CHAPTER XXV. MAN PROPOSES
Before sunset, as Ingolby had promised, he made his way towards GabrielDruse's house. A month had gone since he had left its hospitalitybehind. What had happened between that time and this day of fate forLebanon and Manitou?
It is not a long story, and needs but a brief backward look. This hadhappened:
The New York expert performed the operation upon Ingolby's eyes,announced it successful, declared that his sight would be restored, andthen vanished with a thousand dollars in his pocket. For days thereafterthe suspense was almost more than Fleda could bear. She grew suddenlythin and a little worn, and her big eyes had that look of yearning whichonly comes to those whose sorrow is for another. Old Gabriel Druse wasemphatic in his encouragement, but his face reflected the trouble inthat of his daughter. He knew well that if Ingolby remained blind hewould never marry Fleda, though he also knew well that, with her nature,almost fanatical in its convictions, she would sacrifice herself, ifsacrifice was the name for it. The New York expert had prophesied andpromised, but who could tell! There was the chance of failure, and thevanished eye-surgeon had the thousand dollars in his pocket.
Two people, however, were cheerful; they were Ingolby and Jim. Jim wentabout the place humming a nigger melody to himself, and twice he broughtBerry the barber to play to his Chief on the cottonfield fiddle. NiggerJim, though it was two generations gone which linked him with thewilds of the Gold Coast, was the slave of fanatical imagination, and inIngolby's own mind there was the persistent superstition that all wouldbe well, because of a dream he had had. He dreamed he heard his deadmother's voice in the room, where he lay. She had called him by name,and had said: "Look at me, Max," and he had replied, "I cannot see," andshe had said again,
"Look at me, my son!" Then he thought that he had looked at her, hadseen her face clearly, and it was as the last time they parted, shiningand sweet and good. She had said to him in days long gone, that ifshe could ever speak to him across the Void, she would; and he had thefullest belief now that she had done so.
So it was that this dreadnought of industry and organization, in dockfor repairs, cheerfully awaited the hour when he would be launched againupon the tide of work-healthy, healed and whole. At last there camethe day when, for an instant, the bandages could be removed. There werepresent, Rockwell, Fleda, and Jim--Jim, pale but grinning, at the footof the bed; Fleda, with her back against the door and her hands clenchedbehind her as though to shut out the invading world. Never had her heartbeat as it beat now, but her eyes were steady and bright. There wasin them, however, a kind of pleading look. She could not see Ingolby'sface; did not want to see it when the bandages were taken off; but atthe critical moment she shut her eyes and her back held the door, asthough a thousand were trying to force an entrance.
The first words after the bandages were removed came from Ingolby.
"Well, Jim, you look all right!" he said.
Swaying as she went, Fleda half-blindly moved towards a chair near byand sank into it. She scarcely heard Jim's reply.
"Looking all right yourself, Chief. You won't see much change in thishere old town."
Ingolby's hand was in Rockwell's. "It's all right, isn't it?" he asked.
"You can see it is," answered Rockwell with a chuckle in his voice, andthen suddenly he put the bandages round Ingolby's eyes again. "That'senough for today," he said.
A moment later the bandages were secured and Rockwell stood back fromthe bed.
"In another week you'll see as well as ever you did," Rockwell said."I'm proud of you."
"Well, I hope I'll see a little better than ever I did," remarkedIngolby meaningly. "I was pretty short-sighted before."
At that instant he heard Fleda's footstep approaching the bed. Hissenses had grown very acute since the advent of his blindness. He heldout his hand into space.
"What a nice room this is!" he said as her fingers slid into his. "It'sthe nicest room I was ever in. It's too nice for me. In a few days I'llhand the lease over again to its owner, and go back to the pigsty Jimkeeps in Stormont Street."
"Well, there ain't any pigs in that sty now, Chief; but it's all ready,"said Jim, indignant and sarcastic.
It was a lucky speech. It broke the spell of emotion which was greatlystraining everybody's endurance.
"That's one in the eye for somebody," remarked Rockwell drily.
"What would you like for lunch?" asked Fleda, letting go Ingolby's hand,but laying her fingers on his arm for a moment.
What would he like for lunch! Here was a man back from the Shadows, frombroken hopes and shattered career, from the helplessness and eternalpatience of the blind; here he was on the hard, bright highroad again,with a procession of restored things coming towards him, with life andlove within his grasp; and the woman to whom it mattered most of all,who was worth it all, and more than all where he was concerned, said tohim in this moment of revelation, "What would you like for lunch?"
With an air as casually friendly as her own, he put another hand on thefingers lying on his arm, patted them, and said gaily, "Anything I cansee. As a drover once said to me, 'I can clean as fur as I can reach.'"
In just such a temper also they had parted when he went back to his"pigsty" with Jim. To Gabriel Druse he had said all that one man mightsay to another without excess of feeling; to Madame Bulteel he had givena gold pencil which he had always worn; to Fleda he gave nothing, saidlittle, but the few words he did say told the story, if not the wholestory.
"It's a nice room," he said, and she had flushed at his words, "and I'vehad the best time of my life in it. I'd like to buy it, but I know it'snot for sale. Love and money couldn't buy it--isn't that so?"
Then had--come days in his own home, still with bandaged eyes, but withthe bandages removed for increasing hours every day; yet no one at allin the town knowing the truth except the Mayor, Halliday the lawyer, andone or two others who kept the faith until Ingolby gave them the word tospeak. Then had come the Mayor's visit to Montreal, the great meeting,the fire at Manitou, and now Ingolby on the way to his tryst with Fleda.They had met twice only since he had left Gabriel Druse's house, andon the last occasion they had looked each other full in the eyes, andIngolby had said to her in the moment they had had alone:
"I'm going to get back, but I can't do it without you."
To this her reply had been, "I hope it's not so bad as that," and shehad looked provokingly in his eyes. Now she knew beyond peradventurethat he cared for her, and she was almost provoked at herself that whenhe was in such danger of losing his sight for ever she had caught hishead to her breast in the passion of the moment. Many a time when he hadbeen asleep, with gentle fingers she had caressed his hands, his head,his face; but that did not count, because he did not know. He did,however, know of that moment when her passionate heart broke over him intenderness; and she tried to make him think, by things said since, thatit was only pity for his sufferings which made her do it.
Ingolby thought of all these things, but in a spirit of understanding,as he went to his tryst with her at sunset on the day when Lebanon andManitou were reconciled.
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He met her walking among the trees, very near the place where theyhad had their first long talk, months before, when Jethro Fawe was aprisoner in the Hut in the Woods. Then it was warm, singing Summer;now, beneath the feet the red and brown leaves rustled, the trees werestretching up gaunt arms to the Winter, the woods were no longer vocal,and the singing birds had fled, though here and there a black squirrel,not yet gone to Winter quarters, was busy and increasing his stores. Ahedgehog scuttled across his path. He smiled as he remembered tellingFleda that once, when he was a little boy, he had eaten hedgehog,and she had asked him if he remembered the Gipsy name forhedgehog--hotchewitchi was the word. Now, as the shapeless creature madefor its hole, it was significant of the history of his life during thepast Summer. How long it seemed since that day when love first peepedforth from their hearts like a young face
at the lattice of a sunlitwindow. Fleda had warned him of trouble, and that trouble had come!
In his mind she was a woman like none he had ever known; she couldthink greatly, act largely, give tremendously. As he stood waiting, thewonderful, ample life of her seemed to come like a wave towards him. Inhis philosophy, intellect alone had never been the governing influence.Intellect must find its play through the senses, be vitalized by theelements of physical life, or it could not prevail. There was not onesensual strain in him, but with a sensuous mind he loved the vitalthing. He was sure that presently Gabriel Druse would disappear, leavingher behind with him. That was what he meant to ask her to-day--to beand stay with him always. He knew that the Romanys were gathering inthe prairie. They had been heard of here and there, and some of themhad been seen along the Sagalac, though he knew nothing of that dramaticincident in the woods when Fleda was kidnapped and Jethro Fawe vanishedfrom the scene.
As Fleda came towards him, under the same trees which had shielded herfrom the sun months ago--now nearly naked and bare--something in herlook and bearing sharply caught his interest. He asked himself what itwas. So often a face familiar over half a lifetime perhaps, suddenly atsome new angle, or because, by chance, one has looked at it searchingly,shows a new expression, a new contour never before observed, givingfresh significance to the character. There was that in Ingolby's mind,a depth of desire, a resolve to stake two lives against the chances ofFate, which made him look at Fleda now with a revealing intensity. Whatwas the new thing in her carriage which captured his eye? Presently itflashed upon him--memories of Mexico and the Southern UnitedStates; native women with jars of water upon their heads; the erect,well-balanced form; the sure, sinuous movement; the step measured, yetfree; the dignity come of carrying the head as though it were a pillarof an Athenian temple, one of the beautiful Caryatides yonder by theAEgean Sea.
It smote him as a sudden breath of warm air strikes a face in the nightcoolness of the veldt. His pulses quickened, he flushed with the softshock of it. There she was, refined, civilized, gowned like other women,with all the manners and details of civilization and social life abouther; yet, in spite of it all, she did not belong; there was about herstill something remote and alien. It had not to do with appearancealone, though her eyes were so vivid, and her expression so swiftand varying; it was to be found in the whole presence--somethingmountain-like and daring, something Eastern and reserved and secret,something remote--brooding like a Sphinx, and prophetic like a Sibyl.But suppose that in days to come the thing that did not belong, whichwas of the East, of the tan, of the River Starzke; suppose that itshould--
With a great effort he drove apprehension and the instant's confusedwonder far away, and when, come close to him, she smiled, showing theperfect white teeth, and her eyes softened to a dreamy regard of him,all he had ever felt for her in the past months seemed concentrated intothis one moment. Yet he did not look like a languishing lover; ratherlike one inflamed with a great idea or stirred to a great resolve.
For quite a minute they stood gazing as though they would read the wholetruth in each other's eyes. She was all eager, yet timorous; he wasresolved; yet now, when the great moment had come, as it were, like astammerer fearing the sound of his own voice. There was so much to saythat he could not speak.
She broke the spell. "I am here. Can't you see me?" she asked in aquizzical, playful tone, her lips trembling a little, but with a smilein her eyes which she vainly tried to veil.
She had said the one thing which above all others could have lifted thesituation to its real significance. A few weeks ago the eyes now lookinginto hers and telling a great story were sealed with night, and themind behind was fretted by the thought of a perpetual darkness. Allthe tragedy of the past rushed into his mind now, and gave all that wasbetween them, or was to be between them, its real meaning. A beautifulwoman is dear to man simply as woman, and not as the woman; virtue hasslain its thousands, but physical charm has slain its tens of thousands!Whatever Ingolby's defects, however, infinitely more than the girl'sbeauty, more than the palpitating life in her, than red lips and brighteye, than warm breast and clasping hand, was something beneath all whichwould last, or should last, when the hand was palsied and the eye wasdim.
"I am here. Can't you see me?"
All that he had regained in life in her little upper room rushed uponhim, and with outstretched arms and in a voice choked with feeling, hesaid:
"See you! Dear God--To see you and all the world once more! It is beingborn again to me. I haven't learned to talk in my new world yet; butI know three words of the language. I love you. Come--I'll be good toyou."
She drew back from him, and her look said that she would read him to theuttermost word in his life's book, would see the heart of this wonderfulthing; and then with a hungry cry, she flung her arms around his neckand pressed her wet eyes against his flushed cheek.
A half-hour later, as they wandered back to the house he suddenlystopped, put his hands on her shoulders, looked earnestly in her eyes,and said:
"God's good to me. I hope I'll remember that."
"You won't be so blind as to forget," she answered, and she wound herfingers in his with a feeling which was more than the simple love ofwoman for man. "I've got much more to remember than you have,"she added. Suddenly she put both hands upon his breast. "You don'tunderstand; you can't understand, but I tell you that I shall have tofight hard if I am to be all you want me to be. I have got a past toforget; you have a past you want to remember--that's the difference. Imust tell you the truth: it's in my veins, that old life, in spite ofall. Listen. I ought to have told you, and I meant to tell you beforethis happened, but when I saw you there, and you held out your arms tome, I forgot everything. Yet still I must tell you now, though perhapsyou will hate me when you know. The old life--I hate it, but it callsme, and I have an impulse to go back to it even though I hate it.Listen. I'll tell you what happened the other day. It's terrible, butit's true. I was walking in the woods--"
Thereupon she told him of her being seized and carried to the Gipsycamp, and of all that happened there to the last detail. She even hadthe courage to tell of all she felt there; but when she had finished,with a half-frightened look in her eyes, her face pale, and her handsclasped before her, he did not speak for a minute. Suddenly, however, heseemed to tower over her, his two big hands were raised as though theywould strike, and then the palms spread out and enclosed her cheekslovingly, and his eyes fastened upon hers.
"I know," he said gently. "I always understood--everything; butyou'll never have the same fight again, because I'll be with you. Youunderstand, Fleda--I'll be with you."
With an exclamation of gratitude she nestled into his arms.
Before the thrill of his embrace had passed from their pulses, theyheard the breaking of twigs under a quick footstep, and Rhodo stoodbefore them. "Come," he said to Fleda. His voice was as solemn andstrange as his manner. "Come!" he repeated peremptorily.
Fleda sprang to his side. "Is it my father? What has happened?" shecried.
The old man waved her aside, and pointed toward the house.