CHAPTER IV. THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWE
Gabriel Druse's house stood on a little knoll on the outskirts of thetown of Manitou, backed by a grove of pines. Its front windows faced theSagalac, and the windows behind looked into cool coverts where in olddays many Indian tribes had camped; where Hudson's Bay Company's men hadpitched their tents to buy the red man's furs. But the red man no longerset up his tepee in these secluded groves; the wapiti and red deer hadfled to the north never to return, the snarling wolf had stolen intoregions more barren; the ceremonial of the ancient people no longermade weird the lonely nights; the medicine-man's incantations, theharvest-dance, the green-corn-dance, the sun-dance had gone. The braves,their women, and their tepees had been shifted to reservations whereGovernments solemnly tried to teach them to till the field, and growcorn, and drive the cart to market; while yet they remembered the herdsof buffalo which had pounded down the prairie like storm-clouds andgiven their hides for the tepee; and the swift deer whose skins made thewigwam luxurious.
Originally Manitou had been the home of Icelanders, Mennonites,and Doukhobors; settlers from lands where the conditions of earliercenturies prevailed, who, simple as they were in habits and in life,were ignorant, primitive, coarse, and none too cleanly.
They had formed an unprogressive polyglot settlement, and the placeassumed a still more primeval character when the Indian Reservationwas formed near by. When French Canadian settlers arrived, however, theplace became less discordant to the life of a new democracy, thoughthey did little to make it modern in the sense that Lebanon, across theriver, where Ingolby lived, was modern from the day the first shack wasthrown up.
Manitou showed itself antagonistic to progress; it was old-fashioned,and primitively agricultural. It looked with suspicion on the factoriesbuilt after Ingolby came and on the mining propositions, which circledthe place with speculation. Unlike other towns of the West, it wasinsanitary and uneducated; it was also given to nepotism and a primitivekind of jobbery; but, on the whole, it was honest. It was a settlementtwenty years before Lebanon had a house, though the latter exceededthe population of Manitou in five years, and became the home of alladventuring spirits--land agents, company promoters, mining prospectors,railway men, politicians, saloon keepers, and up to-date dissentingpreachers. Manitou was, however, full of back-water people, religiousfanatics, little farmers, guides, trappers, old coureurs-de-bois,Hudson's Bay Company factors and ex-factors, half-breeds; and all therest.
The real feud between the two towns began about the time of the arrivalof Gabriel Druse, his daughter, and Madame Bulteel, the woman in black,and it had grown with great rapidity and increasing intensity. Manitoucondemned the sacrilegiousness of the Protestants, whose meeting-houseswere used for "socials," "tea-meetings," "strawberry festivals," andentertainments of many kinds; while comic songs were sung at the tablewhere the solemn Love Feast was held at the quarterly meetings. At lastwhen attempts were made to elect to Parliament an Irish lawyer who addedto his impecuniousness, eloquence, a half-finished University education,and an Orangeman's prejudices of the best brand of Belfast or Derry,inter-civic strife took the form of physical violence. The great bridgebuilt by Ingolby between the two towns might have been ten thousandyards long, so deep was the estrangement between the two places. Theyhad only one thing in common--a curious compromise--in the person ofNathan Rockwell, an agnostic doctor, who had arrived in Lebanon with areputation for morality somewhat clouded; though, where his patients inManitou and Lebanon were concerned, he had been the "pink of propriety."
Rockwell had arrived in Lebanon early in its career, and had remainedunimportant until a railway accident occurred at Manitou and theresident doctors were driven from the field of battle, one by death,and one by illness. Then it was that the silent, smiling, dark-skinned,cool-headed and cool-handed Rockwell stepped in, and won for himself thegratitude of all--from Monseigneur Lourde, the beloved Catholic priest,to Tekewani, the chief. This accident was followed by an epidemic.
That was at the time, also, when Fleda Druse returned from Winnipegwhere she had been at school for one memorable and terrible six months,pining for her father, defying rules, and crying the night through for"the open world," as she called it. So it was that, to her father'sdismay and joy in one, she had fled from school, leaving all her thingsbehind her; and had reached home with only the clothes on her back and afew cents in her pocket.
Instantly on her return she had gone among the stricken people asfearlessly as Rockwell had done, but chiefly among the women andchildren; and it was said that the herbal medicine she administeredwas marvellous in its effect--so much so that Rockwell asked for theprescription, which she declined to give.
Thus it was that the French Canadian mothers with daughters of theirown, bright-eyed brunettes, ready for the man-market, regarded withtoleration the girl who took their children away for picnics down theriver or into the woods, and brought them back safe and sound at the endof the day. Not that they failed to be shocked sometimes, when, on herwild Indian pony, Fleda swept through Manitou like a wind and out intothe prairie, riding, as it were, to the end of the world. Try as theywould, these grateful mothers of Manitou, they could not get as near toFleda Druse as their children did, and they were vast distances from herfather.
"There, there, look at him," said old Madame Thibadeau to her neighbourChristine Brisson--"look at him with his great grey-beard, and his eyeslike black fires, and that head of hair like a bundle of burnt flax! Hecomes from the place no man ever saw, that's sure."
"Ah, surelee, men don't grow so tall in any Christian country,"announced Christine Brisson, her head nodding sagely. "I've seen thepictures in the books, and there's nobody so tall and that looks likehim--not anywhere since Adam."
"Nom de pipe, sometimes-trulee, sometimes, I look up there at where helives, and I think I see a thousand men on horses ride out of the woodsbehind his house and down here to gobble us all up. That's the way Ifeel. It's fancy, but I can't help that." Dame Thibadeau rested herhands--on her huge stomach as though the idea had its origin there.
"I've seen a lot of fancies come to pass," gloomily returned her friend."It's a funny world. I don't know what to make of its sometimes."
"And that girl of his, the strangest creature, as proud as a peacock,but then as kind as kind to the children--of a good heart, surelee. Theysay she has plenty of gold rings and pearls and bracelets, and all likethat. Babette Courton, she saw them when she went to sew. Why doesn'tMa'm'selle wear them?"
Christine looked wise and smoothed out her apron as though it was aparchment. "With such queer ones, who knows? But, yes, as you say, shehas a kind heart. The children, well, they follow her everywhere."
"Not the children only," sagely added the other. "From Lebanon theycome, the men, and plenty here, too; and there's that Felix Marchand,the worst of all in Manitou or anywhere."
"I'd look sharp if Felix Marchand followed me," remarked Christine."There are more papooses at the Reservation since he come back, andover in Lebanon--!" She whispered darkly to her friend, and they noddedknowingly.
"If he plays pranks in Manitou he'll get his throat cut, for sure. Evenwith Protes'ants and Injuns it's bad enough," remarked Dame Thibadeau,panting with the thought of it.
"He doesn't even leave the Doukhobors alone. There's--" Again Christinewhispered, and again that ugly look came to their faces which belongs tothe thought of forbidden things.
"Felix Marchand'll have much money--bad penny as he is," continuedChristine in her normal voice. "He'll have more money than he can putin all the trouser legs he has. Old Hector, his father, has enough for agover'ment. But that M'sieu' Felix will get his throat cut if he followsMa'm'selle Druse about too much. She hates him--I've seen when they met.Old man Druse'll make trouble. He don't look as he does for nothing."
"Ah, that's so. One day, we shall see what we shall see," murmuredChristine, and waved a hand to a friend in the street.
This conversation happened on the evening of the day
that Fleda Druseshot the Carillon Rapids alone. An hour after the two gossips had hadtheir say Gabriel Druse paced up and down the veranda of his house,stopping now and then to view the tumbling, hurrying Sagalac, or todwell upon the sunset which crimsoned and bronzed the western sky. Hiswalk had an air of impatience; he seemed disturbed of mind and restlessof body.
He gave an impression of great force. He would have been picked out ofa multitude, not alone because of his remarkable height, but becausehe had an air of command and the aloofness which shows a man sufficientunto himself.
As he stood gazing reflectively into the sunset, a strange, plaintive,birdlike note pierced the still evening air. His head lifted quickly,yet he did not look in the direction of the sound, which came from thewoods behind the house. He did not stir, and his eyes half-closed, asthough he hesitated what to do. The call was not that of a bird familiarto the Western world. It had a melancholy softness like that of thebell-bird of the Australian bush. Yet, in the insistence of the note, itwas, too, a challenge or a summons.
Three times during the past week he had heard it--once as he went by themarket-place of Manitou; once as he returned in the dusk from Tekewani'sReservation, and once at dawn from the woods behind the house. Hispresent restlessness and suppressed agitation had been the result.
It was a call he knew well. It was like a voice from a dead world. Itasked, he knew, for an answering call, yet he had not given it. It wasseven days since he first heard it in the market-place, and in thatseven days he had realized that nothing in this world which has everbeen, really ceases to be. Presently, the call was repeated. On thethree former occasions there had been no repetition. The call hadtrembled in the air but once and had died away into unbroken silence.Now, however, it rang out with an added poignancy. It was like a birdcalling to its vanished mate.
With sudden resolution Druse turned. Leaving the veranda, he walkedslowly behind the house into the woods and stood still under thebranches of a great cedar. Raising his head, a strange, solemn note camefrom his lips; but the voice died away in a sharp broken sound which wasmore human than birdlike, which had the shrill insistence of authority.The call to him had been almost ventriloquial in its nature. His lipshad not moved at all.
There was silence for a moment after he had called into the void, as itwere, and then there appeared suddenly from behind a clump of juniper,a young man of dark face and upright bearing. He made a slow obeisancewith a gesture suggestive of the Oriental world, yet not like the usualgesture of the East Indian, the Turk or the Persian; it was composite ofall.
He could not have been more than twenty-five years of age. He was sosparely made, and his face being clean-shaven, he looked even younger.His clothes were the clothes of the Western man; and yet there was amanner of wearing them, there were touches which were evidence to thewatchful observer that he was of other spheres. His wide, felt, Westernhat had a droop on one side and a broken treatment of the crown, whichof itself was enough to show him a stranger to the prairie, while hisbrown velveteen jacket, held by its two lowest buttons, was reminiscentof an un-English life. His eyes alone would have announced him as ofsome foreign race, though he was like none of the foreigners who hadbeen the pioneers of Manitou. Unlike as he and Gabriel Druse were inheight, build, and movement, still there was something akin in themboth.
After a short silence evidently disconcerting to him, "Blessing andhail, my Ry," he said in a low tone. He spoke in a strange language andwith a voice rougher than his looks would have suggested.
The old man made a haughty gesture of impatience. "What do you want withme, my Romany 'chal'?" he asked sharply.--[A glossary of Romany wordswill be found at the end of the book.]
The young man replied hastily. He seemed to speak by rote. His mannerwas too eager to suit the impressiveness of his words. "The sheep arewithout a shepherd," he said. "The young men marry among the Gorgios,or they are lost in the cities and return no more to the tents andthe fields and the road. There is disorder in all the world among theRomanys. The ancient ways are forgotten. Our people gather and settleupon the land and live as the Gorgios live. They forget the way beneaththe trees, they lose their skill in horses. If the fountain is choked,how shall the water run?"
A cold sneer came to the face of Gabriel Druse. "The way beneath thetrees!" he growled. "The way of the open road is enough. The way beneaththe trees is the way of the thief, and the skill of the horse is theskill to cheat."
"There is no other way. It has been the way of the Romany since the timeof Timur Beg and centuries beyond Timur, so it is told. One man and allmen must do as the tribe has done since the beginning."
The old man pulled at his beard angrily. "You do not talk like a Romany,but like a Gorgio of the schools."
The young man's manner became more confident as he replied. "Thinking onwhat was to come to me, I read in the books as the Gorgio reads. I satin my tent and worked with a pen; I saw in the printed sheets what theworld was doing every day. This I did because of what was to come."
"And have you read of me in the printed sheets? Did they tell you whereI was to be found?" Gabriel Druse's eyes were angry, his manner wasauthoritative.
The young man stretched out his hands eloquently. "Hail and blessing, myRy, was there need of printed pages to tell me that? Is not everythingknown of the Ry to the Romany people without the written or printedthing? How does the wind go? How does the star sweep across the sky?Does not the whisper pass as the lightning flashes? Have you forgottenall, my Ry? Is there a Romany camp at Scutari? Shall it not know what isthe news of the Bailies of Scotland and the Caravans by the Tagus? It isknown always where my lord is. All the Romanys everywhere know it, andmany hundreds have come hither from overseas. They are east, they aresouth, they are west."
He made gesture towards these three points of the compass. A dark frowncame upon the old man's forehead. "I ordered that none should seek tofollow, that I be left in peace till my pilgrimage was done. Even asthe first pilgrims of our people in the days of Timur Beg in India, so Ihave come forth from among you all till the time be fulfilled."
There was a crafty look in the old man's eyes as he spoke, and ages ofdubious reasoning and purpose showed in their velvet depths.
"No one has sought me but you in all these years," he continued. "Whoare you that you should come? I did not call, and there was my commandthat none should call to me."
A bolder look grew in the other's face. His carriage gained in ease."There is trouble everywhere--in Italy, in Spain, in France, in England,in Russia, in mother India"--he made a gesture of salutation and bowedlow--"and our rites and mysteries are like water spilt upon the ground.If the hand be cut off, how shall the body move? That is how it is. Youare vanished, my lord, and the body dies."
The old man plucked his beard again fiercely and his words came withguttural force. "That is fool's talk. In the past I was never everywhereat once. When I was in Russia, I was not in Greece; when I was inEngland, I was not in Portugal. I was always 'vanished' from one placeto another, yet the body lived."
"But your word was passed along the roads everywhere, my Ry. Your tonguewas not still from sunrise to the end of the day. Your call was heardalways, now here, now there, and the Romanys were one; they heldtogether."
The old man's face darkened still more and his eyes flashed fire. "Theseare lies you are telling, and they will choke you, my Romany 'chal'. AmI deceived, I who have known more liars than any man under the sky? AmI to be fooled, who have seen so many fools in their folly? There isroguery in you, or I have never seen roguery."
"I am a true Romany, my Ry," the other answered with an air of courageand a little defiance also.
"You are a rogue and a liar, that is sure. These wailings are your own.The Romany goes on his way as he has gone these hundreds of years. If Iam silent, my people will wait until I speak again; if they see me notthey will wait till I enter their camps once more. Why are you here?Speak, rogue and liar." The wrathful old man, sure in his reading ofthe youth, towered a
bove him commandingly. It almost seemed as though hewould do him bodily harm, so threatening was his attitude, but the youngRomany raised his head, and with a note of triumph said:
"I have come for my own, as it is my right."
"What is your own?"
"What has been yours until now, my Ry."
A grey look stole slowly up the strong face of the exiled leader, forhis mind suddenly read the truth behind the young man's confident words.
"What is mine is always mine," he answered roughly. "Speak! What is it Ihave that you come for?"
The young man braced himself and put a hand upon his lips. "I come foryour daughter, my Ry." The old man suddenly regained his composure, andauthority spoke in his bearing and his words. "What have you to do withmy daughter?"
"She was married to me when I was seven years of age, as my Ry knows.I am the son of Lemuel Fawe--Jethro Fawe is my name. For three thousandpounds it was so arranged. On his death-bed three thousand pounds didmy father give to you for this betrothal. I was but a child, yet Iremembered, and my kinsmen remembered, for it is their honour also. I amthe son of Lemuel Fawe, the husband of Fleda, daughter of Gabriel Druse,King and Duke and Earl of all the Romanys; and I come for my own."
Something very like a sigh of relief came from Gabriel Druse's lips, butthe anger in his face did not pass, and a rigid pride made the distancebetween them endless. He looked like a patriarch giving judgment as heraised his hand and pointed with a menacing finger at Jethro Fawe, hisRomany subject--and, according to the laws of the Romany tribes, hisson-in-law. It did not matter that the girl--but three years of age whenit happened--had no memory of the day when the chiefs and great peopleassembled outside the tent of Lemuel Fawe when he lay dying, and, bythe simple act of stepping over a branch of hazel, the two children weremarried: if Romany law and custom were to abide, then the two now wereman and wife. Did not Lemuel Fawe, the old-time rival of Gabriel Drusefor the kinship of the Romanys, the claimant whose family had beenrulers of the Romanys for generations before the Druses gainedascendancy--did not Fawe, dying, seek to secure for his son by marriagewhat he had failed to get for himself by other means?
All these things had at one time been part of Gabriel Druse's covenantof life, until one year in England, when Fleda, at twelve years of age,was taken ill and would have died, but that a great lady descended upontheir camp, took the girl to her own house, and there nursed and tendedher, giving her the best medical aid the world could produce, so thatthe girl lived, and with her passionate nature loved the Lady Barrowdaleas she might have loved her own mother, had that mother lived and shehad ever known her. And when the Lady Barrowdale sickened and died ofthe same sickness which had nearly been her own death, the promise shemade then overrode all other covenants made for her. She had promisedthe great lady who had given her own widowed, childless life for herown, that she would not remain a Gipsy, that she would not marry aGipsy, but that if ever she gave herself to any man it would be to aGorgio, a European, who travelled oftenest "the open road" leading tohis own door. The years which had passed since those tragic days inGloucestershire had seen the shadows of that dark episode pass, but thepledge had remained; and Gabriel Druse had kept his word to the dead,because of the vow made to the woman who had given her life for the lifeof a Romany lass.
The Romany tribes of all the nations did not know why their Ry hadhidden himself in the New World; they did not know that the girl hadfor ever forsworn their race, and would never become head of all theRomanys, solving the problem of the rival dynasties by linking her lifewith that of Jethro Fawe. But Jethro Fawe had come to claim his own.
Now Gabriel Druse's eyes followed his own menacing finger with sharpinsistence. In the past such a look had been in his eyes when he hadsentenced men to death. They had not died by the gallows or the sword orthe bullet, but they had died as commanded, and none had questioned hisdecree. None asked where or how the thing was done when a fire sprangup in a field, or a quarry, or on a lonely heath or hill-top, and on thepyre were all the belongings of the condemned, being resolved into dustas their owner had been made earth again.
"Son of Lemuel Fawe," the old man said, his voice rough withauthority, "but that you are of the Blood, you should die now for thisdisobedience. When the time is fulfilled, I will return. Until then, mydaughter and I are as those who have no people. Begone! Nothing that ishere belongs to you. Begone, and come no more!"
"I have come for my own--for my Romany 'chi', and I will not go withouther. I am blood of the Blood, and she is mine."
"You have not seen her," said the old man craftily, and fighting hardagainst the wrath consuming him, though he liked the young man's spirit."She has changed. She is no longer Romany."
"I have seen her, and her beauty is like the rose and the palm."
"When have you seen her since the day before the tent of Lemuel Fawe nowseventeen years ago?" There was an uneasy note in the commanding tone.
"I have seen her three times of late, and the last time I saw her was anhour or so since, when she rode the Rapids of Carillon."
The old man started, his lips parted, but for a moment he did not speak.At last words came. "The Rapids--speak. What have you heard, Jethro, sonof Lemuel?"
"I did not hear, I saw her shoot the Rapids. I ran to follow.At Carillon I saw her arrive. She was in the arms of a Gorgio ofLebanon--Ingolby is his name."
A malediction burst from Gabriel Druse's lips, words sharp and terriblein their intensity. For the first time since they had met the young manblanched. The savage was alive in the giant.
"Speak. Tell all," Druse said, with hands clenching.
Swiftly the young man told all he had seen, and described how he had runall the way--four miles--from Carillon, arriving before Fleda and herIndian escort.
He had hardly finished his tale, shrinking, as he told it, from thefierceness of his chief, when a voice called from the direction of thehouse.
"Father--father," it cried.
A change passed over the old man's face. It cleared as the face of thesun clears when a cloud drives past and is gone. The transformation wasstartling. Without further glance at his companion, he moved swiftlytowards the house. Once more Fleda's voice called, and before he couldanswer they were face to face.
She stood radiant and elate, and seemed not apprehensive of disfavour orreproach. Behind her was Tekewani and his braves.
"You have heard?" she asked reading her father's face.
"I have heard. Have you no heart?" he answered. "If the Rapids haddrowned you!"
She came close to him and ran her fingers through his beard tenderly. "Iwas not born to be drowned," she said softly.
Now that she was a long distance from Ingolby, the fact that a man hadheld her in his arms left no shadow on her face. Ingolby was now onlypart of her triumph of the Rapids. She tossed a hand affectionatelytowards Tekewani and his braves.
"How!" said Gabriel Druse, and made a gesture of salutation to theIndian chief.
"How!" answered Tekewani, and raised his arm high in response. Aninstant afterwards Tekewani and his followers were gone their ways.
Suddenly Fleda's eyes rested on the young Romany who was now standingat a little distance away. Apprehension came to her face. She felt herheart stand still and her hands grow cold, she knew not why. But she sawthat the man was a Romany.
Her father turned sharply. A storm gathered in his face once more, and amurderous look came into his eyes.
"Who is he?" Fleda asked, scarce above a whisper, and she noted theinsistent, amorous look of the stranger.
"He says he is your husband," answered her father harshly.