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The World For Sale, a novel by Gilbert Parker |
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Book 2 - Chapter 13. The Chain Of The Past |
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_ BOOK II 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. _ |
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