was! If she would only speak altogether in that beloved + language, he could smother much malice. She was beautiful and—well, + who could tell? Ingolby was wounded and blind, maybe for ever, and women + are always with the top dog—that was his theory. Perhaps her + apparent dislike of him was only a mood. Many women that he had conquered + had been just like that. They had begun by disliking him—from Lil + Sarnia down—and had ended by being his. This girl would never be his + in the way that the others had been, but—who could tell?—perhaps + he would think enough of her to marry her? Anyway, it was worth while + making such a beauty care for him. The other kind of women were easy + enough to get, and it would be a piquant thing to have one irreproachable + affaire. He had never had one; he was not sure that any girl or woman he + had ever known had ever loved him, and he was certain that he had never + loved any girl or woman. To be in love would be a new and piquant + experience for him. He did not know love, but he knew what passion was. He + had ever been the hunter. This trail might be dangerous, too, but he would + take his chances. He had seen her dislike of him whenever they had met in + the past, and he had never tried to soften her attitude towards him. He + had certainly whistled, but she had not come. Well, he would whistle again—a + different tune. + </p> + <p> + “You speak French much?” he asked almost eagerly, the insolence gone from + his tone. “Why didn’t I know that?” + </p> + <p> + “I speak French in Manitou,” she replied, “but nearly all the French speak + English there, and so I speak more English than French.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, that’s it,” he rejoined almost angrily again. “The English will not + learn French, will not speak French. They make us learn English, and—” + </p> + <p> + “If you don’t like the flag and the country, why don’t you leave it?” she + interrupted, hardening, though she had meant to try and win him over to + Ingolby’s side. + </p> + <p> + His eyes blazed. There was something almost real in the man after all. + </p> + <p> + “The English can kill us, they can grind us to the dust,” he rejoined in + French, “but we will not leave the land which has always been ours. We + settled it; our fathers gave their lives for it in a thousand places. The + Indians killed them, the rivers and the storms, the plague and the fire, + the sickness and the cold wiped them out. They were burned alive at the + stake, they were flayed; their bones were broken to pieces by stones—but + they blazed trails with their blood in the wilderness from New Orleans to + Hudson’s Bay. They paid for the land with their lives. Then the English + came and took it, and since that time—one hundred and fifty years—we + have been slaves.” + </p> + <p> + “You do not look like a slave,” she answered, “and you have not acted like + a slave. If you were to do the things in France that you’ve done here, you + wouldn’t be free as you are to-day.” + </p> + <p> + “What have I done?” he asked darkly. + </p> + <p> + “You were the cause of what happened at Barbazon’s last night,”—he + smiled evilly—“you are egging on the roughs to break up the Orange + funeral to-day; and there is all the rest you know so well.” + </p> + <p> + “What is the rest I know so well?” He looked closely at her, his long, + mongrel eyes half-closing with covert scrutiny. + </p> + <p> + “Whatever it is, it is all bad and it is all yours.” + </p> + <p> + “Not all,” he retorted coolly. “You forget your Gipsy friend. He did his + part last night, and he’s still free.” + </p> + <p> + They had entered the last little stretch of wood in which her home lay, + and she slackened her footsteps slightly. She felt that she had been + unwise in challenging him; that she ought to try persistently to win him + over. It was repugnant to her, still it must be done even yet. She + mastered herself for Ingolby’s sake and changed her tactics. + </p> + <p> + “As you glory in what you have done, you won’t mind being responsible for + all that’s happened,” she replied in a more friendly tone. + </p> + <p> + She made an impulsive gesture towards him. + </p> + <p> + “You have shown what power you have—isn’t that enough?” she asked. + “You have made the crowd shout, ‘Vive Marchand!’ You can make everything + as peaceful as it is now upset. If you don’t do so, there will be much + misery. If peace must be got by force, then the force of government will + get it in the end. You have the gift of getting hold of the worst men + here, and you have done it; but won’t you now master them again in the + other way? You have money and brains; why not use them to become a leader + of those who will win at last, no matter what the game may be?” + </p> + <p> + He came close to her. She shrank inwardly, but she did not move. His + greenish eyes were wide open in the fulness of eloquence and desire. + </p> + <p> + “You have a tongue like none I ever heard,” he said impulsively. “You’ve + got a mind that thinks, you’ve got dash and can take risks. You took risks + that day on the Carillon Rapids. It was only the day before that I’d met + you by the old ford of the Sagalac, and made up to you. You choked me off + as though I was a wolf or a devil on the loose. The next day when I saw + Ingolby hand you out to the crowd from his arms, I got nasty—I have + fits like that sometimes, when I’ve had a little too much liquor. I felt + it more because you’re the only kind of woman that could ever get a real + hold on me. It was you made me get the boys rampaging and set the toughs + moving. As you say, I can get hold of a crowd. It’s not hard—with + money and drink. You can buy human nature cheap. Every man has his price + they say—and every woman too—bien sur! The thing is to find + out what is the price, and then how to buy. You can’t buy everyone in the + same way, even if you use a different price. You’ve got to find out how + they want the price—whether it’s to be handed over the counter, so + to speak, or to be kept on the window-sill, or left in a pocket, or + dropped in a path, or dug up like a potato, with a funny make-believe that + fools nobody, but just plays to the hypocrite in everyone everywhere. I’m + saying this to you because you’ve seen more of the world, I bet, than one + in a million, even though you’re so young. I don’t see why we can’t come + together. I’m to be bought. I don’t say that my price isn’t high. You’ve + got your price, too. You wouldn’t fuss yourself about things here in + Manitou and Lebanon, if there wasn’t something you wanted to get. Tout ca! + Well, isn’t it worth while making the bargain? You’ve got such gift of + speech that I’m just as if I’d been drugged, and all round, face, figure, + eyes, hair, foot, and girdle, you’re worth giving up a lot for. I’ve seen + plenty of your sex, and I’ve heard crowds of them talk, but they never had + anything for me beyond the minute. You’ve got the real thing. You’re my + fancy. You’ve been thinking and dreaming of Ingolby. He’s done. He’s a + back number. There’s nothing he’s done that isn’t on the tumble since last + night. The financial gang that he downed are out already against him. + They’ll have his economic blood. He made a splash while he was at it, but + the alligator’s got him. It’s ‘Exit Ingolby,’ now.” + </p> + <p> + She made a passionate gesture, and seemed about to speak, but he went on: + “No, don’t say anything. I know how you feel. You’ve had your face turned + his way, and you can’t look elsewhere all at once. But Time cures quick, + if you’re a good healthy human being. Ingolby was the kind likely to draw + a girl. He’s a six-footer and over; he spangled a lot, and he smiled + pretty—comme le printemps, and was sharp enough to keep clear of + women that could hurt him. That was his strongest point after all, for a + little, sly sprat of a woman that’s made eyes at you and led you on, till + you sent her a note in a hurry some time with some loose hot words in it, + and she got what she’d wanted, will make you pay a hundred times for the + goods you get. Ingolby was sharp enough to walk shy, until you came his + way, and then he lost his underpinning. But last night got him in the + vitals—hit him between the eyes; and his stock’s not worth ten cents + in the dollar to-day. But though the pumas are out, and he’s done, and’ll + never see his way out of the hole he’s in”—he laughed at his grisly + joke”—it’s natural to let him down easy. You’ve looked his way; he + did you a good turn at the Carillon Rapids, and you’d do one for him if + you could. I’m the only one can stop the worst from happening. You want to + pay your debt to him. Good. I can help you do it. I can stop the strikes + on the railways and in the mills. I can stop the row at the Orange + funeral. I can stop the run on his bank and the drop in his stock. I can + fight the gang that’s against him—I know how. I’m the man that can + bring things to pass.” + </p> + <p> + He paused with a sly, mean smile of self-approval and conceit, and his + tongue licked the corners of his mouth in a way that drunkards have in the + early morning when the effect of last night’s drinking has worn off. He + spread out his hands with the air of a man who had unpacked his soul, but + the chief characteristic of his manner was egregious belief in himself. + </p> + <p> + At first, in her desire to find a way to meet the needs of Ingolby, Fleda + had listened to him with fortitude and even without revolt. But as he + began to speak of women, and to refer to herself with a look of gloating + which men of his breed cannot hide, her angry pulses beat hard. She did + not quite know where he was leading, but she was sure he meant to say + something which would vex her beyond bearing. At one moment she meant to + cut short his narrative, but he prevented her, and when at last he ended, + she was almost choking with agitation. It had been borne in upon her as + his monologue proceeded, that she would rather die than accept anything + from this man—anything of any kind. To fight him was the only thing. + Nothing else could prevail in the end. His was the service of the + unpenitent thief. + </p> + <p> + “And what is it you want to buy from me?” she asked evenly. + </p> + <p> + He did not notice, and he could not realize that ominous thing in her + voice and face. “I want to be friends with you. I want to see you here in + the woods, to meet you as you met Ingolby. I want to talk with you, to + hear you talk; to learn things from you I never learned before; to—” + </p> + <p> + She interrupted him with a swift gesture. “And then—after that? What + do you want at the end of it all? One cannot spend one’s time talking and + wandering in the woods and teaching and learning. After that, what?” + </p> + <p> + “I have a house in Montreal,” he said evasively. “I don’t want to live + there alone.” He laughed. “It’s big enough for two, and at the end it + might be us two, if—” + </p> + <p> + With sharp anger, yet with coolness and dignity, she broke in on his + words. “Might be us two!” she exclaimed. “I have never thought of making + my home in a sewer. Do you think—but, no, it isn’t any use talking! + You don’t know how to deal with man or woman. You are perverted.” + </p> + <p> + “I did not mean what you mean; I meant that I should want to marry you,” + he protested. “You think the worst of me. Someone has poisoned your mind + against me.” + </p> + <p> + “Everyone has poisoned my mind against you,” she returned, “and yourself + most of all. I know you will try to injure Mr. Ingolby; and I know that + you will try to injure me; but you will not succeed.” + </p> + <p> + She turned and moved away from him quickly, taking the path towards her + own front door. He called something after her, but she did not or would + not hear. + </p> + <p> + As she entered the open space in front of the house, she heard footsteps + behind her and turned quickly, not without apprehension. A woman came + hurrying towards her. She was pale, agitated, haggard with fatigue. + </p> + <p> + “May I speak with you?” she asked in French. “Surely,” replied Fleda. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XV. THE WOMAN FROM WIND RIVER + </h2> + <h3> + “What is it?” asked Fleda, opening the door of the house. + </h3> + <p> + “I want to speak to you about m’sieu’,” replied the sad-faced woman. She + made a motion of her head backwards towards the wood. “About M’sieu’ + Marchand.” + </p> + <p> + Fleda’s face hardened; she had had more than enough of “M’sieu’ Marchand.” + She was bitterly ashamed that she had, even for a moment, thought of using + diplomacy with him. But this woman’s face was so forlorn, apart, and + lonely, that the old spirit of the Open Road worked its will. In far-off + days she had never seen a human being turned away from a Romany tent, or + driven from a Romany camp. She opened the door and stood aside to admit + the wayfarer. + </p> + <p> + A few moments later, the woman, tidied and freshened, sat at the ample + breakfast which was characteristic of Romany home-life. The woman’s plate + was bountifully supplied by Fleda, and her cup filled more than once by + Madame Bulteel, while old Gabriel Druse bulked friendly over all. His face + now showed none of the passion and sternness which had been present when + he passed the Sentence of the Patrin upon Jethro Fawe; nothing of the + gloom filling his eyes as he left Ingolby’s house. The gracious, bountiful + look of the patriarch, of the head of the clan, was upon him. + </p> + <p> + The husband of one wife, the father of one child, yet the Ry of Rys had + still the overlooking, protective sense of one who had the care of great + numbers of people. His keen eyes foresaw more of the story the woman was + to tell presently than either of the women of his household. He had seen + many such women as this, and had inflexibly judged between them and those + who had wronged them. + </p> + <p> + “Where have you come from?” he asked, as the meal drew to a close. + </p> + <p> + “From Wind River and under Elk Mountain,” the woman answered with a look + of relief. Her face was of those who no longer can bear the soul’s + secrets. + </p> + <p> + There was silence while the breakfast things were cleared away, and the + window was thrown wide to the full morning sun. It broke through the + branches of pine and cedar and juniper; it made translucent the leaves of + the maples; it shimmered on Fleda’s brown hair as she pulled a rose from + the bush at the window, and gave it to the forlorn creature in the grey + “linsey-woolsey” dress and the loose blue flannel jacket, whose skin was + coarsened by outdoor life, but who had something of real beauty in the + intense blue of her eyes. She had been a very comely figure in her best + days, for her waist was small, her bosom gently and firmly rounded, and + her hands were finer than those of most who live and work much in the open + air. + </p> + <p> + “You said there was something you wished to tell me,” said Fleda, at last. + </p> + <p> + The woman gazed slowly round at the three, as though with puzzled appeal. + There was the look of the Outlander in her face; of one who had been + exiled from familiar things and places. In manner she was like a child. + Her glance wandered over the faces of the two women, then her eyes met + those of the Ry, and stayed there. + </p> + <p> + “I am old and I have seen many sorrows,” said Gabriel Druse, divining what + was in her mind. “I will try to understand.” + </p> + <p> + “I have known all the bitterness of life,” interposed the low, soft voice + of Madame Bulteel. + </p> + <p> + “All ears are the same here,” Fleda added, looking the woman in the eyes. + </p> + <p> + “I will tell everything,” was the instant reply. Her fingers twined and + untwined in her lap with a nervousness shown by neither face nor body. Her + face was almost apathetic in its despair, but her body had an upright + courage. + </p> + <p> + She sighed heavily and began. + </p> + <p> + “My name is Arabella Stone. I was married from my home over against Wind + River by the Jumping Sandhills. + </p> + <p> + “My father was a lumberman. He was always captain of the gang in the + woods, and captain of the river in the summer. My mother was deaf and + dumb. It was very lonely at times when my father was away. I loved a boy—a + good boy, and he was killed breaking horses. When I was twenty-one years + old my mother died. It was not good for me to be alone, my father said, so + he must either give up the woods and the river, or he or I must marry. + Well, I saw he would not marry, for my mother’s face was one a man could + not forget.” + </p> + <p> + The old man stirred in his seat. “I have seen such,” he said in his deep + voice. + </p> + <p> + “So it was I said to myself I would marry,” she continued, “though I had + loved the Boy that died under the hoofs of the black stallion. There + weren’t many girls at the Jumping Sandhills, and so there were men, now + one, now another, to say things to me which did not touch my heart; but I + did not laugh, because I understood that they were lonely. Yet I liked one + of them more than all the others. + </p> + <p> + “So, for my father’s sake, I came nearer to Dennis, and at last it seemed + I could bear to look at him any time of the day or night he came to me. He + was built like a pine-tree, and had a playful tongue, and also he was a + ranchman like the Boy that was gone. It all came about on the day he rode + in from the range the wild wicked black stallion which all range-riders + had tried for years to capture. It was like a brother of the horse which + had killed my Boy, only bigger. When Dennis mastered him and rode him to + my door I made up my mind, and when he whispered to me over the dipper of + buttermilk I gave him, I said, ‘Yes.’ I was proud of him. He did things + that a woman likes, and said the things a woman loves to hear, though they + be the same thing said over and over again.” + </p> + <p> + Madame Bulteel nodded her head as though in a dream, and the Ry of Rys sat + with his two great hands on the chair-arm and his chin dropped on his + chest. Fleda’s hands were clasped in her lap, and her big eyes never left + the woman’s face. + </p> + <p> + “Before a month was gone I had married him,” the low, tired voice went on. + “It was a gay wedding; and my father was very happy, for he thought I had + got the desire of a woman’s life—a home of her own. For a time all + went well. Dennis was gay and careless and wilful, but he was easy to live + with, too, except when he came back from the town where he sold his + horses. Then he was different, because of the drink, and he was + quarrelsome with me—and cruel, too. + </p> + <p> + “At last when he came home with the drink upon him, he would sleep on the + floor and not beside me. This wore upon my heart. I thought that if I + could only put my hand on his shoulder and whisper in his ear, he would + get better of his bad feeling; but he was sulky, and he would not bear + with me. Though I never loved him as I loved my Boy, still I tried to be a + good wife to him, and never turned my eyes to any other man.” + </p> + <p> + Suddenly she stopped as though the pain of speaking was too great. Madame + Bulteel murmured something, but the only word that reached the ears of the + others was the Arabic word ‘mafish’. Her pale face was suffused as she + said it. + </p> + <p> + Two or three times the woman essayed to speak again, but could not. At + last, however, she overcame her emotion and said: “So it was when M’sieu’ + Felix Marchand came up from the Sagalac.” + </p> + <p> + The old man started and muttered harshly, but Fleda had foreseen the + entrance of the dissolute Frenchman into the tale, and gave no sign of + surprise. + </p> + <p> + “M’sieu’ Marchand bought horses,” the sad voice trailed on. “One day he + bought the mining-claims Dennis had been holding till he could develop + them or sell them for good money. When Dennis went to town again he + brought me back a present of a belt with silver clasps; but yet again that + night he slept upon the floor alone. So it went on. M. Marchand, he goes + on to the mountains and comes back; and he buys more horses, and Dennis + takes them to Yargo, and M. Marchand goes with him, but comes back before + Dennis does. It was then M’sieu’ begun to talk to me; to say things that + soothe a woman when she is hurt. I knew now Dennis did not want me as when + he first married me. He was that kind of man—quick to care and + quicker to forget. He was weak, he could not fasten where he stood. It + pleased him to be gay and friendly with me when he was sober, but there + was nothing behind it—nothing, nothing at all. At last I began to + cry when I thought of it, for it went on and on, and I was too much alone. + I looked at myself in the glass, and I saw I was not old or lean. I sang + in the trees beside the brook, and my voice was even a little better than + in the days when Dennis first came to my father’s house. I looked to my + cooking, and I knew that it was as good as ever. I thought of my clothes, + and how I did my hair, and asked myself if I was as fresh to see as when + Dennis first came to me. I could see no difference. There was a clear pool + not far away under the little hills where the springs came together. I + used to bathe in it every morning and dry myself in the sun; and my body + was like a child’s. That being so, should my own man turn his head away + from me day or night? What had I done to be used so, less than two years + after I had married!” + </p> + <p> + She paused and hung her head, weeping gently. “Shame stings a woman like + nothing else,” Madame Bulteel said with a sigh. + </p> + <p> + “It was so with me,” continued Dennis’s wife. “Then at last the thought + came that there was another woman. And all the time M. Marchand kept + coming and going, at first when Dennis was there, and always with some + good reason for coming—horses, cattle, shooting, or furs bought of + the Indians. When Dennis was not there, he came at first for an hour or + two, as if by chance, then for a whole day, because he said he knew I was + lonely. One day, I was sitting by the pool—it was in the evening. I + was crying because of the thought that followed me of another woman + somewhere, who made Dennis turn from me. Then it was M’sieu’ came and put + a hand on my shoulder—he came so quietly that I did not hear him + till he touched me. He said he knew why I cried, and it saddened his + soul.” + </p> + <p> + “His soul—the jackal!” growled the old man in his beard. + </p> + <p> + The woman nodded wearily and went on. “For all of ten days I had been + alone, except for the cattlemen camping a mile away and an old Indian + helper who slept in his tepee within call. Loneliness makes you weak when + there’s something tearing at the heart. So I let M’sieu’ Marchand talk to + me. At last he told me that there was a woman at Yargo—that Dennis + did not go there for business, but to her. Everyone knew it except me, he + said. He told me to ask old Throw Hard, the Indian helper, if he had + spoken the truth. I was shamed, and angry and crazy, too, I think, so I + went to old Throw Hard and asked him. He said he could not tell the truth, + and that he would not lie to me. So I knew it was all true. + </p> + <p> + “How do I know what was in my mind? Is a woman not mad at such a time! + There I was, tossed aside for a flyaway, who was for any man that would + come her way. Yes, I think I was mad. The pride in me was hurt—as + only a woman can understand.” She paused and looked at the two women who + listened to her. Fleda’s eyes were on the world beyond the window of the + room. + </p> + <p> + “Surely we understand,” whispered Madame Bulteel. + </p> + <p> + The woman’s courage returned, and she continued: “I could not go to my + father, for he was riding the river scores of miles away. I was terribly + alone. It was then that M’sieu’ Marchand, who had bribed the woman to draw + Dennis away, begged me to go away with him. He swore I should marry him as + soon as I could be free of Dennis. I scarcely knew what I said or thought; + but the place I had loved was hateful to me, so I went away with him.” + </p> + <p> + A sharp, pained exclamation broke from the lips of Madame Bulteel, but + presently she reached out and laid a hand upon the woman’s arm. “Of course + you went with him,” she said. “You could not stay where you were and face + the return of Dennis. There was no child to keep you, and the man that + tempted you said he adored you?” + </p> + <p> + The woman looked gratefully at her. “That was what he said,” she answered. + “He said he was tired of wandering, and that he wanted a home-and there + was a big house in Montreal.” + </p> + <p> + She stopped suddenly upon an angry, smothered word from Fleda’s lips. A + big house in Montreal! Fleda’s first impulse was to break in upon the + woman’s story and tell her father what had happened just now outside their + own house; but she waited. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, there was a big house in Montreal?” said Fleda, her eyes now resting + sadly upon the woman. + </p> + <p> + “He said it should be mine. But that did not count. To be far away from + all that had been was more than all else. I was not thinking of the man, + or caring for him, I was flying from my shame. I did not see then the + shame to which I was going. I was a fool, and I was mad and bad also. When + I waked—and it was soon—there was quick understanding between + us. The big house in Montreal—that was never meant for me. He was + already married.” + </p> + <p> + The old man stretched heavily to his feet, leaned both hands on the table, + and looked at the woman with glowering eyes, while Fleda’s heart seemed to + stop beating. + </p> + <p> + “Married!” growled Gabriel Druse, with a blur of passion in his voice. He + knew that Felix Marchand had followed his daughter as though he were a + single man. + </p> + <p> + Fleda saw what was working in his mind. Since her father suspected, he + should know all. + </p> + <p> + “He almost offered me the big house in Montreal this morning,” she said + evenly and coldly. + </p> + <p> + A malediction broke from the old man’s lips. + </p> + <p> + “He almost thought he wanted me to marry him,” Fleda added scornfully. + </p> + <p> + “And what did you say?” Druse asked. + </p> + <p> + “There could only be one thing to say. I told him I had never thought of + making my home in a sewer.” A grim smile broke over the old man’s face, + and he sat down again. + </p> + <p> + “Because I saw him with you I wanted to warn you,” the woman continued. + “Yesterday, I came to warn him of his danger, and he laughed at me. From + Madame Thibadeau I heard he had said he would make you sing his song. When + I came to tell you, there he was with you. But when he left you I was sure + there was no need to speak. Still I felt I must tell you—perhaps + because you are rich and strong, and will stop him from doing more harm.” + </p> + <p> + “How do you know we are rich?” asked Druse in a rough tone. + </p> + <p> + “It is what the world says,” was the reply. “Is there harm in that? In any + case it was right to tell you all; so that one who had herded with a woman + like me should not be friends with you.” + </p> + <p> + “I have seen worse women than you,” murmured the old man. + </p> + <p> + “What danger did you come to warn M. Marchand about?” asked Fleda. + </p> + <p> + “To his life,” answered the woman. + </p> + <p> + “Do you want to save his life?” asked the old man. + </p> + <p> + “Ah, is it not always so?” intervened Madame Bulteel in a low, sad voice. + “To be wronged like that does not make a woman just.” + </p> + <p> + “I am just,” answered the woman. “He deserves to die, but I want to save + the man that will kill him when they meet.” + </p> + <p> + “Who will kill him?” asked Fleda. “Dennis—he will kill Marchand if + he can.” + </p> + <p> + The old man leaned forward with puzzled, gloomy interest. “Why? Dennis + left you for another. You say he had grown cold. Was that not what he + wanted—that you should leave him?” + </p> + <p> + The woman looked at him with tearful eyes. “If I had known Dennis better, + I should have waited. What he did is of the moment only. A man may fall + and rise again, but it is not so with a woman. She thinks and thinks upon + the scar that shows where she wounded herself; and she never forgets, and + so her life becomes nothing—nothing.” + </p> + <p> + No one saw that Madame Bulteel held herself rigidly, and was so white that + even the sunlight was gold beside her look. Yet the strangest, saddest + smile played about her lips; and presently, as the eyes of the others + fastened on the woman and did not leave her, she regained her usual + composure. + </p> + <p> + The woman kept looking at Gabriel Druse. “When Dennis found that I had + gone, and knew why—for I left word on a sheet of paper—he went + mad like me. Trailing to the south, to find M’sieu’ Marchand, he had an + accident, and was laid up in a shack for weeks on the Tanguishene River, + and they could not move him. But at last a ranchman wrote to me, and the + letter found me on the very day I left M’sieu’. When I got that letter + begging me to go to the Tanguishene River, to nurse Dennis who loved me + still, my heart sank. I said to myself I could not go; and Dennis and I + must be apart always to the end of time. But then I thought again. He was + ill, and his body was as broken as his mind. Well, since I could do his + mind no good, I would try to help his body. I could do that much for him. + So I went. But the letter to me had been long on the way, and when I got + to the Tanguishene River he was almost well.” + </p> + <p> + She paused and rocked her body to and fro for a moment as though in pain. + </p> + <p> + “He wanted me to go back to him then. He said he had never cared for the + woman at Yargo, and that what he felt for me now was different from what + it had ever been. When he had settled accounts we could go back to the + ranch and be at peace. I knew what he meant by settling accounts, and it + frightened me. That is why I am here. I came to warn the man, Marchand, + for if Dennis kills him, then they will hang Dennis. Do you not see? This + is a country of law. I saw that Dennis had the madness in his brain, and + so I left him again in the evening of the day I found him, and came here—it + is a long way. Yesterday, M’sieu’ Marchand laughed at me when I warned + him. He said he could take care of himself. But such men as Dennis stop at + nothing; there will be killing, if M’sieu’ stays here.” + </p> + <p> + “You will go back to Dennis?” asked Fleda gently. “Some other woman will + make him happy when he forgets me,” was the cheerless, grey reply. + </p> + <p> + The old man got up and, coming over, laid a hand upon her shoulder. + </p> + <p> + “Where did you think of going from here?” he asked. + </p> + <p> + “Anywhere—I don’t know,” was the reply. + </p> + <p> + “Is there no work here for her?” he asked, turning to Madame Bulteel. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, plenty,” was the reply. “And room also?” he asked again. + </p> + <p> + “Was ever a tent too full, when the lost traveller stumbled into camp in + the old days?” rejoined Fleda. The woman trembled to her feet, a glad look + in her eyes. “I ought to go, but I am tired and I will gladly stay,” she + said and swayed against the table. + </p> + <p> + Madame Bulteel and Fleda put their arms round her, steadying her. + </p> + <p> + “This is not the way to act,” said Fleda with a touch of sharp reproof. + Had she not her own trouble to face? + </p> + <p> + The stricken woman drew herself up and looked Fleda in the eyes. “I will + find the right way, if I can,” she said with courage. + </p> + <p> + A half-hour later, as the old man sat alone in the room where he had + breakfasted, a rifle-shot rang out in the distance. + </p> + <p> + “The trouble begins,” he said, as he rose and hastened into the hallway. + </p> + <p> + Another shot rang out. He caught up his wide felt hat, reached for a great + walking-stick in the corner, and left the house hurriedly. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XVI. THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE + </h2> + <p> + It was a false alarm which had startled Gabriel Druse, but it had + significance. The Orange funeral was not to take place until eleven + o’clock, and it was only eight o’clock when the Ry left his home. A + rifle-shot had, however, been fired across the Sagalac from the Manitou + side, and it had been promptly acknowledged from Lebanon. There was a + short pause, and then came another from the Lebanon side. It was merely a + warning and a challenge. The only man who could have controlled the + position was blind and helpless. + </p> + <p> + As Druse walked rapidly towards the bridge, he met Jowett. Jowett was one + of the few men in either town for whom the Ry had regard, and the + friendliness had had its origin in Jowett’s knowledge of horseflesh. This + was a field in which the Ry was himself a master. He had ever been too + high-placed among his own people to trade and barter horses except when, + sending a score of Romanys on a hunt for wild ponies on the hills of + Eastern Europe, he had afterwards sold the tamed herd to the highest + bidders in some Balkan town; but he had an infallible eye for a horse. + </p> + <p> + It was a curious anomaly also that the one man in Lebanon who would not + have been expected to love and pursue horse-flesh was the Reverend Reuben + Tripple to whom Ingolby had given his conge, but who loved a horse as he + loved himself. + </p> + <p> + He was indeed a greater expert in horses than in souls. One of the sights + of Lebanon had been the appearance in the field of the “Reverend Tripple,” + who owned a great, raw-boned bay mare of lank proportions, the winner of a + certain great trotting-race which had delighted the mockers. + </p> + <p> + For two years Jowett had eyed Mr. Tripple’s rawbone with a piratical eye. + </p> + <p> + Though it had won only a single great race, that, in Jowett’s view, was + its master’s fault. As the Arabs say, however, Allah is with the patient; + and so it was that on the evening of the day in which Ingolby met + disaster, Mr. Tripple informed Jowett that he was willing to sell his + rawbone. + </p> + <p> + He was mounted on the gawky roadster when he met Gabriel Druse making for + the bridge. Their greeting was as cordial as hasty. Anxious as was the Ry + to learn what was going on in the towns, Jowett’s mount caught his eye. It + was but a little time since they had met at Ingolby’s house, and they were + both full of the grave events afoot, but here was a horse-deal of + consequence, and the bridle-rein was looseflung. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, I got it,” said Jowett, with a chuckle, interpreting the old man’s + look. “I got it for good—a wonder from Wonderville. Damned + queer-looking critter, but there, I guess we know what I’ve got. Outside + like a crinoline, inside like a pair of ankles of the Lady Jane + Plantagenet. Yes, I got it, Mr. Druse, got it dead-on!” + </p> + <p> + “How?” asked the Ry, feeling the clean fetlocks with affectionate + approval. + </p> + <p> + “He’s off East, so he says,” was the joyous reply; “sudden but sure, and I + dunno why. Anyway, he’s got the door-handle offered, and he’s off without + his camel.” He stroked the neck of the bay lovingly. “How much?” + </p> + <p> + Jowett held up his fingers. The old man lifted his eyebrows quizzically. + “That-h’m! Does he preach as well as that?” he asked. + </p> + <p> + Jowett chuckled. “He knows the horse-country better than the New + Jerusalem, I guess; and I wasn’t off my feed, nor hadn’t lost my head + neither. I wanted that dust-hawk, and he knew it; but I got in on him with + the harness and the sulky. The bridle he got from a Mexican that come up + here a year ago, and went broke and then went dead; and there being no + padre, Tripple did the burying, and he took the bridle as his fee, I + s’pose. It had twenty dollars’ worth of silver on it—look at these + conchs.” + </p> + <p> + He trifled with the big beautiful buttons on the head-stall. “The sulky’s + as good as new, and so’s the harness almost; and there’s the nose-bag and + the blankets, and a saddle and a monkey-wrench and two bottles of + horse-liniment, and odds and ends. I only paid that”—and he held up + his fingers again as though it was a sacred rite—“for the lot. Not + bad, I want to say. Isn’t he good for all day, this one?” + </p> + <p> + The old man nodded, then turned towards the bridge. “The gun-shots—what?” + he asked, setting forward at a walk which taxed the rawbone’s stride. + </p> + <p> + “An invite—come to the wedding; that’s all. Only it’s a funeral this + time, and, if something good doesn’t happen, there’ll be more than one + funeral on the Sagalac to-morrow. I’ve had my try, but I dunno how it’ll + come out. He’s not a man of much dictionary is the Monseenoor.” + </p> + <p> + “The Monseigneur Lourde? What does he say?” + </p> + <p> + “He says what we all say, that he is sorry. ‘But why have the Orange + funeral while things are as they are?’ he says, and he asks for the red + flag not to be shook in the face of the bull.” + </p> + <p> + “That is not the talk of a fool, as most priests are,” growled the other. + </p> + <p> + “Sure. But it wants a real wind-warbler to make them see it in Lebanon. + They’ve got the needle. They’ll pray to-day with the taste of blood in + their mouths. It’s gone too far. Only a miracle can keep things right. The + Mayor has wired for the mounted police—our own battalion of militia + wouldn’t serve, and there’d be no use ordering them out—but the + Riders can’t get here in time. The train’s due the very time the funeral’s + to start, but that train’s always late, though they say the ingine-driver + is an Orangeman! And the funeral will start at the time fixed, or I don’t + know the boys that belong to the lodge. So it’s up to We, Us & Co. to + see the thing through, or go bust. It don’t suit me. It wouldn’t have been + like this, if it hadn’t been for what happened to the Chief last night. + There’s no holding the boys in. One thing’s sure, the Gipsy that give + Ingolby away has got to lie low if he hasn’t got away, or there’ll be one + less of his tribe to eat the juicy hedgehog. Yes, sir-ee!” + </p> + <p> + To the last words of Jowett the Ry seemed to pay no attention, though his + lips shut tight and a menacing look came into his eyes. They were now upon + the bridge, and could see what was forward on both sides of the Sagalac. + There was unusual bustle and activity in the streets and on the river-bank + of both towns. It was noticeable also that though the mills were running + in Manitou, there were fewer chimneys smoking, and far more men in the + streets than usual. Tied up to the Manitou shore were a half-dozen cribs + or rafts of timber which should be floating eastward down the Sagalac. + </p> + <p> + “If the Monseenoor can’t, or don’t, step in, we’re bound for a shindy over + a corpse,” continued Jowett after a moment. + </p> + <p> + “Can the Monseigneur cast a spell over them all?” remarked the Ry + ironically, for he had little faith in priests, though he had for this + particular one great respect. + </p> + <p> + “He’s a big man, that preelate,” answered Jowett quickly and forcibly. “He + kept the Crees quiet when they was going to rise. If they’d got up, + there’d have been hundreds of settlers massacreed. He risked his life to + do that—went right into the camp in face of levelled rifles, and sat + down and begun to talk. A minute afterwards all the chiefs was squatting, + too. Then the tussle begun between a man with a soul and a heathen gang + that eat dog, kill their old folks, their cripples and their deformed + children, and run sticks of wood through their bleeding chests, just to + show that they’re heathens. But he won out, this Jesueete friend o’ man. + That’s why I’m putting my horses and my land and my pants and my shirt and + the buff that’s underneath on the little preelate.” + </p> + <p> + Gabriel Druse’s face did not indicate the same confidence. “It is not an + age of miracles; the priest is not enough,” he said sceptically. + </p> + <p> + By twos, by threes, by tens, men from Manitou came sauntering across the + bridge into Lebanon, until a goodly number were scattered at different + points through the town. They seemed to distribute themselves by a + preconceived plan, and they were all habitants. There were no Russians, + Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, or Germans among them. They were low-browed, + sturdy men, dressed in red or blue serge shirts, some with sashes around + their waists, some with ear-rings in their ears, some in knee-boots, and + some with the heavy spiked boots of the river-driver. None appeared to + carry any weapon that would shoot, yet in their belts was the + sheath-knife, the invariable equipment of their class. It would have + seemed more suspicious if they had not carried them. The railwaymen, + miners, carters, mill-hands, however, appeared to carry nothing save their + strong arms and hairy hands, and some were as hairy as animals. These + backwoodsmen also could, without weapons, turn a town into a general + hospital. In battle they fought not only with hands but also with teeth + and hoofs like wild stallions. Teeth tore off an ear or sliced away a + nose, hands smote like hammers or gouged out eyes, and their nailed boots + were weapons of as savage a kind as could be invented. They could spring + and strike an opponent with one foot in the chest or in the face, and + spoil the face for many a day, or for ever. It was a gift of the backwoods + and the lumber-camps, practised in hours of stark monotony when the devils + which haunt places of isolation devoid of family life, where men herd + together like dogs in a kennel, break loose. There the man that dips his + fingers “friendly-like” in the dish of his neighbour one minute wants the + eye of that neighbour the next not so much in innate or momentary hatred, + as in innate savagery and the primeval sense of combat, the war which was + in the blood of the first man. + </p> + <p> + The unarmed appearance of these men did not deceive the pioneer folk of + Lebanon. To them the time had come when the reactionary forces of Manitou + must receive a check. Even those who thought the funeral fanatical and + provocative were ready to defend it. + </p> + <p> + The person who liked the whole business least was Rockwell. He was subject + to the same weariness of the flesh and fatigue of the spirit as all men; + yet it was expected of him that at any hour he should be at the disposal + of suffering humanity—of criminal or idiotic humanity—patient, + devoted, calm, nervestrung, complete. He was the one person in the + community who was the universal necessity, and yet for whom the community + had no mercy in its troubles or out of them. There were three doctors in + Lebanon, but none was an institution, none had prestige save Rockwell, and + he often wished that he had less prestige, since he cared nothing for + popularity. + </p> + <p> + He had made his preparations for possible “accidents” in no happy mood. + Fresh from the bedside of Ingolby, having had no sleep, and with many sick + people on his list, he inwardly damned the foolishness of both towns. He + even sharply rebuked the Mayor, who urged surgical preparations upon him, + for not sending sooner to the Government for a force which could preserve + order or prevent the procession. + </p> + <p> + It was while he was doing so that Jowett appeared with Gabriel Druse to + interview the Mayor. + </p> + <p> + “It’s like this,” said Jowett. “In another hour the funeral will start. + There’s a lot of Manitou huskies in Lebanon now, and their feet is loaded, + if their guns ain’t. They’re comin’ by driblets, and by-and-bye, when + they’ve all distributed themselves, there’ll be a marching column of them + from Manitou. It’s all arranged to make trouble and break the law. It’s + the first real organized set-to we’ve had between the towns, and it’ll be + nasty. If the preelate doesn’t dope them, there’ll be pertikler hell to + pay.” + </p> + <p> + He then gave the story of his visit to Monseigneur Lourde, and the details + of what was going forward in Manitou so far as he had learned. Also the + ubiquitous Osterhaut had not been idle, and his bulletin had just been + handed to Jowett. + </p> + <p> + “There’s one thing ought to be done and has got to be done,” Jowett added, + “if the Monseenoor don’t pull if off. The leaders have to be arrested, and + it had better be done by one that, in a way, don’t belong to either + Lebanon or Manitou.” + </p> + <p> + The Mayor shook his head. “I don’t see how I can authorize Marchand’s + arrest—not till he breaks the law, in any case.” + </p> + <p> + “It’s against the law to conspire to break the law,” replied Jowett. + “You’ve been making a lot of special constables. Make Mr. Gabriel Druse + here a special constable, then if the law’s broke, he can have a right to + take a hand in.” + </p> + <p> + The giant Ry had stood apart, watchful and ruminant, but he now stepped + forward, as the Mayor turned to him and stretched out a hand. + </p> + <p> + “I am for peace,” the old man said. “To keep the peace the law must be + strong.” + </p> + <p> + In spite of the gravity of the situation the Mayor smiled. “You wouldn’t + need much disguise to stand for the law, Mr. Druse,” he remarked. “When + the law is seven feet high, it stands well up.” + </p> + <p> + The Ry did not smile. “Make me the head of the constables, and I will keep + the peace,” he said. There was a sudden silence. The proposal had come so + quietly, and it was so startling, that even the calm Rockwell was taken + aback. But his eye and the eye of the Mayor met, and the look in both + their faces was the same. + </p> + <p> + “That’s bold play,” the Mayor said, “but I guess it goes. Yesterday it + couldn’t be done. To-day it can. The Chief Constable’s down with smallpox. + Got it from an Injun prisoner days ago. He’s been bad for three days, but + hung on. Now he’s down, and there’s no Chief. I was going to act myself, + but the trouble was, if anything happened to me, there’d be no head of + anything. It’s better to have two strings to your bow. It’s a go-it’s a + straight go, Mr. Druse. Seven foot of Chief Constable ought to have its + weight with the roughnecks.” + </p> + <p> + A look of hopefulness came into his face. This sage, huge, commanding + figure would have a good moral effect on the rude elements of disorder. + </p> + <p> + “I’ll have you read the Riot Act instead of doing it myself,” added the + Mayor. “It’ll be a good introduction for you, and as you live in Manitou, + it’ll be a knock-out blow to the toughs. Sometimes one man is as good as a + hundred. Come on to the Courthouse with me,” he continued cheerfully. + “We’ll fix the whole thing. All the special constables are waiting there + with the regular police. An extra foot on a captain’s shoulders is as good + as a battery of guns.” + </p> + <p> + “You’re sure it’s according to Hoyle?” asked Jowett quizzically. + </p> + <p> + He was so delighted that he felt he must “make the Mayor show off self,” + as he put it afterwards. He did not miscalculate; the Mayor rose to his + challenge. + </p> + <p> + “I’m boss of this show,” he said, “and I can go it alone if necessary when + the town’s in danger and the law’s being hustled. I’ve had a meeting of + the Council and I’ve got the sailing-orders I want. I’m boss of the place, + and Mr. Druse is my—” he stopped, because there was a look in the + eyes of the Ry which demanded consideration—“And Mr. Druse is lawboss,” + he added. + </p> + <p> + The old ineradicable look of command shone in the eyes of Gabriel Druse. + Leadership was written all over him. Power spoke in every motion. The + square, unbowed shoulders, the heavily lined face, with the patriarchal + beard, the gnarled hands, the rough-hewn limbs, the eye of bright, + brooding force proclaimed authority. + </p> + <p> + Indeed in that moment there came into the face of the old Nomad the look + it had not worn for many a day. The self-exiled ruler had paid a heavy + price for his daughter’s vow, though he had never acknowledged it to + himself. His self-ordained impotency, in a camp that was never moved, + within walls which never rose with the sunset and fell with the morning; + where his feet trod the same roadway day after day; where no man asked for + justice or sought his counsel or fell back on his protection; where he + drank from the same spring and tethered his horse in the same paddock from + morn to morn: all these things had eaten at his heart and bowed his spirit + in spite of himself. + </p> + <p> + He was not now of the Romany world, and he was not of the Gorgio world; + but here at last was the old thing come back to him in a new way, and his + bones rejoiced. He would entitle his daughter to her place among the + Gorgios. Perhaps also it would be given him, in the name of the law, to + deal with a man he hated. + </p> + <p> + “We’ve got Mister Marchand now,” said Jowett softly to the old chieftain. + </p> + <p> + The Ry’s eyes lighted and his jaw set. He did not speak, but his hands + clenched, opened and clenched again. Jowett saw and grinned. + </p> + <p> + “The Mayor and the law-boss’ll win out, I guess,” he said to himself. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XVII. THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMAD + </h2> + <p> + Even more than Dr. Rockwell, Berry, the barber, was the most troubled man + in Lebanon on the day of the Orange funeral. Berry was a good example of + an unreasoning infatuation. The accident which had come to his idol, with + the certain fall of his fortunes, hit him so hard, that, for the first + time since he became a barber, his razor nipped the flesh of more than one + who sat in his red-upholstered chair. + </p> + <p> + In his position, Berry was likely to hear whatever gossip was going. Who + shall have perfect self-control with a giant bib under the chin, tipped + back on a chair that cannot be regulated, with a face covered by lather, + and two plantation fingers holding the nose? In these circumstances, with + much diplomacy, Berry corkscrewed his way into confidence, and when he + dipped a white cloth in bay-rum and eau-de-cologne, and laid it over the + face of the victim, with the finality of a satisfied inquisitor, it was + like giving the last smother to human individuality. An artist after his + kind, he no sooner got what he wanted than he carefully coaxed his victim + away from thoughts of the disclosures into the vague distance of casual + gossip once more. + </p> + <p> + Gradually and slowly he shepherded his patient back to the realms of + self-respect and individual personality. The border-line was at the point + where the fingers of his customer fluttered at a collar-button; for Berry, + who realized the power that lies in making a man look ridiculous, never + allowed a customer to be shaved or have his hair cut with a collar on. + When his customers had corns, off came the boots also, and then Berry’s + triumph over the white man was complete. To call attention to an + exaggerated bunion when the odorous towel lay upon the hidden features of + what once was a “human,” was the last act in the drama of the Unmaking of + Man. + </p> + <p> + Only when the client had felt in his pocket for the price of the flaying, + and laid it, with a ten-cent fee, on the ledge beneath the mirror, where + all the implements of the inquisition and the restoration were assembled, + did he feel manhood restored. If, however, he tried to keep a vow of + silence in the chair of execution, he paid a heavy price; for Berry had + his own methods of punishment. A little tighter grasp of the nose; a + little rougher scrape of the razor, and some sharp, stinging liquid + suddenly slapped with a cold palm on the excoriated spot, with the + devilish hypocrisy of healing it; a longer smothering-period under the + towel, when the corners of it were tucked behind the ears and a crease of + it in the mouth-all these soon induced vocal expression again, and Berry + started on his inquisition with gentle certainty. When at last he dusted + the face with a little fine flour of oatmeal, “to heal the cuticle and + ‘manoor’ the roots,” and smelled with content the hands which had embalmed + the hair in verbena-scented oil, a man left his presence feeling that he + was ready for the wrath to come. + </p> + <p> + Such was Berry when he had under his razor one of Ingolby’s business foes + of Manitou, who had of late been in touch with Felix Marchand. Both were + working for the same end, but with different intentions. Marchand worked + with that inherent devilishness which sometimes takes possession of low + minds; but the other worked as he would have done against his own brother, + for his own business success; and it was his view that one man could only + succeed by taking the place of another, as though the Age of Expansion had + ceased and the Age of Smother had begun. + </p> + <p> + From this client while in a state of abject subjection, Berry, whose heart + was hard that day, but whose diplomacy was impeccable, discovered a thing + of moment. There was to be a procession of strikers from two factories in + Manitou, who would throw down their tools or leave their machines at a + certain moment. Falling into line these strikers would march across the + bridge between the towns at such time as would bring them into touch with + the line of the Orange funeral—two processions meeting at right + angles. If neither procession gave way, the Orange funeral could be broken + up, ostensibly not from religious fanaticism, but from the “unhappy + accident” of two straight lines colliding. It was a juicy plot; and in a + few minutes the Mayor and Gabriel Druse knew of it from the faithful + Berry. + </p> + <p> + The bell of the meeting-house began to toll as the Orangeman whose death + had caused such commotion was carried to the waiting carriage where he + would ride alone. Almost simultaneously with the starting of the gaudy yet + sombre Orange cortege, with its yellow scarfs, glaring banners, charcoal + plumes and black clothes, the labour procession approached the Manitou end + of the Sagalac bridge. The strikers carried only three or four banners, + but they had a band of seven pieces, with a drum and a pair of cymbals. + With frequent discord, but with much spirit, the Bleaters, as these + musicians were called in Lebanon, inspired the steps of the Manitou + fanatics and toughs. As they came upon the bridge they were playing a + gross paraphrase of The Marseillaise. + </p> + <p> + At the head of the Orange procession was a silver-cornet band which the + enterprise of Lebanon had made possible. Its leader was a ne’er-do-well + young Welshman, who had been dismissed from leadership after leadership of + bands in the East till at last he had drifted into Lebanon. Here, strange + to say, he had never been drunk but once; and that was the night before he + married the widow of a local publican, who had a nice little block of + stock in one of Ingolby’s railways, which yielded her seven per cent., and + who knew how to handle the citizens of the City of Booze. When she married + Tom Straker, her first husband, he drank on an average twenty whiskies a + day. She got him down to one; and then he died and had as fine a funeral + as a judge. There were those who said that if Tom’s whiskies hadn’t been + cut down so—but there it was: Tom was in the bosom of Abraham, and + William Jones, who was never called anything else than Willy Welsh, had + been cut down from his unrecorded bibulations to none at all; but he + smoked twenty-cent cigars at the ex-widow’s expense. + </p> + <p> + To-day Willy Welsh played with heart and courage, “I’m Going Home to + Glory,” at the head of the Orange procession; for who that has faced such + a widow as was his for one whole year could fear the onset of faction + fighters! Besides, as the natives of the South Seas will never eat a + Chinaman, so a Western man will never kill a musician. Senators, + magistrates, sheriffs, police, gamblers, horse-stealers, bankers, and + broncho-riders all die unnatural deaths at times, but a musician in the + West is immune from all except the hand of Fate. Not one can be spared. + Even a tough convicted of cheating at cards, or breaking a boom on a + river, has escaped punishment because he played the concertina. + </p> + <p> + The discord and jangle between the two bands was the first collision of + this fateful day. While yet there was a space between the two processions, + the bands broke into furious contest. It was then that, through the long + funeral line, men with hard-set faces came closer up together, and forty, + detaching themselves from the well-kept run of marching lodgemen, closed + up around the horses and the hearse, making a solid flanking force. At + stated intervals also, outside the lodgemen in the lines, were special + constables, many of whom had been the stage-drivers, hunters, cattlemen, + prospectors, and pioneers of the early days. Most of them had come of good + religious stock-Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Unitarians; and + though they had little piety, and had never been able to regain the + religious customs and habits of their childhood, they “Stood for the Thing + the Old Folks stand for.” They were in a mood which would tear cotton, as + the saying was. There was not one of them but expected that broken heads + and bloodshed would be the order of the day, and they were stonily, + fearlessly prepared for the worst. + </p> + <p> + Since the appearance of Gabriel Druse on the scene, the feeling had grown + that the luck would be with them. When he started at the head of the + cortege, they could scarce forbear to cheer. Such a champion in appearance + had never been seen in the West, and, the night before, he had proved his + right to the title by shaking a knot of toughs into spots of disconcerted + humanity. + </p> + <p> + As they approached the crossroads of the bridge, his voice, clear and + sonorous, could be heard commanding the Orange band to cease playing. + </p> + <p> + When the head of the funeral procession was opposite the bridge—the + band, the hearse, the bodyguard of the hearse—Gabriel Druse stood + aside, and took his place at the point where the lines of the two + processions would intersect. + </p> + <p> + It was at this moment that the collision came. There were only about sixty + feet of space between the two processions, when a voice rang out in a + challenge so offensive, that the men of Manitou got their cue for attack + without creating it themselves. Every Orangeman of the Lodge of Lebanon + afterwards denied that he had raised the cry; and the chances are that + every one spoke the truth. It was like Felix Marchand to arrange for just + such an episode, and so throw the burden of responsibility on the + Orangemen. + </p> + <p> + “To hell with the Pope! To hell with the Pope!” the voice rang out, and it + had hardly ceased before the Manitou procession made a rush forward. The + apparent leader of the Manitou roughs was a blackbearded man of middle + height, who spoke raucously to the crowd behind him. + </p> + <p> + Suddenly a powerful voice rang out. + </p> + <p> + “Halt, in the name of the Queen!” it called. Surprise is the very essence + of successful war. The roughs of Manitou had not looked for this. They had + foreseen the appearance of the official Chief Constable of Lebanon; they + had expected his challenge and warning in the vernacular; but here was + something which struck them with consternation—first, the giant of + Manitou in the post of command, looking like some berserker; and then the + formal reading of that stately document in the name of the Queen. + </p> + <p> + Far back in the minds of every French habitant present was the old + monarchical sense. He makes, at worst, a poor anarchist, though he is a + good revolutionist; and the French colonials had never been divorced from + monarchical France. + </p> + <p> + In the eyes of the most forward of those on the Sagalac bridge, there was + a sudden wonderment and confusion. To the dramatic French mind, ceremonial + is ever welcome; and for a moment it had them in its grip, as old Gabriel + Druse read out in his ringing voice, the trenchant royal summons. + </p> + <p> + It was a strange and dramatic scene—the Orange funeral standing + still, garish yet solemn, with hundreds of men, rough and coarse, quiet + and refined, dissolute and careless, sober and puritanic, broad and + tolerant, sharp and fanatical; the labour procession, polyglot in + appearance, but with Gallic features and looseness of dress predominating; + excitable, brutish, generous, cruel; without intellect, but with an + intelligence which in the lowest was acute, and with temperaments + responsive to drama. + </p> + <p> + As Druse read, his eyes now and then flashed, at first he knew not why, to + the slim, bearded figure of the apparent leader. At length he caught the + feverish eye of the man, and held it for a moment. It was familiar, but it + eluded him; he could not place it. + </p> + <p> + He heard, however, Jowett’s voice say to him, scarce above a whisper: + </p> + <p> + “It’s Felix Marchand, boss!” + </p> + <p> + Jowett also had been puzzled at first by the bearded figure, but it + suddenly flashed upon him that the beard and wig were a disguise, that + Marchand had resorted to Ingolby’s device. It might prove as dangerous a + stratagem with him as it had to Ingolby. + </p> + <p> + There was a moment’s hesitation after Druse had finished reading—as + though the men of Manitou had not quite recovered from their surprise—then + the man with the black beard said something to those nearest him. There + was a start forward, and someone cried, “Down with the Orangemen—et + bas l’Orange!” + </p> + <p> + Like a well-disciplined battalion the Orangemen rolled up quickly into a + compact mass, showing that they had planned their defence well, and the + moment was black with danger, when, suddenly, Druse strode forward. + Flinging right and left two or three river-drivers, he caught the man with + the black beard, snatched him out from among the oncoming crowd, and tore + off the black beard and wig. Felix Marchand stood exposed. + </p> + <p> + A cry of fury rang out from the Orangemen behind, and a dozen men rushed + forward, but Gabriel Druse acted with the instant decision of a real + commander. Seeing that it would be a mistake to arrest Marchand at that + moment, he raised the struggling figure of the wrecker above his head and, + with Herculean effort, threw him up over the heads of the Frenchmen in + front of him. + </p> + <p> + So extraordinary was the sight that, as if fascinated, the crowd before + and behind followed the action with staring eyes and tense bodies. The + faces of all the contending forces were as concentrated for the instant, + as though the sun were falling out of the sky. It was so great a feat, one + so much in consonance with the spirit of the frontier world, that gasps of + praise broke from both crowds. As though it were a thunderbolt, the + Manitou roughs standing where Marchand was like to fall, instead of trying + to catch him, broke away from beneath the bundle of falling humanity, and + Marchand fell on the dusty cement of the bridge with a dull thud, like a + bag of bones. + </p> + <p> + For a moment there was no motion on the part of either procession. Banners + drooped and swayed as the men holding them were lost in the excitement. + </p> + <p> + Time had only been gained, however. There was no reason to think that the + trouble was over, or that the special constables who had gathered close + behind Gabriel Druse would not have to strike heavy blows for the cause of + peace. + </p> + <p> + The sudden appearance of a new figure in the narrow, open space between + the factions in that momentary paralysis was not a coincidence. It was + what Jowett had planned for, the factor for peace in which he most + believed. + </p> + <p> + A small, spare man in a scarlet cassock, white chasuble, and black + biretta, suddenly stole out from the crowd on the Lebanon side of the + bridge, carrying the elements of the Mass. His face was shining white, and + in the eyes was an almost unearthly fire. It was the beloved Monseigneur + Lourde. + </p> + <p> + Raising the elements before him toward his own people on the bridge, he + cried in a high, searching voice: + </p> + <p> + “I prayed with you, I begged you to preserve the peace. Last night I asked + you in God’s name to give up your disorderly purposes. I thought then I + had done my whole duty; but the voice of God has spoken to me. An hour ago + I carried the elements to a dying woman here in Lebanon, and gave her + peace. As I did so the funeral bell rang out, and it came to me, as though + the One above had spoken, that peace would be slain and His name insulted + by all of you—by all of you, Catholic and Protestant. God’s voice + bade me come to you from the bed of one who has gone hence from peace to + Peace. In the name of Christ, peace, I say! Peace, in the name of Christ!” + </p> + <p> + He raised the sacred vessel high above his head, so that his eyes looked + through the walls of his uplifted arms. “Kneel!” he called in a clear, + ringing voice which yet quavered with age. + </p> + <p> + There was an instant’s hush, and then great numbers of the crowd in front + of him, toughs and wreckers, blasphemers, turbulent ones and evil-livers, + yet Catholics all, with the ancient root of the Great Thing in them, sank + down; and the banners of the labour societies drooped before the symbol of + peace won by sacrifice. + </p> + <p> + Even the Orangemen bared their heads in the presence of that Popery which + was anathema to them, which they existed to combat, and had been taught to + hate. Some, no doubt, would rather have fought than have had peace at the + price; but they could not free their minds from the sacred force which had + brought most of the crowd of faction-fighters to their knees. + </p> + <p> + With a wave of the hand, Gabriel Druse ordered the cortege forward, and + silently the procession with its yellow banners and its sable, drooping + plumes moved on. + </p> + <p> + Once on its way again, Willy Welsh and his silver-cornet band struck up + the hymn, “Lead, Kindly Light.” It was the one real coincidence of the day + that this moving hymn was written by a cardinal of the Catholic Church. It + was also an irony that, as the crowd of sullen Frenchmen turned back to + Manitou, the train bearing the Mounted Police, for whom the Mayor had sent + to the capital, steamed noisily in, and redcoats showed at its windows and + on the steps of the cars. + </p> + <p> + The only casualty that the day saw was the broken arm and badly bruised + body of Felix Marchand, who was gloomily helped back to his home across + the Sagalac. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XVIII. THE BEACONS + </h2> + <p> + There were few lights showing in Lebanon or Manitou; but here and there + along the Sagalac was the fading glimmer of a camp-fire, and in Tekewani’s + reservation one light glowed softly like a star. It came from a + finely-made and chased safety-lantern given to Tekewani by the Government, + as a symbol of honour for having kept the braves quiet when an Indian and + half-breed rising was threatened; and to the powerless chief it had become + a token of his authority, the sign of the Great White Mother’s approval. + By day a spray of eagle’s feathers waved over his tepee, but the gleam of + the brass lantern every night was like a sentry at the doorway of a + monarch. + </p> + <p> + It was a solace to his wounded spirit; it allayed the smart of subjection; + made him feel himself a ruler in retirement, even as Gabriel Druse was a + self-ordained exile. + </p> + <p> + These two men, representing the primitive nomad life, had been drawn + together in friendship. So much so, that to Tekewani alone of all the + West, Druse gave his confidence and told his story. It came in the + springtime, when the blood of the young bucks was simmering and, the + ancient spell was working. There had preceded them generations of hunters + who had slain their thousands and their tens of thousands of wild animals + and the fowls of the air; had killed their enemies in battle; had seized + the comely women of their foes and made them their own. No thrill of the + hunter’s trail now drew off the overflow of desire. In the days of rising + sap, there were only the young maidens or wives of their own tribe to + pursue, and it lacked in glory. Also in the springtime, Tekewani himself + had his own trials, for in his blood the old medicine stirred. His face + turned towards the prairie North and the mountain West where yet remained + the hunter’s quarry; and he longed to be away with rifle and gun, with his + squaw and the papooses trailing after like camp-followers, to eat the + fruits of victory. But that could not be; he must remain in the place the + Great White Mother had reserved for him; he and his braves must assemble, + and draw their rations at the appointed times and seasons, and grunt + thanks to those who ruled over them. + </p> + <p> + It was on one of these virginal days, when there was a restless stirring + among the young bucks, who smelled the wide waters, the pines and the wild + shrubs; who heard the cry of the loon on the lonely lake and the whir of + the wild duck’s wings, who answered to the phantom cry of ancient war; it + was on such a day that the two chiefs opened their hearts to each other. + </p> + <p> + Near to the boscage on a little hill overlooking the great river, Gabriel + Druse had come upon Tekewani seated in the pine-dust, rocking to and fro, + and chanting a low, sorrowful refrain, with eyes fixed on the setting sun. + And the Ry of Rys understood, with the understanding which only those have + who live close to the earth, and also near to the heavens of their own + gods. He sat down beside the forlorn chief, and in the silence their souls + spoke to each other. There swept into the veins of the Romany ruler + something of the immitigable sadness of the Indian chief; and, with a + sudden premonition that he also was come to the sunset of his life, his + big nomad eyes sought the westering rim of the heavens, and his breast + heaved. + </p> + <p> + In that hour the two men declared themselves to each other, and Gabriel + Druse told Tekewani all that he had hidden from the people of the Sagalac, + and was answered in kind. It seemed to them that they were as brothers who + were one and who had parted in ages long gone; and having met were to part + and disappear once more, beginning still another trail in an endless + reincarnation. + </p> + <p> + “Brother,” said Tekewani, “it was while there was a bridge of land between + the continents at the North that we met. Again I see it. I forgot it, but + again I see. There was war, and you went upon one path and I upon another, + and we met no more under all the moons till now.” + </p> + <p> + “‘Dordi’, so it was and at such a time,” answered the Ry of Rys. “And once + more we will follow after the fire-flies which give no light to the safe + places but only lead farther into the night.” + </p> + <p> + Tekewani rocked to and fro again, muttering to himself, but presently he + said: + </p> + <p> + “We eat from the hands of those who have driven away the buffalo, the + deer, and the beaver; and the young bucks do naught to earn the joy of + women. They are but as lusting sheep, not as the wild-goat that chases its + mate over the places of death, till it comes upon her at last, and calls + in triumph over her as she kneels at his feet. So it is. Like tame beasts + we eat from the hand of the white man, and the white man leaves his own + camp where his own women are, and prowls in our camps, so that not even + our own women are left to us.” + </p> + <p> + It was then that Gabriel Druse learned of the hatred of Tekewani for Felix + Marchand, because of what he had done in the reservation, prowling at + night like a fox or a coyote in the folds. + </p> + <p> + They parted that hour, believing that the epoch of life in which they were + and the fortunes of time which had been or were to come, were but turns of + a wheel that still went on turning; and that whatever chanced of good or + bad fortune in the one span of being, might be repaired in the next span, + or the next, or the next; so, through their creed of reincarnation, taking + courage to face the failure of the life they now lived. Not by logic or + the teaching of any school had they reached this revelation, but through + an inner sense. They were not hopeful and wondering and timid; they were + only sure. Their philosophy, their religion, whether heathen or human, was + inborn. They had comfort in it and in each other. + </p> + <p> + After that day Gabriel Druse always set a light in his window which burned + all night, answering to the lantern-light at the door of Tekewani’s home—the + lights of exile and of an alliance which had behind it the secret + influences of past ages and vanished peoples. + </p> + <p> + There came a night, however, when the light at the door of Tekewani’s + tepee did not burn. At sunset it was lighted, but long before midnight it + was extinguished. Looking out from the doorway of his home (it was the + night after the Orange funeral), Gabriel Druse, returned from his new + duties at Lebanon, saw no light in the Indian reservation. With anxiety, + he set forth in the shine of the moon to visit it. + </p> + <p> + Arrived at the chief’s tepee, he saw that the lantern of honour was gone, + and waking Tekewani, he brought him out to see. When the old Indian knew + his loss, he gave a harsh cry and stooped, and, gathering a handful of + dust from the ground, sprinkled it on his head. Then with arms + outstretched he cursed the thief who had robbed him of what had been to + him like a never-fading mirage, an illusion blinding his eyes to the + bitter facts of his condition. + </p> + <p> + To his mind all the troubles come to Lebanon and Manitou had had one + source; and now the malign spirit had stretched its hand to spoil those + already dispossessed of all but the right to live. One name was upon the + lips of both men, as they stood in the moonlight by Tekewani’s tepee. + </p> + <p> + “There shall be an end of this,” growled the Romany. + </p> + <p> + “I will have my own,” said Tekewani, with malediction on the thief who had + so shamed him. + </p> + <p> + Black anger was in the heart of Gabriel Druse as he turned again towards + his own home, and he was glad of what he had done to Felix Marchand at the + Orange funeral. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XIX. THE KEEPER OF THE BRIDGE + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Like the darkness of the grave, which is darkness itself—” + </pre> + <p> + Most of those who break out of the zareba of life, who lay violent hands + upon themselves, do so with a complete reasoning, which in itself is proof + of their insanity. It may be domestic tragedy, or ill-health, or crime, or + broken faith, or shame, or insomnia, or betrayed trust—whatever it + is, many a one who suffers from such things, tries to end it all with that + deliberation, that strategy, and that cunning which belong only to the + abnormal. + </p> + <p> + A mind which has known a score or more of sleepless nights acquires an + invincible clearness of its own, seeing an end which is without + peradventure. It finds a hundred perfect reasons for not going on, every + one of which is in itself sufficient; every one of which knits into the + other ninety and nine with inevitable affinity. + </p> + <p> + To the mind of Ingolby came a hundred such reasons for breaking out of + life’s enclosure, as the effect of the opiate Rockwell had given him wore + off, and he regained consciousness. As he did so, someone in the room was + telling of that intervention of Gabriel Druse and the Monseigneur at the + Orange funeral, which had saved the situation. At first he listened to + what was said—it was the nurse talking to Jim Beadle with no sharp + perception of the significance of the story; though it slowly pierced the + lethargy of his senses, and he turned over in the bed to face the + watchers. + </p> + <p> + “What time is it, Jim?” he asked heavily. They told him it was sunset. + </p> + <p> + “Is it quiet in both towns?” he asked after a pause. They told him that it + was. + </p> + <p> + “Any telegrams for me?” he asked. + </p> + <p> + There was an instant’s hesitation. They had had no instructions on this + point, and they hardly knew what to say; but Jim’s mind had its own logic, + and the truth seemed best to him now. He answered that there were several + wires, but that they “didn’t amount to nothin’.” + </p> + <p> + “Have they been opened?” Ingolby asked with a frown, half-raising himself. + It was hard to resign the old masterfulness and self-will. + </p> + <p> + “I’d like to see anybody open ‘em ‘thout my pe’mision,” answered Jim + imperiously. “When you’s asleep, Chief, I’m awake; and I take care of you’ + things, same as ever I done. There ain’t no wires been opened, and there + ain’t goin’ to be whiles I’m runnin’ the show for you.” + </p> + <p> + “Open and read them to me,” commanded Ingolby. Again Ingolby was conscious + of hesitation on Jim’s part. Already the acuteness of the blind was + possessing him, sharpening the senses left unimpaired. Although Jim moved, + presumably, towards the place where the telegrams lay, Ingolby realized + that his own authority was being crossed by that of the doctor and the + nurse. + </p> + <p> + “You will leave the room for a moment, nurse,” he said with a brassy + vibration in the voice—a sign of nervous strain. With a smothered + protest the nurse left, and Jim stood beside the bed with the telegrams. + </p> + <p> + “Read them to me, Jim,” Ingolby repeated irritably. “Be quick.” + </p> + <p> + They were not wires which Ingolby should have heard at the time, when his + wound was still inflamed, when he was still on the outer circle of that + artificial sleep which the opiates had secured. They were from Montreal + and New York, and, resolved from their half-hidden suggestion into bare + elements, they meant that henceforth others would do the work he had done. + They meant, in effect, that save for the few scores of thousand dollars he + had made, he was now where he was when he came West. + </p> + <p> + When Jim had finished reading them, Ingolby sank back on the pillows and + said quietly: + </p> + <p> + “All right, Jim. Put them in the drawer of the table and I’ll answer them + to-morrow. I want to get a little more sleep, so give me a drink, and then + leave me alone—both nurse and you—till I ring the bell. + There’s a bell on the table, isn’t there?” + </p> + <p> + He stretched out a hand towards the table beside the bed, and Jim softly + pushed the bell under his fingers. + </p> + <p> + “That’s right,” he added. “Now, I’m not to be disturbed unless the doctor + comes. I’m all right, and I want to be alone and quiet. No one at all in + the room is what I want. You understand, Jim?” + </p> + <p> + “My head’s just as good to get at what you want as ever it was, and you + goin’ have what you want, I guess, while I’m on deck,” was Jim’s reply. + </p> + <p> + Jim put a glass of water into his hand. He drank very slowly, was indeed + only mechanically conscious that he was drinking, for his mind was far + away. + </p> + <p> + After he had put the glass down, Jim still stood beside the bed, looking + at him. + </p> + <p> + “Why don’t you go, as I tell you, Jim?” Ingolby asked wearily. + </p> + <p> + “I’m goin’”—Jim tucked the bedclothes in carefully—“I’m goin’, + but, boss, I jes’ want to say dat dis thing goin’ to come out all right + bime-by. There ain’t no doubt ‘bout dat. You goin’ see everything, come + jes’ like what you want—suh!” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby did not reply. He held out his hand, and black fingers shot over + and took it. A moment later the blind man was alone in the room. + </p> + <p> + The light of day vanished, and the stars came out. There was no moon, but + it was one of those nights of the West when millions of stars glimmer in + the blue vault above, and every planet and every star and cluster of stars + are so near that it might almost seem they could be caught by an expert + human hand. The air was very still, and a mantle of peace was spread over + the tender scene. The window and the glass doors that gave from Ingolby’s + room upon the veranda on the south side of the house, were open, and the + air was warm as in Midsummer. Now and then the note of a night-bird broke + the stillness, but nothing more. + </p> + <p> + It was such a night as Ingolby loved; it was such a night as often found + him out in the restful gloom of the trees, thinking and brooding, + planning, revelling in memories of books he had read, and in dreaming of + books he might write-if there were time. Such a night insulated the dark + moods which possessed him occasionally almost as effectively as fishing + did; and that was saying much. + </p> + <p> + But the darkest mood of all his days was upon him now. When Rockwell came, + soon after Jim and the nurse left him, he simulated sleep, for he had no + mind to talk; and the doctor, deceived by his even breathing, had left, + contented. At last he was wholly alone with his own thoughts, as he + desired. From the moment Jim had read him the wires, which were the real + revelation of the situation to which he had come, he had been travelling + hard on the road leading to a cul-de-sac, from which there was no egress + save by breaking through the wall. Never, it might have seemed, had his + mind been clearer, but it was a clearness belonging to the abnormal. It + was a straight line of thought which, in its intensity, gathered all other + thoughts into its wake, reduced them to the control of an obsession. It + was borne in on his mind that his day was done, that nothing could right + the disorder which had strewn his path with broken hopes and shattered + ambitions. No life-work left, no schemes to accomplish, no construction to + achieve, no wealth to gain, no public good to be won, no home to be his, + no woman, his very own, to be his counsellor and guide in the natural way! + </p> + <p> + As myriad thoughts drove through his brain on this Indian-summer night, + they all merged into the one obsession that he could no longer stay. The + irresistible logic of the brain stretched to an abnormal tenuity, and an + intolerable brightness was with him. He was in the throes of that intense + visualization which comes with insomnia, when one is awake yet apart from + the waking world, where nothing is really real and nothing normal. He had + a call to go hence, and he must go. Minute after minute passed, hours + passed, and the fight of the soul to maintain itself against the + disordered mind went on. All his past seemed but part of a desert, lonely + and barren and strange. + </p> + <p> + In the previous year he had made a journey to Arizona with Jowett, to see + some railway construction there, and at a ranch he had visited he came + upon some verses which had haunted his mind ever since. They fastened upon + his senses now. They were like a lonesome monotone which at length gave + calm to his torturing reflections. In his darkness the verses kept + repeating themselves: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “I heard the desert calling, and my heart stood still + There was Winter in my world and in my heart: + A breath came from the mesa and a message stirred my will, + And my soul and I arose up to depart. + + I heard the desert calling; and I knew that over there, + In an olive-sheltered garden where the mesquite grows, + Was a woman of the sunrise, with the starshine in her hair, + And a beauty that the almond-blossom blows. + + In the night-time when the ghost-trees glimmered in the moon, + Where the mesa by the watercourse was spanned, + Her loveliness enwrapped me like the blessedness of June, + And all my life was thrilling in her hand. + + I hear the desert calling, and my heart stands still; + There is Summer in my world and in my heart; + A breath comes from the mesa, and a will beyond my will + Binds my footsteps as I rise up to depart.” + </pre> + <p> + This strange, half-mystic song of the mesa and the olive-groves, of the + ghost-trees and the moon, kept playing upon his own heated senses like the + spray from a cooling stream, and at last it quieted him. The dark spirit + of self-destruction loosened its hold. + </p> + <p> + His brain had been strained beyond the normal, almost unconsciously his + fingers had fastened on the pistol in the drawer of the table by his bed. + It had been there since the day when he had travelled down from Alaska—loaded + as it had been when he had carried it down the southern trail. But as his + fingers tightened on the little engine of death, from the words which had + been ringing in his brain came the flash of a revelation: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “... And a will beyond my will + Binds my footsteps as I rise up to depart.” + </pre> + <p> + A will beyond his will! It was as though Fleda’s fingers were laid upon + his own; as though she whispered in his ear and her breath swept his + cheek; as though she was there in the room beside him, making the darkness + light, tempering the wind of chastisement to his naked soul. In the + overstrain of his nervous system the illusion was powerful. He thought he + heard her voice. The pistol slipped from his fingers, and he fell back on + the pillow with a sigh. The will beyond his will bound his footsteps. + </p> + <p> + Who can tell? The grim, malign experience of Fleda in her bedroom with the + Thing she thought was from beyond the bounds of her own life; the voice + that spoke to Ingolby, and the breath that swept over his cheek were, + perhaps, as real in a sense as would have been the corporeal presence of + Jethro Fawe in one case and of Fleda Druse in the other. It may be that in + very truth Fleda Druse’s spirit with its poignant solicitude controlled + his will as he “rose up to depart.” But if it was only an illusion, it was + not less a miracle. Some power of suggestion bound his fleeing footsteps, + drew him back from the Brink. + </p> + <p> + He slept. Once the nurse came and looked at him and returned to the other + room; and twice Jim stole in silently for a moment and retired again to + his own chamber. The stars shone in at the doors that opened out from the + quiet room into the night, the watch beside the bed ticked on, the + fox-terrier which always slept on a mat at the foot of the bed sighed in + content, while his master breathed heavily in a sleep full of dreams that + hurried past like phantasmagoria—of a hundred things that had been + in his life, and that had never been; of people he had known, distorted, + ridiculous and tremendous. There were dreams of fiddlers and barbers, of + crowds writhing in passion in a room where there was a billiard-table and + a lucky horseshoe on the wall. There were dreams that tossed and mingled + in one whirlpool vision; and then at last came a dream which was so cruel + and clear that it froze his senses. + </p> + <p> + It was the dream of a great bridge over a swiftflowing river; of his own + bridge over the Sagalacof that bridge being destroyed by men who crept + through the night with dynamite in their hands. + </p> + <p> + With a hoarse, smothered cry he awoke. His eyes opened wide. His heart was + beating like a hammer against his side. Only the terrier at his feet heard + the muttered agony. With an instinct all its own, it slipped to the floor. + </p> + <p> + It watched its master get out of bed, cross the room and feel for a coat + along the wall—an overcoat which he used as a dressing-gown at + times. Putting it on hastily, with outstretched hands Ingolby felt his way + to the glass doors opening on the veranda. The dog, as though to let him + know he was there, rubbed against his legs. Ingolby murmured a soft, + unintelligible word, and, in his bare feet, passed out on to the veranda, + and from there to the garden and towards the gate at the front of the + house. + </p> + <p> + The nurse heard the gate click lightly, but she was only half-awake, and + as all was quiet in the next room, she composed herself in her chair again + with the vain idea that she was not sleeping. And Jim the faithful one, as + though under a narcotic of fate, was snoring softly beside the vacant + room. The streets were still. No lights burned anywhere so far as eye + could see. But now and then, in the stillness through which the river + flowed on, murmuring and rhythmic, there rose the distant sounds of + disorderly voices. Ingolby was in a state which was neither sleep nor + waking, which was in part delirium, in part oblivion to all things in the + world save one—an obsession so complete, that he moved automatically + through the street in which he lived towards that which led to the bridge. + </p> + <p> + His terrier, as though realizing exactly what he wished, seemed to guide + him by rubbing against his legs, and even pressing hard against them when + he was in any danger of losing the middle of the road, or swerving towards + a ditch or some obstruction. Only once did they pass any human being, and + that was when they came upon a camp of road-builders, where a red light + burned, and two men slept in the open by a dying fire. One of them raised + his head when Ingolby passed, but being more than half-asleep, and seeing + only a man and a dog, thought nothing of it, and dropped back again upon + his rough pillow. He was a stranger to Lebanon, and there was little + chance of his recognizing Ingolby in the semi-darkness. + </p> + <p> + As they neared the river, Ingolby became deeply agitated. He moved with + his hands outstretched. Had it not been for his dog he would probably have + walked into the Sagalac; for though he seemed to have an instinct that was + extra-natural, he swayed and staggered in the delirium driving him on. + There was one dreadful moment when, having swerved from the road leading + on to the bridge, he was within a foot of the river-bank. One step + farther, and he would have plunged down thirty feet into the stream, to be + swept to the Rapids below. + </p> + <p> + But for the first time the terrier made a sound. He gave a whining bark + almost human in its meaning, and threw himself at the legs of his master, + pushing him backwards and over towards the road leading upon the bridge, + as a collie guides sheep. Presently Ingolby felt the floor of the bridge + under his feet; and now he hastened on, with outstretched arms and head + bent forward, listening intently, the dog trotting beside, with what + knowledge working in him Heaven alone knew. + </p> + <p> + The roar of the Rapids below was a sonorous accompaniment to Ingolby’s + wild thoughts. One thing only he felt, one thing only heard—the men + in Barbazon’s Tavern saying that the bridge should be blown up on the + Saturday night; and this was Saturday night—the night of the day + following that of the Orange funeral. He had heard the criminal hireling + of Felix Marchand say that it should be done at midnight, and that the + explosive should be laid under that part of the bridge which joined the + Manitou bank of the Sagalac. As though in very truth he saw with his eyes, + he stopped short not far from the point where the bridge joined the land, + and stood still, listening. + </p> + <p> + For several minutes he was motionless, intent, as an animal waiting for + its foe. At last his newly-sensitive ears heard footsteps approaching and + low voices. The footsteps came nearer, the voices, though so low, became + more distinct. They were now not fifty feet away, but to the delirious + Ingolby they were as near as death had been when his fingers closed on the + pistol in his room. + </p> + <p> + He took a step forward, and with passionate voice and arms outstretched, + he cried: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “You shall not do it-by God, you shall not touch my bridge! + I built it. You shall not touch it. Back, you devils-back!” + </pre> + <p> + The terrier barked loudly. + </p> + <p> + The two men in the semi-darkness in front of him cowered at the sight of + this weird figure holding the bridge they had come to destroy. His words, + uttered in so strange and unnatural a voice, shook their nerves. They + shrank away from the ghostly form with the outstretched arms. + </p> + <p> + In the minute’s pause following on his words, a giant figure suddenly + appeared behind the dynamiters. It was the temporary Chief Constable of + Lebanon, returning from his visit to Tekewani. He had heard Ingolby’s wild + words, and he realized the situation. + </p> + <p> + “Ingolby—steady there, Ingolby!” he called. “Steady! Steady! Gabriel + Druse is here. It’s all right.” + </p> + <p> + At the first sound of Druse’s voice the two wreckers turned and ran. + </p> + <p> + As they did so, Ingolby’s hands fell to his side, and he staggered + forward. + </p> + <p> + “Druse—Fleda,” he murmured, then swayed, trembled and fell. + </p> + <p> + With words that stuck in his throat Gabriel Druse stooped and lifted him + up in his arms. At first he turned towards the bridge, as though to cross + over to Lebanon, but the last word Ingolby had uttered rang in his ears, + and he carried him away into the trees towards his own house, the faithful + terrier following. “Druse—Fleda!” They were the words of one who had + suddenly emerged from the obsession of delirium into sanity, and then had + fallen into as sudden unconsciousness. + </p> + <p> + “Fleda! Fleda!” called Gabriel Druse outside the door of his house a + quarter of an hour later, and her voice in reply was that of one who knew + that the feet of Fate were at her threshold. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XX. TWO LIFE PIECES + </h2> + <h3> + “It’s a fine day.” + </h3> + <p> + “Yes, it’s beautiful.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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.’” + </p> + <p> + Being blind, he could not see that, suddenly, a storm of emotion swept + over her face. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “What is it?” Ingolby asked, with startled face. + </p> + <p> + “Nothing,” she answered, “nothing. I pricked my finger badly, that’s all.” + </p> + <p> + And, indeed, she had done so, but that would not have brought the moan to + her lips. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, but you’re a man!” she remarked lightly, though two tears fell down + her cheeks. + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + “Am I to be left alone?” he asked, with an assumed grievance in his voice. + </p> + <p> + “Madame Bulteel will stay with you,” she replied. + </p> + <p> + “Do you need a walk so very badly?” he asked presently. + </p> + <p> + “I don’t suppose I need it, but I want it,” she answered. “My feet and the + earth are very friendly.” + </p> + <p> + “Where do you walk?” he asked. + </p> + <p> + “Just anywhere,” was her reply. “Sometimes up the river, sometimes down, + sometimes miles away in the woods.” + </p> + <p> + “Do you never take a gun with you?” + </p> + <p> + “Of course,” she answered, nodding, as though he could see. “I get wild + pigeons and sometimes a wild duck or a prairie-hen.” + </p> + <p> + “That’s right,” he remarked; “that’s right.” + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + Suddenly his face grew grave. “Yes, that’s it,” he remarked. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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—” + </p> + <p> + He checked himself, then added with a quizzical smile: + </p> + <p> + “You are looking very well to-day, Miss Fleda Druse, very well indeed. I + like that dark-red dress you’re wearing.” + </p> + <p> + 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? + </p> + <p> + “How did you know it was dark-red?” she asked, her voice shaking. + </p> + <p> + “Guessed it! Guessed it!” he answered almost gleefully. “Was I right? Is + it dark-red?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, dark-red,” she answered. “Was it really a guess?” + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + Concentration came into his face. “It’s three minutes to twelve o’clock,” + he said decisively. + </p> + <p> + She took up the watch which lay on the table beside the bed. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, it’s just three minutes to twelve,” she declared in an awe-struck + voice. “That’s marvellous—how wonderful you are!” + </p> + <p> + “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?” + </p> + <p> + “You mean, since you came here?” she asked, divining what was in his mind. + </p> + <p> + “Exactly. How long?” + </p> + <p> + “Six weeks,” she answered. “Six weeks and three days.” + </p> + <p> + “Why don’t you add the hour, too,” he urged half-plaintively, though he + smiled. + </p> + <p> + “Well, it was three o’clock in the morning to the minute,” she answered. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + Anxiety drove the colour from her cheeks. She shrank back. + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + 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?” + </p> + <p> + “I understand so,” she replied. + </p> + <p> + He remained silent for a moment, his face very pale. “Who is running the + show?” he asked. + </p> + <p> + She told him. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, him!” he exclaimed. “He’s dead against my policy. He’ll make a mess.” + </p> + <p> + “They say he’s doing that,” she remarked. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + For a moment after she had answered his questions, there was strong + emotion in his face, and then it cleared. + </p> + <p> + He reached out a hand towards her. How eagerly she clasped it! It was + cold, and hers was so warm and firm and kind. + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + “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?” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “It was the manager?” he repeated. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, they say so,” she answered. “He speculated with bank money.” + </p> + <p> + “In what?” + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “You are a master,” she interposed. “You are the Master Man,” she repeated + admiringly. + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + “Aren’t you getting anything out of it?” she asked softly. “Aren’t you—Chief?” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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—” + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + “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?” + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + 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? + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + “We told you there was,” she answered. + </p> + <p> + “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.’” + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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!” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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?” + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby stopped knitting for a moment. “You don’t mean that a penalty + could touch you?” he asked incredulously. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “Please tell me about it,” he urged. “Tell me, so that I can understand + everything.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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: + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, I know. Three hours would sicken me. But what might not happen in + those three hours! Can’t you understand?” + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + “He knows the game is up,” Ingolby remarked with forced cheerfulness. “He + won’t be asking for any more.” + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + “Your hands are cold,” she said to him. “Cold hands, warm heart,” he + chattered. + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + Fleda turned back towards the bed. + </p> + <p> + “Good luck!” she said. “You’ll see, it will be all right.” + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + “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!” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + In the room where he awaited the verdict of the expert, he kept saying to + himself: + </p> + <p> + “She would have made everything else look cheap—if it could have + been.” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XXI. THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER + </h2> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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? + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + A few feet away from her he spoke. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + Getting to her feet slowly, she ignored Jethro, looked into the face of + the crowd, and said: + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “I will go with you,” Fleda said. Then she turned to Jethro: “I wish to + speak to you alone, Jethro Fawe,” she added. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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: + </p> + <p> + “To-night is yours, Jethro. You can make tomorrow sure.” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XXII. THE SECRET MAN + </h2> + <h3> + “You are wasting your time.” + </h3> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “Have you forgotten the Sentence of the Patrin?” Fleda asked the question + in a voice which showed a sudden access of determination. + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “That was because there was another man,” interjected Jethro. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + “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!” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + With a Romany expletive, he flung back the curtain of the tent and passed + out into the night. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “Would you like to come?” he asked. “Would you like to come home to the + Ry?” + </p> + <p> + With a cry she flung herself upon him. “Rhodo! Rhodo!” she exclaimed, and + now the tears broke forth, and her body shook with sobs. + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “No, you never kissed me after you were old enough to like or dislike,” he + said with mournful and ironical reflection. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “I will kiss you again in another fifteen years,” she said half-smiling + through her tears. “But tell me—tell me what has happened.” + </p> + <p> + “Jethro Fawe has gone,” he answered with a sweeping outward gesture. + </p> + <p> + “Where has he gone?” she asked, apprehension seizing her. + </p> + <p> + “A journey into the night,” responded the old man with scorn and wrath in + his tone, and his lips were set. + </p> + <p> + “Is he going far?” she asked. + </p> + <p> + “The road you might think long would be short to him,” he answered. + </p> + <p> + Her hands became cold; her heart seemed to stop beating. + </p> + <p> + “What road is that?” she asked. She knew, but she must ask. + </p> + <p> + “Everybody knows it; everybody goes it some time or another,” he answered + darkly. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, he was blaspheming,” remarked the old man grimly. + </p> + <p> + “Tell me what it was you said, and tell me what has happened,” she + persisted. + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + “They did not go with him?” she asked. + </p> + <p> + “It is not the custom,” he answered sardonically. “That is a path a Romany + walks alone.” + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + “Perhaps it will not be at all. My father spoke, but he can withdraw his + word,” she urged. + </p> + <p> + Suddenly the old Gipsy’s face hardened. A look of dark resolve and iron + force came into it. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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: + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “He must not die,” she insisted. + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + 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: + </p> + <p> + “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!” + </p> + <p> + A flush slowly stole over Fleda’s face, and a look of horror came into her + eyes. She read the parable aright. + </p> + <p> + “Will you let me kiss you?” she said to the woman, and now it was the + woman’s turn to flush. + </p> + <p> + “You are the daughter of the Ry of Rys,” she said almost shyly, yet + proudly. + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “Tell me what has happened? Tell me what has happened?” she asked in + distress. + </p> + <p> + Fleda took both her hands. “Before I answer, tell me what has happened + here,” she said breathlessly. “What news?” + </p> + <p> + Madame Bulteel’s face lighted. “Good news,” she exclaimed eagerly. + </p> + <p> + “He will see—he will see again?” Fleda asked in great agitation. + </p> + <p> + “The Montreal doctor said that the chances were even,” answered Madame + Bulteel. “This man from the States says it is a sure thing.” + </p> + <p> + With a murmur Fleda sank into a chair, and a faintness came over her. + </p> + <p> + “That’s not like a Romany,” remarked old Rhodo. “No, it’s certainly not + like a Romany,” remarked Madame Bulteel meaningly. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XXIII. THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS + </h2> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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! + </p> + <p> + “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!” + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “He sees, boys—he sees!” they shouted. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby’s hand shot up above them with a gesture of command. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + A moment later someone shouted, “It’s the Catholic church at Manitou on + fire!” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XXIV. AT LONG LAST + </h2> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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!” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “What did the Chief do?” asked Osterhaut. “Did you see what happened to + him?” + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “Heard anything more about Marchand—where he is?” asked Osterhaut, + as the hoofs of the horses clattered on the bridge. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “Gautry’s tavern—that joint!” exclaimed Osterhaut with repulsion. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + 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!” + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + “Six months,” was the reply, “but she’s working smooth as music. She’s as + good as anything ‘twixt here and the Atlantic.” + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + As Gautry came reeling and plunging down the street, someone shouted, “Is + there anyone in the house, Gautry?” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “Ma’mselle, Felix Marchand is in Gautry’s house—drunk!” she cried. + “He’ll burn to death—but yes, burn to death.” + </p> + <p> + In agitation Fleda hastened to where the stranger stood shaking old + Gautry. + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + From the window opposite, her fat old face lighted by the blazing roof, + Madame Thibadeau called out, “Second floor! It’s the second floor!” + </p> + <p> + In an instant Dennis was lost in the smoke and flame. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “Great glory, it’s Marchand! It’s Felix Marchand!” someone shouted. + </p> + <p> + “Is he dead?” asked another. + </p> + <p> + “Dead drunk,” was the comment of Osterhaut, who had helped to carry him + across the street. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + As he said it, Dennis broke through the crowd and made for Marchand. + Stooping over, he looked into Marchand’s face. + </p> + <p> + “Hell and damnation—you!” he growled. “I risked my life to save + you!” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + “Got the strength of two, for a drunk man weighs twice as heavy as a sober + one!” exclaimed another admiringly. + </p> + <p> + “Marchand’s game is up on the Sagalac,” declared a third decisively. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + Ingolby drew near and laid a hand upon Dennis’s arm. Fleda’s hand was on + the other arm. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + Dennis suddenly swung round with a gesture of fury. “He spoiled + her-treated her like dirt!” he cried huskily. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “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?” + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + “No, I won’t come, I can’t come now,” said Ingolby, in response to an + inquiring look from Fleda. + </p> + <p> + “Not now, but before sundown, please.” + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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: + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XXV. MAN PROPOSES + </h2> + <p> + 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? + </p> + <p> + It is not a long story, and needs but a brief backward look. This had + happened: + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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, + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + The first words after the bandages were removed came from Ingolby. + </p> + <p> + “Well, Jim, you look all right!” he said. + </p> + <p> + Swaying as she went, Fleda half-blindly moved towards a chair near by and + sank into it. She scarcely heard Jim’s reply. + </p> + <p> + “Looking all right yourself, Chief. You won’t see much change in this here + old town.” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby’s hand was in Rockwell’s. “It’s all right, isn’t it?” he asked. + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + A moment later the bandages were secured and Rockwell stood back from the + bed. + </p> + <p> + “In another week you’ll see as well as ever you did,” Rockwell said. “I’m + proud of you.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I hope I’ll see a little better than ever I did,” remarked Ingolby + meaningly. “I was pretty short-sighted before.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, there ain’t any pigs in that sty now, Chief; but it’s all ready,” + said Jim, indignant and sarcastic. + </p> + <p> + It was a lucky speech. It broke the spell of emotion which was greatly + straining everybody’s endurance. + </p> + <p> + “That’s one in the eye for somebody,” remarked Rockwell drily. + </p> + <p> + “What would you like for lunch?” asked Fleda, letting go Ingolby’s hand, + but laying her fingers on his arm for a moment. + </p> + <p> + 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?” + </p> + <p> + 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.’” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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?” + </p> + <p> + 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: + </p> + <p> + “I’m going to get back, but I can’t do it without you.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + ......................... +</pre> + <p> + 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! + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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— + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “I am here. Can’t you see me?” + </p> + <p> + 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: + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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: + </p> + <p> + “God’s good to me. I hope I’ll remember that.” + </p> + <p> + “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—” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + With an exclamation of gratitude she nestled into his arms. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + Fleda sprang to his side. “Is it my father? What has happened?” she cried. + </p> + <p> + The old man waved her aside, and pointed toward the house. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XXVI. THE SLEEPER + </h2> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “Father! Oh, Ry! Oh, my Ry!” she whispered in agony and admiration, too, + and kept on whispering. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “My Ry! My father! Oh, my Ry of Rys!” she kept murmuring to herself. + </p> + <p> + On either side of her, but a few feet behind, stood Rhodo and Ingolby. + </p> + <p> + Presently in a low, firm voice Rhodo spoke. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + 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? + </p> + <p> + “What is it you wish to say to me, Rhodo?” she asked. + </p> + <p> + “What I have to say is for your ears only,” was the low reply. + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + “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—” + </p> + <p> + It was plain that some great passion was working in the man, that it was + wise and right to humour him, and Ingolby intervened. + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + “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.” + </p> + <p> + The old man raised both hands, and made a gesture as though he would drive + her from his sight. + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + 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.” + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “You will take him away?” Fleda asked. + </p> + <p> + Rhodo inclined his head. “When the doctors have testified, we will take + him with us. Say your farewells,” he added, with gesture of command. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XXVII. THE WORLD FOR SALE + </h2> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “By Nebo’s lonely mountain, On this side Jordan’s wave.” + </pre> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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: + </p> + <p> + “I want to help you do the big things. They will be yours. The world is + all for you yet.” + </p> + <p> + Ingolby shook his head. He had had his Moscow. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + “I have you—the world for sale!” he said, with the air of one + discarding a useless thing. + </p> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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. +</pre> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: + + Agony in thinking about the things we’re never going to do + I don’t believe in walking just for the sake of walking + It’s no good simply going—you’ve got to go somewhere + Most honest thing I ever heard, but it’s not the most truthful + Saw how futile was much competition + They think that if a vote’s worth having it’s worth paying for + When you strike your camp, put out the fires + Women may leave you in the bright days + You never can really overtake a newspaper lie +</pre> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + +End of Project Gutenberg’s The World For Sale, Complete, by Gilbert Parker + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD FOR SALE, COMPLETE *** + +***** This file should be named 6284-h.htm or 6284-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/6/2/8/6284/ + +Produced by David Widger + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The World For Sale, Complete + +Author: Gilbert Parker + +Last Updated: March 14, 2009 +Release Date: October 18, 2006 [EBook #6284] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD FOR SALE, COMPLETE *** + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +THE WORLD FOR SALE + +By Gilbert Parker + + + +CONTENTS: + + PRELUDE + + BOOK I + I. "THE DRUSES ARE UP!" + II. THE WHISPER FROM BEYOND + III. CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNS + IV. THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWE + V. "BY THE RIVER STARZKE... IT WAS SO DONE" + VI. THE UNGUARDED FIRES + VII. IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE + + BOOK II + VIII. THE SULTAN + IX. MATTER AND MIND AND TWO MEN + X. FOR LUCK + XI. THE SENTENCE OF THE PATRIN + XII. "LET THERE BE LIGHT" + XIII. THE CHAIN OF THE PAST + XIV. SUCH THINGS MAY NOT BE + XV. THE WOMAN FROM WIND RIVER + XVI. THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE + XVII. THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMAD + XVIII. THE BEACONS + XIX. THE BEEPER OF THE BRIDGE + + 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 + + + + +INTRODUCTION + +'The World for Sale' is a tale of the primitive and lonely West and +North, but the primitiveness and loneliness is not like that to be found +in 'Pierre and His People'. Pierre's wanderings took place in a period +when civilization had made but scant marks upon the broad bosom of the +prairie land, and towns and villages were few and far scattered. The +Lebanon and Manitou of this story had no existence in the time of +Pierre, except that where Manitou stands there was a Hudson's Bay +Company's post at which Indians, half-breeds, and chance settlers +occasionally gathered for trade and exchange-furs, groceries, clothing, +blankets, tobacco, and other things; and in the long winters the post +was as isolated as an oasis in the Sahara. + +That old life was lonely and primitive, but it had its compensating +balance of bright sun, wild animal life, and an air as vivid and virile +as ever stirred the veins of man. Sometimes the still, bright cold was +broken by a terrific storm, which ravaged, smothered, and entombed the +stray traveller in ravines of death. That was in winter; but in +summer, what had been called, fifty years ago, an alkali desert was an +everlasting stretch of untilled soil, with unsown crops, and here +and there herds of buffalo, which were stalked by alert Red Indians, +half-breeds, and white pioneer hunters. + +The stories in 'Pierre and His People' were true to the life of that +time; the incidents in 'The World for Sale', and the whole narrative, +are true to the life of a very few years ago. Railways have pierced +and opened up lonely regions of the Sagalae, and there are two thriving +towns where, in the days of Pierre, only stood a Hudson's Bay Company's +post with its store. Now, as far as eye can see, vast fields of grain +greet the eye, and houses and barns speckle the greenish brown or Tuscan +yellow of the crop-covered lands, while towns like Lebanon and Manitou +provide for the modern settler all the modern conveniences which science +has given to civilized municipalities. Today the motor-car and the +telephone are as common in such places as they are in a thriving town +of the United Kingdom. After the first few days of settlement two things +always appear--a school-house and a church. Probably there is no country +in the world where elementary education commands the devotion and +the cash of the people as in English Canada; that is why the towns of +Lebanon and Manitou had from the first divergent views. Lebanon +was English, progressive, and brazenly modern; Manitou was slow, +reactionary, more or less indifferent to education, and strenuously +Catholic, and was thus opposed to the militant Protestantism of Lebanon. + +It was my idea to picture a situation in the big new West where destiny +is being worked out in the making of a nation and the peopling of the +wastes. I selected a very modern and unusual type of man as the central +figure of my story. He was highly educated, well born, and carefully +brought up. He possessed all the best elements of a young man in a new +country--intelligent self-dependence, skill, daring, vision. He had an +original turn of mind, and, as men are obliged to do in new countries, +he looked far ahead. Yet he had to face what pioneers and reformers in +old countries have to face, namely the disturbance of rooted interests. +Certainly rooted interests in towns but a generation old cannot be +extensive or remarkable, but if they are associated with habits and +principles, they may be as deadly as those which test the qualities +and wreck the careers of men in towns as old as London. The difference, +however, between the old European town and the new Western town is that +differences in the Western town are more likely to take physical form, +as was the case in the life of Ingolby. In order to accentuate the +primitive and yet highly civilized nature of the life I chose my heroine +from a race and condition more unsettled and more primitive than that of +Lebanon or Manitou at any time. I chose a heroine from the gipsy race, +and to heighten the picture of the primitive life from which she had +come I made her a convert to the settled life of civilization. I had +known such a woman, older, but with the same characteristics, the same +struggles, temptations, and suffering the same restriction of her life +and movements by the prejudice in her veins--the prejudice of racial +predilection. + +Looking at the story now after its publication, I am inclined to think +that the introduction of the gipsy element was too bold, yet I believe +it was carefully worked out in construction, and was a legitimate, +intellectual enterprise. The danger of it was that it might detract from +the reality and vividness of the narrative as a picture of Western life. +Most American critics of the book seem not to have been struck by this +doubt which has occurred to me. They realize perhaps more faithfully +than some of the English critics have done that these mad contrasts are +by no means uncommon in the primitive and virile life of the West and +North. Just as California in the old days, just as Ballaret in Australia +drew the oddest people from every corner of the world, so Western towns, +with new railways, brought strange conglomerations into the life. For +instance, a town like Winnipeg has sections which represent the life of +nearly every race of Europe, and towns like Lebanon and Manitou, with +English and French characteristics controlling them mainly, are still as +subject to outside racial influences as to inside racial antagonisms. + +I believe The World for Sale shows as plainly as anything can show +the vexed and conglomerate life of a Western town. It shows how racial +characteristics may clash, disturb, and destroy, and yet how wisdom, +tact, and lucky incident may overcome almost impossible situations. The +antagonisms between Lebanon and Manitou were unwillingly and unjustly +deepened by the very man who had set out to bring them together, as one +of the ideals of his life, and as one of the factors of his success. +Ingolby, who had everything to gain by careful going, almost wrecked his +own life, and he injured the life of the two towns by impulsive acts. + +The descriptions of life in the two towns are true, and the chief +characters in the book are lifted out of the life as one has seen it. +Men like Osterhaut and Jowett, Indians like Tekewani, doctors like +Rockwell, priests like Monseigneur Fabre, ministers like Mr. Tripple, +and ne'er-do-weels like Marchand may be found in many a town of the West +and North. Naturally the book must lack in something of that magnetic +picturesqueness and atmosphere which belongs to the people in the +Province of Quebec. Western and Northern life has little of the settled +charm which belongs to the old civilization of the French province. The +only way to recapture that charm is to place Frenchmen in the West, +and have them act and live--or try to act and live--as they do in old +Quebec. + +That is what I did with Pierre in my first book of fiction, Pierre and +His People, but with the exception of Monseigneur Fabre there is no +Frenchman in this book who fulfils, or could fulfil, the temperamental +place which I have indicated. Men like Monseigneur Fabre have lived +in the West, and worked and slaved like him, blest and beloved by all +classes, creeds, and races. Father Lacombe was one of them. The part he +played in the life of Western Canada will be written some day by one who +understands how such men, celibate, and dedicated to religious life, may +play a stupendous part in the development of civilization. Something of +him is to be found in my description of Monseigneur Fabre. + + + + +NOTE + +This book was begun in 1911 and finished in 1913, a year before war +broke out. It was published serially in the year 1915 and the beginning +of 1916. It must, therefore, go to the public on the basis of its merits +alone, and as a picture of the peace-life of the great North West. + + + + +PRELUDE + +Harvest-time was almost come, and the great new land was resting under +coverlets of gold. From the rise above the town of Lebanon, there +stretched out ungarnered wheat in the ear as far as sight could reach, +and the place itself and the neighbouring town of Manitou on the other +side of the Sagalac River were like islands washed by a topaz sea. + +Standing upon the Rise, lost in the prospect, was an old, white-haired +man in the cassock of a priest, with grey beard reaching nearly to the +waist. + +For long he surveyed the scene, and his eyes had a rapt look. + +At last he spoke aloud: + + "There shall be an heap of corn in the earth, high upon the hills; + his fruit shall shake like Libanus, and shall be green in the city + like grass upon the earth." + +A smile came to his lips--a rare, benevolent smile. He had seen this +expanse of teeming life when it was thought to be an alkali desert, fit +only to be invaded by the Blackfeet and the Cree and the Blood Indians +on a foray for food and furs. Here he had come fifty years before, and +had gone West and North into the mountains in the Summer season, when +the land was tremulous with light and vibrating to the hoofs of herds of +buffalo as they stampeded from the hunters; and also in the Winter time, +when frost was master and blizzard and drift its malignant servants. + +Even yet his work was not done. In the town of Manitou he still said +mass now and then, and heard the sorrows and sins of men and women, and +gave them "ghostly comfort," while priests younger than himself took the +burden of parish-work from his shoulders. + +For a lifetime he had laboured among the Indians and the few whites and +squaw-men and half-breeds, with neither settlement nor progress. Then, +all at once, the railway; and people coming from all the world, +and cities springing up! Now once more he was living the life of +civilization, exchanging raw flesh of fish and animals and a meal of +tallow or pemmican for the wheaten loaf; the Indian tepee for the warm +house with the mansard roof; the crude mass beneath the trees for the +refinements of a chancel and an altar covered with lace and white linen. + +A flock of geese went honking over his head. His eyes smiled in memory +of the countless times he had watched such flights, had seen thousands +of wild ducks hurrying down a valley, had watched a family of herons +stretching away to some lonely water-home. And then another sound +greeted his ear. It was shrill, sharp and insistent. A great serpent was +stealing out of the East and moving down upon Lebanon. It gave out puffs +of smoke from its ungainly head. It shrieked in triumph as it came. It +was the daily train from the East, arriving at the Sagalac River. + +"These things must be," he said aloud as he looked. While he lost +himself again in reminiscence, a young man came driving across the +plains, passing beneath where he stood. The young man's face and figure +suggested power. In his buggy was a fishing-rod. + +His hat was pulled down over his eyes, but he was humming cheerfully +to himself. When he saw the priest, he raised his hat respectfully, yet +with an air of equality. + +"Good day, Monseigneur" (this honour of the Church had come at last to +the aged missionary), he said warmly. "Good day--good day!" + +The priest raised his hat and murmured the name, "Ingolby." As the +distance grew between them, he said sadly: "These are the men who change +the West, who seize it, and divide it, and make it their own-- + + "'I will rejoice, and divide Sichem: and mete out the valley of + Succoth.' + +"Hush! Hush!" he said to himself in reproach. "These things must be. The +country must be opened up. That is why I came--to bring the Truth before +the trader." + +Now another traveller came riding out of Lebanon towards him, galloping +his horse up-hill and down. He also was young, but nothing about him +suggested power, only self-indulgence. He, too, raised his hat, or +rather swung it from his head in a devil-may-care way, and overdid his +salutation. He did not speak. The priest's face was very grave, if not a +little resentful. His salutation was reserved. + +"The tyranny of gold," he murmured, "and without the mind or energy that +created it. Felix was no name for him. Ingolby is a builder, perhaps a +jerry-builder; but he builds." + +He looked across the prairie towards the young man in the buggy. + +"Sure, he is a builder. He has the Cortez eye. He sees far off, and +plans big things. But Felix Marchand there--" + +He stopped short. + +"Such men must be, perhaps," he added. Then, after a moment, as he gazed +round again upon the land of promise which he had loved so long, he +murmured as one murmurs a prayer: + + "Thou suferedst men to ride over our heads: we went through fire and + water, and Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place." + + + + +CHAPTER I. "THE DRUSES ARE UP!" + +"Great Scott, look at her! She's goin' to try and take 'em!" exclaimed +Osterhaut, the Jack-of-all-trades at Lebanon. + +"She ain't such a fool as all that. Why, no one ever done it alone. +Low water, too, when every rock's got its chance at the canoe. But, my +gracious, she is goin' to ride 'em!" + +Jowett, the horse-dealer, had a sportsman's joy in a daring thing. + +"See, old Injun Tekewani's after her! He's calling at her from the bank. +He knows. He done it himself years ago when there was rips in the tribe +an' he had to sew up the tears. He run them Rapids in his canoe--" + +"Just as the Druse girl there is doin'--" + +"An' he's done what he liked with the Blackfeet ever since." + +"But she ain't a chief--what's the use of her doin' it? She's goin' +straight for them. She can't turn back now. She couldn't make the bank +if she wanted to. She's got to run 'em. Holy smoke, see her wavin' the +paddle at Tekewani! Osterhaut, she's the limit, that petticoat--so quiet +and shy and don't-look-at-me, too, with eyes like brown diamonds." + +"Oh, get out, Jowett; she's all right! She'll make this country sit up +some day-by gorry, she'll make Manitou and Lebanon sit up to-day if she +runs the Carillon Rapids safe!" + +"She's runnin' 'em all right, son. She's--by jee, well done, Miss Druse! +Well done, I say--well done!" exclaimed Jowett, dancing about and waving +his arms towards the adventurous girl. + +The girl had reached the angry, thrashing waters where the rocks rent +and tore into white ribbons the onrushing current, and her first trial +had come on the instant the spitting, raging panthers of foam struck the +bow of her canoe. The waters were so low that this course, which she +had made once before with her friend Tekewani the Blackfeet chief, +had perils not met on that desperate journey. Her canoe struck a rock +slantwise, shuddered and swung round, but by a dexterous stroke she +freed the frail craft. It righted and plunged forward again into fresh +death-traps. + +It was these new dangers which had made Tekewani try to warn her from +the shore--he and the dozen braves with him: but it was characteristic +of his race that, after the first warning, when she must play out the +game to the bitter end, he made no further attempt to stop her. The +Indians ran down the river-bank, however, with eyes intent on her +headlong progress, grunting approval as she plunged safely from danger +to danger. + +Osterhaut and Jowett became silent, too, and, like the Indians, ran +as fast as they could, over fences, through the trees, stumbling and +occasionally cursing, but watching with fascinated eyes this adventuress +of the North, taking chances which not one coureur-de-bois or +river-driver in a thousand would take, with a five thousand-dollar prize +as the lure. Why should she do it? + +"Women folks are sick darn fools when they git goin'," gasped Osterhaut +as he ran. "They don't care a split pea what happens when they've got +the pip. Look at her--my hair's bleachin'." + +"She's got the pip all right," stuttered Jowett as he plunged along; +"but she's foreign, and they've all got the pip, foreign men and women +both--but the women go crazy." + +"She keeps pretty cool for a crazy loon, that girl. If I owned her, +I'd--" + +Jowett interrupted impatiently. "You'd do what old man Druse does--you'd +let her be, Osterhaut. What's the good of havin' your own way with one +that's the apple of your eye, if it turns her agin you? You want her +to kiss you on the high cheek-bone, but if you go to play the +cat-o'-nine-tails round her, the high cheek-bone gets froze. Gol blast +it, look at her, son! What are the wild waves saying? They're sayin', +'This is a surprise, Miss Druse. Not quite ready for ye, Miss Druse.' +My, ain't she got the luck of the old devil!" + +It seemed so. More than once the canoe half jammed between the rocks, +and the stern lifted up by the force of the wild current, but again the +paddle made swift play, and again the cockle-shell swung clear. But now +Fleda Druse was no longer on her feet. She knelt, her strong, slim +brown arms bared to the shoulder, her hair blown about her forehead, +her daring eyes flashing to left and right, memory of her course at work +under such a strain as few can endure without chaos of mind in the end. +A hundred times since the day she had run these Rapids with Tekewani, +she had gone over the course in her mind, asleep and awake, forcing her +brain to see again every yard of that watery way; because she knew that +the day must come when she would make the journey alone. Why she would +make it she did not know; she only knew that she would do it some day; +and the day had come. For long it had been an obsession with her--as +though some spirit whispered in her ear--"Do you hear the bells ringing +at Carillon? Do you hear the river singing towards Carillon? Do you +see the wild birds flying towards Carillon? Do you hear the Rapids +calling--the Rapids of Carillon?" + +Night and day since she had braved death with Tekewani, giving him a +gun, a meerschaum pipe, and ten pounds of beautiful brown "plug" tobacco +as a token of her gratitude--night and day she had heard this spirit +murmuring in her ear, and always the refrain was, "Down the stream to +Carillon! Shoot the Rapids of Carillon!" + +Why? How should she know? Wherefore should she know? This was of the +things beyond the why of the human mind. Sometimes all our lives, if we +keep our souls young, and see the world as we first saw it with eyes and +heart unsoiled, we hear the murmuring of the Other Self, that Self +from which we separated when we entered this mortal sphere, but which +followed us, invisible yet whispering inspiration to us. But sometimes +we only hear It, our own soul's oracle, while yet our years are few, +and we have not passed that frontier between innocence and experience, +reality and pretence. Pretence it is which drives the Other Self away +with wailing on its lips. Then we hear It cry in the night when, because +of the trouble of life, we cannot sleep; or at the play when we are +caught away from ourselves into another air than ours; when music pours +around us like a soft wind from a garden of pomegranates; or when a +child asks a question which brings us back to the land where everything +is so true that it can be shouted from the tree-tops. + +Why was Fleda Druse tempting death in the Carillon Rapids? + +She had heard a whisper as she wandered among the pine-trees there at +Manitou, and it said simply the one word, "Now!" She knew that she must +do it; she had driven her canoe out into the resistless current to ride +the Rapids of Carillon. Her Other Self had whispered to her. + +Yonder, thousands of miles away in Syria, there were the Hills of +Lebanon; and there was one phrase which made every Syrian heart beat +faster, if he were on the march. It was, "The Druses are up!" When +that wild tribe took to the saddle to war upon the Caravans and against +authority, from Lebanon to Palmyra, from Jerusalem to Damascus men +looked anxiously about them and rode hard to refuge. + +And here also in the Far North where the River Sagalac ran a wild race +to Carillon, leaving behind the new towns of Lebanon and Manitou, "the +Druses were up." + +The daughter of Gabriel Druse, the giant, was riding the Rapids of the +Sagalac. The suspense to her and to those who watched her course--to +Tekewani and his braves, to Osterhaut and Jowett--could not be long. It +was a matter of minutes only, in which every second was a miracle and +might be a catastrophe. + +From rock to rock, from wild white water to wild white water she sped, +now tossing to death as it seemed, now shooting on safely to the next +test of skill and courage--on, on, till at last there was only one +passage to make before the canoe would plunge into the smooth water +running with great swiftness till it almost reached Carillon. + +Suddenly, as she neared the last dangerous point, round which she must +swing between jagged and unseen barriers of rock, her sight became for +an instant dimmed, as though a cloud passed over her eyes. She had never +fainted in her life, but it seemed to her now that she was hovering on +unconsciousness. Commending the will and energy left, she fought the +weakness down. It was as though she forced a way through tossing, +buffeting shadows; as though she was shaking off from her shoulders +shadowy hands which sought to detain her; as though smothering things +kept choking back her breath, and darkness like clouds of wool gathered +about her face. She was fighting for her life, and for years it seemed +to be; though indeed it was only seconds before her will reasserted +itself, and light broke again upon her way. Even on the verge of the +last ambushed passage her senses came back; but they came with a stark +realization of the peril ahead: it looked out of her eyes as a face +shows itself at the window of a burning building. + +Memory shook itself free. It pierced the tumult of waters, found the +ambushed rocks, and guided the lithe brown arms and hands, so that the +swift paddle drove the canoe straight onward, as a fish drives itself +through a flume of dragon's teeth beneath the flood. The canoe quivered +for an instant at the last cataract, then responding to Memory and Will, +sped through the hidden chasm, tossed by spray and water, and swept into +the swift current of smooth water below. + +Fleda Druse had run the Rapids of Carillon. She could hear the bells +ringing for evening service in the Catholic Church of Carillon, and +bells-soft, booming bells-were ringing in her own brain. Like muffled +silver these brain-bells were, and she was as one who enters into a deep +forest, and hears far away in the boscage the mystic summons of +forest deities. Voices from the banks of the river behind called to +her--hilarious, approving, agitated voices of her Indian friends, and of +Osterhaut and Jowett, those wild spectators of her adventure: but they +were not wholly real. Only those soft, booming bells in her brain were +real. + +Shooting the Rapids of Carillon was the bridge by which she passed from +the world she had left to this other. Her girlhood was ended--wondering, +hovering, unrealizing girlhood. This adventure was the outward sign, the +rite in the Lodge of Life which passed her from one degree of being to +another. + +She was safe; but now as her canoe shot onward to the town of Carillon, +her senses again grew faint. Again she felt the buffeting mist, again +her face was muffled in smothering folds; again great hands reached out +towards her; again her eyes were drawn into a stupefying darkness; but +now there was no will to fight, no energy to resist. The paddle lay +inert in her fingers, her head drooped. She slowly raised her head once, +twice, as though the call of the exhausted will was heard, but suddenly +it fell heavily upon her breast. For a moment so, and then as the canoe +shot forward on a fresh current, the lithe body sank backwards in the +canoe, and lay face upward to the evening sky. + +The canoe sped on, but presently it swung round and lay athwart the +current, dipping and rolling. + +From the banks on either side, the Indians of the Manitou Reservation +and the two men from Lebanon called out and hastened on, for they saw +that the girl had collapsed, and they knew only too well that her danger +was not yet past. The canoe might strike against the piers of the bridge +at Carillon and overturn, or it might be carried to the second cataract +below the town. They were too far away to save her, but they kept +shouting as they ran. + +None responded to their call, but that defiance of the last cataract of +the Rapids of Carillon had been seen by one who, below an eddy on the +Lebanon side of the river, was steadily stringing upon maple-twigs black +bass and long-nosed pike. As he sat in the shade of the trees, he had +seen the plunge of the canoe into the chasm, and had held his breath in +wonder and admiration. Even at that distance he knew who it was. He had +seen Fleda only a few times before, for she was little abroad; but when +he had seen her he had asked himself what such a face and form were +doing in the Far North. It belonged to Andalusia, to the Carpathians, to +Syrian villages. + +"The pluck of the very devil!" he had exclaimed, as Fleda's canoe swept +into the smooth current, free of the dragon's teeth; and as he had +something of the devil in himself, she seemed much nearer to him than +the hundreds of yards of water intervening. Presently, however, he saw +her droop and sink away out of sight. + +For an instant he did not realize what had happened, and then, with +angry self-reproach, he flung the oars into the rowlocks of his skiff +and drove down and athwart the stream with long, powerful strokes. + +"That's like a woman!" he said to himself as he bent to the oars, and +now and then turned his head to make sure that the canoe was still safe. +"Do the trick better than a man, and then collapse like a rabbit." + +He was Max Ingolby, the financier, contractor, manager of great +interests, disturber of the peace of slow minds, who had come to Lebanon +with the avowed object of amalgamating three railways, of making the +place the swivel of all the trade and interests of the Western North; +but also with the declared intention of uniting Lebanon and Manitou in +one municipality, one centre of commercial and industrial power. + +Men said he had bitten off more than he could chew, but he had replied +that his teeth were good, and he would masticate the meal or know the +reason why. He was only thirty-three, but his will was like nothing the +West had seen as yet. It was sublime in its confidence, it was free from +conceit, and it knew not the word despair, though once or twice it had +known defeat. + +Men cheered him from the shore as his skiff leaped through the water. +"It's that blessed Ingolby," said Jowett, who had tried to "do" the +financier in a horsedeal, and had been done instead, and was now a +devout admirer and adherent of the Master Man. "I saw him driving down +there this morning from Lebanon. He's been fishing at Seely's Eddy." + +"When Ingolby goes fishing, there's trouble goin' on somewhere and he's +stalkin' it," rejoined Osterhaut. "But, by gol, he's goin' to do this +trump trick first; he's goin' to overhaul her before she gits to the +bridge. Look at him swing! Hell, ain't it pretty! There you go, old +Ingolby. You're right on it, even when you're fishing." + +On the other-the Manitou-shore Tekewani and his braves were less +talkative, but they were more concerned in the incident than Osterhaut +and Jowett. They knew little or nothing of Ingolby the hustler, but they +knew more of Fleda Druse and her father than all the people of Lebanon +and Manitou put together. Fleda had won old Tekewani's heart when she +had asked him to take her down the Rapids, for the days of adventure +for him and his tribe were over. The adventure shared with this girl +had brought back to the chief the old days when Indian women tanned +bearskins and deerskins day in, day out, and made pemmican of the +buffalo-meat; when the years were filled with hunting and war and +migrant journeyings to fresh game-grounds and pastures new. + +Danger faced was the one thing which could restore Tekewani's +self-respect, after he had been checked and rebuked before his tribe by +the Indian Commissioner for being drunk. Danger faced had restored it, +and Fleda Druse had brought the danger to him as a gift. + +If the canoe should crash against the piers of the bridge, if it should +drift to the cataract below, if anything should happen to this white +girl whom he worshipped in his heathen way, nothing could preserve his +self-respect; he would pour ashes on his head and firewater down his +throat. + +Suddenly he and his braves stood still. They watched as one would watch +an enemy a hundred times stronger than one's self. The white man's skiff +was near the derelict canoe; the bridge was near also. Carillon now +lined the bank of the river with its people. They ran upon the bridge, +but not so fast as to reach the place where, in the nick of time, +Ingolby got possession of the rolling canoe; where Fleda Druse lay +waiting like a princess to be waked by the kiss of destiny. + +Only five hundred yards below the bridge was the second cataract, and +she would never have waked if she had been carried into it. + +To Ingolby she was as beautiful as a human being could be as she lay +with white face upturned, the paddle still in her hand. + +"Drowning isn't good enough for her," he said, as he fastened her canoe +to his skiff. + +"It's been a full day's work," he added; and even in this human crisis +he thought of the fish he had caught, of "the big trouble," he had been +thinking out as Osterhaut had said, as well as of the girl that he was +saving. + +"I always have luck when I go fishing," he added presently. "I can take +her back to Lebanon," he continued with a quickening look. "She'll be +all right in a jiffy. I've got room for her in my buggy--and room for +her in any place that belongs to me," he hastened to reflect with a +curious, bashful smile. + +"It's like a thing in a book," he murmured, as he neared the waiting +people on the banks of Carillon, and the ringing of the vesper bells +came out to him on the evening air. + +"Is she dead?" some one whispered, as eager hands reached out to secure +his skiff to the bank. + +"As dead as I am," he answered with a laugh, and drew Fleda's canoe up +alongside his skiff. + +He had a strange sensation of new life, as, with delicacy and +gentleness, he lifted her up in his strong arms and stepped ashore. + + + + +CHAPTER II. THE WHISPER FROM BEYOND + +Ingolby had a will of his own, but it had never been really tried +against a woman's will. It was, however, tried sorely when Fleda came +to consciousness again in his arms and realized that a man's face was +nearer to hers than any man's had ever been except that of her own +father. Her eyes opened slowly, and for the instant she did not +understand, but when she did, the blood stole swiftly back to her neck +and face and forehead, and she started in dismay. + +"Put me down," she whispered faintly. + +"I'm taking you to my buggy," he replied. "I'll drive you back to +Lebanon." He spoke as calmly as he could, for there was a strange +fluttering of his nerves, and the crowd was pressing him. + +"Put me down at once," she said peremptorily. She trembled on her feet, +and swayed, and would have fallen but that Ingolby and a woman in black, +who had pushed her way through the crowd with white, anxious face, +caught her. + +"Give her air, and stand back!" called the sharp voice of the constable +of Carillon, and he heaved the people back with his powerful shoulders. + +A space was cleared round the place where Fleda sat with her head +against the shoulder of the stately woman in black who had come to her +assistance. A dipper of water was brought, and when she had drunk it she +raised her head slowly and her eyes sought those of Ingolby. + +"One cannot pay for such things," she said to him, meeting his look +firmly and steeling herself to thank him. Though deeply grateful, it was +a trial beyond telling to be obliged to owe the debt of a life to any +one, and in particular to a man of the sort to whom material gifts could +not be given. + +"Such things are paid for just by accepting them," he answered quickly, +trying to feel that he had never held her in his arms, as she evidently +desired him to feel. He had intuition, if not enough of it, for the +regions where the mind of Fleda Druse dwelt. + +"I couldn't very well decline, could I?" she rejoined, quick humour +shooting into her eyes. "I was helpless. I never fainted before in my +life." + +"I am sure you will never faint again," he remarked. "We only do such +things when we are very young." + +She was about to reply, but paused reflectively. Her half-opened lips +did not frame the words she had been impelled to speak. + +Admiration was alive in his eyes. He had never seen this type of +womanhood before--such energy and grace, so amply yet so lithely +framed; such darkness and fairness in one living composition; such +individuality, yet such intimate simplicity. Her hair was a very light +brown, sweeping over a broad, low forehead, and lying, as though with +a sense of modesty, on the tips of the ears, veiling them slightly. The +forehead was classic in its intellectual fulness; but the skin was so +fresh, even when pale as now, and with such an underglow of vitality, +that the woman in her, sex and the possibilities of sex, cast a glamour +over the intellect and temperament showing in every line of her contour. +In contrast to the light brown of the hair was the very dark brown of +the eyes and the still darker brown of the eyelashes. The face shone, +the eyes burned, and the piquancy of the contrast between the soft +illuminating whiteness of the skin and the flame in the eyes had +fascinated many more than Ingolby. + +Her figure was straight yet supple, somewhat fuller than is modern +beauty, with hints of Juno-like stateliness to come; and the curves +of her bust, the long lines of her limbs, were not obscured by her +absolutely plain gown of soft, light-brown linen. She was tall, but not +too commanding, and, as her hand was raised to fasten back a wisp of +hair, there was the motion of as small a wrist and as tapering a bare +arm as ever made prisoner of a man's neck. + +Impulse was written in every feature, in the passionate eagerness of +her body; yet the line from the forehead to the chin, and the firm +shapeliness of the chin itself, gave promise of great strength of will. +From the glory of the crown of hair to the curve of the high instep of +a slim foot it was altogether a personality which hinted at history--at +tragedy, maybe. + +"She'll have a history," Madame Bulteel, who now stood beside the girl, +herself a figure out of a picture by Velasquez, had said of her sadly; +for she saw in Fleda's rare qualities, in her strange beauty, happenings +which had nothing to do with the life she was living. So this duenna of +Gabriel Druse's household, this aristocratic, silent woman was ever +on the watch for some sudden revelation of a being which had not found +itself, and which must find itself through perils and convulsions. + +That was why, to-day, she had hesitated to leave Fleda alone and come +to Carillon, to be at the bedside of a dying, friendless woman whom by +chance she had come to know. In the street she had heard of what was +happening on the river, and had come in time to receive Fleda from the +arms of her rescuer. + +"How did you get here?" Fleda asked her. + +"How am I always with you when I am needed, truant?" said the other with +a reproachful look. "Did you fly? You are so light, so thin, you could +breathe yourself here," rejoined the girl, with a gentle, quizzical +smile. "But, no," she added, "I remember, you were to be here at +Carillon." + +"Are you able to walk now?" asked Madame Bulteel. + +"To Manitou--but of course," Fleda answered almost sharply. + +After the first few minutes the crowd had fallen back. They watched her +with respectful admiration from a decent distance. They had the chivalry +towards woman so characteristic of the West. There was no vulgarity in +their curiosity, though most of them had never seen her before. All, +however, had heard of her and her father, the giant greybeard who moved +and lived in an air of mystery, and apparently secret wealth, for +more than once he had given large sums--large in the eyes of folks of +moderate means, when charity was needed; as in the case of the floods +the year before, and in the prairie-fire the year before that, when so +many people were made homeless, and also when fifty men had been injured +in one railway accident. On these occasions he gave disproportionately +to his mode of life. + +Now, when they saw that Fleda was about to move away, they drew just +a little nearer, and presently one of the crowd could contain his +admiration no longer. He raised a cheer. + +"Three cheers for Her," he shouted, and loud hurrahs followed. + +"Three cheers for Ingolby," another cried, and the noise was boisterous +but not so general. + +"Who shot Carillon Rapids?" another called in the formula of the West. + +"She shot the Rapids," was the choral reply. "Who is she?" came the +antiphon. + +"Druse is her name," was the gay response. "What did she do?" + +"She shot Carillon Rapids--shot 'em dead. Hooray!" + +In the middle of the cheering, Osterhaut and Jowett arrived in a wagon +which they had commandeered, and, about the same time, from across the +bridge, came running Tekewani and his braves. + +"She done it like a kingfisher," cried Osterhaut. "Manitou's got the +belt." + +Fleda Druse's friendly eyes were given only for one instant to Osterhaut +and his friend. Her gaze became fixed on Tekewani who, silent, and with +immobile face, stole towards her. In spite of the civilization which +controlled him, he wore Indian moccasins and deerskin breeches, though +his coat was rather like a shortened workman's blouse. He did not belong +to the life about him; he was a being apart, the spirit of vanished and +vanishing days. + +"Tekewani--ah, Tekewani, you have come," the girl said, and her eyes +smiled at him as they had not smiled at Ingolby or even at the woman in +black beside her. + +"How!" the chief replied, and looked at her with searching, worshipping +eyes. + +"Don't look at me that way, Tekewani," she said, coming close to him. "I +had to do it, and I did it." + +"The teeth of rock everywhere!" he rejoined reproachfully, with a +gesture of awe. + +"I remembered all--all. You were my master, Tekewani." + +"But only once with me it was, Summer Song," he persisted. Summer Song +was his name for her. + +"I saw it--saw it, every foot of the way," she insisted. "I thought +hard, oh, hard as the soul thinks. And I saw it all." There was +something singularly akin in the nature of the girl and the Indian. She +spoke to him as she never spoke to any other. + +"Too much seeing, it is death," he answered. "Men die with too much +seeing. I have seen them die. To look hard through deerskin curtains, +to see through the rock, to behold the water beneath the earth, and the +rocks beneath the black waters, it is for man to see if he has a soul, +but the seeing--behold, so those die who should live!" + +"I live, Tekewani, though I saw the teeth of rocks beneath the black +water," she urged gently. + +"Yet the half-death came--" + +"I fainted, but I was not to die--it was not my time." + +He shook his head gloomily. "Once it may be, but the evil spirits tempt +us to death. It matters not what comes to Tekewani; he is as the leaf +that falls from the stem; but for Summer Song that has far to go, it is +the madness from beyond the Hills of Life." + +She took his hand. "I will not do it again, Tekewani." + +"How!" he said, with hand upraised, as one who greets the great in this +world. + +"I don't know why I did it," she added meaningly. "It was selfish. I +feel that now." + +The woman in black pressed her hand timidly. + +"It is so for ever with the great," Tekewani answered. "It comes, also, +from beyond the Hills--the will to do it. It is the spirit that whispers +over the earth out of the Other Earth. No one hears it but the great. +The whisper only is for this one here and that one there who is of the +Few. It whispers, and the whisper must be obeyed. So it was from the +beginning." + +"Yes, you understand, Tekewani," she answered softly. "I did it because +something whispered from the Other Earth to me." + +Her head drooped a little, her eyes had a sudden shadow. + +"He will understand," answered the Indian; "your father will +understand," as though reading her thoughts. He had clearly read her +thought, this dispossessed, illiterate Indian chieftain. Yet, was he so +illiterate? Had he not read in books which so few have learned to read? +His life had been broken on the rock of civilization, but his simple +soul had learned some elemental truths--not many, but the essential +ones, without which there is no philosophy, no understanding. He +knew Fleda Druse was thinking of her father, wondering if he would +understand, half-fearing, hardly hoping, dreading the moment when she +must meet him face to face. She knew she had been selfish, but would +Gabriel Druse understand? She raised her eyes in gratitude to the +Blackfeet chief. + +"I must go home," she said. + +She turned to go, but as she did so, a man came swaggering down the +street, broke through the crowd, and made towards her with an arm +raised, a hand waving, and a leer on his face. He was a thin, rather +handsome, dissolute-looking fellow of middle height and about forty, in +dandified dress. His glossy black hair fell carelessly over his smooth +forehead from under a soft, wide-awake hat. + +"Manitou for ever!" he cried, with a flourish of his hand. "I salute the +brave. I escort the brave to the gates of Manitou. I escort the brave. +I escort the brave. Salut! Salut! Salut! Well done, Beauty +Beauty--Beauty--Beauty, well done again!" + +He held out his hand to Fleda, but she drew back with disgust. Felix +Marchand, the son of old Hector Marchand, money-lender and capitalist of +Manitou, had pressed his attentions upon her during the last year since +he had returned from the East, bringing dissoluteness and vulgar pride +with him. Women had spoiled him, money had corrupted and degraded him. + +"Come, beautiful brave, it's Salut! Salut! Salut!" he said, bending +towards her familiarly. + +Her face flushed with anger. + +"Let me pass, monsieur," she said sharply. + +"Pride of Manitou--" he apostrophized, but got no farther. + +Ingolby caught him by the shoulders, wheeled him round, and then flung +him at the feet of Tekewani and his braves. + +At this moment Tekewani's eyes had such a fire as might burn in +Wotan's smithy. He was ready enough to defy the penalty of the law for +assaulting a white man, but Felix Marchand was in the dust, and that +would do for the moment. + +With grim face Ingolby stood over the begrimed figure. "There's the +river if you want more," he said. "Tekewani knows where the water's +deepest." Then he turned and followed Fleda and the woman in black. +Felix Marchand's face was twisted with hate as he got slowly to his +feet. + +"You'll eat dust before I'm done," he called after Ingolby. Then, amid +the jeers of the crowd, he went back to the tavern where he had been +carousing. + + + + +CHAPTER III. CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNS + +A word about Max Ingolby. + +He was the second son of four sons, with a father who had been a +failure; but with a mother of imagination and great natural strength +of brain, yet whose life had been so harried in bringing up a family on +nothing at all, that there only emerged from her possibilities a great +will to do the impossible things. From her had come the spirit which +would not be denied. + +In his boyhood Max could not have those things which lads +prize--fishing-rods, cricket-bats and sleds, and all such things; but +he could take most prizes at school open to competition; he could win in +the running-jump, the high-jump, and the five hundred yards' race; and +he could organize a picnic, or the sports of the school or town--at +no cost to himself. His finance in even this limited field had been +brilliant. Other people paid, and he did the work; and he did it with +such ease that the others intriguing to crowd him out, suffered failure +and came to him in the end to put things right. + +He became the village doctor's assistant and dispenser at seventeen +and induced his master to start a drug-store. He made the drug-store a +success within two years, and meanwhile he studied Latin and Greek +and mathematics in every spare hour he had--getting up at five in the +morning, and doing as much before breakfast as others did in a whole +day. His doctor loved him and helped him; a venerable Archdeacon, an +Oxford graduate, gave him many hours of coaching, and he went to the +University with three scholarships. These were sufficient to carry him +through in three years, and there was enough profit-sharing from the +drug-business he had founded on terms to shelter his mother and his +younger brothers, while he took honours at the University. + +There he organized all that students organize, and was called in at last +by the Bursar of his college to reorganize the commissariat, which he +did with such success that the college saved five thousand dollars a +year. He had genius, the college people said, and after he had taken +his degree with honours in classics and mathematics they offered him a +professorship at two thousand dollars a year. + +He laughed ironically, but yet with satisfaction, when the professorship +was offered. It was all so different from what was in his mind for +the future. As he looked out of the oriel window in the sweet gothic +building, to the green grass and the maples and elms which made the +college grounds like an old-world park, he had a vision of himself +permanently in these surroundings of refinement growing venerable with +years, seeing pass under his influence thousands of young men directed, +developed and inspired by him. + +He had, however, shaken himself free of this modest vision. He knew +that such a life would act like a narcotic to his real individuality. +He thirsted for contest, for the control of brain and will; he wanted +to construct; he was filled with the idea of simplifying things, of +economizing strength; he saw how futile was much competition, and how +the big brain could command and control with ease, wasting no force, +saving labour, making the things controlled bigger and better. + +So it came that his face was seen no more in the oriel window. With +a mere handful of dollars, and some debts, he left the world of +scholarship and superior pedagogy, and went where the head offices of +railways were. Railways were the symbol of progress in his mind. The +railhead was the advance post of civilization. It was like Cortez and +his Conquistadores overhauling and appropriating the treasures of long +generations. So where should he go if not to the Railway? + +His first act, when he got to his feet inside the offices of the +President of a big railway, was to show the great man how two "outside" +proposed lines could be made one, and then further merged into the +company controlled by the millionaire in whose office he sat. He got his +chance by his very audacity--the President liked audacity. In attempting +this merger, however, he had his first failure, but he showed that he +could think for himself, and he was made increasingly responsible. After +a few years of notable service, he was offered the task of building a +branch line of railway from Lebanon and Manitou north, and northwest, +and on to the Coast; and he had accepted it, at the same time planning +to merge certain outside lines competing with that which he had in hand. +For over four years he worked night and day, steadily advancing towards +his goal, breaking down opposition, manoeuvring, conciliating, fighting. + +Most men loved his whimsical turn of mind, even those who were the +agents of the financial clique which had fought him in their efforts +to get control of the commercial, industrial, transport and banking +resources of the junction city of Lebanon. In the days when vast markets +would be established for Canadian wheat in Shanghai and Tokio, then +these two towns of Manitou and Lebanon on the Sagalac would be like the +swivel to the organization of trade of a continent. + +Ingolby had worked with this end in view. In doing so he had tried to +get what he wanted without trickery; to reach his goal by playing the +game according to the rules, and this policy nonplussed his rivals and +associates. They expected secret moves, and he laid his cards on the +table. Sharp, quick, resolute and ruthless he was, however, if he knew +that he was being tricked. Then he struck, and struck hard. The war of +business was war and not "gollyfoxing," as he said. Selfish, stubborn +and self-centred he was in much, but he had great joy in the natural and +sincere, and he had a passionate love of Nature. To him the flat +prairie was never ugly. Its very monotony had its own individuality. +The Sagalac, even when muddy, had its own deep interest, and when it was +full of logs drifting down to the sawmills, for which he had found the +money by interesting capitalists in the East, he sniffed the stinging +smell of the pines with elation. As the great saws in the mills, for +which he had secured the capital, throwing off the spray of mangled +wood, hummed and buzzed and sang, his mouth twisted in the droll smile +it always wore when he talked with such as Jowett and Osterhaut, whose +idiosyncrasies were like a meal to him; as he described it once to some +of the big men from the East who had been behind his schemes, yet who +cavilled at his ways. He was never diverted from his course by such men, +and while he was loyal to those who had backed him, he vowed that he +would be independent of these wooden souls in the end. They and the +great bankers behind them were for monopoly; he was for organization and +for economic prudence. So far they were necessary to all he did; but it +was his intention to shake himself free of all monopoly in good time. +One or two of his colleagues saw the drift of his policy and would have +thrown him over if they could have replaced him by a man as capable, who +would, at the time, consent to grow rich on their terms. + +They could not understand a man who would stand for a half-hour watching +a sunset, or a morning sky dappled with all the colours that shake from +a prism; they were suspicious of a business-mind which could gloat over +the light falling on snow-peaked mountains, while it planned a great +bridge across a gorge in the same hour; of a man who would quote a verse +of poetry while a flock of wild pigeons went whirring down a pine-girt +valley in the shimmer of the sun. + +On the occasion when he had quoted a verse of poetry to them, one of +them said to him with a sidelong glance: "You seem to be dead-struck on +Nature, Ingolby." + +To that, with a sly quirk of the mouth, and meaning to mystify his +wooden-headed questioner still more, he answered: "Dead-struck? +Dead-drunk, you mean. I'm a Nature's dipsomaniac--as you can see," he +added with a sly note of irony. + +Then instantly he had drawn the little circle of experts into a +discussion upon technical questions of railway-building and finance, +which made demands upon all their resources and knowledge. In that +conference he gave especial attention to the snub-souled financier who +had sneered at his love of Nature. He tied his critic up in knots of +self-assertion and bad logic which presently he deftly, deliberately and +skilfully untied, to the delight of all the group. + +"He's got as much in his ten years in the business as we've got out +of half a life-time," said the chief of his admirers. This was the +President who had first welcomed him into business, and introduced him +to his colleagues in enterprise. + +"I shouldn't be surprised if the belt flew off the wheel some day," +savagely said Ingolby's snub-souled critic, whose enmity was held in +check by the fact that on Ingolby, for the moment, depended the safety +of the hard cash he had invested. + +But the qualities which alienated an expert here and there caught the +imagination of the pioneer spirits of Lebanon. Except those who, +for financial reasons, were opposed to him, and must therefore pit +themselves against him, as the representatives of bigger forces behind +them, he was a leader of whom Lebanon was combatively proud. At last he +came to the point where his merger was practically accomplished, and a +problem arising out of it had to be solved. It was a problem which taxed +every quality of an able mind. The situation had at last become acute, +and Time, the solvent of most complications, had not quite eased the +strain. Indeed, on the day that Fleda Druse had made her journey down +the Carillon Rapids, Time's influence had not availed. So he had gone +fishing, with millions at stake--to the despair of those who were +risking all on his skill and judgment. + +But that was Ingolby. Thinking was the essence of his business, not +Time. As fishing was the friend of thinking, therefore he fished in +Seely's Eddy, saw Fleda Druse run the Carillon Rapids, saved her from +drowning, and would have brought her in pride and peace to her own home, +but that she decreed otherwise. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWE + +Gabriel Druse's house stood on a little knoll on the outskirts of the +town of Manitou, backed by a grove of pines. Its front windows faced the +Sagalac, and the windows behind looked into cool coverts where in old +days many Indian tribes had camped; where Hudson's Bay Company's men had +pitched their tents to buy the red man's furs. But the red man no longer +set up his tepee in these secluded groves; the wapiti and red deer had +fled to the north never to return, the snarling wolf had stolen into +regions more barren; the ceremonial of the ancient people no longer +made weird the lonely nights; the medicine-man's incantations, the +harvest-dance, the green-corn-dance, the sun-dance had gone. The braves, +their women, and their tepees had been shifted to reservations where +Governments solemnly tried to teach them to till the field, and grow +corn, and drive the cart to market; while yet they remembered the herds +of buffalo which had pounded down the prairie like storm-clouds and +given their hides for the tepee; and the swift deer whose skins made the +wigwam luxurious. + +Originally Manitou had been the home of Icelanders, Mennonites, +and Doukhobors; settlers from lands where the conditions of earlier +centuries prevailed, who, simple as they were in habits and in life, +were ignorant, primitive, coarse, and none too cleanly. + +They had formed an unprogressive polyglot settlement, and the place +assumed a still more primeval character when the Indian Reservation +was formed near by. When French Canadian settlers arrived, however, the +place became less discordant to the life of a new democracy, though +they did little to make it modern in the sense that Lebanon, across the +river, where Ingolby lived, was modern from the day the first shack was +thrown up. + +Manitou showed itself antagonistic to progress; it was old-fashioned, +and primitively agricultural. It looked with suspicion on the factories +built after Ingolby came and on the mining propositions, which circled +the place with speculation. Unlike other towns of the West, it was +insanitary and uneducated; it was also given to nepotism and a primitive +kind of jobbery; but, on the whole, it was honest. It was a settlement +twenty years before Lebanon had a house, though the latter exceeded +the population of Manitou in five years, and became the home of all +adventuring spirits--land agents, company promoters, mining prospectors, +railway men, politicians, saloon keepers, and up to-date dissenting +preachers. Manitou was, however, full of back-water people, religious +fanatics, little farmers, guides, trappers, old coureurs-de-bois, +Hudson's Bay Company factors and ex-factors, half-breeds; and all the +rest. + +The real feud between the two towns began about the time of the arrival +of Gabriel Druse, his daughter, and Madame Bulteel, the woman in black, +and it had grown with great rapidity and increasing intensity. Manitou +condemned the sacrilegiousness of the Protestants, whose meeting-houses +were used for "socials," "tea-meetings," "strawberry festivals," and +entertainments of many kinds; while comic songs were sung at the table +where the solemn Love Feast was held at the quarterly meetings. At last +when attempts were made to elect to Parliament an Irish lawyer who added +to his impecuniousness, eloquence, a half-finished University education, +and an Orangeman's prejudices of the best brand of Belfast or Derry, +inter-civic strife took the form of physical violence. The great bridge +built by Ingolby between the two towns might have been ten thousand +yards long, so deep was the estrangement between the two places. They +had only one thing in common--a curious compromise--in the person of +Nathan Rockwell, an agnostic doctor, who had arrived in Lebanon with a +reputation for morality somewhat clouded; though, where his patients in +Manitou and Lebanon were concerned, he had been the "pink of propriety." + +Rockwell had arrived in Lebanon early in its career, and had remained +unimportant until a railway accident occurred at Manitou and the +resident doctors were driven from the field of battle, one by death, +and one by illness. Then it was that the silent, smiling, dark-skinned, +cool-headed and cool-handed Rockwell stepped in, and won for himself the +gratitude of all--from Monseigneur Lourde, the beloved Catholic priest, +to Tekewani, the chief. This accident was followed by an epidemic. + +That was at the time, also, when Fleda Druse returned from Winnipeg +where she had been at school for one memorable and terrible six months, +pining for her father, defying rules, and crying the night through for +"the open world," as she called it. So it was that, to her father's +dismay and joy in one, she had fled from school, leaving all her things +behind her; and had reached home with only the clothes on her back and a +few cents in her pocket. + +Instantly on her return she had gone among the stricken people as +fearlessly as Rockwell had done, but chiefly among the women and +children; and it was said that the herbal medicine she administered +was marvellous in its effect--so much so that Rockwell asked for the +prescription, which she declined to give. + +Thus it was that the French Canadian mothers with daughters of their +own, bright-eyed brunettes, ready for the man-market, regarded with +toleration the girl who took their children away for picnics down the +river or into the woods, and brought them back safe and sound at the end +of the day. Not that they failed to be shocked sometimes, when, on her +wild Indian pony, Fleda swept through Manitou like a wind and out into +the prairie, riding, as it were, to the end of the world. Try as they +would, these grateful mothers of Manitou, they could not get as near to +Fleda Druse as their children did, and they were vast distances from her +father. + +"There, there, look at him," said old Madame Thibadeau to her neighbour +Christine Brisson--"look at him with his great grey-beard, and his eyes +like black fires, and that head of hair like a bundle of burnt flax! He +comes from the place no man ever saw, that's sure." + +"Ah, surelee, men don't grow so tall in any Christian country," +announced Christine Brisson, her head nodding sagely. "I've seen the +pictures in the books, and there's nobody so tall and that looks like +him--not anywhere since Adam." + +"Nom de pipe, sometimes-trulee, sometimes, I look up there at where he +lives, and I think I see a thousand men on horses ride out of the woods +behind his house and down here to gobble us all up. That's the way I +feel. It's fancy, but I can't help that." Dame Thibadeau rested her +hands--on her huge stomach as though the idea had its origin there. + +"I've seen a lot of fancies come to pass," gloomily returned her friend. +"It's a funny world. I don't know what to make of its sometimes." + +"And that girl of his, the strangest creature, as proud as a peacock, +but then as kind as kind to the children--of a good heart, surelee. They +say she has plenty of gold rings and pearls and bracelets, and all like +that. Babette Courton, she saw them when she went to sew. Why doesn't +Ma'm'selle wear them?" + +Christine looked wise and smoothed out her apron as though it was a +parchment. "With such queer ones, who knows? But, yes, as you say, she +has a kind heart. The children, well, they follow her everywhere." + +"Not the children only," sagely added the other. "From Lebanon they +come, the men, and plenty here, too; and there's that Felix Marchand, +the worst of all in Manitou or anywhere." + +"I'd look sharp if Felix Marchand followed me," remarked Christine. +"There are more papooses at the Reservation since he come back, and +over in Lebanon--!" She whispered darkly to her friend, and they nodded +knowingly. + +"If he plays pranks in Manitou he'll get his throat cut, for sure. Even +with Protes'ants and Injuns it's bad enough," remarked Dame Thibadeau, +panting with the thought of it. + +"He doesn't even leave the Doukhobors alone. There's--" Again Christine +whispered, and again that ugly look came to their faces which belongs to +the thought of forbidden things. + +"Felix Marchand'll have much money--bad penny as he is," continued +Christine in her normal voice. "He'll have more money than he can put +in all the trouser legs he has. Old Hector, his father, has enough for a +gover'ment. But that M'sieu' Felix will get his throat cut if he follows +Ma'm'selle Druse about too much. She hates him--I've seen when they met. +Old man Druse'll make trouble. He don't look as he does for nothing." + +"Ah, that's so. One day, we shall see what we shall see," murmured +Christine, and waved a hand to a friend in the street. + +This conversation happened on the evening of the day that Fleda Druse +shot the Carillon Rapids alone. An hour after the two gossips had had +their say Gabriel Druse paced up and down the veranda of his house, +stopping now and then to view the tumbling, hurrying Sagalac, or to +dwell upon the sunset which crimsoned and bronzed the western sky. His +walk had an air of impatience; he seemed disturbed of mind and restless +of body. + +He gave an impression of great force. He would have been picked out of +a multitude, not alone because of his remarkable height, but because +he had an air of command and the aloofness which shows a man sufficient +unto himself. + +As he stood gazing reflectively into the sunset, a strange, plaintive, +birdlike note pierced the still evening air. His head lifted quickly, +yet he did not look in the direction of the sound, which came from the +woods behind the house. He did not stir, and his eyes half-closed, as +though he hesitated what to do. The call was not that of a bird familiar +to the Western world. It had a melancholy softness like that of the +bell-bird of the Australian bush. Yet, in the insistence of the note, it +was, too, a challenge or a summons. + +Three times during the past week he had heard it--once as he went by the +market-place of Manitou; once as he returned in the dusk from Tekewani's +Reservation, and once at dawn from the woods behind the house. His +present restlessness and suppressed agitation had been the result. + +It was a call he knew well. It was like a voice from a dead world. It +asked, he knew, for an answering call, yet he had not given it. It was +seven days since he first heard it in the market-place, and in that +seven days he had realized that nothing in this world which has ever +been, really ceases to be. Presently, the call was repeated. On the +three former occasions there had been no repetition. The call had +trembled in the air but once and had died away into unbroken silence. +Now, however, it rang out with an added poignancy. It was like a bird +calling to its vanished mate. + +With sudden resolution Druse turned. Leaving the veranda, he walked +slowly behind the house into the woods and stood still under the +branches of a great cedar. Raising his head, a strange, solemn note came +from his lips; but the voice died away in a sharp broken sound which was +more human than birdlike, which had the shrill insistence of authority. +The call to him had been almost ventriloquial in its nature. His lips +had not moved at all. + +There was silence for a moment after he had called into the void, as it +were, and then there appeared suddenly from behind a clump of juniper, +a young man of dark face and upright bearing. He made a slow obeisance +with a gesture suggestive of the Oriental world, yet not like the usual +gesture of the East Indian, the Turk or the Persian; it was composite of +all. + +He could not have been more than twenty-five years of age. He was so +sparely made, and his face being clean-shaven, he looked even younger. +His clothes were the clothes of the Western man; and yet there was a +manner of wearing them, there were touches which were evidence to the +watchful observer that he was of other spheres. His wide, felt, Western +hat had a droop on one side and a broken treatment of the crown, which +of itself was enough to show him a stranger to the prairie, while his +brown velveteen jacket, held by its two lowest buttons, was reminiscent +of an un-English life. His eyes alone would have announced him as of +some foreign race, though he was like none of the foreigners who had +been the pioneers of Manitou. Unlike as he and Gabriel Druse were in +height, build, and movement, still there was something akin in them +both. + +After a short silence evidently disconcerting to him, "Blessing and +hail, my Ry," he said in a low tone. He spoke in a strange language and +with a voice rougher than his looks would have suggested. + +The old man made a haughty gesture of impatience. "What do you want with +me, my Romany 'chal'?" he asked sharply.--[A glossary of Romany words +will be found at the end of the book.] + +The young man replied hastily. He seemed to speak by rote. His manner +was too eager to suit the impressiveness of his words. "The sheep are +without a shepherd," he said. "The young men marry among the Gorgios, +or they are lost in the cities and return no more to the tents and +the fields and the road. There is disorder in all the world among the +Romanys. The ancient ways are forgotten. Our people gather and settle +upon the land and live as the Gorgios live. They forget the way beneath +the trees, they lose their skill in horses. If the fountain is choked, +how shall the water run?" + +A cold sneer came to the face of Gabriel Druse. "The way beneath the +trees!" he growled. "The way of the open road is enough. The way beneath +the trees is the way of the thief, and the skill of the horse is the +skill to cheat." + +"There is no other way. It has been the way of the Romany since the time +of Timur Beg and centuries beyond Timur, so it is told. One man and all +men must do as the tribe has done since the beginning." + +The old man pulled at his beard angrily. "You do not talk like a Romany, +but like a Gorgio of the schools." + +The young man's manner became more confident as he replied. "Thinking on +what was to come to me, I read in the books as the Gorgio reads. I sat +in my tent and worked with a pen; I saw in the printed sheets what the +world was doing every day. This I did because of what was to come." + +"And have you read of me in the printed sheets? Did they tell you where +I was to be found?" Gabriel Druse's eyes were angry, his manner was +authoritative. + +The young man stretched out his hands eloquently. "Hail and blessing, my +Ry, was there need of printed pages to tell me that? Is not everything +known of the Ry to the Romany people without the written or printed +thing? How does the wind go? How does the star sweep across the sky? +Does not the whisper pass as the lightning flashes? Have you forgotten +all, my Ry? Is there a Romany camp at Scutari? Shall it not know what is +the news of the Bailies of Scotland and the Caravans by the Tagus? It is +known always where my lord is. All the Romanys everywhere know it, and +many hundreds have come hither from overseas. They are east, they are +south, they are west." + +He made gesture towards these three points of the compass. A dark frown +came upon the old man's forehead. "I ordered that none should seek to +follow, that I be left in peace till my pilgrimage was done. Even as +the first pilgrims of our people in the days of Timur Beg in India, so I +have come forth from among you all till the time be fulfilled." + +There was a crafty look in the old man's eyes as he spoke, and ages of +dubious reasoning and purpose showed in their velvet depths. + +"No one has sought me but you in all these years," he continued. "Who +are you that you should come? I did not call, and there was my command +that none should call to me." + +A bolder look grew in the other's face. His carriage gained in ease. +"There is trouble everywhere--in Italy, in Spain, in France, in England, +in Russia, in mother India"--he made a gesture of salutation and bowed +low--"and our rites and mysteries are like water spilt upon the ground. +If the hand be cut off, how shall the body move? That is how it is. You +are vanished, my lord, and the body dies." + +The old man plucked his beard again fiercely and his words came with +guttural force. "That is fool's talk. In the past I was never everywhere +at once. When I was in Russia, I was not in Greece; when I was in +England, I was not in Portugal. I was always 'vanished' from one place +to another, yet the body lived." + +"But your word was passed along the roads everywhere, my Ry. Your tongue +was not still from sunrise to the end of the day. Your call was heard +always, now here, now there, and the Romanys were one; they held +together." + +The old man's face darkened still more and his eyes flashed fire. "These +are lies you are telling, and they will choke you, my Romany 'chal'. Am +I deceived, I who have known more liars than any man under the sky? Am +I to be fooled, who have seen so many fools in their folly? There is +roguery in you, or I have never seen roguery." + +"I am a true Romany, my Ry," the other answered with an air of courage +and a little defiance also. + +"You are a rogue and a liar, that is sure. These wailings are your own. +The Romany goes on his way as he has gone these hundreds of years. If I +am silent, my people will wait until I speak again; if they see me not +they will wait till I enter their camps once more. Why are you here? +Speak, rogue and liar." The wrathful old man, sure in his reading of +the youth, towered above him commandingly. It almost seemed as though he +would do him bodily harm, so threatening was his attitude, but the young +Romany raised his head, and with a note of triumph said: + +"I have come for my own, as it is my right." + +"What is your own?" + +"What has been yours until now, my Ry." + +A grey look stole slowly up the strong face of the exiled leader, for +his mind suddenly read the truth behind the young man's confident words. + +"What is mine is always mine," he answered roughly. "Speak! What is it I +have that you come for?" + +The young man braced himself and put a hand upon his lips. "I come for +your daughter, my Ry." The old man suddenly regained his composure, and +authority spoke in his bearing and his words. "What have you to do with +my daughter?" + +"She was married to me when I was seven years of age, as my Ry knows. +I am the son of Lemuel Fawe--Jethro Fawe is my name. For three thousand +pounds it was so arranged. On his death-bed three thousand pounds did +my father give to you for this betrothal. I was but a child, yet I +remembered, and my kinsmen remembered, for it is their honour also. I am +the son of Lemuel Fawe, the husband of Fleda, daughter of Gabriel Druse, +King and Duke and Earl of all the Romanys; and I come for my own." + +Something very like a sigh of relief came from Gabriel Druse's lips, but +the anger in his face did not pass, and a rigid pride made the distance +between them endless. He looked like a patriarch giving judgment as he +raised his hand and pointed with a menacing finger at Jethro Fawe, his +Romany subject--and, according to the laws of the Romany tribes, his +son-in-law. It did not matter that the girl--but three years of age when +it happened--had no memory of the day when the chiefs and great people +assembled outside the tent of Lemuel Fawe when he lay dying, and, by +the simple act of stepping over a branch of hazel, the two children were +married: if Romany law and custom were to abide, then the two now were +man and wife. Did not Lemuel Fawe, the old-time rival of Gabriel Druse +for the kinship of the Romanys, the claimant whose family had been +rulers of the Romanys for generations before the Druses gained +ascendancy--did not Fawe, dying, seek to secure for his son by marriage +what he had failed to get for himself by other means? + +All these things had at one time been part of Gabriel Druse's covenant +of life, until one year in England, when Fleda, at twelve years of age, +was taken ill and would have died, but that a great lady descended upon +their camp, took the girl to her own house, and there nursed and tended +her, giving her the best medical aid the world could produce, so that +the girl lived, and with her passionate nature loved the Lady Barrowdale +as she might have loved her own mother, had that mother lived and she +had ever known her. And when the Lady Barrowdale sickened and died of +the same sickness which had nearly been her own death, the promise she +made then overrode all other covenants made for her. She had promised +the great lady who had given her own widowed, childless life for her +own, that she would not remain a Gipsy, that she would not marry a +Gipsy, but that if ever she gave herself to any man it would be to a +Gorgio, a European, who travelled oftenest "the open road" leading to +his own door. The years which had passed since those tragic days in +Gloucestershire had seen the shadows of that dark episode pass, but the +pledge had remained; and Gabriel Druse had kept his word to the dead, +because of the vow made to the woman who had given her life for the life +of a Romany lass. + +The Romany tribes of all the nations did not know why their Ry had +hidden himself in the New World; they did not know that the girl had +for ever forsworn their race, and would never become head of all the +Romanys, solving the problem of the rival dynasties by linking her life +with that of Jethro Fawe. But Jethro Fawe had come to claim his own. + +Now Gabriel Druse's eyes followed his own menacing finger with sharp +insistence. In the past such a look had been in his eyes when he had +sentenced men to death. They had not died by the gallows or the sword or +the bullet, but they had died as commanded, and none had questioned his +decree. None asked where or how the thing was done when a fire sprang +up in a field, or a quarry, or on a lonely heath or hill-top, and on the +pyre were all the belongings of the condemned, being resolved into dust +as their owner had been made earth again. + +"Son of Lemuel Fawe," the old man said, his voice rough with +authority, "but that you are of the Blood, you should die now for this +disobedience. When the time is fulfilled, I will return. Until then, my +daughter and I are as those who have no people. Begone! Nothing that is +here belongs to you. Begone, and come no more!" + +"I have come for my own--for my Romany 'chi', and I will not go without +her. I am blood of the Blood, and she is mine." + +"You have not seen her," said the old man craftily, and fighting hard +against the wrath consuming him, though he liked the young man's spirit. +"She has changed. She is no longer Romany." + +"I have seen her, and her beauty is like the rose and the palm." + +"When have you seen her since the day before the tent of Lemuel Fawe now +seventeen years ago?" There was an uneasy note in the commanding tone. + +"I have seen her three times of late, and the last time I saw her was an +hour or so since, when she rode the Rapids of Carillon." + +The old man started, his lips parted, but for a moment he did not speak. +At last words came. "The Rapids--speak. What have you heard, Jethro, son +of Lemuel?" + +"I did not hear, I saw her shoot the Rapids. I ran to follow. +At Carillon I saw her arrive. She was in the arms of a Gorgio of +Lebanon--Ingolby is his name." + +A malediction burst from Gabriel Druse's lips, words sharp and terrible +in their intensity. For the first time since they had met the young man +blanched. The savage was alive in the giant. + +"Speak. Tell all," Druse said, with hands clenching. + +Swiftly the young man told all he had seen, and described how he had run +all the way--four miles--from Carillon, arriving before Fleda and her +Indian escort. + +He had hardly finished his tale, shrinking, as he told it, from the +fierceness of his chief, when a voice called from the direction of the +house. + +"Father--father," it cried. + +A change passed over the old man's face. It cleared as the face of the +sun clears when a cloud drives past and is gone. The transformation was +startling. Without further glance at his companion, he moved swiftly +towards the house. Once more Fleda's voice called, and before he could +answer they were face to face. + +She stood radiant and elate, and seemed not apprehensive of disfavour or +reproach. Behind her was Tekewani and his braves. + +"You have heard?" she asked reading her father's face. + +"I have heard. Have you no heart?" he answered. "If the Rapids had +drowned you!" + +She came close to him and ran her fingers through his beard tenderly. "I +was not born to be drowned," she said softly. + +Now that she was a long distance from Ingolby, the fact that a man had +held her in his arms left no shadow on her face. Ingolby was now only +part of her triumph of the Rapids. She tossed a hand affectionately +towards Tekewani and his braves. + +"How!" said Gabriel Druse, and made a gesture of salutation to the +Indian chief. + +"How!" answered Tekewani, and raised his arm high in response. An +instant afterwards Tekewani and his followers were gone their ways. + +Suddenly Fleda's eyes rested on the young Romany who was now standing +at a little distance away. Apprehension came to her face. She felt her +heart stand still and her hands grow cold, she knew not why. But she saw +that the man was a Romany. + +Her father turned sharply. A storm gathered in his face once more, and a +murderous look came into his eyes. + +"Who is he?" Fleda asked, scarce above a whisper, and she noted the +insistent, amorous look of the stranger. + +"He says he is your husband," answered her father harshly. + + + + +CHAPTER V. "BY THE RIVER STARZKE... IT WAS SO DONE" + +There was absolute silence for a moment. The two men fixed their +gaze upon the girl. The fear which had first come to her face passed +suddenly, and a will, new-born and fearless, possessed it. Yesterday +this will had been only a trembling, undisciplined force, but since then +she had been passed through the tests which her own soul, or +Destiny, had set for her, and she had emerged a woman, confident and +understanding, if tremulous. In days gone by her adventurous, lonely +spirit had driven her to the prairies, savagely riding her Indian pony +through the streets of Manitou and out on the North Trail, or south +through coulees, or westward into the great woods, looking for what: she +never found. + +Her spirit was no longer the vague thing driving here and there with +pleasant torture. It had found freedom and light; what the Romany folk +call its own 'tan', its home, though it be but home of each day's trek. +That wild spirit was now a force which understood itself in a new if +uncompleted way. It was a sword free from its scabbard. + +The adventure of the Carillon Rapids had been a kind of deliverance of +an unborn thing which, desiring the overworld, had found it. A few hours +ago the face of Ingolby, as she waked to consciousness in his arms, had +taught her something suddenly; and the face of Felix Marchand had taught +her even more. Something new and strange had happened to her, and her +father's uncouth but piercing mind saw the change in her. Her quick, +fluttering moods, her careless, undirected energy, her wistful +waywardness, had of late troubled and vexed him, called on capacities in +him which he did not possess; but now he was suddenly aware that she had +emerged from passionate inconsistencies and in some good sense had found +herself. + +Like a wind she had swept out of childhood into a woman's world where +the eyes saw things unseen before, a world how many thousand leagues in +the future; and here in a flash, also, she was swept like a wind back +again to a time before there was even conscious childhood--a dim, +distant time when she lived and ate and slept for ever in the field +or the vale, in the quarry, beside the hedge, or on the edge of +harvest-fields; when she was carried in strong arms, or sat in the +shelter of a man's breast as a horse cantered down a glade, under an +ardent sky, amid blooms never seen since then. She was whisked back +into that distant, unreal world by the figure of a young Romany standing +beside a spruce-tree, and by her father's voice which uttered the +startling words: "He says he is your husband!" + +Indignation and a bitter pride looked out of her eyes, as she heard the +preposterous claim--as though she were some wild dweller of the jungle +being called by her savage mate back to the lair she had forsaken. + +"Since when were you my husband?" she asked Jethro Fawe composedly. + +Her quiet scorn brought a quiver to his spirit; for he was of a people +to whom anger and passion were part of every relationship of life, its +stimulus and its recreation, its expression of the individual. + +His eyelids trembled, but he drew himself together. "Seventeen years +ago by the River Starzke in the Roumelian country, it was so done," he +replied stubbornly. "You were sealed to me, as my Ry here knows, and as +you will remember, if you fix your mind upon it. It was beyond the city +of Starzke three leagues, under the brown scarp of the Dragbad Hills. +It was in the morning when the sun was by a quarter of its course. It +happened before my father's tent, the tent of Lemuel Fawe. There you and +I were sealed before our Romany folk. For three thousand pounds which my +father gave to your father, you--" + +With a swift gesture she stopped him. Walking close up to him, she +looked him full in the eyes. There was a contemptuous pride in her face +which forced him to lower his eyelids sulkily. + +He would have understood a torrent of words--to him that would have +regulated the true value of the situation; but this disdainful composure +embarrassed him. He had come prepared for trouble and difficulty, but he +had rather more determination than most of his class and people, and his +spirit of adventure was high. Now that he had seen the girl who was +his own according to Romany law, he felt he had been a hundred times +justified in demanding her from her father, according to the pledge and +bond of so many years ago. He had nothing to lose but his life, and he +had risked that before. This old man, the head of the Romany folk, had +the bulk of the fortune which had been his own father's and he had the +logic of lucre which is the most convincing of all logic. Yet with the +girl holding his eyes commandingly, he was conscious that he was asking +more than a Romany lass to share his 'tan', to go wandering from Romany +people to Romany people, king and queen of them all when Gabriel Druse +had passed away. Fleda Druse would be a queen of queens, but there was +that queenliness in her now which was not Romany--something which was +Gorgio, which was caste, which made a shivering distance between them. + +As he had spoken, she saw it all as he described it. Vaguely, cloudily, +the scene passed before her. Now and again in the passing years had +filmy impressions floated before her mind of a swift-flowing river and +high crags, and wooded hills and tents and horsemen and shouting, and +a lad that held her hand, and banners waved over their heads, and +galloping and shouting, and then a sudden quiet, and many men and women +gathered about a tent, and a wailing thereafter. After which, in +her faint remembrance, there seemed to fall a mist, and a space of +blankness, and then a starting up from a bed, and looking out of the +doors of a tent, where many people gathered about a great fire, whose +flames licked the heavens, and seemed to devour a Romany tent standing +alone with a Romany wagon full of its household things. + +As Jethro Fawe had spoken, the misty, elusive visions had become living +memories, and she knew that he had spoken the truth, and that these +fleeting things were pictures of her sealing to Jethro Fawe and the +death of Lemuel Fawe, and the burning of all that belonged to him in +that last ritual of Romany farewell to the dead. + +She knew now that she had been bargained for like any slave--for three +thousand pounds. How far away it all seemed, how barbaric and revolting! +Yet here it all was rolling up like a flood to her feet, to bear her +away into a past with its sordidness and vagabondage, however gilded and +graded above the lowest vagabondage. + +Here at Manitou she had tasted a free life which was not vagabondage, +the passion of the open road which was not an elaborate and furtive +evasion of the law and a defiance of social ostracism. Here she and her +father moved in an atmosphere of esteem touched by mystery, but not +by suspicion; here civilization in its most elastic organization and +flexible conventions, had laid its hold upon her, had done in this +expansive, loosely knitted social system what could never have been +accomplished in a great city--in London, Vienna, Rome, or New York. She +had had here the old free life of the road, so full of the scent of deep +woods--the song of rivers, the carol of birds, the murmuring of trees, +the mysterious and devout whisperings of the night, the happy communings +of stray peoples meeting and passing, the gaiety and gossip of the +market-place, the sound of church bells across a valley, the storms and +wild lightnings and rushing torrents, the cries of frightened beasts, +the wash and rush of rain, the sharp pain of frost, and the agonies of +some lost traveller rescued from the wide inclemency, the soft starlight +after, the balm of the purged air, and "rosy-fingered morn" blinking +blithely at the world. The old life of the open road she had had here +without anything of its shame, its stigma, and its separateness, its +discordance with the stationary forces of law and organized community. + +Wild moments there had been of late years when she longed for the faces +of Romany folk gathered about the fire, while some Romany 'pral' drew +all hearts with the violin or the dulcimer. When Ambrose or Gilderoy or +Christo responded to the pleadings of some sentimental lass, and sang to +the harpist's strings: + + "Cold blows the wind over my true love, + Cold blow the drops of rain; + I never, never had but one sweetheart; + In the green wood he was slain," + +and to cries of "Again! 'Ay bor'! again!" the blackeyed lover, +hypnotizing himself into an ecstasy, poured out race and passion and war +with the law, in the true Gipsy rant which is sung from Transylvania to +Yetholm or Carnarvon or Vancouver: + + "Time was I went to my true love, + Time was she came to me--" + +The sharp passion which moved her now as she stood before Jethro Fawe +would not have been so acute yesterday; but to-day--she had lain in a +Gorgio's arms to-day; and though he was nothing to her, he was still a +Gorgio of Gorgios; and this man before her--her husband--was at best but +a man of the hedges and the byre and the clay-pit, the quarry and the +wood; a nomad with no home, nothing that belonged to what she was now a +part of--organized, collective existence, the life of the house-dweller, +not the life of the 'tan', the 'koppa', and the 'vellgouris'--the tent, +the blanket, and the fair. + +"I was never bought, and I was never sold," she said to Jethro Fawe at +last "not for three thousand pounds, not in three thousand years. Look +at me well, and see whether you think it was so, or ever could be so. +Look at me well, Jethro Fawe." + +"You are mine--it was so done seventeen years ago," he answered, +defiantly and tenaciously. + +"I was three years old, seventeen years ago," she returned quietly, +but her eyes forced his to look at her, when they turned away as though +their light hurt him. + +"It is no matter," he rejoined. "It is the way of our people. It has +been so, and it will be so while there is a Romany tent standing or +moving on." + +In his rage Gabriel Druse could keep silence no longer. + +"Rogue, what have you to say of such things?" he growled. "I am the head +of all. I pass the word, and things are so and so. By long and by last, +if I pass the word that you shall sleep the sleep, it will be so, my +Romany 'chal'." + +His daughter stretched out her hand to stop further speech from her +father--"Hush!" she said maliciously, "he has come a long way for +naught. It will be longer going back. Let him have his say. It is his +capital. He has only breath and beauty." + +Jethro shrank from the sharp irony of her tongue as he would not have +shrunk before her father's violence. Biting rejection was in her tones. +He knew dimly that the thing he shrank from belonged to nothing Romany +in her, but to that scornful pride of the Gorgios which had kept the +Romany outside the social pale. + +"Only breath and beauty!" she had said, and that she could laugh at his +handsomeness was certain proof that it was not wilfulness which rejected +his claims. Now there was rage in his heart greater than had been in +that of Gabriel Druse. + +"I have come a long way for a good thing," he said with head thrown +back, "and if 'breath and beauty' is all I bring, yet that is because +what my father had in his purse has made my 'Ry' rich"--he flung a hand +out towards Gabriel Druse--"and because I keep to the open road as +my father did, true to my Romany blood. The wind and the sun and the +fatness of the field have made me what I am, and never in my life had I +an ache or a pain. You have the breath and the beauty, too, but you have +the gold also; and what you are and what you have is mine by the Romany +law, and it will come to me, by long and by last." + +Fleda turned quietly to her father. "If it is true concerning the three +thousand pounds, give it to him and let him go. It will buy him what he +would never get by what he is." + +The old man flashed a look of anger upon her. "He came empty, he shall +go empty. Against my commands, his insolence has brought him here. And +let him keep his eyes skinned, or he shall have no breath with which to +return. I am Gabriel Druse, lord over all the Romany people in all the +world from Teheran to San Diego, and across the seas and back again; and +my will shall be done." + +He paused, reflecting for a moment, though his fingers opened and shut +in anger. "This much I will do," he added. "When I return to my people +I will deal with this matter in the place where Lemuel Fawe died. By the +place called Starzke, I will come to reckoning, and then and then only." + +"When?" asked the young man eagerly. + +Gabriel Druse's eyes flashed. "When I return as I will to return." Then +suddenly he added: "This much I will say, it shall be before--" + +The girl stopped him. "It shall be when it shall be. Am I a chattel to +be bartered by any will except my own? I will have naught to do with any +Romany law. Not by Starzke shall the matter be dealt with, but here by +the River Sagalac. This Romany has no claim upon me. My will is my own; +I myself and no other shall choose my husband, and he will never be a +Romany." + +The young man's eyes suddenly took on a dreaming, subtle look, +submerging the sulkiness which had filled him. Twice he essayed to +speak, but faltered. At last, with an air, he said: + +"For seventeen years I have kept the faith. I was sealed to you, and +I hold by the sealing. Wherever you went, it was known to me. In my +thoughts I followed. I read the Gorgio books; I made ready for this day. +I saw you as you were that day by Starzke, like the young bird in the +nest; and the thought of it was with me always. I knew that when I saw +you again the brown eyes would be browner, the words at the lips would +be sweeter--and so it is. All is as I dreamed for these long years. I +was ever faithful. By night and day I saw you as you were when Romany +law made you mine for ever. I looked forward to the day when I would +take you to my 'tan', and there we two would--" + +A flush sprang suddenly to Fleda Druse's face, then slowly faded, +leaving it pale and indignant. Sharply she interrupted him. + +"They should have called you Ananias," she said scornfully. "My father +has called you a rogue, and now I know you are one. I have not heard, +but I know--I know that you have had a hundred loves, and been true +to none. The red scarfs you have given to the Romany and the Gorgio +fly-aways would make a tent for all the Fawes in all the world." + +At first he flung up his head in astonishment at her words, then, as she +proceeded, a flush swept across his face and his eyes filled up again +with sullenness. She had read the real truth concerning him. He had gone +too far. He had been convincing while he had said what was true, but her +instinct had suddenly told her what he was. Her perception had pierced +to the core of his life--a vagabondage, a little more gilded than was +common among his fellows, made possible by his position as the successor +to her father, and by the money of Lemuel Fawe which he had dissipated. + +He had come when all his gold was gone to do the one bold thing which +might at once restore his fortunes. He had brains, and he knew now that +his adventure was in grave peril. + +He laughed in his anger. "Is only the Gorgio to embrace the Romany lass? +One fondled mine to-day in his arms down there at Carillon. That's the +way it goes! The old song tells the end of it: + + "'But the Gorgio lies 'neath the beech-wood tree; + He'll broach my tan no more; + And my love she sleeps afar from me, + But near to the churchyard door. + + 'Time was I went to my true love, + Time was she came to me--'" + +He got no farther. Gabriel Druse was on him, gripping his arms so tight +to his body that his swift motion to draw a weapon was frustrated. The +old man put out all his strength, a strength which in his younger days +was greater than any two men in any Romany camp, and the "breath and +beauty" of Jethro Fawe grew less and less. His face became purple and +distorted, his body convulsed, then limp, and presently he lay on the +ground with a knee on his chest and fierce, bony hands at his throat. + +"Don't kill him--father, don't!" cried the girl, laying restraining +hands on the old man's shoulders. He withdrew his hands and released the +body from his knee. Jethro Fawe lay still. + +"Is he dead?" she whispered, awestricken. "Dead?" The old man felt the +breast of the unconscious man. He smiled grimly. "He is lucky not to be +dead." + +"What shall we do?" the girl asked again with a white face. + +The old man stooped and lifted the unconscious form in his arms +as though it was that of a child. "Where are you going?" she asked +anxiously, as he moved away. + +"To the hut in the juniper wood," he answered. She watched till he had +disappeared with his limp burden into the depths of the trees. Then she +turned and went slowly towards the house. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. THE UNGUARDED FIRES + +The public knew well that Ingolby had solved his biggest business +problem, because three offices of three railways--one big and two +small--suddenly became merged under his control. At which there was +rejoicing at Lebanon, followed by dismay and indignation at Manitou, for +one of the smaller merged railways had its offices there, and it was +now removed to Lebanon; while several of the staff, having proved +cantankerous, were promptly retired. As they were French Canadians, +their retirement became a public matter in Manitou and begot fresh +quarrel between the rival towns. + +Ingolby had made a tactical mistake in at once removing the office +of the merged railway from Manitou, and he saw it quickly. It was not +possible to put the matter right at once, however. + +There had already been collision between his own railway-men and the +rivermen from Manitou, whom Felix Marchand had bribed to cause trouble: +two Manitou men had been seriously hurt, and feeling ran high. Ingolby's +eyes opened wide when he saw Marchand's ugly game. He loathed the +dissolute fellow, but he realized now that his foe was a factor to be +reckoned with, for Marchand had plenty of money as well as a bad nature. +He saw he was in for a big fight with Manitou, and he had to think it +out. + +So this time he went pigeon-shooting. + +He got his pigeons, and the slaughter did him good. As though in keeping +with the situation, he shot on both sides of the Sagalac with great good +luck, and in the late afternoon sent his Indian lad on ahead to Lebanon +with the day's spoil, while he loitered through the woods, a gun slung +in the hollow of his arm. He had walked many miles, but there was still +a spring to his step and he hummed an air with his shoulders thrown back +and his hat on the back of his head. He had had his shooting, he had +done his thinking, and he was pleased with himself. He had shaped his +homeward course so that it would bring him near to Gabriel Druse's +house. + +He had seen Fleda only twice since the episode at Carillon, and met her +only once, and that was but for a moment at a Fete for the hospital +at Manitou, and with other people present--people who lay in wait for +crumbs of gossip. + +Since the running of the Rapids, Fleda had filled a larger place in the +eyes of Manitou and Lebanon. She had appealed to the Western mind: +she had done a brave physical thing. Wherever she went she was made +conscious of a new attitude towards herself, a more understanding +feeling. At the Fete when she and Ingolby met face to face, people +had immediately drawn round them curious and excited. These could not +understand why the two talked so little, and had such an every-day +manner with each other. Only old Mother Thibadeau, who had a heart +that sees, caught a look in Fleda's eyes, a warm deepening of colour, a +sudden embarrassment, which she knew how to interpret. + +"See now, monseigneur," she said to Monseigneur Lourde, nodding towards +Fleda and Ingolby, "there would be work here soon for you or Father +Bidette if they were not two heretics." + +"Is she a heretic, then, madame?" asked the old white-headed priest, his +eyes quizzically following Fleda. + +"She is not a Catholic, and she must be a heretic, that's certain," was +the reply. + +"I'm not so sure," mused the priest. Smiling, he raised his hat as he +caught Fleda's eyes. He made as if to go towards her, but something in +her look held him back. He realized that Fleda did not wish to speak +with him, and that she was even hurrying away from her father, who +lumbered through the crowd as though unconscious of them all. + +Presently Monseigneur Lourde saw Fleda leave the Fete and take the road +towards home. There was a sense of excitement in her motions, and he +also had seen that tremulous, embarrassed look in her eyes. It puzzled +him. He did not connect it wholly with Ingolby as Madame Thibadeau +had done. He had lived so long among primitive people that he was more +accustomed to study faces than find the truth from words, and he had +always been conscious that this girl, educated and even intellectual, +was at heart as primitive as the wildest daughter of the tepees of the +North. There was also in her something of that mystery which belongs to +the universal itinerary--that cosmopolitan something which is the native +human. + +"She has far to go," the priest said to himself as he turned to greet +Ingolby with a smile, bright and shy, but gravely reproachful, too. + +This happened on the day before the collision between the railway-men +and the river-drivers, and the old priest already knew what trouble was +afoot. + +There was little Felix Marchand did which was hidden from him. He made +his way to Ingolby to warn him. + +As Ingolby now walked in the woods towards Gabriel Druse's house, he +recalled one striking phrase used by the aged priest in reference to the +closing of the railway offices. + +"When you strike your camp, put out the fires," was the aphorism. + +Ingolby stopped humming to himself as the words came to his memory +again. Bending his head in thought for a moment, he stood still, +cogitating. + +"The dear old fellow was right," he said presently aloud with uplifted +head. "I struck camp, but I didn't put out the fires. There's a lot of +that in life." + +That is what had happened also to Gabriel Druse and his daughter. They +had struck camp, but had not put out the camp-fires. That which had +been done by the River Starzke came again in its appointed time. The +untended, unguarded fire may spread devastation and ruin, following with +angry freedom the marching feet of those who builded it. + +"Yes, you've got to put out your fires when you quit the bivouac," +continued Ingolby aloud, as he gazed ahead of him through the opening +greenery, beyond which lay Gabriel Druse's home. Where he was the +woods were thick, and here and there on either side it was almost +impenetrable. Few people ever came through this wood. It belonged in +greater part to Gabriel Druse, and in lesser part to the Hudson's Bay +Company and the Government; and as the land was not valuable till it +was cleared, and there was plenty of prairie land to be had, from which +neither stick nor stump must be removed, these woods were very lonely. +Occasionally a trapper or a sportsman wandered through them, but just +here where Ingolby was none ever loitered. It was too thick for game, +there was no roadway leading anywhere, but only an overgrown path, used +in the old days by Indians. It was this path which Ingolby trod with +eager steps. + +Presently, as he stood still at sight of a ground-hog making for its +hiding-place, he saw a shadow fall across the light breaking through the +trees some distance in front of him. It was Fleda. She had not seen +him, and she came hurrying towards where he was with head bent, a +brightly-ribboned hat swinging in her fingers. She seemed part of the +woods, its wild simplicity, its depth, its colour-already Autumn was +crimsoning the leaves, touching them with amber tints, making the +woodland warm and kind. She wore a dress of golden brown which matched +her hair, and at her throat was a black velvet ribbon with a brooch of +antique paste which flashed the light like diamonds, but more softly. + +Suddenly, as she came on, she stopped and raised her head in a listening +attitude, her eyes opening wide as if listening, too--it was as though +she heard with them as well; alive to catch sounds which evaded capture. +She was like some creature of an ancient wood with its own secret and +immemorial history which the world could never know. There was that in +her face which did not belong to civilization or to that fighting world +of which Ingolby was so eager a factor. All the generations of the wood +and road, the combe and the river, the quarry and the secluded boscage +were in her look. There was that about her which was at once elusive and +primevally real. + +She was not of those who would be lost in the dust of futility. +Whatever she was, she was an independent atom in the mass of the world's +breeding. Perhaps it was consciousness of the dynamic quality in the +girl, her nearness to naked nature, which made Madame Bulteel say that +she would "have a history." + +If she got twisted as she came wayfaring, if her mind became possessed +of a false passion or purpose which she thought a true one, then tragedy +would await her. Yet in this quiet wood so near to the centuries that +were before Adam was, she looked like a spirit of comedy listening till +the Spirit of the Wood should break the silence. + +Ingolby felt his blood beat faster. He had a feeling that he was looking +at a wood-nymph who might flash out of his vision as a mere fantasy of +the mind. There shot through him the strangest feeling that if she were +his, he would be linked with something alien to the world of which he +was. + +Yet, recalling the day at Carillon when her cheek lay on his shoulder +and her warm breast was pressed unresistingly against him, as he lifted +her from his boat, he knew that he would have to make the hardest +fight of his life if he meant not to have more of her than this brief +acquaintance, so touched by sensation and romance. He was, maybe, +somewhat sensational; his career had, even in its present restricted +compass, been spectacular; but romance, with its reveries and its +moonshinings, its impulses and its blind adventures, had not been any +part of his existence. + +Hers were not the first red lips which, voluntarily or involuntarily, +had invited him; nor hers the first eyes which had sparkled to his +glances; and this triumphant Titian head of hers was not the only one he +had seen. + +When he had taken her hand at the Hospital Fete, her fingers, long and +warm and fine, had folded round his own with a singular confidence, +an involuntary enclosing friendliness; and now as he watched her +listening--did she hear something?--he saw her hand stretch out as +though commanding silence, the "hush!" of an alluring gesture. + +This assuredly was not the girl who had run the Carillon Rapids, for +that adventuress was full of a vital force like a man's, and this girl +had the evanishing charm of a dryad. + +Suddenly a change passed over her. She was as one who had listened and +had caught the note of song for which she waited; but her face clouded, +and the rapt look gave way to an immediate distress. The fantasy of the +wood-nymph underwent translation in Ingolby's mind; she was now like a +mortal, who, having been transformed, at immortal dictate was returning +to mortal state again. + +To heighten the illusion, he thought he heard faint singing in the +depths of the wood. He put his hands to his ears for a moment, and took +them away again to make sure that it was really singing and not his +imagination; and when he saw Fleda's face again, there was fresh +evidence that his senses had not deceived him. After all, it was not +strange that some one should be singing in that deepest wood beyond. + +Now Fleda moved forward towards where he stood, quickening her footsteps +as though remembering something she must do. He stepped out into the +path and came to meet her. She heard his footsteps, saw him, and stood +still abruptly. + +She did not make a sound, but a hand went to her bosom quickly, as +though to quiet her heart or to steady herself. He had broken suddenly +upon her intent thoughts, he had startled her as she had been +seldom startled, for all her childhood training had been towards +self-possession before surprise and danger. + +"This is not your side of the Sagalac," she said with a half-smile, +regaining composure. + +"That is in dispute," he answered gaily. "I want to belong to both sides +of the Sagalac, I want both sides to belong to each other so that either +side shall not be my side or your side, or--" + +"Or Monsieur Felix Marchand's side," she interrupted meaningly. + +"Oh, he's on the outside!" snapped the fighter, with a hardening mouth. + +She did not reply at once, but put her hat on, and tied the ribbons +loosely under her chin, looking thoughtfully into the distance. + +"Is that the Western slang for saying he belongs nowhere?" she asked. + +"Nowhere here," he answered with a grim twist to the corner of his +mouth, his eyes half-closing with sulky meaning. "Won't you sit down?" +he added quickly, in a more sprightly tone, for he saw she was about to +move on. He motioned towards a log lying beside the path and kicked some +branches out of the way. + +After slight hesitation she sat down, burying her shoes in the fallen +leaves. + +"You don't like Felix Marchand?" she remarked presently. + +"No. Do you?" + +She met his eyes squarely--so squarely that his own rather lost their +courage, and he blinked more quickly than is needed with a healthy eye. +He had been audacious, but he had not surprised the garrison. + +"I have no deep reason for liking or disliking him, and you have," she +answered firmly; yet her colour rose slightly, and he thought he had +never seen skin that looked so like velvet-creamy, pink velvet. + +"You seemed to think differently at Carillon not long ago," he returned. + +"That was an accident," she answered calmly. "He was drunk, and that is +for forgetting--always." + +"Always! Have you seen many men drunk?" he asked quickly. He did not +mean to be quizzical, but his voice sounded so, and she detected it. + +"Yes, many," she answered with a little ring of defiance in her +tone--"many, often." + +"Where?" he queried recklessly. + +"In Lebanon," she retorted. "In Lebanon--your side." + +How different she seemed from a few moments ago when she stood listening +like a nymph for the song of the Spirit of the Wood! Now she was gay, +buoyant, with a chamois-like alertness and a beaming vigour. + +"Now I know what 'blind drunk' means," he replied musingly. "In Manitou +when men get drunk, the people get astigmatism and can't see the +tangledfooted stagger." + +"It means that the pines of Manitou are straighter than the cedars of +Lebanon," she remarked. + +"And the pines of Manitou have needles," he rejoined, meaning to give +her the victory. + +"Is my tongue as sharp as that?" she asked, amusement in her eyes. + +"So sharp I can feel the point when I can't see it," he retorted. + +"I'm glad of that," she replied with an affectation of conceit. "Of +course if you live in Lebanon you need surgery to make you feel a +point." + +"I give in--you have me," he remarked. + +"You give in to Manitou?" she asked provokingly. "Certainly not--only to +you. I said, 'You have me.'" + +"Ah, you give in to that which won't hurt you--" + +"Wouldn't you hurt me?" he asked in a softening tone. + +"You only play with words," she answered with sudden gravity. "Hurt you? +I owe you what I can not pay back. I owe you my life; but as nothing can +be given in exchange for a life, I cannot pay you." + +"But like may be given for like," he rejoined in a tone suddenly full of +meaning. + +"Again you are playing with words--and with me," she answered brusquely, +and a little light of anger dawned in her eyes. Did he think that he +could say a thing of that sort to her--when he pleased? Did he think +that because he had done her a great service, he could say casually what +belonged only to the sacred moments of existence? She looked at him with +rising indignation, but there suddenly came to her the conviction that +he had not spoken with affronting gallantry, but that for him the moment +had a gravity not to be marred by the place or the circumstance. + +"I beg your pardon if I spoke hastily," he answered presently. "Yet +there's many a true word spoken in jest." + +There was a moment's silence. She realized that he was drawn to her, +and that the attraction was not alone due to his having saved her at +Carillon; that he was not taking advantage of the thing which must ever +be a bond between them, whatever came of life. When she had seen him at +the Hospital Fete, a feeling had rushed over her that he had got nearer +to her than any man had ever done. Then--even then, she felt the thing +which all lovers, actual, or in the making, feel--that they must do +something for the being who to them is more than all else and all +others. She was not in love with Ingolby. How could she be in love with +this man she had seen but a few times--this Gorgio. Why was it that even +as they talked together now, she felt the real, true distance between +them--of race, of origin, of history, of life, of circumstance? The hut +in the wood where Gabriel Druse had carried Jethro Fawe was not three +hundred yards away. + +She sighed, stirred, and a wild look came in her eyes--a look of +rebellion or of protest. Presently she recovered herself. She was a +creature of sudden moods. + +"What is it you want to do with Manitou and Lebanon?" she asked after a +pause in which the thoughts of both had travelled far. + +"You really wish to know--you don't know?" he asked with sudden +intensity. + +She regarded him frankly, smiled, then she laughed outright, showing her +teeth very white and regular and handsome. The boyish eagerness of his +look, the whimsical twist of his mouth, which always showed when he was +keenly roused--as though everything that really meant anything was part +of a comet-like comedy--had caused her merriment. All the hidden things +in his face seemed to open out into a swift shrewdness and dry candour +when he was in his mood of "laying all the cards upon the table." + +"I don't know," she answered quietly. "I have heard things, but I should +like to learn the truth from you. What are your plans?" + +Her eyes were burning with inquiry. She was suddenly brought to the +gateways of a new world. Plans--what had she or her people to do with +plans! What Romany ever constructed anything? What did the building of +a city or a country mean to a Romany 'chal' or a Romany 'chi', they who +lived from field to field, from common to moor, from barn to city +wall. A Romany tent or a Romany camp, with its families, was the whole +territory of their enterprise, designs and patriotism. They saw the +thousand places where cities could be made, and built their fires on the +sites of them, and camped a day, and were gone, leaving them waiting and +barren as before. They travelled through the new lands in America from +the fringe of the Arctic to Patagonia, but they raised no roof-tree; +they tilled no acre, opened no market, set up no tabernacle: they had +neither home nor country. + +Fleda was the heir of all this, the product of generations of such +vagabondage. Had the last few years given her the civic sense, the home +sense? From the influence of the Englishwoman, who had made her forsake +the Romany life, had there come habits of mind in tune with the women +of the Sagalac, who were helping to build so much more than their homes? +Since the incident of the Carillon Rapids she had changed, but what the +change meant was yet in her unopened Book of Revelations. Yet something +stirred in her which she had never felt before. She had come of a race +of wayfarers, but the spirit of the builders touched her now. + +"What are my plans?" Ingolby drew along breath of satisfaction. "Well, +just here where we are will be seen a great thing. There's the Yukon +and all its gold; there's the Peace River country and all its unploughed +wheat-fields; there's the whole valley of the Sagalac, which alone can +maintain twenty millions of people; there's the East and the British +people overseas who must have bread; there's China and Japan going to +give up rice, and eat the wheaten loaf; there's the U. S. A. with +its hundred millions of people--it'll be that in a few years--and its +exhausted wheat-fields; and here, right here, is the bread-basket for +all the hungry peoples; and Manitou and Lebanon are the centre of it. +They will be the distributing centre. I want to see the base laid right. +I'm not going to stay here till it all happens, but I want to plan +it all so that it will happen, then I'll go on and do a bigger thing +somewhere else. These two towns have got to come together; they must +play one big game. I want to lay the wires for it. That's why I've got +capitalists to start paper-works, engineering works, a foundry, and a +sash-door-and-blind factory--just the beginning. That's why I've put two +factories on one side of the river and two on the other." + +"Was it really you who started those factories?" she asked +incredulously. + +"Of course! It was part of my plans. I wasn't foolish enough to build +and run them myself. I looked for the right people that had the money +and the brains, and I let them sweat--let them sweat it out. I'm not a +manufacturer; I'm an inventor and a builder. I built the bridge over the +river; and--" + +She nodded. "Yes, the bridge is good; but they say you are a schemer," +she added suggestively. + +"Certainly. But if I have schemes which'll do good, I ought to be +supported. I don't mind what they call me, so long as they don't call me +too late for dinner." + +They both laughed. It was seldom he talked like this, and never had he +talked to such a listener before. "The merging of the three railways +was a good scheme, and I was the schemer," he continued. "It might mean +monopoly, but it won't work out that way. It will simply concentrate +energy and: save elbow-grease. It will set free capital and capacity for +other things." + +"They say there will be fewer men at work, not only in the offices but +on the whole railway system, and they don't like that in Manitou--ah, +no, they don't!" she urged. + +"They're right in a sense," he answered. "But the men will be employed +at other things, which won't represent waste and capital overlapping. +Overlapping capital hits everybody in the end. But who says all that? +Who raises the cry of 'wolf' in Manitou?" + +"A good many people say it now," she answered, "but I think Felix +Marchand said it first. He is against you, and he is dangerous." + +He shrugged a shoulder. "Oh, if any fool said it, it would be the same!" +he answered. "That's a fire easily lighted; though it sometimes burns +long and hard." He frowned, and a fighting look came into his face. + +"Then you know all that is working against you in Manitou--working +harder than ever before?" + +"I think I do, but I probably don't know all. Have you any special news +about it?" + +"Felix Marchand is spending money among the men. They are going on +strike on your railways and in the mills." + +"What mills--in Manitou?" he asked abruptly. "In both towns." + +He laughed harshly. "That's a tall order," he said sharply. "Both +towns--I don't think so, not yet." + +"A sympathetic strike is what he calls it," she rejoined. + +"Yes, a row over some imagined grievance on the railway, and all the men +in all the factories to strike--that's the new game of the modern +labour agitator! Marchand has been travelling in France," he added +disdainfully, "but he has brought his goods to the wrong shop. What do +the priests--what does Monseigneur Lourde say to it all?" + +"I am not a Catholic," she replied gravely. "I've heard, though, that +Monseigneur is trying to stop the trouble. But--" She paused. + +"Yes--but?" he asked. "What were you going to say?" + +"But there are many roughs in Manitou, and Felix Marchand makes friends +with them. I don't think the priests will be able to help much in the +end, and if it is to be Manitou against Lebanon, you can't expect a +great deal." + +"I never expect more than I get--generally less," he answered grimly; +and he moved the gun about on his knees restlessly, fingering the lock +and the trigger softly. + +"I am sure Felix Marchand means you harm," she persisted. + +"Personal harm?" + +"Yes." + +He laughed sarcastically again. "We are not in Bulgaria or Sicily," he +rejoined, his jaw hardening; "and I can take care of myself. What makes +you say he means personal harm? Have you heard anything?" + +"No, nothing, but I feel it is so. That day at the Hospital Fete he +looked at you in a way that told me. I think such instincts are given to +some people and some races. You read books--I read people. I wanted +to warn you, and I do so. This has been lucky in a way, this meeting. +Please don't treat what I've said lightly. Your plans are in danger and +you also." Was the psychic and fortune-telling instinct of the Romany +alive in her and working involuntarily, doing that faithfully which her +people did so faithlessly? The darkness which comes from intense feeling +had gathered underneath her eyes, and gave them a look of pensiveness +not in keeping with the glow of her perfect health, the velvet of her +cheek. + +"Would you mind telling me where you got your information?" he asked +presently. + +"My father heard here and there, and I, also, and some I got from old +Madame Thibadeau, who is a friend of mine. I talk with her more than +with any one else in Manitou. First she taught me how to crochet, but +she teaches me many other things, too." + +"I know the old girl by sight. She is a character. She would know a lot, +that woman." + +He paused, seemed about to speak, hesitated, then after a moment hastily +said: "A minute ago you spoke of having the instinct of your race, or +something like that. What is your race? Is it Irish, or--do you mind my +asking? Your English is perfect, but there is something--something--" + +She turned away her head, a flush spreading over her face. She was +unprepared for the question. No one had ever asked it directly of her +since they had come to Manitou. Whatever speculation there had been, she +had never been obliged to tell any one of what race she was. She spoke +English with no perceptible accent, as she spoke Spanish, Italian, +French, Hungarian and Greek; and there was nothing in her speech marking +her as different from the ordinary Western woman. Certainly she would +have been considered pure English among the polyglot population of +Manitou. + +What must she say? What was it her duty to say? She was living the life +of a British woman, she was as much a Gorgio in her daily existence as +this man be side her. Manitou was as much home--nay, it was a thousand +times more home--than the shifting habitat of the days when they +wandered from the Caspians to John o' Groat's. + +For years all traces of the past had been removed as completely as +though the tide had washed over them; for years it had been so, until +the fateful day when she ran the Carillon Rapids. That day saw her whole +horizon alter; that day saw this man beside her enter on the stage of +her life. And on that very day, also, came Jethro Fawe out of the Past +and demanded her return. + +That had been a day of Destiny. The old, panting, unrealized, +tempestuous longing was gone. She was as one who saw danger and faced +it, who had a fight to make and would make it. + +What would happen if she told this man that she was a Gipsy--the +daughter of a Gipsy ruler, which was no more than being head of a clan +of the world's transients, the leader of the world's nomads. Money--her +father had that, at least--much money; got in ways that could not bear +the light at times, yet, as the world counts things, not dishonestly; +for more than one great minister in a notable country in Europe had +commissioned him, more than one ruler and crowned head had used him +when "there was trouble in the Balkans," or the "sick man of Europe" +was worse, or the Russian Bear came prowling. His service had ever +been secret service, when he lived the life of the caravan and the open +highway. He had no stable place among the men of all nations, and yet +secret rites and mysteries and a language which was known from Bokhara +to Wandsworth, and from Waikiki to Valparaiso, gave him dignity of a +kind, clothed him with importance. + +Yet she wanted to tell this man beside her the whole truth, and see +what he would do. Would he turn his face away in disgust? What had she +a right to tell? She knew well that her father would wish her to keep +to that secrecy which so far had sheltered them--at least until Jethro +Fawe's coming. + +At last she turned and looked him in the eyes, the flush gone from her +face. + +"I'm not Irish--do I look Irish?" she asked quietly, though her heart +was beating unevenly. + +"You look more Irish than anything else, except, maybe, Slav or +Hungarian--or Gipsy," he said admiringly and unwittingly. + +"I have Gipsy blood in me," she answered slowly, "but no Irish or +Hungarian blood." + +"Gipsy--is that so?" he said spontaneously, as she watched him so +intently that the pulses throbbed at her temples. + +A short time ago Fleda might have announced her origin defiantly, now +her courage failed her. She did not wish him to be prejudiced against +her. + +"Well, well," he added, "I only just guessed at it, because there's +something unusual and strong in you, not because your eyes are so dark +and your hair so brown." + +"Not because of my 'wild beauty'--I thought you were going to say that," +she added ironically and a little defiantly. "I got some verses by post +the other day from one of your friends in Lebanon--a stock-rider I think +he was, and they said I had a 'wild beauty' and a 'savage sweetness.'" + +He laughed, yet he suddenly saw her sensitive vigilance, and by instinct +he felt that she was watching for some sign of shock or disdain on his +part; yet in truth he cared no more whether she had Gipsy blood in her +than he would have done if she had said she was a daughter of the Czar. + +"Men do write that kind of thing," he added cheerfully, "but it's quite +harmless. There was a disease at college we called adjectivitis. Your +poet friend had it. He could have left out the 'wild' and 'savage' and +he'd have been pleasant, and truthful too--no, I apologize." + +He had seen her face darken under the compliment, and he hastened to put +it right. + +"I loved a Gipsy once," he added whimsically to divert attention from +his mistake, and with so genuine a sympathy in his voice that she was +disarmed. "I was ten and she was fifty at least. Oh, a wonderful woman! +I had a boy friend, a fat, happy, little joker he was; his name was +Charley Long. Well, this woman was his aunt. When she moved through +the town people looked twice. She was tall and splendidly made, and her +manner--oh, as if she owned the place. She did own a lot--she had more +money than any one else thereabouts, anyhow. It was the tallest kind of +a holiday when Charley and I walked out to the big white house-golly, +but it was white--to visit her! We didn't eat much the day before we +went to see her; and we didn't eat much the day after, either. She used +to feed us--I wish I could eat like that now! I can see her brown eyes +following us about, full of fire, but soft and kind, too. She had a +great temper, they said, but everybody liked her, and some loved her. +She'd had one girl, but she died of consumption, got camping out in +bad weather. Aunt Cynthy--that was what we called her, her name being +Cynthia--never got over her girl's death. She blamed herself for it. She +had had those fits of going back to the open-for weeks at a time. The +girl oughtn't to have been taken to camp out. She was never strong, and +it was the wrong place and the wrong time of year--all right in August +and all wrong in October. + +"Well, always after her girl's death Aunt Cynthy was as I knew her, +being good to us youngsters as no one else ever was, or could be. Her +tea-table was a sight; and the rest of the meals were banquets. The +first time I ever ate hedgehog was at her place. A little while ago, +just before you came, I thought of her. A hedgehog crossed the path +here, and it brought those days back to me--Charley Long and Aunt Cynthy +and all. Yes, the first time I ever ate hedgehog; was in Aunt Cynthy's +house. Hi-yi, as old Tekewani says, but it was good!" + +"What is the Romany word for hedgehog?" Fleda asked in a low tone. + +"Hotchewitchi," he replied instantly. "That's right, isn't it?" + +"Yes, it is right," she answered, and her eyes had a far-away look, but +there was a kind of trouble at her mouth. + +"Do you speak Romany?" she added a little breathlessly. + +"No, no. I only picked up words I heard Aunt Cynthy use now and then +when she was in the mood." + +"What was the history of Aunt Cynthy?" + +"I only know what Charley Long told me. Aunt Cynthy was the daughter +of a Gipsy--they say the only Gipsy in that part of the country at +the time--who used to buy and sell horses, and travel in a big van +as comfortable as a house. The old man suddenly died on the farm of +Charley's uncle. In a month the uncle married the girl. She brought him +thirty thousand dollars." + +Fleda knew that this man who had fired her spirit for the first time had +told his childhood story to show her the view he took of her origin; but +she did not like him less for that, though she seemed to feel a chasm +between them still. The new things moving in her were like breezes that +stir the trees, not like the wind turning the windmill which grinds the +corn. She had scarcely yet begun to grind the corn of life. + +She did not know where she was going, what she would find, or where the +new trail would lead her. The Past dogged her footsteps, hung round her +like the folds of a garment. Even as she rejected it, it asserted its +power, troubled her, angered her, humiliated her, called to her. + +She was glad of this meeting with Ingolby. It had helped her. She had +set out to do a thing she dreaded, and it was easier now than it would +have been if they had not met. She had been on her way to the Hut in the +Wood, and now the dread of the visit to Jethro Fawe had diminished. The +last voice she would hear before she entered Jethro Fawe's prison was +that of the man who represented to her, however vaguely, the life which +must be her future--the settled life, the life of Society and not of the +Saracen. + +After he had told his boyhood story they sat in silence for a moment +or two, then she rose, and, turning to him, was about to speak. At that +instant there came distinctly through the wood a faint, trilling sound. +Her face paled a little, and the words died upon her lips. Ingolby, +having turned his head as though to listen, did not see the change in +her face, and she quickly regained her self-control. + +"I heard that sound before," he said, "and I thought from your look you +heard it, too. It's funny. It is singing, isn't it?" + +"Yes, it's singing," she answered. + +"Who is it--some of the heathen from the Reservation?" + +"Yes, some of the heathen," she answered. + +"Has Tekewani got a lodge about here?" + +"He had one here in the old days." + +"And his people go to it still-was that where you were going when I +broke in on you?" + +"Yes, I was going there. I am a heathen, also, you know." + +"Well, I'll be a heathen, too, if you'll show me how; if you think I'd +pass for one. I've done a lot of heathen things in my time." + +She gave him her hand to say good-bye. "Mayn't I go with you?" he asked. + +"'I must finish my journey alone,'" she answered slowly, repeating a +line from the first English book she had ever read. + +"That's English enough," he responded with a laugh. "Well, if I mustn't +go with you I mustn't, but my respects to Robinson Crusoe." He slung +the gun into the hollow of his arm. "I'd like much to go with you," he +urged. + +"Not to-day," she answered firmly. + +Again the voice came through the woods, a little louder now. + +"It sounds like a call," he remarked. + +"It is a call," she answered--"the call of the heathen." + +An instant after she had gone on, with a look half-smiling, +half-forbidding, thrown over her shoulder at him. + +"I've a notion to follow her," he said eagerly, and he took a step in +her direction. + +Suddenly she turned and came back to him. "Your plans are in +danger--don't forget Felix Marchand," she said, and then turned from him +again. + +"Oh, I'll not forget," he answered, and waved his cap after her. "No, +I'll not forget monsieur," he added sharply, and he stepped out with a +light of battle in his eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE + +As Fleda wound her way through the deeper wood, remembering the things +which had just been said between herself and Ingolby, the colour +came and went in her face. To no man had she ever talked so long and +intimately, not even in the far-off days when she lived the Romany life. + +Then, as daughter of the head of all the Romanys, she had her place +apart; and the Romany lads had been few who had talked with her even as +a child. Her father had jealously guarded her until the time when she +fell under the spell and influence of Lady Barrowdale. Here, by the +Sagalac, she had moved among this polyglot people with an assurance of +her own separateness which was the position of every girl in the West, +but developed in her own case to the nth degree. + +Never before had she come so near--not to a man, but to what concerned +a man; and never had a man come so near to her or what concerned her +inmost life. It was not a question of opportunity or temptation--these +always attend the footsteps of those who would adventure; but for long +she had fenced herself round with restrictions of her own making; and +the secrecy and strangeness of her father's course had made this not +only possible, but in a sense imperative. + +The end to that had come. Gaiety, daring, passion, elation, depression, +were alive in her now, and in a sense had found an outlet in a handful +of days--indeed since the day when Jethro Fawe and Max Ingolby had come +into her life, each in his own way, for good or for evil. If Ingolby +came for good, then Jethro Fawe came for evil. She would have revolted +at the suggestion that Jethro Fawe came for good. + +Yet, during the last few days, she had been drawn again and again +towards the hut in the wood. It was as though a power stronger than +herself had ordered her not to wander far from where the Romany claimant +of herself awaited his fate. As though Jethro knew she was drawn towards +him, he had sung the Gipsy songs which she and Ingolby had heard in the +distance. He might have shouted for relief in the hope of attracting the +attention of some passer-by, and so found release and brought confusion +and perhaps punishment to Gabriel Druse; but that was not possible to +him. First and last he was a Romany, good or bad; and it was his duty to +obey his Ry of Rys, the only rule which the Romany acknowledged. "Though +he slay me, yet will I trust him," he would have said, if he had ever +heard the phrase; but in his stubborn way he made the meaning of the +phrase the pivot of his own action. If he could but see Fleda face to +face, he made no doubt that something would accrue to his advantage. He +would not give up the hunt without a struggle. + +Twice a day Gabriel Druse had placed food and water inside the door of +the hut and locked him fast again, but had not spoken to him save once, +and then but to say that his fate had not yet been determined. Jethro's +reply had been that he was in no haste, that he could wait for what he +came to get; that it was his own--'ay bor'! it was his own, and God or +devil could not prevent the thing meant to be from the beginning of the +world. + +He did not hear Fleda approach the hut; he was singing to himself a song +he had learned in Montenegro. There the Romany was held in high regard, +because of the help his own father had given to the Montenegrin +people, fighting for their independence, by admirable weapons of Gipsy +workmanship, setting all the Gipsies in that part of the Balkans at work +to supply them. + +This was the song he sang + + "He gave his soul for a thousand days, + The sun was his in the sky, + His feet were on the neck of the world + He loved his Romany chi. + + "He sold his soul for a thousand days, + By her side to walk, in her arms to lie; + His soul might burn, but her lips were his, + And the heart of his Romany chi." + +He repeated the last two lines into a rising note of exultation: + + "His soul might burn, but her lips were his, + And the heart of his Romany chi." + +The key suddenly turned in the lock, the door opened on the last words +of the refrain, and, without hesitation, Fleda stepped inside, closing +the door behind her. + +"'Mi Duvel', but who would think--ah, did you hear me call then?" he +asked, rising from the plank couch where he had been sitting. He showed +his teeth in a smile which was meant to be a welcome, but it had an +involuntary malice. + +"I heard you singing," she answered composedly, "but I do not come here +because I'm called." + +"But I do," he rejoined. "You called me from over the seas, and I came. +I was in the Balkans; there was trouble--Servia, Montenegro, and Austria +were rattling the fire-irons again, and there was I as my father was +before me. But I heard you calling, and I came." + +"You never heard me call, Jethro Fawe," she returned quietly. "My +calling of you is as silent as the singing of the stars, where you are +concerned. And the stars do not sing." + +"But the stars do sing, and you call just the same," he responded with +a twist to his moustache, and posing against the wall. "I've heard +the stars sing. What's the noise they make in the heart, if it's not +singing? You don't hear with the ears only. The heart hears. It's only +a manner of speaking, this talk about the senses. One sense can do the +same as all can do and a Romany ought to know how to use one or all. +When your heart called I heard it, and across the seas I came. And by +long and by last, but I was right in coming." + +His impudence at once irritated her and provoked her admiration. She +knew by instinct how false he was, and how a lie was as common with him +as the truth; but his submission to her father, his indifference to his +imprisonment, forced her interest, even as she was humiliated by the +fact that he was sib to her, bound by ties of clan and blood apart from +his monstrous claim of marriage. He was indeed such a man as a brainless +or sensual woman could yield to with ease. He had an insinuating animal +grace, that physical handsomeness which marks so many of the Tziganies +who fill the red coats of a Gipsy musical sextette! He was not +distinguished, yet there was an intelligence in his face, a daring at +his lips and chin, which, in the discipline and conventions of +organized society, would have made him superior. Now, with all his +sleek handsomeness, he looked a cross between a splendid peasant and a +chevalier of industry. + +She compared him instinctively with Ingolby the Gorgio, as she looked at +him. What was it made the difference between the two? It was the world +in a man--personality, knowledge of life, the culture of the thousand +things which make up civilization: it was personality got from life and +power in contest with the ordered world. + +Yet was this so after all? Tekewani was only an Indian brave who lived +on the bounty of a government, and yet he had presence and an air of +command. Tekewani had been a nomad; he had not been bound to one place, +settled in one city, held subservient to one flag. But, no, she was +wrong: Tekewani had been the servant and child of a system which was as +fixed and historical as that of Russia or Spain. He belonged to a people +who had traditions and laws of their own; organized communities moving +here and there, but carrying with them their system, their laws and +their national feeling. + +There was the difference. This Romany was the child of irresponsibility, +the being that fed upon life, that did not feed life; that left one +place in the world to escape into another; that squeezed one day dry, +threw it away, and then went seeking another day to bleed; for ever +fleeing from yesterday, and using to-day only as a camping-ground. +Suddenly, however, she came to a stop in her reflections. Her father, +Gabriel Druse, was of the same race as this man, the same unorganized, +irresponsible, useless race, with no weight of civic or social duty upon +its shoulders--where did he stand? Was he no better than such as Jethro +Fawe? Was he inferior to such as Ingolby, or even Tekewani? + +She realized that in her father's face there was the look of one who had +no place in the ambitious designs of men, who was not a builder, but +a wayfarer. She had seen the look often of late, and had never read +it until now, when Jethro Fawe stared at her with the boldness of +possession, with the insolence of a soul of lust which had had its +victories. + +She read his look, and while one part of her shrank from him as +from some noisome thing, another part of her--to her dismay and +anger--understood him, and did not resent him. It was the Past dragging +at her life. It was inherited predisposition, the unregulated passions +of her forebears, the mating of the fields, the generated dominance of +the body, which was not to be commanded into obscurity, but must taunt +and tempt her while her soul sickened. She put a hand on herself. She +must make this man realize once and for all that they were as far apart +as Adam and Cagliostro. "I never called to you," she said at last. +"I did not know of your existence, and, if I had, then I certainly +shouldn't have called." + +"The Gorgios have taken away your mind, or you'd understand," he replied +coolly. "Your soul calls and those that understand come. It isn't that +you know who hears or who is coming--till he comes." + +"A call to all creation!" she answered disdainfully. "Do you think you +can impress me by saying things like that?" + +"Why not? It's true. Wherever you went in all these years the memory of +you kept calling me, my little 'rinkne rakli'--my pretty little girl, +made mine by the River Starzke over in the Roumelian country." + +"You heard what my father said--" + +"I heard what the Duke Gabriel said--'Mi Duvel', I heard enough what he +said, and I felt enough what he did!" + +He laughed, and began to roll a cigarette mechanically, keeping his eyes +fixed on her, however. + +"You heard what my father said and what I said, and you will learn that +it is true, if you live long enough," she added meaningly. + +A look of startled perception flashed into his eyes. "If I live long +enough, I'll turn you, my mad wife, into my Romany queen and the +blessing of my 'tan'." + +"Don't mistake what I mean," she urged. "I shall never be ruler of the +Romanys. I shall never hear--" + +"You'll hear the bosh played-fiddle, they call it in these heathen +places--at your second wedding with Jethro Fawe," he rejoined +insolently, lighting his cigarette. "Home you'll come with me soon--'ay +bor'!" + +"Listen to me," she answered with anger tingling in every nerve and +fibre. "I come of your race, I was what you are, a child of the hedge +and the wood and the road; but that is all done. Home, you say! Home--in +a tent by the roadside or--" + +"As your mother lived--where you were bornwell, well, but here's a +Romany lass that's forgot her cradle!" + +"I have forgotten nothing. I have only moved on. I have only seen that +there is a better road to walk than that where people, always looking +behind lest they be followed, and always looking in front to find +refuge, drop the patrin in the dust or the grass or the bushes for +others to follow after--always going on and on because they dare not go +back." + +Suddenly he threw his cigarette on the ground, and put his heel upon it +in fury real or assumed. "Great Heaven and Hell," he exclaimed, "here's +a Romany has sold her blood to the devil! And this is the daughter of +Gabriel Druse, King and Duke of all the Romanys, him with ancestor King +Panuel, Duke of Little Egypt, who had Sigismund, and Charles the Great, +and all the kings for friends. By long and by last, but this is a tale +to tell to the Romanys of the world!" For reply she went to the door +and opened it wide. "Then go and tell it, Jethro Fawe, to all the world. +Tell them I am the renegade daughter of Gabriel Druse, ruler of them +all. Tell them there is no fault in him, and that he will return to +his own people in his own time, but that I, Fleda Druse, will never +return--never! Now, get you gone from here." + +The sunlight broke through the trees, and fell in a narrow path of light +upon the doorway. A little grey bird fluttered into the radiance +and came tripping across the threshold; a whippoorwill called in the +ashtrees; and the sweet smell of the thick woodland, of the bracken and +fern, crept into the room. The balm of a perfect evening of Summer was +upon the face of nature. The world seemed untroubled and serene; but in +this hidden but two stormy spirits broke the peace to which the place +and the time were all entitled. + +After Fleda's scornful words of release and dismissal, Jethro stood for +a moment confounded and dismayed. He had not reckoned with this. During +their talk it had come to him how simple it would be to overpower +any check to his exit, how devilishly easy to put the girl at a +disadvantage; but he drove the thought from him. In the first place, +he was by no means sure that escape was what he wanted--not yet, at any +rate; in the second place, if Gabriel Druse passed the word along the +subterranean wires of the Romany world that Jethro Fawe should vanish, +he would not long cumber the ground. + +Yet it was not cowardice or fear of consequences which had held him +back; it was a staggering admiration for this girl who had been given +to him in marriage so many years ago. He had fared far and wide in his +adventures and amours when he had gold in plenty; and he had swung more +than one Gorgio woman in the wild dance of sentiment, dazzling them by +the splendour of his passion. The fire gleaming in his dark eyes lighted +a face which would have made memorable a picture by Guido. He had +fared far and wide, but he had never seen a woman who had seized his +imagination as this girl was doing; who roused in him, not the old +hot desire, but the hungry will to have a 'tan' of his own, and go +travelling down the world with one who alone could satisfy him for all +his days. + +As he sat in this improvised woodland prison he had had visions of a +hundred glades and valleys through which he had passed in days gone +by--in England, in Spain, in Italy, in Roumania, in Austria, in +Australia, in India--where his camp-fires had burned. In his visions he +had seen her--Fleda Fawe, not Fleda Druse--laying the cloth and bringing +out the silver cups, or stretching the Turkey rugs upon the ground to +make a couch for two bright-eyed lovers to whom the night was as the +day, radiant and full of joy. He had shut his eyes and beheld hillsides +where abandoned castles stood, and the fox and the squirrel and the hawk +gave shade and welcome to the dusty pilgrims of the road; or, when the +wild winds blew in winter, gave shelter and wood for the fire, and a +sense of homeliness among the companionable trees. + +He had seen himself and this beautiful Romany 'chi' at some village +fair, while the lesser Romany folk told fortunes, or bought and sold +horses, and the lesser still tinkered or worked in gold or brass; he had +seen them both in a great wagon with bright furnishings and brass-girt +harness on their horses, lording it over all, rich, dominant and +admired. In his visions he had even seen a Romany babe carried in his +arms to a Christian church and there baptized in grandeur as became the +child of the head of the people. His imagination had also seen his own +tombstone in some Christian churchyard near to the church porch, where +he would not be lonely when he was dead, but could hear the gossip of +the people as they went in and out of church; and on the tombstone some +such inscription as he had seen once at Pforzheim--"To the high-born +Lord Johann, Earl of Little Egypt, to whose soul God be gracious and +merciful." + +To be sure, it was a strange thing for a Romany to be buried in a +Gorgio churchyard; but it was what had chanced to many great men of the +Romanys, such as the high-born Lord Panuel at Steinbrock, and Peter of +Kleinschild at Mantua--all of whom had great emblazoned monuments +in Christian churches, just to show that in all-levelling death they +condescended from high estate to mingle their ashes with the dust of the +Gorgio. + +He had sought out his chieftain here in the new world in a spirit of +adventure, cupidity and desire. He had come like one who betrays, but he +acknowledged to a higher force than his own and to superior rights when +Gabriel Druse's strong arm brought him low; and, waking to life and +consciousness again, he was aware that another force also had levelled +him to the earth. That force was this woman's spirit which now gave him +his freedom so scornfully; who bade him begone and tell their people +everywhere that she was no longer a Romany, while she would go, no +doubt--a thousand times without doubt unless he prevented it--to the +swaggering Gorgio who had saved her on the Sagalac. + +She stood waiting for him to go, as though he could not refuse his +freedom. As a bone is tossed to a dog, she gave it to him. + +"You have no right to set me free," he said coolly now. "I am not your +prisoner. You tell me to take that word to the Romany people--that you +leave them for ever. I will not do it. You are a Romany, and a Romany +you must stay. You belong nowhere else. If you married a Gorgio, you +would still sigh for the camp beneath the stars, for the tambourine and +the dance--" + +"And the fortune-telling," she interjected sharply, "and the snail-soup, +and the dirty blanket under the hedge, and the constable on the road +behind, always just behind, watching, waiting, and--" + +"The hedge is as clean as the dirty houses where the low-class Gorgios +sleep. In faith, you are a long way from the River Starzke!" he added. +"But you are my mad wife, and I must wait till you've got sense again." + +He sat down on the plank couch, and began to roll a cigarette once more. + +"You come fitted out like a Gorgio lass now, and you look like a +Gorgio countess, and you have the manners of an Archduchess; but that's +nothing; it will peel off like a blister when it's pricked. Underneath +is the Romany. It's there, and it will show red and angry when we've +stripped off the Gorgio. It's the way with a woman, always acting, +always imagining herself something else than what she is--if she's a +beggar fancying herself a princess; if she's a princess fancying herself +a flower-girl. 'Mi Duvel', but I know you all!" + +Every word he said went home. She knew that there was truth in what +he said, and that beneath all was the Romany blood; but she meant to +conquer it. She had made her vow to one in England that she loved, and +she would not change. Whatever happened, she had finished with Romany +life, and to go back would only mean black tragedy in the end. A month +ago it was a vow and an inner desire which made her determined; to-day +it was the vow and a man--a Gorgio whom she had but now left in the +woods, gazing after her with the look which a woman so well interprets. + +"You mean you won't go free from here? Because I was a Romany, and wish +you no harm, I have come here to-day to let you go where you will--to go +back to the place where the patrins show where your people travel. I set +you free, and you say what you think will hurt and shame me. You have +a cruel soul. You would torture any woman till she died. You shall not +torture me. You are as far from me as the River Starzke. I could have +let you stay here for my father to deal with, but I have set you free. I +open the door for you, though you are nothing to me, and I am no more to +you than one of the women you have fooled and left to eat the vile bread +of the forsaken. You have been, you are a wolf--a wolf." + +He got to his feet again, and the blood rushed to his face, so that it +seemed almost black. A torrent of mad words gathered in his throat, but +they choked him, and in the pause his will asserted itself. He became +cool and deliberate. + +"You are right, my girl, I have sucked the orange and thrown the skin +away, and I've picked flowers and cast them by, but that was before the +first day I saw you as you now are. You were standing by the Sagalac +looking out to the west where the pack-trains were travelling into the +sun over the mountains, and you had your hand on the neck of your pony. +I was not ten feet away from you, behind a juniper-bush. I looked at +you, and I wished that I had never seen a woman before and could look at +the world as you did then--it was like water from a spring, that look. +You are right in what you say. By long and by last I had a hard hand, +and when I left what I'd struck down I never looked back. But I saw you, +and I wished I had never seen a woman before. You have been here alone +with me with that door shut. Have I said or done anything that a Gorgio +duke wouldn't do? Ah, God's love, but you were bold to come! I married +you by the River Starzke; I looked upon you as my wife; and here you +were alone with me! I had my rights, and I had been trampled underfoot +by your father--" + +"By your Chief." + +"'Ay bor', by my Chief! I had my wrongs, and I had my rights, and you +were mine by Romany law. It was for me here to claim you--here where a +Romany and his wife were alone together!" + +His eyes were fixed searchingly on hers, as though he would read the +effect of his words before he replied, and his voice had a curious, +rough note, as though with difficulty he quelled the tempest within him. +"I have my rights, and you had spat upon me," he said with ferocious +softness. + +She did not blench, but looked him steadily in the eyes. + +"I knew what would be in your mind," she answered, "but that did not +keep me from coming. You would not bite the hand that set you free." + +"You called me a wolf a minute ago." + +"But a wolf would not bite the hand that freed it from the trap. Yet if +such shame could be, I still would have had no fear, for I should have +shot you as wolves are shot that come too near the fold." + +He looked at her piercingly, and the pupils of his eyes narrowed to a +pin-point. "You would have shot me--you are armed?" he questioned. + +"Am I the only woman that has armed herself against you and such as you? +Do you not see?" + +"Mi Duvel, but I do see now with a thousand eyes!" he said hoarsely. + +His senses were reeling. Down beneath everything had been the thought +that, as he had prevailed with other women, he could prevail with her; +that she would come to him in the end. He had felt, but he had declined +to see, the significance of her bearing, of her dress, of her speech, +of her present mode of life, of its comparative luxury, its social +distinction of a kind which lifted her above even the Gorgios by whom +she was surrounded. A fatuous belief in himself and in his personal +powers had deluded him. He had told the truth when he said that no woman +had ever appealed to him as she did; that she had blotted out all other +women from the book of his adventurous and dissolute life; and he had +dreamed a dream of conquest of her when Fortune should hand out to him +the key of the situation. Did not the beautiful Russian countess on the +Volga flee from her liege lord and share his 'tan'? When he played +his fiddle to the Austrian princess, did she not give him a key to +the garden where she walked of an evening? And this was a Romany lass, +daughter of his Chieftain, as he was son of a great Romany chief; and +what marvel could there be that she who had been made his child wife, +should be conquered as others had been! + +"'Mi Duvel', but I see!" he repeated in a husky fierceness. "I am your +husband, but you would have killed me if I had taken a kiss from your +lips, sealed to me by all our tribes and by your father and mine." + +"My lips are my own, my life is my own, and when I marry, I shall marry +a man of my own choosing, and he will not be a Romany," she replied with +a look of resolution which her beating heart belied. "I'm not a pedlar's +basket." + +"'Kek! Kek'! That's plain," he retorted. "But the 'wolf' is no lamb +either! I said I would not go till your father set me free, since you +had no right to do so, but a wife should save her husband, and her +husband should set himself free for his wife's sake"--his voice rose in +fierce irony--"and so I will now go free. But I will not take the word +to the Romany people that you are no more of them. I am a true Romany. I +disobeyed my 'Ry' in coming here because my wife was here, and I wanted +her. I am a true Romany husband who will not betray his wife to her +people; but I will have my way, and no Gorgio shall take her to his +home. She belongs to my tent, and I will take her there." + +Her gesture of contempt, anger and negation infuriated him. "If I do +not take you to my 'tan', it will be because I'm dead," he said, and his +white teeth showed fiercely. + +"I have set you free. You had better go," she rejoined quietly. + +Suddenly he turned at the doorway. A look of passion burned in his eyes. +His voice became soft and persuasive. "I would put the past behind me, +and be true to you, my girl," he said. "I shall be chief over all the +Romany people when Duke Gabriel dies. We are sib; give me what is mine. +I am yours--and I hold to my troth. Come, beloved, let us go together." + +A sigh broke from her lips, for she saw that, bad as he was, there was +a moment's truth in his words. "Go while you can," she said. "You are +nothing to me." + +For an instant he hesitated, then, with a muttered oath, sprang out into +the bracken, and was presently lost among the trees. + +For a long time she sat in the doorway, and again and again her eyes +filled with tears. She felt a cloud of trouble closing in upon her. At +last there was the sound of footsteps, and a moment later Gabriel Druse +came through the trees towards her. His eyes were sullen and brooding. + +"You have set him free?" he asked. + +She nodded. "It was madness keeping him here," she said. + +"It is madness letting him go," he answered morosely. "He will do harm. +'Ay bor', he will! I might have known--women are chicken-hearted. I +ought to have put him out of the way, but I have no heart any more--no +heart; I have the soul of a rabbit." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. THE SULTAN + +Ingolby's square head jerked forwards in stern inquiry and his eyes +fastened those of Jowett, the horsedealer. "Take care what you're +saying, Jowett," he said. "It's a penitentiary job, if it can be proved. +Are you sure you got it right?" + +Jowett had unusual shrewdness, some vanity and a humorous tongue. He +was a favourite in both towns, and had had the better of both in +horse-dealing a score of times. + +That did not make him less popular. However, it was said he liked low +company, and it was true that though he had "money in the bank," and +owned a corner lot or so, he seemed to care little what his company was. +His most constant companion was Fabian Osterhaut, who was the common +property of both towns, doing a little of everything for a living, from +bill-posting to the solicitation of an insurance agent. + +For any casual work connected with public functions Osterhaut was +indispensable, and he would serve as a doctor's assistant and help cut +off a leg, be the majordomo for a Sunday-school picnic, or arrange a +soiree at a meeting-house with equal impartiality. He had been known to +attend a temperance meeting and a wake in the same evening. Yet no one +ever questioned his bona fides, and if he had attended mass at Manitou +in the morning, joined a heathen dance in Tekewani's Reserve in the +afternoon, and listened to the oleaginous Rev. Reuben Tripple in the +evening, it would have been taken as a matter of course. + +He was at times profane and impecunious, and he had been shifted from +one boarding-house to another till at last, having exhausted credit in +Lebanon, he had found a room in the house of old Madame Thibadeau in +Manitou. She had taken him in because, in years gone by, he had nursed +her only son through an attack of smallpox on the Siwash River, and +somehow Osterhaut had always paid his bills to her. He was curiously +exact where she was concerned. If he had not enough for his week's board +and lodging, he borrowed it, chiefly of Jowett, who used him profitably +at times to pass the word about a horse, or bring news of a possible +deal. + +"It's a penitentiary job, Jowett," Ingolby repeated. "I didn't think +Marchand would be so mad as that." + +"Say, it's all straight enough, Chief," answered Jowett, sucking his +unlighted cigar. "Osterhaut got wind of it--he's staying at old Mother +Thibadeau's, as you know. He moves round a lot, and he put me on to +it. I took on the job at once. I got in with the French toughs over at +Manitou, at Barbazon's Tavern, and I gave them gin--we made it a gin +night. It struck their fancy--gin, all gin! 'Course there's nothing in +gin different from any other spirit; but it fixed their minds, and took +away suspicion. + +"I got drunk--oh, yes, of course, blind drunk, didn't I? Kissed me, +half a dozen of the Quebec boys did--said I was 'bully boy' and +'hell-fellow'; said I was 'bon enfant'; and I said likewise in my best +patois. They liked that. I've got a pretty good stock of monkey-French, +and I let it go. They laughed till they cried at some of my mistakes, +but they weren't no mistakes, not on your life. It was all done +a-purpose. They said I was the only man from Lebanon they wouldn't have +cut up and boiled, and they was going to have the blood of the Lebanon +lot before they'd done. I pretended to get mad, and I talked wild. I +said that Lebanon would get them first, that Lebanon wouldn't +wait, but'd have it out; and I took off my coat and staggered +about--blind-fair blind boozy. I tripped over some fool's foot +purposely, just beside a bench against the wall, and I come down on that +bench hard. They laughed--Lord, how they laughed! They didn't mind my +givin' 'em fits--all except one or two. That was what I expected. The +one or two was mad. They begun raging towards me, but there I was asleep +on the bench-stony blind, and then they only spit fire a bit. Some one +threw my coat over me. I hadn't any cash in the pockets, not much--I +knew better than that--and I snored like a sow. Then it happened what I +thought would happen. They talked. And here it is. They're going to have +a strike in the mills, and you're to get a toss into the river. That's +to be on Friday. But the other thing--well, they all cleared away but +two. They were the two that wanted to have it out with me. They stayed +behind. There was I snoring like a locomotive, but my ears open all +right. + +"Well, they give the thing away. One of 'em had just come from Felix +Marchand and he was full of it. What was it? Why, the second night of +the strike your new bridge over the river was to be blown up. Marchand +was to give these two toughs three hundred dollars each for doing it." + +"Blown up with what?" Ingolby asked sharply. + +"Dynamite." + +"Where would they get it?" + +"Some left from blasting below the mills." + +"All right! Go on." + +"There wasn't much more. Old Barbazon, the landlord, come in and they +quit talking about it; but they said enough to send 'em to gaol for ten +years." + +Ingolby blinked at Jowett reflectively, and his mouth gave a twist that +lent to his face an almost droll look. + +"What good would it do if they got ten years--or one year, if the bridge +was blown up? If they got skinned alive, and if Marchand was handed over +to a barnful of hungry rats to be gnawed to death, it wouldn't help. +I've heard and seen a lot of hellish things, but there's nothing to +equal that. To blow up the bridge--for what? To spite Lebanon, and +to hurt me; to knock the spokes out of my wheel. He's the dregs, is +Marchand." + +"I guess he's a shyster by nature, that fellow," interposed Jowett. "He +was boilin' hot when he was fifteen. He spoiled a girl I knew when he +was twenty-two, not fourteen she was--Lil Sarnia; and he got her away +before--well, he got her away East; and she's in a dive in Winnipeg +now. As nice a girl--as nice a little girl she was, and could ride any +broncho that ever bucked. What she saw in him--but there, she was only a +child, just the mind of a child she had, and didn't understand. He'd ha' +been tarred and feathered if it'd been known. But old Mick Sarnia said +hush, for his wife's sake, and so we hushed, and Sarnia's wife doesn't +know even now. I thought a lot of Lil, as much almost as if she'd been +my own; and lots o' times, when I think of it, I sit up straight, and +the thing freezes me; and I want to get Marchand by the scruff of the +neck. I got a horse, the worst that ever was--so bad I haven't had the +heart to ride him or sell him. He's so bad he makes me laugh. There's +nothing he won't do, from biting to bolting. Well, I'd like to tie Mr. +Felix Marchand, Esquire, to his back, and let him loose on the prairie, +and pray the Lord to save him if he thought fit. I fancy I know what the +Lord would do. And Lil Sarnia's only one. Since he come back from +the States, he's the limit, oh, the damnedest limit. He's a pest all +round-and now, this!" + +Ingolby kept blinking reflectively as Jowett talked. He was doing two +things at once with a facility quite his own. He was understanding all +Jowett was saying, but he was also weighing the whole situation. His +mind was gone fishing, figuratively speaking. He was essentially a man +of action, but his action was the bullet of his mind; he had to be quiet +physically when he was really thinking. Then he was as one in a dream +where all physical motion was mechanical, and his body was acting +automatically. His concentration, and therefore his abstraction, was +phenomenal. Jowett's reminiscences at a time so critical did not disturb +him--did not, indeed, seem to be irrelevant. It was as though Felix +Marchand was being passed in review before him in a series of aspects. +He nodded encouragement to Jowett to go on. + +"It's because Marchand hates you, Chief. The bump he got when you +dropped him on the ground that day at Carillon hurts still. It's a +chronic inflammation. Closing them railway offices at Manitou, and +dislodging the officials give him his first good chance. The feud +between the towns is worse now than it's ever been. Make no mistake. +There's a whole lot of toughs in Manitou. Then there's religion, +and there's race, and there's a want-to-stand-still and +leave-me-alone-feeling. They don't want to get on. They don't want +progress. They want to throw the slops out of the top windows into the +street; they want their cesspools at the front door; they think that +everybody's got to have smallpox some time or another, and the sooner +they have it the better; they want to be bribed; and they think that if +a vote's worth having it's worth paying for--and yet there's a bridge +between these two towns! A bridge--why, they're as far apart as the +Yukon and Patagonia." + +"What'd buy Felix Marchand?" Ingolby asked meditatively. "What's his +price?" + +Jowett shifted with impatience. "Say, Chief, I don't know what you're +thinking about. Do you think you could make a deal with Felix Marchand? +Not much. You've got the cinch on him. You could send him to quod, and +I'd send him there as quick as lightning. I'd hang him, if I could, for +what he done to Lil Sarnia. Years ago when he was a boy he offered me +a gold watch for a mare I had. The watch looked as right as could +be--solid fourteen-carat, he said it was. He got my horse, and I got his +watch. It wasn't any more gold than he was. It was filled--just plated +with nine-carat gold. It was worth about ten dollars." + +"What was the mare worth?" asked Ingolby, his mouth twisting again with +quizzical meaning. + +"That mare--she was all right." + +"Yes, but what was the matter with her?" + +"Oh, a spavin--she was all right when she got wound up--go like Dexter +or Maud S." + +"But if you were buying her what would you have paid for her, Jowett? +Come now, man to man, as they say. How much did you pay for her?" + +"About what she was worth, Chief, within a dollar or two." + +"And what was she worth?" + +"What I paid for her-ten dollars." + +Then the two men looked at each other full in the eyes, and Jowett threw +back his head and laughed outright--laughed loud and hard. "Well, you +got me, Chief, right under the guard," he observed. + +Ingolby did not laugh outright, but there was a bubble of humour in his +eyes. "What happened to the watch?" he asked. + +"I got rid of it." + +"In a horse-trade?" + +"No, I got a town lot with it." + +"In Lebanon?" + +"Well, sort of in Lebanon's back-yard." + +"What's the lot worth now?" + +"About two thousand dollars!" + +"Was it your first town lot?" + +"The first lot of Mother Earth I ever owned." + +"Then you got a vote on it?" + +"Yes, my first vote." + +"And the vote let you be a town-councillor?" + +"It and my good looks." + +"Indirectly, therefore, you are a landowner, a citizen, a public +servant, and an instrument of progress because of Felix Marchand. If you +hadn't had the watch you wouldn't have had that town lot." + +"Well, mebbe, not that lot." + +Suddenly Ingolby got to his feet and squared himself, and his face +became alight with purpose. His mind had come back from fishing, and he +was ready now for action. His plans were formed. He was in for a fight, +and he had made up his mind how, with the new information to his hand, +he would develop his campaign further. + +"You didn't make a fuss about the watch, Jowett. You might have gone to +Felix Marchand or to his father and proved him a liar, and got even that +way. You didn't; you got a corner lot with it. That's what I'm going to +do. I can have Felix Marchand put in the jug, and make his old father, +Hector Marchand, sick; but I like old Hector Marchand, and I think +he's bred as bad a pup as ever was. I'm going to try and do with this +business as you did with that watch. I'm going to try and turn it to +account and profit in the end. Felix Marchand's profiting by a mistake +of mine--a mistake in policy. It gives him his springboard; and there's +enough dry grass in both towns to get a big blaze with a very little +match. I know that things are seething. The Chief Constable keeps me +posted as to what's going on here, and pretty fairly as to what's going +on in Manitou. The police in Manitou are straight enough. That's +one comfort. I've done Felix Marchand there. I guess that the Chief +Constable of Manitou and Monseigneur Lourde and old Mother Thibadeau are +about the only people that Marchand can't bribe. I see I've got to face +a scrimmage before I can get what I want." + +"What you want you'll have, I bet," was the admiring response. + +"I'm going to have a good try. I want these two towns to be one. That'll +be good for your town lots, Jowett," he added whimsically. "If my policy +is carried out, my town lot'll be worth a pocketful of gold-plated +watches or a stud of spavined mares." He chuckled to himself, and his +fingers reached towards a bell on the table, but he paused. "When was it +they said the strike would begin?" he asked. + +"Friday." + +"Did they say what hour?" + +"Eleven in the morning." + +"Third of a day's work and a whole day's pay," he mused. "Jowett," he +added, "I want you to have faith. I'm going to do Marchand, and I'm +going to do him in a way that'll be best in the end. You can help as +much if not more than anybody--you and Osterhaut. And if I succeed, +it'll be worth your while." + +"I ain't followin' you because it's worth while, but because I want to, +Chief." + +"I know; but a man--every man--likes the counters for the game." He +turned to the table, opened a drawer, and took out a folded paper. +He looked it through carefully, wrote a name on it, and handed it to +Jowett. + +"There's a hundred shares in the Northwest Railway, with my regards, +Jowett. Some of the counters of the game." + +Jowett handed it back at once with a shake of the head. "I don't live in +Manitou," he said. "I'm almost white, Chief. I've never made a deal with +you, and don't want to. I'm your man for the fun of it, and because I'd +give my life to have your head on my shoulders for one year." + +"I'd feel better if you'd take the shares, Jowett. You've helped me, and +I can't let you do it for nothing." + +"Then I can't do it at all. I'm discharged." Suddenly, however, a +humorous, eager look shot into Jowett's face. "Will you toss for it?" he +blurted out. "Certainly, if you like," was the reply. + +"Heads I win, tails it's yours?" + +"Good." + +Ingolby took a silver dollar from his pocket, and tossed. It came down +tails. Ingolby had won. + +"My corner lot against double the shares?" Jowett asked sharply, his +face flushed with eager pleasure. He was a born gambler. + +"As you like," answered Ingolby with a smile. Ingolby tossed, and they +stooped over to look at the dollar on the floor. It had come up heads. +"You win," said Ingolby, and turning to the table, took out another +hundred shares. In a moment they were handed over. + +"You're a wonder, Jowett," he said. "You risked a lot of money. Are you +satisfied?" + +"You bet, Chief. I come by these shares honestly now." + +He picked up the silver dollar from the floor, and was about to put it +in his pocket. + +"Wait--that's my dollar," said Ingolby. + +"By gracious, so it is!" said Jowett, and handed it over reluctantly. + +Ingolby pocketed it with satisfaction. + +Neither dwelt on the humour of the situation. They were only concerned +for the rules of the game, and both were gamesters in their way. + +After a few brief instructions to Jowett, and a message for Osterhaut +concerning a suit of workman's clothes, Ingolby left his offices and +walked down the main street of the town with his normal rapidity, +responding cheerfully to the passers-by, but not encouraging evident +desire for talk with him. Men half-started forward to him, but he held +them back with a restraining eye. They knew his ways. He was responsive +in a brusque, inquisitive, but good-humoured and sometimes very droll +way; but there were times when men said to themselves that he was to be +left alone; and he was so much master of the place that, as Osterhaut +and Jowett frequently remarked, "What he says goes!" It went even with +those whom he had passed in the race of power. + +He had had his struggles to be understood in his first days in Lebanon. +He had fought intrigue and even treachery, had defeated groups which +were the forces at work before he came to Lebanon, and had compelled the +submission of others. All these had vowed to "get back at him," but when +it became a question of Lebanon against Manitou they swung over to his +side and acknowledged him as leader. The physical collision between the +rougher elements of the two towns had brought matters to a head, and +nearly every man in Lebanon felt that his honour was at stake, and was +ready "to have it out with Manitou." + +As he walked along the main street after his interview with Jowett, +his eyes wandered over the buildings rising everywhere; and his mind +reviewed as in a picture the same thinly inhabited street five years ago +when he first came. Now farmers' wagons clacked and rumbled through the +prairie dust, small herds of cattle jerked and shuffled their way to +the slaughter-yard, or out to the open prairie, and caravans of settlers +with their effects moved sturdily forward to the trails which led to a +new life beckoning from three points of the compass. That point which +did not beckon was behind them. Flaxen-haired Swedes and Norwegians; +square-jawed, round-headed North Germans; square-shouldered, +loose-jointed Russians with heavy contemplative eyes and long hair, +looked curiously at each other and nodded understandingly. Jostling them +all, with a jeer and an oblique joke here and there, and crude chaff on +each other and everybody, the settler from the United States asserted +himself. He invariably obtruded himself, with quizzical inquiry, half +contempt and half respect, on the young Englishman, who gazed round with +phlegm upon his fellow adventurers, and made up to the sandy-faced +Scot or the cheerful Irishman with his hat on the back of his head, who +showed in the throng here and there. This was one of the days when the +emigrant and settlers' trains arrived both from the East and from "the +States," and Front Street in Lebanon had, from early morning, been alive +with the children of hope and adventure. + +With hands plunged deep in the capacious pockets of his grey jacket, +Ingolby walked on, seeing everything; yet with his mind occupied +intently, too, on the trouble which must be faced before Lebanon and +Manitou would be the reciprocating engines of his policy. Coming to a +spot where a great gap of vacant land showed in the street-land which +he had bought for the new offices of his railway combine--he stood +and looked at it abstractedly. Beyond it, a few blocks away, was the +Sagalac, and beyond the Sagalac was Manitou, and a little way to the +right was the bridge which was the symbol of his policy. His eyes gazed +almost unconsciously on the people and the horses and wagons coming and +going upon the bridge. Then they were lifted to the tall chimneys rising +at two or three points on the outskirts of Manitou. + +"They don't know a good thing when they get it," he said to himself. "A +strike--why, wages are double what they are in Quebec, where most of 'em +come from! Marchand--" + +A hand touched his arm. "Have you got a minute to spare, kind sir?" a +voice asked. + +Ingolby turned and saw Nathan Rockwell, the doctor. "Ah, Rockwell," he +responded cheerfully, "two minutes and a half, if you like! What is it?" + +The Boss Doctor, as he was familiarly called by every one, to identify +him from the newer importations of medical men, drew from his pocket a +newspaper. + +"There's an infernal lie here about me," he replied. "They say that I--" + +He proceeded to explain the misstatement, as Ingolby studied the paper +carefully, for Rockwell was a man worth any amount of friendship. + +"It's a lie, of course," Ingolby said firmly as he finished the +paragraph. "Well?" + +"Well, I've got to deal with it." + +"You mean you're going to deny it in the papers?" + +"Exactly." + +"I wouldn't, Rockwell." + +"You wouldn't?" + +"No. You never can really overtake a newspaper lie. Lots of the people +who read the lie don't see the denial. Your truth doesn't overtake the +lie--it's a scarlet runner." + +"I don't see that. When you're lied about, when a lie like that--" + +"You can't overtake it, Boss. It's no use. It's sensational, it runs too +fast. Truth's slow-footed. When a newspaper tells a lie about you, don't +try to overtake it, tell another." + +He blinked with quizzical good-humour. Rockwell could not resist the +audacity. "I don't believe you'd do it just the same," he retorted +decisively, and laughing. + +"I don't try the overtaking anyhow; I get something spectacular in my +own favour to counteract the newspaper lie." + +"In what way?" + +"For instance, if they said I couldn't ride a moke at a village +steeplechase, I'd at once publish the fact that, with a jack-knife, I'd +killed two pumas that were after me. Both things would be lies, but the +one would neutralize the other. If I said I could ride a moke, nobody +would see it, and if it were seen it wouldn't make any impression; but +to say I killed two mountain-lions with a jack-knife on the edge of a +precipice, with the sun standing still to look at it, is as good as the +original lie and better; and I score. My reputation increases." + +Nathan Rockwell's equilibrium was restored. "You're certainly a wonder," +he declared. "That's why you've succeeded." + +"Have I succeeded?" + +"Thirty-three-and what you are!" + +"What am I?" + +"Pretty well master here." + +"Rockwell, that'd do me a lot of harm if it was published. Don't say +it again. This is a democratic country. They'd kick at my being called +master of anything, and I'd have to tell a lie to counteract it." + +"But it's the truth, and it hasn't to be overtaken." + +A grim look came into Ingolby's face. "I'd like to be master-boss of +life and death, holder of the sword and balances, the Sultan, here just +for one week. I'd change some things. I'd gag some people that are doing +terrible harm. It's a real bad business. The scratch-your-face period is +over, and we're in the cut-your-throat epoch." + +Rockwell nodded assent, opened the paper again, and pointed to a column. +"I expect you haven't seen that. To my mind, in the present state of +things, it's dynamite." + +Ingolby read the column hastily. It was the report of a sermon delivered +the evening before by the Rev. Reuben Tripple, the evangelical minister +of Lebanon. It was a paean of the Scriptures accompanied by a crazy +charge that the Roman Church forbade the reading of the Bible. It had a +tirade also about the Scarlet Woman and Popish idolatry. + +Ingolby made a savage gesture. "The insatiable Christian beast!" he +growled in anger. "There's no telling what this may do. You know what +those fellows are over in Manitou. The place is full of them going to +the woods, besides the toughs at the mills and in the taverns. They're +not psalm-singing, and they don't keep the Ten Commandments, but they're +savagely fanatical, and--" + +"And there's the funeral of an Orangeman tomorrow. The Orange Lodge +attends in regalia." + +Ingolby started and looked at the paper again. "The sneaking, praying +liar," he said, his jaw setting grimly. "This thing's a call to riot. +There's an element in Lebanon as well that'd rather fight than eat. It's +the kind of lie that--" + +"That you can't overtake," said the Boss Doctor appositely; "and I +don't know that even you can tell another that'll neutralize it. Your +prescription won't work here." + +An acknowledging smile played at Ingolby's mouth. "We've got to have a +try. We've got to draw off the bull with a red rag somehow." + +"I don't see how myself. That Orange funeral will bring a row on to us. +I can just see the toughs at Manitou when they read this stuff, and know +about that funeral." + +"It's announced?" + +"Yes, here's an invitation in the Budget to Orangemen to attend the +funeral of a brother sometime of the banks of the Boyne!" + +"Who's the Master of the Lodge?" asked Ingolby. Rockwell told him, +urging at the same time that he see the Chief Constable as well, and +Monseigneur Lourde at Manitou. + +"That's exactly what I mean to do--with a number of other things. +Between ourselves, Rockwell, I'd have plenty of lint and bandages ready +for emergencies if I were you." + +"I'll see to it. That collision the other day was serious enough, +and it's gradually becoming a vendetta. Last night one of the Lebanon +champions lost his nose." + +"His nose--how?" + +"A French river-driver bit a third of it off." + +Ingolby made a gesture of disgust. "And this is the twentieth century!" + +They had moved along the street until they reached a barber-shop, from +which proceeded the sound of a violin. "I'm going in here," Ingolby +said. "I've got some business with Berry, the barber. You'll keep me +posted as to anything important?" + +"You don't need to say it. Shall I see the Master of the Orange Lodge +or the Chief Constable for you?" Ingolby thought for a minute. "No, I'll +tackle them myself, but you get in touch with Monseigneur Lourde. He's +grasped the situation, and though he'd like to have Tripple boiled in +oil, he doesn't want broken heads and bloodshed." + +"And Tripple?" + +"I'll deal with him at once. I've got a hold on him. I never wanted +to use it, but I will now without compunction. I have the means in my +pocket. They've been there for three days, waiting for the chance." + +"It doesn't look like war, does it?" said Rockwell, looking up the +street and out towards the prairie where the day bloomed like a flower. +Blue above--a deep, joyous blue, against which a white cloud rested or +slowly travelled westward; a sky down whose vast cerulean bowl flocks of +wild geese sailed, white and grey and black, while the woods across the +Sagalac were glowing with a hundred colours, giving tender magnificence +to the scene. The busy eagerness of a pioneer life was still a quiet, +orderly thing, so immense was the theatre for effort and movement. In +these wide streets, almost as wide as a London square, there was room +to move; nothing seemed huddled, pushing, or inconvenient. Even +the disorder of building lost its ugly crudity in the space and the +sunlight. + +"The only time I get frightened in life is when things look like that," +Ingolby answered. "I go round with a life-preserver on me when it seems +as if 'all's right with the world.'" + +The violin inside the barber-shop kept scraping out its cheap music--a +coon-song of the day. + +"Old Berry hasn't much business this morning," remarked Rockwell. "He's +in keeping with this surface peace." + +"Old Berry never misses anything. What we're thinking, he's thinking. +I go fishing when I'm in trouble; Berry plays his fiddle. He's a +philosopher and a friend." + +"You don't make friends as other people do." + +"I make friends of all kinds. I don't know why, but I've always had a +kind of kinship with the roughs, the no-accounts, and the rogues." + +"As well as the others--I hope I don't intrude!" + +Ingolby laughed. "You? Oh, I wish all the others were like you. It's the +highly respectable members of the community I've always had to watch." + +The fiddle-song came squeaking out upon the sunny atmosphere. It +arrested the attention of a man on the other side of the street--a +stranger in strange Lebanon. He wore a suit of Western clothes as a +military man wears mufti, if not awkwardly, yet with a manner not wholly +natural--the coat too tight across the chest, too short in the body. +However, the man was handsome and unusual in his leopard way, with his +brown curling hair and well-cared-for moustache. It was Jethro Fawe. + +Attracted by the sound of the violin, he stayed his steps and smiled +scornfully. Then his look fell on the two figures at the door of the +barber-shop, and his eyes flashed. + +Here was the man he wished to see--Max Ingolby, the man who stood +between him and his Romany lass. Here was a chance of speaking face to +face with the man who was robbing him. What he should do when they met +must be according to circumstances. That did not matter. There was the +impulse storming in his brain, and it drove him across the street as +the Boss Doctor walked away, and Ingolby entered the shop. All Jethro +realized was that the man who stood in his way, the big, rich, masterful +Gorgio was there. + +He entered the shop after Ingolby, and stood for an instant unseen. The +old negro barber with his curly white head, slave-black face, and large, +shrewd, meditative eyes was standing in a corner with a violin under his +chin, his cheek lovingly resting against it, as he drew his bow through +the last bars of the melody. He had smiled in welcome as Ingolby +entered, instantly rising from his stool, but continuing to play. He +would not have stopped in the middle of a tune for an emperor, and he +put Ingolby higher than an emperor. For one who had been born a slave, +and had still the scars of the overseer's whip on his back, he was very +independent. He cut everybody's hair as he wanted to cut it, trimmed +each beard as he wished to trim it, regardless of its owner's wishes. If +there was dissent, then his customer need not come again, that was all. +There were other barbers in the place, but Berry was the master barber. +To have your head massaged by him was never to be forgotten, especially +if you found your hat too small for your head in the morning. Also he +singed the hair with a skill and care, which had filled many a thinly +covered scalp with luxuriant growth, and his hair-tonic, known as +"Smilax," gave a pleasant odour to every meeting-house or church or +public hall where the people gathered. Berry was an institution even in +this new Western town. He kept his place and he forced the white man, +whoever he was, to keep his place. + +When he saw Jethro Fawe enter the shop he did not stop playing, but his +eyes searched the newcomer. Following his glance, Ingolby turned round +and saw the Romany. His first impression was one of admiration, but +suspicion was quickly added. He was a good judge of men, and there +was something secluded about the man which repelled him. Yet he was +interested. The dark face had a striking racial peculiarity. + +The music died away, and old Berry lowered the fiddle from his chin and +gave his attention to the Romany. + +"Yeth-'ir?" he said questioningly. + +For an instant Jethro was confused. When he entered the shop he had not +made up his mind what he should do. It had been mere impulse and the +fever of his brain. As old Berry spoke, however, his course opened out. + +"I heard. I am a stranger. My fiddle is not here. My fingers itch for +the cat-gut. Eh?" + +The look in old Berry's face softened a little. His instinct had been +against his visitor, and he had been prepared to send him to another +shop-besides, not every day could he talk to the greatest man in the +West. + +"If you can play, there it is," he said after a slight pause, and handed +the fiddle over. + +It was true that Jethro Fawe loved the fiddle. He had played it in +many lands. Twice, in order to get inside the palace of a monarch for +a purpose--once in Berlin and once in London--he had played the second +violin in a Tzigany orchestra. He turned the fiddle slowly round, +looking at it with mechanical intentness. Through the passion of emotion +the sure sense of the musician was burning. His fingers smoothed the +oval brown breast of the instrument with affection. His eyes found joy +in the colour of the wood, which had all the graded, merging tints of +Autumn leaves. + +"It is old--and strange," he said, his eyes going from Berry to Ingolby +and back again with a veiled look, as though he had drawn down blinds +before his inmost thoughts. "It was not made by a professional." + +"It was made in the cotton-field by a slave," observed old Berry +sharply, yet with a content which overrode antipathy to his visitor. + +Jethro put the fiddle to his chin, and drew the bow twice or thrice +sweepingly across the strings. Such a sound had never come from Berry's +violin before. It was the touch of a born musician who certainly had +skill, but who had infinitely more of musical passion. + +"Made by a slave in the cotton-fields!" Jethro said with a veiled look, +and as though he was thinking of something else: "'Dordi', I'd like to +meet a slave like that!" + +At the Romany exclamation Ingolby swept the man with a searching look. +He had heard the Romany wife of Ruliff Zaphe use the word many years ago +when he and Charley Long visited the big white house on the hill. Was +the man a Romany, and, if so, what was he doing here? Had it anything to +do with Gabriel Druse and his daughter? But no--what was there strange +in the man being a Romany and playing the fiddle? Here and there in the +West during the last two years, he had seen what he took to be Romany +faces. He looked to see the effect of the stranger's remark on old +Berry. + +"I was a slave, and I was like that. My father made that fiddle in the +cotton-fields of Georgia," the aged barber said. + +The son of a race which for centuries had never known country or flag +or any habitat, whose freedom was the soul of its existence, if it had +a soul; a freedom defying all the usual laws of social order--the son +of that race looked at the negro barber with something akin to awe. Here +was a man who had lived a life which was the staring antithesis of his +own, under the whip as a boy, confined to compounds; whose vision was +constricted to the limits of an estate; who was at the will of one man, +to be sold and trafficked with like a barrel of herrings, to be worked +at another's will--and at no price! This was beyond the understanding of +Jethro Fawe. But awe has the outward look of respect, and old Berry who +had his own form of vanity, saw that he had had a rare effect on the +fellow, who evidently knew all about fiddles. Certainly that was a +wonderful sound he had produced from his own cotton-field fiddle. + +In the pause Ingolby said to Jethro Fawe, "Play something, won't you? +I've got business here with Mr. Berry, but five minutes of good music +won't matter. We'd like to hear him play--wouldn't we, Berry?" + +The old man nodded assent. "There's plenty of music in the thing," he +said, "and a lot could come out in five minutes, if the right man played +it." + +His words were almost like a challenge, and it reached to Jethro's +innermost nature. He would show this Gorgio robber what a Romany could +do, and do as easily as the birds sing. The Gorgio was a money-master, +they said, but he would find that a Romany was a master, too, in his own +way. He thought of one of the first pieces he had ever heard, a rhapsody +which had grown and grown, since it was first improvised by a Tzigany in +Hungary. He had once played it to an English lady at the Amphitryon Club +in London, and she had swooned in the arms of her husband's best friend. +He had seen men and women avert their heads when he had played it, +daring not to look into each other's eyes. He would play it now--a +little of it. He would play it to her--to the girl who had set him free +in the Sagalac woods, to the ravishing deserter from her people, to the +only woman who had told him the truth in all his life, and who insulated +his magnetism as a ground-wire insulates lightning. He would summon her +here by his imagination, and tell her to note how his soul had caught +the music of the spheres. He would surround himself with an atmosphere +of his own. His rage, his love, and his malignant hate, his tenderness +and his lust should fill the barber's shop with a flood which would +drown the Gorgio raider. He laughed to himself, almost unconsciously. +Then suddenly he leaned his cheek to the instrument and drew the bow +across the strings with a savage softness. The old cottonfield fiddle +cried out with a thrilling, exquisite pain, but muffled, as a hand at +the lips turns agony into a tender moan. Some one--some spirit--in the +fiddle was calling for its own. + +Five minutes later-a five minutes in which people gathered at the +door of the shop, and heads were thrust inside in ravished wonder--the +palpitating Romany lowered the fiddle from his chin, and stood for a +minute looking into space, as though he saw a vision. + +He was roused by old Berry's voice. "Das a fiddle I wouldn't sell for +a t'ousand dollars. If I could play like dat I wouldn't sell it for ten +t'ousand. You kin play a fiddle to make it worth a lot--you." + +The Romany handed back the instrument. "It's got something inside it +that makes it better than it is. It's not a good fiddle, but it has +something--ah, man alive, it has something!" It was as though he was +talking to himself. + +Berry made a quick, eager gesture. "It's got the cotton-fields and the +slave days in it. It's got the whip and the stocks in it; it's got the +cry of the old man that'd never see his children ag'in. That's what the +fiddle's got in it." + +Suddenly, in an apparent outburst of anger, he swept down on the front +door and drove the gathering crowd away. + +"Dis is a barber-shop," he said with an angry wave of his hand; "it +ain't a circuse." + +One man protested. "I want a shave," he said. He tried to come inside, +but was driven back. + +"I ain't got a razor that'd cut the bristle off your face," the old +barber declared peremptorily; "and, if I had, it wouldn't be busy on +you. I got two customers, and that's all I'm going to take befo' I have +my dinner. So you git away. There ain't goin' to be no more music." + +The crowd drew off, for none of them cared to offend this autocrat of +the shears and razor. + +Ingolby had listened to the music with a sense of being swayed by a wind +which blew from all quarters of the compass at once. He loved music; it +acted as a clearing-house to his mind; and he played the piano himself +with the enthusiasm of a wilful amateur, who took liberties with every +piece he essayed. There was something in this fellow's playing which the +great masters, such as Paganini, must have had. As the music ceased, he +did not speak, but remained leaning against the great red-plush barber's +chair looking reflectively at the Romany. Berry, however, said to the +still absorbed musician: "Where did you learn to play?" + +The Romany started, and a flush crossed his face. "Everywhere," he +answered sullenly. + +"You've got the thing Sarasate had," Ingolby observed. "I only heard him +play but once--in London years ago: but there's the same something in +it. I bought a fiddle of Sarasate. I've got it now." + +"Here in Lebanon?" The eyes of the Romany were burning. An idea had just +come into his brain. Was it through his fiddling that he was going to +find a way to deal with this Gorgio, who had come between him and his +own? + +"Only a week ago it came," Ingolby replied. "They actually charged me +Customs duty on it. I'd seen it advertised, and I made an offer and got +it at last." + +"You have it here--at your house here?" asked old Berry in surprise. + +"It's the only place I've got. Did you think I'd put it in a museum? I +can't play it, but there it is for any one that can play. How would you +like to try it?" he added to Jethro in a friendly tone. "I'd give a good +deal to see it under your chin for an hour. Anyhow, I'd like to show it +to you. Will you come?" + +It was like him to bring matters to a head so quickly. + +The Romany's eyes glistened. "To play the Sarasate alone to you?" he +asked. + +"That's it-at nine o'clock to-night, if you can." + +"I will come--yes, I will come," Jethro answered, the lids drooping over +his eyes in which were the shadows of the first murder of the created +world. + +"Here is my address, then." Ingolby wrote something on his +visiting-card. "My man'll let you in, if you show that. Well, good-bye." + +The Romany took the card, and turned to leave. He had been dismissed by +the swaggering Gorgio, as though he was a servant, and he had not even +been asked his name, of so little account was he! He could come and play +on the Sarasate to the masterful Gorgio at the hour which the masterful +Gorgio fixed--think of that! He could be--a servant to the pleasure +of the man who was stealing from him the wife sealed to him in the +Roumelian country. But perhaps it was all for the best--yes, he would +make it all for the best! As he left the shop, however, and passed down +the street his mind remained in the barber-shop. He saw in imagination +the masterful Gorgio in the red-plush chair, and the negro barber +bending over him, with black fingers holding the Gorgio's chin, and +an open razor in the right hand lightly grasped. A flash of malicious +desire came into his eyes as the vision shaped itself in his +imagination, and he saw himself, instead of the negro barber, holding +the Gorgio chin and looking down at the Gorgio throat with the razor, +not lightly, but firmly grasped in his right hand. How was it that more +throats were not cut in that way? How was it that while the scissors +passed through the beard of a man's face the points did not suddenly +slip up and stab the light from helpless eyes? How was it that men did +not use their chances? He went lightly down the street, absorbed in +a vision which was not like the reality; but it was evidence that his +visit to Max Ingolby's house was not the visit of a virtuoso alone, but +of an evil spirit. + +As the Romany disappeared, Max Ingolby had his hand on the old +barber's shoulder. "I want one of the wigs you made for that theatrical +performance of the Mounted Police, Berry," he said. "Never mind what +it's for. I want it at once--one with the long hair of a French-Canadian +coureur-de-bois. Have you got one?" + +"Suh, I'll send it round-no, I'll bring it round as I come from dinner. +Want the clothes, too?" + +"No. I'm arranging for them with Osterhaut. I've sent word by Jowett." + +"You want me to know what it's for?" + +"You can know anything I know--almost, Berry. You're a friend of the +right sort, and I can trust you." + +"Yeth-'ir, I bin some use to you, onct or twict, I guess." + +"You'll have a chance to be of use more than ever presently." + +"Suh, there's gain' to be a bust-up, but I know who's comin' out on the +top. That Felix Marchand and his roughs can't down you. I hear and see +a lot, and there's two or three things I was goin' to put befo' you; +yeth-'ir." + +He unloaded his secret information to his friend, and was rewarded by +Ingolby suddenly shaking his hand warmly. + +"That's the line," Ingolby said decisively. "When do you go over to +Manitou again to cut old Hector Marchand's hair? Soon?" + +"To-day is his day--this evening," was the reply. + +"Good. You wanted to know what the wig and the habitant's clothes are +for, Berry--well, for me to wear in Manitou. In disguise I'm going there +tonight among them all, among the roughs and toughs. I want to find out +things for myself. I can speak French as good as most of 'em, and I can +chew tobacco and swear with the best." + +"You suhly are a wonder," said the old man admiringly. "How you fin' the +time I got no idee." + +"Everything in its place, Berry, and everything in its time. I've got a +lot to do to-day, but it's in hand, and I don't have to fuss. You'll not +forget the wig--you'll bring it round yourself?" + +"Suh. No snoopin' into the parcel then. But if you go to Manitou +to-night, how can you have that fiddler?" + +"He comes at nine o'clock. I'll go to Manitou later. Everything in its +own time." + +He was about to leave the shop when some one came bustling in. Berry was +between Ingolby and the door, and for an instant he did not see who it +was. Presently he heard an unctuous voice: "Ah, good day, good day, Mr. +Berry. I want to have my hair cut, if you please," it said. + +Ingolby smiled. The luck was with him to-day so far. The voice belonged +to the Rev. Reuben Tripple, and he would be saved a journey to the +manse. Accidental meetings were better than planned interviews. Old +Berry's grizzled beard was bristling with repugnance, and he was about +to refuse Mr. Tripple the hospitality of the shears when Ingolby said: +"You won't mind my having a word with Mr. Tripple first, will you, +Berry? May we use your back parlour?" + +A significant look from Ingolby's eyes gave Berry his cue. + +"Suh, Mr. Ingolby. I'm proud." He opened the door of another room. + +Mr. Tripple had not seen Ingolby when he entered, and he recognized him +now with a little shock of surprise. There was no reason why he should +not care to meet the Master Man, but he always had an uncanny feeling +when his eye met that of Ingolby. His apprehension had no foundation +in any knowledge, yet he had felt that Ingolby had no love for him, and +this disturbed the egregious vanity of a narrow nature. His slouching, +corpulent figure made an effort to resist the gesture with which +Ingolby drew him to the door, but his will succumbed, and he shuffled +importantly into the other room. + +Ingolby shut the door quietly behind him, and motioned the minister to a +chair beside the table. Tripple sank down, mechanically smiling, placed +his hat on the floor, and rested his hands on the table. Ingolby could +not help but notice how coarse the hands were--with fingers suddenly +ending as though they had been cut off, and puffy, yellowish skin that +suggested fat foods, or worse. + +Ingolby came to grips at once. "You preached a sermon last night which +no doubt was meant to do good, but will only do harm," he said abruptly. + +The flabby minister flushed, and then made an effort to hold his own. + +"I speak as I am moved," he said, puffing out his lips. "You spoke +on this occasion before you were moved--just a little while before," +answered Ingolby grimly. "The speaking was last night, the moving comes +today." + +"I don't get your meaning," was the thick rejoinder. The man had a +feeling that there was some real danger ahead. + +"You preached a sermon last night which might bring riot and bloodshed +between these two towns, though you knew the mess that's brewing." + +"My conscience is my own. I am responsible to my Lord for words which I +speak in His name, not to you." + +"Your conscience belongs to yourself, but your acts belong to all of +us. If there is trouble at the Orange funeral to-morrow it will be your +fault. The blame will lie at your door." + +"The sword of the Spirit--" + +"Oh, you want the sword, do you? You want the sword, eh?" Ingolby's jaw +was set now like a millstone. "Well, you can have it, and have it now. +If you had taken what I said in the right way, I would not have done +what I'm going to do. I'm going to send you out of Lebanon. You're a bad +and dangerous element here. You must go." + +"Who are you to tell me I must go?" + +The fat hands quivered on the table with anger and emotion, but also +with fear of something. "You may be a rich man and own railways, but--" + +"But I am not rich and I don't own railways. Lately bad feeling has been +growing on the Sagalac, and only a spark was needed to fire the ricks. +You struck the spark in your sermon last night. I don't see the end of +it all. One thing is sure--you're not going to take the funeral service +to-morrow." + +The slack red lips of the man of God were gone dry with excitement, the +loose body swayed with the struggle to fight it out. + +"I'll take no orders from you," the husky voice protested. "My +conscience alone will guide me. I'll speak the truth as I feel it, and +the people will stand by me." + +"In that case you WILL take orders from me. I'm going to save the town +from what hurts it, if I can. I've got no legal rights over you, but I +have moral rights, and I mean to enforce them. You gabble of conscience +and truth, but isn't it a new passion with you--conscience and truth?" + +He leaned over the table and fastened the minister's eyes with his own. +"Had you the same love of conscience and truth at Radley?" + +A whiteness passed over the flabby face, and the beady eyes took on a +glazed look. Fight suddenly died out of them. + +"You went on a missionary tour on the Ottawa River. At Radley you +toiled and rested from your toil--and feasted. The girl had no father or +brother, but her uncle was a railway-man. He heard where you were, and +he hired with my company to come out here as a foreman. He came to drop +on you. The day after he came he had a bad accident. I went to see him. +He told me all; his nerves were unstrung, you observe. He meant to ruin +you, as you ruined the girl. He had proofs enough. The girl herself is +in Winnipeg. Well, I know life, and I know man and man's follies and +temptations. I thought it a pity that a career and a life like yours +should be ruined--" + +A groan broke from the twitching lips before him, and a heavy sweat +stood out on the round, rolling forehead. + +"If the man spoke, I knew it would be all up with you, for the world +is very hard on men of God who fall. I've seen men ruined before this, +because of an hour's passion and folly. I said to myself that you were +only human, and that maybe you had paid heavy in remorse and fear. Then +there was the honour of the town of Lebanon. I couldn't let the thing +take its course. I got the doctor to tell the man that he must go for +special treatment to a hospital in Montreal, and I--well, I bought +him off on his promising to keep his mouth shut. He was a bit stiff +in terms, because he said the girl needed the money. The child died, +luckily for you. Anyhow I bought him off, and he went. That was a year +ago. I've got all the proofs in my pocket, even to the three silly +letters you wrote her when your senses were stronger than your judgment. +I was going to see you about them to-day." + +He took from his pocket a small packet, and held them before the +other's face. "Have a good look at your own handwriting, and see if you +recognize it," Ingolby continued. + +But the glazed, shocked eyes did not see. Reuben Tripple had passed the +several stages of horror during Ingolby's merciless arraignment, and he +had nearly collapsed before he heard the end of the matter. When he +knew that Ingolby had saved him, his strength gave way, and he trembled +violently. Ingolby looked round and saw a jug of water. Pouring out a +glassful, he thrust it into the fat, wrinkled fingers. + +"Drink and pull yourself together," he said sternly. The shaken figure +straightened itself, and the water was gulped down. "I thank you," he +said in a husky voice. + +"You see I treated you fairly, and that you've been a fool?" Ingolby +asked with no lessened determination. + +"I have tried to atone, and--" + +"No, you haven't had the right spirit to atone. You were fat with vanity +and self-conceit. I've watched you." + +"In future I will--" + +"Well, that rests with yourself, but your health is bad, and you're not +going to take the funeral tomorrow. You've had a sudden breakdown, and +you're going to get a call from some church in the East--as far East +as Yokohama or Bagdad, I hope; and leave here in a few weeks. You +understand? I've thought the thing out, and you've got to go. You'll do +no good to yourself or others here. Take my advice, and wherever you go, +walk six miles a day at least, work in a garden, eat half as much as +you do, and be good to your wife. It's bad enough for any woman to be a +parson's wife, but to be a parson's wife and your wife, too, wants a lot +of fortitude." + +The heavy figure lurched to the upright, and steadied itself with a +force which had not yet been apparent. + +"I'll do my best--so help me God!" he said and looked Ingolby squarely +in the face for the first time. + +"All right, see you keep your word," Ingolby replied, and nodded +good-bye. + +The other went to the door, and laid a hand on the knob. + +Suddenly Ingolby stopped him, and thrust a little bundle of bills +into his hand. "There's a hundred dollars for your wife. It'll pay the +expense of moving," he said. + +A look of wonder, revelation and gratitude crept into Tripple's face. "I +will keep my word, so help me God!" he said again. + +"All right, good-bye," responded Ingolby abruptly, and turned away. + +A moment afterwards the door closed behind the Rev. Reuben Tripple +and his influence in Lebanon. "I couldn't shake hands with him," said +Ingolby to himself, "but I'm glad he didn't sniffle. There's some stuff +in him--if it only has a chance." + +"I've done a good piece of business, Berry," he said cheerfully as he +passed through the barber-shop. "Suh, if you say so," said the barber, +and they left the shop together. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. MATTER AND MIND AND TWO MEN + +Promptly at nine o'clock Jethro Fawe knocked at Ingolby's door, and was +admitted by the mulatto man-servant Jim Beadle, who was to Ingolby like +his right hand. It was Jim who took command of his house, "bossed" +his two female servants, arranged his railway tours, superintended his +kitchen--with a view to his own individual tastes; valeted him, kept his +cigars within a certain prescribed limit by a firm actuarial principle +which transferred any surplus to his own use; gave him good advice, +weighed up his friends and his enemies with shrewd sense; and protected +him from bores and cranks, borrowers and "dead-beats." + +Jim was accustomed to take a good deal of responsibility, and had more +than once sent people to the right-about who had designs on his master, +even though they came accredited. On such occasions he did not lie +to protect himself when called to account, but told the truth +pertinaciously. He was obstinate in his vanity, and carried off his +mistakes with aplomb. When asked by Ingolby what he called the Governor +General when he took His Excellency over the new railway in Ingolby's +private car, he said, "I called him what everybody called him. I called +him 'Succelency.'" And "Succelency" for ever after the Governor General +was called in the West. Jim's phonetic mouthful gave the West a roar of +laughter and a new word to the language. On another occasion Jim gave +the West a new phrase to its vocabulary which remains to this day. +Having to take the wife of a high personage of the neighbouring Republic +over the line in the private car, he had astounded his master by +presenting a bill for finger-bowls before the journey began. Ingolby +said to him, "Jim, what the devil is this--finger-bowls in my private +car? We've never had finger-bowls before, and we've had everybody as was +anybody to travel with us." Jim's reply was final. "Say," he replied, +"we got to have 'em. Soon's I set my eyes on that lady I said: 'She's a +finger-bowl lady.'" + +"'Finger-bowl lady' be hanged, Jim, we don't--" Ingolby protested, but +Jim waved him down. + +"Say," he said decisively, "she'll ask for them finger-bowls--she'll ask +for 'em, and what'd I do if we hadn't got 'em." + +She did ask for them; and henceforth the West said of any woman who put +on airs and wanted what she wasn't born to: "She's a finger-bowl lady." + +It was Jim who opened the door to Jethro Fawe, and his first glance was +one of prejudice. His quick perception saw that the Romany wore clothes +not natural to him. He felt the artificial element, the quality of +disguise. He was prepared to turn the visitor away, no matter what he +wanted, but Ingolby's card handed to him by the Romany made him pause. +He had never known his master give a card like that more than once +or twice in the years they had been together. He fingered the +card, scrutinized it carefully, turned it over, looked heavenward +reflectively, as though the final permission for the visit remained with +him, and finally admitted the visitor. + +"Mr. Ingolby ain't in," he said. "He went out a little while back. You +got to wait," he added sulkily, as he showed the Romany into Ingolby's +working-room. + +As Jim did so, he saw lying on a chair a suit of clothes on top of which +were a wig and false beard and moustache. Instantly he got between the +visitor and the make-up. The parcel was closed when he was in the room a +half-hour before. Ingolby had opened it since, had been called out, and +had forgotten to cover the things up or put them away. + +"Sit down," Jim said to the Romany, still covering the disguise. Then +he raised them in his arms, and passed with them into another room, +muttering angrily to himself. + +The Romany had seen, however. They were the first things on which his +eyes had fallen when he entered the room. A wig, a false beard, and +workman's clothes! What were they for? Were these disguises for the +Master Gorgio? Was he to wear them? If so, he--Jethro Fawe--would +watch and follow him wherever he went. Had these disguises to do with +Fleda--with his Romany lass? + +His pulses throbbed; he was in an overwrought mood. He was ready for any +illusion, susceptible to any vagary of the imagination. + +He looked round the room. So this was the way the swaggering, masterful +Gorgio lived? + +Here were pictures and engravings which did not seem to belong to a new +town in a new land, where everything was useful or spectacular. Here +was a sense of culture and refinement. Here were finished and unfinished +water-colours done by Ingolby's own hand or bought by him from some +hard-up artist earning his way mile by mile, as it were. Here were +books, not many, but well-bound and important-looking, covering fields +in which Jethro Fawe had never browsed, into which, indeed, he had +never entered. If he had opened them he would have seen a profusion of +marginal notes in pencil, and slips of paper stuck in the pages to mark +important passages. + +He turned from them to the welcome array of weapons on the walls-rifles, +shotguns, Indian bows, arrows and spears, daggers, and great +sheath-knives such as are used from the Yukon to Bolivia, and a sabre +with a faded ribbon of silk tied to the handle. This was all that Max +Ingolby had inherited from his father--that artillery sabre which he +had worn in the Crimea and in the Indian Mutiny. Jethro's eyes wandered +eagerly over the weapons, and, in imagination, he had each one in his +hand. From the pained, angry confusion he felt when he looked at the +books had emerged a feeling of fanaticism, of feud and war, in which his +spirit regained its own kind of self-respect. In looking at the weapons +he was as good a man as any Gorgio. Brains and books were one thing, but +the strong arm, the quick eye, and the deft lunge home with the sword +or dagger were better; they were of a man's own skill, not the acquired +skill of another's brains which books give. He straightened his +shoulders till he looked like a modern actor playing the hero in a +romantic drama, and with quick vain motions he stroked and twisted his +brown moustache, and ran his fingers through his curling hair. In truth +he was no coward; and his conceit would not lessen his courage when the +test of it came. + +As his eyes brightened from gloom and sullenness to valiant enmity, they +suddenly fell on a table in a corner where lay a black coffin-shaped +thing of wood. In this case, he knew, was the Sarasate violin. +Sarasate--once he had paid ten lira to hear Sarasate play the fiddle in +Turin, and the memory of it was like the sun on the clouds to him now. +In music such of him as was real found a home. It fed everything in +him--his passion, his vanity; his vagabond taste, his emotions, his +self-indulgence, his lust. It was the means whereby he raised himself to +adventure and to pilgrimage, to love and license and loot and spying +and secret service here and there in the east of Europe. It was the +flagellation of these senses which excited him to do all that man may do +and more. + +He was going to play to the masterful Gorgio, and he would play as he +had never played before. He would pour the soul of his purpose into the +music--to win back or steal back, the lass sealed to him by the Starzke +River. + +"Kismet!" he said aloud, and he rose from the chair to go to the violin, +but as he did so the door opened and Ingolby entered. + +"Oh, you're here, and longing to get at it," he said pleasantly. + +He had seen the look in the eyes of the Romany as he entered, and noted +which way his footsteps were tending. "Well, we needn't lose any time, +but will you have a drink and a smoke first?" he added. + +He threw his hat in a corner, and opened a spirittable where shone a +half dozen cut-glass, tumblers and several well-filled bottles, while +boxes of cigars and cigarettes flanked them. It was the height of modern +luxury imported from New York, and Jethro eyed it with envious inward +comment. The Gorgio had the world on his key-chain! Every door would +open to him--that was written on his face--unless Fate stepped in and +closed all doors! + +The door of Fleda's heart had already been opened, but he had not yet +made his bed in it, and there was still time to help Fate, if her mystic +finger beckoned. + +Jethro nodded in response to Ingolby's invitation to drink. "But I do +not drink much when I play," he remarked. "There's enough liquor in the +head when the fiddle's in the hand. 'Dadia', I do not need the spirit to +make the pulses go!" + +"As little as you like then, if you'll only play as well as you did this +afternoon," Ingolby said cheerily. "I will play better," was the reply. + +"On Sarasate's violin--well, of course." + +"Not only because it is Sarasate's violin, 'Kowadji'!" + +"Kowadji! Oh, come now, you may be a Gipsy, but that doesn't mean that +you're an Egyptian or an Arab. Why Arabic--why 'kowadji'?" + +The other shrugged his shoulders. "Who can tell I speak many languages. +I do not like the Mister. It is ugly in the ear. Monsieur, signor, +effendi, kowadji, they have some respect in them." + +"You wanted to pay me respect, eh?" + +"You have Sarasate's violin!" + +"I have a lot of things I could do without." + +"Could you do without the Sarasate?" + +"Long enough to hear you play it, Mr.--what is your name, may I ask?" + +"My name is Jethro Fawe." + +"Well, Jethro Fawe, my Romany 'chal', you shall show me what a violin +can do." + +"You know the Romany lingo?" Jethro asked, as Ingolby went over to the +violin-case. + +"A little--just a little." + +"When did you learn it?" There was a sudden savage rage in Jethro's +heart, for he imagined Fleda had taught Ingolby. + +"Many a year ago when I could learn anything and remember anything and +forget anything." Ingolby sighed. "But that doesn't matter, for I know +only a dozen words or so, and they won't carry me far." + +He turned the violin over in his hands. "This ought to do a bit more +than the cotton-field fiddle," he said dryly. + +He snapped the strings, looking at it with the love of the natural +connoisseur. "Finish your drink and your cigarette. I can wait," he +added graciously. "If you like the cigarettes, you must take some away +with you. You don't drink much, that's clear, therefore you must smoke. +Every man has some vice or other, if it's only hanging on to virtue too +tight." + +He laughed eagerly. Strange that he should have a feeling of greater +companionship for a vagabond like this than for most people he met. +Was it some temperamental thing in him? "Dago," as he called the Romany +inwardly, there was still a bond between them. They understood the glory +of a little instrument like this, and could forget the world in the +light on a great picture. There was something in the air they breathed +which gave them easier understanding of each other and of the world. + +Suddenly with a toss Jethro drained the glass of spirit, though he had +not meant to do so. He puffed the cigarette an instant longer, then +threw it on the floor, and was about to put his foot on it, when Ingolby +stopped him. + +"I'm a slave," he said. "I've got a master. It's Jim. Jim's a hard +master, too. He'd give me fits if we ground our cigarette ashes into the +carpet." + +He threw the refuse into a flower-pot. + +"That squares Jim. Now let's turn the world inside out," he proceeded. +He handed the fiddle over. "Here's the little thing that'll let you do +the trick. Isn't it a beauty, Jethro Fawe?" + +The Romany took it, his eyes glistening with mingled feelings. Hatred +was in his soul, and it showed in the sidelong glance as Ingolby turned +to place a chair where he could hear and see comfortably; yet he had the +musician's love of the perfect instrument, and the woods and the streams +and the sounds of night and the whisperings of trees and the ghosts that +walked in lonely places and called across the glens--all were pouring +into his brain memories which made his pulses move far quicker than the +liquor he had drunk could do. + +"What do you wish?" he asked as he tuned the fiddle. + +Ingolby laughed good-humouredly. "Something Eastern; something you'd +play for yourself if you were out by the Caspian Sea. Something that has +life in it." + +Jethro continued to tune the fiddle carefully and abstractedly. His eyes +were half-closed, giving them a sulky look, and his head was averted. He +made no reply to Ingolby, but his head swayed from side to side in +that sensuous state produced by self-hypnotism, so common among the +half-Eastern races. By an effort of the will they send through the +nerves a flood of feeling which is half-anaesthetic, half-intoxicant. +Carried into its fullest expression it drives a man amok or makes of +him a howling dervish, a fanatic, or a Shakir. In lesser intensity it +produces the musician of the purely sensuous order, or the dancer that +performs prodigies of abandoned grace. Suddenly the sensuous exaltation +had come upon Jethro Fawe. It was as though he had discharged into his +system from some cells of his brain a flood which coursed like a stream +of soft fire. + +In the pleasurable pain of such a mood he drew his bow across the +strings with a sweeping stroke, and then, for an instant, he ran hither +and thither on the strings testing the quality and finding the range +and capacity of the instrument. It was a scamper of hieroglyphics which +could only mean anything to a musician. + +"Well, what do you think of him?" Ingolby asked as the Romany lowered +the bow. "Paganini--Joachim--Sarasate--any one, it is good enough," was +the half-abstracted reply. + +"It is good enough for you--almost, eh?" + +Ingolby meant his question as a compliment, but an evil look shot into +the Romany's face, and the bow twitched in his hand. He was not Paganini +or Sarasate, but that was no reason why he should be insulted. + +Ingolby's quick perception saw, however, what his words had done, and +he hastened to add: "I believe you can get more out of that fiddle than +Sarasate ever could, in your own sort of music anyhow. I've never heard +any one play half so well the kind of piece you played this afternoon. +I'm glad I didn't make a fool of myself buying the fiddle. I didn't, did +I? I gave five thousand dollars for it." + +"It's worth anything to the man that loves it," was the Romany's +response. He was mollified by the praise he had received. + +He raised the fiddle slowly to his chin, his eyes wandering round +the room, then projecting themselves into space, from which they only +returned to fix themselves on Ingolby with the veiled look which +sees but does not see--such a look as an oracle, or a death-god, or a +soulless monster of some between-world, half-Pagan god would wear. Just +such a look as Watts's "Minotaur" wears in the Tate Gallery in London. + +In an instant he was away in a world which was as far off from this +world as Jupiter is from Mars. It was the world of his soul's origin--a +place of beautiful and yet of noisome creations also; of white mountains +and green hills, and yet of tarns in which crawled evil things; a place +of vagrant, hurricanes and tidal-waves and cloud-bursts, of forests +alive with quarrelling! and affrighted beasts. It was a place where +birds sang divinely, yet where obscene fowls of prey hovered in the +blue or waited by the dying denizens of the desert or the plain; where +dark-eyed women heard, with sidelong triumph, the whispers of passion; +where sweet-faced children fled in fear from terrors undefined; where +harpies and witch-women and evil souls waited in ambush; or scurried +through the coverts where men brought things to die; or where they fled +for futile refuge from armed foes. It was a world of unbridled will, +this, where the soul of Jethro Fawe had its origin; and to it his senses +fled involuntarily when he put Sarasate's fiddle to his chin this Autumn +evening. + +From that well of the First Things--the first things of his own +life, the fount from which his forebears drew, backwards through the +centuries, Jethro Fawe quickly drank his fill; and then into the violin +he poured his own story--no improvisation, but musical legends and +classic fantasies and folk-breathings and histories of anguished or +joyous haters or lovers of life; treated by the impressionist who +made that which had been in other scenes to other men the thing of the +present and for the men who are. That which had happened by the Starzke +River was now of the Sagalac River. The passions and wild love and +irresponsible deeds of the life he had lived in years gone by were here. + +It was impossible for Ingolby to resist the spell of the music. Such +abandonment he had never seen in any musician, such riot of musical +meaning he had never heard. He was conscious of the savagery and the +bestial soul of vengeance which spoke through the music, and drowned +the joy and radiance and almost ghostly and grotesque frivolity of the +earlier passages; but it had no personal meaning to him, though at times +it seemed when the Romany came near and bent over him with the ecstatic +attack of the music, as though there was a look in the black eyes like +that of a man who kills. It had, of course, nothing to do with him; it +was the abandonment of a highly emotional nature, he thought. + +It was only after he had been playing, practically without ceasing, +for three-quarters of an hour, that there came to Ingolby the true +interpretation of the Romany mutterings through the man's white, +wolf-like teeth. He did not shrink, however, but kept his head and +watched. + +Once, as the musician flung his body round in a sweep of passion, +Ingolby saw the black eyes flash to the weapons on the wall with a +malign look which did not belong to the music alone, and he took a +swift estimate of the situation. Why the man should have any intentions +against him, he could not guess, except that he might be one of the +madmen who have a vendetta against the capitalist. Or was he a tool +of Felix Marchand? It did not seem possible, and yet if the man was +penniless and an anarchist maybe, there was the possibility. Or--the +blood rushed to his face--or it might be that the Gipsy's presence here, +this display of devilish antipathy, as though it were all part of the +music, was due, somehow, to Fleda Druse. + +The music swelled to a swirling storm, crashed and flooded the feelings +with a sense of shipwreck and chaos, through which a voice seemed to +cry-the quiver and delicate shrillness of one isolated string--and then +fell a sudden silence, as though the end of all things had come; and on +the silence the trembling and attenuated note which had quivered on +the lonely string, rising, rising, piercing the infinite distance and +sinking into silence again. + +In the pause which followed the Romany stood panting, his eyes fixed on +Ingolby with an evil exaltation which made him seem taller and bigger +than he was, but gave him, too, a look of debauchery like that on the +face of a satyr. Generations of unbridled emotion, of license of the +fields and the covert showed in his unguarded features. + +"What did the single cry--the motif--express?" Ingolby asked coolly. "I +know there was catastrophe, the tumblings of avalanches, but the voice +that cried-the soul of a lover, was it?" + +The Romany's lips showed an ugly grimace. "It was the soul of one that +betrayed a lover, going to eternal tortures." + +Ingolby laughed carelessly. "It was a fine bit of work. Sarasate would +have been proud of his fiddle if he could have heard. Anyhow he couldn't +have played that. Is it Gipsy music?" + +"It is the music of a 'Gipsy,' as you call it." + +"Well, it's worth a year's work to hear," Ingolby replied admiringly, +yet acutely conscious of danger. "Are you a musician by trade?" he +asked. + +"I have no trade." The glowing eyes kept scanning the wall where the +weapons hung, and as though without purpose other than to get a pipe +from the rack on the wall, Ingolby moved to where he could be prepared +for any rush. It seemed absurd that there should be such a possibility; +but the world was full of strange things. + +"What brought you to the West?" he asked as he filled a pipe, his back +almost against the wall. + +"I came to get what belonged to me." + +Ingolby laughed ironically. "Most of us are here for that purpose. We +think the world owes us such a lot." + +"I know what is my own." + +Ingolby lit his pipe, his eyes reflectively scanning the other. + +"Have you got it again out here--your own?" + +"Not yet, but I will." + +Ingolby took out his watch, and looked at it. "I haven't found it easy +getting all that belongs to me." + +"You have found it easier getting what belongs to some one else," was +the snarling response. + +Ingolby's jaw hardened. What did the fellow mean? Did he refer to money, +or--was it Fleda Druse? "See here," he said, "there's no need to say +things like that. I never took anything that didn't belong to me, that I +didn't win, or earn or pay for--market price or 'founder's shares'"--he +smiled grimly. "You've given me the best treat I've had in many a day. +I'd walk fifty miles to hear you play my Sarasate--or even old Berry's +cotton-field fiddle. I'm as grateful as I can be, and I'd like to pay +you for it; but as you're not a professional, and it's one gentleman +to another as it were, I can only thank you--or maybe help you to get +what's your own, if you're really trying to get it out here. Meanwhile, +have a cigar and a drink." + +He was still between the Romany and the wall, and by a movement forward +sought to turn Jethro to the spirit-table. Probably this manoeuvring was +all nonsense, that he was wholly misreading the man; but he had always +trusted his instincts, and he would not let his reason rule him entirely +in such a situation. He could also ring the bell for Jim, or call to +him, for while he was in the house Jim was sure to be near by; but he +felt he must deal with the business alone. + +The Romany did not move towards the spirit-table, and Ingolby became +increasingly vigilant. + +"No, I can't pay you anything, that's clear," he said; "but to get your +own--I've got some influence out here--what can I do? A stranger is up +against all kinds of things if he isn't a native, and you're not. Your +home and country's a good way from here, eh?" + +Suddenly the Romany faced him. "Yes. I come from places far from here. +Where is the Romany's home? It is everywhere in the world, but it +is everywhere inside his tent. Because his country is everywhere and +nowhere, his home is more to him than it is to any other. He is alone +with his wife, and with his own people. Yes, and by long and by last, +he will make the man pay who spoils his home. It is all he has. Good or +bad, it is all he has. It is his own." + +Ingolby had a strange, disturbing premonition that he was about to hear +what would startle him, but he persisted. "You said you had come here to +get your own--is your home here?" + +For a moment the Romany did not answer. He had worked himself into a +great passion. He had hypnotized himself, he had acted for a while as +though he was one of life's realities; but suddenly there passed through +his veins the chilling sense of the unreal, that he was only acting +a part, as he had ever done in his life, and that the man before him +could, with a wave of the hand, raise the curtain on all his disguises +and pretences. It was only for an instant, however, for there swept +through him the feeling that Fleda had roused in him--the first real +passion, the first true love--if what such as he felt can be love--that +he had ever known; and he saw her again as she was in the but in the +wood defying him, ready to defend herself against him. All his erotic +anger and melodramatic fervour were alive in him once more. + +He was again a man with a wrong, a lover dispossessed. On the instant +his veins filled with passionate blood. The Roscian strain in him had +its own tragic force and reality. + +"My home is where my own is, and you, have taken my own from me, as I +said," he burst out. "There was all the world for you, but I had only my +music and my wife, and you have taken my wife from me. 'Mi Duvel', you +have taken, but you shall give back again, or there will be only one of +us in the world! The music I have played for you--that has told you all: +the thing that was music from the beginning of Time, the will of the +First of All. Fleda Druse, she was mine, she is my wife, and you, the +Gorgio, come between, and she will not return to me." + +A sudden savage desire came to Ingolby to strike the man in the +face--this Gipsy vagabond the husband of Fleda Druse! It was too +monstrous. It was an evil lie, and yet she had said she was a Romany, +and had said it with apparent shame or anxiety. She had given him no +promise, had pledged no faith, had admitted no love, and yet already in +his heart of hearts he thought upon her as his own. Ever since the day +he had held her in his arms at the Carillon Rapids her voice had sounded +in his ears, and a warmth was in his heart which had never been there +in all his days. This waif of barbarism even to talk of Fleda Druse as +though he was of the same sphere as herself invited punishment-but to +claim her as his wife! It was shameless. An ugly mood came on him, +the force that had made him what he was filled all his senses. He +straightened himself; contempt of the Ishmael showed at his lips. + +"I think you lie, Jethro Fawe," he said quietly, and his eyes were hard +and piercing. "Gabriel Druse's daughter is not--never was--any wife of +yours. She never called you husband. She does not belong to the refuse +of the world." + +The Romany made a sudden rush towards the wall where the weapons hung, +but two arms of iron were flung out and caught him, and he was hurled +across the room. He crashed against a table, swayed, missed a chair +where rested the Sarasate violin, then fell to the floor; but he +staggered to his feet again, all his senses in chaos. + +"You almost fell on the fiddle. If you had hurt it I'd have hurt you, +Mr. Fawe," Ingolby said with a grim smile. "That fiddle's got too much +in it to waste it." + +"Mi Duvel! Mi Duvel!" gasped the Romany in his fury. + +"You can say that as much as you like, but if you play any more of +your monkey tricks here, my Paganini, I will wring your neck," Ingolby +returned, his six feet of solid flesh making a movement of menace. + +"And look," he added, "since you are here, and I said what I meant, +that I'd help you to get your own, I'll keep my word. But don't talk in +damned riddles. Talk white men's language. You said that Gabriel Druse's +daughter was your wife. Explain what you meant, and no nonsense." + +The Romany made a gesture of acquiescence. "She was made mine according +to Romany law by the River Starzke seventeen years ago. I was the son of +Lemuel Fawe, rightful King of all the Romanys. Gabriel Druse seized the +headship, and my father gave him three thousand pounds that we should +marry, she and I, and so bring the headship to the Fawes again when +Gabriel Druse should die; and so it was done by the River Starzke in the +Roumelian country." + +Ingolby winced, for the man's words rang true. A cloud came over his +face, but he said nothing. Jethro saw the momentary advantage. "You did +not know?" he asked. "She did not tell you she was made my wife those +years ago? She did not tell you she was the daughter of the Romany King? +So it is, you see, she is afraid to tell the truth." + +Ingolby's knitted bulk heaved with desire to injure. "Your wife--you +melodious sinner! Do you think such tomfoolery has any effect in this +civilized country? She is about as much your wife as I am your brother. +Don't talk your heathenish rot here. I said I'd help you to get your +own, because you played the fiddle as few men can play it, and I owe you +a lot for that hour's music; but there's nothing belonging to Gabriel +Druse that belongs to you, and his daughter least of all. Look +out--don't sit on the fiddle, damn you!" + +The Romany had made a motion as if to sit down on the chair where the +fiddle was, but stopped short at Ingolby's warning. For an instant +Jethro had an inclination to seize the fiddle and break it across his +knees. It would be an exquisite thing to destroy five thousand dollars' +worth of this man's property at a single wrench and blow. But the spirit +of the musician asserted itself before the vengeful lover could carry +out his purpose; as Ingolby felt sure it would. Ingolby had purposely +given the warning about the fiddle, in the belief that it might break +the unwelcome intensity of the scene. He detested melodrama, and the +scene came precious near to it. Men had been killed before his eyes more +than once, but there had been no rodomontade even when there had been a +woman in the case. + +This Romany lover, however, seemed anxious to make a Sicilian drama out +of his preposterous claim, and it sickened him. Who was the fellow that +he should appear in the guise of a rival to himself! It was humiliating +and offensive. Ingolby had his own kind of pride and vanity, and they +were both hurt now. He would have been less irritable if this rival had +been as good a man as himself or better. He was so much a gamester that +he would have said, "Let the best man win," and have taken his chances. + +His involuntary strategy triumphed for the moment. The Romany looked at +the fiddle for an instant with murderous eyes, but the cool, quiet voice +of Ingolby again speaking sprayed his hot virulence. + +"You can make a good musician quite often, but a good fiddle is a +prize-packet from the skies," Ingolby said. "When you get a good +musician and a good fiddle together it's a day for a salute of a hundred +guns." + +Half-dazed with unregulated emotion, Jethro acted with indecision for +a moment, and the fiddle was safe. But he had suffered the indignity +of being flung like a bag of bones across the room, and the microbe of +insane revenge was in him. It was not to be killed by the cold humour of +the man who had worsted him. He returned to the attack. + +"She is mine, and her father knows it is so. I have waited all these +years, and the hour has come. I will--" + +Ingolby's eyes became hard and merciless again. "Don't talk your Gipsy +rhetoric. I've had enough. No hour has come that makes a woman do what +she doesn't want to do in a free country. The lady is free to do what +she pleases here within British law, and British law takes no heed of +Romany law or any other law. You'll do well to go back to your Roumelian +country or whatever it is. The lady will marry whom she likes." + +"She will never marry you," the Romany said huskily and menacingly. + +"I have never asked her, but if I do, and she said yes, no one could +prevent it." + +"I would prevent it." + +"How?" + +"She is a Romany: she belongs to the Romany people; I will find a way." + +Ingolby had a flash of intuition. + +"You know well that if Gabriel Druse passed the word, your life wouldn't +be worth a day's purchase. The Camorra would not be more certain or more +deadly. If you do anything to hurt the daughter of Gabriel Druse, you +will pay the full price, and you know it. The Romanys don't love you +better than their rightful chief." + +"I am their rightful chief." + +"Maybe, but if they don't say so, too, you might as well be their +rightful slave. You are a genius in your way. Take my advice and return +to the trail of the Gipsy. Or, there's many an orchestra would give you +a good salary as leader. You've got no standing in this country. You +can't do anything to hurt me except try to kill me, and I'll take my +chance of that. You'd better have a drink now and go quietly home to +bed. Try and understand that this is a British town, and we don't settle +our affairs by jumping from a violin rhapsody to a knife or a gun." +He jerked his head backwards towards the wall. "Those things are for +ornament, not for use. Come, Fawe, have a drink and go home like a good +citizen for one night only." + +The Romany hesitated, then shook his head and muttered chaotically. + +"Very well," was the decisive reply. Ingolby pressed a bell, and, in +an instant, Jim Beadle was in the room. He had evidently been at the +keyhole. "Jim," he said, "show the gentleman out." + +But suddenly he caught up a box of cigars from the table and thrust +it into the Romany's hands. "They're the best to be got this side of +Havana," he said cheerily. "They'll help you put more fancy still into +your playing. Good night. You never played better than you've done +during the last hour, I'll stake my life on that. Good night. Show Mr. +Fawe out, Jim." + +The Romany had not time to thrust back the cigars upon his host, and +dazed by the strategy of the thing, by the superior force and mind +of the man who a moment ago he would have killed, he took the box and +turned towards the door, taking his hat dazedly from Jim. + +At the door, however, catching sight of the sly grin on the mulatto +servant's face, his rage and understanding returned to him, and he faced +the masterful Gorgio once again. + +"By God, I'll have none of it!" he exclaimed roughly and threw the box +of cigars on the floor of the room. Ingolby was not perturbed. "Don't +forget there's an east-bound train every day," he said menacingly, and +turned his back as the door closed. + +In another minute Jim entered the room. "Get the clothes and the wig and +things, Jim. I must be off," he said. + +"The toughs don't get going till about this time over at Manitou," +responded Jim. Then he told his master about the clothes having been +exposed in the room when the Romany arrived. "But I don't think he seen +them," Jim added with approval of his own conduct. "I got 'em out quick +as lightning. I covered 'em like a blanket." + +"All right, Jim; it doesn't matter. That fellow's got other things to +think of than that." + +He was wrong, however. The Romany was waiting outside in the darkness +not far away--watching and waiting. + + + + +CHAPTER X. FOR LUCK + +Felix Marchand was in the highest spirits. His clean-shaven face was +wrinkled with smiles and sneers. His black hair was flung in waves of +triumph over his heavily-lined forehead; one hand was on his hip with +brave satisfaction, the other with lighted cigarette was tossed upwards +in exultation. + +"I've got him. I've got him--like that!" he said transferring the +cigarette to his mouth, and clenching his right hand as though it could +not be loosed by an earthquake. "For sure, it's a thing finished as the +solder of a pannikin--like that." + +He caught up a tin quart-pot from the bar-counter and showed the +soldered bottom of it. + +He was alone in the bar of Barbazon's Hotel except for one person--the +youngest of the officials who had been retired from the offices of the +railways when Ingolby had merged them. This was a man who had got his +position originally by nepotism, and represented the worst elements of a +national life where the spoils system is rooted in the popular mind. He +had, however, a little residue of that discipline which, working in a +great industrial organization, begets qualms as to extreme courses. + +He looked reflectively at the leaden pot and said in reply: "I'd never +believe in anything where that Ingolby is concerned till I had it in +the palm of my hand. He's as deep as a well, and when he's quietest it's +good to look out. He takes a lot of skinning, that badger." + +"He's skinned this time all right," was Marchand's reply. "To-morrow'll +be the biggest day Manitou's had since the Indian lifted his wigwam and +the white man put down his store. Listen--hear them! They're coming!" + +He raised a hand for silence, and a rumbling, ragged roar of voices +could be heard without. + +"The crowd have gone the rounds," he continued. "They started at +Barbazon's and they're winding up at Barbazon's. They're drunk enough +to-night to want to do anything, and to-morrow when they've got sore +heads they'll do anything. They'll make that funeral look like a +squeezed orange; they'll show Lebanon and Master Ingolby that we're to +be bosses of our own show. The strike'll be on after the funeral, and +after the strike's begun there'll be--eh, bien sur!" + +He paused sharply, as though he had gone too far. "There'll be what?" +whispered the other; but Marchand made no reply, save to make a warning +gesture, for Barbazon, the landlord, had entered behind the bar. + +"They're coming back, Barbazon," Marchand said to the landlord, jerking +his head towards the front door. The noise of the crowd was increasing, +the raucous shouts were so loud that the three had to raise their +voices. "You'll do a land-office business to-night," he declared. + +Barbazon had an evil face. There were rumours that he had been in gaol +in Quebec for robbery, and that after he had served his time he had +dug up the money he had stolen and come West. He had started the first +saloon at Manitou, and had grown with the place in more senses than one. +He was heavy and thick-set, with huge shoulders, big hands, and beady +eyes that looked out of a stolid face where long hours, greed and vices +other than drink had left their mark. He never drank spirits, and was +therefore ready to take advantage of those who did drink. More than one +horse and canoe and cow and ox, and acre of land, in the days when land +was cheap, had come to him across the bar-counter. He could be bought, +could Barbazon, and he sold more than wine and spirits. He had a wife +who had left him twice because of his misdemeanours, but had returned +and straightened out his house and affairs once again; and even when +she went off with Lick Baldwin, a cattle-dealer, she was welcomed back +without reproaches by Barbazon, chiefly because he had no morals, and +her abilities were of more value to him than her virtue. On the whole, +Gros Barbazon was a bad lot. + +At Marchand's words Barbazon shrugged his shoulders. "The more spent +to-night, the less to spend to-morrow," he growled. + +"But there's going to be spending for a long time," Marchand answered. +"There's going to be a riot to-morrow, and there's going to be a strike +the next day, and after that there's going to be something else." + +"What else?" Barbazon asked, his beady eyes fastened on Marchand's face. + +"Something worth while-better than all the rest." Barbazon's low +forehead seemed to disappear almost, as he drew the grizzled shock of +hair down, by wrinkling his forehead with a heavy frown. + +"It's no damn good, m'sieu'," he growled. "Am I a fool? They'll spend +money to-night, and tomorrow, and the next day, and when the row is on; +and the more they spend then, the less they'll have to spend by-and-by. +It's no good. The steady trade for me--all the time. That is my idee. +And the something else--what? You think there's something else that'll +be good for me? Nom de Dieu, there's nothing you're doing, or mean to +do, but'll hurt me and everybody." + +"That's your view, is it, Barbazon?" exclaimed Marchand loudly, for the +crowd was now almost at the door. "You're a nice Frenchman and patriot. +That crowd'll be glad to hear you think they're fools. Suppose they took +it into their heads to wreck the place?" + +Barbazon's muddy face got paler, but his eyes sharpened, and he leaned +over the bar-counter, and said with a snarl: "Go to hell, and say what +you like; and then I'll have something to say about something else, +m'sieu'." + +Marchand was about to reply angrily, but he instantly changed his mind, +and before Barbazon could stop him, he sprang over the counter and +disappeared into the office behind the bar. + +"I won't steal anything, Barbazon," he said over his shoulder as he +closed the door behind him. + +"I'll see to that," Barbazon muttered stolidly, but with malicious eyes. + +The front door was flung open now, and the crowd poured into the room, +boisterous, reckless, though some were only sullen, watchful and angry. +These last were mostly men above middle age, and of a fanatical and +racially bitter type. They were not many, but in one sense they were the +backbone and force of the crowd, probably the less intelligent but the +more tenacious and consistent. They were black spots of gathering storm +in an electric atmosphere. + +All converged upon the bar. Two assistants rushed the drinks along the +counter with flourishes, while Barbazon took in the cash and sharply +checked the rougher element, who were inclined to treat the bar as +a place for looting. Most of them, however, had a wholesome fear of +Barbazon, and also most of them wished to stand well with him--credit +was a good thing, even in a saloon. + +For a little time the room was packed, then some of the more restless +spirits, their thirst assuaged, sallied forth to taste the lager and +old rye elsewhere, and "raise Cain" in the streets. When they went, it +became possible to move about more freely in the big bar-room, at the +end of which was a billiard-table. It was notable, however, that the +more sullen elements stayed. Some of them were strangers to each other. +Manitou was a distributing point for all radiations of the compass, and +men were thrown together in its streets who only saw one another once +or twice a year-when they went to the woods in the Fall or worked the +rivers in the Summer. Some were Mennonites, Doukhobors and Finlanders, +some Swedes, Norwegians and Icelanders. Others again were birds of +passage who would probably never see Manitou in the future, but they +were mostly French, and mostly Catholic, and enemies of the Orange +Lodges wherever they were, east or west or north or south. They all had +a common ground of unity--half-savage coureurs-de-bois, river-drivers, +railway-men, factory hands, cattlemen, farmers, labourers; they had a +gift for prejudice, and taking sides on something or other was as the +breath of the nostrils to them. + +The greater number of the crowd were, however, excitable, good-natured +men, who were by instinct friendly, save when their prejudices were +excited; and their oaths and exclamations were marvels of droll +ingenuity. Most of them were still too good-humoured with drink to be +dangerous, but all hoped for trouble at the Orange funeral on principle, +and the anticipated strike had elements of "thrill." They were of a +class, however, who would swing from what was good-humour to deadly +anger in a minute, and turn a wind of mere prejudice into a hurricane of +life and death with the tick of a clock. They would all probably go to +the Orange funeral to-morrow in a savage spirit. Some of them were loud +in denunciation of Ingolby and "the Lebanon gang"; they joked coarsely +over the dead Orangeman, but their cheerful violence had not yet the +appearance of reality. + +One man suddenly changed all that. He was a river-driver of stalwart +proportions, with a red handkerchief round his neck, and with loose +corded trousers tucked into his boots. He had a face of natural ugliness +made almost repulsive by marks of smallpox. Red, flabby lips and an +overhanging brow made him a figure which men would avoid on a dark +night. + +"Let's go over to Lebanon to-night and have it out," he said in French. +"That Ingolby--let's go break his windows and give him a dip in the +river. He's the curse of this city. Holy, once Manitou was a place to +live in, now it's a place to die in! The factories, the mills, they're +full of Protes'ants and atheists and shysters; the railway office is +gone to Lebanon. Ingolby took it there. Manitou was the best town in the +West; it's no good now. Who's the cause? Ingolby's the cause. Name of +God, if he was here I'd get him by the throat as quick as winkin'." + +He opened and shut his fingers with spasmodic malice, and glared round +the room. "He's going to lock us out if we strike," he added. "He's +going to take the bread out of our mouths; he's going to put his heel on +Manitou, and grind her down till he makes her knuckle to Lebanon--to a +lot of infidels, Protes'ants, and thieves. Who's going to stand it? I +say-bagosh, I say, who's going to stand it!" + +"He's a friend of the Monseigneur," ventured a factory-hand, who had a +wife and children to support, and however partisan, was little ready for +that which would stop his supplies. + +"Sacre bapteme! That's part of his game," roared the big river-driver +in reply. "I'll take the word of Felix Marchand about that. Look at +him! That Felix Marchand doesn't try to take the bread out of people's +mouths. He gives money here, he gives it there. He wants the old town to +stay as it is and not be swallowed up." + +"Three cheers for Felix Marchand!" cried some one in the throng. All +cheered loudly save one old man with grizzled hair and beard, who leaned +against the wall half-way down the room smoking a corncob pipe. He was a +French Canadian in dress and appearance, and he spat on the floor like +a navvy--he had filled his pipe with the strongest tobacco that one man +ever offered to another. As the crowd cheered for Felix Marchand, he +made his way up towards the bar slowly. He must have been tall when he +was young; now he was stooped, yet there was still something very sinewy +about him. + +"Who's for Lebanon?" cried the big river-driver with an oath. "Who's for +giving Lebanon hell, and ducking Ingolby in the river?" + +"I am--I am--I am--all of us!" shouted the crowd. "It's no good waiting +for to-morrow. Let's get the Lebs by the scruff to-night. Let's break +Ingolby's windows and soak him in the Sagalac. Allons--allons gai!" + +Uproar and broken sentences, threats, oaths, and objurgations sounded +through the room. There was a sudden movement towards the door, but +the exit of the crowd was stopped by a slow but clear voice speaking in +French. + +"Wait a minute, my friends!" it cried. "Wait a minute. Let's ask a few +questions first." + +"Who's he?" asked a dozen voices. "What's he going to say?" The mob +moved again towards the bar. + +The big river-driver turned on the grizzled old man beside the +bar-counter with bent shoulders and lazy, drawling speech. + +"What've you got to say about it, son?" he asked threateningly. + +"Well, to ask a few questions first--that's all," the old man replied. + +"You don't belong here, old cock," the other said roughly. + +"A good many of us don't belong here," the old man replied quietly. "It +always is so. This isn't the first time I've been to Manitou. You're a +river-driver, and you don't live here either," he continued. + +"What've you got to say about it? I've been coming and going here for +ten years. I belong--bagosh, what do you want to ask? Hurry up. We've +got work to do. We're going to raise hell in Lebanon." + +"And give hell to Ingolby," shouted some one in the crowd. + +"Suppose Ingolby isn't there?" questioned the old man. + +"Oh, that's one of your questions, is it?" sneered the big river-driver. +"Well, if you knew him as we do, you'd know that it's at night-time he +sits studyin' how he'll cut Lebanon's throat. He's home, all right. He's +in Lebanon anyhow, and we'll find him." + +"Well, but wait a minute--be quiet a bit," said the old man, his eyes +blinking slowly at the big riverdriver. "I've been 'round a good deal, +and I've had some experience in the world. Did you ever give that +Ingolby a chance to tell you what his plans were? Did you ever get close +to him and try to figure what he was driving at? There's no chance of +getting at the truth if you don't let a man state his case--but no. If +he can't make you see his case then is the time to jib, not before." + +"Oh, get out!" cried a rowdy English road-maker in the crowd. "We know +all right what Ingolby's after." + +"Eh, well, what is he after?" asked the old man looking the other in the +eye. + +"What's he after? Oof-oof-oof, that's what he's after. He's for his own +pocket, he's for being boss of all the woolly West. He's after keeping +us poor and making himself rich. He's after getting the cinch on two +towns and three railways, and doing what he likes with it all; and we're +after not having him do it, you bet. That's how it is, old hoss." + +The other stroked his beard with hands which, somehow, gave little +indication of age, and then, with a sudden jerk forward of his head, he +said: "Oh, it's like that, eh? Is that what M'sieu' Marchand told you? +That's what he said, is it?" + +The big river-driver, eager to maintain his supreme place as leader, +lunged forward a step, and growled a challenge. + +"Who said it? What does it matter if M'sieu' Marchand said it--it's +true. If I said it, it's true. All of us in this room say it, and it's +true. Young Marchand says what Manitou says." + +The old man's eyes grew brighter--they were exceedingly sharp for one so +old, and he said quite gently now: + +"M. Marchand said it first, and you all say it afterwards--ah, bah! But +listen to me; I know Max Ingolby that you think is such a villain; I +know him well. I knew him when he was a little boy and--" + +"You was his nurse, I suppose!" cried the Englishman's voice amid a roar +of laughter. + +"Taught him his A-B-C-was his dear, kind teacher, eh?" hilariously cried +another. + +The old man appeared not to hear. "I have known him all the years since. +He has only been in the West a few years, but he has lived in the world +exactly thirty-three years. He never willingly did anybody harm--never. +Since he came West, since he came to the Sagalac, he's brought work +to Lebanon and to Manitou. There are hundreds more workmen in both the +towns than there were when he came. It was he made others come with much +money and build the factories and the mills. Work means money, money +means bread, bread means life--so." + +The big river-driver, seeing the effect of the old man's words upon the +crowd, turned to them with an angry gesture and a sneer. + +"I s'pose Ingolby has paid this old skeesicks for talking this swash. +We know all right what Ingolby is, and what he's done. He's made war +between the two towns--there's hell to pay now on both sides of the +Sagalac. He took away the railway offices from here, and threw men out +of work. He's done harm to Manitou--he's against Manitou every time." + +Murmurs of approval ran through the crowd, though some were silent, +looking curiously at the forceful and confident old man. Even his bent +shoulders seemed to suggest driving power rather than the weight of +years. He suddenly stretched out a hand in command as it were. + +"Comrades, comrades," he said, "every man makes mistakes. Even if it was +a mistake for Ingolby to take away the offices from Manitou, he's done a +big thing for both cities by combining the three railways." + +"Monopoly," growled a voice from the crowd. "Not monopoly," the old man +replied with a ring to his voice, which made it younger, fresher. "Not +monopoly, but better management of the railways, with more wages, more +money to spend on things to eat and drink and wear, more dollars in the +pocket of everybody that works in Manitou and Lebanon. Ingolby works, he +doesn't loaf." + +"Oh, gosh all hell, he's a dynamo," shouted a voice from the crowd. +"He's a dynamo running the whole show-eh!" + +The old man seemed to grow shorter, but as he thrust his shoulders +forward, it was like a machine gathering energy and power. + +"I'll tell you, friends, what Ingolby is trying to do," he said in a low +voice vibrating with that force which belongs neither to age nor youth, +but is the permanent activity uniting all ages of a man. "Of course, +Ingolby is ambitious and he wants power. He tries to do the big things +in the world because there is the big thing to do--for sure. Without +such men the big things are never done, and other men have less work +to do, and less money and poorer homes. They discover and construct and +design and invent and organize and give opportunities. I am a working +man, but I know what Ingolby thinks. I know what men think who try to do +the big things. I have tried to do them." + +The crowd were absolutely still now, but the big river-driver shook +himself free of the eloquence, which somehow swayed them all, and said: + +"You--you look as if you'd tried to do big things, you do, old +skeesicks. I bet you never earned a hundred dollars in your life." He +turned to the crowd with fierce gestures. "Let's go to Lebanon and make +the place sing," he roared. "Let's get Ingolby out to talk for himself, +if he wants to talk. We know what we want to do, and we're not going to +be bossed. He's for Lebanon and we're for Manitou. Lebanon means to boss +us, Lebanon wants to sit on us because we're Catholics, because we're +French, because we're honest." + +Again a wave of revolution swept through the crowd. The big river-driver +represented their natural instincts, their native fanaticism, their +prejudices. But the old man spoke once more. + +"Ingolby wants Lebanon and Manitou to come together, not to fall apart," +he declared. "He wants peace. If he gets rich here he won't get rich +alone. He's working for both towns. If he brings money from outside, +that's good for both towns. If he--" + +"Shut your mouth, let Ingolby speak for himself," snarled the big +river-driver. "Take his dollars out of your pocket and put them on the +bar, the dollars Ingolby gives you to say all this. Put them dollars of +Ingolby's up for drinks, or we'll give you a jar that'll shake you, old +wart-hog." + +At that instant a figure forced itself through the crowd, and broke into +the packed circle which was drawing closer upon the old man. + +It was Jethro Fawe. He flung a hand out towards the old man. + +"You want Ingolby--well, that's Ingolby," he shouted. + +Like lightning the old man straightened himself, snatched the wig and +beard away from his head and face, and with quiet fearlessness said: + +"Yes, I am Ingolby." + +For an instant there was absolute silence, in which Ingolby weighed his +chances. He was among enemies. He had meant only to move among the +crowd to discover their attitude, to find things out for himself. He +had succeeded, and his belief that Manitou could be swayed in the right +direction if properly handled, was correct. Beneath the fanaticism and +the racial spirit was human nature; and until Jethro Fawe had appeared, +he had hoped to prevent violence and the collision at to-morrow's +funeral. + +Now the situation was all changed. It was hard to tell what sharp turn +things might take. He was about to speak, but suddenly from the crowd +there was spat out at him the words, "Spy! Sneak! Spy!" + +Instantly the wave of feeling ran against him. He smiled frankly, +however, with that droll twist of his mouth which had won so many, and +the raillery of his eyes was more friendly than any appeal. + +"Spy, if you like, my friends," he said firmly and clearly. "Moses sent +spies down into the Land of Promise, and they brought back big bunches +of grapes. Well, I've come down into a land of promise. I wanted to know +just how you all feel without being told it by some one else. I knew if +I came here as Max Ingolby I shouldn't hear the whole truth; I wouldn't +see exactly how you see, so I came as one of you, and you must admit, my +French is as good as yours almost." + +He laughed and nodded at them. + +"There wasn't one of you that knew I wasn't a Frenchman. That's in my +favour. If I know the French language as I do, and can talk to you in +French as I've done, do you think I don't understand the French people, +and what you want and how you feel? I'm one of the few men in the West +that can talk your language. I learned it when I was a boy, so that I +might know my French fellow-countrymen under the same flag, with the +same King and the same national hope. As for your religion, God knows, I +wish I was as good a Protestant as lots of you are good Catholics. And +I tell you this, I'd be glad to have a minister that I could follow and +respect and love as I respect and love Monseigneur Lourde of Manitou. I +want to bring these two towns together, to make them a sign of what +this country is, and what it can do; to make hundreds like ourselves in +Manitou and Lebanon work together towards health, wealth, comfort and +happiness. Can't you see, my friends, what I'm driving at? I'm for peace +and work and wealth and power--not power for myself alone, but power +that belongs to all of us. If I can show I'm a good man at my job, maybe +better than others, then I have a right to ask you to follow me. If I +can't, then throw me out. I tell you I'm your friend--Max Ingolby is +your friend." + +"Spy! Spy! Spy!" cried a new voice. + +It came from behind the bar. An instant after, the owner of the voice +leaped up on the counter. It was Felix Marchand. He had entered by the +door behind the bar into Barbazon's office. + +"When I was in India," Marchand cried, "I found a snake in the bed. +I killed it before it stung me. There's a snake in the bed of +Manitou--what are you going to do with it?" + +The men swayed, murmured, and shrill shouts of "Marchand! Marchand! +Marchand!" went up. The crowd heaved upon Ingolby. "One minute!" +he called with outstretched arm and commanding voice. They paused. +Something in him made him master of them even then. + +At that moment two men were fiercely fighting their way through the +crowd towards where Ingolby was. They were Jowett and Osterhaut. Ingolby +saw them coming. + +"Go back--go back!" he called to them. + +Suddenly a drunken navvy standing on a table in front of and to the left +of Ingolby seized a horseshoe hanging on the wall, and flung it with an +oath. + +It caught Ingolby in the forehead, and he fell to the floor without a +sound. + +A minute afterwards the bar was empty, save for Osterhaut, Jowett, old +Barbazon, and his assistants. + +Barbazon and Jowett lifted the motionless figure in their arms, and +carried it into a little room. + +Then Osterhaut picked up the horseshoe tied with its gay blue ribbons, +now stained with blood, and put it in his pocket. + +"For luck," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. THE SENTENCE OF THE PATRIN + +Fleda waked suddenly, but without motion; just a wide opening of the +eyes upon the darkness, and a swift beating of the heart, but not the +movement of a muscle. It was as though some inward monitor, some gnome +of the hidden life had whispered of danger to her slumbering spirit. The +waking was a complete emergence, a vigilant and searching attention. + +There was something on her breast weighing it down, yet with a pressure +which was not weight alone, and maybe was not weight at all as weight +is understood. Instantly there flashed through her mind the primitive +belief that a cat will lie upon the breasts of children and suck their +breath away. Strange and even absurd as it was, it seemed to her that +a cat was pressing and pressing down upon her breast. There could be no +mistaking the feline presence. Now with a sudden energy of the body, she +threw the Thing from her, and heard it drop, with the softness of feline +feet, on the Indian rug upon the floor. + +Then she sprang out of bed, and, feeling for the matches, lit a candle +on the small table beside her bed, and moved it round searching for what +she thought to be a cat. It was not to be seen. She looked under the +bed; it was not there: under the washstand, under the chest of drawers, +under the improvised dressing-table; and no cat was to be found. She +173 looked under the chair over which hung her clothes, even behind the +dresses and the Indian deerskin cape hanging on the door. + +There was no life of any kind save her own in the room, so far as she +could see. She laughed nervously, though her heart was still beating +hard. That it should beat hard was absurd, for what had she to fear--she +who had lived the wild open-air life of many lands, had slept among +hills infested by animals the enemy of man, and who when a little girl +had faced beasts of prey alone. Yet here in her own safe room on the +Sagalac, with its four walls, but its unlocked doors--for Gabriel Druse +said that he could not bear that last sign of his exile--here in the +fortress of the town-dweller there was a strange trembling of her pulses +in the presence of a mere hallucination or nightmare--the first she had +had ever. Her dreams in the past had always been happy and without the +black fancies of nightmare. On the night that Jethro Fawe had first +confronted her father and herself, and he had been carried to the hut in +the Wood, her sleep had been disturbed and restless, but dreamless; in +her sleep on the night of the day of his release, she had been tossed +upon vague clouds of mental unrest; but that was the first really +disordered sleep she had ever known. + +Holding the candle above her head, she looked in the mirror on her +dressing-table, and laughed nervously at the shocked look in her +eyes, at the hand pressed upon the bosom whose agitations troubled +the delicate linen at her breast. The pale light of the candle, +the reflection from the white muslin of her dressing-table and her +nightwear, the strange, deep darkness of her eyes, the ungathered tawny +hair falling to her shoulders, gave an unusual paleness to her face. + +"What a ninny I am!" she said aloud as she looked at herself, her tongue +chiding her apprehensive eyes, her laugh contemptuously adding its +comment on her tremulousness. "It was a real nightmare--a waking +nightmare, that's what it was." + +She searched the room once more, however-every corner, under the bed, +the chest of drawers and the dressing-table, before she got into bed +again, her feet icily cold. And yet again before settling down she +looked round, perplexed and inquiring. Placing the matches beside the +candlestick, she blew out the light. Then, half-turning on her side with +her face to the wall, she composed herself to sleep. + +Resolutely putting from her mind any sense of the supernatural, she shut +her eyes with confidence of coming sleep. While she was, however, still +within the borders of wakefulness, and wholly conscious, she felt the +Thing jump from the floor upon her legs, and crouch there with that +deadening pressure which was not weight. Now with a start of anger +she raised herself, and shot out a determined hand to seize the Thing, +whatever it was. Her hand grasped nothing, and again she distinctly +heard a soft thud as of something jumping on the floor. Exasperated, she +drew herself out of bed, lit the candle again, and began another search. +Nothing was to be seen; but she had now the curious sense of an unseen +presence. She went to the door, opened it, and looked out into the +narrow hall. Nothing was to be seen there. Then she closed the door +again, and stood looking at it meditatively for a moment. It had a lock +and key; yet it had never been locked in the years they had lived on the +Sagalac. She did not know whether the key would turn in the lock. After +a moment's hesitation, she shrugged her shoulders and turned the key. +It rasped, proved stubborn, but at last came home with a click. Then she +turned to the window. It was open about three inches at the bottom. She +closed it tight, and fastened it, then stood for a moment in the middle +of the room looking at both door and window. + +She was conscious of a sense of suffocation. Never in her life had she +slept with door or window or tentflap entirely closed. Never before had +she been shut in all night behind closed doors and sealed windows. Now, +as the sense of imprisonment was felt, her body protested; her spirit +resented the funereal embrace of security. It panted for the freedom +which gives the challenge to danger and the courage to face it. + +She went to the window and opened it slightly at the top, and then +sought her bed again; but even as she lay down, something whispered to +her mind that it was folly to lock the door and yet leave the window +open, if it was but an inch. With an exclamation of self-reproach, and +a vague indignation at something, she got up and closed the window once +more. + +Again she composed herself to sleep, lying now with her face turned to +the window and the door. She was still sure that she had been the victim +of a hallucination which, emerging from her sleep, had invaded the +borders of wakefulness, and then had reproduced itself in a waking +illusion--an imitation of its original existence. + +Resolved to conquer any superstitious feeling, she invoked sleep, and +was on its borders once more when she was startled more violently than +before. + +The Thing had sprung again upon her feet and was crouched there. Wide +awake, she waited for a moment to make sure that she was not mad, or +that she was not asleep or in a half-dream. In the pause, she felt the +Thing draw up towards her knees, dragging its body along with tiger-like +closeness, and with that strange pressure which was not weight but +power. + +With a cry which was no longer doubt, but agonized apprehension, she +threw the Thing from her with a motion of both hands and feet; and, +as she did so, she felt a horrible cold air breathing from a bloodless +body, chill her hand. + +In another instant she was on her feet again. With shaking fingers +she lighted the candle yet once more, after which she lighted a lamp +standing upon the chest of drawers. The room was almost brilliantly +bright now. With a gesture of incredulity she looked round. The doors +and windows were sealed tight, and there was nothing to be seen; yet she +was more than ever conscious of a presence grown more manifest. For +a moment she stood staring straight before her at the place where it +seemed to be. She realized its malice and its hatred, and an intense +anger and hatred took possession of her. She had always laughed at such +things even when thrilled by wonder and manufactured terrors. But now +there was a sense of conflict, of evil, of the indefinable things in +which so many believed. + +Suddenly she remembered an ancient Sage of her tribe, who, proficient in +mysteries and secret rites gathered from nations as old as Phoenicia +and Egypt and as modern as Switzerland, held the Romanys of the world in +awe, for his fame had travelled where he could not follow. To Fleda in +her earliest days he had been like one inspired, and as she now stood +facing the intangible Thing, she recalled an exorcism which the Sage had +recited to her, when he had sufficiently startled her senses by tales of +the Between World. This exorcism was, as he had told her, more powerful +than that which the Christian exorcists used, and the symbol of exorcism +was not unlike the sign of the Cross, to which was added genuflection of +Assyrian origin. + +At any other time Fleda would have laughed at the idea of using the +exorcism; but all the ancient superstition of the Romany people latent +in her now broke forth and held her captive. Standing with candle raised +above her head, her eyes piercing the space before her, she recalled +every word of the exorcism which had caught the drippings from the +fountains of Chaldean, Phoenician, and Egyptian mystery. + +Solemnly and slowly the exorcism came from her lips, and at the end her +right hand made the cabalistic sign; then she stood like one transfixed +with her arm extended towards the Thing she could not see. + +Presently there passed from her a sense of oppression. The air seemed +to grow lighter, restored self-possession came; there was a gentle +breathing in the room like that of a sleeping child. It was a moment +before she realized that the breathing was her own, and she looked round +her like one who had come out of a trance. + +"It is gone," she said aloud. "It is gone." A great sigh came from her. + +Mechanically she put down the candle, smoothed the pillows of her bed, +adjusted the coverings, and prepared to lie down; but, with a sudden +impulse, she turned to the window and the door. + +"It is gone," she said again. With a little laugh of hushed triumph, she +turned and made again the cabalistic sign at the bed, where the Thing +had first assaulted her, and then at that point in the room near the +door where she had felt it crouching. + +"Oh, Ewie Gal," she added, speaking to that Romany Sage long since laid +to rest in the Roumelian country, "you did not talk to me for nothing. +You were right--yes, you were right, old Ewie Gal. It was there,"--she +looked again at the place where the Thing had been--"and your curse +drove it away." + +With confidence she went to the door and unlocked it. Going to the +window she opened it also, but she compromised sufficiently to open it +at the top instead of at the bottom. Presently she laid her head on her +pillow with a sigh of content. + +Once again she composed herself to sleep in the darkness. But now there +came other invasions, other disturbers of the night. In her imagination +a man came who had held her in his arms one day on the Sagalac River, +who had looked into her eyes with a masterful but respectful tenderness. +As she neared the confines of sleep, he was somehow mingled with visions +of things which her childhood had known--moonlit passes in the Bosnian, +Roumelian, and Roumanian hills, green fields by the Danube, with peasant +voices drowsing in song before the lights went out; a gallop after dun +deer far away up the Caspian mountains, over waste places, carpeted +with flowers after a benevolent rain; mornings in Egypt, when the camels +thudded and slid with melancholy ease through the sands of the desert, +while the Arab drivers called shrilly for Allah to curse or bless; a +tender sunset in England seen from the top of a castle when all the +western sky was lightly draped with saffron, gold and mauve and delicate +green and purple. + +Now she slept again, with the murmur of the Sagalac in her ears, and +there was a smile at her lips. If one could have seen her through the +darkness, one would have said that she was like some wild creature of +a virgin world, whom sleep had captured and tamed; for, behind the +refinement which education and the vigilant influence with which Madame +Bulteel had surrounded her, there was in her the spirit of primitive +things: of the open road and the wilderness, of the undisciplined and +vagrant life, however marked by such luxury as the ruler of all the +Romanys could buy and use in pilgrimage. There was that in her which +would drag at her footsteps in this new life. + +For a full hour or more she slept, then there crept through the +fantasies of sleep something that did not belong to sleep--again +something from the wakeful world, strange, alien, troubling. At first +it was only as though a wind stirred the air of dreams, then it was like +the sounds that gather behind the coming rage of a storm, and again +it was as though a night-prowler plucked at the sleeve of a home-goer. +Presently, with a stir of fright and a smothered cry, she waked to a +sound which was not of the supernatural or of the mind's illusions, +but no less dreadful to her because of that. In some cryptic way it +was associated with the direful experience through which she had just +passed. + +What she heard in the darkness was a voice which sang there by her +window--at it or beneath it--the words of a Romany song. + +It was a song of violence, which she had heard but a short time before +in the trees behind her father's house, when a Romany claimed her as his +wife: + + "Time was I went to my true love, + Time was she came to me--" + +Only one man would sing that song at her window, or anywhere in this +Western world. This was no illusion of her overwrought senses. There, +outside her window, was Jethro Fawe. + +She sat up and listened, leaning on one arm, and staring into the +half-darkness beyond the window, the blind of which she had not drawn +down. There was no moon, but the stars were shining brightly, relieving +the intensity of the dark. Through the whispering of the trees, and +hushing the melancholy of a night-bird's song, came the wild low note of +the Romany epic of vengeance. It had a thrill of exultation. Something +in the voice, insistent, vibrating, personal, made every note a thrust +of victory. In spite of her indignation at the insolent serenade, +she thrilled; for the strain of the Past was in her, and it had been +fighting with her all night, breaking in upon the Present, tugging at +the cords of youth. + +The man's daring roused her admiration, even as her anger mounted. If +her father heard the singing, there could be no doubt that Jethro Fawe's +doom would be sealed. Gabriel Druse would resent this insolence to +the daughter of the Ry of Rys. Word would be passed as silently as the +electric spark flies, and one day Jethro Fawe would be found dead, with +no clue to his slayer, and maybe no sign of violence upon him; for while +the Romany people had remedies as old as Buddha, they had poisons as old +as Sekhet. + +Suddenly the song ceased, and for a moment there was silence save for +the whispering trees and the night-bird's song. Fleda rose from her bed, +and was about to put on her dressing-gown, when she was startled by a +voice loudly whispering her name at her window, as it seemed. + +"Daughter of the Ry of Rys!" it called. + +In anger she started forward to the window, then, realizing that she was +in her nightgown, caught up her red dressing-gown and put it on. As she +did so she understood why the voice had sounded so near. Not thirty feet +from her window there was a solitary oak-tree among the pines, in which +was a seat among the branches, and, looking out, she could see a figure +that blackened the starlit duskiness. + +"Fleda--daughter of the Ry of Rys," the voice called again. + +She gathered her dressing-gown tight about her, and, going to the +window, raised it high and leaned out. + +"What do you want?" she asked sharply. + +"Wife of Jethro Fawe, I bring you news," the voice said, and she saw a +hat waved with mock courtesy. In spite of herself, Fleda felt a shiver +of premonition pass through her. The Thing which had threatened her in +the night seemed to her now like the soul of this dark spirit in the +trees. + +Resentment seized her. "I have news for you, Jethro Fawe," she replied. +"I set you free, and I gave my word that no harm should come to you, if +you went your ways and did not come again. You have come, and I shall do +nothing now to save you from the Ry's anger. Go at once, or I will wake +him." + +"Will a wife betray her husband?" he asked in soft derision. + +Stung by his insolence, "I would not throw a rope to you, if you were +drowning," she declared. "I am a Gorgio, and the thing that was done by +the Starzke River is nothing to me. Now, go." + +"You have forgotten my news," he said: "It is bad news for the Gorgio +daughter of the Romany Ry." She was silent in apprehension. He waited, +but she did not speak. + +"The Gorgio of Gorgios of the Sagalac has had a fall," he said. + +Her heart beat fast for an instant, and then the presentiment came to +her that the man spoke the truth. In the presence of the accomplished +thing, she became calm. + +"What has happened?" she asked quietly. + +"He went prowling in Manitou, and in Barbazon's Tavern they struck him +down." + +"Who struck him down?" she asked. It seemed to her that the night-bird +sang so loud that she could scarcely hear her own voice. + +"A drunken Gorgio," he replied. "The horseshoe is for luck all the world +over, and it brought its luck to Manitou to-night. It struck down a +young Master Gorgio who in white beard and long grey hair went spying." + +She knew in her heart that he spoke the truth. "He is dead?" she asked +in a voice that had a strange quietness. + +"Not yet," he answered. "There is time to wish him luck." + +She heard the ribald laugh with a sense of horror and loathing. "The +hand that brought him down may have been the hand of a Gorgio, but +behind the hand was Jethro Fawe," she said in a voice grown passionate +again. "Where is he?" she added. + +"At his own house. I watched them take him there. It is a nice +house--good enough for a Gorgio house-dweller. I know it well. Last +night I played his Sarasate fiddle for him there, and I told him all +about you and me, and what happened at Starzke, and then--" + +"You told him I was a Romany, that I was married to you?" she asked in a +low voice. + +"I told him that, and asked him why he thought you had deceived him, had +held from him the truth. He was angry and tried to kill me." + +"That is a lie," she answered. "If he had tried to kill you he would +have done so." + +Suddenly she realized the situation as it was--that she was standing +at her window in the night, scantily robed, talking to a man in a tree +opposite her window; and that the man had done a thing which belonged to +the wild places which she had left so far behind. + +It flashed into her mind--what would Max Ingolby think of such a thing? +She flushed. The new Gorgio self of her flushed, and yet the old Romany +self, the child of race and heredity had taken no exact account of the +strangeness of this situation. It had not seemed unnatural. Even if he +had been in her room itself, she would have felt no tithe of the shame +that she felt now in asking herself what the Master Gorgio would think, +if he knew. It was not that she had less modesty, that any stir of sex +was in her veins where the Romany chal was concerned; but in the life +she had once lived less delicate cognizance was taken of such things, +and something of it stayed. + +"Listen," Jethro said with sudden lowering of the voice, and imparting +into his tones an emotion which was in part an actor's gift, but also in +large degree a passion now eating at his heart, "you are my wife by all +the laws of our people. Nothing can change it. I have waited for you, +and I will wait, but you shall be mine in the end. You see to-night--'Mi +Duvel', you see that fate is with me! The Gorgio has bewitched you. He +goes down to-night in that tavern there by the hand of a Gorgio, and the +Romany has his revenge. Fate is always with me, and I will be the gift +of the gods to the woman that takes me. The luck is mine always. It will +be always with me. I am poor to-day, I shall be rich to-morrow. I was +rich, and I lost it all; and I was poor, and became rich again. Ah, yes, +there are ways! Sometimes it is a Government, sometimes a prince that +wants to know, and Jethro Fawe, the Romany, finds it out, and money +fills his pockets. I am here, poor, because last year when I lost all, +I said, 'It is because my Romany lass is not with me. I have not brought +her to my tan, but when she comes then the gold will be here as before, +and more when it is wanted.' So, I came, and I hear the road calling, +and all the camping places over all the world, and I see the patrins in +every lane, and my heart is lifted up. I am glad. I rejoice. My heart +burns with love. I will forget everything, and be true to the queen of +my soul. Men die, and Gabriel Druse, he will die one day, and when the +time comes, then it would be that you and I would beckon, and all the +world would come to us." + +He stretched out a hand to her in the half-darkness. "I send the blood +of my heart to you," he continued. "I am a son of kings. Fleda, daughter +of the Ry of Rys, come to me. I have been bad, but I can be good. I have +killed, but I will live at peace. I have cursed, but I will speak the +word of blessing. I have trespassed, but I will keep to my own, if you +will come to me." + +Suddenly he dropped to the ground, lighting on his feet like an animal +with a soft rebound. Stretching up his arms, he made soft murmuring of +endearment. + +She had listened, fascinated in spite of herself by the fire and meaning +of his words. She felt that in most part it was true, that it was meant; +and, whatever he was, he was yet a man offering his heart and life, +offering a love that she despised, and yet which was love and passion of +a kind. It was a passion natural to the people from whom she came, and +to such as Jethro Fawe it was something more than sensual longing and +the aboriginal desire of possession. She realized it, and was not wholly +revolted by it, even while her mind was fleeing to where the Master +Gorgio lay wounded, it might be unto death; even while she knew that +this man before her, by some means, had laid Ingolby low. She was all at +once a human being torn by contending forces. + +Jethro's drop to the ground broke the sudden trance into which his words +had thrown her. She shook herself as with an effort of control. Then +leaning over the window-sill, and, looking down at him, now grown so +distinct that she could see his features, her eyes having become used to +the half-light of the approaching dawn, she said with something almost +like gentleness: + +"Once more I say, you must go and come no more. You are too far off +from me. You belong to that which is for the ignorant, or the low, the +vicious and the bad. Behind the free life of the Romany is only the +thing that the beasts of the field have. I have done with it for ever. +Find a Romany who will marry you. As for me, I would rather die than +do so, and I should die before it could come to pass. If you stay here +longer I will call the Ry." + +Presently the feeling that he had been responsible for the disaster +to Ingolby came upon her with great force, and as suddenly as she had +softened towards this man she hardened again. + +"Go, before there comes to you the death you deserve," she added, and +turned away. + +At that moment footsteps sounded near, and almost instantly there +emerged from a pathway which made a short cut to the house, the figure +of old Gabriel Druse. They had not heard him till he was within a few +feet of where Jethro Fawe stood. His walking had been muffled in the +dust of the pathway. + +The Ry started when he saw Jethro Fawe; then he made a motion as though +he would seize the intruder, who was too dumbfounded to flee; but he +recovered himself, and gazed up at the open window. + +"Fleda!" he called. + +She came to the window again. + +"Has this man come here against your will?" he asked, not as though +seeking information, but confirmation of his own understanding. + +"He is not here by my will," she answered. "He came to sing the Song of +Hate under my window, to tell me that he had--" + +"That I had brought the Master Gorgio to the ground," said Jethro, who +now stood with sullen passiveness looking at Gabriel Druse. + +"From the Master Gorgio, as you call him, I have just come," returned +the old man. "When I heard the news, I went to him. It was you who +betrayed him to the mob, and--" + +"Wait, wait," Fleda cried in agitation. "Is--is he dead?" + +"He is alive, but terribly hurt; and he may die," was the reply. + +Then the old man turned to the Romany with a great anger and +determination in his face. He stretched out an arm, making a sign as +cabalistic as that which Fleda had used against her invisible foe in the +bedroom. + +"Go, Jethro Fawe of all the Fawes," he said. "Go, and may no patrins +mark your road!" + +Jethro Fawe shrank back, and half raised his arm, as though to fend +himself from a blow. + +The patrin is the clue which Gipsies leave behind them on the road they +go, that other Gipsies who travel in it may know they have gone before. +It may be a piece of string, a thread of wool, a twig, or in the dust +the ancient cross of the Romany, which preceded the Christian cross and +belonged to the Assyrian or Phoenician world. The invocation that no +patrins shall mark the road of a Romany is to make him an outcast, and +for the Ry of Rys to utter the curse is sentence of death upon a Romany, +for thenceforward every hand of his race is against him, free to do him +harm. + +It was that which made Jethro Fawe shrink and cower for a moment. Fleda +raised her hand suddenly in protest to Gabriel Druse. + +"No, no, not that," Fleda murmured brokenly to her father, with eyes +that looked the pain and horror she felt. Though she repudiated the bond +by which the barbarian had dared to call her wife, she heard an inner +voice that said to her: "What was done by the Starzke River was the seal +of blood and race, and this man must be nearer than the stranger, dearer +than the kinsman, forgiven of his crimes like a brother, saved from +shame, danger or death when she who was sealed to him can save him." + +She shuddered as she heard the inner voice. She felt that this Other +Self of her, the inner-seeing soul which had the secret of the far +paths, had spoken truly. Even as she begged her father to withdraw the +sentence, it flashed into her mind that the grim Thing of the night +was the dark spirit of hatred between Jethro Fawe and the Master Gorgio +seeking embodiment, as though Jethro's evil soul detached itself from +his body to persecute her. + +At her appeal, Jethro raised his head. His courage came back, the old +insolent self-possession took hold of him again. The sentence which the +Ry had passed was worse than death (and it meant death, too), for it +made him an outcast from his people, and to be outcast was to be thrown +into the abyss. It was as though a man without race or country +was banished into desolate space. In a vague way he felt its full +significance, and the shadow of it fell on him. + +"No, no, no," Fleda repeated hoarsely, with that new sense of +responsibility where Jethro was concerned. + +Jethro's eyes were turned upon her now. In the starlit night, just +yielding to the dawn, she could faintly see his burning look, could +feel, as it were, his hands reach out to claim her; and she felt that +while he lived she was not wholly free. She realized that the hand of +nomad, disorderly barbarism was dragging her with a force which was +inhuman, or, maybe, superhuman. + +Gabriel Druse could know nothing of the elements fighting in his +daughter's soul; he only knew that her interest in the Master Gorgio was +one he had never seen before, and that she abhorred the Romany who had +brought Ingolby low. He had shut his eyes to the man's unruliness and +his daughter's intervention to free him; but now he was without pity. He +had come from Ingolby's bedside, and had been told a thing which shook +his rugged nature to its centre--a thing sad as death itself, which he +must tell his daughter. + +To Fleda's appeal he turned a stony face. There was none of that rage +in his words which had marked the scene when Jethro Fawe first came to +claim what he could not have. There was something in him now more deadly +and inevitable. It made him like some figure of mythology, implacable, +fateful. His great height, his bushy beard and stormy forehead, the eyes +over which shaggy eyebrows hung like the shrubs on a cliff-edge, his +face lined and set like a thing in bronze--all were signs of a power +which, in passion, would be like that of OEdipus: in the moment of +justice or doom would, with unblinking eyes, slay and cast aside as +debris is tossed upon the dust-heap. + +As he spoke now his voice was toneless. His mind was flint, and his +tongue was but the flash of the flint. He looked at his daughter for a +moment with no light of fatherhood in his face, then turned from her +to Jethro Fawe with slow decision and a gesture of authority. His eyes +fastened on the face of the son of Lemuel Fawe, as though it was that +old enemy himself. + +"I have said what I have said, and there is no more to be spoken. The +rule of the Ry will be as water for ever after if these things may be +done to him and his. For generations have the Rys of all the Rys been +like the trees that bend only to the whirlwind; and when they speak +there is no more to be said. When it ceases to be so, then the Rys will +vanish from the world, and be as stubble of the field ready for the +burning. I have spoken. Go! And no patrins shall lie upon your road." + +A look of savage obedience and sullen acquiescence came into Jethro +Fawe's face, and he took off his hat as one who stands in the presence +of his master. The strain of generations, the tradition of the race +without a country was stronger than the revolt in his soul. He was +young, his blood was hot and brawling in his veins, he was all carnal, +with the superior intelligence of the trained animal, but custom was +stronger than all. He knew now that whatever he might do, some time, not +far, his doom would fall upon him suddenly, as a wind shoots up a ravine +from the desert, or a nightbird rises from the dark. + +He set his feet stubbornly, and raised his sullen face and fanatical +eyes. The light of morning was creeping through the starshine, and his +features showed plainly. + +"I am your daughter's husband," he said. "Nothing can change that. It +was done by the River Starzke, and it was the word of the Ry of Rys. It +stands for ever. There is no divorce except death for the Romany." + +"The patrins cease to mark the way," returned the old man with a swift +gesture. "The divorce of death will come." + +Jethro's face grew still paler, and he opened his lips to speak, but +paused, seeing Fleda, with a backward look of pity and of horror, draw +back into the darkness of her room. + +He made a motion of passion and despair. His voice was almost shrill +when he spoke. "Till that divorce comes, the daughter of the Ry of Rys +is mine!" he cried sharply. "I will not give my wife to a Gorgio thief. +His hands shall not caress her, his eyes shall not feed upon her--" + +"His eyes will not feed upon her," interrupted the old man, "So cease +the prattle which can alter nothing. Begone." + +For a moment Jethro Fawe stood like one who did not understand what was +said to him, but suddenly a look of triumph and malice came into his +face, and his eyes lighted with a reckless fire. He threw back his head, +and laughed with a strange, offensive softness. Then, waving a hand to +the window from which Fleda had gone, he swung his cap on his head and +plunged into the trees. + +A moment afterwards his voice came back exultingly, through the morning +air: + + "But a Gorgio sleeps 'neath the greenwood tree + He'll broach my tan no more: + And my love, she sleeps afar from me + But near to the churchyard door." + +As the old man turned heavily towards the house, and opened the outer +door, Fleda met him. + +"What did you mean when you said that Ingolby's eyes would not feed upon +me?" she asked in a low tone of fear. + +A look of compassion came into the old man's face. He took her hand. + +"Come and I will tell you," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. "LET THERE BE LIGHT" + +In Ingolby's bedroom, on the night of the business at Barbazon's Tavern, +Dr. Rockwell received a shock. His face, naturally colourless, was +almost white, and his eyes were moist. He had what the West called +nerve. That the crisis through which he had passed was that of a +friend's life did not lessen the poignancy of the experience. He had a +singularly reserved manner and a rare economy of words; also, he had +the refinement and distinction of one who had, oforetime, moved on the +higher ranges of social life. He was always simply and comfortably and +in a sense fashionably dressed, yet there was nothing of the dude about +him, and his black satin tie gave him an air of old-worldishness which +somehow compelled an extra amount of respect. This, in spite of the fact +that he had been known as one who had left the East and come into the +wilds because of a woman not his wife. + +It was not, however, strictly true to say that he had come West +because of a woman, for it was on account of three women, who by sudden +coincidence or collusion sprang a situation from which the only relief +was flight. In that he took refuge, not because he was a coward, but +because it was folly to fight a woman, or three women, and because it +was the only real solution of an ungovernable situation. At first he +had drifted from one town to another, dissolute and reckless, apparently +unable to settle down, or to forget the unwholesome three. But one +day there was a terrible railway accident on a construction train, and +Lebanon and Manitou made a call upon his skill, and held him in bondage +to his profession for one whole month. During this time he performed +two operations which the surgeons who had been sent out by the Railway +Directors at Montreal declared were masterpieces. + +When that month was up he was a changed man, and he opened an office in +Lebanon. Men trusted him despite his past, and women learned that there +was never a moment when his pulses beat unevenly in their presence. +Nathan Rockwell had had his lesson and it was not necessary to learn it +again. To him, woman, save as a subject of his skill, was a closed book. +He regarded them as he regarded himself, with a kindly cynicism. He +never forgot that his own trouble could and would have been avoided had +it not been for woman's vanity and consequent cruelty. The unwholesome +three had shared his moral lapse with wide-open eyes, and were in no +sense victims of his; but, disregarding their responsibility, they had, +from sheer jealousy, wrecked his past, and, to their own surprise, had +wrecked themselves as well. They were of those who act first and then +think--too late. + +Thus it was that both men and women called Rockwell a handsome man, but +thought of him as having only a crater of exhausted fires in place of a +heart. They came to him with their troubles--even the women of Manitou +who ought to have gone to the priest. + +He moved about Lebanon as one who had authority, and desired not to use +it; as one to whom life was like a case in surgery to be treated with +scientific, coolness, with humanity, but not with undue sympathy; yet +the early morning of the day after Ingolby had had his accident at +Barbazon's Hotel found him the slave of an emotion which shook him +from head to foot. He had saved his friend's life by a most skilful +operation, but he had been shocked beyond control when, an hour after +the operation was over, and consciousness returned to the patient in the +brilliantly lighted room, Ingolby said: + +"Why don't you turn on the light?" + +It was thus Rockwell knew that the Master Man, the friend of Lebanon +and Manitou, was stone blind. When Ingolby's voice ceased, a horrified +silence filled the room for a moment. Even Jim Beadle, his servant, +standing at the foot of the bed, clapped a hand to his mouth to stop a +cry, and the nurse turned as white as the apron she wore. + +Dumbfounded as Rockwell was, with instant professional presence of mind +he said: + +"No, Ingolby, you must be kept in darkness a while yet." Then he whipped +out a silk handkerchief from his pocket. "We will have light," he +continued, "but we must bandage you first to keep out the glare and +prevent pain. The nerves of the eyes have been injured." + +Hastily and tenderly he bound the handkerchief round the sightless eyes. +Having done so, he said to the nurse with unintentional quotation from +the Gospel of St. John, and a sad irony: "Let there be light." + +It all gave him time to pull himself together and prepare for the moment +when he must tell Ingolby the truth. In one sense the sooner it was +told the better, lest Ingolby should suddenly discover it for himself. +Surprise and shock must be avoided. So now he talked in his low, +soothing voice, telling Ingolby that the operation had put him out of +danger, that the pain now felt came chiefly from the nerves of the +eye, and that quiet and darkness were necessary. He insisted on Ingolby +keeping silent, and he gave a mild opiate which induced several hours' +sleep. + +During this time Rockwell prepared himself for the ordeal which must +be passed as soon as possible; gave all needed directions, and had a +conference with the assistant Chief Constable to whom he confided the +truth. He suggested plans for preserving order in excited Lebanon, which +was determined to revenge itself on Manitou; and he gave some careful +and specific instructions to Jowett the horse-dealer. Also, he had +conferred with Gabriel Druse, who had helped bear the injured man to +his own home. He had noted with admiration the strange gentleness of the +giant Romany as he, alone, carried Ingolby in his arms, and laid him +on the bed from which he was to rise with all that he had fought for +overthrown, himself the blind victim of a hard fate. He had noticed the +old man straighten himself with a spring and stand as though petrified +when Ingolby said: "Why don't you turn on the light?" As he looked round +in that instant of ghastly silence he had observed almost mechanically +that the old man's lips were murmuring something. Then the thought of +Fleda Druse shot into Rockwell's mind, and it harassed him during the +hours Ingolby slept, and after the giant Gipsy had taken his departure +just before the dawn. + +"I'm afraid it will mean more there than anywhere else," he said sadly +to himself. "There was evidently something between those two; and she +isn't the kind to take it philosophically. Poor girl! Poor girl! It's a +bitter dose, if there was anything in it," he added. + +He watched beside the sick-bed till the dawn stared in and his patient +stirred and waked, then he took Ingolby's hand, grown a little cooler, +in both his own. "How are you feeling, old man?" he asked cheerfully. +"You've had a good sleep-nearly three and a half hours. Is the pain in +the head less?" + +"Better, Sawbones, better," Ingolby replied cheerfully. "They've +loosened the tie that binds--begad, it did stretch the nerves. I had +gripes of colic once, but the pain I had in my head was twenty times +worse, till you gave the opiate." + +"That's the eyes," said Rockwell. "I had to lift a bit of bone, and the +eyes saw it and felt it, and cried out-shrieked, you might say. They've +got a sensitiveness all their own, have the eyes." + +"It's odd there aren't more accidents to them," answered Ingolby--"just +a little ball of iridescent pulp with strings tied to the brain." + +"And what hurts the head may destroy the eyes sometimes," Rockwell +answered cautiously. "We know so little of the delicate union between +them, that we can't be sure we can put the eyes right again when, +because of some blow to the head, the ricochet puts the eyes out of +commission." + +"That's what's the matter with me, then?" asked Ingolby, feeling the +bandage on his eyes feverishly, and stirring in his bed with a sense of +weariness. + +"Yes, the ricochet got them, and has put them out of commission," +replied Rockwell, carefully dwelling upon each word, and giving a note +of meaning to his tone. + +Ingolby raised himself in bed, but Rockwell gently forced him down +again. "Will my eyes have to be kept bandaged long? Shall I have to give +up work for any length of time?" Ingolby asked. + +"Longer than you'll like," was the enigmatical reply. "It's the devil's +own business," was the weary answer. "Every minute's valuable to me now. +I ought to be on deck morning, noon, and night. There's all the trouble +between the two towns; there's the strike on hand; there's that business +of the Orange funeral, and more than all a thousand times, there's--" he +paused. + +He was going to say, "There's that devil Marchand's designs on my +bridge," but he thought better of it and stopped. It had been his +intention to deal with Marchand directly, to get a settlement of their +differences without resort to the law, to prevent the criminal act +without deepening a feud which might keep the two towns apart for years. +Bad as Marchand was, to prevent his crime was far better than punishing +him for it afterwards. To have Marchand arrested for conspiracy to +commit a crime was a business which would gravely interfere with his +freedom of motion in the near future, would create complications which +might cripple his own purposes in indirect ways. That was why he had +declared to Jowett that even Felix Marchand had his price, and that he +would try negotiations first. + +But what troubled him now, as he lay with eyes bandaged and a knowledge +that to-morrow was the day fixed for the destruction of the bridge, was +his own incapacity. It was unlikely that his head or his eyes would be +right by to-morrow, or that Rockwell would allow him to get up. He felt +in his own mind that the injury he had received was a serious one, and +that the lucky horseshoe had done Maxchand's work for him all too well. +This thought shook him. Rockwell could see his chest heave with an +excitement gravely injurious to his condition; yet he must be told the +worst, or the shock of discovery by himself that he was blind might give +him brain fever. Rockwell felt that he must hasten the crisis. + +"Rockwell," Ingolby suddenly asked, "is there any chance of my +discarding this and getting out to-morrow?" He touched the handkerchief +round his eyes. "It doesn't matter about the head bandages, but the +eyes--can't I slough the wraps to-morrow? I feel scarcely any pain now." + +"Yes, you can get rid of the bandages to-morrow--you can get rid of them +to-day, if you really wish," Rockwell answered, closing in on the last +defence. + +"But I don't mind being in the dark to-day if it'll make me fitter for +to-morrow and get me right sooner. I'm not a fool. There's too much +carelessness about such things. People often don't give themselves a +chance to get right by being in too big a hurry. So, keep me in darkness +to-day, if you want to, old man. For a hustler I'm not in too big a +hurry, you see. I'm for holding back to get a bigger jump." + +"You can't be in a big hurry, even if you want to, Ingolby," rejoined +Rockwell, gripping the wrist of the sick man, and leaning over him. + +Ingolby grew suddenly very still. It was as though vague fear had seized +him and held him in a vice. "What is it? What do you want to say to me?" +he asked in a low, nerveless tone. + +"You've been hit hard, Chief. The ricochet has done you up for some +time. The head will soon get well, but I'm far from sure about your +eyes. You've got to have a specialist about them. You're in the dark, +and as for making you see, so am I. Your eyes and you are out of +commission for some time, anyhow." + +He leaned over hastily, but softly and deftly undid the bandages over +the eyes and took them off. "It's seven in the morning, and the sun's +up, Chief, but it doesn't do you much good, you see." + +The last two words were the purest accident, but it was a strange, +mournful irony, and Rockwell flushed at the thought of it. He saw +Ingolby's face turn grey, and then become white as death itself. + +"I see," came from the bluish-white lips, as the stricken man made call +on all the will and vital strength in him. + +For a long minute Rockwell held the cold hand in the grasp of one who +loves and grieves, but even so the physician and surgeon in him were +uppermost, as they should be, in the hour when his friend was standing +on the brink of despair, maybe of catastrophe irremediable. He did not +say a word yet, however. In such moments the vocal are dumb and the +blind see. + +Ingolby heaved himself in the bed and threw up his arms, wresting them +from Rockwell's grasp. + +"My God--oh, my God-blind!" he cried in agony. Rockwell drew the head +with the sightless eyes to his shoulder. + +For a moment he laid one hand on the heart, that, suddenly still, now +went leaping under his fingers. "Steady," he said firmly. "Steady. It +may be only temporary. Keep your head up to the storm. We'll have a +specialist, and you must not get mired till then. Steady, Chief." + +"Chief! Chief!" murmured Ingolby. "Dear God, what a chief! I risked +everything, and I've lost everything by my own vanity. Barbazon's--the +horseshoe--among the wolves, just to show I could do things better than +any one else--as if I had the patent for setting the world right. And +now--now--" + +The thought of the bridge, of Marchand's devilish design, shot into +his mind, and once more he was shaken. "The bridge! Blind! Mother!" he +called in a voice twisted in an agony which only those can feel to whom +life's purposes are even more than life itself. Then, with a moan, he +became unconscious, and his head rolled over against Rockwell's cheek. +The damp of his brow was as the damp of death as Rockwell's lips touched +it. + +"Old boy, old boy!" Rockwell said tenderly, "I wish it had been me +instead. Life means so much to you--and so little to me. I've seen too +much, and you've only just begun to see." + +Laying him gently down, Rockwell summoned the nurse and Jim Beadle and +spoke to them in low tones. "He knows now, and it has hit him hard, but +not so hard that he won't stiffen to it. It might have been worse." + +He gave instructions as to the care that should be taken, and replaced +the bandages on the eyes. It was, however, long before Ingolby was +restored to consciousness, and when it came, Rockwell put to his lips +a cooling drink containing a powerful opiate. Ingolby drank it without +protest and in silence. He was like one whose sense of life was +automatic and of an inner rather than an outer understanding. But when +he lay back on the pillow again, he said slowly: + +"I want the Chief Constable to come here to-night at eight o'clock. It +will be dark then. He must come. It is important. Will you see to it, +Rockwell?" + +He thrust out a hand as though to find Rockwell's, and there was a +gratitude and an appeal in the pressure of his fingers which went to +Rockwell's heart. + +"All right, Chief. I'll have him here," Rockwell answered briskly, but +with tears standing in his eyes. Ingolby had, as it were, been stricken +out of the active, sentient, companionable world into a world where +he was alone, detached, solitary. His being seemed suspended in an +atmosphere of misery and helplessness. + +"Blind! I am blind!" That was the phrase which kept beating with the +pulses in Ingolby's veins, that throbbed, and throbbed, and throbbed +like engines in a creaking ship which the storm was shaking and pounding +in the vast seas between the worlds. Here was the one incomprehensible, +stupefying fact: nothing else mattered. Every plan he had ever had, +every design which he had made his own by an originality that even his +foes acknowledged, were passing before his brain in swift procession, +shining, magnified, and magnificent, and in that sudden clear-seeing +of his soul he beheld their full value, their exact concrete force +and ultimate effect. Yet he knew himself detached from them, inactive, +incapable, because he could not see with the eyes of the body. The great +essential thing to him was that one thing he had lost. A man might be a +cripple and still direct the great concerns of life and the business of +life. He might be shorn of limb and scarred of body, but with eye sight +still direct the courses of great schemes, in whatever sphere of life +his purposes were at work. He might be deaf to every sound and forever +dumb, but seeing enabled him still to carry forward every enterprise. +In darkness, however, those things were naught, because judgment must +depend on the eyes and senses of others. The report might be true or +false, the deputy might deceive, and his blind chief might never know +the truth unless some other spectator of his schemes should report it; +and the truth could not surely be checked, save by some one, perhaps, +whose life was joined to his, by one that truly loved him, whose fate +was his. + +His brain was afire. By one that truly loved him! Who was there that +loved him? Who was there at one with him in all his deep designs, in all +he had done and meant to do? Neither brother, nor sister, nor friend, +nor any other. None of his blood was there who could share with him the +constructive work he had set out to do. There was no friend whose fate +was part of his own. There was the Boss Doctor: but Rockwell was tied to +his own responsibilities, and he could not give up, of course, would not +give up his life to the schemes of another. There were a dozen men whom +he had helped to forge ahead by his own schemes, but their destinies +were not linked with his. Only one whose life was linked with his could +be trusted to be his eyes, to be the true reporter of all he did, had +done, or planned to do. Only one who loved him. + +But even one who loved him could not carry through his incompleted +work against the assaults of his enemies, who were powerful, watchful, +astute, and merciless; who had a greed which set money higher than +all else in the world. They were of the new order of things in the +New World. The business of life was to them not a system of barter and +exchange, a giving something of value to get something of value, with a +margin of profit for each, and a sense of human equity behind; it was +a cockpit where one man sought to get what another man had--and get it +almost anyhow. + +It was the work of the faro-bank man, whose sleight of hand deceived the +man that carried the gun. + +All the old humanity and good-fellowship of the trader, the man who +exchanged, as it was in the olden days of the world and continued in +greater or less degree till the present generation--all that was gone. +It was held in contempt. It had prevailed when men were open robbers and +filibusters and warriors, giving their lives, if need be, to get what +they wanted, making force their god. It had triumphed over the violence +and robbery of the open road until the dying years of one century +and the young years of a new century. Then the day of the trickster +came--and men laughed at the idea of fair exchange and strove to give +an illusive value for a thing of real value--the remorseless sleight of +hand which the law could not reach. The desire to get profit by honest +toiling was dying down to ashes. + +Against such men had Ingolby worked--the tricksters, the manipulators. +At the basis of his schemes was organization and the economy which +concentrated and conserved energy begets, together with its profit. He +had been the enemy of waste, the apostle of frugality and thrift; and +it was that which had enabled him, in his short career, to win the +confidence of the big men behind him in Montreal, to make good every +step of the way. He had worked for profit out of legitimate product and +industry and enterprise, out of the elimination of waste. It was his +theory (and his practice) that no bit of old iron, no bolt or screw, no +scrap of paper should be thrown away; that the cinders of the engines +could and should be utilized for that which they would make; and that +was why there was a paper-mill and foundry on the Sagalac at Manitou. +That was why and how, so far, he had beaten the tricksters. + +But while his schemes flashed before his mind, as the opiate suspended +him in the middle heaven between sleep and waking, the tricksters and +manipulators came hurrying after him like marauders that waited for the +moment when they could rush the camp in the watches of the night. His +disordered imagination saw the ruin and wreck of his work, the seizure +of what was his own--the place of control on his railways, the place of +the Master Man who cared infinitely more to see his designs accomplished +than for the profit they would bring to himself. Yesterday he had been +just at the top of the hill. The key in his fingers was turning in the +lock which would make safe the securities of his life and career, when +it snapped, and the world grew dark as the black curtain fell and shut +out the lighted room from the wayfarer in the gloom. Then, it was, +came the opaque blackness which could be felt, and his voice calling in +despair: "Blind! I am blind!" + +He did not know that he had taken an opiate, that his friend had +mercifully atrophied his rebellious nerves. These visions he was seeing +were terribly true, but they somehow gave him no physical torture. It +was as though one saw an operation performed upon one's body with the +nerves stilled and deadened by ether. Yet he was cruelly conscious of +the disaster which had come to him. For a time at least. Then his mind +seemed less acute, the visions came, then without seeing them go, +they went. And others came in broken patches, shreds, and dreams, +phantasmagoria of the brain, and at last all were mingled and confused; +but as they passed they seemed to burn his sight. How he longed for a +cool bandage over his eyes, for a soft linen which would shut out the +cumuli of broken hopes and designs, life's goals obliterated! He had had +enough of the black procession of futile things. + +His longing was not denied, for even as he roused himself from the +oblivion coming on him, as though by a last effort to remember his dire +misfortune, maybe his everlasting tragedy, something soothing and soft +like linen dipped in dew was laid upon his forehead. A cool, delicious +hand covered his eyes caressingly; a voice from spheres so far away that +worlds were the echoing points of the sound, came whispering to him like +a stir of wings in a singing grove. With a last effort to remain in the +waking world, he raised his head so very little, but fell gently back +again with one sighing word on his lips: + +"Fleda!" + +It was no illusion. Fleda had come from her own night of trouble to his +motherless, wifeless home, and would not be denied admittance by the +nurse. It was Jim Beadle who admitted her. + +"He'd be mad if he knew we wouldn't let her come," Jim had said to the +nurse. + +It was Fleda who had warned Ingolby of the dangers that surrounded +him--the physical as well as business dangers. She came now to serve the +blind victim of that Fate which she had seen hovering over him. + +The renegade daughter of the Romanys, as Jethro Fawe had called her, +was, for the first time, in the house of her master Gorgio. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. THE CHAIN OF THE PAST + +For once in its career, Lebanon was absolutely united. The blow that had +brought down the Master Man had also struck the town between the eyes, +and there was no one--friend or foe of Ingolby--who did not regard it as +an insult and a challenge. It was now known that the roughs of Manitou, +led by the big river-driver, were about to start on a raid upon Lebanon +and upon Ingolby at the very moment the horseshoe did its work. All +night there were groups of men waiting outside Ingolby's house. They +were of all classes-carters, railway workers, bartenders, lawyers, +engineers, bankers, accountants, merchants, ranchmen, carpenters, +insurance agents, manufacturers, millers, horse-dealers, and so on. + +Some prayed for Ingolby's life, others swore viciously; and those who +swore had no contempt for those who prayed, while those who prayed were +tolerant of those who swore. It was a union of incongruous elements. +Men who had nothing in common were one in the spirit of faction; and +all were determined that the Orangeman, whose funeral was fixed for this +memorable Saturday, should be carried safely to his grave. Civic pride +had almost become civic fanaticism in Lebanon. One of the men beaten by +Ingolby in the recent struggle for control of the railways said to the +others shivering in the grey dawn: "They were bound to get him in the +back. They're dagos, the lot of 'em. Skunks are skunks, even when you +skin 'em." + +When, just before dawn, old Gabriel Druse issued from the house into +which he had carried Ingolby the night before, they questioned him +eagerly. He had been a figure apart from both Lebanon and Manitou, and +they did not regard him as a dago, particularly as it was more than +whispered that Ingolby "had a lien" on his daughter. In the grey light, +with his long grizzled beard and iron-grey, shaggy hair, Druse looked +like a mystic figure of the days when the gods moved among men like +mortals. His great height, vast proportions, and silent ways gave him +a place apart, and added to the superstitious feeling by which he was +surrounded. + +"How is he?" they asked whisperingly, as they crowded round him. + +"The danger is over," was the slow, heavy reply. "He will live, but he +has bad days to face." + +"What was the danger?" they asked. "Fever--maybe brain fever," he +replied. "We'll see him through," someone said. + +"Well, he cannot see himself through," rejoined the old man solemnly. +The enigmatical words made them feel there was something behind. + +"Why can't he see himself through?" asked Osterhaut the universal, who +had just arrived from the City Hall. + +"He can't see himself through because he is blind," was the heavy +answer. + +There was a moment of shock, of hushed surprise, and then a voice burst +forth: "Blind--they've blinded him, boys! The dagos have killed his +sight. He's blind, boys!" + +A profane and angry muttering ran through the crowd, who were thirsty, +hungry, and weary with watching. + +Osterhaut held up the horseshoe which had brought Ingolby down. "Here it +is, the thing that done it. It's tied with a blue ribbon-for luck," +he added ironically. "It's got his blood on it. I'm keeping it till +Manitou's paid the price of it. Then I'll give it to Lebanon for keeps." + +"That's the thing that did it, but where's the man behind the thing?" +snarled a voice. + +Again there was a moment's silence, and then Billy Kyle, the veteran +stage-driver, said: "He's in the jug, but a gaol has doors, and doors'll +open with or without keys. I'm for opening the door, boys." + +"What for?" asked a man who knew the answer, but who wanted the thing +said. + +"I spent four years in Arizona, same as Jowett," Billy Kyle answered, +"and I got in the way of thinking as they do there, and acting just as +quick as you think. I drove stage down in the Verde Valley. Sometimes +there wasn't time to bring a prisoner all the way to a judge and jury, +and people was busy, and hadn't time to wait for the wagon; so they done +what was right, and there was always a tree that would carry that kind +o' fruit for the sake of humanity. It's the best way, boys." + +"This isn't Arizona or any other lyncher's country," said Halliday, +the lawyer, making his way to the front. "It isn't the law, and in this +country it's the law that counts. It's the Gover'ment's right to attend +to that drunken dago that threw the horseshoe, and we've got to let the +Gover'ment do it. No lynching on my plate, thank you. If Ingolby could +speak to us, you can bet your boots it's what he'd say." + +"What's your opinion, boss?" asked Billy Kyle of Gabriel Druse, who had +stood listening, his chin on his breast, his sombre eyes fixed on them +abstractedly. + +At Kyle's question his eyes lighted up with a fire that was struck from +a flint in other spheres, and he answered: "It is for the ruler to take +life, not the subject. If it is a man that rules, it is for him; if it +is the law that rules, it is for the law. Here, it is the law. Then it +is not for the subject, and it is not for you." + +"If he was your son?" asked Billy Kyle. + +"If he was my son, I should be the ruler, not the law," was the grim, +enigmatic reply, and the old man stalked away from them towards the +bridge. + +"I'd bet he'd settle the dago's hash that done to his son what the +Manitou dagos done to Ingolby--and settle it quick," remarked Lick +Farrelly, the tinsmith. + +"I bet he's been a ruler or something somewhere," remarked Billy Kyle. + +"I bet I'm going home to breakfast," interposed Halliday, the lawyer. +"There's a straight day's work before us, gentlemen," he added, "and we +can't do anything here. Orangemen, let's hoof it." + +Twenty Orangemen stepped out from the crowd. Halliday was a past master +of their lodge, and they all meant what he meant. They marched away in +procession--to breakfast and to a meeting of the lodge. Others straggled +after, but a few waited for the appearance of the doctor. When the sun +came up and Rockwell, pale and downcast, issued forth, they gathered +round him, and walked with him through the town, questioning, listening +and threatening. + +A few still remained behind at Ingolby's house. They were of the devoted +slaves of Ingolby who would follow him to the gates of Hades and back +again, or not back if need be. + +The nigger barber, Berry, was one; another was the Jack-of-all-trades, +Osterhaut, a kind of municipal odd-man, with the well-known red hair, +the face that constantly needed shaving, the blue serge shirt with a +scarf for a collar, the suit of canvas in the summer and of Irish frieze +in the winter; the pair of hands which were always in his own pocket, +never in any one else's; the grey eye, doglike in its mildness, and the +long nose which gave him the name of Snorty. Of the same devoted class +also was Jowett who, on a higher plane, was as wise and discerning a +scout as any leader ever had. + +While old Berry and Osterhaut and all the others were waiting at +Ingolby's house, Jowett was scouting among the Manitou roughs for the +Chief Constable of Lebanon, to find out what was forward. What he had +found was not reassuring, because Manitou, conscious of being in the +wrong, realized that Lebanon would try to make her understand her +wrong-doing; and that was intolerable. It was clear to Jowett that, in +spite of all, there would be trouble at the Orange funeral, and that +the threatened strike would take place at the same time in spite of +Ingolby's catastrophe. Already in the early morning revengeful spirits +from Lebanon had invaded the outer portions of Manitou and had taken +satisfaction out of an equal number of "Dogans," as they called the +Roman Catholic labourers, one of whom was carried to the hospital with +an elbow out of joint and a badly injured back. + +With as much information as he needed, Jowett made his way back to +Lebanon, when, at the approach to the bridge, he met Fleda hurrying with +bent head and pale, distressed face in his own direction. Of all Western +men none had a better appreciation of the sex that takes its toll of +every traveller after his kind than Aaron Jowett. He had been a real +buck in his day among those of his own class, and though the storm of +his romances had become but a faint stirring of leaves which had tinges +of days that are sear, he still had an eye unmatched for female beauty. +The sun which makes that northern land a paradise in summer caught +the gold-brown hair of Gabriel Druse's daughter, and made it glint and +shine. It coquetted with the umber of her eyes and they grew luminous as +a jewel; it struck lightly across the pale russet of her cheek and made +it like an apple that one's lips touch lovingly, when one calls it "too +good to eat." It made an atmosphere of half-silver and half-gold with a +touch of sunrise crimson for her to walk in, translating her form into +melting lines of grace. + +Jowett knew that Druse's daughter was on her way to the man who had +looked once, looked twice, looked thrice into her eyes and had seen +there his own image; and that she had done the same; and that the man, +it might be, would never look into their dark depths again. He might +speak once, he might speak twice, he might speak thrice, but would it +ever be the same as the look that needed no words? + +When he crossed Fleda Druse's pathway she stopped short. She knew that +Jowett was Ingolby's true friend. She had seen him often, and he was +intimately associated with that day when she had run the Carillon Rapids +and had lain (for how long she never dared to think) in Ingolby's arms +in the sight of all the world. First among those who crowded round her +at Carillon that day were Jowett and Osterhaut, who had tried to warn +her. + +"You are going to him?" she said now with confidence in her eyes, and by +the intimacy of the phrase (as though she could speak of Ingolby only as +him) their own understanding was complete. + +"To see how he is and then to do other things," Jowett answered. + +There was silence for a moment in which they moved slowly forward, and +then she said: "You were at Barbazon's last night?" + +"When that Gipsy son of a dog gave him away!" he assented. "I never +heard anything like the speech Ingolby made. He had them in the throat. +The Gipsy would have had nothing out of it, if it hadn't been for the +horseshoe. But in spite of the giveaway, Ingolby was getting them where +they were soft-fairly drugging them with good news. You never heard such +dope. My, he was smooth! The golden, velvet truth it was, too. That's +the only kind he has in stock; and they were sort of stupefied and +locoed as they chewed his word-plant. Cicero must have been a saucy +singer of the dictionary, and Paul the Apostle had a dope of his own you +couldn't buy, but the gay gamut that Ingolby run gives them all the cold +good-bye." + +She held herself very still as he spoke. There was, however, a strange, +lonely look in her eyes. The man lying asleep in the darkness of body +and mind yonder was not really her lover, for he had said no word direct +of love to her, and she knew him so little, how could she love him? +Yet there was something between them which had its authority over their +lives, overcoming even that maiden modesty which was in contrast to the +bold, physical thing she had done in running the Carillon Rapids those +centuries ago when she was young and glad-wistfully glad. So much had +come since that day, she had travelled so far on the highway of Fate, +that she looked back from peak to peak of happening to an almost +invisible horizon. So much had occurred and she felt so old this +morning; and yet there was in her heart the undefined feeling that she +must keep her radiant Spring of life for the blind Gorgio if he needed +it-if he needed it. Would he need it, robbed of sight and with his +life-work murdered? + +She shuddered as she thought of what it meant to him. If a man is to +work, he must have eyes to see. Yet what had she to do with it, after +all? She had no right to go to him even as she was going. Yet had she +not the right of common humanity? This Gorgio was her friend. Did not +the world know that he had saved her life? + +As they came to the Lebanon end of the bridge, Fleda turned to Jowett +and, commenting on his description of the scene at Barbazon, said: "He +is a great man, but he trusts too much and risks too much. That was no +place for him." + +"Big men like him think they can do anything," Jowett replied, a little +ironically, subtly trying to force a confession of her preference for +Ingolby. + +He succeeded. Her eye lighted with indignation. She herself might +challenge him, but she would not allow another to do so. + +"It is not the truth," she rejoined sharply. "He does not measure +himself against the world so. He is like--like a child," she added. + +"It seems to me all big men are like that," Jowett rejoined; "and he's +the biggest man the West has seen. He knows about every man's business +as though it was his own. I can get a margin off most any man in the +West on a horse-trade, but I'd look shy about doing a trade with him. +You can't dope a horse so he won't know. He's on to it, sees it-sees +it like as if it was in glass. Sees anything and everything, and--" He +stopped short. The Master Gorgio could no longer see, and his henchman +flushed like a girl at his "break"; though, as a horse-dealer, he had in +his time listened without shame to wilder, angrier reproaches than most +men living. + +She glanced at him, saw his confusion, forgave and understood him. + +"It was not the horseshoe, it was not the Gipsy," she returned. "They +did not set it going. It would not have happened but for one man." + +"Yes, it's Marchand, right enough," answered Jowett, "but we'll get him +yet. We'll get him with the branding-iron hot." + +"That will not put things right if--" she paused, then with a great +effort she added: "Does the doctor think he will get it back and that--" + +She stopped suddenly in an agitation he did not care to see and he +turned away his head. + +"Doctor doesn't know," he answered. "There's got to be an expert. It'll +take time before he gets here, but--" he could not help but say it, +seeing how great her distress was--"but it's going to come back. I've +seen cases--I saw one down on the Border"--how easily he lied!--"just +like his. It was blasting that done it--the shock. But the sight come +back all right, and quick too--like as I've seen a paralizite get up +all at once and walk as though he'd never been locoed. Why, God +Almighty don't let men like Ingolby be done like that by reptiles same's +Marchand." + +"You believe in God Almighty?" she said half-wonderingly, yet with +gratitude in her tone. "You understand about God?" + +"I've seen too many things not to try and deal fair with Him and not try +to cheat Him," he answered. "I see things lots of times that wasn't ever +born on the prairie or in any house. I've seen--I've seen enough," he +said abruptly, and stopped. + +"What have you seen?" she asked eagerly. "Was it good or bad?" + +"Both," he answered quickly. "I was stalked once--stalked I was by night +and often in the open day, by some sickly, loathsome thing, that even +made me fight it with my hands--a thing I couldn't see. I used to fire +buckshot at it, enough to kill an army, till I near went mad. I was +really and truly getting loony. Then I took to prayin' to the best woman +I ever knowed. I never had a mother, but she looked after me--my sister, +Sara, it was. She brought me up, and then died and left me without +anything to hang on to. I didn't know all I'd lost till she was gone. +But I guess she knew what I thought of her; for she come back--after I'd +prayed till I couldn't see. She come back into my room one night when +the cursed 'haunt' was prowling round me, and as plain as I see you, +I saw her. 'Be at peace,' she said, and I spoke to her, and said, +'Sara-why, Sara' and she smiled, and went away into nothing--like a bit +o' cloud in the sun." + +He stopped, and was looking straight before him as though he saw a +vision. + +"It went?" she asked breathlessly. + +"It went like that--" He made a swift, outward gesture. "It went and it +never came back; and she didn't either--not ever. My idee is," he added, +"that there's evil things that mebbe are the ghost-shapes of living men +that want to do us harm; though, mebbe, too, they're the ghost-shapes +of men that's dead, but that can't get on Over There. So they try to get +back to us here; and they can make life Hell while they're stalking us." + +"I am sure you are right," she said. + +She was thinking of the loathsome thing which haunted her room last +night. Was it the embodied second self of Jethro Fawe, doing the +evil that Jethro Fawe, the visible corporeal man, wished to do? She +shuddered, then bent her head and fixed her mind on Ingolby, whose house +was not far away. She felt strangely, miserably alone this morning. She +was in that fluttering state which follows a girl's discovery that she +is a woman, and the feeling dawns that she must complete herself by +joining her own life with the life of another. + +She showed no agitation, but her repression gave an almost statuesque +character to her face and figure. The adventurous nature of her early +life had given her a power to meet shock and danger with coolness, and +though the news of Ingolby's tragedy had seemed to freeze the vital +forces in her, and all the world became blank for a moment, she had +controlled herself and had set forth to go to him, come what might. + +As she entered the street where Ingolby lived, she suddenly realized the +difficulty before her. She might go to him, but by only one right could +she stay and nurse him, and that right she did not possess. He would, +she knew, understand her, no matter how the world babbled. Why should +the world babble? What woman could have designs upon a blind man? Was +not humanity alone sufficient warrant for staying by his side? Yet would +he wish it? Suddenly her heart sank; but again she remembered their last +parting, and once more she was sure he would be glad to have her with +him. + +It flashed upon her how different it would have been, if he and she had +been Romanys, and this thing had happened over there in the far lands +she knew so well. Who would have hinted at shame, if she had taken him +to her father's tan or gone to his tan and tended him as a man might +tend a man? Humanity would have been the only convention; there would +have been no sex, no false modesty, no babble, no reproach. If it had +been a man as old as the oldest or as young as Jethro Fawe it would have +made no difference. + +As young as Jethro Fawe! Why was it that now she could never think of +the lost and abandoned Romany life without thinking also of Jethro Fawe? +Why should she hate him, despise him, revolt against him, and yet feel +that, as it were by invisible cords, he drew her back to that which she +had forsworn, to the Past which dragged at her feet? The Romany was +not dead in her; her real struggle was yet to come; and in a vague but +prophetic way she realized it. She was not yet one with the settled +western world. + +As they came close to Ingolby's house she heard marching footsteps, and +in the near distance she saw fourscore or more men tramping in military +order. "Who are they?" she asked of Jowett. + +"Men that are going to see law and order kept in Lebanon," he answered. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. SUCH THINGS MAY NOT BE + +A few hours later Fleda slowly made her way homeward through the woods +on the Manitou side of the Sagalac. Leaving Ingolby's house, she had +seen men from the ranches and farms and mines beyond Lebanon driving +or riding into the town, as though to a fair or fete-day. Word of +anticipated troubles had sped through the countryside, and the innate +curiosity of a race who greatly love a row brought in sensation-lovers. +Some were skimming along in one-horse gigs, a small bag of oats dangling +beneath like the pendulum of a great clock. Others were in double or +triple-seated light wagons--"democrats" they were called. Women had +a bit of colour in their hats or at their throats, and the men had on +clean white collars and suits of "store-clothes"--a sign of being on +pleasure bent. Young men and girls on rough but serviceable mounts +cantered past, laughing and joking, and their loud talking grated on the +ear of the girl who had seen a Napoleon in the streets of his Moscow. + +Presently there crossed her path a gruesomely ugly hearse, with glass +sides and cheap imitation ostrich plumes drawn by gorged ravens of +horses with egregiously long tails, and driven by an undertaker's +assistant, who, with a natural gaiety of soul, displayed an idiotic +solemnity by dragging down the corners of the mouth. She turned away in +loathing. + +Her mind fled to a scene far away in the land of the Volga when she was +a child, where she had seen buried two men, who had fought for their +insulted honour till both had died of their wounds. She remembered the +white and red sashes and the gay scarfs worn by the women at the +burial, the jackets with great silver buttons worn by the men, and the +silver-mounted pistols and bright steel knives in the garish belts. She +saw again the bodies of the two gladiators, covered with crimson robes, +carried shoulder-high on a soft bed of interlaced branches to the +graves beneath the trees. There, covered with flowers and sprigs and +evergreens, ribbons and favours, the kindly earth hid them, cloaked for +their long sleep, while women wept, and men praised the dead, and went +back to the open road again cheerily, as the dead would have them do. + +If he had died--the man she had just left behind in that torpid sleep +which opiates bring--his body would have been carried to his last home +in just such a hideous equipage as this hearse. A shiver of revolt went +through her frame, and her mind went to him as she had seen him lying +between the white sheets of his bed, his hands, as they had lain +upon the coverlet, compact of power and grace, knit and muscular and +vital--not the hand for a violin but the hand for a sword. + +As she had laid her hand upon his hot forehead and over his eyes, he had +unconsciously spoken her name. That had told her more of what really was +between them than she had ever known. In the presence of the catastrophe +that must endanger, if not destroy the work he had done, the career he +had made, he thought of her, spoke her name. + +What could she do to prevent his ruin? She must do something, else she +had no right to think of him. As though her thoughts had summoned him, +she came suddenly upon Felix Marchand at a point where her path resolved +itself into two, one leading to Manitou, the other to her own home. + +There was a malicious glint in the greenish eyes of the dissolute +demagogue as he saw her. His hat made a half-circle before it found his +head again. + +"You pay early visits, mademoiselle," he said, his teeth showing +rat-like. + +"And you late ones?" she asked meaningly. + +"Not so late that I can't get up early to see what's going on," he +rejoined in a sour voice. + +"Is it that those who beat you have to get up early?" she asked +ironically. + +"No one has got up earlier than me lately," he sneered. + +"All the days are not begun," she remarked calmly. + +"You have picked up quite an education since you left the road and the +tan," he said with the look of one who delivers a smashing blow. + +"I am not yet educated enough to know how you get other people to commit +your crimes for you," she retorted. + +"Who commits my crimes for me?" His voice was sharp and even anxious. + +"The man who told you I was once a Gipsy--Jethro Fawe." + +Her instinct had told her this was so. But had Jethro told all? She +thought not. It would need some catastrophe which threw him off his +balance to make him speak to a Gorgio of the inner things of Romany +life; and child--marriage was one of them. + +He scoffed. "Once a Gipsy always a Gipsy. Race is race, and you can't +put it off and on like--your stocking." + +He was going to say chemise, but race was race, and vestiges of native +French chivalry stayed the gross simile on the lips of the degenerate. +Fleda's eyes, however, took on a dark and brooding look which, more +than anything else, showed the Romany in her. With a murky flood of +resentment rising in her veins, she strove to fight back the half-savage +instincts of a bygone life. She felt as though she could willingly +sentence this man to death as her father had done Jethro Fawe that very +morning. Another thought, however, was working and fighting in her--that +Marchand was better as a friend than an enemy; and that while Ingolby's +fate was in the balance, while yet the Orange funeral had not taken +place and the strikes had not yet come, it might be that he could be won +over to Ingolby. Her mind was thus involuntarily reproducing Ingolby's +policy, as he had declared it to Jowett and Rockwell. It was to find +Felix Marchand's price, and to buy off his enmity--not by money, for +Marchand did not need that, but by those other coins of value which are +individual to each man's desires, passions and needs. + +"Once a Frenchman isn't always a Frenchman," she replied coolly, +disregarding the coarse insolence of his last utterance. "You yourself +do not now swear faith to the tricolour or the fleur-de-lis." + +He flushed. She had touched a tender nerve. + +"I am a Frenchman always," he rejoined angrily. "I hate the English. I +spit on the English flag." + +"Yes, I've heard you are an anarchist," she rejoined. "A man with no +country and with a flag that belongs to no country--quelle affaire et +quelle drolerie!" + +She laughed. Taken aback in spite of his anger, he stared at her. How +good her French accent was! If she would only speak altogether in +that beloved language, he could smother much malice. She was beautiful +and--well, who could tell? Ingolby was wounded and blind, maybe for +ever, and women are always with the top dog--that was his theory. +Perhaps her apparent dislike of him was only a mood. Many women that +he had conquered had been just like that. They had begun by disliking +him--from Lil Sarnia down--and had ended by being his. This girl +would never be his in the way that the others had been, but--who could +tell?--perhaps he would think enough of her to marry her? Anyway, it was +worth while making such a beauty care for him. The other kind of women +were easy enough to get, and it would be a piquant thing to have one +irreproachable affaire. He had never had one; he was not sure that any +girl or woman he had ever known had ever loved him, and he was certain +that he had never loved any girl or woman. To be in love would be a new +and piquant experience for him. He did not know love, but he knew what +passion was. He had ever been the hunter. This trail might be dangerous, +too, but he would take his chances. He had seen her dislike of him +whenever they had met in the past, and he had never tried to soften her +attitude towards him. He had certainly whistled, but she had not come. +Well, he would whistle again--a different tune. + +"You speak French much?" he asked almost eagerly, the insolence gone +from his tone. "Why didn't I know that?" + +"I speak French in Manitou," she replied, "but nearly all the French +speak English there, and so I speak more English than French." + +"Yes, that's it," he rejoined almost angrily again. "The English will +not learn French, will not speak French. They make us learn English, +and--" + +"If you don't like the flag and the country, why don't you leave it?" +she interrupted, hardening, though she had meant to try and win him over +to Ingolby's side. + +His eyes blazed. There was something almost real in the man after all. + +"The English can kill us, they can grind us to the dust," he rejoined in +French, "but we will not leave the land which has always been ours. We +settled it; our fathers gave their lives for it in a thousand places. +The Indians killed them, the rivers and the storms, the plague and the +fire, the sickness and the cold wiped them out. They were burned alive +at the stake, they were flayed; their bones were broken to pieces by +stones--but they blazed trails with their blood in the wilderness from +New Orleans to Hudson's Bay. They paid for the land with their lives. +Then the English came and took it, and since that time--one hundred and +fifty years--we have been slaves." + +"You do not look like a slave," she answered, "and you have not acted +like a slave. If you were to do the things in France that you've done +here, you wouldn't be free as you are to-day." + +"What have I done?" he asked darkly. + +"You were the cause of what happened at Barbazon's last night,"--he +smiled evilly--"you are egging on the roughs to break up the Orange +funeral to-day; and there is all the rest you know so well." + +"What is the rest I know so well?" He looked closely at her, his long, +mongrel eyes half-closing with covert scrutiny. + +"Whatever it is, it is all bad and it is all yours." + +"Not all," he retorted coolly. "You forget your Gipsy friend. He did his +part last night, and he's still free." + +They had entered the last little stretch of wood in which her home lay, +and she slackened her footsteps slightly. She felt that she had been +unwise in challenging him; that she ought to try persistently to win +him over. It was repugnant to her, still it must be done even yet. She +mastered herself for Ingolby's sake and changed her tactics. + +"As you glory in what you have done, you won't mind being responsible +for all that's happened," she replied in a more friendly tone. + +She made an impulsive gesture towards him. + +"You have shown what power you have--isn't that enough?" she asked. "You +have made the crowd shout, 'Vive Marchand!' You can make everything +as peaceful as it is now upset. If you don't do so, there will be much +misery. If peace must be got by force, then the force of government will +get it in the end. You have the gift of getting hold of the worst men +here, and you have done it; but won't you now master them again in +the other way? You have money and brains; why not use them to become a +leader of those who will win at last, no matter what the game may be?" + +He came close to her. She shrank inwardly, but she did not move. His +greenish eyes were wide open in the fulness of eloquence and desire. + +"You have a tongue like none I ever heard," he said impulsively. "You've +got a mind that thinks, you've got dash and can take risks. You took +risks that day on the Carillon Rapids. It was only the day before that +I'd met you by the old ford of the Sagalac, and made up to you. You +choked me off as though I was a wolf or a devil on the loose. The next +day when I saw Ingolby hand you out to the crowd from his arms, I got +nasty--I have fits like that sometimes, when I've had a little too much +liquor. I felt it more because you're the only kind of woman that could +ever get a real hold on me. It was you made me get the boys rampaging +and set the toughs moving. As you say, I can get hold of a crowd. It's +not hard--with money and drink. You can buy human nature cheap. Every +man has his price they say--and every woman too--bien sur! The thing +is to find out what is the price, and then how to buy. You can't buy +everyone in the same way, even if you use a different price. You've got +to find out how they want the price--whether it's to be handed over the +counter, so to speak, or to be kept on the window-sill, or left in a +pocket, or dropped in a path, or dug up like a potato, with a funny +make-believe that fools nobody, but just plays to the hypocrite in +everyone everywhere. I'm saying this to you because you've seen more of +the world, I bet, than one in a million, even though you're so young. I +don't see why we can't come together. I'm to be bought. I don't say +that my price isn't high. You've got your price, too. You wouldn't +fuss yourself about things here in Manitou and Lebanon, if there wasn't +something you wanted to get. Tout ca! Well, isn't it worth while making +the bargain? You've got such gift of speech that I'm just as if I'd +been drugged, and all round, face, figure, eyes, hair, foot, and girdle, +you're worth giving up a lot for. I've seen plenty of your sex, and I've +heard crowds of them talk, but they never had anything for me beyond the +minute. You've got the real thing. You're my fancy. You've been thinking +and dreaming of Ingolby. He's done. He's a back number. There's nothing +he's done that isn't on the tumble since last night. The financial gang +that he downed are out already against him. They'll have his economic +blood. He made a splash while he was at it, but the alligator's got him. +It's 'Exit Ingolby,' now." + +She made a passionate gesture, and seemed about to speak, but he went +on: "No, don't say anything. I know how you feel. You've had your face +turned his way, and you can't look elsewhere all at once. But Time cures +quick, if you're a good healthy human being. Ingolby was the kind likely +to draw a girl. He's a six-footer and over; he spangled a lot, and he +smiled pretty--comme le printemps, and was sharp enough to keep clear of +women that could hurt him. That was his strongest point after all, for +a little, sly sprat of a woman that's made eyes at you and led you on, +till you sent her a note in a hurry some time with some loose hot words +in it, and she got what she'd wanted, will make you pay a hundred times +for the goods you get. Ingolby was sharp enough to walk shy, until you +came his way, and then he lost his underpinning. But last night got him +in the vitals--hit him between the eyes; and his stock's not worth ten +cents in the dollar to-day. But though the pumas are out, and he's done, +and'll never see his way out of the hole he's in"--he laughed at his +grisly joke"--it's natural to let him down easy. You've looked his way; +he did you a good turn at the Carillon Rapids, and you'd do one for him +if you could. I'm the only one can stop the worst from happening. You +want to pay your debt to him. Good. I can help you do it. I can stop +the strikes on the railways and in the mills. I can stop the row at +the Orange funeral. I can stop the run on his bank and the drop in his +stock. I can fight the gang that's against him--I know how. I'm the man +that can bring things to pass." + +He paused with a sly, mean smile of self-approval and conceit, and his +tongue licked the corners of his mouth in a way that drunkards have in +the early morning when the effect of last night's drinking has worn off. +He spread out his hands with the air of a man who had unpacked his +soul, but the chief characteristic of his manner was egregious belief in +himself. + +At first, in her desire to find a way to meet the needs of Ingolby, +Fleda had listened to him with fortitude and even without revolt. But +as he began to speak of women, and to refer to herself with a look of +gloating which men of his breed cannot hide, her angry pulses beat hard. +She did not quite know where he was leading, but she was sure he meant +to say something which would vex her beyond bearing. At one moment she +meant to cut short his narrative, but he prevented her, and when at last +he ended, she was almost choking with agitation. It had been borne in +upon her as his monologue proceeded, that she would rather die than +accept anything from this man--anything of any kind. To fight him was +the only thing. Nothing else could prevail in the end. His was the +service of the unpenitent thief. + +"And what is it you want to buy from me?" she asked evenly. + +He did not notice, and he could not realize that ominous thing in her +voice and face. "I want to be friends with you. I want to see you here +in the woods, to meet you as you met Ingolby. I want to talk with you, +to hear you talk; to learn things from you I never learned before; to--" + +She interrupted him with a swift gesture. "And then--after that? What do +you want at the end of it all? One cannot spend one's time talking and +wandering in the woods and teaching and learning. After that, what?" + +"I have a house in Montreal," he said evasively. "I don't want to live +there alone." He laughed. "It's big enough for two, and at the end it +might be us two, if--" + +With sharp anger, yet with coolness and dignity, she broke in on his +words. "Might be us two!" she exclaimed. "I have never thought of making +my home in a sewer. Do you think--but, no, it isn't any use talking! You +don't know how to deal with man or woman. You are perverted." + +"I did not mean what you mean; I meant that I should want to marry you," +he protested. "You think the worst of me. Someone has poisoned your mind +against me." + +"Everyone has poisoned my mind against you," she returned, "and yourself +most of all. I know you will try to injure Mr. Ingolby; and I know that +you will try to injure me; but you will not succeed." + +She turned and moved away from him quickly, taking the path towards her +own front door. He called something after her, but she did not or would +not hear. + +As she entered the open space in front of the house, she heard footsteps +behind her and turned quickly, not without apprehension. A woman came +hurrying towards her. She was pale, agitated, haggard with fatigue. + +"May I speak with you?" she asked in French. "Surely," replied Fleda. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. THE WOMAN FROM WIND RIVER + +"What is it?" asked Fleda, opening the door of the house. + +"I want to speak to you about m'sieu'," replied the sad-faced woman. +She made a motion of her head backwards towards the wood. "About M'sieu' +Marchand." + +Fleda's face hardened; she had had more than enough of "M'sieu' +Marchand." She was bitterly ashamed that she had, even for a moment, +thought of using diplomacy with him. But this woman's face was so +forlorn, apart, and lonely, that the old spirit of the Open Road worked +its will. In far-off days she had never seen a human being turned away +from a Romany tent, or driven from a Romany camp. She opened the door +and stood aside to admit the wayfarer. + +A few moments later, the woman, tidied and freshened, sat at the ample +breakfast which was characteristic of Romany home-life. The woman's +plate was bountifully supplied by Fleda, and her cup filled more than +once by Madame Bulteel, while old Gabriel Druse bulked friendly over +all. His face now showed none of the passion and sternness which had +been present when he passed the Sentence of the Patrin upon Jethro Fawe; +nothing of the gloom filling his eyes as he left Ingolby's house. The +gracious, bountiful look of the patriarch, of the head of the clan, was +upon him. + +The husband of one wife, the father of one child, yet the Ry of Rys had +still the overlooking, protective sense of one who had the care of great +numbers of people. His keen eyes foresaw more of the story the woman was +to tell presently than either of the women of his household. He had +seen many such women as this, and had inflexibly judged between them and +those who had wronged them. + +"Where have you come from?" he asked, as the meal drew to a close. + +"From Wind River and under Elk Mountain," the woman answered with a +look of relief. Her face was of those who no longer can bear the soul's +secrets. + +There was silence while the breakfast things were cleared away, and the +window was thrown wide to the full morning sun. It broke through the +branches of pine and cedar and juniper; it made translucent the leaves +of the maples; it shimmered on Fleda's brown hair as she pulled a rose +from the bush at the window, and gave it to the forlorn creature in the +grey "linsey-woolsey" dress and the loose blue flannel jacket, whose +skin was coarsened by outdoor life, but who had something of real beauty +in the intense blue of her eyes. She had been a very comely figure in +her best days, for her waist was small, her bosom gently and firmly +rounded, and her hands were finer than those of most who live and work +much in the open air. + +"You said there was something you wished to tell me," said Fleda, at +last. + +The woman gazed slowly round at the three, as though with puzzled +appeal. There was the look of the Outlander in her face; of one who had +been exiled from familiar things and places. In manner she was like a +child. Her glance wandered over the faces of the two women, then her +eyes met those of the Ry, and stayed there. + +"I am old and I have seen many sorrows," said Gabriel Druse, divining +what was in her mind. "I will try to understand." + +"I have known all the bitterness of life," interposed the low, soft +voice of Madame Bulteel. + +"All ears are the same here," Fleda added, looking the woman in the +eyes. + +"I will tell everything," was the instant reply. Her fingers twined and +untwined in her lap with a nervousness shown by neither face nor body. +Her face was almost apathetic in its despair, but her body had an +upright courage. + +She sighed heavily and began. + +"My name is Arabella Stone. I was married from my home over against Wind +River by the Jumping Sandhills. + +"My father was a lumberman. He was always captain of the gang in the +woods, and captain of the river in the summer. My mother was deaf and +dumb. It was very lonely at times when my father was away. I loved +a boy--a good boy, and he was killed breaking horses. When I was +twenty-one years old my mother died. It was not good for me to be alone, +my father said, so he must either give up the woods and the river, or +he or I must marry. Well, I saw he would not marry, for my mother's face +was one a man could not forget." + +The old man stirred in his seat. "I have seen such," he said in his deep +voice. + +"So it was I said to myself I would marry," she continued, "though I +had loved the Boy that died under the hoofs of the black stallion. There +weren't many girls at the Jumping Sandhills, and so there were men, now +one, now another, to say things to me which did not touch my heart; but +I did not laugh, because I understood that they were lonely. Yet I liked +one of them more than all the others. + +"So, for my father's sake, I came nearer to Dennis, and at last it +seemed I could bear to look at him any time of the day or night he came +to me. He was built like a pine-tree, and had a playful tongue, and also +he was a ranchman like the Boy that was gone. It all came about on the +day he rode in from the range the wild wicked black stallion which all +range-riders had tried for years to capture. It was like a brother of +the horse which had killed my Boy, only bigger. When Dennis mastered him +and rode him to my door I made up my mind, and when he whispered to me +over the dipper of buttermilk I gave him, I said, 'Yes.' I was proud of +him. He did things that a woman likes, and said the things a woman loves +to hear, though they be the same thing said over and over again." + +Madame Bulteel nodded her head as though in a dream, and the Ry of Rys +sat with his two great hands on the chair-arm and his chin dropped on +his chest. Fleda's hands were clasped in her lap, and her big eyes never +left the woman's face. + +"Before a month was gone I had married him," the low, tired voice went +on. "It was a gay wedding; and my father was very happy, for he thought +I had got the desire of a woman's life--a home of her own. For a time +all went well. Dennis was gay and careless and wilful, but he was easy +to live with, too, except when he came back from the town where he sold +his horses. Then he was different, because of the drink, and he was +quarrelsome with me--and cruel, too. + +"At last when he came home with the drink upon him, he would sleep on +the floor and not beside me. This wore upon my heart. I thought that +if I could only put my hand on his shoulder and whisper in his ear, he +would get better of his bad feeling; but he was sulky, and he would not +bear with me. Though I never loved him as I loved my Boy, still I tried +to be a good wife to him, and never turned my eyes to any other man." + +Suddenly she stopped as though the pain of speaking was too great. +Madame Bulteel murmured something, but the only word that reached the +ears of the others was the Arabic word 'mafish'. Her pale face was +suffused as she said it. + +Two or three times the woman essayed to speak again, but could not. +At last, however, she overcame her emotion and said: "So it was when +M'sieu' Felix Marchand came up from the Sagalac." + +The old man started and muttered harshly, but Fleda had foreseen the +entrance of the dissolute Frenchman into the tale, and gave no sign of +surprise. + +"M'sieu' Marchand bought horses," the sad voice trailed on. "One day he +bought the mining-claims Dennis had been holding till he could develop +them or sell them for good money. When Dennis went to town again he +brought me back a present of a belt with silver clasps; but yet again +that night he slept upon the floor alone. So it went on. M. Marchand, +he goes on to the mountains and comes back; and he buys more horses, +and Dennis takes them to Yargo, and M. Marchand goes with him, but comes +back before Dennis does. It was then M'sieu' begun to talk to me; to say +things that soothe a woman when she is hurt. I knew now Dennis did not +want me as when he first married me. He was that kind of man--quick to +care and quicker to forget. He was weak, he could not fasten where he +stood. It pleased him to be gay and friendly with me when he was sober, +but there was nothing behind it--nothing, nothing at all. At last I +began to cry when I thought of it, for it went on and on, and I was too +much alone. I looked at myself in the glass, and I saw I was not old +or lean. I sang in the trees beside the brook, and my voice was even +a little better than in the days when Dennis first came to my father's +house. I looked to my cooking, and I knew that it was as good as ever. I +thought of my clothes, and how I did my hair, and asked myself if I +was as fresh to see as when Dennis first came to me. I could see no +difference. There was a clear pool not far away under the little hills +where the springs came together. I used to bathe in it every morning and +dry myself in the sun; and my body was like a child's. That being so, +should my own man turn his head away from me day or night? What had I +done to be used so, less than two years after I had married!" + +She paused and hung her head, weeping gently. "Shame stings a woman like +nothing else," Madame Bulteel said with a sigh. + +"It was so with me," continued Dennis's wife. "Then at last the thought +came that there was another woman. And all the time M. Marchand kept +coming and going, at first when Dennis was there, and always with some +good reason for coming--horses, cattle, shooting, or furs bought of the +Indians. When Dennis was not there, he came at first for an hour or two, +as if by chance, then for a whole day, because he said he knew I was +lonely. One day, I was sitting by the pool--it was in the evening. I +was crying because of the thought that followed me of another woman +somewhere, who made Dennis turn from me. Then it was M'sieu' came and +put a hand on my shoulder--he came so quietly that I did not hear him +till he touched me. He said he knew why I cried, and it saddened his +soul." + +"His soul--the jackal!" growled the old man in his beard. + +The woman nodded wearily and went on. "For all of ten days I had been +alone, except for the cattlemen camping a mile away and an old Indian +helper who slept in his tepee within call. Loneliness makes you weak +when there's something tearing at the heart. So I let M'sieu' Marchand +talk to me. At last he told me that there was a woman at Yargo--that +Dennis did not go there for business, but to her. Everyone knew it +except me, he said. He told me to ask old Throw Hard, the Indian helper, +if he had spoken the truth. I was shamed, and angry and crazy, too, I +think, so I went to old Throw Hard and asked him. He said he could not +tell the truth, and that he would not lie to me. So I knew it was all +true. + +"How do I know what was in my mind? Is a woman not mad at such a time! +There I was, tossed aside for a flyaway, who was for any man that would +come her way. Yes, I think I was mad. The pride in me was hurt--as only +a woman can understand." She paused and looked at the two women who +listened to her. Fleda's eyes were on the world beyond the window of the +room. + +"Surely we understand," whispered Madame Bulteel. + +The woman's courage returned, and she continued: "I could not go to my +father, for he was riding the river scores of miles away. I was terribly +alone. It was then that M'sieu' Marchand, who had bribed the woman to +draw Dennis away, begged me to go away with him. He swore I should marry +him as soon as I could be free of Dennis. I scarcely knew what I said +or thought; but the place I had loved was hateful to me, so I went away +with him." + +A sharp, pained exclamation broke from the lips of Madame Bulteel, but +presently she reached out and laid a hand upon the woman's arm. "Of +course you went with him," she said. "You could not stay where you were +and face the return of Dennis. There was no child to keep you, and the +man that tempted you said he adored you?" + +The woman looked gratefully at her. "That was what he said," she +answered. "He said he was tired of wandering, and that he wanted a +home-and there was a big house in Montreal." + +She stopped suddenly upon an angry, smothered word from Fleda's lips. +A big house in Montreal! Fleda's first impulse was to break in upon the +woman's story and tell her father what had happened just now outside +their own house; but she waited. + +"Yes, there was a big house in Montreal?" said Fleda, her eyes now +resting sadly upon the woman. + +"He said it should be mine. But that did not count. To be far away from +all that had been was more than all else. I was not thinking of the man, +or caring for him, I was flying from my shame. I did not see then the +shame to which I was going. I was a fool, and I was mad and bad also. +When I waked--and it was soon--there was quick understanding between us. +The big house in Montreal--that was never meant for me. He was already +married." + +The old man stretched heavily to his feet, leaned both hands on the +table, and looked at the woman with glowering eyes, while Fleda's heart +seemed to stop beating. + +"Married!" growled Gabriel Druse, with a blur of passion in his voice. +He knew that Felix Marchand had followed his daughter as though he were +a single man. + +Fleda saw what was working in his mind. Since her father suspected, he +should know all. + +"He almost offered me the big house in Montreal this morning," she said +evenly and coldly. + +A malediction broke from the old man's lips. + +"He almost thought he wanted me to marry him," Fleda added scornfully. + +"And what did you say?" Druse asked. + +"There could only be one thing to say. I told him I had never thought of +making my home in a sewer." A grim smile broke over the old man's face, +and he sat down again. + +"Because I saw him with you I wanted to warn you," the woman continued. +"Yesterday, I came to warn him of his danger, and he laughed at me. From +Madame Thibadeau I heard he had said he would make you sing his song. +When I came to tell you, there he was with you. But when he left you +I was sure there was no need to speak. Still I felt I must tell +you--perhaps because you are rich and strong, and will stop him from +doing more harm." + +"How do you know we are rich?" asked Druse in a rough tone. + +"It is what the world says," was the reply. "Is there harm in that? In +any case it was right to tell you all; so that one who had herded with a +woman like me should not be friends with you." + +"I have seen worse women than you," murmured the old man. + +"What danger did you come to warn M. Marchand about?" asked Fleda. + +"To his life," answered the woman. + +"Do you want to save his life?" asked the old man. + +"Ah, is it not always so?" intervened Madame Bulteel in a low, sad +voice. "To be wronged like that does not make a woman just." + +"I am just," answered the woman. "He deserves to die, but I want to save +the man that will kill him when they meet." + +"Who will kill him?" asked Fleda. "Dennis--he will kill Marchand if he +can." + +The old man leaned forward with puzzled, gloomy interest. "Why? Dennis +left you for another. You say he had grown cold. Was that not what he +wanted--that you should leave him?" + +The woman looked at him with tearful eyes. "If I had known Dennis +better, I should have waited. What he did is of the moment only. A man +may fall and rise again, but it is not so with a woman. She thinks and +thinks upon the scar that shows where she wounded herself; and she never +forgets, and so her life becomes nothing--nothing." + +No one saw that Madame Bulteel held herself rigidly, and was so white +that even the sunlight was gold beside her look. Yet the strangest, +saddest smile played about her lips; and presently, as the eyes of the +others fastened on the woman and did not leave her, she regained her +usual composure. + +The woman kept looking at Gabriel Druse. "When Dennis found that I had +gone, and knew why--for I left word on a sheet of paper--he went mad +like me. Trailing to the south, to find M'sieu' Marchand, he had an +accident, and was laid up in a shack for weeks on the Tanguishene River, +and they could not move him. But at last a ranchman wrote to me, and the +letter found me on the very day I left M'sieu'. When I got that letter +begging me to go to the Tanguishene River, to nurse Dennis who loved me +still, my heart sank. I said to myself I could not go; and Dennis and +I must be apart always to the end of time. But then I thought again. He +was ill, and his body was as broken as his mind. Well, since I could do +his mind no good, I would try to help his body. I could do that much for +him. So I went. But the letter to me had been long on the way, and when +I got to the Tanguishene River he was almost well." + +She paused and rocked her body to and fro for a moment as though in +pain. + +"He wanted me to go back to him then. He said he had never cared for the +woman at Yargo, and that what he felt for me now was different from what +it had ever been. When he had settled accounts we could go back to the +ranch and be at peace. I knew what he meant by settling accounts, and it +frightened me. That is why I am here. I came to warn the man, Marchand, +for if Dennis kills him, then they will hang Dennis. Do you not see? +This is a country of law. I saw that Dennis had the madness in his +brain, and so I left him again in the evening of the day I found him, +and came here--it is a long way. Yesterday, M'sieu' Marchand laughed at +me when I warned him. He said he could take care of himself. But such +men as Dennis stop at nothing; there will be killing, if M'sieu' stays +here." + +"You will go back to Dennis?" asked Fleda gently. "Some other woman will +make him happy when he forgets me," was the cheerless, grey reply. + +The old man got up and, coming over, laid a hand upon her shoulder. + +"Where did you think of going from here?" he asked. + +"Anywhere--I don't know," was the reply. + +"Is there no work here for her?" he asked, turning to Madame Bulteel. + +"Yes, plenty," was the reply. "And room also?" he asked again. + +"Was ever a tent too full, when the lost traveller stumbled into camp +in the old days?" rejoined Fleda. The woman trembled to her feet, a +glad look in her eyes. "I ought to go, but I am tired and I will gladly +stay," she said and swayed against the table. + +Madame Bulteel and Fleda put their arms round her, steadying her. + +"This is not the way to act," said Fleda with a touch of sharp reproof. +Had she not her own trouble to face? + +The stricken woman drew herself up and looked Fleda in the eyes. "I will +find the right way, if I can," she said with courage. + +A half-hour later, as the old man sat alone in the room where he had +breakfasted, a rifle-shot rang out in the distance. + +"The trouble begins," he said, as he rose and hastened into the hallway. + +Another shot rang out. He caught up his wide felt hat, reached for a +great walking-stick in the corner, and left the house hurriedly. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE + +It was a false alarm which had startled Gabriel Druse, but it had +significance. The Orange funeral was not to take place until eleven +o'clock, and it was only eight o'clock when the Ry left his home. A +rifle-shot had, however, been fired across the Sagalac from the Manitou +side, and it had been promptly acknowledged from Lebanon. There was a +short pause, and then came another from the Lebanon side. It was merely +a warning and a challenge. The only man who could have controlled the +position was blind and helpless. + +As Druse walked rapidly towards the bridge, he met Jowett. Jowett was +one of the few men in either town for whom the Ry had regard, and the +friendliness had had its origin in Jowett's knowledge of horseflesh. +This was a field in which the Ry was himself a master. He had ever been +too high-placed among his own people to trade and barter horses except +when, sending a score of Romanys on a hunt for wild ponies on the hills +of Eastern Europe, he had afterwards sold the tamed herd to the highest +bidders in some Balkan town; but he had an infallible eye for a horse. + +It was a curious anomaly also that the one man in Lebanon who would +not have been expected to love and pursue horse-flesh was the Reverend +Reuben Tripple to whom Ingolby had given his conge, but who loved a +horse as he loved himself. + +He was indeed a greater expert in horses than in souls. One of the +sights of Lebanon had been the appearance in the field of the "Reverend +Tripple," who owned a great, raw-boned bay mare of lank proportions, the +winner of a certain great trotting-race which had delighted the mockers. + +For two years Jowett had eyed Mr. Tripple's rawbone with a piratical +eye. + +Though it had won only a single great race, that, in Jowett's view, +was its master's fault. As the Arabs say, however, Allah is with the +patient; and so it was that on the evening of the day in which Ingolby +met disaster, Mr. Tripple informed Jowett that he was willing to sell +his rawbone. + +He was mounted on the gawky roadster when he met Gabriel Druse making +for the bridge. Their greeting was as cordial as hasty. Anxious as was +the Ry to learn what was going on in the towns, Jowett's mount caught +his eye. It was but a little time since they had met at Ingolby's +house, and they were both full of the grave events afoot, but here was a +horse-deal of consequence, and the bridle-rein was looseflung. + +"Yes, I got it," said Jowett, with a chuckle, interpreting the old +man's look. "I got it for good--a wonder from Wonderville. Damned +queer-looking critter, but there, I guess we know what I've got. +Outside like a crinoline, inside like a pair of ankles of the Lady Jane +Plantagenet. Yes, I got it, Mr. Druse, got it dead-on!" + +"How?" asked the Ry, feeling the clean fetlocks with affectionate +approval. + +"He's off East, so he says," was the joyous reply; "sudden but sure, +and I dunno why. Anyway, he's got the door-handle offered, and he's off +without his camel." He stroked the neck of the bay lovingly. "How much?" + +Jowett held up his fingers. The old man lifted his eyebrows quizzically. +"That-h'm! Does he preach as well as that?" he asked. + +Jowett chuckled. "He knows the horse-country better than the New +Jerusalem, I guess; and I wasn't off my feed, nor hadn't lost my head +neither. I wanted that dust-hawk, and he knew it; but I got in on him +with the harness and the sulky. The bridle he got from a Mexican that +come up here a year ago, and went broke and then went dead; and there +being no padre, Tripple did the burying, and he took the bridle as his +fee, I s'pose. It had twenty dollars' worth of silver on it--look at +these conchs." + +He trifled with the big beautiful buttons on the head-stall. "The +sulky's as good as new, and so's the harness almost; and there's the +nose-bag and the blankets, and a saddle and a monkey-wrench and two +bottles of horse-liniment, and odds and ends. I only paid that"--and he +held up his fingers again as though it was a sacred rite--"for the lot. +Not bad, I want to say. Isn't he good for all day, this one?" + +The old man nodded, then turned towards the bridge. "The +gun-shots--what?" he asked, setting forward at a walk which taxed the +rawbone's stride. + +"An invite--come to the wedding; that's all. Only it's a funeral this +time, and, if something good doesn't happen, there'll be more than one +funeral on the Sagalac to-morrow. I've had my try, but I dunno how it'll +come out. He's not a man of much dictionary is the Monseenoor." + +"The Monseigneur Lourde? What does he say?" + +"He says what we all say, that he is sorry. 'But why have the Orange +funeral while things are as they are?' he says, and he asks for the red +flag not to be shook in the face of the bull." + +"That is not the talk of a fool, as most priests are," growled the +other. + +"Sure. But it wants a real wind-warbler to make them see it in Lebanon. +They've got the needle. They'll pray to-day with the taste of blood in +their mouths. It's gone too far. Only a miracle can keep things right. +The Mayor has wired for the mounted police--our own battalion of militia +wouldn't serve, and there'd be no use ordering them out--but the Riders +can't get here in time. The train's due the very time the funeral's to +start, but that train's always late, though they say the ingine-driver +is an Orangeman! And the funeral will start at the time fixed, or I +don't know the boys that belong to the lodge. So it's up to We, Us & Co. +to see the thing through, or go bust. It don't suit me. It wouldn't have +been like this, if it hadn't been for what happened to the Chief last +night. There's no holding the boys in. One thing's sure, the Gipsy that +give Ingolby away has got to lie low if he hasn't got away, or there'll +be one less of his tribe to eat the juicy hedgehog. Yes, sir-ee!" + +To the last words of Jowett the Ry seemed to pay no attention, though +his lips shut tight and a menacing look came into his eyes. They were +now upon the bridge, and could see what was forward on both sides of the +Sagalac. There was unusual bustle and activity in the streets and on the +river-bank of both towns. It was noticeable also that though the mills +were running in Manitou, there were fewer chimneys smoking, and far +more men in the streets than usual. Tied up to the Manitou shore were +a half-dozen cribs or rafts of timber which should be floating eastward +down the Sagalac. + +"If the Monseenoor can't, or don't, step in, we're bound for a shindy +over a corpse," continued Jowett after a moment. + +"Can the Monseigneur cast a spell over them all?" remarked the Ry +ironically, for he had little faith in priests, though he had for this +particular one great respect. + +"He's a big man, that preelate," answered Jowett quickly and forcibly. +"He kept the Crees quiet when they was going to rise. If they'd got up, +there'd have been hundreds of settlers massacreed. He risked his life +to do that--went right into the camp in face of levelled rifles, and +sat down and begun to talk. A minute afterwards all the chiefs was +squatting, too. Then the tussle begun between a man with a soul and +a heathen gang that eat dog, kill their old folks, their cripples and +their deformed children, and run sticks of wood through their bleeding +chests, just to show that they're heathens. But he won out, this +Jesueete friend o' man. That's why I'm putting my horses and my land +and my pants and my shirt and the buff that's underneath on the little +preelate." + +Gabriel Druse's face did not indicate the same confidence. "It is not an +age of miracles; the priest is not enough," he said sceptically. + +By twos, by threes, by tens, men from Manitou came sauntering across the +bridge into Lebanon, until a goodly number were scattered at different +points through the town. They seemed to distribute themselves by a +preconceived plan, and they were all habitants. There were no Russians, +Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, or Germans among them. They were low-browed, +sturdy men, dressed in red or blue serge shirts, some with sashes around +their waists, some with ear-rings in their ears, some in knee-boots, and +some with the heavy spiked boots of the river-driver. None appeared +to carry any weapon that would shoot, yet in their belts was the +sheath-knife, the invariable equipment of their class. It would have +seemed more suspicious if they had not carried them. The railwaymen, +miners, carters, mill-hands, however, appeared to carry nothing save +their strong arms and hairy hands, and some were as hairy as animals. +These backwoodsmen also could, without weapons, turn a town into a +general hospital. In battle they fought not only with hands but also +with teeth and hoofs like wild stallions. Teeth tore off an ear or +sliced away a nose, hands smote like hammers or gouged out eyes, +and their nailed boots were weapons of as savage a kind as could be +invented. They could spring and strike an opponent with one foot in the +chest or in the face, and spoil the face for many a day, or for ever. It +was a gift of the backwoods and the lumber-camps, practised in hours of +stark monotony when the devils which haunt places of isolation devoid of +family life, where men herd together like dogs in a kennel, break loose. +There the man that dips his fingers "friendly-like" in the dish of his +neighbour one minute wants the eye of that neighbour the next not +so much in innate or momentary hatred, as in innate savagery and the +primeval sense of combat, the war which was in the blood of the first +man. + +The unarmed appearance of these men did not deceive the pioneer folk +of Lebanon. To them the time had come when the reactionary forces +of Manitou must receive a check. Even those who thought the funeral +fanatical and provocative were ready to defend it. + +The person who liked the whole business least was Rockwell. He was +subject to the same weariness of the flesh and fatigue of the spirit as +all men; yet it was expected of him that at any hour he should be at +the disposal of suffering humanity--of criminal or idiotic +humanity--patient, devoted, calm, nervestrung, complete. He was the one +person in the community who was the universal necessity, and yet for +whom the community had no mercy in its troubles or out of them. There +were three doctors in Lebanon, but none was an institution, none had +prestige save Rockwell, and he often wished that he had less prestige, +since he cared nothing for popularity. + +He had made his preparations for possible "accidents" in no happy mood. +Fresh from the bedside of Ingolby, having had no sleep, and with many +sick people on his list, he inwardly damned the foolishness of +both towns. He even sharply rebuked the Mayor, who urged surgical +preparations upon him, for not sending sooner to the Government for a +force which could preserve order or prevent the procession. + +It was while he was doing so that Jowett appeared with Gabriel Druse to +interview the Mayor. + +"It's like this," said Jowett. "In another hour the funeral will start. +There's a lot of Manitou huskies in Lebanon now, and their feet is +loaded, if their guns ain't. They're comin' by driblets, and by-and-bye, +when they've all distributed themselves, there'll be a marching column +of them from Manitou. It's all arranged to make trouble and break the +law. It's the first real organized set-to we've had between the towns, +and it'll be nasty. If the preelate doesn't dope them, there'll be +pertikler hell to pay." + +He then gave the story of his visit to Monseigneur Lourde, and the +details of what was going forward in Manitou so far as he had learned. +Also the ubiquitous Osterhaut had not been idle, and his bulletin had +just been handed to Jowett. + +"There's one thing ought to be done and has got to be done," Jowett +added, "if the Monseenoor don't pull if off. The leaders have to be +arrested, and it had better be done by one that, in a way, don't belong +to either Lebanon or Manitou." + +The Mayor shook his head. "I don't see how I can authorize Marchand's +arrest--not till he breaks the law, in any case." + +"It's against the law to conspire to break the law," replied Jowett. +"You've been making a lot of special constables. Make Mr. Gabriel Druse +here a special constable, then if the law's broke, he can have a right +to take a hand in." + +The giant Ry had stood apart, watchful and ruminant, but he now stepped +forward, as the Mayor turned to him and stretched out a hand. + +"I am for peace," the old man said. "To keep the peace the law must be +strong." + +In spite of the gravity of the situation the Mayor smiled. "You wouldn't +need much disguise to stand for the law, Mr. Druse," he remarked. "When +the law is seven feet high, it stands well up." + +The Ry did not smile. "Make me the head of the constables, and I will +keep the peace," he said. There was a sudden silence. The proposal had +come so quietly, and it was so startling, that even the calm Rockwell +was taken aback. But his eye and the eye of the Mayor met, and the look +in both their faces was the same. + +"That's bold play," the Mayor said, "but I guess it goes. Yesterday +it couldn't be done. To-day it can. The Chief Constable's down with +smallpox. Got it from an Injun prisoner days ago. He's been bad for +three days, but hung on. Now he's down, and there's no Chief. I was +going to act myself, but the trouble was, if anything happened to me, +there'd be no head of anything. It's better to have two strings to +your bow. It's a go-it's a straight go, Mr. Druse. Seven foot of Chief +Constable ought to have its weight with the roughnecks." + +A look of hopefulness came into his face. This sage, huge, commanding +figure would have a good moral effect on the rude elements of disorder. + +"I'll have you read the Riot Act instead of doing it myself," added +the Mayor. "It'll be a good introduction for you, and as you live in +Manitou, it'll be a knock-out blow to the toughs. Sometimes one man is +as good as a hundred. Come on to the Courthouse with me," he continued +cheerfully. "We'll fix the whole thing. All the special constables are +waiting there with the regular police. An extra foot on a captain's +shoulders is as good as a battery of guns." + +"You're sure it's according to Hoyle?" asked Jowett quizzically. + +He was so delighted that he felt he must "make the Mayor show off self," +as he put it afterwards. He did not miscalculate; the Mayor rose to his +challenge. + +"I'm boss of this show," he said, "and I can go it alone if necessary +when the town's in danger and the law's being hustled. I've had a +meeting of the Council and I've got the sailing-orders I want. I'm boss +of the place, and Mr. Druse is my--" he stopped, because there was a +look in the eyes of the Ry which demanded consideration--"And Mr. Druse +is lawboss," he added. + +The old ineradicable look of command shone in the eyes of Gabriel Druse. +Leadership was written all over him. Power spoke in every motion. The +square, unbowed shoulders, the heavily lined face, with the patriarchal +beard, the gnarled hands, the rough-hewn limbs, the eye of bright, +brooding force proclaimed authority. + +Indeed in that moment there came into the face of the old Nomad the look +it had not worn for many a day. The self-exiled ruler had paid a heavy +price for his daughter's vow, though he had never acknowledged it to +himself. His self-ordained impotency, in a camp that was never moved, +within walls which never rose with the sunset and fell with the morning; +where his feet trod the same roadway day after day; where no man asked +for justice or sought his counsel or fell back on his protection; where +he drank from the same spring and tethered his horse in the same paddock +from morn to morn: all these things had eaten at his heart and bowed his +spirit in spite of himself. + +He was not now of the Romany world, and he was not of the Gorgio world; +but here at last was the old thing come back to him in a new way, and +his bones rejoiced. He would entitle his daughter to her place among the +Gorgios. Perhaps also it would be given him, in the name of the law, to +deal with a man he hated. + +"We've got Mister Marchand now," said Jowett softly to the old +chieftain. + +The Ry's eyes lighted and his jaw set. He did not speak, but his hands +clenched, opened and clenched again. Jowett saw and grinned. + +"The Mayor and the law-boss'll win out, I guess," he said to himself. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMAD + +Even more than Dr. Rockwell, Berry, the barber, was the most troubled +man in Lebanon on the day of the Orange funeral. Berry was a good +example of an unreasoning infatuation. The accident which had come to +his idol, with the certain fall of his fortunes, hit him so hard, that, +for the first time since he became a barber, his razor nipped the flesh +of more than one who sat in his red-upholstered chair. + +In his position, Berry was likely to hear whatever gossip was going. Who +shall have perfect self-control with a giant bib under the chin, tipped +back on a chair that cannot be regulated, with a face covered by lather, +and two plantation fingers holding the nose? In these circumstances, +with much diplomacy, Berry corkscrewed his way into confidence, and when +he dipped a white cloth in bay-rum and eau-de-cologne, and laid it over +the face of the victim, with the finality of a satisfied inquisitor, it +was like giving the last smother to human individuality. An artist after +his kind, he no sooner got what he wanted than he carefully coaxed his +victim away from thoughts of the disclosures into the vague distance of +casual gossip once more. + +Gradually and slowly he shepherded his patient back to the realms of +self-respect and individual personality. The border-line was at the +point where the fingers of his customer fluttered at a collar-button; +for Berry, who realized the power that lies in making a man look +ridiculous, never allowed a customer to be shaved or have his hair cut +with a collar on. When his customers had corns, off came the boots +also, and then Berry's triumph over the white man was complete. To call +attention to an exaggerated bunion when the odorous towel lay upon the +hidden features of what once was a "human," was the last act in the +drama of the Unmaking of Man. + +Only when the client had felt in his pocket for the price of the +flaying, and laid it, with a ten-cent fee, on the ledge beneath the +mirror, where all the implements of the inquisition and the restoration +were assembled, did he feel manhood restored. If, however, he tried to +keep a vow of silence in the chair of execution, he paid a heavy price; +for Berry had his own methods of punishment. A little tighter grasp of +the nose; a little rougher scrape of the razor, and some sharp, stinging +liquid suddenly slapped with a cold palm on the excoriated spot, with +the devilish hypocrisy of healing it; a longer smothering-period under +the towel, when the corners of it were tucked behind the ears and a +crease of it in the mouth-all these soon induced vocal expression again, +and Berry started on his inquisition with gentle certainty. When at last +he dusted the face with a little fine flour of oatmeal, "to heal the +cuticle and 'manoor' the roots," and smelled with content the hands +which had embalmed the hair in verbena-scented oil, a man left his +presence feeling that he was ready for the wrath to come. + +Such was Berry when he had under his razor one of Ingolby's business +foes of Manitou, who had of late been in touch with Felix Marchand. Both +were working for the same end, but with different intentions. Marchand +worked with that inherent devilishness which sometimes takes possession +of low minds; but the other worked as he would have done against his own +brother, for his own business success; and it was his view that one man +could only succeed by taking the place of another, as though the Age of +Expansion had ceased and the Age of Smother had begun. + +From this client while in a state of abject subjection, Berry, whose +heart was hard that day, but whose diplomacy was impeccable, discovered +a thing of moment. There was to be a procession of strikers from two +factories in Manitou, who would throw down their tools or leave their +machines at a certain moment. Falling into line these strikers would +march across the bridge between the towns at such time as would bring +them into touch with the line of the Orange funeral--two processions +meeting at right angles. If neither procession gave way, the Orange +funeral could be broken up, ostensibly not from religious fanaticism, +but from the "unhappy accident" of two straight lines colliding. It was +a juicy plot; and in a few minutes the Mayor and Gabriel Druse knew of +it from the faithful Berry. + +The bell of the meeting-house began to toll as the Orangeman whose death +had caused such commotion was carried to the waiting carriage where he +would ride alone. Almost simultaneously with the starting of the gaudy +yet sombre Orange cortege, with its yellow scarfs, glaring banners, +charcoal plumes and black clothes, the labour procession approached the +Manitou end of the Sagalac bridge. The strikers carried only three or +four banners, but they had a band of seven pieces, with a drum and +a pair of cymbals. With frequent discord, but with much spirit, the +Bleaters, as these musicians were called in Lebanon, inspired the steps +of the Manitou fanatics and toughs. As they came upon the bridge they +were playing a gross paraphrase of The Marseillaise. + +At the head of the Orange procession was a silver-cornet band which the +enterprise of Lebanon had made possible. Its leader was a ne'er-do-well +young Welshman, who had been dismissed from leadership after leadership +of bands in the East till at last he had drifted into Lebanon. Here, +strange to say, he had never been drunk but once; and that was the night +before he married the widow of a local publican, who had a nice little +block of stock in one of Ingolby's railways, which yielded her seven +per cent., and who knew how to handle the citizens of the City of Booze. +When she married Tom Straker, her first husband, he drank on an average +twenty whiskies a day. She got him down to one; and then he died and had +as fine a funeral as a judge. There were those who said that if Tom's +whiskies hadn't been cut down so--but there it was: Tom was in the bosom +of Abraham, and William Jones, who was never called anything else than +Willy Welsh, had been cut down from his unrecorded bibulations to none +at all; but he smoked twenty-cent cigars at the ex-widow's expense. + +To-day Willy Welsh played with heart and courage, "I'm Going Home to +Glory," at the head of the Orange procession; for who that has faced +such a widow as was his for one whole year could fear the onset of +faction fighters! Besides, as the natives of the South Seas will never +eat a Chinaman, so a Western man will never kill a musician. Senators, +magistrates, sheriffs, police, gamblers, horse-stealers, bankers, and +broncho-riders all die unnatural deaths at times, but a musician in the +West is immune from all except the hand of Fate. Not one can be spared. +Even a tough convicted of cheating at cards, or breaking a boom on a +river, has escaped punishment because he played the concertina. + +The discord and jangle between the two bands was the first collision +of this fateful day. While yet there was a space between the two +processions, the bands broke into furious contest. It was then that, +through the long funeral line, men with hard-set faces came closer up +together, and forty, detaching themselves from the well-kept run of +marching lodgemen, closed up around the horses and the hearse, making a +solid flanking force. At stated intervals also, outside the lodgemen +in the lines, were special constables, many of whom had been the +stage-drivers, hunters, cattlemen, prospectors, and pioneers of the +early days. Most of them had come of good religious stock-Presbyterians, +Baptists, Methodists, Unitarians; and though they had little piety, and +had never been able to regain the religious customs and habits of their +childhood, they "Stood for the Thing the Old Folks stand for." They were +in a mood which would tear cotton, as the saying was. There was not one +of them but expected that broken heads and bloodshed would be the order +of the day, and they were stonily, fearlessly prepared for the worst. + +Since the appearance of Gabriel Druse on the scene, the feeling had +grown that the luck would be with them. When he started at the head +of the cortege, they could scarce forbear to cheer. Such a champion in +appearance had never been seen in the West, and, the night before, he +had proved his right to the title by shaking a knot of toughs into spots +of disconcerted humanity. + +As they approached the crossroads of the bridge, his voice, clear and +sonorous, could be heard commanding the Orange band to cease playing. + +When the head of the funeral procession was opposite the bridge--the +band, the hearse, the bodyguard of the hearse--Gabriel Druse stood +aside, and took his place at the point where the lines of the two +processions would intersect. + +It was at this moment that the collision came. There were only about +sixty feet of space between the two processions, when a voice rang out +in a challenge so offensive, that the men of Manitou got their cue for +attack without creating it themselves. Every Orangeman of the Lodge of +Lebanon afterwards denied that he had raised the cry; and the chances +are that every one spoke the truth. It was like Felix Marchand +to arrange for just such an episode, and so throw the burden of +responsibility on the Orangemen. + +"To hell with the Pope! To hell with the Pope!" the voice rang out, and +it had hardly ceased before the Manitou procession made a rush forward. +The apparent leader of the Manitou roughs was a blackbearded man of +middle height, who spoke raucously to the crowd behind him. + +Suddenly a powerful voice rang out. + +"Halt, in the name of the Queen!" it called. Surprise is the very +essence of successful war. The roughs of Manitou had not looked for +this. They had foreseen the appearance of the official Chief Constable +of Lebanon; they had expected his challenge and warning in +the vernacular; but here was something which struck them with +consternation--first, the giant of Manitou in the post of command, +looking like some berserker; and then the formal reading of that stately +document in the name of the Queen. + +Far back in the minds of every French habitant present was the old +monarchical sense. He makes, at worst, a poor anarchist, though he is +a good revolutionist; and the French colonials had never been divorced +from monarchical France. + +In the eyes of the most forward of those on the Sagalac bridge, there +was a sudden wonderment and confusion. To the dramatic French mind, +ceremonial is ever welcome; and for a moment it had them in its grip, +as old Gabriel Druse read out in his ringing voice, the trenchant royal +summons. + +It was a strange and dramatic scene--the Orange funeral standing still, +garish yet solemn, with hundreds of men, rough and coarse, quiet +and refined, dissolute and careless, sober and puritanic, broad and +tolerant, sharp and fanatical; the labour procession, polyglot +in appearance, but with Gallic features and looseness of dress +predominating; excitable, brutish, generous, cruel; without intellect, +but with an intelligence which in the lowest was acute, and with +temperaments responsive to drama. + +As Druse read, his eyes now and then flashed, at first he knew not why, +to the slim, bearded figure of the apparent leader. At length he caught +the feverish eye of the man, and held it for a moment. It was familiar, +but it eluded him; he could not place it. + +He heard, however, Jowett's voice say to him, scarce above a whisper: + +"It's Felix Marchand, boss!" + +Jowett also had been puzzled at first by the bearded figure, but it +suddenly flashed upon him that the beard and wig were a disguise, that +Marchand had resorted to Ingolby's device. It might prove as dangerous a +stratagem with him as it had to Ingolby. + +There was a moment's hesitation after Druse had finished reading--as +though the men of Manitou had not quite recovered from their +surprise--then the man with the black beard said something to those +nearest him. There was a start forward, and someone cried, "Down with +the Orangemen--et bas l'Orange!" + +Like a well-disciplined battalion the Orangemen rolled up quickly into a +compact mass, showing that they had planned their defence well, and +the moment was black with danger, when, suddenly, Druse strode forward. +Flinging right and left two or three river-drivers, he caught the man +with the black beard, snatched him out from among the oncoming crowd, +and tore off the black beard and wig. Felix Marchand stood exposed. + +A cry of fury rang out from the Orangemen behind, and a dozen men rushed +forward, but Gabriel Druse acted with the instant decision of a real +commander. Seeing that it would be a mistake to arrest Marchand at that +moment, he raised the struggling figure of the wrecker above his head +and, with Herculean effort, threw him up over the heads of the Frenchmen +in front of him. + +So extraordinary was the sight that, as if fascinated, the crowd before +and behind followed the action with staring eyes and tense bodies. The +faces of all the contending forces were as concentrated for the instant, +as though the sun were falling out of the sky. It was so great a feat, +one so much in consonance with the spirit of the frontier world, that +gasps of praise broke from both crowds. As though it were a thunderbolt, +the Manitou roughs standing where Marchand was like to fall, instead +of trying to catch him, broke away from beneath the bundle of falling +humanity, and Marchand fell on the dusty cement of the bridge with a +dull thud, like a bag of bones. + +For a moment there was no motion on the part of either procession. +Banners drooped and swayed as the men holding them were lost in the +excitement. + +Time had only been gained, however. There was no reason to think that +the trouble was over, or that the special constables who had gathered +close behind Gabriel Druse would not have to strike heavy blows for the +cause of peace. + +The sudden appearance of a new figure in the narrow, open space between +the factions in that momentary paralysis was not a coincidence. It +was what Jowett had planned for, the factor for peace in which he most +believed. + +A small, spare man in a scarlet cassock, white chasuble, and black +biretta, suddenly stole out from the crowd on the Lebanon side of the +bridge, carrying the elements of the Mass. His face was shining white, +and in the eyes was an almost unearthly fire. It was the beloved +Monseigneur Lourde. + +Raising the elements before him toward his own people on the bridge, he +cried in a high, searching voice: + +"I prayed with you, I begged you to preserve the peace. Last night I +asked you in God's name to give up your disorderly purposes. I thought +then I had done my whole duty; but the voice of God has spoken to me. +An hour ago I carried the elements to a dying woman here in Lebanon, and +gave her peace. As I did so the funeral bell rang out, and it came to +me, as though the One above had spoken, that peace would be slain and +His name insulted by all of you--by all of you, Catholic and Protestant. +God's voice bade me come to you from the bed of one who has gone hence +from peace to Peace. In the name of Christ, peace, I say! Peace, in the +name of Christ!" + +He raised the sacred vessel high above his head, so that his eyes looked +through the walls of his uplifted arms. "Kneel!" he called in a clear, +ringing voice which yet quavered with age. + +There was an instant's hush, and then great numbers of the crowd in +front of him, toughs and wreckers, blasphemers, turbulent ones and +evil-livers, yet Catholics all, with the ancient root of the Great Thing +in them, sank down; and the banners of the labour societies drooped +before the symbol of peace won by sacrifice. + +Even the Orangemen bared their heads in the presence of that Popery +which was anathema to them, which they existed to combat, and had been +taught to hate. Some, no doubt, would rather have fought than have had +peace at the price; but they could not free their minds from the sacred +force which had brought most of the crowd of faction-fighters to their +knees. + +With a wave of the hand, Gabriel Druse ordered the cortege forward, and +silently the procession with its yellow banners and its sable, drooping +plumes moved on. + +Once on its way again, Willy Welsh and his silver-cornet band struck up +the hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light." It was the one real coincidence of the +day that this moving hymn was written by a cardinal of the Catholic +Church. It was also an irony that, as the crowd of sullen Frenchmen +turned back to Manitou, the train bearing the Mounted Police, for whom +the Mayor had sent to the capital, steamed noisily in, and redcoats +showed at its windows and on the steps of the cars. + +The only casualty that the day saw was the broken arm and badly bruised +body of Felix Marchand, who was gloomily helped back to his home across +the Sagalac. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. THE BEACONS + +There were few lights showing in Lebanon or Manitou; but here and +there along the Sagalac was the fading glimmer of a camp-fire, and in +Tekewani's reservation one light glowed softly like a star. It came +from a finely-made and chased safety-lantern given to Tekewani by the +Government, as a symbol of honour for having kept the braves quiet when +an Indian and half-breed rising was threatened; and to the powerless +chief it had become a token of his authority, the sign of the Great +White Mother's approval. By day a spray of eagle's feathers waved over +his tepee, but the gleam of the brass lantern every night was like a +sentry at the doorway of a monarch. + +It was a solace to his wounded spirit; it allayed the smart of +subjection; made him feel himself a ruler in retirement, even as Gabriel +Druse was a self-ordained exile. + +These two men, representing the primitive nomad life, had been drawn +together in friendship. So much so, that to Tekewani alone of all the +West, Druse gave his confidence and told his story. It came in the +springtime, when the blood of the young bucks was simmering and, the +ancient spell was working. There had preceded them generations of +hunters who had slain their thousands and their tens of thousands of +wild animals and the fowls of the air; had killed their enemies in +battle; had seized the comely women of their foes and made them their +own. No thrill of the hunter's trail now drew off the overflow of +desire. In the days of rising sap, there were only the young maidens or +wives of their own tribe to pursue, and it lacked in glory. Also in the +springtime, Tekewani himself had his own trials, for in his blood the +old medicine stirred. His face turned towards the prairie North and the +mountain West where yet remained the hunter's quarry; and he longed to +be away with rifle and gun, with his squaw and the papooses trailing +after like camp-followers, to eat the fruits of victory. But that could +not be; he must remain in the place the Great White Mother had reserved +for him; he and his braves must assemble, and draw their rations at the +appointed times and seasons, and grunt thanks to those who ruled over +them. + +It was on one of these virginal days, when there was a restless stirring +among the young bucks, who smelled the wide waters, the pines and the +wild shrubs; who heard the cry of the loon on the lonely lake and +the whir of the wild duck's wings, who answered to the phantom cry +of ancient war; it was on such a day that the two chiefs opened their +hearts to each other. + +Near to the boscage on a little hill overlooking the great river, +Gabriel Druse had come upon Tekewani seated in the pine-dust, rocking to +and fro, and chanting a low, sorrowful refrain, with eyes fixed on the +setting sun. And the Ry of Rys understood, with the understanding +which only those have who live close to the earth, and also near to the +heavens of their own gods. He sat down beside the forlorn chief, and in +the silence their souls spoke to each other. There swept into the veins +of the Romany ruler something of the immitigable sadness of the Indian +chief; and, with a sudden premonition that he also was come to the +sunset of his life, his big nomad eyes sought the westering rim of the +heavens, and his breast heaved. + +In that hour the two men declared themselves to each other, and Gabriel +Druse told Tekewani all that he had hidden from the people of the +Sagalac, and was answered in kind. It seemed to them that they were as +brothers who were one and who had parted in ages long gone; and having +met were to part and disappear once more, beginning still another trail +in an endless reincarnation. + +"Brother," said Tekewani, "it was while there was a bridge of land +between the continents at the North that we met. Again I see it. I +forgot it, but again I see. There was war, and you went upon one path +and I upon another, and we met no more under all the moons till now." + +"'Dordi', so it was and at such a time," answered the Ry of Rys. "And +once more we will follow after the fire-flies which give no light to the +safe places but only lead farther into the night." + +Tekewani rocked to and fro again, muttering to himself, but presently he +said: + +"We eat from the hands of those who have driven away the buffalo, the +deer, and the beaver; and the young bucks do naught to earn the joy of +women. They are but as lusting sheep, not as the wild-goat that chases +its mate over the places of death, till it comes upon her at last, and +calls in triumph over her as she kneels at his feet. So it is. Like tame +beasts we eat from the hand of the white man, and the white man leaves +his own camp where his own women are, and prowls in our camps, so that +not even our own women are left to us." + +It was then that Gabriel Druse learned of the hatred of Tekewani for +Felix Marchand, because of what he had done in the reservation, prowling +at night like a fox or a coyote in the folds. + +They parted that hour, believing that the epoch of life in which they +were and the fortunes of time which had been or were to come, were but +turns of a wheel that still went on turning; and that whatever chanced +of good or bad fortune in the one span of being, might be repaired in +the next span, or the next, or the next; so, through their creed of +reincarnation, taking courage to face the failure of the life they now +lived. Not by logic or the teaching of any school had they reached +this revelation, but through an inner sense. They were not hopeful +and wondering and timid; they were only sure. Their philosophy, their +religion, whether heathen or human, was inborn. They had comfort in it +and in each other. + +After that day Gabriel Druse always set a light in his window which +burned all night, answering to the lantern-light at the door of +Tekewani's home--the lights of exile and of an alliance which had behind +it the secret influences of past ages and vanished peoples. + +There came a night, however, when the light at the door of Tekewani's +tepee did not burn. At sunset it was lighted, but long before midnight +it was extinguished. Looking out from the doorway of his home (it was +the night after the Orange funeral), Gabriel Druse, returned from his +new duties at Lebanon, saw no light in the Indian reservation. With +anxiety, he set forth in the shine of the moon to visit it. + +Arrived at the chief's tepee, he saw that the lantern of honour was +gone, and waking Tekewani, he brought him out to see. When the old +Indian knew his loss, he gave a harsh cry and stooped, and, gathering +a handful of dust from the ground, sprinkled it on his head. Then with +arms outstretched he cursed the thief who had robbed him of what had +been to him like a never-fading mirage, an illusion blinding his eyes to +the bitter facts of his condition. + +To his mind all the troubles come to Lebanon and Manitou had had one +source; and now the malign spirit had stretched its hand to spoil those +already dispossessed of all but the right to live. One name was upon the +lips of both men, as they stood in the moonlight by Tekewani's tepee. + +"There shall be an end of this," growled the Romany. + +"I will have my own," said Tekewani, with malediction on the thief who +had so shamed him. + +Black anger was in the heart of Gabriel Druse as he turned again towards +his own home, and he was glad of what he had done to Felix Marchand at +the Orange funeral. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. THE KEEPER OF THE BRIDGE + + "Like the darkness of the grave, which is darkness itself--" + +Most of those who break out of the zareba of life, who lay violent hands +upon themselves, do so with a complete reasoning, which in itself is +proof of their insanity. It may be domestic tragedy, or ill-health, +or crime, or broken faith, or shame, or insomnia, or betrayed +trust--whatever it is, many a one who suffers from such things, tries to +end it all with that deliberation, that strategy, and that cunning which +belong only to the abnormal. + +A mind which has known a score or more of sleepless nights acquires +an invincible clearness of its own, seeing an end which is without +peradventure. It finds a hundred perfect reasons for not going on, every +one of which is in itself sufficient; every one of which knits into the +other ninety and nine with inevitable affinity. + +To the mind of Ingolby came a hundred such reasons for breaking out of +life's enclosure, as the effect of the opiate Rockwell had given him +wore off, and he regained consciousness. As he did so, someone in +the room was telling of that intervention of Gabriel Druse and the +Monseigneur at the Orange funeral, which had saved the situation. At +first he listened to what was said--it was the nurse talking to Jim +Beadle with no sharp perception of the significance of the story; though +it slowly pierced the lethargy of his senses, and he turned over in the +bed to face the watchers. + +"What time is it, Jim?" he asked heavily. They told him it was sunset. + +"Is it quiet in both towns?" he asked after a pause. They told him that +it was. + +"Any telegrams for me?" he asked. + +There was an instant's hesitation. They had had no instructions on this +point, and they hardly knew what to say; but Jim's mind had its own +logic, and the truth seemed best to him now. He answered that there were +several wires, but that they "didn't amount to nothin'." + +"Have they been opened?" Ingolby asked with a frown, half-raising +himself. It was hard to resign the old masterfulness and self-will. + +"I'd like to see anybody open 'em 'thout my pe'mision," answered Jim +imperiously. "When you's asleep, Chief, I'm awake; and I take care of +you' things, same as ever I done. There ain't no wires been opened, and +there ain't goin' to be whiles I'm runnin' the show for you." + +"Open and read them to me," commanded Ingolby. Again Ingolby was +conscious of hesitation on Jim's part. Already the acuteness of the +blind was possessing him, sharpening the senses left unimpaired. +Although Jim moved, presumably, towards the place where the telegrams +lay, Ingolby realized that his own authority was being crossed by that +of the doctor and the nurse. + +"You will leave the room for a moment, nurse," he said with a brassy +vibration in the voice--a sign of nervous strain. With a smothered +protest the nurse left, and Jim stood beside the bed with the telegrams. + +"Read them to me, Jim," Ingolby repeated irritably. "Be quick." + +They were not wires which Ingolby should have heard at the time, when +his wound was still inflamed, when he was still on the outer circle +of that artificial sleep which the opiates had secured. They were from +Montreal and New York, and, resolved from their half-hidden suggestion +into bare elements, they meant that henceforth others would do the work +he had done. They meant, in effect, that save for the few scores of +thousand dollars he had made, he was now where he was when he came West. + +When Jim had finished reading them, Ingolby sank back on the pillows and +said quietly: + +"All right, Jim. Put them in the drawer of the table and I'll answer +them to-morrow. I want to get a little more sleep, so give me a drink, +and then leave me alone--both nurse and you--till I ring the bell. +There's a bell on the table, isn't there?" + +He stretched out a hand towards the table beside the bed, and Jim softly +pushed the bell under his fingers. + +"That's right," he added. "Now, I'm not to be disturbed unless the +doctor comes. I'm all right, and I want to be alone and quiet. No one at +all in the room is what I want. You understand, Jim?" + +"My head's just as good to get at what you want as ever it was, and you +goin' have what you want, I guess, while I'm on deck," was Jim's reply. + +Jim put a glass of water into his hand. He drank very slowly, was indeed +only mechanically conscious that he was drinking, for his mind was far +away. + +After he had put the glass down, Jim still stood beside the bed, looking +at him. + +"Why don't you go, as I tell you, Jim?" Ingolby asked wearily. + +"I'm goin'"--Jim tucked the bedclothes in carefully--"I'm goin', but, +boss, I jes' want to say dat dis thing goin' to come out all right +bime-by. There ain't no doubt 'bout dat. You goin' see everything, come +jes' like what you want--suh!" + +Ingolby did not reply. He held out his hand, and black fingers shot over +and took it. A moment later the blind man was alone in the room. + +The light of day vanished, and the stars came out. There was no moon, +but it was one of those nights of the West when millions of stars +glimmer in the blue vault above, and every planet and every star and +cluster of stars are so near that it might almost seem they could be +caught by an expert human hand. The air was very still, and a mantle of +peace was spread over the tender scene. The window and the glass doors +that gave from Ingolby's room upon the veranda on the south side of the +house, were open, and the air was warm as in Midsummer. Now and then the +note of a night-bird broke the stillness, but nothing more. + +It was such a night as Ingolby loved; it was such a night as often +found him out in the restful gloom of the trees, thinking and brooding, +planning, revelling in memories of books he had read, and in dreaming of +books he might write-if there were time. Such a night insulated the dark +moods which possessed him occasionally almost as effectively as fishing +did; and that was saying much. + +But the darkest mood of all his days was upon him now. When Rockwell +came, soon after Jim and the nurse left him, he simulated sleep, for he +had no mind to talk; and the doctor, deceived by his even breathing, had +left, contented. At last he was wholly alone with his own thoughts, as +he desired. From the moment Jim had read him the wires, which were +the real revelation of the situation to which he had come, he had been +travelling hard on the road leading to a cul-de-sac, from which there +was no egress save by breaking through the wall. Never, it might have +seemed, had his mind been clearer, but it was a clearness belonging to +the abnormal. It was a straight line of thought which, in its intensity, +gathered all other thoughts into its wake, reduced them to the control +of an obsession. It was borne in on his mind that his day was done, that +nothing could right the disorder which had strewn his path with +broken hopes and shattered ambitions. No life-work left, no schemes to +accomplish, no construction to achieve, no wealth to gain, no public +good to be won, no home to be his, no woman, his very own, to be his +counsellor and guide in the natural way! + +As myriad thoughts drove through his brain on this Indian-summer night, +they all merged into the one obsession that he could no longer stay. The +irresistible logic of the brain stretched to an abnormal tenuity, and +an intolerable brightness was with him. He was in the throes of that +intense visualization which comes with insomnia, when one is awake yet +apart from the waking world, where nothing is really real and nothing +normal. He had a call to go hence, and he must go. Minute after minute +passed, hours passed, and the fight of the soul to maintain itself +against the disordered mind went on. All his past seemed but part of a +desert, lonely and barren and strange. + +In the previous year he had made a journey to Arizona with Jowett, to +see some railway construction there, and at a ranch he had visited +he came upon some verses which had haunted his mind ever since. They +fastened upon his senses now. They were like a lonesome monotone which +at length gave calm to his torturing reflections. In his darkness the +verses kept repeating themselves: + + "I heard the desert calling, and my heart stood still + There was Winter in my world and in my heart: + A breath came from the mesa and a message stirred my will, + And my soul and I arose up to depart. + + I heard the desert calling; and I knew that over there, + In an olive-sheltered garden where the mesquite grows, + Was a woman of the sunrise, with the starshine in her hair, + And a beauty that the almond-blossom blows. + + In the night-time when the ghost-trees glimmered in the moon, + Where the mesa by the watercourse was spanned, + Her loveliness enwrapped me like the blessedness of June, + And all my life was thrilling in her hand. + + I hear the desert calling, and my heart stands still; + There is Summer in my world and in my heart; + A breath comes from the mesa, and a will beyond my will + Binds my footsteps as I rise up to depart." + +This strange, half-mystic song of the mesa and the olive-groves, of the +ghost-trees and the moon, kept playing upon his own heated senses like +the spray from a cooling stream, and at last it quieted him. The dark +spirit of self-destruction loosened its hold. + +His brain had been strained beyond the normal, almost unconsciously his +fingers had fastened on the pistol in the drawer of the table by his +bed. It had been there since the day when he had travelled down from +Alaska--loaded as it had been when he had carried it down the southern +trail. But as his fingers tightened on the little engine of death, +from the words which had been ringing in his brain came the flash of a +revelation: + + "... And a will beyond my will + Binds my footsteps as I rise up to depart." + +A will beyond his will! It was as though Fleda's fingers were laid upon +his own; as though she whispered in his ear and her breath swept his +cheek; as though she was there in the room beside him, making the +darkness light, tempering the wind of chastisement to his naked soul. +In the overstrain of his nervous system the illusion was powerful. He +thought he heard her voice. The pistol slipped from his fingers, and he +fell back on the pillow with a sigh. The will beyond his will bound his +footsteps. + +Who can tell? The grim, malign experience of Fleda in her bedroom with +the Thing she thought was from beyond the bounds of her own life; the +voice that spoke to Ingolby, and the breath that swept over his cheek +were, perhaps, as real in a sense as would have been the corporeal +presence of Jethro Fawe in one case and of Fleda Druse in the other. +It may be that in very truth Fleda Druse's spirit with its poignant +solicitude controlled his will as he "rose up to depart." But if it was +only an illusion, it was not less a miracle. Some power of suggestion +bound his fleeing footsteps, drew him back from the Brink. + +He slept. Once the nurse came and looked at him and returned to the +other room; and twice Jim stole in silently for a moment and retired +again to his own chamber. The stars shone in at the doors that opened +out from the quiet room into the night, the watch beside the bed ticked +on, the fox-terrier which always slept on a mat at the foot of the bed +sighed in content, while his master breathed heavily in a sleep full of +dreams that hurried past like phantasmagoria--of a hundred things that +had been in his life, and that had never been; of people he had known, +distorted, ridiculous and tremendous. There were dreams of fiddlers +and barbers, of crowds writhing in passion in a room where there was a +billiard-table and a lucky horseshoe on the wall. There were dreams +that tossed and mingled in one whirlpool vision; and then at last came a +dream which was so cruel and clear that it froze his senses. + +It was the dream of a great bridge over a swiftflowing river; of his own +bridge over the Sagalacof that bridge being destroyed by men who crept +through the night with dynamite in their hands. + +With a hoarse, smothered cry he awoke. His eyes opened wide. His heart +was beating like a hammer against his side. Only the terrier at his feet +heard the muttered agony. With an instinct all its own, it slipped to +the floor. + +It watched its master get out of bed, cross the room and feel for a coat +along the wall--an overcoat which he used as a dressing-gown at times. +Putting it on hastily, with outstretched hands Ingolby felt his way to +the glass doors opening on the veranda. The dog, as though to let him +know he was there, rubbed against his legs. Ingolby murmured a soft, +unintelligible word, and, in his bare feet, passed out on to the +veranda, and from there to the garden and towards the gate at the front +of the house. + +The nurse heard the gate click lightly, but she was only half-awake, +and as all was quiet in the next room, she composed herself in her chair +again with the vain idea that she was not sleeping. And Jim the faithful +one, as though under a narcotic of fate, was snoring softly beside the +vacant room. The streets were still. No lights burned anywhere so far +as eye could see. But now and then, in the stillness through which the +river flowed on, murmuring and rhythmic, there rose the distant sounds +of disorderly voices. Ingolby was in a state which was neither sleep nor +waking, which was in part delirium, in part oblivion to all things +in the world save one--an obsession so complete, that he moved +automatically through the street in which he lived towards that which +led to the bridge. + +His terrier, as though realizing exactly what he wished, seemed to guide +him by rubbing against his legs, and even pressing hard against them +when he was in any danger of losing the middle of the road, or swerving +towards a ditch or some obstruction. Only once did they pass any human +being, and that was when they came upon a camp of road-builders, where a +red light burned, and two men slept in the open by a dying fire. One +of them raised his head when Ingolby passed, but being more than +half-asleep, and seeing only a man and a dog, thought nothing of it, and +dropped back again upon his rough pillow. He was a stranger to +Lebanon, and there was little chance of his recognizing Ingolby in the +semi-darkness. + +As they neared the river, Ingolby became deeply agitated. He moved with +his hands outstretched. Had it not been for his dog he would probably +have walked into the Sagalac; for though he seemed to have an instinct +that was extra-natural, he swayed and staggered in the delirium driving +him on. There was one dreadful moment when, having swerved from the road +leading on to the bridge, he was within a foot of the river-bank. +One step farther, and he would have plunged down thirty feet into the +stream, to be swept to the Rapids below. + +But for the first time the terrier made a sound. He gave a whining +bark almost human in its meaning, and threw himself at the legs of his +master, pushing him backwards and over towards the road leading upon the +bridge, as a collie guides sheep. Presently Ingolby felt the floor of +the bridge under his feet; and now he hastened on, with outstretched +arms and head bent forward, listening intently, the dog trotting beside, +with what knowledge working in him Heaven alone knew. + +The roar of the Rapids below was a sonorous accompaniment to Ingolby's +wild thoughts. One thing only he felt, one thing only heard--the men +in Barbazon's Tavern saying that the bridge should be blown up on +the Saturday night; and this was Saturday night--the night of the day +following that of the Orange funeral. He had heard the criminal hireling +of Felix Marchand say that it should be done at midnight, and that the +explosive should be laid under that part of the bridge which joined the +Manitou bank of the Sagalac. As though in very truth he saw with his +eyes, he stopped short not far from the point where the bridge joined +the land, and stood still, listening. + +For several minutes he was motionless, intent, as an animal waiting for +its foe. At last his newly-sensitive ears heard footsteps approaching +and low voices. The footsteps came nearer, the voices, though so low, +became more distinct. They were now not fifty feet away, but to the +delirious Ingolby they were as near as death had been when his fingers +closed on the pistol in his room. + +He took a step forward, and with passionate voice and arms outstretched, +he cried: + + "You shall not do it-by God, you shall not touch my bridge! + I built it. You shall not touch it. Back, you devils-back!" + +The terrier barked loudly. + +The two men in the semi-darkness in front of him cowered at the sight +of this weird figure holding the bridge they had come to destroy. His +words, uttered in so strange and unnatural a voice, shook their nerves. +They shrank away from the ghostly form with the outstretched arms. + +In the minute's pause following on his words, a giant figure suddenly +appeared behind the dynamiters. It was the temporary Chief Constable of +Lebanon, returning from his visit to Tekewani. He had heard Ingolby's +wild words, and he realized the situation. + +"Ingolby--steady there, Ingolby!" he called. "Steady! Steady! Gabriel +Druse is here. It's all right." + +At the first sound of Druse's voice the two wreckers turned and ran. + +As they did so, Ingolby's hands fell to his side, and he staggered +forward. + +"Druse--Fleda," he murmured, then swayed, trembled and fell. + +With words that stuck in his throat Gabriel Druse stooped and lifted +him up in his arms. At first he turned towards the bridge, as though to +cross over to Lebanon, but the last word Ingolby had uttered rang in his +ears, and he carried him away into the trees towards his own house, the +faithful terrier following. "Druse--Fleda!" They were the words of one +who had suddenly emerged from the obsession of delirium into sanity, and +then had fallen into as sudden unconsciousness. + +"Fleda! Fleda!" called Gabriel Druse outside the door of his house a +quarter of an hour later, and her voice in reply was that of one who +knew that the feet of Fate were at her threshold. + + + + +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. + + + + ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "WORLD FOR SALE": + + Agony in thinking about the things we're never going to do + I don't believe in walking just for the sake of walking + It's no good simply going--you've got to go somewhere + Most honest thing I ever heard, but it's not the most truthful + Saw how futile was much competition + They think that if a vote's worth having it's worth paying for + When you strike your camp, put out the fires + Women may leave you in the bright days + You never can really overtake a newspaper lie + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The World For Sale, Complete, by Gilbert Parker + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD FOR SALE, COMPLETE *** + +***** This file should be named 6284.txt or 6284.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/6/2/8/6284/ + +Produced by David Widger + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers***** + + +Title: The World For Sale, Complete + +Author: Gilbert Parker + +Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6284] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on December 5, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + + + + + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD FOR SALE, PARKER, Entire *** + + + +This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> + + + + + +THE WORLD FOR SALE + +By Gilbert Parker + + + +CONTENTS: + +PRELUDE + +BOOK I + +I. "THE DRUSES ARE UP!" +II. THE WHISPER FROM BEYOND +III. CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNS +IV. THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWE +V. "BY THE RIVER STARZKE....IT WAS SO DONE" +VI. THE UNGUARDED FIRES +VII. IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE + + +BOOK II + +VIII. THE SULTAN +IX. MATTER AND MIND AND TWO MEN +X. FOR LUCK +XI. THE SENTENCE OF THE PATRIN +XII. "LET THERE BE LIGHT" +XIII. THE CHAIN OF THE PAST +XIV. SUCH THINGS MAY NOT BE +XV. THE WOMAN FROM WIND RIVER +XVI. THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE +XVII. THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMAD +XVIII. THE BEACONS +XIX. THE BEEPER OF THE BRIDGE + + +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 + + + + +INTRODUCTION + +'The World for Sale' is a tale of the primitive and lonely West and +North, but the primitiveness and loneliness is not like that to be found +in 'Pierre and His People'. Pierre's wanderings took place in a period +when civilization had made but scant marks upon the broad bosom of the +prairie land, and towns and villages were few and far scattered. The +Lebanon and Manitou of this story had no existence in the time of Pierre, +except that where Manitou stands there was a Hudson's Bay Company's post +at which Indians, half-breeds, and chance settlers occasionally gathered +for trade and exchange-furs, groceries, clothing, blankets, tobacco, and +other things; and in the long winters the post was as isolated as an +oasis in the Sahara. + +That old life was lonely and primitive, but it had its compensating +balance of bright sun, wild animal life, and an air as vivid and virile +as ever stirred the veins of man. Sometimes the still, bright cold was +broken by a terrific storm, which ravaged, smothered, and entombed the +stray traveller in ravines of death. That was in winter; but in summer, +what had been called, fifty years ago, an alkali desert was an +everlasting stretch of untilled soil, with unsown crops, and here and +there herds of buffalo, which were stalked by alert Red Indians, half- +breeds, and white pioneer hunters. + +The stories in 'Pierre and His People' were true to the life of that +time; the incidents in 'The World for Sale', and the whole narrative, are +true to the life of a very few years ago. Railways have pierced and +opened up lonely regions of the Sagalae, and there are two thriving towns +where, in the days of Pierre, only stood a Hudson's Bay Company's post +with its store. Now, as far as eye can see, vast fields of grain greet +the eye, and houses and barns speckle the greenish brown or Tuscan yellow +of the crop-covered lands, while towns like Lebanon and Manitou provide +for the modern settler all the modern conveniences which science has +given to civilized municipalities. Today the motor-car and the telephone +are as common in such places as they are in a thriving town of the United +Kingdom. After the first few days of settlement two things always +appear--a school-house and a church. Probably there is no country in the +world where elementary education commands the devotion and the cash of +the people as in English Canada; that is why the towns of Lebanon and +Manitou had from the first divergent views. Lebanon was English, +progressive, and brazenly modern; Manitou was slow, reactionary, more or +less indifferent to education, and strenuously Catholic, and was thus +opposed to the militant Protestantism of Lebanon. + +It was my idea to picture a situation in the big new West where destiny +is being worked out in the making of a nation and the peopling of the +wastes. I selected a very modern and unusual type of man as the central +figure of my story. He was highly educated, well born, and carefully +brought up. He possessed all the best elements of a young man in a new +country--intelligent self-dependence, skill, daring, vision. He had an +original turn of mind, and, as men are obliged to do in new countries, +he looked far ahead. Yet he had to face what pioneers and reformers in +old countries have to face, namely the disturbance of rooted interests. +Certainly rooted interests in towns but a generation old cannot be +extensive or remarkable, but if they are associated with habits and +principles, they may be as deadly as those which test the qualities and +wreck the careers of men in towns as old as London. The difference, +however, between the old European town and the new Western town is that +differences in the Western town are more likely to take physical form, +as was the case in the life of Ingolby. In order to accentuate the +primitive and yet highly civilized nature of the life I chose my heroine +from a race and condition more unsettled and more primitive than that of +Lebanon or Manitou at any time. I chose a heroine from the gipsy race, +and to heighten the picture of the primitive life from which she had come +I made her a convert to the settled life of civilization. I had known +such a woman, older, but with the same characteristics, the same +struggles, temptations, and suffering the same restriction of her life +and movements by the prejudice in her veins--the prejudice of racial +predilection. + +Looking at the story now after its publication, I am inclined to think +that the introduction of the gipsy element was too bold, yet I believe +it was carefully worked out in construction, and was a legitimate, +intellectual enterprise. The danger of it was that it might detract from +the reality and vividness of the narrative as a picture of Western life. +Most American critics of the book seem not to have been struck by this +doubt which has occurred to me. They realize perhaps more faithfully +than some of the English critics have done that these mad contrasts are +by no means uncommon in the primitive and virile life of the West and +North. Just as California in the old days, just as Ballaret in Australia +drew the oddest people from every corner of the world, so Western towns, +with new railways, brought strange conglomerations into the life. For +instance, a town like Winnipeg has sections which represent the life of +nearly every race of Europe, and towns like Lebanon and Manitou, with +English and French characteristics controlling them mainly, are still as +subject to outside racial influences as to inside racial antagonisms. + +I believe The World for Sale shows as plainly as anything can show the +vexed and conglomerate life of a Western town. It shows how racial +characteristics may clash, disturb, and destroy, and yet how wisdom, +tact, and lucky incident may overcome almost impossible situations. The +antagonisms between Lebanon and Manitou were unwillingly and unjustly +deepened by the very man who had set out to bring them together, as one +of the ideals of his life, and as one of the factors of his success. +Ingolby, who had everything to gain by careful going, almost wrecked his +own life, and he injured the life of the two towns by impulsive acts. + +The descriptions of life in the two towns are true, and the chief +characters in the book are lifted out of the life as one has seen it. +Men like Osterhaut and Jowett, Indians like Tekewani, doctors like +Rockwell, priests like Monseigneur Fabre, ministers like Mr. Tripple, and +ne'er-do-weels like Marchand may be found in many a town of the West and +North. Naturally the book must lack in something of that magnetic +picturesqueness and atmosphere which belongs to the people in the +Province of Quebec. Western and Northern life has little of the settled +charm which belongs to the old civilization of the French province. The +only way to recapture that charm is to place Frenchmen in the West, and +have them act and live--or try to act and live--as they do in old Quebec. + +That is what I did with Pierre in my first book of fiction, Pierre and +His People, but with the exception of Monseigneur Fabre there is no +Frenchman in this book who fulfils, or could fulfil, the temperamental +place which I have indicated. Men like Monseigneur Fabre have lived in +the West, and worked and slaved like him, blest and beloved by all +classes, creeds, and races. Father Lacombe was one of them. The part he +played in the life of Western Canada will be written some day by one who +understands how such men, celibate, and dedicated to religious life, may +play a stupendous part in the development of civilization. Something of +him is to be found in my description of Monseigneur Fabre. + + + + +NOTE + +This book was begun in 1911 and finished in 1913, a year before war broke +out. It was published serially in the year 1915 and the beginning of +1916. It must, therefore, go to the public on the basis of its merits +alone, and as a picture of the peace-life of the great North West. + + + + +PRELUDE + +Harvest-time was almost come, and the great new land was resting under +coverlets of gold. From the rise above the town of Lebanon, there +stretched out ungarnered wheat in the ear as far as sight could reach, +and the place itself and the neighbouring town of Manitou on the other +side of the Sagalac River were like islands washed by a topaz sea. + +Standing upon the Rise, lost in the prospect, was an old, white-haired +man in the cassock of a priest, with grey beard reaching nearly to the +waist. + +For long he surveyed the scene, and his eyes had a rapt look. + +At last he spoke aloud: + + "There shall be an heap of corn in the earth, high upon the hills; + his fruit shall shake like Libanus, and shall be green in the city + like grass upon the earth." + +A smile came to his lips--a rare, benevolent smile. He had seen this +expanse of teeming life when it was thought to be an alkali desert, fit +only to be invaded by the Blackfeet and the Cree and the Blood Indians on +a foray for food and furs. Here he had come fifty years before, and had +gone West and North into the mountains in the Summer season, when the +land was tremulous with light and vibrating to the hoofs of herds of +buffalo as they stampeded from the hunters; and also in the Winter time, +when frost was master and blizzard and drift its malignant servants. + +Even yet his work was not done. In the town of Manitou he still said +mass now and then, and heard the sorrows and sins of men and women, and +gave them "ghostly comfort," while priests younger than himself took the +burden of parish-work from his shoulders. + +For a lifetime he had laboured among the Indians and the few whites and +squaw-men and half-breeds, with neither settlement nor progress. Then, +all at once, the railway; and people coming from all the world, and +cities springing up! Now once more he was living the life of +civilization, exchanging raw flesh of fish and animals and a meal of +tallow or pemmican for the wheaten loaf; the Indian tepee for the warm +house with the mansard roof; the crude mass beneath the trees for the +refinements of a chancel and an altar covered with lace and white linen. + +A flock of geese went honking over his head. His eyes smiled in memory +of the countless times he had watched such flights, had seen thousands +of wild ducks hurrying down a valley, had watched a family of herons +stretching away to some lonely water-home. And then another sound +greeted his ear. It was shrill, sharp and insistent. A great serpent +was stealing out of the East and moving down upon Lebanon. It gave +out puffs of smoke from its ungainly head. It shrieked in triumph as +it came. It was the daily train from the East, arriving at the Sagalac +River. + +"These things must be," he said aloud as he looked. While he lost +himself again in reminiscence, a young man came driving across the +plains, passing beneath where he stood. The young man's face and figure +suggested power. In his buggy was a fishing-rod. + +His hat was pulled down over his eyes, but he was humming cheerfully to +himself. When he saw the priest, he raised his hat respectfully, yet +with an air of equality. + +"Good day, Monseigneur" (this honour of the Church had come at last to +the aged missionary), he said warmly. "Good day--good day!" + +The priest raised his hat and murmured the name, "Ingolby." As the +distance grew between them, he said sadly: "These are the men who change +the West, who seize it, and divide it, and make it their own-- + + "'I will rejoice, and divide Sichem: and mete out the valley of + Succoth.' + +"Hush! Hush!" he said to himself in reproach. "These things must be. +The country must be opened up. That is why I came--to bring the Truth +before the trader." + +Now another traveller came riding out of Lebanon towards him, galloping +his horse up-hill and down. He also was young, but nothing about him +suggested power, only self-indulgence. He, too, raised his hat, or +rather swung it from his head in a devil-may-care way, and overdid his +salutation. He did not speak. The priest's face was very grave, if not +a little resentful. His salutation was reserved. + +"The tyranny of gold," he murmured, "and without the mind or energy that +created it. Felix was no name for him. Ingolby is a builder, perhaps a +jerry-builder; but he builds." + +He looked across the prairie towards the young man in the buggy. + +"Sure, he is a builder. He has the Cortez eye. He sees far off, and +plans big things. But Felix Marchand there--" + +He stopped short. + +"Such men must be, perhaps," he added. Then, after a moment, as he gazed +round again upon the land of promise which he had loved so long, he +murmured as one murmurs a prayer: + + "Thou suferedst men to ride over our heads: we went through fire and + water, and Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place." + + + + +BOOK I + +I. "THE DRUSES ARE UP!" +II. THE WHISPER FROM BEYOND +III. CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNS +IV. THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWE +V. "BY THE RIVER STARZKE....IT WAS SO DONE" +VI. THE UNGUARDED FIRES +VII. IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +"THE DRUSES ARE UP!" + +"Great Scott, look at her! She's goin' to try and take 'em !" exclaimed +Osterhaut, the Jack-of-all-trades at Lebanon. + +"She ain't such a fool as all that. Why, no one ever done it alone. Low +water, too, when every rock's got its chance at the canoe. But, my +gracious, she is goin' to ride 'em!" + +Jowett, the horse-dealer, had a sportsman's joy in a daring thing. + +"See, old Injun Tekewani's after her! He's calling at her from the bank. +He knows. He done it himself years ago when there was rips in the tribe +an' he had to sew up the tears. He run them Rapids in his canoe--" + +"Just as the Druse girl there is doin'--" + +"An' he's done what he liked with the Blackfeet ever since." + +"But she ain't a chief--what's the use of her doin' it? She's goin' +straight for them. She can't turn back now. She couldn't make the bank +if she wanted to. She's got to run 'em. Holy smoke, see her wavin' the +paddle at Tekewani! Osterhaut, she's the limit, that petticoat--so quiet +and shy and don't-look-at-me, too, with eyes like brown diamonds." + +"Oh, get out, Jowett; she's all right! She'll make this country sit up +some day-by gorry, she'll make Manitou and Lebanon sit up to-day if she +runs the Carillon Rapids safe!" + +"She's runnin' 'em all right, son. She's--by jee, well done, Miss Druse! +Well done, I say--well done!" exclaimed Jowett, dancing about and waving +his arms towards the adventurous girl. + +The girl had reached the angry, thrashing waters where the rocks rent and +tore into white ribbons the onrushing current, and her first trial had +come on the instant the spitting, raging panthers of foam struck the bow +of her canoe. The waters were so low that this course, which she had +made once before with her friend Tekewani the Blackfeet chief, had perils +not met on that desperate journey. Her canoe struck a rock slantwise, +shuddered and swung round, but by a dexterous stroke she freed the frail +craft. It righted and plunged forward again into fresh death-traps. + +It was these new dangers which had made Tekewani try to warn her from the +shore--he and the dozen braves with him: but it was characteristic of his +race that, after the first warning, when she must play out the game to +the bitter end, he made no further attempt to stop her. The Indians ran +down the river-bank, however, with eyes intent on her headlong progress, +grunting approval as she plunged safely from danger to danger. + +Osterhaut and Jowett became silent, too, and, like the Indians, ran as +fast as they could, over fences, through the trees, stumbling and +occasionally cursing, but watching with fascinated eyes this adventuress +of the North, taking chances which not one coureur-de-bois or river- +driver in a thousand would take, with a five thousand-dollar prize as the +lure. Why should she do it? + +"Women folks are sick darn fools when they git goin'," gasped Osterhaut +as he ran. "They don't care a split pea what happens when they've got +the pip. Look at her--my hair's bleachin'." + +"She's got the pip all right," stuttered Jowett as he plunged along; "but +she's foreign, and they've all got the pip, foreign men and women both-- +but the women go crazy." + +"She keeps pretty cool for a crazy loon, that girl. If I owned her, +I'd--" + +Jowett interrupted impatiently. "You'd do what old man Druse does--you'd +let her be, Osterhaut. What's the good of havin' your own way with one +that's the apple of your eye, if it turns her agin you? You want her to +kiss you on the high cheek-bone, but if you go to play the cat-o'-nine- +tails round her, the high cheek-bone gets froze. Gol blast it, look at +her, son! What are the wild waves saying? They're sayin', 'This is a +surprise, Miss Druse. Not quite ready for ye, Miss Druse.' My, ain't +she got the luck of the old devil!" + +It seemed so. More than once the canoe half jammed between the rocks, +and the stern lifted up by the force of the wild current, but again the +paddle made swift play, and again the cockle-shell swung clear. But now +Fleda Druse was no longer on her feet. She knelt, her strong, slim brown +arms bared to the shoulder, her hair blown about her forehead, her daring +eyes flashing to left and right, memory of her course at work under such +a strain as few can endure without chaos of mind in the end. A hundred +times since the day she had run these Rapids with Tekewani, she had gone +over the course in her mind, asleep and awake, forcing her brain to see +again every yard of that watery way; because she knew that the day must +come when she would make the journey alone. Why she would make it she +did not know; she only knew that she would do it some day; and the day +had come. For long it had been an obsession with her--as though some +spirit whispered in her ear--"Do you hear the bells ringing at Carillon? +Do you hear the river singing towards Carillon? Do you see the wild +birds flying towards Carillon? Do you hear the Rapids calling--the +Rapids of Carillon?" + +Night and day since she had braved death with Tekewani, giving him a gun, +a meerschaum pipe, and ten pounds of beautiful brown "plug" tobacco as a +token of her gratitude--night and day she had heard this spirit murmuring +in her ear, and always the refrain was, "Down the stream to Carillon! +Shoot the Rapids of Carillon!" + +Why? How should she know? Wherefore should she know? This was of the +things beyond the why of the human mind. Sometimes all our lives, if we +keep our souls young, and see the world as we first saw it with eyes and +heart unsoiled, we hear the murmuring of the Other Self, that Self from +which we separated when we entered this mortal sphere, but which followed +us, invisible yet whispering inspiration to us. But sometimes we only +hear It, our own soul's oracle, while yet our years are few, and we have +not passed that frontier between innocence and experience, reality and +pretence. Pretence it is which drives the Other Self away with wailing +on its lips. Then we hear It cry in the night when, because of the +trouble of life, we cannot sleep; or at the play when we are caught away +from ourselves into another air than ours; when music pours around us +like a soft wind from a garden of pomegranates; or when a child asks a +question which brings us back to the land where everything is so true +that it can be shouted from the tree-tops. + +Why was Fleda Druse tempting death in the Carillon Rapids? + +She had heard a whisper as she wandered among the pine-trees there at +Manitou, and it said simply the one word, "Now!" She knew that she must +do it; she had driven her canoe out into the resistless current to ride +the Rapids of Carillon. Her Other Self had whispered to her. + +Yonder, thousands of miles away in Syria, there were the Hills of +Lebanon; and there was one phrase which made every Syrian heart beat +faster, if he were on the march. It was, "The Druses are up!" When +that wild tribe took to the saddle to war upon the Caravans and against +authority, from Lebanon to Palmyra, from Jerusalem to Damascus men looked +anxiously about them and rode hard to refuge. + +And here also in the Far North where the River Sagalac ran a wild race to +Carillon, leaving behind the new towns of Lebanon and Manitou, "the +Druses were up." + +The daughter of Gabriel Druse, the giant, was riding the Rapids of the +Sagalac. The suspense to her and to those who watched her course--to +Tekewani and his braves, to Osterhaut and Jowett--could not be long. +It was a matter of minutes only, in which every second was a miracle +and might be a catastrophe. + +From rock to rock, from wild white water to wild white water she sped, +now tossing to death as it seemed, now shooting on safely to the next +test of skill and courage--on, on, till at last there was only one +passage to make before the canoe would plunge into the smooth water +running with great swiftness till it almost reached Carillon. + +Suddenly, as she neared the last dangerous point, round which she must +swing between jagged and unseen barriers of rock, her sight became for an +instant dimmed, as though a cloud passed over her eyes. She had never +fainted in her life, but it seemed to her now that she was hovering on +unconsciousness. Commending the will and energy left, she fought the +weakness down. It was as though she forced a way through tossing, +buffeting shadows; as though she was shaking off from her shoulders +shadowy hands which sought to detain her; as though smothering things +kept choking back her breath, and darkness like clouds of wool gathered +about her face. She was fighting for her life, and for years it seemed +to be; though indeed it was only seconds before her will reasserted +itself, and light broke again upon her way. Even on the verge of the +last ambushed passage her senses came back; but they came with a stark +realization of the peril ahead: it looked out of her eyes as a face shows +itself at the window of a burning building. + +Memory shook itself free. It pierced the tumult of waters, found the +ambushed rocks, and guided the lithe brown arms and hands, so that the +swift paddle drove the canoe straight onward, as a fish drives itself +through a flume of dragon's teeth beneath the flood. The canoe quivered +for an instant at the last cataract, then responding to Memory and Will, +sped through the hidden chasm, tossed by spray and water, and swept into +the swift current of smooth water below. + +Fleda Druse had run the Rapids of Carillon. She could hear the bells +ringing for evening service in the Catholic Church of Carillon, and +bells-soft, booming bells-were ringing in her own brain. Like muffled +silver these brain-bells were, and she was as one who enters into a deep +forest, and hears far away in the boscage the mystic summons of forest +deities. Voices from the banks of the river behind called to her-- +hilarious, approving, agitated voices of her Indian friends, and of +Osterhaut and Jowett, those wild spectators of her adventure: but they +were not wholly real. Only those soft, booming bells in her brain were +real. + +Shooting the Rapids of Carillon was the bridge by which she passed from +the world she had left to this other. Her girlhood was ended--wondering, +hovering, unrealizing girlhood. This adventure was the outward sign, the +rite in the Lodge of Life which passed her from one degree of being to +another. + +She was safe; but now as her canoe shot onward to the town of Carillon, +her senses again grew faint. Again she felt the buffeting mist, again +her face was muffled in smothering folds; again great hands reached out +towards her; again her eyes were drawn into a stupefying darkness; but +now there was no will to fight, no energy to resist. The paddle lay +inert in her fingers, her head drooped. She slowly raised her head once, +twice, as though the call of the exhausted will was heard, but suddenly +it fell heavily upon her breast. For a moment so, and then as the canoe +shot forward on a fresh current, the lithe body sank backwards in the +canoe, and lay face upward to the evening sky. + +The canoe sped on, but presently it swung round and lay athwart the +current, dipping and rolling. + +From the banks on either side, the Indians of the Manitou Reservation and +the two men from Lebanon called out and hastened on, for they saw that +the girl had collapsed, and they knew only too well that her danger was +not yet past. The canoe might strike against the piers of the bridge at +Carillon and overturn, or it might be carried to the second cataract +below the town. They were too far away to save her, but they kept +shouting as they ran. + +None responded to their call, but that defiance of the last cataract of +the Rapids of Carillon had been seen by one who, below an eddy on the +Lebanon side of the river, was steadily stringing upon maple-twigs black +bass and long-nosed pike. As he sat in the shade of the trees, he had +seen the plunge of the canoe into the chasm, and had held his breath in +wonder and admiration. Even at that distance he knew who it was. He had +seen Fleda only a few times before, for she was little abroad; but when +he had seen her he had asked himself what such a face and form were doing +in the Far North. It belonged to Andalusia, to the Carpathians, to +Syrian villages. + +"The pluck of the very devil!" he had exclaimed, as Fleda's canoe swept +into the smooth current, free of the dragon's teeth; and as he had +something of the devil in himself, she seemed much nearer to him than the +hundreds of yards of water intervening. Presently, however, he saw her +droop and sink away out of sight. + +For an instant he did not realize what had happened, and then, with angry +self-reproach, he flung the oars into the rowlocks of his skiff and drove +down and athwart the stream with long, powerful strokes. + +"That's like a woman!" he said to himself as he bent to the oars, and +now and then turned his head to make sure that the canoe was still safe. +"Do the trick better than a man, and then collapse like a rabbit." + +He was Max Ingolby, the financier, contractor, manager of great +interests, disturber of the peace of slow minds, who had come to Lebanon +with the avowed object of amalgamating three railways, of making the +place the swivel of all the trade and interests of the Western North; but +also with the declared intention of uniting Lebanon and Manitou in one +municipality, one centre of commercial and industrial power. + +Men said he had bitten off more than he could chew, but he had replied +that his teeth were good, and he would masticate the meal or know the +reason why. He was only thirty-three, but his will was like nothing the +West had seen as yet. It was sublime in its confidence, it was free from +conceit, and it knew not the word despair, though once or twice it had +known defeat. + +Men cheered him from the shore as his skiff leaped through the water. +"It's that blessed Ingolby," said Jowett, who had tried to "do" the +financier in a horsedeal, and had been done instead, and was now a devout +admirer and adherent of the Master Man. "I saw him driving down there +this morning from Lebanon. He's been fishing at Seely's Eddy." + +"When Ingolby goes fishing, there's trouble goin' on somewhere and he's +stalkin' it," rejoined Osterhaut. "But, by gol, he's goin' to do this +trump trick first; he's goin' to overhaul her before she gits to the +bridge. Look at him swing! Hell, ain't it pretty! There you go, old +Ingolby. You're right on it, even when you're fishing." + +On the other-the Manitou-shore Tekewani and his braves were less +talkative, but they were more concerned in the incident than Osterhaut +and Jowett. They knew little or nothing of Ingolby the hustler, but they +knew more of Fleda Druse and her father than all the people of Lebanon +and Manitou put together. Fleda had won old Tekewani's heart when she +had asked him to take her down the Rapids, for the days of adventure for +him and his tribe were over. The adventure shared with this girl had +brought back to the chief the old days when Indian women tanned bearskins +and deerskins day in, day out, and made pemmican of the buffalo-meat; +when the years were filled with hunting and war and migrant journeyings +to fresh game-grounds and pastures new. + +Danger faced was the one thing which could restore Tekewani's self- +respect, after he had been checked and rebuked before his tribe by the +Indian Commissioner for being drunk. Danger faced had restored it, and +Fleda Druse had brought the danger to him as a gift. + +If the canoe should crash against the piers of the bridge, if it should +drift to the cataract below, if anything should happen to this white girl +whom he worshipped in his heathen way, nothing could preserve his self- +respect; he would pour ashes on his head and firewater down his throat. + +Suddenly he and his braves stood still. They watched as one would watch +an enemy a hundred times stronger than one's self. The white man's skiff +was near the derelict canoe; the bridge was near also. Carillon now +lined the bank of the river with its people. They ran upon the bridge, +but not so fast as to reach the place where, in the nick of time, Ingolby +got possession of the rolling canoe; where Fleda Druse lay waiting like a +princess to be waked by the kiss of destiny. + +Only five hundred yards below the bridge was the second cataract, and she +would never have waked if she had been carried into it. + +To Ingolby she was as beautiful as a human being could be as she lay with +white face upturned, the paddle still in her hand. + +"Drowning isn't good enough for her," he said, as he fastened her canoe +to his skiff. + +"It's been a full day's work," he added; and even in this human crisis he +thought of the fish he had caught, of "the big trouble," he had been +thinking out as Osterhaut had said, as well as of the girl that he was +saving. + +"I always have luck when I go fishing," he added presently. "I can take +her back to Lebanon," he continued with a quickening look. "She'll be +all right in a jiffy. I've got room for her in my buggy--and room for +her in any place that belongs to me," he hastened to reflect with a +curious, bashful smile. + +"It's like a thing in a book," he murmured, as he neared the waiting +people on the banks of Carillon, and the ringing of the vesper bells came +out to him on the evening air. + +"Is she dead?" some one whispered, as eager hands reached out to secure +his skiff to the bank. + +"As dead as I am," he answered with a laugh, and drew Fleda's canoe up +alongside his skiff. + +He had a strange sensation of new life, as, with delicacy and gentleness, +he lifted her up in his strong arms and stepped ashore. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE WHISPER FROM BEYOND + +Ingolby had a will of his own, but it had never been really tried +against a woman's will. It was, however, tried sorely when Fleda came to +consciousness again in his arms and realized that a man's face was nearer +to hers than any man's had ever been except that of her own father. Her +eyes opened slowly, and for the instant she did not understand, but when +she did, the blood stole swiftly back to her neck and face and forehead, +and she started in dismay. + +"Put me down," she whispered faintly. + +"I'm taking you to my buggy," he replied. "I'll drive you back to +Lebanon." He spoke as calmly as he could, for there was a strange +fluttering of his nerves, and the crowd was pressing him. + +"Put me down at once," she said peremptorily. She trembled on her feet, +and swayed, and would have fallen but that Ingolby and a woman in black, +who had pushed her way through the crowd with white, anxious face, caught +her. + +"Give her air, and stand back!" called the sharp voice of the constable +of Carillon, and he heaved the people back with his powerful shoulders. + +A space was cleared round the place where Fleda sat with her head +against the shoulder of the stately woman in black who had come to her +assistance. A dipper of water was brought, and when she had drunk it +she raised her head slowly and her eyes sought those of Ingolby. + +"One cannot pay for such things," she said to him, meeting his look +firmly and steeling herself to thank him. Though deeply grateful, it was +a trial beyond telling to be obliged to owe the debt of a life to any +one, and in particular to a man of the sort to whom material gifts could +not be given. + +"Such things are paid for just by accepting them," he answered quickly, +trying to feel that he had never held her in his arms, as she evidently +desired him to feel. He had intuition, if not enough of it, for the +regions where the mind of Fleda Druse dwelt. + +"I couldn't very well decline, could I?" she rejoined, quick humour +shooting into her eyes. "I was helpless. I never fainted before in my +life." + +"I am sure you will never faint again," he remarked. "We only do such +things when we are very young." + +She was about to reply, but paused reflectively. Her half-opened lips +did not frame the words she had been impelled to speak. + +Admiration was alive in his eyes. He had never seen this type of +womanhood before--such energy and grace, so amply yet so lithely framed; +such darkness and fairness in one living composition; such individuality, +yet such intimate simplicity. Her hair was a very light brown, sweeping +over a broad, low forehead, and lying, as though with a sense of modesty, +on the tips of the ears, veiling them slightly. The forehead was classic +in its intellectual fulness; but the skin was so fresh, even when pale as +now, and with such an underglow of vitality, that the woman in her, sex +and the possibilities of sex, cast a glamour over the intellect and +temperament showing in every line of her contour. In contrast to the +light brown of the hair was the very dark brown of the eyes and the still +darker brown of the eyelashes. The face shone, the eyes burned, and the +piquancy of the contrast between the soft illuminating whiteness of the +skin and the flame in the eyes had fascinated many more than Ingolby. + +Her figure was straight yet supple, somewhat fuller than is modern +beauty, with hints of Juno-like stateliness to come; and the curves of +her bust, the long lines of her limbs, were not obscured by her +absolutely plain gown of soft, light-brown linen. She was tall, but not +too commanding, and, as her hand was raised to fasten back a wisp of +hair, there was the motion of as small a wrist and as tapering a bare arm +as ever made prisoner of a man's neck. + +Impulse was written in every feature, in the passionate eagerness of +her body; yet the line from the forehead to the chin, and the firm +shapeliness of the chin itself, gave promise of great strength of will. +From the glory of the crown of hair to the curve of the high instep of a +slim foot it was altogether a personality which hinted at history--at +tragedy, maybe. + +"She'll have a history," Madame Bulteel, who now stood beside the girl, +herself a figure out of a picture by Velasquez, had said of her sadly; +for she saw in Fleda's rare qualities, in her strange beauty, happenings +which had nothing to do with the life she was living. So this duenna of +Gabriel Druse's household, this aristocratic, silent woman was ever on +the watch for some sudden revelation of a being which had not found +itself, and which must find itself through perils and convulsions. + +That was why, to-day, she had hesitated to leave Fleda alone and come to +Carillon, to be at the bedside of a dying, friendless woman whom by +chance she had come to know. In the street she had heard of what was +happening on the river, and had come in time to receive Fleda from the +arms of her rescuer. + +"How did you get here?" Fleda asked her. + +"How am I always with you when I am needed, truant?" said the other with +a reproachful look. "Did you fly? You are so light, so thin, you could +breathe yourself here," rejoined the girl, with a gentle, quizzical +smile. "But, no," she added, "I remember, you were to be here at +Carillon." + +"Are you able to walk now?" asked Madame Bulteel. + +"To Manitou--but of course," Fleda answered almost sharply. + +After the first few minutes the crowd had fallen back. They watched her +with respectful admiration from a decent distance. They had the chivalry +towards woman so characteristic of the West. There was no vulgarity in +their curiosity, though most of them had never seen her before. All, +however, had heard of her and her father, the giant greybeard who moved +and lived in an air of mystery, and apparently secret wealth, for more +than once he had given large sums--large in the eyes of folks of moderate +means, when charity was needed; as in the case of the floods the year +before, and in the prairie-fire the year before that, when so many people +were made homeless, and also when fifty men had been injured in one +railway accident. On these occasions he gave disproportionately to his +mode of life. + +Now, when they saw that Fleda was about to move away, they drew just a +little nearer, and presently one of the crowd could contain his +admiration no longer. He raised a cheer. + +"Three cheers for Her," he shouted, and loud hurrahs followed. + +"Three cheers for Ingolby," another cried, and the noise was boisterous +but not so general. + +"Who shot Carillon Rapids?" another called in the formula of the West. + +"She shot the Rapids," was the choral reply. "Who is she?" came the +antiphon. + +"Druse is her name," was the gay response. "What did she do?" + +"She shot Carillon Rapids--shot 'em dead. Hooray!" + +In the middle of the cheering, Osterhaut and Jowett arrived in a wagon +which they had commandeered, and, about the same time, from across the +bridge, came running Tekewani and his braves. + +"She done it like a kingfisher," cried Osterhaut. "Manitou's got the +belt." + +Fleda Druse's friendly eyes were given only for one instant to Osterhaut +and his friend. Her gaze became fixed on Tekewani who, silent, and with +immobile face, stole towards her. In spite of the civilization which +controlled him, he wore Indian moccasins and deerskin breeches, though +his coat was rather like a shortened workman's blouse. He did not belong +to the life about him; he was a being apart, the spirit of vanished and +vanishing days. + +"Tekewani--ah, Tekewani, you have come," the girl said, and her eyes +smiled at him as they had not smiled at Ingolby or even at the woman in +black beside her. + +"How!" the chief replied, and looked at her with searching, worshipping +eyes. + +"Don't look at me that way, Tekewani," she said, coming close to him. +"I had to do it, and I did it." + +"The teeth of rock everywhere!" he rejoined reproachfully, with a +gesture of awe. + +"I remembered all--all. You were my master, Tekewani." + +"But only once with me it was, Summer Song," he persisted. Summer Song +was his name for her. + +"I saw it--saw it, every foot of the way," she insisted. "I thought +hard, oh, hard as the soul thinks. And I saw it all." There was +something singularly akin in the nature of the girl and the Indian. She +spoke to him as she never spoke to any other. + +"Too much seeing, it is death," he answered. "Men die with too much +seeing. I have seen them die. To look hard through deerskin curtains, +to see through the rock, to behold the water beneath the earth, and the +rocks beneath the black waters, it is for man to see if he has a soul, +but the seeing--behold, so those die who should live!" + +"I live, Tekewani, though I saw the teeth of rocks beneath the black +water," she urged gently. + +"Yet the half-death came--" + +"I fainted, but I was not to die--it was not my time." + +He shook his head gloomily. "Once it may be, but the evil spirits tempt +us to death. It matters not what comes to Tekewani; he is as the leaf +that falls from the stem; but for Summer Song that has far to go, it is +the madness from beyond the Hills of Life." + +She took his hand. "I will not do it again, Tekewani." + +"How!" he said, with hand upraised, as one who greets the great in this +world. + +"I don't know why I did it," she added meaningly. "It was selfish. I +feel that now." + +The woman in black pressed her hand timidly. + +"It is so for ever with the great," Tekewani answered. "It comes, also, +from beyond the Hills--the will to do it. It is the spirit that whispers +over the earth out of the Other Earth. No one hears it but the great. +The whisper only is for this one here and that one there who is of the +Few. It whispers, and the whisper must be obeyed. So it was from the +beginning." + +"Yes, you understand, Tekewani," she answered softly. "I did it because +something whispered from the Other Earth to me." + +Her head drooped a little, her eyes had a sudden shadow. + +"He will understand," answered the Indian; "your father will understand," +as though reading her thoughts. He had clearly read her thought, this +dispossessed, illiterate Indian chieftain. Yet, was he so illiterate? +Had he not read in books which so few have learned to read? His life had +been broken on the rock of civilization, but his simple soul had learned +some elemental truths--not many, but the essential ones, without which +there is no philosophy, no understanding. He knew Fleda Druse was +thinking of her father, wondering if he would understand, half-fearing, +hardly hoping, dreading the moment when she must meet him face to face. +She knew she had been selfish, but would Gabriel Druse understand? She +raised her eyes in gratitude to the Blackfeet chief. + +"I must go home," she said. + +She turned to go, but as she did so, a man came swaggering down the +street, broke through the crowd, and made towards her with an arm raised, +a hand waving, and a leer on his face. He was a thin, rather handsome, +dissolute-looking fellow of middle height and about forty, in dandified +dress. His glossy black hair fell carelessly over his smooth forehead +from under a soft, wide-awake hat. + +"Manitou for ever!" he cried, with a flourish of his hand. "I salute +the brave. I escort the brave to the gates of Manitou. I escort the +brave. I escort the brave. Salut! Salut! Salut! Well done, Beauty +Beauty--Beauty--Beauty, well done again!" + +He held out his hand to Fleda, but she drew back with disgust. Felix +Marchand, the son of old Hector Marchand, money-lender and capitalist of +Manitou, had pressed his attentions upon her during the last year since +he had returned from the East, bringing dissoluteness and vulgar pride +with him. Women had spoiled him, money had corrupted and degraded him. + +"Come, beautiful brave, it's Salut! Salut! Salut!" he said, bending +towards her familiarly. + +Her face flushed with anger. + +"Let me pass, monsieur," she said sharply. + +"Pride of Manitou--" he apostrophized, but got no farther. + +Ingolby caught him by the shoulders, wheeled him round, and then flung +him at the feet of Tekewani and his braves. + +At this moment Tekewani's eyes had such a fire as might burn in Wotan's +smithy. He was ready enough to defy the penalty of the law for +assaulting a white man, but Felix Marchand was in the dust, and that +would do for the moment. + +With grim face Ingolby stood over the begrimed figure. "There's the +river if you want more," he said. "Tekewani knows where the water's +deepest." Then he turned and followed Fleda and the woman in black. +Felix Marchand's face was twisted with hate as he got slowly to his feet. + +"You'll eat dust before I'm done," he called after Ingolby. Then, amid +the jeers of the crowd, he went back to the tavern where he had been +carousing. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNS + +A word about Max Ingolby. + +He was the second son of four sons, with a father who had been a failure; +but with a mother of imagination and great natural strength of brain, yet +whose life had been so harried in bringing up a family on nothing at all, +that there only emerged from her possibilities a great will to do the +impossible things. From her had come the spirit which would not be +denied. + +In his boyhood Max could not have those things which lads prize--fishing- +rods, cricket-bats and sleds, and all such things; but he could take most +prizes at school open to competition; he could win in the running-jump, +the high-jump, and the five hundred yards' race; and he could organize a +picnic, or the sports of the school or town--at no cost to himself. His +finance in even this limited field had been brilliant. Other people +paid, and he did the work; and he did it with such ease that the others +intriguing to crowd him out, suffered failure and came to him in the end +to put things right. + +He became the village doctor's assistant and dispenser at seventeen and +induced his master to start a drug-store. He made the drug-store a +success within two years, and meanwhile he studied Latin and Greek +and mathematics in every spare hour he had--getting up at five in the +morning, and doing as much before breakfast as others did in a whole day. +His doctor loved him and helped him; a venerable Archdeacon, an Oxford +graduate, gave him many hours of coaching, and he went to the University +with three scholarships. These were sufficient to carry him through in +three years, and there was enough profit-sharing from the drug-business +he had founded on terms to shelter his mother and his younger brothers, +while he took honours at the University. + +There he organized all that students organize, and was called in at last +by the Bursar of his college to reorganize the commissariat, which he did +with such success that the college saved five thousand dollars a year. +He had genius, the college people said, and after he had taken his degree +with honours in classics and mathematics they offered him a professorship +at two thousand dollars a year. + +He laughed ironically, but yet with satisfaction, when the professorship +was offered. It was all so different from what was in his mind for the +future. As he looked out of the oriel window in the sweet gothic +building, to the green grass and the maples and elms which made the +college grounds like an old-world park, he had a vision of himself +permanently in these surroundings of refinement growing venerable with +years, seeing pass under his influence thousands of young men directed, +developed and inspired by him. + +He had, however, shaken himself free of this modest vision. He knew that +such a life would act like a narcotic to his real individuality. He +thirsted for contest, for the control of brain and will; he wanted to +construct; he was filled with the idea of simplifying things, of +economizing strength; he saw how futile was much competition, and how the +big brain could command and control with ease, wasting no force, saving +labour, making the things controlled bigger and better. + +So it came that his face was seen no more in the oriel window. With a +mere handful of dollars, and some debts, he left the world of scholarship +and superior pedagogy, and went where the head offices of railways were. +Railways were the symbol of progress in his mind. The railhead was the +advance post of civilization. It was like Cortez and his Conquistadores +overhauling and appropriating the treasures of long generations. So +where should he go if not to the Railway? + +His first act, when he got to his feet inside the offices of the +President of a big railway, was to show the great man how two "outside" +proposed lines could be made one, and then further merged into the +company controlled by the millionaire in whose office he sat. He got his +chance by his very audacity--the President liked audacity. In attempting +this merger, however, he had his first failure, but he showed that he +could think for himself, and he was made increasingly responsible. After +a few years of notable service, he was offered the task of building a +branch line of railway from Lebanon and Manitou north, and northwest, and +on to the Coast; and he had accepted it, at the same time planning to +merge certain outside lines competing with that which he had in hand. +For over four years he worked night and day, steadily advancing towards +his goal, breaking down opposition, manoeuvring, conciliating, fighting. + +Most men loved his whimsical turn of mind, even those who were the agents +of the financial clique which had fought him in their efforts to get +control of the commercial, industrial, transport and banking resources of +the junction city of Lebanon. In the days when vast markets would be +established for Canadian wheat in Shanghai and Tokio, then these two +towns of Manitou and Lebanon on the Sagalac would be like the swivel to +the organization of trade of a continent. + +Ingolby had worked with this end in view. In doing so he had tried to +get what he wanted without trickery; to reach his goal by playing the +game according to the rules, and this policy nonplussed his rivals and +associates. They expected secret moves, and he laid his cards on the +table. Sharp, quick, resolute and ruthless he was, however, if he knew +that he was being tricked. Then he struck, and struck hard. The war of +business was war and not "gollyfoxing," as he said. Selfish, stubborn +and self-centred he was in much, but he had great joy in the natural and +sincere, and he had a passionate love of Nature. To him the flat prairie +was never ugly. Its very monotony had its own individuality. The +Sagalac, even when muddy, had its own deep interest, and when it was full +of logs drifting down to the sawmills, for which he had found the money +by interesting capitalists in the East, he sniffed the stinging smell of +the pines with elation. As the great saws in the mills, for which he had +secured the capital, throwing off the spray of mangled wood, hummed and +buzzed and sang, his mouth twisted in the droll smile it always wore when +he talked with such as Jowett and Osterhaut, whose idiosyncrasies were +like a meal to him; as he described it once to some of the big men from +the East who had been behind his schemes, yet who cavilled at his ways. +He was never diverted from his course by such men, and while he was loyal +to those who had backed him, he vowed that he would be independent of +these wooden souls in the end. They and the great bankers behind them +were for monopoly; he was for organization and for economic prudence. So +far they were necessary to all he did; but it was his intention to shake +himself free of all monopoly in good time. One or two of his colleagues +saw the drift of his policy and would have thrown him over if they could +have replaced him by a man as capable, who would, at the time, consent to +grow rich on their terms. + +They could not understand a man who would stand for a half-hour watching +a sunset, or a morning sky dappled with all the colours that shake from a +prism; they were suspicious of a business-mind which could gloat over the +light falling on snow-peaked mountains, while it planned a great bridge +across a gorge in the same hour; of a man who would quote a verse of +poetry while a flock of wild pigeons went whirring down a pine-girt +valley in the shimmer of the sun. + +On the occasion when he had quoted a verse of poetry to them, one of them +said to him with a sidelong glance: "You seem to be dead-struck on +Nature, Ingolby." + +To that, with a sly quirk of the mouth, and meaning to mystify his +wooden-headed questioner still more, he answered: "Dead-struck? Dead- +drunk, you mean. I'm a Nature's dipsomaniac--as you can see," he added +with a sly note of irony. + +Then instantly he had drawn the little circle of experts into a +discussion upon technical questions of railway-building and finance, +which made demands upon all their resources and knowledge. In that +conference he gave especial attention to the snub-souled financier who +had sneered at his love of Nature. He tied his critic up in knots of +self-assertion and bad logic which presently he deftly, deliberately and +skilfully untied, to the delight of all the group. + +"He's got as much in his ten years in the business as we've got out +of half a life-time," said the chief of his admirers. This was the +President who had first welcomed him into business, and introduced him to +his colleagues in enterprise. + +"I shouldn't be surprised if the belt flew off the wheel some day," +savagely said Ingolby's snub-souled critic, whose enmity was held in +check by the fact that on Ingolby, for the moment, depended the safety +of the hard cash he had invested. + +But the qualities which alienated an expert here and there caught the +imagination of the pioneer spirits of Lebanon. Except those who, for +financial reasons, were opposed to him, and must therefore pit themselves +against him, as the representatives of bigger forces behind them, he was +a leader of whom Lebanon was combatively proud. At last he came to the +point where his merger was practically accomplished, and a problem +arising out of it had to be solved. It was a problem which taxed every +quality of an able mind. The situation had at last become acute, and +Time, the solvent of most complications, had not quite eased the strain. +Indeed, on the day that Fleda Druse had made her journey down the +Carillon Rapids, Time's influence had not availed. So he had gone +fishing, with millions at stake--to the despair of those who were risking +all on his skill and judgment. + +But that was Ingolby. Thinking was the essence of his business, not +Time. As fishing was the friend of thinking, therefore he fished in +Seely's Eddy, saw Fleda Druse run the Carillon Rapids, saved her from +drowning, and would have brought her in pride and peace to her own home, +but that she decreed otherwise. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWE + +Gabriel Druse's house stood on a little knoll on the outskirts of the +town of Manitou, backed by a grove of pines. Its front windows faced the +Sagalac, and the windows behind looked into cool coverts where in old +days many Indian tribes had camped; where Hudson's Bay Company's men had +pitched their tents to buy the red man's furs. But the red man no longer +set up his tepee in these secluded groves; the wapiti and red deer had +fled to the north never to return, the snarling wolf had stolen into +regions more barren; the ceremonial of the ancient people no longer made +weird the lonely nights; the medicine-man's incantations, the harvest- +dance, the green-corn-dance, the sun-dance had gone. The braves, their +women, and their tepees had been shifted to reservations where +Governments solemnly tried to teach them to till the field, and grow +corn, and drive the cart to market; while yet they remembered the herds +of buffalo which had pounded down the prairie like storm-clouds and given +their hides for the tepee; and the swift deer whose skins made the wigwam +luxurious. + +Originally Manitou had been the home of Icelanders, Mennonites, and +Doukhobors; settlers from lands where the conditions of earlier centuries +prevailed, who, simple as they were in habits and in life, were +ignorant, primitive, coarse, and none too cleanly. + +They had formed an unprogressive polyglot settlement, and the place +assumed a still more primeval character when the Indian Reservation was +formed near by. When French Canadian settlers arrived, however, the +place became less discordant to the life of a new democracy, though they +did little to make it modern in the sense that Lebanon, across the river, +where Ingolby lived, was modern from the day the first shack was thrown +up. + +Manitou showed itself antagonistic to progress; it was old-fashioned, and +primitively agricultural. It looked with suspicion on the factories +built after Ingolby came and on the mining propositions, which circled +the place with speculation. Unlike other towns of the West, it was +insanitary and uneducated; it was also given to nepotism and a primitive +kind of jobbery; but, on the whole, it was honest. It was a settlement +twenty years before Lebanon had a house, though the latter exceeded the +population of Manitou in five years, and became the home of all +adventuring spirits--land agents, company promoters, mining prospectors, +railway men, politicians, saloon keepers, and up to-date dissenting +preachers. Manitou was, however, full of back-water people, religious +fanatics, little farmers, guides, trappers, old coureurs-de-bois, +Hudson's Bay Company factors and ex-factors, half-breeds; and all the +rest. + +The real feud between the two towns began about the time of the arrival +of Gabriel Druse, his daughter, and Madame Bulteel, the woman in black, +and it had grown with great rapidity and increasing intensity. Manitou +condemned the sacrilegiousness of the Protestants, whose meeting-houses +were used for "socials," "tea-meetings," "strawberry festivals," and +entertainments of many kinds; while comic songs were sung at the table +where the solemn Love Feast was held at the quarterly meetings. At last +when attempts were made to elect to Parliament an Irish lawyer who added +to his impecuniousness, eloquence, a half-finished University education, +and an Orangeman's prejudices of the best brand of Belfast or Derry, +inter-civic strife took the form of physical violence. The great bridge +built by Ingolby between the two towns might have been ten thousand yards +long, so deep was the estrangement between the two places. They had only +one thing in common--a curious compromise--in the person of Nathan +Rockwell, an agnostic doctor, who had arrived in Lebanon with a +reputation for morality somewhat clouded; though, where his patients in +Manitou and Lebanon were concerned, he had been the "pink of propriety." + +Rockwell had arrived in Lebanon early in its career, and had remained +unimportant until a railway accident occurred at Manitou and the resident +doctors were driven from the field of battle, one by death, and one by +illness. Then it was that the silent, smiling, dark-skinned, cool-headed +and cool-handed Rockwell stepped in, and won for himself the gratitude of +all--from Monseigneur Lourde, the beloved Catholic priest, to Tekewani, +the chief. This accident was followed by an epidemic. + +That was at the time, also, when Fleda Druse returned from Winnipeg where +she had been at school for one memorable and terrible six months, pining +for her father, defying rules, and crying the night through for "the open +world," as she called it. So it was that, to her father's dismay and joy +in one, she had fled from school, leaving all her things behind her; and +had reached home with only the clothes on her back and a few cents in her +pocket. + +Instantly on her return she had gone among the stricken people as +fearlessly as Rockwell had done, but chiefly among the women and +children; and it was said that the herbal medicine she administered was +marvellous in its effect--so much so that Rockwell asked for the +prescription, which she declined to give. + +Thus it was that the French Canadian mothers with daughters of their own, +bright-eyed brunettes, ready for the man-market, regarded with toleration +the girl who took their children away for picnics down the river or into +the woods, and brought them back safe and sound at the end of the day. +Not that they failed to be shocked sometimes, when, on her wild Indian +pony, Fleda swept through Manitou like a wind and out into the prairie, +riding, as it were, to the end of the world. Try as they would, these +grateful mothers of Manitou, they could not get as near to Fleda Druse as +their children did, and they were vast distances from her father. + +"There, there, look at him," said old Madame Thibadeau to her neighbour +Christine Brisson--"look at him with his great grey-beard, and his eyes +like black fires, and that head of hair like a bundle of burnt flax! He +comes from the place no man ever saw, that's sure." + +"Ah, surelee, men don't grow so tall in any Christian country," announced +Christine Brisson, her head nodding sagely. "I've seen the pictures in +the books, and there's nobody so tall and that looks like him--not +anywhere since Adam." + +"Nom de pipe, sometimes-trulee, sometimes, I look up there at where he +lives, and I think I see a thousand men on horses ride out of the woods +behind his house and down here to gobble us all up. That's the way I +feel. It's fancy, but I can't help that." Dame Thibadeau rested her +hands--on her huge stomach as though the idea had its origin there. + +"I've seen a lot of fancies come to pass," gloomily returned her friend. +"It's a funny world. I don't know what to make of its sometimes." + +"And that girl of his, the strangest creature, as proud as a peacock, but +then as kind as kind to the children--of a good heart, surelee. They say +she has plenty of gold rings and pearls and bracelets, and all like that. +Babette Courton, she saw them when she went to sew. Why doesn't +Ma'm'selle wear them?" + +Christine looked wise and smoothed out her apron as though it was a +parchment. "With such queer ones, who knows? But, yes, as you say, she +has a kind heart. The children, well, they follow her everywhere." + +"Not the children only," sagely added the other. "From Lebanon they +come, the men, and plenty here, too; and there's that Felix Marchand, the +worst of all in Manitou or anywhere." + +"I'd look sharp if Felix Marchand followed me," remarked Christine. +"There are more papooses at the Reservation since he come back, and over +in Lebanon--!" She whispered darkly to her friend, and they nodded +knowingly. + +"If he plays pranks in Manitou he'll get his throat cut, for sure. Even +with Protes'ants and Injuns it's bad enough," remarked Dame Thibadeau, +panting with the thought of it. + +"He doesn't even leave the Doukhobors alone. There's--" Again Christine +whispered, and again that ugly look came to their faces which belongs to +the thought of forbidden things. + +"Felix Marchand'll have much money--bad penny as he is," continued +Christine in her normal voice. "He'll have more money than he can put in +all the trouser legs he has. Old Hector, his father, has enough for a +gover'ment. But that M'sieu' Felix will get his throat cut if he follows +Ma'm'selle Druse about too much. She hates him--I've seen when they met. +Old man Druse'll make trouble. He don't look as he does for nothing." + +"Ah, that's so. One day, we shall see what we shall see," murmured +Christine, and waved a hand to a friend in the street. + +This conversation happened on the evening of the day that Fleda Druse +shot the Carillon Rapids alone. An hour after the two gossips had had +their say Gabriel Druse paced up and down the veranda of his house, +stopping now and then to view the tumbling, hurrying Sagalac, or to dwell +upon the sunset which crimsoned and bronzed the western sky. His walk +had an air of impatience; he seemed disturbed of mind and restless of +body. + +He gave an impression of great force. He would have been picked out of a +multitude, not alone because of his remarkable height, but because he had +an air of command and the aloofness which shows a man sufficient unto +himself. + +As he stood gazing reflectively into the sunset, a strange, plaintive, +birdlike note pierced the still evening air. His head lifted quickly, +yet he did not look in the direction of the sound, which came from the +woods behind the house. He did not stir, and his eyes half-closed, as +though he hesitated what to do. The call was not that of a bird familiar +to the Western world. It had a melancholy softness like that of the +bell-bird of the Australian bush. Yet, in the insistence of the note, it +was, too, a challenge or a summons. + +Three times during the past week he had heard it--once as he went by the +market-place of Manitou; once as he returned in the dusk from Tekewani's +Reservation, and once at dawn from the woods behind the house. His +present restlessness and suppressed agitation had been the result. + +It was a call he knew well. It was like a voice from a dead world. It +asked, he knew, for an answering call, yet he had not given it. It was +seven days since he first heard it in the market-place, and in that seven +days he had realized that nothing in this world which has ever been, +really ceases to be. Presently, the call was repeated. On the three +former occasions there had been no repetition. The call had trembled in +the air but once and had died away into unbroken silence. Now, however, +it rang out with an added poignancy. It was like a bird calling to its +vanished mate. + +With sudden resolution Druse turned. Leaving the veranda, he walked +slowly behind the house into the woods and stood still under the branches +of a great cedar. Raising his head, a strange, solemn note came from his +lips; but the voice died away in a sharp broken sound which was more +human than birdlike, which had the shrill insistence of authority. The +call to him had been almost ventriloquial in its nature. His lips had +not moved at all. + +There was silence for a moment after he had called into the void, as it +were, and then there appeared suddenly from behind a clump of juniper, a +young man of dark face and upright bearing. He made a slow obeisance +with a gesture suggestive of the Oriental world, yet not like the usual +gesture of the East Indian, the Turk or the Persian; it was composite of +all. + +He could not have been more than twenty-five years of age. He was so +sparely made, and his face being clean-shaven, he looked even younger. +His clothes were the clothes of the Western man; and yet there was a +manner of wearing them, there were touches which were evidence to the +watchful observer that he was of other spheres. His wide, felt, Western +hat had a droop on one side and a broken treatment of the crown, which of +itself was enough to show him a stranger to the prairie, while his brown +velveteen jacket, held by its two lowest buttons, was reminiscent of an +un-English life. His eyes alone would have announced him as of some +foreign race, though he was like none of the foreigners who had been the +pioneers of Manitou. Unlike as he and Gabriel Druse were in height, +build, and movement, still there was something akin in them both. + +After a short silence evidently disconcerting to him, "Blessing and hail, +my Ry," he said in a low tone. He spoke in a strange language and with a +voice rougher than his looks would have suggested. + +The old man made a haughty gesture of impatience. "What do you want with +me, my Romany 'chal'?" he asked sharply.--[A glossary of Romany words +will be found at the end of the book.] + +The young man replied hastily. He seemed to speak by rote. His manner +was too eager to suit the impressiveness of his words. "The sheep are +without a shepherd," he said. "The young men marry among the Gorgios, or +they are lost in the cities and return no more to the tents and the +fields and the road. There is disorder in all the world among the +Romanys. The ancient ways are forgotten. Our people gather and settle +upon the land and live as the Gorgios live. They forget the way beneath +the trees, they lose their skill in horses. If the fountain is choked, +how shall the water run?" + +A cold sneer came to the face of Gabriel Druse. "The way beneath the +trees!" he growled. "The way of the open road is enough. The way +beneath the trees is the way of the thief, and the skill of the horse is +the skill to cheat." + +"There is no other way. It has been the way of the Romany since the time +of Timur Beg and centuries beyond Timur, so it is told. One man and all +men must do as the tribe has done since the beginning." + +The old man pulled at his beard angrily. "You do not talk like a Romany, +but like a Gorgio of the schools." + +The young man's manner became more confident as he replied. "Thinking on +what was to come to me, I read in the books as the Gorgio reads. I sat +in my tent and worked with a pen; I saw in the printed sheets what the +world was doing every day. This I did because of what was to come." + +"And have you read of me in the printed sheets? Did they tell you where +I was to be found?" Gabriel Druse's eyes were angry, his manner was +authoritative. + +The young man stretched out his hands eloquently. "Hail and blessing, my +Ry, was there need of printed pages to tell me that? Is not everything +known of the Ry to the Romany people without the written or printed +thing? How does the wind go? How does the star sweep across the sky? +Does not the whisper pass as the lightning flashes? Have you forgotten +all, my Ry? Is there a Romany camp at Scutari? Shall it not know what +is the news of the Bailies of Scotland and the Caravans by the Tagus? It +is known always where my lord is. All the Romanys everywhere know it, +and many hundreds have come hither from overseas. They are east, they +are south, they are west." + +He made gesture towards these three points of the compass. A dark frown +came upon the old man's forehead. "I ordered that none should seek to +follow, that I be left in peace till my pilgrimage was done. Even as the +first pilgrims of our people in the days of Timur Beg in India, so I have +come forth from among you all till the time be fulfilled." + +There was a crafty look in the old man's eyes as he spoke, and ages of +dubious reasoning and purpose showed in their velvet depths. + +"No one has sought me but you in all these years," he continued. "Who +are you that you should come? I did not call, and there was my command +that none should call to me." + +A bolder look grew in the other's face. His carriage gained in ease. +"There is trouble everywhere--in Italy, in Spain, in France, in England, +in Russia, in mother India"--he made a gesture of salutation and bowed +low--"and our rites and mysteries are like water spilt upon the ground. +If the hand be cut off, how shall the body move? That is how it is. You +are vanished, my lord, and the body dies." + +The old man plucked his beard again fiercely and his words came with +guttural force. "That is fool's talk. In the past I was never +everywhere at once. When I was in Russia, I was not in Greece; when I +was in England, I was not in Portugal. I was always 'vanished' from one +place to another, yet the body lived." + +"But your word was passed along the roads everywhere, my Ry. Your tongue +was not still from sunrise to the end of the day. Your call was heard +always, now here, now there, and the Romanys were one; they held +together." + +The old man's face darkened still more and his eyes flashed fire. "These +are lies you are telling, and they will choke you, my Romany 'chal'. Am +I deceived, I who have known more liars than any man under the sky? Am I +to be fooled, who have seen so many fools in their folly? There is +roguery in you, or I have never seen roguery." + +"I am a true Romany, my Ry," the other answered with an air of courage +and a little defiance also. + +"You are a rogue and a liar, that is sure. These wailings are your own. +The Romany goes on his way as he has gone these hundreds of years. If I +am silent, my people will wait until I speak again; if they see me not +they will wait till I enter their camps once more. Why are you here? +Speak, rogue and liar." The wrathful old man, sure in his reading of the +youth, towered above him commandingly. It almost seemed as though he +would do him bodily harm, so threatening was his attitude, but the young +Romany raised his head, and with a note of triumph said: + +"I have come for my own, as it is my right." + +"What is your own?" + +"What has been yours until now, my Ry." + +A grey look stole slowly up the strong face of the exiled leader, for his +mind suddenly read the truth behind the young man's confident words. + +"What is mine is always mine," he answered roughly. "Speak! What is it +I have that you come for?" + +The young man braced himself and put a hand upon his lips. "I come for +your daughter, my Ry." The old man suddenly regained his composure, and +authority spoke in his bearing and his words. "What have you to do with +my daughter?" + +"She was married to me when I was seven years of age, as my Ry knows. +I am the son of Lemuel Fawe--Jethro Fawe is my name. For three thousand +pounds it was so arranged. On his death-bed three thousand pounds did +my father give to you for this betrothal. I was but a child, yet I +remembered, and my kinsmen remembered, for it is their honour also. I am +the son of Lemuel Fawe, the husband of Fleda, daughter of Gabriel Druse, +King and Duke and Earl of all the Romanys; and I come for my own." + +Something very like a sigh of relief came from Gabriel Druse's lips, but +the anger in his face did not pass, and a rigid pride made the distance +between them endless. He looked like a patriarch giving judgment as he +raised his hand and pointed with a menacing finger at Jethro Fawe, his +Romany subject--and, according to the laws of the Romany tribes, his son- +in-law. It did not matter that the girl--but three years of age when it +happened--had no memory of the day when the chiefs and great people +assembled outside the tent of Lemuel Fawe when he lay dying, and, by the +simple act of stepping over a branch of hazel, the two children were +married: if Romany law and custom were to abide, then the two now were +man and wife. Did not Lemuel Fawe, the old-time rival of Gabriel Druse +for the kinship of the Romanys, the claimant whose family had been rulers +of the Romanys for generations before the Druses gained ascendancy--did +not Fawe, dying, seek to secure for his son by marriage what he had +failed to get for himself by other means? + +All these things had at one time been part of Gabriel Druse's covenant of +life, until one year in England, when Fleda, at twelve years of age, was +taken ill and would have died, but that a great lady descended upon their +camp, took the girl to her own house, and there nursed and tended her, +giving her the best medical aid the world could produce, so that the girl +lived, and with her passionate nature loved the Lady Barrowdale as she +might have loved her own mother, had that mother lived and she had ever +known her. And when the Lady Barrowdale sickened and died of the same +sickness which had nearly been her own death, the promise she made then +overrode all other covenants made for her. She had promised the great +lady who had given her own widowed, childless life for her own, that she +would not remain a Gipsy, that she would not marry a Gipsy, but that if +ever she gave herself to any man it would be to a Gorgio, a European, who +travelled oftenest "the open road" leading to his own door. The years +which had passed since those tragic days in Gloucestershire had seen the +shadows of that dark episode pass, but the pledge had remained; and +Gabriel Druse had kept his word to the dead, because of the vow made to +the woman who had given her life for the life of a Romany lass. + +The Romany tribes of all the nations did not know why their Ry had hidden +himself in the New World; they did not know that the girl had for ever +forsworn their race, and would never become head of all the Romanys, +solving the problem of the rival dynasties by linking her life with that +of Jethro Fawe. But Jethro Fawe had come to claim his own. + +Now Gabriel Druse's eyes followed his own menacing finger with sharp +insistence. In the past such a look had been in his eyes when he had +sentenced men to death. They had not died by the gallows or the sword or +the bullet, but they had died as commanded, and none had questioned his +decree. None asked where or how the thing was done when a fire sprang up +in a field, or a quarry, or on a lonely heath or hill-top, and on the +pyre were all the belongings of the condemned, being resolved into dust +as their owner had been made earth again. + +"Son of Lemuel Fawe," the old man said, his voice rough with authority, +"but that you are of the Blood, you should die now for this disobedience. +When the time is fulfilled, I will return. Until then, my daughter and I +are as those who have no people. Begone! Nothing that is here belongs +to you. Begone, and come no more!" + +"I have come for my own--for my Romany 'chi', and I will not go without +her. I am blood of the Blood, and she is mine." + +"You have not seen her," said the old man craftily, and fighting hard +against the wrath consuming him, though he liked the young man's spirit. +"She has changed. She is no longer Romany." + +"I have seen her, and her beauty is like the rose and the palm." + +"When have you seen her since the day before the tent of Lemuel Fawe now +seventeen years ago?" There was an uneasy note in the commanding tone. + +"I have seen her three times of late, and the last time I saw her was an +hour or so since, when she rode the Rapids of Carillon." + +The old man started, his lips parted, but for a moment he did not speak. +At last words came. "The Rapids--speak. What have you heard, Jethro, +son of Lemuel?" + +"I did not hear, I saw her shoot the Rapids. I ran to follow. At +Carillon I saw her arrive. She was in the arms of a Gorgio of Lebanon-- +Ingolby is his name." + +A malediction burst from Gabriel Druse's lips, words sharp and terrible +in their intensity. For the first time since they had met the young man +blanched. The savage was alive in the giant. + +"Speak. Tell all," Druse said, with hands clenching. + +Swiftly the young man told all he had seen, and described how he had run +all the way--four miles--from Carillon, arriving before Fleda and her +Indian escort. + +He had hardly finished his tale, shrinking, as he told it, from the +fierceness of his chief, when a voice called from the direction of the +house. + +"Father--father," it cried. + +A change passed over the old man's face. It cleared as the face of the +sun clears when a cloud drives past and is gone. The transformation was +startling. Without further glance at his companion, he moved swiftly +towards the house. Once more Fleda's voice called, and before he could +answer they were face to face. + +She stood radiant and elate, and seemed not apprehensive of disfavour or +reproach. Behind her was Tekewani and his braves. + +"You have heard?" she asked reading her father's face. + +"I have heard. Have you no heart?" he answered. "If the Rapids had +drowned you!" + +She came close to him and ran her fingers through his beard tenderly. +"I was not born to be drowned," she said softly. + +Now that she was a long distance from Ingolby, the fact that a man had +held her in his arms left no shadow on her face. Ingolby was now only +part of her triumph of the Rapids. She tossed a hand affectionately +towards Tekewani and his braves. + +"How!" said Gabriel Druse, and made a gesture of salutation to the +Indian chief. + +"How!" answered Tekewani, and raised his arm high in response. An +instant afterwards Tekewani and his followers were gone their ways. + +Suddenly Fleda's eyes rested on the young Romany who was now standing at +a little distance away. Apprehension came to her face. She felt her +heart stand still and her hands grow cold, she knew not why. But she saw +that the man was a Romany. + +Her father turned sharply. A storm gathered in his face once more, and a +murderous look came into his eyes. + +"Who is he?" Fleda asked, scarce above a whisper, and she noted the +insistent, amorous look of the stranger. + +"He says he is your husband," answered her father harshly. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +"BY THE RIVER STARZKE . . . IT WAS SO DONE" + +There was absolute silence for a moment. The two men fixed their gaze +upon the girl. The fear which had first come to her face passed +suddenly, and a will, new-born and fearless, possessed it. Yesterday +this will had been only a trembling, undisciplined force, but since then +she had been passed through the tests which her own soul, or Destiny, had +set for her, and she had emerged a woman, confident and understanding, if +tremulous. In days gone by her adventurous, lonely spirit had driven her +to the prairies, savagely riding her Indian pony through the streets of +Manitou and out on the North Trail, or south through coulees, or westward +into the great woods, looking for what: she never found. + +Her spirit was no longer the vague thing driving here and there with +pleasant torture. It had found freedom and light; what the Romany folk +call its own 'tan', its home, though it be but home of each day's trek. +That wild spirit was now a force which understood itself in a new if +uncompleted way. It was a sword free from its scabbard. + +The adventure of the Carillon Rapids had been a kind of deliverance of an +unborn thing which, desiring the overworld, had found it. A few hours +ago the face of Ingolby, as she waked to consciousness in his arms, had +taught her something suddenly; and the face of Felix Marchand had taught +her even more. Something new and strange had happened to her, and her +father's uncouth but piercing mind saw the change in her. Her quick, +fluttering moods, her careless, undirected energy, her wistful +waywardness, had of late troubled and vexed him, called on capacities in +him which he did not possess; but now he was suddenly aware that she had +emerged from passionate inconsistencies and in some good sense had found +herself. + +Like a wind she had swept out of childhood into a woman's world where the +eyes saw things unseen before, a world how many thousand leagues in the +future; and here in a flash, also, she was swept like a wind back again +to a time before there was even conscious childhood--a dim, distant time +when she lived and ate and slept for ever in the field or the vale, in +the quarry, beside the hedge, or on the edge of harvest-fields; when she +was carried in strong arms, or sat in the shelter of a man's breast as a +horse cantered down a glade, under an ardent sky, amid blooms never seen +since then. She was whisked back into that distant, unreal world by the +figure of a young Romany standing beside a spruce-tree, and by her +father's voice which uttered the startling words: "He says he is your +husband!" + +Indignation and a bitter pride looked out of her eyes, as she heard the +preposterous claim--as though she were some wild dweller of the jungle +being called by her savage mate back to the lair she had forsaken. + +"Since when were you my husband?" she asked Jethro Fawe composedly. + +Her quiet scorn brought a quiver to his spirit; for he was of a people to +whom anger and passion were part of every relationship of life, its +stimulus and its recreation, its expression of the individual. + +His eyelids trembled, but he drew himself together. "Seventeen years ago +by the River Starzke in the Roumelian country, it was so done," he +replied stubbornly. "You were sealed to me, as my Ry here knows, and as +you will remember, if you fix your mind upon it. It was beyond the city +of Starzke three leagues, under the brown scarp of the Dragbad Hills. +It was in the morning when the sun was by a quarter of its course. It +happened before my father's tent, the tent of Lemuel Fawe. There you and +I were sealed before our Romany folk. For three thousand pounds which my +father gave to your father, you--" + +With a swift gesture she stopped him. Walking close up to him, she +looked him full in the eyes. There was a contemptuous pride in her face +which forced him to lower his eyelids sulkily. + +He would have understood a torrent of words--to him that would have +regulated the true value of the situation; but this disdainful composure +embarrassed him. He had come prepared for trouble and difficulty, but he +had rather more determination than most of his class and people, and his +spirit of adventure was high. Now that he had seen the girl who was his +own according to Romany law, he felt he had been a hundred times +justified in demanding her from her father, according to the pledge and +bond of so many years ago. He had nothing to lose but his life, and he +had risked that before. This old man, the head of the Romany folk, had +the bulk of the fortune which had been his own father's and he had the +logic of lucre which is the most convincing of all logic. Yet with the +girl holding his eyes commandingly, he was conscious that he was asking +more than a Romany lass to share his 'tan', to go wandering from Romany +people to Romany people, king and queen of them all when Gabriel Druse +had passed away. Fleda Druse would be a queen of queens, but there was +that queenliness in her now which was not Romany--something which was +Gorgio, which was caste, which made a shivering distance between them. + +As he had spoken, she saw it all as he described it. Vaguely, cloudily, +the scene passed before her. Now and again in the passing years had +filmy impressions floated before her mind of a swift-flowing river and +high crags, and wooded hills and tents and horsemen and shouting, and a +lad that held her hand, and banners waved over their heads, and galloping +and shouting, and then a sudden quiet, and many men and women gathered +about a tent, and a wailing thereafter. After which, in her faint +remembrance, there seemed to fall a mist, and a space of blankness, and +then a starting up from a bed, and looking out of the doors of a tent, +where many people gathered about a great fire, whose flames licked the +heavens, and seemed to devour a Romany tent standing alone with a Romany +wagon full of its household things. + +As Jethro Fawe had spoken, the misty, elusive visions had become living +memories, and she knew that he had spoken the truth, and that these +fleeting things were pictures of her sealing to Jethro Fawe and the death +of Lemuel Fawe, and the burning of all that belonged to him in that last +ritual of Romany farewell to the dead. + +She knew now that she had been bargained for like any slave--for three +thousand pounds. How far away it all seemed, how barbaric and revolting! +Yet here it all was rolling up like a flood to her feet, to bear her away +into a past with its sordidness and vagabondage, however gilded and +graded above the lowest vagabondage. + +Here at Manitou she had tasted a free life which was not vagabondage, the +passion of the open road which was not an elaborate and furtive evasion +of the law and a defiance of social ostracism. Here she and her father +moved in an atmosphere of esteem touched by mystery, but not by +suspicion; here civilization in its most elastic organization and +flexible conventions, had laid its hold upon her, had done in this +expansive, loosely knitted social system what could never have been +accomplished in a great city--in London, Vienna, Rome, or New York. She +had had here the old free life of the road, so full of the scent of deep +woods--the song of rivers, the carol of birds, the murmuring of trees, +the mysterious and devout whisperings of the night, the happy communings +of stray peoples meeting and passing, the gaiety and gossip of the +market-place, the sound of church bells across a valley, the storms and +wild lightnings and rushing torrents, the cries of frightened beasts, the +wash and rush of rain, the sharp pain of frost, and the agonies of some +lost traveller rescued from the wide inclemency, the soft starlight +after, the balm of the purged air, and "rosy-fingered morn" blinking +blithely at the world. The old life of the open road she had had here +without anything of its shame, its stigma, and its separateness, its +discordance with the stationary forces of law and organized community. + +Wild moments there had been of late years when she longed for the faces +of Romany folk gathered about the fire, while some Romany 'pral' drew all +hearts with the violin or the dulcimer. When Ambrose or Gilderoy or +Christo responded to the pleadings of some sentimental lass, and sang to +the harpist's strings: + + "Cold blows the wind over my true love, + Cold blow the drops of rain; + I never, never had but one sweetheart; + In the green wood he was slain," + +and to cries of "Again! 'Ay bor'! again!" the blackeyed lover, +hypnotizing himself into an ecstasy, poured out race and passion and war +with the law, in the true Gipsy rant which is sung from Transylvania to +Yetholm or Carnarvon or Vancouver: + + "Time was I went to my true love, + Time was she came to me--" + +The sharp passion which moved her now as she stood before Jethro Fawe +would not have been so acute yesterday; but to-day--she had lain in a +Gorgio's arms to-day; and though he was nothing to her, he was still a +Gorgio of Gorgios; and this man before her--her husband--was at best but +a man of the hedges and the byre and the clay-pit, the quarry and the +wood; a nomad with no home, nothing that belonged to what she was now a +part of--organized, collective existence, the life of the house-dweller, +not the life of the 'tan', the 'koppa', and the 'vellgouris'--the tent, +the blanket, and the fair. + +"I was never bought, and I was never sold," she said to Jethro Fawe at +last "not for three thousand pounds, not in three thousand years. Look +at me well, and see whether you think it was so, or ever could be so. +Look at me well, Jethro Fawe." + +"You are mine--it was so done seventeen years ago," he answered, +defiantly and tenaciously. + +"I was three years old, seventeen years ago," she returned quietly, but +her eyes forced his to look at her, when they turned away as though their +light hurt him. + +"It is no matter," he rejoined. "It is the way of our people. It has +been so, and it will be so while there is a Romany tent standing or +moving on." + +In his rage Gabriel Druse could keep silence no longer. + +"Rogue, what have you to say of such things?" he growled. "I am the +head of all. I pass the word, and things are so and so. By long and by +last, if I pass the word that you shall sleep the sleep, it will be so, +my Romany 'chal'." + +His daughter stretched out her hand to stop further speech from her +father--"Hush!" she said maliciously, "he has come a long way for +naught. It will be longer going back. Let him have his say. It is his +capital. He has only breath and beauty." + +Jethro shrank from the sharp irony of her tongue as he would not have +shrunk before her father's violence. Biting rejection was in her tones. +He knew dimly that the thing he shrank from belonged to nothing Romany in +her, but to that scornful pride of the Gorgios which had kept the Romany +outside the social pale. + +"Only breath and beauty!" she had said, and that she could laugh at his +handsomeness was certain proof that it was not wilfulness which rejected +his claims. Now there was rage in his heart greater than had been in +that of Gabriel Druse. + +"I have come a long way for a good thing," he said with head thrown back, +"and if 'breath and beauty' is all I bring, yet that is because what my +father had in his purse has made my 'Ry' rich"--he flung a hand out +towards Gabriel Druse--"and because I keep to the open road as my father +did, true to my Romany blood. The wind and the sun and the fatness of +the field have made me what I am, and never in my life had I an ache or +a pain. You have the breath and the beauty, too, but you have the gold +also; and what you are and what you have is mine by the Romany law, and +it will come to me, by long and by last." + +Fleda turned quietly to her father. "If it is true concerning the three +thousand pounds, give it to him and let him go. It will buy him what he +would never get by what he is." + +The old man flashed a look of anger upon her. "He came empty, he shall +go empty. Against my commands, his insolence has brought him here. And +let him keep his eyes skinned, or he shall have no breath with which to +return. I am Gabriel Druse, lord over all the Romany people in all the +world from Teheran to San Diego, and across the seas and back again; and +my will shall be done." + +He paused, reflecting for a moment, though his fingers opened and shut in +anger. "This much I will do," he added. "When I return to my people I +will deal with this matter in the place where Lemuel Fawe died. By the +place called Starzke, I will come to reckoning, and then and then only." + +"When?" asked the young man eagerly. + +Gabriel Druse's eyes flashed. "When I return as I will to return." Then +suddenly he added: "This much I will say, it shall be before--" + +The girl stopped him. "It shall be when it shall be. Am I a chattel to +be bartered by any will except my own? I will have naught to do with any +Romany law. Not by Starzke shall the matter be dealt with, but here by +the River Sagalac. This Romany has no claim upon me. My will is my own; +I myself and no other shall choose my husband, and he will never be a +Romany." + +The young man's eyes suddenly took on a dreaming, subtle look, submerging +the sulkiness which had filled him. Twice he essayed to speak, but +faltered. At last, with an air, he said: + +"For seventeen years I have kept the faith. I was sealed to you, and +I hold by the sealing. Wherever you went, it was known to me. In my +thoughts I followed. I read the Gorgio books; I made ready for this day. +I saw you as you were that day by Starzke, like the young bird in the +nest; and the thought of it was with me always. I knew that when I saw +you again the brown eyes would be browner, the words at the lips would be +sweeter--and so it is. All is as I dreamed for these long years. I was +ever faithful. By night and day I saw you as you were when Romany law +made you mine for ever. I looked forward to the day when I would take +you to my 'tan', and there we two would--" + +A flush sprang suddenly to Fleda Druse's face, then slowly faded, leaving +it pale and indignant. Sharply she interrupted him. + +"They should have called you Ananias," she said scornfully. "My father +has called you a rogue, and now I know you are one. I have not heard, +but I know--I know that you have had a hundred loves, and been true to +none. The red scarfs you have given to the Romany and the Gorgio fly- +aways would make a tent for all the Fawes in all the world." + +At first he flung up his head in astonishment at her words, then, as she +proceeded, a flush swept across his face and his eyes filled up again +with sullenness. She had read the real truth concerning him. He had +gone too far. He had been convincing while he had said what was true, +but her instinct had suddenly told her what he was. Her perception had +pierced to the core of his life--a vagabondage, a little more gilded than +was common among his fellows, made possible by his position as the +successor to her father, and by the money of Lemuel Fawe which he had +dissipated. + +He had come when all his gold was gone to do the one bold thing which +might at once restore his fortunes. He had brains, and he knew now that +his adventure was in grave peril. + +He laughed in his anger. "Is only the Gorgio to embrace the Romany lass? +One fondled mine to-day in his arms down there at Carillon. That's the +way it goes! The old song tells the end of it: + + "'But the Gorgio lies 'neath the beech-wood tree; + He'll broach my tan no more; + And my love she sleeps afar from me, + But near to the churchyard door. + + 'Time was I went to my true love, + Time was she came to me--'" + +He got no farther. Gabriel Druse was on him, gripping his arms so tight +to his body that his swift motion to draw a weapon was frustrated. The +old man put out all his strength, a strength which in his younger days +was greater than any two men in any Romany camp, and the "breath and +beauty" of Jethro Fawe grew less and less. His face became purple and +distorted, his body convulsed, then limp, and presently he lay on the +ground with a knee on his chest and fierce, bony hands at his throat. + +"Don't kill him--father, don't!" cried the girl, laying restraining +hands on the old man's shoulders. He withdrew his hands and released the +body from his knee. Jethro Fawe lay still. + +"Is he dead?" she whispered, awestricken. "Dead?" The old man felt the +breast of the unconscious man. He smiled grimly. "He is lucky not to be +dead." + +"What shall we do?" the girl asked again with a white face. + +The old man stooped and lifted the unconscious form in his arms as though +it was that of a child. "Where are you going?" she asked anxiously, as +he moved away. + +"To the hut in the juniper wood," he answered. She watched till he had +disappeared with his limp burden into the depths of the trees. Then she +turned and went slowly towards the house. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE UNGUARDED FIRES + +The public knew well that Ingolby had solved his biggest business +problem, because three offices of three railways--one big and two small-- +suddenly became merged under his control. At which there was rejoicing +at Lebanon, followed by dismay and indignation at Manitou, for one of the +smaller merged railways had its offices there, and it was now removed to +Lebanon; while several of the staff, having proved cantankerous, were +promptly retired. As they were French Canadians, their retirement became +a public matter in Manitou and begot fresh quarrel between the rival +towns. + +Ingolby had made a tactical mistake in at once removing the office of the +merged railway from Manitou, and he saw it quickly. It was not possible +to put the matter right at once, however. + +There had already been collision between his own railway-men and the +rivermen from Manitou, whom Felix Marchand had bribed to cause trouble: +two Manitou men had been seriously hurt, and feeling ran high. Ingolby's +eyes opened wide when he saw Marchand's ugly game. He loathed the +dissolute fellow, but he realized now that his foe was a factor to be +reckoned with, for Marchand had plenty of money as well as a bad nature. +He saw he was in for a big fight with Manitou, and he had to think it +out. + +So this time he went pigeon-shooting. + +He got his pigeons, and the slaughter did him good. As though in keeping +with the situation, he shot on both sides of the Sagalac with great good +luck, and in the late afternoon sent his Indian lad on ahead to Lebanon +with the day's spoil, while he loitered through the woods, a gun slung in +the hollow of his arm. He had walked many miles, but there was still a +spring to his step and he hummed an air with his shoulders thrown back +and his hat on the back of his head. He had had his shooting, he had +done his thinking, and he was pleased with himself. He had shaped his +homeward course so that it would bring him near to Gabriel Druse's house. + +He had seen Fleda only twice since the episode at Carillon, and met her +only once, and that was but for a moment at a Fete for the hospital at +Manitou, and with other people present--people who lay in wait for crumbs +of gossip. + +Since the running of the Rapids, Fleda had filled a larger place in the +eyes of Manitou and Lebanon. She had appealed to the Western mind: she +had done a brave physical thing. Wherever she went she was made +conscious of a new attitude towards herself, a more understanding +feeling. At the Fete when she and Ingolby met face to face, people had +immediately drawn round them curious and excited. These could not +understand why the two talked so little, and had such an every-day manner +with each other. Only old Mother Thibadeau, who had a heart that sees, +caught a look in Fleda's eyes, a warm deepening of colour, a sudden +embarrassment, which she knew how to interpret. + +"See now, monseigneur," she said to Monseigneur Lourde, nodding towards +Fleda and Ingolby, "there would be work here soon for you or Father +Bidette if they were not two heretics." + +"Is she a heretic, then, madame?" asked the old white-headed priest, his +eyes quizzically following Fleda. + +She is not a Catholic, and she must be a heretic, that's certain," was +the reply. + +"I'm not so sure," mused the priest. Smiling, he raised his hat as he +caught Fleda's eyes. He made as if to go towards her, but something in +her look held him back. He realized that Fleda did not wish to speak +with him, and that she was even hurrying away from her father, who +lumbered through the crowd as though unconscious of them all. + +Presently Monseigneur Lourde saw Fleda leave the Fete and take the road +towards home. There was a sense of excitement in her motions, and he +also had seen that tremulous, embarrassed look in her eyes. It puzzled +him. He did not connect it wholly with Ingolby as Madame Thibadeau had +done. He had lived so long among primitive people that he was more +accustomed to study faces than find the truth from words, and he had +always been conscious that this girl, educated and even intellectual, was +at heart as primitive as the wildest daughter of the tepees of the North. +There was also in her something of that mystery which belongs to the +universal itinerary--that cosmopolitan something which is the native +human. + +"She has far to go," the priest said to himself as he turned to greet +Ingolby with a smile, bright and shy, but gravely reproachful, too. + +This happened on the day before the collision between the railway-men and +the river-drivers, and the old priest already knew what trouble was +afoot. + +There was little Felix Marchand did which was hidden from him. He made +his way to Ingolby to warn him. + +As Ingolby now walked in the woods towards Gabriel Druse's house, he +recalled one striking phrase used by the aged priest in reference to the +closing of the railway offices. + +"When you strike your camp, put out the fires," was the aphorism. + +Ingolby stopped humming to himself as the words came to his memory again. +Bending his head in thought for a moment, he stood still, cogitating. + +"The dear old fellow was right," he said presently aloud with uplifted +head. "I struck camp, but I didn't put out the fires. There's a lot of +that in life." + +That is what had happened also to Gabriel Druse and his daughter. +They had struck camp, but had not put out the camp-fires. That which +had been done by the River Starzke came again in its appointed time. +The untended, unguarded fire may spread devastation and ruin, following +with angry freedom the marching feet of those who builded it. + +"Yes, you've got to put out your fires when you quit the bivouac," +continued Ingolby aloud, as he gazed ahead of him through the opening +greenery, beyond which lay Gabriel Druse's home. Where he was the woods +were thick, and here and there on either side it was almost impenetrable. +Few people ever came through this wood. It belonged in greater part to +Gabriel Druse, and in lesser part to the Hudson's Bay Company and the +Government; and as the land was not valuable till it was cleared, and +there was plenty of prairie land to be had, from which neither stick nor +stump must be removed, these woods were very lonely. Occasionally a +trapper or a sportsman wandered through them, but just here where Ingolby +was none ever loitered. It was too thick for game, there was no roadway +leading anywhere, but only an overgrown path, used in the old days by +Indians. It was this path which Ingolby trod with eager steps. + +Presently, as he stood still at sight of a ground-hog making for its +hiding-place, he saw a shadow fall across the light breaking through the +trees some distance in front of him. It was Fleda. She had not seen +him, and she came hurrying towards where he was with head bent, a +brightly-ribboned hat swinging in her fingers. She seemed part of the +woods, its wild simplicity, its depth, its colour-already Autumn was +crimsoning the leaves, touching them with amber tints, making the +woodland warm and kind. She wore a dress of golden brown which matched +her hair, and at her throat was a black velvet ribbon with a brooch of +antique paste which flashed the light like diamonds, but more softly. + +Suddenly, as she came on, she stopped and raised her head in a listening +attitude, her eyes opening wide as if listening, too--it was as though +she heard with them as well; alive to catch sounds which evaded capture. +She was like some creature of an ancient wood with its own secret and +immemorial history which the world could never know. There was that in +her face which did not belong to civilization or to that fighting world +of which Ingolby was so eager a factor. All the generations of the wood +and road, the combe and the river, the quarry and the secluded boscage +were in her look. There was that about her which was at once elusive and +primevally real. + +She was not of those who would be lost in the dust of futility. Whatever +she was, she was an independent atom in the mass of the world's breeding. +Perhaps it was consciousness of the dynamic quality in the girl, her +nearness to naked nature, which made Madame Bulteel say that she would +"have a history." + +If she got twisted as she came wayfaring, if her mind became possessed of +a false passion or purpose which she thought a true one, then tragedy +would await her. Yet in this quiet wood so near to the centuries that +were before Adam was, she looked like a spirit of comedy listening till +the Spirit of the Wood should break the silence. + +Ingolby felt his blood beat faster. He had a feeling that he was looking +at a wood-nymph who might flash out of his vision as a mere fantasy of +the mind. There shot through him the strangest feeling that if she were +his, he would be linked with something alien to the world of which he +was. + +Yet, recalling the day at Carillon when her cheek lay on his shoulder and +her warm breast was pressed unresistingly against him, as he lifted her +from his boat, he knew that he would have to make the hardest fight of +his life if he meant not to have more of her than this brief +acquaintance, so touched by sensation and romance. He was, maybe, +somewhat sensational; his career had, even in its present restricted +compass, been spectacular; but romance, with its reveries and its +moonshinings, its impulses and its blind adventures, had not been any +part of his existence. + +Hers were not the first red lips which, voluntarily or involuntarily, had +invited him; nor hers the first eyes which had sparkled to his glances; +and this triumphant Titian head of hers was not the only one he had seen. + +When he had taken her hand at the Hospital Fete, her fingers, long and +warm and fine, had folded round his own with a singular confidence, an +involuntary enclosing friendliness; and now as he watched her listening +--did she hear something?--he saw her hand stretch out as though +commanding silence, the "hush!" of an alluring gesture. + +This assuredly was not the girl who had run the Carillon Rapids, for that +adventuress was full of a vital force like a man's, and this girl had the +evanishing charm of a dryad. + +Suddenly a change passed over her. She was as one who had listened and +had caught the note of song for which she waited; but her face clouded, +and the rapt look gave way to an immediate distress. The fantasy of the +wood-nymph underwent translation in Ingolby's mind; she was now like a +mortal, who, having been transformed, at immortal dictate was returning +to mortal state again. + +To heighten the illusion, he thought he heard faint singing in the depths +of the wood. He put his hands to his ears for a moment, and took them +away again to make sure that it was really singing and not his +imagination; and when he saw Fleda's face again, there was fresh evidence +that his senses had not deceived him. After all, it was not strange that +some one should be singing in that deepest wood beyond. + +Now Fleda moved forward towards where he stood, quickening her footsteps +as though remembering something she must do. He stepped out into the +path and came to meet her. She heard his footsteps, saw him, and stood +still abruptly. + +She did not make a sound, but a hand went to her bosom quickly, as though +to quiet her heart or to steady herself. He had broken suddenly upon her +intent thoughts, he had startled her as she had been seldom startled, for +all her childhood training had been towards self-possession before +surprise and danger. + +"This is not your side of the Sagalac," she said with a half-smile, +regaining composure. + +"That is in dispute," he answered gaily. "I want to belong to both sides +of the Sagalac, I want both sides to belong to each other so that either +side shall not be my side or your side, or--" + +"Or Monsieur Felix Marchand's side," she interrupted meaningly. + +"Oh, he's on the outside!" snapped the fighter, with a hardening mouth. + +She did not reply at once, but put her hat on, and tied the ribbons +loosely under her chin, looking thoughtfully into the distance. + +"Is that the Western slang for saying he belongs nowhere?" she asked. + +"Nowhere here," he answered with a grim twist to the corner of his mouth, +his eyes half-closing with sulky meaning. "Won't you sit down?" he +added quickly, in a more sprightly tone, for he saw she was about to move +on. He motioned towards a log lying beside the path and kicked some +branches out of the way. + +After slight hesitation she sat down, burying her shoes in the fallen +leaves. + +"You don't like Felix Marchand?" she remarked presently. + +"No. Do you?" + +She met his eyes squarely--so squarely that his own rather lost their +courage, and he blinked more quickly than is needed with a healthy eye. +He had been audacious, but he had not surprised the garrison. + +"I have no deep reason for liking or disliking him, and you have," she +answered firmly; yet her colour rose slightly, and he thought he had +never seen skin that looked so like velvet-creamy, pink velvet. + +"You seemed to think differently at Carillon not long ago," he returned. + +"That was an accident," she answered calmly. "He was drunk, and that is +for forgetting--always." + +"Always! Have you seen many men drunk?" he asked quickly. He did not +mean to be quizzical, but his voice sounded so, and she detected it. + +"Yes, many," she answered with a little ring of defiance in her tone-- +"many, often." + +"Where?" he queried recklessly. + +"In Lebanon," she retorted. "In Lebanon--your side." + +How different she seemed from a few moments ago when she stood listening +like a nymph for the song of the Spirit of the Wood! Now she was gay, +buoyant, with a chamois-like alertness and a beaming vigour. + +"Now I know what 'blind drunk' means," he replied musingly. "In Manitou +when men get drunk, the people get astigmatism and can't see the +tangledfooted stagger." + +"It means that the pines of Manitou are straighter than the cedars of +Lebanon," she remarked. + +"And the pines of Manitou have needles," he rejoined, meaning to give her +the victory. + +"Is my tongue as sharp as that?" she asked, amusement in her eyes. + +"So sharp I can feel the point when I can't see it," he retorted. + +"I'm glad of that," she replied with an affectation of conceit. "Of +course if you live in Lebanon you need surgery to make you feel a point." + +"I give in--you have me," he remarked. + +"You give in to Manitou?" she asked provokingly. "Certainly not--only +to you. I said, 'You have me.'" + +"Ah, you give in to that which won't hurt you--" + +"Wouldn't you hurt me?" he asked in a softening tone. + +"You only play with words," she answered with sudden gravity. "Hurt you? +I owe you what I can not pay back. I owe you my life; but as nothing can +be given in exchange for a life, I cannot pay you." + +"But like may be given for like," he rejoined in a tone suddenly full of +meaning. + +"Again you are playing with words--and with me," she answered brusquely, +and a little light of anger dawned in her eyes. Did he think that he +could say a thing of that sort to her--when he pleased? Did he think +that because he had done her a great service, he could say casually what +belonged only to the sacred moments of existence? She looked at him with +rising indignation, but there suddenly came to her the conviction that he +had not spoken with affronting gallantry, but that for him the moment had +a gravity not to be marred by the place or the circumstance. + +"I beg your pardon if I spoke hastily," he answered presently. "Yet +there's many a true word spoken in jest." + +There was a moment's silence. She realized that he was drawn to her, and +that the attraction was not alone due to his having saved her at +Carillon; that he was not taking advantage of the thing which must ever +be a bond between them, whatever came of life. When she had seen him at +the Hospital Fete, a feeling had rushed over her that he had got nearer +to her than any man had ever done. Then--even then, she felt the thing +which all lovers, actual, or in the making, feel--that they must do +something for the being who to them is more than all else and all others. +She was not in love with Ingolby. How could she be in love with this man +she had seen but a few times--this Gorgio. Why was it that even as they +talked together now, she felt the real, true distance between them--of +race, of origin, of history, of life, of circumstance? The hut in the +wood where Gabriel Druse had carried Jethro Fawe was not three hundred +yards away. + +She sighed, stirred, and a wild look came in her eyes--a look of +rebellion or of protest. Presently she recovered herself. She was a +creature of sudden moods. + +"What is it you want to do with Manitou and Lebanon?" she asked after a +pause in which the thoughts of both had travelled far. + +"You really wish to know--you don't know?" he asked with sudden +intensity. + +She regarded him frankly, smiled, then she laughed outright, showing her +teeth very white and regular and handsome. The boyish eagerness of his +look, the whimsical twist of his mouth, which always showed when he was +keenly roused--as though everything that really meant anything was part +of a comet-like comedy--had caused her merriment. All the hidden things +in his face seemed to open out into a swift shrewdness and dry candour +when he was in his mood of "laying all the cards upon the table." + +"I don't know," she answered quietly. "I have heard things, but I should +like to learn the truth from you. What are your plans?" + +Her eyes were burning with inquiry. She was suddenly brought to the +gateways of a new world. Plans--what had she or her people to do with +plans! What Romany ever constructed anything? What did the building of +a city or a country mean to a Romany 'chal' or a Romany 'chi', they who +lived from field to field, from common to moor, from barn to city wall. +A Romany tent or a Romany camp, with its families, was the whole +territory of their enterprise, designs and patriotism. They saw the +thousand places where cities could be made, and built their fires on the +sites of them, and camped a day, and were gone, leaving them waiting and +barren as before. They travelled through the new lands in America from +the fringe of the Arctic to Patagonia, but they raised no roof-tree; they +tilled no acre, opened no market, set up no tabernacle: they had neither +home nor country. + +Fleda was the heir of all this, the product of generations of such +vagabondage. Had the last few years given her the civic sense, the home +sense? From the influence of the Englishwoman, who had made her forsake +the Romany life, had there come habits of mind in tune with the women of +the Sagalac, who were helping to build so much more than their homes? +Since the incident of the Carillon Rapids she had changed, but what the +change meant was yet in her unopened Book of Revelations. Yet something +stirred in her which she had never felt before. She had come of a race +of wayfarers, but the spirit of the builders touched her now. + +"What are my plans?" Ingolby drew along breath of satisfaction. "Well, +just here where we are will be seen a great thing. There's the Yukon and +all its gold; there's the Peace River country and all its unploughed +wheat-fields; there's the whole valley of the Sagalac, which alone can +maintain twenty millions of people; there's the East and the British +people overseas who must have bread; there's China and Japan going to +give up rice, and eat the wheaten loaf; there's the U. S. A. with its +hundred millions of people--it'll be that in a few years--and its +exhausted wheat-fields; and here, right here, is the bread-basket for all +the hungry peoples; and Manitou and Lebanon are the centre of it. They +will be the distributing centre. I want to see the base laid right. I'm +not going to stay here till it all happens, but I want to plan it all so +that it will happen, then I'll go on and do a bigger thing somewhere +else. These two towns have got to come together; they must play one big +game. I want to lay the wires for it. That's why I've got capitalists +to start paper-works, engineering works, a foundry, and a sash-door-and- +blind factory--just the beginning. That's why I've put two factories on +one side of the river and two on the other." + +"Was it really you who started those factories?" she asked +incredulously. + +"Of course! It was part of my plans. I wasn't foolish enough to build +and run them myself. I looked for the right people that had the money +and the brains, and I let them sweat--let them sweat it out. I'm not a +manufacturer; I'm an inventor and a builder. I built the bridge over the +river; and--" + +She nodded. "Yes, the bridge is good; but they say you are a schemer," +she added suggestively. + +"Certainly. But if I have schemes which'll do good, I ought to be +supported. I don't mind what they call me, so long as they don't call me +too late for dinner." + +They both laughed. It was seldom he talked like this, and never had he +talked to such a listener before. "The merging of the three railways was +a good scheme, and I was the schemer," he continued. "It might mean +monopoly, but it won't work out that way. It will simply concentrate +energy and: save elbow-grease. It will set free capital and capacity for +other things." + +"They say there will be fewer men at work, not only in the offices but on +the whole railway system, and they don't like that in Manitou--ah, no, +they don't!" she urged. + +"They're right in a sense," he answered. "But the men will be employed +at other things, which won't represent waste and capital overlapping. +Overlapping capital hits everybody in the end. But who says all that? +Who raises the cry of 'wolf' in Manitou?" + +"A good many people say it now," she answered, "but I think Felix +Marchand said it first. He is against you, and he is dangerous." + +He shrugged a shoulder. "Oh, if any fool said it, it would be the same!" +he answered. "That's a fire easily lighted; though it sometimes burns +long and hard." He frowned, and a fighting look came into his face. + +"Then you know all that is working against you in Manitou--working harder +than ever before?" + +"I think I do, but I probably don't know all. Have you any special news +about it?" + +"Felix Marchand is spending money among the men. They are going on +strike on your railways and in the mills." + +"What mills--in Manitou?" he asked abruptly. "In both towns." + +He laughed harshly. "That's a tall order," he said sharply. "Both +towns--I don't think so, not yet." + +"A sympathetic strike is what he calls it," she rejoined. + +"Yes, a row over some imagined grievance on the railway, and all the +men in all the factories to strike--that's the new game of the modern +labour agitator! Marchand has been travelling in France," he added +disdainfully, "but he has brought his goods to the wrong shop. What do +the priests--what does Monseigneur Lourde say to it all?" + +"I am not a Catholic," she replied gravely. "I've heard, though, that +Monseigneur is trying to stop the trouble. But--" She paused. + +"Yes--but?" he asked. "What were you going to say?" + +"But there are many roughs in Manitou, and Felix Marchand makes friends +with them. I don't think the priests will be able to help much in the +end, and if it is to be Manitou against Lebanon, you can't expect a great +deal." + +"I never expect more than I get--generally less," he answered grimly; +and he moved the gun about on his knees restlessly, fingering the lock +and the trigger softly. + +"I am sure Felix Marchand means you harm," she persisted. + +"Personal harm?" + +"Yes." + +He laughed sarcastically again. "We are not in Bulgaria or Sicily," he +rejoined, his jaw hardening; "and I can take care of myself. What makes +you say he means personal harm? Have you heard anything?" + +"No, nothing, but I feel it is so. That day at the Hospital Fete he +looked at you in a way that told me. I think such instincts are given +to some people and some races. You read books--I read people. I wanted +to warn you, and I do so. This has been lucky in a way, this meeting. +Please don't treat what I've said lightly. Your plans are in danger and +you also." Was the psychic and fortune-telling instinct of the Romany +alive in her and working involuntarily, doing that faithfully which her +people did so faithlessly? The darkness which comes from intense feeling +had gathered underneath her eyes, and gave them a look of pensiveness not +in keeping with the glow of her perfect health, the velvet of her cheek. + +"Would you mind telling me where you got your information?" he asked +presently. + +"My father heard here and there, and I, also, and some I got from old +Madame Thibadeau, who is a friend of mine. I talk with her more than +with any one else in Manitou. First she taught me how to crochet, but +she teaches me many other things, too." + +"I know the old girl by sight. She is a character. She would know a +lot, that woman." + +He paused, seemed about to speak, hesitated, then after a moment hastily +said: "A minute ago you spoke of having the instinct of your race, or +something like that. What is your race? Is it Irish, or--do you mind my +asking? Your English is perfect, but there is something--something--" + +She turned away her head, a flush spreading over her face. She was +unprepared for the question. No one had ever asked it directly of her +since they had come to Manitou. Whatever speculation there had been, she +had never been obliged to tell any one of what race she was. She spoke +English with no perceptible accent, as she spoke Spanish, Italian, +French, Hungarian and Greek; and there was nothing in her speech marking +her as different from the ordinary Western woman. Certainly she would +have been considered pure English among the polyglot population of +Manitou. + +What must she say? What was it her duty to say? She was living the life +of a British woman, she was as much a Gorgio in her daily existence as +this man be side her. Manitou was as much home--nay, it was a thousand +times more home--than the shifting habitat of the days when they wandered +from the Caspians to John o' Groat's. + +For years all traces of the past had been removed as completely as though +the tide had washed over them; for years it had been so, until the +fateful day when she ran the Carillon Rapids. That day saw her whole +horizon alter; that day saw this man beside her enter on the stage of her +life. And on that very day, also, came Jethro Fawe out of the Past and +demanded her return. + +That had been a day of Destiny. The old, panting, unrealized, +tempestuous longing was gone. She was as one who saw danger and faced +it, who had a fight to make and would make it. + +What would happen if she told this man that she was a Gipsy--the daughter +of a Gipsy ruler, which was no more than being head of a clan of the +world's transients, the leader of the world's nomads. Money--her father +had that, at least--much money; got in ways that could not bear the light +at times, yet, as the world counts things, not dishonestly; for more than +one great minister in a notable country in Europe had commissioned him, +more than one ruler and crowned head had used him when "there was trouble +in the Balkans," or the "sick man of Europe" was worse, or the Russian +Bear came prowling. His service had ever been secret service, when he +lived the life of the caravan and the open highway. He had no stable +place among the men of all nations, and yet secret rites and mysteries +and a language which was known from Bokhara to Wandsworth, and from +Waikiki to Valparaiso, gave him dignity of a kind, clothed him with +importance. + +Yet she wanted to tell this man beside her the whole truth, and see what +he would do. Would he turn his face away in disgust? What had she a +right to tell? She knew well that her father would wish her to keep to +that secrecy which so far had sheltered them--at least until Jethro +Fawe's coming. + +At last she turned and looked him in the eyes, the flush gone from her +face. + +"I'm not Irish--do I look Irish?" she asked quietly, though her heart +was beating unevenly. + +"You look more Irish than anything else, except, maybe, Slav or +Hungarian--or Gipsy," he said admiringly and unwittingly. + +"I have Gipsy blood in me," she answered slowly, "but no Irish or +Hungarian blood." + +"Gipsy--is that so?" he said spontaneously, as she watched him so +intently that the pulses throbbed at her temples. + +A short time ago Fleda might have announced her origin defiantly, now her +courage failed her. She did not wish him to be prejudiced against her. + +"Well, well," he added, "I only just guessed at it, because there's +something unusual and strong in you, not because your eyes are so dark +and your hair so brown." + +"Not because of my 'wild beauty'--I thought you were going to say that," +she added ironically and a little defiantly. "I got some verses by post +the other day from one of your friends in Lebanon--a stock-rider I think +he was, and they said I had a 'wild beauty' and a 'savage sweetness.'" + +He laughed, yet he suddenly saw her sensitive vigilance, and by instinct +he felt that she was watching for some sign of shock or disdain on his +part; yet in truth he cared no more whether she had Gipsy blood in her +than he would have done if she had said she was a daughter of the Czar. + +"Men do write that kind of thing," he added cheerfully, "but it's quite +harmless. There was a disease at college we called adjectivitis. Your +poet friend had it. He could have left out the 'wild' and 'savage' and +he'd have been pleasant, and truthful too--no, I apologize." + +He had seen her face darken under the compliment, and he hastened to put +it right. + +"I loved a Gipsy once," he added whimsically to divert attention from his +mistake, and with so genuine a sympathy in his voice that she was +disarmed. "I was ten and she was fifty at least. Oh, a wonderful woman! +I had a boy friend, a fat, happy, little joker he was; his name was +Charley Long. Well, this woman was his aunt. When she moved through the +town people looked twice. She was tall and splendidly made, and her +manner--oh, as if she owned the place. She did own a lot--she had more +money than any one else thereabouts, anyhow. It was the tallest kind of +a holiday when Charley and I walked out to the big white house-golly, but +it was white--to visit her! We didn't eat much the day before we went to +see her; and we didn't eat much the day after, either. She used to feed +us--I wish I could eat like that now! I can see her brown eyes following +us about, full of fire, but soft and kind, too. She had a great temper, +they said, but everybody liked her, and some loved her. She'd had one +girl, but she died of consumption, got camping out in bad weather. Aunt +Cynthy--that was what we called her, her name being Cynthia--never got +over her girl's death. She blamed herself for it. She had had those +fits of going back to the open-for weeks at a time. The girl oughtn't to +have been taken to camp out. She was never strong, and it was the wrong +place and the wrong time of year--all right in August and all wrong in +October. + +"Well, always after her girl's death Aunt Cynthy was as I knew her, +being good to us youngsters as no one else ever was, or could be. +Her tea-table was a sight; and the rest of the meals were banquets. +The first time I ever ate hedgehog was at her place. A little while ago, +just before you came, I thought of her. A hedgehog crossed the path +here, and it brought those days back to me--Charley Long and Aunt Cynthy +and all. Yes, the first time I ever ate hedgehog; was in Aunt Cynthy's +house. Hi-yi, as old Tekewani says, but it was good!" + +"What is the Romany word for hedgehog?" Fleda asked in a low tone. + +"Hotchewitchi," he replied instantly. "That's right, isn't it?" + +"Yes, it is right," she answered, and her eyes had a far-away look, but +there was a kind of trouble at her mouth. + +"Do you speak Romany?" she added a little breathlessly. + +"No, no. I only picked up words I heard Aunt Cynthy use now and then when +she was in the mood." + +"What was the history of Aunt Cynthy?" + +"I only know what Charley Long told me. Aunt Cynthy was the daughter +of a Gipsy--they say the only Gipsy in that part of the country at the +time--who used to buy and sell horses, and travel in a big van as +comfortable as a house. The old man suddenly died on the farm of +Charley's uncle. In a month the uncle married the girl. She brought him +thirty thousand dollars." + +Fleda knew that this man who had fired her spirit for the first time had +told his childhood story to show her the view he took of her origin; but +she did not like him less for that, though she seemed to feel a chasm +between them still. The new things moving in her were like breezes that +stir the trees, not like the wind turning the windmill which grinds the +corn. She had scarcely yet begun to grind the corn of life. + +She did not know where she was going, what she would find, or where the +new trail would lead her. The Past dogged her footsteps, hung round her +like the folds of a garment. Even as she rejected it, it asserted its +power, troubled her, angered her, humiliated her, called to her. + +She was glad of this meeting with Ingolby. It had helped her. She had +set out to do a thing she dreaded, and it was easier now than it would +have been if they had not met. She had been on her way to the Hut in the +Wood, and now the dread of the visit to Jethro Fawe had diminished. +The last voice she would hear before she entered Jethro Fawe's prison +was that of the man who represented to her, however vaguely, the life +which must be her future--the settled life, the life of Society and not +of the Saracen. + +After he had told his boyhood story they sat in silence for a moment or +two, then she rose, and, turning to him, was about to speak. At that +instant there came distinctly through the wood a faint, trilling sound. +Her face paled a little, and the words died upon her lips. Ingolby, +having turned his head as though to listen, did not see the change in her +face, and she quickly regained her self-control. + +"I heard that sound before," he said, "and I thought from your look you +heard it, too. It's funny. It is singing, isn't it?" + +"Yes, it's singing," she answered. + +"Who is it--some of the heathen from the Reservation?" + +"Yes, some of the heathen," she answered. + +"Has Tekewani got a lodge about here?" + +"He had one here in the old days." + +"And his people go to it still-was that where you were going when I broke +in on you?" + +"Yes, I was going there. I am a heathen, also, you know." + +"Well, I'll be a heathen, too, if you'll show me how; if you think I'd +pass for one. I've done a lot of heathen things in my time." + +She gave him her hand to say good-bye. "Mayn't I go with you?" he +asked. + +"'I must finish my journey alone,'" she answered slowly, repeating a line +from the first English book she had ever read. + +"That's English enough," he responded with a laugh. "Well, if I mustn't +go with you I mustn't, but my respects to Robinson Crusoe." He slung the +gun into the hollow of his arm. "I'd like much to go with you," he +urged. + +"Not to-day," she answered firmly. + +Again the voice came through the woods, a little louder now. + +"It sounds like a call," he remarked. + +"It is a call," she answered--"the call of the heathen." + +An instant after she had gone on, with a look half-smiling, half- +forbidding, thrown over her shoulder at him. + +"I've a notion to follow her," he said eagerly, and he took a step in her +direction. + +Suddenly she turned and came back to him. "Your plans are in danger-- +don't forget Felix Marchand," she said, and then turned from him again. + +"Oh, I'll not forget," he answered, and waved his cap after her. "No, +I'll not forget monsieur," he added sharply, and he stepped out with a +light of battle in his eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE + +As Fleda wound her way through the deeper wood, remembering the things +which had just been said between herself and Ingolby, the colour came and +went in her face. To no man had she ever talked so long and intimately, +not even in the far-off days when she lived the Romany life. + +Then, as daughter of the head of all the Romanys, she had her place +apart; and the Romany lads had been few who had talked with her even as a +child. Her father had jealously guarded her until the time when she fell +under the spell and influence of Lady Barrowdale. Here, by the Sagalac, +she had moved among this polyglot people with an assurance of her own +separateness which was the position of every girl in the West, but +developed in her own case to the nth degree. + +Never before had she come so near--not to a man, but to what concerned a +man; and never had a man come so near to her or what concerned her inmost +life. It was not a question of opportunity or temptation--these always +attend the footsteps of those who would adventure; but for long she had +fenced herself round with restrictions of her own making; and the secrecy +and strangeness of her father's course had made this not only possible, +but in a sense imperative. + +The end to that had come. Gaiety, daring, passion, elation, depression, +were alive in her now, and in a sense had found an outlet in a handful of +days--indeed since the day when Jethro Fawe and Max Ingolby had come into +her life, each in his own way, for good or for evil. If Ingolby came for +good, then Jethro Fawe came for evil. She would have revolted at the +suggestion that Jethro Fawe came for good. + +Yet, during the last few days, she had been drawn again and again towards +the hut in the wood. It was as though a power stronger than herself had +ordered her not to wander far from where the Romany claimant of herself +awaited his fate. As though Jethro knew she was drawn towards him, he +had sung the Gipsy songs which she and Ingolby had heard in the distance. +He might have shouted for relief in the hope of attracting the attention +of some passer-by, and so found release and brought confusion and perhaps +punishment to Gabriel Druse; but that was not possible to him. First and +last he was a Romany, good or bad; and it was his duty to obey his Ry of +Rys, the only rule which the Romany acknowledged. "Though he slay me, +yet will I trust him," he would have said, if he had ever heard the +phrase; but in his stubborn way he made the meaning of the phrase the +pivot of his own action. If he could but see Fleda face to face, he made +no doubt that something would accrue to his advantage. He would not give +up the hunt without a struggle. + +Twice a day Gabriel Druse had placed food and water inside the door of +the hut and locked him fast again, but had not spoken to him save once, +and then but to say that his fate had not yet been determined. Jethro's +reply had been that he was in no haste, that he could wait for what he +came to get; that it was his own--'ay bor'! it was his own, and God or +devil could not prevent the thing meant to be from the beginning of the +world. + +He did not hear Fleda approach the hut; he was singing to himself a song +he had learned in Montenegro. There the Romany was held in high regard, +because of the help his own father had given to the Montenegrin people, +fighting for their independence, by admirable weapons of Gipsy +workmanship, setting all the Gipsies in that part of the Balkans +at work to supply them. + +This was the song he sang + + "He gave his soul for a thousand days, + The sun was his in the sky, + His feet were on the neck of the world + He loved his Romany chi. + + "He sold his soul for a thousand days, + By her side to walk, in her arms to lie; + His soul might burn, but her lips were his, + And the heart of his Romany chi." + +He repeated the last two lines into a rising note of exultation: + + "His soul might burn, but her lips were his, + And the heart of his Romany chi." + +The key suddenly turned in the lock, the door opened on the last words of +the refrain, and, without hesitation, Fleda stepped inside, closing the +door behind her. + +"'Mi Duvel', but who would think--ah, did you hear me call then?" he +asked, rising from the plank couch where he had been sitting. He showed +his teeth in a smile which was meant to be a welcome, but it had an +involuntary malice. + +"I heard you singing," she answered composedly, "but I do not come here +because I'm called." + +"But I do," he rejoined. "You called me from over the seas, and I came. +I was in the Balkans; there was trouble--Servia, Montenegro, and Austria +were rattling the fire-irons again, and there was I as my father was +before me. But I heard you calling, and I came." + +"You never heard me call, Jethro Fawe," she returned quietly. "My +calling of you is as silent as the singing of the stars, where you are +concerned. And the stars do not sing." + +"But the stars do sing, and you call just the same," he responded with a +twist to his moustache, and posing against the wall. "I've heard the +stars sing. What's the noise they make in the heart, if it's not +singing? You don't hear with the ears only. The heart hears. It's only +a manner of speaking, this talk about the senses. One sense can do the +same as all can do and a Romany ought to know how to use one or all. +When your heart called I heard it, and across the seas I came. And by +long and by last, but I was right in coming." + +His impudence at once irritated her and provoked her admiration. She +knew by instinct how false he was, and how a lie was as common with him +as the truth; but his submission to her father, his indifference to his +imprisonment, forced her interest, even as she was humiliated by the fact +that he was sib to her, bound by ties of clan and blood apart from his +monstrous claim of marriage. He was indeed such a man as a brainless or +sensual woman could yield to with ease. He had an insinuating animal +grace, that physical handsomeness which marks so many of the Tziganies +who fill the red coats of a Gipsy musical sextette! He was not +distinguished, yet there was an intelligence in his face, a daring at +his lips and chin, which, in the discipline and conventions of organized +society, would have made him superior. Now, with all his sleek +handsomeness, he looked a cross between a splendid peasant and a +chevalier of industry. + +She compared him instinctively with Ingolby the Gorgio, as she looked at +him. What was it made the difference between the two? It was the world +in a man--personality, knowledge of life, the culture of the thousand +things which make up civilization: it was personality got from life and +power in contest with the ordered world. + +Yet was this so after all? Tekewani was only an Indian brave who lived +on the bounty of a government, and yet he had presence and an air of +command. Tekewani had been a nomad; he had not been bound to one place, +settled in one city, held subservient to one flag. But, no, she was +wrong: Tekewani had been the servant and child of a system which was as +fixed and historical as that of Russia or Spain. He belonged to a people +who had traditions and laws of their own; organized communities moving +here and there, but carrying with them their system, their laws and their +national feeling. + +There was the difference. This Romany was the child of irresponsibility, +the being that fed upon life, that did not feed life; that left one place +in the world to escape into another; that squeezed one day dry, threw it +away, and then went seeking another day to bleed; for ever fleeing from +yesterday, and using to-day only as a camping-ground. Suddenly, however, +she came to a stop in her reflections. Her father, Gabriel Druse, was of +the same race as this man, the same unorganized, irresponsible, useless +race, with no weight of civic or social duty upon its shoulders--where +did he stand? Was he no better than such as Jethro Fawe? Was he +inferior to such as Ingolby, or even Tekewani? + +She realized that in her father's face there was the look of one who had +no place in the ambitious designs of men, who was not a builder, but a +wayfarer. She had seen the look often of late, and had never read it +until now, when Jethro Fawe stared at her with the boldness of +possession, with the insolence of a soul of lust which had had its +victories. + +She read his look, and while one part of her shrank from him as from some +noisome thing, another part of her--to her dismay and anger--understood +him, and did not resent him. It was the Past dragging at her life. It +was inherited predisposition, the unregulated passions of her forebears, +the mating of the fields, the generated dominance of the body, which was +not to be commanded into obscurity, but must taunt and tempt her while +her soul sickened. She put a hand on herself. She must make this man +realize once and for all that they were as far apart as Adam and +Cagliostro. "I never called to you," she said at last. "I did not know +of your existence, and, if I had, then I certainly shouldn't have +called." + +"The Gorgios have taken away your mind, or you'd understand," he replied +coolly. "Your soul calls and those that understand come. It isn't that +you know who hears or who is coming--till he comes." + +"A call to all creation!" she answered disdainfully. "Do you think you +can impress me by saying things like that?" + +"Why not? It's true. Wherever you went in all these years the memory of +you kept calling me, my little 'rinkne rakli'--my pretty little girl, +made mine by the River Starzke over in the Roumelian country." + +"You heard what my father said--" + +"I heard what the Duke Gabriel said--'Mi Duvel', I heard enough what he +said, and I felt enough what he did!" + +He laughed, and began to roll a cigarette mechanically, keeping his eyes +fixed on her, however. + +"You heard what my father said and what I said, and you will learn that +it is true, if you live long enough," she added meaningly. + +A look of startled perception flashed into his eyes. If I live long +enough, I'll turn you, my mad wife, into my Romany queen and the blessing +of my 'tan'." + +"Don't mistake what I mean," she urged. "I shall never be ruler of the +Romanys. I shall never hear--" + +"You'll hear the bosh played-fiddle, they call it in these heathen +places--at your second wedding with Jethro Fawe," he rejoined insolently, +lighting his cigarette. "Home you'll come with me soon--'ay bor'!" + +"Listen to me," she answered with anger tingling in every nerve and +fibre. "I come of your race, I was what you are, a child of the hedge +and the wood and the road; but that is all done. Home, you say! Home-- +in a tent by the roadside or--" + +"As your mother lived--where you were bornwell, well, but here's a Romany +lass that's forgot her cradle!" + +"I have forgotten nothing. I have only moved on. I have only seen that +there is a better road to walk than that where people, always looking +behind lest they be followed, and always looking in front to find refuge, +drop the patrin in the dust or the grass or the bushes for others to +follow after--always going on and on because they dare not go back." + +Suddenly he threw his cigarette on the ground, and put his heel upon it +in fury real or assumed. "Great Heaven and Hell," he exclaimed, "here's +a Romany has sold her blood to the devil! And this is the daughter of +Gabriel Druse, King and Duke of all the Romanys, him with ancestor King +Panuel, Duke of Little Egypt, who had Sigismund, and Charles the Great, +and all the kings for friends. By long and by last, but this is a tale +to tell to the Romanys of the world!" For reply she went to the door and +opened it wide. "Then go and tell it, Jethro Fawe, to all the world. +Tell them I am the renegade daughter of Gabriel Druse, ruler of them all. +Tell them there is no fault in him, and that he will return to his own +people in his own time, but that I, Fleda Druse, will never return-- +never! Now, get you gone from here." + +The sunlight broke through the trees, and fell in a narrow path of light +upon the doorway. A little grey bird fluttered into the radiance and +came tripping across the threshold; a whippoorwill called in the +ashtrees; and the sweet smell of the thick woodland, of the bracken and +fern, crept into the room. The balm of a perfect evening of Summer was +upon the face of nature. The world seemed untroubled and serene; but in +this hidden but two stormy spirits broke the peace to which the place and +the time were all entitled. + +After Fleda's scornful words of release and dismissal, Jethro stood for a +moment confounded and dismayed. He had not reckoned with this. During +their talk it had come to him how simple it would be to overpower any +check to his exit, how devilishly easy to put the girl at a disadvantage; +but he drove the thought from him. In the first place, he was by no +means sure that escape was what he wanted--not yet, at any rate; in the +second place, if Gabriel Druse passed the word along the subterranean +wires of the Romany world that Jethro Fawe should vanish, he would not +long cumber the ground. + +Yet it was not cowardice or fear of consequences which had held him back; +it was a staggering admiration for this girl who had been given to him in +marriage so many years ago. He had fared far and wide in his adventures +and amours when he had gold in plenty; and he had swung more than one +Gorgio woman in the wild dance of sentiment, dazzling them by the +splendour of his passion. The fire gleaming in his dark eyes lighted a +face which would have made memorable a picture by Guido. He had fared +far and wide, but he had never seen a woman who had seized his +imagination as this girl was doing; who roused in him, not the old hot +desire, but the hungry will to have a 'tan' of his own, and go travelling +down the world with one who alone could satisfy him for all his days. + +As he sat in this improvised woodland prison he had had visions of a +hundred glades and valleys through which he had passed in days gone by-- +in England, in Spain, in Italy, in Roumania, in Austria, in Australia, +in India--where his camp-fires had burned. In his visions he had seen +her--Fleda Fawe, not Fleda Druse--laying the cloth and bringing out the +silver cups, or stretching the Turkey rugs upon the ground to make a +couch for two bright-eyed lovers to whom the night was as the day, +radiant and full of joy. He had shut his eyes and beheld hillsides where +abandoned castles stood, and the fox and the squirrel and the hawk gave +shade and welcome to the dusty pilgrims of the road; or, when the wild +winds blew in winter, gave shelter and wood for the fire, and a sense of +homeliness among the companionable trees. + +He had seen himself and this beautiful Romany 'chi' at some village fair, +while the lesser Romany folk told fortunes, or bought and sold horses, +and the lesser still tinkered or worked in gold or brass; he had seen +them both in a great wagon with bright furnishings and brass-girt harness +on their horses, lording it over all, rich, dominant and admired. In his +visions he had even seen a Romany babe carried in his arms to a Christian +church and there baptized in grandeur as became the child of the head of +the people. His imagination had also seen his own tombstone in some +Christian churchyard near to the church porch, where he would not be +lonely when he was dead, but could hear the gossip of the people as they +went in and out of church; and on the tombstone some such inscription as +he had seen once at Pforzheim--"To the high-born Lord Johann, Earl of +Little Egypt, to whose soul God be gracious and merciful." + +To be sure, it was a strange thing for a Romany to be buried in a Gorgio +churchyard; but it was what had chanced to many great men of the Romanys, +such as the high-born Lord Panuel at Steinbrock, and Peter of Kleinschild +at Mantua--all of whom had great emblazoned monuments in Christian +churches, just to show that in all-levelling death they condescended from +high estate to mingle their ashes with the dust of the Gorgio. + +He had sought out his chieftain here in the new world in a spirit of +adventure, cupidity and desire. He had come like one who betrays, but he +acknowledged to a higher force than his own and to superior rights when +Gabriel Druse's strong arm brought him low; and, waking to life and +consciousness again, he was aware that another force also had levelled +him to the earth. That force was this woman's spirit which now gave him +his freedom so scornfully; who bade him begone and tell their people +everywhere that she was no longer a Romany, while she would go, no doubt +--a thousand times without doubt unless he prevented it--to the +swaggering Gorgio who had saved her on the Sagalac. + +She stood waiting for him to go, as though he could not refuse his +freedom. As a bone is tossed to a dog, she gave it to him. + +"You have no right to set me free," he said coolly now. "I am not your +prisoner. You tell me to take that word to the Romany people--that you +leave them for ever. I will not do it. You are a Romany, and a Romany +you must stay. You belong nowhere else. If you married a Gorgio, you +would still sigh for the camp beneath the stars, for the tambourine and +the dance--" + +"And the fortune-telling," she interjected sharply, "and the snail-soup, +and the dirty blanket under the hedge, and the constable on the road +behind, always just behind, watching, waiting, and--" + +"The hedge is as clean as the dirty houses where the low-class Gorgios +sleep. In faith, you are a long way from the River Starzke!" he added. +"But you are my mad wife, and I must wait till you've got sense again." + +He sat down on the plank couch, and began to roll a cigarette once more. + +"You come fitted out like a Gorgio lass now, and you look like a Gorgio +countess, and you have the manners of an Archduchess; but that's nothing; +it will peel off like a blister when it's pricked. Underneath is the +Romany. It's there, and it will show red and angry when we've stripped +off the Gorgio. It's the way with a woman, always acting, always +imagining herself something else than what she is--if she's a beggar +fancying herself a princess; if she's a princess fancying herself a +flower-girl. 'Mi Duvel', but I know you all!" + +Every word he said went home. She knew that there was truth in what he +said, and that beneath all was the Romany blood; but she meant to conquer +it. She had made her vow to one in England that she loved, and she would +not change. Whatever happened, she had finished with Romany life, and to +go back would only mean black tragedy in the end. A month ago it was a +vow and an inner desire which made her determined; to-day it was the vow +and a man--a Gorgio whom she had but now left in the woods, gazing after +her with the look which a woman so well interprets. + +"You mean you won't go free from here? Because I was a Romany, and wish +you no harm, I have come here to-day to let you go where you will--to go +back to the place where the patrins show where your people travel. I set +you free, and you say what you think will hurt and shame me. You have a +cruel soul. You would torture any woman till she died. You shall not +torture me. You are as far from me as the River Starzke. I could have +let you stay here for my father to deal with, but I have set you free. +I open the door for you, though you are nothing to me, and I am no more +to you than one of the women you have fooled and left to eat the vile +bread of the forsaken. You have been, you are a wolf--a wolf." + +He got to his feet again, and the blood rushed to his face, so that it +seemed almost black. A torrent of mad words gathered in his throat, but +they choked him, and in the pause his will asserted itself. He became +cool and deliberate. + +"You are right, my girl, I have sucked the orange and thrown the skin +away, and I've picked flowers and cast them by, but that was before the +first day I saw you as you now are. You were standing by the Sagalac +looking out to the west where the pack-trains were travelling into the +sun over the mountains, and you had your hand on the neck of your pony. +I was not ten feet away from you, behind a juniper-bush. I looked at +you, and I wished that I had never seen a woman before and could look at +the world as you did then--it was like water from a spring, that look. +You are right in what you say. By long and by last I had a hard hand, +and when I left what I'd struck down I never looked back. But I saw you, +and I wished I had never seen a woman before. You have been here alone +with me with that door shut. Have I said or done anything that a Gorgio +duke wouldn't do? Ah, God's love, but you were bold to come! I married +you by the River Starzke; I looked upon you as my wife; and here you were +alone with me! I had my rights, and I had been trampled underfoot by +your father--" + +"By your Chief." + +"'Ay bor', by my Chief! I had my wrongs, and I had my rights, and you +were mine by Romany law. It was for me here to claim you--here where a +Romany and his wife were alone together!" + +His eyes were fixed searchingly on hers, as though he would read the +effect of his words before he replied, and his voice had a curious, rough +note, as though with difficulty he quelled the tempest within him. +"I have my rights, and you had spat upon me," he said with ferocious +softness. + +She did not blench, but looked him steadily in the eyes. + +"I knew what would be in your mind," she answered, "but that did not keep +me from coming. You would not bite the hand that set you free." + +"You called me a wolf a minute ago." + +"But a wolf would not bite the hand that freed it from the trap. Yet if +such shame could be, I still would have had no fear, for I should have +shot you as wolves are shot that come too near the fold." + +He looked at her piercingly, and the pupils of his eyes narrowed to a +pin-point. "You would have shot me--you are armed?" he questioned. + +"Am I the only woman that has armed herself against you and such as you? +Do you not see?" + +"Mi Duvel, but I do see now with a thousand eyes!" he said hoarsely. + +His senses were reeling. Down beneath everything had been the thought +that, as he had prevailed with other women, he could prevail with her; +that she would come to him in the end. He had felt, but he had declined +to see, the significance of her bearing, of her dress, of her speech, of +her present mode of life, of its comparative luxury, its social +distinction of a kind which lifted her above even the Gorgios by whom she +was surrounded. A fatuous belief in himself and in his personal powers +had deluded him. He had told the truth when he said that no woman had +ever appealed to him as she did; that she had blotted out all other women +from the book of his adventurous and dissolute life; and he had dreamed a +dream of conquest of her when Fortune should hand out to him the key of +the situation. Did not the beautiful Russian countess on the Volga flee +from her liege lord and share his 'tan'? When he played his fiddle to +the Austrian princess, did she not give him a key to the garden where she +walked of an evening? And this was a Romany lass, daughter of his +Chieftain, as he was son of a great Romany chief; and what marvel could +there be that she who had been made his child wife, should be conquered +as others had been! + +"'Mi Duvel', but I see!" he repeated in a husky fierceness. "I am your +husband, but you would have killed me if I had taken a kiss from your +lips, sealed to me by all our tribes and by your father and mine." + +"My lips are my own, my life is my own, and when I marry, I shall marry a +man of my own choosing, and he will not be a Romany," she replied with a +look of resolution which her beating heart belied. "I'm not a pedlar's +basket." + +"'Kek! Kek'! That's plain," he retorted. "But the 'wolf' is no lamb +either! I said I would not go till your father set me free, since you +had no right to do so, but a wife should save her husband, and her +husband should set himself free for his wife's sake"--his voice rose in +fierce irony--"and so I will now go free. But I will not take the word +to the Romany people that you are no more of them. I am a true Romany. +I disobeyed my 'Ry' in coming here because my wife was here, and I wanted +her. I am a true Romany husband who will not betray his wife to her +people; but I will have my way, and no Gorgio shall take her to his home. +She belongs to my tent, and I will take her there." + +Her gesture of contempt, anger and negation infuriated him. "If I do not +take you to my 'tan', it will be because I'm dead," he said, and his +white teeth showed fiercely. + +"I have set you free. You had better go," she rejoined quietly. + +Suddenly he turned at the doorway. A look of passion burned in his eyes. +His voice became soft and persuasive. "I would put the past behind me, +and be true to you, my girl," he said. "I shall be chief over all the +Romany people when Duke Gabriel dies. We are sib; give me what is mine. +I am yours--and I hold to my troth. Come, beloved, let us go together." + +A sigh broke from her lips, for she saw that, bad as he was, there was a +moment's truth in his words. "Go while you can," she said. "You are +nothing to me." + +For an instant he hesitated, then, with a muttered oath, sprang out into +the bracken, and was presently lost among the trees. + +For a long time she sat in the doorway, and again and again her eyes +filled with tears. She felt a cloud of trouble closing in upon her. At +last there was the sound of footsteps, and a moment later Gabriel Druse +came through the trees towards her. His eyes were sullen and brooding. + +"You have set him free?" he asked. + +She nodded. "It was madness keeping him here," she said. + +"It is madness letting him go," he answered morosely. "He will do harm. +'Ay bor', he will! I might have known--women are chicken-hearted. I +ought to have put him out of the way, but I have no heart any more--no +heart; I have the soul of a rabbit." + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +Saw how futile was much competition +When you strike your camp, put out the fires + + + + + + +THE WORLD FOR SALE + +By Gilbert Parker + + + +BOOK II + +VIII. THE SULTAN +IX. MATTER AND MIND AND TWO MEN +X. FOR LUCK +XI. THE SENTENCE OF THE PATRIN +XII. "LET THERE BE LIGHT" +XIII. THE CHAIN OF THE PAST +XIV. SUCH THINGS MAY NOT BE +XV. THE WOMAN FROM WIND RIVER +XVI. THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE +XVII. THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMAD +XVIII. THE BEACONS +XIX. THE BEEPER OF THE BRIDGE + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE SULTAN + +Ingolby's square head jerked forwards in stern inquiry and his eyes +fastened those of Jowett, the horsedealer. "Take care what you're +saying, Jowett," he said. "It's a penitentiary job, if it can be proved. +Are you sure you got it right?" + +Jowett had unusual shrewdness, some vanity and a humorous tongue. He was +a favourite in both towns, and had had the better of both in horse- +dealing a score of times. + +That did not make him less popular. However, it was said he liked low +company, and it was true that though he had "money in the bank," and +owned a corner lot or so, he seemed to care little what his company was. +His most constant companion was Fabian Osterhaut, who was the common +property of both towns, doing a little of everything for a living, from +bill-posting to the solicitation of an insurance agent. + +For any casual work connected with public functions Osterhaut was +indispensable, and he would serve as a doctor's assistant and help cut +off a leg, be the majordomo for a Sunday-school picnic, or arrange a +soiree at a meeting-house with equal impartiality. He had been known to +attend a temperance meeting and a wake in the same evening. Yet no one +ever questioned his bona fides, and if he had attended mass at Manitou in +the morning, joined a heathen dance in Tekewani's Reserve in the +afternoon, and listened to the oleaginous Rev. Reuben Tripple in the +evening, it would have been taken as a matter of course. + +He was at times profane and impecunious, and he had been shifted from +one boarding-house to another till at last, having exhausted credit in +Lebanon, he had found a room in the house of old Madame Thibadeau in +Manitou. She had taken him in because, in years gone by, he had nursed +her only son through an attack of smallpox on the Siwash River, and +somehow Osterhaut had always paid his bills to her. He was curiously +exact where she was concerned. If he had not enough for his week's board +and lodging, he borrowed it, chiefly of Jowett, who used him profitably +at times to pass the word about a horse, or bring news of a possible +deal. + +"It's a penitentiary job, Jowett," Ingolby repeated. "I didn't think +Marchand would be so mad as that." + +"Say, it's all straight enough, Chief," answered Jowett, sucking his +unlighted cigar. "Osterhaut got wind of it--he's staying at old Mother +Thibadeau's, as you know. He moves round a lot, and he put me on to it. +I took on the job at once. I got in with the French toughs over at +Manitou, at Barbazon's Tavern, and I gave them gin--we made it a gin +night. It struck their fancy--gin, all gin! 'Course there's nothing in +gin different from any other spirit; but it fixed their minds, and took +away suspicion. + +"I got drunk--oh, yes, of course, blind drunk, didn't I? Kissed me, half +a dozen of the Quebec boys did--said I was 'bully boy' and 'hell-fellow'; +said I was 'bon enfant'; and I said likewise in my best patois. They +liked that. I've got a pretty good stock of monkey-French, and I let +it go. They laughed till they cried at some of my mistakes, but they +weren't no mistakes, not on your life. It was all done a-purpose. +They said I was the only man from Lebanon they wouldn't have cut up and +boiled, and they was going to have the blood of the Lebanon lot before +they'd done. I pretended to get mad, and I talked wild. I said that +Lebanon would get them first, that Lebanon wouldn't wait, but'd have it +out; and I took off my coat and staggered about--blind-fair blind boozy. +I tripped over some fool's foot purposely, just beside a bench against +the wall, and I come down on that bench hard. They laughed--Lord, how +they laughed! They didn't mind my givin' 'em fits--all except one or +two. That was what I expected. The one or two was mad. They begun +raging towards me, but there I was asleep on the bench-stony blind, +and then they only spit fire a bit. Some one threw my coat over me. +I hadn't any cash in the pockets, not much--I knew better than that--and +I snored like a sow. Then it happened what I thought would happen. They +talked. And here it is. They're going to have a strike in the mills, +and you're to get a toss into the river. That's to be on Friday. But +the other thing--well, they all cleared away but two. They were the two +that wanted to have it out with me. They stayed behind. There was I +snoring like a locomotive, but my ears open all right. + +"Well, they give the thing away. One of 'em had just come from Felix +Marchand and he was full of it. What was it? Why, the second night of +the strike your new bridge over the river was to be blown up. +Marchand was to give these two toughs three hundred dollars each for +doing it." + +"Blown up with what?" Ingolby asked sharply. + +"Dynamite." + +"Where would they get it?" + +"Some left from blasting below the mills." + +"All right! Go on." + +"There wasn't much more. Old Barbazon, the landlord, come in and they +quit talking about it; but they said enough to send 'em to gaol for ten +years." + +Ingolby blinked at Jowett reflectively, and his mouth gave a twist that +lent to his face an almost droll look. + +"What good would it do if they got ten years--or one year, if the bridge +was blown up? If they got skinned alive, and if Marchand was handed over +to a barnful of hungry rats to be gnawed to death, it wouldn't help. +I've heard and seen a lot of hellish things, but there's nothing to equal +that. To blow up the bridge--for what? To spite Lebanon, and to hurt +me; to knock the spokes out of my wheel. He's the dregs, is Marchand." + +"I guess he's a shyster by nature, that fellow," interposed Jowett. +"He was boilin' hot when he was fifteen. He spoiled a girl I knew when +he was twenty-two, not fourteen she was--Lil Sarnia; and he got her away +before--well, he got her away East; and she's in a dive in Winnipeg now. +As nice a girl--as nice a little girl she was, and could ride any broncho +that ever bucked. What she saw in him--but there, she was only a child, +just the mind of a child she had, and didn't understand. He'd ha' been +tarred and feathered if it'd been known. But old Mick Sarnia said hush, +for his wife's sake, and so we hushed, and Sarnia's wife doesn't know +even now. I thought a lot of Lil, as much almost as if she'd been my +own; and lots o' times, when I think of it, I sit up straight, and the +thing freezes me; and I want to get Marchand by the scruff of the neck. +I got a horse, the worst that ever was--so bad I haven't had the heart to +ride him or sell him. He's so bad he makes me laugh. There's nothing he +won't do, from biting to bolting. Well, I'd like to tie Mr. Felix +Marchand, Esquire, to his back, and let him loose on the prairie, and +pray the Lord to save him if he thought fit. I fancy I know what the +Lord would do. And Lil Sarnia's only one. Since he come back from the +States, he's the limit, oh, the damnedest limit. He's a pest all round- +and now, this!" + +Ingolby kept blinking reflectively as Jowett talked. He was doing two +things at once with a facility quite his own. He was understanding all +Jowett was saying, but he was also weighing the whole situation. His +mind was gone fishing, figuratively speaking. He was essentially a man +of action, but his action was the bullet of his mind; he had to be quiet +physically when he was really thinking. Then he was as one in a dream +where all physical motion was mechanical, and his body was acting +automatically. His concentration, and therefore his abstraction, was +phenomenal. Jowett's reminiscences at a time so critical did not disturb +him--did not, indeed, seem to be irrelevant. It was as though Felix +Marchand was being passed in review before him in a series of aspects. +He nodded encouragement to Jowett to go on. + +"It's because Marchand hates you, Chief. The bump he got when you +dropped him on the ground that day at Carillon hurts still. It's a +chronic inflammation. Closing them railway offices at Manitou, and +dislodging the officials give him his first good chance. The feud +between the towns is worse now than it's ever been. Make no mistake. +There's a whole lot of toughs in Manitou. Then there's religion, and +there's race, and there's a want-to-stand-still and leave-me-alone- +feeling. They don't want to get on. They don't want progress. They +want to throw the slops out of the top windows into the street; they want +their cesspools at the front door; they think that everybody's got to +have smallpox some time or another, and the sooner they have it the +better; they want to be bribed; and they think that if a vote's worth +having it's worth paying for--and yet there's a bridge between these two +towns! A bridge--why, they're as far apart as the Yukon and Patagonia." + +"What'd buy Felix Marchand?" Ingolby asked meditatively. "What's his +price?" + +Jowett shifted with impatience. "Say, Chief, I don't know what you're +thinking about. Do you think you could make a deal with Felix Marchand? +Not much. You've got the cinch on him. You could send him to quod, and +I'd send him there as quick as lightning. I'd hang him, if I could, for +what he done to Lil Sarnia. Years ago when he was a boy he offered me a +gold watch for a mare I had. The watch looked as right as could be-- +solid fourteen-carat, he said it was. He got my horse, and I got his +watch. It wasn't any more gold than he was. It was filled--just plated +with nine-carat gold. It was worth about ten dollars." + +"What was the mare worth?" asked Ingolby, his mouth twisting again with +quizzical meaning. + +"That mare--she was all right." + +"Yes, but what was the matter with her?" + +"Oh, a spavin--she was all right when she got wound up--go like Dexter or +Maud S." + +"But if you were buying her what would you have paid for her, Jowett? +Come now, man to man, as they say. How much did you pay for her?" + +"About what she was worth, Chief, within a dollar or two." + +"And what was she worth?" + +"What I paid for her-ten dollars." + +Then the two men looked at each other full in the eyes, and Jowett threw +back his head and laughed outright--laughed loud and hard. "Well, you +got me, Chief, right under the guard," he observed. + +Ingolby did not laugh outright, but there was a bubble of humour in his +eyes. "What happened to the watch?" he asked. + +"I got rid of it." + +"In a horse-trade?" + +"No, I got a town lot with it." + +"In Lebanon?" + +"Well, sort of in Lebanon's back-yard." + +"What's the lot worth now?" + +"About two thousand dollars!" + +"Was it your first town lot?" + +"The first lot of Mother Earth I ever owned." + +"Then you got a vote on it?" + +"Yes, my first vote." + +"And the vote let you be a town-councillor?" + +"It and my good looks." + +"Indirectly, therefore, you are a landowner, a citizen, a public servant, +and an instrument of progress because of Felix Marchand. If you hadn't +had the watch you wouldn't have had that town lot." + +"Well, mebbe, not that lot." + +Suddenly Ingolby got to his feet and squared himself, and his face became +alight with purpose. His mind had come back from fishing, and he was +ready now for action. His plans were formed. He was in for a fight, and +he had made up his mind how, with the new information to his hand, he +would develop his campaign further. + +"You didn't make a fuss about the watch, Jowett. You might have gone to +Felix Marchand or to his father and proved him a liar, and got even that +way. You didn't; you got a corner lot with it. That's what I'm going to +do. I can have Felix Marchand put in the jug, and make his old father, +Hector Marchand, sick; but I like old Hector Marchand, and I think he's +bred as bad a pup as ever was. I'm going to try and do with this +business as you did with that watch. I'm going to try and turn it to +account and profit in the end. Felix Marchand's profiting by a mistake +of mine--a mistake in policy. It gives him his springboard; and there's +enough dry grass in both towns to get a big blaze with a very little +match. I know that things are seething. The Chief Constable keeps me +posted as to what's going on here, and pretty fairly as to what's going +on in Manitou. The police in Manitou are straight enough. That's one +comfort. I've done Felix Marchand there. I guess that the Chief +Constable of Manitou and Monseigneur Lourde and old Mother Thibadeau are +about the only people that Marchand can't bribe. I see I've got to face +a scrimmage before I can get what I want." + +"What you want you'll have, I bet," was the admiring response. + +"I'm going to have a good try. I want these two towns to be one. +That'll be good for your town lots, Jowett," he added whimsically. "If +my policy is carried out, my town lot'll be worth a pocketful of gold- +plated watches or a stud of spavined mares." He chuckled to himself, and +his fingers reached towards a bell on the table, but he paused. "When +was it they said the strike would begin?" he asked. + +"Friday." + +"Did they say what hour?" + +"Eleven in the morning." + +"Third of a day's work and a whole day's pay," he mused. "Jowett," he +added, "I want you to have faith. I'm going to do Marchand, and I'm +going to do him in a way that'll be best in the end. You can help as +much if not more than anybody--you and Osterhaut. And if I succeed, +it'll be worth your while." + +"I ain't followin' you because it's worth while, but because I want to, +Chief." + +"I know; but a man--every man--likes the counters for the game." He +turned to the table, opened a drawer, and took out a folded paper. He +looked it through carefully, wrote a name on it, and handed it to Jowett. + +"There's a hundred shares in the Northwest Railway, with my regards, +Jowett. Some of the counters of the game." + +Jowett handed it back at once with a shake of the head. "I don't live in +Manitou," he said. "I'm almost white, Chief. I've never made a deal +with you, and don't want to. I'm your man for the fun of it, and because +I'd give my life to have your head on my shoulders for one year." + +"I'd feel better if you'd take the shares, Jowett. You've helped me, +and I can't let you do it for nothing." + +"Then I can't do it at all. I'm discharged." Suddenly, however, a +humorous, eager look shot into Jowett's face. "Will you toss for it?" +he blurted out. "Certainly, if you like," was the reply. + +"Heads I win, tails it's yours?" + +"Good." + +Ingolby took a silver dollar from his pocket, and tossed. It came down +tails. Ingolby had won. + +"My corner lot against double the shares?" Jowett asked sharply, his +face flushed with eager pleasure. He was a born gambler. + +"As you like," answered Ingolby with a smile. Ingolby tossed, and they +stooped over to look at the dollar on the floor. It had come up heads. +"You win," said Ingolby, and turning to the table, took out another +hundred shares. In a moment they were handed over. + +"You're a wonder, Jowett," he said. "You risked a lot of money. Are you +satisfied?" + +"You bet, Chief. I come by these shares honestly now." + +He picked up the silver dollar from the floor, and was about to put it in +his pocket. + +"Wait--that's my dollar," said Ingolby. + +"By gracious, so it is!" said Jowett, and handed it over reluctantly. + +Ingolby pocketed it with satisfaction. + +Neither dwelt on the humour of the situation. They were only concerned +for the rules of the game, and both were gamesters in their way. + +After a few brief instructions to Jowett, and a message for Osterhaut +concerning a suit of workman's clothes, Ingolby left his offices and +walked down the main street of the town with his normal rapidity, +responding cheerfully to the passers-by, but not encouraging evident +desire for talk with him. Men half-started forward to him, but he held +them back with a restraining eye. They knew his ways. He was responsive +in a brusque, inquisitive, but good-humoured and sometimes very droll +way; but there were times when men said to themselves that he was to be +left alone; and he was so much master of the place that, as Osterhaut and +Jowett frequently remarked, "What he says goes!" It went even with those +whom he had passed in the race of power. + +He had had his struggles to be understood in his first days in Lebanon. +He had fought intrigue and even treachery, had defeated groups which were +the forces at work before he came to Lebanon, and had compelled the +submission of others. All these had vowed to "get back at him," but when +it became a question of Lebanon against Manitou they swung over to his +side and acknowledged him as leader. The physical collision between the +rougher elements of the two towns had brought matters to a head, and +nearly every man in Lebanon felt that his honour was at stake, and was +ready "to have it out with Manitou." + +As he walked along the main street after his interview with Jowett, his +eyes wandered over the buildings rising everywhere; and his mind reviewed +as in a picture the same thinly inhabited street five years ago when he +first came. Now farmers' wagons clacked and rumbled through the prairie +dust, small herds of cattle jerked and shuffled their way to the +slaughter-yard, or out to the open prairie, and caravans of settlers with +their effects moved sturdily forward to the trails which led to a new +life beckoning from three points of the compass. That point which did +not beckon was behind them. Flaxen-haired Swedes and Norwegians; square- +jawed, round-headed North Germans; square-shouldered, loose-jointed +Russians with heavy contemplative eyes and long hair, looked curiously at +each other and nodded understandingly. Jostling them all, with a jeer +and an oblique joke here and there, and crude chaff on each other and +everybody, the settler from the United States asserted himself. He +invariably obtruded himself, with quizzical inquiry, half contempt and +half respect, on the young Englishman, who gazed round with phlegm upon +his fellow adventurers, and made up to the sandy-faced Scot or the +cheerful Irishman with his hat on the back of his head, who showed in the +throng here and there. This was one of the days when the emigrant and +settlers' trains arrived both from the East and from "the States," and +Front Street in Lebanon had, from early morning, been alive with the +children of hope and adventure. + +With hands plunged deep in the capacious pockets of his grey jacket, +Ingolby walked on, seeing everything; yet with his mind occupied +intently, too, on the trouble which must be faced before Lebanon and +Manitou would be the reciprocating engines of his policy. Coming to a +spot where a great gap of vacant land showed in the street-land which he +had bought for the new offices of his railway combine--he stood and +looked at it abstractedly. Beyond it, a few blocks away, was the +Sagalac, and beyond the Sagalac was Manitou, and a little way to the +right was the bridge which was the symbol of his policy. His eyes gazed +almost unconsciously on the people and the horses and wagons coming and +going upon the bridge. Then they were lifted to the tall chimneys rising +at two or three points on the outskirts of Manitou. + +"They don't know a good thing when they get it," he said to himself. +"A strike--why, wages are double what they are in Quebec, where most of +'em come from! Marchand--" + +A hand touched his arm. "Have you got a minute to spare, kind sir?" +a voice asked. + +Ingolby turned and saw Nathan Rockwell, the doctor. "Ah, Rockwell," he +responded cheerfully, "two minutes and a half, if you like! What is it?" + +The Boss Doctor, as he was familiarly called by every one, to identify +him from the newer importations of medical men, drew from his pocket a +newspaper. + +"There's an infernal lie here about me," he replied. "They say that I--" + +He proceeded to explain the misstatement, as Ingolby studied the paper +carefully, for Rockwell was a man worth any amount of friendship. + +"It's a lie, of course," Ingolby said firmly as he finished the +paragraph. "Well?" + +"Well, I've got to deal with it." + +"You mean you're going to deny it in the papers?" + +"Exactly." + +"I wouldn't, Rockwell." + +"You wouldn't?" + +"No. You never can really overtake a newspaper lie. Lots of the people +who read the lie don't see the denial. Your truth doesn't overtake the +lie--it's a scarlet runner." + +"I don't see that. When you're lied about, when a lie like that--" + +"You can't overtake it, Boss. It's no use. It's sensational, it runs +too fast. Truth's slow-footed. When a newspaper tells a lie about you, +don't try to overtake it, tell another." + +He blinked with quizzical good-humour. Rockwell could not resist the +audacity. "I don't believe you'd do it just the same," he retorted +decisively, and laughing. + +"I don't try the overtaking anyhow; I get something spectacular in my own +favour to counteract the newspaper lie." + +"In what way?" + +"For instance, if they said I couldn't ride a moke at a village +steeplechase, I'd at once publish the fact that, with a jack-knife, I'd +killed two pumas that were after me. Both things would be lies, but the +one would neutralize the other. If I said I could ride a moke, nobody +would see it, and if it were seen it wouldn't make any impression; but to +say I killed two mountain-lions with a jack-knife on the edge of a +precipice, with the sun standing still to look at it, is as good as the +original lie and better; and I score. My reputation increases." + +Nathan Rockwell's equilibrium was restored. "You're certainly a wonder," +he declared. "That's why you've succeeded." + +"Have I succeeded?" + +"Thirty-three-and what you are!" + +"What am I?" + +"Pretty well master here." + +"Rockwell, that'd do me a lot of harm if it was published. Don't say it +again. This is a democratic country. They'd kick at my being called +master of anything, and I'd have to tell a lie to counteract it." + +"But it's the truth, and it hasn't to be overtaken." + +A grim look came into Ingolby's face. "I'd like to be master-boss of +life and death, holder of the sword and balances, the Sultan, here just +for one week. I'd change some things. I'd gag some people that are +doing terrible harm. It's a real bad business. The scratch-your-face +period is over, and we're in the cut-your-throat epoch." + +Rockwell nodded assent, opened the paper again, and pointed to a column. +"I expect you haven't seen that. To my mind, in the present state of +things, it's dynamite." + +Ingolby read the column hastily. It was the report of a sermon delivered +the evening before by the Rev. Reuben Tripple, the evangelical minister +of Lebanon. It was a paean of the Scriptures accompanied by a crazy +charge that the Roman Church forbade the reading of the Bible. It had +a tirade also about the Scarlet Woman and Popish idolatry. + +Ingolby made a savage gesture. "The insatiable Christian beast!" he +growled in anger. "There's no telling what this may do. You know what +those fellows are over in Manitou. The place is full of them going to +the woods, besides the toughs at the mills and in the taverns. They're +not psalm-singing, and they don't keep the Ten Commandments, but they're +savagely fanatical, and--" + +"And there's the funeral of an Orangeman tomorrow. The Orange Lodge +attends in regalia." + +Ingolby started and looked at the paper again. "The sneaking, praying +liar," he said, his jaw setting grimly. "This thing's a call to riot. +There's an element in Lebanon as well that'd rather fight than eat. It's +the kind of lie that--" + +"That you can't overtake," said the Boss Doctor appositely; "and I don't +know that even you can tell another that'll neutralize it. Your +prescription won't work here." + +An acknowledging smile played at Ingolby's mouth. "We've got to have a +try. We've got to draw off the bull with a red rag somehow." + +"I don't see how myself. That Orange funeral will bring a row on to us. +I can just see the toughs at Manitou when they read this stuff, and know +about that funeral." + +"It's announced?" + +"Yes, here's an invitation in the Budget to Orangemen to attend the +funeral of a brother sometime of the banks of the Boyne!" + +"Who's the Master of the Lodge?" asked Ingolby. Rockwell told him, +urging at the same time that he see the Chief Constable as well, and +Monseigneur Lourde at Manitou. + +"That's exactly what I mean to do--with a number of other things. +Between ourselves, Rockwell, I'd have plenty of lint and bandages ready +for emergencies if I were you." + +"I'll see to it. That collision the other day was serious enough, and +it's gradually becoming a vendetta. Last night one of the Lebanon +champions lost his nose." + +"His nose--how?" + +"A French river-driver bit a third of it off." + +Ingolby made a gesture of disgust. "And this is the twentieth century!" + +They had moved along the street until they reached a barber-shop, from +which proceeded the sound of a violin. "I'm going in here," Ingolby +said. "I've got some business with Berry, the barber. You'll keep me +posted as to anything important?" + +"You don't need to say it. Shall I see the Master of the Orange Lodge or +the Chief Constable for you?" Ingolby thought for a minute. "No, I'll +tackle them myself, but you get in touch with Monseigneur Lourde. He's +grasped the situation, and though he'd like to have Tripple boiled in +oil, he doesn't want broken heads and bloodshed." + +"And Tripple?" + +"I'll deal with him at once. I've got a hold on him. I never wanted to +use it, but I will now without compunction. I have the means in my +pocket. They've been there for three days, waiting for the chance." + +"It doesn't look like war, does it?" said Rockwell, looking up the +street and out towards the prairie where the day bloomed like a flower. +Blue above--a deep, joyous blue, against which a white cloud rested or +slowly travelled westward; a sky down whose vast cerulean bowl flocks of +wild geese sailed, white and grey and black, while the woods across the +Sagalac were glowing with a hundred colours, giving tender magnificence +to the scene. The busy eagerness of a pioneer life was still a quiet, +orderly thing, so immense was the theatre for effort and movement. In +these wide streets, almost as wide as a London square, there was room to +move; nothing seemed huddled, pushing, or inconvenient. Even the +disorder of building lost its ugly crudity in the space and the sunlight. + +"The only time I get frightened in life is when things look like that," +Ingolby answered. "I go round with a life-preserver on me when it seems +as if 'all's right with the world.'" + +The violin inside the barber-shop kept scraping out its cheap music--a +coon-song of the day. + +"Old Berry hasn't much business this morning," remarked Rockwell. +"He's in keeping with this surface peace." + +"Old Berry never misses anything. What we're thinking, he's thinking. +I go fishing when I'm in trouble; Berry plays his fiddle. He's a +philosopher and a friend." + +"You don't make friends as other people do." + +"I make friends of all kinds. I don't know why, but I've always had a +kind of kinship with the roughs, the no-accounts, and the rogues." + +"As well as the others--I hope I don't intrude!" + +Ingolby laughed. "You? Oh, I wish all the others were like you. It's +the highly respectable members of the community I've always had to +watch." + +The fiddle-song came squeaking out upon the sunny atmosphere. +It arrested the attention of a man on the other side of the street-- +a stranger in strange Lebanon. He wore a suit of Western clothes as a +military man wears mufti, if not awkwardly, yet with a manner not wholly +natural--the coat too tight across the chest, too short in the body. +However, the man was handsome and unusual in his leopard way, with his +brown curling hair and well-cared-for moustache. It was Jethro Fawe. + +Attracted by the sound of the violin, he stayed his steps and smiled +scornfully. Then his look fell on the two figures at the door of the +barber-shop, and his eyes flashed. + +Here was the man he wished to see--Max Ingolby, the man who stood between +him and his Romany lass. Here was a chance of speaking face to face with +the man who was robbing him. What he should do when they met must be +according to circumstances. That did not matter. There was the impulse +storming in his brain, and it drove him across the street as the Boss +Doctor walked away, and Ingolby entered the shop. All Jethro realized +was that the man who stood in his way, the big, rich, masterful Gorgio +was there. + +He entered the shop after Ingolby, and stood for an instant unseen. The +old negro barber with his curly white head, slave-black face, and large, +shrewd, meditative eyes was standing in a corner with a violin under his +chin, his cheek lovingly resting against it, as he drew his bow through +the last bars of the melody. He had smiled in welcome as Ingolby +entered, instantly rising from his stool, but continuing to play. He +would not have stopped in the middle of a tune for an emperor, and he put +Ingolby higher than an emperor. For one who had been born a slave, and +had still the scars of the overseer's whip on his back, he was very +independent. He cut everybody's hair as he wanted to cut it, trimmed +each beard as he wished to trim it, regardless of its owner's wishes. +If there was dissent, then his customer need not come again, that was +all. There were other barbers in the place, but Berry was the master +barber. To have your head massaged by him was never to be forgotten, +especially if you found your hat too small for your head in the morning. +Also he singed the hair with a skill and care, which had filled many a +thinly covered scalp with luxuriant growth, and his hair-tonic, known as +"Smilax," gave a pleasant odour to every meeting-house or church or +public hall where the people gathered. Berry was an institution even in +this new Western town. He kept his place and he forced the white man, +whoever he was, to keep his place. + +When he saw Jethro Fawe enter the shop he did not stop playing, but his +eyes searched the newcomer. Following his glance, Ingolby turned round +and saw the Romany. His first impression was one of admiration, but +suspicion was quickly added. He was a good judge of men, and there was +something secluded about the man which repelled him. Yet he was +interested. The dark face had a striking racial peculiarity. + +The music died away, and old Berry lowered the fiddle from his chin and +gave his attention to the Romany. + +"Yeth-'ir?" he said questioningly. + +For an instant Jethro was confused. When he entered the shop he had not +made up his mind what he should do. It had been mere impulse and the +fever of his brain. As old Berry spoke, however, his course opened out. + +"I heard. I am a stranger. My fiddle is not here. My fingers itch for +the cat-gut. Eh?" + +The look in old Berry's face softened a little. His instinct had been +against his visitor, and he had been prepared to send him to another +shop-besides, not every day could he talk to the greatest man in the +West. + +"If you can play, there it is," he said after a slight pause, and handed +the fiddle over. + +It was true that Jethro Fawe loved the fiddle. He had played it in many +lands. Twice, in order to get inside the palace of a monarch for a +purpose--once in Berlin and once in London--he had played the second +violin in a Tzigany orchestra. He turned the fiddle slowly round, +looking at it with mechanical intentness. Through the passion of emotion +the sure sense of the musician was burning. His fingers smoothed the +oval brown breast of the instrument with affection. His eyes found joy +in the colour of the wood, which had all the graded, merging tints of +Autumn leaves. + +"It is old--and strange," he said, his eyes going from Berry to Ingolby +and back again with a veiled look, as though he had drawn down blinds +before his inmost thoughts. "It was not made by a professional." + +"It was made in the cotton-field by a slave," observed old Berry sharply, +yet with a content which overrode antipathy to his visitor. + +Jethro put the fiddle to his chin, and drew the bow twice or thrice +sweepingly across the strings. Such a sound had never come from Berry's +violin before. It was the touch of a born musician who certainly had +skill, but who had infinitely more of musical passion. + +"Made by a slave in the cotton-fields!" Jethro said with a veiled look, +and as though he was thinking of something else: "'Dordi', I'd like to +meet a slave like that!" + +At the Romany exclamation Ingolby swept the man with a searching look. +He had heard the Romany wife of Ruliff Zaphe use the word many years ago +when he and Charley Long visited the big white house on the hill. Was +the man a Romany, and, if so, what was he doing here? Had it anything to +do with Gabriel Druse and his daughter? But no--what was there strange +in the man being a Romany and playing the fiddle? Here and there in the +West during the last two years, he had seen what he took to be Romany +faces. He looked to see the effect of the stranger's remark on old +Berry. + +"I was a slave, and I was like that. My father made that fiddle in the +cotton-fields of Georgia," the aged barber said. + +The son of a race which for centuries had never known country or flag or +any habitat, whose freedom was the soul of its existence, if it had a +soul; a freedom defying all the usual laws of social order--the son of +that race looked at the negro barber with something akin to awe. Here +was a man who had lived a life which was the staring antithesis of his +own, under the whip as a boy, confined to compounds; whose vision was +constricted to the limits of an estate; who was at the will of one man, +to be sold and trafficked with like a barrel of herrings, to be worked at +another's will--and at no price! This was beyond the understanding of +Jethro Fawe. But awe has the outward look of respect, and old Berry who +had his own form of vanity, saw that he had had a rare effect on the +fellow, who evidently knew all about fiddles. Certainly that was a +wonderful sound he had produced from his own cotton-field fiddle. + +In the pause Ingolby said to Jethro Fawe, "Play something, won't you? +I've got business here with Mr. Berry, but five minutes of good music +won't matter. We'd like to hear him play--wouldn't we, Berry?" + +The old man nodded assent. "There's plenty of music in the thing," he +said, "and a lot could come out in five minutes, if the right man played +it." + +His words were almost like a challenge, and it reached to Jethro's +innermost nature. He would show this Gorgio robber what a Romany could +do, and do as easily as the birds sing. The Gorgio was a money-master, +they said, but he would find that a Romany was a master, too, in his own +way. He thought of one of the first pieces he had ever heard, a rhapsody +which had grown and grown, since it was first improvised by a Tzigany in +Hungary. He had once played it to an English lady at the Amphitryon Club +in London, and she had swooned in the arms of her husband's best friend. +He had seen men and women avert their heads when he had played it, daring +not to look into each other's eyes. He would play it now--a little of +it. He would play it to her--to the girl who had set him free in the +Sagalac woods, to the ravishing deserter from her people, to the only +woman who had told him the truth in all his life, and who insulated his +magnetism as a ground-wire insulates lightning. He would summon her here +by his imagination, and tell her to note how his soul had caught the +music of the spheres. He would surround himself with an atmosphere of +his own. His rage, his love, and his malignant hate, his tenderness and +his lust should fill the barber's shop with a flood which would drown the +Gorgio raider. He laughed to himself, almost unconsciously. Then +suddenly he leaned his cheek to the instrument and drew the bow across +the strings with a savage softness. The old cottonfield fiddle cried out +with a thrilling, exquisite pain, but muffled, as a hand at the lips +turns agony into a tender moan. Some one--some spirit--in the fiddle +was calling for its own. + +Five minutes later-a five minutes in which people gathered at the +door of the shop, and heads were thrust inside in ravished wonder--the +palpitating Romany lowered the fiddle from his chin, and stood for a +minute looking into space, as though he saw a vision. + +He was roused by old Berry's voice. "Das a fiddle I wouldn't sell for a +t'ousand dollars. If I could play like dat I wouldn't sell it for ten +t'ousand. You kin play a fiddle to make it worth a lot--you." + +The Romany handed back the instrument. "It's got something inside it +that makes it better than it is. It's not a good fiddle, but it has +something--ah, man alive, it has something!" It was as though he was +talking to himself. + +Berry made a quick, eager gesture. "It's got the cotton-fields and the +slave days in it. It's got the whip and the stocks in it; it's got the +cry of the old man that'd never see his children ag'in. That's what the +fiddle's got in it." + +Suddenly, in an apparent outburst of anger, he swept down on the front +door and drove the gathering crowd away. + +"Dis is a barber-shop," he said with an angry wave of his hand; "it ain't +a circuse." + +One man protested. "I want a shave," he said. He tried to come inside, +but was driven back. + +"I ain't got a razor that'd cut the bristle off your face," the old +barber declared peremptorily; "and, if I had, it wouldn't be busy on you. +I got two customers, and that's all I'm going to take befo' I have my +dinner. So you git away. There ain't goin' to be no more music." + +The crowd drew off, for none of them cared to offend this autocrat of the +shears and razor. + +Ingolby had listened to the music with a sense of being swayed by a wind +which blew from all quarters of the compass at once. He loved music; +it acted as a clearing-house to his mind; and he played the piano himself +with the enthusiasm of a wilful amateur, who took liberties with every +piece he essayed. There was something in this fellow's playing which the +great masters, such as Paganini, must have had. As the music ceased, he +did not speak, but remained leaning against the great red-plush barber's +chair looking reflectively at the Romany. Berry, however, said to the +still absorbed musician: "Where did you learn to play?" + +The Romany started, and a flush crossed his face. "Everywhere," he +answered sullenly. + +"You've got the thing Sarasate had," Ingolby observed. "I only heard him +play but once--in London years ago: but there's the same something in it. +I bought a fiddle of Sarasate. I've got it now." + +"Here in Lebanon?" The eyes of the Romany were burning. An idea had +just come into his brain. Was it through his fiddling that he was going +to find a way to deal with this Gorgio, who had come between him and his +own? + +"Only a week ago it came," Ingolby replied. "They actually charged me +Customs duty on it. I'd seen it advertised, and I made an offer and got +it at last." + +"You have it here--at your house here?" asked old Berry in surprise. + +"It's the only place I've got. Did you think I'd put it in a museum? +I can't play it, but there it is for any one that can play. How would +you like to try it?" he added to Jethro in a friendly tone. "I'd give a +good deal to see it under your chin for an hour. Anyhow, I'd like to +show it to you. Will you come?" + +It was like him to bring matters to a head so quickly. + +The Romany's eyes glistened. "To play the Sarasate alone to you?" he +asked. + +"That's it-at nine o'clock to-night, if you can." + +"I will come--yes, I will come," Jethro answered, the lids drooping over +his eyes in which were the shadows of the first murder of the created +world. + +"Here is my address, then." Ingolby wrote something on his visiting- +card. "My man'll let you in, if you show that. Well, good-bye." + +The Romany took the card, and turned to leave. He had been dismissed by +the swaggering Gorgio, as though he was a servant, and he had not even +been asked his name, of so little account was he! He could come and play +on the Sarasate to the masterful Gorgio at the hour which the masterful +Gorgio fixed--think of that! He could be--a servant to the pleasure of +the man who was stealing from him the wife sealed to him in the Roumelian +country. But perhaps it was all for the best--yes, he would make it all +for the best! As he left the shop, however, and passed down the street +his mind remained in the barber-shop. He saw in imagination the +masterful Gorgio in the red-plush chair, and the negro barber bending +over him, with black fingers holding the Gorgio's chin, and an open razor +in the right hand lightly grasped. A flash of malicious desire came into +his eyes as the vision shaped itself in his imagination, and he saw +himself, instead of the negro barber, holding the Gorgio chin and looking +down at the Gorgio throat with the razor, not lightly, but firmly grasped +in his right hand. How was it that more throats were not cut in that +way? How was it that while the scissors passed through the beard of a +man's face the points did not suddenly slip up and stab the light from +helpless eyes? How was it that men did not use their chances? He went +lightly down the street, absorbed in a vision which was not like the +reality; but it was evidence that his visit to Max Ingolby's house was +not the visit of a virtuoso alone, but of an evil spirit. + +As the Romany disappeared, Max Ingolby had his hand on the old barber's +shoulder. "I want one of the wigs you made for that theatrical +performance of the Mounted Police, Berry," he said. "Never mind what +it's for. I want it at once--one with the long hair of a French-Canadian +coureur-de-bois. Have you got one?" + +"Suh, I'll send it round-no, I'll bring it round as I come from dinner. +Want the clothes, too?" + +"No. I'm arranging for them with Osterhaut. I've sent word by Jowett." + +"You want me to know what it's for?" + +"You can know anything I know--almost, Berry. You're a friend of the +right sort, and I can trust you." + +"Yeth-'ir, I bin some use to you, onct or twict, I guess." + +"You'll have a chance to be of use more than ever presently." + +"Suh, there's gain' to be a bust-up, but I know who's comin' out on the +top. That Felix Marchand and his roughs can't down you. I hear and see +a lot, and there's two or three things I was goin' to put befo' you; +yeth-'ir." + +He unloaded his secret information to his friend, and was rewarded by +Ingolby suddenly shaking his hand warmly. + +"That's the line," Ingolby said decisively. "When do you go over to +Manitou again to cut old Hector Marchand's hair? Soon?" + +"To-day is his day--this evening," was the reply. + +"Good. You wanted to know what the wig and the habitant's clothes are +for, Berry--well, for me to wear in Manitou. In disguise I'm going there +tonight among them all, among the roughs and toughs. I want to find out +things for myself. I can speak French as good as most of 'em, and I can +chew tobacco and swear with the best." + +"You suhly are a wonder," said the old man admiringly. "How you fin' the +time I got no idee." + +"Everything in its place, Berry, and everything in its time. I've got a +lot to do to-day, but it's in hand, and I don't have to fuss. You'll not +forget the wig--you'll bring it round yourself?" + +"Suh. No snoopin' into the parcel then. But if you go to Manitou +to-night, how can you have that fiddler?" + +"He comes at nine o'clock. I'll go to Manitou later. Everything in its +own time." + +He was about to leave the shop when some one came bustling in. Berry was +between Ingolby and the door, and for an instant he did not see who it +was. Presently he heard an unctuous voice: "Ah, good day, good day, Mr. +Berry. I want to have my hair cut, if you please," it said. + +Ingolby smiled. The luck was with him to-day so far. The voice belonged +to the Rev. Reuben Tripple, and he would be saved a journey to the manse. +Accidental meetings were better than planned interviews. Old Berry's +grizzled beard was bristling with repugnance, and he was about to refuse +Mr. Tripple the hospitality of the shears when Ingolby said: "You won't +mind my having a word with Mr. Tripple first, will you, Berry? May we +use your back parlour?" + +A significant look from Ingolby's eyes gave Berry his cue. + +"Suh, Mr. Ingolby. I'm proud." He opened the door of another room. + +Mr. Tripple had not seen Ingolby when he entered, and he recognized him +now with a little shock of surprise. There was no reason why he should +not care to meet the Master Man, but he always had an uncanny feeling +when his eye met that of Ingolby. His apprehension had no foundation in +any knowledge, yet he had felt that Ingolby had no love for him, and this +disturbed the egregious vanity of a narrow nature. His slouching, +corpulent figure made an effort to resist the gesture with which Ingolby +drew him to the door, but his will succumbed, and he shuffled importantly +into the other room. + +Ingolby shut the door quietly behind him, and motioned the minister to a +chair beside the table. Tripple sank down, mechanically smiling, placed +his hat on the floor, and rested his hands on the table. Ingolby could +not help but notice how coarse the hands were--with fingers suddenly +ending as though they had been cut off, and puffy, yellowish skin that +suggested fat foods, or worse. + +Ingolby came to grips at once. "You preached a sermon last night which +no doubt was meant to do good, but will only do harm," he said abruptly. + +The flabby minister flushed, and then made an effort to hold his own. + +"I speak as I am moved," he said, puffing out his lips. "You spoke on +this occasion before you were moved--just a little while before," +answered Ingolby grimly. "The speaking was last night, the moving comes +today." + +"I don't get your meaning," was the thick rejoinder. The man had a +feeling that there was some real danger ahead. + +"You preached a sermon last night which might bring riot and bloodshed +between these two towns, though you knew the mess that's brewing." + +"My conscience is my own. I am responsible to my Lord for words which I +speak in His name, not to you." + +"Your conscience belongs to yourself, but your acts belong to all of us. +If there is trouble at the Orange funeral to-morrow it will be your +fault. The blame will lie at your door." + +"The sword of the Spirit--" + +"Oh, you want the sword, do you? You want the sword, eh?" Ingolby's jaw +was set now like a millstone. "Well, you can have it, and have it now. +If you had taken what I said in the right way, I would not have done what +I'm going to do. I'm going to send you out of Lebanon. You're a bad and +dangerous element here. You must go." + +"Who are you to tell me I must go?" + +The fat hands quivered on the table with anger and emotion, but also with +fear of something. "You may be a rich man and own railways, but--" + +"But I am not rich and I don't own railways. Lately bad feeling has been +growing on the Sagalac, and only a spark was needed to fire the ricks. +You struck the spark in your sermon last night. I don't see the end of +it all. One thing is sure--you're not going to take the funeral service +to-morrow." + +The slack red lips of the man of God were gone dry with excitement, the +loose body swayed with the struggle to fight it out. + +"I'll take no orders from you," the husky voice protested. "My +conscience alone will guide me. I'll speak the truth as I feel it, and +the people will stand by me." + +"In that case you WILL take orders from me. I'm going to save the town +from what hurts it, if I can. I've got no legal rights over you, but I +have moral rights, and I mean to enforce them. You gabble of conscience +and truth, but isn't it a new passion with you--conscience and truth?" + +He leaned over the table and fastened the minister's eyes with his own. +"Had you the same love of conscience and truth at Radley?" + +A whiteness passed over the flabby face, and the beady eyes took on a +glazed look. Fight suddenly died out of them. + +"You went on a missionary tour on the Ottawa River. At Radley you toiled +and rested from your toil--and feasted. The girl had no father or +brother, but her uncle was a railway-man. He heard where you were, and +he hired with my company to come out here as a foreman. He came to drop +on you. The day after he came he had a bad accident. I went to see him. +He told me all; his nerves were unstrung, you observe. He meant to ruin +you, as you ruined the girl. He had proofs enough. The girl herself is +in Winnipeg. Well, I know life, and I know man and man's follies and +temptations. I thought it a pity that a career and a life like yours +should be ruined--" + +A groan broke from the twitching lips before him, and a heavy sweat stood +out on the round, rolling forehead. + +"If the man spoke, I knew it would be all up with you, for the world is +very hard on men of God who fall. I've seen men ruined before this, +because of an hour's passion and folly. I said to myself that you were +only human, and that maybe you had paid heavy in remorse and fear. Then +there was the honour of the town of Lebanon. I couldn't let the thing +take its course. I got the doctor to tell the man that he must go for +special treatment to a hospital in Montreal, and I--well, I bought him +off on his promising to keep his mouth shut. He was a bit stiff in +terms, because he said the girl needed the money. The child died, +luckily for you. Anyhow I bought him off, and he went. That was a year +ago. I've got all the proofs in my pocket, even to the three silly +letters you wrote her when your senses were stronger than your judgment. +I was going to see you about them to-day." + +He took from his pocket a small packet, and held them before the other's +face. "Have a good look at your own handwriting, and see if you +recognize it," Ingolby continued. + +But the glazed, shocked eyes did not see. Reuben Tripple had passed the +several stages of horror during Ingolby's merciless arraignment, and he +had nearly collapsed before he heard the end of the matter. When he knew +that Ingolby had saved him, his strength gave way, and he trembled +violently. Ingolby looked round and saw a jug of water. Pouring out a +glassful, he thrust it into the fat, wrinkled fingers. + +"Drink and pull yourself together," he said sternly. The shaken figure +straightened itself, and the water was gulped down. "I thank you," he +said in a husky voice. + +"You see I treated you fairly, and that you've been a fool?" Ingolby +asked with no lessened determination. + +"I have tried to atone, and--" + +"No, you haven't had the right spirit to atone. You were fat with vanity +and self-conceit. I've watched you." + +"In future I will--" + +"Well, that rests with yourself, but your health is bad, and you're not +going to take the funeral tomorrow. You've had a sudden breakdown, and +you're going to get a call from some church in the East--as far East as +Yokohama or Bagdad, I hope; and leave here in a few weeks. You +understand? I've thought the thing out, and you've got to go. You'll do +no good to yourself or others here. Take my advice, and wherever you go, +walk six miles a day at least, work in a garden, eat half as much as you +do, and be good to your wife. It's bad enough for any woman to be a +parson's wife, but to be a parson's wife and your wife, too, wants a lot +of fortitude." + +The heavy figure lurched to the upright, and steadied itself with a force +which had not yet been apparent. + +"I'll do my best--so help me God!" he said and looked Ingolby squarely +in the face for the first time. + +"All right, see you keep your word," Ingolby replied, and nodded good- +bye. + +The other went to the door, and laid a hand on the knob. + +Suddenly Ingolby stopped him, and thrust a little bundle of bills into +his hand. "There's a hundred dollars for your wife. It'll pay the +expense of moving," he said. + +A look of wonder, revelation and gratitude crept into Tripple's face. "I +will keep my word, so help me God!" he said again. + +"All right, good-bye," responded Ingolby abruptly, and turned away. + +A moment afterwards the door closed behind the Rev. Reuben Tripple and +his influence in Lebanon. "I couldn't shake hands with him," said +Ingolby to himself, "but I'm glad he didn't sniffle. There's some stuff +in him--if it only has a chance." + +"I've done a good piece of business, Berry," he said cheerfully as he +passed through the barber-shop. "Suh, if you say so," said the barber, +and they left the shop together. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +MATTER AND MIND AND TWO MEN + +Promptly at nine o'clock Jethro Fawe knocked at Ingolby's door, and was +admitted by the mulatto man-servant Jim Beadle, who was to Ingolby like +his right hand. It was Jim who took command of his house, "bossed" his +two female servants, arranged his railway tours, superintended his +kitchen--with a view to his own individual tastes; valeted him, kept his +cigars within a certain prescribed limit by a firm actuarial principle +which transferred any surplus to his own use; gave him good advice, +weighed up his friends and his enemies with shrewd sense; and protected +him from bores and cranks, borrowers and "dead-beats." + +Jim was accustomed to take a good deal of responsibility, and had more +than once sent people to the right-about who had designs on his master, +even though they came accredited. On such occasions he did not lie to +protect himself when called to account, but told the truth +pertinaciously. He was obstinate in his vanity, and carried off his +mistakes with aplomb. When asked by Ingolby what he called the Governor +General when he took His Excellency over the new railway in Ingolby's +private car, he said, "I called him what everybody called him. I called +him 'Succelency.'" And "Succelency" for ever after the Governor General +was called in the West. Jim's phonetic mouthful gave the West a roar of +laughter and a new word to the language. On another occasion Jim gave +the West a new phrase to its vocabulary which remains to this day. +Having to take the wife of a high personage of the neighbouring Republic +over the line in the private car, he had astounded his master by +presenting a bill for finger-bowls before the journey began. Ingolby +said to him, "Jim, what the devil is this--finger-bowls in my private +car? We've never had finger-bowls before, and we've had everybody as was +anybody to travel with us." Jim's reply was final. "Say," he replied, +"we got to have 'em. Soon's I set my eyes on that lady I said: 'She's a +finger-bowl lady.'" + +"'Finger-bowl lady' be hanged, Jim, we don't--" Ingolby protested, but +Jim waved him down. + +"Say," he said decisively, "she'll ask for them finger-bowls--she'll ask +for 'em, and what'd I do if we hadn't got 'em." + +She did ask for them; and henceforth the West said of any woman who put +on airs and wanted what she wasn't born to: "She's a finger-bowl lady." + +It was Jim who opened the door to Jethro Fawe, and his first glance was +one of prejudice. His quick perception saw that the Romany wore clothes +not natural to him. He felt the artificial element, the quality of +disguise. He was prepared to turn the visitor away, no matter what he +wanted, but Ingolby's card handed to him by the Romany made him pause. +He had never known his master give a card like that more than once or +twice in the years they had been together. He fingered the card, +scrutinized it carefully, turned it over, looked heavenward reflectively, +as though the final permission for the visit remained with him, and +finally admitted the visitor. + +"Mr. Ingolby ain't in," he said. "He went out a little while back. You +got to wait," he added sulkily, as he showed the Romany into Ingolby's +working-room. + +As Jim did so, he saw lying on a chair a suit of clothes on top of which +were a wig and false beard and moustache. Instantly he got between the +visitor and the make-up. The parcel was closed when he was in the room a +half-hour before. Ingolby had opened it since, had been called out, and +had forgotten to cover the things up or put them away. + +"Sit down," Jim said to the Romany, still covering the disguise. Then he +raised them in his arms, and passed with them into another room, +muttering angrily to himself. + +The Romany had seen, however. They were the first things on which his +eyes had fallen when he entered the room. A wig, a false beard, and +workman's clothes! What were they for? Were these disguises for the +Master Gorgio? Was he to wear them? If so, he--Jethro Fawe--would watch +and follow him wherever he went. Had these disguises to do with Fleda-- +with his Romany lass? + +His pulses throbbed; he was in an overwrought mood. He was ready for any +illusion, susceptible to any vagary of the imagination. + +He looked round the room. So this was the way the swaggering, masterful +Gorgio lived? + +Here were pictures and engravings which did not seem to belong to a new +town in a new land, where everything was useful or spectacular. Here was +a sense of culture and refinement. Here were finished and unfinished +water-colours done by Ingolby's own hand or bought by him from some hard- +up artist earning his way mile by mile, as it were. Here were books, not +many, but well-bound and important-looking, covering fields in which +Jethro Fawe had never browsed, into which, indeed, he had never entered. +If he had opened them he would have seen a profusion of marginal notes in +pencil, and slips of paper stuck in the pages to mark important passages. + +He turned from them to the welcome array of weapons on the walls-rifles, +shotguns, Indian bows, arrows and spears, daggers, and great sheath- +knives such as are used from the Yukon to Bolivia, and a sabre with a +faded ribbon of silk tied to the handle. This was all that Max Ingolby +had inherited from his father--that artillery sabre which he had worn in +the Crimea and in the Indian Mutiny. Jethro's eyes wandered eagerly over +the weapons, and, in imagination, he had each one in his hand. From the +pained, angry confusion he felt when he looked at the books had emerged a +feeling of fanaticism, of feud and war, in which his spirit regained its +own kind of self-respect. In looking at the weapons he was as good a man +as any Gorgio. Brains and books were one thing, but the strong arm, the +quick eye, and the deft lunge home with the sword or dagger were better; +they were of a man's own skill, not the acquired skill of another's +brains which books give. He straightened his shoulders till he looked +like a modern actor playing the hero in a romantic drama, and with quick +vain motions he stroked and twisted his brown moustache, and ran his +fingers through his curling hair. In truth he was no coward; and his +conceit would not lessen his courage when the test of it came. + +As his eyes brightened from gloom and sullenness to valiant enmity, they +suddenly fell on a table in a corner where lay a black coffin-shaped +thing of wood. In this case, he knew, was the Sarasate violin. +Sarasate--once he had paid ten lira to hear Sarasate play the fiddle in +Turin, and the memory of it was like the sun on the clouds to him now. +In music such of him as was real found a home. It fed everything in him +--his passion, his vanity; his vagabond taste, his emotions, his self- +indulgence, his lust. It was the means whereby he raised himself to +adventure and to pilgrimage, to love and license and loot and spying and +secret service here and there in the east of Europe. It was the +flagellation of these senses which excited him to do all that man may do +and more. + +He was going to play to the masterful Gorgio, and he would play as he had +never played before. He would pour the soul of his purpose into the +music--to win back or steal back, the lass sealed to him by the Starzke +River. + +"Kismet!" he said aloud, and he rose from the chair to go to the violin, +but as he did so the door opened and Ingolby entered. + +"Oh, you're here, and longing to get at it," he said pleasantly. + +He had seen the look in the eyes of the Romany as he entered, and noted +which way his footsteps were tending. "Well, we needn't lose any time, +but will you have a drink and a smoke first?" he added. + +He threw his hat in a corner, and opened a spirittable where shone a half +dozen cut-glass, tumblers and several well-filled bottles, while boxes of +cigars and cigarettes flanked them. It was the height of modern luxury +imported from New York, and Jethro eyed it with envious inward comment. +The Gorgio had the world on his key-chain! Every door would open to him +--that was written on his face--unless Fate stepped in and closed all +doors! + +The door of Fleda's heart had already been opened, but he had not yet +made his bed in it, and there was still time to help Fate, if her mystic +finger beckoned. + +Jethro nodded in response to Ingolby's invitation to drink. "But I do +not drink much when I play," he remarked. "There's enough liquor in the +head when the fiddle's in the hand. 'Dadia', I do not need the spirit to +make the pulses go!" + +"As little as you like then, if you'll only play as well as you did this +afternoon," Ingolby said cheerily. "I will play better," was the reply. + +"On Sarasate's violin--well, of course." + +"Not only because it is Sarasate's violin, 'Kowadji'!" "Kowadji! Oh, +come now, you may be a Gipsy, but that doesn't mean that you're an +Egyptian or an Arab. Why Arabic--why 'kowadji'?" + +The other shrugged his shoulders. "Who can tell I speak many languages. +I do not like the Mister. It is ugly in the ear. Monsieur, signor, +effendi, kowadji, they have some respect in them." + +"You wanted to pay me respect, eh?" + +"You have Sarasate's violin!" + +"I have a lot of things I could do without." + +"Could you do without the Sarasate?" + +"Long enough to hear you play it, Mr.--what is your name, may I ask?" + +"My name is Jethro Fawe." + +"Well, Jethro Fawe, my Romany 'chal', you shall show me what a violin can +do." + +"You know the Romany lingo?" Jethro asked, as Ingolby went over to the +violin-case. + +"A little--just a little." + +"When did you learn it?" There was a sudden savage rage in Jethro's +heart, for he imagined Fleda had taught Ingolby. + +"Many a year ago when I could learn anything and remember anything and +forget anything." Ingolby sighed. "But that doesn't matter, for I know +only a dozen words or so, and they won't carry me far." + +He turned the violin over in his hands. "This ought to do a bit more +than the cotton-field fiddle," he said dryly. + +He snapped the strings, looking at it with the love of the natural +connoisseur. "Finish your drink and your cigarette. I can wait," he +added graciously. "If you like the cigarettes, you must take some away +with you. You don't drink much, that's clear, therefore you must smoke. +Every man has some vice or other, if it's only hanging on to virtue too +tight." + +He laughed eagerly. Strange that he should have a feeling of greater +companionship for a vagabond like this than for most people he met. Was +it some temperamental thing in him? "Dago," as he called the Romany +inwardly, there was still a bond between them. They understood the glory +of a little instrument like this, and could forget the world in the light +on a great picture. There was something in the air they breathed which +gave them easier understanding of each other and of the world. + +Suddenly with a toss Jethro drained the glass of spirit, though he had +not meant to do so. He puffed the cigarette an instant longer, then +threw it on the floor, and was about to put his foot on it, when Ingolby +stopped him. + +"I'm a slave," he said. "I've got a master. It's Jim. Jim's a hard +master, too. He'd give me fits if we ground our cigarette ashes into the +carpet." + +He threw the refuse into a flower-pot. + +"That squares Jim. Now let's turn the world inside out," he proceeded. +He handed the fiddle over. "Here's the little thing that'll let you do +the trick. Isn't it a beauty, Jethro Fawe?" + +The Romany took it, his eyes glistening with mingled feelings. Hatred +was in his soul, and it showed in the sidelong glance as Ingolby turned +to place a chair where he could hear and see comfortably; yet he had the +musician's love of the perfect instrument, and the woods and the streams +and the sounds of night and the whisperings of trees and the ghosts that +walked in lonely places and called across the glens--all were pouring +into his brain memories which made his pulses move far quicker than the +liquor he had drunk could do. + +"What do you wish?" he asked as he tuned the fiddle. + +Ingolby laughed good-humouredly. "Something Eastern; something you'd +play for yourself if you were out by the Caspian Sea. Something that has +life in it." + +Jethro continued to tune the fiddle carefully and abstractedly. His eyes +were half-closed, giving them a sulky look, and his head was averted. He +made no reply to Ingolby, but his head swayed from side to side in that +sensuous state produced by self-hypnotism, so common among the half- +Eastern races. By an effort of the will they send through the nerves a +flood of feeling which is half-anaesthetic, half-intoxicant. Carried +into its fullest expression it drives a man amok or makes of him a +howling dervish, a fanatic, or a Shakir. In lesser intensity it produces +the musician of the purely sensuous order, or the dancer that performs +prodigies of abandoned grace. Suddenly the sensuous exaltation had come +upon Jethro Fawe. It was as though he had discharged into his system +from some cells of his brain a flood which coursed like a stream of soft +fire. + +In the pleasurable pain of such a mood he drew his bow across the strings +with a sweeping stroke, and then, for an instant, he ran hither and +thither on the strings testing the quality and finding the range and +capacity of the instrument. It was a scamper of hieroglyphics which +could only mean anything to a musician. + +"Well, what do you think of him?" Ingolby asked as the Romany lowered +the bow. "Paganini--Joachim--Sarasate--any one, it is good enough," was +the half-abstracted reply. + +"It is good enough for you--almost, eh?" + +Ingolby meant his question as a compliment, but an evil look shot into +the Romany's face, and the bow twitched in his hand. He was not Paganini +or Sarasate, but that was no reason why he should be insulted. + +Ingolby's quick perception saw, however, what his words had done, and he +hastened to add: "I believe you can get more out of that fiddle than +Sarasate ever could, in your own sort of music anyhow. I've never heard +any one play half so well the kind of piece you played this afternoon. +I'm glad I didn't make a fool of myself buying the fiddle. I didn't, did +I? I gave five thousand dollars for it." + +"It's worth anything to the man that loves it," was the Romany's +response. He was mollified by the praise he had received. + +He raised the fiddle slowly to his chin, his eyes wandering round the +room, then projecting themselves into space, from which they only +returned to fix themselves on Ingolby with the veiled look which sees but +does not see--such a look as an oracle, or a death-god, or a soulless +monster of some between-world, half-Pagan god would wear. Just such a +look as Watts's "Minotaur" wears in the Tate Gallery in London. + +In an instant he was away in a world which was as far off from this world +as Jupiter is from Mars. It was the world of his soul's origin--a place +of beautiful and yet of noisome creations also; of white mountains and +green hills, and yet of tarns in which crawled evil things; a place of +vagrant, hurricanes and tidal-waves and cloud-bursts, of forests alive +with quarrelling! and affrighted beasts. It was a place where birds +sang divinely, yet where obscene fowls of prey hovered in the blue or +waited by the dying denizens of the desert or the plain; where dark-eyed +women heard, with sidelong triumph, the whispers of passion; where sweet- +faced children fled in fear from terrors undefined; where harpies and +witch-women and evil souls waited in ambush; or scurried through the +coverts where men brought things to die; or where they fled for futile +refuge from armed foes. It was a world of unbridled will, this, where +the soul of Jethro Fawe had its origin; and to it his senses fled +involuntarily when he put Sarasate's fiddle to his chin this Autumn +evening. + +From that well of the First Things--the first things of his own life, the +fount from which his forebears drew, backwards through the centuries, +Jethro Fawe quickly drank his fill; and then into the violin he poured +his own story--no improvisation, but musical legends and classic +fantasies and folk-breathings and histories of anguished or joyous haters +or lovers of life; treated by the impressionist who made that which had +been in other scenes to other men the thing of the present and for the +men who are. That which had happened by the Starzke River was now of the +Sagalac River. The passions and wild love and irresponsible deeds of the +life he had lived in years gone by were here. + +It was impossible for Ingolby to resist the spell of the music. Such +abandonment he had never seen in any musician, such riot of musical +meaning he had never heard. He was conscious of the savagery and the +bestial soul of vengeance which spoke through the music, and drowned the +joy and radiance and almost ghostly and grotesque frivolity of the +earlier passages; but it had no personal meaning to him, though at times +it seemed when the Romany came near and bent over him with the ecstatic +attack of the music, as though there was a look in the black eyes like +that of a man who kills. It had, of course, nothing to do with him; it +was the abandonment of a highly emotional nature, he thought. + +It was only after he had been playing, practically without ceasing, for +three-quarters of an hour, that there came to Ingolby the true +interpretation of the Romany mutterings through the man's white, wolf- +like teeth. He did not shrink, however, but kept his head and watched. + +Once, as the musician flung his body round in a sweep of passion, Ingolby +saw the black eyes flash to the weapons on the wall with a malign look +which did not belong to the music alone, and he took a swift estimate of +the situation. Why the man should have any intentions against him, he +could not guess, except that he might be one of the madmen who have a +vendetta against the capitalist. Or was he a tool of Felix Marchand? It +did not seem possible, and yet if the man was penniless and an anarchist +maybe, there was the possibility. Or--the blood rushed to his face--or +it might be that the Gipsy's presence here, this display of devilish +antipathy, as though it were all part of the music, was due, somehow, to +Fleda Druse. + +The music swelled to a swirling storm, crashed and flooded the feelings +with a sense of shipwreck and chaos, through which a voice seemed to cry- +the quiver and delicate shrillness of one isolated string--and then fell +a sudden silence, as though the end of all things had come; and on the +silence the trembling and attenuated note which had quivered on the +lonely string, rising, rising, piercing the infinite distance and sinking +into silence again. + +In the pause which followed the Romany stood panting, his eyes fixed on +Ingolby with an evil exaltation which made him seem taller and bigger +than he was, but gave him, too, a look of debauchery like that on the +face of a satyr. Generations of unbridled emotion, of license of the +fields and the covert showed in his unguarded features. + +"What did the single cry--the motif--express?" Ingolby asked coolly. +"I know there was catastrophe, the tumblings of avalanches, but the voice +that cried-the soul of a lover, was it?" + +The Romany's lips showed an ugly grimace. "It was the soul of one that +betrayed a lover, going to eternal tortures." + +Ingolby laughed carelessly. "It was a fine bit of work. Sarasate would +have been proud of his fiddle if he could have heard. Anyhow he couldn't +have played that. Is it Gipsy music?" + +"It is the music of a 'Gipsy,' as you call it." + +"Well, it's worth a year's work to hear," Ingolby replied admiringly, yet +acutely conscious of danger. "Are you a musician by trade?" he asked. + +"I have no trade." The glowing eyes kept scanning the wall where the +weapons hung, and as though without purpose other than to get a pipe from +the rack on the wall, Ingolby moved to where he could be prepared for any +rush. It seemed absurd that there should be such a possibility; but the +world was full of strange things. + +"What brought you to the West?" he asked as he filled a pipe, his back +almost against the wall. + +"I came to get what belonged to me." + +Ingolby laughed ironically. "Most of us are here for that purpose. We +think the world owes us such a lot." + +"I know what is my own." + +Ingolby lit his pipe, his eyes reflectively scanning the other. + +"Have you got it again out here--your own?" + +"Not yet, but I will." + +Ingolby took out his watch, and looked at it. "I haven't found it easy +getting all that belongs to me." + +"You have found it easier getting what belongs to some one else," was the +snarling response. + +Ingolby's jaw hardened. What did the fellow mean? Did he refer to +money, or--was it Fleda Druse? "See here," he said, "there's no need to +say things like that. I never took anything that didn't belong to me, +that I didn't win, or earn or pay for--market price or 'founder's +shares'"--he smiled grimly. "You've given me the best treat I've had in +many a day. I'd walk fifty miles to hear you play my Sarasate--or even +old Berry's cotton-field fiddle. I'm as grateful as I can be, and I'd +like to pay you for it; but as you're not a professional, and it's one +gentleman to another as it were, I can only thank you--or maybe help you +to get what's your own, if you're really trying to get it out here. +Meanwhile, have a cigar and a drink." + +He was still between the Romany and the wall, and by a movement forward +sought to turn Jethro to the spirit-table. Probably this manoeuvring was +all nonsense, that he was wholly misreading the man; but he had always +trusted his instincts, and he would not let his reason rule him entirely +in such a situation. He could also ring the bell for Jim, or call to +him, for while he was in the house Jim was sure to be near by; but he +felt he must deal with the business alone. + +The Romany did not move towards the spirit-table, and Ingolby became +increasingly vigilant. + +"No, I can't pay you anything, that's clear," he said; "but to get your +own--I've got some influence out here--what can I do? A stranger is up +against all kinds of things if he isn't a native, and you're not. Your +home and country's a good way from here, eh?" + +Suddenly the Romany faced him. "Yes. I come from places far from here. +Where is the Romany's home? It is everywhere in the world, but it is +everywhere inside his tent. Because his country is everywhere and +nowhere, his home is more to him than it is to any other. He is alone +with his wife, and with his own people. Yes, and by long and by last, +he will make the man pay who spoils his home. It is all he has. Good or +bad, it is all he has. It is his own." + +Ingolby had a strange, disturbing premonition that he was about to hear +what would startle him, but he persisted. "You said you had come here to +get your own--is your home here?" + +For a moment the Romany did not answer. He had worked himself into a +great passion. He had hypnotized himself, he had acted for a while as +though he was one of life's realities; but suddenly there passed through +his veins the chilling sense of the unreal, that he was only acting a +part, as he had ever done in his life, and that the man before him could, +with a wave of the hand, raise the curtain on all his disguises and +pretences. It was only for an instant, however, for there swept through +him the feeling that Fleda had roused in him--the first real passion, the +first true love--if what such as he felt can be love--that he had ever +known; and he saw her again as she was in the but in the wood defying +him, ready to defend herself against him. All his erotic anger and +melodramatic fervour were alive in him once more. + +He was again a man with a wrong, a lover dispossessed. On the instant +his veins filled with passionate blood. The Roscian strain in him had +its own tragic force and reality. + +"My home is where my own is, and you, have taken my own from me, as I +said," he burst out. "There was all the world for you, but I had only my +music and my wife, and you have taken my wife from me. 'Mi Duvel', you +have taken, but you shall give back again, or there will be only one of +us in the world! The music I have played for you--that has told you all: +the thing that was music from the beginning of Time, the will of the +First of All. Fleda Druse, she was mine, she is my wife, and you, the +Gorgio, come between, and she will not return to me." + +A sudden savage desire came to Ingolby to strike the man in the face-- +this Gipsy vagabond the husband of Fleda Druse! It was too monstrous. +It was an evil lie, and yet she had said she was a Romany, and had said +it with apparent shame or anxiety. She had given him no promise, had +pledged no faith, had admitted no love, and yet already in his heart of +hearts he thought upon her as his own. Ever since the day he had held +her in his arms at the Carillon Rapids her voice had sounded in his ears, +and a warmth was in his heart which had never been there in all his days. +This waif of barbarism even to talk of Fleda Druse as though he was of +the same sphere as herself invited punishment-but to claim her as his +wife! It was shameless. An ugly mood came on him, the force that had +made him what he was filled all his senses. He straightened himself; +contempt of the Ishmael showed at his lips. + +"I think you lie, Jethro Fawe," he said quietly, and his eyes were hard +and piercing. "Gabriel Druse's daughter is not--never was--any wife of +yours. She never called you husband. She does not belong to the refuse +of the world." + +The Romany made a sudden rush towards the wall where the weapons hung, +but two arms of iron were flung out and caught him, and he was hurled +across the room. He crashed against a table, swayed, missed a chair +where rested the Sarasate violin, then fell to the floor; but he +staggered to his feet again, all his senses in chaos. + +"You almost fell on the fiddle. If you had hurt it I'd have hurt you, +Mr. Fawe," Ingolby said with a grim smile. "That fiddle's got too much +in it to waste it." + +"Mi Duvel! Mi Duvel!" gasped the Romany in his fury. + +"You can say that as much as you like, but if you play any more of your +monkey tricks here, my Paganini, I will wring your neck," Ingolby +returned, his six feet of solid flesh making a movement of menace. + +"And look," he added, "since you are here, and I said what I meant, that +I'd help you to get your own, I'll keep my word. But don't talk in +damned riddles. Talk white men's language. You said that Gabriel +Druse's daughter was your wife. Explain what you meant, and no +nonsense." + +The Romany made a gesture of acquiescence. "She was made mine according +to Romany law by the River Starzke seventeen years ago. I was the son of +Lemuel Fawe, rightful King of all the Romanys. Gabriel Druse seized the +headship, and my father gave him three thousand pounds that we should +marry, she and I, and so bring the headship to the Fawes again when +Gabriel Druse should die; and so it was done by the River Starzke in the +Roumelian country." + +Ingolby winced, for the man's words rang true. A cloud came over his +face, but he said nothing. Jethro saw the momentary advantage. "You did +not know?" he asked. "She did not tell you she was made my wife those +years ago? She did not tell you she was the daughter of the Romany King? +So it is, you see, she is afraid to tell the truth." + +Ingolby's knitted bulk heaved with desire to injure. "Your wife--you +melodious sinner! Do you think such tomfoolery has any effect in this +civilized country? She is about as much your wife as I am your brother. +Don't talk your heathenish rot here. I said I'd help you to get your +own, because you played the fiddle as few men can play it, and I owe you +a lot for that hour's music; but there's nothing belonging to Gabriel +Druse that belongs to you, and his daughter least of all. Look out-- +don't sit on the fiddle, damn you!" + +The Romany had made a motion as if to sit down on the chair where the +fiddle was, but stopped short at Ingolby's warning. For an instant +Jethro had an inclination to seize the fiddle and break it across his +knees. It would be an exquisite thing to destroy five thousand dollars' +worth of this man's property at a single wrench and blow. But the spirit +of the musician asserted itself before the vengeful lover could carry out +his purpose; as Ingolby felt sure it would. Ingolby had purposely given +the warning about the fiddle, in the belief that it might break the +unwelcome intensity of the scene. He detested melodrama, and the scene +came precious near to it. Men had been killed before his eyes more than +once, but there had been no rodomontade even when there had been a woman +in the case. + +This Romany lover, however, seemed anxious to make a Sicilian drama out +of his preposterous claim, and it sickened him. Who was the fellow that +he should appear in the guise of a rival to himself! It was humiliating +and offensive. Ingolby had his own kind of pride and vanity, and they +were both hurt now. He would have been less irritable if this rival had +been as good a man as himself or better. He was so much a gamester that +he would have said, "Let the best man win," and have taken his chances. + +His involuntary strategy triumphed for the moment. The Romany looked at +the fiddle for an instant with murderous eyes, but the cool, quiet voice +of Ingolby again speaking sprayed his hot virulence. + +"You can make a good musician quite often, but a good fiddle is a prize- +packet from the skies," Ingolby said. "When you get a good musician and +a good fiddle together it's a day for a salute of a hundred guns." + +Half-dazed with unregulated emotion, Jethro acted with indecision for a +moment, and the fiddle was safe. But he had suffered the indignity of +being flung like a bag of bones across the room, and the microbe of +insane revenge was in him. It was not to be killed by the cold humour of +the man who had worsted him. He returned to the attack. + +"She is mine, and her father knows it is so. I have waited all these +years, and the hour has come. I will--" + +Ingolby's eyes became hard and merciless again. "Don't talk your Gipsy +rhetoric. I've had enough. No hour has come that makes a woman do what +she doesn't want to do in a free country. The lady is free to do what +she pleases here within British law, and British law takes no heed of +Romany law or any other law. You'll do well to go back to your Roumelian +country or whatever it is. The lady will marry whom she likes." + +"She will never marry you," the Romany said huskily and menacingly. + +"I have never asked her, but if I do, and she said yes, no one could +prevent it." + +"I would prevent it." + +"How?" + +"She is a Romany: she belongs to the Romany people; I will find a way." + +Ingolby had a flash of intuition. + +"You know well that if Gabriel Druse passed the word, your life wouldn't +be worth a day's purchase. The Camorra would not be more certain or more +deadly. If you do anything to hurt the daughter of Gabriel Druse, you +will pay the full price, and you know it. The Romanys don't love you +better than their rightful chief." + +"I am their rightful chief." + +"Maybe, but if they don't say so, too, you might as well be their +rightful slave. You are a genius in your way. Take my advice and return +to the trail of the Gipsy. Or, there's many an orchestra would give you +a good salary as leader. You've got no standing in this country. You +can't do anything to hurt me except try to kill me, and I'll take my +chance of that. You'd better have a drink now and go quietly home to +bed. Try and understand that this is a British town, and we don't settle +our affairs by jumping from a violin rhapsody to a knife or a gun." He +jerked his head backwards towards the wall. "Those things are for +ornament, not for use. Come, Fawe, have a drink and go home like a good +citizen for one night only." + +The Romany hesitated, then shook his head and muttered chaotically. + +"Very well," was the decisive reply. Ingolby pressed a bell, and, in an +instant, Jim Beadle was in the room. He had evidently been at the +keyhole. "Jim," he said, "show the gentleman out." + +But suddenly he caught up a box of cigars from the table and thrust it +into the Romany's hands. "They're the best to be got this side of +Havana," he said cheerily. "They'll help you put more fancy still into +your playing. Good night. You never played better than you've done +during the last hour, I'll stake my life on that. Good night. Show Mr. +Fawe out, Jim." + +The Romany had not time to thrust back the cigars upon his host, and +dazed by the strategy of the thing, by the superior force and mind of the +man who a moment ago he would have killed, he took the box and turned +towards the door, taking his hat dazedly from Jim. + +At the door, however, catching sight of the sly grin on the mulatto +servant's face, his rage and understanding returned to him, and he faced +the masterful Gorgio once again. + +"By God, I'll have none of it!" he exclaimed roughly and threw the box +of cigars on the floor of the room. Ingolby was not perturbed. "Don't +forget there's an east-bound train every day," he said menacingly, and +turned his back as the door closed. + +In another minute Jim entered the room. "Get the clothes and the wig and +things, Jim. I must be off," he said. + +"The toughs don't get going till about this time over at Manitou," +responded Jim. Then he told his master about the clothes having been +exposed in the room when the Romany arrived. "But I don't think he seen +them," Jim added with approval of his own conduct. "I got 'em out quick +as lightning. I covered 'em like a blanket." + +"All right, Jim; it doesn't matter. That fellow's got other things to +think of than that." + +He was wrong, however. The Romany was waiting outside in the darkness +not far away--watching and waiting. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +FOR LUCK + +Felix Marchand was in the highest spirits. His clean-shaven face was +wrinkled with smiles and sneers. His black hair was flung in waves of +triumph over his heavily-lined forehead; one hand was on his hip with +brave satisfaction, the other with lighted cigarette was tossed upwards +in exultation. + +"I've got him. I've got him--like that!" he said transferring the +cigarette to his mouth, and clenching his right hand as though it could +not be loosed by an earthquake. "For sure, it's a thing finished as the +solder of a pannikin--like that." + +He caught up a tin quart-pot from the bar-counter and showed the soldered +bottom of it. + +He was alone in the bar of Barbazon's Hotel except for one person--the +youngest of the officials who had been retired from the offices of the +railways when Ingolby had merged them. This was a man who had got his +position originally by nepotism, and represented the worst elements of a +national life where the spoils system is rooted in the popular mind. He +had, however, a little residue of that discipline which, working in a +great industrial organization, begets qualms as to extreme courses. + +He looked reflectively at the leaden pot and said in reply: "I'd never +believe in anything where that Ingolby is concerned till I had it in the +palm of my hand. He's as deep as a well, and when he's quietest it's +good to look out. He takes a lot of skinning, that badger." + +"He's skinned this time all right," was Marchand's reply. "To-morrow'll +be the biggest day Manitou's had since the Indian lifted his wigwam and +the white man put down his store. Listen--hear them! They're coming!" + +He raised a hand for silence, and a rumbling, ragged roar of voices could +be heard without. + +"The crowd have gone the rounds," he continued. "They started at +Barbazon's and they're winding up at Barbazon's. They're drunk enough +to-night to want to do anything, and to-morrow when they've got sore +heads they'll do anything. They'll make that funeral look like a +squeezed orange; they'll show Lebanon and Master Ingolby that we're to be +bosses of our own show. The strike'll be on after the funeral, and after +the strike's begun there'll be--eh, bien sur!" + +He paused sharply, as though he had gone too far. "There'll be what?" +whispered the other; but Marchand made no reply, save to make a warning +gesture, for Barbazon, the landlord, had entered behind the bar. + +"They're coming back, Barbazon," Marchand said to the landlord, jerking +his head towards the front door. The noise of the crowd was increasing, +the raucous shouts were so loud that the three had to raise their voices. +"You'll do a land-office business to-night," he declared. + +Barbazon had an evil face. There were rumours that he had been in gaol +in Quebec for robbery, and that after he had served his time he had dug +up the money he had stolen and come West. He had started the first +saloon at Manitou, and had grown with the place in more senses than one. +He was heavy and thick-set, with huge shoulders, big hands, and beady +eyes that looked out of a stolid face where long hours, greed and vices +other than drink had left their mark. He never drank spirits, and was +therefore ready to take advantage of those who did drink. More than one +horse and canoe and cow and ox, and acre of land, in the days when land +was cheap, had come to him across the bar-counter. He could be bought, +could Barbazon, and he sold more than wine and spirits. He had a wife +who had left him twice because of his misdemeanours, but had returned and +straightened out his house and affairs once again; and even when she went +off with Lick Baldwin, a cattle-dealer, she was welcomed back without +reproaches by Barbazon, chiefly because he had no morals, and her +abilities were of more value to him than her virtue. On the whole, Gros +Barbazon was a bad lot. + +At Marchand's words Barbazon shrugged his shoulders. "The more spent +to-night, the less to spend to-morrow," he growled. + +"But there's going to be spending for a long time," Marchand answered. +"There's going to be a riot to-morrow, and there's going to be a strike +the next day, and after that there's going to be something else." + +"What else?" Barbazon asked, his beady eyes fastened on Marchand's face. + +"Something worth while-better than all the rest." Barbazon's low +forehead seemed to disappear almost, as he drew the grizzled shock of +hair down, by wrinkling his forehead with a heavy frown. + +"It's no damn good, m'sieu'," he growled. "Am I a fool? They'll spend +money to-night, and tomorrow, and the next day, and when the row is on; +and the more they spend then, the less they'll have to spend by-and-by. +It's no good. The steady trade for me--all the time. That is my idee. +And the something else--what? You think there's something else that'll +be good for me? Nom de Dieu, there's nothing you're doing, or mean to +do, but'll hurt me and everybody." + +"That's your view, is it, Barbazon?" exclaimed Marchand loudly, for the +crowd was now almost at the door. "You're a nice Frenchman and patriot. +That crowd'll be glad to hear you think they're fools. Suppose they took +it into their heads to wreck the place?" + +Barbazon's muddy face got paler, but his eyes sharpened, and he leaned +over the bar-counter, and said with a snarl: "Go to hell, and say what +you like; and then I'll have something to say about something else, +m'sieu'." + +Marchand was about to reply angrily, but he instantly changed his mind, +and before Barbazon could stop him, he sprang over the counter and +disappeared into the office behind the bar. + +"I won't steal anything, Barbazon," he said over his shoulder as he +closed the door behind him. + +"I'll see to that," Barbazon muttered stolidly, but with malicious eyes. + +The front door was flung open now, and the crowd poured into the room, +boisterous, reckless, though some were only sullen, watchful and angry. +These last were mostly men above middle age, and of a fanatical and +racially bitter type. They were not many, but in one sense they were the +backbone and force of the crowd, probably the less intelligent but the +more tenacious and consistent. They were black spots of gathering storm +in an electric atmosphere. + +All converged upon the bar. Two assistants rushed the drinks along the +counter with flourishes, while Barbazon took in the cash and sharply +checked the rougher element, who were inclined to treat the bar as a +place for looting. Most of them, however, had a wholesome fear of +Barbazon, and also most of them wished to stand well with him--credit +was a good thing, even in a saloon. + +For a little time the room was packed, then some of the more restless +spirits, their thirst assuaged, sallied forth to taste the lager and old +rye elsewhere, and "raise Cain" in the streets. When they went, it +became possible to move about more freely in the big bar-room, at the end +of which was a billiard-table. It was notable, however, that the more +sullen elements stayed. Some of them were strangers to each other. +Manitou was a distributing point for all radiations of the compass, and +men were thrown together in its streets who only saw one another once or +twice a year-when they went to the woods in the Fall or worked the rivers +in the Summer. Some were Mennonites, Doukhobors and Finlanders, some +Swedes, Norwegians and Icelanders. Others again were birds of passage +who would probably never see Manitou in the future, but they were mostly +French, and mostly Catholic, and enemies of the Orange Lodges wherever +they were, east or west or north or south. They all had a common ground +of unity--half-savage coureurs-de-bois, river-drivers, railway-men, +factory hands, cattlemen, farmers, labourers; they had a gift for +prejudice, and taking sides on something or other was as the breath +of the nostrils to them. + +The greater number of the crowd were, however, excitable, good-natured +men, who were by instinct friendly, save when their prejudices were +excited; and their oaths and exclamations were marvels of droll +ingenuity. Most of them were still too good-humoured with drink to be +dangerous, but all hoped for trouble at the Orange funeral on principle, +and the anticipated strike had elements of "thrill." They were of a +class, however, who would swing from what was good-humour to deadly anger +in a minute, and turn a wind of mere prejudice into a hurricane of life +and death with the tick of a clock. They would all probably go to the +Orange funeral to-morrow in a savage spirit. Some of them were loud in +denunciation of Ingolby and "the Lebanon gang"; they joked coarsely over +the dead Orangeman, but their cheerful violence had not yet the +appearance of reality. + +One man suddenly changed all that. He was a river-driver of stalwart +proportions, with a red handkerchief round his neck, and with loose +corded trousers tucked into his boots. He had a face of natural ugliness +made almost repulsive by marks of smallpox. Red, flabby lips and an +overhanging brow made him a figure which men would avoid on a dark night. + +"Let's go over to Lebanon to-night and have it out," he said in French. +"That Ingolby--let's go break his windows and give him a dip in the +river. He's the curse of this city. Holy, once Manitou was a place to +live in, now it's a place to die in! The factories, the mills, they're +full of Protes'ants and atheists and shysters; the railway office is gone +to Lebanon. Ingolby took it there. Manitou was the best town in +the West; it's no good now. Who's the cause? Ingolby's the cause. Name +of God, if he was here I'd get him by the throat as quick as winkin'." + +He opened and shut his fingers with spasmodic malice, and glared round +the room. "He's going to lock us out if we strike," he added. "He's +going to take the bread out of our mouths; he's going to put his heel on +Manitou, and grind her down till he makes her knuckle to Lebanon--to a +lot of infidels, Protes'ants, and thieves. Who's going to stand it? I +say-bagosh, I say, who's going to stand it!" + +"He's a friend of the Monseigneur," ventured a factory-hand, who had a +wife and children to support, and however partisan, was little ready for +that which would stop his supplies. + +"Sacre bapteme! That's part of his game," roared the big river-driver in +reply. "I'll take the word of Felix Marchand about that. Look at him! +That Felix Marchand doesn't try to take the bread out of people's mouths. +He gives money here, he gives it there. He wants the old town to stay as +it is and not be swallowed up." + +"Three cheers for Felix Marchand !" cried some one in the throng. All +cheered loudly save one old man with grizzled hair and beard, who leaned +against the wall half-way down the room smoking a corncob pipe. He was a +French Canadian in dress and appearance, and he spat on the floor like a +navvy--he had filled his pipe with the strongest tobacco that one man +ever offered to another. As the crowd cheered for Felix Marchand, he +made his way up towards the bar slowly. He must have been tall when he +was young; now he was stooped, yet there was still something very sinewy +about him. + +"Who's for Lebanon?" cried the big river-driver with an oath. "Who's +for giving Lebanon hell, and ducking Ingolby in the river?" + +"I am--I am--I am--all of us!" shouted the crowd. "It's no good waiting +for to-morrow. Let's get the Lebs by the scruff to-night. Let's break +Ingolby's windows and soak him in the Sagalac. Allons--allons gai!" + +Uproar and broken sentences, threats, oaths, and objurgations sounded +through the room. There was a sudden movement towards the door, but the +exit of the crowd was stopped by a slow but clear voice speaking in +French. + +"Wait a minute, my friends!" it cried. "Wait a minute. Let's ask a few +questions first." + +"Who's he?" asked a dozen voices. "What's he going to say?" The mob +moved again towards the bar. + +The big river-driver turned on the grizzled old man beside the bar- +counter with bent shoulders and lazy, drawling speech. + +"What've you got to say about it, son?" he asked threateningly. + +"Well, to ask a few questions first--that's all," the old man replied. + +"You don't belong here, old cock," the other said roughly. + +"A good many of us don't belong here," the old man replied quietly. "It +always is so. This isn't the first time I've been to Manitou. You're a +river-driver, and you don't live here either," he continued. + +"What've you got to say about it? I've been coming and going here for +ten years. I belong--bagosh, what do you want to ask? Hurry up. We've +got work to do. We're going to raise hell in Lebanon." + +"And give hell to Ingolby," shouted some one in the crowd. + +"Suppose Ingolby isn't there?" questioned the old man. + +"Oh, that's one of your questions, is it?" sneered the big river-driver. +"Well, if you knew him as we do, you'd know that it's at night-time he +sits studyin' how he'll cut Lebanon's throat. He's home, all right. +He's in Lebanon anyhow, and we'll find him." + +"Well, but wait a minute--be quiet a bit," said the old man, his eyes +blinking slowly at the big riverdriver. "I've been 'round a good deal, +and I've had some experience in the world. Did you ever give that +Ingolby a chance to tell you what his plans were? Did you ever get close +to him and try to figure what he was driving at? There's no chance of +getting at the truth if you don't let a man state his case--but no. If +he can't make you see his case then is the time to jib, not before." + +"Oh, get out!" cried a rowdy English road-maker in the crowd. "We know +all right what Ingolby's after." + +"Eh, well, what is he after?" asked the old man looking the other in the +eye. + +"What's he after? Oof-oof-oof, that's what he's after. He's for his own +pocket, he's for being boss of all the woolly West. He's after keeping +us poor and making himself rich. He's after getting the cinch on two +towns and three railways, and doing what he likes with it all; and we're +after not having him do it, you bet. That's how it is, old hoss." + +The other stroked his beard with hands which, somehow, gave little +indication of age, and then, with a sudden jerk forward of his head, he +said: "Oh, it's like that, eh? Is that what M'sieu' Marchand told you? +That's what he said, is it?" + +The big river-driver, eager to maintain his supreme place as leader, +lunged forward a step, and growled a challenge. + +"Who said it? What does it matter if M'sieu' Marchand said it--it's +true. If I said it, it's true. All of us in this room say it, and it's +true. Young Marchand says what Manitou says." + +The old man's eyes grew brighter--they were exceedingly sharp for one so +old, and he said quite gently now: + +"M. Marchand said it first, and you all say it afterwards--ah, bah! But +listen to me; I know Max Ingolby that you think is such a villain; I know +him well. I knew him when he was a little boy and--" + +"You was his nurse, I suppose!" cried the Englishman's voice amid a roar +of laughter. + +"Taught him his A-B-C-was his dear, kind teacher, eh?" hilariously cried +another. + +The old man appeared not to hear. "I have known him all the years since. +He has only been in the West a few years, but he has lived in the world +exactly thirty-three years. He never willingly did anybody harm--never. +Since he came West, since he came to the Sagalac, he's brought work to +Lebanon and to Manitou. There are hundreds more workmen in both the +towns than there were when he came. It was he made others come with much +money and build the factories and the mills. Work means money, money +means bread, bread means life--so." + +The big river-driver, seeing the effect of the old man's words upon the +crowd, turned to them with an angry gesture and a sneer. + +"I s'pose Ingolby has paid this old skeesicks for talking this swash. +We know all right what Ingolby is, and what he's done. He's made war +between the two towns--there's hell to pay now on both sides of the +Sagalac. He took away the railway offices from here, and threw men out +of work. He's done harm to Manitou--he's against Manitou every time." + +Murmurs of approval ran through the crowd, though some were silent, +looking curiously at the forceful and confident old man. Even his bent +shoulders seemed to suggest driving power rather than the weight of +years. He suddenly stretched out a hand in command as it were. + +"Comrades, comrades," he said, "every man makes mistakes. Even if it was +a mistake for Ingolby to take away the offices from Manitou, he's done a +big thing for both cities by combining the three railways." + +"Monopoly," growled a voice from the crowd. "Not monopoly," the old man +replied with a ring to his voice, which made it younger, fresher. "Not +monopoly, but better management of the railways, with more wages, more +money to spend on things to eat and drink and wear, more dollars in the +pocket of everybody that works in Manitou and Lebanon. Ingolby works, +he doesn't loaf." + +"Oh, gosh all hell, he's a dynamo," shouted a voice from the crowd. +"He's a dynamo running the whole show-eh!" + +The old man seemed to grow shorter, but as he thrust his shoulders +forward, it was like a machine gathering energy and power. + +"I'll tell you, friends, what Ingolby is trying to do," he said in a low +voice vibrating with that force which belongs neither to age nor youth, +but is the permanent activity uniting all ages of a man. "Of course, +Ingolby is ambitious and he wants power. He tries to do the big things +in the world because there is the big thing to do--for sure. Without +such men the big things are never done, and other men have less work to +do, and less money and poorer homes. They discover and construct and +design and invent and organize and give opportunities. I am a working +man, but I know what Ingolby thinks. I know what men think who try to do +the big things. I have tried to do them." + +The crowd were absolutely still now, but the big river-driver shook +himself free of the eloquence, which somehow swayed them all, and said: + +"You--you look as if you'd tried to do big things, you do, old skeesicks. +I bet you never earned a hundred dollars in your life." He turned to the +crowd with fierce gestures. "Let's go to Lebanon and make the place +sing," he roared. "Let's get Ingolby out to talk for himself, if he +wants to talk. We know what we want to do, and we're not going to be +bossed. He's for Lebanon and we're for Manitou. Lebanon means to boss +us, Lebanon wants to sit on us because we're Catholics, because we're +French, because we're honest." + +Again a wave of revolution swept through the crowd. The big river-driver +represented their natural instincts, their native fanaticism, their +prejudices. But the old man spoke once more. + +"Ingolby wants Lebanon and Manitou to come together, not to fall apart," +he declared. "He wants peace. If he gets rich here he won't get rich +alone. He's working for both towns. If he brings money from outside, +that's good for both towns. If he--" + +"Shut your mouth, let Ingolby speak for himself," snarled the big river- +driver. "Take his dollars out of your pocket and put them on the bar, +the dollars Ingolby gives you to say all this. Put them dollars of +Ingolby's up for drinks, or we'll give you a jar that'll shake you, old +wart-hog." + +At that instant a figure forced itself through the crowd, and broke into +the packed circle which was drawing closer upon the old man. + +It was Jethro Fawe. He flung a hand out towards the old man. + +"You want Ingolby--well, that's Ingolby," he shouted. + +Like lightning the old man straightened himself, snatched the wig and +beard away from his head and face, and with quiet fearlessness said: + +"Yes, I am Ingolby." + +For an instant there was absolute silence, in which Ingolby weighed his +chances. He was among enemies. He had meant only to move among the +crowd to discover their attitude, to find things out for himself. He had +succeeded, and his belief that Manitou could be swayed in the right +direction if properly handled, was correct. Beneath the fanaticism and +the racial spirit was human nature; and until Jethro Fawe had appeared, +he had hoped to prevent violence and the collision at to-morrow's +funeral. + +Now the situation was all changed. It was hard to tell what sharp turn +things might take. He was about to speak, but suddenly from the crowd +there was spat out at him the words, "Spy! Sneak! Spy!" + +Instantly the wave of feeling ran against him. He smiled frankly, +however, with that droll twist of his mouth which had won so many, and +the raillery of his eyes was more friendly than any appeal. + +"Spy, if you like, my friends," he said firmly and clearly. "Moses sent +spies down into the Land of Promise, and they brought back big bunches of +grapes. Well, I've come down into a land of promise. I wanted to know +just how you all feel without being told it by some one else. I knew if +I came here as Max Ingolby I shouldn't hear the whole truth; I wouldn't +see exactly how you see, so I came as one of you, and you must admit, my +French is as good as yours almost." + +He laughed and nodded at them. + +"There wasn't one of you that knew I wasn't a Frenchman. That's in my +favour. If I know the French language as I do, and can talk to you in +French as I've done, do you think I don't understand the French people, +and what you want and how you feel? I'm one of the few men in the West +that can talk your language. I learned it when I was a boy, so that I +might know my French fellow-countrymen under the same flag, with the same +King and the same national hope. As for your religion, God knows, I wish +I was as good a Protestant as lots of you are good Catholics. And I tell +you this, I'd be glad to have a minister that I could follow and respect +and love as I respect and love Monseigneur Lourde of Manitou. I want to +bring these two towns together, to make them a sign of what this country +is, and what it can do; to make hundreds like ourselves in Manitou and +Lebanon work together towards health, wealth, comfort and happiness. +Can't you see, my friends, what I'm driving at? I'm for peace and work +and wealth and power--not power for myself alone, but power that belongs +to all of us. If I can show I'm a good man at my job, maybe better than +others, then I have a right to ask you to follow me. If I can't, then +throw me out. I tell you I'm your friend--Max Ingolby is your friend." + +"Spy! Spy! Spy!" cried a new voice. + +It came from behind the bar. An instant after, the owner of the voice +leaped up on the counter. It was Felix Marchand. He had entered by the +door behind the bar into Barbazon's office. + +"When I was in India," Marchand cried, "I found a snake in the bed. I +killed it before it stung me. There's a snake in the bed of Manitou-- +what are you going to do with it?" + +The men swayed, murmured, and shrill shouts of "Marchand! Marchand! +Marchand !" went up. The crowd heaved upon Ingolby. "One minute!" he +called with outstretched arm and commanding voice. They paused. +Something in him made him master of them even then. + +At that moment two men were fiercely fighting their way through the crowd +towards where Ingolby was. They were Jowett and Osterhaut. Ingolby saw +them coming. + +"Go back--go back!" he called to them. + +Suddenly a drunken navvy standing on a table in front of and to the left +of Ingolby seized a horseshoe hanging on the wall, and flung it with an +oath. + +It caught Ingolby in the forehead, and he fell to the floor without a +sound. + +A minute afterwards the bar was empty, save for Osterhaut, Jowett, old +Barbazon, and his assistants. + +Barbazon and Jowett lifted the motionless figure in their arms, and +carried it into a little room. + +Then Osterhaut picked up the horseshoe tied with its gay blue ribbons, +now stained with blood, and put it in his pocket. + +"For luck," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE SENTENCE OF THE PATRIN + +Fleda waked suddenly, but without motion; just a wide opening of the eyes +upon the darkness, and a swift beating of the heart, but not the movement +of a muscle. It was as though some inward monitor, some gnome of the +hidden life had whispered of danger to her slumbering spirit. The waking +was a complete emergence, a vigilant and searching attention. + +There was something on her breast weighing it down, yet with a pressure +which was not weight alone, and maybe was not weight at all as weight is +understood. Instantly there flashed through her mind the primitive +belief that a cat will lie upon the breasts of children and suck their +breath away. Strange and even absurd as it was, it seemed to her that a +cat was pressing and pressing down upon her breast. There could be no +mistaking the feline presence. Now with a sudden energy of the body, she +threw the Thing from her, and heard it drop, with the softness of feline +feet, on the Indian rug upon the floor. + +Then she sprang out of bed, and, feeling for the matches, lit a candle on +the small table beside her bed, and moved it round searching for what she +thought to be a cat. It was not to be seen. She looked under the bed; +it was not there: under the washstand, under the chest of drawers, under +the improvised dressing-table; and no cat was to be found. She 173 +looked under the chair over which hung her clothes, even behind the +dresses and the Indian deerskin cape hanging on the door. + +There was no life of any kind save her own in the room, so far as she +could see. She laughed nervously, though her heart was still beating +hard. That it should beat hard was absurd, for what had she to fear--she +who had lived the wild open-air life of many lands, had slept among hills +infested by animals the enemy of man, and who when a little girl had +faced beasts of prey alone. Yet here in her own safe room on the +Sagalac, with its four walls, but its unlocked doors--for Gabriel Druse +said that he could not bear that last sign of his exile--here in the +fortress of the town-dweller there was a strange trembling of her pulses +in the presence of a mere hallucination or nightmare--the first she had +had ever. Her dreams in the past had always been happy and without the +black fancies of nightmare. On the night that Jethro Fawe had first +confronted her father and herself, and he had been carried to the hut in +the Wood, her sleep had been disturbed and restless, but dreamless; in +her sleep on the night of the day of his release, she had been tossed +upon vague clouds of mental unrest; but that was the first really +disordered sleep she had ever known. + +Holding the candle above her head, she looked in the mirror on her +dressing-table, and laughed nervously at the shocked look in her eyes, +at the hand pressed upon the bosom whose agitations troubled the delicate +linen at her breast. The pale light of the candle, the reflection from +the white muslin of her dressing-table and her nightwear, the strange, +deep darkness of her eyes, the ungathered tawny hair falling to her +shoulders, gave an unusual paleness to her face. + +"What a ninny I am!" she said aloud as she looked at herself, her tongue +chiding her apprehensive eyes, her laugh contemptuously adding its +comment on her tremulousness. "It was a real nightmare--a waking +nightmare, that's what it was." + +She searched the room once more, however-every corner, under the bed, the +chest of drawers and the dressing-table, before she got into bed again, +her feet icily cold. And yet again before settling down she looked +round, perplexed and inquiring. Placing the matches beside the +candlestick, she blew out the light. Then, half-turning on her side with +her face to the wall, she composed herself to sleep. + +Resolutely putting from her mind any sense of the supernatural, she shut +her eyes with confidence of coming sleep. While she was, however, still +within the borders of wakefulness, and wholly conscious, she felt the +Thing jump from the floor upon her legs, and crouch there with that +deadening pressure which was not weight. Now with a start of anger she +raised herself, and shot out a determined hand to seize the Thing, +whatever it was. Her hand grasped nothing, and again she distinctly +heard a soft thud as of something jumping on the floor. Exasperated, she +drew herself out of bed, lit the candle again, and began another search. +Nothing was to be seen; but she had now the curious sense of an unseen +presence. She went to the door, opened it, and looked out into the +narrow hall. Nothing was to be seen there. Then she closed the door +again, and stood looking at it meditatively for a moment. It had a lock +and key; yet it had never been locked in the years they had lived on the +Sagalac. She did not know whether the key would turn in the lock. After +a moment's hesitation, she shrugged her shoulders and turned the key. It +rasped, proved stubborn, but at last came home with a click. Then she +turned to the window. It was open about three inches at the bottom. She +closed it tight, and fastened it, then stood for a moment in the middle +of the room looking at both door and window. + +She was conscious of a sense of suffocation. Never in her life had she +slept with door or window or tentflap entirely closed. Never before had +she been shut in all night behind closed doors and sealed windows. Now, +as the sense of imprisonment was felt, her body protested; her spirit +resented the funereal embrace of security. It panted for the freedom +which gives the challenge to danger and the courage to face it. + +She went to the window and opened it slightly at the top, and then sought +her bed again; but even as she lay down, something whispered to her mind +that it was folly to lock the door and yet leave the window open, if it +was but an inch. With an exclamation of self-reproach, and a vague +indignation at something, she got up and closed the window once more. + +Again she composed herself to sleep, lying now with her face turned to +the window and the door. She was still sure that she had been the victim +of a hallucination which, emerging from her sleep, had invaded the +borders of wakefulness, and then had reproduced itself in a waking +illusion--an imitation of its original existence. + +Resolved to conquer any superstitious feeling, she invoked sleep, and was +on its borders once more when she was startled more violently than +before. + +The Thing had sprung again upon her feet and was crouched there. Wide +awake, she waited for a moment to make sure that she was not mad, or that +she was not asleep or in a half-dream. In the pause, she felt the Thing +draw up towards her knees, dragging its body along with tiger-like +closeness, and with that strange pressure which was not weight but power. + +With a cry which was no longer doubt, but agonized apprehension, she +threw the Thing from her with a motion of both hands and feet; and, as +she did so, she felt a horrible cold air breathing from a bloodless body, +chill her hand. + +In another instant she was on her feet again. With shaking fingers she +lighted the candle yet once more, after which she lighted a lamp standing +upon the chest of drawers. The room was almost brilliantly bright now. +With a gesture of incredulity she looked round. The doors and windows +were sealed tight, and there was nothing to be seen; yet she was more +than ever conscious of a presence grown more manifest. For a moment she +stood staring straight before her at the place where it seemed to be. +She realized its malice and its hatred, and an intense anger and hatred +took possession of her. She had always laughed at such things even when +thrilled by wonder and manufactured terrors. But now there was a sense +of conflict, of evil, of the indefinable things in which so many +believed. + +Suddenly she remembered an ancient Sage of her tribe, who, proficient in +mysteries and secret rites gathered from nations as old as Phoenicia and +Egypt and as modern as Switzerland, held the Romanys of the world in awe, +for his fame had travelled where he could not follow. To Fleda in her +earliest days he had been like one inspired, and as she now stood facing +the intangible Thing, she recalled an exorcism which the Sage had recited +to her, when he had sufficiently startled her senses by tales of the +Between World. This exorcism was, as he had told her, more powerful than +that which the Christian exorcists used, and the symbol of exorcism was +not unlike the sign of the Cross, to which was added genuflection of +Assyrian origin. + +At any other time Fleda would have laughed at the idea of using the +exorcism; but all the ancient superstition of the Romany people latent in +her now broke forth and held her captive. Standing with candle raised +above her head, her eyes piercing the space before her, she recalled +every word of the exorcism which had caught the drippings from the +fountains of Chaldean, Phoenician, and Egyptian mystery. + +Solemnly and slowly the exorcism came from her lips, and at the end her +right hand made the cabalistic sign; then she stood like one transfixed +with her arm extended towards the Thing she could not see. + +Presently there passed from her a sense of oppression. The air seemed to +grow lighter, restored self-possession came; there was a gentle breathing +in the room like that of a sleeping child. It was a moment before she +realized that the breathing was her own, and she looked round her like +one who had come out of a trance. + +"It is gone," she said aloud. "It is gone." A great sigh came from her. + +Mechanically she put down the candle, smoothed the pillows of her bed, +adjusted the coverings, and prepared to lie down; but, with a sudden +impulse, she turned to the window and the door. + +"It is gone," she said again. With a little laugh of hushed triumph, she +turned and made again the cabalistic sign at the bed, where the Thing had +first assaulted her, and then at that point in the room near the door +where she had felt it crouching. + +"Oh, Ewie Gal," she added, speaking to that Romany Sage long since laid +to rest in the Roumelian country, "you did not talk to me for nothing. +You were right--yes, you were right, old Ewie Gal. It was there,"--she +looked again at the place where the Thing had been--"and your curse drove +it away." + +With confidence she went to the door and unlocked it. Going to the +window she opened it also, but she compromised sufficiently to open it +at the top instead of at the bottom. Presently she laid her head on her +pillow with a sigh of content. + +Once again she composed herself to sleep in the darkness. But now there +came other invasions, other disturbers of the night. In her imagination +a man came who had held her in his arms one day on the Sagalac River, who +had looked into her eyes with a masterful but respectful tenderness. As +she neared the confines of sleep, he was somehow mingled with visions of +things which her childhood had known--moonlit passes in the Bosnian, +Roumelian, and Roumanian hills, green fields by the Danube, with peasant +voices drowsing in song before the lights went out; a gallop after dun +deer far away up the Caspian mountains, over waste places, carpeted with +flowers after a benevolent rain; mornings in Egypt, when the camels +thudded and slid with melancholy ease through the sands of the desert, +while the Arab drivers called shrilly for Allah to curse or bless; a +tender sunset in England seen from the top of a castle when all the +western sky was lightly draped with saffron, gold and mauve and delicate +green and purple. + +Now she slept again, with the murmur of the Sagalac in her ears, and +there was a smile at her lips. If one could have seen her through the +darkness, one would have said that she was like some wild creature of a +virgin world, whom sleep had captured and tamed; for, behind the +refinement which education and the vigilant influence with which Madame +Bulteel had surrounded her, there was in her the spirit of primitive +things: of the open road and the wilderness, of the undisciplined and +vagrant life, however marked by such luxury as the ruler of all the +Romanys could buy and use in pilgrimage. There was that in her which +would drag at her footsteps in this new life. + +For a full hour or more she slept, then there crept through the fantasies +of sleep something that did not belong to sleep--again something from the +wakeful world, strange, alien, troubling. At first it was only as though +a wind stirred the air of dreams, then it was like the sounds that gather +behind the coming rage of a storm, and again it was as though a night- +prowler plucked at the sleeve of a home-goer. Presently, with a stir of +fright and a smothered cry, she waked to a sound which was not of the +supernatural or of the mind's illusions, but no less dreadful to her +because of that. In some cryptic way it was associated with the direful +experience through which she had just passed. + +What she heard in the darkness was a voice which sang there by her +window--at it or beneath it--the words of a Romany song. + +It was a song of violence, which she had heard but a short time before in +the trees behind her father's house, when a Romany claimed her as his +wife: + + "Time was I went to my true love, + Time was she came to me--" + +Only one man would sing that song at her window, or anywhere in this +Western world. This was no illusion of her overwrought senses. There, +outside her window, was Jethro Fawe. + +She sat up and listened, leaning on one arm, and staring into the half- +darkness beyond the window, the blind of which she had not drawn down. +There was no moon, but the stars were shining brightly, relieving the +intensity of the dark. Through the whispering of the trees, and hushing +the melancholy of a night-bird's song, came the wild low note of the +Romany epic of vengeance. It had a thrill of exultation. Something in +the voice, insistent, vibrating, personal, made every note a thrust of +victory. In spite of her indignation at the insolent serenade, she +thrilled; for the strain of the Past was in her, and it had been fighting +with her all night, breaking in upon the Present, tugging at the cords of +youth. + +The man's daring roused her admiration, even as her anger mounted. If +her father heard the singing, there could be no doubt that Jethro Fawe's +doom would be sealed. Gabriel Druse would resent this insolence to the +daughter of the Ry of Rys. Word would be passed as silently as the +electric spark flies, and one day Jethro Fawe would be found dead, with +no clue to his slayer, and maybe no sign of violence upon him; for while +the Romany people had remedies as old as Buddha, they had poisons as old +as Sekhet. + +Suddenly the song ceased, and for a moment there was silence save for the +whispering trees and the night-bird's song. Fleda rose from her bed, and +was about to put on her dressing-gown, when she was startled by a voice +loudly whispering her name at her window, as it seemed. + + +"Daughter of the Ry of Rys !" it called. + +In anger she started forward to the window, then, realizing that she was +in her nightgown, caught up her red dressing-gown and put it on. As she +did so she understood why the voice had sounded so near. Not thirty feet +from her window there was a solitary oak-tree among the pines, in which +was a seat among the branches, and, looking out, she could see a figure +that blackened the starlit duskiness. + +"Fleda--daughter of the Ry of Rys," the voice called again. + +She gathered her dressing-gown tight about her, and, going to the window, +raised it high and leaned out. + +"What do you want?" she asked sharply. + +"Wife of Jethro Fawe, I bring you news," the voice said, and she saw a +hat waved with mock courtesy. In spite of herself, Fleda felt a shiver +of premonition pass through her. The Thing which had threatened her in +the night seemed to her now like the soul of this dark spirit in the +trees. + +Resentment seized her. "I have news for you, Jethro Fawe," she replied. +"I set you free, and I gave my word that no harm should come to you, if +you went your ways and did not come again. You have come, and I shall do +nothing now to save you from the Ry's anger. Go at once, or I will wake +him." + +"Will a wife betray her husband?" he asked in soft derision. + +Stung by his insolence, "I would not throw a rope to you, if you were +drowning," she declared. "I am a Gorgio, and the thing that was done by +the Starzke River is nothing to me. Now, go." + +"You have forgotten my news," he said: "It is bad news for the Gorgio +daughter of the Romany Ry." She was silent in apprehension. He waited, +but she did not speak. + +"The Gorgio of Gorgios of the Sagalac has had a fall," he said. + +Her heart beat fast for an instant, and then the presentiment came to her +that the man spoke the truth. In the presence of the accomplished thing, +she became calm. + +"What has happened?" she asked quietly. + +"He went prowling in Manitou, and in Barbazon's Tavern they struck him +down." + +"Who struck him down?" she asked. It seemed to her that the night-bird +sang so loud that she could scarcely hear her own voice. + +"A drunken Gorgio," he replied. "The horseshoe is for luck all the world +over, and it brought its luck to Manitou to-night. It struck down a +young Master Gorgio who in white beard and long grey hair went spying." + +She knew in her heart that he spoke the truth. "He is dead?" she asked +in a voice that had a strange quietness. + +"Not yet," he answered. "There is time to wish him luck." + +She heard the ribald laugh with a sense of horror and loathing. "The +hand that brought him down may have been the hand of a Gorgio, but behind +the hand was Jethro Fawe," she said in a voice grown passionate again. +"Where is he?" she added. + +"At his own house. I watched them take him there. It is a nice house-- +good enough for a Gorgio house-dweller. I know it well. Last night I +played his Sarasate fiddle for him there, and I told him all about you +and me, and what happened at Starzke, and then--" + +"You told him I was a Romany, that I was married to you?" she asked in a +low voice. + +"I told him that, and asked him why he thought you had deceived him, had +held from him the truth. He was angry and tried to kill me." + +"That is a lie," she answered. "If he had tried to kill you he would +have done so." + +Suddenly she realized the situation as it was--that she was standing at +her window in the night, scantily robed, talking to a man in a tree +opposite her window; and that the man had done a thing which belonged to +the wild places which she had left so far behind. + +It flashed into her mind--what would Max Ingolby think of such a thing? +She flushed. The new Gorgio self of her flushed, and yet the old Romany +self, the child of race and heredity had taken no exact account of the +strangeness of this situation. It had not seemed unnatural. Even if he +had been in her room itself, she would have felt no tithe of the shame +that she felt now in asking herself what the Master Gorgio would think, +if he knew. It was not that she had less modesty, that any stir of sex +was in her veins where the Romany chal was concerned; but in the life she +had once lived less delicate cognizance was taken of such things, and +something of it stayed. + +"Listen," Jethro said with sudden lowering of the voice, and imparting +into his tones an emotion which was in part an actor's gift, but also in +large degree a passion now eating at his heart, "you are my wife by all +the laws of our people. Nothing can change it. I have waited for you, +and I will wait, but you shall be mine in the end. You see to-night-- +'Mi Duvel', you see that fate is with me! The Gorgio has bewitched you. +He goes down to-night in that tavern there by the hand of a Gorgio, and +the Romany has his revenge. Fate is always with me, and I will be the +gift of the gods to the woman that takes me. The luck is mine always. +It will be always with me. I am poor to-day, I shall be rich to-morrow. +I was rich, and I lost it all; and I was poor, and became rich again. +Ah, yes, there are ways! Sometimes it is a Government, sometimes a +prince that wants to know, and Jethro Fawe, the Romany, finds it out, and +money fills his pockets. I am here, poor, because last year when I lost +all, I said, 'It is because my Romany lass is not with me. I have not +brought her to my tan, but when she comes then the gold will be here as +before, and more when it is wanted.' So, I came, and I hear the road +calling, and all the camping places over all the world, and I see the +patrins in every lane, and my heart is lifted up. I am glad. I rejoice. +My heart burns with love. I will forget everything, and be true to the +queen of my soul. Men die, and Gabriel Druse, he will die one day, and +when the time comes, then it would be that you and I would beckon, and +all the world would come to us." + +He stretched out a hand to her in the half-darkness. "I send the blood +of my heart to you," he continued. "I am a son of kings. Fleda, +daughter of the Ry of Rys, come to me. I have been bad, but I can be +good. I have killed, but I will live at peace. I have cursed, but I +will speak the word of blessing. I have trespassed, but I will keep to +my own, if you will come to me." + +Suddenly he dropped to the ground, lighting on his feet like an animal +with a soft rebound. Stretching up his arms, he made soft murmuring of +endearment. + +She had listened, fascinated in spite of herself by the fire and meaning +of his words. She felt that in most part it was true, that it was meant; +and, whatever he was, he was yet a man offering his heart and life, +offering a love that she despised, and yet which was love and passion of +a kind. It was a passion natural to the people from whom she came, and +to such as Jethro Fawe it was something more than sensual longing and the +aboriginal desire of possession. She realized it, and was not wholly +revolted by it, even while her mind was fleeing to where the Master +Gorgio lay wounded, it might be unto death; even while she knew that this +man before her, by some means, had laid Ingolby low. She was all at once +a human being torn by contending forces. + +Jethro's drop to the ground broke the sudden trance into which his words +had thrown her. She shook herself as with an effort of control. Then +leaning over the window-sill, and, looking down at him, now grown so +distinct that she could see his features, her eyes having become used to +the half-light of the approaching dawn, she said with something almost +like gentleness: + +"Once more I say, you must go and come no more. You are too far off from +me. You belong to that which is for the ignorant, or the low, the +vicious and the bad. Behind the free life of the Romany is only the +thing that the beasts of the field have. I have done with it for ever. +Find a Romany who will marry you. As for me, I would rather die than do +so, and I should die before it could come to pass. If you stay here +longer I will call the Ry." + +Presently the feeling that he had been responsible for the disaster to +Ingolby came upon her with great force, and as suddenly as she had +softened towards this man she hardened again. + +"Go, before there comes to you the death you deserve," she added, and +turned away. + +At that moment footsteps sounded near, and almost instantly there emerged +from a pathway which made a short cut to the house, the figure of old +Gabriel Druse. They had not heard him till he was within a few feet of +where Jethro Fawe stood. His walking had been muffled in the dust of the +pathway. + +The Ry started when he saw Jethro Fawe; then he made a motion as though +he would seize the intruder, who was too dumbfounded to flee; but he +recovered himself, and gazed up at the open window. + +"Fleda!" he called. + +She came to the window again. + +"Has this man come here against your will?" he asked, not as though +seeking information, but confirmation of his own understanding. + +"He is not here by my will," she answered. "He came to sing the Song of +Hate under my window, to tell me that he had--" + +"That I had brought the Master Gorgio to the ground," said Jethro, who +now stood with sullen passiveness looking at Gabriel Druse. + +"From the Master Gorgio, as you call him, I have just come," returned the +old man. "When I heard the news, I went to him. It was you who betrayed +him to the mob, and--" + +"Wait, wait," Fleda cried in agitation. "Is--is he dead?" + +"He is alive, but terribly hurt; and he may die," was the reply. + +Then the old man turned to the Romany with a great anger and +determination in his face. He stretched out an arm, making a sign as +cabalistic as that which Fleda had used against her invisible foe in the +bedroom. + +"Go, Jethro Fawe of all the Fawes," he said. "Go, and may no patrins +mark your road!" + +Jethro Fawe shrank back, and half raised his arm, as though to fend +himself from a blow. + +The patrin is the clue which Gipsies leave behind them on the road they +go, that other Gipsies who travel in it may know they have gone before. +It may be a piece of string, a thread of wool, a twig, or in the dust the +ancient cross of the Romany, which preceded the Christian cross and +belonged to the Assyrian or Phoenician world. The invocation that no +patrins shall mark the road of a Romany is to make him an outcast, and +for the Ry of Rys to utter the curse is sentence of death upon a Romany, +for thenceforward every hand of his race is against him, free to do him +harm. + +It was that which made Jethro Fawe shrink and cower for a moment. Fleda +raised her hand suddenly in protest to Gabriel Druse. + +"No, no, not that," Fleda murmured brokenly to her father, with eyes that +looked the pain and horror she felt. Though she repudiated the bond by +which the barbarian had dared to call her wife, she heard an inner voice +that said to her: "What was done by the Starzke River was the seal of +blood and race, and this man must be nearer than the stranger, dearer +than the kinsman, forgiven of his crimes like a brother, saved from +shame, danger or death when she who was sealed to him can save him." + +She shuddered as she heard the inner voice. She felt that this Other +Self of her, the inner-seeing soul which had the secret of the far paths, +had spoken truly. Even as she begged her father to withdraw the +sentence, it flashed into her mind that the grim Thing of the night was +the dark spirit of hatred between Jethro Fawe and the Master Gorgio +seeking embodiment, as though Jethro's evil soul detached itself from his +body to persecute her. + +At her appeal, Jethro raised his head. His courage came back, the old +insolent self-possession took hold of him again. The sentence which the +Ry had passed was worse than death (and it meant death, too), for it made +him an outcast from his people, and to be outcast was to be thrown into +the abyss. It was as though a man without race or country was banished +into desolate space. In a vague way he felt its full significance, and +the shadow of it fell on him. + +"No, no, no," Fleda repeated hoarsely, with that new sense of +responsibility where Jethro was concerned. + +Jethro's eyes were turned upon her now. In the starlit night, just +yielding to the dawn, she could faintly see his burning look, could feel, +as it were, his hands reach out to claim her; and she felt that while he +lived she was not wholly free. She realized that the hand of nomad, +disorderly barbarism was dragging her with a force which was inhuman, or, +maybe, superhuman. + +Gabriel Druse could know nothing of the elements fighting in his +daughter's soul; he only knew that her interest in the Master Gorgio was +one he had never seen before, and that she abhorred the Romany who had +brought Ingolby low. He had shut his eyes to the man's unruliness and +his daughter's intervention to free him; but now he was without pity. He +had come from Ingolby's bedside, and had been told a thing which shook +his rugged nature to its centre--a thing sad as death itself, which he +must tell his daughter. + +To Fleda's appeal he turned a stony face. There was none of that rage in +his words which had marked the scene when Jethro Fawe first came to claim +what he could not have. There was something in him now more deadly and +inevitable. It made him like some figure of mythology, implacable, +fateful. His great height, his bushy beard and stormy forehead, the eyes +over which shaggy eyebrows hung like the shrubs on a cliff-edge, his face +lined and set like a thing in bronze--all were signs of a power which, in +passion, would be like that of OEdipus: in the moment of justice or doom +would, with unblinking eyes, slay and cast aside as debris is tossed upon +the dust-heap. + +As he spoke now his voice was toneless. His mind was flint, and his +tongue was but the flash of the flint. He looked at his daughter for a +moment with no light of fatherhood in his face, then turned from her to +Jethro Fawe with slow decision and a gesture of authority. His eyes +fastened on the face of the son of Lemuel Fawe, as though it was that +old enemy himself. + +"I have said what I have said, and there is no more to be spoken. The +rule of the Ry will be as water for ever after if these things may be +done to him and his. For generations have the Rys of all the Rys been +like the trees that bend only to the whirlwind; and when they speak there +is no more to be said. When it ceases to be so, then the Rys will vanish +from the world, and be as stubble of the field ready for the burning. I +have spoken. Go! And no patrins shall lie upon your road." + +A look of savage obedience and sullen acquiescence came into Jethro +Fawe's face, and he took off his hat as one who stands in the presence of +his master. The strain of generations, the tradition of the race without +a country was stronger than the revolt in his soul. He was young, his +blood was hot and brawling in his veins, he was all carnal, with the +superior intelligence of the trained animal, but custom was stronger than +all. He knew now that whatever he might do, some time, not far, his doom +would fall upon him suddenly, as a wind shoots up a ravine from the +desert, or a nightbird rises from the dark. + +He set his feet stubbornly, and raised his sullen face and fanatical +eyes. The light of morning was creeping through the starshine, and his +features showed plainly. + +"I am your daughter's husband," he said. "Nothing can change that. It +was done by the River Starzke, and it was the word of the Ry of Rys. It +stands for ever. There is no divorce except death for the Romany." + +"The patrins cease to mark the way," returned the old man with a swift +gesture. "The divorce of death will come." + +Jethro's face grew still paler, and he opened his lips to speak, but +paused, seeing Fleda, with a backward look of pity and of horror, draw +back into the darkness of her room. + +He made a motion of passion and despair. His voice was almost shrill +when he spoke. "Till that divorce comes, the daughter of the Ry of Rys +is mine!" he cried sharply. "I will not give my wife to a Gorgio thief. +His hands shall not caress her, his eyes shall not feed upon her--" + +"His eyes will not feed upon her," interrupted the old man, "So cease +the prattle which can alter nothing. Begone." + +For a moment Jethro Fawe stood like one who did not understand what was +said to him, but suddenly a look of triumph and malice came into his +face, and his eyes lighted with a reckless fire. He threw back his head, +and laughed with a strange, offensive softness. Then, waving a hand to +the window from which Fleda had gone, he swung his cap on his head and +plunged into the trees. + +A moment afterwards his voice came back exultingly, through the morning +air: + + "But a Gorgio sleeps 'neath the greenwood tree + He'll broach my tan no more: + And my love, she sleeps afar from me + But near to the churchyard door." + +As the old man turned heavily towards the house, and opened the outer +door, Fleda met him. + +"What did you mean when you said that Ingolby's eyes would not feed upon +me?" she asked in a low tone of fear. + +A look of compassion came into the old man's face. He took her hand. + +"Come and I will tell you," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +"LET THERE BE LIGHT" + +In Ingolby's bedroom, on the night of the business at Barbazon's Tavern, +Dr. Rockwell received a shock. His face, naturally colourless, was +almost white, and his eyes were moist. He had what the West called +nerve. That the crisis through which he had passed was that of a +friend's life did not lessen the poignancy of the experience. He had a +singularly reserved manner and a rare economy of words; also, he had the +refinement and distinction of one who had, oforetime, moved on the higher +ranges of social life. He was always simply and comfortably and in a +sense fashionably dressed, yet there was nothing of the dude about him, +and his black satin tie gave him an air of old-worldishness which somehow +compelled an extra amount of respect. This, in spite of the fact that he +had been known as one who had left the East and come into the wilds +because of a woman not his wife. + +It was not, however, strictly true to say that he had come West because +of a woman, for it was on account of three women, who by sudden +coincidence or collusion sprang a situation from which the only relief +was flight. In that he took refuge, not because he was a coward, but +because it was folly to fight a woman, or three women, and because it was +the only real solution of an ungovernable situation. At first he had +drifted from one town to another, dissolute and reckless, apparently +unable to settle down, or to forget the unwholesome three. But one day +there was a terrible railway accident on a construction train, and +Lebanon and Manitou made a call upon his skill, and held him in bondage +to his profession for one whole month. During this time he performed two +operations which the surgeons who had been sent out by the Railway +Directors at Montreal declared were masterpieces. + +When that month was up he was a changed man, and he opened an office in +Lebanon. Men trusted him despite his past, and women learned that there +was never a moment when his pulses beat unevenly in their presence. +Nathan Rockwell had had his lesson and it was not necessary to learn it +again. To him, woman, save as a subject of his skill, was a closed book. +He regarded them as he regarded himself, with a kindly cynicism. He +never forgot that his own trouble could and would have been avoided had +it not been for woman's vanity and consequent cruelty. The unwholesome +three had shared his moral lapse with wide-open eyes, and were in no +sense victims of his; but, disregarding their responsibility, they had, +from sheer jealousy, wrecked his past, and, to their own surprise, had +wrecked themselves as well. They were of those who act first and then +think--too late. + +Thus it was that both men and women called Rockwell a handsome man, but +thought of him as having only a crater of exhausted fires in place of a +heart. They came to him with their troubles--even the women of Manitou +who ought to have gone to the priest. + +He moved about Lebanon as one who had authority, and desired not to use +it; as one to whom life was like a case in surgery to be treated with +scientific, coolness, with humanity, but not with undue sympathy; yet the +early morning of the day after Ingolby had had his accident at Barbazon's +Hotel found him the slave of an emotion which shook him from head to +foot. He had saved his friend's life by a most skilful operation, but he +had been shocked beyond control when, an hour after the operation was +over, and consciousness returned to the patient in the brilliantly +lighted room, Ingolby said: + +"Why don't you turn on the light?" + +It was thus Rockwell knew that the Master Man, the friend of Lebanon and +Manitou, was stone blind. When Ingolby's voice ceased, a horrified +silence filled the room for a moment. Even Jim Beadle, his servant, +standing at the foot of the bed, clapped a hand to his mouth to stop a +cry, and the nurse turned as white as the apron she wore. + +Dumbfounded as Rockwell was, with instant professional presence of mind +he said: + +"No, Ingolby, you must be kept in darkness a while yet." Then he whipped +out a silk handkerchief from his pocket. "We will have light," he +continued, "but we must bandage you first to keep out the glare and +prevent pain. The nerves of the eyes have been injured." + +Hastily and tenderly he bound the handkerchief round the sightless eyes. +Having done so, he said to the nurse with unintentional quotation from +the Gospel of St. John, and a sad irony: "Let there be light." + +It all gave him time to pull himself together and prepare for the moment +when he must tell Ingolby the truth. In one sense the sooner it was told +the better, lest Ingolby should suddenly discover it for himself. +Surprise and shock must be avoided. So now he talked in his low, +soothing voice, telling Ingolby that the operation had put him out of +danger, that the pain now felt came chiefly from the nerves of the eye, +and that quiet and darkness were necessary. He insisted on Ingolby +keeping silent, and he gave a mild opiate which induced several hours' +sleep. + +During this time Rockwell prepared himself for the ordeal which must be +passed as soon as possible; gave all needed directions, and had a +conference with the assistant Chief Constable to whom he confided the +truth. He suggested plans for preserving order in excited Lebanon, which +was determined to revenge itself on Manitou; and he gave some careful and +specific instructions to Jowett the horse-dealer. Also, he had conferred +with Gabriel Druse, who had helped bear the injured man to his own home. +He had noted with admiration the strange gentleness of the giant Romany +as he, alone, carried Ingolby in his arms, and laid him on the bed from +which he was to rise with all that he had fought for overthrown, himself +the blind victim of a hard fate. He had noticed the old man straighten +himself with a spring and stand as though petrified when Ingolby said: +"Why don't you turn on the light?" As he looked round in that instant of +ghastly silence he had observed almost mechanically that the old man's +lips were murmuring something. Then the thought of Fleda Druse shot into +Rockwell's mind, and it harassed him during the hours Ingolby slept, and +after the giant Gipsy had taken his departure just before the dawn. + +"I'm afraid it will mean more there than anywhere else," he said sadly to +himself. "There was evidently something between those two; and she isn't +the kind to take it philosophically. Poor girl! Poor girl! It's a +bitter dose, if there was anything in it," he added. + +He watched beside the sick-bed till the dawn stared in and his patient +stirred and waked, then he took Ingolby's hand, grown a little cooler, +in both his own. "How are you feeling, old man?" he asked cheerfully. +"You've had a good sleep-nearly three and a half hours. Is the pain in +the head less?" + +"Better, Sawbones, better," Ingolby replied cheerfully. "They've +loosened the tie that binds--begad, it did stretch the nerves. I had +gripes of colic once, but the pain I had in my head was twenty times +worse, till you gave the opiate." + +"That's the eyes," said Rockwell. "I had to lift a bit of bone, and the +eyes saw it and felt it, and cried out-shrieked, you might say. They've +got a sensitiveness all their own, have the eyes." + +"It's odd there aren't more accidents to them," answered Ingolby--"just a +little ball of iridescent pulp with strings tied to the brain." + +"And what hurts the head may destroy the eyes sometimes," Rockwell +answered cautiously. "We know so little of the delicate union between +them, that we can't be sure we can put the eyes right again when, because +of some blow to the head, the ricochet puts the eyes out of commission." + +"That's what's the matter with me, then?" asked Ingolby, feeling the +bandage on his eyes feverishly, and stirring in his bed with a sense of +weariness. + +"Yes, the ricochet got them, and has put them out of commission," replied +Rockwell, carefully dwelling upon each word, and giving a note of meaning +to his tone. + +Ingolby raised himself in bed, but Rockwell gently forced him down again. +"Will my eyes have to be kept bandaged long? Shall I have to give up +work for any length of time?" Ingolby asked. + +"Longer than you'll like," was the enigmatical reply. "It's the devil's +own business," was the weary answer. "Every minute's valuable to me now. +I ought to be on deck morning, noon, and night. There's all the trouble +between the two towns; there's the strike on hand; there's that business +of the Orange funeral, and more than all a thousand times, there's--" +he paused. + +He was going to say, "There's that devil Marchand's designs on my +bridge," but he thought better of it and stopped. It had been his +intention to deal with Marchand directly, to get a settlement of their +differences without resort to the law, to prevent the criminal act +without deepening a feud which might keep the two towns apart for years. +Bad as Marchand was, to prevent his crime was far better than punishing +him for it afterwards. To have Marchand arrested for conspiracy to +commit a crime was a business which would gravely interfere with his +freedom of motion in the near future, would create complications which +might cripple his own purposes in indirect ways. That was why he had +declared to Jowett that even Felix Marchand had his price, and that he +would try negotiations first. + +But what troubled him now, as he lay with eyes bandaged and a knowledge +that to-morrow was the day fixed for the destruction of the bridge, was +his own incapacity. It was unlikely that his head or his eyes would be +right by to-morrow, or that Rockwell would allow him to get up. He felt +in his own mind that the injury he had received was a serious one, and +that the lucky horseshoe had done Maxchand's work for him all too well. +This thought shook him. Rockwell could see his chest heave with an +excitement gravely injurious to his condition; yet he must be told the +worst, or the shock of discovery by himself that he was blind might give +him brain fever. Rockwell felt that he must hasten the crisis. + +"Rockwell," Ingolby suddenly asked, "is there any chance of my discarding +this and getting out to-morrow?" He touched the handkerchief round his +eyes. "It doesn't matter about the head bandages, but the eyes--can't I +slough the wraps to-morrow? I feel scarcely any pain now." + +"Yes, you can get rid of the bandages to-morrow--you can get rid of them +to-day, if you really wish," Rockwell answered, closing in on the last +defence. + +"But I don't mind being in the dark to-day if it'll make me fitter for +to-morrow and get me right sooner. I'm not a fool. There's too much +carelessness about such things. People often don't give themselves a +chance to get right by being in too big a hurry. So, keep me in darkness +to-day, if you want to, old man. For a hustler I'm not in too big a +hurry, you see. I'm for holding back to get a bigger jump." + +"You can't be in a big hurry, even if you want to, Ingolby," rejoined +Rockwell, gripping the wrist of the sick man, and leaning over him. + +Ingolby grew suddenly very still. It was as though vague fear had seized +him and held him in a vice. "What is it? What do you want to say to +me?" he asked in a low, nerveless tone. + +"You've been hit hard, Chief. The ricochet has done you up for some +time. The head will soon get well, but I'm far from sure about your +eyes. You've got to have a specialist about them. You're in the dark, +and as for making you see, so am I. Your eyes and you are out of +commission for some time, anyhow." + +He leaned over hastily, but softly and deftly undid the bandages over the +eyes and took them off. "It's seven in the morning, and the sun's up, +Chief, but it doesn't do you much good, you see." + +The last two words were the purest accident, but it was a strange, +mournful irony, and Rockwell flushed at the thought of it. He saw +Ingolby's face turn grey, and then become white as death itself. + +"I see," came from the bluish-white lips, as the stricken man made call +on all the will and vital strength in him. + +For a long minute Rockwell held the cold hand in the grasp of one who +loves and grieves, but even so the physician and surgeon in him were +uppermost, as they should be, in the hour when his friend was standing on +the brink of despair, maybe of catastrophe irremediable. He did not say +a word yet, however. In such moments the vocal are dumb and the blind +see. + +Ingolby heaved himself in the bed and threw up his arms, wresting them +from Rockwell's grasp. + +"My God--oh, my God-blind!" he cried in agony. Rockwell drew the head +with the sightless eyes to his shoulder. + +For a moment he laid one hand on the heart, that, suddenly still, now +went leaping under his fingers. "Steady," he said firmly. "Steady. It +may be only temporary. Keep your head up to the storm. We'll have a +specialist, and you must not get mired till then. Steady, Chief." + +"Chief! Chief!" murmured Ingolby. "Dear God, what a chief! I risked +everything, and I've lost everything by my own vanity. Barbazon's--the +horseshoe--among the wolves, just to show I could do things better than +any one else--as if I had the patent for setting the world right. And +now--now--" + +The thought of the bridge, of Marchand's devilish design, shot into his +mind, and once more he was shaken. "The bridge! Blind! Mother!" he +called in a voice twisted in an agony which only those can feel to whom +life's purposes are even more than life itself. Then, with a moan, he +became unconscious, and his head rolled over against Rockwell's cheek. +The damp of his brow was as the damp of death as Rockwell's lips touched +it. + +"Old boy, old boy!" Rockwell said tenderly, "I wish it had been me +instead. Life means so much to you--and so little to me. I've seen too +much, and you've only just begun to see." + +Laying him gently down, Rockwell summoned the nurse and Jim Beadle and +spoke to them in low tones. "He knows now, and it has hit him hard, but +not so hard that he won't stiffen to it. It might have been worse." + +He gave instructions as to the care that should be taken, and replaced +the bandages on the eyes. It was, however, long before Ingolby was +restored to consciousness, and when it came, Rockwell put to his lips a +cooling drink containing a powerful opiate. Ingolby drank it without +protest and in silence. He was like one whose sense of life was +automatic and of an inner rather than an outer understanding. But when +he lay back on the pillow again, he said slowly: + +"I want the Chief Constable to come here to-night at eight o'clock. It +will be dark then. He must come. It is important. Will you see to it, +Rockwell?" + +He thrust out a hand as though to find Rockwell's, and there was a +gratitude and an appeal in the pressure of his fingers which went to +Rockwell's heart. + +"All right, Chief. I'll have him here," Rockwell answered briskly, but +with tears standing in his eyes. Ingolby had, as it were, been stricken +out of the active, sentient, companionable world into a world where he +was alone, detached, solitary. His being seemed suspended in an +atmosphere of misery and helplessness. + +"Blind! I am blind!" That was the phrase which kept beating with the +pulses in Ingolby's veins, that throbbed, and throbbed, and throbbed like +engines in a creaking ship which the storm was shaking and pounding in +the vast seas between the worlds. Here was the one incomprehensible, +stupefying fact: nothing else mattered. Every plan he had ever had, +every design which he had made his own by an originality that even his +foes acknowledged, were passing before his brain in swift procession, +shining, magnified, and magnificent, and in that sudden clear-seeing of +his soul he beheld their full value, their exact concrete force and +ultimate effect. Yet he knew himself detached from them, inactive, +incapable, because he could not see with the eyes of the body. The great +essential thing to him was that one thing he had lost. A man might be a +cripple and still direct the great concerns of life and the business of +life. He might be shorn of limb and scarred of body, but with eye sight +still direct the courses of great schemes, in whatever sphere of life his +purposes were at work. He might be deaf to every sound and forever dumb, +but seeing enabled him still to carry forward every enterprise. In +darkness, however, those things were naught, because judgment must depend +on the eyes and senses of others. The report might be true or false, the +deputy might deceive, and his blind chief might never know the truth +unless some other spectator of his schemes should report it; and the +truth could not surely be checked, save by some one, perhaps, whose life +was joined to his, by one that truly loved him, whose fate was his. + +His brain was afire. By one that truly loved him! Who was there that +loved him? Who was there at one with him in all his deep designs, in all +he had done and meant to do? Neither brother, nor sister, nor friend, +nor any other. None of his blood was there who could share with him the +constructive work he had set out to do. There was no friend whose fate +was part of his own. There was the Boss Doctor: but Rockwell was tied to +his own responsibilities, and he could not give up, of course, would not +give up his life to the schemes of another. There were a dozen men whom +he had helped to forge ahead by his own schemes, but their destinies were +not linked with his. Only one whose life was linked with his could be +trusted to be his eyes, to be the true reporter of all he did, had done, +or planned to do. Only one who loved him. + +But even one who loved him could not carry through his incompleted work +against the assaults of his enemies, who were powerful, watchful, astute, +and merciless; who had a greed which set money higher than all else in +the world. They were of the new order of things in the New World. The +business of life was to them not a system of barter and exchange, a +giving something of value to get something of value, with a margin of +profit for each, and a sense of human equity behind; it was a cockpit +where one man sought to get what another man had--and get it almost +anyhow. + +It was the work of the faro-bank man, whose sleight of hand deceived the +man that carried the gun. + +All the old humanity and good-fellowship of the trader, the man who +exchanged, as it was in the olden days of the world and continued in +greater or less degree till the present generation--all that was gone. +It was held in contempt. It had prevailed when men were open robbers and +filibusters and warriors, giving their lives, if need be, to get what +they wanted, making force their god. It had triumphed over the violence +and robbery of the open road until the dying years of one century and the +young years of a new century. Then the day of the trickster came--and +men laughed at the idea of fair exchange and strove to give an illusive +value for a thing of real value--the remorseless sleight of hand which +the law could not reach. The desire to get profit by honest toiling was +dying down to ashes. + +Against such men had Ingolby worked--the tricksters, the manipulators. +At the basis of his schemes was organization and the economy which +concentrated and conserved energy begets, together with its profit. +He had been the enemy of waste, the apostle of frugality and thrift; +and it was that which had enabled him, in his short career, to win the +confidence of the big men behind him in Montreal, to make good every +step of the way. He had worked for profit out of legitimate product +and industry and enterprise, out of the elimination of waste. It was his +theory (and his practice) that no bit of old iron, no bolt or screw, no +scrap of paper should be thrown away; that the cinders of the engines +could and should be utilized for that which they would make; and that was +why there was a paper-mill and foundry on the Sagalac at Manitou. That +was why and how, so far, he had beaten the tricksters. + +But while his schemes flashed before his mind, as the opiate suspended +him in the middle heaven between sleep and waking, the tricksters and +manipulators came hurrying after him like marauders that waited for the +moment when they could rush the camp in the watches of the night. His +disordered imagination saw the ruin and wreck of his work, the seizure of +what was his own--the place of control on his railways, the place of the +Master Man who cared infinitely more to see his designs accomplished than +for the profit they would bring to himself. Yesterday he had been just +at the top of the hill. The key in his fingers was turning in the lock +which would make safe the securities of his life and career, when it +snapped, and the world grew dark as the black curtain fell and shut out +the lighted room from the wayfarer in the gloom. Then, it was, came the +opaque blackness which could be felt, and his voice calling in despair: +"Blind! I am blind!" + +He did not know that he had taken an opiate, that his friend had +mercifully atrophied his rebellious nerves. These visions he was seeing +were terribly true, but they somehow gave him no physical torture. It +was as though one saw an operation performed upon one's body with the +nerves stilled and deadened by ether. Yet he was cruelly conscious of +the disaster which had come to him. For a time at least. Then his mind +seemed less acute, the visions came, then without seeing them go, they +went. And others came in broken patches, shreds, and dreams, +phantasmagoria of the brain, and at last all were mingled and confused; +but as they passed they seemed to burn his sight. How he longed for a +cool bandage over his eyes, for a soft linen which would shut out the +cumuli of broken hopes and designs, life's goals obliterated! He had had +enough of the black procession of futile things. + +His longing was not denied, for even as he roused himself from the +oblivion coming on him, as though by a last effort to remember his dire +misfortune, maybe his everlasting tragedy, something soothing and soft +like linen dipped in dew was laid upon his forehead. A cool, delicious +hand covered his eyes caressingly; a voice from spheres so far away that +worlds were the echoing points of the sound, came whispering to him like +a stir of wings in a singing grove. With a last effort to remain in the +waking world, he raised his head so very little, but fell gently back +again with one sighing word on his lips: + +"Fleda!" + +It was no illusion. Fleda had come from her own night of trouble to his +motherless, wifeless home, and would not be denied admittance by the +nurse. It was Jim Beadle who admitted her. + +"He'd be mad if he knew we wouldn't let her come," Jim had said to the +nurse. + +It was Fleda who had warned Ingolby of the dangers that surrounded him +--the physical as well as business dangers. She came now to serve the +blind victim of that Fate which she had seen hovering over him. + +The renegade daughter of the Romanys, as Jethro Fawe had called her, was, +for the first time, in the house of her master Gorgio. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE CHAIN OF THE PAST + +For once in its career, Lebanon was absolutely united. The blow that had +brought down the Master Man had also struck the town between the eyes, +and there was no one--friend or foe of Ingolby--who did not regard it as +an insult and a challenge. It was now known that the roughs of Manitou, +led by the big river-driver, were about to start on a raid upon Lebanon +and upon Ingolby at the very moment the horseshoe did its work. All +night there were groups of men waiting outside Ingolby's house. They +were of all classes-carters, railway workers, bartenders, lawyers, +engineers, bankers, accountants, merchants, ranchmen, carpenters, +insurance agents, manufacturers, millers, horse-dealers, and so on. + +Some prayed for Ingolby's life, others swore viciously; and those who +swore had no contempt for those who prayed, while those who prayed were +tolerant of those who swore. It was a union of incongruous elements. +Men who had nothing in common were one in the spirit of faction; and all +were determined that the Orangeman, whose funeral was fixed for this +memorable Saturday, should be carried safely to his grave. Civic pride +had almost become civic fanaticism in Lebanon. One of the men beaten by +Ingolby in the recent struggle for control of the railways said to the +others shivering in the grey dawn: "They were bound to get him in the +back. They're dagos, the lot of 'em. Skunks are skunks, even when you +skin 'em." + +When, just before dawn, old Gabriel Druse issued from the house into +which he had carried Ingolby the night before, they questioned him +eagerly. He had been a figure apart from both Lebanon and Manitou, and +they did not regard him as a dago, particularly as it was more than +whispered that Ingolby "had a lien" on his daughter. In the grey light, +with his long grizzled beard and iron-grey, shaggy hair, Druse looked +like a mystic figure of the days when the gods moved among men like +mortals. His great height, vast proportions, and silent ways gave him a +place apart, and added to the superstitious feeling by which he was +surrounded. + +"How is he?" they asked whisperingly, as they crowded round him. + +"The danger is over," was the slow, heavy reply. He will live, but he +has bad days to face." + +"What was the danger?" they asked. "Fever--maybe brain fever," he +replied. "We'll see him through," someone said. + +"Well, he cannot see himself through," rejoined the old man solemnly. +The enigmatical words made them feel there was something behind. + +"Why can't he see himself through?" asked Osterhaut the universal, who +had just arrived from the City Hall. + +"He can't see himself through because he is blind," was the heavy answer. + +There was a moment of shock, of hushed surprise, and then a voice burst +forth: "Blind--they've blinded him, boys! The dagos have killed his +sight. He's blind, boys!" + +A profane and angry muttering ran through the crowd, who were thirsty, +hungry, and weary with watching. + +Osterhaut held up the horseshoe which had brought Ingolby down. "Here it +is, the thing that done it. It's tied with a blue ribbon-for luck," he +added ironically. "It's got his blood on it. I'm keeping it till +Manitou's paid the price of it. Then I'll give it to Lebanon for keeps." + +"That's the thing that did it, but where's the man behind the thing?" +snarled a voice. + +Again there was a moment's silence, and then Billy Kyle, the veteran +stage-driver, said: "He's in the jug, but a gaol has doors, and doors'll +open with or without keys. I'm for opening the door, boys." + +"What for?" asked a man who knew the answer, but who wanted the thing +said. + +"I spent four years in Arizona, same as Jowett," Billy Kyle answered, +"and I got in the way of thinking as they do there, and acting just as +quick as you think. I drove stage down in the Verde Valley. Sometimes +there wasn't time to bring a prisoner all the way to a judge and jury, +and people was busy, and hadn't time to wait for the wagon; so they done +what was right, and there was always a tree that would carry that kind o' +fruit for the sake of humanity. It's the best way, boys." + +"This isn't Arizona or any other lyncher's country," said Halliday, the +lawyer, making his way to the front. "It isn't the law, and in this +country it's the law that counts. It's the Gover'ment's right to attend +to that drunken dago that threw the horseshoe, and we've got to let the +Gover'ment do it. No lynching on my plate, thank you. If Ingolby could +speak to us, you can bet your boots it's what he'd say." + +"What's your opinion, boss?" asked Billy Kyle of Gabriel Druse, who had +stood listening, his chin on his breast, his sombre eyes fixed on them +abstractedly. + +At Kyle's question his eyes lighted up with a fire that was struck from a +flint in other spheres, and he answered: "It is for the ruler to take +life, not the subject. If it is a man that rules, it is for him; if it +is the law that rules, it is for the law. Here, it is the law. Then it +is not for the subject, and it is not for you." + +"If he was your son?" asked Billy Kyle. + +"If he was my son, I should be the ruler, not the law," was the grim, +enigmatic reply, and the old man stalked away from them towards the +bridge. + +"I'd bet he'd settle the dago's hash that done to his son what the +Manitou dagos done to Ingolby--and settle it quick," remarked Lick +Farrelly, the tinsmith. + +"I bet he's been a ruler or something somewhere," remarked Billy Kyle. + +"I bet I'm going home to breakfast," interposed Halliday, the lawyer. +"There's a straight day's work before us, gentlemen," he added, "and we +can't do anything here. Orangemen, let's hoof it." + +Twenty Orangemen stepped out from the crowd. Halliday was a past master +of their lodge, and they all meant what he meant. They marched away in +procession--to breakfast and to a meeting of the lodge. Others straggled +after, but a few waited for the appearance of the doctor. When the sun +came up and Rockwell, pale and downcast, issued forth, they gathered +round him, and walked with him through the town, questioning, listening +and threatening. + +A few still remained behind at Ingolby's house. They were of the devoted +slaves of Ingolby who would follow him to the gates of Hades and back +again, or not back if need be. + +The nigger barber, Berry, was one; another was the Jack-of-all-trades, +Osterhaut, a kind of municipal odd-man, with the well-known red hair, the +face that constantly needed shaving, the blue serge shirt with a scarf +for a collar, the suit of canvas in the summer and of Irish frieze in the +winter; the pair of hands which were always in his own pocket, never in +any one else's; the grey eye, doglike in its mildness, and the long nose +which gave him the name of Snorty. Of the same devoted class also was +Jowett who, on a higher plane, was as wise and discerning a scout as any +leader ever had. + +While old Berry and Osterhaut and all the others were waiting at +Ingolby's house, Jowett was scouting among the Manitou roughs for the +Chief Constable of Lebanon, to find out what was forward. What he had +found was not reassuring, because Manitou, conscious of being in the +wrong, realized that Lebanon would try to make her understand her wrong- +doing; and that was intolerable. It was clear to Jowett that, in spite +of all, there would be trouble at the Orange funeral, and that the +threatened strike would take place at the same time in spite of Ingolby's +catastrophe. Already in the early morning revengeful spirits from +Lebanon had invaded the outer portions of Manitou and had taken +satisfaction out of an equal number of "Dogans," as they called the Roman +Catholic labourers, one of whom was carried to the hospital with an elbow +out of joint and a badly injured back. + +With as much information as he needed, Jowett made his way back to +Lebanon, when, at the approach to the bridge, he met Fleda hurrying with +bent head and pale, distressed face in his own direction. Of all Western +men none had a better appreciation of the sex that takes its toll of +every traveller after his kind than Aaron Jowett. He had been a real +buck in his day among those of his own class, and though the storm of his +romances had become but a faint stirring of leaves which had tinges of +days that are sear, he still had an eye unmatched for female beauty. The +sun which makes that northern land a paradise in summer caught the gold- +brown hair of Gabriel Druse's daughter, and made it glint and shine. It +coquetted with the umber of her eyes and they grew luminous as a jewel; +it struck lightly across the pale russet of her cheek and made it like an +apple that one's lips touch lovingly, when one calls it "too good to +eat." It made an atmosphere of half-silver and half-gold with a touch of +sunrise crimson for her to walk in, translating her form into melting +lines of grace. + +Jowett knew that Druse's daughter was on her way to the man who had +looked once, looked twice, looked thrice into her eyes and had seen there +his own image; and that she had done the same; and that the man, it might +be, would never look into their dark depths again. He might speak once, +he might speak twice, he might speak thrice, but would it ever be the +same as the look that needed no words? + +When he crossed Fleda Druse's pathway she stopped short. She knew that +Jowett was Ingolby's true friend. She had seen him often, and he was +intimately associated with that day when she had run the Carillon Rapids +and had lain (for how long she never dared to think) in Ingolby's arms in +the sight of all the world. First among those who crowded round her at +Carillon that day were Jowett and Osterhaut, who had tried to warn her. + +"You are going to him?" she said now with confidence in her eyes, and by +the intimacy of the phrase (as though she could speak of Ingolby only as +him) their own understanding was complete. + +"To see how he is and then to do other things," Jowett answered. + +There was silence for a moment in which they moved slowly forward, and +then she said: "You were at Barbazon's last night?" + +"When that Gipsy son of a dog gave him away!" he assented. "I never +heard anything like the speech Ingolby made. He had them in the throat. +The Gipsy would have had nothing out of it, if it hadn't been for the +horseshoe. But in spite of the giveaway, Ingolby was getting them where +they were soft-fairly drugging them with good news. You never heard such +dope. My, he was smooth! The golden, velvet truth it was, too. That's +the only kind he has in stock; and they were sort of stupefied and locoed +as they chewed his word-plant. Cicero must have been a saucy singer of +the dictionary, and Paul the Apostle had a dope of his own you couldn't +buy, but the gay gamut that Ingolby run gives them all the cold good- +bye." + +She held herself very still as he spoke. There was, however, a strange, +lonely look in her eyes. The man lying asleep in the darkness of body +and mind yonder was not really her lover, for he had said no word direct +of love to her, and she knew him so little, how could she love him? Yet +there was something between them which had its authority over their +lives, overcoming even that maiden modesty which was in contrast to the +bold, physical thing she had done in running the Carillon Rapids those +centuries ago when she was young and glad-wistfully glad. So much had +come since that day, she had travelled so far on the highway of Fate, +that she looked back from peak to peak of happening to an almost +invisible horizon. So much had occurred and she felt so old this +morning; and yet there was in her heart the undefined feeling that she +must keep her radiant Spring of life for the blind Gorgio if he needed +it-if he needed it. Would he need it, robbed of sight and with his life- +work murdered? + +She shuddered as she thought of what it meant to him. If a man is to +work, he must have eyes to see. Yet what had she to do with it, after +all? She had no right to go to him even as she was going. Yet had she +not the right of common humanity? This Gorgio was her friend. Did not +the world know that he had saved her life? + +As they came to the Lebanon end of the bridge, Fleda turned to Jowett +and, commenting on his description of the scene at Barbazon, said: +"He is a great man, but he trusts too much and risks too much. That was +no place for him." + +"Big men like him think they can do anything," Jowett replied, a little +ironically, subtly trying to force a confession of her preference for +Ingolby. + +He succeeded. Her eye lighted with indignation. She herself might +challenge him, but she would not allow another to do so. + +"It is not the truth," she rejoined sharply. "He does not measure +himself against the world so. He is like--like a child," she added. + +"It seems to me all big men are like that," Jowett rejoined; "and he's +the biggest man the West has seen. He knows about every man's business +as though it was his own. I can get a margin off most any man in the +West on a horse-trade, but I'd look shy about doing a trade with him. +You can't dope a horse so he won't know. He's on to it, sees it-sees it +like as if it was in glass. Sees anything and everything, and--" He +stopped short. The Master Gorgio could no longer see, and his henchman +flushed like a girl at his "break"; though, as a horse-dealer, he had in +his time listened without shame to wilder, angrier reproaches than most +men living. + +She glanced at him, saw his confusion, forgave and understood him. + +"It was not the horseshoe, it was not the Gipsy," she returned. "They +did not set it going. It would not have happened but for one man." + +"Yes, it's Marchand, right enough," answered Jowett, "but we'll get him +yet. We'll get him with the branding-iron hot." + +"That will not put things right if--" she paused, then with a great +effort she added: "Does the doctor think he will get it back and that--" + +She stopped suddenly in an agitation he did not care to see and he turned +away his head. + +"Doctor doesn't know," he answered. "There's got to be an expert. It'll +take time before he gets here, but--" he could not help but say it, +seeing how great her distress was--"but it's going to come back. I've +seen cases--I saw one down on the Border"--how easily he lied!--"just +like his. It was blasting that done it--the shock. But the sight come +back all right, and quick too--like as I've seen a paralizite get up all +at once and walk as though he'd never been locoed. Why, God Almighty +don't let men like Ingolby be done like that by reptiles same's +Marchand." + +"You believe in God Almighty?" she said half-wonderingly, yet with +gratitude in her tone. "You understand about God?" + +"I've seen too many things not to try and deal fair with Him and not try +to cheat Him," he answered. "I see things lots of times that wasn't ever +born on the prairie or in any house. I've seen--I've seen enough," he +said abruptly, and stopped. + +"What have you seen?" she asked eagerly. "Was it good or bad?" + +"Both," he answered quickly. "I was stalked once--stalked I was by night +and often in the open day, by some sickly, loathsome thing, that even +made me fight it with my hands--a thing I couldn't see. I used to fire +buckshot at it, enough to kill an army, till I near went mad. I was +really and truly getting loony. Then I took to prayin' to the best woman +I ever knowed. I never had a mother, but she looked after me--my sister, +Sara, it was. She brought me up, and then died and left me without +anything to hang on to. I didn't know all I'd lost till she was gone. +But I guess she knew what I thought of her; for she come back--after I'd +prayed till I couldn't see. She come back into my room one night when +the cursed 'haunt' was prowling round me, and as plain as I see you, I +saw her. 'Be at peace,' she said, and I spoke to her, and said, 'Sara- +why, Sara' and she smiled, and went away into nothing--like a bit o' +cloud in the sun." + +He stopped, and was looking straight before him as though he saw a +vision. + +"It went?" she asked breathlessly. + +"It went like that--" He made a swift, outward gesture. "It went and it +never came back; and she didn't either--not ever. My idee is," he added, +"that there's evil things that mebbe are the ghost-shapes of living men +that want to do us harm; though, mebbe, too, they're the ghost-shapes of +men that's dead, but that can't get on Over There. So they try to get +back to us here; and they can make life Hell while they're stalking us." + +"I am sure you are right," she said. + +She was thinking of the loathsome thing which haunted her room last +night. Was it the embodied second self of Jethro Fawe, doing the evil +that Jethro Fawe, the visible corporeal man, wished to do? She +shuddered, then bent her head and fixed her mind on Ingolby, whose house +was not far away. She felt strangely, miserably alone this morning. She +was in that fluttering state which follows a girl's discovery that she is +a woman, and the feeling dawns that she must complete herself by joining +her own life with the life of another. + +She showed no agitation, but her repression gave an almost statuesque +character to her face and figure. The adventurous nature of her early +life had given her a power to meet shock and danger with coolness, and +though the news of Ingolby's tragedy had seemed to freeze the vital +forces in her, and all the world became blank for a moment, she had +controlled herself and had set forth to go to him, come what might. + +As she entered the street where Ingolby lived, she suddenly realized the +difficulty before her. She might go to him, but by only one right could +she stay and nurse him, and that right she did not possess. He would, +she knew, understand her, no matter how the world babbled. Why should +the world babble? What woman could have designs upon a blind man? Was +not humanity alone sufficient warrant for staying by his side? Yet would +he wish it? Suddenly her heart sank; but again she remembered their last +parting, and once more she was sure he would be glad to have her with +him. + +It flashed upon her how different it would have been, if he and she had +been Romanys, and this thing had happened over there in the far lands she +knew so well. Who would have hinted at shame, if she had taken him to +her father's tan or gone to his tan and tended him as a man might tend a +man? Humanity would have been the only convention; there would have been +no sex, no false modesty, no babble, no reproach. If it had been a man +as old as the oldest or as young as Jethro Fawe it would have made no +difference. + +As young as Jethro Fawe! Why was it that now she could never think of +the lost and abandoned Romany life without thinking also of Jethro Fawe? +Why should she hate him, despise him, revolt against him, and yet feel +that, as it were by invisible cords, he drew her back to that which she +had forsworn, to the Past which dragged at her feet? The Romany was not +dead in her; her real struggle was yet to come; and in a vague but +prophetic way she realized it. She was not yet one with the settled +western world. + +As they came close to Ingolby's house she heard marching footsteps, and +in the near distance she saw fourscore or more men tramping in military +order. "Who are they?" she asked of Jowett. + +"Men that are going to see law and order kept in Lebanon," he answered. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +SUCH THINGS MAY NOT BE + +A few hours later Fleda slowly made her way homeward through the woods on +the Manitou side of the Sagalac. Leaving Ingolby's house, she had seen +men from the ranches and farms and mines beyond Lebanon driving or riding +into the town, as though to a fair or fete-day. Word of anticipated +troubles had sped through the countryside, and the innate curiosity of +a race who greatly love a row brought in sensation-lovers. Some were +skimming along in one-horse gigs, a small bag of oats dangling beneath +like the pendulum of a great clock. Others were in double or triple- +seated light wagons--"democrats" they were called. Women had a bit of +colour in their hats or at their throats, and the men had on clean white +collars and suits of "store-clothes"--a sign of being on pleasure bent. +Young men and girls on rough but serviceable mounts cantered past, +laughing and joking, and their loud talking grated on the ear of the girl +who had seen a Napoleon in the streets of his Moscow. + +Presently there crossed her path a gruesomely ugly hearse, with glass +sides and cheap imitation ostrich plumes drawn by gorged ravens of horses +with egregiously long tails, and driven by an undertaker's assistant, +who, with a natural gaiety of soul, displayed an idiotic solemnity by +dragging down the corners of the mouth. She turned away in loathing. + +Her mind fled to a scene far away in the land of the Volga when she was a +child, where she had seen buried two men, who had fought for their +insulted honour till both had died of their wounds. She remembered the +white and red sashes and the gay scarfs worn by the women at the burial, +the jackets with great silver buttons worn by the men, and the silver- +mounted pistols and bright steel knives in the garish belts. She saw +again the bodies of the two gladiators, covered with crimson robes, +carried shoulder-high on a soft bed of interlaced branches to the graves +beneath the trees. There, covered with flowers and sprigs and +evergreens, ribbons and favours, the kindly earth hid them, cloaked for +their long sleep, while women wept, and men praised the dead, and went +back to the open road again cheerily, as the dead would have them do. + +If he had died--the man she had just left behind in that torpid sleep +which opiates bring--his body would have been carried to his last home in +just such a hideous equipage as this hearse. A shiver of revolt went +through her frame, and her mind went to him as she had seen him lying +between the white sheets of his bed, his hands, as they had lain upon the +coverlet, compact of power and grace, knit and muscular and vital--not +the hand for a violin but the hand for a sword. + +As she had laid her hand upon his hot forehead and over his eyes, he had +unconsciously spoken her name. That had told her more of what really was +between them than she had ever known. In the presence of the catastrophe +that must endanger, if not destroy the work he had done, the career he +had made, he thought of her, spoke her name. + +What could she do to prevent his ruin? She must do something, else she +had no right to think of him. As though her thoughts had summoned him, +she came suddenly upon Felix Marchand at a point where her path resolved +itself into two, one leading to Manitou, the other to her own home. + +There was a malicious glint in the greenish eyes of the dissolute +demagogue as he saw her. His hat made a half-circle before it found his +head again. + +"You pay early visits, mademoiselle," he said, his teeth showing rat- +like. + +"And you late ones?" she asked meaningly. + +"Not so late that I can't get up early to see what's going on," he +rejoined in a sour voice. + +"Is it that those who beat you have to get up early?" she asked +ironically. + +"No one has got up earlier than me lately," he sneered. + +"All the days are not begun," she remarked calmly. + +"You have picked up quite an education since you left the road and the +tan," he said with the look of one who delivers a smashing blow. + +"I am not yet educated enough to know how you get other people to commit +your crimes for you," she retorted. + +"Who commits my crimes for me?" His voice was sharp and even anxious. + +"The man who told you I was once a Gipsy--Jethro Fawe." + +Her instinct had told her this was so. But had Jethro told all? She +thought not. It would need some catastrophe which threw him off his +balance to make him speak to a Gorgio of the inner things of Romany life; +and child--marriage was one of them. + +He scoffed. "Once a Gipsy always a Gipsy. Race is race, and you can't +put it off and on like--your stocking." + +He was going to say chemise, but race was race, and vestiges of native +French chivalry stayed the gross simile on the lips of the degenerate. +Fleda's eyes, however, took on a dark and brooding look which, more +than anything else, showed the Romany in her. With a murky flood of +resentment rising in her veins, she strove to fight back the half-savage +instincts of a bygone life. She felt as though she could willingly +sentence this man to death as her father had done Jethro Fawe that very +morning. Another thought, however, was working and fighting in her--that +Marchand was better as a friend than an enemy; and that while Ingolby's +fate was in the balance, while yet the Orange funeral had not taken place +and the strikes had not yet come, it might be that he could be won over +to Ingolby. Her mind was thus involuntarily reproducing Ingolby's +policy, as he had declared it to Jowett and Rockwell. It was to find +Felix Marchand's price, and to buy off his enmity--not by money, for +Marchand did not need that, but by those other coins of value which are +individual to each man's desires, passions and needs. + +"Once a Frenchman isn't always a Frenchman," she replied coolly, +disregarding the coarse insolence of his last utterance. "You yourself +do not now swear faith to the tricolour or the fleur-de-lis." + +He flushed. She had touched a tender nerve. + +"I am a Frenchman always," he rejoined angrily. "I hate the English. +I spit on the English flag." + +"Yes, I've heard you are an anarchist," she rejoined. "A man with no +country and with a flag that belongs to no country--quelle affaire et +quelle drolerie!" + +She laughed. Taken aback in spite of his anger, he stared at her. How +good her French accent was! If she would only speak altogether in that +beloved language, he could smother much malice. She was beautiful and-- +well, who could tell? Ingolby was wounded and blind, maybe for ever, and +women are always with the top dog--that was his theory. Perhaps her +apparent dislike of him was only a mood. Many women that he had +conquered had been just like that. They had begun by disliking him--from +Lil Sarnia down--and had ended by being his. This girl would never be +his in the way that the others had been, but--who could tell?--perhaps he +would think enough of her to marry her? Anyway, it was worth while +making such a beauty care for him. The other kind of women were easy +enough to get, and it would be a piquant thing to have one irreproachable +affaire. He had never had one; he was not sure that any girl or woman he +had ever known had ever loved him, and he was certain that he had never +loved any girl or woman. To be in love would be a new and piquant +experience for him. He did not know love, but he knew what passion was. +He had ever been the hunter. This trail might be dangerous, too, but he +would take his chances. He had seen her dislike of him whenever they had +met in the past, and he had never tried to soften her attitude towards +him. He had certainly whistled, but she had not come. Well, he would +whistle again--a different tune. + +"You speak French much?" he asked almost eagerly, the insolence gone from +his tone. "Why didn't I know that?" + +"I speak French in Manitou," she replied, "but nearly all the French +speak English there, and so I speak more English than French." + +"Yes, that's it," he rejoined almost angrily again. "The English will +not learn French, will not speak French. They make us learn English, +and--" + +"If you don't like the flag and the country, why don't you leave it?" she +interrupted, hardening, though she had meant to try and win him over to +Ingolby's side. + +His eyes blazed. There was something almost real in the man after all. + +"The English can kill us, they can grind us to the dust," he rejoined in +French, "but we will not leave the land which has always been ours. We +settled it; our fathers gave their lives for it in a thousand places. +The Indians killed them, the rivers and the storms, the plague and the +fire, the sickness and the cold wiped them out. They were burned alive +at the stake, they were flayed; their bones were broken to pieces by +stones--but they blazed trails with their blood in the wilderness from +New Orleans to Hudson's Bay. They paid for the land with their lives. +Then the English came and took it, and since that time--one hundred and +fifty years--we have been slaves." + +"You do not look like a slave," she answered, "and you have not acted +like a slave. If you were to do the things in France that you've done +here, you wouldn't be free as you are to-day." + +"What have I done?" he asked darkly. + +"You were the cause of what happened at Barbazon's last night,"--he +smiled evilly--"you are egging on the roughs to break up the Orange +funeral to-day; and there is all the rest you know so well." + +"What is the rest I know so well?" He looked closely at her, his long, +mongrel eyes half-closing with covert scrutiny. + +"Whatever it is, it is all bad and it is all yours." + +"Not all," he retorted coolly. "You forget your Gipsy friend. He did +his part last night, and he's still free." + +They had entered the last little stretch of wood in which her home lay, +and she slackened her footsteps slightly. She felt that she had been +unwise in challenging him; that she ought to try persistently to win him +over. It was repugnant to her, still it must be done even yet. She +mastered herself for Ingolby's sake and changed her tactics. + +"As you glory in what you have done, you won't mind being responsible +for all that's happened," she replied in a more friendly tone. + +She made an impulsive gesture towards him. + +"You have shown what power you have--isn't that enough?" she asked. +"You have made the crowd shout, 'Vive Marchand !' You can make everything +as peaceful as it is now upset. If you don't do so, there will be much +misery. If peace must be got by force, then the force of government will +get it in the end. You have the gift of getting hold of the worst men +here, and you have done it; but won't you now master them again in the +other way? You have money and brains; why not use them to become a +leader of those who will win at last, no matter what the game may be?" + +He came close to her. She shrank inwardly, but she did not move. His +greenish eyes were wide open in the fulness of eloquence and desire. + +"You have a tongue like none I ever heard," he said impulsively. "You've +got a mind that thinks, you've got dash and can take risks. You took +risks that day on the Carillon Rapids. It was only the day before that +I'd met you by the old ford of the Sagalac, and made up to you. You +choked me off as though I was a wolf or a devil on the loose. The next +day when I saw Ingolby hand you out to the crowd from his arms, I got +nasty--I have fits like that sometimes, when I've had a little too much +liquor. I felt it more because you're the only kind of woman that could +ever get a real hold on me. It was you made me get the boys rampaging +and set the toughs moving. As you say, I can get hold of a crowd. It's +not hard--with money and drink. You can buy human nature cheap. Every +man has his price they say--and every woman too--bien sur! The thing is +to find out what is the price, and then how to buy. You can't buy +everyone in the same way, even if you use a different price. You've got +to find out how they want the price--whether it's to be handed over the +counter, so to speak, or to be kept on the window-sill, or left in a +pocket, or dropped in a path, or dug up like a potato, with a funny make- +believe that fools nobody, but just plays to the hypocrite in everyone +everywhere. I'm saying this to you because you've seen more of the +world, I bet, than one in a million, even though you're so young. I +don't see why we can't come together. I'm to be bought. I don't say +that my price isn't high. You've got your price, too. You wouldn't fuss +yourself about things here in Manitou and Lebanon, if there wasn't +something you wanted to get. Tout ca! Well, isn't it worth while making +the bargain? You've got such gift of speech that I'm just as if I'd been +drugged, and all round, face, figure, eyes, hair, foot, and girdle, +you're worth giving up a lot for. I've seen plenty of your sex, and I've +heard crowds of them talk, but they never had anything for me beyond the +minute. You've got the real thing. You're my fancy. You've been +thinking and dreaming of Ingolby. He's done. He's a back number. +There's nothing he's done that isn't on the tumble since last night. +The financial gang that he downed are out already against him. They'll +have his economic blood. He made a splash while he was at it, but the +alligator's got him. It's 'Exit Ingolby,' now." + +She made a passionate gesture, and seemed about to speak, but he went on: +"No, don't say anything. I know how you feel. You've had your face +turned his way, and you can't look elsewhere all at once. But Time cures +quick, if you're a good healthy human being. Ingolby was the kind likely +to draw a girl. He's a six-footer and over; he spangled a lot, and he +smiled pretty--comme le printemps, and was sharp enough to keep clear of +women that could hurt him. That was his strongest point after all, for a +little, sly sprat of a woman that's made eyes at you and led you on, till +you sent her a note in a hurry some time with some loose hot words in it, +and she got what she'd wanted, will make you pay a hundred times for the +goods you get. Ingolby was sharp enough to walk shy, until you came his +way, and then he lost his underpinning. But last night got him in the +vitals--hit him between the eyes; and his stock's not worth ten cents in +the dollar to-day. But though the pumas are out, and he's done, and'll +never see his way out of the hole he's in"--he laughed at his grisly +joke"--it's natural to let him down easy. You've looked his way; he did +you a good turn at the Carillon Rapids, and you'd do one for him if you +could. I'm the only one can stop the worst from happening. You want to +pay your debt to him. Good. I can help you do it. I can stop the +strikes on the railways and in the mills. I can stop the row at the +Orange funeral. I can stop the run on his bank and the drop in his +stock. I can fight the gang that's against him--I know how. I'm the +man that can bring things to pass." + +He paused with a sly, mean smile of self-approval and conceit, and his +tongue licked the corners of his mouth in a way that drunkards have in +the early morning when the effect of last night's drinking has worn off. +He spread out his hands with the air of a man who had unpacked his soul, +but the chief characteristic of his manner was egregious belief in +himself. + +At first, in her desire to find a way to meet the needs of Ingolby, Fleda +had listened to him with fortitude and even without revolt. But as he +began to speak of women, and to refer to herself with a look of gloating +which men of his breed cannot hide, her angry pulses beat hard. She did +not quite know where he was leading, but she was sure he meant to say +something which would vex her beyond bearing. At one moment she meant to +cut short his narrative, but he prevented her, and when at last he ended, +she was almost choking with agitation. It had been borne in upon her as +his monologue proceeded, that she would rather die than accept anything +from this man--anything of any kind. To fight him was the only thing. +Nothing else could prevail in the end. His was the service of the +unpenitent thief. + +"And what is it you want to buy from me?" she asked evenly. + +He did not notice, and he could not realize that ominous thing in her +voice and face. "I want to be friends with you. I want to see you here +in the woods, to meet you as you met Ingolby. I want to talk with you, +to hear you talk; to learn things from you I never learned before; to--" + +She interrupted him with a swift gesture. "And then--after that? What +do you want at the end of it all? One cannot spend one's time talking +and wandering in the woods and teaching and learning. After that, what?" + +"I have a house in Montreal," he said evasively. "I don't want to live +there alone." He laughed. "It's big enough for two, and at the end it +might be us two, if--" + +With sharp anger, yet with coolness and dignity, she broke in on his +words. "Might be us two!" she exclaimed. "I have never thought of +making my home in a sewer. Do you think--but, no, it isn't any use +talking! You don't know how to deal with man or woman. You are +perverted." + +"I did not mean what you mean; I meant that I should want to marry you," +he protested. "You think the worst of me. Someone has poisoned your +mind against me." + +"Everyone has poisoned my mind against you," she returned, "and yourself +most of all. I know you will try to injure Mr. Ingolby; and I know that +you will try to injure me; but you will not succeed." + +She turned and moved away from him quickly, taking the path towards her +own front door. He called something after her, but she did not or would +not hear. + +As she entered the open space in front of the house, she heard footsteps +behind her and turned quickly, not without apprehension. A woman came +hurrying towards her. She was pale, agitated, haggard with fatigue. + +"May I speak with you?" she asked in French. "Surely," replied Fleda. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE WOMAN FROM WIND RIVER + +"What is it?" asked Fleda, opening the door of the house. + +"I want to speak to you about m'sieu'," replied the sad-faced woman. +She made a motion of her head backwards towards the wood. "About M'sieu' +Marchand." + +Fleda's face hardened; she had had more than enough of "M'sieu' +Marchand." She was bitterly ashamed that she had, even for a moment, +thought of using diplomacy with him. But this woman's face was so +forlorn, apart, and lonely, that the old spirit of the Open Road worked +its will. In far-off days she had never seen a human being turned away +from a Romany tent, or driven from a Romany camp. She opened the door +and stood aside to admit the wayfarer. + +A few moments later, the woman, tidied and freshened, sat at the ample +breakfast which was characteristic of Romany home-life. The woman's +plate was bountifully supplied by Fleda, and her cup filled more than +once by Madame Bulteel, while old Gabriel Druse bulked friendly over all. +His face now showed none of the passion and sternness which had been +present when he passed the Sentence of the Patrin upon Jethro Fawe; +nothing of the gloom filling his eyes as he left Ingolby's house. The +gracious, bountiful look of the patriarch, of the head of the clan, was +upon him. + +The husband of one wife, the father of one child, yet the Ry of Rys had +still the overlooking, protective sense of one who had the care of great +numbers of people. His keen eyes foresaw more of the story the woman was +to tell presently than either of the women of his household. He had seen +many such women as this, and had inflexibly judged between them and those +who had wronged them. + +"Where have you come from?" he asked, as the meal drew to a close. + +"From Wind River and under Elk Mountain," the woman answered with a look +of relief. Her face was of those who no longer can bear the soul's +secrets. + +There was silence while the breakfast things were cleared away, and the +window was thrown wide to the full morning sun. It broke through the +branches of pine and cedar and juniper; it made translucent the leaves of +the maples; it shimmered on Fleda's brown hair as she pulled a rose from +the bush at the window, and gave it to the forlorn creature in the grey +"linsey-woolsey" dress and the loose blue flannel jacket, whose skin was +coarsened by outdoor life, but who had something of real beauty in the +intense blue of her eyes. She had been a very comely figure in her best +days, for her waist was small, her bosom gently and firmly rounded, and +her hands were finer than those of most who live and work much in the +open air. + +"You said there was something you wished to tell me," said Fleda, at +last. + +The woman gazed slowly round at the three, as though with puzzled appeal. +There was the look of the Outlander in her face; of one who had been +exiled from familiar things and places. In manner she was like a child. +Her glance wandered over the faces of the two women, then her eyes met +those of the Ry, and stayed there. + +"I am old and I have seen many sorrows," said Gabriel Druse, divining +what was in her mind. "I will try to understand." + +"I have known all the bitterness of life," interposed the low, soft voice +of Madame Bulteel. + +"All ears are the same here," Fleda added, looking the woman in the eyes. + +"I will tell everything," was the instant reply. Her fingers twined and +untwined in her lap with a nervousness shown by neither face nor body. +Her face was almost apathetic in its despair, but her body had an upright +courage. + +She sighed heavily and began. + +"My name is Arabella Stone. I was married from my home over against Wind +River by the Jumping Sandhills. + +"My father was a lumberman. He was always captain of the gang in the +woods, and captain of the river in the summer. My mother was deaf and +dumb. It was very lonely at times when my father was away. I loved a +boy--a good boy, and he was killed breaking horses. When I was twenty- +one years old my mother died. It was not good for me to be alone, my +father said, so he must either give up the woods and the river, or he or +I must marry. Well, I saw he would not marry, for my mother's face was +one a man could not forget." + +The old man stirred in his seat. "I have seen such," he said in his deep +voice. + +"So it was I said to myself I would marry," she continued, "though I had +loved the Boy that died under the hoofs of the black stallion. There +weren't many girls at the Jumping Sandhills, and so there were men, now +one, now another, to say things to me which did not touch my heart; but I +did not laugh, because I understood that they were lonely. Yet I liked +one of them more than all the others. + +"So, for my father's sake, I came nearer to Dennis, and at last it seemed +I could bear to look at him any time of the day or night he came to me. +He was built like a pine-tree, and had a playful tongue, and also he was +a ranchman like the Boy that was gone. It all came about on the day he +rode in from the range the wild wicked black stallion which all range- +riders had tried for years to capture. It was like a brother of the +horse which had killed my Boy, only bigger. When Dennis mastered him and +rode him to my door I made up my mind, and when he whispered to me over +the dipper of buttermilk I gave him, I said, 'Yes.' I was proud of him. +He did things that a woman likes, and said the things a woman loves to +hear, though they be the same thing said over and over again." + +Madame Bulteel nodded her head as though in a dream, and the Ry of Rys +sat with his two great hands on the chair-arm and his chin dropped on his +chest. Fleda's hands were clasped in her lap, and her big eyes never +left the woman's face. + +"Before a month was gone I had married him," the, low, tired voice went +on. "It was a gay wedding; and my father was very happy, for he thought +I had got the desire of a woman's life--a home of her own. For a time +all went well. Dennis was gay and careless and wilful, but he was easy +to live with, too, except when he came back from the town where he sold +his horses. Then he was different, because of the drink, and he was +quarrelsome with me--and cruel, too. + +"At last when he came home with the drink upon him, he would sleep on the +floor and not beside me. This wore upon my heart. I thought that if I +could only put my hand on his shoulder and whisper in his ear, he would +get better of his bad feeling; but he was sulky, and he would not bear +with me. Though I never loved him as I loved my Boy, still I tried to be +a good wife to him, and never turned my eyes to any other man." + +Suddenly she stopped as though the pain of speaking was too great. +Madame Bulteel murmured something, but the only word that reached the +ears of the others was the Arabic word 'mafish'. Her pale face was +suffused as she said it. + +Two or three times the woman essayed to speak again, but could not. At +last, however, she overcame her emotion and said: "So it was when M'sieu' +Felix Marchand came up from the Sagalac." + +The old man started and muttered harshly, but Fleda had foreseen the +entrance of the dissolute Frenchman into the tale, and gave no sign of +surprise. + +"M'sieu' Marchand bought horses," the sad voice trailed on. "One day he +bought the mining-claims Dennis had been holding till he could develop +them or sell them for good money. When Dennis went to town again he +brought me back a present of a belt with silver clasps; but yet again +that night he slept upon the floor alone. So it went on. M. Marchand, +he goes on to the mountains and comes back; and he buys more horses, and +Dennis takes them to Yargo, and M. Marchand goes with him, but comes back +before Dennis does. It was then M'sieu' begun to talk to me; to say +things that soothe a woman when she is hurt. I knew now Dennis did not +want me as when he first married me. He was that kind of man--quick to +care and quicker to forget. He was weak, he could not fasten where he +stood. It pleased him to be gay and friendly with me when he was sober, +but there was nothing behind it--nothing, nothing at all. At last I +began to cry when I thought of it, for it went on and on, and I was too +much alone. I looked at myself in the glass, and I saw I was not old or +lean. I sang in the trees beside the brook, and my voice was even a +little better than in the days when Dennis first came to my father's +house. I looked to my cooking, and I knew that it was as good as ever. +I thought of my clothes, and how I did my hair, and asked myself if I +was as fresh to see as when Dennis first came to me. I could see no +difference. There was a clear pool not far away under the little hills +where the springs came together. I used to bathe in it every morning and +dry myself in the sun; and my body was like a child's. That being so, +should my own man turn his head away from me day or night? What had I +done to be used so, less than two years after I had married!" + +She paused and hung her head, weeping gently. "Shame stings a woman like +nothing else," Madame Bulteel said with a sigh. + +"It was so with me," continued Dennis's wife. "Then at last the thought +came that there was another woman. And all the time M. Marchand kept +coming and going, at first when Dennis was there, and always with some +good reason for coming--horses, cattle, shooting, or furs bought of the +Indians. When Dennis was not there, he came at first for an hour or two, +as if by chance, then for a whole day, because he said he knew I was +lonely. One day, I was sitting by the pool--it was in the evening. +I was crying because of the thought that followed me of another woman +somewhere, who made Dennis turn from me. Then it was M'sieu' came and +put a hand on my shoulder--he came so quietly that I did not hear him +till he touched me. He said he knew why I cried, and it saddened his +soul." + +"His soul--the jackal!" growled the old man in his beard. + +The woman nodded wearily and went on. "For all of ten days I had been +alone, except for the cattlemen camping a mile away and an old Indian +helper who slept in his tepee within call. Loneliness makes you weak +when there's something tearing at the heart. So I let M'sieu' Marchand +talk to me. At last he told me that there was a woman at Yargo--that +Dennis did not go there for business, but to her. Everyone knew it +except me, he said. He told me to ask old Throw Hard, the Indian helper, +if he had spoken the truth. I was shamed, and angry and crazy, too, I +think, so I went to old Throw Hard and asked him. He said he could not +tell the truth, and that he would not lie to me. So I knew it was all +true. + +"How do I know what was in my mind? Is a woman not mad at such a time! +There I was, tossed aside for a flyaway, who was for any man that would +come her way. Yes, I think I was mad. The pride in me was hurt--as only +a woman can understand." She paused and looked at the two women who +listened to her. Fleda's eyes were on the world beyond the window +of the room. + +"Surely we understand," whispered Madame Bulteel. + +The woman's courage returned, and she continued: "I could not go to my +father, for he was riding the river scores of miles away. I was terribly +alone. It was then that M'sieu' Marchand, who had bribed the woman to +draw Dennis away, begged me to go away with him. He swore I should marry +him as soon as I could be free of Dennis. I scarcely knew what I said or +thought; but the place I had loved was hateful to me, so I went away with +him." + +A sharp, pained exclamation broke from the lips of Madame Bulteel, but +presently she reached out and laid a hand upon the woman's arm. "Of +course you went with him," she said. "You could not stay where you were +and face the return of Dennis. There was no child to keep you, and the +man that tempted you said he adored you?" + +The woman looked gratefully at her. "That was what he said," she +answered. "He said he was tired of wandering, and that he wanted a home- +and there was a big house in Montreal." + +She stopped suddenly upon an angry, smothered word from Fleda's lips. A +big house in Montreal! Fleda's first impulse was to break in upon the +woman's story and tell her father what had happened just now outside +their own house; but she waited. + +"Yes, there was a big house in Montreal?" said Fleda, her eyes now +resting sadly upon the woman. + +"He said it should be mine. But that did not count. To be far away from +all that had been was more than all else. I was not thinking of the man, +or caring for him, I was flying from my shame. I did not see then the +shame to which I was going. I was a fool, and I was mad and bad also. +When I waked--and it was soon--there was quick understanding between us. +The big house in Montreal--that was never meant for me. He was already +married." + +The old man stretched heavily to his feet, leaned both hands on the +table, and looked at the woman with glowering eyes, while Fleda's heart +seemed to stop beating. + +"Married!" growled Gabriel Druse, with a blur of passion in his voice. +He knew that Felix Marchand had followed his daughter as though he were a +single man. + +Fleda saw what was working in his mind. Since her father suspected, he +should know all. + +"He almost offered me the big house in Montreal this morning," she said +evenly and coldly. + +A malediction broke from the old man's lips. + +"He almost thought he wanted me to marry him," Fleda added scornfully. + +"And what did you say?" Druse asked. + +"There could only be one thing to say. I told him I had never thought of +making my home in a sewer." A grim smile broke over the old man's face, +and he sat down again. + +"Because I saw him with you I wanted to warn you," the woman continued. +"Yesterday, I came to warn him of his danger, and he laughed at me. From +Madame Thibadeau I heard he had said he would make you sing his song. +When I came to tell you, there he was with you. But when he left you I +was sure there was no need to speak. Still I felt I must tell you-- +perhaps because you are rich and strong, and will stop him from doing +more harm." + +"How do you know we are rich?" asked Druse in a rough tone. + +"It is what the world says," was the reply. "Is there harm in that? In +any case it was right to tell you all; so that one who had herded with a +woman like me should not be friends with you." + +"I have seen worse women than you," murmured the old man. + +"What danger did you come to warn M. Marchand about?" asked Fleda. + +"To his life," answered the woman. + +"Do you want to save his life?" asked the old man. + +"Ah, is it not always so?" intervened Madame Bulteel in a low, sad +voice. "To be wronged like that does not make a woman just." + +"I am just," answered the woman. "He deserves to die, but I want to save +the man that will kill him when they meet." + +"Who will kill him?" asked Fleda. "Dennis--he will kill Marchand if he +can." + +The old man leaned forward with puzzled, gloomy interest. "Why? Dennis +left you for another. You say he had grown cold. Was that not what he +wanted--that you should leave him?" + +The woman looked at him with tearful eyes. "If I had known Dennis +better, I should have waited. What he did is of the moment only. A man +may fall and rise again, but it is not so with a woman. She thinks and +thinks upon the scar that shows where she wounded herself; and she never +forgets, and so her life becomes nothing--nothing." + +No one saw that Madame Bulteel held herself rigidly, and was so white +that even the sunlight was gold beside her look. Yet the strangest, +saddest smile played about her lips; and presently, as the eyes of the +others fastened on the woman and did not leave her, she regained her +usual composure. + +The woman kept looking at Gabriel Druse. "When Dennis found that I had +gone, and knew why--for I left word on a sheet of paper--he went mad like +me. Trailing to the south, to find M'sieu' Marchand, he had an accident, +and was laid up in a shack for weeks on the Tanguishene River, and they +could not move him. But at last a ranchman wrote to me, and the letter +found me on the very day I left M'sieu'. When I got that letter begging +me to go to the Tanguishene River, to nurse Dennis who loved me still, my +heart sank. I said to myself I could not go; and Dennis and I must be +apart always to the end of time. But then I thought again. He was ill, +and his body was as broken as his mind. Well, since I could do his mind +no good, I would try to help his body. I could do that much for him. So +I went. But the letter to me had been long on the way, and when I got to +the Tanguishene River he was almost well." + +She paused and rocked her body to and fro for a moment as though in pain. + +"He wanted me to go back to him then. He said he had never cared for the +woman at Yargo, and that what he felt for me now was different from what +it had ever been. When he had settled accounts we could go back to the +ranch and be at peace. I knew what he meant by settling accounts, and it +frightened me. That is why I am here. I came to warn the man, Marchand, +for if Dennis kills him, then they will hang Dennis. Do you not see? +This is a country of law. I saw that Dennis had the madness in his +brain, and so I left him again in the evening of the day I found him, and +came here--it is a long way. Yesterday, M'sieu' Marchand laughed at me +when I warned him. He said he could take care of himself. But such men +as Dennis stop at nothing; there will be killing, if M'sieu' stays here." + +"You will go back to Dennis?" asked Fleda gently. "Some other woman +will make him happy when he forgets me," was the cheerless, grey reply. + +The old man got up and, coming over, laid a hand upon her shoulder. + +"Where did you think of going from here?" he asked. + +"Anywhere--I don't know," was the reply. + +"Is there no work here for her?" he asked, turning to Madame Bulteel. + +"Yes, plenty," was the reply. "And room also?" he asked again. + +"Was ever a tent too full, when the lost traveller stumbled into camp in +the old days?" rejoined Fleda. The woman trembled to her feet, a glad +look in her eyes. "I ought to go, but I am tired and I will gladly +stay," she said and swayed against the table. + +Madame Bulteel and Fleda put their arms round her, steadying her. + +"This is not the way to act," said Fleda with a touch of sharp reproof. +Had she not her own trouble to face? + +The stricken woman drew herself up and looked Fleda in the eyes. "I will +find the right way, if I can," she said with courage. + +A half-hour later, as the old man sat alone in the room where he had +breakfasted, a rifle-shot rang out in the distance. + +"The trouble begins," he said, as he rose and hastened into the hallway. + +Another shot rang out. He caught up his wide felt hat, reached for a +great walking-stick in the corner, and left the house hurriedly. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE + +It was a false alarm which had startled Gabriel Druse, but it had +significance. The Orange funeral was not to take place until eleven +o'clock, and it was only eight o'clock when the Ry left his home. A +rifle-shot had, however, been fired across the Sagalac from the Manitou +side, and it had been promptly acknowledged from Lebanon. There was a +short pause, and then came another from the Lebanon side. It was merely +a warning and a challenge. The only man who could have controlled the +position was blind and helpless. + +As Druse walked rapidly towards the bridge, he met Jowett. Jowett was +one of the few men in either town for whom the Ry had regard, and the +friendliness had had its origin in Jowett's knowledge of horseflesh. +This was a field in which the Ry was himself a master. He had ever been +too high-placed among his own people to trade and barter horses except +when, sending a score of Romanys on a hunt for wild ponies on the hills +of Eastern Europe, he had afterwards sold the tamed herd to the highest +bidders in some Balkan town; but he had an infallible eye for a horse. + +It was a curious anomaly also that the one man in Lebanon who would not +have been expected to love and pursue horse-flesh was the Reverend Reuben +Tripple to whom Ingolby had given his conge, but who loved a horse as he +loved himself. + +He was indeed a greater expert in horses than in souls. One of the +sights of Lebanon had been the appearance in the field of the "Reverend +Tripple," who owned a great, raw-boned bay mare of lank proportions, the +winner of a certain great trotting-race which had delighted the mockers. + +For two years Jowett had eyed Mr. Tripple's rawbone with a piratical eye. + +Though it had won only a single great race, that, in Jowett's view, was +its master's fault. As the Arabs say, however, Allah is with the +patient; and so it was that on the evening of the day in which Ingolby +met disaster, Mr. Tripple informed Jowett that he was willing to sell his +rawbone. + +He was mounted on the gawky roadster when he met Gabriel Druse making for +the bridge. Their greeting was as cordial as hasty. Anxious as was the +Ry to learn what was going on in the towns, Jowett's mount caught his +eye. It was but a little time since they had met at Ingolby's house, and +they were both full of the grave events afoot, but here was a horse-deal +of consequence, and the bridle-rein was looseflung. + +"Yes, I got it," said Jowett, with a chuckle, interpreting the old man's +look. "I got it for good--a wonder from Wonderville. Damned queer- +looking critter, but there, I guess we know what I've got. Outside like +a crinoline, inside like a pair of ankles of the Lady Jane Plantagenet. +Yes, I got it, Mr. Druse, got it dead-on!" + +"How?" asked the Ry, feeling the clean fetlocks with affectionate +approval. + +"He's off East, so he says," was the joyous reply; "sudden but sure, and +I dunno why. Anyway, he's got the door-handle offered, and he's off +without his camel." He stroked the neck of the bay lovingly. "How +much?" + +Jowett held up his fingers. The old man lifted his eyebrows quizzically. +"That-h'm! Does he preach as well as that?" he asked. + +Jowett chuckled. "He knows the horse-country better than the New +Jerusalem, I guess; and I wasn't off my feed, nor hadn't lost my head +neither. I wanted that dust-hawk, and he knew it; but I got in on him +with the harness and the sulky. The bridle he got from a Mexican that +come up here a year ago, and went broke and then went dead; and there +being no padre, Tripple did the burying, and he took the bridle as his +fee, I s'pose. It had twenty dollars' worth of silver on it--look at +these conchs." + +He trifled with the big beautiful buttons on the head-stall. "The +sulky's as good as new, and so's the harness almost; and there's the +nose-bag and the blankets, and a saddle and a monkey-wrench and two +bottles of horse-liniment, and odds and ends. I only paid that"--and he +held up his fingers again as though it was a sacred rite--"for the lot. +Not bad, I want to say. Isn't he good for all day, this one?" + +The old man nodded, then turned towards the bridge. "The gun-shots-- +what?" he asked, setting forward at a walk which taxed the rawbone's +stride. + +"An invite--come to the wedding; that's all. Only it's a funeral this +time, and, if something good doesn't happen, there'll be more than one +funeral on the Sagalac to-morrow. I've had my try, but I dunno how it'll +come out. He's not a man of much dictionary is the Monseenoor." + +"The Monseigneur Lourde? What does he say?" + +"He says what we all say, that he is sorry. 'But why have the Orange +funeral while things are as they are?' he says, and he asks for the red +flag not to be shook in the face of the bull." + +"That is not the talk of a fool, as most priests are," growled the other. + +"Sure. But it wants a real wind-warbler to make them see it in Lebanon. +They've got the needle. They'll pray to-day with the taste of blood in +their mouths. It's gone too far. Only a miracle can keep things right. +The Mayor has wired for the mounted police--our own battalion of militia +wouldn't serve, and there'd be no use ordering them out--but the Riders +can't get here in time. The train's due the very time the funeral's to +start, but that train's always late, though they say the ingine-driver is +an Orangeman! And the funeral will start at the time fixed, or I don't +know the boys that belong to the lodge. So it's up to We, Us & Co. to +see the thing through, or go bust. It don't suit me. It wouldn't have +been like this, if it hadn't been for what happened to the Chief last +night. There's no holding the boys in. One thing's sure, the Gipsy that +give Ingolby away has got to lie low if he hasn't got away, or there'll +be one less of his tribe to eat the juicy hedgehog. Yes, sir-ee!" + +To the last words of Jowett the Ry seemed to pay no attention, though his +lips shut tight and a menacing look came into his eyes. They were now +upon the bridge, and could see what was forward on both sides of the +Sagalac. There was unusual bustle and activity in the streets and on the +river-bank of both towns. It was noticeable also that though the mills +were running in Manitou, there were fewer chimneys smoking, and far more +men in the streets than usual. Tied up to the Manitou shore were a half- +dozen cribs or rafts of timber which should be floating eastward down the +Sagalac. + +"If the Monseenoor can't, or don't, step in, we're bound for a shindy +over a corpse," continued Jowett after a moment. + +"Can the Monseigneur cast a spell over them all?" remarked the Ry +ironically, for he had little faith in priests, though he had for this +particular one great respect. + +"He's a big man, that preelate," answered Jowett quickly and forcibly. +"He kept the Crees quiet when they was going to rise. If they'd got up, +there'd have been hundreds of settlers massacreed. He risked his life to +do that--went right into the camp in face of levelled rifles, and sat +down and begun to talk. A minute afterwards all the chiefs was +squatting, too. Then the tussle begun between a man with a soul and a +heathen gang that eat dog, kill their old folks, their cripples and their +deformed children, and run sticks of wood through their bleeding chests, +just to show that they're heathens. But he won out, this Jesueete friend +o' man. That's why I'm putting my horses and my land and my pants and my +shirt and the buff that's underneath on the little preelate." + +Gabriel Druse's face did not indicate the same confidence. "It is not an +age of miracles; the priest is not enough," he said sceptically. + +By twos, by threes, by tens, men from Manitou came sauntering across the +bridge into Lebanon, until a goodly number were scattered at different +points through the town. They seemed to distribute themselves by a +preconceived plan, and they were all habitants. There were no Russians, +Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, or Germans among them. They were low-browed, +sturdy men, dressed in red or blue serge shirts, some with sashes around +their waists, some with ear-rings in their ears, some in knee-boots, and +some with the heavy spiked boots of the river-driver. None appeared to +carry any weapon that would shoot, yet in their belts was the sheath- +knife, the invariable equipment of their class. It would have seemed +more suspicious if they had not carried them. The railwaymen, miners, +carters, mill-hands, however, appeared to carry nothing save their strong +arms and hairy hands, and some were as hairy as animals. These +backwoodsmen also could, without weapons, turn a town into a general +hospital. In battle they fought not only with hands but also with teeth +and hoofs like wild stallions. Teeth tore off an ear or sliced away a +nose, hands smote like hammers or gouged out eyes, and their nailed boots +were weapons of as savage a kind as could be invented. They could spring +and strike an opponent with one foot in the chest or in the face, and +spoil the face for many a day, or for ever. It was a gift of the +backwoods and the lumber-camps, practised in hours of stark monotony when +the devils which haunt places of isolation devoid of family life, where +men herd together like dogs in a kennel, break loose. There the man that +dips his fingers "friendly-like" in the dish of his neighbour one minute +wants the eye of that neighbour the next not so much in innate or +momentary hatred, as in innate savagery and the primeval sense of combat, +the war which was in the blood of the first man. + +The unarmed appearance of these men did not deceive the pioneer folk +of Lebanon. To them the time had come when the reactionary forces of +Manitou must receive a check. Even those who thought the funeral +fanatical and provocative were ready to defend it. + +The person who liked the whole business least was Rockwell. He was +subject to the same weariness of the flesh and fatigue of the spirit as +all men; yet it was expected of him that at any hour he should be at the +disposal of suffering humanity--of criminal or idiotic humanity--patient, +devoted, calm, nervestrung, complete. He was the one person in the +community who was the universal necessity, and yet for whom the community +had no mercy in its troubles or out of them. There were three doctors in +Lebanon, but none was an institution, none had prestige save Rockwell, +and he often wished that he had less prestige, since he cared nothing for +popularity. + +He had made his preparations for possible "accidents" in no happy mood. +Fresh from the bedside of Ingolby, having had no sleep, and with many +sick people on his list, he inwardly damned the foolishness of both +towns. He even sharply rebuked the Mayor, who urged surgical +preparations upon him, for not sending sooner to the Government for a +force which could preserve order or prevent the procession. + +It was while he was doing so that Jowett appeared with Gabriel Druse to +interview the Mayor. + +"It's like this," said Jowett. "In another hour the funeral will start. +There's a lot of Manitou huskies in Lebanon now, and their feet is +loaded, if their guns ain't. They're comin' by driblets, and by-and-bye, +when they've all distributed themselves, there'll be a marching column of +them from Manitou. It's all arranged to make trouble and break the law. +It's the first real organized set-to we've had between the towns, and +it'll be nasty. If the preelate doesn't dope them, there'll be pertikler +hell to pay." + +He then gave the story of his visit to Monseigneur Lourde, and the +details of what was going forward in Manitou so far as he had learned. +Also the ubiquitous Osterhaut had not been idle, and his bulletin had +just been handed to Jowett. + +"There's one thing ought to be done and has got to be done," Jowett +added, "if the Monseenoor don't pull if off. The leaders have to be +arrested, and it had better be done by one that, in a way, don't belong +to either Lebanon or Manitou." + +The Mayor shook his head. "I don't see how I can authorize Marchand's +arrest--not till he breaks the law, in any case." + +"It's against the law to conspire to break the law," replied Jowett. +"You've been making a lot of special constables. Make Mr. Gabriel Druse +here a special constable, then if the law's broke, he can have a right to +take a hand in." + +The giant Ry had stood apart, watchful and ruminant, but he now stepped +forward, as the Mayor turned to him and stretched out a hand. + +"I am for peace," the old man said. "To keep the peace the law must be +strong." + +In spite of the gravity of the situation the Mayor smiled. "You wouldn't +need much disguise to stand for the law, Mr. Druse," he remarked. "When +the law is seven feet high, it stands well up." + +The Ry did not smile. "Make me the head of the constables, and I will +keep the peace," he said. There was a sudden silence. The proposal had +come so quietly, and it was so startling, that even the calm Rockwell was +taken aback. But his eye and the eye of the Mayor met, and the look in +both their faces was the same. + +"That's bold play," the Mayor said, "but I guess it goes. Yesterday it +couldn't be done. To-day it can. The Chief Constable's down with +smallpox. Got it from an Injun prisoner days ago. He's been bad for +three days, but hung on. Now he's down, and there's no Chief. I was +going to act myself, but the trouble was, if anything happened to me, +there'd be no head of anything. It's better to have two strings to your +bow. It's a go-it's a straight go, Mr. Druse. Seven foot of Chief +Constable ought to have its weight with the roughnecks." + +A look of hopefulness came into his face. This sage, huge, commanding +figure would have a good moral effect on the rude elements of disorder. + +"I'll have you read the Riot Act instead of doing it myself," added the +Mayor. "It'll be a good introduction for you, and as you live in +Manitou, it'll be a knock-out blow to the toughs. Sometimes one man is +as good as a hundred. Come on to the Courthouse with me," he continued +cheerfully. "We'll fix the whole thing. All the special constables are +waiting there with the regular police. An extra foot on a captain's +shoulders is as good as a battery of guns." + +"You're sure it's according to Hoyle?" asked Jowett quizzically. + +He was so delighted that he felt he must "make the Mayor show off self," +as he put it afterwards. He did not miscalculate; the Mayor rose to his +challenge. + +"I'm boss of this show," he said, "and I can go it alone if necessary +when the town's in danger and the law's being hustled. I've had a +meeting of the Council and I've got the sailing-orders I want. I'm boss +of the place, and Mr. Druse is my--" he stopped, because there was a look +in the eyes of the Ry which demanded consideration--"And Mr. Druse is +lawboss," he added. + +The old ineradicable look of command shone in the eyes of Gabriel Druse. +Leadership was written all over him. Power spoke in every motion. The +square, unbowed shoulders, the heavily lined face, with the patriarchal +beard, the gnarled hands, the rough-hewn limbs, the eye of bright, +brooding force proclaimed authority. + +Indeed in that moment there came into the face of the old Nomad the look +it had not worn for many a day. The self-exiled ruler had paid a heavy +price for his daughter's vow, though he had never acknowledged it to +himself. His self-ordained impotency, in a camp that was never moved, +within walls which never rose with the sunset and fell with the morning; +where his feet trod the same roadway day after day; where no man asked +for justice or sought his counsel or fell back on his protection; where +he drank from the same spring and tethered his horse in the same paddock +from morn to morn: all these things had eaten at his heart and bowed his +spirit in spite of himself. + +He was not now of the Romany world, and he was not of the Gorgio world; +but here at last was the old thing come back to him in a new way, and his +bones rejoiced. He would entitle his daughter to her place among the +Gorgios. Perhaps also it would be given him, in the name of the law, to +deal with a man he hated. + +"We've got Mister Marchand now," said Jowett softly to the old chieftain. + +The Ry's eyes lighted and his jaw set. He did not speak, but his hands +clenched, opened and clenched again. Jowett saw and grinned. + +"The Mayor and the law-boss'll win out, I guess," he said to himself. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMAD + +Even more than Dr. Rockwell, Berry, the barber, was the most troubled man +in Lebanon on the day of the Orange funeral. Berry was a good example of +an unreasoning infatuation. The accident which had come to his idol, +with the certain fall of his fortunes, hit him so hard, that, for the +first time since he became a barber, his razor nipped the flesh of more +than one who sat in his red-upholstered chair. + +In his position, Berry was likely to hear whatever gossip was going. Who +shall have perfect self-control with a giant bib under the chin, tipped +back on a chair that cannot be regulated, with a face covered by lather, +and two plantation fingers holding the nose? In these circumstances, +with much diplomacy, Berry corkscrewed his way into confidence, and when +he dipped a white cloth in bay-rum and eau-de-cologne, and laid it over +the face of the victim, with the finality of a satisfied inquisitor, it +was like giving the last smother to human individuality. An artist after +his kind, he no sooner got what he wanted than he carefully coaxed his +victim away from thoughts of the disclosures into the vague distance of +casual gossip once more. + +Gradually and slowly he shepherded his patient back to the realms of +self-respect and individual personality. The border-line was at the +point where the fingers of his customer fluttered at a collar-button; for +Berry, who realized the power that lies in making a man look ridiculous, +never allowed a customer to be shaved or have his hair cut with a collar +on. When his customers had corns, off came the boots also, and then +Berry's triumph over the white man was complete. To call attention to an +exaggerated bunion when the odorous towel lay upon the hidden features of +what once was a "human," was the last act in the drama of the Unmaking of +Man. + +Only when the client had felt in his pocket for the price of the flaying, +and laid it, with a ten-cent fee, on the ledge beneath the mirror, where +all the implements of the inquisition and the restoration were assembled, +did he feel manhood restored. If, however, he tried to keep a vow of +silence in the chair of execution, he paid a heavy price; for Berry had +his own methods of punishment. A little tighter grasp of the nose; a +little rougher scrape of the razor, and some sharp, stinging liquid +suddenly slapped with a cold palm on the excoriated spot, with the +devilish hypocrisy of healing it; a longer smothering-period under the +towel, when the corners of it were tucked behind the ears and a crease of +it in the mouth-all these soon induced vocal expression again, and Berry +started on his inquisition with gentle certainty. When at last he dusted +the face with a little fine flour of oatmeal, "to heal the cuticle and +'manoor' the roots," and smelled with content the hands which had +embalmed the hair in verbena-scented oil, a man left his presence +feeling that he was ready for the wrath to come. + +Such was Berry when he had under his razor one of Ingolby's business foes +of Manitou, who had of late been in touch with Felix Marchand. Both were +working for the same end, but with different intentions. Marchand worked +with that inherent devilishness which sometimes takes possession of low +minds; but the other worked as he would have done against his own +brother, for his own business success; and it was his view that one man +could only succeed by taking the place of another, as though the Age of +Expansion had ceased and the Age of Smother had begun. + +From this client while in a state of abject subjection, Berry, whose +heart was hard that day, but whose diplomacy was impeccable, discovered +a thing of moment. There was to be a procession of strikers from two +factories in Manitou, who would throw down their tools or leave their +machines at a certain moment. Falling into line these strikers would +march across the bridge between the towns at such time as would bring +them into touch with the line of the Orange funeral--two processions +meeting at right angles. If neither procession gave way, the Orange +funeral could be broken up, ostensibly not from religious fanaticism, +but from the "unhappy accident" of two straight lines colliding. It was +a juicy plot; and in a few minutes the Mayor and Gabriel Druse knew of +it from the faithful Berry. + +The bell of the meeting-house began to toll as the Orangeman whose death +had caused such commotion was carried to the waiting carriage where he +would ride alone. Almost simultaneously with the starting of the gaudy +yet sombre Orange cortege, with its yellow scarfs, glaring banners, +charcoal plumes and black clothes, the labour procession approached the +Manitou end of the Sagalac bridge. The strikers carried only three or +four banners, but they had a band of seven pieces, with a drum and a pair +of cymbals. With frequent discord, but with much spirit, the Bleaters, +as these musicians were called in Lebanon, inspired the steps of the +Manitou fanatics and toughs. As they came upon the bridge they were +playing a gross paraphrase of The Marseillaise. + +At the head of the Orange procession was a silver-cornet band which the +enterprise of Lebanon had made possible. Its leader was a ne'er-do-well +young Welshman, who had been dismissed from leadership after leadership +of bands in the East till at last he had drifted into Lebanon. Here, +strange to say, he had never been drunk but once; and that was the night +before he married the widow of a local publican, who had a nice little +block of stock in one of Ingolby's railways, which yielded her seven per +cent., and who knew how to handle the citizens of the City of Booze. +When she married Tom Straker, her first husband, he drank on an average +twenty whiskies a day. She got him down to one; and then he died and had +as fine a funeral as a judge. There were those who said that if Tom's +whiskies hadn't been cut down so--but there it was: Tom was in the bosom +of Abraham, and William Jones, who was never called anything else than +Willy Welsh, had been cut down from his unrecorded bibulations to none at +all; but he smoked twenty-cent cigars at the ex-widow's expense. + +To-day Willy Welsh played with heart and courage, "I'm Going Home to +Glory," at the head of the Orange procession; for who that has faced such +a widow as was his for one whole year could fear the onset of faction +fighters! Besides, as the natives of the South Seas will never eat a +Chinaman, so a Western man will never kill a musician. Senators, +magistrates, sheriffs, police, gamblers, horse-stealers, bankers, and +broncho-riders all die unnatural deaths at times, but a musician in the +West is immune from all except the hand of Fate. Not one can be spared. +Even a tough convicted of cheating at cards, or breaking a boom on a +river, has escaped punishment because he played the concertina. + +The discord and jangle between the two bands was the first collision of +this fateful day. While yet there was a space between the two +processions, the bands broke into furious contest. It was then that, +through the long funeral line, men with hard-set faces came closer up +together, and forty, detaching themselves from the well-kept run of +marching lodgemen, closed up around the horses and the hearse, making a +solid flanking force. At stated intervals also, outside the lodgemen in +the lines, were special constables, many of whom had been the stage- +drivers, hunters, cattlemen, prospectors, and pioneers of the early days. +Most of them had come of good religious stock-Presbyterians, Baptists, +Methodists, Unitarians; and though they had little piety, and had never +been able to regain the religious customs and habits of their childhood, +they "Stood for the Thing the Old Folks stand for." They were in a mood +which would tear cotton, as the saying was. There was not one of them +but expected that broken heads and bloodshed would be the order of the +day, and they were stonily, fearlessly prepared for the worst. + +Since the appearance of Gabriel Druse on the scene, the feeling had grown +that the luck would be with them. When he started at the head of the +cortege, they could scarce forbear to cheer. Such a champion in +appearance had never been seen in the West, and, the night before, +he had proved his right to the title by shaking a knot of toughs into +spots of disconcerted humanity. + +As they approached the crossroads of the bridge, his voice, clear and +sonorous, could be heard commanding the Orange band to cease playing. + +When the head of the funeral procession was opposite the bridge--the +band, the hearse, the bodyguard of the hearse--Gabriel Druse stood aside, +and took his place at the point where the lines of the two processions +would intersect. + +It was at this moment that the collision came. There were only about +sixty feet of space between the two processions, when a voice rang out in +a challenge so offensive, that the men of Manitou got their cue for +attack without creating it themselves. Every Orangeman of the Lodge of +Lebanon afterwards denied that he had raised the cry; and the chances are +that every one spoke the truth. It was like Felix Marchand to arrange +for just such an episode, and so throw the burden of responsibility on +the Orangemen. + +"To hell with the Pope! To hell with the Pope!" the voice rang out, and +it had hardly ceased before the Manitou procession made a rush forward. +The apparent leader of the Manitou roughs was a blackbearded man of +middle height, who spoke raucously to the crowd behind him. + +Suddenly a powerful voice rang out. + +"Halt, in the name of the Queen!" it called. Surprise is the very +essence of successful war. The roughs of Manitou had not looked for +this. They had foreseen the appearance of the official Chief Constable +of Lebanon; they had expected his challenge and warning in the +vernacular; but here was something which struck them with consternation +--first, the giant of Manitou in the post of command, looking like some +berserker; and then the formal reading of that stately document in the +name of the Queen. + +Far back in the minds of every French habitant present was the old +monarchical sense. He makes, at worst, a poor anarchist, though he is a +good revolutionist; and the French colonials had never been divorced from +monarchical France. + +In the eyes of the most forward of those on the Sagalac bridge, there +was a sudden wonderment and confusion. To the dramatic French mind, +ceremonial is ever welcome; and for a moment it had them in its grip, +as old Gabriel Druse read out in his ringing voice, the trenchant royal +summons. + +It was a strange and dramatic scene--the Orange funeral standing still, +garish yet solemn, with hundreds of men, rough and coarse, quiet and +refined, dissolute and careless, sober and puritanic, broad and tolerant, +sharp and fanatical; the labour procession, polyglot in appearance, but +with Gallic features and looseness of dress predominating; excitable, +brutish, generous, cruel; without intellect, but with an intelligence +which in the lowest was acute, and with temperaments responsive to drama. + +As Druse read, his eyes now and then flashed, at first he knew not why, +to the slim, bearded figure of the apparent leader. At length he caught +the feverish eye of the man, and held it for a moment. It was familiar, +but it eluded him; he could not place it. + +He heard, however, Jowett's voice say to him, scarce above a whisper: + +"It's Felix Marchand, boss!" + +Jowett also had been puzzled at first by the bearded figure, but it +suddenly flashed upon him that the beard and wig were a disguise, that +Marchand had resorted to Ingolby's device. It might prove as dangerous +a stratagem with him as it had to Ingolby. + +There was a moment's hesitation after Druse had finished reading--as +though the men of Manitou had not quite recovered from their surprise-- +then the man with the black beard said something to those nearest him. +There was a start forward, and someone cried, "Down with the Orangemen +--et bas l'Orange!" + +Like a well-disciplined battalion the Orangemen rolled up quickly into a +compact mass, showing that they had planned their defence well, and the +moment was black with danger, when, suddenly, Druse strode forward. +Flinging right and left two or three river-drivers, he caught the man +with the black beard, snatched him out from among the oncoming crowd, +and tore off the black beard and wig. Felix Marchand stood exposed. + +A cry of fury rang out from the Orangemen behind, and a dozen men rushed +forward, but Gabriel Druse acted with the instant decision of a real +commander. Seeing that it would be a mistake to arrest Marchand at that +moment, he raised the struggling figure of the wrecker above his head +and, with Herculean effort, threw him up over the heads of the Frenchmen +in front of him. + +So extraordinary was the sight that, as if fascinated, the crowd before +and behind followed the action with staring eyes and tense bodies. The +faces of all the contending forces were as concentrated for the instant, +as though the sun were falling out of the sky. It was so great a feat, +one so much in consonance with the spirit of the frontier world, that +gasps of praise broke from both crowds. As though it were a thunderbolt, +the Manitou roughs standing where Marchand was like to fall, instead of +trying to catch him, broke away from beneath the bundle of falling +humanity, and Marchand fell on the dusty cement of the bridge with a dull +thud, like a bag of bones. + +For a moment there was no motion on the part of either procession. +Banners drooped and swayed as the men holding them were lost in the +excitement. + +Time had only been gained, however. There was no reason to think that +the trouble was over, or that the special constables who had gathered +close behind Gabriel Druse would not have to strike heavy blows for the +cause of peace. + +The sudden appearance of a new figure in the narrow, open space between +the factions in that momentary paralysis was not a coincidence. It was +what Jowett had planned for, the factor for peace in which he most +believed. + +A small, spare man in a scarlet cassock, white chasuble, and black +biretta, suddenly stole out from the crowd on the Lebanon side of the +bridge, carrying the elements of the Mass. His face was shining white, +and in the eyes was an almost unearthly fire. It was the beloved +Monseigneur Lourde. + +Raising the elements before him toward his own people on the bridge, he +cried in a high, searching voice: + +"I prayed with you, I begged you to preserve the peace. Last night I +asked you in God's name to give up your disorderly purposes. I thought +then I had done my whole duty; but the voice of God has spoken to me. +An hour ago I carried the elements to a dying woman here in Lebanon, and +gave her peace. As I did so the funeral bell rang out, and it came to +me, as though the One above had spoken, that peace would be slain and His +name insulted by all of you--by all of you, Catholic and Protestant. +God's voice bade me come to you from the bed of one who has gone hence +from peace to Peace. In the name of Christ, peace, I say! Peace, in the +name of Christ!" + +He raised the sacred vessel high above his head, so that his eyes looked +through the walls of his uplifted arms. "Kneel!" he called in a clear, +ringing voice which yet quavered with age. + +There was an instant's hush, and then great numbers of the crowd in front +of him, toughs and wreckers, blasphemers, turbulent ones and evil-livers, +yet Catholics all, with the ancient root of the Great Thing in them, sank +down; and the banners of the labour societies drooped before the symbol +of peace won by sacrifice. + +Even the Orangemen bared their heads in the presence of that Popery which +was anathema to them, which they existed to combat, and had been taught +to hate. Some, no doubt, would rather have fought than have had peace at +the price; but they could not free their minds from the sacred force +which had brought most of the crowd of faction-fighters to their knees. + +With a wave of the hand, Gabriel Druse ordered the cortege forward, and +silently the procession with its yellow banners and its sable, drooping +plumes moved on. + +Once on its way again, Willy Welsh and his silver-cornet band struck up +the hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light." It was the one real coincidence of the +day that this moving hymn was written by a cardinal of the Catholic +Church. It was also an irony that, as the crowd of sullen Frenchmen +turned back to Manitou, the train bearing the Mounted Police, for whom +the Mayor had sent to the capital, steamed noisily in, and redcoats +showed at its windows and on the steps of the cars. + +The only casualty that the day saw was the broken arm and badly bruised +body of Felix Marchand, who was gloomily helped back to his home across +the Sagalac. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE BEACONS + +There were few lights showing in Lebanon or Manitou; but here and +there along the Sagalac was the fading glimmer of a camp-fire, and in +Tekewani's reservation one light glowed softly like a star. It came +from a finely-made and chased safety-lantern given to Tekewani by the +Government, as a symbol of honour for having kept the braves quiet when +an Indian and half-breed rising was threatened; and to the powerless +chief it had become a token of his authority, the sign of the Great White +Mother's approval. By day a spray of eagle's feathers waved over his +tepee, but the gleam of the brass lantern every night was like a sentry +at the doorway of a monarch. + +It was a solace to his wounded spirit; it allayed the smart of +subjection; made him feel himself a ruler in retirement, even as Gabriel +Druse was a self-ordained exile. + +These two men, representing the primitive nomad life, had been drawn +together in friendship. So much so, that to Tekewani alone of all the +West, Druse gave his confidence and told his story. It came in the +springtime, when the blood of the young bucks was simmering and, the +ancient spell was working. There had preceded them generations of +hunters who had slain their thousands and their tens of thousands of wild +animals and the fowls of the air; had killed their enemies in battle; had +seized the comely women of their foes and made them their own. No thrill +of the hunter's trail now drew off the overflow of desire. In the days +of rising sap, there were only the young maidens or wives of their own +tribe to pursue, and it lacked in glory. Also in the springtime, +Tekewani himself had his own trials, for in his blood the old medicine +stirred. His face turned towards the prairie North and the mountain West +where yet remained the hunter's quarry; and he longed to be away with +rifle and gun, with his squaw and the papooses trailing after like camp- +followers, to eat the fruits of victory. But that could not be; he must +remain in the place the Great White Mother had reserved for him; he and +his braves must assemble, and draw their rations at the appointed times +and seasons, and grunt thanks to those who ruled over them. + +It was on one of these virginal days, when there was a restless stirring +among the young bucks, who smelled the wide waters, the pines and the +wild shrubs; who heard the cry of the loon on the lonely lake and the +whir of the wild duck's wings, who answered to the phantom cry of ancient +war; it was on such a day that the two chiefs opened their hearts to each +other. + +Near to the boscage on a little hill overlooking the great river, Gabriel +Druse had come upon Tekewani seated in the pine-dust, rocking to and fro, +and chanting a low, sorrowful refrain, with eyes fixed on the setting +sun. And the Ry of Rys understood, with the understanding which only +those have who live close to the earth, and also near to the heavens of +their own gods. He sat down beside the forlorn chief, and in the silence +their souls spoke to each other. There swept into the veins of the +Romany ruler something of the immitigable sadness of the Indian chief; +and, with a sudden premonition that he also was come to the sunset of his +life, his big nomad eyes sought the westering rim of the heavens, and his +breast heaved. + +In that hour the two men declared themselves to each other, and Gabriel +Druse told Tekewani all that he had hidden from the people of the +Sagalac, and was answered in kind. It seemed to them that they were as +brothers who were one and who had parted in ages long gone; and having +met were to part and disappear once more, beginning still another trail +in an endless reincarnation. + +"Brother," said Tekewani, "it was while there was a bridge of land +between the continents at the North that we met. Again I see it. I +forgot it, but again I see. There was war, and you went upon one path +and I upon another, and we met no more under all the moons till now." + +"'Dordi', so it was and at such a time," answered the Ry of Rys. "And +once more we will follow after the fire-flies which give no light to the +safe places but only lead farther into the night." + +Tekewani rocked to and fro again, muttering to himself, but presently he +said: + +"We eat from the hands of those who have driven away the buffalo, the +deer, and the beaver; and the young bucks do naught to earn the joy of +women. They are but as lusting sheep, not as the wild-goat that chases +its mate over the places of death, till it comes upon her at last, and +calls in triumph over her as she kneels at his feet. So it is. Like +tame beasts we eat from the hand of the white man, and the white man +leaves his own camp where his own women are, and prowls in our camps, +so that not even our own women are left to us." + +It was then that Gabriel Druse learned of the hatred of Tekewani for +Felix Marchand, because of what he had done in the reservation, prowling +at night like a fox or a coyote in the folds. + +They parted that hour, believing that the epoch of life in which they +were and the fortunes of time which had been or were to come, were but +turns of a wheel that still went on turning; and that whatever chanced +of good or bad fortune in the one span of being, might be repaired in +the next span, or the next, or the next; so, through their creed of +reincarnation, taking courage to face the failure of the life they now +lived. Not by logic or the teaching of any school had they reached this +revelation, but through an inner sense. They were not hopeful and +wondering and timid; they were only sure. Their philosophy, their +religion, whether heathen or human, was inborn. They had comfort in it +and in each other. + +After that day Gabriel Druse always set a light in his window which +burned all night, answering to the lantern-light at the door of +Tekewani's home--the lights of exile and of an alliance which had +behind it the secret influences of past ages and vanished peoples. + +There came a night, however, when the light at the door of Tekewani's +tepee did not burn. At sunset it was lighted, but long before midnight +it was extinguished. Looking out from the doorway of his home (it was +the night after the Orange funeral), Gabriel Druse, returned from his new +duties at Lebanon, saw no light in the Indian reservation. With anxiety, +he set forth in the shine of the moon to visit it. + +Arrived at the chief's tepee, he saw that the lantern of honour was gone, +and waking Tekewani, he brought him out to see. When the old Indian knew +his loss, he gave a harsh cry and stooped, and, gathering a handful of +dust from the ground, sprinkled it on his head. Then with arms +outstretched he cursed the thief who had robbed him of what had been +to him like a never-fading mirage, an illusion blinding his eyes to the +bitter facts of his condition. + +To his mind all the troubles come to Lebanon and Manitou had had one +source; and now the malign spirit had stretched its hand to spoil those +already dispossessed of all but the right to live. One name was upon the +lips of both men, as they stood in the moonlight by Tekewani's tepee. + +"There shall be an end of this," growled the Romany. + +"I will have my own," said Tekewani, with malediction on the thief who +had so shamed him. + +Black anger was in the heart of Gabriel Druse as he turned again towards +his own home, and he was glad of what he had done to Felix Marchand at +the Orange funeral. + + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +THE KEEPER OF THE BRIDGE + + "Like the darkness of the grave, which is darkness itself--" + +Most of those who break out of the zareba of life, who lay violent hands +upon themselves, do so with a complete reasoning, which in itself is +proof of their insanity. It may be domestic tragedy, or ill-health, +or crime, or broken faith, or shame, or insomnia, or betrayed trust-- +whatever it is, many a one who suffers from such things, tries to end it +all with that deliberation, that strategy, and that cunning which belong +only to the abnormal. + +A mind which has known a score or more of sleepless nights acquires an +invincible clearness of its own, seeing an end which is without +peradventure. It finds a hundred perfect reasons for not going on, every +one of which is in itself sufficient; every one of which knits into the +other ninety and nine with inevitable affinity. + +To the mind of Ingolby came a hundred such reasons for breaking out of +life's enclosure, as the effect of the opiate Rockwell had given him wore +off, and he regained consciousness. As he did so, someone in the room +was telling of that intervention of Gabriel Druse and the Monseigneur at +the Orange funeral, which had saved the situation. At first he listened +to what was said--it was the nurse talking to Jim Beadle with no sharp +perception of the significance of the story; though it slowly pierced the +lethargy of his senses, and he turned over in the bed to face the +watchers. + +"What time is it, Jim?" he asked heavily. They told him it was sunset. + +"Is it quiet in both towns?" he asked after a pause. They told him that +it was. + +"Any telegrams for me?" he asked. + +There was an instant's hesitation. They had had no instructions on this +point, and they hardly knew what to say; but Jim's mind had its own +logic, and the truth seemed best to him now. He answered that there were +several wires, but that they "didn't amount to nothin'." + +"Have they been opened?" Ingolby asked with a frown, half-raising +himself. It was hard to resign the old masterfulness and self-will. + +"I'd like to see anybody open 'em 'thout my pe'mision," answered Jim +imperiously. "When you's asleep, Chief, I'm awake; and I take care of +you' things, same as ever I done. There ain't no wires been opened, and +there ain't goin' to be whiles I'm runnin' the show for you." + +"Open and read them to me," commanded Ingolby. Again Ingolby was +conscious of hesitation on Jim's part. Already the acuteness of the +blind was possessing him, sharpening the senses left unimpaired. +Although Jim moved, presumably, towards the place where the telegrams +lay, Ingolby realized that his own authority was being crossed by that +of the doctor and the nurse. + +"You will leave the room for a moment, nurse," he said with a brassy +vibration in the voice--a sign of nervous strain. With a smothered +protest the nurse left, and Jim stood beside the bed with the telegrams. + +"Read them to me, Jim," Ingolby repeated irritably. "Be quick." + +They were not wires which Ingolby should have heard at the time, when his +wound was still inflamed, when he was still on the outer circle of that +artificial sleep which the opiates had secured. They were from Montreal +and New York, and, resolved from their half-hidden suggestion into bare +elements, they meant that henceforth others would do the work he had +done. They meant, in effect, that save for the few scores of thousand +dollars he had made, he was now where he was when he came West. + +When Jim had finished reading them, Ingolby sank back on the pillows and +said quietly: + +"All right, Jim. Put them in the drawer of the table and I'll answer +them to-morrow. I want to get a little more sleep, so give me a drink, +and then leave me alone--both nurse and you--till I ring the bell. +There's a bell on the table, isn't there?" + +He stretched out a hand towards the table beside the bed, and Jim softly +pushed the bell under his fingers. + +"That's right," he added. "Now, I'm not to be disturbed unless the +doctor comes. I'm all right, and I want to be alone and quiet. No one +at all in the room is what I want. You understand, Jim?" + +"My head's just as good to get at what you want as ever it was, and you +goin' have what you want, I guess, while I'm on deck," was Jim's reply. + +Jim put a glass of water into his hand. He drank very slowly, was indeed +only mechanically conscious that he was drinking, for his mind was far +away. + +After he had put the glass down, Jim still stood beside the bed, looking +at him. + +"Why don't you go, as I tell you, Jim?" Ingolby asked wearily. + +"I'm goin'"--Jim tucked the bedclothes in carefully--"I'm goin', but, +boss, I jes' want to say dat dis thing goin' to come out all right bime- +by. There ain't no doubt 'bout dat. You goin' see everything, come jes' +like what you want--suh!" + +Ingolby did not reply. He held out his hand, and black fingers shot over +and took it. A moment later the blind man was alone in the room. + +The light of day vanished, and the stars came out. There was no moon, +but it was one of those nights of the West when millions of stars glimmer +in the blue vault above, and every planet and every star and cluster of +stars are so near that it might almost seem they could be caught by an +expert human hand. The air was very still, and a mantle of peace was +spread over the tender scene. The window and the glass doors that gave +from Ingolby's room upon the veranda on the south side of the house, were +open, and the air was warm as in Midsummer. Now and then the note of a +night-bird broke the stillness, but nothing more. + +It was such a night as Ingolby loved; it was such a night as often found +him out in the restful gloom of the trees, thinking and brooding, +planning, revelling in memories of books he had read, and in dreaming of +books he might write-if there were time. Such a night insulated the dark +moods which possessed him occasionally almost as effectively as fishing +did; and that was saying much. + +But the darkest mood of all his days was upon him now. When Rockwell +came, soon after Jim and the nurse left him, he simulated sleep, for he +had no mind to talk; and the doctor, deceived by his even breathing, had +left, contented. At last he was wholly alone with his own thoughts, as +he desired. From the moment Jim had read him the wires, which were the +real revelation of the situation to which he had come, he had been +travelling hard on the road leading to a cul-de-sac, from which there +was no egress save by breaking through the wall. Never, it might have +seemed, had his mind been clearer, but it was a clearness belonging to +the abnormal. It was a straight line of thought which, in its intensity, +gathered all other thoughts into its wake, reduced them to the control of +an obsession. It was borne in on his mind that his day was done, that +nothing could right the disorder which had strewn his path with broken +hopes and shattered ambitions. No life-work left, no schemes to +accomplish, no construction to achieve, no wealth to gain, no public +good to be won, no home to be his, no woman, his very own, to be his +counsellor and guide in the natural way! + +As myriad thoughts drove through his brain on this Indian-summer night, +they all merged into the one obsession that he could no longer stay. The +irresistible logic of the brain stretched to an abnormal tenuity, and an +intolerable brightness was with him. He was in the throes of that +intense visualization which comes with insomnia, when one is awake yet +apart from the waking world, where nothing is really real and nothing +normal. He had a call to go hence, and he must go. Minute after minute +passed, hours passed, and the fight of the soul to maintain itself +against the disordered mind went on. All his past seemed but part +of a desert, lonely and barren and strange. + +In the previous year he had made a journey to Arizona with Jowett, to see +some railway construction there, and at a ranch he had visited he came +upon some verses which had haunted his mind ever since. They fastened +upon his senses now. They were like a lonesome monotone which at length +gave calm to his torturing reflections. In his darkness the verses kept +repeating themselves: + + "I heard the desert calling, and my heart stood still + There was Winter in my world and in my heart: + A breath came from the mesa and a message stirred my will, + And my soul and I arose up to depart. + + I heard the desert calling; and I knew that over there, + In an olive-sheltered garden where the mesquite grows, + Was a woman of the sunrise, with the starshine in her hair, + And a beauty that the almond-blossom blows. + + In the night-time when the ghost-trees glimmered in the moon, + Where the mesa by the watercourse was spanned, + Her loveliness enwrapped me like the blessedness of June, + And all my life was thrilling in her hand. + + I hear the desert calling, and my heart stands still; + There is Summer in my world and in my heart; + A breath comes from the mesa, and a will beyond my will + Binds my footsteps as I rise up to depart." + +This strange, half-mystic song of the mesa and the olive-groves, of the +ghost-trees and the moon, kept playing upon his own heated senses like +the spray from a cooling stream, and at last it quieted him. The dark +spirit of self-destruction loosened its hold. + +His brain had been strained beyond the normal, almost unconsciously his +fingers had fastened on the pistol in the drawer of the table by his bed. +It had been there since the day when he had travelled down from Alaska-- +loaded as it had been when he had carried it down the southern trail. +But as his fingers tightened on the little engine of death, from the +words which had been ringing in his brain came the flash of a revelation: + + ". . . And a will beyond my will + Binds my footsteps as I rise up to depart." + +A will beyond his will! It was as though Fleda's fingers were laid upon +his own; as though she whispered in his ear and her breath swept his +cheek; as though she was there in the room beside him, making the +darkness light, tempering the wind of chastisement to his naked soul. +In the overstrain of his nervous system the illusion was powerful. He +thought he heard her voice. The pistol slipped from his fingers, and he +fell back on the pillow with a sigh. The will beyond his will bound his +footsteps. + +Who can tell? The grim, malign experience of Fleda in her bedroom with +the Thing she thought was from beyond the bounds of her own life; the +voice that spoke to Ingolby, and the breath that swept over his cheek +were, perhaps, as real in a sense as would have been the corporeal +presence of Jethro Fawe in one case and of Fleda Druse in the other. +It may be that in very truth Fleda Druse's spirit with its poignant +solicitude controlled his will as he "rose up to depart." But if it was +only an illusion, it was not less a miracle. Some power of suggestion +bound his fleeing footsteps, drew him back from the Brink. + +He slept. Once the nurse came and looked at him and returned to the +other room; and twice Jim stole in silently for a moment and retired +again to his own chamber. The stars shone in at the doors that opened +out from the quiet room into the night, the watch beside the bed ticked +on, the fox-terrier which always slept on a mat at the foot of the bed +sighed in content, while his master breathed heavily in a sleep full of +dreams that hurried past like phantasmagoria--of a hundred things that +had been in his life, and that had never been; of people he had known, +distorted, ridiculous and tremendous. There were dreams of fiddlers and +barbers, of crowds writhing in passion in a room where there was a +billiard-table and a lucky horseshoe on the wall. There were dreams that +tossed and mingled in one whirlpool vision; and then at last came a dream +which was so cruel and clear that it froze his senses. + +It was the dream of a great bridge over a swiftflowing river; of his own +bridge over the Sagalacof that bridge being destroyed by men who crept +through the night with dynamite in their hands. + +With a hoarse, smothered cry he awoke. His eyes opened wide. His heart +was beating like a hammer against his side. Only the terrier at his feet +heard the muttered agony. With an instinct all its own, it slipped to +the floor. + +It watched its master get out of bed, cross the room and feel for a coat +along the wall--an overcoat which he used as a dressing-gown at times. +Putting it on hastily, with outstretched hands Ingolby felt his way to +the glass doors opening on the veranda. The dog, as though to let him +know he was there, rubbed against his legs. Ingolby murmured a soft, +unintelligible word, and, in his bare feet, passed out on to the veranda, +and from there to the garden and towards the gate at the front of the +house. + +The nurse heard the gate click lightly, but she was only half-awake, and +as all was quiet in the next room, she composed herself in her chair +again with the vain idea that she was not sleeping. And Jim the faithful +one, as though under a narcotic of fate, was snoring softly beside the +vacant room. The streets were still. No lights burned anywhere so far +as eye could see. But now and then, in the stillness through which the +river flowed on, murmuring and rhythmic, there rose the distant sounds of +disorderly voices. Ingolby was in a state which was neither sleep nor +waking, which was in part delirium, in part oblivion to all things in the +world save one--an obsession so complete, that he moved automatically +through the street in which he lived towards that which led to the +bridge. + +His terrier, as though realizing exactly what he wished, seemed to guide +him by rubbing against his legs, and even pressing hard against them when +he was in any danger of losing the middle of the road, or swerving +towards a ditch or some obstruction. Only once did they pass any human +being, and that was when they came upon a camp of road-builders, where a +red light burned, and two men slept in the open by a dying fire. One of +them raised his head when Ingolby passed, but being more than half- +asleep, and seeing only a man and a dog, thought nothing of it, and +dropped back again upon his rough pillow. He was a stranger to Lebanon, +and there was little chance of his recognizing Ingolby in the semi- +darkness. + +As they neared the river, Ingolby became deeply agitated. He moved with +his hands outstretched. Had it not been for his dog he would probably +have walked into the Sagalac; for though he seemed to have an instinct +that was extra-natural, he swayed and staggered in the delirium driving +him on. There was one dreadful moment when, having swerved from the road +leading on to the bridge, he was within a foot of the river-bank. One +step farther, and he would have plunged down thirty feet into the stream, +to be swept to the Rapids below. + +But for the first time the terrier made a sound. He gave a whining bark +almost human in its meaning, and threw himself at the legs of his master, +pushing him backwards and over towards the road leading upon the bridge, +as a collie guides sheep. Presently Ingolby felt the floor of the bridge +under his feet; and now he hastened on, with outstretched arms and head +bent forward, listening intently, the dog trotting beside, with what +knowledge working in him Heaven alone knew. + +The roar of the Rapids below was a sonorous accompaniment to Ingolby's +wild thoughts. One thing only he felt, one thing only heard--the men in +Barbazon's Tavern saying that the bridge should be blown up on the +Saturday night; and this was Saturday night--the night of the day +following that of the Orange funeral. He had heard the criminal hireling +of Felix Marchand say that it should be done at midnight, and that the +explosive should be laid under that part of the bridge which joined the +Manitou bank of the Sagalac. As though in very truth he saw with his +eyes, he stopped short not far from the point where the bridge joined the +land, and stood still, listening. + +For several minutes he was motionless, intent, as an animal waiting for +its foe. At last his newly-sensitive ears heard footsteps approaching +and low voices. The footsteps came nearer, the voices, though so low, +became more distinct. They were now not fifty feet away, but to the +delirious Ingolby they were as near as death had been when his fingers +closed on the pistol in his room. + +He took a step forward, and with passionate voice and arms outstretched, +he cried: + + "You shall not do it-by God, you shall not touch my bridge! + I built it. You shall not touch it. Back, you devils-back!" + + +The terrier barked loudly. + +The two men in the semi-darkness in front of him cowered at the sight of +this weird figure holding the bridge they had come to destroy. His +words, uttered in so strange and unnatural a voice, shook their nerves. +They shrank away from the ghostly form with the outstretched arms. + +In the minute's pause following on his words, a giant figure suddenly +appeared behind the dynamiters. It was the temporary Chief Constable of +Lebanon, returning from his visit to Tekewani. He had heard Ingolby's +wild words, and he realized the situation. + +"Ingolby--steady there, Ingolby !" he called. "Steady! Steady! +Gabriel Druse is here. It's all right." + +At the first sound of Druse's voice the two wreckers turned and ran. + +As they did so, Ingolby's hands fell to his side, and he staggered +forward. + +"Druse--Fleda," he murmured, then swayed, trembled and fell. + +With words that stuck in his throat Gabriel Druse stooped and lifted him +up in his arms. At first he turned towards the bridge, as though to +cross over to Lebanon, but the last word Ingolby had uttered rang +in his ears, and he carried him away into the trees towards his own +house, the faithful terrier following. "Druse--Fleda !" They were the +words of one who had suddenly emerged from the obsession of delirium into +sanity, and then had fallen into as sudden unconsciousness. + +"Fleda! Fleda!" called Gabriel Druse outside the door of his house a +quarter of an hour later, and her voice in reply was that of one who knew +that the feet of Fate were at her threshold. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +They think that if a vote's worth having it's worth paying for +You never can really overtake a newspaper lie + + + + + + +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. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +Agony in thinking about the things we're never going to do +I don't believe in walking just for the sake of walking +It's no good simply going--you've got to go somewhere +Most honest thing I ever heard, but it's not the most truthful +Women may leave you in the bright days + + + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "WORLD FOR SALE": + +Agony in thinking about the things we're never going to do +I don't believe in walking just for the sake of walking +It's no good simply going--you've got to go somewhere +Most honest thing I ever heard, but it's not the most truthful +Saw how futile was much competition +They think that if a vote's worth having it's worth paying for +When you strike your camp, put out the fires +Women may leave you in the bright days +You never can really overtake a newspaper lie + + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD FOR SALE, ENTIRE *** + +******* This file should be named gp11110.txt or gp11110.zip ******** + +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, gp11111.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, gp11110a.txt + +This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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