The Lane That Had No Turning | Page 4

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