“Then somebody else has carried her off, and I'm going to know all
about it before I come back to camp. If I never come back, you may
have the stuff and land. I'm in this heels over head, and I don't care
how soon things end with me.”
“But, Prowny, old poy, I vill help you—”
“You stay here. This is my hunt.”
Jim passed the rustic guest-houses without turning aside from the
trail. Brown took no thought of inquiring at their doors, for
throughout the summer Françoise had not once been seen at the hotels.
He did, however, hastily borrow a horse from the stable where he was
privileged, and pursuing the blood-hound along the lake shore, he
cantered over a causeway of logs and earth which had been raised above
a swamp.
The trail was very fresh, for Jim, without swerving, followed the road
where it turned at right angles from the shore and wound inland among
stumps. They had nearly reached Allanville, a group of log huts beside
a north-shore railroad, when Jim uttered the bay of victory.
Brown dropped from the saddle and called him sternly back. To be
hunting Françoise with a blood-hound out of leash—how horrible was
this! He tied his horse to a tree and took Jim by the collar,
restraining the creature's fierce joy of discovery. Françoise must be
near, unless a hound whose scent was unerring had become a fool.
What if she had left camp of her own will? She was so quiet, one
could not be sure of her thoughts. Brown was sure of his thoughts. He
grinned in the lonely landscape, seeing himself as he had appeared on
recent Sundays, in his best turtle-tail neck-tie mounted on velvet.
“I've got it bad,” he confessed.
Stooping to Jim's collar while the dog whined and strained, he passed
a cabin. And there Jim relaxed in the search and turned around. The
moon stood high enough to make a wan fairy daylight. Gougou, like a
gnome, started from the ground to meet them, and the dog at once lay
down and fawned at his feet.
More slowly approaching from the cabin, Brown saw Françoise, still
carrying in her hand the bundle of her belongings brought from camp.
In the shadow of the house a man watched the encounter, and a sift
of rank tobacco smoke hinted the pipes of fathers and sons resting
from the day's labor on the cabin door-sill or the sward. Voices of
children could be heard, and other dogs gave mouth, so that Brown laid
severe commands on Jim before he could tremblingly speak to Françoise.
“Oh, M'sieu' Brownee, I t'ink maybe you come!”
“But, Françoise, what made you leave?”
“It is my husban's brudder. I not know what to do! He bring us to dese
folks to stay all night till de cars go.”
“Why didn't he show himself to us, and take you like a man?”
“Oh, M'sieu' Brownee—he say de priest hexcommunicate me—to live—so—in
de camp! It is not my fault—and I t'ink about you and M'sieu'
Puttanee—and Gougou he bite his honcle, and kick and scream!”
“Damn the uncle!” swore Brown, deeply.
“Oh, I been so anxion!” sobbed Françoise.
“We must be married right off,” said Brown. “I'll fix your
brother-in-law. Françoise, will you have me for your husband?”
“Me, M'sieu' Brownee?”
“Yes, you—you cursed sweet patois!”
“M'sieu' Brownee, you may call me de cursed patois. I not know
anyt'ings. But when André La France take me away, oh, I t'ink I die!
Let me honly be Françoise to do your mend'! I be 'appier to honly look
at you dan some womans who 'ave 'usban'!”
“Françoise, kiss me—kiss me!” His voice broke with a sob. “If you
loved me you would have me!”
“M'sieu' Brownee, I ado' you!”
Suddenly giving way to passionate weeping, and to all the tenderness
which nature teaches even barbarians to repress, she abandoned herself
to his arms.
THE MOTHERS OF HONORÉ
The sun was shining again after squalls, and the strait showed violet,
green, red, and bronze lines, melting and intermingling each changing
second. Metallic lustres shone as if some volcanic fountain on the
lake-bed were spraying the surface. Jules McCarty stood at his gate,
noting this change in the weather with one eye. He was a small, old
man, having the appearance of a mummied boy. His cheek-bones shone
apple-red, and his partial blindness had merely the effect of a
prolonged wink. Jules was keeping melancholy holiday in his best
clothes, the well-preserved coat parting its jaunty tails a little
below the middle of his back.
Another old islander paused at the gate in passing. The two men shook
their heads at each other.
“I went to your wife's funeral this morning, Jules,” said the passer,
impressing on the widower's hearing an important fact which might have
escaped his one eye.
“You was at de funer'l? Did you see Therese?”
“Yes, I saw her.”
“Ah, what a fat woman dat was! I make some of de peop' feel her arm. I
feed her well.”
The other old man smiled, but he was bound to say,
“I'm sorry for you, Jules.”
“Did you see me at de church?”
“Yes, I went to the church.”
“You t'ink I feel bad—eh?”
“I thought you felt pretty bad.”
“You go to de graveyard, too?”
“No,” admitted his sympathizer, reluctantly, “I didn't go to the
graveyard.”
“But dat was de fines'. You ought see me at de graveyard. You t'ink I
feel bad at de church—I raise hell at de graveyard.”
The friend shuffled his feet and coughed behind his hand.
“Yes, I feel bad, me,” ruminated the bereaved man. “You get used to
some woman in de house and not know where to get anodder.”
“Haven't you had your share, Jules?” inquired his friend, relaxing
gladly to banter.
“I have one fine wife, maman to Honoré,” enumerated Jules, “and de
squaw, and Lavelotte's widow, and Therese. It is not much.”
“I've often wondered why you didn't take Melinda Cree. You've no
objection to Indians. She's next door to you, and she knows how to
nurse in sickness, besides being a good washer and ironer. The summer
folks say she makes the best fish pies on the island.”
“It is de trut'!” exclaimed Jules, a new light shining in his
dim blue eye as he turned it towards the house of Melinda Cree.
The weather-worn, low domicile was bowered in trees. There was a
convenient stile two steps high in the separating fence, and it had
long been made a thoroughfare by the families. On the top step sat
Clethera, Melinda Cree's granddaughter. Clethera had been Honoré's
playmate since infancy. She was a lithe, dark girl, with more of her
French father in her than of her half-breed mother. Some needle-work
busied her hands, but her ear caught every accent of the conference
at the gate. She flattened her lips, and determined to tell Honoré as
soon as he came in with the boat. Honoré was the favorite skipper of
the summer visitors. He went out immediately after the funeral to earn
money to apply on his last mother's burial expenses.
When the old men parted, Clethera examined her grandmother with
stealthy eyes in a kind of aboriginal reconnoitring. Melinda Cree's
black hair and dark masses of wrinkles showed through a sashless shed
window where she stood at her ironing-board. Her stoical eyelids
were lowered, and she moved with the rhythmical motion of the
smoothing-iron. Whether she had overheard the talk, or was meditating
on her own matrimonial troubles, was impossible to gather from
facial muscles rigid as carved wood. Melinda Cree was one of the few
pure-blooded Indians on the island. If she was fond of anything in the
world, her preference had not declared itself, though previous to
receiving her orphaned granddaughter into her house she had consented
to become the bride of a drunken youth in his teens. This incipient
husband—before he got drowned in a squall off Detour, thereby saving
his aged wife some outlay—visited her only when he needed funds, and
she silently paid the levy if her toil had provided the means. He also
inclined to offer delicate attentions to Clethera, who spat at him
like a cat, and at sight of him ever afterwards took to the attic,
locking the door.
But while Melinda Cree submitted to the shackles of civilization,
she did not entirely give up the ways of her own people. She kept a
conical tent of poles and birch bark in her back yard, in which she
slept during summer. And she was noted as wise and skilled in herbs,
guarding their secrets so jealously that the knowledge was likely to
die with her. Once she appeared at the bedside of a dying islander,
and asked, as the doctor had withdrawn, to try her own remedies.
Permission being given, she went to the kitchen, took some dried
vegetable substance from her pocket, and made a tea of it. A little
was poured down the sick man's throat. He revived. He drank more, and
grew better. Melinda Cree's decoction cured him, and the chagrined
doctor visited her to learn what wonderful remedy she had used.
“It was nothing but some little bushes,” responded the Indian woman.
“If you tell me what they are, I will pay you fifty dollars,” he
pleaded.
Melinda Cree shook her head. She continued to repeat, as he raised the
bid higher, “It was nothing but some little bushes, doctor; it was
nothing but some little bushes.”
Clethera felt the same kind of protecting tenderness for this
self-restrained squaw that Honoré had for his undersized parent, whom
he always called by the baptismal name. Melinda had been the wife of
a great medicine-man, who wore a trailing blanket, and white gulls'
wings bound around and spread behind his head. During his lifetime
he was often seen stretched on his back invoking the sun. A stranger
observing him declared he was using the signs of Freemasonry, and must
know its secrets.
With the readiness of custom, Honoré and Clethera met each other at
the steps in the fence about dusk. She sat down on her side, and he
sat down on his, the broad top of the stile separating them. Honoré
was a stalwart Saxon-looking youth in his early twenties. Wind and
weather had painted his large-featured countenance a rosy tan. By
the employing class Honoré was considered one of the finest and most
promising young quarter-breeds on the island.
The fresh moist odor of the lake, with its incessant wash upon
pebbles, came to them accompanied by piercing sweetness of wild
roses. For the wind had turned to the west, raking fragrant thickets.
Dusk was moving from eastern fastnesses to rock battlements still
tinged with sunset. The fort, dismantled of its garrison, reared a
whitewashed crown against the island's back of evergreens.
Both Honoré and Clethera knew there was a Spanish war. As summer day
followed summer day, the village seethed with it, as other spots then
seethed. A military post, even when dismantled, always brings home to
the community where it is situated the dignity and pomp of arms. Young
men enlisted, and Honoré restlessly followed, with a friend from the
North Shore, to look at the camp. His pulses beat with the drums. But
he was carrying the burden of the family; to leave Jules and Jules's
dependent wife would be deserting infants.
Clethera gave little more thought to fleets sailing tropical seas
than to La Salle's vanished _Griffin_ on Northern waters. It was
nothing to her, for she had never heard of it, that pioneers of her
father's blood once trod that island, and lifted up the cross at
St. Ignace, and planted outposts along the South Shore. Bareheaded,
or with a crimson kerchief bound about her hair, she loved to help
her grandmother spread the white clothes to bleach, or to be seen
and respected as a prosperous laundress carrying her basket through
the teeming streets. The island was her world. Its crowds in summer
brought variety enough; and its virgin winter snows, the dog-sledges,
the ice-boats, were month by month a procession of joys.
Clethera wondered that Honoré persistently went where newspapers were
read and discussed. He stuffed them in his pockets, and pored over
them while waiting in his boat beside the wharf. People would fight
out that war with Spain. What thrilled her was the boom of winter
surf, piling iridescent frozen spume as high as a man's head, and
rimming the island in a corona of shattered rainbows. And she had an
eye for summer lightning infusing itself through sheets of water as if
descending in the downpour, glorifying for one instant every distinct
drop.
The pair sitting with the broad top step betwixt them exchanged the
smiling good-will of youth.
“I take some more party out to-night for de light-moon sail,” said
Honoré, pleased to report his prosperity. “It is consider' gran' to
sail in de light-moon.”
“Did you find de hot fish pie?” inquired Clethera, solicitous about
man thrown on his own resources as cook.
Honoré acknowledged with hearty gratitude the supper which Melinda
Cree had baked and her granddaughter had carried into the bereaved
house while its inmates were out.
“They not get fish pie like that in de war. Jules, he say it is better
than poor Therese could make,” Honoré added, handsomely, with large
unsuspicion.
Clethera shook a finger in his face.
“Honoré McCarty, you got watch dat Jules! I got to watch Melinda.
Simon Leslie, he have come by and put it in Jules' head since de
funer'l! I hear it, me.”
The young man's face changed through the dusk. He braced his back
against the fence and breathed the deep sigh of tried patience.
“Honoré, how many mothers is it you have already?”
“I have not count',” said the young man, testily.
“Count dem mothers,” ordered Clethera.
“Maman,” he began the enumeration, reverently. His companion allowed
him a minute's silence after the mention of that fine woman.
“One,” she tallied.
“Nex',” proceeded Honoré, “poor Jules is involve' with de Chippewa
woman.”
“Two,” clinched Clethera.
The Chippewa squaw was a sore theme. She had entered Jules's wigwam in
good faith; but during one of his merry carouses, while both Honoré
and the priest were absent, he traded her off to a North Shore man for
a horse. Long after she tramped away across the frozen strait with
her new possessor, and all trace of her was lost, Jules had the grace
to be shamefaced about the scandal; but he got a good bargain in the
horse.
“Then there is Lavelotte's widow,” continued Honoré.
“Three,” marked Clethera.
Yes, there was Lavelotte's widow, the worst of all. She whipped little
Jules unmercifully, and if Honoré had not taken his part and stood
before him, she might have ended by being Jules's widow. She stripped
him of his whole fortune, four hundred dollars, when he finally
obtained a separation from her. But instead of curing him, this
experience only whetted his zest for another wife.
“And there is Therese.” Honoré did not say, “Last, Therese.” While
Jules lived and his wives died, or were traded off or divorced, there
would be no last.
“It is four,” declared Clethera; and the count was true. Honoré
had taken Jules in hand like a father, after the adventure with
Lavelotte's widow. He made his parent work hard at the boat, and in
winter walked him to and from mass literally with hand on collar. He
encouraged the little man, moreover, with a half interest in their
house on the beach, which long-accumulated earnings of the boat paid
for. But all this care was thrown away; though after Jules brought
Therese home, and saw that Honoré was not appeased by a woman's
cooking, he had qualms about the homestead, and secretly carried the
deed back to the original owner.
“I want you keep my part of de deed,” he explained. “I not let some
more women rob Honoré. My wife, if she get de deed in her han', she
might sell de whole t'ing!”
“Why, no, Jules, she couldn't sell your real estate!” the former owner
declared. “She would only have a life interest in your share.”
“You say she couldn't sell it?”
“No. She would have nothing but a life interest.”
“She have only life interest? By gar! I t'ink I pay somebody twenty
dollar to kill her!”
But lacking both twenty dollars and determination, he lived peaceably
with Therese until she died a natural death, on that occasion proudly
doing his whole duty as a man and a mourner.
Remembering these affairs, which had not been kept secret from anybody
on the island, Clethera spoke out under conviction.
“Honoré, it a scandal' t'ing, to get marry.”
“Me, I t'ink so too,” assented Honoré.
“Jules McCarty have disgrace' his son!”
“Melinda Cree,” retorted Honoré, obliged to defend his own, “she take
a little 'usban' honly nineteen.”
“She 'ave no chance like Jules; she is oblige' to wait and take what
invite her.”
The voices of children from other quarter-breed cottages, playing
along the beach, added cheer to the sweet darkness. Clethera and
Honoré sat silently enjoying each other's company, unconscious that
their aboriginal forefathers had courted in that manner, sitting under
arbors of branches.
“Why do peop' want to get marry?” propounded Clethera.
“I don't know,” said Honoré.
“Me, if some man hask me, I box his ear! I have know you all my
life—but don' you never hask me to get marry!”
“I not such a fool,” heartily responded Honoré. “You and me, we have
seen de folly. I not form de habit, like Jules.”
“But what we do, Honoré, to keep dat Jules and dat Melinda apart?”
Though they discussed many plans, the sequel showed that nothing
effectual could be done. All their traditions and instincts were
against making themselves disagreeable or showing discourtesy to their
elders. The young man's French and Irish and Chippewa blood, and the
young girl's French and Cree blood exhausted all their inherited
diplomacy. But as steadily as the waters set like a strong tide
through the strait, in spite of wind which combed them to ridging
foam, the rapid courtship of age went on.
In carrying laundered clothing through the village street, Melinda
Cree was carefully chaperoned by her granddaughter, and Honoré kept
Jules under orders in the boat. But of early mornings and late
twilights there was no restraining the twittering widower.
“Melinda 'tend to her work and is behave if Jules let her alone,”
Clethera reported to Honoré. “But he slip around de garden and talk
over de back fence, and he is by de ironing-board de minute my back is
turn'! If he belong to me, I could 'mos' whip him!”
“Jules McCarty,” declared Honoré, with some bitterness, “when he fix
his min' to marry some more, he is not turn' if he is hexcommunicate'!”
Jules, indeed, became so bold that he crowded across the stile through
the very conferences of the pair united to prevent him; and his loud
voice could be heard beside Melinda's ironing-board, proclaiming in
the manner of a callow young suitor.
“Some peop' like separate us, Melinda, but we not let them.”
The conflict of Honoré and Clethera with Jules and Melinda ended
one day in August. There had been no domestic clamor in this silent
grapple of forces. The young man used no argument except maxims and
morals and a tightening of authority; the young girl permitted neither
neighboring maids nor the duties of religion to lure her off guard.
It may be said of any French half-breed that he has all the instincts
of gentility except an inclination to lying, and that arises from
excessive politeness.
Honoré came to the fence at noon and called Clethera. In his
excitement he crossed the stile and stood on her premises.
“It no use, Clethera. Jules have tell me this morning he have arrange'
de marriage.”
Clethera glanced behind her at the house she called home, and threw
herself in Honoré's arms, as she had often done in childish despairs.
Neither misunderstood the action, and it relieved them to shed a few
tears on each other's necks. This truly Latin outburst being over,
they stood apart and wiped their eyes on their sleeves.
“It no use,” exclaimed Clethera, “to set a good examp' to your
grandmother!”
“I not wait any longer now,” announced Honoré, giving rein to fierce
eagerness. “I go to de war to-day.”
“But de camp is move',” objected Clethera.
“I have pass' de examin', and I know de man to go to when I am ready;
he promis' to get me into de war. Jules have de sails up now, ready to
take me across to de train.”
“But who will have de boat when you are gone, Honoré?”
“Jules. And he bring Melinda to de house.”
“She not come. She not leave her own house. She take her 'usban' in.”
“Then Jules must rent de house. You not detest poor Jules?”
“I not detest him like de hudder one.”
“Au 'voir, Clethera.”
“Au 'voir, Honoré.”
They shook hands, the young man wringing himself away with the
animation of one who goes, the girl standing in the dull anxiety of
one who stays. War, so remote that she had heard of it indifferently,
rushed suddenly from the tropics over the island.
“Are your clothes all mend' and ready, Honoré?”
But what thought can a young man give to his clothes when about to
wrap himself in glory? He is politely tapping at the shed window
of the Indian woman, and touching his cap in farewell and gallant
capitulation, and with long-limbed sweeping haste, unusual in a
quarter-breed, he is gone to the docks, with a bundle under one arm,
waving his hand as he passes. All the women and children along the
street would turn out to see him go to the war if his intention were
known, and even summer idlers about the bazars would look at him with
new interest.
Clethera could not imagine the moist and horrid heat of those southern
latitudes into which Honoré departed to throw himself. Shifting mists
on the lake rim were no vaguer than her conception of her country's
mighty undertaking. But she could feel; and the life she had lived to
that day was wrenched up by the roots, leaving her as with a bleeding
socket.
All afternoon she drenched herself with soapsuds in the ferocity of
her washing. By the time Jules returned with the boat, the lake was
black as ink under a storm cloud, with glints of steel; a dull bar
stretched diagonally across the water. Beyond that a whitening of rain
showed against the horizon. Points of cedars on the opposite island
pricked a sullen sky.
Clethera's tubs were under the trees. She paid no attention to what
befell her, or to her grandmother, who called her out of the rain. It
came like a powder of dust, and then a moving, blanched wall, pushing
islands of flattened mist before it. Under a steady pour the waters
turned dull green, and lightened shade by shade as if diluting an
infusion of grass. Waves began to come in regular windrows. Though
Clethera told herself savagely she not care for anything in de world,
her Indian eye took joy of these sights. The shower-bath from the
trees she endured without a shiver.
Jules sat beside Melinda to be comforted. He wept for Honoré, and
praised his boy, gasconading with time-worn boasts.
“I got de hang of him, and now I got to part! But de war will end, now
Honoré have gone into it. His gran'fodder was such a fighter when de
British come to take de island, he turn' de cannon and blow de British
off. The gran'fodder of Honoré was a fine man. He always keep de bes'
liquors and hy wines on his sideboa'd.”
When Honoré had been gone twenty-four hours, and Jules was still
idling like a boy undriven by his task-master, leaving the boat to
rock under bare poles at anchor on the rise and fall of the water,
Clethera went into their empty house. It contained three rooms, and
she laid violent hands on male housekeeping. The service was almost
religious, like preparing linen for an altar. It comforted her
unacknowledged anguish, which increased rather than diminished, the
unrest of which she resented with all her stoic Indian nature.
Nets, sledge-harness, and Honoré's every-day clothes hung on his
whitewashed wall. The most touching relic of any man is the hat he has
worn. Honoré's cap crowned the post of his bed like a wraith. The room
might have been a young hermit's cell in a cave, or a tunnel in the
evergreens, it was so simple and bare of human appointments. Clethera
stood with the broom in one hand, and tipped forward a piece of broken
looking-glass on his shaving-shelf. A new, unforeseen Clethera, whom
she had never been obliged to deal with before, gave her a desperate,
stony stare out of a haggard face. She was young, her skin had not
a line. But it was as if she had changed places with her wrinkled
grandmother, to whom the expression of complacent maidenhood now
belonged.
As Clethera propped the glass again in place, she heard Jules come in.
She resumed her sweeping with resolute strokes on the bare boards,
which would explain to his ear the necessity of her presence. He
appeared at the door, and it was Honoré!