The Right of Way, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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The Cure turned to the bed once more. "What did he say about Jo?" Charley
asked.
"He is dead, my son, and the quack-doctor also. The others have escaped."
Charley turned his face away. "Au revoir, Jo," he said into the great
distance.
Then there was silence for a moment, while outside the door a girl
prayed, with an old woman's arm around her.
The Cure leaned over Charley again. "Shall not the sacraments of the
Church comfort you in your last hours?" he said. "It is the way, the
truth, and the life. It is the Voice that says: 'Peace' to the vexed
mind. Human intellect is vanity; only the soul survives. Will you not
hear the Voice? Will you not give us who love and honour you the right to
make you ours for ever? Will you not come to the bosom of that Church for
which you have given all?"
"Tell them so," Charley said, and he motioned towards the window, under
which the people were gathered.
With a glad exclamation the Cure hastened to the window, and, in a voice
of sorrowful exultation, spoke to the people below.
Charley reckoned swiftly with his fate. What was there now to do? If his
wound was not mortal, what tragedy might now come! For Billy's hand--the
hand of Kathleen's brother--had brought him low. If the robbers and
murderers were captured, he must be dragged into the old life, and to
what an issue--all the old problems carried into more terrible
conditions. And Rosalie--in his half-consciousness he had felt her near
him; he felt her near him now. Rosalie--in any case, what could there be
for her? Nothing. He had heard the Cure whisper her name at the door. She
was outside-praying for him. He stretched out a hand as though he saw
her, and his lips framed her name. In his weakness and fading life he had
no anguish in the thought of her. Life and Love were growing distant
though he loved her as few love and live. She would be removed from want
by him--there were the pearls and the money in the safe with the money of
the Church; there was the letter to the Cure, his last testament, leaving
all to her. He, sleeping, would fear no foe; she, awake in the living
world, would hold him in dear remembrance. Death were the better thing
for all. Then Kathleen in her happiness would be at peace; and even Billy
might go unmolested, for, who was there to recognise Billy, now that
Portugais was dead?
He heard the Cure's voice at the window--"Oh, my dear people, God has
given him to us at last. I go now to prepare him for his long journey,
to--"
Charley realised and shuddered. Receive the sacraments of the Church? Be
made ready by the priest for his going hence--end all the soul's
interrogations, with the solving of his own mortal problems? Say "I
believe," confess his sins, and, receiving absolution, lie down in peace.
He suddenly raised himself on his elbow, flinging his body over. The
bandage of his wound was displaced, and blood gushed out upon the white
clothes of the bed. "Rosalie!" he gasped. "Rosalie, my love! God
keep . . . "
As he sank back he heard the priest's anguished voice above him, calling
for help. He smiled.
"Rosalie--" he whispered. The priest ran and unlocked the door, and
Rosalie entered, followed by the Seigneur and Mrs. Flynn.
"Quick! Quick!" said the priest. "The bandage slipped."
The bandage slipped--or was it slipped? Who knows!
Blind with agony, and as in a direful dream, Rosalie made her way to the
bed. The sight of his ensanguined body roused her, and, murmuring his
name--continually murmuring his name--she assisted Mrs. Flynn to bind up
the wound again. Standing where she stood when she had stayed Louis
Trudel's arm long ago, with an infinite tenderness she touched the
scar-the scar of the cross--on his breast. Terrible as was her grief, her
heart had its comfort in the thought--who could rob her of that for
ever?--that he would die a martyr. It did not matter now who knew the
story of her love. It could not do him harm. She was ready to proclaim it
to all the world. And those who watched knew that they were in the
presence of a great human love.
The priest made ready to receive the unconscious man into the Church. Had
Charley not said, "Tell them so?" Was it not now his duty to say the
sacred offices over a son of the Church in his last bitter hour? So it
was done while he lay unconscious.
For hours he lay still, and then the fevered blood, poisoned by the
bullet which had brought him down, made him delirious, gave him
hallucinations--open-eyed illusions. All the time Rosalie knelt at the
foot of the bed, her piteous tearless eyes for ever fixed on his face.
Towards evening, with an unnatural strength, he sat up in bed.
"See," he whispered, "that woman in the corner there. She has come to
take me, but I will not go." Fantasy after fantasy possessed him-fantasy,
strangely mixed with facts of his own past. Now it was Kathleen, now
Billy, now Jo Portugais, now John Brown, now Suzon Charlemagne at the
Cote Dorion, again Jo Portugais. In strange, touching sentences he spoke
to them, as though they were present before him. At length he stopped
abruptly, and gazed straight before him--over the head of Rosalie into
the distance.
"See," he said, pointing, "who is that? Who? I can't see his face--it is
covered. So tall-so white! He is opening his arms to me. He is
coming--closer--closer. Who is it?"
"It is Death, my son," said the priest in his ear, with a pitying
gentleness.
The Cure's voice seemed to calm the agitated sense, to bring it back to
the outer precincts of understanding. There was an awe-struck silence as
the dying man fumbled, fumbled, over his breast, found his eye-glass,
and, with a last feeble effort, raised it to his eye, shining now with an
unearthly fire. The old interrogation of the soul, the elemental habit
outlived all else in him. The idiosyncrasy of the mind automatically
expressed itself.
"I beg--your--pardon," he whispered to the imagined figure, and the light
died out of his eyes, "have I--ever--been--introduced--to you?"
"At the hour of your birth, my son," said the priest, as a sobbing cry
came from the foot of the bed.
But Charley did not hear. His ears were for ever closed to the voices of
life and time.
CHAPTER LX
THE HAND AT THE DOOR
The eve of the day of the memorable funeral two belated visitors to the
Passion Play arrived in the village, unknowing that it had ended, and of
the tragedy which had set a whole valley mourning; unconscious that they
shared in the bitter fortunes of the tailor-man, of whom men and women
spoke with tears. Affected by the gloom of the place, the two visitors at
once prepared for their return journey, but the manner of the tailorman's
death arrested their sympathies, touched the humanity in them. The woman
was much impressed.
They asked to see the body of the man. They were taken to the door of the
tailor-shop, while their horses were being brought round. Within the
house itself they were met by an old Irishwoman, who, in response to
their wish "to see the brave man's body," showed them into a room where a
man lay dead with a bullet through his heart. It was the body of Jo
Portugais, whose master and friend lay in another room across the
hallway. The lady turned back in disappointment--the dead man was little
like a hero.
The Irishwoman had meant to deceive her, for at this moment a girl who
loved the tailor was kneeling beside his body, and, if possible, Mrs.
Flynn would have no curious eyes look upon that scene.
When the visitors came into the hall again, the man said: "There was
another; Kathleen--a woodsman." But standing by the nearly closed door,
behind which lay the dead tailor of Chaudiere--they could see the holy
candles flickering within--Kathleen whispered "We've seen the
tailor--that's enough. It's only the woodsman there. I prefer not, Tom."
With his fingers at the latch, the man hesitated, even as Mrs. Flynn
stepped apprehensively forward; then, shrugging a shoulder, he responded
to Kathleen's hand on his arm. They went down the stairs together, and
out to their carriage.
As they drove away, Kathleen said: "It's strange that men who do such
fine things should look so commonplace."
"The other one might have been more uncommon," he replied.
"I wonder!" she said, with a sigh of relief, as they passed the bounds of
the village. Then she caught herself flushing, for she suddenly realised
that the exclamation was one so often on the lips of a dead, disgraced
man whose name she once had borne.
If the door of the little room upstairs had opened to the fingers of the
man beside her, the tailor of Chaudiere, though dead, would have been
dearly avenged.
CHAPTER LXI
THE CURE SPEAKS
The Cure stood with his back to the ruins of the church, at his feet two
newly made graves, and all round, with wistful faces, crowds of reverent
habitants. A benignant sorrow made his voice in perfect temper with the
pensive striving of this latest day of spring. At the close of his
address he said:
"I owe you much, my people. I owe him more, for it was given him, who
knew not God, to teach us how to know Him better. For his past, it is not
given you to know. It is hidden in the bosom of the Church. Sinner he
once was, criminal never, as one can testify who knows all"--he turned to
the Abbe Rossignol, who stood beside him, grave and compassionate--"and
his sins were forgiven him. He is the one sheaf which you and I may carry
home rejoicing from the pagan world of unbelief. What he had in life he
gave to us, and in death he leaves to our church all that he has not left
to a woman he loved--to Rosalie Evanturel."
There was a gasping murmur among the people, but they stilled again, and
strained to hear.
"He leaves her a little fortune, and to us all else he had. Let us pray
for his soul, and let us comfort her who, loving deeply, reaped no
harvest of love.
"The law may never reach his ruthless murderers, for there is none to
recognise their faces; and were they ten times punished, how should it
avail us now! Let us always remember that, in his grave, our friend bears
on his breast the little iron cross we held so dear. That is all we could
give--our dearest treasure. I pray God that, scarring his breast in life,
it may heal all his woes in death, and be a saving image on his bosom in
the Presence at the last."
He raised his hands in benediction.
EPILOGUE
Never again was there a Passion Play in the Chaudiere Valley.
Spring-times and harvests and long winters came and went, and a blessing
seemed to be upon the valley, for men prospered, and no untoward things
befel the people. So it was for twenty years, wherein there had been
going and coming in quiet. Some had gone upon short mortal journeys and
had come back, some upon long immortal voyages, and had never returned.
Of the last were the Seigneur and a woman once a Magdalene; but in a
house beside a beautiful church, with a noble doorway, lived the Cure, M.
Loisel, aged and serene. There never was a day, come rain or shine, in
which he was not visited by a beautiful woman, whose life was one with
the people of the valley.
There was no sorrow in the parish which the lady did not share, with the
help of an old Irishwoman called Mrs. Flynn. Was there sickness in the
parish, her hand smoothed the pillow and soothed the pain. Was there
trouble anywhere, her face brought light to the door way. Did any suffer
ill-repute, her word helped to restore the ruined name. They did not know
that she forgave so much in all the world, because she thought she had so
much in herself to forgive.
She was ever called "Madame Rosalie," and she cherished the name, and
gave commands that when her grave came to be made near to a certain other
grave, Madame Rosalie should be carved upon the stone. Cheerfulness and
serenity were ever with her, undisturbed by wish to probe the mystery of
the life which had once absorbed her own. She never sought to know whence
the man came; it was sufficient to know whither he had gone, and that he
had been hers for a brief dream of life. It was better to have lived the
one short thrilling hour with all its pain, than never to have known what
she knew or felt what she had felt. The mystery deepened her romance, and
she was even glad that the ruffians who slew him were never brought to
justice. To her mind they were but part of the mystic machinery of fate.
For her the years had given many compensations, and so she told the Cure,
one midsummer day, when she brought to visit him the orphaned son of
Paulette Dubois, graduated from his college in France and making ready to
go to the far East.
"I have had more than I deserve--a thousand times," she said.
The Cure smiled, and laid a gentle hand upon her own. "It is right for
you to think so," he said, "but after a long life, I am ready to say
that, one way or another, we earn all the real happiness we have. I mean
the real happiness--the moments, my child. I once had a moment full of
happiness."
"May I ask?" she said.
"When my heart first went out to him"--he turned his face towards the
churchyard.
"He was a great man," she said proudly.
The Cure looked at her benignly: she was a woman, and she had loved the
man. He had, however, come to a stage of life where greatness alone
seemed of little moment. He forbore to answer her, but he pressed her
hand.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Youth is the only comrade for youth
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "RIGHT OF WAY":
A left-handed boy is all right in the world
Always hoping the best from the worst of us
Damnable propinquity
Good fathers think they have good daughters
Have not we all something to hide--with or without shame?
He has wheeled his nuptial bed into the street
He left his fellow-citizens very much alone
He had had acquaintances, but never friendships, and never loves
Hugging the chain of denial to his bosom
I have a good memory for forgetting
I am only myself when I am drunk
I should remember to forget it
Importunity with discretion was his motto
In all secrets there is a kind of guilt
Is the habit of good living mere habit and mere acting
It is good to live, isn't it?
Know how bad are you, and doesn't mind
Liquor makes me human
Nervous legs at a gallop
Pathetically in earnest
Shure, if we could always be 'about the same,' we'd do
So say your prayers, believe all you can, don't ask questions
Strike first and heal after--"a kick and a lick"
Suspicion, the bane of sick old age
Things that once charmed charm less
Was not civilisation a mistake
Who knows!
Youth is the only comrade for youth
Youth is the only comrade for youth