Oscar Micheaux

“ You will do her a favor by going to your room until it is over," advised their mother.
"Oh, well, if I'm not wanted, then I'll go," spit out Ethel wickedly, whereupon she turned and hastened up the stairs to her room and slammed the door behind her.
"Ethel has such a temper," her mother sighed deploringly. "She is so different from you, dear. You are like your mother, while she—well, she has her father's ways."
"Papa is not as mean as Ethel," defended Orlean, ever obedient to her mother, yet always upholding her father, it mattered not what the issue. ”

“ Jean Baptiste pulled his new binder before the barn, jumped from the seat, and before he started to unhitch, he gazed out over a stretch of land which two years before, had been a mass of unbroken prairie, but was now a world of shocked grain. Thousands upon thousands of shocks stood over the field like a great army in the distance. His crop was good—the best. And no crops are like the crop on new land. ”

“ It was at this juncture in life that a new thought came to Jean Baptiste. In all his life he had been a thinker, a practical thinker—a prolific thinker. Moreover, a great reader into the bargain. So the thought that struck him now, was writing. Perhaps he could write. If so then what would he write? So in the days that followed, gradually a plot formed in his mind, and when he had decided, he chose that he could write his own story—his life of hell, the work of an evil power! ”

“ So the best way, as I can see, is for you to meet Orlean somewhere, and there reason it out with her." She paused briefly then, and was thoughtful.
"She loves you as her mother loves, in a simple, weak way; but what is a love like that worth! In truth, while I admire your courage, and desire to uphold the sacredness of the marriage vow, you ought to get a divorce and marry a girl with some will and force."
"I realize so, Mrs. Pruitt, but I am determined to live with Orlean and protect her if it is within my power." ”

“ So time had gone on as time will; never stopping for anything, never hesitating, never delaying. So the day went, and the week and the month, and the month after that and the month after that, until in time the holidays were near, and Jean Baptiste was going away, away to forget that which was more to him than all the world—the love of Agnes Stewart. ”

“ If Orlean was a woman she would be right out there with you now where she belongs!"
"And I agree with you again, Glavis. But Orlean isn't a woman, and that is what I have been trying to make her. She has never been a woman—wasn't reared so to be. By nature she is like her mother, and she has grown up according to her training." ”

“ In short the Keystone was the meeting place for men in nearly all the walks of life.
Always the freest city in the world for the black man, Chicago has the most Negroes in the mail service and the civil service; more Negroes carry clubs as policemen; more can be found in all the departments of the municipal courts, county commissioners, aldermen, corporation counsels, game warden assistants, and so on down. Indeed, a Negro feels freer and more hopeful in Chicago than anywhere else in the United States.
So it was such a crowd that Jean Baptiste encountered at the Keystone that day. ”

“ He regarded her curiously. She was of that cross bred type that are so numerous, full bloods seemingly to have become rare about those parts. She was of a light brown complexion, almost a mulatto. She seemed about twenty-two years of age. Of the curious eyes upon her she seemed entirely unaware, finally leaving the train at a station that he was familiar with and disappeared.
At Thirty-first Street he left the train, fell in with the scattered crowd below and the dash of the city life was his again in a twinkling. He found his way to State Street, the great thoroughfare of his people. ”

“ Land values had climbed and climbed, and had gone so high until only the moneyed could even reckon to own land. And Jean Baptiste controlled a thousand acres.
Over all the country, the pounding of steam and gasoline tractors filled the air with an incessant drumming; the black streaks everywhere told the story of conquest. The prairie was giving place to the inevitable settler, and hope was high in the hearts of all. So the wind had blown hot many days before the settlers became apprehensive of anything really serious. ”

“ Have you never seen a woman who never changed her mind—especially when there was a man in the case?"
"Of course I have," she shouted. "I am one who has never changed their mind!"
"I agree, and that is what's the matter with you," so saying, he made his get-away to avoid what would have followed.
"Now, you will have to deal with my husband in regard to this matter, Mr. Baptiste," admonished Mother Mary. She had given into him along with Orlean. It was useless to try to pit their weak wits against the commanding and domineering reason, the quick logic and searching intuition of Jean Baptiste. ”

“ While Jean Baptiste was conscious that a burden had been lifted from his mind, and Glavis and her father chatted freely, she sat silently by without even a clear thought. She was only conscious that she had lied, that after a life of weakness, a life that had made no one happy or cheerful or gay, she had for the first time in her life, deliberately lied. And as she became more conscious of what had passed, she felt a burden upon her. Never since the day she had abused her husband ”

“ Your morals are common knowledge to all the people of Illinois, and elsewhere. And let me tell you, you can—as you have—in your family, force those who know it and condemn it to keep quiet by making yourself so disagreeable that they will honey you up to get along with you. But it is not because they, or all those who know you, are not aware of it! That's your reputation, and some day you are going to suffer for it. You deliberately make people miserable to satisfy your infernal vanity; your desire to be looked upon and called great. ”

“ Was it all because Jean Baptiste loved his wife? What is there between love and duty? It had never been as much a question with Jean Baptiste as to how much he loved her as it was a question of duty. She was his wife by the decree of God and the law of the land. ”

“ In truth, he admired no man, other than himself. And when others did not do likewise, he usually found excuses to disagree with them in some manner.
Jean Baptiste was not the type of man to make friends with her husband. He was too frank, too forward, too progressive in every way ever to become very intimate with N. Justine McCarthy. To begin with, Jean had never flattered his vanity as it was not his wont to give undue praise. And as yet he had no reason especially to admire the Reverend. That it had not been Orlean who had objected to coming West to marry him he was aware. ”

“ The evil and misery you have brought unto others, shall now be cast upon you. You are my father, and the creator of my weakness, but you have taken my husband and soul mate, and made a new generation impossible for me to lead. And now I say unto you, go forth and repent. Begone from me. For from this day evermore though in weak flesh I may pretend to love you, know that I must hate you!"
He shook himself, and succeeded in casting off the depression. When he looked again, Orlean was sitting up in bed, regarding him sleepily. ”

“ One wonders how such men can have the conscience to preach and tell people to live right, to do right, so they may be prepared to die right. But somehow we take the Elder's subtle conduct down this way as a matter of course. We think no more—I daresay not as much—of what he does in that way than we would the most common man in town. But it is too bad that his daughter must suffer for his evil. Orlean is a good girl, but she has been raised to regard that old father as a criterion of righteousness, regardless of the life he does, and always has lived. ”

“ Such very often are given thoughtlessly as to the infinite harm, ill health and unhappiness they might later bring. But the fact that others cultivate and heed such is no reason, dear, do you feel, that we should?"
"No, Jean," she admitted without hesitation and very humbly.
"I feel more inspired to say this at this point in our new union, Orlean, because I cannot believe that it is your nature to be wicked; to wilfully practice and condone the wrong." ”

“ They had now returned, and Ethel was pacified. The visitors had departed to spread the gossip, and all but Ethel was downcast. Orlean, in unspoken remorse, had retired; while the Reverend, fully conscious at last of what his interposition had brought, was regretful, but not openly. And the others, not knowing that he had that day repented, sat at their distance and tried to form no conclusion.
"It is over—all over," cried Orlean now in the bed. "And as I have done all my life, I have failed at the most crucial moment. Oh, merciful God, what can you do with a weak woman like I! ”

“ He could see that they were tender eyes; eyes behind which there was not apparently the force of will that he desired; but Orlean McCarthy was a fine girl. She was fine because she was not wicked; because she was intelligent and had been carefully reared; she was fine because she had never cultivated the society of undesirable or common people; but she was not a fine girl because she had a great mind, or great ability; or because she had done anything illustrious. And this Jean Baptiste, a judge of human nature could readily see; but he would marry her, he would be good to her ”

“ Two fine girls, Orlean and Ethel, and his wife is a good little soul, rather helpless and without the force a woman should have; but very nice. But that husband—forget him!"
"This is—er—rather unusual, don't you think?"
"Well, it is," she said. "One would naturally suppose that a man with such a family of moral girls as he has, would not be so—not because he is a preacher." She paused thoughtfully. "Because you know that does not count for a high morality always in our society.... But N.J. McCarthy has been like he is ever since I knew him. ”

“ If the world contained more men like you, the evil of divorce would lessen; but on the other hand, as long as it contains men like the Reverend, and women like Orlean, there will always be ground for divorce."
"But every man should exhaust all that is in him for what he feels is right, shouldn't he, Mrs. Pruitt?" spoke Baptiste.
"Of course," she said somewhat absently. She looked quickly at him then, and her eyes brightened with an inspiration.
"By the way, Jean," she said. "You remember Mrs. Merley?" ”

“ The Elder had extricated himself at last, and now sailed down the street with high head. "May the God crush that hard-headed bulldog into the earth," he muttered between compressed lips, so angry that he could not see clearly. "How long am I to be aggravated with this rotten gossip!"
He changed his mind about walking far, and at a convenient corner, he turned back toward home. But when he arrived there, he was confronted with another, and more serious problem. It had been his intention before arriving there, to arraign his wife again for having let Orlean go West in the beginning. ”

“ Augustus M. Barr appeared very much impressed with Jean Baptiste. He was a judge of men, withal, and much impressed with Baptiste as a personality; but the fact that Baptiste had broken one hundred and thirty acres on his homestead and now had it ready for crop, the first year of settlement; and had wisely invested in another quarter upon which a girl had made proof, delighted Barr. He admired the younger man's viewpoint and optimism. So when Barr was in town, and the conversation happened around that way, he was ever pleased to speak his praise of Baptiste. ”

“ The fact that he had been a Presiding Elder in one of the leading denominations of Negro churches out of which he managed to filch about a thousand a year, was in a measure foreign to his son-in-law. And the Reverend was not an informed or practical man.
The truth was that all the pretensions made to the Elder, flattering him into feeling he was a great man, Jean Baptiste came to regard as a deliberate fawning to flatter an extreme vanity. Far from being even practical, N.J. McCarthy was by disposition, environment and cultivation, narrow, impractical, hypocritical, envious and spiteful. ”

“ Jean Baptiste was her husband, and she was not ungrateful. He gave her real love and husbandry, and it was perhaps her woman's nature to speak in defense of her mate. So she said:
"But Jean is not like Glavis, papa. They are two different men entirely."
"Well, yes, my dear," he said slowly, his dark face taking on a peculiar—and not very pleasant expression, "I'm afraid I will have to agree with you. Yes. They are different. Glavis is a fine boy, though. Don't own a thousand acres of land, but certainly takes care of home like a man. No, no. I never have to worry about anything. ”