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The World For Sale, a novel by Gilbert Parker |
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Book 2 - Chapter 19. The Keeper Of The Bridge |
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_ BOOK II CHAPTER XIX. THE KEEPER OF THE BRIDGE "Like the darkness of the grave, which is darkness itself--" Most of those who break out of the zareba of life, who lay violent hands upon themselves, do so with a complete reasoning, which in itself is proof of their insanity. It may be domestic tragedy, or ill-health, or crime, or broken faith, or shame, or insomnia, or betrayed trust--whatever it is, many a one who suffers from such things, tries to end it all with that deliberation, that strategy, and that cunning which belong only to the abnormal. A mind which has known a score or more of sleepless nights acquires an invincible clearness of its own, seeing an end which is without peradventure. It finds a hundred perfect reasons for not going on, every one of which is in itself sufficient; every one of which knits into the other ninety and nine with inevitable affinity. To the mind of Ingolby came a hundred such reasons for breaking out of life's enclosure, as the effect of the opiate Rockwell had given him wore off, and he regained consciousness. As he did so, someone in the room was telling of that intervention of Gabriel Druse and the Monseigneur at the Orange funeral, which had saved the situation. At first he listened to what was said--it was the nurse talking to Jim Beadle with no sharp perception of the significance of the story; though it slowly pierced the lethargy of his senses, and he turned over in the bed to face the watchers. "What time is it, Jim?" he asked heavily. They told him it was sunset. "Is it quiet in both towns?" he asked after a pause. They told him that it was. "Any telegrams for me?" he asked. There was an instant's hesitation. They had had no instructions on this point, and they hardly knew what to say; but Jim's mind had its own logic, and the truth seemed best to him now. He answered that there were several wires, but that they "didn't amount to nothin'." "Have they been opened?" Ingolby asked with a frown, half-raising himself. It was hard to resign the old masterfulness and self-will. "I'd like to see anybody open 'em 'thout my pe'mision," answered Jim imperiously. "When you's asleep, Chief, I'm awake; and I take care of you' things, same as ever I done. There ain't no wires been opened, and there ain't goin' to be whiles I'm runnin' the show for you." "Open and read them to me," commanded Ingolby. Again Ingolby was conscious of hesitation on Jim's part. Already the acuteness of the blind was possessing him, sharpening the senses left unimpaired. Although Jim moved, presumably, towards the place where the telegrams lay, Ingolby realized that his own authority was being crossed by that of the doctor and the nurse. "You will leave the room for a moment, nurse," he said with a brassy vibration in the voice--a sign of nervous strain. With a smothered protest the nurse left, and Jim stood beside the bed with the telegrams. "Read them to me, Jim," Ingolby repeated irritably. "Be quick." They were not wires which Ingolby should have heard at the time, when his wound was still inflamed, when he was still on the outer circle of that artificial sleep which the opiates had secured. They were from Montreal and New York, and, resolved from their half-hidden suggestion into bare elements, they meant that henceforth others would do the work he had done. They meant, in effect, that save for the few scores of thousand dollars he had made, he was now where he was when he came West. When Jim had finished reading them, Ingolby sank back on the pillows and said quietly: "All right, Jim. Put them in the drawer of the table and I'll answer them to-morrow. I want to get a little more sleep, so give me a drink, and then leave me alone--both nurse and you--till I ring the bell. There's a bell on the table, isn't there?" He stretched out a hand towards the table beside the bed, and Jim softly pushed the bell under his fingers. "That's right," he added. "Now, I'm not to be disturbed unless the doctor comes. I'm all right, and I want to be alone and quiet. No one at all in the room is what I want. You understand, Jim?" "My head's just as good to get at what you want as ever it was, and you goin' have what you want, I guess, while I'm on deck," was Jim's reply. Jim put a glass of water into his hand. He drank very slowly, was indeed only mechanically conscious that he was drinking, for his mind was far away. After he had put the glass down, Jim still stood beside the bed, looking at him. "Why don't you go, as I tell you, Jim?" Ingolby asked wearily. "I'm goin'"--Jim tucked the bedclothes in carefully--"I'm goin', but, boss, I jes' want to say dat dis thing goin' to come out all right bime-by. There ain't no doubt 'bout dat. You goin' see everything, come jes' like what you want--suh!" Ingolby did not reply. He held out his hand, and black fingers shot over and took it. A moment later the blind man was alone in the room. The light of day vanished, and the stars came out. There was no moon, but it was one of those nights of the West when millions of stars glimmer in the blue vault above, and every planet and every star and cluster of stars are so near that it might almost seem they could be caught by an expert human hand. The air was very still, and a mantle of peace was spread over the tender scene. The window and the glass doors that gave from Ingolby's room upon the veranda on the south side of the house, were open, and the air was warm as in Midsummer. Now and then the note of a night-bird broke the stillness, but nothing more. It was such a night as Ingolby loved; it was such a night as often found him out in the restful gloom of the trees, thinking and brooding, planning, revelling in memories of books he had read, and in dreaming of books he might write-if there were time. Such a night insulated the dark moods which possessed him occasionally almost as effectively as fishing did; and that was saying much. But the darkest mood of all his days was upon him now. When Rockwell came, soon after Jim and the nurse left him, he simulated sleep, for he had no mind to talk; and the doctor, deceived by his even breathing, had left, contented. At last he was wholly alone with his own thoughts, as he desired. From the moment Jim had read him the wires, which were the real revelation of the situation to which he had come, he had been travelling hard on the road leading to a cul-de-sac, from which there was no egress save by breaking through the wall. Never, it might have seemed, had his mind been clearer, but it was a clearness belonging to the abnormal. It was a straight line of thought which, in its intensity, gathered all other thoughts into its wake, reduced them to the control of an obsession. It was borne in on his mind that his day was done, that nothing could right the disorder which had strewn his path with broken hopes and shattered ambitions. No life-work left, no schemes to accomplish, no construction to achieve, no wealth to gain, no public good to be won, no home to be his, no woman, his very own, to be his counsellor and guide in the natural way! As myriad thoughts drove through his brain on this Indian-summer night, they all merged into the one obsession that he could no longer stay. The irresistible logic of the brain stretched to an abnormal tenuity, and an intolerable brightness was with him. He was in the throes of that intense visualization which comes with insomnia, when one is awake yet apart from the waking world, where nothing is really real and nothing normal. He had a call to go hence, and he must go. Minute after minute passed, hours passed, and the fight of the soul to maintain itself against the disordered mind went on. All his past seemed but part of a desert, lonely and barren and strange. In the previous year he had made a journey to Arizona with Jowett, to see some railway construction there, and at a ranch he had visited he came upon some verses which had haunted his mind ever since. They fastened upon his senses now. They were like a lonesome monotone which at length gave calm to his torturing reflections. In his darkness the verses kept repeating themselves: I heard the desert calling; and I knew that over there, In the night-time when the ghost-trees glimmered in the moon, I hear the desert calling, and my heart stands still;
His brain had been strained beyond the normal, almost unconsciously his fingers had fastened on the pistol in the drawer of the table by his bed. It had been there since the day when he had travelled down from Alaska--loaded as it had been when he had carried it down the southern trail. But as his fingers tightened on the little engine of death, from the words which had been ringing in his brain came the flash of a revelation:
Who can tell? The grim, malign experience of Fleda in her bedroom with the Thing she thought was from beyond the bounds of her own life; the voice that spoke to Ingolby, and the breath that swept over his cheek were, perhaps, as real in a sense as would have been the corporeal presence of Jethro Fawe in one case and of Fleda Druse in the other. It may be that in very truth Fleda Druse's spirit with its poignant solicitude controlled his will as he "rose up to depart." But if it was only an illusion, it was not less a miracle. Some power of suggestion bound his fleeing footsteps, drew him back from the Brink. He slept. Once the nurse came and looked at him and returned to the other room; and twice Jim stole in silently for a moment and retired again to his own chamber. The stars shone in at the doors that opened out from the quiet room into the night, the watch beside the bed ticked on, the fox-terrier which always slept on a mat at the foot of the bed sighed in content, while his master breathed heavily in a sleep full of dreams that hurried past like phantasmagoria--of a hundred things that had been in his life, and that had never been; of people he had known, distorted, ridiculous and tremendous. There were dreams of fiddlers and barbers, of crowds writhing in passion in a room where there was a billiard-table and a lucky horseshoe on the wall. There were dreams that tossed and mingled in one whirlpool vision; and then at last came a dream which was so cruel and clear that it froze his senses. It was the dream of a great bridge over a swiftflowing river; of his own bridge over the Sagalacof that bridge being destroyed by men who crept through the night with dynamite in their hands. With a hoarse, smothered cry he awoke. His eyes opened wide. His heart was beating like a hammer against his side. Only the terrier at his feet heard the muttered agony. With an instinct all its own, it slipped to the floor. It watched its master get out of bed, cross the room and feel for a coat along the wall--an overcoat which he used as a dressing-gown at times. Putting it on hastily, with outstretched hands Ingolby felt his way to the glass doors opening on the veranda. The dog, as though to let him know he was there, rubbed against his legs. Ingolby murmured a soft, unintelligible word, and, in his bare feet, passed out on to the veranda, and from there to the garden and towards the gate at the front of the house. The nurse heard the gate click lightly, but she was only half-awake, and as all was quiet in the next room, she composed herself in her chair again with the vain idea that she was not sleeping. And Jim the faithful one, as though under a narcotic of fate, was snoring softly beside the vacant room. The streets were still. No lights burned anywhere so far as eye could see. But now and then, in the stillness through which the river flowed on, murmuring and rhythmic, there rose the distant sounds of disorderly voices. Ingolby was in a state which was neither sleep nor waking, which was in part delirium, in part oblivion to all things in the world save one--an obsession so complete, that he moved automatically through the street in which he lived towards that which led to the bridge. His terrier, as though realizing exactly what he wished, seemed to guide him by rubbing against his legs, and even pressing hard against them when he was in any danger of losing the middle of the road, or swerving towards a ditch or some obstruction. Only once did they pass any human being, and that was when they came upon a camp of road-builders, where a red light burned, and two men slept in the open by a dying fire. One of them raised his head when Ingolby passed, but being more than half-asleep, and seeing only a man and a dog, thought nothing of it, and dropped back again upon his rough pillow. He was a stranger to Lebanon, and there was little chance of his recognizing Ingolby in the semi-darkness. As they neared the river, Ingolby became deeply agitated. He moved with his hands outstretched. Had it not been for his dog he would probably have walked into the Sagalac; for though he seemed to have an instinct that was extra-natural, he swayed and staggered in the delirium driving him on. There was one dreadful moment when, having swerved from the road leading on to the bridge, he was within a foot of the river-bank. One step farther, and he would have plunged down thirty feet into the stream, to be swept to the Rapids below. But for the first time the terrier made a sound. He gave a whining bark almost human in its meaning, and threw himself at the legs of his master, pushing him backwards and over towards the road leading upon the bridge, as a collie guides sheep. Presently Ingolby felt the floor of the bridge under his feet; and now he hastened on, with outstretched arms and head bent forward, listening intently, the dog trotting beside, with what knowledge working in him Heaven alone knew. The roar of the Rapids below was a sonorous accompaniment to Ingolby's wild thoughts. One thing only he felt, one thing only heard--the men in Barbazon's Tavern saying that the bridge should be blown up on the Saturday night; and this was Saturday night--the night of the day following that of the Orange funeral. He had heard the criminal hireling of Felix Marchand say that it should be done at midnight, and that the explosive should be laid under that part of the bridge which joined the Manitou bank of the Sagalac. As though in very truth he saw with his eyes, he stopped short not far from the point where the bridge joined the land, and stood still, listening. For several minutes he was motionless, intent, as an animal waiting for its foe. At last his newly-sensitive ears heard footsteps approaching and low voices. The footsteps came nearer, the voices, though so low, became more distinct. They were now not fifty feet away, but to the delirious Ingolby they were as near as death had been when his fingers closed on the pistol in his room. He took a step forward, and with passionate voice and arms outstretched, he cried:
The two men in the semi-darkness in front of him cowered at the sight of this weird figure holding the bridge they had come to destroy. His words, uttered in so strange and unnatural a voice, shook their nerves. They shrank away from the ghostly form with the outstretched arms. In the minute's pause following on his words, a giant figure suddenly appeared behind the dynamiters. It was the temporary Chief Constable of Lebanon, returning from his visit to Tekewani. He had heard Ingolby's wild words, and he realized the situation. "Ingolby--steady there, Ingolby!" he called. "Steady! Steady! Gabriel Druse is here. It's all right." At the first sound of Druse's voice the two wreckers turned and ran. As they did so, Ingolby's hands fell to his side, and he staggered forward. "Druse--Fleda," he murmured, then swayed, trembled and fell. With words that stuck in his throat Gabriel Druse stooped and lifted him up in his arms. At first he turned towards the bridge, as though to cross over to Lebanon, but the last word Ingolby had uttered rang in his ears, and he carried him away into the trees towards his own house, the faithful terrier following. "Druse--Fleda!" They were the words of one who had suddenly emerged from the obsession of delirium into sanity, and then had fallen into as sudden unconsciousness. "Fleda! Fleda!" called Gabriel Druse outside the door of his house a quarter of an hour later, and her voice in reply was that of one who knew that the feet of Fate were at her threshold. _ |
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