Read Ebook: The Young Seigneur Or Nation-Making by Lighthall W D William Douw

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Ebook has 1304 lines and 54400 words, and 27 pages

After weighing his companion in thought for a few moments longer, according to a habit of his, the elder man recollected another matter:--

"You have resigned your seat in the Dominion House to enter the Provincial. Why is that?"

"A new turn has arrived in affairs, sir. The Honorable Genest's fever has broken him down. He cannot fill a place where activity is needed. Until the fever, he was an influence, you know, in the Dominion House, while I was in the Local. After it, he arranged that we should exchange seats, as the Legislature has latterly been so quiet. Lately, however, Picault's corruptionists, whom we thought crushed, have made another assault for the moneys, bullied, lied, and bribed, weighed their silver to the Iscariots, and edged Genest out of his seat."

"Who is their man here?"

"Libergent, lawyer. The election was annulled for frauds, but by moving the heavens and earth of the Courts they saved Libergent from disqualification, and now he appears again against us. Our cause calls for energetic action, in the Legislature, so Genest and I are changing places back again."

"I hope you will not be lost to us long?"

The seigneur's manner was full of enthusiasm.

"I can't see it as you young men do," Chrysler said, in an inflection suggestive of regret. "What may we effect beyond trying to keep Government pure and prudent, and we are often powerless to do even that? Nor can we form the future character of the people much, but must leave that to themselves, don't you think?"

"A partial truth," he returned, meditatively,--"a great one too. When I go into the country among the farmers, I often think: 'The people are the true nation-makers.'"--

"And Providence has apparently designed it," the old man proceeded in his gentle strain, "to be our modest lot to follow the lead of other lands more developed and better situated. Where do you discover anything striking in the outlook?"

"What then is our 'reason of existence?'"

The elder man was surprised. "My dear Haviland," he exclaimed, "Are you sure you are practical?"

"I think I am practical, Mr. Chrysler," Haviland replied firmly. "I have that objection so thoroughly in mind, that I would not expose my news to an ordinary man. It is because you are broad, liberal and willing to-examine matters in a large aspect, and that I think that in a large aspect I shall be justified, as at least not unreasonable, that I open my heart to you. Believe me, I am not unpractical, but only seeking a higher plane of practicality."

"But how do you propose to get the people to follow this aim?"

"The-oretical" Chrysler murmured slowly, shaking his head.

"For a man, but not for a People!" the young Member cried.

Both were silent some moments. The elder looked up at last "What sort of Ideal would you offer them?"

"Simply Ideal Canada, and the vista of her proper national work, the highest she might be, and the best she might perform, situated as she is, all time being given and the utmost stretch of aims. As Plato's mind's eye saw his Republic, Bacon his New Atlantis, More his Utopia; so let us see before and above us the Ideal Canada, and boldly aim at the programme of doing something in the world."

"Can you show me anything special that we can do in the world?" the old man asked. His caution was wavering a little. "It is not impossible I may be with you," he added.

The Ontarian, in fact, did not object in a spirit of cavil. He did so apparently neither to doubt nor to believe, but simply to enquire, for in life he was a business man. His father had left him large lumber interests to preserve, and the responsibility had framed his prudence. He took the same kind of care in examining the joints of Haviland's scheme as he would have exacted about the pegging or chains of a timber crib which was going to run a rapid.

"Why, here for instance," answered Haviland, "are great problems at our threshold:--Independence, Imperial Federation, both of them bearing on all advance in civilized organizations,--Unification of Races--development of our vast and peculiar areas. Education, too, Foreign Trade, Land, the Classes--press upon our attention."

"You would have us awake to some such new sense of our situation as Germany did in Goethe's day?"

"I pray for no long-haired enthusiasts. We have business different from altering the names of the Latin divinities into Teutonic gutturals."

"The country itself will see to that. We have the fear of the nations round about in our eyes," grimly said Chrysler; then he added: "I have never known you as well as I wish, Haviland. You speak of this work as if you had some definite system of it, while all the notions I have ever met or formed of such a thing have been partial or vague."

Chamilly stood up and the firelight shone brightly and softly upon his flushed cheek; the dark portraits on the walls seemed to look out upon him as if they lived, and the statue of Apollo to rise and associate its dignity with his.

He hesitated.

"I will ask you to read a manuscript, of which you will find the first half in your room. The remainder is not written yet"

Pierre, the butler, brought in coffee and they talked more quietly of other subjects.

THE MANUSCRIPT.

--ISABELLA VALANCEY CRAWFORD.

When Chrysler went up to his bedchamber he found the following on a table between two candles:--

BOOK OF ENTHUSIASMS.

At the Friars' School at Dormilli?re, racing with gleeful playmates around the shady playground, or glibly reciting frequent "Paters" and "Ave Marias," other ideas of life scarce ever entered my head; till one day my father spoke, out of his calm silence, to my grandmother; and with the last of his two or three sentences, "I don't destine him for a Thibetan prayer-mill," he sat down to a letter, the result of which was that I found myself in a week at the Royal Grammar School at Montreal. Here, where the great city appeared a wilderness of palaces and the large School an almost universe of youthful Crichtons whose superiorities seemed to me the greater because I knew little of their English tongue, the contrasts with my rural Dormilli?re were so striking and continual that I was set thinking by almost every occurrence.

A French boy is nothing if not imaginative. The time seemed to me a momentous epoch big with the question: "What path shall I follow?"

I admired the prize boys who were so clever and famous. I took a prize myself, and felt heaven in the clapping.

I admired those equally who were skilled at athletics. I saw a tournament of sports and envied the sparkling cups and medals.

The first step, out of a number that were to come, towards a great discovery, was thus unconsciously by me taken. What is greater than Life? what discovery is more momentous than of its profound meaning? Anything I am or may do is the outcome of this one discovery I later made, which seems to me the very Secret of the World.

But hold:--there is a memory in my earlier recollection, more fixed than the trees--they were poplars--of the Friars' School playground. I leaped into a seat beside my father in the carriage one day, and we drove back far into the country. Green and pleasant all the landscape we passed. Or did it pass us, I was thinking in my weird little mind? We arrived at length at wide gates and drove up an avenue, lined by stately trees and running between broad grain fields, which led to a court shaded with leafy giants of elms and cobbled in an antique fashion; and under the woof of boughs and leaves overhead ran a very long old country-house, cottage-built. Surpassingly peaceful, and secluded was its air. It had oblique-angle-faced, shingled gables, and many windows with thin-ribbed blinds; and a high bit of gallery. On one hand near it, under the hugest of the trees was a cool, white, well-house of stone, like a little tower. I remember vividly the red-stained door of that. On the other hand, a short distance off, commenced the capacious pile of the barns. Close at the back of the house ran a long wooded hill.

It was the ancient Manoir of Esneval--the Maison Blanche.--one of the relics of a feudal time. As we drove in and our wheels stopped, a little exquisite girl stood on the gallery, looking. Her child's face eyed us with wonder but courage for a few moments; then she ran within and, to the pang and regret of my heart, she appeared no more.

The little, brave face of the Manoir d'Esneval haunted me, child as I was, for years.

CONFRERIE.

McGill University sits among her grounds upon the beginning of the slope of Mount Royal which lifts its foliage-foaming crest above it like an immense surge just about to break and bury the grey halls, the verdant Campus and the lovely secluded corner of brookside park. It owes its foundation to a public-spirited gentleman merchant of other days, the Honorable James McGill, whose portrait, in queue and ruffles, is brought forth in state at Founder's Festival, and who in the days of the Honorable Hudson's Bay Co.'s prime, stored his merchandize in the stout old blue warehouses by the Place Jacques-Cartier, and thought out his far-sighted gifts to the country in the retirement of this pretty manor by the Mountain.

To that little corner of brookside park it was often my custom to withdraw in the evenings. The trees, little and great, were my companions, and the sky looked down like a friend, between their leaves. One night, at summer's close, when the dark blue of the sky was unusually deep and luminous, and the moon only a tender crescent of light, I lay on the grass in the darkness, under my favorite tree, an oak, among whose boughs the almost imperceptible moonbeams rioted. I was hidden by the shadows of a little grove just in front of me. The path passed between, about a couple of yards away. Every stroller seemed to have gone, and I had, I thought, the peace of the surroundings to myself.

All were not yet gone, however, it seemed. The peculiar echo of steps on the hard sandy path indicated someone approaching. A shadow of a form just appeared in the darkness along the path, and turning off, disappeared for a moment into the dark grove. A deep sigh of despair surprised me. I lay still, and in a moment the form came partly between me and a glimmering of the moonlight between the branches. It was apparently a man, at least. I strained my attention and kept perfectly still. There was something extraordinary about the movements of the shadow.

Suddenly, it stepped forward a stride, I saw an arm go up to the head, both these became exposed in a open space of moonlight, and a glimmer reached me from something in the hand. Like a flash it came across me that I was in the presence of the extraordinary act of suicide. The glimmer was from the barrel and mountings of a revolver! Those glintings were unmistakable.

I would have leaped up and sprung into the midst of the scene at once had not something else been plain at the same moment, which startled me and froze my blood.

Quinet,--the life of this strange fellow always was extraordinary. There were several of our French-Canadians in college and they differed in some general respects from the English, but this striking-colored compatriot of mine, with his dark-red-brown hair, and dark-red-brown eyes set in his yellow complexion, was even from them a separated figure. He was fearfully clever: thought himself neglected: brooded upon it. His strange face and strange writings sometimes published, had often fastened themselves upon me. Now it was undoubtedly my duty to save him.

His conduct might have seemed completely lunatical to an Englishman. It was strange in any case. But to me it was his physique that was wrong, and I should see that all was put right. "Stick to me, Quinet," said I to him as soothingly as possible, "and I will always stick to you. Soyons amis, bon marin, 'Be we friends, good sailor;' and sail over every sea fearlessly. Neither of us is understood, perhaps because our critics do not understand themselves."

"Be it so," he said, dejectedly resigning himself.

His odd colour and eyes gave a kind of unearthly tone to the interview. I met him a few days later in almost as great a depression again.

"It's these English. I hate them. It is necessary that I should kill one."

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