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Side by side with it went a Nationalist agitation of ever-increasing boldness against the war. Ammunition for this campaign was readily found in the imputations, innuendoes, charges, mendacities of the Labor and pacifist extremists of Great Britain and France; they lost none of their malignancy in the retelling. Bourassa included Laurier in the scope of his denunciations.
In Quebec, Monk, Conservative, and the Nationalist, Bourassa, who entering Parliament as a follower of Laurier had developed a strong antipathy to him, were indefatigable in alarming the habitant by interpreting to him the secret purposes of the naval service bill.
Their opportunity came even sooner than they had expected. A trader named Bourassa, who had left Fort St Charles for Michilimackinac shortly before the setting out of Jean de La Vérendrye and his party, had camped for the night on the banks of the Rainy river. The following morning, as he was about to push off from the shore, he was surrounded by thirty canoes manned by a hundred Sioux.
Laurier tried to steer a middle course, but the attacks of ultra-imperialists in Ontario and of ultra-nationalists in Quebec, led henceforward by a brilliant and eloquent grandson of Papineau, Henri Bourassa, hampered him at every turn. The South African War gave a new unity to English-speaking Canada, but it widened the gap between the French and English sections.
In his own account of what happened he is, indeed, careful to omit any mention of this particular incident. The Sioux released Bourassa, after taking possession of his arms and supplies. Then they paddled down to the lake, where they were only too successful in finding the French and in making them the victims of the cruel joke of the Chippewas.
In the hall she met Father Bourassa. "Go with him to the hospital," she whispered, and disappeared through the doorway. Immediately after she had gone, a man came driving hard to bring Father Bourassa to visit a dying Catholic in the prairie, and it was Finden who accompanied Varley to the hospital, waited for him till his examination of the "casual" was concluded, and met him outside.
"Can it be done?" he asked of Varley. "I'll take word to Father Bourassa." "It can be done it will be done," answered Varley, absently. "I do not understand the man. He has been in a different sphere of life. He tried to hide it, but the speech occasionally! I wonder." "You wonder if he's worth saving?" Varley shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "No; that's not what I meant."
Afterwards Father Bourassa made up his mind that the confession had a purpose behind it other than repentance, and he deeply resented the use to which he thought he was being put a kind of spy upon the beautiful woman whom Jansen loved, and who, in spite of any outward flippancy, was above reproach.
Ten years before, she would not have appreciated or understood him, this intellectual, clean-shaven, rigidly abstemious man, whose pleasures belonged to the fishing-rod and the gun and the horse, and who had come to be so great a friend of him who had been her best friend Father Bourassa.
Finden spoke once more, but Varley did not hear him. Presently the door opened and Father Bourassa entered. He made a gesture of the hand to signify that all was over.
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