Fleda said the words with a quiet determination, and yet in the tone was a slight over-emphasis which was like a call upon reserve forces within herself.
“Time is nothing to me,” was the complete reply, clothed in a tone of soft irony. “I’m young enough to waste it. I’ve plenty of it in my knapsack.”
“Have you forgotten the Sentence of the Patrin?” Fleda asked the question in a voice which showed a sudden access of determination.
“He will have to wipe it out after to-morrow,” replied the other with a gleam of sulky meaning and furtive purpose in his eyes.
“If you mean that I will change my mind to-morrow, and be your wife, and return to the Gipsy life, it is the thought of a fool. I asked you to come here to speak with me because I was sure I could make you see things as they truly are. I wanted to explain why I did not tell the Romanys outside there that the Sentence had been passed on you. I did not tell them because I can’t forget that your people and my people have been sib for hundreds of years; that you and I were children together; that we were sealed to one another when neither of us could have any say about it. If I had remained a Gipsy, who can tell—my mind might have become like yours! I think there must be something rash and bad in me somewhere, because I tell you frankly now that a chord in my heart rang when you made your wild speeches to me there in the hut in the Wood months ago, even when I hated you, knowing you for what you are.”
“That was because there was another man,” interjected Jethro.
She inclined her head. “Yes, it was partly because of another man,” she replied. “It is a man who suffers because of you. When he was alone among his foes, a hundred to one, you betrayed him. That itself would have made me despise you to the end of my life, even if the man had been nothing at all to me.
“It was a low, cowardly thing to do. You did it; and if you were my brother, I would hate you for it; if you were my father, I should leave your house; if you were my husband, I should kill you. I asked you to speak with me now because I thought that if you would go away—far away—promising never to cross my father’s path, or my path, again, I could get him to withdraw the Sentence. You have kidnapped me. Where do you think you are? In Mesopotamia? You can’t break the law of this country and escape as you would there. They don’t take count of Romany custom here. Not only you, but every one of the Fawes here will be punished if the law reaches for your throat. I want you to escape, and I tell you to go now. Go back to Europe. I advise you this for your own sake—because you are a Fawe and of the clan.”
The blood mounted to Jethro’s forehead, and he made an angry gesture. “And leave you here for him! ‘Mi Duvel!’ I can only die once, and I would rather die near you than far away,” he exclaimed.
His eyes had a sardonic look, there was a savage edge to his tongue, yet his face was flushed with devouring emotion and he was quivering with hope. That which he called love was flooding the field of his feelings, and the mad thing—the toxic impulse which is deep in the brain of Eastern races bled into his brain now. He was reckless, rebellious against fate, insanely wilful, and what she had said concerning Ingolby had roused in him the soul of Cain.
She realized it, and she was apprehensive of some desperate act; yet she had no physical fear of him. Something seemed to tell her that, no matter what happened, Ingolby would not wait for her in vain, and that he would yet see her enter to him again with the love-light in her eyes.
“But listen to me,” Jethro said, with an unnatural shining in his eyes, his voice broken in its passion. “You think you can come it over me with your Gorgio talk and the clever things you’ve learned in the Gorgio world. You try to look down on me. I’m as well born or as ill born as you. The only difference between us is the way you dress, the way you live and use your tongue. All that belongs to the life of the cities. Anyone can learn it. Anyone well born like you and me, with a little practice, can talk like Gorgio dukes and earls. I’ve been among them and I know. I’ve had my friends among them, too. I’ve got the hang of it all. It’s no good to me, and I don’t want it. It’s all part of a set piece. There’s no independence in that life; you live by rule. Diable! I know. I’ve been in palaces; I’ve played my fiddle to the women in high places who can’t blush. It’s no good; it brings nothing in the end. It’s all hollow. Look at our people there.” He swept a hand to the tent door.
“They’re tanned and rough, as all out-door things are rough, but they’ve got their share of happiness, and every day has its pleasures. Listen to them!” he cried with a gesture of exultation. “Listen to that!”
The colour slowly left Fleda’s face. Outside in the light of the dying fires, under the glittering stars, in the shade of the trees, groups of Romanys were singing the Romany wedding melody, called “The Song of the Sealing.” It was not like the ringing of wedding bells alone, it sealed blessing upon the man and the woman. It was a poem in praise of marriage passion; it was a paean proclaiming the accomplishment of life. Crude, primitive, it thrilled with Eastern feeling; a weird charm was showered from its notes.
“Listen!” exclaimed Jethro again, a fire burning in his face. “That’s for you and me. To them you are my wife, and I am your man. ‘Mi Duvel’—it shall be so! I know women. For an hour you will hate me; for a day you will resent me, and then you will begin to love me. You will fight me, but I will conquer. I know you—I know you—all you women. But no, it will not be I that will conquer. It’s my love that will do it. It’s a den of tigers. When it breaks loose it will have its way. Here it is. Can’t you see it in my face? Can’t you hear it in my voice? Don’t you hear my heart beating? Every throb says, ‘Fleda—Fleda—Fleda, come to me.’ I have loved you since you were three. I want you now. We can be happy. Every night we will make a new home. The world will be ours; the best that is in it will come to us. We will tap the trees of happiness—they’re hid from the Gorgio world. You and I will know where to find them. Every land shall be ours; every gift of paradise within our reach—riches, power, children. Come back to your own people; be a true daughter of the Ry of Rys; live with your Romany chal. You will never be at home anywhere else. It’s in your bones; it’s in your blood; it’s deeper than all. Here, now, come to me—my wife.”
He flung the flap of the tent door across the opening, shutting out the camp-fires and the people. “Here—now—come. Be mine while they sing.”
For one swift moment the great passion and eloquence of the man lifted her off her feet; for one instant the Romany in her triumphed, and a thrill of passion passed through her, storming her senses, like a mist shutting out all the rest of the world. This Romany was right; there was in her the wild thing—the everlasting strain of race and years breaking down all the defences which civilized life had built up within her. Just for one instant so—and then there flashed before her a face with two blind eyes.
Like a stream of ether playing upon warm flesh, making it icy cold, so something of the ineradicable good in her swept like a frozen spray upon the elements of emotion, and with both hands she made a gesture of repulsion.
His eyes with their reddish glow burned nearer and nearer to her. He bulked over her, driving her back against the couch by the tent wall. For an instant like that—and then, with clenched hand, she struck him in the face.
Swift as had been the change in her, so a change like a cyclone swept over him. The hysterical passion which had possessed him suddenly passed, and a dark, sullen determination swept into his eyes and over his face. His lips parted in a savage smile.
“Hell, so that’s what you’ve learned in the Gorgio world, is it?” he asked malevolently. “Then I’ll teach you what they do in the Romany world; and to-morrow you can put the two together and see what they look like.”
With a Romany expletive, he flung back the curtain of the tent and passed out into the night.
For a long time Fleda sat stunned and overcome by the side of the couch, her brain tortured by a thousand thoughts. She knew there was no immediate escape from the encampment. She could only rely upon the hue and cry which would be raised and the certain hunt which would be made for her. But what might not happen before any rescue came? The ancient grudge of the Fawes against the Druses had gained power and activity by the self-imposed exile of Gabriel Druse; and Jethro had worked upon it. The veiled threats which Jethro had made she did not despise. He was a barbarian. He would kill what he loved; he would have his way with what he loved, whether or not it was the way of law or custom or right. Outside, the wedding song still made musical the night. Women’s voices, shrill, and with falsetto notes, made the trees ring with it; low, bass voices gave it a kind of solemnity. The view which the encampment took of her captivity was clear. Where was the woman that brought her to the tent—whose tent it was? She seemed kind. Though her face had a hard look, surely she meant to be friendly. Or did she only mean to betray her; to give her a fancied security, and leave her to Jethro—and the night? She looked round for some weapon. There was nothing available save two brass candlesticks. Though the door of the tent was closed, she knew that there were watchers outside; that any break for liberty would only mean defeat, and yet she was determined to save herself.
As she tried to take the measure of the situation and plan what she would do, the noise of the music suddenly ceased, and she heard a voice, though low in tone, give some sort of command. Then there was a cry, and what seemed the chaotic noise of a struggle followed; then a voice a little louder speaking, a voice of someone she remembered, though she could not place it. Something vital was happening outside, something punctuated by sharp, angry exclamations; afterwards a voice speaking soothingly, firmly, prevailed; and then there was silence. As she listened there was a footstep at the door of the tent, a voice called to her softly, and a hand drew aside the tent curtain. The woman who had brought her to this place entered.
“You are all safe now,” she said, reaching out both hands to Fleda. “By long and by last, but it was a close shave! He meant to make you his wife to-night, whether you would or no. I’m a Fawe, but I’d have none of that. I was on my way to your father’s house when I met someone—someone that you know. He carries your father’s voice in his mouth.”
She stepped to the tent door and beckoned; and out of the darkness, only faintly lightened by the dying fires, there entered one whom Fleda had seen not more than fifty times in her life, and never but twice since she had ceased to be a Romany. It was her father’s secret agent, Rhodo, the Roumelian, now grizzled and gaunt, but with the same vitality which had been his in the days when she was a little child.
Here and there in the world went Rhodo, the voice of the Ry of Rys to do his bidding, to say his say. No minister of a Czar was ever more dreaded or loved. His words were ever few, but his deeds had been many. Now, as he looked at Fleda, his old eyes gleamed, and he showed a double row of teeth, not one of which was imperfect, though he was seventy years of age.
“Would you like to come?” he asked. “Would you like to come home to the Ry?”
With a cry she flung herself upon him. “Rhodo! Rhodo!” she exclaimed, and now the tears broke forth, and her body shook with sobs.
A few moments later he said to her: “It’s fifteen years since you kissed me last. I thought you were ashamed of old Rhodo.”
She did not answer, but looked at him with eyes streaming, drawing back from him. Her embrace was astonishing even to herself, for as a child Rhodo had been a figure of awe to her, and the feeling had deepened as the years had gone on, knowing as she did his work throughout the world for the Ry of Rys. In his face was secrecy, knowledge, and some tragic underthing which gave him, apart from his office, a singular loneliness of figure and manner. He was so closely knit in form; there was such concentration in face, bearing and gesture, that the isolation of his position was greatly deepened.
“No, you never kissed me after you were old enough to like or dislike,” he said with mournful and ironical reflection.
There crept into his face a kind of yearning such as one might feel who beheld afar off a promised land, and yet was denied its joys. Rhodo was wifeless, childless, and had been so for forty years. He had had no intimates among the Romany people. His life he lived alone. That the daughter of the Ry of Rys should kiss him was a thing of which he would dream when deeds were done and over and the shadows threatened.
“I will kiss you again in another fifteen years,” she said half-smiling through her tears. “But tell me—tell me what has happened.”
“Jethro Fawe has gone,” he answered with a sweeping outward gesture.
“Where has he gone?” she asked, apprehension seizing her.
“A journey into the night,” responded the old man with scorn and wrath in his tone, and his lips were set.
“Is he going far?” she asked.
“The road you might think long would be short to him,” he answered.
Her hands became cold; her heart seemed to stop beating.
“What road is that?” she asked. She knew, but she must ask.
“Everybody knows it; everybody goes it some time or another,” he answered darkly.
“What was it you said to all of them outside?”—she made a gesture towards the doorway. “There were angry cries, and I heard Jethro Fawe’s voice.”
“Yes, he was blaspheming,” remarked the old man grimly.
“Tell me what it was you said, and tell me what has happened,” she persisted.
The old man hesitated a moment, then said grimly: “I told them they must go one way and Jethro Fawe another. I told them the Ry of Rys had said no patrins should mark the road Jethro Fawe’s feet walked. I had heard of this gathering here, and I was on my way to bid them begone, for in following the Ry they have broken his command. As I came, I met the woman of this tent who has been your friend. She is a good woman; she has suffered. Her people are gone, but she has a heart for others. I met her. She told me of what that rogue and devil had done and would do. He is the head of the Fawes, but the Ry of Rys is the head of all the Romanys of the world. He has spoken the Word against Jethro, and the Word shall prevail. The Word of the Ry when it is given cannot be withdrawn. It is like the rock on which the hill rests.”
“They did not go with him?” she asked.
“It is not the custom,” he answered sardonically. “That is a path a Romany walks alone.”
Her face was white. “But he has not come to the end of the path—has he?” she asked tremulously. “Who can tell? This day, or twenty years from now, or to-morrow, or next moon, he will come to the end of the path. No one knows, he least of all. He will not see the end, because the road is dark. I don’t think it will be soon,” he added, because he saw how haggard her face had grown. “No, I don’t think it will be soon. He is a Fawe, at the head of all the Fawes; so perhaps there will be time for him to think, and no doubt it will not be soon.”
“Perhaps it will not be at all. My father spoke, but he can withdraw his word,” she urged.
Suddenly the old Gipsy’s face hardened. A look of dark resolve and iron force came into it.
“The Ry will not withdraw. He has spoken, and it must be. If he spoke lightly he is not fit to rule. Unless the word of the Ry of Rys is good against breaking, then the Romanys are no more than scattered leaves at the will of the wind. It is the word of the Ry that holds our folk together. It shall not bless, and it shall not curse in vain.”
Pitying the girl’s face, however, and realizing that the Gorgio life had given her a new view of things; angry with her because it was so, but loving her for herself, he added:
“But the night road may be long, though it is lonely, and if it should be that the Ry should pass before the end of the road comes to Jethro, then is Jethro freed, since the Word is gone which binds his feet for the pitfall.”
“He must not die,” she insisted.
“Then the Ry of Rys must not live,” he rejoined sternly. With a kindly gesture, however, he stretched out his hand. “Come, we shall reach the house of the Ry before the morning,” he added. “He is not returned from his journey, and so will not be troubled by having missed you. There will be an hour for beauty-sleep before the sun rises,” he continued with the same wide smile with which he greeted her first. Then he lifted up the curtain and passed out into the night.
Following him, Fleda saw that the Romanys had broken camp, and only a small handful remained, among them the woman who had befriended her. Fleda went up to her:
“I will never forget you,” she said. “Will you wear this for me?” she added, and she took from her throat a brooch which she had worn ever since her first days in England, after her great illness there. The woman accepted the brooch. “Lady love,” she said, “you’ve lost your sleep to-night, but that’s a loss you can make good. If there’s a night’s sleep owing you, you can collect the debt some time. No, a night’s sleep lost in a tent is nothing, if you’re the only one in the tent. But if you’re not alone, and you lose a night’s sleep, someone else may pick it up, and you might never get it again!”
A flush slowly stole over Fleda’s face, and a look of horror came into her eyes. She read the parable aright.
“Will you let me kiss you?” she said to the woman, and now it was the woman’s turn to flush.
“You are the daughter of the Ry of Rys,” she said almost shyly, yet proudly.
“I’m a girl with a debt to pay and can never pay it,” Fleda answered, putting her arms impulsively around the woman’s neck and kissing her. Then she took the brooch from the woman’s hand, and pinned it at her throat.
“Think of Fleda of the Druses sometimes,” she said, and she laid a hand upon the woman’s breast. “Lady love—lady love,” said the blunt woman with the pockmarked face, “you’ve had the worst fright to-night that you’ll ever have.” She caught Fleda’s hand and peered into it. “Yes, it’s happiness for you now, and on and on,” she added exultingly, and with the fortune-teller’s air. “You’ve passed the danger place, and there’ll be wealth and a man who’s been in danger, too; and there’s children, beautiful children—I see them.”
In confusion, Fleda snatched her hand away. “Good-bye, you fool-woman,” she said impatiently, yet gently, too. “You talk such sense and such nonsense. Good-bye,” she added brusquely, but yet she smiled at the woman as she turned away.
A moment later she was on her way back to Manitou, but she did not get to her father’s house before the break of day; and in the doorway she met Madame Bulteel, whose pale, drawn face proclaimed a sleepless night.
“Tell me what has happened? Tell me what has happened?” she asked in distress.
Fleda took both her hands. “Before I answer, tell me what has happened here,” she said breathlessly. “What news?”
Madame Bulteel’s face lighted. “Good news,” she exclaimed eagerly.
“He will see—he will see again?” Fleda asked in great agitation.
“The Montreal doctor said that the chances were even,” answered Madame Bulteel. “This man from the States says it is a sure thing.”
With a murmur Fleda sank into a chair, and a faintness came over her.
“That’s not like a Romany,” remarked old Rhodo. “No, it’s certainly not like a Romany,” remarked Madame Bulteel meaningly.
Grey days in the prairie country do not come very often, but they are very depressing when they arrive. The landscape is not of the luscious kind; it has no close correspondence with a picture by Corot or Constable; sunlight is needed to give it the touch of the habitable and the homelike. It was, therefore, unfortunate for the spirits of the Lebanon people that the meeting summoned by local agitators to discuss with asperity affairs on both sides of the Sagalac should, while starting with fitful sunlight in the early morning, have developed to a bleak greyness by three o’clock in the afternoon, the time set for the meeting.
Another strike was imminent in the factories at Manitou and in the railway-shops at Lebanon, due to the stupidity of the policy of Ingolby’s successor as to the railways and other financial and manufacturing interests. If he had planned a campaign of maladroitness he could not have more happily fulfilled his object. It was not a good time for reducing wages, or for quarrelling with the Town Councils of Manitou and Lebanon concerning assessments and other matters. November and May always found Manitou, as though to say, “upset.” In the former month, men were pouring through the place on their way to the shanties for their Winter’s work, and generally celebrating their coming internment by “irrigation”; in the latter month, they were returning from their Winter’s imprisonment, thirsty for excitement, and with memories of Winter quarrels inciting them to “have it out of someone.”
And it was in October, when the shantyman was passing through on his way to the woods—a natural revolutionary, loving trouble as a coyote loves his hole—that labour discontent was practically whipped into action, and the Councils of the two towns were stung into bitterness against the new provocative railway policy. Things looked dark enough. The trouble between the two towns and the change of control and policy of the railways, due to Ingolby’s downfall, had greatly shaken land and building values in Lebanon, and a black eye, as it were, had been given to the whole district for the moment.
So serious had the situation been regarded that the Mayor of Lebanon, with Halliday the lawyer and another notable citizen, all friends of Ingolby, had “gone East”—as a journey to Montreal, Toronto, or Quebec was generally called—to confer with and make appeal to the directorate of the great railways. They went with some elation and hope, for they had arguments of an unexpected kind in their possession, carefully hidden from the rest of the population. They had returned only the day before the meeting which was to be held in the square in front of the Town Hall, to find that a platform had been built at the very steps of the Town Hall with the assent of the Chief Constable, now recovered from illness and returned to duty. To the Deputy Mayor and the Council, the Chief Constable, on the advice of Gabriel Druse, had said that it was far better to have the meeting in front of the Town Hall where he could, on the instant, summon special constables from within if necessary, while the influence of a well-built platform and the orderly arrangement of a regular meeting were better than a mob oration from the tops of ash-barrels.
The signs were ominous. In a day of sunshine the rebellious and discontented spirit does not thrive; on a wet day it is apt to take shelter; on a bleak, grey day men are prone to huddle together in their anger with consequent stimulation of their passions.
It was a grey enough day at Lebanon, and dark-faced visitors from Manitou felt the need of Winter clothing as they shiveringly crossed the Sagalac by Ingolby’s bridge. The air was raw and searching; Nature was sulky. In the sharp wind the trees shook themselves angrily free of leaves. The taverns were greatly frequented, which was not good for Manitou and Lebanon. Up to the time of the meeting, however, the expected strike had not occurred. This was mainly due to the fact that Felix Marchand, the evil genius of Manitou, had not been seen in the town or in the district for over a week. It was not generally known that he was absent because a man by the name of Dennis, whose wife he had wronged, was dogging him with no good intent. Marchand had treated the woman’s warning with contempt, but at sight of her injured husband he had himself withdrawn from the scene of his dark enterprises. His malign influence was therefore not at work at the moment.
The tactics of the Lebanon Town Council had been careful and wise. So that the meeting should not be composed only of the roughest elements, they privately urged all responsible citizens to attend, and if possible capture the meeting for law and order and legitimate agitation. That was why Osterhaut, the town-crier, went about with a large dinner-bell announcing the hour of the meeting and admonishing all “good folks” to attend. No one had ever seen Osterhaut quite so cheerful—and he had a bonny cheerfulness on occasion—as on this grisly October day when Nature was very sour and the spirit of the winds was in a “scratchy” mood. But Osterhaut was not more cheerful than Jowett who, in a very undignified way, described the state of his feelings, on receiving a certain confidence from Halliday, the lawyer, and Gabriel Druse, by turning a cart-wheel in the Mayor’s office; which certainly was an unusual thing in a man of fifty years of age.
It was a people’s meeting. No local official was on the platform. Under the influence of alien elements who, though their co-operation was directed against the common enemy, were intensely irritating, the meeting became disorderly. One or two wise men, however, were able to secure order long enough to have the resolution passed for forming a Local Interests Committee whose duty it would be to see that the people were not sacrificed to a “soulless plutocracy.” While the names of those who were to form the Committee were being selected, in a storm of disorder arising from the Manitou section of the crowd, the sky overhead grew suddenly brighter and the sun came out, bringing an instant change. It was as though a hand, which had hypnotized them into anger, restored them to good-humour once again.
At this moment, to the astonishment of all, there appeared at the back of the platform between Jowett and Halliday the lawyer, the man with a tragic history who had been as one buried for weeks past, who had vanished from their calculations. It was their old champion, Ingolby. Slowly a hush came over the vast assembly as, apparently guided by his friends on the platform, he was given a seat on the right of the Chairman’s table.
A strange sensation, partly pleasure, partly resentment, passed through the crowd. Why did Ingolby come to remind them of better days gone—of his own rashness, of what they had lost through that rashness? Why had he come? They could not say and do all that they wanted with him present. It was like having a row in the presence of a corpse. He had been a hero to all in Lebanon, but he was not in the picture now. His day was done. It was no place for him. Yet it was a pleasant omen that the sun broke clear and shining over the platform as Ingolby took his seat. Presently in the silence he half-turned his head, murmured something to the Chairman, and then got to his feet, stretching out a hand towards the crowd.
For one moment there was silence, a little awestricken, a little painful, and then as from one man a great cheer went up. For a moment they had thought him inconsiderate to come among them in this crisis, for he was no longer of their scheme of things, and must be counted out, a beaten, battered, blind bankrupt. Yet the sight of him on his feet was too much for them. Blind he might be, but there was the personality which had conquered them in the past brave, adroit, reckless, renowned. None of them, or very few of them, had seen him since that night at Barbazon’s Tavern, yet in spite of his tragedy there seemed little change in him. There was the same quirk at the corner of the mouth, the same humour in the strong face, not so ruddy now; and strangely enough the eyes were neither guarded by spectacles, nor were they shrunken, glazed, or diseased, so far as could be seen.
Stretching out a hand, Ingolby gave a crisp laugh and said: “So there’s been trouble since I’ve been gone, has there?” The corner of his mouth quirked, his eyelids drooped in the old quizzical way, and the crowd laughed in spite of themselves. What a spirit he had to take it all that way!
“Got a little deeper in the mire, have you, boys?” he added. “They tell me the town’s a frost just now, but it seems nice and warm here in the sun. Yes, boys, it’s nice and warm here among you all—the same good old crowd that’s made the two towns what they are. The same good old crowd,” he repeated, “—and up to the same old games!”
At this point he could scarcely proceed for laughter. “Like true pioneers,” he went on, “not satisfied with what you’ve got, but wanting such a lot more—if I might say so in the language of the dictionary, a deuce of a lot more.”
Almost every sentence had been punctuated by cheers. His personality dominated them as aforetime with some new accent to it; his voice was like that of one given up from the dead, yet come back from the wars alive and loving. They never knew what a figure he was until now when they saw and heard him again, and realized that he was one of the few whom the world calls leaders, because they have in them that immeasurable sympathy which is understanding of men and matters. Yet in the old days there never had been the something that was in his voice now, and in his face there was a great friendliness, a sense of companionship, a Jonathan and David something. He was like a comrade talking to a thousand other comrades. There was a new thing in him and they felt it stir them. They thought he had been made softer by his blindness; and they were not wrong. Even the Manitou section were stilled into sympathy with him. Many of them had heard his speech in Barbazon’s Tavern just before the horseshoe struck him down, and they heard him now, much simpler in manner and with that something in his voice and face. Yet it made them shrink a little, too, to see his blind eyes looking out straight before him. It was uncanny. Their idea was that the eyes were as before, but seeing nothing-blank to the world.
Presently his hand shot out again. “The same old crowd!” he said. “Just the same—after the same old thing, wanting what we all want: these two places, Manitou and Lebanon, to be boosted till they rule the West and dominate the North. It’s good to see you all here again”—he spoke very slowly—“to see you all here together looking for trouble—looking for trouble. There you are, Jim Barager; there you are, Bill Riley; there you are, Mr. William John Thomas McLeary.” The last named was the butt of every tavern and every street corner. “There you are, Berry—old brown Berry, my barber.”
At first the crowd did not quite understand, did not realize that he was actually pointing to the people whom he named, but presently, as Berry the barber threw up his hands with a falsetto cry of understanding, there was a simultaneous, wild rush forward to the platform.
“He sees, boys—he sees!” they shouted.
Ingolby’s hand shot up above them with a gesture of command.
“Yes, boys, I see—I see you all. I’m cured. My sight’s come back, and what’s more”—he snatched from his pocket a folded sheet of paper and held it aloft “what’s more, I’ve got my commission to do the old job again; to boss the railways, to help the two towns. The Mayor brought it back from Montreal yesterday; and together, boys, together, we’ll make Manitou and Lebanon the fulcrum of the West, the swivel by which to swing prosperity round our centre.”
The platform swayed with the wild enthusiasm of the crowd storming it to shake hands with him, when suddenly a bell rang out across the river, wildly, clamorously. A bell only rang like that for a fire. Those on the platform could see a horseman galloping across the bridge.
A moment later someone shouted, “It’s the Catholic church at Manitou on fire!”
Originally the Catholic church at Manitou had stood quite by itself, well back from the river, but as the town grew its dignified isolation was invaded and houses kept creeping nearer and nearer to it. So that when it caught fire there was general danger, because the town possessed only a hand fire-engine. Since the first settlement of the place there had been but few fires, and these had had pretty much their own way. When one broke out the plan was to form a long line of men, who passed buckets of water between the nearest pump, well, or river, and the burning building. It had been useful in incipient fires, but it was child’s play in a serious outburst. The mournful fact that Manitou had never equipped itself with a first-class fire-engine or a fire-brigade was now to play a great part in the future career of the two towns. Osterhaut put the thing in a nutshell as he slithered up the main street of Lebanon on his way to the manning of the two fire-engines at the Lebanon fire-brigade station.
“This thing is going to link up Lebanon and Manitou like a trace-chain,” he declared with a chuckle. “Everything’s come at the right minute. Here’s Ingolby back on the locomotive, running the good old train of Progress, and here’s Ingolby’s fire-brigade, which cost Lebanon twenty thousand dollars and himself five thousand, going to put out the fires of hate consuming two loving hamulets. Out with Ingolby’s fire-brigade! This is the day the doctor ordered! Hooray!”
Osterhaut had a gift of being able to do two things at one time. Nothing prevented him from talking, and though it had probably never been tested, it is quite certain he could have talked under water. His words had been addressed to Jowett, who drew to him on all great occasions like the drafts of a regiment to the main body. Jowett was often very critical of Osterhaut’s acts, words and views, but on this occasion they were of one mind.
“I guess it’s Ingolby’s day all right,” answered Jowett. “When you say ‘Hooray!’ Osterhaut, I agree, but you’ve got better breath’n I have. I can’t talk like I used to, but I’m going to ride that fire-engine to save the old Monseenoor’s church—or bust.”
Both Jowett and Osterhaut belonged to the Lebanon fire-brigade, which was composed of only a few permanent professionals, helped by capable amateurs. The two cronies had their way, and a few moments later, wearing brass helmets, they were away with the engine and the hose, leaving the less rapid members of the brigade to follow with the ladders.
“What did the Chief do?” asked Osterhaut. “Did you see what happened to him?”
Jowett snorted. “What do you think Mr. Max Ingolby, Esquire, would do? He commandeered my sulky and that rawbone I bought from the Reverend Tripple, and away he went like greased lightning over the bridge. I don’t know why I drove that trotter to-day, nor why I went on that sulky, for I couldn’t hear good where I was, on the outskirts of the meeting; but I done it like as if the Lord had told me. The Chief spotted me soon as the fire-bell rung. In a second he bundled me off, straddled the sulky, and was away ‘fore you could say snakes.”
“I don’t believe he’s strong enough for all this. He ain’t got back to where he was before the war,” remarked Osterhaut sagely.
“War—that business at Barbazon’s! You call that war! It wasn’t war,” declared Jowett spasmodically, grasping the rail of the fire-engine as the wheel struck a stone and nearly shot them from their seats. “It wasn’t war. It was terrible low-down treachery. That Gipsy gent, Fawe, pulled the lever, but Marchand built the scaffold.”
“Heard anything more about Marchand—where he is?” asked Osterhaut, as the hoofs of the horses clattered on the bridge.
“Yes, I’ve heard—there’s news,” responded Jowett. “He’s been lying drunk at Gautry’s caboose ever since yesterday morning at five o’clock, when he got off the West-bound train. Nice sort of guy he is. What’s the good of being rich, if you can’t be decent Some men are born low. They always find their level, no matter what’s done for them, and Marchand’s level is the ditch.”
“Gautry’s tavern—that joint!” exclaimed Osterhaut with repulsion.
“Well, that ranchman, Dennis What’s-his-name, is looking for him, and Felix can’t go home or to the usual places. I dunno why he comes back at all till this Dennis feller gits out.”
“Doesn’t make any bones about it, does he? Dennis Doane’s the name, ain’t it? Marchand spoiled his wife-run away with her up along the Wind River, eh?” asked Osterhaut.
Jowett nodded: “Yes, that’s it, and Mr. Dennis Doane ain’t careful; that’s the trouble. He’s looking for Marchand, and blabbing what he means to do when he finds him. That ain’t good for Dennis. If he kills Marchand, it’s murder, and even if the lawyers plead unwritten law, and he ain’t hung, and his wife ain’t a widow, you can’t have much married life in gaol. It don’t do you any good to be punished for punishing someone else. Jonas George Almighty—look! Look, Osterhaut!”
Jowett’s hand was pointing towards the Catholic church, from a window of which smoke was rolling. “There’s going to be something to do there. It ain’t a false alarm, Snorty.”
“Well, this engine’ll do anything you ask it,” rejoined Osterhaut. “When did you have a fire last, Billy?” he shouted to the driver of the engine, as the horses’ feet caught the dusty road of Manitou.
“Six months,” was the reply, “but she’s working smooth as music. She’s as good as anything ‘twixt here and the Atlantic.”
“It ain’t time for Winter fires. I wonder what set it going,” said Jowett, shaking his head ominously. “Something wrong with the furnace, I s’pose,” returned Osterhaut. “Probably trying the first heatup of the Fall.”
Osterhaut was right. No one had set the church on fire. The sexton had lighted the furnace for the first time to test it for the Winter’s working, but had not stayed to see the result. There was a defect in the furnace, the place had caught fire, and some of the wooden flooring had been burnt before the aged Monseigneur Lourde discovered it. It was he who had given the alarm and had rescued the silver altar-vessels from the sacristy.
Manitou offered brute force, physical energy, native athletics, muscle and brawn; but it was of no avail. Five hundred men, with five hundred buckets of water would have had no effect upon the fire at St. Michael’s Church at Manitou; willing hands and loving Christian hearts would have been helpless to save the building without the scientific aid of the Lebanon fire-brigade. Ingolby, on founding the brigade, had equipped it to the point where it could deal with any ordinary fire. The work it had to do at St. Michael’s was critical. If the church could not be saved, then the wooden houses by which it was surrounded would be swept away, and the whole town would be ablaze; for though it was Autumn, everything was dry, and the wind was sufficient to fan and spread the flames.
Lebanon took command of the whole situation, and for the first time in the history of the two towns men worked together under one control like brothers. The red-shirted river-driver from Manitou and the lawyer’s clerk from Lebanon; the Presbyterian minister and a Christian brother of the Catholic school; a Salvation Army captain and a black-headed Catholic shantyman; the President of the Order of Good Templars and a switchman member of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament slaved together on the hand-engine, to supplement the work of the two splendid engines of the Lebanon fire-brigade; or else they climbed the roofs of houses, side by side, to throw on the burning shingles the buckets of water handed up to them.
For some time it seemed as though the church could not be saved. The fire had made good headway with the flooring, and had also made progress in the chancel and the altar. Skill and organization, combined with good luck, conquered, however. Though a portion of the roof was destroyed and the chancel gutted, the church was not beyond repair, and a few thousand dollars would put it right. There was danger, however, among the smaller houses surrounding the church, and there men from both towns worked with great gallantry. By one of those accidents which make fatality, a small wooden house some distance away, with a roof as dry as wool, caught fire from a flying cinder. As everybody had fled from their own homes and shops to the church, this fire was not noticed until it had made headway. Then it was that the cries of Madame Thibadeau, who was confined to her bed in the house opposite, were heard, and the crowd poured down towards the burning building. It was Gautry’s “caboose.” Gautry himself had been among the crowd at the church.
As Gautry came reeling and plunging down the street, someone shouted, “Is there anyone in the house, Gautry?”
Gautry was speechless with drink. He threw his hands up in the air with a gesture of maudlin despair, and shouted something which no one understood. The crowd gathered like magic in the wide street before the house—the one wide street in Manitou—from the roof and upper windows of which flames were bursting. Far up the street was heard the noisy approach of the fire-engine, which now would be able to do little more than save adjoining buildings. Gautry, reeling, mumbling and whining, gestured and wept.
A man shook him roughly by the shoulder. “Brace up, get steady, you damned old geezer! Is there any body in the house? Do you hear? Is there anybody in the house?” he roared.
Madame Thibadeau, who had dragged herself from her bed, was now at the window of the house opposite. Seeing Fleda Druse passing beneath, she called to her.
“Ma’mselle, Felix Marchand is in Gautry’s house—drunk!” she cried. “He’ll burn to death—but yes, burn to death.”
In agitation Fleda hastened to where the stranger stood shaking old Gautry.
“There’s a man asleep inside the house,” she said to the stranger, and then all at once she realized who he was. It was Dennis Doane, whose wife was staying in Gabriel Druse’s home: it was the husband of Marchand’s victim.
“A man in there, is there?” exclaimed Dennis. “Well, he’s got to be saved.” He made a rush for the door. Men called to him to come back, that the roof would fall in. In the smoking doorway he looked back. “What floor?” he shouted.
From the window opposite, her fat old face lighted by the blazing roof, Madame Thibadeau called out, “Second floor! It’s the second floor!”
In an instant Dennis was lost in the smoke and flame.
One, two, three minutes passed. A fire-engine arrived; in a moment the hose was paid out to the river near by, and as a fireman seized the nozzle to train the water upon the building the roof fell in with a crash. At that instant Dennis stumbled out of the house, blind with smoke, his clothes aflame, carrying a man in his arms. A score of hands caught them, coats smothered Dennis’s burning clothes, and the man he had rescued was carried across the street and laid upon the pavement.
“Great glory, it’s Marchand! It’s Felix Marchand!” someone shouted.
“Is he dead?” asked another.
“Dead drunk,” was the comment of Osterhaut, who had helped to carry him across the street.
At that moment Ingolby appeared on the scene. “What’s all this?” he asked. Then he recognized Marchand. “He’s been playing with fire again,” he added sarcastically, and there was a look of contempt on his face.
As he said it, Dennis broke through the crowd and made for Marchand. Stooping over, he looked into Marchand’s face.
“Hell and damnation—you!” he growled. “I risked my life to save you!”
With a sudden access of rage his hand suddenly went to his hip-pocket, but another hand was quicker. It was that of Fleda Druse.
“No—no,” she said, her fingers on his wrist. “You have had your revenge. For the rest of his life he will have to bear his punishment—that you have saved him. Leave him alone. It was to be. It is fate.”
Dennis Doane was not a man of great thinking capacity. If he got a matter into his head it stayed there till it was dislodged, and dislodging was a real business with him.
“If you want her to live with you again, you had better let this be as it is,” whispered Fleda, for the crowd were surging round and cheering the new hero. “Just escaped the roof falling in,” said one.
“Got the strength of two, for a drunk man weighs twice as heavy as a sober one!” exclaimed another admiringly.
“Marchand’s game is up on the Sagalac,” declared a third decisively.
The excitement was so great, however, that only a very few of them knew what they were saying, and fewer still knew that Dennis Doane had risked his life to save the man he had been stalking for weeks past. Marchand had been lying on his face in the smoke-filled room when Dennis broke into it, and he had been carried down the stairs without his face being seen at all.
To Dennis it was as though he had been made a fool of by Fate or Providence, or whatever controlled the destinies of men; as though the dangerous episode had been arranged to trap him into this situation.
Ingolby drew near and laid a hand upon Dennis’s arm. Fleda’s hand was on the other arm.
“You can’t kill a man and save him too,” said Ingolby quietly, and holding the abashed blue eyes of Dennis. “There were two ways to punish him; taking away his life at great cost, or giving it him at great cost. If you’d taken away his life, the cost would probably have been your own life; in giving him his life you only risked your own; you had a chance to save it. You’re a bit scorched-hair, eyebrows, moustache, clothes too, but he’ll have brimstone inside him. Come along. Your wife would rather have it this way; and so will you, to-morrow. Come along.”
Dennis suddenly swung round with a gesture of fury. “He spoiled her-treated her like dirt!” he cried huskily.
With savage purpose he made a movement towards where Marchand had lain; but Marchand was gone. With foresight Ingolby had quickly and quietly accomplished that while Dennis’s back was turned.
“You’d be treating her like a brute if you went to prison for killing Marchand,” urged Ingolby. “Give her a chance. She’s fretting her heart out.”
“She wants to go back to Elk Mountain with you,” pleaded Fleda gently. “She couldn’t do that if the law took hold of you.”
“Ain’t there to be any punishment for men like him?” demanded Dennis, stubbornly yet helplessly. “Why didn’t I let him burn! I’d have been willing to burn myself to have seen him sizzling. Ain’t men like that to be punished at all?”
“When he knows who has saved him, he’ll sizzle inside for the rest of his life,” remarked Ingolby. “Don’t think he hasn’t got a heart. He’s done wrong and gone wrong; he has belonged to the sewer, but he isn’t all bad, and maybe this is the turning-point. Drink’ll make a man do anything.”
“His kind are never sorry for what they do,” commented Dennis bitterly. “They’re sorry for what comes from what they do, but not for the doing of it. I can’t think the thing out. It makes me sick. I was hunting for him to kill him; I was watching this town like a lynx, and I’ve been and gone and saved his body from Hell on earth.”
“Well, perhaps you’ve saved his soul from Hell below,” said Fleda. “Ah, come! Your face and hands are burned, your hair is scorched—your clothes need mending. Arabella is waiting for you. Come home with me to Arabella.”
With sudden resolve Dennis squared his shoulders. “All right,” he said. “This thing’s too much for me. I can’t get the hang of it. I’ve lost my head.”
“No, I won’t come, I can’t come now,” said Ingolby, in response to an inquiring look from Fleda.
“Not now, but before sundown, please.”
As Fleda and Dennis disappeared, Ingolby looked back towards the fire. “How good it is to see again even a sight like that,” he said. “Nothing that the eyes see is so horrible as the pictures that come to the mind when the eyes don’t see. As Dennis said, I can’t get the hang of it, but I’ll try—I’ll try.”
The burning of Gautry’s tavern had been conquered, though not before it was a shell; and the houses on either side had been saved. Lebanon had shown itself masterful in organization, but it had also shown that that which makes enemies is not so deep or great a thing as that which makes friends. Jealous, envious, narrow and bitter Manitou had been, but she now saw Lebanon in a new light. It was a strange truth that if Lebanon had saved the whole town of Manitou, it would not have been the same to the people as the saving of the church. Beneath everything in Manitou—beneath its dirt and its drunkenness, its irresponsibility and the signs of primeval savagery which were part of its life, there was the tradition of religion, the almost fanatical worship of that which was their master, first and last, in spite of all—the Church. Not one of its citizens but would have turned with horror from the man who cursed his baptism; not one but would want the last sacrament when his time came. Lebanon had saved the Catholic church, the temple of their faith, and in an hour was accomplished what years had not wrought.
The fire at the church was out. A few houses had been destroyed, and hundreds of others had been saved. The fire-brigade of Lebanon, with its two engines, had performed prodigies of valour. The work done, the men marched back, but with Osterhaut sitting on one fire-engine and Jowett on the other, through crowds of cheering, roaring workmen, rivermen, shantymen, and black-eyed habitants. When Ingolby walked past Barbazon’s Tavern arm in arm with Monseigneur Lourde, to the tiny house where the good priest lived, the old man’s face beaming with gratitude, and with a piety which was his very life, the jubilant crowd followed them to the very door. There the sainted pioneer expressed the feeling of the moment when he raised his hands in benediction over them and said:
“Peace be unto you and the blessings of peace; and the Lord make his face to shine upon you and give you peace now and for ever more.”