"TELL ME WHY YOU DIDN'T ANSWER THE LAST LETTER I WROTE YOU"
"Now I wish you would tell me all about yourself, that is, all you
_care_ to tell," said Irene Grey to the man who sat beside her on the
veranda of their beautiful home, some time after luncheon had been
served. "I have always been peculiarly interested in you and your life
alone off there in the Northwest," whereupon she made herself
comfortable and prepared to listen.
"Oh," he said hesitatingly, thinking of the series of dry years and
their attendant disaster, and hoping that he could find some way of
avoiding a conversation in which that was involved. "I really don't
consider there is much to relate. My life has been rather--well, in a
measure uneventful."
"Oh, but it hasn't, I know," she protested. "All alone you were for so
many years, and you have been, so I have been told, an untiring worker."
She was anxious, he could see, but withal sincere, and in the course of
the afternoon, she told him of how her father had came to Kansas a poor
man, bought the land now a part of what they owned on payments, found
that raising potatoes was profitable--especially when they were ready
for the early market, and later after his marriage to her mother, and
with her mother's assistance, had succeeded. From where they sat, their
property stretched before them in the valley of the Kaw, and comprised
several hundred acres of the richest soil in the state. Indeed, his
success was widely known, and Jean Baptiste had been rather curious to
know the family intimately.
After some time he walked with her through three hundred acres of
potatoes that lay in the valley before the house, and he had for the
first time in his life, the opportunity to study potato raising on a
large scale.
"From your conversation it seems that you raise potatoes on the same
ground every year. I am curious to know how this is done, for even on
the blackest soil in the country I live, this is regarded as quite
impossible with any success."
"Well, it is generally so; but we have found that to plow the land after
the potatoes have been dug, and then seed the same in turnips is
practical. When the turnips, with their wealth of green leaves are at
their best, then, we plow them under and the freezing does the rest."
"A wonderful mulch!"
"It is very simple when one looks into it." They were walking through
the fields, and without her knowing it, he studied her. The kind of girl
and the kind of family his race needed, he could see. In his observation
of the clan to which he had been born, practicability was the greatest
need. Indeed he was sometimes surprised that his race could be so
impracticable. Further west in this State, his uncles, who, like all
Negroes previous to the emancipation, had been born slaves, had gone
West in the latter seventies and early eighties, and settled on land.
With time this land had mounted to great values and the holders had been
made well-to-do thereby. A case of evolution, on all sides. Over all the
Central West, this had been so. At the price land now brought it would
have been impossible for any to own land. There happened, then as had
recently, a series of dry years--seemingly about every twenty years. To
pull through such a siege, the old settlers usually did much better
than the new. To begin with, they were financially better able; but on
the other hand, they did not, as a rule, take the chances new settlers
were inclined to take. Because two or three years were seasonable, and
crops were good, they did not become overly enthusiastic and plunge
deeply into debt as he had done. He could see his error now, and the
chances new settlers were inclined to take. Because moreover, he had
been so much alone--his wedded life had been so brief, and even during
it, he was confused so much with disadvantages, that he had never
attempted to subsidize his farming with stock raising. Perhaps this had
been his most serious mistake; to have had a hundred head of cattle
during such a period as had just passed, would have been to have gone
through it without disaster.
He felt rather guilty as he strolled beside this girl whose father had
succeeded. But one thing he would not do, and that was make excuses. He
had ever been opposed to excusing away his failures. If he had failed,
he had failed, no excuses should be resorted to. But as they strolled
through the fields of potatoes he could not help observe the contrast
between the woman he had married, and the one now beside him that he
might have had for wife. Here was one, and he did not know her so well
as to conclude what kind of girl in all things she was, but it was a
self evident fact that she was practical. Whereas, he had only to recall
that not only had his wife been impractical, but that her father before
her had been so. He recalled that awful night before he had taken her
away, at Colome, when that worthy when he chanced to use the word
practical, had exclaimed: "I'm so tired of hearing that word I do not
know what to do!" and it was seconded by his cohort in evil, Ethel.
His race was filled with such as N.J. McCarthy, he knew; but not only
were they hypocrites, and in a measure enemies to success but enemies to
society as well. How many were there in his race who purported to be
sacrificing their very soul for the cause of Ethiopia but when so little
as medical aid was required in their families, called in a white
physician to administer the same. This had been the case of his august
father-in-law all his evil life.
"Would you like to walk down by the river?" she said now, and looked up
into his face. She had been silent while he was so deeply engrossed in
thought, and upon hearing her voice he started abruptly.
"What--why--what's the matter?" she inquired anxiously.
"Nothing," he said quickly, coloring guiltily. "I was just thinking."
"Of what?" she asked artfully.
"Of you," he said evasively.
"No, you weren't," she said easily. "On the contrary, I venture to
suggest that you were thinking of yourself, your life and what it has
been."
"You are psychological."
"But I have guessed correctly, haven't I?"
"I'm compelled to agree that you have."
They had reached the river now, and took a seat where they could look
out over its swiftly moving waters.
"Frankly I wish you would tell me of your life," she said seriously. "My
brother who, as you know is now dead, told me so much of you. Indeed, he
was so very much impressed with you and your ways. He used to tell me of
what an extraordinary character you were, and I was so anxious to meet
you."
He was silent, but she was an unconventionally bold person. She was
curious, and the more he was silent on such topics, the more anxious she
became to know the secret that he held.
"I appreciate your silence," she said, and gave him the spell of her
wonderful eyes. Stretched there under a walnut she was the picture of
enchantment. Almost he wanted to forget the years and what had passed
with them since she wrote him that letter that he had received too late.
"I want to ask you one question--have wanted to ask it for years," she
pursued. "I want to ask it because, somehow, I am not able to regard you
as a flirt." She paused then, and regarded him with her quick eyes,
expectantly. But he made no answer, so she went on. "From what _I_ have
heard, I think I may be free to discuss this," and she paused again,
with her eyes asking that she may.
He nodded.
"Well, of course," she resumed, as if glad that she might tell what was
in her mind. "It is not--should not be the woman to ask it, either; but
won't you tell me why you didn't answer the last letter I wrote
you--tell me why you _didn't_ come on the visit you suggested?"
He caught his breath sharply, whereat, she looked up and into his eyes.
His lips had parted, but merely to exclaim, but upon quick thought he
had hesitated.
"Yes?"
"I heard you."
"Well?"
"I hardly know how to answer you."
"Please."
"Don't insist on a reply."
"I don't want to, but--"
"I'd rather not tell."
"Well, I don't know as I ought to have asked you. It was perhaps
unladylike in me so to do; but honestly I _would_ like to know the
truth."
He permitted his eyes to rest on the other bank, and as a pastime he
picked up small pebbles and cast them into the river, and watched the
ripples they made subside. He thought long and deeply. He had almost
forgotten the circumstances that led up to the unfortunate climax. She,
by his side, he estimated, was merely curious. Should he confess? Would
it be worth while? Of course it would not; but at this moment he felt
her hand on his arm.
"We'll go now."
They arose then, and went between the rows of potatoes back to the
house. When they arrived there was some excitement, and she was greeted
anxiously.
"Papa has returned," said one of the boys, coming to meet them.
"Oh, he has," whereupon she caught his hand and led him hurriedly into
the presence of the man who was widely known as Junius N. Grey, the
Negro Potato King.