The Right of Way
CHAPTER XLVIII
"WHERE THE TREE OF LIFE IS BLOOMING—"
As Charley walked the bank of the great river by the city where his old life
lay dead, he struggled with the new life which—long or short—must henceforth
belong to the village of the woman he loved.... But as he fought with himself in
the long night-watch it was borne in upon him that though he had been shown the
Promised Land, he might never find there a habitation and a home. The hymn he
had mockingly sung the night he had been done to death at the Cote Dorion sang
in his senses now, an ever-present mockery:
"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."
In the uttermost corner of his intelligence he felt with sure prescience
that, however befalling, the end of all was not far off. In the exercise of new
faculties, which had more to do with the soul than with reason, he now believed
what he could not see, and recognised what was not proved. Labour of the hand,
trouble, sorrow, and perplexity, charity and humanity, had cleared and
simplified his life, had sweetened his intelligence, and taken the place of
ambition. He saw life now through the lens of personal duty, which required that
the thing nearest to one's hand should be done first.
But as foreboding pressed upon him there came the thought of what should come
after—to Rosalie. His thoughts took a practical form—her good was uppermost in
his mind. All Rosalie had to live on was her salary as postmistress, for it was
in every one's knowledge that the little else she had was being sacrificed to
her father's illness. Suppose, then, that through illness or accident she lost
her position, what could she do? He might leave her what he had—but what had he?
Enough to keep her for a year or two—no more. All his earnings had gone to the
poor and the suffering of Chaudiere.
There was one way. It had suggested itself to him so often in Chaudiere, and
had been one of the two reasons for bringing him here. There were his dead
mother's pearls and one thousand dollars in notes behind a secret panel in the
white house on the hill, in this very city where he was. The pearls were worth
over ten thousand dollars—in all, there would be eleven thousand, enough to
secure Rosalie from poverty. What should Kathleen do with his mother's pearls,
even if they were found by her? What should she do with his money did she not
loathe his memory? Had not all his debts been paid? These pearls and this money
were all his own.
But to get them. To go now to the white house on the hill; to face that old
life even for an hour, a knocking at the door of a haunted house—he shrank from
the thought. He would have to enter the place like a thief in the night.
Yet for Rosalie he must take the risk—he must go.