The Young Seigneur Part 2

"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; Panh.e.l.lenism 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 Cla.s.ses--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 a.s.sociate 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 ma.n.u.script, 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 Ma.n.u.sCRIPT.

"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.

These,--to be a brilliant man of learning _and an athlete_--seemed to me the two great careers of existence!

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 pa.s.sed. Or did it pa.s.s 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 fas.h.i.+on; and under the woof of boughs and leaves overhead ran a very long old country-house, cottage-built. Surpa.s.singly peaceful, and secluded was its air. It had oblique-angle-faced, s.h.i.+ngled 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.

CHAPTER V.

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[D] 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.

[Footnote D: NOTE--Now turned into the restaurant called the "Chateau de Ramezay," and soon probably to be demolished.]