“Champagne Charlie is my name,”
sang the medicine-man. All Charley’s old life surged up in him as dyked water suddenly bursts bounds and spreads destruction. He had an uncontrollable impulse. As a starving animal snatches at the first food offered it, he stooped, with a rattle in his throat, seized the bottle, uncorked it, put it to his lips, and drank—drank—drank.
Then he turned and plunged away into the trees. The sound of the song followed him. It came to him, the last refrain, sung loudly to the laughter of the crowd, in imitation of his own voice as it used to be—it had been a different voice during this past year. He turned with headlong intention, and, as the last notes of the song and the applause that followed it, died away, threw back his head and sang out of the darkness:
“Champagne Charlie is my name—”
With a shrill laugh, like the half-mad cry of an outcast soul, he flung away farther into the trees.
There was a sudden silence. The crowd turned with half-apprehensive laughter to the trees. Upon John Brown the effect was startling. His face blanched, his eyes grew large with terror, his mouth opened in helpless agitation. Charley Steele was lying under the waters of the great river, his bones rotting there for a year, yet here was his voice coming out of the night, in response to his own grotesque imitation of the dead man. Seeing his agitation, women turned pale, men felt their flesh creep, imagination gave a thrilling coldness to the air. For a moment the silence was unbroken. Then John Brown stretched out his hand and said, in a hoarse whisper:
“It was his voice—Charley’s voice, and he’s been dead a year!”
Within half-an-hour, in utter collapse and fright, he was being driven to the next parish by two young habitants whom he paid to accompany him.