finding it hard to get it into words that would allay Cousin Lorena's
forebodings and impress her properly. Annie frowned at the paper. How
inform a bilious, middle-aged prophet of evil that she had not only
wedded prosperity and industry but also a glorious young demigod whose
tenderness and goodness passed belief?
Suddenly she heard a voice, loud, angry, incoherent. She dropped the
pen and ran out to the kitchen door.
Wes stood there, confronting Uncle Zenas--a Wes she had never dreamed
could exist. The vein on his forehead was black and swollen; indeed
his whole face was distorted with rage.
"You damned old liar--don't you tell me again you put that pitchfork
away when I found it myself in the stable behind the mare's stall.
Pretty business if she'd knocked it down and run one of the tines into
her."
"Marse Wes, you haddat pitchfo'k dere yo'se'f dis mawnin'; I ain't
nevah touch dat pitchfo'k." Unc' Zenas's voice was low and even.
Behind Wes's back Aunt Dolcey made signs to her husband for silence.
"I tell you you're a liar, and by rights I ought to cut your lying
tongue out of your head! I haven't even seen that pitchfork for three
days, and when I went to look for it just now I found it in the stable
where you'd had it cleaning out the stalls. Now shut up and get out
about your work! Don't let me hear another word out of you!"
Unc' Zenas turned away and Wes, without a word or look at the two
women, strode after him. Annie, shaken, caught Aunt Dolcey's arm.
"Oh, Aunt Dolcey," she breathed, "what on earth was the matter?"
Aunt Dolcey drew her into the kitchen.
"Nuffin' but Marse Wes flyin' int' one his bad Dean temper fits,
honey," said the old woman "No use to min' him. No use payin' any
'tention. Dat why I waggle my head at Zenas to say nuffin' back. Talk
back to Marse Wes when he's high-flyin' on'y meks things worse."
Annie beheld an abyss yawning beneath her feet.
"Yes, but, Aunt Dolcey--what's the sense in talking that way? It
wasn't anything, just a pitchfork out of place. And he went on so. And
he looked so dreadful."
Aunt Dolcey rattled her pans.
"I been dreadin' dis moment, whenas you firs' see Marse Wes in his
anger. Zenas an' me, we's use to it. Marse Wes dataway; som'n go wrong
he fly off de handle. Zenas ain't mislay no pitchfo'k--I seed Marse
Wes mahse'f wid dat pitchfo'k dis mawnin'. But eve'y once in a while
he git a temper fit an' blow off he mouf like dat. Sometimes he strike
some-buddy--but he doan often strike Zenas. Sometimes he git mad at
oner de hosses an' frail it proper. Dat high temper run in de Dean
fambly, chile. Dey gits mad, an' dey flies off, an' you just got to
stan' it."
"But does he--does he get over it quick?"
The old negress shook her head.
"He'll be mighty quiet come suppeh-time, not talkin' much, lookin'
dahk. Walk light, an' don't say nuffin' rile him up, eve'ything all
right. T'-morrow mawnin' come, he's outer it." Her voice rose into a
minor cadence, almost a chant. "Chile, it's a dahk shadder on all de
Deans--dey all mahked wid dat frown on deir foreheads, an' dey all got
dahk hours come to um. Marse Wes's maw she fade out an' die caze she
cain' stan' no such. His grammaw, she leave his grampaw. An' so on
back. Ontell some ooman marry a Dean who kin chase dat debbil outer
him, jes so long de Dean men lib in de shadder. I tole you, ain' I, de
day you come, sperrit an' sense carry you fur, but it's de haht gwine
carry you froo. Now you un'stan'."
Yes, Annie understood, imperfectly. So might Red Riding Hood have
understood when the wolf suddenly appeared beside her peaceful
pathway. She asked one more question, "Does he get mad often?" and
waited, trembling, for the answer.
Aunt Dolcey stuck out her underlip. "Sometime he do, en den again,
sometime he doan'. Mos' giner'ly he do."
Annie walked back to her letter, and looked at its last phrase. She
picked up the pen, but did not write.
Then with a quick intake of breath she took her first conscious step
in the path of loyal wifehood.
She added, writing fast: "He is the best man that ever lived, I do
believe," and signed her name, folded the letter and sealed it in its
envelope as quickly as she could.
At supper she watched Wes. He was, as Aunt Dolcey had predicted, very
silent; the vein in his forehead still twitched menacingly and the
pupils of his eyes were distended until the colour about them
disappeared in blackness. After he had eaten he went outside and
smoked, while Annie sat fiddling with a bit of sewing and dreading she
knew not what.
But nothing happened. Presently he came in, announced that he was
tired and had a hard day before him to-morrow, and thought he'd go to
bed.
Long after he had fallen into immobile slumber Annie lay beside him,
awake, marvelling how suddenly he had become a stranger, almost an
ogre. Yet she loved him and yearned to him. The impulse that had made
her finish the letter to Cousin Lorena in the same spirit in which she
had begun it called her to pity and help him. She must conceal his
weakness from their world. She listened to his deep, regular
breathing, she put her hand against his hard palm.
"I'm his wife," thought Annie Dean with inarticulate tenderness. "I'm
going to try to be everything a wife ought to be."
The next morning he was his old self again, laughing, joking, teasing
her as usual. The scene of yesterday seemed to have gone utterly from
his memory, though he must have known that she had seen and heard it.
But he made no allusion to it, nor did she. The farm work was
pressing; the warm spring days foretold an early season.
As he went whistling out toward the barn Annie heard him salute Unc'
Zenas with familiar friendliness:
"How's tricks this morning? Think the Jersey'll be fresh next week?"
Aunt Dolcey heard him, too, and she and Annie exchanged long glances.
The old woman's said, "You see--what I told you was true"; and the
young woman's answered, "Yes, I see, and I understand. I'm going to
see it through."
But something in her youth had definitely vanished, as it always does
when responsibility lays its heavy hand on us. She went about her new
life questioningly eager for understanding. There was so much for her
to see and learn--the erratic ways of setting hens, the care of
foolish little baby chicks; the spring house, cool and damp and
gray-walled, with its trickle of cold water forever eddying about the
crocks of cream-topped milk; the garden making, left to her and Aunt
Dolcey after the first spading; the various messes and mashes to be
prepared for cows with calf; the use of the stored vegetables and
fruits, and meat dried and salted in such generous quantity that she
marvelled at it. All the farm woman's primer she learned, bit by bit,
seeing how it supplemented and harmonized with that life of the fields
that so engrossed and commanded Wes.
But through it all, beneath it all, she found herself waiting, with
dread, for another outburst. Against whom would it be this time--Unc'
Zenas again--Aunt Dolcey--one of the animals--or perhaps herself? She
wondered if she could bear it if he turned on her.
She was working in the spring house mixing cream with curd for cottage
cheese, very busy and anxious over it, for this was her first essay
alone, when she heard Wes again in anger. She dropped her spoon, but
did not go to look, only concentrated herself to listen.
This time he was cursing one of his horses, and she could hear the
stinging whish of a whip, a wicked and sinister emphasis to the
beast's snorting and frenzied thumping of hoofs. Her blue eyes dilated
with fear; she knew in what pain and fright the horse must be lunging
under those blows. And Wes, raucous, violent, his mouth foul with
unclean words--only this morning he had told her that when Sunday came
they'd go into the woods and find a wild clematis to plant beside the
front door. Wild clematis! She could have laughed at the irony of it.
At last she could bear it no longer; she put her hands to her ears to
shut out the hideousness of it. After an interminable wait she took
them down. He had stopped--there was silence--but she heard footsteps
outside, and she literally cowered into the darkest corner of the
spring house. But it was only Aunt Dolcey, her lips set in a line of
endurance.
"I was lookin' erbout foh you, honey," she said reassuringly. "I di'n'
know where you was, en den I remembah you come off down heah. Let Aunt
Dolcey finish up dat cheese."
"What--what started him?" asked Annie piteously.
"I doan' jes' know--sound' like one de big team di'n' go inter his
right stall, er som'n like dat. It's always som'n triflin', en no
'count. But land, he'll be ovah it come night. Doan' look so white en
skeer, chile."
"But--but I been thinking--what if he might turn on me--what if he'd
strike me? Aunt Dolcey--did he ever strike you?"
"Oncet."
"Oh, Aunt Dolcey, what did you do?"
Something flared in Aunt Dolcey's eyes that was as old as her race.
She looked past Annie as if she saw something she rather relished;
just so her ancestors must have looked when they were dancing before a
bloodstained Congo fetish.
"You see dat big white scar on Marse Wes' lef' wris'? When he struck
me I mahk him dere wid my hot flatiron. Am' no man eveh gwine lif' his
hand to Dolcey, no matter who."
A shrewd question came to Annie:
"Aunt Dolcey, did he ever strike you again?"
"No, ma'am, no 'ndeedy, he didn'. Wil' Marse Wes may be, but he ain'
no crazy man. It's dat ole debbil in his nature, Miss Annie, honey. En
ef ever once som'n tremenjus happen to Marse Wes, dat debbil'll be
cas' out. But hit's got to be stronger en mo' pow'ful dan he is. Not
'ligion, fer 'ligion goes f'm de outside in. Som'n got to come from
inside Marse Wes out befo' dat ole debbil is laid."
This was meagre comfort, and Annie did not follow the primitive
psychology of it. She only knew that into her happiness there had come
again the darkening of a fear, fear that was to be her devil, no less
terrible because his presence was for the most part veiled.
But again she steeled her courage. "I won't let him spoil everything;
I won't let him make me afraid of him," she vowed, seeing Wes in his
silent mood that night. "I won't be afraid of him. I wish I could cut
that old vein out of his forehead. I hate it--it's just as if it was
the thing that starts him. Never seems as if it was part of the real
Wes, my Wes."
In the depths of the woods, on Sunday, she stood by while he dug up
the wild clematis--stood so he could not see her lips quiver--and she
put her clenched hands behind her for fear they, too, would betray
her.
"Wes," she asked, "what made you get so mad last Thursday and beat old
Pomp so?"
He turned toward her in genuine surprise.
"I wasn't mad; not much, that is. And all I laid on Pomp's tough old
hide couldn't hurt him. He's as mean as a mule, that old scoundrel.
Gets me riled every once in a while."
"I wish you wouldn't ever do it again. It scared me almost to death."
"Scared you!" he laughed. "Oh, Annie, you little silly--you aren't
scared of me. Now don't let on you are. What you doing--trying to kid
me? There, ain't that a splendid plant? I believe I'll take back a
couple shovelfuls this rich wood earth to put in under it. It'll never
know it's not at home."
"Yes, but, Wes--I wish you'd promise me something."
"Promise you anything."
"Then--promise me not to get mad and beat the horses any more or
holler at Unc' Zenas. I don't like it."
"Annie, you little simp--what's the matter with you? A fellow's got to
let off steam once in a while, and if you'd been pestered like I have
with Unc' Zenas's ornery trifling spells and old Pomp's general
cussedness, you'd wonder that I don't get mad and stay mad every
minute. Don't let's talk any more about it. Say, look there--there's a
scarlet tanager! Ain't it pretty? Shyest bird there is, but up here in
the woods there's a couple pairs 'most every year. Pull that old
newspaper up round the earth a little, so's I can get a better holt of
it. That's the girl. Gee, I never knew what fun it'd be to have a wife
who'd be so darn chummy as you are. How d'you like your husband, Mrs.
Dean? Ain't it about time you said something nice to the poor feller
instead of scolding his lights and liver out of place on a nice
peaceful Sabbath day? You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
She pushed back the fear devil and answered his smile.
'No, sir, I'm not going to say anything nice to my husband. I'll tell
you a secret about him--he's awful stuck on himself now."
"Why shouldn't he be? Look who he picked out to marry."
Who could stand against such beguiling? Annie looked up at him and saw
his Dean mark give a little mocking twitch as if it rejoiced in her
thwarting.
But she said no more; and they planted the wild clematis with its
black woods earth beneath at the side of the front door, and Annie
twisted its pliable green stems round one of the posts of the little
benched entrance.
Her hands moved deftly, and Wes, who had finished firming the earth
about the plant, watched them.
"Your little paws are gettin' awful brown," he said. "I remember that
first day, in the shop, how white they were--and how quick they moved.
You wrapped up them aprons like somethin' was after you, and I was
trying to get my nerve up to speak to you."
"Tryin' to get up your nerve! I reckon it wasn't much effort. There,
don't that vine look's if it grew there of itself?"
"Yeh--it looks fine." He sat down on the bench and pulled her down
beside him, his arm about her. "Annie, baby, are y' happy?"
She put her cheek against his shoulder and shut her eyes.
"I'm so happy I wouldn't darst be any happier."
"You're not sorry you picked up with me so quick? You don't wish't
you'd stayed down in Balt'mer and got you a city beau?"
"I'd rather be with you--here--than any place in the world. And,
Wes--I think you're the best and kindest man that ever lived. I
wouldn't have you changed, any way, one little bit."
She defied her fears and that mocking, twitching vein with the words.
"Same here. Made to order for me, you were. First minute I looked in
those round blue eyes of yours I knew it."
"It isn't possible," she thought. "It isn't possible that he can get
so mad and be so dreadful. Maybe if I can make him think he's awful
good and kind"--oh, simple subtlety--"believe he is, too, and he'll
stop getting such spells. Oh, if he would always be just like this!"
But it was only two days later when she called him to help her; there
was a hen that was possessed to brood, and Aunt Dolcey had declared
that it was too late, that summer chickens never thrived.
"I can't get her out, Wes," said Annie. "She's 'way in under the
stable, and she pecks at me so mean. You got longer arms'n me--you
reach in and grab her."
He came, smiling. He reached in and grabbed, and the incensed biddy
pecked viciously.
In a flash his anger was on him. He snatched again, and this time
brought out the creature and dropped her with wrung neck, a mass of
quivering feathers and horribly jerking feet, before Annie.
"I reckon that'll learn the old crow!" he snarled, and strode away.
"We might's well have soup for supper," remarked Aunt Dolcey, coming
on the scene a moment later. "Dere, chile, what's a chicken, anyway?"
"It's not that," said Annie briefly; "but he makes me afraid of him.
If I get too afraid of him I'll stop caring anything about him. I
don't want to do that."
"Den," answered Aunt Dolcey with equal brevity, "you got think up some
manner er means to dribe his debbil out. Like I done tol' you."
"Yes, but----"
Aunt Dolcey paused, holding the carcass of the chicken in her hands,
and faced her.
"Dishyer ain' nuthin'. Wait tell he gits one his still spells, whenas
he doan' speak ter nobody an' doan' do no work. Why ain' we got no
seed potaters? Marse Wes he took a contrairy spell an' he wouldn't dig
'em, an' he wouldn't let Zenas tech 'em needer. Me, I went out
moonlight nights an' dug some to eat an' hid 'em in de cellar. Miss
Annie, you doan' know nuffin' erbout de Dean temper yit."
They went silently to the house. Aunt Dolcey stopped in the kitchen
and Annie went on into the living room. There on the walls hung the
pictures of Wes's father and mother, cabinet photographs framed square
in light wood. Annie looked at those pictured faces in accusing
inquiry. Why had they bequeathed Wes such a legacy? In his father's
face, despite the beard that was the fashion of those days, there was
the same unmistakable pride and passion of Wes to-day. And his mother
was a meek woman who could not live and endure the Dean temper. Well,
Annie was not going to be meek. She thought with satisfaction of Aunt
Dolcey and the hot flatiron. The fact that he had never lifted finger
to Aunt Dolcey again proved that if one person could thus conquer him,
so might another. Was she, his wife, to be less resourceful, less
self-respecting than that old Negro woman? Was she to endure what Aunt
Dolcey would not?
Suddenly she snatched out the little old family album from its place
in the top of the desk secretary, an old-fashioned affair bound in
shabby brown leather with two gilt clasps. Here were more pictures of
the Dean line--his grandfather, more bearded than his father, his Dean
vein even more prominent; his grandmother, another meek woman.
"Probably the old wretch beat her," thought Annie angrily.
Another page and here was great-grandfather himself, in middle age,
his picture--a faded daguerreotype--showing him in his Sunday best,
but plainly in no Sunday mood. "Looks like a pirate," was Annie's
comment. There was no picture of great-grandmother. "Probably he
killed her off too young, before she had time to get her picture
taken." And Annie's eyes darted blue fire at the supposed culprit. She
shook her brown little fist at him. "You started all this," she said
aloud. "You began it. If you'd had a wife who'd've stood up to you
you'd never got drunk and killed a man, and you wouldn't have left
your family a nasty old mad vein in the middle of their foreheads,
looking perfectly unChristian. I just wish I had you here, you old
scoundrel! I'll bet I'd tell you something that'd make your ears
smart."
She banged to the album and put it in its place.
"Well, not me!" said Annie. "Not me! I'm not going to be bullied and
scared to death by any man with a bad temper, and the very next time
Mister Wes flies off the handle and raises Cain I'm going to raise
Cain, two to his one. I won't be scared! I won't be a little gump and
take such actions off any man. We'll see!"
It is easy enough to be bold and resolute and threaten a picture. It
is easy enough to plot action either before or after the need for it
arises. But when it comes to raising Cain two to your husband's one,
and that husband has been a long and successful cultivator of that
particular crop--why, that is quite a different thing.
Besides, as it happened, Annie did not wholly lack sympathy for his
next outburst, which was directed toward a tramp, a bold dirty
creature who appeared one morning at the kitchen door and asked for
food.
"You two Janes all by your lonesome here?" he asked, stepping in.
Wes had come into the house for another shirt--he had split the one he
was wearing in a mighty bout with the grubbing hoe--and he entered the
kitchen from the inner door just in time to catch the words.
He leaped and struck in one movement, and it carried the tramp and
himself outside on the grass of the drying yard. The tramp was a burly
man, and after the surprise of the attack he attempted to fight. He
might as well have battled with a locomotive going full speed.
"What you doin' way up here, you lousy loafer?" demanded Wes between
blows. "Get to hell out of here before I kill you, like you deserve,
comin' into my house and scarin' women. I've a great mind to get my
gun and blow you full of holes."
In two minutes the tramp was running full speed toward the road,
followed by Wes, who assisted his flight with kicks whenever he could
reach him. After twenty minutes or so the victor came back. His eyes
were red with rage that possessed him. He did not stop to speak, but
hurried out his rackety little car and was gone. Later they found out
he had overtaken the tramp, fought him again, knocked him out, and
then, roping him, had taken him to the nearest constable and seen him
committed to jail.
But the encounter left him strange and silent for a week, and his Dean
mark twitched and leaped in triumph. During that time the only notice
he took of Annie was to teach her to use his rifle.
"Another tramp comes round, shoot him," he commanded.
"En in de meantime," counselled Aunt Dolcey, "it'll come in mighty
handy fer you to kill off some deseyer chicken hawks what makin' so
free wid our nex' crap br'ilers."
But beyond the learning how to use the gun Annie had learned something
more: she added it to her knowledge that Aunt Dolcey had once outfaced
that tyrant. It was this--that Wes's rage was the same, whether the
cause of it was real or imaginary.
* * * * *
The advancing summer, with its sultriness, its sudden evening storms
shot through with flaming lightning and reverberant with the drums of
thunder, brought to Annie a cessation of her purpose. She was languid,
subject to whimsical desires and appetites, at times a prey to sudden
nervous tears. The household work slipped back into Aunt Dolcey's
faithful hands, save now and then when Annie felt more buoyant and
instinct with life and energy than she had ever felt before. Then she
would weed her garden or churn and print a dozen rolls of butter with
a keen and vivid delight in her activity.
In the evening she and Wes walked down the long lane and looked at the
wheat, wide level green plains already turning yellow; or at the corn,
regiments of tall soldiers, each shako tipped with a feathery tassel.
Beyond lay the woods--dark, mysterious. Little dim plants of the soil
bloomed and shed faint scent along the pathway in the dewy twilight.
Sometimes they sat under the wild clematis, flowering now, and that,
too, was perfumed, a wild and tangy scent that did not cloy. They did
not talk very much, but he was tender with her, and his fits of anger
seemed forgotten.
When they did talk it was usually about the crops--the wheat. It was
wonderful heavy wheat. It was the best wheat in all the neighbourhood.
Occasionally they took out the little coffeepot and drove through the
country and looked at other wheat, but there was none so fine as
theirs.
And with the money it would bring--the golden wheat turned into
gold--they would---- And now came endless dreams.
"I thought we'd sell the old coffeepot to the junkman and get a
brand-new car, a good one, but now----" This was Wes.
"I think we ought to save, too. A boy'll need so many things."
"Girls don't need anything much, I suppose--oh, no!" He touched her
cheek with gentle fingers.
"It's not going to be a girl."
"How d'you know?"
"I know."
So went their talk, over and over, an endless garland of happy
conjectures, plans, air castles. Cousin Lorena sent little patterns
and thin scraps of material, tiny laces, blue ribbons.
"I told her blue--blue's for boys," said Annie. And Wes laughed at
her. It was all a blessed interlude of peace and expectancy.
The wheat was ready for harvest. From her place under the clematis
vine, where she sat with her sewing, Annie could see the fields of
pale gold, ready for the reaper. Wes had taken the coffeepot and gone
down to the valley to see when the threshers would be able to come. In
the morning he would begin to cut. Annie cocked a questioning eye at
the sky, for she had already learned to watch the farmer's greatest
ally and enemy--weather.
"If this good spell of weather only holds until he gets it all cut!"
She remembered stories he had told her of sudden storms that flattened
the ripe grain to the ground, beyond saving; of long-continued rains
that mildewed it as it stood in the shocks. But if the good weather
held! And there was not a cloud in the sky, nor any of those faint
signs by which changing winds or clouds are forecast.
She heard the rattle and clack of the returning coffeepot, boiling up
the hill at an unwonted speed. And she waved her hand to Wes as he
came past; but he was bent over the wheel and did not even look round
for her, only banged the little car round to the back furiously.
Something in his attitude warned her, and she felt the old
almost-forgotten devil of her fear leap to clutch her heart.
Presently he came round the house, and she hardly dared to look at
him; she could not ask. But there was no need. He flung his hat on the
ground before her with a gesture of frantic violence. When he spoke
the words came in a ferment of fury: