The World for Sale, Complete

by Gilbert Parker

  CHAPTER XVII. THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMAD

  Even more than Dr. Rockwell, Berry, the barber, was the most troubledman in Lebanon on the day of the Orange funeral. Berry was a goodexample of an unreasoning infatuation. The accident which had come tohis 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 fleshof more than one who sat in his red-upholstered chair.

  In his position, Berry was likely to hear whatever gossip was going. Whoshall have perfect self-control with a giant bib under the chin, tippedback 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 whenhe dipped a white cloth in bay-rum and eau-de-cologne, and laid it overthe face of the victim, with the finality of a satisfied inquisitor, itwas like giving the last smother to human individuality. An artist afterhis kind, he no sooner got what he wanted than he carefully coaxed hisvictim away from thoughts of the disclosures into the vague distance ofcasual gossip once more.

  Gradually and slowly he shepherded his patient back to the realms ofself-respect and individual personality. The border-line was at thepoint where the fingers of his customer fluttered at a collar-button;for Berry, who realized the power that lies in making a man lookridiculous, never allowed a customer to be shaved or have his hair cutwith a collar on. When his customers had corns, off came the bootsalso, and then Berry's triumph over the white man was complete. To callattention to an exaggerated bunion when the odorous towel lay upon thehidden features of what once was a "human," was the last act in thedrama of the Unmaking of Man.

  Only when the client had felt in his pocket for the price of theflaying, and laid it, with a ten-cent fee, on the ledge beneath themirror, where all the implements of the inquisition and the restorationwere assembled, did he feel manhood restored. If, however, he tried tokeep 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 ofthe nose; a little rougher scrape of the razor, and some sharp, stingingliquid suddenly slapped with a cold palm on the excoriated spot, withthe devilish hypocrisy of healing it; a longer smothering-period underthe towel, when the corners of it were tucked behind the ears and acrease of it in the mouth-all these soon induced vocal expression again,and Berry started on his inquisition with gentle certainty. When at lasthe dusted the face with a little fine flour of oatmeal, "to heal thecuticle and 'manoor' the roots," and smelled with content the handswhich had embalmed the hair in verbena-scented oil, a man left hispresence feeling that he was ready for the wrath to come.

  Such was Berry when he had under his razor one of Ingolby's businessfoes of Manitou, who had of late been in touch with Felix Marchand. Bothwere working for the same end, but with different intentions. Marchandworked with that inherent devilishness which sometimes takes possessionof low minds; but the other worked as he would have done against his ownbrother, for his own business success; and it was his view that one mancould only succeed by taking the place of another, as though the Age ofExpansion had ceased and the Age of Smother had begun.

  From this client while in a state of abject subjection, Berry, whoseheart was hard that day, but whose diplomacy was impeccable, discovereda thing of moment. There was to be a procession of strikers from twofactories in Manitou, who would throw down their tools or leave theirmachines at a certain moment. Falling into line these strikers wouldmarch across the bridge between the towns at such time as would bringthem into touch with the line of the Orange funeral--two processionsmeeting at right angles. If neither procession gave way, the Orangefuneral could be broken up, ostensibly not from religious fanaticism,but from the "unhappy accident" of two straight lines colliding. It wasa juicy plot; and in a few minutes the Mayor and Gabriel Druse knew ofit from the faithful Berry.

  The bell of the meeting-house began to toll as the Orangeman whose deathhad caused such commotion was carried to the waiting carriage where hewould ride alone. Almost simultaneously with the starting of the gaudyyet sombre Orange cortege, with its yellow scarfs, glaring banners,charcoal plumes and black clothes, the labour procession approached theManitou end of the Sagalac bridge. The strikers carried only three orfour banners, but they had a band of seven pieces, with a drum anda pair of cymbals. With frequent discord, but with much spirit, theBleaters, as these musicians were called in Lebanon, inspired the stepsof the Manitou fanatics and toughs. As they came upon the bridge theywere playing a gross paraphrase of The Marseillaise.

  At the head of the Orange procession was a silver-cornet band which theenterprise of Lebanon had made possible. Its leader was a ne'er-do-wellyoung Welshman, who had been dismissed from leadership after leadershipof 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 nightbefore he married the widow of a local publican, who had a nice littleblock of stock in one of Ingolby's railways, which yielded her sevenper 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 averagetwenty whiskies a day. She got him down to one; and then he died and hadas fine a funeral as a judge. There were those who said that if Tom'swhiskies hadn't been cut down so--but there it was: Tom was in the bosomof Abraham, and William Jones, who was never called anything else thanWilly Welsh, had been cut down from his unrecorded bibulations to noneat 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 toGlory," at the head of the Orange procession; for who that has facedsuch a widow as was his for one whole year could fear the onset offaction fighters! Besides, as the natives of the South Seas will nevereat a Chinaman, so a Western man will never kill a musician. Senators,magistrates, sheriffs, police, gamblers, horse-stealers, bankers, andbroncho-riders all die unnatural deaths at times, but a musician in theWest 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 ariver, has escaped punishment because he played the concertina.

  The discord and jangle between the two bands was the first collisionof this fateful day. While yet there was a space between the twoprocessions, the bands broke into furious contest. It was then that,through the long funeral line, men with hard-set faces came closer uptogether, and forty, detaching themselves from the well-kept run ofmarching lodgemen, closed up around the horses and the hearse, making asolid flanking force. At stated intervals also, outside the lodgemenin the lines, were special constables, many of whom had been thestage-drivers, hunters, cattlemen, prospectors, and pioneers of theearly days. Most of them had come of good religious stock-Presbyterians,Baptists, Methodists, Unitarians; and though they had little piety, andhad never been able to regain the religious customs and habits of theirchildhood, they "Stood for the Thing the Old Folks stand for." They werein a mood which would tear cotton, as the saying was. There was not oneof them but expected that broken heads and bloodshed would be the orderof the day, and they were stonily, fearlessly prepared for the worst.

  Since the appearance of Gabriel Druse on the scene, the feeling hadgrown that the luck would be with them. When he started at the headof the cortege, they could scarce forbear to cheer. Such a champion inappearance had never been seen in the West, and, the night before, hehad proved his right to the title by shaking a knot of toughs into spotsof disconcerted humanity.

  As they approached the crossroads of the bridge, his voice, clear andsonorous, could be heard commanding the Orange band to cease playing.

  When the head of the funeral procession was opposite the bridge--theband, the hearse, the bodyguard of the hearse--Gabriel Druse stoodaside, and took his place at the point where the lines of the twoprocessions would intersect.

  It was at this moment that the collision came. There were only aboutsixty feet of space between the two processions, when a voice rang o
utin a challenge so offensive, that the men of Manitou got their cue forattack without creating it themselves. Every Orangeman of the Lodge ofLebanon afterwards denied that he had raised the cry; and the chancesare that every one spoke the truth. It was like Felix Marchandto arrange for just such an episode, and so throw the burden ofresponsibility on the Orangemen.

  "To hell with the Pope! To hell with the Pope!" the voice rang out, andit had hardly ceased before the Manitou procession made a rush forward.The apparent leader of the Manitou roughs was a blackbearded man ofmiddle 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 veryessence of successful war. The roughs of Manitou had not looked forthis. They had foreseen the appearance of the official Chief Constableof Lebanon; they had expected his challenge and warning inthe vernacular; but here was something which struck them withconsternation--first, the giant of Manitou in the post of command,looking like some berserker; and then the formal reading of that statelydocument in the name of the Queen.

  Far back in the minds of every French habitant present was the oldmonarchical sense. He makes, at worst, a poor anarchist, though he isa good revolutionist; and the French colonials had never been divorcedfrom monarchical France.

  In the eyes of the most forward of those on the Sagalac bridge, therewas 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 royalsummons.

  It was a strange and dramatic scene--the Orange funeral standing still,garish yet solemn, with hundreds of men, rough and coarse, quietand refined, dissolute and careless, sober and puritanic, broad andtolerant, sharp and fanatical; the labour procession, polyglotin appearance, but with Gallic features and looseness of dresspredominating; excitable, brutish, generous, cruel; without intellect,but with an intelligence which in the lowest was acute, and withtemperaments 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 caughtthe 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 itsuddenly flashed upon him that the beard and wig were a disguise, thatMarchand had resorted to Ingolby's device. It might prove as dangerous astratagem with him as it had to Ingolby.

  There was a moment's hesitation after Druse had finished reading--asthough the men of Manitou had not quite recovered from theirsurprise--then the man with the black beard said something to thosenearest him. There was a start forward, and someone cried, "Down withthe Orangemen--et bas l'Orange!"

  Like a well-disciplined battalion the Orangemen rolled up quickly into acompact mass, showing that they had planned their defence well, andthe moment was black with danger, when, suddenly, Druse strode forward.Flinging right and left two or three river-drivers, he caught the manwith 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 rushedforward, but Gabriel Druse acted with the instant decision of a realcommander. Seeing that it would be a mistake to arrest Marchand at thatmoment, he raised the struggling figure of the wrecker above his headand, with Herculean effort, threw him up over the heads of the Frenchmenin front of him.

  So extraordinary was the sight that, as if fascinated, the crowd beforeand behind followed the action with staring eyes and tense bodies. Thefaces 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, thatgasps of praise broke from both crowds. As though it were a thunderbolt,the Manitou roughs standing where Marchand was like to fall, insteadof trying to catch him, broke away from beneath the bundle of fallinghumanity, and Marchand fell on the dusty cement of the bridge with adull 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 theexcitement.

  Time had only been gained, however. There was no reason to think thatthe trouble was over, or that the special constables who had gatheredclose behind Gabriel Druse would not have to strike heavy blows for thecause of peace.

  The sudden appearance of a new figure in the narrow, open space betweenthe factions in that momentary paralysis was not a coincidence. Itwas what Jowett had planned for, the factor for peace in which he mostbelieved.

  A small, spare man in a scarlet cassock, white chasuble, and blackbiretta, suddenly stole out from the crowd on the Lebanon side of thebridge, carrying the elements of the Mass. His face was shining white,and in the eyes was an almost unearthly fire. It was the belovedMonseigneur Lourde.

  Raising the elements before him toward his own people on the bridge, hecried in a high, searching voice:

  "I prayed with you, I begged you to preserve the peace. Last night Iasked you in God's name to give up your disorderly purposes. I thoughtthen 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, andgave her peace. As I did so the funeral bell rang out, and it came tome, as though the One above had spoken, that peace would be slain andHis 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 hencefrom peace to Peace. In the name of Christ, peace, I say! Peace, in thename of Christ!"

  He raised the sacred vessel high above his head, so that his eyes lookedthrough 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 infront of him, toughs and wreckers, blasphemers, turbulent ones andevil-livers, yet Catholics all, with the ancient root of the Great Thingin them, sank down; and the banners of the labour societies droopedbefore the symbol of peace won by sacrifice.

  Even the Orangemen bared their heads in the presence of that Poperywhich was anathema to them, which they existed to combat, and had beentaught to hate. Some, no doubt, would rather have fought than have hadpeace at the price; but they could not free their minds from the sacredforce which had brought most of the crowd of faction-fighters to theirknees.

  With a wave of the hand, Gabriel Druse ordered the cortege forward, andsilently the procession with its yellow banners and its sable, droopingplumes moved on.

  Once on its way again, Willy Welsh and his silver-cornet band struck upthe hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light." It was the one real coincidence of theday that this moving hymn was written by a cardinal of the CatholicChurch. It was also an irony that, as the crowd of sullen Frenchmenturned back to Manitou, the train bearing the Mounted Police, for whomthe Mayor had sent to the capital, steamed noisily in, and redcoatsshowed at its windows and on the steps of the cars.

  The only casualty that the day saw was the broken arm and badly bruisedbody of Felix Marchand, who was gloomily helped back to his home acrossthe Sagalac.