The Young Seigneur Part 3

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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ce 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.

_The arm, the face, were those of my cla.s.smate Quinet!_ An involuntary start of mine rustled a fallen dry branch, and the snap of a dry twig of it seemed to dissolve his determination; the hand dropped, he sprang off--and rushed quickly away in the darkness.

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.

I followed him to his home, went up to his room and confronted him with the whole story,--myself more agitated than he was. I remember his pa.s.sionate state:--"Haviland, do not wonder at me. Mankind are the key to the universe; and I am sick of a world of turkey-c.o.c.ks. To speak frankly is to be proscribed; to be kind to the unfortunate is to lose standing; to think deeply brings the reputation of a fool. No one understands me. They do not understand me, the imbeciles!--_Coglioni!_"

cried he fiercely, grinding the Corsican cry in his teeth and rising to walk about. "As Napoleon the Great despised them so do I, Quinet. They never but made one wretched who had genius in him. And _I_ have it, and dare to say that in their faces. The weapon for neglect is contempt! If the wretched shallow world can make me miserable, they can never at least take away the delight of my superiority. I, who would have sympathized with and helped them and given my talents for them, shall look down with but scorn. Yes, I delight in these proud expressions, I am not ashamed of testifying, and one day I shall a.s.sert myself and make them bow to me, and shall hate them, and persecute them, and anatomize them for the derision of each other!"

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."

"My dearest misanthrope," I replied, "what you need is some horse-riding."

CHAPTER VI.

ALEXANDRA.

Maintenant que la belle saison etale les splendeurs de sa robe.

--BENJ. SULTE.

Listen! A note is struck which, with an old magic, transforms the world!

In the dying beauty of an autumntide, Love Divine, last and most potent of the G.o.ddesses, came walking through the woods and diffused the mystery of heaven over the forest paths, the trees, the streets of the town; and she melted into a sweet and n.o.ble human face--a face I caught but for a moment clearly on one of our galloping rides, Quinet's and mine; yet it remained and still looks upon me in the holy of holies of my heart's inner chapel.

"What a rare autumn! What perfect foliage! What cool weather!" Quinet had wakened up beyond my expectations, and soon we were racing along, laughing and shouting repartees at each other. We reined in at last to a walk.

"Mehercle, be Charon propitious to thee when thy soul meets him at the river in Hades," he cried. "Be he propitious to thee, Chamilly, for making me a horseman!"

Then the memorable picture;--we speeding along that bit of road in the Park, the Mountain-side towering precipitously above us on the left and sloping below us in groves on the right; our horses galloping faster and faster; our dash into a bold rocky cutting; our consternation!--a young maiden picking up autumn leaves within two yards before our galloping horses! Near by, I remember quite clearly now her companion, and not far off the carriage with golden-bay horses.

"Stop!" I shouted.

Even as I shouted, I was already past her, and the brush of Quinet's horse flying as near on the other side of her, s.n.a.t.c.hed off her bouquet of autumn leaves and strewed them in a cloud. Thank G.o.d only that we had not gone over her! The peril was frightful. My horse had had his head down and I could not pull him up.

But what excited me most was the courage of the girl. She started; but rose straight and firm, facing us as we charged. Even in that instant, I could see changes of pallor and color leap across her brow and cheek--could see them as if with supernatural vividness. Yet her eyes lighted proudly, her form held itself erect, and her clear features triumphed with the lines as if of a superior race. She could only be compared, standing there, to an angel guarding Paradise! How fair she was! And the face was the face of the little girl of the Manoir of Esneval!

After the agitations of our apologies I retained just enough of my wits about me to enquire her name. "Alexandra Grant," she said gracefully enough. Ah yes, I recollected--the Grants, within a generation, had bought the Esneval Seigniory, and its Manor-house.

CHAPTER VII.

QUINET.

Now a little more of Quinet. Small, gaunt and strange-looking, I pitied him because he was a victim of our stupid educational wrecking systems.

His was too fine an organization to have been exposed to the blunders of the scholastic managers; for his course had exhibited signs of no less than the genius he had claimed. Most of his years of study had been spent as a precocious youth in that great Seminary of the Sulpician Fathers, the _College de Montreal_. The close system of the seminaries, however, being meant for developing priests, is apt to produce two opposite poles of young men--the Ultramontane and the Red Radical. Of the bravest and keenest of the latter Quinet was. If newspapers were forbidden to be brought into the College: he had a regular supply of the most liberal. If all books but those first submitted to approval were _tabu_: Quinet was thrice caught reading Voltaire. If criticism of any of the doctrines of Catholic piety was a sin to be expiated hardly even by months of penance: there was nothing sacred to his inquiries, from the authority of the Popes of Avignon to the stigma miracle of the Seraphic St. Francis. He was an _enfant terrible_; Revolutionist Rousseau had infected him; Victor Hugo the Excommunicate was his literary idol; hidden and forbidden sweets made their way by subterranean pa.s.sages to his appet.i.te; he was the leader of a group who might some day give trouble to the Reverend gentlemen who managed the "nation Canadienne." And yet, "What a declaimer of Cicero and Bossuet! I love him," exclaimed the professor of Rhetoric, in the black-robed consultations. "His meridians do me credit!" cried the astronomical Father.

No--he was far too promising a youth to estrange by the expulsion without ceremony which any vulgar transgressor would have got for the little finger of his offences. The record ended at length with the student himself, towards the approach of his graduation, when an article appeared in that unpardonable sheet _La Lanterne du Progres_, acutely describing and discussing the defects of the system of Seminary education, making a flippant allusion to a circular of His Grace the Archbishop, who prided himself on his style; and signed openly with the boy's name at the bottom!

Imagine the severe faces of the outraged gowned, the avoidance aghast by terrified playmates--the council with closed doors, his disappearance into the mysterious Office to confront the Directeur alone, and the interview with him at white-heat strain beginning mildly: "My son" and ending with icy distinctness: "Then, sir, Go!"

He did go. He came to the Grammar School during my last session there, and at the end of it swept away the whole of the prizes, with the Dux Medal of the school, notwithstanding his imperfect knowledge of English, and was head in every subject, _except good conduct and punctuality_.

At this he nearly killed himself. Proceeding, he carried off the highest scholarship among the Matriculants at the University, where his cla.s.sical papers were said to be perfect. All through these two years and a half of College progress since, he had been astonishing us with similar terrible application and results. Professors encouraged, friends applauded, we wondered at and admired him. We did not envy him, however, for he became, as I commenced by saying, a pitiable wreck. Look at him as he stoops upon the horse!

Good old Father St. Esprit--oldest and humblest of the Order in the College--who was his friend, and whom everybody, and especially Quinet, venerated, took a private word with him before he departed from that inst.i.tution.

"My son," said he, "I see the quality of thy mind, and that the Church of G.o.d will not be able to contain thee. Thou mayst wander, poor child; yet carry thou at least in thy heart ever love of what thou seest to be good, and respect for what is venerated by another. Put this word away in thy soul in memory of thy friend the Pere St. Esprit."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE TOBOGGAN SLIDE.

"What is there in this blossom-hour should knit An omen in with every simple word?"

--ISABELLA VALANCEY CRAWFORD.

During the next few days I could do nothing of interest to me but make prudent enquiries about Alexandra Grant. I remember an answer of Little Steele's "Ah--_That_ is a beautiful girl!"

"You _were_ beautiful, Alexandra!"

I caught glimpses of her on the street and in her carriage; memory marks the spots by a glow of light; they are my holy places. I saw her open her purse for a blind man begging on a church step. I watched her turn and speak politely to a ragged newsgirl. One day, when Quinet and I, coming down from College and seeing a little boy fall on the path, threw away our books and set him on his feet, it was _her_ face of approval that beamed out of a carriage window on the opposite side of the street.