The World For Sale, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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From the banks on either side, the Indians of the Manitou Reservation and
the two men from Lebanon called out and hastened on, for they saw that
the girl had collapsed, and they knew only too well that her danger was
not yet past. The canoe might strike against the piers of the bridge at
Carillon and overturn, or it might be carried to the second cataract
below the town. They were too far away to save her, but they kept
shouting as they ran.
None responded to their call, but that defiance of the last cataract of
the Rapids of Carillon had been seen by one who, below an eddy on the
Lebanon side of the river, was steadily stringing upon maple-twigs black
bass and long-nosed pike. As he sat in the shade of the trees, he had
seen the plunge of the canoe into the chasm, and had held his breath in
wonder and admiration. Even at that distance he knew who it was. He had
seen Fleda only a few times before, for she was little abroad; but when
he had seen her he had asked himself what such a face and form were doing
in the Far North. It belonged to Andalusia, to the Carpathians, to Syrian
villages.
"The pluck of the very devil!" he had exclaimed, as Fleda's canoe swept
into the smooth current, free of the dragon's teeth; and as he had
something of the devil in himself, she seemed much nearer to him than the
hundreds of yards of water intervening. Presently, however, he saw her
droop and sink away out of sight.
For an instant he did not realize what had happened, and then, with angry
self-reproach, he flung the oars into the rowlocks of his skiff and drove
down and athwart the stream with long, powerful strokes.
"That's like a woman!" he said to himself as he bent to the oars, and now
and then turned his head to make sure that the canoe was still safe. "Do
the trick better than a man, and then collapse like a rabbit."
He was Max Ingolby, the financier, contractor, manager of great
interests, disturber of the peace of slow minds, who had come to Lebanon
with the avowed object of amalgamating three railways, of making the
place the swivel of all the trade and interests of the Western North; but
also with the declared intention of uniting Lebanon and Manitou in one
municipality, one centre of commercial and industrial power.
Men said he had bitten off more than he could chew, but he had replied
that his teeth were good, and he would masticate the meal or know the
reason why. He was only thirty-three, but his will was like nothing the
West had seen as yet. It was sublime in its confidence, it was free from
conceit, and it knew not the word despair, though once or twice it had
known defeat.
Men cheered him from the shore as his skiff leaped through the water.
"It's that blessed Ingolby," said Jowett, who had tried to "do" the
financier in a horsedeal, and had been done instead, and was now a devout
admirer and adherent of the Master Man. "I saw him driving down there
this morning from Lebanon. He's been fishing at Seely's Eddy."
"When Ingolby goes fishing, there's trouble goin' on somewhere and he's
stalkin' it," rejoined Osterhaut. "But, by gol, he's goin' to do this
trump trick first; he's goin' to overhaul her before she gits to the
bridge. Look at him swing! Hell, ain't it pretty! There you go, old
Ingolby. You're right on it, even when you're fishing."
On the other-the Manitou-shore Tekewani and his braves were less
talkative, but they were more concerned in the incident than Osterhaut
and Jowett. They knew little or nothing of Ingolby the hustler, but they
knew more of Fleda Druse and her father than all the people of Lebanon
and Manitou put together. Fleda had won old Tekewani's heart when she had
asked him to take her down the Rapids, for the days of adventure for him
and his tribe were over. The adventure shared with this girl had brought
back to the chief the old days when Indian women tanned bearskins and
deerskins day in, day out, and made pemmican of the buffalo-meat; when
the years were filled with hunting and war and migrant journeyings to
fresh game-grounds and pastures new.
Danger faced was the one thing which could restore Tekewani's
self-respect, after he had been checked and rebuked before his tribe by
the Indian Commissioner for being drunk. Danger faced had restored it,
and Fleda Druse had brought the danger to him as a gift.
If the canoe should crash against the piers of the bridge, if it should
drift to the cataract below, if anything should happen to this white girl
whom he worshipped in his heathen way, nothing could preserve his
self-respect; he would pour ashes on his head and firewater down his
throat.
Suddenly he and his braves stood still. They watched as one would watch
an enemy a hundred times stronger than one's self. The white man's skiff
was near the derelict canoe; the bridge was near also. Carillon now lined
the bank of the river with its people. They ran upon the bridge, but not
so fast as to reach the place where, in the nick of time, Ingolby got
possession of the rolling canoe; where Fleda Druse lay waiting like a
princess to be waked by the kiss of destiny.
Only five hundred yards below the bridge was the second cataract, and she
would never have waked if she had been carried into it.
To Ingolby she was as beautiful as a human being could be as she lay with
white face upturned, the paddle still in her hand.
"Drowning isn't good enough for her," he said, as he fastened her canoe
to his skiff.
"It's been a full day's work," he added; and even in this human crisis he
thought of the fish he had caught, of "the big trouble," he had been
thinking out as Osterhaut had said, as well as of the girl that he was
saving.
"I always have luck when I go fishing," he added presently. "I can take
her back to Lebanon," he continued with a quickening look. "She'll be all
right in a jiffy. I've got room for her in my buggy--and room for her in
any place that belongs to me," he hastened to reflect with a curious,
bashful smile.
"It's like a thing in a book," he murmured, as he neared the waiting
people on the banks of Carillon, and the ringing of the vesper bells came
out to him on the evening air.
"Is she dead?" some one whispered, as eager hands reached out to secure
his skiff to the bank.
"As dead as I am," he answered with a laugh, and drew Fleda's canoe up
alongside his skiff.
He had a strange sensation of new life, as, with delicacy and gentleness,
he lifted her up in his strong arms and stepped ashore.
CHAPTER II
THE WHISPER FROM BEYOND
Ingolby had a will of his own, but it had never been really tried against
a woman's will. It was, however, tried sorely when Fleda came to
consciousness again in his arms and realized that a man's face was nearer
to hers than any man's had ever been except that of her own father. Her
eyes opened slowly, and for the instant she did not understand, but when
she did, the blood stole swiftly back to her neck and face and forehead,
and she started in dismay.
"Put me down," she whispered faintly.
"I'm taking you to my buggy," he replied. "I'll drive you back to
Lebanon." He spoke as calmly as he could, for there was a strange
fluttering of his nerves, and the crowd was pressing him.
"Put me down at once," she said peremptorily. She trembled on her feet,
and swayed, and would have fallen but that Ingolby and a woman in black,
who had pushed her way through the crowd with white, anxious face, caught
her.
"Give her air, and stand back!" called the sharp voice of the constable
of Carillon, and he heaved the people back with his powerful shoulders.
A space was cleared round the place where Fleda sat with her head against
the shoulder of the stately woman in black who had come to her
assistance. A dipper of water was brought, and when she had drunk it she
raised her head slowly and her eyes sought those of Ingolby.
"One cannot pay for such things," she said to him, meeting his look
firmly and steeling herself to thank him. Though deeply grateful, it was
a trial beyond telling to be obliged to owe the debt of a life to any
one, and in particular to a man of the sort to whom material gifts could
not be given.
"Such things are paid for just by accepting them," he answered quickly,
trying to feel that he had never held her in his arms, as she evidently
desired him to feel. He had intuition, if not enough of it, for the
regions where the mind of Fleda Druse dwelt.
"I couldn't very well decline, could I?" she rejoined, quick humour
shooting into her eyes. "I was helpless. I never fainted before in my
life."
"I am sure you will never faint again," he remarked. "We only do such
things when we are very young."
She was about to reply, but paused reflectively. Her half-opened lips did
not frame the words she had been impelled to speak.
Admiration was alive in his eyes. He had never seen this type of
womanhood before--such energy and grace, so amply yet so lithely framed;
such darkness and fairness in one living composition; such individuality,
yet such intimate simplicity. Her hair was a very light brown, sweeping
over a broad, low forehead, and lying, as though with a sense of modesty,
on the tips of the ears, veiling them slightly. The forehead was classic
in its intellectual fulness; but the skin was so fresh, even when pale as
now, and with such an underglow of vitality, that the woman in her, sex
and the possibilities of sex, cast a glamour over the intellect and
temperament showing in every line of her contour. In contrast to the
light brown of the hair was the very dark brown of the eyes and the still
darker brown of the eyelashes. The face shone, the eyes burned, and the
piquancy of the contrast between the soft illuminating whiteness of the
skin and the flame in the eyes had fascinated many more than Ingolby.
Her figure was straight yet supple, somewhat fuller than is modern
beauty, with hints of Juno-like stateliness to come; and the curves of
her bust, the long lines of her limbs, were not obscured by her
absolutely plain gown of soft, light-brown linen. She was tall, but not
too commanding, and, as her hand was raised to fasten back a wisp of
hair, there was the motion of as small a wrist and as tapering a bare arm
as ever made prisoner of a man's neck.
Impulse was written in every feature, in the passionate eagerness of her
body; yet the line from the forehead to the chin, and the firm
shapeliness of the chin itself, gave promise of great strength of will.
From the glory of the crown of hair to the curve of the high instep of a
slim foot it was altogether a personality which hinted at history--at
tragedy, maybe.
"She'll have a history," Madame Bulteel, who now stood beside the girl,
herself a figure out of a picture by Velasquez, had said of her sadly;
for she saw in Fleda's rare qualities, in her strange beauty, happenings
which had nothing to do with the life she was living. So this duenna of
Gabriel Druse's household, this aristocratic, silent woman was ever on
the watch for some sudden revelation of a being which had not found
itself, and which must find itself through perils and convulsions.
That was why, to-day, she had hesitated to leave Fleda alone and come to
Carillon, to be at the bedside of a dying, friendless woman whom by
chance she had come to know. In the street she had heard of what was
happening on the river, and had come in time to receive Fleda from the
arms of her rescuer.
"How did you get here?" Fleda asked her.
"How am I always with you when I am needed, truant?" said the other with
a reproachful look. "Did you fly? You are so light, so thin, you could
breathe yourself here," rejoined the girl, with a gentle, quizzical
smile. "But, no," she added, "I remember, you were to be here at
Carillon."
"Are you able to walk now?" asked Madame Bulteel.
"To Manitou--but of course," Fleda answered almost sharply.
After the first few minutes the crowd had fallen back. They watched her
with respectful admiration from a decent distance. They had the chivalry
towards woman so characteristic of the West. There was no vulgarity in
their curiosity, though most of them had never seen her before. All,
however, had heard of her and her father, the giant greybeard who moved
and lived in an air of mystery, and apparently secret wealth, for more
than once he had given large sums--large in the eyes of folks of moderate
means, when charity was needed; as in the case of the floods the year
before, and in the prairie-fire the year before that, when so many people
were made homeless, and also when fifty men had been injured in one
railway accident. On these occasions he gave disproportionately to his
mode of life.
Now, when they saw that Fleda was about to move away, they drew just a
little nearer, and presently one of the crowd could contain his
admiration no longer. He raised a cheer.
"Three cheers for Her," he shouted, and loud hurrahs followed.
"Three cheers for Ingolby," another cried, and the noise was boisterous
but not so general.
"Who shot Carillon Rapids?" another called in the formula of the West.
"She shot the Rapids," was the choral reply. "Who is she?" came the
antiphon.
"Druse is her name," was the gay response. "What did she do?"
"She shot Carillon Rapids--shot 'em dead. Hooray!"
In the middle of the cheering, Osterhaut and Jowett arrived in a wagon
which they had commandeered, and, about the same time, from across the
bridge, came running Tekewani and his braves.
"She done it like a kingfisher," cried Osterhaut. "Manitou's got the
belt."
Fleda Druse's friendly eyes were given only for one instant to Osterhaut
and his friend. Her gaze became fixed on Tekewani who, silent, and with
immobile face, stole towards her. In spite of the civilization which
controlled him, he wore Indian moccasins and deerskin breeches, though
his coat was rather like a shortened workman's blouse. He did not belong
to the life about him; he was a being apart, the spirit of vanished and
vanishing days.
"Tekewani--ah, Tekewani, you have come," the girl said, and her eyes
smiled at him as they had not smiled at Ingolby or even at the woman in
black beside her.
"How!" the chief replied, and looked at her with searching, worshipping
eyes.
"Don't look at me that way, Tekewani," she said, coming close to him. "I
had to do it, and I did it."
"The teeth of rock everywhere!" he rejoined reproachfully, with a gesture
of awe.
"I remembered all--all. You were my master, Tekewani."
"But only once with me it was, Summer Song," he persisted. Summer Song
was his name for her.
"I saw it--saw it, every foot of the way," she insisted. "I thought hard,
oh, hard as the soul thinks. And I saw it all." There was something
singularly akin in the nature of the girl and the Indian. She spoke to
him as she never spoke to any other.
"Too much seeing, it is death," he answered. "Men die with too much
seeing. I have seen them die. To look hard through deerskin curtains, to
see through the rock, to behold the water beneath the earth, and the
rocks beneath the black waters, it is for man to see if he has a soul,
but the seeing--behold, so those die who should live!"
"I live, Tekewani, though I saw the teeth of rocks beneath the black
water," she urged gently.
"Yet the half-death came--"
"I fainted, but I was not to die--it was not my time."
He shook his head gloomily. "Once it may be, but the evil spirits tempt
us to death. It matters not what comes to Tekewani; he is as the leaf
that falls from the stem; but for Summer Song that has far to go, it is
the madness from beyond the Hills of Life."
She took his hand. "I will not do it again, Tekewani."
"How!" he said, with hand upraised, as one who greets the great in this
world.
"I don't know why I did it," she added meaningly. "It was selfish. I feel
that now."
The woman in black pressed her hand timidly.
"It is so for ever with the great," Tekewani answered. "It comes, also,
from beyond the Hills--the will to do it. It is the spirit that whispers
over the earth out of the Other Earth. No one hears it but the great. The
whisper only is for this one here and that one there who is of the Few.
It whispers, and the whisper must be obeyed. So it was from the
beginning."
"Yes, you understand, Tekewani," she answered softly. "I did it because
something whispered from the Other Earth to me."
Her head drooped a little, her eyes had a sudden shadow.
"He will understand," answered the Indian; "your father will understand,"
as though reading her thoughts. He had clearly read her thought, this
dispossessed, illiterate Indian chieftain. Yet, was he so illiterate? Had
he not read in books which so few have learned to read? His life had been
broken on the rock of civilization, but his simple soul had learned some
elemental truths--not many, but the essential ones, without which there
is no philosophy, no understanding. He knew Fleda Druse was thinking of
her father, wondering if he would understand, half-fearing, hardly
hoping, dreading the moment when she must meet him face to face. She knew
she had been selfish, but would Gabriel Druse understand? She raised her
eyes in gratitude to the Blackfeet chief.
"I must go home," she said.
She turned to go, but as she did so, a man came swaggering down the
street, broke through the crowd, and made towards her with an arm raised,
a hand waving, and a leer on his face. He was a thin, rather handsome,
dissolute-looking fellow of middle height and about forty, in dandified
dress. His glossy black hair fell carelessly over his smooth forehead
from under a soft, wide-awake hat.
"Manitou for ever!" he cried, with a flourish of his hand. "I salute the
brave. I escort the brave to the gates of Manitou. I escort the brave. I
escort the brave. Salut! Salut! Salut! Well done, Beauty
Beauty--Beauty--Beauty, well done again!"
He held out his hand to Fleda, but she drew back with disgust. Felix
Marchand, the son of old Hector Marchand, money-lender and capitalist of
Manitou, had pressed his attentions upon her during the last year since
he had returned from the East, bringing dissoluteness and vulgar pride
with him. Women had spoiled him, money had corrupted and degraded him.
"Come, beautiful brave, it's Salut! Salut! Salut!" he said, bending
towards her familiarly.
Her face flushed with anger.
"Let me pass, monsieur," she said sharply.
"Pride of Manitou--" he apostrophized, but got no farther.
Ingolby caught him by the shoulders, wheeled him round, and then flung
him at the feet of Tekewani and his braves.
At this moment Tekewani's eyes had such a fire as might burn in Wotan's
smithy. He was ready enough to defy the penalty of the law for assaulting
a white man, but Felix Marchand was in the dust, and that would do for
the moment.
With grim face Ingolby stood over the begrimed figure. "There's the river
if you want more," he said. "Tekewani knows where the water's deepest."
Then he turned and followed Fleda and the woman in black. Felix
Marchand's face was twisted with hate as he got slowly to his feet.
"You'll eat dust before I'm done," he called after Ingolby. Then, amid
the jeers of the crowd, he went back to the tavern where he had been
carousing.
CHAPTER III
CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNS
A word about Max Ingolby.
He was the second son of four sons, with a father who had been a failure;
but with a mother of imagination and great natural strength of brain, yet
whose life had been so harried in bringing up a family on nothing at all,
that there only emerged from her possibilities a great will to do the
impossible things. From her had come the spirit which would not be
denied.
In his boyhood Max could not have those things which lads
prize--fishing-rods, cricket-bats and sleds, and all such things; but he
could take most prizes at school open to competition; he could win in the
running-jump, the high-jump, and the five hundred yards' race; and he
could organize a picnic, or the sports of the school or town--at no cost
to himself. His finance in even this limited field had been brilliant.
Other people paid, and he did the work; and he did it with such ease that
the others intriguing to crowd him out, suffered failure and came to him
in the end to put things right.
He became the village doctor's assistant and dispenser at seventeen and
induced his master to start a drug-store. He made the drug-store a
success within two years, and meanwhile he studied Latin and Greek and
mathematics in every spare hour he had--getting up at five in the
morning, and doing as much before breakfast as others did in a whole day.
His doctor loved him and helped him; a venerable Archdeacon, an Oxford
graduate, gave him many hours of coaching, and he went to the University
with three scholarships. These were sufficient to carry him through in
three years, and there was enough profit-sharing from the drug-business
he had founded on terms to shelter his mother and his younger brothers,
while he took honours at the University.
There he organized all that students organize, and was called in at last
by the Bursar of his college to reorganize the commissariat, which he did
with such success that the college saved five thousand dollars a year. He
had genius, the college people said, and after he had taken his degree
with honours in classics and mathematics they offered him a professorship
at two thousand dollars a year.
He laughed ironically, but yet with satisfaction, when the professorship
was offered. It was all so different from what was in his mind for the
future. As he looked out of the oriel window in the sweet gothic
building, to the green grass and the maples and elms which made the
college grounds like an old-world park, he had a vision of himself
permanently in these surroundings of refinement growing venerable with
years, seeing pass under his influence thousands of young men directed,
developed and inspired by him.
He had, however, shaken himself free of this modest vision. He knew that
such a life would act like a narcotic to his real individuality. He
thirsted for contest, for the control of brain and will; he wanted to
construct; he was filled with the idea of simplifying things, of
economizing strength; he saw how futile was much competition, and how the
big brain could command and control with ease, wasting no force, saving
labour, making the things controlled bigger and better.
So it came that his face was seen no more in the oriel window. With a
mere handful of dollars, and some debts, he left the world of scholarship
and superior pedagogy, and went where the head offices of railways were.
Railways were the symbol of progress in his mind. The railhead was the
advance post of civilization. It was like Cortez and his Conquistadores
overhauling and appropriating the treasures of long generations. So where
should he go if not to the Railway?
His first act, when he got to his feet inside the offices of the
President of a big railway, was to show the great man how two "outside"
proposed lines could be made one, and then further merged into the
company controlled by the millionaire in whose office he sat. He got his
chance by his very audacity--the President liked audacity. In attempting
this merger, however, he had his first failure, but he showed that he
could think for himself, and he was made increasingly responsible. After
a few years of notable service, he was offered the task of building a
branch line of railway from Lebanon and Manitou north, and northwest, and
on to the Coast; and he had accepted it, at the same time planning to
merge certain outside lines competing with that which he had in hand. For
over four years he worked night and day, steadily advancing towards his
goal, breaking down opposition, manoeuvring, conciliating, fighting.
Most men loved his whimsical turn of mind, even those who were the agents
of the financial clique which had fought him in their efforts to get
control of the commercial, industrial, transport and banking resources of
the junction city of Lebanon. In the days when vast markets would be
established for Canadian wheat in Shanghai and Tokio, then these two
towns of Manitou and Lebanon on the Sagalac would be like the swivel to
the organization of trade of a continent.
Ingolby had worked with this end in view. In doing so he had tried to get
what he wanted without trickery; to reach his goal by playing the game
according to the rules, and this policy nonplussed his rivals and
associates. They expected secret moves, and he laid his cards on the
table. Sharp, quick, resolute and ruthless he was, however, if he knew
that he was being tricked. Then he struck, and struck hard. The war of
business was war and not "gollyfoxing," as he said. Selfish, stubborn and
self-centred he was in much, but he had great joy in the natural and
sincere, and he had a passionate love of Nature. To him the flat prairie
was never ugly. Its very monotony had its own individuality. The Sagalac,
even when muddy, had its own deep interest, and when it was full of logs
drifting down to the sawmills, for which he had found the money by
interesting capitalists in the East, he sniffed the stinging smell of the
pines with elation. As the great saws in the mills, for which he had
secured the capital, throwing off the spray of mangled wood, hummed and
buzzed and sang, his mouth twisted in the droll smile it always wore when
he talked with such as Jowett and Osterhaut, whose idiosyncrasies were
like a meal to him; as he described it once to some of the big men from
the East who had been behind his schemes, yet who cavilled at his ways.
He was never diverted from his course by such men, and while he was loyal
to those who had backed him, he vowed that he would be independent of
these wooden souls in the end. They and the great bankers behind them
were for monopoly; he was for organization and for economic prudence. So
far they were necessary to all he did; but it was his intention to shake
himself free of all monopoly in good time. One or two of his colleagues
saw the drift of his policy and would have thrown him over if they could
have replaced him by a man as capable, who would, at the time, consent to
grow rich on their terms.