Produced by David Widger
THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING
By Gilbert Parker
CONTENTS
Volume 1.
THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING
Volume 2.
THE ABSURD ROMANCE OF P’TITE LOUISON
THE LITTLE BELL OF HONOUR
A SON OF THE WILDERNESS
A WORKER IN STONE
Volume 3.
THE TRAGIC COMEDY OF ANNETTE
THE MARRIAGE OF THE MILLER
MATHURIN
THE STORY OF THE LIME-BURNER
THE WOODSMAN’S STORY OF THE GREAT WHITE CHIEF
UNCLE JIM
THE HOUSE WITH THE TALL PORCH
PARPON THE DWARF
Volume 4.
TIMES WERE HARD IN PONTIAC
MEDALLION’S WHIM
THE PRISONER
AN UPSET PRICE
A FRAGMENT OF LIVES
THE MAN THAT DIED AT ALMA
THE BARON OF BEAUGARD
THE TUNE McGILVERAY PLAYED
The Right Hon. Sir Wilfrid Laurier G.C.M.G.
Dear Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Since I first began to write these tales in
1892, I have had it in my mind to dedicate to you the “bundle of life”
when it should be complete. It seemed to me--and it seems so still--that
to put your name upon the covering of my parcel, as one should say, “In
care of,” when it went forth, was to secure its safe and considerate
delivery to that public of the Empire which is so much in your debt.
But with other feelings also do I dedicate this volume to yourself. For
many years your name has stood for a high and noble compromise between
the temperaments and the intellectual and social habits of two races;
and I am not singular in thinking that you have done more than most
other men to make the English and French of the Dominion understand each
other better. There are somewhat awkward limits to true understanding as
yet, but that sympathetic service which you render to both peoples,
with a conscientious striving for impartiality, tempers even the wind of
party warfare to the shorn lamb of political opposition.
In a sincere sympathy with French life and character, as exhibited in
the democratic yet monarchical province of Quebec, or Lower Canada
(as, historically, I still love to think of it), moved by friendly
observation, and seeking to be truthful and impartial, I have made this
book and others dealing with the life of the proud province, which a
century and a half of English governance has not Anglicised. This series
of more or less connected stories, however, has been the most cherished
of all my labours, covering, as it has done, so many years, and being
the accepted of my anxious judgment out of a much larger gathering, so
many numbers of which are retired to the seclusion of copyright, while
reserved from publication. In passing, I need hardly say that the
“Pontiac” of this book is an imaginary place, and has no association
with the real Pontiac of the Province.
I had meant to call the volume, “Born with a Golden Spoon,” a title
stolen from the old phrase, “Born with a golden spoon in the mouth”; but
at the last moment I have given the book the name of the tale which is,
chronologically, the climax of the series, and the end of my narratives
of French Canadian life and character. I had chosen the former title
because of an inherent meaning in it relation to my subject. A man born
in the purple--in comfort wealth, and secure estate--is said to have the
golden spoon in his mouth. In the eyes of the world, however, the phrase
has a some what ironical suggestiveness, and to have luxury, wealth, and
place as a birthright is not thought to be the most fortunate incident
of mortality. My application of the phrase is, therefore, different.
I have, as you know, travelled far and wide during the past seventeen
years, and though I have seen people as frugal and industrious as the
French Canadians, I have never seen frugality and industry associated
with so much domestic virtue, so much education and intelligence, and so
deep and simple a religious life; nor have I ever seen a priesthood at
once so devoted and high-minded in all the concerns the home life
of their people, as in French Canada. A land without poverty and yet
without riches, French Canada stands alone, too well educated to have a
peasantry, too poor to have an aristocracy; as though in her the ancient
prayer had been answered “Give me neither poverty nor riches, but feed
me with food convenient for me.” And it is of the habitant of Quebec,
before a men else, I should say, “Born with the golden spoon in his
mouth.”
To you I come with this book, which contains the first thing I ever
wrote out of the life of the Province so dear to you, and the last
things also that I shall ever write about it. I beg you to receive it as
the loving recreation of one who sympathises with the people of who you
come, and honours their virtues, and who has no fear for the unity, and
no doubt as to the splendid future, of the nation, whose fibre is got of
the two great civilising races of Europe.
Lastly, you will know with what admiration and regard I place your
name on the fore page of my book, and greet in you the statesman, the
litterateur, and the personal friend.
Believe me,
Dear Sir Wilfrid Laurier,
Yours very sincerely,
GILBERT PARKER.
20 CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE, LONDON, S. W.,
14th August, 1900.
INTRODUCTION
The story with which this book opens, ‘The Lane That Had No Turning’,
gives the title to a collection which has a large share in whatever
importance my work may possess. Cotemporaneous with the Pierre
series, which deal with the Far West and the Far North, I began in
the ‘Illustrated London News’, at the request of the then editor, Mr.
Clement K. Shorter, a series of French Canadian sketches of which
the first was ‘The Tragic Comedy of Annette’. It was followed by ‘The
Marriage of the Miller, The House with the Tall Porch, The Absurd
Romance of P’tite Louison, and The Woodsman’s Story of the Great White
Chief’. They were begun and finished in the autumn of 1892 in lodgings
which I had taken on Hampstead Heath. Each--for they were all very
short--was written at a sitting, and all had their origin in true
stories which had been told me in the heart of Quebec itself. They were
all beautifully illustrated in the Illustrated London News, and in their
almost monosyllabic narrative, and their almost domestic simplicity,
they were in marked contrast to the more strenuous episodes of the
Pierre series. They were indeed in keeping with the happily simple and
uncomplicated life of French Canada as I knew it then; and I had perhaps
greater joy in writing them and the purely French Canadian stories that
followed them, such as ‘Parpon the Dwarf, A Worker in Stone, The Little
Bell of Honour, and The Prisoner’, than in almost anything else I have
written, except perhaps ‘The Right of Way and Valmond’, so far as Canada
is concerned.
I think the book has harmony, although the first story in it covers
eighty-two pages, while some of the others, like ‘The Marriage of the
Miller’, are less than four pages in length. At the end also there are
nine fantasies or stories which I called ‘Parables of Provinces’. All
of these, I think, possessed the spirit of French Canada, though all are
more or less mystical in nature. They have nothing of the simple realism
of ‘The Tragic Comedy of Annette’, and the earlier series. These nine
stories could not be called popular, and they were the only stories
I have ever written which did not have an immediate welcome from the
editors to whom they were sent. In the United States I offered them to
‘Harper’s Magazine’, but the editor, Henry M. Alden, while, as I know,
caring for them personally, still hesitated to publish them. He thought
them too symbolic for the every-day reader. He had been offered four of
them at once because I declined to dispose of them separately, though
the editor of another magazine was willing to publish two of them.
Messrs. Stone & Kimball, however, who had plenty of fearlessness where
literature was concerned, immediately bought the series for The Chap
Book, long since dead, and they were published in that wonderful little
short-lived magazine, which contained some things of permanent value
to literature. They published four of the series, namely: ‘The Golden
Pipes, The Guardian of the Fire, By that Place Called Peradventure,
The Singing of the Bees, and The Tent of the Purple Mat’. In England,
because I would not separate the first five, and publish them
individually, two or three of the editors who were taking the Pierre
series and other stories appearing in this volume would not publish
them. They, also, were frightened by the mystery and allusiveness of the
tales, and had an apprehension that they would not be popular.
Perhaps they were right. They were all fantasies, but I do not wish
them other than they are. One has to write according to the impulse that
seizes one and after the fashion of one’s own mind. This at least can be
said of all my books, that not a page of them has ever been written to
order, and there is not a story published in all the pages bearing
my name which does not represent one or two other stories rejected by
myself. The art of rejection is the hardest art which an author has
to learn; but I have never had a doubt as to my being justified in
publishing these little symbolic things.
Eventually the whole series was published in England. W. E. Henley gave
‘There Was a Little City’ a home in ‘The New Review’, and expressed
himself as happy in having it. ‘The Forge in the Valley’ was published
by Sir Wemyss Reid in the weekly paper called ‘The Speaker’, now known
as ‘The Nation’, in which ‘Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’ made his name and
helped the fame of others. ‘There Was a Little City’ was published in
‘The Chap Book’ in the United States, but ‘The Forge in the Valley’ had
(I think) no American public until it appeared within the pages of ‘The
Lane That Had No Turning’. The rest of the series were published in the
‘English Illustrated Magazine’, which was such a good friend to my work
at the start. As was perhaps natural, there was some criticism, but very
little, in French Canada itself, upon the stories in this volume. It
soon died away, however, and almost as I write these words there has
come to me an appreciation which I value as much as anything that has
befallen me in my career, and that is, the degree of Doctor of Letters
from the French Catholic University of Laval at Quebec. It is the seal
of French Canada upon the work which I have tried to do for her and for
the whole Dominion.
THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING
CHAPTER I. THE RETURN OF MADELINETTE
His Excellency the Governor--the English Governor of French Canada--was
come to Pontiac, accompanied by a goodly retinue; by private secretary,
military secretary, aide-de-camp, cabinet minister, and all that. He was
making a tour of the Province, but it was obvious that he had gone out
of his way to visit Pontiac, for there were disquieting rumours in the
air concerning the loyalty of the district. Indeed, the Governor had
arrived but twenty-four hours after a meeting had been held under the
presidency of the Seigneur, at which resolutions easily translatable
into sedition were presented. The Cure and the Avocat, arriving in the
nick of time, had both spoken against these resolutions; with the result
that the new-born ardour in the minds of the simple habitants had died
down, and the Seigneur had parted from the Cure and the Avocat in anger.
Pontiac had been involved in an illegal demonstration once before.
Valmond, the bizarre but popular Napoleonic pretender, had raised his
standard there; the stones before the parish church had been stained
with his blood; and he lay in the churchyard of St. Saviour’s forgiven
and unforgotten. How was it possible for Pontiac to forget him? Had
he not left his little fortune to the parish? and had he not also
left twenty thousand francs for the musical education of Madelinette
Lajeunesse, the daughter of the village forgeron, to learn singing of
the best masters in Paris? Pontiac’s wrong-doings had brought it more
profit than penalty, more praise than punishment: for, after five
years in France in the care of the Little Chemist’s widow, Madelinette
Lajeunesse had become the greatest singer of her day. But what had put
the severest strain upon the modesty of Pontiac was the fact that, on
the morrow of Madelinette’s first triumph in Paris, she had married M.
Louis Racine, the new Seigneur of Pontiac.
What more could Pontiac wish? It had been rewarded for its mistakes; it
had not even been chastened, save that it was marked Suspicious as to
its loyalty, at the headquarters of the English Government in Quebec. It
should have worn a crown of thorns, but it flaunted a crown of roses. A
most unreasonable good fortune seemed to pursue it. It had been led to
expect that its new Seigneur would be an Englishman, one George Fournel,
to whom, as the late Seigneur had more than once declared, the property
was devised by will; but at his death no will had been found, and Louis
Racine, the direct heir in blood, had succeeded to the property and the
title.
Brilliant, enthusiastic, fanatically French, the new Seigneur had set
himself to revive certain old traditions, customs, and privileges of the
Seigneurial position. He was reactionary, seductive, generous, and at
first he captivated the hearts of Pontiac. He did more than that.
He captivated Madelinette Lajeunesse. In spite of her years in
Paris--severe, studious years, which shut out the social world and the
temptations of Bohemian life--Madelinette retained a strange simplicity
of heart and mind, a desperate love for her old home which would not
be gainsaid, a passionate loyalty to her past, which was an illusory
attempt to arrest the inevitable changes that come with growth; and,
with a sudden impulse, she had sealed herself to her past at the very
outset of her great career by marriage with Louis Racine.
On the very day of their marriage Louis Racine had made a painful
discovery. A heritage of his fathers, which had skipped two generations,
suddenly appeared in himself: he was becoming a hunchback.
Terror, despair, gloom, anxiety had settled upon him. Three months later
Madelinette had gone to Paris alone. The Seigneur had invented excuses
for not accompanying her, so she went instead in the care of the Little
Chemist’s widow, as of old Louis had promised to follow within another
three months, but had not done so. The surgical operation performed upon
him was unsuccessful; the strange growth increased. Sensitive, fearful,
and morose, he would not go to Europe to be known as the hunchback
husband of Lajeunesse, the great singer. He dreaded the hour when
Madelinette and he should meet again. A thousand times he pictured her
as turning from him in loathing and contempt. He had married her because
he loved her, but he knew well enough that ten thousand other men could
love her just as well, and be something more than a deformed Seigneur of
an obscure manor in Quebec.
As his gloomy imagination pictured the future, when Madelinette should
return and see him as he was and cease to love him--to build up his
Seigneurial honour to an undue importance, to give his position a
fictitious splendour, became a mania with him. No ruler of a Grand Duchy
ever cherished his honour dearer or exacted homage more persistently
than did Louis Racine in the Seigneury of Pontiac. Coincident with the
increase of these futile extravagances was the increase of his fanatical
patriotism, which at last found vent in seditious writings, agitations,
the purchase of rifles, incitement to rebellion, and the formation of an
armed, liveried troop of dependants at the Manor. On the very eve of the
Governor’s coming, despite the Cure’s and the Avocat’s warnings, he
had held a patriotic meeting intended to foster a stubborn, if silent,
disregard of the Governor’s presence amongst them.
The speech of the Cure, who had given guarantee for the good behaviour
of his people to the Government, had been so tinged with sorrowful
appeal, had recalled to them so acutely the foolish demonstration which
had ended in the death of Valmond; that the people had turned from the
exasperated Seigneur with the fire of monomania in his eyes, and had
left him alone in the hall, passionately protesting that the souls of
Frenchmen were not in them.
Next day, upon the church, upon the Louis Quinze Hotel, and elsewhere,
the Union Jack flew--the British colours flaunted it in Pontiac with
welcome to the Governor. But upon the Seigneury was another flag--it
of the golden-lilies. Within the Manor House M. Louis Racine sat in the
great Seigneurial chair, returned from the gates of death. As he had
come home from the futile public meeting, galloping through the streets
and out upon the Seigneury road in the dusk, his horse had shied upon
a bridge, where mischievous lads waylaid travellers with ghostly heads
made of lighted candles in hollowed pumpkins, and horse and man had been
plunged into the stream beneath. His faithful servant Havel had seen the
accident and dragged his insensible master from the water.
Now the Seigneur sat in the great arm-chair glowering out upon the
cheerful day. As he brooded, shaken and weak and bitter--all his
thoughts were bitter now--a flash of scarlet, a glint of white plumes
crossed his line of vision, disappeared, then again came into view, and
horses’ hoofs rang out on the hard road below. He started to his feet,
but fell back again, so feeble was he, then rang the bell at his side
with nervous insistence. A door opened quickly behind him, and his voice
said imperiously:
“Quick, Havel--to the door. The Governor and his suite have come.
Call Tardif, and have wine and cake brought at once. When the Governor
enters, let Tardif stand at the door, and you beside my chair. Have the
men-at-arms get into livery, and make a guard of honour for the Governor
when he leaves. Their new rifles too--and let old Fashode wear his
medal! See that Lucre is not filthy--ha! ha! very good. I must let the
Governor hear that. Quick--quick, Havel. They are entering the grounds.
Let the Manor bell be rung, and every one mustered. He shall see that
to be a Seigneur is not an empty honour. I am something in the state,
something by my own right.” His lips moved restlessly; he frowned; his
hands nervously clasped the arms of the chair. “Madelinette too shall
see that I am to be reckoned with, that I am not a nobody. By God, then,
but she shall see it!” he added, bringing his clasped hand down hard
upon the wood.
There was a stir outside, a clanking of chains, a champing of bits,
and the murmurs of the crowd who were gathering fast in the grounds.
Presently the door was thrown open and Havel announced the Governor.
Louis Racine got to his feet, but the Governor hastened forward, and,
taking both his hands, forced him gently back into the chair.
“No, no, my dear Seigneur. You must not rise. This is no state visit,
but a friendly call to offer congratulations on your happy escape, and
to inquire how you are.”
The Governor said his sentences easily, but he suddenly flushed and
was embarrassed, for Louis Racine’s deformity, of which he had not
known--Pontiac kept its troubles to itself--stared him in the face; and
he felt the Seigneur’s eyes fastened on him with strange intensity.
“I have to thank your Excellency,” the Seigneur said in a hasty nervous
voice. “I fell on my shoulders--that saved me. If I had fallen on my
head I should have been killed, no doubt. My shoulders saved me!” he
added, with a petulant insistence in his voice, a morbid anxiety in his
face.
“Most providential,” responded the Governor. “It grieves me that
it should have happened on the occasion of my visit. I missed the
Seigneur’s loyal public welcome. But I am happy,” he continued, with
smooth deliberation, “to have it here in this old Manor House, where
other loyal French subjects of England have done honour to their
Sovereign’s representative.”
“This place is sacred to hospitality and patriotism, your Excellency,”
said Louis Racine, nervousness passing from his voice and a curious hard
look coming into his face.
The Governor was determined not to see the double meaning. “It is a
privilege to hear you say so. I shall recall the fact to her Majesty’s
Government in the report I shall make upon my tour of the province.
I have a feeling that the Queen’s pleasure in the devotion of her
distinguished French subjects may take some concrete form.”
The Governor’s suite looked at each other significantly, for never
before in his journeys had his Excellency hinted so strongly that an
honour might be conferred. Veiled as it was, it was still patent as the
sun. Spots of colour shot into the Seigneur’s cheeks. An honour from the
young English Queen--that would mate with Madelinette’s fame. After all,
it was only his due. He suddenly found it hard to be consistent. His
mind was in a whirl. The Governor continued:
“It must have given you great pleasure to know that at Windsor her
Majesty has given tokens of honour to the famous singer, the wife of
a notable French subject, who, while passionately eager to keep alive
French sentiment, has, as we believe, a deep loyalty to England.”
The Governor had said too much. He had thought to give the Seigneur an
opportunity to recede from his seditious position there and then, and
to win his future loyalty. M. Racine’s situation had peril, and the
Governor had here shown him the way of escape. But he had said one thing
that drove Louis Racine mad. He had given him unknown information about
his own wife. Louis did not know that Madelinette had been received
by the Queen, or that she had received “tokens of honour.” Wild with
resentment, he saw in the Governor’s words a consideration for himself
based only on the fact that he was the husband of the great singer. He
trembled to his feet.
At that moment there was a cheering outside--great cheering--but he
did not heed it; he was scarcely aware of it. If it touched his
understanding at all, it only meant to him a demonstration in honour of
the Governor.
“Loyalty to the flag of England, your Excellency!” he said, in a
hoarse acrid voice--“you speak of loyalty to us whose lives for two
centuries--” He paused, for he heard a voice calling his name.
“Louis! Louis! Louis!”
The fierce words he had been about to utter died on his lips, his eyes
stared at the open window, bewildered and even frightened.
“Louis! Louis!”
Now the voice was inside the house. He stood trembling, both hands
grasping the arms of the chair. Every eye in the room was now turned
towards the door. As it opened, the Seigneur sank back in the chair, a
look of helpless misery, touched by a fierce pride, covering his face.
“Louis!”
It was Madelinette, who, disregarding the assembled company, ran forward
to him and caught both his hands in hers.
“O Louis, I have heard of your accident, and--” she stopped suddenly
short. The Governor turned away his head. Every person in the room did
the same. For as she bent over him--she saw. She saw for the first time;
for the first time knew!
A look of horrified amazement, of shrinking anguish, crossed over her
face. He felt the lightning-like silence, he knew that she had seen; he
struggled to his feet, staring fiercely at her.
That one torturing instant had taken all the colour from her face, but
there was a strange brightness in her eyes, a new power in her bearing.
She gently forced him into the seat again.
“You are not strong enough, Louis. You must be tranquil.”
She turned now to the Governor. He made a sign to his suite, who,
bowing, slowly left the room. “Permit me to welcome you to your native
land again, Madame,” he said. “You have won for it a distinction it
could never have earned, and the world gives you many honours.”
She was smiling and still, and with one hand clasping her husband’s, she
said:
“The honour I value most my native land has given me: I am lady of the
Manor here, and wife of the Seigneur Racine.”
Agitated triumph came upon Louis Racine’s face; a weird painful vanity
entered into him. He stood up beside his wife, as she turned and looked
at him, showing not a sign that what she saw disturbed her.
“It is no mushroom honour to be Seigneur of Pontiac, your Excellency,”
he said, in a tone that jarred. “The barony is two hundred years old. By
rights granted from the crown of France, I am Baron of Pontiac.”
“I think England has not yet recognised the title,” said the Governor
suggestively, for he was here to make peace, and in the presence of this
man, whose mental torture was extreme, he would not allow himself to be
irritated.
“Our baronies have never been recognised,” said the Seigneur harshly.
“And yet we are asked to love the flag of England and--”
“And to show that we are too proud to ask for a right that none can
take away,” interposed Madelinette graciously and eagerly, as though to
prevent Louis from saying what he intended. All at once she had had to
order her life anew, to replace old thoughts by new ones. “We honour and
obey the rulers of our land, and fly the English flag, and welcome the
English Governor gladly when he comes to us--will your Excellency have
some refreshment?” she added quickly, for she saw the cloud on the
Seigneur’s brow. “Louis,” she added quickly, “will you--”
“I have ordered refreshment,” said the Seigneur excitedly, the storm
passing from his face, however. “Havel, Tardif--where are you, fellows!”
He stamped his foot imperiously.
Havel entered with a tray of wine and glasses, followed by Tardif loaded
with cakes and comfits, and set them on the table.
Ten minutes later the Governor took his leave. At the front door he
stopped surprised, for a guard of honour of twenty men were drawn up. He
turned to the Seigneur.
“What soldiers are these?” he asked.
“The Seigneury company, your Excellency,” replied Louis.
“What uniform is it they wear?” he asked in an even tone, but with a
black look in his eye, which did not escape Madelinette.
“The livery of the Barony of Pontiac,” answered the Seigneur.
The Governor looked at them a moment without speaking. “It is French
uniform of the time of Louis Quinze,” he said. “Picturesque, but
informal,” he added.
He went over, and taking a carbine from one of the men, examined
it. “Your carbines are not so unconventional and antique,” he
said meaningly, and with a frosty smile. “The compromise of the
centuries--hein?” he added to the Cure, who, with the Avocat, was now
looking on with some trepidation. “I am wondering if it is quite
legal. It is charming to have such a guard of honour, but I am
wondering--wondering--eh, monsieur l’avocat, is it legal?”
The Avocat made no reply, but the Cure’s face was greatly troubled. The
Seigneur’s momentary placidity passed.
“I answer for their legality, your Excellency,” he said, in a high,
assertive voice.
“Of course, of course, you will answer for it,” said the Governor,
smiling enigmatically. He came forward and held out his hand to
Madelinette.
“Madame, I shall remember your kindness, and I appreciate the simple
honours done me here. Your arrival at the moment of my visit is a happy
circumstance.”
There was a meaning in his eye--not in his voice--which went straight
to Madelinette’s understanding. She murmured something in reply, and a
moment afterwards the Governor, his suite, and the crowd were gone; and
the men-at-arms-the fantastic body of men in their antique livery-armed
with the latest modern weapons, had gone back to civic life again.
Inside the house once more, Madelinette laid her hand upon Louis’ arm
with a smile that wholly deceived him for a moment. He thought now that
she must have known of his deformity before she came--the world was so
full of tale-bearers--and no doubt had long since reconciled herself
to the painful fact. She had shown no surprise, no shrinking. There
had been only the one lightning instant in which he had felt a kind of
suspension of her breath and being, but when he had looked her in
the face, she was composed and smiling. After all his frightened
anticipation the great moment had come and gone without tragedy. With
satisfaction he looked in the mirror in the hall as they passed inside
the house. He saw no reason to quarrel with his face. Was it possible
that the deformity did not matter after all?
He felt Madelinette’s hand on his arm. He turned and clasped her to his
breast.
He did not notice that she kept her hands under her chin as he drew
her to him, that she did not, as had been her wont, put them on his
shoulders. He did not feel her shrink, and no one, seeing, could have
said that she shrank from him in ever so little.
“How beautiful you are!” he said, as he looked into her face.
“How glad I am to be here again, and how tired I am, Louis!” she said.
“I’ve driven thirty miles since daylight.” She disengaged herself. “I am
going to sleep now,” she added. “I am going to turn the key in my door
till evening. Please tell Madame Marie so, Louis.”
Inside her room alone she flung herself on her bed in agony and despair.
“Louis--Oh, my God!” she cried, and sobbed and sobbed her strength away.