Chapter V (5)

"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."

This was meagre comfort, and Annie did not follow the primitive psychology of it. She only knew that into her happiness there had come again the darkening of a fear, fear that was to be her devil, no less terrible because his presence was for the most part veiled.

But again she steeled her courage. "I won't let him spoil everything; I won't let him make me afraid of him," she vowed, seeing Wes in his silent mood that night. "I won't be afraid of him. I wish I could cut that old vein out of his forehead. I hate it--it's just as if it was the thing that starts him. Never seems as if it was part of the real Wes, my Wes."

In the depths of the woods, on Sunday, she stood by while he dug up the wild clematis--stood so he could not see her lips quiver--and she put her clenched hands behind her for fear they, too, would betray her.

"Wes," she asked, "what made you get so mad last Thursday and beat old Pomp so?"

He turned toward her in genuine surprise.

"I wasn't mad; not much, that is. And all I laid on Pomp's tough old hide couldn't hurt him. He's as mean as a mule, that old scoundrel. Gets me riled every once in a while."

"I wish you wouldn't ever do it again. It scared me almost to death."

"Scared you!" he laughed. "Oh, Annie, you little silly--you aren't scared of me. Now don't let on you are. What you doing--trying to kid me? There, ain't that a splendid plant? I believe I'll take back a couple shovelfuls this rich wood earth to put in under it. It'll never know it's not at home."

"Yes, but, Wes--I wish you'd promise me something."

"Promise you anything."

"Then--promise me not to get mad and beat the horses any more or holler at Unc' Zenas. I don't like it."

"Annie, you little simp--what's the matter with you? A fellow's got to let off steam once in a while, and if you'd been pestered like I have with Unc' Zenas's ornery trifling spells and old Pomp's general cussedness, you'd wonder that I don't get mad and stay mad every minute. Don't let's talk any more about it. Say, look there--there's a scarlet tanager! Ain't it pretty? Shyest bird there is, but up here in the woods there's a couple pairs 'most every year. Pull that old newspaper up round the earth a little, so's I can get a better holt of it. That's the girl. Gee, I never knew what fun it'd be to have a wife who'd be so darn chummy as you are. How d'you like your husband, Mrs. Dean? Ain't it about time you said something nice to the poor feller instead of scolding his lights and liver out of place on a nice peaceful Sabbath day? You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

She pushed back the fear devil and answered his smile.

'No, sir, I'm not going to say anything nice to my husband. I'll tell you a secret about him--he's awful stuck on himself now."

"Why shouldn't he be? Look who he picked out to marry."

Who could stand against such beguiling? Annie looked up at him and saw his Dean mark give a little mocking twitch as if it rejoiced in her thwarting.

But she said no more; and they planted the wild clematis with its black woods earth beneath at the side of the front door, and Annie twisted its pliable green stems round one of the posts of the little benched entrance.

Her hands moved deftly, and Wes, who had finished firming the earth about the plant, watched them.

"Your little paws are gettin' awful brown," he said. "I remember that first day, in the shop, how white they were--and how quick they moved. You wrapped up them aprons like somethin' was after you, and I was trying to get my nerve up to speak to you."

"Tryin' to get up your nerve! I reckon it wasn't much effort. There, don't that vine look's if it grew there of itself?"

"Yeh--it looks fine." He sat down on the bench and pulled her down beside him, his arm about her. "Annie, baby, are y' happy?"

She put her cheek against his shoulder and shut her eyes.

"I'm so happy I wouldn't darst be any happier."

"You're not sorry you picked up with me so quick? You don't wish't you'd stayed down in Balt'mer and got you a city beau?"

"I'd rather be with you--here--than any place in the world. And, Wes--I think you're the best and kindest man that ever lived. I wouldn't have you changed, any way, one little bit."

She defied her fears and that mocking, twitching vein with the words.

"Same here. Made to order for me, you were. First minute I looked in those round blue eyes of yours I knew it."

"It isn't possible," she thought. "It isn't possible that he can get so mad and be so dreadful. Maybe if I can make him think he's awful good and kind"--oh, simple subtlety--"believe he is, too, and he'll stop getting such spells. Oh, if he would always be just like this!"

But it was only two days later when she called him to help her; there was a hen that was possessed to brood, and Aunt Dolcey had declared that it was too late, that summer chickens never thrived.

"I can't get her out, Wes," said Annie. "She's 'way in under the stable, and she pecks at me so mean. You got longer arms'n me--you reach in and grab her."

He came, smiling. He reached in and grabbed, and the incensed biddy pecked viciously.

In a flash his anger was on him. He snatched again, and this time brought out the creature and dropped her with wrung neck, a mass of quivering feathers and horribly jerking feet, before Annie.

"I reckon that'll learn the old crow!" he snarled, and strode away.

"We might's well have soup for supper," remarked Aunt Dolcey, coming on the scene a moment later. "Dere, chile, what's a chicken, anyway?"

"It's not that," said Annie briefly; "but he makes me afraid of him. If I get too afraid of him I'll stop caring anything about him. I don't want to do that."

"Den," answered Aunt Dolcey with equal brevity, "you got think up some manner er means to dribe his debbil out. Like I done tol' you."

"Yes, but----"

Aunt Dolcey paused, holding the carcass of the chicken in her hands, and faced her.

"Dishyer ain' nuthin'. Wait tell he gits one his still spells, whenas he doan' speak ter nobody an' doan' do no work. Why ain' we got no seed potaters? Marse Wes he took a contrairy spell an' he wouldn't dig 'em, an' he wouldn't let Zenas tech 'em needer. Me, I went out moonlight nights an' dug some to eat an' hid 'em in de cellar. Miss Annie, you doan' know nuffin' erbout de Dean temper yit."

They went silently to the house. Aunt Dolcey stopped in the kitchen and Annie went on into the living room. There on the walls hung the pictures of Wes's father and mother, cabinet photographs framed square in light wood. Annie looked at those pictured faces in accusing inquiry. Why had they bequeathed Wes such a legacy? In his father's face, despite the beard that was the fashion of those days, there was the same unmistakable pride and passion of Wes to-day. And his mother was a meek woman who could not live and endure the Dean temper. Well, Annie was not going to be meek. She thought with satisfaction of Aunt Dolcey and the hot flatiron. The fact that he had never lifted finger to Aunt Dolcey again proved that if one person could thus conquer him, so might another. Was she, his wife, to be less resourceful, less self-respecting than that old Negro woman? Was she to endure what Aunt Dolcey would not?

Suddenly she snatched out the little old family album from its place in the top of the desk secretary, an old-fashioned affair bound in shabby brown leather with two gilt clasps. Here were more pictures of the Dean line--his grandfather, more bearded than his father, his Dean vein even more prominent; his grandmother, another meek woman.

"Probably the old wretch beat her," thought Annie angrily.

Another page and here was great-grandfather himself, in middle age, his picture--a faded daguerreotype--showing him in his Sunday best, but plainly in no Sunday mood. "Looks like a pirate," was Annie's comment. There was no picture of great-grandmother. "Probably he killed her off too young, before she had time to get her picture taken." And Annie's eyes darted blue fire at the supposed culprit. She shook her brown little fist at him. "You started all this," she said aloud. "You began it. If you'd had a wife who'd've stood up to you you'd never got drunk and killed a man, and you wouldn't have left your family a nasty old mad vein in the middle of their foreheads, looking perfectly unChristian. I just wish I had you here, you old scoundrel! I'll bet I'd tell you something that'd make your ears smart."

She banged to the album and put it in its place.

"Well, not me!" said Annie. "Not me! I'm not going to be bullied and scared to death by any man with a bad temper, and the very next time Mister Wes flies off the handle and raises Cain I'm going to raise Cain, two to his one. I won't be scared! I won't be a little gump and take such actions off any man. We'll see!"

It is easy enough to be bold and resolute and threaten a picture. It is easy enough to plot action either before or after the need for it arises. But when it comes to raising Cain two to your husband's one, and that husband has been a long and successful cultivator of that particular crop--why, that is quite a different thing.

Besides, as it happened, Annie did not wholly lack sympathy for his next outburst, which was directed toward a tramp, a bold dirty creature who appeared one morning at the kitchen door and asked for food.

"You two Janes all by your lonesome here?" he asked, stepping in.

Wes had come into the house for another shirt--he had split the one he was wearing in a mighty bout with the grubbing hoe--and he entered the kitchen from the inner door just in time to catch the words.

He leaped and struck in one movement, and it carried the tramp and himself outside on the grass of the drying yard. The tramp was a burly man, and after the surprise of the attack he attempted to fight. He might as well have battled with a locomotive going full speed.

"What you doin' way up here, you lousy loafer?" demanded Wes between blows. "Get to hell out of here before I kill you, like you deserve, comin' into my house and scarin' women. I've a great mind to get my gun and blow you full of holes."

In two minutes the tramp was running full speed toward the road, followed by Wes, who assisted his flight with kicks whenever he could reach him. After twenty minutes or so the victor came back. His eyes were red with rage that possessed him. He did not stop to speak, but hurried out his rackety little car and was gone. Later they found out he had overtaken the tramp, fought him again, knocked him out, and then, roping him, had taken him to the nearest constable and seen him committed to jail.

But the encounter left him strange and silent for a week, and his Dean mark twitched and leaped in triumph. During that time the only notice he took of Annie was to teach her to use his rifle.

"Another tramp comes round, shoot him," he commanded.

"En in de meantime," counselled Aunt Dolcey, "it'll come in mighty handy fer you to kill off some deseyer chicken hawks what makin' so free wid our nex' crap br'ilers."

But beyond the learning how to use the gun Annie had learned something more: she added it to her knowledge that Aunt Dolcey had once outfaced that tyrant. It was this--that Wes's rage was the same, whether the cause of it was real or imaginary.

* * * * *

The advancing summer, with its sultriness, its sudden evening storms shot through with flaming lightning and reverberant with the drums of thunder, brought to Annie a cessation of her purpose. She was languid, subject to whimsical desires and appetites, at times a prey to sudden nervous tears. The household work slipped back into Aunt Dolcey's faithful hands, save now and then when Annie felt more buoyant and instinct with life and energy than she had ever felt before. Then she would weed her garden or churn and print a dozen rolls of butter with a keen and vivid delight in her activity.

In the evening she and Wes walked down the long lane and looked at the wheat, wide level green plains already turning yellow; or at the corn, regiments of tall soldiers, each shako tipped with a feathery tassel. Beyond lay the woods--dark, mysterious. Little dim plants of the soil bloomed and shed faint scent along the pathway in the dewy twilight. Sometimes they sat under the wild clematis, flowering now, and that, too, was perfumed, a wild and tangy scent that did not cloy. They did not talk very much, but he was tender with her, and his fits of anger seemed forgotten.

When they did talk it was usually about the crops--the wheat. It was wonderful heavy wheat. It was the best wheat in all the neighbourhood. Occasionally they took out the little coffeepot and drove through the country and looked at other wheat, but there was none so fine as theirs.

And with the money it would bring--the golden wheat turned into gold--they would---- And now came endless dreams.

"I thought we'd sell the old coffeepot to the junkman and get a brand-new car, a good one, but now----" This was Wes.

"I think we ought to save, too. A boy'll need so many things."

"Girls don't need anything much, I suppose--oh, no!" He touched her cheek with gentle fingers.

"It's not going to be a girl."

"How d'you know?"

"I know."

So went their talk, over and over, an endless garland of happy conjectures, plans, air castles. Cousin Lorena sent little patterns and thin scraps of material, tiny laces, blue ribbons.

"I told her blue--blue's for boys," said Annie. And Wes laughed at her. It was all a blessed interlude of peace and expectancy.

The wheat was ready for harvest. From her place under the clematis vine, where she sat with her sewing, Annie could see the fields of pale gold, ready for the reaper. Wes had taken the coffeepot and gone down to the valley to see when the threshers would be able to come. In the morning he would begin to cut. Annie cocked a questioning eye at the sky, for she had already learned to watch the farmer's greatest ally and enemy--weather.

"If this good spell of weather only holds until he gets it all cut!" She remembered stories he had told her of sudden storms that flattened the ripe grain to the ground, beyond saving; of long-continued rains that mildewed it as it stood in the shocks. But if the good weather held! And there was not a cloud in the sky, nor any of those faint signs by which changing winds or clouds are forecast.

She heard the rattle and clack of the returning coffeepot, boiling up the hill at an unwonted speed. And she waved her hand to Wes as he came past; but he was bent over the wheel and did not even look round for her, only banged the little car round to the back furiously. Something in his attitude warned her, and she felt the old almost-forgotten devil of her fear leap to clutch her heart.

Presently he came round the house, and she hardly dared to look at him; she could not ask. But there was no need. He flung his hat on the ground before her with a gesture of frantic violence. When he spoke the words came in a ferment of fury:

"That skunk of a Harrison says he won't bring the thresher up here this year; claims the road's too rough and bridges are too weak for the engine."

"Oh, Wes--what'll you do?"

"Do! I'm not going to do anything! I'm not going to haul my wheat down to him--I'll see him in hell and back again before I will."

"But our wheat!"

"The wheat can rot in the fields! I won't be bossed and blackguarded by any dirty little runt that thinks because he owns the only threshing outfit in the neighbourhood that he can run my affairs."

He raged up and down, adding invective, vituperation.

"But you can't, Wes--you can't let the wheat go to waste." For Annie had absorbed the sound creed of the country, that to waste foodstuff is a crime as heinous as murder.

"Can't I? Well, we'll see about that!"

She recognized from his tone that she had been wrong to protest; she had confirmed him in his purpose. She picked up her sewing and tried with unsteady fingers to go on with it, but she could not see the stitches for her tears. He couldn't mean it--and yet, what if he should? She looked up and out toward those still fields of precious ore, dimming under the purple shadows of twilight, and saw them a black tangle of wanton desolation. The story Aunt Dolcey had told her about the potatoes of last year was ominous in her mind.

He was sitting opposite her now, his head in his hands, brooding, sullen, the implacable vein in his forehead swollen with triumph, something brutish and hard dimming his clean and gallant youth.

"That's the way he's going to look as he gets older," thought Annie with a touch of prescience. "He's going to change into somebody else--little by little. This is the worst spell he's ever had. And all this mean blood's going to live again in my child. It goes on and on and on."

She leaned against the porch seat and struggled against the sickness of it.

"I might stand it for myself," she thought. "I might stand it for myself; but I'm not going to stand it for my baby. I'll do something--I'll take him away."

Her thoughts ran on hysterically, round and round in a coil that had no end and no beginning.

The silent fit was on Wes now. Presently, she knew, he would get up and stalk away to bed without a word. And in the morning----

It was as she expected. Without a word to her he got up and went inside, and she heard him going up the stairs. She sat then a little longer, for the night was still and warm and beautiful, the stars very near, and the soft hush-h of the country solitude comforting to her distress.

Then she heard Unc' Zenas and Dolcey talking at the kitchen door, their voices a faint cadenced murmur; and this reminded her that she was not quite alone. She slipped round to them.

"Unc' Zenas, Wes says he's not going to cut the wheat; he'll let it rot in the fields. Seems Harrison won't send his thresher up this far; wants us to haul to him instead."

"Marse Wes say he ain' gwine cut dat good wheat? Oh, no Miss Annie, he cain' mean dat, sholy, sholy!"

"He said it. He's got an awful spell this time. Unc' Zenas--look--couldn't you ride the reaper if he wouldn't? Couldn't you? Once the wheat gets cut there's some chance."

"Befo' my God, Miss Annie, wid deseyer wuffless ole han's I cain' ha'dly hol' one hawss, let alone three. Oh, if I had back my stren'th lak I useter!"

The three fell into hopeless silence.

"Are the bridges so bad? Is it too hard to get the thresher up here?" asked Annie at last. "Or was that just Harrison's excuse?"

"No, ma'am; he's got de rights. Dem ole bridges might go down mos' any time. An' dishyer road up yere, it mighty hard to navigate foh er grea' big hebby contraption lak er threshin' machine en er engine. Mos' eve'y year he gits stuck. Las' year tuk er day en er ha'f to git him out. No'm; he's got de rights."

"Yes, but, Unc' Zenas, that wheat mustn't be left go to waste."

Aunt Dolcey spoke up. "Miss Annie, honey, go git your res'--mawnin' brings light. Maybe Marse Wes'll come to his solid senses een de mawnin'. You cain' do nuffin' ternight noway."

"No, that's so." She sighed hopelessly. "Unc' Zenas, maybe we could hire somebody else to cut the wheat if he won't."

"Miss Annie, honey, eve'ybody busy wid his own wheat--an', moreover, Marse Wes ain' gwi' let any stranger come on dis place an' cut his wheat--you know he ain'."

There seemed nothing more to say. In the darkness tears were slowly trickling down Annie's cheeks, and she could not stop them.

"Well--good-night."

"Good-night, my lamb, good-night. I gwi' name you en your tribulations in my prayers dis night."

She had never felt so abandoned, so alone. She could not even make the effort to force herself to believe that Wes would not commit this crime against all Nature; instead, she had a vivid and complete certainty that he would. She went over it and over it, lying in stubborn troubled wakefulness. She put it in clear if simple terms. If Wes persisted in his petty childish anger and wasted this wheat, it meant that they could not save the money that they had intended for the child that was coming. They would have, in fact, hardly more than their bare living left them. The ridiculous futility of it swept her from one mood to another, from courage to utter hopelessness. She remembered the first time that she had seen Wes angry, and how she had lain awake then and wondered, and dreaded. She remembered how, later, she had planned to manage him, to control him. And she had done nothing. Now it had come to this, that her child would be born in needless impoverishment; and, worse, born with the Dean curse full upon him. She clenched and unclenched her hands. The poverty she might bear, but the other was beyond her power to endure. Sleep came to her at last as a blessed anodyne.

In the first moment of the sunlit morning she forgot her trouble, but instantly she remembered, and she dressed in an agony of apprehension and wonder. Wes was gone, as was usual, for he got up before she did, to feed his cattle. She hurried into her clothes and came down, to find him stamping in to breakfast, and with the first glance at him her hope fell like a plummet.

He did mean it--he did! He did not mean to cut that wheat. She watched him as he ate, and that fine-spun desperation that comes when courage alone is not enough, that purpose that does the impossible, took hold of her.

When he had finished his silent meal he went leisurely out to the little front porch and sat down. She followed him. "Wes Dean, you going to cut that wheat?" she demanded; and she did not know the sound of her own voice, so high and shrill it was.

The vein in his forehead leered at her. What was she to pit her strength against a mood like this? He did not answer, did not even look at her.

"Do you mean to say you'd be so wicked--such a fool?" she went on.

Now he looked up at her with furious, threatening eyes.

"Shut your mouth and go in!" he said.

She did not move. "If you ain't going to cut it--then I am!"

She turned and started through the house, and he leaped up and followed her. In the kitchen he overtook her.

"You stay where you are! You don't go out of this house this day!" He laid a rough, restraining hand on her shoulder.

At that touch--the first harshness she had ever felt from him--something hot and flaming leaped through her. She whirled away from him and caught up Aunt Dolcey's big sharp butcher knife lying on the table; lifted it.

"You put your hands on me like that again and I'll kill you!" Her voice was not high and shrill now; she did not even raise it. "You and your getting mad! You and your rotten, filthy temper! You'd waste that wheat because you haven't got enough sense to see what a big fool you are."

She dropped the knife and walked past him, out of the kitchen, to the barn.

"Unc' Zenas," she called, "you hitch up the horses to the reaper. I'm going to cut that near field to-day myself."

"But, Miss Annie----" began the old man.

"You hitch up that team," she said. "If there ain't any men round this place, I don't know's it makes so much difference."

She waited while the three big horses were brought out and hitched to the reaper, and then she mounted grimly to the seat. She did not even look around to see if Wes might be watching. She did not answer when Unc' Zenas offered a word of direction.

"Let dat nigh horse swing round de cornahs by hisse'f, Miss Annie. He knows. An' look--here's how you drop de knife. I'll let down de bars an' foller you."

Behind her back he made frantic gestures to Dolcey to come to him, and she ran, shuffling, shaken. Together they followed the little figure in the blue calico dress, perched high on the rattling, clacking reaper. Her hair shone in the sun like the wheat.

The near horse knew the game, knew how to lead the others. That was Annie's salvation. As she swung into the field she had a struggle with the knife, but it dropped into place, and the first of the golden harvest fell before it squarely, cleanly; the stubble was even behind it. She watched the broad backs of her team, a woman in a dream. She did not know how she drove them; the lines were heavy in her hands, dragged at her arms. It was hot, and sweat rolled down her forehead. She wished vaguely that she had remembered to put on her sunbonnet.

Behind her came Unc' Zenas and Aunt Dolcey, setting the sheaves into compact, well-capped stocks, little rough golden castles to dot this field of amazing conflict.

And now the reaper had come to the corner. Unc' Zenas straightened himself and watched anxiously. But his faith in the near horse was justified--the team turned smoothly, Annie lifted the blade and dropped it, and they started again, only half visible now across the tall grain.

Annie's wrists and back ached unbearably, the sweat got in her eyes, but she drove on. She thought a little of Wes, and how he had looked when she picked up that butcher knife. She thought of his heavy hand on her shoulder, and her flesh burned where he had grasped it.

"I'm going to cut this wheat if it kills me." she said over and over to herself in a queer refrain. "I'm going to cut this wheat if it kills me!" She thought probably it would. But she drove on.

She made her second corner successfully, and now the sun was at her back, and that gave her a little ease. This wheat was going to be cut, and hauled to the thresher, and sold in the market, if she did every bit of the work herself. She would show Wes Dean! Let him try to stop her--if he dared!

And there would be money enough for everything the baby might want or might need. Her child should not be born to poverty and skimping. If only the sun didn't beat so hard on the back of her neck! If only her arms didn't ache so!

After countless hours of time she overtook Dolcey and Zenas, and the old woman divined her chief discomfort. She snatched the sunbonnet off her own head and handed it up to her.

"Marster in hebben, ef I only had my stren'th!" muttered Zenas as she went on.

"Angels b'arin' dat chile up wid deir wings," chanted Aunt Dolcey. Then, descending to more mundane matters, she added a delighted chuckle: "I knowed she'd rise en shine one dese days. Holler at Marse Wes she did, name him names, plenty. Yessuh--laid him out!"

"What you s'pose he up to now?" asked Zenas, looking over his shoulder.

"I dunno--but I bet you he plumb da'nted. Zenas, lak I tol' you--man may hab plenty debbilment, rip en t'ar, but he'll stan' back whenas a ooman meks up her min' she stood enough." And Aunt Dolcey had never heard of Rudyard Kipling's famous line.

"Dat chile might kill he'se'f."

"When yo' mad yo' kin 'complish de onpossible, en it doan' hurt yo'," replied Dolcey, thus going Kipling one better.

But she watched Annie anxiously.

The girl held out, though the jolting and shaking racked her excruciatingly and the pull of the reins seemed to drag the very flesh from her bones. Now and then the golden field swam dark before her eyes, the backs of the horses swelled to giant size and blotted out the sun. But she kept on long after her physical strength was gone; her endurance held her. Slowly, carefully, the machine went round and round the field, and the two bent old figures followed.

And so they came to mid-morning. They had long since ceased to look or care for any sign of the young master of the land. None of them noticed him, coming slowly, slowly from the stables, coming slowly, slowly to the field's edge and standing there, watching with unbelieving, sullen eyes the progress of the reaper, the wavering arms that guided the horses, the little shaken blue figure that sat high in the driver's seat. But he was there.

It is said of criminals that a confession can often be extracted by the endless repetition of one question alone; they cannot bear the pressure of its monotony. Perhaps it was the monotony of the measured rattle and clack of the machine going on so steadily that finally impelled Wes Dean, after his long frowning survey of the scene, to vault the low stone wall and approach it.

Annie did not check the horses when she saw him; she did not even look at him. But he looked at her, and in her white face, with the dreary circles of utter fatigue shadowing her eyes, his defeat was completed. He put his hand on the bit of the nearest horse and stopped the team.

Then she looked at him, as one looks at a loathsome stranger.

"What you want?" she asked coldly.

He swallowed hard. "Annie--I'll--I'll cut the wheat, le'me lift you down off there." He held out his arms.

She did not budge. "You going to cut it all--and haul it down to the thresher?"

"Yes--yes, I will. Gee, you look near dead--get down, honey. You go in the house and lay down--I'm afraid you'll kill yourself. I'm afraid you'll hurt--him some way."

Still she did not move. "I'd ruther be dead than live with a man that acts like you do," she said. "Grown up, and can't handle his temper."

Something in her quiet, cold scorn struck through to him and cut away forever his childish satisfaction with himself. A new manhood came into his face; his twitching, sinister vein was still. Surrender choked him, but he managed to get it out:

"I know I acted like a fool. But I can't let you do this. I'll--I'll try to----"

The words died on his lips and he leaped forward in time to catch her as she swayed and fell, fainting.

An hour later Annie lay on the lounge in the sitting room, still aching with terrible weariness, but divinely content. Far away she could hear the steady susurrus of the reaper, driven against the golden wheat, and the sound was a promise and a song to her ears. She looked up now and then at the pictured face of Wes's father, frowning and passionate, and the faint smile of a conqueror curved her tired mouth. For she had found and proved the strongest thing in the world, and she would never again know fear.

THE TRIBUTE

By HARRY ANABLE KNIFFIN

From _Brief Stories_

The Little Chap reached up a chubby hand to the doorknob. A few persistent tugs and twists and it turned in his grasp. Slowly pushing the door open, he stood hesitating on the threshold of the studio.

The Big Chap looked up from his easel by the window. His gray eyes kindled into a kindly smile, its welcoming effect offset by an admonitory headshake. "Not now, Son," he said. "I'm busy."

"Can't I stay a little while, Daddy?" The sturdy little legs carried their owner across the floor as he spoke. "I'll be quiet, like--like I was asleep."

The Big Chap hesitated, looking first at his canvas and then at the small replica of himself standing before him.

"I got on my new pants," the youngster was saying, conversationally easing the embarrassment of a possible capitulation. "Mummy says I ought to be proud of them, and because I'm five years old."

The artist looked gravely down at him. "Proud, Son?" he asked, in the peculiar way he had of reasoning with the Little Chap. "Have you reached the age of five because of anything you have done? Or did you acquire the trousers with money you earned?"

The Little Chap looked up at him questioningly. He had inherited his father's wide gray eyes, and at present their expression was troubled. Then, evidently seeking a more easily comprehended topic, his eyes left his father's and sought the canvas on which was depicted a court scene of mediaeval times. "Who is that, Daddy?" His small index finger pointed to the most prominent figure in the painting.

His father continued to regard him thoughtfully. "One of England's proud kings, Son."

"And what did _he_ do to be proud of?" came quickly from the youthful inquisitioner.

A hearty laugh escaped the artist. "Bully for you, Son! That's a poser! Aside from taxing the poor and having enemies beheaded, I'm puzzled to know what he really did do to earn his high position."

The Little Chap squirmed himself between his father's knees and started to scale the heights to his lap, where he finally settled down with a sigh of comfort. "Tell me a story about him," he said eagerly. "A story with castles, 'n' wars, 'n' everything."

The artist's gaze rested on the kingly figure in the picture, then wandered away to the window through which he seemed to lose himself in scenes of a far-distant time.

"I'll tell you a story, Son," he began, slowly and ruminatingly, "of how Loyalty and Service stormed the Stronghold of Honour and Splendour. This proud king you see in the picture lived part of the time in the great castle of Windsor, and the balance of the year in Saint James's Palace in London."

"It must have cost him a lot for rent," wisely interpolated the Little Chap.

"No, the people paid the rent, Son. Some of them were glad to do it, for they looked upon their king as a superior being. Among this class of loyal subjects was an old hatter, very poor and humble."

"What was his name?" asked the Little Chap, apparently greatly interested.

"He had no name. People in those olden days were known by their trade or calling. So he was simply called 'the hatter'."

"And did he make nice hats?"

"I've no doubt he did, Son. But you mustn't interrupt. Well, the hatter paid his tithes, or taxes, after which, I dare say, he had little enough left to live on. But he appeared not to mind. And whenever the King and Queen rode through the streets in their gilded coach of state, his cracked old voice would cheer lustily, and his hoary head would be bared in deepest reverence."

"Didn't he ever catch cold?"

"Hush, Son, I'm telling a story! As the hatter grew older he lost his wits and became quite crazy on the subject of his king. He yearned to do something to prove his loyalty. And whenever England engaged in a war, and a proclamation was issued calling for men to fight for King and country, he would be one of the first to volunteer. But they never accepted him, of course, because he was so old.

"With the passing of the years the Queen died, and the King decided to marry again. Great preparations for the ceremony were begun at Westminster Abbey, where the wedding was to take place. The old hatter became greatly excited when he heard the news. His addled wits presently hit upon a wonderful scheme by which he could both honour and serve his sovereign: _He would make the King a hat to wear at his wedding_!"

"I guess he must 've been a good hatter, after all," the Little Chap murmured, in a tone of conviction.

"Perhaps, in his time," his father conceded. "But you must remember he now was old and foolish. His materials were merely such odds and ends as he could gather together, and the result was very disreputable-looking. But in his rheumy old eyes it was the most wonderful hat ever designed for a monarch. He carefully wrapped it in a soiled old cloth and started out to present it to the King. At the palace gates the guards refused him admittance, and cruelly laughed in his face. He tried every means he could think of to have the hat reach its destination. Once he stopped the Court Chamberlain on the street, only to be rebuked for his pains. Another time he waylaid a peer, as he left the House of Lords, and was threatened with arrest. Foiled in all his attempts, the cracked-brained old fellow impatiently awaited the wedding ceremony. At last the great day arrived. All the bells of old London were ringing blithely as the gilded coach, drawn by ten white horses, deposited the King at Westminster Abbey. In the forefront of the vast throng surrounding the entrance stood the hatter."

"And did he have the hat with him?" asked the Little Chap.

"Yes, Son, he had it with him. And when the King entered the portals of the ancient Abbey, the hatter somehow broke through the line of guards and ran after him crying 'Your Majesty! Your Majesty! Deign to accept this token of a loyal subject's regard!'

"The King turned in surprise And when he saw the ragged old fellow tending him the ridiculous-looking hat, he flew into a great rage and cried angrily: 'How comes this varlet here, interrupting his Sovereign's nuptials and desecrating our Tomb of Kings? Away with him to prison, and let him repent his insolence as he rots in a dungeon!'"

"Why did he do that, Daddy?"