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.
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.
“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.”
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.