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

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"You must forgive me," she pleaded plaintively. "I reckon I've been
mighty bad with you, and you always so good to me; but--but, you see--it
hurts so."

"I know it hurts, dear; I know it does. But men and women must learn to
bear hurts in this world."

"Not hurts like this; they couldn't."

"Yes, even hurts like this. Bear and stand straight; be brave. After
all, Zora, no man is quite worth a woman's soul; no love is worth a
whole life."

Zora turned away with a gesture of impatience.

"You were born in ice," she retorted, adding a bit more tenderly, "in
clear strong ice; but I was born in fire. I live--I love; that's all."
And she sat down again, despairingly, and stared at the dull swamp. Miss
Smith stood for a moment and closed her eyes upon a vision.

"Ice!" she whispered. "My God!"

Then, at length, she said to Zora:

"Zora, there's only one way: do something; if you sit thus brooding
you'll go crazy."

"Do crazy folks forget?"

"Nonsense, Zora!" Miss Smith ridiculed the girl's fantastic vagaries;
her sound common sense rallied to her aid. "They are the people who
remember; sane folk forget. Work is the only cure for such pain."

"But there's nothing to do--nothing I want to do--nothing worth
doing--now."

"The Silver Fleece?"

The girl sat upright.

"The Silver Fleece," she murmured. Without further word, slowly she
arose and walked down the stairs, and out into the swamp. Miss Smith
watched her go; she knew that every step must be the keen prickle of
awakening flesh. Yet the girl walked steadily on.

* * * * *

It was the Christmas--not Christmas-tide of the North and West, but
Christmas of the Southern South. It was not the festival of the Christ
Child, but a time of noise and frolic and license, the great Pay-Day of
the year when black men lifted their heads from a year's toiling in the
earth, and, hat in hand, asked anxiously: "Master, what have I earned?
Have I paid my old debts to you? Have I made my clothes and food? Have I
got a little of the year's wage coming to me?" Or, more carelessly and
cringingly: "Master, gimme a Christmas gift."

The lords of the soil stood round, gauging their cotton, measuring their
men. Their stores were crowded, their scales groaned, their gins sang.
In the long run public opinion determines all wage, but in more
primitive times and places, private opinion, personal judgment of some
man in power, determines. The Black Belt is primitive and the landlord
wields the power.

"What about Johnson?" calls the head clerk.

"Well, he's a faithful nigger and needs encouragement; cancel his debt
and give him ten dollars for Christmas." Colonel Cresswell glowed, as if
he were full of the season's spirit.

"And Sanders?"

"How's his cotton?"

"Good, and a lot of it."

"He's trying to get away. Keep him in debt, but let him draw what he
wants."

"Aunt Rachel?"

"H'm, they're way behind, aren't they? Give her a couple of dollars--not
a cent more."

"Jim Sykes?"

"Say, Harry, how about that darky, Sykes?" called out the Colonel.

Excusing himself from his guests, Harry Cresswell came into the office.

To them this peculiar spectacle of the market place was of unusual
interest. They saw its humor and its crowding, its bizarre effects and
unwonted pageantry. Black giants and pigmies were there; kerchiefed
aunties, giggling black girls, saffron beauties, and loafing white men.
There were mules and horses and oxen, wagons and buggies and carts; but
above all and in all, rushing through, piled and flying, bound and
baled--was cotton. Cotton was currency; cotton was merchandise; cotton
was conversation.

All this was "beautiful" to Mrs. Grey and "unusually interesting" to
Mrs. Vanderpool. To Mary Taylor it had the fascination of a puzzle whose
other side she had already been partially studying. She was particularly
impressed with the joy and abandon of the scene--light laughter, huge
guffaws, handshakes, and gossipings.

"At all events," she concluded, "this is no oppressed people." And
sauntering away from the rest she noted the smiles of an undersized
smirking yellow man who hurried by with a handful of dollar bills. At a
side entrance liquor was evidently on sale--men were drinking and women,
too; some were staggering, others cursing, and yet others singing. Then
suddenly a man swung around the corner swearing in bitter rage:

"The damned thieves, they'se stole a year's work--the white--" But some
one called, "Hush up, Sanders! There's a white woman." And he threw a
startled look at Mary and hurried by. She was perplexed and upset and
stood hesitating a moment when she heard a well-known voice:

"Why, Miss Taylor, I was alarmed for you; you really must be careful
about trusting yourself with these half drunken Negroes."

"Wouldn't it be better not to give them drink, Mr. Cresswell?"

"And let your neighbor sell them poison at all hours? No, Miss Taylor."
They joined the others, and all were turning toward the carriage when a
figure coming down the road attracted them.

"Quite picturesque," observed Mrs. Vanderpool, looking at the tall, slim
girl swaying toward them with a piled basket of white cotton poised
lightly on her head. "Why," in abrupt recognition, "it is our Venus of
the Roadside, is it not?"

Mary saw it was Zora. Just then, too, Zora caught sight of them, and for
a moment hesitated, then came on; the carriage was in front of the
store, and she was bound for the store. A moment Mary hesitated, too,
and then turned resolutely to greet her. But Zora's eyes did not see
her. After one look at that sorrow-stricken face, Mary turned away.

Colonel Cresswell stood by the door, his hat on, his hands in his
pockets.

"Well, Zora, what have you there?" he asked.

"Cotton, sir."

Harry Cresswell bent over it.

"Great heavens! Look at this cotton!" he ejaculated. His father
approached. The cotton lay in silken handfuls, clean and shimmering,
with threads full two inches long. The idlers, black and white,
clustered round, gazing at it, and fingering it with repeated
exclamations of astonishment.

"Where did this come from?" asked the Colonel sharply. He and Harry were
both eying the girl intently.

"I raised it in the swamp," Zora replied quietly, in a dead voice. There
was no pride of achievement in her manner, no gladness; all that had
flown.

"Is that all?"

"No, sir; I think there's two bales."

"Two bales! Where is it? How the devil--" The Colonel was forgetting his
guests, but Harry intervened.

"You'll need to get it picked right off," he suggested.

"It's all picked, sir."

"But where is it?"

"If you'll send a wagon, sir--"

But the Colonel hardly waited.

"Here you, Jim, take the big mules and drive like--Where's that wench?"

But Zora was already striding on ahead, and was far up the red road when
the great mules galloped into sight and the long whip snapped above
their backs. The Colonel was still excited.

"That cotton must be ours, Harry--all of it. And see that none is
stolen. We've got no contract with the wench, so don't dally with her."
But Harry said firmly, quietly:

"It's fine cotton, and she raised it; she must be paid well for it."
Colonel Cresswell glanced at him with something between contempt and
astonishment on his face.

"You go along with the ladies," Harry added; "I'll see to this cotton."
Mary Taylor's smile had rewarded him; now he must get rid of his
company--before Zora returned.

It was dark when the cotton came; such a load as Cresswell's store had
never seen before. Zora watched it weighed, received the cotton checks,
and entered the store. Only the clerk was there, and he was closing. He
pointed her carelessly to the office in the back part. She went into the
small dim room, and laying the cotton-check on the desk, stood waiting.
Slowly the hopelessness and bitterness of it all came back in a great
whelming flood. What was the use of trying for anything? She was lost
forever. The world was against her, and again she saw the fingers of
Elspeth--the long black claw-like talons that clutched and dragged her
down--down. She did not struggle--she dropped her hands listlessly,
wearily, and stood but half conscious as the door opened and Mr. Harry
Cresswell entered the dimly lighted room. She opened her eyes. She had
expected his father. Somewhere way down in the depths of her nature the
primal tiger awoke and snarled. She was suddenly alive from hair to
finger tip. Harry Cresswell paused a second and swept her full length
with his eye--her profile, the long supple line of bosom and hip, the
little foot. Then he closed the door softly and walked slowly toward
her. She stood like stone, without a quiver; only her eye followed the
crooked line of the Cresswell blue blood on his marble forehead as she
looked down from her greater height; her hand closed almost caressingly
on a rusty poker lying on the stove nearby; and as she sensed the hot
breath of him she felt herself purring in a half heard whisper.

"I should not like--to kill you."

He looked at her long and steadily as he passed to his desk. Slowly he
lighted a cigarette, opened the great ledger, and compared the
cotton-check with it.

"Three thousand pounds," he announced in a careless tone. "Yes, that
will make about two bales of lint. It's extra cotton--say fifteen cents
a pound--one hundred fifty dollars--seventy-five dollars to you--h'm."
He took a note-book out of his pocket, pushed his hat back on his head,
and paused to relight his cigarette.

"Let's see--your rent and rations--"

"Elspeth pays no rent," she said slowly, but he did not seem to hear.

"Your rent and rations with the five years' back debt,"--he made a hasty
calculation--"will be one hundred dollars. That leaves you twenty-five
in our debt. Here's your receipt."

The blow had fallen. She did not wince nor cry out. She took the
receipt, calmly, and walked out into the darkness.

They had stolen the Silver Fleece.

What should she do? She never thought of appeal to courts, for Colonel
Cresswell was Justice of the Peace and his son was bailiff. Why had they
stolen from her? She knew. She was now penniless, and in a sense
helpless. She was now a peon bound to a master's bidding. If Elspeth
chose to sign a contract of work for her to-morrow, it would mean
slavery, jail, or hounded running away. What would Elspeth do? One never
knew. Zora walked on. An hour ago it seemed that this last blow must
have killed her. But now it was different. Into her first despair had
crept, in one fierce moment, grim determination. Somewhere in the world
sat a great dim Injustice which had veiled the light before her young
eyes, just as she raised them to the morning. With the veiling, death
had come into her heart.

And yet, they should not kill her; they should not enslave her. A
desperate resolve to find some way up toward the light, if not to it,
formed itself within her. She would not fall into the pit opening before
her. Somehow, somewhere lay The Way. She must never fall lower; never be
utterly despicable in the eyes of the man she had loved. There was no
dream of forgiveness, of purification, of re-kindled love; all these she
placed sadly and gently into the dead past. But in awful earnestness,
she turned toward the future; struggling blindly, groping in half formed
plans for a way.

She came thus into the room where sat Miss Smith, strangely pallid
beneath her dusky skin. But there lay a light in her eyes.

_Eighteen_

THE COTTON CORNER

All over the land the cotton had foamed in great white flakes under the
winter sun. The Silver Fleece lay like a mighty mantle across the earth.
Black men and mules had staggered beneath its burden, while deep songs
welled in the hearts of men; for the Fleece was goodly and gleaming and
soft, and men dreamed of the gold it would buy. All the roads in the
country had been lined with wagons--a million wagons speeding to and fro
with straining mules and laughing black men, bearing bubbling masses of
piled white Fleece. The gins were still roaring and spitting flames and
smoke--fifty thousand of them in town and vale. Then hoarse iron throats
were filled with fifteen billion pounds of white-fleeced, black-specked
cotton, for the whirling saws to tear out the seed and fling five
thousand million pounds of the silken fibre to the press.

And there again the black men sang, like dark earth-spirits flitting in
twilight; the presses creaked and groaned; closer and closer they
pressed the silken fleece. It quivered, trembled, and then lay cramped,
dead, and still, in massive, hard, square bundles, tied with iron
strings. Out fell the heavy bales, thousand upon thousand, million upon
million, until they settled over the South like some vast dull-white
swarm of birds. Colonel Cresswell and his son, in these days, had a long
and earnest conversation perforated here and there by explosions of the
Colonel's wrath. The Colonel could not understand some things.

"They want us to revive the Farmers' League?" he fiercely demanded.

"Yes," Harry calmly replied.

"And throw the rest of our capital after the fifty thousand dollars
we've already lost?"

"Yes."

"And you were fool enough to consent--"

"Wait, Father--and don't get excited. Listen. Cotton is going up--"

"Of course it's going up! Short crop and big demand--"

"Cotton is going up, and then it's going to fall."

"I don't believe it."

"I know it; the trust has got money and credit enough to force it down."

"Well, what then?" The Colonel glared.

"Then somebody will corner it."

"The Farmers' League won't stand--"

"Precisely. The Farmers' League can do the cornering and hold it for
higher prices."

"Lord, son! if we only could!" groaned the Colonel.

"We can; we'll have unlimited credit."

"But--but--" stuttered the bewildered Colonel, "I don't understand. Why
should the trust--"

"Nonsense, Father--what's the use of understanding. Our advantage is
plain, and John Taylor guarantees the thing."

"Who's John Taylor?" snorted the Colonel. "Why should we trust him?"

"Well," said Harry slowly, "he wants to marry Helen--"

His father grew apopletic.

"I'm not saying he will, Father; I'm only saying that he wants to,"
Harry made haste to placate the rising tide of wrath.

"No Southern gentleman--" began the Colonel. But Harry shrugged his
shoulders.

"Which is better, to be crushed by the trust or to escape at their
expense, even if that escape involves unwarranted assumptions on the
part of one of them? I tell you, Father, the code of the Southern
gentleman won't work in Wall Street."

"And I'll tell you why--there _are_ no Southern gentlemen," growled his
father.

The Silver Fleece was golden, for its prices were flying aloft. Mr.
Caldwell told Colonel Cresswell that he confidently expected twelve-cent
cotton.

"The crop is excellent and small, scarcely ten million bales," he
declared. "The price is bound to go up."

Colonel Cresswell was hesitant, even doubtful; the demand for cotton at
high prices usually fell off rapidly and he had heard rumors of
curtailed mill production. While, then, he hoped for high prices he
advised the Farmers' League to be on guard.

Mr. Caldwell seemed to be right, for cotton rose to ten cents a
pound--ten and a half--eleven--and then the South began to see visions
and to dream dreams.

"Yes, my dear," said Mr. Maxwell, whose lands lay next to the
Cresswells' on the northwest, "yes, if cotton goes to twelve or thirteen
cents as seems probable, I think we can begin the New House"--for Mrs.
Maxwell's cherished dream was a pillared mansion like the Cresswells'.

Mr. Tolliver looked at his house and barns. "Well, daughter, if this
crop sells at twelve cents, I'll be on my feet again, and I won't have
to sell that land to the nigger school after all. Once out of the
clutch of the Cresswells--well, I think we can have a coat of paint."
And he laughed as he had not laughed in ten years.

Down in the bottoms west of the swamp a man and woman were figuring
painfully on an old slate. He was light brown and she was yellow.

"Honey," he said tremblingly, "I b'lieve we can do it--if cotton goes to
twelve cents, we can pay the mortgage."

Two miles north of the school an old black woman was shouting and waving
her arms. "If cotton goes to twelve cents we can pay out and be free!"
and she threw her apron over her head and wept, gathering her children
in her arms.

But even as she cried a flash and tremor shook the South. Far away to
the north a great spider sat weaving his web. The office looked down
from the clouds on lower Broadway, and was soft with velvet and leather.
Swift, silent messengers hurried in and out, and Mr. Easterly, deciding
the time was ripe, called his henchman to him.

"Taylor, we're ready--go South."

And John Taylor rose, shook hands silently, and went.

As he entered Cresswell's plantation store three days later, a colored
woman with a little boy turned sadly away from the counter.

"No, aunty," the clerk was telling her, "calico is too high; can't let
you have any till we see how your cotton comes out."

"I just wanted a bit; I promised the boy--"

"Go on, go on--Why, Mr. Taylor!" And the little boy burst into tears
while he was hurried out.

"Tightening up on the tenants?" asked Taylor.

"Yes; these niggers are mighty extravagant. Besides, cotton fell a
little today--eleven to ten and three-fourths; just a flurry, I reckon.
Had you heard?"

Mr. Taylor said he had heard, and he hurried on. Next morning the long
shining wires of that great Broadway web trembled and flashed again and
cotton went to ten cents.

"No house this year, I fear," quoth Mr. Maxwell, bitterly.

The next day nine and a half was the quotation, and men began to look at
each other and asked questions.

"Paper says the crop is larger than the government estimate," said
Tolliver, and added, "There'll be no painting this year." He looked
toward the Smith School and thought of the five thousand dollars
waiting; but he hesitated. John Taylor had carefully mentioned seven
thousand dollars as a price he was willing to pay and "perhaps more."
Was Cresswell back of Taylor? Tolliver was suspicious and moved to delay
matters.

"It's manipulation and speculation in New York," said Colonel Cresswell,
"and the Farmers' League must begin operations."

The local paper soon had an editorial on "our distinguished fellow
citizen, Colonel Cresswell," and his efforts to revive the Farmers'
League. It was understood that Colonel Cresswell was risking his whole
private fortune to hold the price of cotton, and some effort seemed to
be needed, for cotton dropped to nine cents within a week. Swift
negotiations ensued, and a meeting of the executive committee of the
Farmers' League was held in Montgomery. A system of warehouses and
warehouse certificates was proposed.

"But that will cost money," responded each of the dozen big landlords
who composed the committee; whereupon Harry Cresswell introduced John
Taylor, who represented thirty millions of Southern bank stock.

"I promise you credit to any reasonable amount," said Mr. Taylor, "I
believe in cotton--the present price is abnormal." And Mr. Taylor knew
whereof he spoke, for when he sent a cipher despatch North, cotton
dropped to eight and a half. The Farmers' League leased three warehouses
at Savannah, Montgomery, and New Orleans.

Then silently the South gripped itself and prepared for battle. Men
stopped spending, business grew dull, and millions of eyes were glued
to the blackboards of the cotton-exchange. Tighter and tighter the
reins grew on the backs of the black tenants.

"Miss Smith, is yo' got just a drap of coffee to lend me? Mr. Cresswell
won't give me none at the store and I'se just starving for some," said
Aunt Rachel from over the hill. "We won't git free this year, Miss
Smith, not this year," she concluded plaintively.

Cotton fell to seven and a half cents and the muttered protest became
angry denunciation. Why was it? Who was doing it?

Harry Cresswell went to Montgomery. He was getting nervous. The thing
was too vast. He could not grasp it. It set his head in a whirl. Harry
Cresswell was not a bad man--are there any bad men? He was a man who
from the day he first wheedled his black mammy into submission, down to
his thirty-sixth year, had seldom known what it was voluntarily to deny
himself or curb a desire. To rise when he would, eat what he craved, and
do what the passing fancy suggested had long been his day's programme.
Such emptiness of life and aim had to be filled, and it was filled; he
helped his father sometimes with the plantations, but he helped
spasmodically and played at work.

The unregulated fire of energy and delicacy of nervous poise within him
continually hounded him to the verge of excess and sometimes beyond.
Cool, quiet, and gentlemanly as he was by rule of his clan, the ice was
thin and underneath raged unappeased fires. He craved the madness of
alcohol in his veins till his delicate hands trembled of mornings. The
women whom he bent above in languid, veiled-eyed homage, feared lest
they love him, and what work was to others gambling was to him.

The Cotton Combine, then, appealed to him overpoweringly--to his passion
for wealth, to his passion for gambling. But once entered upon the game
it drove him to fear and frenzy: first, it was a long game and Harry
Cresswell was not trained to waiting, and, secondly, it was a game whose
intricacies he did not know. In vain did he try to study the matter
through. He ordered books from the North, he subscribed for financial
journals, he received special telegraphic reports only to toss them
away, curse his valet, and call for another brandy. After all, he kept
saying to himself, what guarantee, what knowledge had he that this was
not a "damned Yankee trick"?

Now that the web was weaving its last mesh in early January he haunted
Montgomery, and on this day when it seemed that things must culminate or
he would go mad, he hastened again down to the Planters' Hotel and was
quickly ushered to John Taylor's room. The place was filled with tobacco
smoke. An electric ticker was drumming away in one corner, a telephone
ringing on the desk, and messenger boys hovered outside the door and
raced to and fro.

"Well," asked Cresswell, maintaining his composure by an effort, "how
are things?"

"Great!" returned Taylor. "League holds three million bales and controls
five. It's the biggest corner in years."

"But how's cotton?"

"Ticker says six and three-fourths."

Cresswell sat down abruptly opposite Taylor, looking at him fixedly.

"That last drop means liabilities of a hundred thousand to us," he said
slowly.

"Exactly," Taylor blandly admitted.

Beads of sweat gathered on Cresswell's forehead. He looked at the
scrawny iron man opposite, who had already forgotten his presence. He
ordered whiskey, and taking paper and pencil began to figure, drinking
as he figured. Slowly the blood crept out of his white face leaving it
whiter, and went surging and pounding in his heart. Poverty--that was
what those figures spelled. Poverty--unclothed, wineless poverty, to dig
and toil like a "nigger" from morning until night, and to give up horses
and carriages and women; that was what they spelled.

"How much--farther will it drop?" he asked harshly.

Taylor did not look up.

"Can't tell," he said, "'fraid not much though." He glanced through a
telegram. "No--damn it!--outside mills are low; they'll stampede soon.
Meantime we'll buy."

"But, Taylor--"

"Here are one hundred thousand offered at six and three-fourths."

"I tell you, Taylor--" Cresswell half arose.

"Done!" cried Taylor. "Six and one-half," clicked the machine.

Cresswell arose from his chair by the window and came slowly to the wide
flat desk where Taylor was working feverishly. He sat down heavily in
the chair opposite and tried quietly to regain his self-control. The
liabilities of the Cresswells already amounted to half the value of
their property, at a fair market valuation. The cotton for which they
had made debts was still falling in value. Every fourth of a cent fall
meant--he figured it again tremblingly--meant one hundred thousand more
of liabilities. If cotton fell to six he hadn't a cent on earth. If it
stayed there--"My God!" He felt a faintness stealing over him but he
beat it back and gulped down another glass of fiery liquor.

Then the one protecting instinct of his clan gripped him. Slowly,
quietly his hand moved back until it grasped the hilt of the big Colt's
revolver that was ever with him--his thin white hand became suddenly
steady as it slipped the weapon beneath the shadow of the desk.

"If it goes to six," he kept murmuring, "we're ruined--if it goes to
six--if--"

"Tick," sounded the wheel and the sound reverberated like sudden thunder
in his ears. His hand was iron, and he raised it slightly. "Six," said
the wheel--his finger quivered--"and a half."

"Hell!" yelled Taylor. "She's turned--there'll be the devil to pay now."
A messenger burst in and Taylor scowled.

"She's loose in New York--a regular mob in New Orleans--and--hark!--By
God! there's something doing here. Damn it--I wish we'd got another
million bales. Let's see, we've got--" He figured while the wheel
whirred--"7--7-1/2--8--8-1/2."

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