The Young Seigneur Part 1

The Young Seigneur.

by Wilfrid Chateauclair.

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-fas.h.i.+oned Tory and an old-fas.h.i.+oned 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._

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 pa.s.sed in the broad and verdant panorama of the sh.o.r.es 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 inst.i.tutions, still people the sh.o.r.es 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 pa.s.sing close to the sh.o.r.e, 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 pa.s.s tranquilly on into the centuries to come: old traditions cl.u.s.ter 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 _n.o.blesse_]

"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 Telesph.o.r.e 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.