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THE RIGHT OF WAY
By SIR GILBERT PARKER NOT guilty, your Honor! " Such was the unexpected verdict in Jo Portugais's murder trial at Montreal. This result was due to the remarkable pleading of Charley Steele, popularly called "Beauty Steele," a brilliant, handsome young lawyer addicted to strong drink. His success in this case also won for him the hand of the beautiful Kathleen Wantage, whom he admired, al-though .,he. did 'not love, her, any more than she loved him. After the trial Jo tried to thank Charley. "Get out of my sight," he replied; "you are as guilty as hell!" Five years later found him still more brilliant and more a slave to the bottle. He had corrupted Kathleen's brother Billy, and demoralized the popular preacher, the Rev.John Brown. Billy forged Charley's name and squandered twenty-five thousand dollars of trust money, but Charley resolved to save him from ruin. He went that night to the "Cote Dorion" tavern, where he drank heavily, quarreled recklessly with some rough river-drivers, and was kicked senseless and flung into the river. Just at that moment Jo Portugais, on a raft opposite the tavern, heard the scuffle and the splash, jumped into the water, and rescued the insensible man, whom he recognized as his former deliverer. Taking him to his hut on Vadrome Mountain, near Chaudiere Parish, he nursed him seven months till he was restored to health, but with his memory completely gone. After the cure's brother, M. Loisel, a skilled surgeon, operated on him his memory returned. He did not know Jo, but his eye chanced to fall on a newspaper which told of his own death, of the marriage of his wife to a former admirer, and accused him of having embezzled the trust money. What was he to do? He could not go back even to clear himself. He decided to remain unknown, as Charles Mallard, in Chaudiere. The village postmistress, Rosa-lie Evanturel, a charming girl of fine famil and convent education, made his acquaintance by bringing up to him a parcel-post package from the surgeon. Charley became apprentice to the elderly, crotchety tailor, Louis Trudel, and went to live with him. Louis was suspicious of him because he was an infidel, and determined to show him a sign from heaven so as to convert him. He stole from the church door the little iron cross blessed by the Pope, and late one night, after Charley had gone to bed, heated it red-hot, and, rushing upstairs, dropped it on Charley's bare chest. Rosalie from the post-office opposite noticed a light under the tailor's door at that unusual hour and, suspecting something wrong, saw through the shutters what the man was doing. She hastened through the kitchen and upstairs, but too late to stay the tailor's hand. He turned and fell headlong and died soon after, calling Charley "a black infidel from hell." Rosalie took the cross to the post-office and afterward restored it to the church door. Chaudiere believed that the tailor's death was due to the infidel and was ready to mob him, but the cure took his part and urged the people to pray that he might be brought into the fold. Charley lived on in the tailor's house and continued his business, giving most of his earnings to the poor and the sick, and fighting the demon drink which frequently assailed him. It was St. Jean Baptiste's Day. Chaudiere was filled with festivity. As the militia came noisily into the village Charley rescued a man and his frightened horse from death. The man proved to be John Brown, now become a quack doctor and advertising his nostrums by singing comic songs. Charley, hiding behind some trees, heard him telling the story of his old friend "Champagne Charley." All day he had been fighting a fierce battle with a raging thirst and questioning himself about Rosalie. Could he marry while his wife was still living? Should he tell her all and let the law separate him from Kathleen? But Rosalie was a Catholic and the church opposed divorce. Just then a bottle of whisky fell from the pocket of a drunken habitant at his very feet. With an uncontrollable impulse he seized it and drained it. Jo Portugais followed him as he staggered home, and Charley in his delirium recognized him as the murderer he had pleaded for. He took .Jo by the throat, then fell to the floor. For five days Jo struggled to save his life, and then carried him back to Vadrome Mountain. Rosalie came to warn him that he was suspected of stealing the gold vessels from the cathedral in Quebec and trying to blow up Government House. She had hardly finished speaking when the cure, the seigneur, and the Abbe Rossignol entered with two constables. The abbe charged Charley with the theft, which he stoutly denied. Jo called the abbe aside and confessed his crime in order to save his friend, promising to give himself up at the end of a year. Meantime Charley took a vial of laudanum from his pocket, but as he was about to uncork it Rosalie sprang from behind a curtain, crying, "If you go, I go also." Footsteps were heard and he promised not to take the poison. The abbe came to announce that he believed Charley's denial. His great temptation still remained, but he found help in Rosalie's eyes. It was the first time he had yielded to a power outside himself. The cure was planning to give the Passion Play at the Indian Reservation of Four Mountains at Easter, and asked Charley to translate the German text and to make some drawings for the costumes. He did so. About this time Rosalie took her crippled father to the hospital at Montreal and was gone some months, which were months of misery for Charley. What could he do? He felt that it had been dastardly of him to win her love, when he could give her only the empty hand, the hopeless hour, the secret sorrow in return. He fought his old enemy with desperate resolve. The week before Easter he went to Montreal with Jo's dogs and sled. In the dead of night he entered the white house on the hill where Kathleen was living, made his way to a secret cupboard, and removed two packets; one contained his mother's pearls worth ten thousand dollars, and the other a thousand dollars in notes. As he turned, after restoring the panel, Kathleen stood before him in her nightgown. She was asleep. Charley followed her as she walked out of the house, across the lawn toward the river where the gate was open. Her life was in his hands. For a moment he hesitated, then noiselessly stole between her and the gate, closed and locked it. Her husband, not fifty feet away, called to him. "Hush! She's 'asleep," Charley whispered, and disappeared; unrecognized. Rosalie's father died soon after this and she was ill for weeks. The Passion Play brought unwelcome crowds to Chaudiere; the last three days strangers were prohibited. At the final performance Rosalie chose to take the part of Marie Magdalen. (It was an act of expiation. After the play ended she received absolution.) Far away under the trees sat a man in misery immeasurable. It was Charley. That night he wrote for a long time; then put the paper with the pearls and the money in the safe. That same night John Brown lay drunk in the church. He lighted a match and threw it on a surplice. Soon cries of "Fire" were heard. Charley and Jo saved the sacred treasures. Rosalie went back for the little cross and Charley dashed in and rescued her. By his eloquence the people were induced to give one-fortieth of their possessions for a new edifice. The money collected was placed in his charge and locked in his safe under the parish seal. While he and Jo were keeping guard over it, Billy Wantage, John Brown, and three other rogues, having learned where the money was, entered the tailor's house to steal it. Billy shot Charley, Jo killed John Brown, two of the other men fired at Jo and killed him. The seal was found intact. Rosalie helped bind up Charley's wound and the cure was preparing to give him the sacrament. Suddenly the bandage slipped-or did he purposely let it slip?-and he died faithful in his love for Rosalie. She lived, rejoicing in her memory of him and in her lifelong service for the poor and suffering of the parish. |