The Right of Way
CHAPTER VIII
THE COST OF THE ORNAMENT
One, two, three, four, five, six miles. The sharp click of the iron hoofs on
the road; the strong rush of the river; the sweet smell of the maple and the
pungent balsam; the dank rich odour of the cedar swamp; the cry of the loon from
the water; the flaming crane in the fishing-boat; the fisherman, spear in hand,
staring into the dark waters tinged with sombre red; the voice of a lonely
settler keeping time to the ping of the axe as, lengthening out his day to
nightly weariness, he felled a tree; river-drivers' camps spotted along the
shore; huge cribs or rafts which had swung down the great stream for scores of
miles, the immense oars motionless, the little houses on the timbers blinking
with light; and from cheerful raftsmen coming the old familiar song of the
rivers:
"En roulant, ma boule roulant,
En roulant ma boule!"
Not once had Charley Steele turned his head as the horse sped on. His face
was kept straight along the line of the road; he seemed not to see or to hear,
to be unresponsive to sound or scene. The monocle at his eye was like a veil to
hide the soul, a defence against inquiry, itself the unceasing question, a sort
of battery thrown forward, a kind of field-casemate for a lonely besieged
spirit.
It was full of suggestion. It might have been the glass behind which showed
some mediaeval relic, the body of some ancient Egyptian king whose life had been
spent in doing wonders and making signs—the primitive, anthropomorphic being. He
might have been a stone man, for any motion that he made. Yet looking at him
closely you would have seen discontent in the eye, a kind of glaze of the
sardonic over the whole face.
What is the good! the face asked. What is there worth doing? it said. What a
limitless futility! it urged, fain to be contradicted too, as the grim
melancholy of the figure suggested.
"To be an animal and soak in the world," he thought to himself—"that is
natural; and the unnatural is civilisation, and the cheap adventure of the mind
into fields of baffling speculation, lighted by the flickering intelligences of
dead speculators, whose seats we have bought in the stock-exchange of mortality,
and exhaust our lives in paying for. To eat, to drink, to lie fallow,
indifferent to what comes after, to roam like the deer, and to fight like the
tiger—"
He came to a dead stop in his thinking. "To fight like the tiger!" He turned
his head quickly now to where upon a raft some river-drivers were singing:
"And when a man in the fight goes down,
Why, we will carry him home!"
"To fight like the tiger!" Ravage—the struggle to possess from all the world
what one wished for one's self, and to do it without mercy and without fear-that
was the clear plan in the primitive world, where action was more than speech and
dominance than knowledge. Was not civilisation a mistake, and religion the
insinuating delusion designed to cover it up; or, if not designed, accepted by
the original few who saw that humanity could not turn back, and must even go
forward with illusions, lest in mere despair all men died and the world died
with them?
His eyes wandered to the raft where the men were singing, and he remembered
the threat made: that if he came again to the Cote Dorion he "would get what
for!" He remembered the warning of Rouge Gosselin conveyed by Jolicoeur, and a
sinister smile crossed over his face. The contradictions of his own thoughts
came home to him suddenly, for was it not the case that his physical strength
alone, no matter what his skill, would be of small service to him in a dark
corner of contest? Primitive ideas could only hold in a primitive world. His
real weapon was his brain, that which civilisation had given him in lieu of
primitive prowess and the giant's strength.
They had come to a long piece of corduroy-road, and the horse's hoofs struck
rumbling hollow sounds from the floor of cedar logs. There was a swamp on one
side where fire-flies were flickering, and there flashed into Charley Steele's
mind some verses he had once learned at school:
"They made her a grave too cold and damp
For a soul so warm and true—"
It kept repeating itself in his brain in a strange dreary monotone.
"Stop the horse. I'll walk the rest of the way," he said presently to the
groom. "You needn't come for me, Finn; I'll walk back as far as the Marochal
Tavern. At twelve sharp I'll be there. Give yourself a drink and some supper"—he
put a dollar into the man's hand—"and no white whiskey, mind: a bottle of beer
and a leg of mutton, that's the thing." He nodded his head, and by the light of
the moon walked away smartly down the corduroy-road through the shadows of the
swamp. Finn the groom looked after him.
"Well, if he ain't a queer dick! A reg'lar 'centric—but a reg'lar brick,
cutting a wide swathe as he goes. He's a tip-topper; and he's a sort of tough
too—a sort of a kind of a tough. Well, it's none of my business. Get up!" he
added to the horse, and turning round in the road with difficulty, he drove back
a mile to the Tavern Marochal for his beer and mutton—and white whiskey.
Charley stepped on briskly, his shining leather shoes, straw hat, and light
cane in no good keeping with his surroundings. He was thinking that he had never
been in such a mood for talk with Suzon Charlemagne. Charlemagne's tavern of the
Cote Dorion was known over half a province, and its patrons carried news of it
half across a continent. Suzon Charlemagne—a girl of the people, a tavern-girl,
a friend of sulking, coarse river-drivers! But she had an alert precision of
brain, an instinct that clove through wastes of mental underbrush to the tree of
knowledge. Her mental sight was as keen and accurate as that which runs along
the rifle-barrel of the great hunter with the red deer in view. Suzon
Charlemagne no company for Charley Steele? What did it matter! He had entered
into other people's lives to-day, had played their games with them and for them,
and now he would play his own game, live his own life in his own way through the
rest of this day. He thirsted for some sort of combat, for the sharp contrasts
of life, for the common and the base; he thirsted even for the white whiskey
against which he had warned his groom. He was reckless—not blindly, but
wilfully, wildly reckless, caring not at all what fate or penalty might come his
way.
"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.