It was the second week in May when the seigniory farmers began to
arrive and closet themselves with Mr. Ewart in the office. The "going"
was atrocious, and the appearance at the side door of the clay-clogged
cariole, buggy, _caleche_ and farm-cart, bore witness to this fact.
Jamie and I were on the watch for each arrival. We knew nearly all of
these habitant-farmers. They hitched their "team", and spent hours
with Mr. Ewart. Sometimes, when we were in the living-room, we could
hear voices from the office in lively and earnest discussion. We
remarked the air of pride and satisfaction with which each one
unhitched his horse, climbed into his special conveyance, slapped the
reins on his animal's back and was off with a merry "Bonnes nouvelles!"
to his habitant-wife who, while waiting for her husband, had been in
the kitchen exchanging courtesies with Angelique, and feasting on
freshly fried doughnuts and hot coffee. The notary from
Richelieu-en-Bas, as well as the county surveyor, were also closeted
with Mr. Ewart; they arrived after breakfast and left before supper.
At dinner they were our guests, but no business topics were mentioned.
By Saturday, the routine of visitation was concluded. The notary
departed with his green baize bag apparently bursting with documents.
It was Angelique who informed us after his departure that the seignior
had been receiving the seignioral rents with his own hand.
The next morning at the breakfast table, Mr. Ewart asked me if I would
help him to audit some accounts, the farmers having just paid their
half-yearly rents.
"At what hour?" I asked.
"I shall need your help for the entire forenoon and probably for an
hour or two after dinner. Shall we say at nine?"
"Can't I help?" said Jamie, rather half-heartedly I must confess.
Mr. Ewart took in the situation by the tone, and smiled as he answered:
"No; you 're too busy with your work; the prose of figures would n't
appeal to you just now."
"Would n't they though! Try me on a check from my publisher."
"It's the point of view, after all, that changes proportions, is n't
it? Are you going to work in here?"
"Yes; I need about four by eight feet of surface to keep my ideas from
jostling one another, and this dining-room table is about the right fit
when I 'm comparing pages of manuscript with first galley proofs."
"Good luck, then; we 'll not disturb you till dinner."
An hour later when I went into the office, I found Mr. Ewart at his
desk. Beside him was a large tin box, twice as large as a bread-box.
On top lay two pairs of his thick driving-gloves. I must have looked
my surprise, for he laughed as he rose to place two chairs, one on each
side of the only table in the room--a fine old square one of ancient
curly birch, generally bare, but now covered with a square of oil cloth.
"What next? I can't wait for developments to explain all this
paraphernalia," I said; my curiosity was thoroughly roused.
"These." He held out a pair of the driving-gloves. "You are to put
them on, please, and not to take them off till I give you permission."
Mystified, I obeyed. He set down the tin box on the table between us;
opened wide both windows to let in the tonic air, that began to hint of
real spring, and, drawing on the other pair of gloves, took his seat
opposite me at the table. I could not help laughing.
"How does this performance strike you?" he asked, amused at my
amusement.
"Like the prelude to some absolutely ridiculous rite, unknown to me."
"That is just what it is." He spoke so emphatically, so earnestly,
that I was still further mystified. "You have hit the bull's-eye. It
is a ridiculous rite, and, thank God, it's for the last time that I am
chief mummer in it. Here in this box, Miss Farrell," he went on
unlocking it and displaying a conglomerate mass of silver and soiled
paper money, "are rents, seigniorial rents, paid by men who farm it on
the seigniory, whose fathers and fathers' fathers have worked this
ground before them, men who should own this land, to a man who should
not own it in the existing conditions--conditions that have no place in
the body politic, here or anywhere else. It's a left-over from
medievalism--and I am about to do away with this order of things, to
prove myself a man."
"You believe, then, in the ownership of the land by the many?" I asked
eagerly. I was glad to get his point of view. The discussions between
him, Doctor Rugvie and Jamie, were always of great interest to me.
Although I knew something of his plans from the other two, he had never
mentioned them to me. I saw he was speaking with great feeling.
"Believe in it! It's the first article in my political and
sociological creed. I 've come back here to Canada, where I was born,
to incorporate it in action.-- And you 're wondering where you come
in, in this experiment, I 'll wager," he said gayly.
I answered him in the same vein: "I confess, I fail to see the
connection between your driving-gloves on my hands, your strong box
between us--and the first article of your creed."
"Of course you don't!" He laughed aloud at my mental plight and his
own manner of announcing his special tenet. "I 'll begin at the
beginning and present the matter by the handle. I want you to grasp it
right in the first place."
"Thank you," I said meekly; "not being a feminine John Stuart Mill, I
need all the enlightenment I can have on the presence of this worldly
dross that lies between us. Facts contradict theories."
With a sudden, almost passionate movement, he shoved the box to one
side on the table; it was no longer between us. I knew there was
significance in his impulsive action, but I failed to understand what
it indicated.
"It's taking rather a mean advantage of a woman, I own, to ask her on
the spur of the moment to share a man's political and sociological
views--but I want you to share mine, and enlightenment is your due."
"And in the meantime am I to keep on the gloves?"
He laughed again. "Yes; keep them on and help me out of this scrape--I
have never felt so humiliated in my life as I have taking this money.
Now I 'll be rational. You see, smallpox roams at times through
Canada. This money has been stored in stockings, instead of banks,
after having been hoarded, handled, greased, soiled by a generation or
more. You 'll find dates of issue on these notes that are a good deal
older than you, and silver minted in the early sixties. Now I want
your help in counting over--auditing, we 'll call it--this mass of
corruption. And I don't intend you shall run any risk in handling even
a small part of it--hence the gloves and the fresh air. After we 're
through with it, we will pack the filthy lucre in the box and express
it to a Montreal bank. It is n't mine--at least I do not consider it
so."
"Why not?"
"Because I am going to apply these half-yearly rents in reducing the
interest on the money I am loaning these farmers, in order to enable
them to buy the best implements and cultivate their land more
intelligently. This I may say to you, but to no one else."
"You are going to sell them the land?"
"The greater part of it. The forest I keep, because I love that work
and hope in time to make a sufficient income from it, in case of actual
need. In fact, I 've been working all the week with the notary to get
the deeds in order."
"So that was their 'bonnes nouvelles'?"
"You heard them?"
"Yes. They looked so happy--"
"Oh, I am glad; glad too, that you could see something of their
pleasure in this special work of mine. Do you know,"--he leaned
towards me over the table,--"that I have asked you to help me with this
as a matter of pure sentiment?"
His eyes sought mine, but I am sure they found only an enquiring turn
of mind in them, for I could not imagine where the sentiment was in
evidence.
"I see I 'll have to explain," he said smiling. "I want you, an
American with all the free inheritance of the American, to share with
me in this last rite of mediaevalism, in order that in the future we may
look back to it--and mark our own progress."
Oh, that word "our"! Used so freely, it rejoiced me. He intended this
affair to mark some epoch in his life and mine. I waited for him to
say something further. But, instead, he turned to the business in hand
and we set to work. To be sure the "auditing" on my part was a mere
farce; for not only did Mr. Ewart do most of the counting, and making
into bundles of a hundred, but he insisted on my not bending close over
the currency to watch him. As I told him, "After asking me to help
you, you keep me at arm's distance."
Whereupon he smiled in an amused way, and said engagingly, but firmly:
"There is no question of my keeping you at a distance. Don't mind my
crotchets, Miss Farrell, I have a fancy to have you here with me at the
obsequies of all this sixteenth-in-the-twentieth century nonsense. At
forty-six, I still have my dreams. You 'll be good enough to indulge
me, won't you?"
"If that's all, I think I can indulge you. But is there nothing I can
do to be of some real help?"
"Nothing but to lend me your companionship during this trying ordeal.
You might fill out some labels--you 'll find them in that handy-box on
the desk--with the words 'hundred' and 'fifty', and I 'll gum them on
to these slips for the money rolls."
For a few minutes I busied myself with the labels. After that, I
watched his swift counting of bills and silver, and his ordering them
into neat packages and rolls. Before long, however, I took matters
into my own gloved hand and, without so much as "by your leave", began
the recount, labelling as I went on. Within an hour the work was
finished and a smaller tin box packed.
"How much did you make it?" he asked, before locking the box.
"Three thousand four hundred and twenty-two, just."
"The rate of interest I charge them is two per cent, and this amount
will reduce that greatly."
"Do you mean that you are letting them have the land, supplying money
to help them cultivate it, and charging only two per cent interest?"
"Why should I charge more? They are the ones who are doing the land
good. You see, the use of this rent-accumulation to reduce their
interest rate for the first year or two, is a part of my general
scheme. They are to apply their half-yearly rents as purchase money
for their land; this is in the deeds. Within a comparatively short
period, this assures to each of them a freehold. The valuation I have
put on their land is regulated by the amount of work they have put out
on it, and the time they have lived on it.
"Take old Mere Guillardeau, for instance. She has an 'arpent' now of
her very own. She, and her father, and her father's father have lived
on these seigniory lands for nearly two hundred years. I value that
land by discounting the value of the service rendered to it in four
generations. Her little 'cabane' is her own, having been built by her
father. The land is worth to her all the accumulated value of those
generations of toil; to me, who have never done anything for it,
neither I nor my fathers, it is worth exactly ten dollars--now, don't
laugh!--her yearly rent."
"And that buys it!" I exclaimed, wondering what kind of finance this
might be, frenzied or sane.
"It is hers--and I have the pleasure of knowing it is hers while I am
living. She and her old daughter of seventy drove out here the other
day in Farmer Boucher's cart, and when she went home she carried the
deed with her to have it registered. Old Andre's sister is a hundred
years old in January--a hundred years, the product of one piece of
land, for, practically they have lived from it with a yearly pig, a
cow, a few hens and a garden. Ninety years of toil she has spent upon
it. Would you, in the circumstances, have dared to make the time of
purchase one year, six months even, and she nearly a centenarian?"
"No." I was beginning to understand.
"And take old Jo Latour. You know him well, for I hear from him how
many times you have been there on snow-shoes to take him something
'comforting and warming', as he says. Jo has rheumatism, the kind that
catches him when he is sitting in his chair or stooping, and prevents
his getting up; and at last, when he manages to stand upright, it won't
let him bend or sit down again until after painful effort. What can he
do? Boil maple syrup once a year, or chop a cord or two of wood at a
dollar a cord? He is seventy-two and has no family as you know. What
is he going to do when the pinch becomes too hard? He has a small
woodlot, a little garden, a patch of tobacco--is happy all day long
with his dog and pipe, despite that rheumatic crippling. I have valued
his lot at twenty dollars, and a year's rent will pay for it--with the
help of this," he added, touching the box.
"I am learning how to take hold of the matter by the handle. Enlighten
me some more, please."
"I could go on for hours into more detail, but I am going to mention
only two other families, to show how my plan works. There are
Dominique Montferrand and Maxime Longeman, men of thirty or
thereabouts, fine strong men with their broods of six and eight. They
marry young; work hard and faithfully; shun the cabarets; save their
surplus earnings. They were born on the land; they love it and give it
of their best toil; it responds to good treatment. Their dairy is one
of the best; their stock superior. They have seventy-five acres each.
I asked them to value it themselves. They showed they appreciated the
worth of the land by the price they set: four thousand dollars--four
thousand 'pieces'. They would not cheapen it--not even for the sake of
getting it more quickly. A man appreciates that spirit. I have set
the period for half-yearly payments at ten years--and I will help out
with improved farm implements at the rate of interest I mentioned.
"In less than ten years, if the crops are good, it is theirs. If the
crops are poor, they can still pay for it in the period set. They are
young. They have something to work for during the best years of their
lives."
"But how do you feel about parting with all this land that was your
ancestors? Are n't you, too, bound to it by ties of value given?"
"Me? My ancestors!" he exclaimed. "Where did you get that idea? Who
told you that this was ancestral land of mine?"
"Mrs. Macleod, or Jamie, intimated it was yours by inheritance."
"Hm--I must undeceive them. But _you_ are not to harbor such a thought
for a moment."
"I won't if you say so--but I would like to know how things stand." I
grew bold to ask, at the thought of his expressed confidence in me.
"Why, it's all so simple--"
"More simple, I hope, than all that matter of seigniorial rights and
transferences I read upon, in the Library before I came--and was no
wiser than before."
"And you thought-- Oh, this is rich!" he said, thoroughly amused.
I nodded. "Yes; I thought you were a seignior. I dreamed dreams,
before coming here of course, of retainers and ancestral halls, and
then--I was met by Cale at the boat landing!"
Mr. Ewart fairly shouted as he sensed my disappointment on the romantic
side upon discovering Cale.
"And the first thing you did, poor girl, was to lay a rag carpet strip
in the passageway for my seigniorial boots--spurred, of course, in your
imagination--to make wet snow tracks on! Oh, go on, go on; tell me
some more. I would n't miss this for anything."
Before I could speak there was a decided rap on the door.
"That's Jamie," I said; "he has come for the fun."
"Come in," cried Mr. Ewart. Jamie intruded his head; his rueful face
caused an outburst on my part.
"I say, Ewart, is it playing fair to a man to have all this unwonted
hilarity in business hours, and keep me out?"
"No more it is n't, mon vieux. Come in and hear about Miss Farrell's
seigniorial romancing."
"Go on, Marcia," said Jamie, sitting down by me.
"You 've misled me, Jamie. Did n't you, or Mrs. Macleod, tell me when
I first came that this Seigniory of Lamoral was Mr. Ewart's by
inheritance?"
"Well, it was in a way, was n't it, Gordon? It was a Ewart's?"
"Not in a way, even. I never thought enough about your view of the
matter to speak of it. Let's have a cigar, if Miss Farrell does n't
object, and I 'll tell what there is to tell--there 's so little!"
Jamie looked at me when Mr. Ewart rose to get the cigars--and looked
unutterable things. I read his thought: "Now is our time to find out
the truth of things heard and rumored."
"I was born in Canada, Miss Farrell," he said, between puffs, "as Jamie
knows, and educated in England. My mother's great-uncle, on her
mother's side, was a Ewart of Stoke Charity, a little place in the
south of England. While I was there, I was much with this great-uncle;
I bear his name. He owned this estate of Lamoral in Canada, that is,
two-thirds of the original seigniory; the other third belongs to the
present seignior and seignioress in Richelieu-en-Bas. He purchased it
from a Culbertson who inherited it from his grandfather, an officer of
prominence in the French and Indian wars. At that time, many of the
old French seigniories fell into the conqueror's hands, and, by the
power of a might that makes right, were allotted to various English
officers for distinguished services. The original Culbertson never
lived here. His grandson, my great-uncle's friend, never cared enough
for it to manage it himself; he left all to an agent and found it paid
him but little--so little that he was willing enough to sell two-thirds
of it, the neglected two-thirds, to my great-uncle.
"On my great-uncle's death, his grandson, my contemporary, inherited
it. I bought it of him ten years ago; but I have used it only as a
camping-place when I have been over from England or the Island
Continent. I paid for it with a part of what I earned on my sheep
ranch in Australia--so linking two parts of the Empire in my small
way--and I have never regretted it. That's all there is to tell of the
'inheritance' romance, Miss Farrell."
"Gordon--" Jamie stopped short; blew the smoke vigorously from his
lips, and began again. "Would you mind telling me how you came to want
to settle here?"
"Why? Because I am a Canadian, not an Englishman."
"Why do you always take pains to make that distinction?"
"That's easy to explain. Because a Canadian is never an Englishman; he
is Canadian heart and soul. You can't make him over into an
Englishman, no matter if you plant him in Oxford and train him in
Australia. I 've been enough in England to know that we are looked
upon for what we are--colonials, Canadians, just the other side of the
English pale although within the bounds of the British Empire. You
feel it in the air, social, political and economic. No drawing-room in
England accepts me as an Englishman--and I enter no drawing-room with
any wish to be other than a Canadian of the purest brand. We 're not
even English in our political rights over there. We are English only
in the law, as is the pariah of India. We want to be just Canadians,
inheritors of a land unequalled in its possibilities for human growth,
for human progress, for the carrying out of just, wise laws, for a
far-reaching economical largesse undreamed of in other lands--not
excepting yours," he said, turning to me.
"And would you mind telling me," I asked, emboldened by Jamie's
personal question, "how it has come about that you look upon your
special land ownership with such a broad human outlook?"
"And this really interests you?" He asked me in some surprise.
"It really interests me--why should n't it when I have my own
livelihood to earn? The economic question, so-called, seems to me to
resolve itself into the question: How are we, I and my brothers and
sisters, who work in one way and another, going to feed and clothe
ourselves--and yet not live by bread alone? But, I don't suppose you
know that side of it, only theoretically?"
"Yes, and no. I got all my inspiration about this land question in
England."
"In England!" Jamie repeated, showing his surprise. "That would seem
the last place for the advancement of such theories about land as I
have heard you explain more than once."
"In this way. The object lesson came from England--but was upside down
on my national retina. I had to re-adjust it in Canada. It's just
here; the condition of England is this--I have seen it with both bodily
and spiritual eyes:--That snug little, tight little island is what you
might call in athletic parlance 'muscle bound'. I 'll explain. For
more than a century she has colonized. What is left now? Her land
owned by the few; her population, that which is left, rapidly
pauperizing. England, with a land for the sustenance of millions, is
powerless to help, to succor her own. She has too much unused land, as
the muscle-bound athlete has too much muscle. It handicaps her in all
progress. Her classes are now two: the very poor, and the poor who
have no land; the rich who have practically all the land. In this
condition of things her economical and political system is drained of
it best.
"Scotch, English, Irish--the clearest brains, the best muscle, the
highest hearts, are coming over here to Canada. This land is the great
free land for the many. In settling here, I wanted to add my quota of
effort in the right direction. And I cannot see but that this little
piece of earth, three thousand acres in all, on which, for two hundred
years, men, women and children have succeeded one another, multiplying
as generation after generation, have gone on caring for the land,
living from it,--but never owning a foot of it,--is the best kind of an
experiment station for working out my principles. I am about to apply
the result of my English object lesson here in Lamoral. I have been
telling Miss Farrell about the disposition I intend to make of it,
gradually, of course. Perhaps you would like to hear sometime."
"Will you tell me about it in detail?" Jamie asked eagerly.
"I am only too pleased to find a listener, an interested one. Miss
Farrell has proven a good one--I've kept you already two hours." He
rose.
"Is it possible!" I was genuinely surprised. "The time had seemed so
short. I must go now and help Angelique with her new cake recipe--a
cake we eat only in the States, and a good object lesson on the
economic side." I rose and laid the gloves on the table. I had kept
them on just a little longer than was necessary--because they were his!
Foolish? Oh, yes, I knew it to be; but it was such a pleasure to
indulge myself in foolishness that concerned nobody's pleasure but my
own.
"Sometime I want to ask you a few questions, Miss Farrell," said Mr.
Ewart, as I turned to the door.
"What about?" I was a little on the defensive.
"I want to know how you came to have any such economic ideas in your
thinking-box?"
I turned again from the door to face him. "Have you ever lived in New
York?"
"No."
"Have you ever been there?" There was a moment's hesitancy before he
replied, thoughtfully:
"Yes; I have been through it several times."
"Then you must know something of the economic conditions of those four
millions?"
"Yes."
"Do I answer you, when I tell you I was one four-millionth for seven
years? That I struggled for my daily bread with the other four
millions; that after seven years I found myself going under in the
struggle, poor, alone, ill, with just twenty-two dollars to show for
the seven years of work? Can you wonder that I am interested in your
work after _my_ object lesson?"
For a moment there was silence in the office. I broke it.
"My two friends," I said lightly, "I have upstairs in my purse a little
sum of fourteen dollars that I received from Mrs. Macleod when I was in
New York; that was my passage money to Lamoral. I was too proud to owe
anything to any one unknown to me, so took fourteen dollars of my
twenty-two--all I possessed after the seven years' struggle--and paid
my own passage. I 've wondered again and again to whom I should return
this money. I have never had the courage to ask. Will you tell me
now?"
"I knew nothing of the money, Miss Farrell, or of you." Mr. Ewart
spoke at last in a steady, but strained voice. Jamie's eyes were
reddened. He held out his hand and I put mine into it.
"That was n't friendly of you, Marcia--you should have told us."
"Whose money is it, Jamie?"
"It's the Doctor's."
"His own?"
"His very own; he told me. Why?"
"Because I am so thankful to know that it is not from that accumulated
sum; you know what he said. I would not like to touch it, coming from
such an unknown source, besides--"
"Pardon me," said Mr. Ewart rising abruptly. Going to the side door he
called to Cale who was passing round the house. "I have to speak with
Cale."
He left the room, and Jamie and I stared at each other, an
interrogation point in the eyes of each.
The tin box still stood on the table.
"What's in that?" Jamie demanded.
"Filthy lucre," I said, turning for the second time to leave the room.
"Well, if Ewart's queer sometimes, as witness his abrupt departure, you
're queerer with your ideas of money."