The Quest of the Silver Fleece by W. E. B. Du Bois

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THE QUEST OF THE SILVER FLEECE

_A Novel_

W.E.B. DU BOIS

1911

A.C. McClurg & Co.

_Contents_

THE QUEST OF THE SILVER FLEECE

_Note from the Author_ 3

_One_: DREAMS 5

_Two_: THE SCHOOL 12

_Three_: MISS MARY TAYLOR 16

_Four_: TOWN 23

_Five_: ZORA 33

_Six_: COTTON 42

_Seven_: THE PLACE OF DREAMS 53

_Eight_: MR. HARRY CRESSWELL 66

_Nine_: THE PLANTING 74

_Ten_: MR. TAYLOR CALLS 84

_Eleven_: THE FLOWERING OF THE FLEECE 99

_Twelve_: THE PROMISE 108

_Thirteen_: MRS. GREY GIVES A DINNER 122

_Fourteen_: LOVE 128

_Fifteen_: REVELATION 134

_Sixteen_: THE GREAT REFUSAL 146

_Seventeen_: THE RAPE OF THE FLEECE 154

_Eighteen_: THE COTTON CORNER 162

_Nineteen_: THE DYING OF ELSPETH 171

_Twenty_: THE WEAVING OF THE SILVER FLEECE 182

_Twenty-one_: THE MARRIAGE MORNING 191

_Twenty-two_: MISS CAROLINE WYNN 199

_Twenty-three_: THE TRAINING OF ZORA 210

_Twenty-four_: THE EDUCATION OF ALWYN 218

_Twenty-five_: THE CAMPAIGN 230

_Twenty-six_: CONGRESSMAN CRESSWELL 244

_Twenty-seven_: THE VISION OF ZORA 254

_Twenty-eight_: THE ANNUNCIATION 263

_Twenty-nine_: A MASTER OF FATE 271

_Thirty_: THE RETURN OF ZORA 283

_Thirty-one_: A PARTING OF WAYS 293

_Thirty-two_: ZORA'S WAY 309

_Thirty-three_: THE BUYING OF THE SWAMP 316

_Thirty-four_: THE RETURN OF ALWYN 328

_Thirty-five_: THE COTTON MILL 339

_Thirty-six_: THE LAND 350

_Thirty-seven_: THE MOB 364

_Thirty-eight_: ATONEMENT 371

THE QUEST OF THE SILVER FLEECE

TO ONE

whose name may not be written but to whose tireless
faith the shaping of these cruder thoughts to forms
more fitly perfect is doubtless due, this
finished work is herewith dedicated

_Note_

He who would tell a tale must look toward three ideals: to tell it well,
to tell it beautifully, and to tell the truth.

The first is the Gift of God, the second is the Vision of Genius, but
the third is the Reward of Honesty.

In _The Quest of the Silver Fleece_ there is little, I ween, divine or
ingenious; but, at least, I have been honest. In no fact or picture have
I consciously set down aught the counterpart of which I have not seen or
known; and whatever the finished picture may lack of completeness, this
lack is due now to the story-teller, now to the artist, but never to the
herald of the Truth.

NEW YORK CITY

_August 15, 1911_

THE AUTHOR

_One_

DREAMS

Night fell. The red waters of the swamp grew sinister and sullen. The
tall pines lost their slimness and stood in wide blurred blotches all
across the way, and a great shadowy bird arose, wheeled and melted,
murmuring, into the black-green sky.

The boy wearily dropped his heavy bundle and stood still, listening as
the voice of crickets split the shadows and made the silence audible. A
tear wandered down his brown cheek. They were at supper now, he
whispered--the father and old mother, away back yonder beyond the night.
They were far away; they would never be as near as once they had been,
for he had stepped into the world. And the cat and Old Billy--ah, but
the world was a lonely thing, so wide and tall and empty! And so bare,
so bitter bare! Somehow he had never dreamed of the world as lonely
before; he had fared forth to beckoning hands and luring, and to the
eager hum of human voices, as of some great, swelling music.

Yet now he was alone; the empty night was closing all about him here in
a strange land, and he was afraid. The bundle with his earthly treasure
had hung heavy and heavier on his shoulder; his little horde of money
was tightly wadded in his sock, and the school lay hidden somewhere far
away in the shadows. He wondered how far it was; he looked and harkened,
starting at his own heartbeats, and fearing more and more the long dark
fingers of the night.

Then of a sudden up from the darkness came music. It was human music,
but of a wildness and a weirdness that startled the boy as it fluttered
and danced across the dull red waters of the swamp. He hesitated, then
impelled by some strange power, left the highway and slipped into the
forest of the swamp, shrinking, yet following the song hungrily and half
forgetting his fear. A harsher, shriller note struck in as of many and
ruder voices; but above it flew the first sweet music, birdlike,
abandoned, and the boy crept closer.

The cabin crouched ragged and black at the edge of black waters. An old
chimney leaned drunkenly against it, raging with fire and smoke, while
through the chinks winked red gleams of warmth and wild cheer. With a
revel of shouting and noise, the music suddenly ceased. Hoarse staccato
cries and peals of laughter shook the old hut, and as the boy stood
there peering through the black trees, abruptly the door flew open and a
flood of light illumined the wood.

Amid this mighty halo, as on clouds of flame, a girl was dancing. She
was black, and lithe, and tall, and willowy. Her garments twined and
flew around the delicate moulding of her dark, young, half-naked limbs.
A heavy mass of hair clung motionless to her wide forehead. Her arms
twirled and flickered, and body and soul seemed quivering and whirring
in the poetry of her motion.

As she danced she sang. He heard her voice as before, fluttering like a
bird's in the full sweetness of her utter music. It was no tune nor
melody, it was just formless, boundless music. The boy forgot himself
and all the world besides. All his darkness was sudden light; dazzled he
crept forward, bewildered, fascinated, until with one last wild whirl
the elf-girl paused. The crimson light fell full upon the warm and
velvet bronze of her face--her midnight eyes were aglow, her full purple
lips apart, her half hid bosom panting, and all the music dead.
Involuntarily the boy gave a gasping cry and awoke to swamp and night
and fire, while a white face, drawn, red-eyed, peered outward from some
hidden throng within the cabin.

"Who's that?" a harsh voice cried.

"Where?" "Who is it?" and pale crowding faces blurred the light.

The boy wheeled blindly and fled in terror stumbling through the swamp,
hearing strange sounds and feeling stealthy creeping hands and arms and
whispering voices. On he toiled in mad haste, struggling toward the road
and losing it until finally beneath the shadows of a mighty oak he sank
exhausted. There he lay a while trembling and at last drifted into
dreamless sleep.

It was morning when he awoke and threw a startled glance upward to the
twisted branches of the oak that bent above, sifting down sunshine on
his brown face and close curled hair. Slowly he remembered the
loneliness, the fear and wild running through the dark. He laughed in
the bold courage of day and stretched himself.

Then suddenly he bethought him again of that vision of the night--the
waving arms and flying limbs of the girl, and her great black eyes
looking into the night and calling him. He could hear her now, and hear
that wondrous savage music. Had it been real? Had he dreamed? Or had it
been some witch-vision of the night, come to tempt and lure him to his
undoing? Where was that black and flaming cabin? Where was the girl--the
soul that had called him? _She_ must have been real; she had to live and
dance and sing; he must again look into the mystery of her great eyes.
And he sat up in sudden determination, and, lo! gazed straight into the
very eyes of his dreaming.

She sat not four feet from him, leaning against the great tree, her
eyes now languorously abstracted, now alert and quizzical with mischief.
She seemed but half-clothed, and her warm, dark flesh peeped furtively
through the rent gown; her thick, crisp hair was frowsy and rumpled, and
the long curves of her bare young arms gleamed in the morning sunshine,
glowing with vigor and life. A little mocking smile came and sat upon
her lips.

"What you run for?" she asked, with dancing mischief in her eyes.

"Because--" he hesitated, and his cheeks grew hot.

"I knows," she said, with impish glee, laughing low music.

"Why?" he challenged, sturdily.

"You was a-feared."

He bridled. "Well, I reckon you'd be a-feared if you was caught out in
the black dark all alone."

"Pooh!" she scoffed and hugged her knees. "Pooh! I've stayed out all
alone heaps o' nights."

He looked at her with a curious awe.

"I don't believe you," he asserted; but she tossed her head and her eyes
grew scornful.

"Who's a-feared of the dark? I love night." Her eyes grew soft.

He watched her silently, till, waking from her daydream, she abruptly
asked:

"Where you from?"

"Georgia."

"Where's that?"

He looked at her in surprise, but she seemed matter-of-fact.

"It's away over yonder," he answered.

"Behind where the sun comes up?"

"Oh, no!"

"Then it ain't so far," she declared. "I knows where the sun rises, and
I knows where it sets." She looked up at its gleaming splendor glinting
through the leaves, and, noting its height, announced abruptly:

"I'se hungry."

"So'm I," answered the boy, fumbling at his bundle; and then, timidly:
"Will you eat with me?"

"Yes," she said, and watched him with eager eyes.

Untying the strips of cloth, he opened his box, and disclosed chicken
and biscuits, ham and corn-bread. She clapped her hands in glee.

"Is there any water near?" he asked.

Without a word, she bounded up and flitted off like a brown bird,
gleaming dull-golden in the sun, glancing in and out among the trees,
till she paused above a tiny black pool, and then came tripping and
swaying back with hands held cupwise and dripping with cool water.

"Drink," she cried. Obediently he bent over the little hands that seemed
so soft and thin. He took a deep draught; and then to drain the last
drop, his hands touched hers and the shock of flesh first meeting flesh
startled them both, while the water rained through. A moment their eyes
looked deep into each other's--a timid, startled gleam in hers; a wonder
in his. Then she said dreamily:

"We'se known us all our lives, and--before, ain't we?"

He hesitated.

"Ye--es--I reckon," he slowly returned. And then, brightening, he asked
gayly: "And we'll be friends always, won't we?"

"Yes," she said at last, slowly and solemnly, and another brief moment
they stood still.

Then the mischief danced in her eyes, and a song bubbled on her lips.
She hopped to the tree.

"Come--eat!" she cried. And they nestled together amid the big black
roots of the oak, laughing and talking while they ate.

"What's over there?" he asked pointing northward.

"Cresswell's big house."

"And yonder to the west?"

"The school."

He started joyfully.

"The school! What school?"

"Old Miss' School."

"Miss Smith's school?"

"Yes." The tone was disdainful.

"Why, that's where I'm going. I was a-feared it was a long way off; I
must have passed it in the night."

"I hate it!" cried the girl, her lips tense.

"But I'll be so near," he explained. "And why do you hate it?"

"Yes--you'll be near," she admitted; "that'll be nice; but--" she
glanced westward, and the fierce look faded. Soft joy crept to her face
again, and she sat once more dreaming.

"Yon way's nicest," she said.

"Why, what's there?"

"The swamp," she said mysteriously.

"And what's beyond the swamp?"

She crouched beside him and whispered in eager, tense tones: "Dreams!"

He looked at her, puzzled.

"Dreams?" vaguely--"dreams? Why, dreams ain't--nothing."

"Oh, yes they is!" she insisted, her eyes flaming in misty radiance as
she sat staring beyond the shadows of the swamp. "Yes they is! There
ain't nothing but dreams--that is, nothing much.

"And over yonder behind the swamps is great fields full of dreams, piled
high and burning; and right amongst them the sun, when he's tired o'
night, whispers and drops red things, 'cept when devils make 'em black."

The boy stared at her; he knew not whether to jeer or wonder.

"How you know?" he asked at last, skeptically.

"Promise you won't tell?"

"Yes," he answered.

She cuddled into a little heap, nursing her knees, and answered slowly.

"I goes there sometimes. I creeps in 'mongst the dreams; they hangs
there like big flowers, dripping dew and sugar and blood--red, red
blood. And there's little fairies there that hop about and sing, and
devils--great, ugly devils that grabs at you and roasts and eats you if
they gits you; but they don't git me. Some devils is big and white, like
ha'nts; some is long and shiny, like creepy, slippery snakes; and some
is little and broad and black, and they yells--"

The boy was listening in incredulous curiosity, half minded to laugh,
half minded to edge away from the black-red radiance of yonder dusky
swamp. He glanced furtively backward, and his heart gave a great bound.

"Some is little and broad and black, and they yells--" chanted the girl.
And as she chanted, deep, harsh tones came booming through the forest:

"_Zo-ra! Zo-ra!_ O--o--oh, Zora!"

He saw far behind him, toward the shadows of the swamp, an old
woman--short, broad, black and wrinkled, with fangs and pendulous lips
and red, wicked eyes. His heart bounded in sudden fear; he wheeled
toward the girl, and caught only the uncertain flash of her
garments--the wood was silent, and he was alone.

He arose, startled, quickly gathered his bundle, and looked around him.
The sun was strong and high, the morning fresh and vigorous. Stamping
one foot angrily, he strode jauntily out of the wood toward the big
road.

But ever and anon he glanced curiously back. Had he seen a haunt? Or was
the elf-girl real? And then he thought of her words:

"We'se known us all our lives."

_Two_

THE SCHOOL

Day was breaking above the white buildings of the Negro school and
throwing long, low lines of gold in at Miss Sarah Smith's front window.
She lay in the stupor of her last morning nap, after a night of
harrowing worry. Then, even as she partially awoke, she lay still with
closed eyes, feeling the shadow of some great burden, yet daring not to
rouse herself and recall its exact form; slowly again she drifted toward
unconsciousness.

"_Bang! bang! bang!_" hard knuckles were beating upon the door below.

She heard drowsily, and dreamed that it was the nailing up of all her
doors; but she did not care much, and but feebly warded the blows away,
for she was very tired.

"_Bang! bang! bang!_" persisted the hard knuckles.

She started up, and her eye fell upon a letter lying on her bureau. Back
she sank with a sigh, and lay staring at the ceiling--a gaunt, flat,
sad-eyed creature, with wisps of gray hair half-covering her baldness,
and a face furrowed with care and gathering years.

It was thirty years ago this day, she recalled, since she first came to
this broad land of shade and shine in Alabama to teach black folks.

It had been a hard beginning with suspicion and squalor around; with
poverty within and without the first white walls of the new school home.
Yet somehow the struggle then with all its helplessness and
disappointment had not seemed so bitter as today: then failure meant but
little, now it seemed to mean everything; then it meant disappointment
to a score of ragged urchins, now it meant two hundred boys and girls,
the spirits of a thousand gone before and the hopes of thousands to
come. In her imagination the significance of these half dozen gleaming
buildings perched aloft seemed portentous--big with the destiny not
simply of a county and a State, but of a race--a nation--a world. It was
God's own cause, and yet--

"_Bang! bang! bang!_" again went the hard knuckles down there at the
front.

Miss Smith slowly arose, shivering a bit and wondering who could
possibly be rapping at that time in the morning. She sniffed the
chilling air and was sure she caught some lingering perfume from Mrs.
Vanderpool's gown. She had brought this rich and rare-apparelled lady up
here yesterday, because it was more private, and here she had poured
forth her needs. She had talked long and in deadly earnest. She had not
spoken of the endowment for which she had hoped so desperately during a
quarter of a century--no, only for the five thousand dollars to buy the
long needed new land. It was so little--so little beside what this woman
squandered--

The insistent knocking was repeated louder than before.

"Sakes alive," cried Miss Smith, throwing a shawl about her and leaning
out the window. "Who is it, and what do you want?"

"Please, ma'am. I've come to school," answered a tall black boy with a
bundle.

"Well, why don't you go to the office?" Then she saw his face and
hesitated. She felt again the old motherly instinct to be the first to
welcome the new pupil; a luxury which, in later years, the endless push
of details had denied her.

"Wait!" she cried shortly, and began to dress.

A new boy, she mused. Yes, every day they straggled in; every day came
the call for more, more--this great, growing thirst to know--to do--to
be. And yet that woman had sat right here, aloof, imperturbable,
listening only courteously. When Miss Smith finished, she had paused
and, flicking her glove,--

"My dear Miss Smith," she said softly, with a tone that just escaped a
drawl--"My dear Miss Smith, your work is interesting and your
faith--marvellous; but, frankly, I cannot make myself believe in it. You
are trying to treat these funny little monkeys just as you would your
own children--or even mine. It's quite heroic, of course, but it's sheer
madness, and I do not feel I ought to encourage it. I would not mind a
thousand or so to train a good cook for the Cresswells, or a clean and
faithful maid for myself--for Helene has faults--or indeed deft and
tractable laboring-folk for any one; but I'm quite through trying to
turn natural servants into masters of me and mine. I--hope I'm not too
blunt; I hope I make myself clear. You know, statistics show--"

"Drat statistics!" Miss Smith had flashed impatiently. "These are
folks."

Mrs. Vanderpool smiled indulgently. "To be sure," she murmured, "but
what sort of folks?"

"God's sort."

"Oh, well--"

But Miss Smith had the bit in her teeth and could not have stopped. She
was paying high for the privilege of talking, but it had to be said.

"God's sort, Mrs. Vanderpool--not the sort that think of the world as
arranged for their exclusive benefit and comfort."

"Well, I do want to count--"

Miss Smith bent forward--not a beautiful pose, but earnest.

"I want you to count, and I want to count, too; but I don't want us to
be the only ones that count. I want to live in a world where every soul
counts--white, black, and yellow--all. _That's_ what I'm teaching these
children here--to count, and not to be like dumb, driven cattle. If you
don't believe in this, of course you cannot help us."

"Your spirit is admirable, Miss Smith," she had said very softly; "I
only wish I could feel as you do. Good-afternoon," and she had rustled
gently down the narrow stairs, leaving an all but imperceptible
suggestion of perfume. Miss Smith could smell it yet as she went down
this morning.

The breakfast bell jangled. "Five thousand dollars," she kept repeating
to herself, greeting the teachers absently--"five thousand dollars." And
then on the porch she was suddenly aware of the awaiting boy. She eyed
him critically: black, fifteen, country-bred, strong, clear-eyed.

"Well?" she asked in that brusque manner wherewith her natural timidity
was wont to mask her kindness. "Well, sir?"

"I've come to school."

"Humph--we can't teach boys for nothing."

The boy straightened. "I can pay my way," he returned.

"You mean you can pay what we ask?"

"Why, yes. Ain't that all?"

"No. The rest is gathered from the crumbs of Dives' table."

Then he saw the twinkle in her eyes. She laid her hand gently upon his
shoulder.

"If you don't hurry you'll be late to breakfast," she said with an air
of confidence. "See those boys over there? Follow them, and at noon come
to the office--wait! What's your name?"

"Blessed Alwyn," he answered, and the passing teachers smiled.

_Three_

MISS MARY TAYLOR

Miss Mary Taylor did not take a college course for the purpose of
teaching Negroes. Not that she objected to Negroes as human
beings--quite the contrary. In the debate between the senior societies
her defence of the Fifteenth Amendment had been not only a notable bit
of reasoning, but delivered with real enthusiasm. Nevertheless, when the
end of the summer came and the only opening facing her was the teaching
of children at Miss Smith's experiment in the Alabama swamps, it must be
frankly confessed that Miss Taylor was disappointed.

Her dream had been a post-graduate course at Bryn Mawr; but that was out
of the question until money was earned. She had pictured herself earning
this by teaching one or two of her "specialties" in some private school
near New York or Boston, or even in a Western college. The South she had
not thought of seriously; and yet, knowing of its delightful
hospitality and mild climate, she was not averse to Charleston or New
Orleans. But from the offer that came to teach Negroes--country Negroes,
and little ones at that--she shrank, and, indeed, probably would have
refused it out of hand had it not been for her queer brother, John. John
Taylor, who had supported her through college, was interested in cotton.
Having certain schemes in mind, he had been struck by the fact that the
Smith School was in the midst of the Alabama cotton-belt.

"Better go," he had counselled, sententiously. "Might learn something
useful down there."

She had been not a little dismayed by the outlook, and had protested
against his blunt insistence.

"But, John, there's no society--just elementary work--"

John had met this objection with, "Humph!" as he left for his office.
Next day he had returned to the subject.

"Been looking up Tooms County. Find some Cresswells there--big
plantations--rated at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Some
others, too; big cotton county."

"You ought to know, John, if I teach Negroes I'll scarcely see much of
people in my own class."

"Nonsense! Butt in. Show off. Give 'em your Greek--and study Cotton. At
any rate, I say go."

And so, howsoever reluctantly, she had gone.

The trial was all she had anticipated, and possibly a bit more. She was
a pretty young woman of twenty-three, fair and rather daintily moulded.
In favorable surroundings, she would have been an aristocrat and an
epicure. Here she was teaching dirty children, and the smell of confused
odors and bodily perspiration was to her at times unbearable.

Then there was the fact of their color: it was a fact so insistent, so
fatal she almost said at times, that she could not escape it.
Theoretically she had always treated it with disdainful ease.

"What's the mere color of a human soul's skin," she had cried to a
Wellesley audience and the audience had applauded with enthusiasm. But
here in Alabama, brought closely and intimately in touch with these dark
skinned children, their color struck her at first with a sort of
terror--it seemed ominous and forbidding. She found herself shrinking
away and gripping herself lest they should perceive. She could not help
but think that in most other things they were as different from her as
in color. She groped for new ways to teach colored brains and marshal
colored thoughts and the result was puzzling both to teacher and
student. With the other teachers she had little commerce. They were in
no sense her sort of folk. Miss Smith represented the older New England
of her parents--honest, inscrutable, determined, with a conscience which
she worshipped, and utterly unselfish. She appealed to Miss Taylor's
ruddier and daintier vision but dimly and distantly as some memory of
the past. The other teachers were indistinct personalities, always very
busy and very tired, and talking "school-room" with their meals. Miss
Taylor was soon starving for human companionship, for the lighter
touches of life and some of its warmth and laughter. She wanted a glance
of the new books and periodicals and talk of great philanthropies and
reforms. She felt out of the world, shut in and mentally anaemic; great
as the "Negro Problem" might be as a world problem, it looked sordid and
small at close range. So for the hundredth time she was thinking today,
as she walked alone up the lane back of the barn, and then slowly down
through the bottoms. She paused a moment and nodded to the two boys at
work in a young cotton field.

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