The Right of Way, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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"What do I care!" he said to himself. "I shall never squeal at any
penalty. I shall never say in the great round-up that I was weak and I
fell. I'll take my gruel expecting it, not fearing it--if there is to be
any gruel anywhere, or any round-up anywhere!"
A figure suddenly appeared coming round the bend of the road before him.
It was Rouge Gosselin. Rouge Gosselin was inclined to speak. Some satanic
whim or malicious foppery made Charley stare him blankly in the face. The
monocle and the stare stopped the bon soir and the friendly warning on
Rouge Gosselin's tongue, and the pilot passed on with a muttered oath.
Gosselin had not gone far, however, before he suddenly stopped and
laughed outright, for at the bottom he had great good-nature, in keeping
with his "six-foot" height, and his temper was friendly if quick. It
seemed so absurd, so audacious, that a man could act like Charley Steele,
that he at once became interested in the phenomenon, and followed slowly
after Charley, saying as he went: "Tiens, there will be things to watch
to-night!"
Before Charley was within five hundred yards of the tavern he could hear
the laughter and song coming from the old seigneury which Theophile
Charlemagne called now the Cote Dorion Hotel, after the name given to the
point on which the house stood. Low and wide-roofed, with dormer windows
and a wide stoop in front, and walls three feet thick, behind, on the
river side, it hung over the water, its narrow veranda supported by
piles, with steps down to the water-side. Seldom was there an hour when
boats were not tied to these steps. Summer and winter the tavern was a
place of resort. Inside, the low ceiling, the broad rafters, the great
fireplace, the well-worn floor, the deep windows, the wooden cross let
into the wall, and the varied and picturesque humanity frequenting this
great room, gave it an air of romance. Yet there were people who called
the tavern a "shebang"--slander as it was against Suzon Charlemagne,
which every river-driver and woodsman and habitant who frequented the
place would have resented with violence. It was because they thought
Charley Steele slandered the girl and the place in his mind, that the
river-drivers had sworn they would make it hot for him if he came again.
Charley was the last man in the world to undeceive them by words.
When he coolly walked into the great room, where a half-dozen of them
were already assembled, drinking white "whiskey-wine," he had no
intention of setting himself right. He raised his hat cavalierly to Suzon
and shook hands with her.
He took no notice of the men around him. "Brandy, please!" he said. "Why
do I drink, do you say?" he added, as Suzon placed the bottle and glass
before him.
She was silent for an instant, then she said gravely: "Perhaps because
you like it; perhaps because something was left out of you when you were
made, and--"
She paused and went no further, for a red-shirted river-driver with brass
rings in his ears came close to them, and called gruffly for whiskey. He
glowered at Charley, who looked at him indolently, then raised his glass
towards Suzon and drank the brandy.
"Pish!" said Red Shirt, and, turning round, joined his comrades. It was
clear he wanted a pretext to quarrel.
"Perhaps because you like it; perhaps because something was left out of
you when you were made--" Charley smiled pleasantly as Suzon came over to
him again. "You've answered the question," he said, "and struck the thing
at the centre. Which is it? The difficulty to decide which has divided
the world. If it's only a physical craving, it means that we are
materialists naturally, and that the soil from which the grape came is
the soil that's in us; that it is the body feeding on itself all the
time; that like returns to like, and we live a little together, and then
mould together for ever and ever, amen. If it isn't a natural
craving--like to like--it's a proof of immortality, for it represents the
wild wish to forget the world, to be in another medium.
"I am only myself when I am drunk. Liquor makes me human. At other times
I'm merely Charley Steele! Now isn't it funny, this sort of talk here?"
"I don't know about that," she answered, "if, as you say, it's natural.
This tavern's the only place I have to think in, and what seems to you
funny is a sort of ordinary fact to me."
"Right again, ma belle Suzon. Nothing's incongruous. I've never felt so
much like singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs as when I've been
drinking. I remember the last time I was squiffy I sang all the way home
that old nursery hymn:
"'On the other side of Jordan,
In the sweet fields of Eden,
Where the tree of life is blooming,
There is rest for you.
There is rest for the weary,
There is rest for the weary,
There is rest for the weary,
There is rest for you!'"
"I should have liked to hear you sing it--sure!" said Suzon, laughing.
Charley tossed off a quarter-tumbler of brandy, which, instead of
flushing the face, seemed only to deepen the whiteness of the skin,
showing up more brightly the spots of colour in the cheeks, that white
and red which had made him known as Beauty Steele. With a whimsical
humour, behind which was the natural disposition of the man to do what he
listed without thinking of the consequences, he suddenly began singing,
in a voice shaken a little now by drink, but full of a curious magnetism:
"On the other side of Jordan--"
"Oh, don't; please don't!" said the girl, in fear, for she saw two
river-drivers entering the door, one of whom had sworn he would do for
Charley Steele if ever he crossed his path.
"Oh, don't--M'sieu' Charley!" she again urged. The "Charley" caught his
ear, and the daring in his eye brightened still more. He was ready for
any change or chance to-night, was standing on the verge of any
adventure, the most reckless soul in Christendom.
"On the other side of Jordan,
In the sweet fields of Eden,
Where the tree of life is blooming,
There is rest for you!"
What more incongruous thing than this flaneur in patent leathers and red
tie, this "hell-of-a-fellow with a pane of glass in his eye," as Jake
Hough, the horse-doctor, afterwards said, surrounded by red and
blue-shirted river-men, woodsmen, loafers, and toughs, singing a sacred
song with all the unction of a choir-boy; with a magnetism, too, that did
its work in spite of all prejudice? It was as if he were counsel in one
of those cases when, the minds and sympathies of judge and jury at first
arrayed against him, he had irresistibly cloven his way to their
judgment--not stealing away their hearts, but governing, dominating their
intelligences. Whenever he had done this he had been drinking hard, was
in a mental world created by drink, serene, clear-eyed, in which his
brain worked like an invincible machine, perfect and powerful. Was it the
case that, as he himself suggested, he was never so natural as when under
this influence? That then and only then the real man spoke, that then and
only then the primitive soul awakened, that it supplied the thing left
out of him at birth?
"There is rest for the weary,
There is rest for the weary,
There is rest for the weary,
There is rest for you!"
One, two verses he sang as the men, at first snorting and scornful,
shuffled angrily; then Jake Hough, the English horse-doctor, roared in
the refrain:
"There is rest for the weary,
There is rest for you!"
Upon which, carried away, every one of them roared, gurgled, or shouted
"There is rest for the weary,
There is rest for you!"
Rouge Gosselin, who had entered during the singing, now spoke up quickly
in French:
"A sermon now, M'sieu'!"
Charley took his monocle out of his eye and put it back again. Now each
man present seemed singled out for an attack by this little battery of
glass. He did not reply directly to Rouge Gosselin, but standing
perfectly still, with one hand resting on the counter at which Suzon
stood, he prepared to speak.
Suzon did not attempt to stop him now, but gazed at him in a sort of awe.
These men present were Catholics, and held religion in superstitious
respect, however far from practising its precepts. Many of them had been
profane and blasphemous in their time; may have sworn "sacre bapteme!"
one of the worst oaths of their race; but it had been done in the
wildness of anger, and they were little likely to endure from Charley
Steele any word that sounded like blasphemy. Besides, the world said that
he was an infidel, and that was enough for bitter prejudice.
In the pause--very short--before Charley began speaking, Suzon's fingers
stole to his on the counter and pressed them quickly. He made no
response; he was scarcely aware of it. He was in a kind of dream. In an
even, conversational tone, in French at once idiomatic and very simple,
he began:
"My dear friends, this is a world where men get tired. If they work they
get tired, and if they play they get tired. If they look straight ahead
of them they walk straight, but then they get blind by-and-by; if they
look round them and get open-eyed, their feet stumble and they fall. It
is a world of contradictions. If a man drinks much he loses his head, and
if he doesn't drink at all he loses heart. If he asks questions he gets
into trouble, and if he doesn't ask them he gets old before his time.
Take the hymn we have just sung:
"'On the other side of Jordan,
In the sweet fields of Eden,
Where the tree of life is blooming,
There is rest for you!'
"We all like that, because we get tired, and it isn't always summer, and
nothing blooms all the year round. We get up early and we work late, and
we sleep hard, and when the weather is good and wages good, and there's
plenty in the house, we stay sober and we sadly sing, 'On the other side
of Jordan'; but when the weather's heavy and funds scarce, and the pork
and molasses and bread come hard, we get drunk, and we sing the comic
chanson 'Brigadier, vows avez raison!' We've been singing a sad song
to-night when we're feeling happy. We didn't think whether it was sad or
not, we only knew it pleased our ears, and we wanted those sweet fields
of Eden, and the blooming tree of life, and the rest under the tree. But
ask a question or two. Where is the other side of Jordan? Do you go up to
it, or down to it? And how do you go? And those sweet fields of Eden,
what do they look like, and how many will they hold? Isn't it clear that
the things that make us happiest in this world are the things we go for
blind?"
He paused. Now a dozen men came a step or two nearer, and crowded close
together, looking over each others' shoulders at him with sharp,
wondering eyes.
"Isn't that so?" he continued. "Do you realise that no man knows where
that Jordan and those fields are, and what the flower of the tree of life
looks like? Let us ask a question again. Why is it that the one being in
all the world who could tell us anything about it, the one being who had
ever seen Jordan or Eden or that tree of life-in fact, the one of all
creation who could describe heaven, never told? Isn't it queer? Here he
was--that one man-standing just as I am among you, and round him were the
men who followed him, all ordinary men, with ordinary curiosity. And he
said he had come down from heaven, and for years they were with him, and
yet they never asked him what that heaven was like: what it looked like,
what it felt like, what sort of life they lived there, what manner of
folk were the angels, what was the appearance of God. Why didn't they
ask, and why didn't he answer? People must have kept asking that question
afterwards, for a man called John answered it. He described, as only an
oriental Jew would or could, a place all precious stones and gold and
jewels and candles, in oriental language very splendid and auriferous.
But why didn't those twelve men ask the One Man who knew, and why didn't
the One answer? And why didn't the One tell without being asked?"
He paused again, and now there came a shuffling and a murmuring, a
curious rumble, a hard breathing, for Charley had touched with steely
finger the tender places in the natures of these Catholics, who, whatever
their lives, held fast to the immemorial form, the sacredness of Mother
Church. They were ever ready to step into the galley which should bear
them all home, with the invisible rowers of God at the oars, down the
wild rapids, to the haven of St. Peter. There was savagery in their faces
now.
He saw, and he could not refrain from smiling as he stretched out his
hand to them again with a little quieting gesture, and continued
soothingly:
"But why should we ask? There's a thing called electricity. Well, you
know that if you take a slice out of anything, less remains behind. We
can take the air out of this room, and scarcely leave any in it.
"We take a drink out of a bottle, and certainly there isn't as much left
in it! But the queer thing is that with this electricity you take it away
and just as much remains. It goes out from your toe, rushes away to
Timbuctoo, and is back in your toe before you can wink. Why? No one
knows. What's the good of asking? You can't see it: you can only see what
it does. What good would it do us if we knew all about it? There it is,
and it's going to revolutionise the world. It's no good asking--no one
knows what it is and where it comes from, or what it looks like. It's
better to go it blind, because you feel the power, though you can't see
where it comes from. You can't tell where the fields of Eden are, but you
believe they're somewhere, and that you'll get to them some day. So say
your prayers, believe all you can, don't ask questions, and don't try to
answer 'em; and remember that Charley Steele preached to you the fear of
the Lord at the Cote Dorion, and wound up the service with the fine old
hymn:
"'I'll away, I'll away, to the promised land--'"
A whole verse of this camp-meeting hymn he sang in an ominous silence
now, for it had crept into their minds that the hymn they had previously
sung so loudly was a Protestant hymn, and that this was another
Protestant hymn of the rankest sort. When he stopped singing and pushed
over his glass for Suzon to fill it, the crowd were noiseless and silent
for a moment, for the spell was still on them. They did not recover
themselves until they saw him lift his glass to Suzon, his back on them,
again insolently oblivious of them all. They could not see his face, but
they could see the face of Suzon Charlemagne, and they misunderstood the
light in her eye, the flush on her cheek. They set it down to a personal
interest in Charley Steele.
Charley had, however, thrown a spell over her in another fashion. In her
eye, in her face, was admiration, the sympathy of a strong intelligence,
the wonder of a mind in the presence of its master, but they thought they
saw passion, love, desire, in her face--in the face of their Suzon, the
pride of the river, the flower of the Cote Dorion. Not alone because
Charley had blasphemed against religion did they hate him at this moment,
but because every heart was scorched with envy and jealousy--the black
unreasoning jealousy which the unlettered, the dull, the crude, feels for
the lettered, the able and the outwardly refined.
Charley was back again in the unfriendly climate of his natural life.
Suzon felt the troubled air round them, saw the dark looks on the faces
of the men, and was at once afraid and elated. She loved the glow of
excitement, she had a keen sense of danger, but she also felt that in any
possible trouble to-night the chances of escape would be small for the
man before her.
He pushed out his glass again. She mechanically poured brandy into it.
"You've had more than enough," she said, in a low voice.
"Every man knows his own capacity, Suzon. Love me little, love me long,"
he added, again raising his glass to her, as the men behind suddenly
moved forward upon the bar.
"Don't--for God's sake!" she whispered hastily. "Do go--or there'll be
trouble!"
The black face of Theophile Charlemagne was also turned anxiously in
Charley's direction as he pushed out glasses for those who called for
liquor.
"Oh, do, do go--like a good soul!" Suzon urged. Charley laughed
disdainfully. "Like a good soul!" Had it come to this, that Suzon pleaded
with him as if he were a foolish, obstreperous child!
"Faithless and unbelieving!" he said to Suzon in English. "Didn't I play
my game well a minute ago--eh--eh--eh, Suzon?"
"Oh, yes, yes, M'sieu'," she replied in English; "but now you are
differen' and so are they. You must goah, so, you must!"
He laughed again, a queer sardonic sort of laugh, yet he put out his hand
and touched the girl's arm lightly with a forefinger. "I am a Quaker
born; I never stir till the spirit moves me," he said.
He scented conflict, and his spirits rose at the thought. Some reckless
demon of adventure possessed him; some fatalistic courage was upon him.
So far as the eye could see, the liquor he had drunk had done no more
than darken the blue of his eye, for his hand was steady, his body was
well poised, his look was direct; there seemed some strange electric
force in leash behind his face, a watchful yet nonchalant energy of
spirit, joined to an indolent pose of body. As the girl looked at him
something of his unreckoning courage passed into her. Somehow she
believed in him, felt that by some wild chance he might again conquer
this truculent element now almost surrounding him. She spoke quickly to
her step-father. "He won't go. What can we do?"
"You go, and he'll follow," said Theophile, who didn't want a row--a
dangerous row-in his house.
"No, he won't," she said; "and I don't believe they'd let him follow me."
There was no time to say more. The crowd were insistent and restless now.
They seemed to have a plan of campaign, and they began to carry it out.
First one, then another, brushed roughly against Charley. Cool and
collected, he refused to accept the insults.
"Pardon," he said, in each case; "I am very awkward."
He smiled all the time; he seemed waiting. The pushing and crowding
became worse. "Don't mention it," he said. "You should learn how to carry
your liquor in your legs."
Suddenly he changed from apology to attack. He talked at them with a
cheerful scorn, a deprecating impertinence, as though they were children;
he chided them with patient imprecations. This confused them for a moment
and cleared a small space around him. There was no defiance in his
aspect, no aggressiveness of manner; he was as quiet as though it were a
drawing-room and he a master of monologues. He hurled original epithets
at them in well-cadenced French, he called them what he listed, but in
language which half-veiled the insults--the more infuriating to his
hearers because they did not perfectly understand.
Suddenly a low-set fellow, with brass rings in his ears, pulled off his
coat and threw it on the floor. "I'll eat your heart," he said, and
rolled up blue sleeves along a hairy arm.
"My child," said Charley, "be careful what you eat. Take up your coat
again, and learn that it is only dogs that delight to bark and bite. Our
little hands were never made to tear each other's eyes."
The low-set fellow made a rush forward, but Rouge Gosselin held him back.
"No, no, Jougon," he said. "I have the oldest grudge."
Jougon struggled with Rouge Gosselin. "Be good, Jougon," said Charley.
As he spoke a heavy tumbler flew from the other side of the room. Charley
saw the missile thrown and dodged. It missed his temple, but caught the
rim of his straw hat, carrying it off his head, and crashed into a
lantern hanging against the wall, putting out the light. The room was
only lighted now by another lantern on the other side of the room.
Charley stooped, picked up his hat, and put it on his head again coolly.
"Stop that, or I'll clear the bar!" cried Theophile Charlemagne, taking
the pistol Suzon slipped into his hand. The sight of the pistol drove the
men wild, and more than one snatched at the knife in his belt.
At that instant there pushed forward into the clear space beside Charley
Steele the great figure of Jake Hough, the horse-doctor, the strongest
man, and the most popular Englishman on the river. He took his stand by
Charley, raised his great hand, smote him in the small of his back, and
said:
"By the Lord, you have sand, and I'll stand by you!" Under the friendly
but heavy stroke the monocle shot from Charley's eye the length of the
string. Charley lifted it again, put it up, and staring hard at Jake,
coolly said:
"I beg your pardon--but have I ever--been introduced to you?"
What unbelievable indifference to danger, what disdain to friendliness,
made Charley act as he did is a matter for speculation. It was throwing
away his one chance; it was foppery on the scaffold--an incorrigible
affectation or a relentless purpose.
Jake Hough strode forward into the crowd, rage in his eye. "Go to the
devil, then, and take care of yourself!" he said roughly.
"Please," said Charley.
They were the last words he uttered that night, for suddenly the other
lantern went out, there was a rush and a struggle, a muffled groan, a
shrill woman's voice, a scramble and hurrying feet, a noise of a
something splashing heavily in the water outside. When the lights were up
again the room was empty, save for Theophile Charlemagne, Jake Hough, and
Suzon, who lay in a faint on the floor with a nasty bruise on her
forehead.
A score of river-drivers were scattering into the country-side, and
somewhere in the black river, alive or dead, was Charley Steele.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
He had had acquaintances, but never friendships, and never loves
He has wheeled his nuptial bed into the street
He left his fellow-citizens very much alone
I am only myself when I am drunk
I should remember to forget it
Liquor makes me human
Nervous legs at a gallop
So say your prayers, believe all you can, don't ask questions
Was not civilisation a mistake
Who knows!
THE RIGHT OF WAY
By Gilbert Parker
Volume 2.
IX. OLD DEBTS FOR NEW
X. THE WAY IN AND THE WAY OUT
XI. THE RAISING OF THE CURTAIN
XII. THE COMING OF ROSALIE
XIII. HOW CHARLEY WENT ADVENTURING, AND WHAT HE FOUND
XIV. ROSALIE, CHARLEY, AND THE MAN THE WIDOW PLOMONDON JILTED
XV. THE MARK IN THE PAPER
XVI. MADAME DAUPHIN HAS A MISSION
XVII. THE TAILOR MAKES A MIDNIGHT FORAY
XVIII. THE STEALING OF THE CROSS
CHAPTER IX
OLD DEBTS FOR NEW
Jo Portugtais was breaking the law of the river--he was running a little
raft down the stream at night, instead of tying up at sundown and camping
on the shore, or sitting snugly over cooking-pot by the little wooden
caboose on his raft. But defiance of custom and tradition was a habit
with Jo Portugais. He had lived in his own way many a year, and he was
likely to do so till the end, though he was a young man yet. He had many
professions, or rather many gifts, which he practised as it pleased him.
He was river-driver, woodsman, hunter, carpenter, guide, as whim or
opportunity came to him. On the evening when Charley Steele met with his
mishap he was a river-driver--or so it seemed. He had been up nor'west a
hundred and fifty miles, and he had come down-stream alone with his
raft-which in the usual course should take two men to guide it--through
slides, over rapids, and in strong currents. Defying the code of the
river, with only one small light at the rear of his raft, he voyaged the
swift current towards his home, which, when he arrived opposite the Cote
Dorion, was still a hundred miles below. He had watched the lights in the
river-drivers' camps, had seen the men beside the fires, and had drifted
on, with no temptation to join in the songs floating out over the dark
water, to share the contents of the jugs raised to boisterous lips, or to
thrust his hand into the greasy cooking-pot for a succulent bone.
He drifted on until he came opposite Charlemagne's tavern. Here the
current carried him inshore. He saw the dim light, he saw dark figures in
the bar-room, he even got a glimpse of Suzon Charlemagne. He dropped the
house behind quickly, but looked back, leaning on the oar and thinking
how swift was the rush of the current past the tavern. His eyes were on
the tavern door and the light shining through it. Suddenly the light
disappeared, and the door vanished into darkness. He heard a scuffle, and
then a heavy splash.
"There's trouble there," said Jo Portugais, straining his eyes through
the night, for a kind of low roar, dwindling to a loud whispering, and
then a noise of hurrying feet, came down the stream, and he could dimly
see dark figures running away into the night by different paths.