The young Acadien was on horseback. His stolid, fine-featured face was as immovable as marble, as he jogged by, but there was some play between his violet eyes and Bidiane"s tawny ones that Agapit did not catch, but strongly suspected.
"Do you wish to speak to him?" he inquired, coldly, when Bidiane stretched her neck outside the buggy to gaze after him.
"No," she said, composedly, "I only want to see how he sits his horse.
He is my first admirer," she added, demurely, but with irrepressible glee.
"Indeed,--I should fancy that mademoiselle might have had several."
"What,--and I am only seventeen? You are crazy, my dear sir,--I am only beginning that sort of thing. It is very amusing to have young men come to see you; although, of course," she interpolated, modestly, "I shall not make a choice for some years yet."
"I should hope not," said her companion, stiffly.
"I say I have never had an admirer; yet sometimes gay young men would stare at me in the street,--I suppose on account of this red hair,--and Mr. Nimmo would be very much annoyed with them."
"A city is a wicked place; it is well that you have come home."
"With that I console myself when I am sometimes lonely for Paris," said Bidiane, wistfully. "I long to see those entrancing streets and parks, and to mingle with the lively crowds of people; but I say to myself what Mr. Nimmo often told me, that one can be as happy in one place as in another, and home is the best of all to keep the heart fresh. "Bidiane,"
he said, one day, when I was extolling the beauties of Paris, "I would give it all for one glimpse of the wind-swept sh.o.r.es of your native Bay.""
"Ah, he still thinks that!"
"Yes, yes; though I never after heard him say anything like it. I only know his feelings through his mother."
Agapit turned the conversation to other subjects. He never cared to discuss Vesper Nimmo for any length of time.
When they reached the Sleeping Water Inn, Bidiane hospitably invited him to stay to supper.
"No, thank you,--I must hurry on to Cheticamp."
"Good-by, then; you were kind to bring me home. Shall we not be better friends in future?"
"Yes, yes," said Agapit, hurriedly. "I apologize, mademoiselle," and jumping into his buggy, he drove quickly away.
Bidiane"s gay face clouded. "You are not very polite to me, sir.
Sometimes you smile like a sunbeam, and sometimes you glower like a rain-cloud, but I"ll find out what is the matter with you, if it takes me a year. It is very discomposing to be treated so."
CHAPTER VI.
A SNAKE IN THE GRa.s.s INTERFERES WITH THE EDUCATION OF MIRABELLE MARIE.
"Fair is the earth and fair is the sky; G.o.d of the tempest, G.o.d of the calm, What must be heaven when here is such balm?"
--_Aminta._
Bidiane, being of a practical turn of mind, and having a tremendous fund of energy to bestow upon the world in some way or other, was doing her best to follow the hint given her by Vesper Nimmo, that she should, as a means of furthering her education, spend some time at the Sleeping Water Inn, with the object of imparting to Mirabelle Marie a few ideas. .h.i.therto outside her narrow range of thought.
Sometimes the girl became provoked with her aunt, sometimes she had to check herself severely, and rapidly mutter Vesper"s incantation, "Do not despise any one; if you do, it will be at a great loss to yourself."
At other times Bidiane had no need to think of the incantation. Her aunt was so good-natured, so forgiving, she was so full of pride in her young niece, that it seemed as if only the most intense provocation could justify any impatience with her.
Mirabelle Marie loved Bidiane almost as well as she loved her own children, and it was only some radical measure, such as the changing of her sneaks at sundown for a pair of slippers, or the sitting in the parlor instead of the kitchen, that excited her rebellion. However, she readily yielded,--these skirmishes were not the occurrences that vexed Bidiane"s soul. The renewed battles were the things that discouraged her. No victory was sustained. Each day she must contend for what had been conceded the day before, and she was tortured by the knowledge that so little hold had she on Mirabelle Marie"s slippery soul that, if she were to leave Sleeping Water on any certain day, by the next one matters would at once slip back to their former condition.
"Do not be discouraged," Vesper wrote her. "The Bay was not built in a day. Some of your ancestors lived in camps in the woods."
This was an allusion on his part to the grandmother of Mrs. Watercrow, who had actually been a squaw, and Bidiane, as a highly civilized being, winced slightly at it. Very little of the Indian strain had entered her veins, except a few drops that were exhibited in a pa.s.sion for rambling in the woods. She was more like her French ancestors, but her aunt had the lazy, careless blood, as had also her children.
One of the chief difficulties that Bidiane had to contend with, in her aunt, was her irreligion. Mirabelle Marie had weak religious instincts.
She had as a child, and as a very young woman, been an adherent of the Roman Catholic Church, and had obtained some grasp of its doctrines.
When, in order to become "stylish," she had forsaken this church, she found herself in the position of a forlorn dog who, having dropped his substantial bone, finds himself groping for a shadow. Protestantism was an empty word to her. She could not comprehend it; and Bidiane, although a Protestant herself, shrewdly made up her mind that there was no hope for her aunt save in the church of her forefathers. However, in what way to get her back to it,--that was the question. She scolded, entreated, reasoned, but all in vain. Mirabelle Marie lounged about the house all day Sunday, very often, strange to say, amusing herself with declamations against the irreligion of the people of Boston.
Bidiane"s opportunity to change this state of affairs at last came, and all unthinkingly she embraced it.
The opportunity began on a hot and windy afternoon, a few days after her drive with Agapit. She sat on the veranda reading, until struck by a sudden thought which made her close her book, and glance up and down the long road, to see if the flying clouds of dust were escorting any approaching traveller to the inn. No one was coming, so she hastily left the house and ran across the road to the narrow green field that lay between the inn and the Bay.
The field was bounded by straggling rows of raspberry bushes, and over the bushes hung a few apple-trees,--meek, patient trees, their backs bent from stooping before the strong westerly winds, their short, stubby foliage blown all over their surprised heads.
There was a sheep-pen in the corner of the field next the road, and near it was a barred gate, opening on a winding path that led down to the flat sh.o.r.e. Bidiane went through the gate, frowned slightly at a mowing-machine left out-of-doors for many days by the careless Claude, then laughed at the handle of its uplifted brake, that looked like a disconsolate and protesting arm raised to the sky.
All the family were in the hay field. Two white oxen drew the hay wagon slowly to and fro, while Claudine and the two boys circled about it, raking together scattered wisps left from the big c.o.c.ks that Claude threw up to Mirabelle Marie.
The mistress of the house was in her element. She gloried in haying, which was the only form of exercise that appealed in the least to her.
Her face was overspread by a grin of delight, her red dress fluttered in the strong breeze, and she gleefully jumped up and down on top of the load, and superimposed her fat jolly weight on the ma.s.ses of hay.
Bidiane ran towards them, dilating her small nostrils as she ran to catch the many delicious odors of the summer air. The strong perfume of the hay overpowered them all, and, in an intoxication of delight, she dropped on a heap of it, and raised an armful to her face.
A squeal from Claudine roused her. Her rake had uncovered a mouse"s nest, and she was busily engaged in killing every one of the tiny velvety creatures.
"But why do you do it?" asked Bidiane, running up to her.
Claudine stared at her. She was a magnificent specimen of womanhood as she stood in the blazing light of the sun, and Bidiane, even in the midst of her subdued indignation, thought of some lines in the Shakespeare that she had just laid down:
""Tis not your inky brows, your black silk hair, Your bugle eyeb.a.l.l.s, nor your cheek of cream, That can entame my spirits to your worship."
Claudine was carrying on a vigorous line of reasoning. She admired Bidiane intensely, and she quietly listened with pleasure to what she called her _rocamboles_ of the olden times, which were Bidiane"s tales of Acadien exploits and sufferings. She was a more apt pupil than the dense and silly Mirabelle Marie.
"If I was a mouse I wouldn"t like to be killed," she said, presently, going on with her raking; and Bidiane, having made her think, was satisfied.
"Now, Claudine," she said, "you must be tired. Give me your rake, and do you go up to the house and rest."
"Yes, go, Claudine," said Mirabelle Marie, from her height, "you look drug out."
"I am not tired," said Claudine, in French, "and I shall not give my rake to you, Bidiane. You are not used to work."
Bidiane bubbled over into low, rippling laughter. "I delicate,--ah, that is good! Give me your rake, Claude. You go up to the barn now, do you not?"