CHAPTER XXXV
AN UNCROWNED KING
Toward spring the snow melted and with gum boots I plunged into thecold, wet corn field and began gathering the corn. It was nasty, coldwork. The damp earth sent cold chills up through my limbs and as aresult I was ill, and could do nothing for a week or more. Indesperation I wrote the Reverend and being a man, I hoped he'dunderstand. I told him of my sickness and the circumstances, of Orlean'sclaim and of my crops to be put in. It was then April and soon the oats,wheat and barley should be seeded. It was a business letter altogether,but I never heard from him, and later learned that he had read only apart of the letter.
While in Chicago, one evening I had called at the house and found thehousehold in a ferment of excitement, with everyone saying nothing andapparently trying to look as small and scarced as possible, while intheir midst, standing like a jungle king and in a plaided bathrobe, theReverend was pouring a storm of abuse upon his wife and shouting orderswhile the wife was trotting to and fro like a frightened lamb,protesting weakly. The way he was storming at her made me feel ashamedbut after listening to his tirade for some fifteen minutes I was angryenough to knock him down then and there. He reminded me more of a brutethan a pious minister. When he had finally exhausted himself he turnedwithout speaking to me and strode up the stairs, head reared back andcarrying himself like a brave soldier returning from war. I wonderedthen how long it would be before I would be commanded as she had been.Shortly afterward I could hardly control the impulse to take her in myarms and comfort her. She was crying quietly and looked so pitiful. Iwas told she had been treated in a like manner off and on for thirtyyears.
As stated, I did not hear from the Reverend and when I wrote to Orlean Iimplied that I did not think her father much of a business man. Perhapsthis was wrong, at least when I received another letter from her itcontained the receipt for the payment on the claim, and the single sheetof paper comprising the letter conveyed the intelligence that since shethought it best not to marry me she was forwarding the receipt withthanks for my kindness and hopes for future success. I received theletter on Friday. Saturday night I went into Megory and took the earlySunday morning train bound for Chicago and to marry her, and while I didnot think she had treated me just right I would not allow a matter of atrip to Chicago to stand in the way of our marriage. I had an idea herfather was indirectly responsible. He and I were much unlike anddisagreed in our discussions concerning the so-called negro problem, andin almost every other discussion in which we had engaged.
Arriving in Omaha I sent a telegram to Orlean asking her not to go towork that day, as I would be in Chicago in the morning. At the depot Icalled up the house and Claves answered the phone and was veryimpertinent, but before he said much Orlean took the receiver andwithout much welcome started to tell me about the criticisms of herfather in my letters.
"You are not taking it in the right way," I hurriedly told her. "I'llcome to the house and we'll talk it over. You will see me, won't you?"
"Yes," she answered hesitatingly, appearing to be a little frightened.Then added, "I'll do you that honor."
The Reverend had returned to Southern Illinois, and when I entered thehouse the rest of the family appeared to have been holding aconsultation in the kitchen, which they had, as Orlean informed melater, with Orlean standing poutingly to one side. She commenced tellingme what she was not going to do, but I went directly to her, andgathered her in my arms, with her making a slight resistance but soonsuccumbing. I looked down at her still pouting face and remonstratedteasingly.
Ethel broke in, her voice resembling a scream, protesting against suchboldness on my part, saying: "Orlean doesn't want you and she isn'tgoing to go onto your old farm". Here Orlean silenced her saying thatshe would attend to that herself, and took me to the front part of thehouse, with her mother tagging after us in a sort of half-stupor andapparently not knowing what to do. We sat down on the davenport whereshe began giving me a lecture and declaring what she was not going todo. Her mother interposed something that angered me, though I do not nowrecall what it was, and a look of dissatisfaction came into my facewhich Orlean observed.
"Don't you scold mama," she finished. "Now, do you hear?"
"Yes, dear," I answered, meekly, with my arm around her waist and myface hidden behind her shoulder. "Anything more?"
"Well, well." She appeared at a loss to know what further to say or howto proceed.
Ethel remarked afterward to her mother that Orlean had not been near mea half hour until she was listening to everything I said.
She finally succeeded in getting off to work after commanding me to freeher as she wanted to get away to think. Her mother bristled up with an,"I'll talk to you." This was entirely to my liking. I loved her motheras well as my own and had no fear that we would not soon agree, and wedid. She couldn't be serious with me very long. She persisted in saying,however:
"I want my husband to know you are here and to know all about this. Youmust not expect to run in and get his daughter just like something wild,nor you just must not!"
"All right, mother," I assented. "But I must hurry back to Dakota, youknow, for I can't lose so much time this time of year."
"You're the worst man I ever saw for always being in a hurry.I--I'll--well, I do declare!" And she bustled off to the kitchen with mefollowing and talking.
"Oh, can't I get away from you? This is just awful, Mr. Devereaux."
"Don't you like the name?" I put in winningly and cutting off herdiscourse, and in spite of her attempt at seriousness she smiled.
"It is a beautiful name," she admitted, looking at me slyly out of hersmall black eyes. She was part Indian, just a trifle, but sufficient togive her black eyes instead of brown, as most colored people have, andshe had long black hair.
Before Orlean returned from the store her mother and I were like motherand son and Orlean seemed pleased, while Ethel looked at Claves andadmitted that I would get Orlean, anyhow. The only thing necessary nowwas to reach the elder, and the next morning we spent a couple of hourstrying to locate him by telephone. We finally succeeded, as I thought,but he denied later he was the party, though I would have sworn to thevoice being his as I could hear him distinctly. In answer to mystatement that we were ready to marry he shouted in a frantic voice:
"I don't approve of it! I don't approve of it! I don't approve of it!"and kept shouting it over and over until the operator called the timewas up.
A letter had been sent him by special delivery the day I arrived and thefollowing morning a reply was received stating that if Orlean marriedme, without my convincing him that I was marrying her for love, and notto hold down a Dakota claim, she would be doing so without his consent.In discussing the matter later Ethel, who had become resigned to theinevitable, said:
"If you want to get along with papa you must flatter him. Just make himthink he is a king."
"Ah," I thought. "Here is where I made my mistake."
I had started wrong. "Just make him think he is a king, His MajestyNewton Jasper." The idea kept revolving in my mind as I realized thereason I had not made good with him. I was too plain and sincere. I mustflatter him, make him think he was what he was not, and my failure to dothat was the reason for his listening to me in such an expressionlessmanner.
Somewhere I had read that to be a king was to look wise and say nothing.This is what he had done. Evidently he liked to feel great. I recalledthe name he was known by, "the Reverend N.J.," and I had heard himspoken of jokingly as the "Great N.J." The N.J. was for Newton Jasper.Ha! Ha! The more I thought of his greatness the more amused I became. Imight have settled the matter easily if I had no objection to flatteringhim. He arrived home the next morning and was sitting in the parlor whenI called, trying to look serious, and surveying me as I entered, just asa king might have done a disobedient subject. I had been so free andwithout fear for so long that it was beyond my ability to shrivel up anddrop as he continued to look me over. I proceeded to tell him all that Ihad written in my lette
r to him, the one he had not read, but did notintimate that I knew he had not read it.
In the dining room where we gathered a few minutes later, with thefamily assembled in mute attention, he asked Orlean whether she wantedto marry me and live in Dakota and she admitted that she did. Thenturning to me he began a lengthy discourse with many ifs and if nots andkept it up until I cut in with:
"My dear people, when I first came to see Orlean I didn't profess love.Circumstances had not granted us the opportunity, but we entered amutual agreement that we would wait and see whether we could learn tolove each other or not." Hesitating a moment, I looked at Orlean andgaining confidence as I met her soft glance, I went on: "I cannotguarantee anything as to the future. We may be happy, and we may not,but I hope for the best."
That seemed to satisfy him and he was very nice about it afterward.Orlean and I had been to the court house the day previous and got thelicense, and when her father told us we should go and get the license welooked at each other rather sheepishly, and stammered out something, butwent down town and bought a pair of shoes instead. When we arrived homepreparations were being made for the wedding. The elder called up thehomes of two bishops who lived in the city, and when he found one sickand the other out of town he was somewhat disappointed, as it had alwaysbeen his desire to have his daughters married by a bishop. He had failedin the first instance and was compelled to accept the services of thepastor of one of the three large African M.E. Churches of the city atthe wedding of Ethel, and had to call upon this pastor again but foundhe also was out of the city. He finally secured the services of anotherpastor, by whom we were married in the presence of some twenty or morenear friends of the family, Orlean wearing her sister's wedding dressand veil. The dress was becoming and I thought her very beautiful. Iwore a Prince Albert coat and trousers to match which belonged toClaves and were too small and tight, making me uncomfortable. I was notlong in getting out of them after undergoing the ordeal of being kissedby all the ladies present. Mrs. Ewis invited us to spend the evening ather home and the next day we left for South Dakota.
A beautiful townsite where trees stood. (page 182.)]
The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer Page 36