The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  A SNAKE IN THE GRASS

  Usually in the story of a man's life, or in fiction, when he gets thegirl's consent to marry, first admitting the love, the story ends; butwith mine it was much to the contrary. The story did not end there, norwhen we had married that afternoon at two o'clock. Instead, my marriagebrought the change in my life which was the indirect cause of my writingthis story. From that time adventures were numerous. We arrived inMegory several hours late and remained over night at a hotel, going tothe farm the next morning and then to the house I had rentedtemporarily.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when I looked over the fields, and saw thatthe boy I hired had done nicely with the work during my absence. Thenext night about sixty of the white neighbors gave us a charivari and mywife was much pleased to know there was no color prejudice among them.We purchased about a hundred dollars worth of furniture in the town andat once began housekeeping. My bride didn't know much about cooking, butotherwise was a good housekeeper, and willing to learn all she could.She was not a forceful person and could not be hurried, but was kind andgood as could be, and I soon became very fond of her and found marriagemuch of an improvement over living alone.

  In May we went up to her claim and put up a sod house and stayed thereawhile, later returning to Megory county to look after the crops. Ourfirst trouble occurred in about a month. I was still rather angry overthe Reverend's obliging me to spend the money to go to Chicago. This hadcost me a hundred dollars which I needed badly to pay the interest on myloan. Letters began coming from the company holding the mortgages,besides I had other obligations pending. I had only fifty dollars in thebank when I started to Chicago and while there drew checks on it forfifty more, making an overdraft of fifty dollars which it took me amonth to get paid after returning home. The furniture required forhousekeeping and improvements in connection with the homesteads tookmore money, and my sister went home to attend the graduation of anothersister and I was required to pay the bills. My corn was gathered and Inow shelled it. As the price in Megory was only forty cents at theelevators I hauled it to Victor, where I received seventy and sometimesseventy-five cents for it, but as it was thirty-five miles, that tooktime and the long drive was hard on the horses. Orlean's folks keptwriting letters telling her she must send money to buy something theythought nice for her to have, and while no doubt not intending to causeany trouble, they made it very hard for me. Money matters are usually asource of trouble to the lives of newly-weds and business is socold-blooded that it contrasts severely with love's young dream.

  My position was a trying one for the reason that all the relatives onboth sides seemed to take it for granted that I should have plenty ofmoney, and nothing I could say or do seemed to change matters. From hiscircuit the Reverend wrote glowing letters to his "daughter and son," ofwhat all the people were saying. Everybody thought she had married sowell; Mr. Devereaux, or Oscar, as they put it, was of good family, asuccessful young man, and was rich. I hadn't written to him and calledhim "dear father." Perhaps this is what I should have done. In a way itwould have been easy enough to write, and since my marriage I had noletters to spend hours in writing. Perhaps I should have written to him,but when a man is in the position I faced, debts on one side andrelatives on the other, I thought it would not do to write as I felt,and I could not write otherwise and play the hypocrite, as I had notliked him from the beginning, and now disliked him still more because Icould find no way of letting him know how I felt. This was no doubtfoolish, but it was the way I felt about it at the time. Myfather-in-law evidently thought me ungrateful, and wrote Orlean that Ishould write him or the folks at home occasionally, but I remainedobdurate. I felt sure he expected me to feel flattered over the opinionsof which he had written in regard to my being considered rich, but I didnot want to be considered rich, for I was not. I had never been vain,and hating flattery, I wanted to tell her people the truth. I wantedthem to understand, if they did not, what it took to make good in thiswestern country, and that I had a load and wanted their encouragementand invited criticism, not empty praise and flattery.

  Before I had any colored people to discourage me with their ignorance ofbusiness or what is required for success, I was stimulated to effort bythe example of my white neighbors and friends who were doing what Iadmired, building an empire; and to me that was the big idea. Theirparents before them knew something of business and this knowledge was agoodly heritage. If they could not help their children with money theyat least gave their moral support and visited them and encouraged themwith kind words of hope and cheer. The people in a new country livemostly on hopes for the first five or ten years. My parents andgrandparents had been slaves, honest, but ignorant. My father couldneither read nor write, had not succeeded in a large way, and hadnothing to give me as a start, not even practical knowledge. My wife'sparents were a little different, but it would have been better for mehad her father been other than "the big preacher" as he was referred to,who in order to be at peace with, it was necessary to praise.

  What I wanted in the circumstances I now faced was to be allowed tomould my wife into a practical woman who would be a help in the work wehad before us, and some day, I assured her, we would be well to do, andthen we could have the better things of life.

  "How long?" She would ask, weeping. She was always crying and so manytears got on my nerves, especially when my creditors were pestering mewith duns, and it is Hades to be dunned, especially when you have notbeen used to it.

  "Oh!" I'd say. "Five or ten years."

  And then she'd have another cry, and I would have to do a lot of pettingand persuading to keep her from telling her mother. This all had atendency to make me cross and I began to neglect kissing her as much asI had been doing, but she was good and had been a nice girl when Imarried her. She could only be made to stop crying when I would spend anhour or two petting and assuring her I still loved her, and this when Ishould have been in the fields. She would ask me a dozen times a daywhether I still loved her, or was I growing tired of her so soon. Shewas a veritable clinging vine. This continued until we were bothdecidedly unhappy and then began ugly little quarrels, but when shewould be away with my sister to her claim in Tipp county I would be solonesome without her, simple as I thought she was, and days seemed likeweeks.

  One day she was late in bringing my dinner to the field where I wasplowing, and we had a quarrel which made us both so miserable andunhappy that we were ashamed of ourselves. By some power for which wewere neither responsible, our disagreements came to an end and we neverquarreled again.

  The first two weeks in June were hot and dry, and considerable damagewas done to the crops in Tipp county and in Megory county also. Thewinds blew from the south and became so hot the young green plants beganto fire, but a big rain on the twenty-fourth saved the crops in Megorycounty. About that time the Reverend wrote that he would come to see usafter conference, which was then three months away.

  One day we were going to town after our little quarrels were over, and Italked kindly with Orlean about her father and tried to overcome mydislike of him, for her sake. I had learned by that time just how shehad been raised, and that was to to praise her father. She would say:

  "You know, papa is such a big man," or "He is so great."

  She had begun to call me her great and big husband, and I think that hadbeen the cause of part of our quarrels for I had discouraged it. I had ahorror of praise when I thought how silly her father was over it, andshe had about ceased and now talked more sensibly, weighing matters andhelping me a little mentally.

  We talked of her father and his expected visit. She appeared so pleasedover the prospect and said:

  "Won't he make a hit up here? Won't these white people be foolish overhis fine looks and that beautiful white hair?" And she raised her handsand drew them back as I had seen her do in stroking her father's hair.

  I agreed with her that he would attract some attention and changed thesubject. When we returned home she gave me the let
ter to read that shehad written to him. She was obedient and did try so hard to please me,and when I read in the letter she had written that we had been to townand had talked about him all the way and were anxious for him to visitus; that we had agreed that he would make a great impression with thepeople out here, I wanted very much to tell her not to send that letteras it placed me in a false light, and would cause him to think thepeople were going to be crazy about him and his distinguishedappearance; but she was watching me so closely that I could not be meanenough to speak my mind and did not offer my usual criticism.

  A short time before her father arrived, a contest was filed againstOrlean's claim on the ground that she had never established a residence.We had established residence, but by staying much of the time in Megorycounty had laid the claim liable to contest. The man who filed thecontest was a banker in Amro, this bank being one of the few buildingsleft there. I knew we were in for a big expense and lots of trouble,which I had feared, and had been working early and late to get throughmy work in Megory county and get onto her claim permanently.

  We did not receive the Reverend's letter stating when he would arrive soI was not at the train to meet him, but happened to be in town on horseback. In answer to my inquiries, a man who had come in on the train gaveme a description of a colored man who had arrived on the same train, andI knew that my father-in-law was in town. I went to the hotel and foundhe had left his baggage but had gone to the restaurant, where I foundhim. He seemed pleased to be in Megory and after I explained that I hadnot received his letter, I went to look up a German neighbor who was intown in a buggy, thinking I would have the Reverend ride out with him.When we got ready to go the German was so drunk and noisy that theReverend was frightened and remarked cautiously that he did not knowwhether he wanted to ride out with a drunken man or not. The Germanheard him and roared in a still louder tone:

  "You don't have to ride with me. Naw! Naw! Naw!"

  The elder became more frightened at this and hurriedly ducked into thehotel, where he stayed. I hitched a team of young mules to the wagon thenext morning and sent Orlean to town after him.

  The Reverend seemed to be carried away with our lives on the LittleCrow, and we got along fine until he and I got to arguing the racequestion, which brought about friction. It was as I had feared but itseemed impossible to avoid it. He had the most ancient and backwardideas concerning race advancement I had ever heard. He was filled tooverflowing with condemnation of the white race and eulogy of the negro.In his idea the negro had no fault, nor could he do any wrong or makeany mistake. Everything had been against him and according to theReverend's idea, was still. This he would declare very loudly. From therace question we drifted to the discussion of mixed schools.

  The Reverend had educated his girls with the intention of makingteachers of them and would speak of this fact with much pride, speakingslowly and distinctly like one who has had years of oratory. He wouldinsist that the public schools of Chicago have not given them a chance."I am opposed to mixed schools," he would exclaim. "They are likeeverything else the white people control. They are managed in a way tokeep the colored people down."

  Here Orlean dissented, this being about the only time she did openlydisagree with him. She was firm in declaring there was no law ormanagement preventing the colored girls' teaching in Chicago if theywere competent.

  "In the first place," she carefully continued, "the school we attendedin Ohio does not admit to teach in the city."

  In order to teach in the city schools it is either necessary to be agraduate of the normal, or have had a certain number of years'experience elsewhere. I do not remember all the whys, but she wasemphatic and continued to insist that it was to some extent the fault ofthe girls, who were not all as attentive to books as they should be;spending too much time in society or with something else that kept themfrom their studies, which impaired their chances when they attempted toenter the city schools.

  She held up instances where colored girls were teaching in Chicagoschools and had been for years, which knocked the foundation from hisargument.

  There are very few colored people in a city or state which has mixedschools, who desire to have them separated. The mixed schools give thecolored children a more equal opportunity and all the advantage ofefficient management. Separate schools lack this. Even in the largecities, where separate schools are in force, the advantage is invariablywith the white schools.

  Another advantage of mixed schools is, it helps to eliminate so muchprejudice. Many ignorant colored people, as well as many ignorant whitepeople, fill their children's minds with undue prejudice against eachrace. If they are kept in separate schools this line becomes moredistinct, with one colored child filling the mind of other coloredchildren with bad ideas, and the white child doing likewise, which isnever helpful to the community. By nature, in the past at least, thecolored children were more ferocious and aggressive; too much so, whichis because they have not been out of heathenism many years. The mixedschool helps to eliminate this tendency.

  With the Reverend it was a self-evident fact, that the only thing hecared about was that it would be easier for the colored girls to teach,if the schools were separate. I was becoming more and more convincedthat he belonged to the class of the negro race that desires ease,privilege, freedom, position, and luxury without any great materialeffort on their part to acquire it, and still held to the time-worn cryof "no opportunity."

  Following this disagreement came another. I had always approved ofBooker T. Washington, his life and his work in the uplift of the negro.Before his name was mentioned I had decided just about how he would takeit, and I was not mistaken. He was bitterly opposed to the educator.