The Right of Way | Page 9

with a curious consistency: it had been with him as a child, at school,
at college, and he had brought it back again to the town where he was
born. It had effectually prevented his being popular, but it had made
him--with his foppishness and his originality--an object of perpetual
interest. Few men had ventured to cross swords with him. He left his
fellow-citizens very much alone. He was uniformly if distantly
courteous, and he was respected in his own profession for his
uncommon powers and for an utter indifference as to whether he had
cases in court or not.
Coming from the judge's chambers after the trial he went to his office,
receiving as he passed congratulations more effusively offered than, as
people presently found, his manner warranted.
For he was again the formal, masked Charley Steele, looking calmly
through the interrogative eye-glass. By the time he reached his office,
greetings became more subdued. His prestige had increased immensely
in a few short hours, but he had no more friends than before. Old
relations were soon re-established. The town was proud of his ability as
it had always been, irritated by his manner as it had always been, more
prophetic of his future than it had ever been, and unconsciously grateful
for the fact that he had given them a sensation which would outlast the
summer.
All these things concerned him little. Once the business of the court-
room was over, a thought which had quietly lain in waiting behind the
strenuous occupations of his brain leaped forward to exclude all others.
As he entered his office he was thinking of that girl's face in the
court-room, with its flush of added beauty which he and his speech had
brought there. "What a perfect loveliness!" he said to himself as he
bathed his face and hands, and prepared to go into the street again. "She
needed just such a flush to make her supreme Kathleen!" He stood,
looking out into the square, out into the green of the trees where the
birds twittered. "Faultless--faultless in form and feature. She was so as
a child, she is so as a woman." He lighted a cigarette, and blew away
little clouds of smoke. "I will do it. I will marry her. She will have me:
I saw it in her eye. Fairing doesn't matter. Her uncle will never consent

to that, and she doesn't care enough for him. She cares, but she doesn't
care enough. . . . I will do it."
He turned towards a cupboard into which he had put a certain bottle
before he went to the court-room two hours before. He put the key in
the lock, then stopped. "No, I think not!" he said. "What I say to her
shall not be said forensically. What a discovery I've made! I was dull,
blank, all iron and ice; the judge, the jury, the public, even Kathleen,
against me; and then that bottle in there--and I saw things like crystal! I
had a glow in my brain, I had a tingle in my fingers; and I had success,
and"--his face clouded--"He was as guilty as hell!" he added, almost
bitterly, as he put the key of the cupboard into his pocket again.
There was a knock at the door, and a youth of about nineteen entered.
"Hello!" he said. "I say, sir, but that speech of yours struck us all where
we couldn't say no. Even Kathleen got in a glow over it. Perhaps
Captain Fairing didn't, for he's just left her in a huff, and she's
looking--you remember those lines in the school-book:
"'A red spot burned upon her cheek, Streamed her rich tresses down--'"
He laughed gaily. "I've come to ask you up to tea," he added. "The
Unclekins is there. When I told him that Kathleen had sent Fairing
away with a flea in his ear, he nearly fell off his chair. He lent me
twenty dollars on the spot. Are you coming our way?" he continued,
suddenly trying to imitate Charley's manner. Charley nodded, and they
left the office together and moved away under a long avenue of maples
to where, in the shade of a high hill, was the house of the uncle of
Kathleen Wantage, with whom she and her brother Billy lived. They
walked in silence for some time, and at last Billy said, 'a propos' of
nothing:
"Fairing hasn't a red cent."
"You have a perambulating mind, Billy," said Charley, and bowed to a
young clergyman approaching them from the opposite direction.

"What does that mean?" remarked Billy, and said "Hello!" to the young
clergyman, and did not wait for Charley's answer.
The Rev. John Brown was by no means a conventional parson. He was
smoking a cigarette, and two dogs followed