A few hours later Fleda slowly made her way homeward through the woods
on the Manitou side of the Sagalac. Leaving Ingolby’s house, she had
seen men from the ranches and farms and mines beyond Lebanon driving
or riding into the town, as though to a fair or fete-day. Word of
anticipated troubles had sped through the countryside, and the innate
curiosity of a race who greatly love a row brought in sensation-lovers.
Some were skimming along in one-horse gigs, a small bag of oats dangling
beneath like the pendulum of a great clock. Others were in double or
triple-seated light wagons--“democrats” they were called. Women had
a bit of colour in their hats or at their throats, and the men had on
clean white collars and suits of “store-clothes”--a sign of being on
pleasure bent. Young men and girls on rough but serviceable mounts
cantered past, laughing and joking, and their loud talking grated on the
ear of the girl who had seen a Napoleon in the streets of his Moscow.
Presently there crossed her path a gruesomely ugly hearse, with glass
sides and cheap imitation ostrich plumes drawn by gorged ravens of
horses with egregiously long tails, and driven by an undertaker’s
assistant, who, with a natural gaiety of soul, displayed an idiotic
solemnity by dragging down the corners of the mouth. She turned away in
loathing.
Her mind fled to a scene far away in the land of the Volga when she was
a child, where she had seen buried two men, who had fought for their
insulted honour till both had died of their wounds. She remembered the
white and red sashes and the gay scarfs worn by the women at the
burial, the jackets with great silver buttons worn by the men, and the
silver-mounted pistols and bright steel knives in the garish belts. She
saw again the bodies of the two gladiators, covered with crimson robes,
carried shoulder-high on a soft bed of interlaced branches to the
graves beneath the trees. There, covered with flowers and sprigs and
evergreens, ribbons and favours, the kindly earth hid them, cloaked for
their long sleep, while women wept, and men praised the dead, and went
back to the open road again cheerily, as the dead would have them do.
If he had died--the man she had just left behind in that torpid sleep
which opiates bring--his body would have been carried to his last home
in just such a hideous equipage as this hearse. A shiver of revolt went
through her frame, and her mind went to him as she had seen him lying
between the white sheets of his bed, his hands, as they had lain
upon the coverlet, compact of power and grace, knit and muscular and
vital--not the hand for a violin but the hand for a sword.
As she had laid her hand upon his hot forehead and over his eyes, he had
unconsciously spoken her name. That had told her more of what really was
between them than she had ever known. In the presence of the catastrophe
that must endanger, if not destroy the work he had done, the career he
had made, he thought of her, spoke her name.
What could she do to prevent his ruin? She must do something, else she
had no right to think of him. As though her thoughts had summoned him,
she came suddenly upon Felix Marchand at a point where her path resolved
itself into two, one leading to Manitou, the other to her own home.
There was a malicious glint in the greenish eyes of the dissolute
demagogue as he saw her. His hat made a half-circle before it found his
head again.
“You pay early visits, mademoiselle,” he said, his teeth showing
rat-like.
“And you late ones?” she asked meaningly.
“Not so late that I can’t get up early to see what’s going on,” he
rejoined in a sour voice.
“Is it that those who beat you have to get up early?” she asked
ironically.
“No one has got up earlier than me lately,” he sneered.
“All the days are not begun,” she remarked calmly.
“You have picked up quite an education since you left the road and the
tan,” he said with the look of one who delivers a smashing blow.
“I am not yet educated enough to know how you get other people to commit
your crimes for you,” she retorted.
“Who commits my crimes for me?” His voice was sharp and even anxious.
“The man who told you I was once a Gipsy--Jethro Fawe.”
Her instinct had told her this was so. But had Jethro told all? She
thought not. It would need some catastrophe which threw him off his
balance to make him speak to a Gorgio of the inner things of Romany
life; and child--marriage was one of them.
He scoffed. “Once a Gipsy always a Gipsy. Race is race, and you can’t
put it off and on like--your stocking.”
He was going to say chemise, but race was race, and vestiges of native
French chivalry stayed the gross simile on the lips of the degenerate.
Fleda’s eyes, however, took on a dark and brooding look which, more
than anything else, showed the Romany in her. With a murky flood of
resentment rising in her veins, she strove to fight back the half-savage
instincts of a bygone life. She felt as though she could willingly
sentence this man to death as her father had done Jethro Fawe that very
morning. Another thought, however, was working and fighting in her--that
Marchand was better as a friend than an enemy; and that while Ingolby’s
fate was in the balance, while yet the Orange funeral had not taken
place and the strikes had not yet come, it might be that he could be won
over to Ingolby. Her mind was thus involuntarily reproducing Ingolby’s
policy, as he had declared it to Jowett and Rockwell. It was to find
Felix Marchand’s price, and to buy off his enmity--not by money, for
Marchand did not need that, but by those other coins of value which are
individual to each man’s desires, passions and needs.
“Once a Frenchman isn’t always a Frenchman,” she replied coolly,
disregarding the coarse insolence of his last utterance. “You yourself
do not now swear faith to the tricolour or the fleur-de-lis.”
He flushed. She had touched a tender nerve.
“I am a Frenchman always,” he rejoined angrily. “I hate the English. I
spit on the English flag.”
“Yes, I’ve heard you are an anarchist,” she rejoined. “A man with no
country and with a flag that belongs to no country--quelle affaire et
quelle drolerie!”
She laughed. Taken aback in spite of his anger, he stared at her. How
good her French accent was! If she would only speak altogether in
that beloved language, he could smother much malice. She was beautiful
and--well, who could tell? Ingolby was wounded and blind, maybe for
ever, and women are always with the top dog--that was his theory.
Perhaps her apparent dislike of him was only a mood. Many women that
he had conquered had been just like that. They had begun by disliking
him--from Lil Sarnia down--and had ended by being his. This girl
would never be his in the way that the others had been, but--who could
tell?--perhaps he would think enough of her to marry her? Anyway, it was
worth while making such a beauty care for him. The other kind of women
were easy enough to get, and it would be a piquant thing to have one
irreproachable affaire. He had never had one; he was not sure that any
girl or woman he had ever known had ever loved him, and he was certain
that he had never loved any girl or woman. To be in love would be a new
and piquant experience for him. He did not know love, but he knew what
passion was. He had ever been the hunter. This trail might be dangerous,
too, but he would take his chances. He had seen her dislike of him
whenever they had met in the past, and he had never tried to soften her
attitude towards him. He had certainly whistled, but she had not come.
Well, he would whistle again--a different tune.
“You speak French much?” he asked almost eagerly, the insolence gone
from his tone. “Why didn’t I know that?”
“I speak French in Manitou,” she replied, “but nearly all the French
speak English there, and so I speak more English than French.”
“Yes, that’s it,” he rejoined almost angrily again. “The English will
not learn French, will not speak French. They make us learn English,
and--”
“If you don’t like the flag and the country, why don’t you leave it?”
she interrupted, hardening, though she had meant to try and win him over
to Ingolby’s side.
His eyes blazed. There was something almost real in the man after all.
“The English can kill us, they can grind us to the dust,” he rejoined in
French, “but we will not leave the land which has always been ours. We
settled it; our fathers gave their lives for it in a thousand places.
The Indians killed them, the rivers and the storms, the plague and the
fire, the sickness and the cold wiped them out. They were burned alive
at the stake, they were flayed; their bones were broken to pieces by
stones--but they blazed trails with their blood in the wilderness from
New Orleans to Hudson’s Bay. They paid for the land with their lives.
Then the English came and took it, and since that time--one hundred and
fifty years--we have been slaves.”
“You do not look like a slave,” she answered, “and you have not acted
like a slave. If you were to do the things in France that you’ve done
here, you wouldn’t be free as you are to-day.”
“What have I done?” he asked darkly.
“You were the cause of what happened at Barbazon’s last night,”--he
smiled evilly--“you are egging on the roughs to break up the Orange
funeral to-day; and there is all the rest you know so well.”
“What is the rest I know so well?” He looked closely at her, his long,
mongrel eyes half-closing with covert scrutiny.
“Whatever it is, it is all bad and it is all yours.”
“Not all,” he retorted coolly. “You forget your Gipsy friend. He did his
part last night, and he’s still free.”
They had entered the last little stretch of wood in which her home lay,
and she slackened her footsteps slightly. She felt that she had been
unwise in challenging him; that she ought to try persistently to win
him over. It was repugnant to her, still it must be done even yet. She
mastered herself for Ingolby’s sake and changed her tactics.
“As you glory in what you have done, you won’t mind being responsible
for all that’s happened,” she replied in a more friendly tone.
She made an impulsive gesture towards him.
“You have shown what power you have--isn’t that enough?” she asked. “You
have made the crowd shout, ‘Vive Marchand!’ You can make everything
as peaceful as it is now upset. If you don’t do so, there will be much
misery. If peace must be got by force, then the force of government will
get it in the end. You have the gift of getting hold of the worst men
here, and you have done it; but won’t you now master them again in
the other way? You have money and brains; why not use them to become a
leader of those who will win at last, no matter what the game may be?”
He came close to her. She shrank inwardly, but she did not move. His
greenish eyes were wide open in the fulness of eloquence and desire.
“You have a tongue like none I ever heard,” he said impulsively. “You’ve
got a mind that thinks, you’ve got dash and can take risks. You took
risks that day on the Carillon Rapids. It was only the day before that
I’d met you by the old ford of the Sagalac, and made up to you. You
choked me off as though I was a wolf or a devil on the loose. The next
day when I saw Ingolby hand you out to the crowd from his arms, I got
nasty--I have fits like that sometimes, when I’ve had a little too much
liquor. I felt it more because you’re the only kind of woman that could
ever get a real hold on me. It was you made me get the boys rampaging
and set the toughs moving. As you say, I can get hold of a crowd. It’s
not hard--with money and drink. You can buy human nature cheap. Every
man has his price they say--and every woman too--bien sur! The thing
is to find out what is the price, and then how to buy. You can’t buy
everyone in the same way, even if you use a different price. You’ve got
to find out how they want the price--whether it’s to be handed over the
counter, so to speak, or to be kept on the window-sill, or left in a
pocket, or dropped in a path, or dug up like a potato, with a funny
make-believe that fools nobody, but just plays to the hypocrite in
everyone everywhere. I’m saying this to you because you’ve seen more of
the world, I bet, than one in a million, even though you’re so young. I
don’t see why we can’t come together. I’m to be bought. I don’t say
that my price isn’t high. You’ve got your price, too. You wouldn’t
fuss yourself about things here in Manitou and Lebanon, if there wasn’t
something you wanted to get. Tout ca! Well, isn’t it worth while making
the bargain? You’ve got such gift of speech that I’m just as if I’d
been drugged, and all round, face, figure, eyes, hair, foot, and girdle,
you’re worth giving up a lot for. I’ve seen plenty of your sex, and I’ve
heard crowds of them talk, but they never had anything for me beyond the
minute. You’ve got the real thing. You’re my fancy. You’ve been thinking
and dreaming of Ingolby. He’s done. He’s a back number. There’s nothing
he’s done that isn’t on the tumble since last night. The financial gang
that he downed are out already against him. They’ll have his economic
blood. He made a splash while he was at it, but the alligator’s got him.
It’s ‘Exit Ingolby,’ now.”
She made a passionate gesture, and seemed about to speak, but he went
on: “No, don’t say anything. I know how you feel. You’ve had your face
turned his way, and you can’t look elsewhere all at once. But Time cures
quick, if you’re a good healthy human being. Ingolby was the kind likely
to draw a girl. He’s a six-footer and over; he spangled a lot, and he
smiled pretty--comme le printemps, and was sharp enough to keep clear of
women that could hurt him. That was his strongest point after all, for
a little, sly sprat of a woman that’s made eyes at you and led you on,
till you sent her a note in a hurry some time with some loose hot words
in it, and she got what she’d wanted, will make you pay a hundred times
for the goods you get. Ingolby was sharp enough to walk shy, until you
came his way, and then he lost his underpinning. But last night got him
in the vitals--hit him between the eyes; and his stock’s not worth ten
cents in the dollar to-day. But though the pumas are out, and he’s done,
and’ll never see his way out of the hole he’s in”--he laughed at his
grisly joke”--it’s natural to let him down easy. You’ve looked his way;
he did you a good turn at the Carillon Rapids, and you’d do one for him
if you could. I’m the only one can stop the worst from happening. You
want to pay your debt to him. Good. I can help you do it. I can stop
the strikes on the railways and in the mills. I can stop the row at
the Orange funeral. I can stop the run on his bank and the drop in his
stock. I can fight the gang that’s against him--I know how. I’m the man
that can bring things to pass.”
He paused with a sly, mean smile of self-approval and conceit, and his
tongue licked the corners of his mouth in a way that drunkards have in
the early morning when the effect of last night’s drinking has worn off.
He spread out his hands with the air of a man who had unpacked his
soul, but the chief characteristic of his manner was egregious belief in
himself.
At first, in her desire to find a way to meet the needs of Ingolby,
Fleda had listened to him with fortitude and even without revolt. But
as he began to speak of women, and to refer to herself with a look of
gloating which men of his breed cannot hide, her angry pulses beat hard.
She did not quite know where he was leading, but she was sure he meant
to say something which would vex her beyond bearing. At one moment she
meant to cut short his narrative, but he prevented her, and when at last
he ended, she was almost choking with agitation. It had been borne in
upon her as his monologue proceeded, that she would rather die than
accept anything from this man--anything of any kind. To fight him was
the only thing. Nothing else could prevail in the end. His was the
service of the unpenitent thief.
“And what is it you want to buy from me?” she asked evenly.
He did not notice, and he could not realize that ominous thing in her
voice and face. “I want to be friends with you. I want to see you here
in the woods, to meet you as you met Ingolby. I want to talk with you,
to hear you talk; to learn things from you I never learned before; to--”
She interrupted him with a swift gesture. “And then--after that? What do
you want at the end of it all? One cannot spend one’s time talking and
wandering in the woods and teaching and learning. After that, what?”
“I have a house in Montreal,” he said evasively. “I don’t want to live
there alone.” He laughed. “It’s big enough for two, and at the end it
might be us two, if--”
With sharp anger, yet with coolness and dignity, she broke in on his
words. “Might be us two!” she exclaimed. “I have never thought of making
my home in a sewer. Do you think--but, no, it isn’t any use talking! You
don’t know how to deal with man or woman. You are perverted.”
“I did not mean what you mean; I meant that I should want to marry you,”
he protested. “You think the worst of me. Someone has poisoned your mind
against me.”
“Everyone has poisoned my mind against you,” she returned, “and yourself
most of all. I know you will try to injure Mr. Ingolby; and I know that
you will try to injure me; but you will not succeed.”
She turned and moved away from him quickly, taking the path towards her
own front door. He called something after her, but she did not or would
not hear.
As she entered the open space in front of the house, she heard footsteps
behind her and turned quickly, not without apprehension. A woman came
hurrying towards her. She was pale, agitated, haggard with fatigue.
“May I speak with you?” she asked in French. “Surely,” replied Fleda.