The Right of Way
CHAPTER XI
THE RAISING OF THE CURTAIN
M. Marcel Loisel did his work with a masterly precision, with the aid of his
brother and Portugais. The man under the instruments, not wholly insensible,
groaned once or twice. Once or twice, too, his eyes opened with a dumb hunted
look, then closed as with an irresistible weariness. When the work was over, and
every stain or sign of surgery removed, sleep came down on the bed—a deep and
saturating sleep, which seemed to fill the room with peace. For hours the
surgeon sat beside the couch, now and again feeling the pulse, wetting the hot
lips, touching the forehead with his palm. At last, with a look of satisfaction,
he came forward to where Jo and the Cure sat beside the fire.
"It is all right," he said. "Let him sleep as long as he will." He turned
again to the bed. "I wish I could stay to see the end of it. Is there no chance,
Prosper?" he added to the priest.
"Impossible, Marcel. You must have sleep. You have a seventy-mile drive
before you to-morrow, and sixty the next day. You can only reach the port now by
starting at daylight to-morrow."
So it was that Marcel Loisel, the great surgeon, was compelled to leave
Chaudiere before he knew that the memory of the man who had been under his knife
had actually returned to him. He had, however, no doubt in his own mind, and he
was confident that there could be no physical harm from the operation. Sleep was
the all-important thing. In it lay the strength for the shock of the
awakening—if awakening of memory there was to be.
Before he left he stooped over Charley and said musingly: "I wonder what you
will wake up to, my friend?" Then he touched the wound with a light caressing
finger. "It was well done, well done," he murmured proudly.
A moment afterwards he was hurrying down the hill to the open road, where a
cariole awaited the Cure and himself.
For a day and a half Charley slept, and Jo watched him with an affectionate
solicitude. Once or twice, becoming anxious, because of the heavy breathing and
the motionless sleep, he had forced open the teeth, and poured a little broth
between.
Just before dawn on the second morning, worn out and heavy with slumber, Jo
lay down by the piled-up fire and dropped into a sleep that wrapped him like a
blanket, folding him away into a drenching darkness.
For a time there was a deep silence, troubled only by Jo's deep breathing,
which seemed itself like the pulse of the silence. Charley appeared not to be
breathing at all. He was lying on his back, seemingly lifeless. Suddenly on the
snug silence there was a sharp sound. A tree outside snapped with the frost.
Charley awoke. The body seemed not to awake, for it did not stir, but the
eyes opened wide and full, looking straight before them—straight up to the brown
smoke-stained rafters, along which were ranged guns and fishing-tackle, axes and
bear-traps. Full clear blue eyes, healthy and untired as a child's fresh from an
all-night's drowse, they looked and looked. Yet, at first, the body did not
stir; only the mind seemed to be awakening, the soul creeping out from slumber
into the day. Presently, however, as the eyes gazed, there stole into them a
wonder, a trouble, an anxiety. For a moment they strained at the rafters and the
crude weapons and implements there, then the body moved, quickly, eagerly, and
turned to see the flickering shadows made by the fire and the simple order of
the room.
A minute more, and Charley was sitting on the side of his couch, dazed and
staring. This hut, this fire, the figure by the hearth in a sound sleep-his hand
went to his head: it felt the bandage there!
He remembered now! Last night at the Cote Dorion! Last night he had talked
with Suzon Charlemagne at the Cote Dorion; last night he had drunk harder than
he had ever drunk in his life, he had defied, chaffed, insulted the
river-drivers. The whole scene came back: the faces of Suzon and her father;
Suzon's fingers on his for an instant; the glass of brandy beside him; the
lanterns on the walls; the hymn he sang; the sermon he preached—he shuddered a
little; the rumble of angry noises round him; the tumbler thrown; the crash of
the lantern, and only one light left in the place! Then Jake Hough and his heavy
hand, the flying monocle, and his disdainful, insulting reply; the sight of the
pistol in the hand of Suzon's father; then a rush, a darkness, and his own
fierce plunge towards the door, beyond which were the stars and the cool night
and the dark river. Curses, hands that battered and tore at him, the doorway
reached, and then a blow on the head and—falling, falling, falling, and distant
noises growing more distant, and suddenly and sweetly—absolute silence.
Again he shuddered. Why? He remembered that scene in his office yesterday
with Kathleen, and the one later with Billy. A sensitive chill swept all over
him, making his flesh creep, and a flush sped over his face from chin to brow.
To-day he must pick up all these threads again, must make things right for
Billy, must replace the money he had stolen, must face Kathleen again he
shuddered. Was he at the Cote Dorion still? He looked round him. No, this was
not the sort of house to be found at the Cote Dorion. Clearly this was the hut
of a hunter. Probably he had been fished out of the river by this woodsman and
brought here. He felt his head. The wound was fresh and very sore. He had played
for death, with an insulting disdain, yet here he was alive.
Certainly he was not intended to be drowned or knifed—he remembered the
knives he saw unsheathed—or kicked or pummelled into the hereafter. It was about
ten o'clock when he had had his "accident"—he affected a smile, yet somehow he
did not smile easily—it must be now about five, for here was the morning
creeping in behind the deer-skin blind at the window.
Strange that he felt none the worse for his mishap, and his tongue was as
clean and fresh as if he had been drinking milk last night, and not very
doubtful brandy at the Cote Dorion. No fever in his hands, no headache, only the
sore skull, so well and tightly bandaged but a wonderful thirst, and an
intolerable hunger. He smiled. When had he ever been hungry for breakfast
before? Here he was with a fine appetite: it was like coals of fire heaped on
his head by Nature for last night's business at the Cote Dorion. How true it was
that penalties did not always come with—indiscretions. Yet, all at once, he
flushed again to the forehead, for a curious sense of shame flashed through his
whole being, and one Charley Steele—the Charley Steele of this morning, an
unknown, unadventuring, onlooking Charley Steele—was viewing with abashed eyes
the Charley Steele who had ended a doubtful career in the coarse and desperate
proceedings of last night. With a nervous confusion he sought refuge in his
eye-glass. His fingers fumbled over his waistcoat, but did not find it. The
weapon of defence and attack, the symbol of interrogation and
incomprehensibility, was gone. Beauty Steele was under the eyes of another self,
and neither disdain, nor contempt, nor the passive stare, were available. He got
suddenly to his feet, and started forward, as though to find refuge from
himself.
The abrupt action sent the blood to his head, and feeling a blindness come
over him, he put both hands up to his temples, and sank back on the couch, dizzy
and faint.
His motions waked Jo Portugais, who scrambled from the floor, and came
towards him.
"M'sieu'," he said, "you must not. You are faint." He dropped his hands
supportingly to Charley's shoulders.
Charley nodded, but did not yet look up. His head throbbed sorely.
"Water—please!" he said.
In an instant Jo was beside him again, with a bowl of fresh water at his
lips. He drank, drank, drank, until the great bowl was drained to the last drop.
"Whew! That was good!" he said, and looked up at Jo with a smile. "Thank you,
my friend; I haven't the honour of your acquaintance, but—"
He stopped suddenly and stared at Jo. Inquiry, mystification, were in his
look.
"Have I ever seen you before?" he said. "Who knows, M'sieu'!"
Since Jo had stood before Charley in the dock near six years ago he had
greatly changed. The marks of smallpox, a heavy beard, grey hair, and solitary
life had altered him beyond Charley's recognition.
Jo could hardly speak. His legs were trembling under him, for now he knew
that Charley Steele was himself again. He was no longer the simple, quiet
man-child of three days ago, and of these months past, but the man who had saved
him from hanging, to whom he owed a debt he dare not acknowledge. Jo's brain was
in a muddle. Now that the great crisis was over, now that the expected thing had
come, and face to face with the cure, he had neither tongue, nor strength, nor
wit. His words stuck in his throat where his heart was, and for a minute his
eyes had a kind of mist before them.
Meanwhile Charley's eyes were upon him, curious, fixed, abstracted.
"Is this your house?"
"It is, M'sieu'."
"You fished me out of the river by the Cote Dorion?" He still held his head
with his hands, for it throbbed so, but his eyes were intent on his companion.
"Yes, M'sieu'."
Charley's hand mechanically fumbled for his monocle. Jo turned quickly to the
wall, and taking it by its cord from the nail where it had been for these long
months, handed it over. Charley took it and mechanically put it in his eye.
"Thank you, my friend," he said. "Have I been conscious at all since you rescued
me last night?" he asked.
"In a way, M'sieu'."
"Ah, well, I can't remember, but it was very kind of you—I do thank you very
much. Do you think you could find me something to eat? I beg your pardon—it
isn't breakfast-time, of course, but I was never so hungry in my life!"
"In a minute, M'sieu'—in one minute. But lie down, you must lie down a
little. You got up too quick, and it makes your head throb. You have had nothing
to eat."
"Nothing, since yesterday noon, and very little then. I didn't eat anything
at the Cote Dorion, I remember." He lay back on the couch and closed his eyes.
The throbbing in his head presently stopped, and he felt that if he ate
something he could go to sleep again, it was so restful in this place—a whole
day's sleep and rest, how good it would be after last night's racketing! Here
was primitive and material comfort, the secret of content, if you liked! Here
was this poor hunter-fellow, with enough to eat and to drink, earning it every
day by every day's labour, and, like Robinson Crusoe no doubt, living in a
serene self-sufficiency and an elysian retirement. Probably he had no
responsibilities in the world, with no one to say him nay, himself only to
consider in all the universe: a divine conception of adequate life. Yet himself,
Charley Steele, an idler, a waster, with no purpose in life, with scarcely the
necessity to earn his bread-never, at any rate, until lately—was the slave of
the civilisation to which he belonged. Was civilisation worth the game?
His hand involuntarily went to his head. It changed the course of his
thoughts. He must go back to-day to put Billy's crime right, to replace the
trust-moneys Billy had taken by forging his brother-in-law's name. Not a moment
must be lost. No doubt he was within driving distance of his office, and,
bandaged head or no bandaged head, last night's disgraceful doings
notwithstanding, it was his duty to face the wondering eyes—what did he care for
wondering eyes? hadn't he been making eyes wonder all his life?—face the
wondering eyes in the little city, and set a crooked business straight. Fool and
scoundrel certainly Billy was, but there was Kathleen!
His lips tightened; he had a strange anxious flutter of the heart. When had
his heart fluttered like this? When had he ever before considered Kathleen's
feelings as to his personal conduct so delicately? Well, since yesterday he did
feel it, and a sudden sense of pity sprang up in him—vague, shamefaced pity,
which belied the sudden egotistical flourish with which he put his monocle to
his eye and tried futilely to smile in the old way.
He had lain with his eyes closed. They opened now, and he saw his host
spreading a newspaper as a kind of cloth on a small rough table, and putting
some food upon it-bread, meat, and a bowl of soup. It was thoughtful of this man
to make his soup overnight-he saw Jo lift it from beside the fire where it had
been kept hot. A good fellow-an excellent fellow, this woodsman.
His head did not throb now, and he drew himself up slowly on his elbow-then,
after a moment, lifted himself to a sitting posture.
"What is your name, my friend?" he said.
"Jo Portugais, M'sieu'," Jo answered, and brought a candle and put it on the
table, then lifted the tin-plate from over the bowl of savoury soup.
Never before had Charley Steele sat down to such a breakfast. A roll and a
cup of coffee had been enough, and often too much, for him. Yet now he could not
wait to eat the soup with a spoon, but lifted the bowl and took a long draught
of it, and set it down with a sigh of content. Then he broke bread into the
soup—large pieces of black oat bread—until the bowl was a mass of luscious pulp.
This he ate almost ravenously, his eye wandering avidly the while to the small
piece of meat beside the bowl. What meat was it? It looked like venison, yet
summer was not the time for venison. What did it matter! Jo sat on a bench
beside the fire, his face turned towards his guest, dreading the moment when the
man he had nursed and cared for, with whom he had eaten and drunk for so long,
should know the truth about himself. He could not tell him all there was to
tell, he was taking another means of letting him know.
Charley did not speak. Hunger was a new sensation, a delicious thing, too
good to be broken by talking. He ate till he had cleared away the last crumbs of
bread and meat and drunk the last drop of soup. He looked at the woodsman as
though wondering if he would bring more. Jo evidently thought he had had enough,
for he did not move. Charley's glance withdrew from Jo, and busied itself with
the few crumbs remaining upon the table. He saw a little piece of bread on the
floor. He picked it up and ate it with relish, laughing to himself.
"How long will it take us to get to town? Can we do it this morning?"
"Not this morning, M'sieu'," said Jo, in a sort of hoarse whisper.
"How many hours would it take?"
He was gathering the last crumbs of his feast with his hand, and looking
casually down at the newspaper spread as a table-cloth.
All at once his hand stopped, his eyes became fixed on a spot in the paper.
He gave a hoarse, guttural cry, like an animal in agony. His lips became dry,
his hand wiped a blinding mist from his eyes.
Jo watched him with an intense alarm and a horrified curiosity. He felt a
base coward for not having told Charley what this paper contained. Never had he
seen such a look as this. He felt his beads, and told them over and over again,
as Charley Steele, in a dry, croaking sort of whisper, read, in letters that
seemed monstrous symbols of fire, a record of himself:
"To-day, by special license from the civil and ecclesiastical courts [the
paragraph in the paper began], was married, at St. Theobald's Church, Mrs.
Charles Steele, daughter of the late Hon. Julien Wantage, and niece of the late
Eustace Wantage, Esq., to Captain Thomas Fairing, of the Royal Fusileers—"
Charley snatched at the top of the paper and read the date "Tenth of
February, 18-!" It was August when he was at the Cote Dorion, the 5th August,
18-, and this paper was February 10th, 18-. He read on, in the month-old paper,
with every nerve in his body throbbing now: a fierce beating that seemed as if
it must burst the heart and the veins:
"—Captain Thomas Fairing, of the Royal Fusileers, whose career in our midst
has been marked by an honourable sense of public and private duty. Our
fellow-citizens will unite with us in congratulating the bride, whose previous
misfortunes have only increased the respect in which she is held. If all
remember the obscure death of her first husband (though the body was not found,
there has never been a doubt of his death), and the subsequent discovery that he
had embezzled trust-moneys to the extent of twenty-five thousand dollars,
thereby setting the final seal of shame upon a misspent life, destined for
brilliant and powerful uses, all have conspired to forget the association of our
beautiful and admired townswoman with his career. It is painful to refer to
these circumstances, but it is only within the past few days that the estate of
the misguided man has been wound up, and the money he embezzled restored to its
rightful owners; and it is better to make these remarks now than repeat them in
the future, only to arouse painful memories in quarters where we should least
desire to wound.
"In her new life, blessed by a romantic devotion known and admired by all,
Mrs. Fairing and her husband will be followed by the affectionate good wishes of
the whole community."
The man on the hearth-stone shrank back at the sight of the still, white
face, in which the eyes were like sparks of fire. His impulse had been to go
over and offer the hand of sympathy to the stricken man, but his simple mind
grasped the fact that no one might, with impunity, invade this awful quiet.
Charley was frozen in body, but his brain was awake with the heat of "a burning
fiery furnace."
Seven months of unconscious life-seven months of silence—no sight, no seeing,
no knowing; seven months of oblivion, in which the world had buried him out of
ken in an unknown grave of infamy! Seven months—and Kathleen was married again
to the man she had always loved. To the world he himself was a rogue and thief.
Billy had remained silent—Billy, whom he had so befriended, had let decent men
heap scorn and reproaches on his memory. Here was what the world thought of
him—he read the lines over again, his eyes scorching, but his finger steady, as
it traced the lines slowly: "the obscure death..." "embezzled trustmoneys..."
"the final seal of shame upon a misspent life!"
These were the epitaphs on the tombstone of Charley Steele; dead and buried,
out of sight, out of repute, soon to be out of mind and out of memory, save as a
warning to others—an old example raked out of the dust-bin of time by the
scavengers of morality, to toss at all who trod the paths of dalliance.
What was there to do? Go back? Go back and knock at Kathleen's door, another
Enoch Arden, and say: "I have come to my own again?" Return and tell Tom Fairing
to go his way and show his face no more? Break up this union, this marriage of
love in which these two rejoiced? Summon Kathleen out of her illegal intercourse
with the man who had been true to her all these years?
To what end? What had he ever done for her that he might destroy her now?
What sort of Spartan tragedy was this, that the woman who had been the victim of
circumstances, who had been the slave to a tie he never felt, yet which had been
as iron-bound to her, should now be brought out to be mangled body and soul for
no fault of her own? What had she done? What had she ever done to give him right
to touch so much as a hair of her head?
Go back, and bring Billy to justice, and clear his own name? Go back, and
send Kathleen's brother, the forger, to jail? What an achievement in justice!
Would not the world have a right to say that the only decent thing he could do
was to eliminate himself from the equation? What profit for him in the great
summing-up, that he was technically innocent of this one thing, and that to
establish his innocence he broke a woman's heart and destroyed a boy's life? To
what end! It was the murderer coming back as a ghost to avenge himself for being
hanged. Suppose he went back—the death's-head at the feast—what would there be
for himself afterwards; for any one for whom he was responsible? Living at that
price?
To die and end it all, to disappear from this petty life where he had done so
little, and that little ill? To die?
No. There was in him some deep, if obscure, fatalism after all. If he had
been meant to die now, why had he not gone to the bottom of the river that
yesterday at the Cote Dorion? Why had he been saved by this yokel at the fire,
and brought here to lie in oblivion in this mountain hut, wrapped in silence and
lost to the world? Why had his brain and senses lain fallow all these months, a
vacuous vegetation, an empty consciousness? Was it fate? Did it not seem
probable that the Great Machine had, in its automatic movement, tossed him up
again on the shores of Time because he had not fallen on the trap-door
predestined for his eternal exit?
It was clear to him that death by his own hand was futile, and that if there
were trap-doors set for him alone, it were well to wait until he trod upon them
and fell through in his appointed hour in the movement of the Great Machine.
What to do—where to live—how to live?
He got slowly to his feet and took a step forward half blindly. The man on
the bench stirred. Crossing the room he dropped a hand on the man's shoulder.
"Open the blind, my friend."
Jo Portugais got to his feet quickly, eyes averted—he did not dare look into
Charley's face—and went over and drew back the deer-skin blind. The clear, crisp
sunlight of a frosty morning broke gladly into the room. Charley turned and blew
out the candle on the table where he had eaten, then walked feebly to the
window. Standing on the crest of the mountain the hut looked down through a
clearing, flanked by forest trees.
It was a goodly scene. The green and frosted foliage of the pines and cedars;
the flowery tracery of frost hanging like cobwebs everywhere; the poudre sparkle
in the air; the hills of silver and emerald sloping down to the valley miles
away, where the village clustered about the great old parish church; the smoke
from a hundred chimneys, in purple spirals, rising straight up in the windless
air; over all peace and a perfect silence.
Charley mechanically fixed his eye-glass and stood with hands resting on the
window-sill, looking, looking out upon a new world.
At length he turned.
"Is there anything I can do for you, M'sieu'?" said Jo huskily.
Charley held out his hand and clasped Jo's. "Tell me about all these months,"
he said.