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 assistance.

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.

Suddenly the girl's voice ceased; in the twinkling of an eye there had been a rip, a sudden evacuation of air from one of the rubber tubes on her wheel, and she had sprung to the road.

"Good afternoon," said Agapit, driving up, "you have punctured a tire."

"Yes," she replied, in dismay, "the wretched thing! If I knew which wicked stone it was that did it, I would throw it into the Bay."

"What will you do?"

"Oh, I do not know. I wish I had leather tires."

"I will take you to Sleeping Water, mademoiselle, if you wish."

"But I do not care to cause you that trouble," and she gazed mischievously and longingly up and down the road.

"It will not be a trouble," he said, gravely.

"Anything is a trouble that one does not enjoy."

"But there is duty, mademoiselle."

"Ah, yes, duty, dear duty," she said, making a face. "I have been instructed to love it, therefore I accept your offer. How fortunate for me that you happened to be driving by! Almost every one is haying. What shall we do with the wheel?"

"We can perhaps lash it on behind. I have some rope. No, it is too large. Well, we can at least wheel it to the post-office in Belliveau's Cove,--or stay, give me your wrench. I will take off the wheel, carry it to Meteghan River, and have it mended. I am going to Chéticamp to-night. To-morrow I will call for it and bring it to you."

"Oh, you are good,--I did not know that there is a repair shop at Meteghan River."

"There is,--they even make wheels."

"But the outside world does not know that. The train conductor told that if anything went wrong with my bicycle, I would have to send it to Yarmouth."

"The outside world does not know of many things that exist in Clare. Will you get into the buggy, mademoiselle? I will attend to this."

Bidiane meekly ensconced herself under the hood, and took the reins in her hands. "What are you going to do with the remains?" she asked, when Agapit put the injured wheel in beside her.

"We might leave them at Madame LeBlanc's," and he pointed to a white house in the distance. "She will send them to you by some passing cart."

"That is a good plan,--she is quite a friend of mine."

"I will go on foot, if you will drive my horse."

They at once set out, Bidiane driving, and Agapit walking silently along the grassy path at the side of the road.

The day was tranquil, charming, and a perfect specimen of "the divine weather" that Saint-Mary's Bay is said to enjoy in summer. Earlier in the afternoon there had been a soft roll of pearl gray fog on the Bay, in and out of which the schooners had been slipping like phantom ships. Now it had cleared away, and the long blue sweep of water was open to them. They could plainly see the opposite shores of long Digby Neck,--each fisherman's cottage, each comfortable farmhouse, each bit of forest sloping to the water's edge. Over these hills hung the sun, hot and glowing, as a sun should be in haying time. On Digby Neck the people were probably making hay. Here about them there had been a general desertion of the houses for work in the fields. Men, women, and children were up on the slopes on their left, and down on the banks on their right, the women's cotton dresses shining in gay spots of color against the green foliage of the evergreen and hardwood trees that grew singly or in groups about the extensive fields of grass.

Madame LeBlanc was not at home, so Agapit pinned a note to the bicycle, and left it standing outside her front gate with the comfortable assurance that, although it might be the object of curious glances, no one would touch it until the return of the mistress of the house.

Then he entered the buggy, and, with one glance into Bidiane's eyes, which were dancing with merriment, he took the reins from her and drove on briskly.

She stared at the magnificent panorama of purple hills and shining water spread out before them, and, remembering the company that she was in, tried to concentrate her attention on the tragic history of her countrymen. Her most earnest effort was in vain; she could not do so, and she endeavored to get further back, and con over the romantic exploits of Champlain and De Monts, whose oddly shaped ships had ploughed these waters; but here again she failed. Her mind came back, always irresistibly back, from the ancient past to the man of modern times seated beside her.

She was sorry that he did not like her; she had tried hard to please him. He really was wiser than any one she knew; could she not bring about a better understanding with him? If he only knew how ignorant she felt, how anxious she was to learn, perhaps he would not be so hard on her.

It was most unfortunate that she should have had on her bicycling dress. She had never heard him speak against the wheel as a means of exercise, yet she felt intuitively that he did not like it. He adored modest women, and in bicycling they were absolutely forced to occasionally show their ankles. Gradually and imperceptibly she drew her trim-gaitered feet under her blue skirt; then she put up a cautious hand to feel that her jaunty sailor hat was set straight on her coils of hair. Had he heard, she wondered, that six other Acadien girls, inspired by her example, were to have wheels? He would think that she had set the Bay crazy. Perhaps he regarded it as a misfortune that she had ever come back to it.

If he were any other man she would be furiously angry with him. She would not speak to him again. And, with an abrupt shrug of her shoulders, she watched the squawking progress of a gull from the Bay back to the woods, and then said, impulsively, "It is going to rain."

Agapit came out of his reverie and murmured an assent. Then he looked again into her yellowish brown, certainly charming eyes when full of sunlight, as they were at present from their unwinking stare at the bright sky.

"Up the Bay, Digby Neck was our barometer," she said, thoughtfully. "When it grew purple, we were to have rain. Here one observes the gulls, and the sign never fails,--a noisy flight is rain within twenty-four hours. The old gull is telling the young ones to stay back by the lake in the forest, I suppose."

Agapit tried to shake off his dreaminess and to carry on a conversation with her, but failed dismally, until he discovered that she was choking with suppressed laughter.

"Oh, pardon, pardon, monsieur; I was thinking--ah! how delicious is one's surprise at some things--I am thinking how absurd. You that I fancied would be a brother--you almost as angelic as Mr. Nimmo--you do not care for me at all. You try so hard, but I plague you, I annoy. But what will you? I cannot make myself over. I talk all the Acadienism that I can, but one cannot forever linger on the old times. You yourself say that one should not."

"So you think, mademoiselle, that I dislike you?"

"Think it, my dear sir,--I know it. All the Bay knows it."

"Then all the Bay is mistaken; I esteem you highly."

"Actions speak louder than words," and her teasing glance played about his shining glasses. "In order to be polite you perjure yourself."

"Mademoiselle!"

"I am sorry to be so terribly plain-spoken," she said, nodding her head shrewdly, yet childishly. "But I understand perfectly that you think I have a feather for a brain. You really cannot stoop to converse with me. You say, 'Oh, that deceived Mr. Nimmo! He thinks he has accomplished a wonderful thing. He says, "Come now, see what I have done for a child of the Bay; I will send her back to you. Fall down and worship her."'"

Agapit smiled despite himself. "Mademoiselle, you must not make fun of yourself."

"But why not? It is my chief amusement. I am the most ridiculous mortal that ever lived, and I know how foolish I am; but why do you not exercise your charity? You are, I hear, kind and forbearing with the worst specimens of humanity on the Bay. Why should you be severe with me?"

Agapit winced as if she had pinched him. "What do you wish me to do?"

"Already it is known that you avoid me," she continued, airily; "you who are so much respected. I should like to have your good opinion, and, ridiculous as I am, you know that I am less so than I used to be."

She spoke with a certain dignity, and Agapit was profoundly touched. "Mademoiselle," he said, in a low voice, "I am ashamed of myself. You do not understand me, and I assert again that I do not dislike you."

"Then why don't you come to see me?" she asked, pointedly.

"I cannot tell you," he said, and his eyes blazed excitedly. "Do not urge the question. However, I will come--yes, I will. You shall not complain of me in future."

Bidiane felt slightly subdued, and listened in silence to his energetic remarks suddenly addressed to the horse, who had taken advantage of his master's wandering attention by endeavoring to draw the buggy into a ditch where grew some luscious bunches of grass.

"There comes Pius Poirier," she said, after a time.

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 shores 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 Chéticamp."

"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."