AN UNCROWNED KING
Toward spring the snow melted and with gum boots I plunged into the
cold, wet corn field and began gathering the corn. It was nasty, cold
work. The damp earth sent cold chills up through my limbs and as a
result I was ill, and could do nothing for a week or more. In
desperation I wrote the Reverend and being a man, I hoped he'd
understand. I told him of my sickness and the circumstances, of Orlean's
claim 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 a
part of the letter.
While in Chicago, one evening I had called at the house and found the
household in a ferment of excitement, with everyone saying nothing and
apparently trying to look as small and scarced as possible, while in
their midst, standing like a jungle king and in a plaided bathrobe, the
Reverend was pouring a storm of abuse upon his wife and shouting orders
while the wife was trotting to and fro like a frightened lamb,
protesting weakly. The way he was storming at her made me feel ashamed
but after listening to his tirade for some fifteen minutes I was angry
enough to knock him down then and there. He reminded me more of a brute
than a pious minister. When he had finally exhausted himself he turned
without speaking to me and strode up the stairs, head reared back and
carrying himself like a brave soldier returning from war. I wondered
then 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 my
arms and comfort her. She was crying quietly and looked so pitiful. I
was told she had been treated in a like manner off and on for thirty
years.
As stated, I did not hear from the Reverend and when I wrote to Orlean I
implied that I did not think her father much of a business man. Perhaps
this was wrong, at least when I received another letter from her it
contained the receipt for the payment on the claim, and the single sheet
of paper comprising the letter conveyed the intelligence that since she
thought it best not to marry me she was forwarding the receipt with
thanks for my kindness and hopes for future success. I received the
letter on Friday. Saturday night I went into Megory and took the early
Sunday morning train bound for Chicago and to marry her, and while I did
not think she had treated me just right I would not allow a matter of a
trip to Chicago to stand in the way of our marriage. I had an idea her
father was indirectly responsible. He and I were much unlike and
disagreed in our discussions concerning the so-called negro problem, and
in almost every other discussion in which we had engaged.
Arriving in Omaha I sent a telegram to Orlean asking her not to go to
work that day, as I would be in Chicago in the morning. At the depot I
called up the house and Claves answered the phone and was very
impertinent, but before he said much Orlean took the receiver and
without much welcome started to tell me about the criticisms of her
father in my letters.
"You are not taking it in the right way," I hurriedly told her. "I'll
come 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 the
house the rest of the family appeared to have been holding a
consultation in the kitchen, which they had, as Orlean informed me
later, with Orlean standing poutingly to one side. She commenced telling
me what she was not going to do, but I went directly to her, and
gathered her in my arms, with her making a slight resistance but soon
succumbing. I looked down at her still pouting face and remonstrated
teasingly.
Ethel broke in, her voice resembling a scream, protesting against such
boldness on my part, saying: "Orlean doesn't want you and she isn't
going to go onto your old farm". Here Orlean silenced her saying that
she would attend to that herself, and took me to the front part of the
house, with her mother tagging after us in a sort of half-stupor and
apparently not knowing what to do. We sat down on the davenport where
she began giving me a lecture and declaring what she was not going to
do. Her mother interposed something that angered me, though I do not now
recall what it was, and a look of dissatisfaction came into my face
which 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 my
face hidden behind her shoulder. "Anything more?"
"Well, well." She appeared at a loss to know what further to say or how
to proceed.
Ethel remarked afterward to her mother that Orlean had not been near me
a half hour until she was listening to everything I said.
She finally succeeded in getting off to work after commanding me to free
her 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 mother
as well as my own and had no fear that we would not soon agree, and we
did. 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. You
must 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, you
know, 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 me
following 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 her
discourse, and in spite of her attempt at seriousness she smiled.
"It is a beautiful name," she admitted, looking at me slyly out of her
small black eyes. She was part Indian, just a trifle, but sufficient to
give her black eyes instead of brown, as most colored people have, and
she had long black hair.
Before Orlean returned from the store her mother and I were like mother
and son and Orlean seemed pleased, while Ethel looked at Claves and
admitted that I would get Orlean, anyhow. The only thing necessary now
was to reach the elder, and the next morning we spent a couple of hours
trying 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 the
voice being his as I could hear him distinctly. In answer to my
statement 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 time
was up.
A letter had been sent him by special delivery the day I arrived and the
following morning a reply was received stating that if Orlean married
me, without my convincing him that I was marrying her for love, and not
to hold down a Dakota claim, she would be doing so without his consent.
In discussing the matter later Ethel, who had become resigned to the
inevitable, said:
"If you want to get along with papa you must flatter him. Just make him
think 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 Majesty
Newton Jasper." The idea kept revolving in my mind as I realized the
reason I had not made good with him. I was too plain and sincere. I must
flatter him, make him think he was what he was not, and my failure to do
that was the reason for his listening to me in such an expressionless
manner.
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 recalled
the name he was known by, "the Reverend N.J.," and I had heard him
spoken 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. I
might have settled the matter easily if I had no objection to flattering
him. He arrived home the next morning and was sitting in the parlor when
I called, trying to look serious, and surveying me as I entered, just as
a king might have done a disobedient subject. I had been so free and
without fear for so long that it was beyond my ability to shrivel up and
drop as he continued to look me over. I proceeded to tell him all that I
had written in my letter to him, the one he had not read, but did not
intimate that I knew he had not read it.
In the dining room where we gathered a few minutes later, with the
family assembled in mute attention, he asked Orlean whether she wanted
to marry me and live in Dakota and she admitted that she did. Then
turning to me he began a lengthy discourse with many ifs and if nots and
kept 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 a
mutual agreement that we would wait and see whether we could learn to
love each other or not." Hesitating a moment, I looked at Orlean and
gaining confidence as I met her soft glance, I went on: "I cannot
guarantee 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 the
license, and when her father told us we should go and get the license we
looked at each other rather sheepishly, and stammered out something, but
went down town and bought a pair of shoes instead. When we arrived home
preparations were being made for the wedding. The elder called up the
homes of two bishops who lived in the city, and when he found one sick
and the other out of town he was somewhat disappointed, as it had always
been his desire to have his daughters married by a bishop. He had failed
in the first instance and was compelled to accept the services of the
pastor of one of the three large African M.E. Churches of the city at
the wedding of Ethel, and had to call upon this pastor again but found
he also was out of the city. He finally secured the services of another
pastor, by whom we were married in the presence of some twenty or more
near friends of the family, Orlean wearing her sister's wedding dress
and veil. The dress was becoming and I thought her very beautiful. I
wore a Prince Albert coat and trousers to match which belonged to
Claves and were too small and tight, making me uncomfortable. I was not
long in getting out of them after undergoing the ordeal of being kissed
by all the ladies present. Mrs. Ewis invited us to spend the evening at
her home and the next day we left for South Dakota.
[Illustration: A beautiful townsite where trees stood. (page 182.)]