The Conquest; the Story of a Negro Pioneer/Chapter 35
oward 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.
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