The Young Seigneur by Wilfrid Chateauclair

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THE YOUNG SEIGNEUR;

OR,

NATION-MAKING.

BY

WILFRID CHATEAUCLAIR
[hand written: i.e. William Douw Lighthall]

MONTREAL:

WM. DRYSDALE & CO., PUBLISHERS, 232 ST. JAMES STREET, 1888.

Entered according to Act of Parliament of Canada, in the year one
thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight, by WM. DRYSDALE & CO. in the
Office of the Minister of Agriculture.

PREFACE.

The chief aim of this book is the perhaps too bold one--_to map out a
future for the Canadian nation_, which has been hitherto drifting
without any plan.

A lesser purpose of it is to make some of the atmosphere of French
Canada understood by those who speak English. The writer hopes to have
done some service to these brothers of ours in using as his hero one of
those lofty characters which their circle has produced more than once.

The book is not a political work. It must by no means be taken for a
Grit diatribe. The writer is an old-fashioned Tory and an old-fashioned
Liberal: all his parties are dead, and he is at present in a universal
Opposition. The party names he uses are, therefore, in any present-day
application, simply typical, and the work is not a political one in any
current sense.

There are those who will say his characters are untrue and impossible.
To these he would answer: Everything here, apart from a few little
inaccuracies, is studied from the life, and you can find item, man and
date for the essential particulars.

A charge of Metaphysics will be advanced also, by a generation not too
willing to think. _Mon ami_, what we give you of that is not very hard.
If you cannot understand it, leave it out or study Emerson. The main
subject of the book cannot be treated otherwise than with an attempt to
ground it deeply.

If Bigotry may not impossibly be laid to the author by some, because he
has drawn two or three of the characters from unusual quarters and
described them freely; the many who know him will limit any phrases to
the several characters as individuals.

Lastly, the book is not a novel. It consequently escapes the awful
charge of being 'a novel with a purpose.' None can feel more conscious
of its imperfections than the writer, or will regret more if it treads
on any sensitive toes.

WILFRID CHATEAUCLAIR. _Dormilliere, March, 1888._

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

BOOK I.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE MANOIR OF DORMILLIERE 1
II. THE YOUNG SEIGNEUR 4
III. HAVILAND'S IDEA 7
IV. THE MANUSCRIPT 13
V. CONFRERIE 16
VI. ALEXANDRA 20
VII. QUINET 22
VIII. THE TOBOGGAN SLIDE 25
IX. ASSORTED ENTHUSIASMS 29
X. THE ENTHUSIASM OF SOCIAL PLEASURE 33
XI. THE CAVE 43
XII. LA MERE PATRIE 48
XIII. SOMETHING MORE OF QUINET 52
XIV. THE ENTHUSIASM OF LEADERSHIP 54
XV. THE LIFE OF LEADERSHIP 57

BOOK II.

XVI. A POLITICAL SERMON 67
XVII. ZOTIQUE'S RECEPTION 72
XVIII. THE AMERICAN FRANCE 79
XVIII. A DISAPPEARING ORDER 86
XIX. HUMAN NATURE 88
XX. CHEZ-NOUS 91
XXI. DELIVER US FROM THE-EVIL ONE 100
XXII. THE MANUFACTORY OF REFLECTIONS 104
XXIII. THE STATESMAN'S DREAM 106
XXIV. THE INSTITUTE 109
XXV. THE CAMPAIGN PLAN 111
XXV. THE LOW-COUNTRY SUNRISE 120
XXVI. THE IDEAL STATE 126
XXVII. JOSEPHTE 134
XXVIII. GRANDMOULIN 139
XXIX. CHAMILLY 145
XXX. AN ORATION UNDER DIFFICULTIES 149
XXXI. LIBERGENT 151
XXXII. MISERICORDE 153
XXXIII. BLEUS 156
XXXIV. THE FREEMASON 158
XXXV. THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE 162
XXXVI. ZOTIQUE'S MISGIVINGS 168
XXXVII. A CRIME! 170
XXXVIII. THE PASSING OF THE HOST 173
XXXIX. THE ELECTION 175
XL. HAVILAND REFUSES 178
XLI. FIAT JUSTITIA 180

BOOK III.

XLII. QUINET'S CONTRIBUTION 187
XLIII. HAVILAND'S PRINCIPLE 191
XLIV. DAUGHTER OF THE GODS 194
XLV. NOT THE END 199

BOOK I.

THE YOUNG SEIGNEUR.

CHAPTER I.

THE MANOIR OF DORMILLIERE.

In the year One Thousand Eight Hundred and Seventy odd, about six years
after the confederation of the Provinces into the Dominion of Canada, an
Ontarian went down into Quebec,--an event then almost as rare as a
Quebecker entering Ontario.

"It's a queer old Province, and romantic to me," said the Montrealer
with whom old Mr. Chrysler (the Ontarian) fell in on the steamer
descending to Sorel, and who had been giving him the names of the
villages they passed in the broad and verdant panorama of the shores of
the St. Lawrence.

In truth, it _is_ a queer, romantic Province, that ancient Province of
Quebec,--ancient in store of heroic and picturesque memories, though the
three centuries of its history would look foreshortened to people of
Europe, and Canada herself is not yet alive to the far-reaching import
of each deed and journey of the chevaliers of its early days.

Here, a hundred and thirty years after the Conquest, a million and a
half of Normans and Bretons, speaking the language of France and
preserving her institutions, still people the shores of the River and
the Gulf. Their white cottages dot the banks like an endless string of
pearls, their willows shade the hamlets and lean over the courses of
brooks, their tapering parish spires nestle in the landscape of their
new-world _patrie_.

"What is that?" exclaimed the Ontarian, suddenly, lifting his hand, his
eyes brightening with an interest unwonted for a man beyond middle age.

The steamer was passing close to the shore, making for a pier some
distance ahead; and, surmounting the high bank, a majestic scene arose,
facing them like an apparition. It was a grey Tudor mansion of
weather-stained stone, with churchy pinnacles, a strange-looking bright
tin roof, and, towering around the sides and back of its grounds a lofty
walk of pine trees, marshalled in dark, square, overshadowing array, out
of which, as if surrounded by a guard of powerful forest spirits, the
mansion looked forth like a resuscitated Elizabethan reality. Its mien
seemed to say: "I am not of yesterday, and shall pass tranquilly on into
the centuries to come: old traditions cluster quietly about my gables;
and rest is here."

"That is the Manoir of Dormilliere," replied the Montrealer, as the
steamer, whose paddles had stopped their roar, glided silently by.

Impressive was the Manoir, with its cool shades and air of erect
lordliness, its solemn grey walls and pinnacled gables, the beautiful
depressed arch of its front door; and its dream-like foreground of river
mirroring its majestic guard of pines.

"I knew," said Chrysler, "that you had your seigniories in Quebec, and
some sort of a feudal history, far back, but I never dreamed of such
seats."

"O, the Seigneurs[A] have not yet altogether disappeared," returned the
Montrealer. "Twenty years ago their position was feudal enough to be
considered oppressive; and here and there still, over the Province, in
some grove of pines or elms, or at some picturesque bend of a river, or
in the shelter of some wooded hill beside the sea, the old-fashioned
residence is to be descried, seated in its broad _demesne_ with trees,
gardens and capacious buildings about it, and at no great distance an
old round windmill."

[Footnote A: The old French gentry or _noblesse_]

"Who lives in this one?"

"The Havilands. An English name but considered French;--grandfather an
officer, an English captain, who married the heiress of the old
D'Argentenayes, of this place."

"Mr. Haviland is the name of the person I am going to visit."

"The M.P.?"

"Yes, he is an M.P."

"A fine young fellow, then. His first name is Chamilly. His father was a
queer man--the Honorable Chateauguay--perhaps you've heard of _him_? He
was of a sort of an antiquarian and genealogical turn, you know, and
made a hobby of preserving old civilities and traditions, so that
Dormilliere is said to be somewhat of a rum place."

The Ontarian thanked his acquaintance and got ready for landing at the
pier.

CHAPTER II.

THE YOUNG SEIGNEUR.

A young man stepped forward and greeted him heartily. It was the
"Chamilly" Haviland of whom they had been speaking.

Mr. Chrysler and he were members together of the Dominion Parliament and
the present visit was the outcome of a special purpose. "It is a pity
the rest of the country does not know my people more closely," Haviland
wrote in his invitation:--"If you will do my house the honor of your
presence, I am sure there is much of their life to which we could
introduce you."

"I am delighted you arrive at this time;" he exclaimed. "My election is
coming." And he talked cheerfully and busied himself making the visitor
comfortable in his drag.

As luck will have it, the enactment of one of the old local customs
occurs as they sit waiting for room to drive off the pier. The rustic
gathering of Lower-Canadian _habitants_ who are crowding it with their
native ponies and hay-carts and their stuff-coated, deliberate persons,
is beginning to break apart as the steamer swings heavily away. The
pedestrians are already stringing off along the road and each jaunty
Telesphore and Jacques, the driver of a horse, leaps jovially into his
cart; but all the carts are halting a moment by some curious common
accord. Why is this?

Suddenly a loud voice shouts:

"MALBROUCK IS DEAD!"

A pause follows.

"_It is not true_" one forcibly contradicts.

"Yes, he is dead!" reiterates the first.

"It is not true!" insists the other.

"He is dead and in his bier!"

The second is incredulous:

"You but tell me that to jeer?"

But the crowd who have been smiling gleefully over the proceedings,
affect to resign themselves to the bad news of Malbrouck's death, and
all altogether groan in hoarse bass mockery:

"CA VA MA-A-A-L!!"[B]

Every one immediately dashes off in all haste, whips crack, wheels fly,
and shouting, racing and singing along all the roads, the country-folk
rattle away to their homes. Our two turn their wheels towards the
Manor-house, gleefully amused.

[Footnote B: That is bad!]

"Who is Malbrouck?" Chrysler enquired.

"Marlborough. That must have been originally enacted in the French camps
that fought him in Flanders. I fancy the soldiers of Montcalm shouting
it at night among their tents here as they held the country against the
English."

They drove along looking about the country and conversing. Chrysler
breathed in the fresh draughts which swept across the wide stretches of
river-view that lay open in bird-like perspective from the crest of the
terraces on which the Dormilliere _cote_, or countryside, was perched,
and along which the road ran.

"Come up, my little buds!" the young man cried in French, to a pair of
baby girls who, holding each others' hands, were crowding on the edge of
the ditch-weeds, out of the wheels' way.

"Houp-la!" he cried, helping the laughing little things up one after the
other by their hands, and then whipping forward. "How much, are you
going to give me for this? Do you think we drive people for nothing,
eh?" The children nestled themselves down with beaming faces. "Tell me,
_bidoux_,"[C] he laughed again, "What are you going to give me?"

[Footnote C: Bidoux is a term of endearment for children.]

Both hung their heads. One of them quickly threw her arms up around his
neck and, kissing him, said, "I will pay you this way," and the other
began to follow suit.

"Stop, stop, my dears. You must not stifle your seigneur," he cried in
the highest glee, returning their embraces.

One of our poets claims that there is something of earthliness in the
kisses of all but children:--

"But in a little child's warm kiss
Is naught but heaven above,
So sweet it is, so pure it is,
So full of faith and love."

So it seemed to Chrysler as he saw this first of the relations between
the young Seigneur and his people.

CHAPTER III.

HAVILAND'S IDEA.

"GRAND MASTER.--O, if you knew what our astrologers say of the coming
age and of our age, that has in it more history within a hundred years
than all the world had in four thousand years before."
--CAMPANELLA--_The City of the Sun_.

When they arrived before the Manor House front, Mr. Chrysler could
almost believe himself in some ancestral place in Europe, the pinnacles
clustered with such a tranquil grace and the walk of pines surrounding
the place seemed to frown with such cool, dark shades.

Within, he found it a comfortable mingling of ancient family portraits
and hanging swords strung around the walls, elaborate, ornate old mantel
ornaments, an immense carved fireplace, and such modern conveniences as
Eastlake Cabinets, student's lamps and electric bell. In a distant
corner of the large united dining and drawing-room, the evidently
favorite object was a full-size cast of the Apollo Belvedere.

Chamilly introduced him respectfully to his grandmother, Madame
Bois-Hebert, an aged, quiet lady, with dark eyes.

In the expressive face of the young man could be traced a resemblance to
hers, and the grace of form and movement which his firmer limbs and
greater activity gave him, were evidently something like what the
dignity of mien and carriage that were still left her by age had once
been.

He was tall and had a handsome make, and kindly, generous face. The
features of his countenance were marked ones, denoting clear intelligent
opinions; and his hair, moustache and young beard, of jet black,
contrasted well with the color which enriched his brunet cheek. Whether
it was due to a happy chance or to the surroundings of his life, or
whether descent from superior races has something in it, existence had
been generous to him in attractions.

When Madame withdrew, after the tea, he gave Mr. Chrysler a chair by the
fireplace in the drawing-room end of the apartment, for it was a cool
evening, and saying:--"Do you mind this? It is a liking of mine,"
stepped over to the lamps and turned them down, throwing the light of
the burning wood upon the pictures and _objets d'art_ which adorned the
apartment.

The great cast of Apollo, though in shadow, stood out against a
background of deep red hangings in its corner and attracted the older
gentleman's remarks.

"I have arranged the surroundings to recall my first impression of him
in the Vatican Galleries," said the other. "I was wandering among that
riches of fine statues and had begun to feel it an _embarras_, as our
own phrase goes, when I came into a chamber and saw in the midst of it
this most beautiful of the deities rising lightly before me, looking
ahead after the arrow he has shot."

"You have been in Italy, then?"

"I have, Sir," he answered, "I have had my Italian days like
Longfellow;" and, looking into the fire, he continued low, almost to
himself:--

"... Land of the Madonna:
How beautiful it is! It seems a garden
Of Paradise ... Long years ago
I wandered as a youth among its bowers
And never from my heart has faded quite
Its memory, that like a summer sunset,
Encircles with a ring of purple light
All the horizon of my youth."

As Chrysler regarded him then and heard this free expression of feeling
he could not but feel that Haviland was a foreigner, different from the
British peoples.

"And yet," mused Haviland, in a moment again, "Have we not a more than
Italy in this beautiful country of our own?"

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?"

"No longer than I can help. The national work will never cease to
attract me. _Is it not sublime this nation-making?_--that this
generation, and particularly a few individuals like you, sir, and myself
should be honored by Heaven with the task of founding a people! It is as
grand as the nebulous making of stars!"

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?"

"I do not care for a thing because it is striking; but I care for a
great thing if it is really great. Do not think me too daring if I
suggest for a moment that Canada should aim to lead the nations instead
of being led. I believe that she can do it, if she only has enough
persistence. A people should plain for a thousand years and be willing
to wait centuries. Still, merely to lead is very subordinate in my view:
a nation should only exist, and will only exist permanently, if it has a
_reason of existence_. France has hers in the needs of the inhabitants
of a vast plain; local Britain in those of an island; with Israel it was
religion; with Imperial Rome, organised civilization; Panhellenism had
the mission of intellect; Canada too, to exist, must have a good reason
why her people shall live and act together."

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

"It must be an _aim_, a _work_," he said soberly.

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?"

"If they were shown a sensible reason why they _ought_ to be a nation,"
said he with calm distinctness,--"a reason more simple and great than
any that could be advanced against it--it is all they would require. I
propose a clear ideal for them--a vision of what Canada ought to be and
do; towards which they can look, and feel that every move of progress
adds a definite stage to a definite and really worthy edifice."

"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.

"I _have_ a system," he said. "I almost feel like saying a commission of
revelation. The reason, sir, why I asked you here was that you, my
venerated friend, might understand my ideas and sympathize with them,
and help me."

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.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MANUSCRIPT.

"When yellow-locked and crystal-eyed,
I dreamed green woods among
* * * * *
O, then the earth was young"

--ISABELLA VALANCEY CRAWFORD.

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

BOOK OF ENTHUSIASMS.

_Narrative of Chamilly d'Argentenaye Haviland_.

At the Friars' School at Dormilliere, 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," (she had fondly intended me for the priesthood)
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 Dormilliere 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.

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