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THE RIGHT OF WAY
By Gilbert Parker
Volume 1.
CONTENTS
Volume 1.
I. THE WAY TO THE VERDICT
II. WHAT CAME OF THE TRIAL
III. AFTER FIVE YEARS
IV. CHARLEY MAKES A DISCOVERY
V. THE WOMAN IN HELIOTROPE
VI. THE WIND AND THE SHORN LAMB
VII. "PEACE, PEACE, AND THERE IS NO PEACE!"
VIII. THE COST OF THE ORNAMENT
Volume 2.
IX. OLD DEBTS FOR NEW
X. THE WAY IN AND THE WAY OUT
XI. THE RAISING OF THE CURTAIN
XII. THE COMING OF ROSALIE
XIII. HOW CHARLEY WENT ADVENTURING, AND WHAT HE FOUND
XIV. ROSALIE, CHARLEY, AND THE MAN THE WIDOW PLOMONDON JILTED
XV. THE MARK IN THE PAPER
XVI. MADAME DAUPHIN HAS A MISSION
XVII. THE TAILOR MAKES A MIDNIGHT FORAY
XVIII. THE STEALING OF THE CROSS
Volume 3.
XIX. THE SIGN FROM HEAVEN
XX. THE RETURN OF THE TAILOR
XXI. THE CURE HAS AN INSPIRATION
XXII. THE WOMAN WHO SAW
XXIII. THE WOMAN WHO DID NOT TELL
XXIV. THE SEIGNEUR TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME
XXV. THE COLONEL TELLS HIS STORY
XXVI. A SONG, A BOTTLE, AND A GHOST
XXVII. OUT ON THE OLD TRAIL
XXVIII. THE SEIGNEUR GIVES A WARNING
Volume 4.
XXIX. THE WILD RIDE
XXX. ROSALIE WARNS CHARLEY
XXXI. CHARLEY STANDS AT BAY
XXXII. JO PORTUGAIS TELLS A STORY
XXXIII. THE EDGE OF LIFE
XXXIV. IN AMBUSH
XXXV. THE COMING OF MAXIMILIAN COUR AND ANOTHER
XXXVI. BARRIERS SWEPT AWAY
XXXVII. THE CHALLENGE OF PAULETTE DUBOIS
XXXVIII. THE CURE AND THE SEIGNEUR VISIT THE TAILOR
XXXIX. THE SCARLET WOMAN
XL. AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING
Volume 5.
XLI. IT WAS MICHAELMAS DAY
XLII. A TRIAL AND A VERDICT
XLIII. JO PORTUGAIS TELLS A STORY
XLIV. "WHO WAS KATHLEEN?"
XLV. SIX MONTHS GO BY
XLVI. THE FORGOTTEN MAN
XLVII. ONE WAS TAKEN AND THE OTHER LEFT
XLVIII. "WHERE THE TREE OF LIFE IS BLOOMING--"
XLIX. THE OPEN GATE
Volume 6.
L. THE PASSION PLAY AT CHAUDIERE
LI. FACE TO FACE
LII. THE COMING OF BILLY
LIII. THE SEIGNEUR AND THE CURE HAVE A SUSPICION
LIV. M. ROSSIGNOL SLIPS THE LEASH
LV. ROSALIE PLAYS A PART
LVI. MRS. FLYNN SPEAKS
LVII. A BURNING FIERY FURNACE
LVIII. WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL
LIX. IN WHICH CHARLEY MEETS A STRANGER
LX. THE HAND AT THE DOOR
LXI. THE CURE SPEAKS
EPILOGUE
INTRODUCTION
In a book called 'The House of Harper', published in this year, 1912,
there are two letters of mine, concerning 'The Right of Way', written to
Henry M. Alden, editor of Harper's Magazine. To my mind those letters
should never have been published. They were purely personal. They were
intended for one man's eyes only, and he was not merely an editor but a
beloved and admired personal friend. Only to him and to W. E. Henley, as
editors, could I ever have emptied out my heart and brain; and, as may be
seen by these two letters, one written from London and the other from a
place near Southampton, I uncovered all my feelings, my hopes and my
ambitions concerning The Right of Way. Had I been asked permission to
publish them I should not have granted it. I may wear my heart upon my
sleeve for my friend, but not for the universe.
The most scathing thing ever said in literature was said by Robert
Buchanan on Dante Gabriel Rossetti's verses--"He has wheeled his nuptial
bed into the street." Looking at these letters I have a great shrinking,
for they were meant only for the eyes of an aged man for whom I cared
enough to let him see behind the curtain. But since they have been
printed, and without a "by your leave," I will use one or two passages
in them to show in what mood, under what pressure of impulse, under what
mental and, maybe, spiritual hypnotism it was written. I first planned
it as a story of twenty-five thousand words, even as 'Valmond' was
planned as a story of five thousand words, and 'A Ladder of Swords' as a
story of twenty thousand words; but I had not written three chapters
before I saw what the destiny of the tale was to be. I had gone to
Quebec to start the thing in the atmosphere where Charley Steele
belonged, and there it was borne in upon me that it must be a three-
decker novel, not a novelette. I telegraphed to Harper & Brothers to ask
them whether it would suit them just as well if I made it into a long
novel. They telegraphed their assent at once; so I went on. At that
time Mr. F. N. Doubleday was a sort of director of Harper's firm. To him
I had told the tale in a railway train, and he had carried me off at once
to Henry M. Alden, to whom I also told it, with the result that Harper's
Magazine was wide open to it, and there in Quebec, soon after my
interview with Mr. Alden and Mr. Doubleday, the book was begun.
The first of the letters published in The House of Harper, however, was
apparently written immediately after my return to London when the novel
was well on its way. Evidently the first paragraph of the letter was an
apology for having suddenly announced the development of the book from a
long short story to a long novel; for I used these words:
"Yet if you really take an interest in the working of the human mind in
its relation to the vicissitudes of life, you will appreciate what I am
going to tell you, and will recognise that there is only stability in
evolution which the vulgar call chance. . . . Now, sir, perpend.
Charley Steele is going to be a novel of one hundred thousand words or
one hundred and twenty thousand--a real bang-up heartful of a novel."
Then there follows the confidence of a friend to a friend. As I look
at the words I am not sorry that I wrote them. They were a part of me.
They were the inveterate truth, but I would not willingly have uncovered
my inner self to any except the man to whom the words were written. But
here is what I wrote:
"I am a bit of a fool over this book. It catches me at every tender
corner of my nature. It has aroused all the old ardent dreams of youth
and springtime puissance. I cannot lay it down, and I cannot shorten it,
for story, character, soul and reflection, imagination, observation are
dragging me along after them. . . . This novel will make me or break
me--prove me human and an artist, or an affected literary bore. If you
want it you must take the risk. But, my dear Alden, you will be
investing in a man's heart--which may be a fortune or a folly. Why,
I ought to have seen--and far back in my brain I did see--that the
character of Charley Steele was a type, an idiosyncrasy of modern life, a
resultant of forces all round us, and that he would demand space in which
to live and tell his story to the world. . . . And behold with what
joy I follow him, not only lovingly but sternly and severely, noting him
down as he really is, condoning naught, forgiving naught, but above all
else, understanding him--his wilful mystification of the world, his
shameless disdain of it, but the old law of interrogation, of sad yet
eager inquiry and wonder and 'non possumus' with him to the end."
This letter was evidently written in December, 1899, and the other went
to Mr. Alden on the 7th August, 1900; therefore, eight or nine months
later. The work had gone well. Week after week, month after month it
had unfolded itself with an almost unpardonable ease. Evidently, the
very ease with which the book was written troubled me, because I find
that in this letter of the 7th August, 1900, to Mr. Alden, I used these
words:
"A kind of terror has seized me, and instead of sending a dozen more
chapters to you as I proposed to do, I am setting to to break this love
story anew under the stones of my most exacting criticism and troubled
regard. I go to bury myself at a solitary little seaside place" (it was
Mablethorpe in Lincolnshire), "there to live alone with Rosalie and
Charley, and if I do not know them hereafter, never ask me to write for
'Harper's' again. . . . This book has been written out of something
vital in me--I do not mean the religious part of it, I mean the humanity
that becomes one's own and part of one's self, by observation,
experience, and understanding got from dead years."
Anyhow that shows the spirit in which the book was written, and there
must have been something in it that rang true, because not only did it
have an enormous sale and therefore a multitude of readers, but I
received hundreds of letters from people who in one way or another were
deeply interested in the story.
The majority of them were inquisitive letters. A great many of them said
that the writer had shared in controversy as to what the relations of
Charley and Rosalie were, and asked me to set for ever queries and
controversies at rest by declaring either that the relations of these two
were what, in the way of life's stern conventions, they ought not to be,
or that Rosalie passed unscathed through the fire. I had foreseen all
this, though I could not have foreseen the passionately intense interest
which my readers would take in the life-story of these unhappy yet happy
people. I had, however, only one reply. It was that all I had meant to
say concerning Charley and Rosalie had been said in the book, to the last
word. All I had meant not to say would not be said after the book was
written. I asked them to take exactly the same view of Charley and
Rosalie as they would in real life regarding two human beings with whom
they were acquainted, and concerning whom, to their minds, there was
sufficient evidence, or not sufficient evidence, to come to a conclusion
as to what their relations were. I added that, as in real life we used
our judgment upon such things with a reasonable amount of accuracy,
I asked them to apply that judgment to Charley Steele and Rosalie
Evanturel. They and their story were there for eyes to see and read,
and when I had ended my manuscript in the year 1900 I had said the last
word I ever meant to say as to their history. The controversy therefore
continues, for the book still makes its appeal to an ever increasing
congregation of new readers.
But another kind of letter came to me--the letter of some man who had
just such a struggle as Charley Steele, or whose father or brother or
friend had had such a struggle. Letters came from clergymen who had
preached concerning the book; from men who told me in brief their own
life problems and tragedies. These letters I prize; most of them had
the real thing in them, the human truth.
That the book drew wide attention to the Dominion of Canada, particularly
to French Canada, and crystallised something of the life of that dear
Province, was a deep pleasure to me; and I was glad that I had been able
to culminate my efforts to portray the life of the French-Canadian as I
saw it, by a book which arrested the attention of so comprehensive a
public.
I have seen many statements as to the original of Charley Steele, but I
have never seen a story which was true. Many people have told me that
they had seen the original of Charley Steele in an American lawyer.
They knew he was the original, because he himself had said so. The
gentleman was mistaken; I have never seen him. As with the purple cow,
I never hope to see him. Whoever he is or whatever he is, the original
Charley was an abler and a more striking man. I knew him as a boy, and
he died while I was yet a boy, taking with him, save in the memory of a
few, a rare and wonderful, if not wholly lovable personality. For over
twenty years I had carried him in my mind, wondering whether, and when,
I should-make use of him. Again and again I was tempted, but was never
convinced that his time had come; yet through all the years he was
gaining strength, securing possession of my mind, and gathering to him,
magnet-like, the thousand observations which my experience sent in his
direction. In my mind his life-story ended with his death at the Cote
Dorion. For years and years I saw his ending there. Yet it all seemed
to me so futile, despite the wonder of his personality, that I could make
nothing of him, and though always fascinated by his character I was held
back from exploiting it, because of the hopelessness of it all. It led
nowhere. It was the 'quid refert' of the philosopher, and I could not
bring myself to get any further than an interrogation mark at the end of
a life which was all scepticism, mind and matter, and nothing more.
There came a day, however, when that all ended, when the doors were flung
wide to a new conception of the man, and of what he might have become.
I was going to America, and I paid an angry and reluctant visit to my
London tailor thirty-six hours before I was to start. A suit of clothes
had been sent home which, after an effective trying-on, was a
monstrosity. I went straight to my tailor, put on the clothes and bade
him look at them. He was a great tailor-he saw exactly what I saw, and
what I saw was bad; and when a tailor will do that, you may be quite sure
he is a good and a great man. He said the clothes were as bad as they
could be, but he added: "You shall have them before you sail, and they
shall be exactly as you want them. I'll have the foreman down." He rang
a bell. Presently the door swung open and in stepped a man with an
eyeglass in his eye. There, with a look at once reflective and
penetrating, with a figure at once slovenly and alert, was a caricature
of Charley Steele as I had known him, and of all his characteristics.
There was such a resemblance as an ugly child in a family may have to his
handsome brother. It was Charley Steele with a twist--gone to seed.
Looking at him in blank amazement, I burst out: "Good heavens, so you
didn't die, Charley Steele! You became a tailor!"
All at once the whole new landscape of my story as it eventually became,
spread out before me. I was justified in waiting all the years. My
discontent with the futile end of the tale as I originally knew it and
saw it was justified. Charley Steele, brilliant, enigmatic and
epigrammatic, did not die at the Cote Dorion, but lived in that far
valley by Dalgrothe Mountain, and became a tailor! So far as I am
concerned he became much more. He was the beginning of a new epoch in
my literary life. I had got into subtler methods, reached more intimate
understandings, had come to a place where analysis of character had
shaken itself free--but certainly not quite free--from a natural yet
rather dangerous eloquence.
As a play The Right of Way, skilfully and sympathetically dramatised by
Mr. Eugene Presbery, has had a career extending over several years, and
still continues to make its appearance.
NOTE
It should not be assumed that the "Chaudiere" of this story is the real
Chaudiere of Quebec province. The name is characteristic, and for this
reason alone I have used it.
I must also apologise to my readers for appearing to disregard a
statement made in 'The Lane that Had no Turning', that that tale was the
last I should write about French Canada. In explanation I would say that
'The Lane that Had no Turning' was written after the present book was
finished.
G. F.
THE RIGHT OF WAY
By Gilbert Parker
Volume 1.
I. THE WAY TO THE VERDICT
II. WHAT CAME OF THE TRIAL
III. AFTER FIVE YEARS
IV. CHARLEY MAKES A DISCOVERY
V. THE WOMAN IN HELIOTROPE
VI. THE WIND AND THE SHORN LAMB
VII. "PEACE, PEACE, AND THERE IS NO PEACE!"
VIII. THE COST OF THE ORNAMENT
"They had lived and loved, and walked and worked in their own way,
and the world went by them. Between them and it a great gulf was
fixed: and they met its every catastrophe with the Quid Refert? of
the philosophers."
"I want to talk with some old lover's ghost,
Who lived before the god of love was born."
"There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and
none of them is without signification."
CHAPTER I
THE WAY TO THE VERDICT
"Not guilty, your Honour!"
A hundred atmospheres had seemed pressing down on the fretted people in
the crowded court-room. As the discordant treble of the huge foreman of
the jury squeaked over the mass of gaping humanity, which had twitched at
skirts, drawn purposeless hands across prickling faces, and kept nervous
legs at a gallop, the smothering weights of elastic air lifted suddenly,
a great suspiration of relief swept through the place like a breeze, and
in a far corner of the gallery a woman laughed outright.
The judge looked up reprovingly at the gallery; the clerk of the court
angrily called "Silence!" towards the offending corner, and seven or
eight hundred eyes raced between three centres of interest--the judge,
the prisoner, and the prisoner's counsel. Perhaps more people looked at
the prisoner's counsel than at the prisoner, certainly far more than
looked at the judge.
Never was a verdict more unexpected. If a poll had been taken of the
judgment of the population twenty-four hours before, a great majority
would have been found believing that there was no escape for the
prisoner, who was accused of murdering a wealthy timber merchant. The
minority would have based their belief that the prisoner had a chance of
escape, not on his possible innocence, not on insufficient evidence, but
on a curious faith in the prisoner's lawyer. This minority would not
have been composed of the friends of the lawyer alone, but of outside
spectators, who, because Charley Steele had never lost a criminal case,
attached to him a certain incapacity for bad luck; and of very young men,
who looked upon him as the perfect pattern of the person good to see and
hard to understand.
During the first two days of the trial the case had gone wholly against
the prisoner, who had given his name as Joseph Nadeau. Witnesses had
heard him quarrelling with the murdered man, and the next day the body of
the victim had been found by the roadside. The prisoner was a stranger
in the lumber-camp where the deed was done, and while there had been
morose and lived apart; no one knew him; and he refused to tell even his
lawyer whence he came, or what his origin, or to bring witnesses from his
home to speak for his character.
One by one the points had been made against him--with no perceptible
effect upon Charley Steele, who seemed the one cool, undisturbed person
in the courtroom.
Indifferent as he seemed, seldom speaking to the prisoner, often looking
out of the windows to the cool green trees far over on the hill, absorbed
and unbusinesslike, yet judge and jury came to see, before the second day
was done, that he had let no essential thing pass, that the questions
he asked had either a pregnant aptness, opened up new avenues of
deliberation, or were touched with mystery--seemed to have a longer
reach than the moment or the hour.
Before the end of this second day, however, more attention was upon him
than upon the prisoner, and nine-tenths of the people in the court-room
could have told how many fine linen handkerchiefs he used during the
afternoon, how many times he adjusted his monocle to look at the judge
meditatively. Probably no man, for eight hours a day, ever exasperated
and tried a judge, jury, and public, as did this man of twenty-nine years
of age, who had been known at college as Beauty Steele, and who was still
so spoken of familiarly; or was called as familiarly, Charley Steele, by
people who never had attempted to be familiar with him.
The second day of the trial had ended gloomily for the prisoner. The
coil of evidence had drawn so close that extrication seemed impossible.
That the evidence was circumstantial, that no sign of the crime was upon
the prisoner, that he was found sleeping quietly in his bed when he was
arrested, that he had not been seen to commit the deed, did not weigh in
the minds of the general public. The man's guilt was freely believed;
not even the few who clung to the opinion that Charley Steele would yet
get him off thought that he was innocent. There seemed no flaw in the
evidence, once granted its circumstantiality.
During the last two hours of the sitting the prisoner had looked at his
counsel in despair, for he seemed perfunctorily conducting the case: was
occupied in sketching upon the blotting-pad before him, looking out of
the window, or turning his head occasionally towards a corner where sat a
half-dozen well-dressed ladies, and more particularly towards one lady
who watched him in a puzzled way--more than once with a look of
disappointment. Only at the very close of the sitting did he appear to
rouse himself. Then, for a brief ten minutes, he cross-examined a friend
of the murdered merchant in a fashion which startled the court-room, for
he suddenly brought out the fact that the dead man had once struck a
woman in the face in the open street. This fact, sharply stated by the
prisoner's counsel, with no explanation and no comment, seemed uselessly
intrusive and malicious. His ironical smile merely irritated all
concerned. The thin, clean-shaven face of the prisoner grew more pinched
and downcast, and he turned almost pleadingly towards the judge. The
judge pulled his long side-whiskers nervously, and looked over his
glasses in severe annoyance, then hastily adjourned the sitting and left
the bench, while the prisoner saw with dismay his lawyer leave the court-
room with not even a glance towards him.
On the morning of the third day Charley Steele's face, for the first
time, wore an expression which, by a stretch of imagination, might be
called anxious. He also took out his monocle frequently, rubbed it with
his handkerchief, and screwed it in again, staring straight before him
much of the time. But twice he spoke to the prisoner in a low voice, and
was hurriedly answered in French as crude as his own was perfect. When
he spoke, which was at rare intervals, his voice was without feeling,
concise, insistent, unappealing. It was as though the business before
him was wholly alien to him, as though he were held there against his
will, but would go on with his task bitterly to the bitter end.
The court adjourned for an hour at noon. During this time Charley
refused to see any one, but sat alone in his office with a few biscuits
and an ominous bottle before him, till the time came for him to go back
to the court-house. Arrived there he entered by a side door, and was not
seen until the court opened once more.
For two hours and a half the crown attorney mercilessly made out his case
against the prisoner. When he sat down, people glanced meaningly at each
other, as though the last word had been said, then looked at the
prisoner, as at one already condemned.
Yet Charley Steele was to reply. He was not now the same man that had
conducted the case during the past two days and a half. Some great
change had passed over him. There was no longer abstraction,
indifference, or apparent boredom, or disdain, or distant stare.
He was human, intimate and eager, yet concentrated and impelling:
he was quietly, unnoticeably drunk.
He assured the prisoner with a glance of the eye, with a word scarce
above a whisper, as he slowly rose to make his speech for the defence.
His first words caused a new feeling in the courtroom. He was a new
presence; the personality had a changed significance. At first the
public, the jury, and the judge were curiously attracted, surprised into
a fresh interest. The voice had an insinuating quality, but it also had
a measured force, a subterranean insistence, a winning tactfulness.
Withal, a logical simplicity governed his argument. The flaneur, the
poseur--if such he was--no longer appeared. He came close to the
jurymen, leaned his hands upon the back of a chair--as it were, shut out
the public, even the judge, from his circle of interest--and talked in a
conversational tone. An air of confidence passed from him to the amazed
yet easily captivated jury; the distance between them, so gaping during
the last two days, closed suddenly up. The tension of the past
estrangement, relaxing all at once, surprised the jury into an almost
eager friendliness, as on a long voyage a sensitive traveller finds in
some exciting accident a natural introduction to an exclusive fellow-
passenger, whom he discovers as human as he had thought him offensively
distant.
Charley began by congratulating the crown attorney on his statement of
the case. He called it masterly; he said that in its presentations it
was irrefutable; as a precis of evidence purely circumstantial it was--
useful and interesting. But, speech-making aside, and ability--and
rhetoric--aside, and even personal conviction aside, the case should
stand or fall by its total, not its comparative, soundness. Since the
evidence was purely circumstantial, there must be no flaw in its cable of
assumption, it must be logically inviolate within itself. Starting with
assumption only, there must be no straying possibilities, no loose ends
of certainty, no invading alternatives. Was this so in the case of the
man before them? They were faced by a curious situation. So far as the
trial was concerned, the prisoner himself was the only person who could
tell them who he was, what was his past, and, if he committed the crime,
what was--the motive of it: out of what spirit--of revenge, or hatred--
the dead man had been sent to his account. Probably in the whole history
of crime there never was a more peculiar case. Even himself the
prisoner's counsel was dealing with one whose life was hid from him
previous to the day the murdered man was discovered by the roadside.
The prisoner had not sought to prove an alibi; he had done no more than
formally plead not guilty. There was no material for defence save that
offered by the prosecution. He had undertaken the defence of the
prisoner because it was his duty as a lawyer to see that the law
justified itself; that it satisfied every demand of proof to the last
atom of certainty; that it met the final possibility of doubt with
evidence perfect and inviolate if circumstantial, and uncontradictory if
eye-witness, if tell-tale incident, were to furnish basis of proof.
Judge, jury, and public riveted their eyes upon Charley Steele.
He had now drawn a little farther away from the jury-box; his eye took
in the judge as well; once or twice he turned, as if appealingly and
confidently, to the people in the room. It was terribly hot, the air
was sickeningly close, every one seemed oppressed--every one save a lady
sitting not a score of feet from where the counsel for the prisoner
stood. This lady's face was not one that could flush easily; it belonged
to a temperament as even as her person was symmetrically beautiful. As
Charley talked, her eyes were fixed steadily, wonderingly upon him.
There was a question in her gaze, which never in the course of the speech
was quite absorbed by the admiration--the intense admiration--she was
feeling for him. Once as he turned with a concentrated earnestness in
her direction his eyes met hers. The message he flashed her was sub-
conscious, for his mind never wavered an instant from the cause in hand,
but it said to her:
"When this is over, Kathleen, I will come to you." For another quarter
of an hour he exposed the fallacy of purely circumstantial evidence; he
raised in the minds of his hearers the painful responsibility of the law,
the awful tyranny of miscarriage of justice; he condemned prejudice
against a prisoner because that prisoner demanded that the law should
prove him guilty instead of his proving himself innocent. If a man chose
to stand to that, to sternly assume this perilous position, the law had
no right to take advantage of it. He turned towards the prisoner and
traced his possible history: as the sensitive, intelligent son of godly
Catholic parents from some remote parish in French Canada. He drew an
imaginary picture of the home from which he might have come, and of the
parents and brothers and sisters who would have lived weeks of torture
knowing that their son and brother was being tried for his life. It
might at first glance seem quixotic, eccentric, but was it unnatural that
the prisoner should choose silence as to his origin and home, rather than
have his family and friends face the undoubted peril lying before him?
Besides, though his past life might have been wholly blameless, it would
not be evidence in his favour. It might, indeed, if it had not been
blameless, provide some element of unjust suspicion against him, furnish
some fancied motive. The prisoner had chosen his path, and events had so
far justified him. It must be clear to the minds of judge and jury that
there were fatally weak places in the circumstantial evidence offered for
the conviction of this man.
There was the fact that no sign of the crime, no drop of blood, no
weapon, was found about him or near him, and that he was peacefully
sleeping at the moment the constable arrested him.
There was also the fact that no motive for the crime had been shown.
It was not enough that he and the dead man had been heard quarrelling.
Was there any certainty that it was a quarrel, since no word or sentence
of the conversation had been brought into court? Men with quick tempers
might quarrel over trivial things, but exasperation did not always end in
bodily injury and the taking of life; imprecations were not so uncommon
that they could be taken as evidence of wilful murder. The prisoner
refused to say what that troubled conversation was about, but who could
question his right to take the risk of his silence being misunderstood?
The judge was alternately taking notes and looking fixedly at the
prisoner; the jury were in various attitudes of strained attention; the
public sat open mouthed; and up in the gallery a woman with white face
and clinched hands listened moveless and staring. Charley Steele was
holding captive the emotions and the judgments of his hearers. All
antipathy had gone; there was a strange eager intimacy between the
jurymen and himself. People no longer looked with distant dislike at the
prisoner, but began to see innocence in his grim silence, disdain only in
his surly defiance.
But Charley Steele had preserved his great stroke for the psychological
moment. He suddenly launched upon them the fact, brought out in
evidence, that the dead man had struck a woman in the face a year ago;
also that he had kept a factory girl in affluence for two years. Here
was motive for murder--if motive were to govern them--far greater than
might be suggested by excited conversation which listeners who could not
hear a word construed into a quarrel--listeners who bore the prisoner at
the bar ill-will because he shunned them while in the lumber-camp. If
the prisoner was to be hanged for motive untraceable, why should not
these two women be hanged for motive traceable!
Here was his chance. He appeared to impeach subtly every intelligence in
the room for having had any preconviction about the prisoner's guilt. He
compelled the jury to feel that they, with him, had made the discovery of
the unsound character of the evidence. The man might be guilty, but
their personal guilt, the guilt of the law, would be far greater if they
condemned the man on violable evidence. With a last simple appeal, his
hands resting on the railing before the seat where the jury sat, his
voice low and conversational again, his eyes running down the line of
faces of the men who had his client's life in their hands, he said:
"It is not a life only that is at stake, it is not revenge for a life
snatched from the busy world by a brutal hand that we should heed to-day,
but the awful responsibility of that thing we call the State, which,
having the power of life and death without gainsay or hindrance, should
prove to the last inch of necessity its right to take a human life. And
the right and the reason should bring conviction to every honest human
mind. That is all I have to say."
The crown attorney made a perfunctory reply. The judge's charge was
brief, and, if anything, a little in favour of the prisoner--very little,
a casuist's little; and the jury filed out of the room. They were gone
but ten minutes. When they returned, the verdict was given: "Not guilty,
your Honour!"
Then it was that a woman laughed in the gallery. Then a whispering voice
said across the railing which separated the public from the lawyers:
"Charley! Charley!"
Though Charley turned and looked at the lady who spoke, he made no
response.
A few minutes later, outside the court, as he walked quickly away, again
inscrutable and debonair, the prisoner, Joseph Nadeau, touched him on the
arm and said:
"M'sieu', M'sieu', you have saved my life--I thank you, M'sieu'!"
Charley Steele drew his arm away with disgust. "Get out of my sight!
You're as guilty as hell!" he said.