MELLIE’S MAN
By William McLeod Raine
“Why don’t you-all git a man, Mellie?”
Mrs. Chunn waited impatiently for an answer, her potato knife poised in air. She was a sallow lath of a woman, dry and hard, with piercing little black eyes that bored like gimlets. Efficiency of management was the dominant note of the widow. She ruled like an autocrat, a kindly one if people submitted gracefully, but a firm one in any event. Three deceased husbands had endured her sway not unhappily. Each of them had fortunately possessed the requisite sense of humor.
Just now the gimlet eyes were turned on the slim, fair girl who sat shelling peas on the porch steps at her feet. Mellie stirred uneasily, as under compulsion, but offered no answer in words. From her childhood she had been much given to silence, an unconscious refuge from the commonplace world of Cache Bayou that misunderstood her of necessity. A sweet, shy creature with a rare color easily moved to paint charming pictures of maidenly embarrassment, one might well wonder how this daughter of the swamps had come to be endowed with so alien a beauty. She suggested a native refinement foreign alike to her training and her environment.
Her stepmother repeated the question with exactly the same inflection as before.
“Don’t yo’, please,” implored the girl, the color sweeping into her face. Then, as if feeling the futility of protest, she added, “I cayn’t, Maw. Yo’ know I ain’t that-a-way.”
“I reckon yo’ kin if yo’ try. You-all air turned nineteen now. Do yo’ ’low nevah to marry? Trouble is, you-all air so meachin’ an’ touch-me-not. Hit don’t do to be dumb’s a wild hawg the whole enjurin’ time when men folks is ’round. Yo’ got to brisk up an’ be peart.”
The widow’s experience entitled her to speak with authority. “Gittin’ a man” had become almost a habit with her. It spoke volumes for her efficiency that men naturally gravitated her way, despite her lack of feminine graces. Temporarily, by reason of a dispensation of Providence, she happened to be husbandless, but it was a condition she expected to change as soon as she could decide on a suitable successor for the late Shep Chunn. To this selection she was giving her judgment with cool detachment, quite unhampered by the superfluous baggage of sentiment. As a preliminary she purposed to do her duty by her stepdaughter and make her happy whether she wanted to be or not.
“Co’se hit stands to reason that a gyurl’s gotten to git a man or be plumb looked down on,” she continued, a note of finality in her voice. “Yo’ hain’t aimin’ to be a’ ol’ maid, air yo’, Mellie? Well, yo’ shorely air hailed that-a-way. Me’n Dave Wilson was ma’ied befo’ I was sixteen. When he up’n died I mo’ned a fittin’ time and then tuk yo’ paw. I met up with Shep ayfter yo’ po’ paw died. All told I haint be’n a widow more’n fo’ years.” The pardonable complacency of success voiced itself in Mirandy Wilson-Briscoe-Chunn’s recital. “This yere kentry’s full of men an’ taint no trick to make ’em think this yearth won’t turn ’f they-all don’t git you. But yo’ cayn’t do hit by folding yo’ hands in yo’ lap and actin’ like men folks plumb skeer yo’ to death. Yo’ got to show ’em yo’re right smart partial to ’em. An’ yit yo’ got to keep ’em jubious. Naow the’ was Jim Dascom, jes’ possessed to git you-all. He plumb thought the world an’ all of yo’. Him a-comin’ yere an’ a-comin’, slickin’ up to go co’tin’ ever’ last night, an’ yo’ takin’ on like he was p’isen. Consequence is, he up an’ tuk Seliny. ’N she c’udn’t hold a candle to you-all fer looks.”
The averted eyes of the slim, young thing looked wistfully across the slash to the bayou beyond. A poignant shame flooded her, the sense of sacred things profaned. Oh, if only her mother had lived, the girl mother who had died at her birth! Surely she would have understood! Or even the quiet slow-speeched father who had petted and “muched” her in secret. Since his death, ten years before, she had been terribly alone. She had only Jed—Jed Wilson, her stepmother’s boy, the magnificent big brother of her youth, who could do everything well and yet condescended to like her and be her comrade. But Jed was in far-away Texas somewhere and had been for four years.
“So I jes’ natchelly makes up my mind to help yo’. I ’low to do by you-all like yo’ own maw would. Air yo’ near through with them peas? I want ’em done right spank at twelve. Mose Hughey’s a-comin’ to dinner.”
Mellie turned a startled face on her stepmother. Her lips parted for speech, but the protest died unvoiced. What she had feared had come at last. A kind of terror surged through her. She was being prepared for the inevitable. If Mrs. Chunn had set her iron will on her marrying Hughey there would be no escape for her. Yet she knew she would rather die.
“I don’t want to—to marry,” she besought. “I druther stay with yo’, Maw.” The girl’s sweet, slow voice seemed to caress the dialect and make it lovable. “You-all have always be’n so good to me sence I was a little trick. Don’t yo’ make me marry ary man, Maw Chunn.”
“Hit ce’tainly riles me to hear you-all talk that-a-way. Hit’s plumb foolish. I reckon yo’ got to do like other folkses, Mellie Briscoe. But yo’ ain’t time to talk about that naow. Yo’ run along an’ slick up. I’ll ’tend to the dinner.”
Hughey’s narrow little shifting eyes gloated on the girl’s dainty youth and ravished the innocence of her pure outline, even while he ate voraciously of the food before him. A wolf were as fit to be mated with a lamb as the long-jawed, yellow-toothed usurer’s cunning with her fine maiden reserve. Even to Mellie’s stepmother his outstanding merit was the forty acres of rich cotton land he owned.
That he had an understanding with Mrs. Chunn was apparent, not less clear than that he counted the girl already his and the wooing a mere formality.
“Seems like nobody nevah cooked sweet taters an’ co’n pone like you’uns Miz Chunn. I ’low o’ co’se yo’ done learned Miss Mellie haow.” His wolfish little eyes leered at the girl.
Mrs. Chunn tossed the ball back, to cover her stepdaughter’s silence.
“Mellie’s a mighty good cook, Mistah Hughey, an’s yo’ say, I kin recommend her pone.”
“Tha’s good. I’m a steady man an’ don’t go devilin’ ’round none. ’F I ma’ied again,”—he was talking pointedly at Mellie—“I druther have a woman that c’d work an’ keep her mouth shet than anything else. Kin you-all tell me where I c’n git one that-a-way, Miz Chunn?”
Mellie waited on him with a padlocked tongue. When he had gorged himself she slipped away and fled to the hickory lead at the edge of the bayou. In the heavy shade of the forest she buried herself, trying to hide from the shame and the horror of it all. What could she do? How could she escape the net which enmeshed her? To whom could she turn for help? Her throat ached with the intensity of the passion of despair that swept her.
Jed would have known what to do. Jed would have saved her. But he was a thousand miles away on some unknown ranch. His mother’s domineering temper had driven him away from home in anger. They had heard of him just once in the four years. That was when the editor of their country paper, stopping at Mrs. Chunn’s over night, had mentioned that her son was still one of the subscribers to the Beebee Bee.
“Texas is a mighty big place, an’ a mighty fine country I’ve heard, but I reckon, Madam”—with a courtly bow to Mrs. Chunn—“be it nevah so humble the’s no place like home!”
“I ’low that’s why he makes out without evah seeing it,” Jed’s mother had returned dryly to the burst of editorial oratory. Her boy was the one weak spot in her inflexible armor of autocracy. To have had him home again she would willingly have made him an exception to her own rule, though she never admitted it even to herself.
It was to Jed’s strength that the girl’s weakness went fluttering out in her hour of need. He would have understood, as nobody else could. The indolent, masterful force of him would have won her battle for her. But without him—fear rose in her throat and choked her. She could not hold out—she knew she could not hold out against the quiet, steadfast, terrible pressure her stepmother would bring to bear.
Texas was a big country and far away. The paper man from Beebee had said that. But he had said, too, that he sent his paper to Jed. If so, he must know where he was living. In the midst of the desert of her despair there began to rise a tiny wellspring of hope. She would write to Jed.
As it happened, Buck Drumley was going to Beebee next day. Buck rented on shares the west bottom from Mrs. Chunn and worked it in cotton. No faintest accent of intelligence disturbed the blur of his vacant features, and he got along very comfortably without a chin. But Mellie could depend upon the loyalty of this lank, tow-headed product of the bayous even if she could not upon his wisdom. Her letter to the editor made verbal explanations unnecessary.
Buck was delighted to oblige her, and he swore himself to secrecy with an air of conspiracy so patent that the contorted winks he attempted just before setting out threatened to disclose everything to Mrs. Chunn.
“What in time’s ailin’ with yo’, Buck Drumley?” demanded the widow.
Buck’s jaw fell. It was Mellie who suggested neuralgia.
“Tha’s hit, Miz Chunn, this yere neuralgatism. Hit keeps a-devilin’ around me wuss’n toothache.”
He had to take half a cup full of vile tasting “yarb” medicine, but he got away at last with his secret still undivulged. Fifty yards away he slewed round in his seat to call back with a fatuous smile, “I’ll sho’ly be back by evenin’, Miss Mellie—three o’clock at the furdest.” Fortunately Mrs. Chunn had returned to her soapmaking at the back door.
Mellie took the precaution to meet her messenger down the road lest he should blow up prematurely with his information in the presence of her stepmother. Buck fished, with much difficulty, a slip of paper and a quarter from the pocket of his jeans. The girl selected them from a promiscuous collection of buttons, strings, peppermints and chewing tobacco.
“This yere’s the place where Jed lives, leastways he useter,” pointing to the address on the slip—“’n it didn’t cost but six bits to put the piece in the paper. Hit’s done fixed to go ever week for a month.”
When Buck next went to town he carried with him a letter addressed to Jed Wilson, 99 Ranch, What Cheer, Texas. A copy of the Beebee Bee came back in his pocket. Mellie hid the paper hurriedly, and waited to look at it till she could get away to the shadows of the hickory lead at the edge of the bayou.
Among the advertisements she found what she was seeking. A chance copy of a New York paper, flung from a train window by a traveling man, had given her a model for her first appearance in type.
“If this should meet the eye of Jed he will know that the girl who hunted ’possums with him six years ago is in great need.”
Hughey pushed his curious wooing persistently. Nearly every evening now he squirted tobacco juice from the porch and bragged of himself and his possessions at Mellie via Mrs. Chunn. His greedy, cruel smile filled the girl with a sick fear. Divining the repulsion he inspired in her, he offered no chance to give expression to it. That the pressure of her environment would wear out her will he was confident, and he could afford to wait till he was sure before he punished her for her detestation of him. But he scored it up against her none the less.
His approaches were no more obtrusive than those of a spider, but they were just as certain. Mellie felt herself being taken for granted. He said no word of love and asked none of the privileges usually accorded the successful wooer. None the less he obsessed her every waking moment. She was never oblivious of the encroaching web he spun about her. The time came when he and Mrs. Chunn could discuss before her the details of his marriage to her without spoken protest on her part. She sat in an unconsenting silence that became passionate protest when she was alone with her stepmother.
But she knew that she fluttered in vain and that every passing week brought her nearer the inevitable sacrifice. If she could only die—but it takes more than a breaking heart to kill a healthy young woman! Her misery could steal the roses from her cheeks, could keep her tossing through the long nights in an agony of sleepless horror, but in the daytime she dragged herself listlessly about her work as usual.
“Mose ’lows he won’t be yere to-night. He’s done gone to Beebee,” Mrs. Chunn explained one evening.
Mellie faintly sighed her relief.
Mrs. Chunn laid her string of peppers on the table and began on another. She was watching the girl without appearing to do so. “Ain’t you-all keerin’ what fer he’s gone?”
Her stepdaughter’s hands fell into her lap. She looked up with a face out of which the color had been suddenly driven.
“Yo’ gump, he’s aimin’ to git the license to-morrow.”
Everything went black before Mellie’s eyes. She caught at the arms of the rocking chair and gripped them desperately. Presently the blood beat back to her heart.
Mrs. Chunn’s dry voice—miles away in the haze—came to her distantly. “’N’s I say, a gyurl that gits fohty acres of good Arkinsaw bottom land with her man is mighty lucky. I reckon I done mighty well by you-all, Mellie. Yo’ hadn’t ought to be so ill and ongrateful.”
Mellie hurried out into the quiet night. She was stifling, oppressed by a deadly choking at her throat. She fled through the slashed field, as if driven by some impotent instinct to attempt escape from the evil fate. Habit led her to the big tree in the hickory lead where she and Jed used to play. Her despair was long past tears. She could only lean her head against the bark and give herself to long, dry sobbing till her passion of self-pity had spent itself.
Not till the man was almost beside her did she hear the approaching footsteps deadened by the soft carpet of moss. Wheeling, she stood poised for flight, an arrested picture of youth far gone in grief.
Then, “Jed!” she cried, and he, “Mel!”
It was too good to be true. The girl’s voice quavered her doubt.
“Is it really you, Jed?”
“Hit shorely is, Mel. I seen yo’ advertisement three days ago in an old paper. I be’n away off on the roundup and jest got back. Co’se I burnt the wind back to help you-all out. I seen someone slippin’ acrost the slash an’ I suspicioned it might be my little sis Mellie.”
She began to sob. “Oh, Jed, yo’ don’t know haow bad I be’n feelin’! Yo’ can’t think haow often I be’n wishin’ I was dead!”
His indolent, good-looking face took on the dark expression she had seen only once or twice.
“If anybody’s done you-all any meanness, sis—”
The blood surged into her cheeks. “Maw’s bound an’ ’termined that I’ll ma’ie Mose Hughey. He’s gittin’ the license to-day.”
“Mose Hughey?” The loose, graceful Southern figure stiffened. “Maw must be crazy!”
“He’s be’n a-pesterin’ me fer nea’ly two months—an’ I hate him wuss than a rattlesnake,” she flamed.
“He won’t pester yo’ any more, sis,” said Jed grimly, and laid a caressing arm across her shoulders.
Mellie moved out of the shadows into the moonlight and instantly Jed’s arm fell to his side. He stared at her in dumb surprise. The thin, awkward child of angles he had left had gone forever, and in her place stood a graceful creature of pliant curves. Never had he seen so sweet and lovable a face as the one upturned to him with such frank confidence. No need to question his heart. He had loved her as a child, as a woman he loved her still. That first, long look surprised the truth from them both, made it clear first to themselves and then to each other.
Mrs. Chunn came out from the wide gallery to the porch and peered into the night. Two figures were moving slowly toward the house along the cedar shadowed path.
“Mellie, is that you?”
“Yes, Maw.”
“Who’s that with you?”
“It’s me, Mother. I’ve come home—to stay.”
A sudden joy flashed into the hard eyes of the mother, but she instantly hid her tenderness as if it had been a vice.
“Hit’s time,” was her grim comment.
He kissed her gaily. “That’s what I thought, Mother.”
“Did Mellie tell you-all that she’s a-goin’ to git married to-morrow?”
“Yes, we be’n talkin’ about it.”
“She’s a-gittin’ a good man,” defiantly.
Jed laughed. “He ain’t good enough fer her.”
“Don’t yo’ put sech notions in her head,” his mother told him sharply.
“No, Maw,” answered Jed with unwonted humility. “Co’se I want her to think she gits a good man when she gits me.”
Mrs. Chunn’s beady eyes fastened on him. Instantly she recognized a defeat that was sweeter than victory, but she was not yet prepared to admit it. “Oh, she gits you-all, does she? Well, I ’low she don’t git much ’f yo’ don’t make a better husban’ than yo’ do a son.”
She turned on her heel and went into the house without more words. Another woman stood first with her boy now. Her jealousy was bitter. But it was for the moment only, and beneath it was to grow a deep satisfaction that Jed had at last come to anchorage near her.
Mellie followed her timidly into the house. She found her stepmother stringing peppers with an impassive face. Kneeling down beside the older woman, she slipped an arm round her.
“I jes’ cu’dn’t help loving Jed, Maw. I reckon I always have, but I didn’t know hit till I seen him so sudden-like in the hickory lead. We’uns are goin’ to be good child’en to you-all and obedient.”
Mrs. Chunn gave a parched little laugh. “Yes, hit looks like it.”
An impressionist’s sketch of a smile touched Mellie’s lips.
“I done like yo’ said. I got a man, Maw.”
