CHAPTER VIII.

FAIRE BOMBANCE.

"Could but our ancestors retrieve their fate, And see their offspring thus degenerate, How we contend for birth and names unknown; And build on their past acts, and not our own; They'd cancel records and their tombs deface, And then disown the vile, degenerate race; For families is all a cheat, 'Tis personal virtue only, makes us great."

THE TRUE BORN ENGLISHMAN. DEFOE.

Bidiane was late for supper, and Claudine was regretfully remarking that the croquettes and the hot potatoes in the oven would all be burnt to cinders, when the young person herself walked into the kitchen, her face a fiery crimson, a row of tiny beads of perspiration at the conjunction of her smooth forehead with her red hair.

"I have had a glorious ride," she said, opening the door of the big oven and taking out the hot dishes.

Claudine laid aside the towel with which she was wiping the cups and saucers that Mirabelle Marie washed. "Go sit down at the table, Bidiane; you must be weary."

The girl, nothing loath, went to the dining-room, while Claudine brought her in hot coffee, buttered toast, and preserved peaches and cream, and then returning to the kitchen watched her through the open door, as she satisfied the demands of a certainly prosperous appetite.

"And yet, it is not food I want, as much as drink," said Bidiane, gaily, as she poured herself out a second glass of milk. "Ah, the bicycle, Claudine. If you rode, you would know how one's mouth feels like a dry bone."

"I think I would like a wheel," said Claudine, modestly. "I have enough money saved."

"Have you? Then you must get one, and I will teach you to ride."

"How would one go about it?"

"We will do it in this way," said Bidiane, in a business-like manner, for she loved to arrange the affairs of other people. "How much money have you?"

"I have one hundred dollars."

"'Pon me soul an' body, I'd have borrered some if I'd known that," interrupted Mirabelle Marie, with a chuckle.

"Good gracious," observed Bidiane, "you don't want more than half that. We will give fifty to one of the men on the schooners. Isn't _La Sauterelle_ going to Boston, to-morrow?"

"Yes; the cook was just in for yeast."

"Has he a head for business?"

"Pretty fair."

"Does he know anything about machines?"

"He once sold sewing-machines, and he also would show how to work them."

"The very man,--we will give him the fifty dollars and tell him to pick you out a good wheel and bring it back in the schooner."

"Then there will be no duty to pay," said Claudine, joyfully.

"H'm,--well, perhaps we had better pay the duty," said Bidiane; "it won't be so very much. It is a great temptation to smuggle things from the States, but I know we shouldn't. By the way, I must tell Mirabelle Marie a good joke I just heard up the Bay. My aunt,--where are you?"

Mirabelle Marie came into the room and seated herself near Claudine.

"Marc à Jaddus à Dominique's little girl gave him away," said Bidiane, laughingly. "She ran over to the custom-house in Belliveau's Cove and told the man what lovely things her papa had brought from Boston, in his schooner, and the customs man hurried over, and Marc had to pay--I must tell you, too, that I bought some white ribbon for Alzélie Gauterot, while I was in the Cove," and Bidiane pulled a little parcel from her pocket.

Mirabelle Marie was intensely interested. Ever since the affair of the ghosts, which Bidiane had given up trying to persuade her was not ghostly, but very material, she had become deeply religious, and took her whole family to mass and vespers every Sunday.

Just now the children of the parish were in training for their first communion. She watched the little creatures daily trotting up the road towards the church to receive instruction, and she hoped that her boys would soon be among them. In the small daughter of her next-door neighbor, who was to make her first communion with the others, she took a special interest, and in her zeal had offered to make the dress, which kind office had devolved upon Bidiane and Claudine.

"Also, I have been thinking of a scheme to save money," said Bidiane. "For a veil we can just take off this fly screen," and she pointed to white netting on the table. "No one but you and Claudine will know. It is fine and soft, and can be freshly done up."

"_Mon jheu!_ but you are smart, and a real Acadien brat," said her aunt. "Claudine, will you go to the door? Some divil rings,--that is, some lady or gentleman," she added, as she caught a menacing glance from Bidiane.

"If you keep a hotel you must always be glad to see strangers," said Bidiane, severely. "It is money in your pocket."

"But such a trouble, and I am sleepy."

"If you are not careful you will have to give up this inn,--however, I must not scold, for you do far better than when I first came."

"It is the political gentleman," said Claudine, entering, and noiselessly closing the door behind her. "He who has been going up and down the Bay for a day or two. He wishes supper and a bed."

"_Sakerjé!_" muttered Mirabelle Marie, rising with an effort. "If I was a man I guess I'd let pollyticks alone, and stay to hum. I s'ppose he's got a nest with some feathers in it. I guess you'd better ask him out, though. There's enough to start him, ain't there?" and she waddled out to the kitchen.

"Ah, the political gentleman," said Bidiane. "It was he for whom I helped Maggie Guilbaut pick blackberries, yesterday. They expected him to call, and were going to offer him berries and cream."

Mirabelle Marie, on going to the kitchen, had left her niece sitting composedly at the table, only lifting an eyelid to glance at the door by which the stranger would enter; but when she returned, as she almost immediately did, to ask the gentleman whether he would prefer tea to coffee, a curious spectacle met her gaze.

Bidiane, with a face that was absolutely furious, had sprung to her feet and was grasping the sides of her bicycle skirt with clenched hands, while the stranger, who was a lean, dark man, with a pale, rather pleasing face, when not disfigured by a sarcastic smile, stood staring at her as if he remembered seeing her before, but had some difficulty in locating her among his acquaintances.

Upon her aunt's appearance, Bidiane found her voice. "Either I or that man must leave this house," she said, pointing a scornful finger at him.

Mirabelle Marie, who was not easily shocked, was plainly so on the present occasion. "Whist, Bidiane," she said, trying to pull her down on her chair; "this is the pollytickle genl'man,--county member they call 'im."

"I do not care if he is member for fifty counties," said Bidiane, in concentrated scorn. "He is a libeller, a slanderer, and I will not stay under the same roof with him,--and to think it was for him I picked the blackberries,--we cannot entertain you here, sir."

The expression of disagreeable surprise with which the man with the unpleasant smile had regarded her gave way to one of cool disdain. "This is your house, I think?" he said, appealing to Mirabelle Marie.

"Yessir," she said, putting down her tea-caddy, and arranging both her hands on her hips, in which position she would hold them until the dispute was finished.

"And you do not refuse me entertainment?" he went on, with the same unpleasant smile. "You cannot, I think, as this is a public house, and you have no just reason for excluding me from it."

"My aunt," said Bidiane, flashing around to her in a towering passion, "if you do not immediately turn this man out-of-doors, I shall never speak to you again."

"I be _dèche_," sputtered the confused landlady, "if I see into this hash. Look at 'em, Claudine. This genl'man'll be mad if I do one thing, an' Biddy'll take my head off if I do another. _Sakerjé!_ You've got to fit it out yourselves."

"Listen, my aunt," said Bidiane, excitedly, and yet with an effort to control herself. "I will tell you what happened. On my way here I was in a hotel in Halifax. I had gone there with some people from the steamer who were taking charge of me. We were on our way to our rooms. We were all speaking English. No one would think that there was a French person in the party. We passed a gentleman, this gentleman, who stood outside his door; he was speaking to a servant. 'Bring me quickly,' he said, 'some water,--some hot water. I have been down among the evil-smelling French of Clare. I must go again, and I want a good wash first.'"

Mirabelle Marie was by no means overcome with horror at the recitation of this trespass on the part of her would-be guest; but Claudine's eyes blazed and flashed on the stranger's back until he moved slightly, and shrugged his shoulders as if he felt their power.

"Imagine," cried Bidiane, "he called us 'evil-smelling,'--we, the best housekeepers in the world, whose stoves shine, whose kitchen floors are as white as the beach! I choked with wrath. I ran up to him and said, '_Moi, je suis Acadienne_'" (I am an Acadienne). "Did I not, sir?"

The stranger lifted his eyebrows indulgently and satirically, but did not speak.

"And he was astonished," continued Bidiane. "_Ma foi_, but he was astonished! He started, and stared at me, and I said, 'I will tell you what you are, sir, unless you apologize.'"

"I guess yeh apologized, didn't yeh?" said Mirabelle Marie, mildly.

"The young lady is dreaming," said the stranger, coolly, and he seated himself at the table. "Can you let me have something to eat at once, madame? I have a brother who resembles me; perhaps she saw him."

Bidiane grew so pale with wrath, and trembled so violently that Claudine ran to support her, and cried, "Tell us, Bidiane, what did you say to this bad man?"

Bidiane slightly recovered herself. "I said to him, 'Sir, I regret to tell you that you are lying.'"

The man at the table surveyed her in intense irritation. "I do not know where you come from, young woman," he said, hastily, "but you look Irish."

"And if I were not Acadien I would be Irish," she said, in a low voice, "for they also suffer for their country. Good-by, my aunt, I am going to Rose à Charlitte. I see you wish to keep this story-teller."

"Hole on, hole on," ejaculated Mirabelle Marie in distress. "Look here, sir, you've gut me in a fix, and you've gut to git me out of it."

"I shall not leave your house unless you tell me to do so," he said, in cool, quiet anger.

Bidiane stretched out her hands to him, and with tears in her eyes exclaimed, pleadingly, "Say only that you regret having slandered the Acadiens. I will forget that you put my people to shame before the English, for they all knew that I was coming to Clare. We will overlook it. Acadiens are not ungenerous, sir."

"As I said before, you are dreaming," responded the stranger, in a restrained fury. "I never was so put upon in my life. I never saw you before."

Bidiane drew herself up like an inspired prophetess. "Beware, sir, of the wrath of God. You lied before,--you are lying now."

The man fell into such a repressed rage that Mirabelle Marie, who was the only unembarrassed spectator, inasmuch as she was weak in racial loves and hatreds, felt called upon to decide the case. The gentleman, she saw, was the story-teller. Bidiane, who had not been particularly truthful as a child, had yet never told her a falsehood since her return from France.

"I'm awful sorry, sir, but you've gut to go. I brought up this leetle girl, an' her mother's dead."

The gentleman rose,--a gentleman no longer, but a plain, common, very ugly-tempered man. These Acadiens were actually turning him, an Englishman, out of the inn. And he had thought the whole people so meek, so spiritless. He was doing them such an honor to personally canvass them for votes for the approaching election. His astonishment almost overmastered his rage, and in a choking voice he said to Mirabelle Marie, "Your house will suffer for this,--you will regret it to the end of your life."

"I know some business," exclaimed Claudine, in sudden and irrepressible zeal. "I know that you wish to make laws, but will our men send you when they know what you say?"

He snatched his hat from the seat behind him. His election was threatened. Unless he chained these women's tongues, what he had said would run up and down the Bay like wildfire,--and yet a word now would stop it. Should he apologize? A devil rose in his heart. He would not.

"Do your worst," he said, in a low, sneering voice. "You are a pack of liars yourselves," and while Bidiane and Claudine stiffened themselves with rage, and Mirabelle Marie contemptuously muttered, "Get out, ole beast," he cast a final malevolent glance on them, and left the house.

For a time the three remained speechless; then Bidiane sank into her chair, pushed back her half-eaten supper, propped her red head on her hand, and burst into passionate weeping.

Claudine stood gloomily watching her, while Mirabelle Marie sat down, and shifting her hands from her hips, laid them on her trembling knees. "I guess he'll drive us out of this, Biddy,--an' I like Sleepin' Water."

Bidiane lifted her face to the ceiling, just as if she were "taking a vowel," her aunt reflected, in her far from perfect English. "He shall not ruin us, my aunt,--we will ruin him."

"What'll you do, sissy?"

"I will tell you something about politics," said Bidiane, immediately becoming calm. "Mr. Nimmo has explained to me something about them, and if you listen, you will understand. In the first place, do you know what politics are?" and hastily wiping her eyes, she intently surveyed the two women who were hanging on her words.

"Yes, I know," said her aunt, joyfully. "It's when men quit work, an' gab, an' git red in the face, an' pass the bottle, an' pick rows, to fine out which shall go up to the city of Boston to make laws an' sit in a big room with lots of other men."

Bidiane, with an impatient gesture, turned to Claudine. "You know better than that?"

"Well, yes,--a little," said the black-eyed beauty, contemptuously.

"My aunt," said Bidiane, solemnly, "you have been out in the world, and yet you have many things to learn. Politics is a science, and deep, very deep."

"Is it?" said her aunt, humbly. "An' what's a science?"

"A science is--well, a science is something wonderfully clever--when one knows a great deal. Now this Dominion of Canada in which we live is large, very large, and there are two parties of politicians in it. You know them, Claudine?"

"Yes, I do," said the young woman, promptly; "they are Liberals and Conservatives."

"That is right; and just now the Premier of the Dominion is a Frenchman, my aunt,--I don't believe you knew that,--and we are proud of him."

"An' what's the Premier?"

"He is the chief one,--the one who stands over the others, when they make the laws."

"Oh, the boss!--you will tell him about this bad man."

"No, it would grieve him too much, for the Premier is always a good man, who never does anything wrong. This bad man will impose on him, and try to get him to promise to let him go to Ottawa--oh, by the way, Claudine, we must explain about that. My aunt, you know that there are two cities to which politicians go to make the laws. One is the capital."

"Yes, I know,--in Boston city."

"Nonsense,--Boston is in the United States. We are in Canada. Halifax is the capital of Nova Scotia."

"But all our folks go to Boston when they travels," said Mirabelle Marie, in a slightly injured tone.

"Yes, yes, I know,--the foolish people; they should go to Halifax. Well, that is where the big house is in which they make the laws. I saw it when I was there, and it has pictures of kings and queens in it. Now, when a man becomes too clever for this house, they send him to Ottawa, where the Premier is."

"Yes, I remember,--the good Frenchman."

"Well, this bad man now wishes to go to Halifax; then if he is ambitious,--and he is bad enough to be anything,--he may wish to go to Ottawa. But we must stop him right away before he does more mischief, for all men think he is good. Mr. Guilbaut was praising him yesterday."

"He didn't say he is bad?"

"No, no, he thinks him very good, and says he will be elected; but we know him to be a liar, and should a liar make laws for his country?"

"A liar should stay to hum, where he is known," was the decisive response.

"Very good,--now should we not try to drive this man out of Clare?"

"But what can we do?" asked Mirabelle Marie. "He is already out an' lying like the divil about us--that is, like a man out of the woods."

"We can talk," said her niece, seriously. "There are women's rights, you know."

"Women's rights," repeated her aunt, thoughtfully. "It is not in the prayer-book."

"No, of course not."

"Come now, Biddy, tell us what it is."

"It is a long subject, my aunt. It would take too many words to explain, though Mr. Nimmo has often told me about it. Women who believe that--can do as men. Why should we not vote,--you, and I, and Claudine?"

"I dunno. I guess the men won't let us."

"I should like to vote," said Bidiane, stoutly, "but even though we cannot, we can tell the men on the Bay of this monster, and they will send him home."

"All right," said her aunt; while Claudine, who had been sitting with knitted brows during the last few minutes, exclaimed, "I have it, Bidiane; let us make _bombance_" (feasting). "Do you know what it means?"

No, Bidiane did not, but Mirabelle Marie did, and immediately began to make a gurgling noise in her throat. "Once I helped to make it in the house of an aunt. Glory! that was fun. But the tin, Claudine, where'll you git that?"

"My one hundred dollars," cried the black-eyed assistant. "I will give them to my country, for I hate that man. I will do without the wheel."

"But what is this?" asked Bidiane, reproachfully. "What are you agreeing to? I do not understand."

"Tell her, Claudine," said Mirabelle Marie, with a proud wave of her hand. "She's English, yeh know."

Claudine explained the phrase, and for the next hour the three, with chairs drawn close together, nodded, talked, and gesticulated, while laying out a feminine electioneering campaign.