The World For Sale, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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"There's an infernal lie here about me," he replied. "They say that I--"
He proceeded to explain the misstatement, as Ingolby studied the paper
carefully, for Rockwell was a man worth any amount of friendship.
"It's a lie, of course," Ingolby said firmly as he finished the
paragraph. "Well?"
"Well, I've got to deal with it."
"You mean you're going to deny it in the papers?"
"Exactly."
"I wouldn't, Rockwell."
"You wouldn't?"
"No. You never can really overtake a newspaper lie. Lots of the people
who read the lie don't see the denial. Your truth doesn't overtake the
lie--it's a scarlet runner."
"I don't see that. When you're lied about, when a lie like that--"
"You can't overtake it, Boss. It's no use. It's sensational, it runs too
fast. Truth's slow-footed. When a newspaper tells a lie about you, don't
try to overtake it, tell another."
He blinked with quizzical good-humour. Rockwell could not resist the
audacity. "I don't believe you'd do it just the same," he retorted
decisively, and laughing.
"I don't try the overtaking anyhow; I get something spectacular in my own
favour to counteract the newspaper lie."
"In what way?"
"For instance, if they said I couldn't ride a moke at a village
steeplechase, I'd at once publish the fact that, with a jack-knife, I'd
killed two pumas that were after me. Both things would be lies, but the
one would neutralize the other. If I said I could ride a moke, nobody
would see it, and if it were seen it wouldn't make any impression; but to
say I killed two mountain-lions with a jack-knife on the edge of a
precipice, with the sun standing still to look at it, is as good as the
original lie and better; and I score. My reputation increases."
Nathan Rockwell's equilibrium was restored. "You're certainly a wonder,"
he declared. "That's why you've succeeded."
"Have I succeeded?"
"Thirty-three-and what you are!"
"What am I?"
"Pretty well master here."
"Rockwell, that'd do me a lot of harm if it was published. Don't say it
again. This is a democratic country. They'd kick at my being called
master of anything, and I'd have to tell a lie to counteract it."
"But it's the truth, and it hasn't to be overtaken."
A grim look came into Ingolby's face. "I'd like to be master-boss of life
and death, holder of the sword and balances, the Sultan, here just for
one week. I'd change some things. I'd gag some people that are doing
terrible harm. It's a real bad business. The scratch-your-face period is
over, and we're in the cut-your-throat epoch."
Rockwell nodded assent, opened the paper again, and pointed to a column.
"I expect you haven't seen that. To my mind, in the present state of
things, it's dynamite."
Ingolby read the column hastily. It was the report of a sermon delivered
the evening before by the Rev. Reuben Tripple, the evangelical minister
of Lebanon. It was a paean of the Scriptures accompanied by a crazy
charge that the Roman Church forbade the reading of the Bible. It had a
tirade also about the Scarlet Woman and Popish idolatry.
Ingolby made a savage gesture. "The insatiable Christian beast!" he
growled in anger. "There's no telling what this may do. You know what
those fellows are over in Manitou. The place is full of them going to the
woods, besides the toughs at the mills and in the taverns. They're not
psalm-singing, and they don't keep the Ten Commandments, but they're
savagely fanatical, and--"
"And there's the funeral of an Orangeman tomorrow. The Orange Lodge
attends in regalia."
Ingolby started and looked at the paper again. "The sneaking, praying
liar," he said, his jaw setting grimly. "This thing's a call to riot.
There's an element in Lebanon as well that'd rather fight than eat. It's
the kind of lie that--"
"That you can't overtake," said the Boss Doctor appositely; "and I don't
know that even you can tell another that'll neutralize it. Your
prescription won't work here."
An acknowledging smile played at Ingolby's mouth. "We've got to have a
try. We've got to draw off the bull with a red rag somehow."
"I don't see how myself. That Orange funeral will bring a row on to us. I
can just see the toughs at Manitou when they read this stuff, and know
about that funeral."
"It's announced?"
"Yes, here's an invitation in the Budget to Orangemen to attend the
funeral of a brother sometime of the banks of the Boyne!"
"Who's the Master of the Lodge?" asked Ingolby. Rockwell told him, urging
at the same time that he see the Chief Constable as well, and Monseigneur
Lourde at Manitou.
"That's exactly what I mean to do--with a number of other things. Between
ourselves, Rockwell, I'd have plenty of lint and bandages ready for
emergencies if I were you."
"I'll see to it. That collision the other day was serious enough, and
it's gradually becoming a vendetta. Last night one of the Lebanon
champions lost his nose."
"His nose--how?"
"A French river-driver bit a third of it off."
Ingolby made a gesture of disgust. "And this is the twentieth century!"
They had moved along the street until they reached a barber-shop, from
which proceeded the sound of a violin. "I'm going in here," Ingolby said.
"I've got some business with Berry, the barber. You'll keep me posted as
to anything important?"
"You don't need to say it. Shall I see the Master of the Orange Lodge or
the Chief Constable for you?" Ingolby thought for a minute. "No, I'll
tackle them myself, but you get in touch with Monseigneur Lourde. He's
grasped the situation, and though he'd like to have Tripple boiled in
oil, he doesn't want broken heads and bloodshed."
"And Tripple?"
"I'll deal with him at once. I've got a hold on him. I never wanted to
use it, but I will now without compunction. I have the means in my
pocket. They've been there for three days, waiting for the chance."
"It doesn't look like war, does it?" said Rockwell, looking up the street
and out towards the prairie where the day bloomed like a flower. Blue
above--a deep, joyous blue, against which a white cloud rested or slowly
travelled westward; a sky down whose vast cerulean bowl flocks of wild
geese sailed, white and grey and black, while the woods across the
Sagalac were glowing with a hundred colours, giving tender magnificence
to the scene. The busy eagerness of a pioneer life was still a quiet,
orderly thing, so immense was the theatre for effort and movement. In
these wide streets, almost as wide as a London square, there was room to
move; nothing seemed huddled, pushing, or inconvenient. Even the disorder
of building lost its ugly crudity in the space and the sunlight.
"The only time I get frightened in life is when things look like that,"
Ingolby answered. "I go round with a life-preserver on me when it seems
as if 'all's right with the world.'"
The violin inside the barber-shop kept scraping out its cheap music--a
coon-song of the day.
"Old Berry hasn't much business this morning," remarked Rockwell. "He's
in keeping with this surface peace."
"Old Berry never misses anything. What we're thinking, he's thinking. I
go fishing when I'm in trouble; Berry plays his fiddle. He's a
philosopher and a friend."
"You don't make friends as other people do."
"I make friends of all kinds. I don't know why, but I've always had a
kind of kinship with the roughs, the no-accounts, and the rogues."
"As well as the others--I hope I don't intrude!"
Ingolby laughed. "You? Oh, I wish all the others were like you. It's the
highly respectable members of the community I've always had to watch."
The fiddle-song came squeaking out upon the sunny atmosphere. It arrested
the attention of a man on the other side of the street--a stranger in
strange Lebanon. He wore a suit of Western clothes as a military man
wears mufti, if not awkwardly, yet with a manner not wholly natural--the
coat too tight across the chest, too short in the body. However, the man
was handsome and unusual in his leopard way, with his brown curling hair
and well-cared-for moustache. It was Jethro Fawe.
Attracted by the sound of the violin, he stayed his steps and smiled
scornfully. Then his look fell on the two figures at the door of the
barber-shop, and his eyes flashed.
Here was the man he wished to see--Max Ingolby, the man who stood between
him and his Romany lass. Here was a chance of speaking face to face with
the man who was robbing him. What he should do when they met must be
according to circumstances. That did not matter. There was the impulse
storming in his brain, and it drove him across the street as the Boss
Doctor walked away, and Ingolby entered the shop. All Jethro realized was
that the man who stood in his way, the big, rich, masterful Gorgio was
there.
He entered the shop after Ingolby, and stood for an instant unseen. The
old negro barber with his curly white head, slave-black face, and large,
shrewd, meditative eyes was standing in a corner with a violin under his
chin, his cheek lovingly resting against it, as he drew his bow through
the last bars of the melody. He had smiled in welcome as Ingolby entered,
instantly rising from his stool, but continuing to play. He would not
have stopped in the middle of a tune for an emperor, and he put Ingolby
higher than an emperor. For one who had been born a slave, and had still
the scars of the overseer's whip on his back, he was very independent. He
cut everybody's hair as he wanted to cut it, trimmed each beard as he
wished to trim it, regardless of its owner's wishes. If there was
dissent, then his customer need not come again, that was all. There were
other barbers in the place, but Berry was the master barber. To have your
head massaged by him was never to be forgotten, especially if you found
your hat too small for your head in the morning. Also he singed the hair
with a skill and care, which had filled many a thinly covered scalp with
luxuriant growth, and his hair-tonic, known as "Smilax," gave a pleasant
odour to every meeting-house or church or public hall where the people
gathered. Berry was an institution even in this new Western town. He kept
his place and he forced the white man, whoever he was, to keep his place.
When he saw Jethro Fawe enter the shop he did not stop playing, but his
eyes searched the newcomer. Following his glance, Ingolby turned round
and saw the Romany. His first impression was one of admiration, but
suspicion was quickly added. He was a good judge of men, and there was
something secluded about the man which repelled him. Yet he was
interested. The dark face had a striking racial peculiarity.
The music died away, and old Berry lowered the fiddle from his chin and
gave his attention to the Romany.
"Yeth-'ir?" he said questioningly.
For an instant Jethro was confused. When he entered the shop he had not
made up his mind what he should do. It had been mere impulse and the
fever of his brain. As old Berry spoke, however, his course opened out.
"I heard. I am a stranger. My fiddle is not here. My fingers itch for the
cat-gut. Eh?"
The look in old Berry's face softened a little. His instinct had been
against his visitor, and he had been prepared to send him to another
shop-besides, not every day could he talk to the greatest man in the
West.
"If you can play, there it is," he said after a slight pause, and handed
the fiddle over.
It was true that Jethro Fawe loved the fiddle. He had played it in many
lands. Twice, in order to get inside the palace of a monarch for a
purpose--once in Berlin and once in London--he had played the second
violin in a Tzigany orchestra. He turned the fiddle slowly round, looking
at it with mechanical intentness. Through the passion of emotion the sure
sense of the musician was burning. His fingers smoothed the oval brown
breast of the instrument with affection. His eyes found joy in the colour
of the wood, which had all the graded, merging tints of Autumn leaves.
"It is old--and strange," he said, his eyes going from Berry to Ingolby
and back again with a veiled look, as though he had drawn down blinds
before his inmost thoughts. "It was not made by a professional."
"It was made in the cotton-field by a slave," observed old Berry sharply,
yet with a content which overrode antipathy to his visitor.
Jethro put the fiddle to his chin, and drew the bow twice or thrice
sweepingly across the strings. Such a sound had never come from Berry's
violin before. It was the touch of a born musician who certainly had
skill, but who had infinitely more of musical passion.
"Made by a slave in the cotton-fields!" Jethro said with a veiled look,
and as though he was thinking of something else: "'Dordi', I'd like to
meet a slave like that!"
At the Romany exclamation Ingolby swept the man with a searching look. He
had heard the Romany wife of Ruliff Zaphe use the word many years ago
when he and Charley Long visited the big white house on the hill. Was the
man a Romany, and, if so, what was he doing here? Had it anything to do
with Gabriel Druse and his daughter? But no--what was there strange in
the man being a Romany and playing the fiddle? Here and there in the West
during the last two years, he had seen what he took to be Romany faces.
He looked to see the effect of the stranger's remark on old Berry.
"I was a slave, and I was like that. My father made that fiddle in the
cotton-fields of Georgia," the aged barber said.
The son of a race which for centuries had never known country or flag or
any habitat, whose freedom was the soul of its existence, if it had a
soul; a freedom defying all the usual laws of social order--the son of
that race looked at the negro barber with something akin to awe. Here was
a man who had lived a life which was the staring antithesis of his own,
under the whip as a boy, confined to compounds; whose vision was
constricted to the limits of an estate; who was at the will of one man,
to be sold and trafficked with like a barrel of herrings, to be worked at
another's will--and at no price! This was beyond the understanding of
Jethro Fawe. But awe has the outward look of respect, and old Berry who
had his own form of vanity, saw that he had had a rare effect on the
fellow, who evidently knew all about fiddles. Certainly that was a
wonderful sound he had produced from his own cotton-field fiddle.
In the pause Ingolby said to Jethro Fawe, "Play something, won't you?
I've got business here with Mr. Berry, but five minutes of good music
won't matter. We'd like to hear him play--wouldn't we, Berry?"
The old man nodded assent. "There's plenty of music in the thing," he
said, "and a lot could come out in five minutes, if the right man played
it."
His words were almost like a challenge, and it reached to Jethro's
innermost nature. He would show this Gorgio robber what a Romany could
do, and do as easily as the birds sing. The Gorgio was a money-master,
they said, but he would find that a Romany was a master, too, in his own
way. He thought of one of the first pieces he had ever heard, a rhapsody
which had grown and grown, since it was first improvised by a Tzigany in
Hungary. He had once played it to an English lady at the Amphitryon Club
in London, and she had swooned in the arms of her husband's best friend.
He had seen men and women avert their heads when he had played it, daring
not to look into each other's eyes. He would play it now--a little of it.
He would play it to her--to the girl who had set him free in the Sagalac
woods, to the ravishing deserter from her people, to the only woman who
had told him the truth in all his life, and who insulated his magnetism
as a ground-wire insulates lightning. He would summon her here by his
imagination, and tell her to note how his soul had caught the music of
the spheres. He would surround himself with an atmosphere of his own. His
rage, his love, and his malignant hate, his tenderness and his lust
should fill the barber's shop with a flood which would drown the Gorgio
raider. He laughed to himself, almost unconsciously. Then suddenly he
leaned his cheek to the instrument and drew the bow across the strings
with a savage softness. The old cottonfield fiddle cried out with a
thrilling, exquisite pain, but muffled, as a hand at the lips turns agony
into a tender moan. Some one--some spirit--in the fiddle was calling for
its own.
Five minutes later-a five minutes in which people gathered at the door of
the shop, and heads were thrust inside in ravished wonder--the
palpitating Romany lowered the fiddle from his chin, and stood for a
minute looking into space, as though he saw a vision.
He was roused by old Berry's voice. "Das a fiddle I wouldn't sell for a
t'ousand dollars. If I could play like dat I wouldn't sell it for ten
t'ousand. You kin play a fiddle to make it worth a lot--you."
The Romany handed back the instrument. "It's got something inside it that
makes it better than it is. It's not a good fiddle, but it has
something--ah, man alive, it has something!" It was as though he was
talking to himself.
Berry made a quick, eager gesture. "It's got the cotton-fields and the
slave days in it. It's got the whip and the stocks in it; it's got the
cry of the old man that'd never see his children ag'in. That's what the
fiddle's got in it."
Suddenly, in an apparent outburst of anger, he swept down on the front
door and drove the gathering crowd away.
"Dis is a barber-shop," he said with an angry wave of his hand; "it ain't
a circuse."
One man protested. "I want a shave," he said. He tried to come inside,
but was driven back.
"I ain't got a razor that'd cut the bristle off your face," the old
barber declared peremptorily; "and, if I had, it wouldn't be busy on you.
I got two customers, and that's all I'm going to take befo' I have my
dinner. So you git away. There ain't goin' to be no more music."
The crowd drew off, for none of them cared to offend this autocrat of the
shears and razor.
Ingolby had listened to the music with a sense of being swayed by a wind
which blew from all quarters of the compass at once. He loved music; it
acted as a clearing-house to his mind; and he played the piano himself
with the enthusiasm of a wilful amateur, who took liberties with every
piece he essayed. There was something in this fellow's playing which the
great masters, such as Paganini, must have had. As the music ceased, he
did not speak, but remained leaning against the great red-plush barber's
chair looking reflectively at the Romany. Berry, however, said to the
still absorbed musician: "Where did you learn to play?"
The Romany started, and a flush crossed his face. "Everywhere," he
answered sullenly.
"You've got the thing Sarasate had," Ingolby observed. "I only heard him
play but once--in London years ago: but there's the same something in it.
I bought a fiddle of Sarasate. I've got it now."
"Here in Lebanon?" The eyes of the Romany were burning. An idea had just
come into his brain. Was it through his fiddling that he was going to
find a way to deal with this Gorgio, who had come between him and his
own?
"Only a week ago it came," Ingolby replied. "They actually charged me
Customs duty on it. I'd seen it advertised, and I made an offer and got
it at last."
"You have it here--at your house here?" asked old Berry in surprise.
"It's the only place I've got. Did you think I'd put it in a museum? I
can't play it, but there it is for any one that can play. How would you
like to try it?" he added to Jethro in a friendly tone. "I'd give a good
deal to see it under your chin for an hour. Anyhow, I'd like to show it
to you. Will you come?"
It was like him to bring matters to a head so quickly.
The Romany's eyes glistened. "To play the Sarasate alone to you?" he
asked.
"That's it-at nine o'clock to-night, if you can."
"I will come--yes, I will come," Jethro answered, the lids drooping over
his eyes in which were the shadows of the first murder of the created
world.
"Here is my address, then." Ingolby wrote something on his visiting-card.
"My man'll let you in, if you show that. Well, good-bye."
The Romany took the card, and turned to leave. He had been dismissed by
the swaggering Gorgio, as though he was a servant, and he had not even
been asked his name, of so little account was he! He could come and play
on the Sarasate to the masterful Gorgio at the hour which the masterful
Gorgio fixed--think of that! He could be--a servant to the pleasure of
the man who was stealing from him the wife sealed to him in the Roumelian
country. But perhaps it was all for the best--yes, he would make it all
for the best! As he left the shop, however, and passed down the street
his mind remained in the barber-shop. He saw in imagination the masterful
Gorgio in the red-plush chair, and the negro barber bending over him,
with black fingers holding the Gorgio's chin, and an open razor in the
right hand lightly grasped. A flash of malicious desire came into his
eyes as the vision shaped itself in his imagination, and he saw himself,
instead of the negro barber, holding the Gorgio chin and looking down at
the Gorgio throat with the razor, not lightly, but firmly grasped in his
right hand. How was it that more throats were not cut in that way? How
was it that while the scissors passed through the beard of a man's face
the points did not suddenly slip up and stab the light from helpless
eyes? How was it that men did not use their chances? He went lightly down
the street, absorbed in a vision which was not like the reality; but it
was evidence that his visit to Max Ingolby's house was not the visit of a
virtuoso alone, but of an evil spirit.
As the Romany disappeared, Max Ingolby had his hand on the old barber's
shoulder. "I want one of the wigs you made for that theatrical
performance of the Mounted Police, Berry," he said. "Never mind what it's
for. I want it at once--one with the long hair of a French-Canadian
coureur-de-bois. Have you got one?"
"Suh, I'll send it round-no, I'll bring it round as I come from dinner.
Want the clothes, too?"
"No. I'm arranging for them with Osterhaut. I've sent word by Jowett."
"You want me to know what it's for?"
"You can know anything I know--almost, Berry. You're a friend of the
right sort, and I can trust you."
"Yeth-'ir, I bin some use to you, onct or twict, I guess."
"You'll have a chance to be of use more than ever presently."
"Suh, there's gain' to be a bust-up, but I know who's comin' out on the
top. That Felix Marchand and his roughs can't down you. I hear and see a
lot, and there's two or three things I was goin' to put befo' you;
yeth-'ir."
He unloaded his secret information to his friend, and was rewarded by
Ingolby suddenly shaking his hand warmly.
"That's the line," Ingolby said decisively. "When do you go over to
Manitou again to cut old Hector Marchand's hair? Soon?"
"To-day is his day--this evening," was the reply.
"Good. You wanted to know what the wig and the habitant's clothes are
for, Berry--well, for me to wear in Manitou. In disguise I'm going there
tonight among them all, among the roughs and toughs. I want to find out
things for myself. I can speak French as good as most of 'em, and I can
chew tobacco and swear with the best."
"You suhly are a wonder," said the old man admiringly. "How you fin' the
time I got no idee."
"Everything in its place, Berry, and everything in its time. I've got a
lot to do to-day, but it's in hand, and I don't have to fuss. You'll not
forget the wig--you'll bring it round yourself?"
"Suh. No snoopin' into the parcel then. But if you go to Manitou
to-night, how can you have that fiddler?"
"He comes at nine o'clock. I'll go to Manitou later. Everything in its
own time."
He was about to leave the shop when some one came bustling in. Berry was
between Ingolby and the door, and for an instant he did not see who it
was. Presently he heard an unctuous voice: "Ah, good day, good day, Mr.
Berry. I want to have my hair cut, if you please," it said.
Ingolby smiled. The luck was with him to-day so far. The voice belonged
to the Rev. Reuben Tripple, and he would be saved a journey to the manse.
Accidental meetings were better than planned interviews. Old Berry's
grizzled beard was bristling with repugnance, and he was about to refuse
Mr. Tripple the hospitality of the shears when Ingolby said: "You won't
mind my having a word with Mr. Tripple first, will you, Berry? May we use
your back parlour?"
A significant look from Ingolby's eyes gave Berry his cue.
"Suh, Mr. Ingolby. I'm proud." He opened the door of another room.
Mr. Tripple had not seen Ingolby when he entered, and he recognized him
now with a little shock of surprise. There was no reason why he should
not care to meet the Master Man, but he always had an uncanny feeling
when his eye met that of Ingolby. His apprehension had no foundation in
any knowledge, yet he had felt that Ingolby had no love for him, and this
disturbed the egregious vanity of a narrow nature. His slouching,
corpulent figure made an effort to resist the gesture with which Ingolby
drew him to the door, but his will succumbed, and he shuffled importantly
into the other room.