The Right of Way Part 3

"That's why I should remember to forget it--I am the child of modesty."

Charley touched the corners of his mouth with his tongue, as though his lips were dry, and his eyes wandered to a saloon a little farther down the street.

"Modesty is your curse," rejoined Brown mockingly.

"Once when you preached at me you said that beauty was my curse."

Charley laughed a curt, distant little laugh which was no more the spontaneous humour lying for ever behind his thoughts than his eye-gla.s.s was the real sight of his eyes, though since childhood this laugh and his eye-gla.s.s were as natural to all expression of himself as John Brown's outward and showy frankness did not come from the real John Brown.

John Brown looked him up and down quickly, then fastened his eyes on the ruddy cheeks of his old friend. "Do they call you Beauty now as they used to?" he asked, rather insolently.

"No. They only say, 'There goes Charley Steele!'" The tongue again touched the corners of the mouth, and the eyes wandered to the doorway down the street, over which was written in French: "Jean Jolicoeur, Licensed to sell wine, beer, and other spirituous and fermented liquors."

Just then an archdeacon of the cathedral pa.s.sed them, bowed gravely to Charley, glanced at John Brown, turned colour slightly, and then with a cold stare pa.s.sed on too quickly for dignity.

"I'm thinking of Bunyan," said the aforetime friend of Charley Steele.

"I'll paraphrase him and say: 'There, but for beauty and a monocle, walks John Brown.'"

Under the bitter sarcasm of the man, who, five years ago, had gone down at last beneath his agnostic raillery, Charley's blue eye did not waver, not a nerve stirred in his face, as he replied: "Who knows!"

"That was what you always said--who knows! That did for John Brown."

Charley seemed not to hear the remark. "What are you doing now?" he asked, looking steadily at the face whence had gone all the warmth of manhood, all that courage of life which keeps men young. The lean parchment visage had the hunted look of the incorrigible failure, had written on it self-indulgence, cunning, and uncertainty.

"Nothing much," John Brown replied.

"What last?"

"Floated an a.r.s.enic-mine on Lake Superior."

"Failed?"

"More or less. There are hopes yet. I've kept the wolf from the door."

"What are you going to do?"

"Don't know--nothing, perhaps; I've not the courage I had."

"I'd have thought you might find a.r.s.enic a good thing," said Charley, holding out a silver cigarette-case, his eyes turning slowly from the startled, gloomy face of the man before him, to the cool darkness beyond the open doorway of that saloon on the other side of the street.

John Brown shivered--there was something so cold-blooded in the suggestion that he might have found a.r.s.enic a good thing. The metallic glare of Charley's eye-gla.s.s seemed to give an added cruelty to the words. Charley's monocle was the token of what was behind his blue eye-one ceaseless interrogation. It was that everlasting questioning, the ceaseless who knows! which had in the end unsettled John Brown's mind, and driven him at last from the church and the possible gaiters of a dean into the rough business of life, where he had been a failure. Yet as Brown looked at Charley the old fascination came on him with a rush.

His hand suddenly caught Charley's as he took a cigarette, and he said: "Perhaps I'll find a.r.s.enic a good thing yet."

For reply Charley laid a hand on his arm-turned him towards the shade of the houses opposite. Without a word they crossed the street, entered the saloon, and pa.s.sed to a little back room, Charley giving an unsympathetic stare to some men at the bar who seemed inclined to speak to him.

As the two pa.s.sed into the small back room with the frosted door, one of the strangers said to the other: "What does he come here for, if he's too proud to speak! What's a saloon for! I'd like to smash that eye-gla.s.s for him!"

"He's going down-hill fast," said the other. "He drinks steady--steady."

"Tiens--tiens!" interposed Jean Jolicoeur, the landlord. "It is not harm to him. He drink all day, an' he walk a crack like a bee-line."

"He's got the handsomest wife in this city. If I was him, I'd think more of myself," answered the Englishman.

"How you think more--hein? You not come down more to my saloon?"

"No, I wouldn't come to your saloon, and I wouldn't go to Theophile Charlemagne's shebang at the Cote Dorion."

"You not like Charlemagne's hotel?" said a huge black-bearded pilot, standing beside the landlord. "Oh, I like Charlemagne's hotel, and I like to talk to Suzon Charlemagne, but I'm not married, Rouge Gosselin--"

"If he go to Charlemagne's hotel, and talk some more too mooch to dat Suzon Charlemagne, he will lose dat gla.s.s out of his eye," interrupted Rouge Gosselin.

"Who say he been at dat place?" said Jean Jolicoeur. "He bin dere four times las' month, and dat Suzon Charlemagne talk'bout him ever since.

When dat Narcisse Bovin and Jacques Gravel come down de river, he better keep away from dat Cote Dorion," sputtered Rouge Gosselin. "Dat's a long story short, all de same for you--bagosh!"

Rouge Gosselin flung off his gla.s.s of white whiskey, and threw after it a gla.s.s of cold water.

"Tiens! you know not M'sieu' Charley Steele," said Jean Jolicoeur, and turned on his heel, nodding his head sagely.

CHAPTER IV. CHARLEY MAKES A DISCOVERY

A hot day a month later Charley Steele sat in his office staring before him into s.p.a.ce, and negligently smoking a cigarette. Outside there was a slow clacking of wheels, and a newsboy was crying "La Patrie! La Patrie! All about the War in France! All about the ma.s.sacree!"

Bells--wedding-bells--were ringing also, and the jubilant sounds, like the call of the newsboy, were out of accord with the slumberous feeling of the afternoon. Charley Steele turned his head slowly towards the window. The branches of a maple-tree half crossed it, and the leaves moved softly in the shadow they made. His eye went past the tree and swam into the tremulous white heat of the square, and beyond to where in the church-tower the bells were ringing-to the church doors, from which gaily dressed folk were issuing to the carriages, or thronged the pavement, waiting for the bride and groom to come forth into a new-created world--for them.

Charley looked through his monocle at the crowd reflectively, his head held a little to one side in a questioning sort of way, on his lips the ghost of a smile--not a rea.s.suring smile. Presently he leaned forward slightly and the monocle dropped from his eye. He fumbled for it, raised it, blew on it, rubbed it with his handkerchief, and screwed it carefully into his eye again, his rather bushy brow gathering over it strongly, his look sharpened to more active thought. He stared straight across the square at a figure in heliotrope, whose face was turned to a man in scarlet uniform taller than herself two glowing figures towards whom many other eyes than his own were directed, some curiously, some disdain fully, some sadly. But Charley did not see the faces of those who looked on; he only saw two people--one in heliotrope, one in scarlet.

Presently his white firm hand went up and ran through his hair nervously, his comely figure settled down in the chair, his tongue touched the corners of his red lips, and his eyes withdrew from the woman in heliotrope and the man in scarlet, and loitered among the leaves of the tree at the window. The softness of the green, the cool health of the foliage, changed the look of his eye from something cold and curious to something companionable, and scarcely above a whisper two words came from his lips:

"Kathleen! Kathleen!"

By the mere sound of the voice it would have been hard to tell what the words meant, for it had an inquiring cadence and yet a kind of distant doubt, a vague anxiety. The face conveyed nothing--it was smooth, fresh, and immobile. The only point where the mind and meaning of the man worked according to the law of his life was at the eye, where the monocle was caught now as in a vise. Behind this gla.s.s there was a troubled depth which belied the self-indulgent mouth, the egotism speaking loudly in the red tie, the jewelled finger, the ostentatiously simple yet sumptuous clothes.

At last he drew in a sharp, sibilant breath, clicked his tongue--a sound of devil-may-care and hopelessness at once--and turned to a little cupboard behind him. The chair squeaked on the floor as he turned, and he frowned, shivered a little, and kicked it irritably with his heel.

From the cupboard he took a bottle of liqueur, and, pouring out a small gla.s.sful, drank it off eagerly. As he put the bottle away, he said again, in an abstracted fashion, "Kathleen!"

Then, seating himself at the table, as if with an effort towards energy, he rang a bell. A clerk entered. "Ask Mr. Wantage to come for a moment,"

he said. "Mr. Wantage has gone to the church--to the wedding," was the reply.

"Oh, very well. He will be in again this afternoon?"

"Sure to, sir."

"Just so. That will do."

The clerk retired, and Charley, rising, unlocked a drawer, and taking out some books and papers, laid them on the table. Intently, carefully, he began to examine them, referring at the same time to a letter which had lain open at his hand while he had been sitting there. For a quarter of an hour he studied the books and papers, then, all at once, his fingers fastened on a point and stayed. Again he read the letter lying beside him. A flush crimsoned his face to his hair--a singular flush of shame, of embarra.s.sment, of guilt--a guilt not his own. His breath caught in his throat.

"Billy!" he gasped. "Billy, by G.o.d!"