Chapter 20

The coffeepot on this particular day chose to boil. They rattled merrily out of Frederick and off into the higher hills beyond. It was a little after noon when they reached the farm.

They had had to turn off the pike and take a winding wood road, rough and muddy from the spring rains. All through the budding green of the trees dogwood had hung out white bridal garlands for them, and there were violets in all the little mossy hollows. At last they came through to the clearing, where lay the farm, right on the ridge, its fields smiling in the sun, a truce of Nature with man's energy and persistence. Yet not a final truce. For all around, the woods crept up to the open and thrust in tentative fingers--tiny pine trees, sprouts and seedlings of hardwood, scraps of underbrush--all trying to gain a foothold and even when cut and overturned by the sharp plough still clinging tenaciously to their feeble rooting.

"It looks somehow," said Annie, vaguely understanding this, "as if the trees and things were just waiting to climb over the walls."

"And that's what they are," said Wesley Dean. "The time I put in grubbing! Well--let's go in and see Aunt Dolcey."

He had told her, coming out, that he was afraid she would find the house sort of plain, but just the space of it delighted her. The rooms were bare and square, whitewashed exquisitely, the furniture dark old cherry and walnut of a style three generations past.

There were no blinds or curtains, and in the streaming sunlight Annie could see that everything was clean and polished to the last flicker of high light. Here and there were bits of colour--crimson and blue in the rag carpet, golden brass candlesticks on the mantel, a red-beaded mat on the table under the lamp, the lamp itself clear glass and filled with red kerosene that happily repeated the tint of the mat. It all pleased Annie, touching some hitherto untwanged chord of beauty in her nature. And there was about it the unmistakable atmosphere of home.

"Old-fashioned but sort of swell, too," she decided. "Looks kind of like some of the parlours of those old houses on Charles Street that I used to rubber into in the evenings when the lights were lit and they'd forgot to put the blinds down."

She liked the impassive almost Egyptian face of Aunt Dolcey, too. The old coloured woman had received her with a serious regard but friendly.

"Mist' Wes, he stahtle me mighty frequen', but he nevah stahtle me with no marryin' befo'," she said. "Honey, it'll be mighty nice to have a pret' young gal in de house. I'll serve you de bes' I kin, faithful an' stiddy, like I always serve him. Ef I'd 'a' known you was a-comin' I'd sho' had somethin' fo' dinneh to-day besides greens an' po'k, cracklin' pone an' apple dumplin's. That's nuffin' fo' a weddin' dinneh."

But when they came to eat it, it was delicious--the greens delicately seasoned, not greasy, the salt pork home-cured and sweet, the cracklin' pone crumbling with richness, and the apple dumpling a delight of spicy flavour.

They sat opposite each other, in as matter-of-fact fashion as if they had been married for years. They were young and exceedingly hungry, and hunger destroys self-consciousness.

The china was very old--white plates with a curving pattern of blue leaves and yellow berries. The knives and forks were polished steel with horn handles. The spoons were silver; old handmade rat-tail spoons they were, with the mark of the smith's mallet still upon them and the initials W.D. cut in uneven letters.

"Those were my great-granddad's," said Wesley. "Same name as mine. He had 'em made out of silver money by a man down in Frederick. They must be nearly a hundred years old. My great-granddad, he was the man that bought this land and began to clear it. He wanted to be away off from everybody."

"Why?" asked Annie, interested in the story.

The vein on Wesley's forehead seemed to grow larger and darker as he answered:

"Oh, he got into trouble--knocked a man down, and the fellow struck his head on a stone and died. It didn't come to trial--it really was an accident--but it didn't make granddad popular. Not that he cared. He was a hard-headed, hard-fisted old son of a gun, if there ever was one, according to the stories they tell about him."

"What were they fighting about?"

"Oh, I dunno--granddad was high-tempered, and this fellow was sort of smart Aleck; give him some lip about something and dared him to touch him. And quick's a wink granddad punched him. At least that's the way I always heard it. Prob'ly they'd both been taking too much hard cider. Bring me another dumplin', Aunt Dolcey, please."

As the old woman entered, bringing the dumpling, Annie fancied there were both warning and sympathy in her eyes. Why, she couldn't imagine. In a moment she forgot it, for Wesley was looking at her hard.

"It's funny," he said, "to think I only saw you yesterday, and that we got married this morning. Seems as if you'd been here for years and years. Does it seem awful strange to you, honey?"

"No," said Annie. "No, it doesn't. It is queer, but all the way here, and when I come into the house, I had a sense of having been here before sometime; kind of as if it was my home all along and I hadn't known about it."

"So it was--and if I hadn't ever met you I'd been an old bach all my life."

"Yes, you would."

"Yes, I wouldn't."

They were both laughing now. He got up and stretched himself.

"Well, Mrs. Dean," he said, "I gotta go out and fix my disker, and you gotta come along. I don't want to let you out of my sight. You might fly off somewhere, and I'd never find you again."

"Don't you worry about that. You couldn't lose me if you tried."

They went through the kitchen, and there a tall gaunt old coloured man rose and bowed respectfully. He and Aunt Dolcey were having their own dinner at the kitchen table.

"This here's Unc' Zenas," said Wesley. "He's Aunt Dolcey's husband, and helps me on the place."

And again Annie saw, this time in the old man's eyes, the flicker of sympathy and apprehension that she had marked in Aunt Dolcey's.

"And right glad to welcome y', Missy," said Unc' Zenas. "We didn' 'spect Marse Wes to bring home a wife whenas he lef', but that ain' no sign that it ain' a mighty fine thing."

They went out into the mellow spring day. Wesley Dean, now in his blue overalls and working shirt, became a king in his own domain, a part of the fair primitiveness about them. It was as if he had sprung from this dark fertile soil, was made of its elements, at one with it. Here he belonged, and the very spring of the earth beneath his feet was repeated in the measured beating of his blood. The land could not warp or break him, as it does so many, for he belonged to it as essentially and as completely as it belonged to him. Dimly the little town girl beside him felt this, and dimly she hoped that she, too, might prove to be of the same mould.

"Look at the barn, and the stables, and the corncrib," he was saying. "See how they're all built? Hand-hewn logs chinked with plaster. Great-granddad built them all, helped by his two slaves. That's all the slaves he had, just two and one of 'em was Unc' Zenas's grandfather. Everything's strong and sound as the day he finished it."

"That one looks newer," said Annie, pointing.

Wesley looked a little shamefaced, as does every typical Anglo-Saxon discovered in sentiment.

"I built that," he confessed. "It's a chicken house. Somehow I didn't want to go down to the sawmill and get planks and build with 'em 'mongst all these old log things. So I got the logs out in the woods and build same as great-granddad. Maybe it was foolish, but I couldn't help it."

"It wasn't foolish; it was nice," she affirmed.

She perched on the tongue of a wagon while he mended the disker, dividing her attention between him and the live things of the barnyard. A string of decorative white ducks marched in single file about the edge of the cow pound. Beyond them a proud red-wattled cock paraded and purred among his harem of trim hens, now and then disturbed in his dignity by the darting nervousness of a pair of malicious guineas, acknowledged brigands of the feathered tribes. Trim iridescent pigeons toddled about on their coral feet, looking for leftovers from the chickens' table.

"Say, Wes, I should think you'd have a dog," she said suddenly. "A nice big dog lazying round here would sort of complete it."

He bent suddenly over his disker and gave the nut he was working on a mighty twist, but he had tossed aside his hat, and she could see the sudden jump and darkening of his menacing vein.

"I had a dog," he said in a low voice, "but he died."

A curious restraint fell on them, and for the first time Annie felt herself an alien, a stranger, far adrift from familiar shores. She shivered in the light wind.

"You cold? You better go in the house and get something round you," Wes said to her.

"I guess I'd better." And she left him hammering.

In the house she found Aunt Dolcey in the big bedroom over the living room. She had just finished remaking the bed--an old maple four-poster, the wood a soft and mellowed orange, fine and colourful against the white quilt, the lace-edged pillow slips.

"I put on clean sheets," said Aunt Dolcey as Annie hesitated on the threshold. "Yes'm, I put on everything clean, an' the bes'. I know what's fitten. My chile, dish yer de third bridal bed I made up for wives of de Dean men."

Something caught in Annie's throat, terrified her. This old black woman, with her remoteness, her pitying wise eyes, what did she mean? Annie wanted terribly to ask her. But how begin? How get through this wall of inscrutability which the black and yellow races have raised for their protection?

She fluttered nearer to the old woman.

"Look," she began tremulously--"look--it's all right, isn't it, my marrying him so quick? I haven't got any folks, and--and I suppose I haven't got much sense; but there was something about him that just made me trust him and--and want him. But it was all so quick, and--now I'm here it seems like maybe--there was--something----Oh, you'd tell me, wouldn't you? It is all right, isn't it?"

The old woman considered. "It's all right ef you're all right," she pronounced at length.

"But--but what do you mean? And--and look here--Aunt Dolcey--tell me--what'd he do to that dog he had?"

"What you know 'bout any dog?"

"I don't know--anything; but when I asked him why he didn't have a dog--he was queer. It scared me."

"Doan be skeered. They ain' nuffin' to be skeered of 'bout Marse Wes. Eve'ything all right ef you got patience, an' ef you got sense, an' ef you got haht enough. Sperrit an' sense go far, but the haht gwine carry you froo. Now I said my say"--her tone mellowed into unctuous kindness--"what you want, Missy? Som'n Aun' Dolcey c'n fotch you? Temme what it is, f'r I got to be up an' erbout my wuk. I got er weddin' cake to mek yit this ebenin'. Yes, ma'am--I gwi' mek you weddin' cake fill de bigges' pan in de kitchen."

She helped Annie rummage in her trunk and get out the sweater she had come in for, and it was not until the girl was running back to the barns that she realized Aunt Dolcey had not answered her question. But the old woman's words had steadied her, reassured her.

And Wes received her gayly. His repairs were done, his team in harness, ready to start.

"It's a shame," he said. "We ought to go off down to town and play round and have a big time, but I'm so behind with my disking, Annie, honey. You see I had to stay over a day in Baltimore. Fact. Important business." He winked at her jocosely. "So I've got to work rest of the day. That's what comes of marrying a farmer. Farm work don't even wait on a bride, not even the prettiest bride in the world."

He stooped to kiss her, and she held tight to his arm.

"I don't mind. You go on about your business and I'll get all unpacked and settled. But don't be late to supper--Aunt Dolcey's making us a wedding cake."

She watched him as he drove down the lane and turned into the field and steadied the first straining rush of his team. Again she felt her abandonment, her utter forlornity, her distance from everything she had known and been accustomed to. But once more she proved herself an adventurer and a philosopher.

Shrugging her shoulders, she turned back to the house.

"It may be a funny way to get married; but everything's all right until it stops being all right, and--and I like it here."

* * * * *

She had been married a week now, and the week had been the fairest of fair weather, indoors as well as out. Now she sat at the clumsy old secretary desk to write a letter to Miss Tolman.

... For all you said, and hought I was crazy, I am just as happy as I can be. Wes is kind and full of fun, and he works very hard. This farm is a pretty place, and the house is ten times as big as your shop. I am learning to cook and churn butter, and Aunt Dolcey, the old coloured woman, teaches me and doesn't laugh when I am dumb. She says, and Wes does, too, that I am a born farmer's wife, and I think maybe I am, for I like it in the country more than I ever thought I'd like any place, and I don't get a bit lonely. You ought to see our wheat--it's like green satin, only prettier.

I hope the rheumatism in your hands is better, and that you have got somebody good in my place. Cousin Lorena, I am a very lucky girl to fall in love with such a nice man, with a piece of property and a flivver, even if it is an old one; but better than all that he has is Wes himself, for you never saw a better, kinder man. He is not rough and does not chew tobacco as you thought maybe he did, only smokes a pipe once in a while. I made a sweet-potato custard yesterday, and he said it was the best he ever tasted. He says I must not do anything that is too hard for me, but I am going to drop seed corn. We have been down to town once, and went to the movies and bought some candy, and he wanted to buy me a new hat, but I wouldn't let him. He is so kind....

* * * * *

She had written in a glow of happiness, trying to tell everything and finding it hard to get it into words that would allay Cousin Lorena's forebodings and impress her properly. Annie frowned at the paper. How inform a bilious, middle-aged prophet of evil that she had not only wedded prosperity and industry but also a glorious young demigod whose tenderness and goodness passed belief?

Suddenly she heard a voice, loud, angry, incoherent. She dropped the pen and ran out to the kitchen door.

Wes stood there, confronting Uncle Zenas--a Wes she had never dreamed could exist. The vein on his forehead was black and swollen; indeed his whole face was distorted with rage.

"You damned old liar--don't you tell me again you put that pitchfork away when I found it myself in the stable behind the mare's stall. Pretty business if she'd knocked it down and run one of the tines into her."

"Marse Wes, you haddat pitchfo'k dere yo'se'f dis mawnin'; I ain't nevah touch dat pitchfo'k." Unc' Zenas's voice was low and even.

Behind Wes's back Aunt Dolcey made signs to her husband for silence.

"I tell you you're a liar, and by rights I ought to cut your lying tongue out of your head! I haven't even seen that pitchfork for three days, and when I went to look for it just now I found it in the stable where you'd had it cleaning out the stalls. Now shut up and get out about your work! Don't let me hear another word out of you!"

Unc' Zenas turned away and Wes, without a word or look at the two women, strode after him. Annie, shaken, caught Aunt Dolcey's arm.

"Oh, Aunt Dolcey," she breathed, "what on earth was the matter?"

Aunt Dolcey drew her into the kitchen.

"Nuffin' but Marse Wes flyin' int' one his bad Dean temper fits, honey," said the old woman "No use to min' him. No use payin' any 'tention. Dat why I waggle my head at Zenas to say nuffin' back. Talk back to Marse Wes when he's high-flyin' on'y meks things worse."

Annie beheld an abyss yawning beneath her feet.

"Yes, but, Aunt Dolcey--what's the sense in talking that way? It wasn't anything, just a pitchfork out of place. And he went on so. And he looked so dreadful."

Aunt Dolcey rattled her pans.

"I been dreadin' dis moment, whenas you firs' see Marse Wes in his anger. Zenas an' me, we's use to it. Marse Wes dataway; som'n go wrong he fly off de handle. Zenas ain't mislay no pitchfo'k--I seed Marse Wes mahse'f wid dat pitchfo'k dis mawnin'. But eve'y once in a while he git a temper fit an' blow off he mouf like dat. Sometimes he strike some-buddy--but he doan often strike Zenas. Sometimes he git mad at oner de hosses an' frail it proper. Dat high temper run in de Dean fambly, chile. Dey gits mad, an' dey flies off, an' you just got to stan' it."

"But does he--does he get over it quick?"

The old negress shook her head.

"He'll be mighty quiet come suppeh-time, not talkin' much, lookin' dahk. Walk light, an' don't say nuffin' rile him up, eve'ything all right. T'-morrow mawnin' come, he's outer it." Her voice rose into a minor cadence, almost a chant. "Chile, it's a dahk shadder on all de Deans--dey all mahked wid dat frown on deir foreheads, an' dey all got dahk hours come to um. Marse Wes's maw she fade out an' die caze she cain' stan' no such. His grammaw, she leave his grampaw. An' so on back. Ontell some ooman marry a Dean who kin chase dat debbil outer him, jes so long de Dean men lib in de shadder. I tole you, ain' I, de day you come, sperrit an' sense carry you fur, but it's de haht gwine carry you froo. Now you un'stan'."

Yes, Annie understood, imperfectly. So might Red Riding Hood have understood when the wolf suddenly appeared beside her peaceful pathway. She asked one more question, "Does he get mad often?" and waited, trembling, for the answer.

Aunt Dolcey stuck out her underlip. "Sometime he do, en den again, sometime he doan'. Mos' giner'ly he do."

Annie walked back to her letter, and looked at its last phrase. She picked up the pen, but did not write.

Then with a quick intake of breath she took her first conscious step in the path of loyal wifehood.

She added, writing fast: "He is the best man that ever lived, I do believe," and signed her name, folded the letter and sealed it in its envelope as quickly as she could.

At supper she watched Wes. He was, as Aunt Dolcey had predicted, very silent; the vein in his forehead still twitched menacingly and the pupils of his eyes were distended until the colour about them disappeared in blackness. After he had eaten he went outside and smoked, while Annie sat fiddling with a bit of sewing and dreading she knew not what.

But nothing happened. Presently he came in, announced that he was tired and had a hard day before him to-morrow, and thought he'd go to bed.

Long after he had fallen into immobile slumber Annie lay beside him, awake, marvelling how suddenly he had become a stranger, almost an ogre. Yet she loved him and yearned to him. The impulse that had made her finish the letter to Cousin Lorena in the same spirit in which she had begun it called her to pity and help him. She must conceal his weakness from their world. She listened to his deep, regular breathing, she put her hand against his hard palm.

"I'm his wife," thought Annie Dean with inarticulate tenderness. "I'm going to try to be everything a wife ought to be."

The next morning he was his old self again, laughing, joking, teasing her as usual. The scene of yesterday seemed to have gone utterly from his memory, though he must have known that she had seen and heard it. But he made no allusion to it, nor did she. The farm work was pressing; the warm spring days foretold an early season.

As he went whistling out toward the barn Annie heard him salute Unc' Zenas with familiar friendliness:

"How's tricks this morning? Think the Jersey'll be fresh next week?"

Aunt Dolcey heard him, too, and she and Annie exchanged long glances. The old woman's said, "You see--what I told you was true"; and the young woman's answered, "Yes, I see, and I understand. I'm going to see it through."

But something in her youth had definitely vanished, as it always does when responsibility lays its heavy hand on us. She went about her new life questioningly eager for understanding. There was so much for her to see and learn--the erratic ways of setting hens, the care of foolish little baby chicks; the spring house, cool and damp and gray-walled, with its trickle of cold water forever eddying about the crocks of cream-topped milk; the garden making, left to her and Aunt Dolcey after the first spading; the various messes and mashes to be prepared for cows with calf; the use of the stored vegetables and fruits, and meat dried and salted in such generous quantity that she marvelled at it. All the farm woman's primer she learned, bit by bit, seeing how it supplemented and harmonized with that life of the fields that so engrossed and commanded Wes.

But through it all, beneath it all, she found herself waiting, with dread, for another outburst. Against whom would it be this time--Unc' Zenas again--Aunt Dolcey--one of the animals--or perhaps herself? She wondered if she could bear it if he turned on her.

She was working in the spring house mixing cream with curd for cottage cheese, very busy and anxious over it, for this was her first essay alone, when she heard Wes again in anger. She dropped her spoon, but did not go to look, only concentrated herself to listen.

This time he was cursing one of his horses, and she could hear the stinging whish of a whip, a wicked and sinister emphasis to the beast's snorting and frenzied thumping of hoofs. Her blue eyes dilated with fear; she knew in what pain and fright the horse must be lunging under those blows. And Wes, raucous, violent, his mouth foul with unclean words--only this morning he had told her that when Sunday came they'd go into the woods and find a wild clematis to plant beside the front door. Wild clematis! She could have laughed at the irony of it.

At last she could bear it no longer; she put her hands to her ears to shut out the hideousness of it. After an interminable wait she took them down. He had stopped--there was silence--but she heard footsteps outside, and she literally cowered into the darkest corner of the spring house. But it was only Aunt Dolcey, her lips set in a line of endurance.

"I was lookin' erbout foh you, honey," she said reassuringly. "I di'n' know where you was, en den I remembah you come off down heah. Let Aunt Dolcey finish up dat cheese."

"What--what started him?" asked Annie piteously.

"I doan' jes' know--sound' like one de big team di'n' go inter his right stall, er som'n like dat. It's always som'n triflin', en no 'count. But land, he'll be ovah it come night. Doan' look so white en skeer, chile."

"But--but I been thinking--what if he might turn on me--what if he'd strike me? Aunt Dolcey--did he ever strike you?"

"Oncet."

"Oh, Aunt Dolcey, what did you do?"

Something flared in Aunt Dolcey's eyes that was as old as her race. She looked past Annie as if she saw something she rather relished; just so her ancestors must have looked when they were dancing before a bloodstained Congo fetish.

"You see dat big white scar on Marse Wes' lef' wris'? When he struck me I mahk him dere wid my hot flatiron. Am' no man eveh gwine lif' his hand to Dolcey, no matter who."

A shrewd question came to Annie:

"Aunt Dolcey, did he ever strike you again?"

"No, ma'am, no 'ndeedy, he didn'. Wil' Marse Wes may be, but he ain' no crazy man. It's dat ole debbil in his nature, Miss Annie, honey. En ef ever once som'n tremenjus happen to Marse Wes, dat debbil'll be cas' out. But hit's got to be stronger en mo' pow'ful dan he is. Not 'ligion, fer 'ligion goes f'm de outside in. Som'n got to come from inside Marse Wes out befo' dat ole debbil is laid."