Right of Way — 14 - Chapters 44, 45, & 46
CHAPTER XLIV.
“WHO WAS KATHLEEN?
” The painful incidents of the morning weighed heavily upon Rosalie, and she was glad when Madame Dugal came to talk with her father, who was ailing and irritable, and when Mrs. Flynn drove her away with a kiss on either cheek, saying: “Don’t come back, darlin’, till there’s roses in both cheeks, for y’r eyes are ‘atin’ up yer face!
” She had seen Charley take the path to Vadrome Mountain, and to the Rest of the Flax-beaters she betook herself, in the blind hope that, returning, he might pass that way.
Under the influence of the fresh air and the quiet of the woods her spirits rose, her pulse beat faster, though a sense of foreboding and sorrow hovered round her.
The two-miles walk to her beloved retreat seemed a matter of minutes only, so busy were her thoughts.
Her mind was one luxurious confusion, through which travelled a ghostly little sprite, who kept tumbling her thoughts about, sneering, smirking, whispering--“You dare not go to confession--dare not go to confession.
You will never be the same again--never feel the same again--never think the same again; your dreams are done!
You can only love.
And what will this love do for you?
What do you expect to happen--you dare not go to confession!
” Her reply had been the one iteration: “I love him--I love him--I love him.
We shall be together all our lives, till we are old and grey.
I
shall watch him at his work, and listen to his voice.
I shall read with him and walk with him, and I shall grow to think like him a little--in everything except religion.
In everything except that.
One day he will come to think like me--to believe in God.
” In the dreamy happiness of these thoughts the colour came to her cheeks, the roses of light gathered in her eyes.
In her tremulous ardour she scarcely realised how time passed, and her reverie deepened as the afternoon shadows grew and the sun made to its covert behind the hills.
She was roused by a man’s voice singing, just under the bluff where she sat.
To her this voice represented the battle-call, the home-call, the life call of the universe.
The song it sang was known to her.
It was as old as Rizzio.
It had come from old France with Mary, had been merged into English words and English music, and had voyaged to New France.
There it had been sung by lovers in fair vales, on wide rivers, and in deep forests: “What is not mine I may not hold, (Ah, hark the hunter’s horn!
), And what is thine may not be sold, (My love comes through the corn!
);
And none shall buy And none shall sell What Love works well?
” In the walk back from Vadrome Mountain, a change--a fleeting change--had passed over Charley’s mind and mood.
The quiet of the woodland, the song of the birds, the tumbling brook, the smell of the rich earth, replenishing its strength from the gorgeous falling leaves, had soothed him.
Thoughts of Rosalie took a new form.
Her image possessed him, excluding the future, the perils that surrounded them.
He had gone through so much within the past twenty-four hours that the capacity for suffering had almost exhausted itself, and in the reaction endearing thoughts of Rosalie had dominion over him.
It was the reassertion of primitive man, the demands of the first element.
The great problem was still in the background.
The picture of Kathleen and the other man was pushed into the distance; thoughts of Billy and his infamy were thrust under foot--how futile to think of them!
There was Rosalie to be thought of, the to-day and to-morrow of the new life.
Rosalie was of to-day.
How strong and womanly she had been this morning, the girl whose life had been bounded by this Chaudiere, with a metropolitan convent and hospital as her only glimpses of the busy world.
She would fit in anywhere--in the highest places, with her grace, and her nobleness of mind, arcadian, passionate and beautiful.
There came upon him again the feeling of the evening before, when he saw her standing in his doorway, the night about them, jealous affection, undying love, in her eyes.
It quickened his steps imperceptibly.
He passed a stream, and glanced down into a dark pool involuntarily.
It reflected himself clearly.
He stopped short.
“Is this you, Beauty Steele?
” he said, and he caught his brown beard in his hand.
“Beauty Steele had brains and no heart.
You have heart, and your wits have gone wool-gathering.
No matter!
What is not mine I may not hold, (Ah, hark the hunter’s horn!
)’” he sang, and came quickly along the stream where the flax-beaters worked in harvest-time, then up the hill, then--Rosalie.
She started to her feet.
“I knew you would come--I knew you would!
” she said.
“You have been waiting here for me?
” he asked breathless, taking her hand.
“I felt you would come.
I made you,” she added smiling, and, eagerly answering the look in his eyes, threw her arms round his neck.
In that moment’s joy a fresh realisation of their fate came upon him with dire force, and a bitter protest went up from his heart, that he and she should be sacrificed.
Yet the impasse was there, and what could remove it--what clear the way?
He looked down at the girl whose head was buried in happy peace on his shoulder.
She clung to him, as though in him was everlasting protection from the sprite that kept whispering: “You dare not go to confession--your dreams are done--you can only love.
” But she had no fear now.
As he looked down at her a swift change passed over him, and, almost for the first time since he was a little child, his eyes filled with tears.
He hastily brushed them away, and drew her down on the seat beside him.
He was wondering how he should tell her that they must not meet like this, that they must be apart.
No matter what had happened, no matter what love there was, it was better that they should die--that he should die--than that they should meet like this.
There was only one end to secret meetings, and discovery was inevitable.
Then, with discovery, shame to her.
For he must either marry her--how could he marry her?
--or die.
For him to die would but increase her misery.
The time had passed when it could be of any use.
It passed that day in the hut on Vadrome Mountain when she said that if he died, she would die with him--“Where you are going you will be alone.
There will be no one to care for you, no one but me.
” Last night it passed for ever.
She had put her life into his hands; henceforth, there could never be a question of giving or taking, of withdrawing or advancing, for all was irrevocable, sealed with the great seal.
Yet she must be saved.
But how?
She suddenly looked up at him.
“I can ask you anything I want now, can’t I?
” she said.
“Anything, Rosalie.
” “You know that when I ask, it is because I want to know what you know, so that I may feel as you feel.
You know that, don’t you?
“I know it when you tell me, wonderful Rosalie.
” What a revelation it was, this transmuting power, which could change mortal dross into the coin of immortal wealth!
“I want to ask you,” she said, “who was Kathleen?
” His blood seemed to go cold in his veins, and he sat without answering, shocked and dismayed.
What could she know of Kathleen?
“Can’t you tell me?
” she asked anxiously yet fearfully.
He looked so strange that she thought she had offended him.
“Please don’t mind telling me.
I should understand everything--everything.
Was it some one you loved--once?
” It was hard for her to say it, but she said it bravely.
“No. I never loved any one in all the world, Rosalie--not till I loved you.
” She gave a happy sigh.
“Oh, it is wonderful!
” she said.
“It is wonderful and good!
Did you--did you love me from the very first?
” “I think I did, though I didn’t know it from the very first,” he answered slowly.
His heart beat hard, for he could not guess how she should know of Kathleen.
It was absurdly impossible that she should know.
“But many have loved you!
” she said proudly.
“They have not shown it,” he answered grimly; then added quickly, and with aching anxiety: “When did you hear of--of Kathleen?
” “Oh, you are such a blind huntsman!
” she laughed.
“Don’t you know where my little fox was hiding?
Why, in the shop, when you held the note-paper up to the light, and looked startled, and bought all the paper we had that was water-marked Kathleen.
Do you think that was clever of me?
I
don’t. ” “I think it was very clever,” he said.
“Then she-Kathleen--doesn’t really matter?
” she asked eagerly.
“Of course she can’t, if you don’t love her.
But does she love you?
Did she ever love you?
” “Never in her life.
” “So of course it doesn’t matter,” she rejoined.
“Hush!
” she added rapidly.
“I see some one coming in the trees yonder.
It may be some one for me.
Father knows I come here sometimes.
Go quickly and hide behind the rocks, please.
I’ll stay and see who it is.
Please go--dearest.
” He kissed her, and, keeping out of sight, got to a place of safety a few hundred feet away.
He saw the new-comer run to Rosalie, speak to her, saw Rosalie half turn in his own direction, then go hastily down the hillside with the messenger.
“It is her father!
” he exclaimed, and followed at a distance.
At the village he learned that M. Evanturel had had another seizure.
CHAPTER XLV. SIX MONTHS GO BY
Spring again--budding trees and flowing sap; the earth banks removed from the houses, and outside windows discarded; the ice tumbling and crunching in the river; the dormant farmer raising his head to the energy and delight of April.
The winter had been long and hard.
Never had there been severer frost or deeper snow, and seldom had big game been so plentiful.
In the snug warm stables the cattle munched and chewed the cud; the idle, long-haired horses grew as spirited in the keen air as in summer they were sluggish with hard work; and the farm-hands were abroad in the dark of the early mornings with lanterns, to feed the stock and take them out to water, singing cheerfully.
All morning spread the clamour of the flail and the fanning-mill, the swish of the knife through the turnips and the beets, and the sound of the saw and the axe, as the youngest man of the family, muffled to the nose, sawed the wood into lengths or split the knots.
Night brought the cutting and stringing of apples, the shelling of the Indian corn, the making of rag carpets.
On Saturday came the going to market with grain, or pork, or beef, or fowls frozen like stones; the gossip in the market-place.
Then again sounded jingling sleigh-bells as, on the return road, the habitant made for home, a glass of white whiskey inside him, and black-eyed children in the doorway, swarming like bees at the mouth of a hive.
This particular winter in Chaudiere had been full of excitement and expectation.
At Easter-time there was to be the great Passion Play, after the manner of that known as The Passion Play of Ober-Ammergau.
Not one in a hundred habitants had ever heard of Ober-Ammergau, but they had all shared in picturesque processions of the Stations of the Cross to some calvaire; and many had taken part in dramatic scenes arranged from the life of Christ.
Drama of a crude kind was deep in them; it showed in gesture, speech, and temperament.
In all the preparations Maximilian Cour was a conspicuous and useful official.
Gifted with the dramatic temperament to a degree rare in so humble a man, he it was who really educated the people of Chaudiere in the details of the Passion Play to be produced by the good Catholics of the parish and the Indians of the reservation.
He had gone to the Cure every day, and the Cure had talked with him, and then had sent him to the tailor, who had, during the past six months, withdrawn more and more from the life about him, practically living with shut door.
No one ventured in unless on business, or were in need, or wished advice.
These he never turned empty away.
Besides Portugais, Maximilian Cour was the one man received constantly by the tailor.
With patience and insight Charley taught the baker, by drawings and careful explanations, the outlines of the representation, and the baker grew proud of the association, though Charley’s face used to haunt him in his sleep.
Excitable, eager, there was an elemental adaptability in the baker, as easily leading to Avernus as to Elysium.
This appealed to Charley, realising, as he did, that Maximilian Cour was a reputable citizen by mere accident.
The baker’s life had run in a sentimental groove of religious duty; that same sentimentality would, in other circumstances, have forced him with equal ardour into the broad primrose path.
In the evening hours and on Sunday Charley had worked at his drawings for the scenery and costumes of the Play, and completed his translation of the German text, but there had been days when he could not put pen to paper.
Life to him now was one aching emptiness--since that day at the Rest of the Flax-beaters Rosalie had been absent.
On the very morning after their meeting by the river she had gone away with her father to the great hospital at Montreal--not Quebec this time, on the advice of the Seigneur--as the one chance of prolonging his life.
There had come but one letter from her since that hour when he saw her in the Seigneur’s coach with her father, moving away in the still autumn air, a piteous appeal in her eyes.
The good-bye look she gave him then was with him day and night.
She had written him one letter, and he had written one in reply, and no more.
Though he was wholly reckless for himself, for her he was prudent now--there was nothing else to do.
To save her--if he could but save her from himself!
If he might only put back the clock!
In his letter to her he had simply said that it were wiser not to write, since the acting postmistress, the Cure’s sister, would note the exchange of letters, and this would arouse suspicion.
He could not see what was best to do, what was right to do.
To wait seemed the only thing, and his one letter ended with the words: Rosalie, my life is lived only in the thought of you.
There is no hour but I think of you, no moment but you are with me.
The greatest proof of love that man can give, I will give to you, in the hour fate wills--for us.
But now, we must wait--we must wait, Rosalie.
Do not write to me, but know that if I could go to you I would go; if I could say to you, Come, I would say it.
If the giving of my life would save you any pain or sorrow, I would give it.
Sitting on his bench at work, it seemed to Charley that sometimes she was near him, and more than once he turned quickly round as though she were, in very truth, standing beside him.
He thought of her continually, and often with an unbearable pain.
He figured her in his mind as pale and distressed, and always her eyes had the piteous terror of that last look as she went away over the hills.
But the weeks had worn on, then the Seigneur, who had been to Montreal, came back with the news that Rosalie was looking as beautiful as a picture.
“Grown a woman in beauty and in stature; comely--comely as a lady in a Watteau picture, my dear messieurs!
” he had said to the Cure, standing in the tailor’s shop.
Replying, the Cure had said: “She is in good hands, with good people, recommended to me by an abbe there; yet I am not wholly happy about her.
When her trouble comes to her”--Charley’s needle slipped and pierced his finger to the bone--“when her father goes, as he must, I fear, there will be no familiar face; she will hear no familiar voice.
” “Faith, there you are wrong, my dear Cure” answered the Seigneur;
“there’ll be a face yonder she likes very well indeed, and a voice she’s fond of too.
” Charley’s back was on them at that moment, of which he was glad, for his face was haggard with anxiety, and it seemed hours before the Cure said: “Whom do you mean, Maurice?
” and hours before the Seigneur replied: “Mrs. Flynn, of course.
I’m sending her tomorrow.
” Mrs. Flynn had gone, and Charley had, in one sense, been made no happier by that, for it seemed to him that Rosalie would rather that strangers’ eyes were on her than the inquisitively friendly eye of Mary Flynn.
Weeks had grown into months, and no news came--none save that which the Cure let fall, or was brought by the irresponsible Notary, who heard all gossip.
Only the Cure’s scant news were authentic, however, and Charley never saw the good priest but he had a secret hope of hearing him say that Rosalie was coming back.
Yet when she came back, what would, or could, he do?
There was always the crime for which he or Billy must be punished.
Concerning this crime his heart was growing harder--for Rosalie’s sake.
But there was Kathleen--and Rosalie was now in the city where she lived, and they might meet!
There was one solution--if Kathleen should die!
It sickened him that he could think of that with a sense of relief, almost of hope.
If Kathleen should die, then he would be free to marry Rosalie--into what?
He still could only marry her into the peril and menace of the law?
Again, even if Kathleen did not stand in the way, neither the Cure nor any other priest would marry him to her without his antecedents being certified.
A Protestant minister would, perhaps, but would Rosalie give up her faith?
Following him without the blessing of the Church, she would trample under foot every dear tradition of her life, win the scorn of all of her religion, and destroy her own peace; for the faith of her fathers was as the breath of her nostrils.
What cruelty to her!
But was it, after all, even true that he had but to call and she would come?
In truth it well might be that she had learned to despise him;
to feel how dastardly he had been to take her love, given in blind simplicity, bestowed like the song of the bird upon the listening fields--to take the plenteous fulness of her life, and give nothing in return save the empty hand, the hopeless hour, the secret sorrow.
Nothing could quench his misery.
The physical part of him craved without ceasing for something to allay his distress.
Again and again he fought his old enemy with desperate resolve.
To fall again, to touch liquor once more, was to end all for ever.
He fought on tenaciously and gloomily, with little of the pride of life, with nothing of the old stubborn self-will, but with a new-awakened sense.
He had found conscience at last--and more.
The months went by and still M. Evanturel lingered on, and Rosalie did not come.
The strain became too great at last.
In the week preceding Easter, when all the parish was busy at Four Mountains, making costumes, rehearsing, building, putting up seats, cutting down trees, and erecting crosses and calvaries, Charley disclosed to Jo a new intention.
In the earlier part of the winter Jo and he had met two or three times a week, but now Jo had come to help him with his work in the shop--two silent, devoted companions.
They understood each other, and in that understanding were life and death.
For never did Jo forget that a year from the day he had confessed his sins he meant to give himself up to justice.
This caused him no sleepless nights.
He thought more of Charley than of himself, and every month now he went to confession, and every day he said his prayers.
He was at his prayers when Charley went to tell him of his purpose.
Charley had often seen Jo on his knees of late, and he had wondered, but not with the old pagan mind.
“Jo,” he said, “I am going away--to Montreal.
” “To Montreal!
” exclaimed Jo huskily.
“You are going back--to stay?
” “Not that.
I am going--to see--Rosalie Evanturel.
” Jo was troubled but not dumfounded.
It had slowly crept into his mind that Charley loved the girl, though he had no real ground for suspicion.
His will, however, had been so long the slave of the other man’s that he had far-off reflections of his thoughts.
He made no reply in words, but nodded his head.
“I want you to stay here, Jo.
If I don’t come back, and--and she does, stand by her, Jo.
I can trust you.
” “You will come back, M’sieu’--but you will come back, then?
” Jo asked heavily.
“If I can, Jo--if I can,” he answered.
Long after he had gone, Jo wandered up and down among the trees on the river-road, up which Charley had disappeared with Jo’s dogs and sled.
He kept shaking his head mournfully.
CHAPTER XLVI. THE FORGOTTEN MAN
It was Easter morning, and the good sunrise of a perfect spring made radiant the high hill above the town.
Rosy-fingered morn touched with magic colour the masts and scattered sails of the ships upon the great river, and spires and towers quivered with rainbow light.
The city was waking cheerfully, though the only active life was in the pealing bells and on the deep flowing rivers.
The streets were empty yet, save for an assiduous priest or the cart of a milkman.
Here and there a window opened and a drowsy head was thrust into the eager air.
These saw a bearded countryman with his team of six dogs and his little cart going slowly up the street.
It was plain the man had come a long distance--from the mountains in the east or south, no doubt, where horses were few, and dogs, canoes, and oxen the means of transportation.
As the man moved slowly through the streets, his dogs still gallantly full of life after their hard journey, he did not stare about him after the manner of countrymen.
His movements had intelligence and freedom.
He was an unusual figure for a woodsman or river-man--he did not wear ear-rings or a waist-sash as did the river-men, and he did not turn in his toes like a woodsman.
Yet he was plainly a man from the far mountains.
The man with the dogs did not heed the few curious looks turned his way, but held his head down as though walking in familiar places.
Now and then he spoke to his dogs, and once he stopped before a newspaper office, which had a placard bearing these lines: The Coming Passion Play In the Chaudiere Valley.
He looked at it mechanically, for, though he was concerned in the Passion Play and the Chaudiere Valley, it was an abstraction to him at this moment.
His mind was absorbed by other things.
Though he looked neither to right nor to left, he was deeply affected by all round him.
At last he came to a certain street, where he and his dogs travelled more quickly.
It opened into a square, where bells were booming in the steeple of a church.
Shops and offices in the street were shut, but a saloon-door was open, and over the doorway was the legend: Jean Jolicoeur, Licensed to sell Wine, Beer, and other Spirituous and Fermented Liquors.
Nearly opposite was a lawyer’s office, with a new-painted sign.
It had once read, in plain black letters, Charles Steele, Barrister, etc. ; now it read, in gold letters and many flourishes of the sign-painter’s art, Rockwell and Tremblay, Barristers, Attorneys, etc. Here the man looked up with trouble in his eyes.
He could see dimly the desk and the window beside which he had sat for so many years, and on the wall a map of the city glowed with the incoming sun.
He moved on, passing the saloon with the open door.
The landlord, in his shirt-sleeves, was standing in the doorway.
He nodded, then came out to the edge of the board-walk.
“Come a long way, M’sieu’?
” he asked.
“Four days’ journey,” answered the man gruffly through his beard, looking the landlord in the eyes.
If this landlord, who in the past had seen him so often and so closely, did not recognise him, surely no one else would.
It was, however, a curious recurrence of habit that, as he looked at the landlord, he instinctively felt for his eye-glass, which he had discarded when he left Chaudiere.
For an instant there was an involuntary arrest of Jean Jolicoeur’s look, as though memory had been roused, but this swiftly passed, and he said: “Fine dogs, them!
We never get that kind hereabouts now, M’sieu’.
Ever been to the city before?
” “I’ve never been far from home before,” answered the Forgotten Man.
“You’d better keep your eyes open, my friend, though you’ve got a sharp pair in your head--sharp as Beauty Steele’s almost.
There’s rascals in the river-side drinking-places that don’t let the left hand know what the right does.
” “My dogs and I never trust anybody,” said the Forgotten Man, as one of the dogs snarled at the landlord’s touch.
“So I can take care of myself, even if I haven’t eyes as sharp as Beauty Steele’s, whoever he is.
” The landlord laughed.
“Beauty’s only skin-deep, they say.
Charley Steele was a lawyer; his office was over there”--he pointed across the street.
“He went wrong.
He come here too often--that wasn’t my fault.
He had an eye like a hawk, and you couldn’t read it.
Now I can read your eye like a book.
There’s a bit of spring in ‘em, M’sieu’.
His eyes were hard winter-ice five feet deep and no fishing under--froze to the bed.
He had a tongue like a cross-cut saw.
He’s at the bottom of the St. Lawrence, leaving a bad job behind him.
“Have a drink--hein?
” He jerked a finger backwards to the saloon door.
“It’s Sunday, but stolen waters are sweet, sure!
” The Forgotten Man shook his head.
“I don’t drink, thank you.
” “It’d do you good.
You’re dead beat.
