The World For Sale, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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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.