In Ingolby’s bedroom, on the night of the business at Barbazon’s Tavern,
Dr. Rockwell received a shock. His face, naturally colourless, was
almost white, and his eyes were moist. He had what the West called
nerve. That the crisis through which he had passed was that of a
friend’s life did not lessen the poignancy of the experience. He had a
singularly reserved manner and a rare economy of words; also, he had
the refinement and distinction of one who had, oforetime, moved on the
higher ranges of social life. He was always simply and comfortably and
in a sense fashionably dressed, yet there was nothing of the dude about
him, and his black satin tie gave him an air of old-worldishness which
somehow compelled an extra amount of respect. This, in spite of the fact
that he had been known as one who had left the East and come into the
wilds because of a woman not his wife.
It was not, however, strictly true to say that he had come West
because of a woman, for it was on account of three women, who by sudden
coincidence or collusion sprang a situation from which the only relief
was flight. In that he took refuge, not because he was a coward, but
because it was folly to fight a woman, or three women, and because it
was the only real solution of an ungovernable situation. At first he
had drifted from one town to another, dissolute and reckless, apparently
unable to settle down, or to forget the unwholesome three. But one
day there was a terrible railway accident on a construction train, and
Lebanon and Manitou made a call upon his skill, and held him in bondage
to his profession for one whole month. During this time he performed
two operations which the surgeons who had been sent out by the Railway
Directors at Montreal declared were masterpieces.
When that month was up he was a changed man, and he opened an office in
Lebanon. Men trusted him despite his past, and women learned that there
was never a moment when his pulses beat unevenly in their presence.
Nathan Rockwell had had his lesson and it was not necessary to learn it
again. To him, woman, save as a subject of his skill, was a closed book.
He regarded them as he regarded himself, with a kindly cynicism. He
never forgot that his own trouble could and would have been avoided had
it not been for woman’s vanity and consequent cruelty. The unwholesome
three had shared his moral lapse with wide-open eyes, and were in no
sense victims of his; but, disregarding their responsibility, they had,
from sheer jealousy, wrecked his past, and, to their own surprise, had
wrecked themselves as well. They were of those who act first and then
think--too late.
Thus it was that both men and women called Rockwell a handsome man, but
thought of him as having only a crater of exhausted fires in place of a
heart. They came to him with their troubles--even the women of Manitou
who ought to have gone to the priest.
He moved about Lebanon as one who had authority, and desired not to use
it; as one to whom life was like a case in surgery to be treated with
scientific, coolness, with humanity, but not with undue sympathy; yet
the early morning of the day after Ingolby had had his accident at
Barbazon’s Hotel found him the slave of an emotion which shook him
from head to foot. He had saved his friend’s life by a most skilful
operation, but he had been shocked beyond control when, an hour after
the operation was over, and consciousness returned to the patient in the
brilliantly lighted room, Ingolby said:
“Why don’t you turn on the light?”
It was thus Rockwell knew that the Master Man, the friend of Lebanon
and Manitou, was stone blind. When Ingolby’s voice ceased, a horrified
silence filled the room for a moment. Even Jim Beadle, his servant,
standing at the foot of the bed, clapped a hand to his mouth to stop a
cry, and the nurse turned as white as the apron she wore.
Dumbfounded as Rockwell was, with instant professional presence of mind
he said:
“No, Ingolby, you must be kept in darkness a while yet.” Then he whipped
out a silk handkerchief from his pocket. “We will have light,” he
continued, “but we must bandage you first to keep out the glare and
prevent pain. The nerves of the eyes have been injured.”
Hastily and tenderly he bound the handkerchief round the sightless eyes.
Having done so, he said to the nurse with unintentional quotation from
the Gospel of St. John, and a sad irony: “Let there be light.”
It all gave him time to pull himself together and prepare for the moment
when he must tell Ingolby the truth. In one sense the sooner it was
told the better, lest Ingolby should suddenly discover it for himself.
Surprise and shock must be avoided. So now he talked in his low,
soothing voice, telling Ingolby that the operation had put him out of
danger, that the pain now felt came chiefly from the nerves of the
eye, and that quiet and darkness were necessary. He insisted on Ingolby
keeping silent, and he gave a mild opiate which induced several hours’
sleep.
During this time Rockwell prepared himself for the ordeal which must
be passed as soon as possible; gave all needed directions, and had a
conference with the assistant Chief Constable to whom he confided the
truth. He suggested plans for preserving order in excited Lebanon, which
was determined to revenge itself on Manitou; and he gave some careful
and specific instructions to Jowett the horse-dealer. Also, he had
conferred with Gabriel Druse, who had helped bear the injured man to
his own home. He had noted with admiration the strange gentleness of the
giant Romany as he, alone, carried Ingolby in his arms, and laid him
on the bed from which he was to rise with all that he had fought for
overthrown, himself the blind victim of a hard fate. He had noticed the
old man straighten himself with a spring and stand as though petrified
when Ingolby said: “Why don’t you turn on the light?” As he looked round
in that instant of ghastly silence he had observed almost mechanically
that the old man’s lips were murmuring something. Then the thought of
Fleda Druse shot into Rockwell’s mind, and it harassed him during the
hours Ingolby slept, and after the giant Gipsy had taken his departure
just before the dawn.
“I’m afraid it will mean more there than anywhere else,” he said sadly
to himself. “There was evidently something between those two; and she
isn’t the kind to take it philosophically. Poor girl! Poor girl! It’s a
bitter dose, if there was anything in it,” he added.
He watched beside the sick-bed till the dawn stared in and his patient
stirred and waked, then he took Ingolby’s hand, grown a little cooler,
in both his own. “How are you feeling, old man?” he asked cheerfully.
“You’ve had a good sleep-nearly three and a half hours. Is the pain in
the head less?”
“Better, Sawbones, better,” Ingolby replied cheerfully. “They’ve
loosened the tie that binds--begad, it did stretch the nerves. I had
gripes of colic once, but the pain I had in my head was twenty times
worse, till you gave the opiate.”
“That’s the eyes,” said Rockwell. “I had to lift a bit of bone, and the
eyes saw it and felt it, and cried out-shrieked, you might say. They’ve
got a sensitiveness all their own, have the eyes.”
“It’s odd there aren’t more accidents to them,” answered Ingolby--“just
a little ball of iridescent pulp with strings tied to the brain.”
“And what hurts the head may destroy the eyes sometimes,” Rockwell
answered cautiously. “We know so little of the delicate union between
them, that we can’t be sure we can put the eyes right again when,
because of some blow to the head, the ricochet puts the eyes out of
commission.”
“That’s what’s the matter with me, then?” asked Ingolby, feeling the
bandage on his eyes feverishly, and stirring in his bed with a sense of
weariness.
“Yes, the ricochet got them, and has put them out of commission,”
replied Rockwell, carefully dwelling upon each word, and giving a note
of meaning to his tone.
Ingolby raised himself in bed, but Rockwell gently forced him down
again. “Will my eyes have to be kept bandaged long? Shall I have to give
up work for any length of time?” Ingolby asked.
“Longer than you’ll like,” was the enigmatical reply. “It’s the devil’s
own business,” was the weary answer. “Every minute’s valuable to me now.
I ought to be on deck morning, noon, and night. There’s all the trouble
between the two towns; there’s the strike on hand; there’s that business
of the Orange funeral, and more than all a thousand times, there’s--” he
paused.
He was going to say, “There’s that devil Marchand’s designs on my
bridge,” but he thought better of it and stopped. It had been his
intention to deal with Marchand directly, to get a settlement of their
differences without resort to the law, to prevent the criminal act
without deepening a feud which might keep the two towns apart for years.
Bad as Marchand was, to prevent his crime was far better than punishing
him for it afterwards. To have Marchand arrested for conspiracy to
commit a crime was a business which would gravely interfere with his
freedom of motion in the near future, would create complications which
might cripple his own purposes in indirect ways. That was why he had
declared to Jowett that even Felix Marchand had his price, and that he
would try negotiations first.
But what troubled him now, as he lay with eyes bandaged and a knowledge
that to-morrow was the day fixed for the destruction of the bridge, was
his own incapacity. It was unlikely that his head or his eyes would be
right by to-morrow, or that Rockwell would allow him to get up. He felt
in his own mind that the injury he had received was a serious one, and
that the lucky horseshoe had done Maxchand’s work for him all too well.
This thought shook him. Rockwell could see his chest heave with an
excitement gravely injurious to his condition; yet he must be told the
worst, or the shock of discovery by himself that he was blind might give
him brain fever. Rockwell felt that he must hasten the crisis.
“Rockwell,” Ingolby suddenly asked, “is there any chance of my
discarding this and getting out to-morrow?” He touched the handkerchief
round his eyes. “It doesn’t matter about the head bandages, but the
eyes--can’t I slough the wraps to-morrow? I feel scarcely any pain now.”
“Yes, you can get rid of the bandages to-morrow--you can get rid of them
to-day, if you really wish,” Rockwell answered, closing in on the last
defence.
“But I don’t mind being in the dark to-day if it’ll make me fitter for
to-morrow and get me right sooner. I’m not a fool. There’s too much
carelessness about such things. People often don’t give themselves a
chance to get right by being in too big a hurry. So, keep me in darkness
to-day, if you want to, old man. For a hustler I’m not in too big a
hurry, you see. I’m for holding back to get a bigger jump.”
“You can’t be in a big hurry, even if you want to, Ingolby,” rejoined
Rockwell, gripping the wrist of the sick man, and leaning over him.
Ingolby grew suddenly very still. It was as though vague fear had seized
him and held him in a vice. “What is it? What do you want to say to me?”
he asked in a low, nerveless tone.
“You’ve been hit hard, Chief. The ricochet has done you up for some
time. The head will soon get well, but I’m far from sure about your
eyes. You’ve got to have a specialist about them. You’re in the dark,
and as for making you see, so am I. Your eyes and you are out of
commission for some time, anyhow.”
He leaned over hastily, but softly and deftly undid the bandages over
the eyes and took them off. “It’s seven in the morning, and the sun’s
up, Chief, but it doesn’t do you much good, you see.”
The last two words were the purest accident, but it was a strange,
mournful irony, and Rockwell flushed at the thought of it. He saw
Ingolby’s face turn grey, and then become white as death itself.
“I see,” came from the bluish-white lips, as the stricken man made call
on all the will and vital strength in him.
For a long minute Rockwell held the cold hand in the grasp of one who
loves and grieves, but even so the physician and surgeon in him were
uppermost, as they should be, in the hour when his friend was standing
on the brink of despair, maybe of catastrophe irremediable. He did not
say a word yet, however. In such moments the vocal are dumb and the
blind see.
Ingolby heaved himself in the bed and threw up his arms, wresting them
from Rockwell’s grasp.
“My God--oh, my God-blind!” he cried in agony. Rockwell drew the head
with the sightless eyes to his shoulder.
For a moment he laid one hand on the heart, that, suddenly still, now
went leaping under his fingers. “Steady,” he said firmly. “Steady. It
may be only temporary. Keep your head up to the storm. We’ll have a
specialist, and you must not get mired till then. Steady, Chief.”
“Chief! Chief!” murmured Ingolby. “Dear God, what a chief! I risked
everything, and I’ve lost everything by my own vanity. Barbazon’s--the
horseshoe--among the wolves, just to show I could do things better than
any one else--as if I had the patent for setting the world right. And
now--now--”
The thought of the bridge, of Marchand’s devilish design, shot into
his mind, and once more he was shaken. “The bridge! Blind! Mother!” he
called in a voice twisted in an agony which only those can feel to whom
life’s purposes are even more than life itself. Then, with a moan, he
became unconscious, and his head rolled over against Rockwell’s cheek.
The damp of his brow was as the damp of death as Rockwell’s lips touched
it.
“Old boy, old boy!” Rockwell said tenderly, “I wish it had been me
instead. Life means so much to you--and so little to me. I’ve seen too
much, and you’ve only just begun to see.”
Laying him gently down, Rockwell summoned the nurse and Jim Beadle and
spoke to them in low tones. “He knows now, and it has hit him hard, but
not so hard that he won’t stiffen to it. It might have been worse.”
He gave instructions as to the care that should be taken, and replaced
the bandages on the eyes. It was, however, long before Ingolby was
restored to consciousness, and when it came, Rockwell put to his lips
a cooling drink containing a powerful opiate. Ingolby drank it without
protest and in silence. He was like one whose sense of life was
automatic and of an inner rather than an outer understanding. But when
he lay back on the pillow again, he said slowly:
“I want the Chief Constable to come here to-night at eight o’clock. It
will be dark then. He must come. It is important. Will you see to it,
Rockwell?”
He thrust out a hand as though to find Rockwell’s, and there was a
gratitude and an appeal in the pressure of his fingers which went to
Rockwell’s heart.
“All right, Chief. I’ll have him here,” Rockwell answered briskly, but
with tears standing in his eyes. Ingolby had, as it were, been stricken
out of the active, sentient, companionable world into a world where
he was alone, detached, solitary. His being seemed suspended in an
atmosphere of misery and helplessness.
“Blind! I am blind!” That was the phrase which kept beating with the
pulses in Ingolby’s veins, that throbbed, and throbbed, and throbbed
like engines in a creaking ship which the storm was shaking and pounding
in the vast seas between the worlds. Here was the one incomprehensible,
stupefying fact: nothing else mattered. Every plan he had ever had,
every design which he had made his own by an originality that even his
foes acknowledged, were passing before his brain in swift procession,
shining, magnified, and magnificent, and in that sudden clear-seeing
of his soul he beheld their full value, their exact concrete force
and ultimate effect. Yet he knew himself detached from them, inactive,
incapable, because he could not see with the eyes of the body. The great
essential thing to him was that one thing he had lost. A man might be a
cripple and still direct the great concerns of life and the business of
life. He might be shorn of limb and scarred of body, but with eye sight
still direct the courses of great schemes, in whatever sphere of life
his purposes were at work. He might be deaf to every sound and forever
dumb, but seeing enabled him still to carry forward every enterprise.
In darkness, however, those things were naught, because judgment must
depend on the eyes and senses of others. The report might be true or
false, the deputy might deceive, and his blind chief might never know
the truth unless some other spectator of his schemes should report it;
and the truth could not surely be checked, save by some one, perhaps,
whose life was joined to his, by one that truly loved him, whose fate
was his.
His brain was afire. By one that truly loved him! Who was there that
loved him? Who was there at one with him in all his deep designs, in all
he had done and meant to do? Neither brother, nor sister, nor friend,
nor any other. None of his blood was there who could share with him the
constructive work he had set out to do. There was no friend whose fate
was part of his own. There was the Boss Doctor: but Rockwell was tied to
his own responsibilities, and he could not give up, of course, would not
give up his life to the schemes of another. There were a dozen men whom
he had helped to forge ahead by his own schemes, but their destinies
were not linked with his. Only one whose life was linked with his could
be trusted to be his eyes, to be the true reporter of all he did, had
done, or planned to do. Only one who loved him.
But even one who loved him could not carry through his incompleted
work against the assaults of his enemies, who were powerful, watchful,
astute, and merciless; who had a greed which set money higher than
all else in the world. They were of the new order of things in the
New World. The business of life was to them not a system of barter and
exchange, a giving something of value to get something of value, with a
margin of profit for each, and a sense of human equity behind; it was
a cockpit where one man sought to get what another man had--and get it
almost anyhow.
It was the work of the faro-bank man, whose sleight of hand deceived the
man that carried the gun.
All the old humanity and good-fellowship of the trader, the man who
exchanged, as it was in the olden days of the world and continued in
greater or less degree till the present generation--all that was gone.
It was held in contempt. It had prevailed when men were open robbers and
filibusters and warriors, giving their lives, if need be, to get what
they wanted, making force their god. It had triumphed over the violence
and robbery of the open road until the dying years of one century
and the young years of a new century. Then the day of the trickster
came--and men laughed at the idea of fair exchange and strove to give
an illusive value for a thing of real value--the remorseless sleight of
hand which the law could not reach. The desire to get profit by honest
toiling was dying down to ashes.
Against such men had Ingolby worked--the tricksters, the manipulators.
At the basis of his schemes was organization and the economy which
concentrated and conserved energy begets, together with its profit. He
had been the enemy of waste, the apostle of frugality and thrift; and
it was that which had enabled him, in his short career, to win the
confidence of the big men behind him in Montreal, to make good every
step of the way. He had worked for profit out of legitimate product and
industry and enterprise, out of the elimination of waste. It was his
theory (and his practice) that no bit of old iron, no bolt or screw, no
scrap of paper should be thrown away; that the cinders of the engines
could and should be utilized for that which they would make; and that
was why there was a paper-mill and foundry on the Sagalac at Manitou.
That was why and how, so far, he had beaten the tricksters.
But while his schemes flashed before his mind, as the opiate suspended
him in the middle heaven between sleep and waking, the tricksters and
manipulators came hurrying after him like marauders that waited for the
moment when they could rush the camp in the watches of the night. His
disordered imagination saw the ruin and wreck of his work, the seizure
of what was his own--the place of control on his railways, the place of
the Master Man who cared infinitely more to see his designs accomplished
than for the profit they would bring to himself. Yesterday he had been
just at the top of the hill. The key in his fingers was turning in the
lock which would make safe the securities of his life and career, when
it snapped, and the world grew dark as the black curtain fell and shut
out the lighted room from the wayfarer in the gloom. Then, it was,
came the opaque blackness which could be felt, and his voice calling in
despair: “Blind! I am blind!”
He did not know that he had taken an opiate, that his friend had
mercifully atrophied his rebellious nerves. These visions he was seeing
were terribly true, but they somehow gave him no physical torture. It
was as though one saw an operation performed upon one’s body with the
nerves stilled and deadened by ether. Yet he was cruelly conscious of
the disaster which had come to him. For a time at least. Then his mind
seemed less acute, the visions came, then without seeing them go,
they went. And others came in broken patches, shreds, and dreams,
phantasmagoria of the brain, and at last all were mingled and confused;
but as they passed they seemed to burn his sight. How he longed for a
cool bandage over his eyes, for a soft linen which would shut out the
cumuli of broken hopes and designs, life’s goals obliterated! He had had
enough of the black procession of futile things.
His longing was not denied, for even as he roused himself from the
oblivion coming on him, as though by a last effort to remember his dire
misfortune, maybe his everlasting tragedy, something soothing and soft
like linen dipped in dew was laid upon his forehead. A cool, delicious
hand covered his eyes caressingly; a voice from spheres so far away that
worlds were the echoing points of the sound, came whispering to him like
a stir of wings in a singing grove. With a last effort to remain in the
waking world, he raised his head so very little, but fell gently back
again with one sighing word on his lips:
“Fleda!”
It was no illusion. Fleda had come from her own night of trouble to his
motherless, wifeless home, and would not be denied admittance by the
nurse. It was Jim Beadle who admitted her.
“He’d be mad if he knew we wouldn’t let her come,” Jim had said to the
nurse.
It was Fleda who had warned Ingolby of the dangers that surrounded
him--the physical as well as business dangers. She came now to serve the
blind victim of that Fate which she had seen hovering over him.
The renegade daughter of the Romanys, as Jethro Fawe had called her,
was, for the first time, in the house of her master Gorgio.