CHAPTER IV.
AN UNKNOWN IRRITANT.
"Il est de ces longs jours d"indicible malaise Ou l"on voudrait dormir du lourd sommeil des morts, De ces heures d"angoisse ou l"existence pese Sur l"ame et sur le corps."
Two or three weeks went by, and, although Bidiane"s headquarters were nominally at the inn, she visited the horseshoe cottage morning, noon, and night.
Rose always smiled when she heard the rustling of her silk-lined skirts, and often murmured:
"Sa robe fait froufrou, froufrou, Ses pet.i.ts pieds font toc, toc, toc."
"I wonder how long she is going to stay here?" said Agapit, one day, to his cousin.
"She does not know,--she obeys Mr. Nimmo blindly, although sometimes she chatters of earning her own living."
"I do not think he would permit that," said Agapit, hastily.
"Nor I, but he does not tell her so."
"He is a kind of _Grand Monarque_ among you women. He speaks, and you listen; and now that Bidiane has broken the ice and we talk more freely of him, I may say that I do not approve of his keeping your boy any longer, although it is a foolish thing for me to mention, since you have never asked my advice on the subject."
"My dear brother," said Rose, softly, "in this one thing I have not agreed with you, because you are not a mother, and cannot understand. I feared to bring back my boy when he was delicate, lest he should die of the separation from Mr. Nimmo. It was better for me to cry myself to sleep for many nights than for me to have him for a few weeks, and then, perhaps, lay his little body in the cold ground. Where would then be my satisfaction? And now that he is strong, I console myself with the thought of the fine schools that he attends, I follow him every hour of the day, through the letters that Mr. Nimmo sends to Bidiane. As I dust my room in the morning, I hold conversations with him.
"I say, "How goes the Latin, little one, and the Greek? They are hard, but do not give up. Some day thou wilt be a clever man." All the time I talk to him. I tell him of every happening on the Bay. Naturally I cannot put all this in my letters to him, that are few and short on account of--well you know why I do not write too much. Agapit, I do not dare to bring him back. He gives that dear young man an object in life; he also interests his mother, who now loves me, through my child. I speak of the schools, and yet it is not altogether for that, for have we not a good college for boys here on the Bay? It is something higher. It is for the good of souls that he stays away. Not yet, not yet, can I recall him. It would not seem right, and I cannot do what is wrong; also there is his father."
Agapit, with a resigned gesture, drew on his gloves. He had been making a short call and was just about to return home.
"Are you going to the inn?" asked Rose.
"Why should I call there?" he said, a trifle irritably. "I have not the time to dance attendance on young girls."
Rose was lost in gentle amazement at Agapit"s recent att.i.tude towards Bidiane. Her mind ran back to the long winter and summer evenings when he had come to her house, and had sat for hours reading the letters from Paris. He had taken a profound interest in the little renegade. Step by step he had followed her career. He had felt himself in a measure responsible for the successful issue of the venture in taking her abroad. And had he not often spoken delightedly of her return, and her probable dissemination among the young people of the stock of new ideas that she would be sure to bring with her?
This was just what she had done. She had enlarged the circle of her acquaintance, and every one liked her, every one admired her. Day after day she flashed up and down the Bay, on the bicycle that she had brought with her from Paris, and, as she flew by the houses, even the old women left their windows and hobbled to the door to catch a gay salutation from her.
Only Agapit was dissatisfied, only Agapit did not praise her, and Rose on this day, as she stood wistfully looking into his face, carried on an internal soliloquy. It must be because she represents Mr. Nimmo. She has been educated by him, she reveres him. He has only lent her to the Bay, and will some day take her away, and Agapit, who feels this, is jealous because he is rich, and because he will not forgive. It is strange that the best of men and women are so human; but our dear Lord will some day melt their hearts; and Rose, who had never disliked any one and had not an enemy in the world, checked a sigh and endeavored to turn her thoughts to some more agreeable subject.
Agapit, however, still stood before her, and while he was there it was difficult to think of anything else. Then he presently asked a distracting question, and one that completely upset her again, although it was put in a would-be careless tone of voice.
"Does the Poirier boy go much to the inn?"
Rose tried to conceal her emotion, but it was hard for her to do so, as she felt that she had just been afforded a painful lightning glance into Agapit"s mind. He felt that he was growing old. Bidiane was a.s.sociating with the girls and young men who had been mere children five years before. The Poirier boy, in particular, had grown up with amazing rapidity and precociousness. He was handsomer, far handsomer than Agapit had ever been, he was also very clever, and very much made of on account of his being the most distinguished pupil in the college of Sainte-Anne, that was presided over by the Eudist fathers from France.
"Agapit," she said, suddenly, and in sweet, patient alarm, "are we getting old, you and I?"
"We shall soon be thirty," he said, gruffly, and he turned away.
Rose had never before thought much on the subject of her age. Whatever traces the slow, painful years had left on her inner soul, there were no revealing marks on the outer countenance of her body. Her gla.s.s showed her still an unruffled, peaceful face, a delicate skin, an eye undimmed, and the same beautiful abundance of shining hair.
"But, Agapit," she said, earnestly, "this is absurd. We are in our prime. Only you are obliged to wear gla.s.ses. And even if we were old, it would not be a terrible thing--there is too much praise of youth. It is a charming time, and yet it is a time of follies. As for me, I love the old ones. Only as we grow older do we find rest."
"The follies of youth," repeated Agapit, sarcastically, "yes, such follies as we have had,--the racking anxiety to find food to put in one"s mouth, to find sticks for the fire, books for the shelf. Yes, that is fine folly. I do not wonder that you sigh for age."
Rose followed him to the front door, where he stood on the threshold and looked down at the river.
"Some days I wish I were there," he said, wearily.
Rose had come to the end of her philosophy, and in real alarm she examined his irritated, disheartened face. "I believe that you are hungry," she said at last.
"No, I am not,--I have a headache. I was up all last night reading a book on Commercial Law. I could not eat to-day, but I am not hungry."
"You are starving--come, take off your gloves," she said, peremptorily.
"You shall have such a fine little dinner. I know what Celina is preparing, and I will a.s.sist her so that you may have it soon. Go lie down there in the sitting-room."
"I do not wish to stay," said Agapit, disagreeably; "I am like a bear."
"The first true word that you have spoken," she said, shaking a finger at him. "You are not like my good Agapit to-day. See, I will leave you for a time--Jovite, Jovite," and she went to the back door and waved her hand in the direction of the stable. "Go take out Monsieur LeNoir"s horse. He stays to dinner."
After dinner she persuaded him to go down to the inn with her. Bidiane was in the parlor, sitting before a piano that Vesper had had sent from Boston for her. Two young Acadien girls were beside her, and when they were not laughing and exchanging jokes, they sang French songs, the favorite one being "_Un Canadien Errant_," to which they returned over and over again.
Several shy young captains from schooners in the Bay were sitting tilted back on chairs on the veranda, each one with a straw held between his teeth to give him countenance. Agapit joined them, while Rose went in the parlor and a.s.sisted the girls with their singing. She did not feel much older than they did. It was curious how this question of age oppressed some people; and she glanced through the window at Agapit"s now reasonably contented face.
"I am glad you came with him," whispered Bidiane, mischievously. "He avoids me now, and I am quite afraid of him. The poor man, he thought to find me a blue-stocking, discussing dictionaries and encyclopaedias; he finds me empty-headed and silly, so he abandons me to the younger set, although I admire him so deeply. You, at least, will never give me up,"
and she sighed and laughed at the same time, and affectionately squeezed Rose"s hand.
Rose laughed too. She was becoming more light-hearted under Bidiane"s half-nonsensical, half-sensible influence, and the two young Acadien girls politely averted their surprised eyes from the saint who would condescend to lay aside for a minute her crown of martyrdom. All the Bay knew that she had had some trouble, although they did not know what it was.
CHAPTER V.
BIDIANE PLAYS AN OVERTURE.
"I"ve tried the force of every reason on him, Soothed and caressed, been angry, soothed again."
ADDISON.
A few days later, Bidiane happened to be caught in a predicament, when none of her new friends were near, and she was forced to avail herself of Agapit"s a.s.sistance.
She had been on her wheel nearly to Weymouth to make a call on one of her numerous and newly acquired girl friends. Merrily she was gliding homeward, and being on a short stretch of road bounded by hay-fields that contained no houses, and fancying that no one was near her, she lifted up her voice in a saucy refrain, "_L"homme qui m"aura, il n"aura pas tout ce qu"il voudra_" (The man that gets me, will not get all he wants).
"_La femme qui m"aura, elle n"aura pas tout ce qu"elle voudra_" (The woman that gets me, she"ll not get all she wants), chanted Agapit, who was coming behind in his buggy.