The World For Sale, Complete - Gilbert Parker
Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23
He trifled with the big beautiful buttons on the head-stall. "The sulky's
as good as new, and so's the harness almost; and there's the nose-bag and
the blankets, and a saddle and a monkey-wrench and two bottles of
horse-liniment, and odds and ends. I only paid that"--and he held up his
fingers again as though it was a sacred rite--"for the lot. Not bad, I
want to say. Isn't he good for all day, this one?"
The old man nodded, then turned towards the bridge. "The
gun-shots--what?" he asked, setting forward at a walk which taxed the
rawbone's stride.
"An invite--come to the wedding; that's all. Only it's a funeral this
time, and, if something good doesn't happen, there'll be more than one
funeral on the Sagalac to-morrow. I've had my try, but I dunno how it'll
come out. He's not a man of much dictionary is the Monseenoor."
"The Monseigneur Lourde? What does he say?"
"He says what we all say, that he is sorry. 'But why have the Orange
funeral while things are as they are?' he says, and he asks for the red
flag not to be shook in the face of the bull."
"That is not the talk of a fool, as most priests are," growled the other.
"Sure. But it wants a real wind-warbler to make them see it in Lebanon.
They've got the needle. They'll pray to-day with the taste of blood in
their mouths. It's gone too far. Only a miracle can keep things right.
The Mayor has wired for the mounted police--our own battalion of militia
wouldn't serve, and there'd be no use ordering them out--but the Riders
can't get here in time. The train's due the very time the funeral's to
start, but that train's always late, though they say the ingine-driver is
an Orangeman! And the funeral will start at the time fixed, or I don't
know the boys that belong to the lodge. So it's up to We, Us & Co. to see
the thing through, or go bust. It don't suit me. It wouldn't have been
like this, if it hadn't been for what happened to the Chief last night.
There's no holding the boys in. One thing's sure, the Gipsy that give
Ingolby away has got to lie low if he hasn't got away, or there'll be one
less of his tribe to eat the juicy hedgehog. Yes, sir-ee!"
To the last words of Jowett the Ry seemed to pay no attention, though his
lips shut tight and a menacing look came into his eyes. They were now
upon the bridge, and could see what was forward on both sides of the
Sagalac. There was unusual bustle and activity in the streets and on the
river-bank of both towns. It was noticeable also that though the mills
were running in Manitou, there were fewer chimneys smoking, and far more
men in the streets than usual. Tied up to the Manitou shore were a
half-dozen cribs or rafts of timber which should be floating eastward
down the Sagalac.
"If the Monseenoor can't, or don't, step in, we're bound for a shindy
over a corpse," continued Jowett after a moment.
"Can the Monseigneur cast a spell over them all?" remarked the Ry
ironically, for he had little faith in priests, though he had for this
particular one great respect.
"He's a big man, that preelate," answered Jowett quickly and forcibly.
"He kept the Crees quiet when they was going to rise. If they'd got up,
there'd have been hundreds of settlers massacreed. He risked his life to
do that--went right into the camp in face of levelled rifles, and sat
down and begun to talk. A minute afterwards all the chiefs was squatting,
too. Then the tussle begun between a man with a soul and a heathen gang
that eat dog, kill their old folks, their cripples and their deformed
children, and run sticks of wood through their bleeding chests, just to
show that they're heathens. But he won out, this Jesueete friend o' man.
That's why I'm putting my horses and my land and my pants and my shirt
and the buff that's underneath on the little preelate."
Gabriel Druse's face did not indicate the same confidence. "It is not an
age of miracles; the priest is not enough," he said sceptically.
By twos, by threes, by tens, men from Manitou came sauntering across the
bridge into Lebanon, until a goodly number were scattered at different
points through the town. They seemed to distribute themselves by a
preconceived plan, and they were all habitants. There were no Russians,
Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, or Germans among them. They were low-browed,
sturdy men, dressed in red or blue serge shirts, some with sashes around
their waists, some with ear-rings in their ears, some in knee-boots, and
some with the heavy spiked boots of the river-driver. None appeared to
carry any weapon that would shoot, yet in their belts was the
sheath-knife, the invariable equipment of their class. It would have
seemed more suspicious if they had not carried them. The railwaymen,
miners, carters, mill-hands, however, appeared to carry nothing save
their strong arms and hairy hands, and some were as hairy as animals.
These backwoodsmen also could, without weapons, turn a town into a
general hospital. In battle they fought not only with hands but also with
teeth and hoofs like wild stallions. Teeth tore off an ear or sliced away
a nose, hands smote like hammers or gouged out eyes, and their nailed
boots were weapons of as savage a kind as could be invented. They could
spring and strike an opponent with one foot in the chest or in the face,
and spoil the face for many a day, or for ever. It was a gift of the
backwoods and the lumber-camps, practised in hours of stark monotony when
the devils which haunt places of isolation devoid of family life, where
men herd together like dogs in a kennel, break loose. There the man that
dips his fingers "friendly-like" in the dish of his neighbour one minute
wants the eye of that neighbour the next not so much in innate or
momentary hatred, as in innate savagery and the primeval sense of combat,
the war which was in the blood of the first man.
The unarmed appearance of these men did not deceive the pioneer folk of
Lebanon. To them the time had come when the reactionary forces of Manitou
must receive a check. Even those who thought the funeral fanatical and
provocative were ready to defend it.
The person who liked the whole business least was Rockwell. He was
subject to the same weariness of the flesh and fatigue of the spirit as
all men; yet it was expected of him that at any hour he should be at the
disposal of suffering humanity--of criminal or idiotic humanity--patient,
devoted, calm, nervestrung, complete. He was the one person in the
community who was the universal necessity, and yet for whom the community
had no mercy in its troubles or out of them. There were three doctors in
Lebanon, but none was an institution, none had prestige save Rockwell,
and he often wished that he had less prestige, since he cared nothing for
popularity.
He had made his preparations for possible "accidents" in no happy mood.
Fresh from the bedside of Ingolby, having had no sleep, and with many
sick people on his list, he inwardly damned the foolishness of both
towns. He even sharply rebuked the Mayor, who urged surgical preparations
upon him, for not sending sooner to the Government for a force which
could preserve order or prevent the procession.
It was while he was doing so that Jowett appeared with Gabriel Druse to
interview the Mayor.
"It's like this," said Jowett. "In another hour the funeral will start.
There's a lot of Manitou huskies in Lebanon now, and their feet is
loaded, if their guns ain't. They're comin' by driblets, and by-and-bye,
when they've all distributed themselves, there'll be a marching column of
them from Manitou. It's all arranged to make trouble and break the law.
It's the first real organized set-to we've had between the towns, and
it'll be nasty. If the preelate doesn't dope them, there'll be pertikler
hell to pay."
He then gave the story of his visit to Monseigneur Lourde, and the
details of what was going forward in Manitou so far as he had learned.
Also the ubiquitous Osterhaut had not been idle, and his bulletin had
just been handed to Jowett.
"There's one thing ought to be done and has got to be done," Jowett
added, "if the Monseenoor don't pull if off. The leaders have to be
arrested, and it had better be done by one that, in a way, don't belong
to either Lebanon or Manitou."
The Mayor shook his head. "I don't see how I can authorize Marchand's
arrest--not till he breaks the law, in any case."
"It's against the law to conspire to break the law," replied Jowett.
"You've been making a lot of special constables. Make Mr. Gabriel Druse
here a special constable, then if the law's broke, he can have a right to
take a hand in."
The giant Ry had stood apart, watchful and ruminant, but he now stepped
forward, as the Mayor turned to him and stretched out a hand.
"I am for peace," the old man said. "To keep the peace the law must be
strong."
In spite of the gravity of the situation the Mayor smiled. "You wouldn't
need much disguise to stand for the law, Mr. Druse," he remarked. "When
the law is seven feet high, it stands well up."
The Ry did not smile. "Make me the head of the constables, and I will
keep the peace," he said. There was a sudden silence. The proposal had
come so quietly, and it was so startling, that even the calm Rockwell was
taken aback. But his eye and the eye of the Mayor met, and the look in
both their faces was the same.
"That's bold play," the Mayor said, "but I guess it goes. Yesterday it
couldn't be done. To-day it can. The Chief Constable's down with
smallpox. Got it from an Injun prisoner days ago. He's been bad for three
days, but hung on. Now he's down, and there's no Chief. I was going to
act myself, but the trouble was, if anything happened to me, there'd be
no head of anything. It's better to have two strings to your bow. It's a
go-it's a straight go, Mr. Druse. Seven foot of Chief Constable ought to
have its weight with the roughnecks."
A look of hopefulness came into his face. This sage, huge, commanding
figure would have a good moral effect on the rude elements of disorder.
"I'll have you read the Riot Act instead of doing it myself," added the
Mayor. "It'll be a good introduction for you, and as you live in Manitou,
it'll be a knock-out blow to the toughs. Sometimes one man is as good as
a hundred. Come on to the Courthouse with me," he continued cheerfully.
"We'll fix the whole thing. All the special constables are waiting there
with the regular police. An extra foot on a captain's shoulders is as
good as a battery of guns."
"You're sure it's according to Hoyle?" asked Jowett quizzically.
He was so delighted that he felt he must "make the Mayor show off self,"
as he put it afterwards. He did not miscalculate; the Mayor rose to his
challenge.
"I'm boss of this show," he said, "and I can go it alone if necessary
when the town's in danger and the law's being hustled. I've had a meeting
of the Council and I've got the sailing-orders I want. I'm boss of the
place, and Mr. Druse is my--" he stopped, because there was a look in the
eyes of the Ry which demanded consideration--"And Mr. Druse is lawboss,"
he added.
The old ineradicable look of command shone in the eyes of Gabriel Druse.
Leadership was written all over him. Power spoke in every motion. The
square, unbowed shoulders, the heavily lined face, with the patriarchal
beard, the gnarled hands, the rough-hewn limbs, the eye of bright,
brooding force proclaimed authority.
Indeed in that moment there came into the face of the old Nomad the look
it had not worn for many a day. The self-exiled ruler had paid a heavy
price for his daughter's vow, though he had never acknowledged it to
himself. His self-ordained impotency, in a camp that was never moved,
within walls which never rose with the sunset and fell with the morning;
where his feet trod the same roadway day after day; where no man asked
for justice or sought his counsel or fell back on his protection; where
he drank from the same spring and tethered his horse in the same paddock
from morn to morn: all these things had eaten at his heart and bowed his
spirit in spite of himself.
He was not now of the Romany world, and he was not of the Gorgio world;
but here at last was the old thing come back to him in a new way, and his
bones rejoiced. He would entitle his daughter to her place among the
Gorgios. Perhaps also it would be given him, in the name of the law, to
deal with a man he hated.
"We've got Mister Marchand now," said Jowett softly to the old chieftain.
The Ry's eyes lighted and his jaw set. He did not speak, but his hands
clenched, opened and clenched again. Jowett saw and grinned.
"The Mayor and the law-boss'll win out, I guess," he said to himself.
CHAPTER XVII
THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMAD
Even more than Dr. Rockwell, Berry, the barber, was the most troubled man
in Lebanon on the day of the Orange funeral. Berry was a good example of
an unreasoning infatuation. The accident which had come to his idol, with
the certain fall of his fortunes, hit him so hard, that, for the first
time since he became a barber, his razor nipped the flesh of more than
one who sat in his red-upholstered chair.
In his position, Berry was likely to hear whatever gossip was going. Who
shall have perfect self-control with a giant bib under the chin, tipped
back on a chair that cannot be regulated, with a face covered by lather,
and two plantation fingers holding the nose? In these circumstances, with
much diplomacy, Berry corkscrewed his way into confidence, and when he
dipped a white cloth in bay-rum and eau-de-cologne, and laid it over the
face of the victim, with the finality of a satisfied inquisitor, it was
like giving the last smother to human individuality. An artist after his
kind, he no sooner got what he wanted than he carefully coaxed his victim
away from thoughts of the disclosures into the vague distance of casual
gossip once more.
Gradually and slowly he shepherded his patient back to the realms of
self-respect and individual personality. The border-line was at the point
where the fingers of his customer fluttered at a collar-button; for
Berry, who realized the power that lies in making a man look ridiculous,
never allowed a customer to be shaved or have his hair cut with a collar
on. When his customers had corns, off came the boots also, and then
Berry's triumph over the white man was complete. To call attention to an
exaggerated bunion when the odorous towel lay upon the hidden features of
what once was a "human," was the last act in the drama of the Unmaking of
Man.
Only when the client had felt in his pocket for the price of the flaying,
and laid it, with a ten-cent fee, on the ledge beneath the mirror, where
all the implements of the inquisition and the restoration were assembled,
did he feel manhood restored. If, however, he tried to keep a vow of
silence in the chair of execution, he paid a heavy price; for Berry had
his own methods of punishment. A little tighter grasp of the nose; a
little rougher scrape of the razor, and some sharp, stinging liquid
suddenly slapped with a cold palm on the excoriated spot, with the
devilish hypocrisy of healing it; a longer smothering-period under the
towel, when the corners of it were tucked behind the ears and a crease of
it in the mouth-all these soon induced vocal expression again, and Berry
started on his inquisition with gentle certainty. When at last he dusted
the face with a little fine flour of oatmeal, "to heal the cuticle and
'manoor' the roots," and smelled with content the hands which had
embalmed the hair in verbena-scented oil, a man left his presence feeling
that he was ready for the wrath to come.
Such was Berry when he had under his razor one of Ingolby's business foes
of Manitou, who had of late been in touch with Felix Marchand. Both were
working for the same end, but with different intentions. Marchand worked
with that inherent devilishness which sometimes takes possession of low
minds; but the other worked as he would have done against his own
brother, for his own business success; and it was his view that one man
could only succeed by taking the place of another, as though the Age of
Expansion had ceased and the Age of Smother had begun.
From this client while in a state of abject subjection, Berry, whose
heart was hard that day, but whose diplomacy was impeccable, discovered a
thing of moment. There was to be a procession of strikers from two
factories in Manitou, who would throw down their tools or leave their
machines at a certain moment. Falling into line these strikers would
march across the bridge between the towns at such time as would bring
them into touch with the line of the Orange funeral--two processions
meeting at right angles. If neither procession gave way, the Orange
funeral could be broken up, ostensibly not from religious fanaticism, but
from the "unhappy accident" of two straight lines colliding. It was a
juicy plot; and in a few minutes the Mayor and Gabriel Druse knew of it
from the faithful Berry.
The bell of the meeting-house began to toll as the Orangeman whose death
had caused such commotion was carried to the waiting carriage where he
would ride alone. Almost simultaneously with the starting of the gaudy
yet sombre Orange cortege, with its yellow scarfs, glaring banners,
charcoal plumes and black clothes, the labour procession approached the
Manitou end of the Sagalac bridge. The strikers carried only three or
four banners, but they had a band of seven pieces, with a drum and a pair
of cymbals. With frequent discord, but with much spirit, the Bleaters, as
these musicians were called in Lebanon, inspired the steps of the Manitou
fanatics and toughs. As they came upon the bridge they were playing a
gross paraphrase of The Marseillaise.
At the head of the Orange procession was a silver-cornet band which the
enterprise of Lebanon had made possible. Its leader was a ne'er-do-well
young Welshman, who had been dismissed from leadership after leadership
of bands in the East till at last he had drifted into Lebanon. Here,
strange to say, he had never been drunk but once; and that was the night
before he married the widow of a local publican, who had a nice little
block of stock in one of Ingolby's railways, which yielded her seven per
cent., and who knew how to handle the citizens of the City of Booze. When
she married Tom Straker, her first husband, he drank on an average twenty
whiskies a day. She got him down to one; and then he died and had as fine
a funeral as a judge. There were those who said that if Tom's whiskies
hadn't been cut down so--but there it was: Tom was in the bosom of
Abraham, and William Jones, who was never called anything else than Willy
Welsh, had been cut down from his unrecorded bibulations to none at all;
but he smoked twenty-cent cigars at the ex-widow's expense.
To-day Willy Welsh played with heart and courage, "I'm Going Home to
Glory," at the head of the Orange procession; for who that has faced such
a widow as was his for one whole year could fear the onset of faction
fighters! Besides, as the natives of the South Seas will never eat a
Chinaman, so a Western man will never kill a musician. Senators,
magistrates, sheriffs, police, gamblers, horse-stealers, bankers, and
broncho-riders all die unnatural deaths at times, but a musician in the
West is immune from all except the hand of Fate. Not one can be spared.
Even a tough convicted of cheating at cards, or breaking a boom on a
river, has escaped punishment because he played the concertina.
The discord and jangle between the two bands was the first collision of
this fateful day. While yet there was a space between the two
processions, the bands broke into furious contest. It was then that,
through the long funeral line, men with hard-set faces came closer up
together, and forty, detaching themselves from the well-kept run of
marching lodgemen, closed up around the horses and the hearse, making a
solid flanking force. At stated intervals also, outside the lodgemen in
the lines, were special constables, many of whom had been the
stage-drivers, hunters, cattlemen, prospectors, and pioneers of the early
days. Most of them had come of good religious stock-Presbyterians,
Baptists, Methodists, Unitarians; and though they had little piety, and
had never been able to regain the religious customs and habits of their
childhood, they "Stood for the Thing the Old Folks stand for." They were
in a mood which would tear cotton, as the saying was. There was not one
of them but expected that broken heads and bloodshed would be the order
of the day, and they were stonily, fearlessly prepared for the worst.
Since the appearance of Gabriel Druse on the scene, the feeling had grown
that the luck would be with them. When he started at the head of the
cortege, they could scarce forbear to cheer. Such a champion in
appearance had never been seen in the West, and, the night before, he had
proved his right to the title by shaking a knot of toughs into spots of
disconcerted humanity.
As they approached the crossroads of the bridge, his voice, clear and
sonorous, could be heard commanding the Orange band to cease playing.
When the head of the funeral procession was opposite the bridge--the
band, the hearse, the bodyguard of the hearse--Gabriel Druse stood aside,
and took his place at the point where the lines of the two processions
would intersect.
It was at this moment that the collision came. There were only about
sixty feet of space between the two processions, when a voice rang out in
a challenge so offensive, that the men of Manitou got their cue for
attack without creating it themselves. Every Orangeman of the Lodge of
Lebanon afterwards denied that he had raised the cry; and the chances are
that every one spoke the truth. It was like Felix Marchand to arrange for
just such an episode, and so throw the burden of responsibility on the
Orangemen.
"To hell with the Pope! To hell with the Pope!" the voice rang out, and
it had hardly ceased before the Manitou procession made a rush forward.
The apparent leader of the Manitou roughs was a blackbearded man of
middle height, who spoke raucously to the crowd behind him.
Suddenly a powerful voice rang out.
"Halt, in the name of the Queen!" it called. Surprise is the very essence
of successful war. The roughs of Manitou had not looked for this. They
had foreseen the appearance of the official Chief Constable of Lebanon;
they had expected his challenge and warning in the vernacular; but here
was something which struck them with consternation--first, the giant of
Manitou in the post of command, looking like some berserker; and then the
formal reading of that stately document in the name of the Queen.
Far back in the minds of every French habitant present was the old
monarchical sense. He makes, at worst, a poor anarchist, though he is a
good revolutionist; and the French colonials had never been divorced from
monarchical France.
In the eyes of the most forward of those on the Sagalac bridge, there was
a sudden wonderment and confusion. To the dramatic French mind,
ceremonial is ever welcome; and for a moment it had them in its grip, as
old Gabriel Druse read out in his ringing voice, the trenchant royal
summons.
It was a strange and dramatic scene--the Orange funeral standing still,
garish yet solemn, with hundreds of men, rough and coarse, quiet and
refined, dissolute and careless, sober and puritanic, broad and tolerant,
sharp and fanatical; the labour procession, polyglot in appearance, but
with Gallic features and looseness of dress predominating; excitable,
brutish, generous, cruel; without intellect, but with an intelligence
which in the lowest was acute, and with temperaments responsive to drama.
As Druse read, his eyes now and then flashed, at first he knew not why,
to the slim, bearded figure of the apparent leader. At length he caught
the feverish eye of the man, and held it for a moment. It was familiar,
but it eluded him; he could not place it.
He heard, however, Jowett's voice say to him, scarce above a whisper:
"It's Felix Marchand, boss!"
Jowett also had been puzzled at first by the bearded figure, but it
suddenly flashed upon him that the beard and wig were a disguise, that
Marchand had resorted to Ingolby's device. It might prove as dangerous a
stratagem with him as it had to Ingolby.
There was a moment's hesitation after Druse had finished reading--as
though the men of Manitou had not quite recovered from their
surprise--then the man with the black beard said something to those
nearest him. There was a start forward, and someone cried, "Down with the
Orangemen--et bas l'Orange!"
Like a well-disciplined battalion the Orangemen rolled up quickly into a
compact mass, showing that they had planned their defence well, and the
moment was black with danger, when, suddenly, Druse strode forward.
Flinging right and left two or three river-drivers, he caught the man
with the black beard, snatched him out from among the oncoming crowd, and
tore off the black beard and wig. Felix Marchand stood exposed.