years ago. She used to sew, but she wasn't strong, and we never could
get ahead."
"My folks are all gone, too."
How little and alone she was, but how much nearer to him her aloneness
brought her. He wanted to put his hand over hers and tell her that he
would take care of her, that she need never be alone again. But the
beginning of the film choked back the words. He poked the box of
caramels at her, and she took it, opened it with a murmured "Oh, my,
thank you!" Presently they both had sweetly bulging cheeks. Where
their elbows touched on the narrow chair arm made tingling thrills run
all over him. Once she gave him an unconscious nudge of excitement.
Out of the corner of his eye he studied her delicate side face as she
sat, with her lips parted, intent on the film.
"She's pretty--and she's good," thought Wesley Dean. "I expect she's
too good for me."
But that unwontedly humble thought did not alter it a hair's breadth
that she must be his. The Deans had their way always. The veins in his
wrists and the vein in his forehead beat with his hot purpose. He
shifted so that his arm did not touch hers, for he found the nearness
of her disturbing; he could not plan or think clearly while she was so
close. And he must think clearly.
When the last flicker of the feature was over and the comic and the
news had wrung their last laugh and gasp of interest from the crowd,
they joined the slow exit of the audience in silence. On the sidewalk,
however, she found her voice.
"It was an awful nice picture," she said softly. "'Most the nicest I
ever saw."
"Look here, let's go somewhere and have a hot choc'late, or some soda,
or ice cream," he broke in hurriedly. He could not let her go with so
much yet unsaid. "Or would you like an oyster stew in a reg'lar
restaurant? Yes, that'd be better. Come on; it isn't late."
"Well, after all those caramels, I shouldn't think an oyster stew----"
"You can have something else, then." The main thing was to get her at
a table opposite him, where they wouldn't have to hurry away. "Let's
go in there."
He pointed toward a small restaurant across the street where red
candlelights glimmered warmly through panelled lace.
"But that looks like such a stylish place," she protested, even as she
let him guide her toward it.
But it was not so stylish when they got inside, and the appearance of
the stout woman, evidently both proprietor and cashier, who presided
over the scene at a table on a low platform near the door reassured
them both. And the red candleshades were only crinkled paper; the lace
curtains showed many careful darns. A rebellious boy of fourteen, in a
white jacket and apron, evidently the proprietor's son, came to take
their order. After a good bit of urging Anita said that she would take
a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee.
Wesley ordered an oyster stew for himself, and coffee, and then
grandly added that they would both have vanilla and chocolate ice
cream.
"He looks as if he just hated being a waiter," said Anita, indicating
the departing boy servitor.
"Sh'd think he would," said Wesley. He put his arms on the table and
leaned toward her. "I was going home this afternoon till I saw you. I
stayed over just to see you again. I've got to go back in the morning,
for I've not got my spring work done; but--you're going with me."
The vein on his forehead heightened his look of desperate
determination. He was not so much a suitor as a commander.
"You haven't got any folks and neither have I, so that makes it easy.
I'll come for you in the morning, about eight o'clock, and we'll go
get a license and get married, and then we can get the ten-o'clock bus
out to Frederick. Oh, girl, I never saw any one like you! I--I'll be
good to you--I'll take care of you. It don't matter if I didn't ever
see you till this afternoon, I'd never find anybody else that I want
so much in a hundred thousand years. I've not got a lot of money, but
the farm's mine, all free and clear, and if my wheat turns out all
right I'll have a thousand dollars' cash outright come the end of the
year, even after the taxes are paid and everything. Won't you look at
me, Anita--won't you tell me something? Don't you like me?"
The girl had listened with her eyes cast down, her hands nervously
picking at the edge of the tablecloth. But he was not mistaken in her.
She had wherewith to meet him, and her gaze was honest, without
coquetry or evasion.
"Oh, I do like you!" she cried with quick colour. "I do! I do! I
always thought somebody like you'd come along some day, just like
this, and then--it just seemed foolish to expect it. But look here. I
told you a story, right off. My name's not Anita--it's Annie. I took
to pretending it's Anita because--it does seem sort of silly, but I
got to tell you--because I saw it in the movies, and it seemed sort of
cute and different, and Annie's such a plain, common name. But I
couldn't let you go on talking like that and calling me by it, now
could I?"
The mutinous young waiter brought their food and thumped it
truculently down before them.
"Look out!" said Dean with sudden violent harshness, the vein in his
forehead darkening ominously. "What do you think you're doing, feeding
cattle?"
The boy drew back in confusion, and Annie exclaimed: "Oh, he didn't
mean it anything against us--he's just mad because he has to be a
waiter."
"Well, he'd better be careful; kids can be too smart Aleck."
The little gust had deflected them away from their own affairs. But
Annie brought them back. She leaned toward him.
"You make me kind of afraid of you. If you ever spoke to me like that
it'd just about kill me."
He was contrite. "Why, I couldn't ever speak to you like that, honey;
it just made me mad the way he banged things down in front of you. I
don't want people to treat you like that."
"And you look so fierce, too--scowling so all the time."
He put up a brown finger and touched his savage vein.
"Now, now--you mustn't mind my look. All the Dean men are marked like
that; it's in the blood. It don't mean a thing." He smiled winningly.
"I reckon if you're beginning to scold me you're going to marry me,
huh?"
Something very sweet and womanly leaped in Annie's blue eyes.
"I--I reckon I am," she said, and then confessed herself a brave
adventurer and philosopher in one. "Yes, I'd be a fool to sit round
and make excuses and pretend it wouldn't do to be so out of the
ordinary when here you are and here I am, and it means--our whole
lives. I don't care, either, if I didn't ever set eyes on you till
to-day--I know you're all right and that what you say's true. And I
feel as if I'd known you for years and years."
"That's the way I felt about you the minute I looked at you. Oh"--he
gave a vast and shaking sigh--"I can't hardly believe my luck. Eat up
your supper and let's get out of here. Maybe there's some stores open
yet and I could buy you a ring."
"And I have to be in my boarding house by half-past ten," offered
Annie, "or I'll be locked out. What the girls are going to say when I
come in and tell 'em----" She looked at him with intense and piteous
question--the question that every woman at the moment of surrender
asks sometimes with her lips, but always with her heart: "It is going
to be all right, isn't it? And you'll be good to me?"
"So help me God," said young Wesley Dean.
* * * * *
The farm lay high, as Wesley had said. Indeed, all the way from
Baltimore they had seemed to be going into the hills, those placidly
rounding friendly Maryland hills that rise so softly, so gradually
that the traveller is not conscious of ascent. The long straight road
dips across them gallantly, a silver band of travel to tie them to the
city, with little cities or towns pendent from it at wide intervals.
Trees edge it with a fringe of green; poor trees, maimed by the
trimmers' saws and shears into twisted caricatures of what a tree
should be, because the telegraph wires and telephone wires must pass,
and oaks and locusts, pines and maples, must be butchered of their
spreading branches to give them room.
It was along this highway that the motor bus, filled with passengers
and baggage and driven with considerably more haste than discretion,
carried the newly married pair. Annie's eyes grew wide at the wonder
and beauty of it. She was not at all afraid. She snuggled her hand
into Wes's and loved it--and loved him, too, with his look of pride
and joy in her. She was content to be silent and let him talk. Now and
then she looked at the little turquoise ring on her finger above the
shiny new wedding ring, and loved that, too, for he had chosen it at
once from the trayful offered them, blurting out that she must have it
because it matched her eyes.
"All this country out here's rich," he bragged, "but Fred'rick
County's far the richest land of all. Richest in the state. Maybe
richest in the whole United States, I dunno. And all the farms are
big. Great big farms--and great big teams to till 'em. People don't
use mules here s'much as they do over on the Eastern Shore. And
there's not any sand, like there is over there--in spots, that is."
"What's that man doing?" asked Annie alertly.
"Ploughin'. Say, didn't you ever see a man ploughin' before?" "Only in
the movies," said Annie, unabashed. "Do you ever plough?"
He laughed outright.
"Say, you're going to be some little farmer's wife. I can see that.
Yes'm, I plough a little now and then. It's like fancywork--awful
fascinating--and once you get started you don't want to stop till you
get a whole field done."
"Quit kidding."
"Say, Annie, do you know a chicken when you see it walking round? Or a
turkey? Or a guinea keet? We got 'em all. Aunt Dolcey, she takes care
of 'em."
"I'd like to take care of 'em. I'll feed 'em, if she'll show me how."
"Aunt Dolcey'll show you. She'll be tickled to death to have somebody
feed 'em when she's got the mis'ry."
At Frederick they left the big motor bus and got into Wes's own
rackety flivver, the possession of which delighted Annie's heart.
"My land, I never thought I'd get married to a man that owned an
automobile," she confessed with flattering frankness in her voice.
"This ain't an automobile," said Wes. "It's a coffeepot, and an awful
mean one. Sometimes she won't boil, no matter what I do."
The coffeepot on this particular day chose to boil. They rattled
merrily out of Frederick and off into the higher hills beyond. It was
a little after noon when they reached the farm.
They had had to turn off the pike and take a winding wood road, rough
and muddy from the spring rains. All through the budding green of the
trees dogwood had hung out white bridal garlands for them, and there
were violets in all the little mossy hollows. At last they came
through to the clearing, where lay the farm, right on the ridge, its
fields smiling in the sun, a truce of Nature with man's energy and
persistence. Yet not a final truce. For all around, the woods crept up
to the open and thrust in tentative fingers--tiny pine trees, sprouts
and seedlings of hardwood, scraps of underbrush--all trying to gain a
foothold and even when cut and overturned by the sharp plough still
clinging tenaciously to their feeble rooting.
"It looks somehow," said Annie, vaguely understanding this, "as if the
trees and things were just waiting to climb over the walls."
"And that's what they are," said Wesley Dean. "The time I put in
grubbing! Well--let's go in and see Aunt Dolcey."
He had told her, coming out, that he was afraid she would find the
house sort of plain, but just the space of it delighted her. The rooms
were bare and square, whitewashed exquisitely, the furniture dark old
cherry and walnut of a style three generations past.
There were no blinds or curtains, and in the streaming sunlight Annie
could see that everything was clean and polished to the last flicker
of high light. Here and there were bits of colour--crimson and blue in
the rag carpet, golden brass candlesticks on the mantel, a red-beaded
mat on the table under the lamp, the lamp itself clear glass and
filled with red kerosene that happily repeated the tint of the mat. It
all pleased Annie, touching some hitherto untwanged chord of beauty in
her nature. And there was about it the unmistakable atmosphere of
home.
"Old-fashioned but sort of swell, too," she decided. "Looks kind of
like some of the parlours of those old houses on Charles Street that I
used to rubber into in the evenings when the lights were lit and
they'd forgot to put the blinds down."
She liked the impassive almost Egyptian face of Aunt Dolcey, too. The
old coloured woman had received her with a serious regard but
friendly.
"Mist' Wes, he stahtle me mighty frequen', but he nevah stahtle me
with no marryin' befo'," she said. "Honey, it'll be mighty nice to
have a pret' young gal in de house. I'll serve you de bes' I kin,
faithful an' stiddy, like I always serve him. Ef I'd 'a' known you was
a-comin' I'd sho' had somethin' fo' dinneh to-day besides greens an'
po'k, cracklin' pone an' apple dumplin's. That's nuffin' fo' a weddin'
dinneh."
But when they came to eat it, it was delicious--the greens delicately
seasoned, not greasy, the salt pork home-cured and sweet, the
cracklin' pone crumbling with richness, and the apple dumpling a
delight of spicy flavour.
They sat opposite each other, in as matter-of-fact fashion as if they
had been married for years. They were young and exceedingly hungry,
and hunger destroys self-consciousness.
The china was very old--white plates with a curving pattern of blue
leaves and yellow berries. The knives and forks were polished steel
with horn handles. The spoons were silver; old handmade rat-tail
spoons they were, with the mark of the smith's mallet still upon them
and the initials W.D. cut in uneven letters.
"Those were my great-granddad's," said Wesley. "Same name as mine. He
had 'em made out of silver money by a man down in Frederick. They must
be nearly a hundred years old. My great-granddad, he was the man that
bought this land and began to clear it. He wanted to be away off from
everybody."
"Why?" asked Annie, interested in the story.
The vein on Wesley's forehead seemed to grow larger and darker as he
answered:
"Oh, he got into trouble--knocked a man down, and the fellow struck
his head on a stone and died. It didn't come to trial--it really was
an accident--but it didn't make granddad popular. Not that he cared.
He was a hard-headed, hard-fisted old son of a gun, if there ever was
one, according to the stories they tell about him."
"What were they fighting about?"
"Oh, I dunno--granddad was high-tempered, and this fellow was sort of
smart Aleck; give him some lip about something and dared him to touch
him. And quick's a wink granddad punched him. At least that's the way
I always heard it. Prob'ly they'd both been taking too much hard
cider. Bring me another dumplin', Aunt Dolcey, please."
As the old woman entered, bringing the dumpling, Annie fancied there
were both warning and sympathy in her eyes. Why, she couldn't imagine.
In a moment she forgot it, for Wesley was looking at her hard.
"It's funny," he said, "to think I only saw you yesterday, and that we
got married this morning. Seems as if you'd been here for years and
years. Does it seem awful strange to you, honey?"
"No," said Annie. "No, it doesn't. It is queer, but all the way here,
and when I come into the house, I had a sense of having been here
before sometime; kind of as if it was my home all along and I hadn't
known about it."
"So it was--and if I hadn't ever met you I'd been an old bach all my
life."
"Yes, you would."
"Yes, I wouldn't."
They were both laughing now. He got up and stretched himself.
"Well, Mrs. Dean," he said, "I gotta go out and fix my disker, and you
gotta come along. I don't want to let you out of my sight. You might
fly off somewhere, and I'd never find you again."
"Don't you worry about that. You couldn't lose me if you tried."
They went through the kitchen, and there a tall gaunt old coloured man
rose and bowed respectfully. He and Aunt Dolcey were having their own
dinner at the kitchen table.
"This here's Unc' Zenas," said Wesley. "He's Aunt Dolcey's husband,
and helps me on the place."
And again Annie saw, this time in the old man's eyes, the flicker of
sympathy and apprehension that she had marked in Aunt Dolcey's.
"And right glad to welcome y', Missy," said Unc' Zenas. "We didn'
'spect Marse Wes to bring home a wife whenas he lef', but that ain' no
sign that it ain' a mighty fine thing."
They went out into the mellow spring day. Wesley Dean, now in his blue
overalls and working shirt, became a king in his own domain, a part of
the fair primitiveness about them. It was as if he had sprung from
this dark fertile soil, was made of its elements, at one with it. Here
he belonged, and the very spring of the earth beneath his feet was
repeated in the measured beating of his blood. The land could not warp
or break him, as it does so many, for he belonged to it as essentially
and as completely as it belonged to him. Dimly the little town girl
beside him felt this, and dimly she hoped that she, too, might prove
to be of the same mould.
"Look at the barn, and the stables, and the corncrib," he was saying.
"See how they're all built? Hand-hewn logs chinked with plaster.
Great-granddad built them all, helped by his two slaves. That's all
the slaves he had, just two and one of 'em was Unc' Zenas's
grandfather. Everything's strong and sound as the day he finished it."
"That one looks newer," said Annie, pointing.
Wesley looked a little shamefaced, as does every typical Anglo-Saxon
discovered in sentiment.
"I built that," he confessed. "It's a chicken house. Somehow I didn't
want to go down to the sawmill and get planks and build with 'em
'mongst all these old log things. So I got the logs out in the woods
and build same as great-granddad. Maybe it was foolish, but I couldn't
help it."
"It wasn't foolish; it was nice," she affirmed.
She perched on the tongue of a wagon while he mended the disker,
dividing her attention between him and the live things of the
barnyard. A string of decorative white ducks marched in single file
about the edge of the cow pound. Beyond them a proud red-wattled cock
paraded and purred among his harem of trim hens, now and then
disturbed in his dignity by the darting nervousness of a pair of
malicious guineas, acknowledged brigands of the feathered tribes. Trim
iridescent pigeons toddled about on their coral feet, looking for
leftovers from the chickens' table.
"Say, Wes, I should think you'd have a dog," she said suddenly. "A
nice big dog lazying round here would sort of complete it."
He bent suddenly over his disker and gave the nut he was working on a
mighty twist, but he had tossed aside his hat, and she could see the
sudden jump and darkening of his menacing vein.
"I had a dog," he said in a low voice, "but he died."
A curious restraint fell on them, and for the first time Annie felt
herself an alien, a stranger, far adrift from familiar shores.
She shivered in the light wind.
"You cold? You better go in the house and get something round you,"
Wes said to her.
"I guess I'd better." And she left him hammering.
In the house she found Aunt Dolcey in the big bedroom over the living
room. She had just finished remaking the bed--an old maple
four-poster, the wood a soft and mellowed orange, fine and colourful
against the white quilt, the lace-edged pillow slips.
"I put on clean sheets," said Aunt Dolcey as Annie hesitated on the
threshold. "Yes'm, I put on everything clean, an' the bes'. I know
what's fitten. My chile, dish yer de third bridal bed I made up for
wives of de Dean men."
Something caught in Annie's throat, terrified her. This old black
woman, with her remoteness, her pitying wise eyes, what did she mean?
Annie wanted terribly to ask her. But how begin? How get through this
wall of inscrutability which the black and yellow races have raised
for their protection?
She fluttered nearer to the old woman.
"Look," she began tremulously--"look--it's all right, isn't it, my
marrying him so quick? I haven't got any folks, and--and I suppose I
haven't got much sense; but there was something about him that just
made me trust him and--and want him. But it was all so quick, and--now
I'm here it seems like maybe--there was--something----Oh, you'd tell
me, wouldn't you? It is all right, isn't it?"
The old woman considered. "It's all right ef you're all right," she
pronounced at length.
"But--but what do you mean? And--and look here--Aunt Dolcey--tell
me--what'd he do to that dog he had?"
"What you know 'bout any dog?"
"I don't know--anything; but when I asked him why he didn't have a
dog--he was queer. It scared me."
"Doan be skeered. They ain' nuffin' to be skeered of 'bout Marse Wes.
Eve'ything all right ef you got patience, an' ef you got sense, an' ef
you got haht enough. Sperrit an' sense go far, but the haht gwine
carry you froo. Now I said my say"--her tone mellowed into unctuous
kindness--"what you want, Missy? Som'n Aun' Dolcey c'n fotch you?
Temme what it is, f'r I got to be up an' erbout my wuk. I got er
weddin' cake to mek yit this ebenin'. Yes, ma'am--I gwi' mek you
weddin' cake fill de bigges' pan in de kitchen."
She helped Annie rummage in her trunk and get out the sweater she had
come in for, and it was not until the girl was running back to the
barns that she realized Aunt Dolcey had not answered her question. But
the old woman's words had steadied her, reassured her.
And Wes received her gayly. His repairs were done, his team in
harness, ready to start.
"It's a shame," he said. "We ought to go off down to town and play
round and have a big time, but I'm so behind with my disking, Annie,
honey. You see I had to stay over a day in Baltimore. Fact. Important
business." He winked at her jocosely. "So I've got to work rest of the
day. That's what comes of marrying a farmer. Farm work don't even wait
on a bride, not even the prettiest bride in the world."
He stooped to kiss her, and she held tight to his arm.
"I don't mind. You go on about your business and I'll get all unpacked
and settled. But don't be late to supper--Aunt Dolcey's making us a
wedding cake."
She watched him as he drove down the lane and turned into the field
and steadied the first straining rush of his team. Again she felt her
abandonment, her utter forlornity, her distance from everything she
had known and been accustomed to. But once more she proved herself an
adventurer and a philosopher.
Shrugging her shoulders, she turned back to the house.
"It may be a funny way to get married; but everything's all right
until it stops being all right, and--and I like it here."
* * * * *
She had been married a week now, and the week had been the fairest of
fair weather, indoors as well as out. Now she sat at the clumsy old
secretary desk to write a letter to Miss Tolman.
... For all you said, and hought I was crazy, I am just as happy as I
can be. Wes is kind and full of fun, and he works very hard. This farm
is a pretty place, and the house is ten times as big as your shop. I
am learning to cook and churn butter, and Aunt Dolcey, the old
coloured woman, teaches me and doesn't laugh when I am dumb. She says,
and Wes does, too, that I am a born farmer's wife, and I think maybe I
am, for I like it in the country more than I ever thought I'd like any
place, and I don't get a bit lonely. You ought to see our wheat--it's
like green satin, only prettier.
I hope the rheumatism in your hands is better, and that you have got
somebody good in my place. Cousin Lorena, I am a very lucky girl to
fall in love with such a nice man, with a piece of property and a
flivver, even if it is an old one; but better than all that he has is
Wes himself, for you never saw a better, kinder man. He is not rough
and does not chew tobacco as you thought maybe he did, only smokes a
pipe once in a while. I made a sweet-potato custard yesterday, and he
said it was the best he ever tasted. He says I must not do anything
that is too hard for me, but I am going to drop seed corn. We have
been down to town once, and went to the movies and bought some candy,
and he wanted to buy me a new hat, but I wouldn't let him. He is so
kind....
* * * * *