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THE MOTHERS OF HONOR?

From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899

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 Th?r?se?"

"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 Honor?," enumerated Jules, "and de squaw, and Lavelotte's widow, and Th?r?se. It is not much."

"I've often wondered why you didn't take Me-linda Cr?e. 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 Cr?e. 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 Cr?e's granddaughter. Clethera had been Honor?'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 Honor? as soon as he came in with the boat. Honor? 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 Cr?e 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 Cr?e 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 Cr?e 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 Honor? 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.

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 Honor? 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 Honor? 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 wondered that Honor? 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 Honor?, 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.

Honor? acknowledged with hearty gratitude the supper which Melinda Cr?e 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 Th?r?se could make," Honor? added, handsomely, with large unsuspicion.

Clethera shook a finger in his face.

"Honor? 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.

"Honor?, 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 Honor?, "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 Honor? 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 Honor?.

"Three," marked Clethera.

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