The World For Sale, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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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.