The World For Sale, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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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'."