The Conquest Part 14

There were some twelve or fifteen churches on his circuit, where quarterly conference was held every three months, and each church was expected to contribute a certain amount at that time. Each member was supposed to give twenty-five cents, which they did not always do.

In a town like M--boro, for instance, where the church had one hundred members, not over twenty-five are considered live members; that is, only twenty-five could be depended upon to pay their quarterly dues regularly, the others being spasmodic, contributing freely at times or nothing at all for a long time.

Orlean often laughed as she told me some of the many ways her father had of making the "dead ones" contribute, but with all the tricks and turns the position was not a lucrative one, there being no certainty as to the amount of the compensation. Mrs. Ewis told me the family had always been poor and got along only by saving in every direction. I could see this as Orlean seemed to have few clothes and had worn her sister's hat to Dakota.

Her sister was said to be very mean and disagreeable, and if anyone in the family had to do without anything it was never the sister. She was quarrelsome and much disliked while Orlean was the opposite and would cheerfully deprive herself of anything necessary. Her mother, Mrs. Ewis went on to tell me, was a "devil, spiteful and mean and as helpless as a baby." I believed a part of this but not all. I had listened to Mrs.

McCraline, and while I felt she was somewhat on the helpless order, I did not believe she was mean, nor a "devil." Meanness and deviltry are usually discernible in the eyes and I had seen none of it in the eyes of either Mrs. McCraline or Orlean, but I did not like Ethel, and from what little Miss Ankin told me about the Reverend I was inclined to believe that he was likely to be the "devil," and Mrs. Ewis' information regarding Mrs. McCraline was probably inspired by jealousy.

I remembered that back in M--pls the preachers' wives were timid creatures, submissive to any order or condition their "elder" husbands put upon them, submitting too much in order to keep peace, never raising a row over the gossip that came to their ears from malicious "sisters"

and church workers. As long as I could remember the colored ministers were accused of many ugly things concerning them and the "sisters,"

mostly women who worked in the church, but I had forgotten it until I now began hearing the gossip concerning Rev. McCraline.

Orlean, her father and her brother-in-law had begun buying a home on Vernon avenue for which they were to pay four thousand, five hundred dollars. Of this amount three hundred dollars had been paid, one hundred by each of them. It was a nice little place, with eight rooms and with a stone front. Ethel had not paid anything, using her money in preparation for her wedding, which had taken place in September. Claves and her father had spent two hundred on it, which seemed very foolish, and were pinched to the last cent when it was done.

Claves had borrowed five dollars from his brother when they went on the wedding trip, to pay for a taxi to the depot. The wedding tour and honeymoon lasted two weeks and was spent in Racine, Wisconsin, sixty miles north of Chicago. They had just returned when I went to Chicago.

When I first called, Mrs. Claves did not come down but when we returned to the house she condescended to come down and shake hands. She put on enough airs to have been a king's daughter.

With the three hundred dollars already paid on the home, they figured they should be able to pay for it in seven years in monthly installments of thirty-five dollars, paying the interest upon the princ.i.p.al at the same time, excepting two thousand which was in a first mortgage and drew five per cent and payable semi-annually. The house was in a quiet neighborhood much unlike the south end of Dearborn street and Armour avenue where none but colored people live.

The better cla.s.s of Chicago's colored population was making a strenuous effort to get away from the rougher set, as well as to get out of the black belt which is centered around Armour, Dearborn, State and Thirty-first. Here the saloons, barbershops, restaurants and vaudeville shows are run by colored people, also the clubs and dance houses. East from State street to the lake, which is referred to by the colored people of the city as "east of State," there is another and altogether different cla.s.s. Here for a long while colored people could hardly rent or buy a place, then as the white population drifted farther south, to Greenwood avenue, Hyde Park, Kenwood and other parts now fas.h.i.+onable districts, some of the avenues including Wabash, Rhodes, Calumet, Vernon and Indiana began renting to colored people and a few began buying.

Chicago is the Mecca for southern negroes. The better cla.s.s continued to desert Dearborn and Armour and paid exorbitant rent for flats east of State street. Some lost what they had made on Armour avenue where rent was sometimes less than one-half what was charged five blocks east, and had to move back to Armour. As more colored people moved toward the lake more white people moved farther south, rent began falling and real estate dealers began offering former homes of rich families first for rent then for sale, and many others began buying as Rev. McCraline had done, making a small cash payment, and in this way otherwise unsalable property was disposed of at from five to ten per cent more than it would have brought at a cash sale.

The place they were buying could have been purchased for three thousand, eight hundred dollars or four thousand dollars in cash. After moving east of State street, these people formed into little sets which represented the more elite, and later developed into a sort of local aristocracy, which was not distinguished so much by wealth as by the airs and conventionality of its members, who did not go to public dances on State street and drink "can" beer. Here for a time they were secure from the vulgar intrusion of the noisy "loud-mouths," as they called them, of State street. The last time I was in Chicago State street, the "dead line," had been crossed and a part of Wabash avenue is almost as noisy and vulgar as Dearborn. Beer cans, rough clubs and dudes were becoming as familiar sights as on Armour, and a large part of that part of the east side is so filled up with colored people that it is only a question of time until it will be a part of the black belt.

Orlean's brother-in-law had come to Chicago several years previous from a stumpy farm in the backwoods of Tennessee. He was the son of a jack-legged preacher and was very ignorant, but had been going with the girl he married some six years and she had trained him out of much of it and when he finally figured in the two hundred dollar wedding referred to, he felt himself admitted into society and highly exalted. He thought the Reverend a great man, Mrs. Ewis had told me, referring to him as a Simian-headed negro who tried to walk and act like the Reverend. The McCralines, especially Ethel, referred to themselves as the "best people." I thought they were. They were not wicked, and I also guessed that Ethel felt very "aristocratic," and I wondered whether I would like the Reverend. He seemed to be regarded as a sort of monarch judging from the way he was spoken of by the family, but I had a "hunch" that he and I were not going to fall in love with each other. Still I hoped not to be the one to start any unpleasantness and would at least wait until I met him before forming an opinion. I received a letter from him when he returned from the conference. He did not write a very brilliant letter but was very reasonable, and tried to appear a little serious when he referred to my having his daughter come to South Dakota and file on land. He concluded by saying he thought it a good thing for colored people to go west and take land.

I received another letter from Orlean about the same time telling me how her father had scolded her about going to the theatre with me the Sunday night I had taken her, and pretended, as he had to me, to be very serious about the claim matter, but she wrote like this: "I know papa, and I could see he was just pleased over it all that he just strutted around like a rooster." She wanted to know when I was going to send the ring, but as I had not thought about it I do not recall what answer I made her, but do remember that my trip to get her and Mrs. Ewis and send them home again, including my own expenses, amounted to one hundred sixty dollars, besides the cost of the land, and having had to pay my sister's and grandmother's way also and get them started on their homesteads had taken all of the seven thousand, six hundred dollars I had borrowed on my land; that I was snow-bound with my corn in the field and my wheat still unthreshed. I began to write long letters trying to reason this out with her. She was willing to listen to reason but seemed so unhappy without the ring, and I imagined as I read her letters that I could see tears. She said when a girl is engaged she feels lost without a ring, "and, too," here she seemed to emphasize her words, "everybody expects it." I was sure she was telling the truth, for with girls "east of State street," and west as well, the most important thing in an engagement is the ring, sometimes being more important than the man himself.

When I lived in Chicago and since I had been living in Dakota and going to Chicago once a year, I knew that Loftis Brothers had more mortgages on the moral future and jobs of the young society men, for the diamonds worn by their sweethearts or wives, than would appear comforting to the credit man. It made no difference what kind of a job a man might have, as all the way from a boot-black or a janitor to head waiters and post-office clerks were included, and their women folks wore some size of a diamond. I asked myself what I was to do. I could not hope to begin changing customs, so I bought a forty dollar diamond set in a small eighteen-karat ring which "just fit," as she wrote later in the sweetest kind of a letter.

I had written I was sorry that I could not be there to put it on (such a story!). I had never thought of diamond rings or going after my wife after spending so much on preliminaries. What I had pictured was what I had seen, while running to the Pacific coast, girls going west to marry their pioneer sweethearts, who sent them the money or a ticket. They had gone, lots of them, to marry their brawny beaux and lived happily "ever after," but the beaux weren't negroes nor the girls colored. Still there are lots of colored men who would be out west building an empire, and plenty of nice colored girls who would journey thither and wed, if they really understood the opportunities offered; but very few understand the situation or realize the opportunities open to them in this western country.

I had expected to get married Christmas but the snow had put a stop to that plan. Besides, I was so far behind in my work and had no place to bring my wife. I had abandoned my little "soddy" and was living in a house on the old townsite, where I intended staying until spring. Then I would build and move onto my wife's homestead in Tipp county. When Christmas came grandma and sister came down from Ritten and stayed while I went to Chicago. I could scarcely afford it but it had become a custom for me to spend Christmas in Chicago and I wanted to know Orlean better and I wanted to meet her father. I had written her that I wasn't coming and when I arrived in the city and called at the house her mother was surprised, but pleasantly. I thought she was such a kind little soul.

She promised not to tell Orlean I was in the city, (Orlean had secured a position in a downtown store--ladies' furnis.h.i.+ngs--and received five-fifty per week) but couldn't keep it and when I was gone she called up Orlean and told her I was in the city. When I called in the evening, instead of surprising Orlean, I was surprised myself. The Reverend hadn't arrived from southern Illinois but was expected soon.

Orlean had worked long enough to buy herself a new waist and coat, and Mrs. Ewis, who was a milliner, had given her a hat, and she was dressed somewhat better than formerly. The family had wanted to give her a nice wedding, like Ethel's, but found themselves unable to do so. The semiannual interest on their two-thousand-dollar loan would be due in January and a payment also, about one hundred and fifty dollars in all.

The high cost of living in Chicago did not leave much out of eighteen dollars and fifty cents per week, and colored people in southern Illinois are not very prompt in paying their church dues, especially in mid-winter; in fact, many of them have a hard time keeping away from the poorhouse or off the county, and when the Reverend came home he was very short of money.

[Ill.u.s.tration: As the people were now all riding in autos. (Page 182.)]

I remember how he appeared the evening I called. He had arrived in town that morning. He was a large man standing well over six feet and weighed about two hundred pounds, small-boned and fleshy, which gave him a round, plump appearance, and although he was then near sixty not a wrinkle was visible in his face. He was very dark, with a medium forehead and high-bridged nose, making it possible for him to wear nose-gla.s.ses, the nose being very unlike the flat-nosed negro. The large square upper-lip was partly hidden by a mustache sprinkled with gray, and his nearly white hair, worn in a ma.s.sive pompadour, contrasted sharply with the dark skin and rounded features. His great height gave him an unusually attractive appearance of which he, I later learned, was well aware and made the most. In fact, his personal appearance was his pride, but his eye was not the eye of an intelligent or deep thinking man. They reminded me more of the eyes of a pig, full but expressionless, and he could put on airs, such a drawing-up and spreading-out, seeming to give the impression of being hard to approach.

When introduced to him I had another "hunch" we were not going to like each other. I was always frank, forward and unafraid, and his ceremonious manner did not affect me in the least. I went straight to him, taking his hand in response to the introduction and saying a few common-place things. They were very home-like for city people, inviting me to supper and treating me with much respect. The head of the table was occupied by the Reverend when he was at home and by Claves when the Reverend was away. I could readily see where Ethel got her airs. It took him about thirty minutes to get over his ceremonious manner, after which we talked freely, or rather, I talked. He was a poor listener and, although he never cut off my discourse in any way, he didn't listen as I had been used to having people listen, apparently with encouragement in their eyes, which makes talking a pleasure, so I soon ceased to talk.

This, however, seemed still more awkward and I grew to feel a trifle displeased in his company.

On the following Sunday we went to morning service on Wabash avenue at a big stone structure. It appeared to be a rule of the household that the girls should go out together. This displeased me very much, as I had grown to dislike Ethel and Claves did not interest me. Both talked of society and "swell people" they wanted me to meet, putting it in such a way as to have me feel I was meeting my betters, while the truth of the matter was that I did not desire to meet any of their friends nor to have them with us anywhere we went. When church services were over we went to spend the time before Sunday School opened, with some friends of theirs named Latimer, who lived on Wabash avenue near the church, and who were so nearly white that they could easily have pa.s.sed for white people.

The family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Latimer and Mr. Latimer's sister, and were the most interesting people I had ever met on any of my trips to Chicago. They inquired all about Dakota and whether there were many colored settlers in the state, listening to every word with careful attention and approving or disapproving with nods and smiles. While they were so deeply interested, Claves, who had a reputation for "b.u.t.ting in"

and talking too much, interrupted the conversation, blurting out his opinion, stopping me and embarra.s.sing them, by stating that colored people had been held in slavery for two hundred years and since they were free they did not want to go out into the wilderness and sit on a farm, but wanted to be where they could have freedom and convenience, and this was sanctioned by a friend of Claves's who was still more ignorant than he. This angered Orlean and when we were outside even Ethel expressed her disgust at Claves' ignorance.

They told me that the Latimers were very well-to-do, owning considerable property besides the three-story building where they lived. To me this accounted for their careful attention, for it is my opinion that when you find a colored man or woman who has succeeded in actually doing something, and not merely pretending to, you will find an interesting and reasonable person to converse with, and one who will listen to a description of conditions and opportunities with marked intelligence.

Orlean and I attended a few shows at the downtown theatres during the week, the first being a pathetic drama which our friends advised us to see ent.i.tled "Madam X". I did not like it at all. The leading character is the wife of a business man who has left her husband and remains away from him two years, presumably discouraged over his lack of affection; is very young and wants to be loved, as the "old story" goes, and the husband is too busy to know that she is unhappy. She returns after two years and asks forgiveness and love, but is turned away by the husband.

Twenty years later, in the closing act, a court scene decorates the stage; a woman is on trial for killing the man she has lived with unlawfully. She had been a woman of the street and lived with many others before living with the one murdered. The young lawyer who has her case, is her son, although he is not aware of this fact. He has just been admitted to the bar and this is his first case, having been appointed to the defense by the court. He takes the stand and delivers an eloquent address on behalf of the woman, who appears to be so saturated with liquor and cocaine as to be quite oblivious of her surroundings. She expires from the effect of her dissipations, but just before death she looks up and recognizes her son, she having been the young wife who left her home twenty-two years before. The unhappy father, who had suffered as only a deserted husband can and who had prayed for many years for the return of the wife, is present in the court room and together with the son, are at her side in death. As the climax of the play is reached, suppressed sobs became audible in the balcony, where we had seats. The scene was pathetic, indeed, and I had hard work keeping back the tears while my betrothed was using her handkerchief freely.

What I did not like about the play was the fact of her going away and taking up an immoral life instead of remaining pure and returning later to her husband. The husband, as the play goes, had not been a bad man and was unhappy throughout the play, and I argued this with Orlean all the way home. Why did she not remain good and when she returned he could have gathered her into his arms and "lived happy ever after." Not only my fiancee but most other women I have talked with about the play contend that he could have taken her back when she returned and been good to her. The man who wrote the play may have been a tragedian but the management that put it on the road knew a money-maker and kept it there as long as the people patronized the box office.

The next play we attended suited me better as, to my mind, it possessed all that "Madam X" lacked and, instead of weakness and an unhappy ending, this was one of strength of character and a happy finale. It was "The Fourth Estate," by Joseph Medill Patterson, who served his apprentices.h.i.+p in writing on the Chicago Tribune. It was a newspaper play and its interest centered around one Wheeler Brand, who, through the purchase of a big city daily by a western man, with the bigness to hand out the truth regardless of the threats of the big advertisers, becomes managing editor. He relentlessly goes after one Judge Barteling whose "rotten" decisions had but sufficed to help "big business" and without regard to their effect upon the poor. The one really square decision was recalled before it took effect. To complicate matters the young editor loves the judge's daughter and while Brand holds a high place in Miss Barteling's regard, he is made to feel that to retain it he must stop the fight on her father. Brand pleads with her to see the moral of it but is unable to change her views. One evening Brand secures a flashlight photo and telephone witnesses of an interview with the judge, the photo showing the judge in the act of handing him a ten-thousand-dollar bribe. Late that night Brand has the article exposing this transaction in type and ready for the press when the proprietor, who has heretofore been so pleased with Brand's performance, but whose wife has gained an entrance into society through the influence of Judge Barteling, enters the office with the order to "kill the story."

This was a hard blow to the coming newspaper man. The judge calls and jokes him about being a smart boy but crazed with ideals, but is shocked when he turns to find his daughter has entered the office and has heard the conversation. He tells her to come along home with papa, but she decides to remain with Brand. She has thought her father in the right all along, but now that she has heard her father condone dishonesty she can no longer think so. Wheeler disobeys orders and sends the paper to press without "killing the story," and "all's well that ends well."

In a week or so I was back in Dakota where the thermometer registered twenty-five below with plenty of snow for company. I received a letter from the Reverend shortly after returning home saying they hoped to see me in Chicago again soon. I did not know what that meant unless it was that I was expected to return to be married, but as I had been to Chicago twice in less than four months and had suggested to Orlean that she come to Megory and be married there, I supposed that it was all settled, but this was where I began to learn that the McCraline family were very inconsiderate.

I had not claimed to be wealthy or to have unlimited amounts of money to spend in going to and from Chicago, as though it were a matter of eighty miles instead of eight hundred. I had explained to the Reverend that it was a burden rather than a luxury to be possessed of a lot of raw land, until it could be cultivated and made to yield a profit. I recalled that while talking with the Reverend in regard to this he had nodded his head in a.s.sent but with no facial expression to indicate that he understood or cared. The more I knew him the more I disliked him, and was very sorry that Orlean regarded his as a great man, although his immediate family were the only ones who regarded him in that light. I had learned to expect his ceremonious manner but was considerably tried by his apparent dullness and lack of interest or encouragement of practical ideas.

I put volumes into my letters to Orlean, trying to make clear why she should condescend to come to Megory and be quietly married instead of obliging me to return to Chicago. I had no more money, as it was expensive to keep my grandmother and sister on their claims. They had no money and I had no outside support, not even the moral support of my people nor of Orlean's, who all seemed to take it for granted that I had plenty of ready money. I had not taken a cent out of the crop I had raised, the corn still standing in the field, with a heavy snow on the ground and my small grain still unthreshed.

However, my letters were in vain. Miss McCraline could see no other way than that if I cared for her I'd come and marry her at home, which she contended was no more than right and would look much better. I sighed wearily over it all and began to suspect I was "in the right church, but in the wrong pew."

CHAPTER x.x.xV

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 circ.u.mstances, 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. Sat.u.r.day 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 succ.u.mbing. 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?"