The World For Sale, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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He paused with a sly, mean smile of self-approval and conceit, and his
tongue licked the corners of his mouth in a way that drunkards have in
the early morning when the effect of last night's drinking has worn off.
He spread out his hands with the air of a man who had unpacked his soul,
but the chief characteristic of his manner was egregious belief in
himself.
At first, in her desire to find a way to meet the needs of Ingolby, Fleda
had listened to him with fortitude and even without revolt. But as he
began to speak of women, and to refer to herself with a look of gloating
which men of his breed cannot hide, her angry pulses beat hard. She did
not quite know where he was leading, but she was sure he meant to say
something which would vex her beyond bearing. At one moment she meant to
cut short his narrative, but he prevented her, and when at last he ended,
she was almost choking with agitation. It had been borne in upon her as
his monologue proceeded, that she would rather die than accept anything
from this man--anything of any kind. To fight him was the only thing.
Nothing else could prevail in the end. His was the service of the
unpenitent thief.
"And what is it you want to buy from me?" she asked evenly.
He did not notice, and he could not realize that ominous thing in her
voice and face. "I want to be friends with you. I want to see you here in
the woods, to meet you as you met Ingolby. I want to talk with you, to
hear you talk; to learn things from you I never learned before; to--"
She interrupted him with a swift gesture. "And then--after that? What do
you want at the end of it all? One cannot spend one's time talking and
wandering in the woods and teaching and learning. After that, what?"
"I have a house in Montreal," he said evasively. "I don't want to live
there alone." He laughed. "It's big enough for two, and at the end it
might be us two, if--"
With sharp anger, yet with coolness and dignity, she broke in on his
words. "Might be us two!" she exclaimed. "I have never thought of making
my home in a sewer. Do you think--but, no, it isn't any use talking! You
don't know how to deal with man or woman. You are perverted."
"I did not mean what you mean; I meant that I should want to marry you,"
he protested. "You think the worst of me. Someone has poisoned your mind
against me."
"Everyone has poisoned my mind against you," she returned, "and yourself
most of all. I know you will try to injure Mr. Ingolby; and I know that
you will try to injure me; but you will not succeed."
She turned and moved away from him quickly, taking the path towards her
own front door. He called something after her, but she did not or would
not hear.
As she entered the open space in front of the house, she heard footsteps
behind her and turned quickly, not without apprehension. A woman came
hurrying towards her. She was pale, agitated, haggard with fatigue.
"May I speak with you?" she asked in French. "Surely," replied Fleda.
CHAPTER XV
THE WOMAN FROM WIND RIVER
"What is it?" asked Fleda, opening the door of the house.
"I want to speak to you about m'sieu'," replied the sad-faced woman. She
made a motion of her head backwards towards the wood. "About M'sieu'
Marchand."
Fleda's face hardened; she had had more than enough of "M'sieu'
Marchand." She was bitterly ashamed that she had, even for a moment,
thought of using diplomacy with him. But this woman's face was so
forlorn, apart, and lonely, that the old spirit of the Open Road worked
its will. In far-off days she had never seen a human being turned away
from a Romany tent, or driven from a Romany camp. She opened the door and
stood aside to admit the wayfarer.
A few moments later, the woman, tidied and freshened, sat at the ample
breakfast which was characteristic of Romany home-life. The woman's plate
was bountifully supplied by Fleda, and her cup filled more than once by
Madame Bulteel, while old Gabriel Druse bulked friendly over all. His
face now showed none of the passion and sternness which had been present
when he passed the Sentence of the Patrin upon Jethro Fawe; nothing of
the gloom filling his eyes as he left Ingolby's house. The gracious,
bountiful look of the patriarch, of the head of the clan, was upon him.
The husband of one wife, the father of one child, yet the Ry of Rys had
still the overlooking, protective sense of one who had the care of great
numbers of people. His keen eyes foresaw more of the story the woman was
to tell presently than either of the women of his household. He had seen
many such women as this, and had inflexibly judged between them and those
who had wronged them.
"Where have you come from?" he asked, as the meal drew to a close.
"From Wind River and under Elk Mountain," the woman answered with a look
of relief. Her face was of those who no longer can bear the soul's
secrets.
There was silence while the breakfast things were cleared away, and the
window was thrown wide to the full morning sun. It broke through the
branches of pine and cedar and juniper; it made translucent the leaves of
the maples; it shimmered on Fleda's brown hair as she pulled a rose from
the bush at the window, and gave it to the forlorn creature in the grey
"linsey-woolsey" dress and the loose blue flannel jacket, whose skin was
coarsened by outdoor life, but who had something of real beauty in the
intense blue of her eyes. She had been a very comely figure in her best
days, for her waist was small, her bosom gently and firmly rounded, and
her hands were finer than those of most who live and work much in the
open air.
"You said there was something you wished to tell me," said Fleda, at
last.
The woman gazed slowly round at the three, as though with puzzled appeal.
There was the look of the Outlander in her face; of one who had been
exiled from familiar things and places. In manner she was like a child.
Her glance wandered over the faces of the two women, then her eyes met
those of the Ry, and stayed there.
"I am old and I have seen many sorrows," said Gabriel Druse, divining
what was in her mind. "I will try to understand."
"I have known all the bitterness of life," interposed the low, soft voice
of Madame Bulteel.
"All ears are the same here," Fleda added, looking the woman in the eyes.
"I will tell everything," was the instant reply. Her fingers twined and
untwined in her lap with a nervousness shown by neither face nor body.
Her face was almost apathetic in its despair, but her body had an upright
courage.
She sighed heavily and began.
"My name is Arabella Stone. I was married from my home over against Wind
River by the Jumping Sandhills.
"My father was a lumberman. He was always captain of the gang in the
woods, and captain of the river in the summer. My mother was deaf and
dumb. It was very lonely at times when my father was away. I loved a
boy--a good boy, and he was killed breaking horses. When I was twenty-one
years old my mother died. It was not good for me to be alone, my father
said, so he must either give up the woods and the river, or he or I must
marry. Well, I saw he would not marry, for my mother's face was one a man
could not forget."
The old man stirred in his seat. "I have seen such," he said in his deep
voice.
"So it was I said to myself I would marry," she continued, "though I had
loved the Boy that died under the hoofs of the black stallion. There
weren't many girls at the Jumping Sandhills, and so there were men, now
one, now another, to say things to me which did not touch my heart; but I
did not laugh, because I understood that they were lonely. Yet I liked
one of them more than all the others.
"So, for my father's sake, I came nearer to Dennis, and at last it seemed
I could bear to look at him any time of the day or night he came to me.
He was built like a pine-tree, and had a playful tongue, and also he was
a ranchman like the Boy that was gone. It all came about on the day he
rode in from the range the wild wicked black stallion which all
range-riders had tried for years to capture. It was like a brother of the
horse which had killed my Boy, only bigger. When Dennis mastered him and
rode him to my door I made up my mind, and when he whispered to me over
the dipper of buttermilk I gave him, I said, 'Yes.' I was proud of him.
He did things that a woman likes, and said the things a woman loves to
hear, though they be the same thing said over and over again."
Madame Bulteel nodded her head as though in a dream, and the Ry of Rys
sat with his two great hands on the chair-arm and his chin dropped on his
chest. Fleda's hands were clasped in her lap, and her big eyes never left
the woman's face.
"Before a month was gone I had married him," the low, tired voice went
on. "It was a gay wedding; and my father was very happy, for he thought I
had got the desire of a woman's life--a home of her own. For a time all
went well. Dennis was gay and careless and wilful, but he was easy to
live with, too, except when he came back from the town where he sold his
horses. Then he was different, because of the drink, and he was
quarrelsome with me--and cruel, too.
"At last when he came home with the drink upon him, he would sleep on the
floor and not beside me. This wore upon my heart. I thought that if I
could only put my hand on his shoulder and whisper in his ear, he would
get better of his bad feeling; but he was sulky, and he would not bear
with me. Though I never loved him as I loved my Boy, still I tried to be
a good wife to him, and never turned my eyes to any other man."
Suddenly she stopped as though the pain of speaking was too great. Madame
Bulteel murmured something, but the only word that reached the ears of
the others was the Arabic word 'mafish'. Her pale face was suffused as
she said it.
Two or three times the woman essayed to speak again, but could not. At
last, however, she overcame her emotion and said: "So it was when M'sieu'
Felix Marchand came up from the Sagalac."
The old man started and muttered harshly, but Fleda had foreseen the
entrance of the dissolute Frenchman into the tale, and gave no sign of
surprise.
"M'sieu' Marchand bought horses," the sad voice trailed on. "One day he
bought the mining-claims Dennis had been holding till he could develop
them or sell them for good money. When Dennis went to town again he
brought me back a present of a belt with silver clasps; but yet again
that night he slept upon the floor alone. So it went on. M. Marchand, he
goes on to the mountains and comes back; and he buys more horses, and
Dennis takes them to Yargo, and M. Marchand goes with him, but comes back
before Dennis does. It was then M'sieu' begun to talk to me; to say
things that soothe a woman when she is hurt. I knew now Dennis did not
want me as when he first married me. He was that kind of man--quick to
care and quicker to forget. He was weak, he could not fasten where he
stood. It pleased him to be gay and friendly with me when he was sober,
but there was nothing behind it--nothing, nothing at all. At last I began
to cry when I thought of it, for it went on and on, and I was too much
alone. I looked at myself in the glass, and I saw I was not old or lean.
I sang in the trees beside the brook, and my voice was even a little
better than in the days when Dennis first came to my father's house. I
looked to my cooking, and I knew that it was as good as ever. I thought
of my clothes, and how I did my hair, and asked myself if I was as fresh
to see as when Dennis first came to me. I could see no difference. There
was a clear pool not far away under the little hills where the springs
came together. I used to bathe in it every morning and dry myself in the
sun; and my body was like a child's. That being so, should my own man
turn his head away from me day or night? What had I done to be used so,
less than two years after I had married!"
She paused and hung her head, weeping gently. "Shame stings a woman like
nothing else," Madame Bulteel said with a sigh.
"It was so with me," continued Dennis's wife. "Then at last the thought
came that there was another woman. And all the time M. Marchand kept
coming and going, at first when Dennis was there, and always with some
good reason for coming--horses, cattle, shooting, or furs bought of the
Indians. When Dennis was not there, he came at first for an hour or two,
as if by chance, then for a whole day, because he said he knew I was
lonely. One day, I was sitting by the pool--it was in the evening. I was
crying because of the thought that followed me of another woman
somewhere, who made Dennis turn from me. Then it was M'sieu' came and put
a hand on my shoulder--he came so quietly that I did not hear him till he
touched me. He said he knew why I cried, and it saddened his soul."
"His soul--the jackal!" growled the old man in his beard.
The woman nodded wearily and went on. "For all of ten days I had been
alone, except for the cattlemen camping a mile away and an old Indian
helper who slept in his tepee within call. Loneliness makes you weak when
there's something tearing at the heart. So I let M'sieu' Marchand talk to
me. At last he told me that there was a woman at Yargo--that Dennis did
not go there for business, but to her. Everyone knew it except me, he
said. He told me to ask old Throw Hard, the Indian helper, if he had
spoken the truth. I was shamed, and angry and crazy, too, I think, so I
went to old Throw Hard and asked him. He said he could not tell the
truth, and that he would not lie to me. So I knew it was all true.
"How do I know what was in my mind? Is a woman not mad at such a time!
There I was, tossed aside for a flyaway, who was for any man that would
come her way. Yes, I think I was mad. The pride in me was hurt--as only a
woman can understand." She paused and looked at the two women who
listened to her. Fleda's eyes were on the world beyond the window of the
room.
"Surely we understand," whispered Madame Bulteel.
The woman's courage returned, and she continued: "I could not go to my
father, for he was riding the river scores of miles away. I was terribly
alone. It was then that M'sieu' Marchand, who had bribed the woman to
draw Dennis away, begged me to go away with him. He swore I should marry
him as soon as I could be free of Dennis. I scarcely knew what I said or
thought; but the place I had loved was hateful to me, so I went away with
him."
A sharp, pained exclamation broke from the lips of Madame Bulteel, but
presently she reached out and laid a hand upon the woman's arm. "Of
course you went with him," she said. "You could not stay where you were
and face the return of Dennis. There was no child to keep you, and the
man that tempted you said he adored you?"
The woman looked gratefully at her. "That was what he said," she
answered. "He said he was tired of wandering, and that he wanted a
home-and there was a big house in Montreal."
She stopped suddenly upon an angry, smothered word from Fleda's lips. A
big house in Montreal! Fleda's first impulse was to break in upon the
woman's story and tell her father what had happened just now outside
their own house; but she waited.
"Yes, there was a big house in Montreal?" said Fleda, her eyes now
resting sadly upon the woman.
"He said it should be mine. But that did not count. To be far away from
all that had been was more than all else. I was not thinking of the man,
or caring for him, I was flying from my shame. I did not see then the
shame to which I was going. I was a fool, and I was mad and bad also.
When I waked--and it was soon--there was quick understanding between us.
The big house in Montreal--that was never meant for me. He was already
married."
The old man stretched heavily to his feet, leaned both hands on the
table, and looked at the woman with glowering eyes, while Fleda's heart
seemed to stop beating.
"Married!" growled Gabriel Druse, with a blur of passion in his voice. He
knew that Felix Marchand had followed his daughter as though he were a
single man.
Fleda saw what was working in his mind. Since her father suspected, he
should know all.
"He almost offered me the big house in Montreal this morning," she said
evenly and coldly.
A malediction broke from the old man's lips.
"He almost thought he wanted me to marry him," Fleda added scornfully.
"And what did you say?" Druse asked.
"There could only be one thing to say. I told him I had never thought of
making my home in a sewer." A grim smile broke over the old man's face,
and he sat down again.
"Because I saw him with you I wanted to warn you," the woman continued.
"Yesterday, I came to warn him of his danger, and he laughed at me. From
Madame Thibadeau I heard he had said he would make you sing his song.
When I came to tell you, there he was with you. But when he left you I
was sure there was no need to speak. Still I felt I must tell
you--perhaps because you are rich and strong, and will stop him from
doing more harm."
"How do you know we are rich?" asked Druse in a rough tone.
"It is what the world says," was the reply. "Is there harm in that? In
any case it was right to tell you all; so that one who had herded with a
woman like me should not be friends with you."
"I have seen worse women than you," murmured the old man.
"What danger did you come to warn M. Marchand about?" asked Fleda.
"To his life," answered the woman.
"Do you want to save his life?" asked the old man.
"Ah, is it not always so?" intervened Madame Bulteel in a low, sad voice.
"To be wronged like that does not make a woman just."
"I am just," answered the woman. "He deserves to die, but I want to save
the man that will kill him when they meet."
"Who will kill him?" asked Fleda. "Dennis--he will kill Marchand if he
can."
The old man leaned forward with puzzled, gloomy interest. "Why? Dennis
left you for another. You say he had grown cold. Was that not what he
wanted--that you should leave him?"
The woman looked at him with tearful eyes. "If I had known Dennis better,
I should have waited. What he did is of the moment only. A man may fall
and rise again, but it is not so with a woman. She thinks and thinks upon
the scar that shows where she wounded herself; and she never forgets, and
so her life becomes nothing--nothing."
No one saw that Madame Bulteel held herself rigidly, and was so white
that even the sunlight was gold beside her look. Yet the strangest,
saddest smile played about her lips; and presently, as the eyes of the
others fastened on the woman and did not leave her, she regained her
usual composure.
The woman kept looking at Gabriel Druse. "When Dennis found that I had
gone, and knew why--for I left word on a sheet of paper--he went mad like
me. Trailing to the south, to find M'sieu' Marchand, he had an accident,
and was laid up in a shack for weeks on the Tanguishene River, and they
could not move him. But at last a ranchman wrote to me, and the letter
found me on the very day I left M'sieu'. When I got that letter begging
me to go to the Tanguishene River, to nurse Dennis who loved me still, my
heart sank. I said to myself I could not go; and Dennis and I must be
apart always to the end of time. But then I thought again. He was ill,
and his body was as broken as his mind. Well, since I could do his mind
no good, I would try to help his body. I could do that much for him. So I
went. But the letter to me had been long on the way, and when I got to
the Tanguishene River he was almost well."
She paused and rocked her body to and fro for a moment as though in pain.
"He wanted me to go back to him then. He said he had never cared for the
woman at Yargo, and that what he felt for me now was different from what
it had ever been. When he had settled accounts we could go back to the
ranch and be at peace. I knew what he meant by settling accounts, and it
frightened me. That is why I am here. I came to warn the man, Marchand,
for if Dennis kills him, then they will hang Dennis. Do you not see? This
is a country of law. I saw that Dennis had the madness in his brain, and
so I left him again in the evening of the day I found him, and came
here--it is a long way. Yesterday, M'sieu' Marchand laughed at me when I
warned him. He said he could take care of himself. But such men as Dennis
stop at nothing; there will be killing, if M'sieu' stays here."
"You will go back to Dennis?" asked Fleda gently. "Some other woman will
make him happy when he forgets me," was the cheerless, grey reply.
The old man got up and, coming over, laid a hand upon her shoulder.
"Where did you think of going from here?" he asked.
"Anywhere--I don't know," was the reply.
"Is there no work here for her?" he asked, turning to Madame Bulteel.
"Yes, plenty," was the reply. "And room also?" he asked again.
"Was ever a tent too full, when the lost traveller stumbled into camp in
the old days?" rejoined Fleda. The woman trembled to her feet, a glad
look in her eyes. "I ought to go, but I am tired and I will gladly stay,"
she said and swayed against the table.
Madame Bulteel and Fleda put their arms round her, steadying her.
"This is not the way to act," said Fleda with a touch of sharp reproof.
Had she not her own trouble to face?
The stricken woman drew herself up and looked Fleda in the eyes. "I will
find the right way, if I can," she said with courage.
A half-hour later, as the old man sat alone in the room where he had
breakfasted, a rifle-shot rang out in the distance.
"The trouble begins," he said, as he rose and hastened into the hallway.
Another shot rang out. He caught up his wide felt hat, reached for a
great walking-stick in the corner, and left the house hurriedly.
CHAPTER XVI
THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE
It was a false alarm which had startled Gabriel Druse, but it had
significance. The Orange funeral was not to take place until eleven
o'clock, and it was only eight o'clock when the Ry left his home. A
rifle-shot had, however, been fired across the Sagalac from the Manitou
side, and it had been promptly acknowledged from Lebanon. There was a
short pause, and then came another from the Lebanon side. It was merely a
warning and a challenge. The only man who could have controlled the
position was blind and helpless.
As Druse walked rapidly towards the bridge, he met Jowett. Jowett was one
of the few men in either town for whom the Ry had regard, and the
friendliness had had its origin in Jowett's knowledge of horseflesh. This
was a field in which the Ry was himself a master. He had ever been too
high-placed among his own people to trade and barter horses except when,
sending a score of Romanys on a hunt for wild ponies on the hills of
Eastern Europe, he had afterwards sold the tamed herd to the highest
bidders in some Balkan town; but he had an infallible eye for a horse.
It was a curious anomaly also that the one man in Lebanon who would not
have been expected to love and pursue horse-flesh was the Reverend Reuben
Tripple to whom Ingolby had given his conge, but who loved a horse as he
loved himself.
He was indeed a greater expert in horses than in souls. One of the sights
of Lebanon had been the appearance in the field of the "Reverend
Tripple," who owned a great, raw-boned bay mare of lank proportions, the
winner of a certain great trotting-race which had delighted the mockers.
For two years Jowett had eyed Mr. Tripple's rawbone with a piratical eye.
Though it had won only a single great race, that, in Jowett's view, was
its master's fault. As the Arabs say, however, Allah is with the patient;
and so it was that on the evening of the day in which Ingolby met
disaster, Mr. Tripple informed Jowett that he was willing to sell his
rawbone.
He was mounted on the gawky roadster when he met Gabriel Druse making for
the bridge. Their greeting was as cordial as hasty. Anxious as was the Ry
to learn what was going on in the towns, Jowett's mount caught his eye.
It was but a little time since they had met at Ingolby's house, and they
were both full of the grave events afoot, but here was a horse-deal of
consequence, and the bridle-rein was looseflung.
"Yes, I got it," said Jowett, with a chuckle, interpreting the old man's
look. "I got it for good--a wonder from Wonderville. Damned queer-looking
critter, but there, I guess we know what I've got. Outside like a
crinoline, inside like a pair of ankles of the Lady Jane Plantagenet.
Yes, I got it, Mr. Druse, got it dead-on!"
"How?" asked the Ry, feeling the clean fetlocks with affectionate
approval.
"He's off East, so he says," was the joyous reply; "sudden but sure, and
I dunno why. Anyway, he's got the door-handle offered, and he's off
without his camel." He stroked the neck of the bay lovingly. "How much?"
Jowett held up his fingers. The old man lifted his eyebrows quizzically.
"That-h'm! Does he preach as well as that?" he asked.
Jowett chuckled. "He knows the horse-country better than the New
Jerusalem, I guess; and I wasn't off my feed, nor hadn't lost my head
neither. I wanted that dust-hawk, and he knew it; but I got in on him
with the harness and the sulky. The bridle he got from a Mexican that
come up here a year ago, and went broke and then went dead; and there
being no padre, Tripple did the burying, and he took the bridle as his
fee, I s'pose. It had twenty dollars' worth of silver on it--look at
these conchs."