The World For Sale: Chapter 26

Chapter 26

THE SLEEPER

The Ry of Rys sat in his huge armchair, his broad-brimmed hat on his knee
in front of him. One hand rested on the chair-arm, the other clasped the
hat as though he would put it on, but his head was fallen forward on his
breast.

It was a picture of profound repose, but it was the repose of death. It
was evident that the Ry had prepared to leave the house, had felt a
sudden weakness, and had taken to his chair to recover himself. As was
evident from the normal way in which his fingers held his hat, and his
hand rested on the chair-arm, death had come as gently as a beam of
light. With his stick lying on the table beside him, and his hat on his
knee, he was like one who rested a moment before renewing a journey.
There could not have been a pang in his passing. He had gone as most men
wish to go--in the midst of the business of life, doing the usual things,
and so passing into the sphere of Eternity as one would go from this room
to that. Only a few days before had he yielded up his temporary position
as chief constable, and had spent almost every hour since in conference
with Rhodo. What he had planned would never be known to his daughter now.
It was Rhodo himself who had found his master with head bowed before the
Master of all men.

Before Fleda entered the room she knew what awaited her; a merciful
intuition had blunted the shock to her senses. Yet when she saw the Ry on
his throne of death a moan broke from her lips like that of one who sees
for the last time someone indelibly dear, and turns to face strange paths
with uncertain feet. She did not go to the giant figure seated in the
chair. In what she did there was no panic or hysteria of lacerated heart
and shocked sense; she only sank to her knees in the room a few feet away
from him, and looked at him.

"Father! Oh, Ry! Oh, my Ry!" she whispered in agony and admiration, too,
and kept on whispering.

Fleda had whispered to him in such awe, not only because he was her
father, but because he was so much a man among men, a giant, with a
great, lumbering mind, slow to conceive, but moving in a large,
impressive way when once conception came. To her he had been more than
father; he had been a patriarch, a leader, a viking, capable of the fury
of a Scythian lord, but with the tenderness of a peasant father to his
first child.

"My Ry! My father! Oh, my Ry of Rys!" she kept murmuring to herself.

On either side of her, but a few feet behind, stood Rhodo and Ingolby.

Presently in a low, firm voice Rhodo spoke.

"The Ry of Rys is dead, but his daughter must stand upon her feet, and in
his place speak for him. Is it not well with him? He sleeps. Sleep is
better than pain. Let his daughter speak."

Slowly Fleda arose. Not so much what Rhodo had said as the meaning in his
voice, aroused her to a situation which she must face. Rhodo had said
that she must speak for her father. What did it mean?

"What is it you wish to say to me, Rhodo?" she asked.

"What I have to say is for your ears only," was the low reply.

"I will go," said Ingolby. "But is it a time for talk?" He made a motion
towards the dead man. "There are things to be said which can only be said
now, and things to be done which can only be done according to what is
said now," grimly remarked Rhodo.

"I wish you to remain," said Fleda to Ingolby with resolution in her
bearing as she placed herself beside the chair where the dead man sat.
"What is it you want to say to me?" she asked Rhodo again.

"Must a Romany bare his soul before a stranger?" replied Rhodo. "Must a
man who has been the voice of the Ry of Rys for the long years have no
words face to face with the Ry's daughter now that he is gone? Must the
secret of the dead be spoken before the robber of the dead--"

It was plain that some great passion was working in the man, that it was
wise and right to humour him, and Ingolby intervened.

"I will not remain," he said to Fleda. To Rhodo he added: "I am not a
robber of the dead. That's high-faluting talk. What I have of his was
given to me by him. She was for me if I could win her. He said so. This
is a free country. I will wait outside," he added to Fleda.

She made a gesture as though she would detain him, but she realized that
the hour of her fate was at hand, and that the old life and the new were
face to face, Rhodo standing for one and she for the other. When they
were alone, Rhodo's eyes softened, and he came near to her. "You asked me
what I wished to tell you," he said. "See then, I want to tell you that
it is for you to take the place of the dead Ry. Everywhere in the world
where the Romanys wander they will rejoice to hear that a Druse rules us
still. The word of the Ry of Rys was law; what he wished to be done was
done; what he wished to be undone was undone. Because of you he hid
himself from his people; because of you I was for ever wandering, keeping
the peace by lies for love of the Ry and for love of you."

His voice shook. "Since your mother died--and she was kin of mine--you
were to me the soul of the Romany people everywhere. As a barren woman
loves a child, so I loved you. I loved you for the sake of your mother. I
gave her to the Ry, who was the better man, that she might be great and
well placed. So it is I would have you be ruler over us, and I would
serve you as I served your father until I, also, fall asleep."

"It is too late," Fleda answered, and there was great emotion in her
voice now. "I am no longer a Romany. I am my father's daughter, but I
have not been a Romany since I was ill in England. I will not go back; I
shall go with the man I love, to be his wife, here, in the Gorgio world.
You believed my father when he spoke; well, believe me--I speak the
truth. It was my father's will that I should be what I am, and do what I
am now doing. Nothing can alter me."

"If it be that Jethro Fawe is still alive he is free from the Sentence of
the Patrin, and he will become the Ry of Rys," said the old man with
sudden passion.

"It may be so. I hope it is so. He is of the blood, and I pray that
Jethro has escaped the sentence which my father passed," answered Fleda.
"By the River Starzke it was ordained that he should succeed my father,
marrying me. Let him succeed."

The old man raised both hands, and made a gesture as though he would
drive her from his sight.

"My life has been wasted," he said. "I wish I were also in death beside
him." He gazed at the dead man with the affection of a clansman for his
chief.

Fleda came up close to him. "Rhodo! Rhodo!" she said gently and sadly.
"Think of him and all he was, and not of me. Suppose I had died in
England--think of it in that way. Let me be dead to you and to all
Romanys, and then you will think no evil."

The old man drew himself up. "Let no more be said," he replied. "Let it
end here. The Ry of Rys is dead. His body and all things that are his
belong now to his people. Say farewell to him," he added, with authority.

"You will take him away?" Fleda asked.

Rhodo inclined his head. "When the doctors have testified, we will take
him with us. Say your farewells," he added, with gesture of command.

A cry of protest rose from Fleda's soul, and yet she knew it was what the
Ry would have wished, that he should be buried by his own people where
they would.

Slowly she drew near to the dead man, and leaned over and kissed his
shaggy head. She did not seek to look into the sightless eyes; the
illusion of sleep was so great that she wished to keep this picture of
him while she lived; but she touched the cold hand which held the hat
upon the knee and the other that lay upon the chair-arm. Then, with a
mist before her eyes, she passed from the room.

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