The Conquest: The Story of a Negro PioneerMicheaux, Oscar
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The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer
Micheaux, Oscar
African American pioneers -- Fiction; Autobiographical fiction; South Dakota -- Fiction; Western stories
She went to the phone and called up the number. In a few minutes she
returned, wearing a jubilant expression, and cried: "I've fixed it, she
is coming over and we will all go to a matinee. Won't it be fine?" she
continued, jumping up and down, and clapping her hands joyfully, beside
herself, with enthusiasm, and I joined her.
Two hours later, Mrs. Hite--the young lady that answered the door when I
came that morning--called from the look-out, where she had been watching
while Mrs. Arling was dressing, and I, too nervous to sit still, was
walking to and fro across the room--that Orlean was coming. We had been
uneasy for fear the Elder might hear of my being in the city, before
Orlean got away. I rushed to the window and saw my wife coming leisurely
along the walk, entirely ignorant of the anxious eyes watching her from
the second-story window. I could see, at the first glance, she had grown
fleshy; she had begun before she left South Dakota. It was a bay window
and we watched her until she had come up the steps and pulled the bell.
Mrs. Arling had told me my wife did not have any gentleman company. I
had not felt she had, for, in the first place, she was not that kind of
a woman, and if her father, by his ways, discouraged any men in coming
to see her while she was single, he was sure to discourage any
afterward. But Mrs. Arling had added: "I told her I was going to get her
a beau, so you get behind the door, and when she comes in I will tell
her that I have found the beau."
I obeyed, and after a little Orlean walked into the room, smiling and
catching her breath, from the exertion of coming up the steps. I stepped
behind her and covered her eyes with my hands. Mrs. Arling chirped,
"That is your beau, so you see I have kept my word, and there he is." I
withdrew my hands and my wife turned and exclaimed "Oh!" and sank weakly
into a chair.
We had returned from the theatre, where we witnessed a character play
with a moral, A Romance of the Under World. We had tickets for an
evening performance to see Robert Mantell in Richelieu. Mrs. Arling
ushered us into her sitting room, closed the door, and left us to
ourselves.
I took my wife by the hand; led her to a rocker; sat down and drew her
down on my knee, and began with: "Now, dear, let us talk it over."
I knew about what to expect, and was not mistaken. She began to tell me
of the "wrongs" I had done her, and the like. I calculated this would
last about an hour, then she would begin to relent, and she did. After I
had listened so patiently without interrupting her, but before I felt
quite satisfied, she wanted to go to the phone and call up the house to
tell the folks that I was in town.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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