THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMAD
Even more than Dr. Rockwell, Berry, the barber, was the most troubled man
in Lebanon on the day of the Orange funeral. Berry was a good example of
an unreasoning infatuation. The accident which had come to his idol,
with the certain fall of his fortunes, hit him so hard, that, for the
first time since he became a barber, his razor nipped the flesh of more
than one who sat in his red-upholstered chair.
In his position, Berry was likely to hear whatever gossip was going. Who
shall have perfect self-control with a giant bib under the chin, tipped
back on a chair that cannot be regulated, with a face covered by lather,
and two plantation fingers holding the nose? In these circumstances,
with much diplomacy, Berry corkscrewed his way into confidence, and when
he dipped a white cloth in bay-rum and eau-de-cologne, and laid it over
the face of the victim, with the finality of a satisfied inquisitor, it
was like giving the last smother to human individuality. An artist after
his kind, he no sooner got what he wanted than he carefully coaxed his
victim away from thoughts of the disclosures into the vague distance of
casual gossip once more.
Gradually and slowly he shepherded his patient back to the realms of
self-respect and individual personality. The border-line was at the
point where the fingers of his customer fluttered at a collar-button; for
Berry, who realized the power that lies in making a man look ridiculous,
never allowed a customer to be shaved or have his hair cut with a collar
on. When his customers had corns, off came the boots also, and then
Berry's triumph over the white man was complete. To call attention to an
exaggerated bunion when the odorous towel lay upon the hidden features of
what once was a "human," was the last act in the drama of the Unmaking of
Man.
Only when the client had felt in his pocket for the price of the flaying,
and laid it, with a ten-cent fee, on the ledge beneath the mirror, where
all the implements of the inquisition and the restoration were assembled,
did he feel manhood restored. If, however, he tried to keep a vow of
silence in the chair of execution, he paid a heavy price; for Berry had
his own methods of punishment. A little tighter grasp of the nose; a
little rougher scrape of the razor, and some sharp, stinging liquid
suddenly slapped with a cold palm on the excoriated spot, with the
devilish hypocrisy of healing it; a longer smothering-period under the
towel, when the corners of it were tucked behind the ears and a crease of
it in the mouth-all these soon induced vocal expression again, and Berry
started on his inquisition with gentle certainty. When at last he dusted
the face with a little fine flour of oatmeal, "to heal the cuticle and
'manoor' the roots," and smelled with content the hands which had
embalmed the hair in verbena-scented oil, a man left his presence
feeling that he was ready for the wrath to come.
Such was Berry when he had under his razor one of Ingolby's business foes
of Manitou, who had of late been in touch with Felix Marchand. Both were
working for the same end, but with different intentions. Marchand worked
with that inherent devilishness which sometimes takes possession of low
minds; but the other worked as he would have done against his own
brother, for his own business success; and it was his view that one man
could only succeed by taking the place of another, as though the Age of
Expansion had ceased and the Age of Smother had begun.
From this client while in a state of abject subjection, Berry, whose
heart was hard that day, but whose diplomacy was impeccable, discovered
a thing of moment. There was to be a procession of strikers from two
factories in Manitou, who would throw down their tools or leave their
machines at a certain moment. Falling into line these strikers would
march across the bridge between the towns at such time as would bring
them into touch with the line of the Orange funeral--two processions
meeting at right angles. If neither procession gave way, the Orange
funeral could be broken up, ostensibly not from religious fanaticism,
but from the "unhappy accident" of two straight lines colliding. It was
a juicy plot; and in a few minutes the Mayor and Gabriel Druse knew of
it from the faithful Berry.
The bell of the meeting-house began to toll as the Orangeman whose death
had caused such commotion was carried to the waiting carriage where he
would ride alone. Almost simultaneously with the starting of the gaudy
yet sombre Orange cortege, with its yellow scarfs, glaring banners,
charcoal plumes and black clothes, the labour procession approached the
Manitou end of the Sagalac bridge. The strikers carried only three or
four banners, but they had a band of seven pieces, with a drum and a pair
of cymbals. With frequent discord, but with much spirit, the Bleaters,
as these musicians were called in Lebanon, inspired the steps of the
Manitou fanatics and toughs. As they came upon the bridge they were
playing a gross paraphrase of The Marseillaise.
At the head of the Orange procession was a silver-cornet band which the
enterprise of Lebanon had made possible. Its leader was a ne'er-do-well
young Welshman, who had been dismissed from leadership after leadership
of bands in the East till at last he had drifted into Lebanon. Here,
strange to say, he had never been drunk but once; and that was the night
before he married the widow of a local publican, who had a nice little
block of stock in one of Ingolby's railways, which yielded her seven per
cent., and who knew how to handle the citizens of the City of Booze.
When she married Tom Straker, her first husband, he drank on an average
twenty whiskies a day. She got him down to one; and then he died and had
as fine a funeral as a judge. There were those who said that if Tom's
whiskies hadn't been cut down so--but there it was: Tom was in the bosom
of Abraham, and William Jones, who was never called anything else than
Willy Welsh, had been cut down from his unrecorded bibulations to none at
all; but he smoked twenty-cent cigars at the ex-widow's expense.
To-day Willy Welsh played with heart and courage, "I'm Going Home to
Glory," at the head of the Orange procession; for who that has faced such
a widow as was his for one whole year could fear the onset of faction
fighters! Besides, as the natives of the South Seas will never eat a
Chinaman, so a Western man will never kill a musician. Senators,
magistrates, sheriffs, police, gamblers, horse-stealers, bankers, and
broncho-riders all die unnatural deaths at times, but a musician in the
West is immune from all except the hand of Fate. Not one can be spared.
Even a tough convicted of cheating at cards, or breaking a boom on a
river, has escaped punishment because he played the concertina.
The discord and jangle between the two bands was the first collision of
this fateful day. While yet there was a space between the two
processions, the bands broke into furious contest. It was then that,
through the long funeral line, men with hard-set faces came closer up
together, and forty, detaching themselves from the well-kept run of
marching lodgemen, closed up around the horses and the hearse, making a
solid flanking force. At stated intervals also, outside the lodgemen in
the lines, were special constables, many of whom had been the stage-
drivers, hunters, cattlemen, prospectors, and pioneers of the early days.
Most of them had come of good religious stock-Presbyterians, Baptists,
Methodists, Unitarians; and though they had little piety, and had never
been able to regain the religious customs and habits of their childhood,
they "Stood for the Thing the Old Folks stand for." They were in a mood
which would tear cotton, as the saying was. There was not one of them
but expected that broken heads and bloodshed would be the order of the
day, and they were stonily, fearlessly prepared for the worst.
Since the appearance of Gabriel Druse on the scene, the feeling had grown
that the luck would be with them. When he started at the head of the
cortege, they could scarce forbear to cheer. Such a champion in
appearance had never been seen in the West, and, the night before,
he had proved his right to the title by shaking a knot of toughs into
spots of disconcerted humanity.
As they approached the crossroads of the bridge, his voice, clear and
sonorous, could be heard commanding the Orange band to cease playing.
When the head of the funeral procession was opposite the bridge--the
band, the hearse, the bodyguard of the hearse--Gabriel Druse stood aside,
and took his place at the point where the lines of the two processions
would intersect.
It was at this moment that the collision came. There were only about
sixty feet of space between the two processions, when a voice rang out in
a challenge so offensive, that the men of Manitou got their cue for
attack without creating it themselves. Every Orangeman of the Lodge of
Lebanon afterwards denied that he had raised the cry; and the chances are
that every one spoke the truth. It was like Felix Marchand to arrange
for just such an episode, and so throw the burden of responsibility on
the Orangemen.
"To hell with the Pope! To hell with the Pope!" the voice rang out, and
it had hardly ceased before the Manitou procession made a rush forward.
The apparent leader of the Manitou roughs was a blackbearded man of
middle height, who spoke raucously to the crowd behind him.
Suddenly a powerful voice rang out.
"Halt, in the name of the Queen!" it called. Surprise is the very
essence of successful war. The roughs of Manitou had not looked for
this. They had foreseen the appearance of the official Chief Constable
of Lebanon; they had expected his challenge and warning in the
vernacular; but here was something which struck them with consternation
--first, the giant of Manitou in the post of command, looking like some
berserker; and then the formal reading of that stately document in the
name of the Queen.
Far back in the minds of every French habitant present was the old
monarchical sense. He makes, at worst, a poor anarchist, though he is a
good revolutionist; and the French colonials had never been divorced from
monarchical France.
In the eyes of the most forward of those on the Sagalac bridge, there
was a sudden wonderment and confusion. To the dramatic French mind,
ceremonial is ever welcome; and for a moment it had them in its grip,
as old Gabriel Druse read out in his ringing voice, the trenchant royal
summons.
It was a strange and dramatic scene--the Orange funeral standing still,
garish yet solemn, with hundreds of men, rough and coarse, quiet and
refined, dissolute and careless, sober and puritanic, broad and tolerant,
sharp and fanatical; the labour procession, polyglot in appearance, but
with Gallic features and looseness of dress predominating; excitable,
brutish, generous, cruel; without intellect, but with an intelligence
which in the lowest was acute, and with temperaments responsive to drama.
As Druse read, his eyes now and then flashed, at first he knew not why,
to the slim, bearded figure of the apparent leader. At length he caught
the feverish eye of the man, and held it for a moment. It was familiar,
but it eluded him; he could not place it.
He heard, however, Jowett's voice say to him, scarce above a whisper:
"It's Felix Marchand, boss!"
Jowett also had been puzzled at first by the bearded figure, but it
suddenly flashed upon him that the beard and wig were a disguise, that
Marchand had resorted to Ingolby's device. It might prove as dangerous
a stratagem with him as it had to Ingolby.
There was a moment's hesitation after Druse had finished reading--as
though the men of Manitou had not quite recovered from their surprise--
then the man with the black beard said something to those nearest him.
There was a start forward, and someone cried, "Down with the Orangemen
--et bas l'Orange!"
Like a well-disciplined battalion the Orangemen rolled up quickly into a
compact mass, showing that they had planned their defence well, and the
moment was black with danger, when, suddenly, Druse strode forward.
Flinging right and left two or three river-drivers, he caught the man
with the black beard, snatched him out from among the oncoming crowd,
and tore off the black beard and wig. Felix Marchand stood exposed.
A cry of fury rang out from the Orangemen behind, and a dozen men rushed
forward, but Gabriel Druse acted with the instant decision of a real
commander. Seeing that it would be a mistake to arrest Marchand at that
moment, he raised the struggling figure of the wrecker above his head
and, with Herculean effort, threw him up over the heads of the Frenchmen
in front of him.
So extraordinary was the sight that, as if fascinated, the crowd before
and behind followed the action with staring eyes and tense bodies. The
faces of all the contending forces were as concentrated for the instant,
as though the sun were falling out of the sky. It was so great a feat,
one so much in consonance with the spirit of the frontier world, that
gasps of praise broke from both crowds. As though it were a thunderbolt,
the Manitou roughs standing where Marchand was like to fall, instead of
trying to catch him, broke away from beneath the bundle of falling
humanity, and Marchand fell on the dusty cement of the bridge with a dull
thud, like a bag of bones.
For a moment there was no motion on the part of either procession.
Banners drooped and swayed as the men holding them were lost in the
excitement.
Time had only been gained, however. There was no reason to think that
the trouble was over, or that the special constables who had gathered
close behind Gabriel Druse would not have to strike heavy blows for the
cause of peace.
The sudden appearance of a new figure in the narrow, open space between
the factions in that momentary paralysis was not a coincidence. It was
what Jowett had planned for, the factor for peace in which he most
believed.
A small, spare man in a scarlet cassock, white chasuble, and black
biretta, suddenly stole out from the crowd on the Lebanon side of the
bridge, carrying the elements of the Mass. His face was shining white,
and in the eyes was an almost unearthly fire. It was the beloved
Monseigneur Lourde.
Raising the elements before him toward his own people on the bridge, he
cried in a high, searching voice:
"I prayed with you, I begged you to preserve the peace. Last night I
asked you in God's name to give up your disorderly purposes. I thought
then I had done my whole duty; but the voice of God has spoken to me.
An hour ago I carried the elements to a dying woman here in Lebanon, and
gave her peace. As I did so the funeral bell rang out, and it came to
me, as though the One above had spoken, that peace would be slain and His
name insulted by all of you--by all of you, Catholic and Protestant.
God's voice bade me come to you from the bed of one who has gone hence
from peace to Peace. In the name of Christ, peace, I say! Peace, in the
name of Christ!"
He raised the sacred vessel high above his head, so that his eyes looked
through the walls of his uplifted arms. "Kneel!" he called in a clear,
ringing voice which yet quavered with age.
There was an instant's hush, and then great numbers of the crowd in front
of him, toughs and wreckers, blasphemers, turbulent ones and evil-livers,
yet Catholics all, with the ancient root of the Great Thing in them, sank
down; and the banners of the labour societies drooped before the symbol
of peace won by sacrifice.
Even the Orangemen bared their heads in the presence of that Popery which
was anathema to them, which they existed to combat, and had been taught
to hate. Some, no doubt, would rather have fought than have had peace at
the price; but they could not free their minds from the sacred force
which had brought most of the crowd of faction-fighters to their knees.
With a wave of the hand, Gabriel Druse ordered the cortege forward, and
silently the procession with its yellow banners and its sable, drooping
plumes moved on.
Once on its way again, Willy Welsh and his silver-cornet band struck up
the hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light." It was the one real coincidence of the
day that this moving hymn was written by a cardinal of the Catholic
Church. It was also an irony that, as the crowd of sullen Frenchmen
turned back to Manitou, the train bearing the Mounted Police, for whom
the Mayor had sent to the capital, steamed noisily in, and redcoats
showed at its windows and on the steps of the cars.
The only casualty that the day saw was the broken arm and badly bruised
body of Felix Marchand, who was gloomily helped back to his home across
the Sagalac.