The Quest of the Silver Fleece Read online

  A stir in the parlor indicated departure.

  “Well, you watch the Farmers’ League, and note its success and methods,” counselled John Taylor, his tone and manner unchanged. “Then figure what it might do in the hands of—let us say, friends.”

  “Who’s running it?”

  “A Colonel Cresswell is its head, and happens also to be the force behind it. Aristocratic family—big planter—near where my sister teaches.”

  “H’m—well, we’ll watch him.”

  “And say,” as Easterly was turning away, “you know Congressman Smith?”

  “I should say I did.”

  “Well, Mrs. Grey seems to be depending on him for advice in distributing some of her charity funds.”

  Easterly appeared startled.

  “She is, is she!” he exclaimed. “But here come the ladies.” He went forward at once, but John Taylor drew back. He noted Mrs. Vanderpool, and thought her too thin and pale. The dashing young Miss Easterly was more to his taste. He intended to have a wife like that one of these days.

  “Mary,” said he to his sister as he finally rose to go, “tell me about the Cresswells.”

  Mary explained to him at length the impossibility of her knowing much about the local white aristocracy of Tooms County, and then told him all she had heard.

  “Mrs. Grey talked to you much?”

  “Yes.”

  “About darky schools?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does she intend to do?”

  “I think she will aid Miss Smith first.”

  “Did you suggest anything?”

  “Well, I told her what I thought about coöperating with the local white people.”

  “The Cresswells?”

  “Yes—you see Mrs. Vanderpool knows the Cresswells.”

  “Does, eh? Good! Say, that’s a good point. You just bear heavy on it—coöperate with the Cresswells.”

  “Why, yes. But—you see, John, I don’t just know whether one could coöperate with the Cresswells or not—one hears such contradictory stories of them. But there must be some other white people—”

  “Stuff! It’s the Cresswells we want.”

  “Well,” Mary was very dubious, “they are—the most important.”

  Seven

  THE PLACE OF DREAMS

  When she went South late in September, Mary Taylor had two definite but allied objects: she was to get all possible business information concerning the Cresswells, and she was to induce Miss Smith to prepare for Mrs. Grey’s benevolence by interesting the local whites in her work. The programme attracted Miss Taylor. She felt in touch, even if dimly and slightly, with great industrial movements, and she felt, too, like a discerning pioneer in philanthropy. Both roles she liked. Besides, they held, each, certain promises of social prestige, and society, Miss Taylor argued, one must have even in Alabama.

  Bles Alwyn met her at the train. He was growing to be a big fine bronze giant, and Mary was glad to see him. She especially tried, in the first few weeks of opening school, to glean as much information as possible concerning the community, and particularly the Cresswells. She found the Negro youth quicker, surer, and more intelligent in his answers than those she questioned elsewhere, and she gained real enjoyment from her long talks with him.

  “Isn’t Bles developing splendidly?” she said to Miss Smith one afternoon. There was an unmistakable note of enthusiasm in her voice. Miss Smith slowly closed her letter-file but did not look up.

  “Yes,” she said crisply. “He’s eighteen now—quite a man.”

  “And most interesting to talk with.”

  “H’m—very”—drily. Mary was busy with her own thoughts, and she did not notice the other woman’s manner.

  “Do you know,” she pursued, “I’m a little afraid of one thing.”

  “So am I.”

  “Oh, you’ve noted it, too?—his friendship for that impossible girl, Zora?”

  Miss Smith gave her a searching look.

  “What of it?” she demanded.

  “She is so far beneath him.”

  “How so?”

  “She is a bold, godless thing; I don’t understand her.”

  “The two are not quite the same.”

  “Of course not; but she is unnaturally forward.”

  “Too bright,” Miss Smith amplified.

  “Yes; she knows quite too much. You surely remember that awful scarlet dress? Well, all her clothes have arrived, or remained, at a simplicity and vividness that is—well—immodest.”

  “Does she think them immodest?”

  “What she thinks is a problem.”

  “The problem, you mean?”

  “Well, yes.”

  They paused a moment. Then Miss Smith said slowly: “What I don’t understand, I don’t judge.”

  “No, but you can’t always help seeing and meeting it,” laughed Miss Taylor.

  “Certainly not. I don’t try; I court the meeting and seeing. It is the only way.”

  “Well, perhaps, for us—but not for a boy like Bles, and a girl like Zora.”

  “True; men and women must exercise judgment in their intercourse and”—she glanced sharply at Miss Taylor—“my dear, you yourself must not forget that Bles Alwyn is a man.”

  Far up the road came a low, long, musical shouting; then with creaking and straining of wagons, four great black mules dashed into sight with twelve bursting bales of yellowish cotton looming and swaying behind. The drivers and helpers were lolling and laughing and singing, but Miss Taylor did not hear nor see. She had sat suddenly upright; her face had flamed crimson, and then went dead white.

  “Miss—Miss Smith!” she gasped, overwhelmed with dismay, a picture of wounded pride and consternation.

  Miss Smith turned around very methodically and took her hand; but while she spoke the girl merely stared at her in stony silence.

  “Now, dear, don’t mean more than I do. I’m an old woman, and I’ve seen many things. This is but a little corner of the world, and yet many people pass here in thirty years. The trouble with new teachers who come is, that like you, they cannot see black folk as human. All to them are either impossible Zoras, or else lovable Blessings. They forget that Zora is not to be annihilated, but studied and understood, and that Bles is a young man of eighteen and not a clod.”

  “But that he should dare—” Mary began breathlessly.

  “He hasn’t dared,” Miss Smith went gently on. “No thought of you but as a teacher has yet entered his dear, simple head. But, my point is simply this: he’s a man, and a human one, and if you keep on making much over him, and talking to him and petting him, he’ll have the right to interpret your manner in his own way—the same that any young man would.”

  “But—but, he’s a—a—”

  “A Negro. To be sure, he is; and a man in addition. Now, dear, don’t take this too much to heart; this is not a rebuke, but a clumsy warning. I am simply trying to make clear to you why you should be careful. Treat poor Zora a little more lovingly, and Bles a little less warmly. They are just human—but, oh! so human.”

  Mary Taylor rose up stiffly and mumbled a brief good-night. She went to her room, and sat down in the dark. The mere mention of the thing was to her so preposterous—no, loathsome, she kept repeating.

  She slowly undressed in the dark, and heard the rumbling of the cotton wagons as they swayed toward town. The cry of the Naked was sweeping the world, and yonder in the night black men were answering the call. They knew not what or why they answered, but obeyed the irresistible call, with hearts light and song upon their lips—the Song of Service. They lashed their mules and drank their whiskey, and all night the piled fleece swept by Mary Taylor’s window, flying—flying to that far cry. Miss Taylor turned uneasily in her bed and jerked the bed-clothes about her ears.

  “Mrs. Vanderpool is right,” she confided to the night, with something of the awe with which one suddenly comprehends a hidden oracle; “there must be a difference, always, alw
ays! That impudent Negro!”

  All night she dreamed, and all day,—especially when trim and immaculate she sat in her chair and looked down upon fifty dark faces—and upon Zora.

  Zora sat thinking. She saw neither Miss Taylor nor the long straight rows of desks and faces. She heard neither the drone of the spellers nor did she hear Miss Taylor say, “Zora!” She heard and saw none of this. She only heard the prattle of the birds in the wood, far down where the Silver Fleece would be planted.

  For the time of cotton-planting was coming; the gray and drizzle of December was past and the hesitation of January. Already a certain warmth and glow had stolen into the air, and the Swamp was calling its child with low, seductive voice. She knew where the first leaves were bursting, where tiny flowers nestled, and where young living things looked upward to the light and cried and crawled. A wistful longing was stealing into her heart. She wanted to be free. She wanted to run and dance and sing, but Bles wanted—

  “Zora!”

  This time she heard the call, but did not heed it. Miss Taylor was very tiresome, and was forever doing and saying silly things. So Zora paid no attention, but sat still and thought. Yes, she would show Bles the place that very night; she had kept it secret from him until now, out of perverseness, out of her love of mystery and secrets. But tonight, after school, when he met her on the big road with the clothes, she would take him and show him the chosen spot.

  Soon she was aware that school had been dismissed, and she leisurely gathered up her books and rose. Mary Taylor regarded her in perplexed despair. Oh, these people! Mrs. Vanderpool was right: culture and—some masses, at least—were not to be linked; and, too, culture and work—were they incompatible? At any rate, culture and this work were.

  Now, there was Mrs. Vanderpool—she toiled not, neither did she spin, and yet! If all these folk were like poor, stupid, docile Jennie it would be simpler, but what earthly sense was there in trying do to anything with a girl like Zora, so stupid in some matters, so startlingly bright in others, and so stubborn in everything? Here, she was doing some work twice as well and twice as fast as the class, and other work she would not touch because she “didn’t like it.” Her classification in school was nearly as difficult as her classification in the world, and Miss Taylor reached up impatiently and removed the gold pin from her stock to adjust it more comfortably when Zora sauntered past unseeing, unheeding, with that curious gliding walk which Miss Taylor called stealthy. She laid the pin on the desk and on sudden impulse spoke again to the girl as she arranged her neck trimmings.

  “Zora,” she said evenly, “why didn’t you come to class when I called?”

  “I didn’t hear you,” said Zora, looking at her full-eyed and telling the half-truth easily.

  Miss Taylor was sure Zora was lying, and she knew that she had lied to her on other occasions. Indeed, she had found lying customary in this community, and she had a New England horror of it. She looked at Zora disapprovingly, while Zora looked at her quite impersonally, but steadily. Then Miss Taylor braced herself, mentally, and took the war into Africa.

  “Do you ever tell lies, Zora?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you know that is a wicked, bad habit?”

  “Why?”

  “Because God hates them.”

  “How does you know He does?” Zora’s tone was still impersonal.

  “He hates all evil.”

  “But why is lies evil?”

  “Because they make us deceive each other.”

  “Is that wrong?”

  “Yes.”

  Zora bent forward and looked squarely into Miss Taylor’s blue eyes. Miss Taylor looked into the velvet blackness of hers and wondered what they veiled.

  “Is it wrong,” asked Zora, “to make believe you likes people when you don’t, when you’se afeared of them and thinks they may rub off and dirty you?”

  “Why—why—yes, if you—if you, deceive.”

  “Then you lies sometimes, don’t you?”

  Miss Taylor stared helplessly at the solemn eyes that seemed to look so deeply into her.

  “Perhaps—I do, Zora; I’m sure I don’t mean to, and—I hope God will forgive me.”

  Zora softened.

  “Oh, I reckon He will if He’s a good God, because He’d know that lies like that are heaps better than blabbing the truth right out. Only,” she added severely, “you mustn’t keep saying it’s wicked to lie ’cause it ain’t. Sometimes I lies,” she reflected pensively, “and sometimes I don’t—it depends.”

  Miss Taylor forgot her collar, and fingered the pin on the desk. She felt at once a desperate desire to know this girl better and to establish her own authority. Yet how should she do it? She kept toying with the pin, and Zora watched her. Then Miss Taylor said, absently:

  “Zora, what do you propose to do when you grow up?”

  Zora considered.

  “Think and walk—and rest,” she concluded.

  “I mean, what work?”

  “Work? Oh, I sha’n’t work. I don’t like work—do you?”

  Miss Taylor winced, wondering if the girl were lying again. She said quickly:

  “Why, yes—that is, I like some kinds of work.”

  “What kinds?”

  But Miss Taylor refused to have the matter made personal, as Zora had a disconcerting way of pointing all their discussions.

  “Everybody likes some kinds of work,” she insisted.

  “If you likes it, it ain’t work,” declared Zora; but Mary Taylor proceeded around her circumscribed circle:

  “You might make a good cook, or a maid.”

  “I hate cooking. What’s a maid?”

  “Why, a woman who helps others.”

  “Helps folks that they love? I’d like that.”

  “It is not a question of affection,” said Miss Taylor, firmly: “one is paid for it.”

  “I wouldn’t work for pay.”

  “But you’ll have to, child; you’ll have to earn a living.”

  “Do you work for pay?”

  “I work to earn a living.”

  “Same thing, I reckon, and it ain’t true. Living just comes free, like—like sunshine.”

  “Stuff! Zora, your people must learn to work and work steadily and work hard—” She stopped, for she was sure Zora was not listening; the far away look was in her eyes and they were shining. She was beautiful as she stood there—strangely, almost uncannily, but startlingly beautiful with her rich dark skin, softly moulded features, and wonderful eyes.

  “My people?—my people?” she murmured, half to herself. “Do you know my people? They don’t never work; they plays. They is all little, funny dark people. They flies and creeps and crawls, slippery-like; and they cries and calls. Ah, my people! my poor little people! they misses me these days, because they is shadowy things that sing and smell and bloom in dark and terrible nights—”

  Miss Taylor started up. “Zora, I believe you’re crazy!” she cried. But Zora was looking at her calmly again.

  “We’se both crazy, ain’t we?” she returned, with a simplicity that left the teacher helpless.

  Miss Taylor hurried out, forgetting her pin. Zora looked it over leisurely, and tried it on. She decided that she liked it, and putting it in her pocket, went out too.

  School was out but the sun was still high, as Bles hurried from the barn up the big road beside the soft shadows of the swamp. His head was busy with new thoughts and his lips were whistling merrily, for today Zora was to show him the long dreamed of spot for the planting of the Silver Fleece. He hastened toward the Cresswell mansion, and glanced anxiously up the road. At last he saw her coming, swinging down the road, lithe and dark, with the big white basket of clothes poised on her head.

  “Zora,” he yodled, and she waved her apron.

  He eased her burden to the ground and they sat down together, he nervous and eager; she silent, passive, but her eyes restless. Bles was full of his plans.

  “Zora,” he sai
d, “we’ll make it the finest bale ever raised in Tooms; we’ll just work it to the inch—just love it into life.”

  She considered the matter intently.

  “But,”—presently,—“how can we sell it without the Cresswells knowing?”

  “We won’t try; we’ll just take it to them and give them half, like the other tenants.”

  “But the swamp is mortal thick and hard to clear.”

  “We can do it.”

  Zora had sat still, listening; but now, suddenly, she leapt to her feet.

  “Come,” she said, “I’ll take the clothes home, then we’ll go”—she glanced at him—“down where the dreams are.” And laughing, they hurried on.

  Elspeth stood in the path that wound down to the cottage, and without a word Zora dropped the basket at her feet. She turned back; but Bles, struck by a thought, paused. The old woman was short, broad, black and wrinkled, with yellow fangs, red hanging lips, and wicked eyes. She leered at them; the boy shrank before it, but stood his ground.

  “Aunt Elspeth,” he began, “Zora and I are going to plant and tend some cotton to pay for her schooling—just the very best cotton we can find—and I heard”—he hesitated,—“I heard you had some wonderful seed.”

  “Yes,” she mumbled, “I’se got the seed—I’se got it—wonder seed, sowed wid the three spells of Obi in the old land ten tousand moons ago. But you couldn’t plant it,” with a sudden shrillness, “it would kill you.”

  “But—” Bles tried to object, but she waved him away.

  “Git the ground—git the ground; dig it—pet it, and we’ll see what we’ll see.” And she disappeared.

  Zora was not sure that it had been wise to tell their secret.

  “I was going to steal the seed,” she said. “I knows where it is, and I don’t fear conjure.”

  “You mustn’t steal, Zora,” said Bles, gravely.

  “Why?” Zora quickly asked.

  But before he answered, they both forgot; for their faces were turned toward the wonder of the swamp. The golden sun was pouring floods of glory through the slim black trees, and the mystic sombre pools caught and tossed back the glow in darker, duller crimson. Long echoing cries leapt to and fro; silent footsteps crept hither and yonder; and the girl’s eyes gleamed with a wild new joy.