The Mothers of Honoré | Page 5

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 by 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!
[Illustration: He appeared at the door 226]
It was Honoré, shamefaced but laughing, back from the war within
twenty-four hours! Clethera heard the broom-handle strike the floor as
one hears the far-off fall of a spar on a ship in harbor. She put her
palms together, without flying into his arms or even offering to shake
hands.

"You come back?" she cried out, her voice sharpened by joy.
"The war is end'," said Honoré. "Peace is declare' yesterday!" He threw
his bundle down and looked fondly around the rough walls. "All de
peop' laugh at me because I go to war when de war is end'!"
"They laugh because de war is end'! I laugh too?" said Clethera,
relaxing to sobs. Tears and cries which had been shut up a day and a
night were let loose with French abandon. Honoré opened his arms to
comfort her in the old manner, and although she rushed into them,
strange embarrassment went with her. The two could not look at each
other.
"It is de 'omesick," she explained. "When you go to war it make me
'omesick."
"Me, too," owned Honoré. "I never know what it is before. I not mind
de fighting, but I am glad de war is end', account of de 'omesick!"
He pushed the hair from her wet face. The fate of temperament and the
deep tides of existence had them in merciless sweep.
"Clethera," represented Honoré, "the rillation is not mix' bad with Jules
and Melinda."
Clethera let the assertion pass unchallenged.
"And this house, it pretty good house. You like it well as de hudder?"