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

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It was distinctively disconcerting to Colonel Cresswell to find Harry
quite in favor of early nuptials, and to learn that the sole objection
even in Helen's mind was the improbability of getting a wedding-gown in
time. Helen had all a child's naive love for beautiful and dainty
things, and a wedding-gown from Paris had been her life dream. On this
point, therefore, there ensued spirited arguments and much
correspondence, and both her brother and her lover evinced
characteristic interest in the planning.

Said Harry: "Sis, I'll cable to Paris today. They can easily hurry the
thing along."

Helen was delighted; she handed over a telegram just received from John
Taylor. "Send me, express, two bales best cotton you can get."

The Colonel read the message. "I don't see the connection between this
and hurrying up a wedding-gown," he growled. None of them discerned the
handwriting of Destiny.

"Neither do I," said Harry, who detected yielding in his father's tone.
"But we'd better send him the two prize bales; it will be a fine
advertisement of our plantation, and evidently he has a surprise in
store for us."

The Colonel affected to hesitate, but next morning the Silver Fleece
went to town.

Zora watched it go, and her heart swelled and died within her. She
walked to town, to the station. She did not see Mrs. Vanderpool arriving
from New Orleans; but Mrs. Vanderpool saw her, and looked curiously at
the tall, tragic figure that leaned so dolorously beside the freight
car. The bales were loaded into the express car; the train pulled away,
its hoarse snorting waking vague echoes in the forest beyond. But to the
girl who stood at the End, looking outward to darkness, those echoes
roared like the crack of doom. A passing band of contract hands called
to her mockingly, and one black giant, laughing loudly, gripped her
hand.

"Come, honey," he shouted, "you'se a'dreaming! Come on, honey!"

She turned abruptly and gripped his hand, as one drowning grips anything
offered--gripped till he winced. She laughed a loud mirthless laugh,
that came pouring like a sob from her deep lungs.

"Come on!" she mocked, and joined them.

They were a motley crowd, ragged, swaggering, jolly. There were husky,
big-limbed youths, and bold-faced, loud-tongued girls. To-morrow they
would start up-country to some backwoods barony in the kingdom of
cotton, and work till Christmas time. Today was the last in town; there
was craftily advanced money in their pockets and riot in their hearts.
In the gathering twilight they marched noisily through the streets; in
their midst, wide-eyed and laughing almost hysterically, marched Zora.

Mrs. Vanderpool meantime rode thoughtfully out of town toward Cresswell
Oaks. She was returning from witnessing the Mardi Gras festivities at
New Orleans and at the urgent invitation of the Cresswells had stopped
off. She might even stay to the wedding if the new plans matured.

Mrs. Vanderpool was quite upset. Her French maid, on whom she had
depended absolutely for five years or more, had left her.

"I think I want to try a colored maid," she told the Cresswells,
laughingly, as they drove home. "They have sweet voices and they can't
doff their uniform. Helene without her cap and apron was often mistaken
for a lady, and while I was in New Orleans a French confectioner married
her under some such delusion. Now, haven't you a girl about here who
would do?"

"No," declared Harry decisively, but his sister suggested that she might
ask Miss Smith at the colored school.

Again Mrs. Vanderpool laughed, but after tea she wandered idly down the
road. The sun behind the swamp was crimsoning the world. Mrs. Vanderpool
strolled alone to the school, and saw Sarah Smith. There was no
cordiality in the latter's greeting, but when she heard the caller's
errand her attention was at once arrested and held. The interests of her
charges were always uppermost in her mind.

"Can't I have the girl Zora?" Mrs. Vanderpool at last inquired.

Miss Smith started, for she was thinking of Zora at that very instant.
The girl was later than usual, and she was momentarily expecting to see
her tall form moving languidly up the walk.

She gave Mrs. Vanderpool a searching look. Mrs. Vanderpool glanced
involuntarily at her gown and smiled as she did it.

"Could I trust you with a human soul?" asked Miss Smith abruptly.

Mrs. Vanderpool looked up quickly. The half mocking answer that rose
involuntarily to her lips was checked. Within, Mrs. Vanderpool was a
little puzzled at herself. Why had she asked for this girl? She had felt
a strange interest in her--a peculiar human interest since she first saw
her and as she saw her again this afternoon. But would she make a
satisfactory maid? Was it not a rather dangerous experiment? Why had she
asked for her? She certainly had not intended to when she entered the
house.

In the silence Miss Smith continued: "Here is a child in whom the
fountains of the great deep are suddenly broken up. With peace and care
she would find herself, for she is strong. But here there is no peace.
Slavery of soul and body awaits her and I am powerless to protect her.
She must go away. That going away may make or ruin her. She knows
nothing of working for wages and she has not the servant's humility; but
she has loyalty and pluck. For one she loves there is nothing she would
not do; but she cannot be driven. Or rather, if she is driven, it may
rouse in her the devil incarnate. She needs not exactly affection--she
would almost resent that--but intelligent interest and care. In return
for this she will gradually learn to serve and serve loyally. Frankly,
Mrs. Vanderpool, I would not have chosen you for this task of human
education. Indeed, you would have been my last thought--you seem to
me--I speak plainly--a worldly woman. Yet, perhaps--who can tell?--God
has especially set you to this task. At any rate, I have little choice.
I am at my wits' end. Elspeth, the mother of this child, is not long
dead; and here is the girl, beautiful, unprotected; and here am I,
almost helpless. She is in debt to the Cresswells, and they are pressing
the claim to her service. Take her if you can get her--it is, I fear,
her only chance. Mind you--if you can persuade her; and that may be
impossible."

"Where is she now?"

Miss Smith glanced out at the darkening landscape, and then at her
watch.

"I do not know; she's very late. She's given to wandering, but usually
she is here before this time."

"I saw her in town this afternoon," said Mrs. Vanderpool.

"Zora? In town?" Miss Smith rose. "I'll send her to you tomorrow," she
said quietly. Mrs. Vanderpool had hardly reached the Oaks before Miss
Smith was driving toward town.

A small cabin on the town's ragged fringe was crowded to suffocation.
Within arose noisy shouts, loud songs, and raucous laughter; the
scraping of a fiddle and whine of an accordion. Liquor began to appear
and happy faces grew red-eyed and sodden as the dances whirled. At the
edge of the orgy stood Zora, wild-eyed and bewildered, mad with the pain
that gripped her heart and hammered in her head, crying in tune with the
frenzied music--"the End--the End!"

Abruptly she recognized a face despite the wreck and ruin of its beauty.

"Bertie!" she cried as she seized the mother of little Emma by the arm.

The woman staggered and offered her glass.

"Drink," she cried, "drink and forget."

In a moment Zora sprang forward and seized the burning liquid in both
hands. A dozen hands clapped a devil's tattoo. A score of voices yelled
and laughed. The shriek of the music was drowned beneath the thunder of
stamping feet. Men reeled to singing women's arms, but above the roar
rose the song of the voice of Zora--she glided to the middle of the
room, standing tip-toed with skirts that curled and turned; she threw
back her head, raised the liquor to her lips, paused and looked into the
face of Miss Smith.

A silence fell like a lightning flash on the room as that white face
peered in at the door. Slowly Zora's hands fell and her eyes blinked as
though waking from some awful dream. She staggered toward the woman's
outstretched arms....

Late that night the girl lay close in Miss Smith's motherly embrace.

"I was going to hell!" she whispered, trembling.

"Why, Zora?" asked Miss Smith calmly.

"I couldn't find the Way--and I wanted to forget."

"People in hell don't forget," was the matter-of-fact comment. "And,
Zora, what way do you seek? The way where?"

Zora sat up in bed, and lifted a gray and stricken face.

"It's a lie," she cried, with hoarse earnedstness, "the way nowhere.
There is no Way! You know--I want _him_--I want nothing on earth but
him--and him I can't ever have."

The older woman drew her down tenderly.

"No, Zora," she said, "there's something you want more than him and
something you can have!"

"What?" asked the wondering girl.

"His respect," said Sarah Smith, "and I know the Way."

_Twenty-one_

THE MARRIAGE MORNING

Mrs. Vanderpool watched Zora as she came up the path beneath the oaks.
"She walks well," she observed. And laying aside her book, she waited
with a marked curiosity.

The girl's greeting was brief, almost curt, but unintentionally so, as
one could easily see, for back in her eyes lurked an impatient hunger;
she was not thinking of greetings. She murmured a quick word, and stood
straight and tall with her eyes squarely on the lady.

In the depths of Mrs. Vanderpool's heart something strange--not new, but
very old--stirred. Before her stood this tall black girl, quietly
returning her look. Mrs. Vanderpool had a most uncomfortable sense of
being judged, of being weighed,--and there arose within her an impulse
to self-justification.

She smiled and said sweetly, "Won't you sit?" But despite all this, her
mind seemed leaping backward a thousand years; back to a simpler,
primal day when she herself, white, frail, and fettered, stood before
the dusky magnificence of some bejewelled barbarian queen and sought to
justify herself. She shook off the phantasy,--and yet how well the girl
stood. It was not every one that could stand still and well.

"Please sit down," she repeated with her softest charm, not dreaming
that outside the school white persons did not ask this girl to sit in
their presence. But even this did not move Zora. She sat down. There was
in her, walking, standing, sitting, a simple directness which Mrs.
Vanderpool sensed and met.

"Zora, I need some one to help me--to do my hair and serve my coffee,
and dress and take care of me. The work will not be hard, and you can
travel and see the world and live well. Would you like it?"

"But I do not know how to do all these things," returned Zora, slowly.
She was thinking rapidly--Was this the Way? It sounded wonderful. The
World, the great mysterious World, that stretched beyond the swamp and
into which Bles and the Silver Fleece had gone--did it lead to the Way?
But if she went there what would she see and do, and would it be
possible to become such a woman as Miss Smith pictured?

"What is the world like?" asked Zora.

Mrs. Vanderpool smiled. "Oh, I meant great active cities and buildings,
myriads of people and wonderful sights."

"Yes--but back of it all, what is it really? What does it look like?"

"Heavens, child! Don't ask. Really, it isn't worth while peering back of
things. One is sure to be disappointed."

"Then what's the use of seeing the world?"

"Why, one must live; and why not be happy?" answered Mrs. Vanderpool,
amused, baffled, spurred for the time being from her chronic _ennui_.

"Are you happy?" retorted Zora, looking her over carefully, from silken
stockings to garden hat. Mrs. Vanderpool laid aside her little mockery
and met the situation bravely.

"No," she replied simply. Her eyes grew old and tired.

Involuntarily Zora's hand crept out protectingly and lay a moment over
the white jewelled fingers. Then quickly recovering herself, she started
hastily to withdraw it, but the woman's fingers closed around the darker
ones, and Mrs. Vanderpool's eyes became dim.

"I need you, Zora," she said; and then, seeing the half-formed question,
"Yes, and you need me; we need each other. In the world lies
opportunity, and I will help you."

Zora rose abruptly, and Mrs. Vanderpool feared, with a tightening of
heart, that she had lost this strangely alluring girl.

"I will come to-morrow," said Zora.

As Mrs. Vanderpool went in to lunch, reaction and lingering doubts came
trouping back. To replace the daintiest of trained experts with the most
baffling semi-barbarian, well!

"Have you hired a maid?" asked Helen.

"I've engaged Zora," laughed Mrs. Vanderpool, lightly; "and now I'm
wondering whether I have a jewel or--a white elephant."

"Probably neither," remarked Harry Cresswell, drily; but he avoided the
lady's inquiring eyes.

Next morning Zora came easily into Mrs. Vanderpool's life. There was
little she knew of her duties, but little, too, that she could not learn
with a deftness and divination almost startling. Her quietness, her
quickness, her young strength, were like a soothing balm to the tired
woman of fashion, and within a week she had sunk back contentedly into
Zora's strong arms.

"It's a jewel," she decided.

With this verdict, the house agreed. The servants waited on "Miss Zora"
gladly; the men scarcely saw her, and the ladies ran to her for help in
all sorts. Harry Cresswell looked upon this transformation with an
amused smile, but the Colonel saw in it simply evidence of dangerous
obstinacy in a black girl who hitherto had refused to work.

Zora had been in the house but a week when a large express package was
received from John Taylor. Its unwrapping brought a cry of pleasure
from the ladies. There lay a bolt of silken-like cambric of wondrous
fineness and lustre, marked: "For the wedding-dress." The explanation
accompanied the package, that Mary Taylor had a similar piece in the
North.

Helen and Harry said nothing of the cablegram to the Paris tailor, and
Helen took no steps toward having the cambric dress made, not even when
the wedding invitations appeared.

"A Cresswell married in cotton!" Helen was almost in tears lest the
Paris gown be delayed, and sure enough a cablegram came at last saying
that there was little likelihood of the gown being ready by Easter. It
would be shipped at the earliest convenience, but it could hardly catch
the necessary boat. Helen had a good cry, and then came a wild rush to
get John Taylor's cloth ready. Still, Helen was querulous. She decided
that silk embroidery must embellish the skirt. The dressmaker was in
despair.

"I haven't a single spare worker," she declared.

Helen was appealing to Mrs. Vanderpool.

"I can do it," said Zora, who was in the room.

"Do you know how?" asked the dressmaker.

"No, but I want to know."

Mrs. Vanderpool gave a satisfied nod. "Show her," she said. The
dressmaker was on the edge of rebellion. "Zora sews beautifully," added
Mrs. Vanderpool.

Thus the beautiful cloth came to Zora's room, and was spread in a glossy
cloud over her bed. She trembled at its beauty and felt a vague inner
yearning, as if some subtle magic of the woven web were trying to tell
her its story.

She worked over it faithfully and lovingly in every spare hour and in
long nights of dreaming. Wilfully she departed from the set pattern and
sewed into the cloth something of the beauty in her heart. In new and
intricate ways, with soft shadowings and coverings, she wove in that
white veil her own strange soul, and Mrs. Vanderpool watched her
curiously, but in silence.

Meantime all things were arranged for a double wedding at Cresswell
Oaks. As John and Mary Taylor had no suitable home, they were to come
down and the two brides to go forth from the Cresswell mansion.
Accordingly the Taylors arrived a week before the wedding and the home
took on a festive air. Even Colonel Cresswell expanded under the genial
influences, and while his head still protested his heart was glad. He
had to respect John Taylor's undoubted ability; and Mary Taylor was
certainly lovely, in spite of that assumption of cleverness of which the
Colonel could not approve.

Mary returned to the old scenes with mingled feelings. Especially was
she startled at seeing Zora a member of the household and apparently
high in favor. It brought back something of the old uneasiness and
suspicion.

All this she soon forgot under the cadence of Harry Cresswell's pleasant
voice and the caressing touch of his arm. He seemed handsomer than ever;
and he was, for sleep and temperance and the wooing of a woman had put a
tinge in his marble face, smoothed the puffs beneath his eyes, and given
him a more distinguished bearing and a firmer hand. And Mary Taylor was
very happy. So was her brother, only differently; he was making money;
he was planning to make more, and he had something to pet which seemed
to him extraordinarily precious and valuable.

Taylor eagerly inquired after the cloth, and followed the ladies to
Zora's room, adjoining Mrs. Vanderpool's, to see it. It lay uncut and
shimmering, covered with dim silken tracery of a delicacy and beauty
which brought an exclamation to all lips.

"That's what we can do with Alabama cotton," cried John Taylor in
triumph.

They turned to him incredulously.

"But--"

"No 'buts' about it; these are the two bales you sent me, woven with a
silk woof." No one particularly noticed that Zora had hastily left the
room. "I had it done in Easterly's New Jersey mills according to an old
plan of mine. I'm going to make cloth like that right in this county
some day," and he chuckled gayly.

But Zora was striding up and down the halls, the blood surging in her
ears. After they were gone she came back and closed the doors. She
dropped on her knees and buried her face in the filmy folds of the
Silver Fleece.

"I knew it! I knew it!" she whispered in mingled tears and joy. "It
called and I did not understand."

It was her talisman new-found; her love come back, her stolen dream come
true. Now she could face the world; God had turned it straight again.
She would go into the world and find--not Love, but the thing greater
than Love. Outside the door came voices--the dressmaker's tones, Helen's
soft drawl, and Mrs. Vanderpool's finished accents. Her face went
suddenly gray. The Silver Fleece was not hers! It belonged--She rose
hastily. The door opened and they came in. The cutting must begin at
once, they all agreed.

"Is it ready, Zora?" inquired Helen.

"No," Zora quietly answered, "not quite, but tomorrow morning, early."
As soon as she was alone again, she sat down and considered. By and by,
while the family was at lunch, she folded the Silver Fleece carefully
and locked it in her new trunk. She would hide it in the swamp. During
the afternoon she sent to town for oil-cloth, and bade the black
carpenter at Miss Smith's make a cedar box, tight and tarred. In the
morning she prepared Mrs. Vanderpool's breakfast with unusual care. She
was sorry for Mrs. Vanderpool, and sorry for Miss Smith. They would not,
they could not, understand. What would happen to her? She did not know;
she did not care. The Silver Fleece had returned to her. Soon it would
be buried in the swamp whence it came. She had no alternative; she must
keep it and wait.

She heard the dressmaker's voice, and then her step upon the stair. She
heard the sound of Harry Cresswell's buggy, and a scurrying at the front
door. On came the dressmaker's footsteps--then her door was
unceremoniously burst open.

Helen Cresswell stood there radiant; the dressmaker, too, was wreathed
in smiles. She carried a big red-sealed bundle.

"Zora!" cried Helen in ecstasy. "It's come!" Zora regarded her coldly,
and stood at bay. The dressmaker was ripping and snipping, and soon
there lay revealed before them--the Paris gown!

Helen was in raptures, but her conscience pricked her. She appealed to
them. "Ought I to tell? You see, Mary's gown will look miserably common
beside it."

The dressmaker was voluble. There was really nothing to tell; and
besides, Helen was a Cresswell and it was to be expected, and so forth.
Helen pursed her lips and petulantly tapped the floor with her foot.

"But the other gown?"

"Where is it?" asked the dressmaker, looking about. "It would make a
pretty morning-dress--"

But Helen had taken a sudden dislike to the thought of it.

"I don't want it," she declared. "And besides, I haven't room for it in
my trunks."

Of a sudden she leaned down and whispered to Zora: "Zora, hide it and
keep it if you want it. Come," to the dressmaker, "I'm dying to try this
on--now.... Remember, Zora--not a word." And all this to Zora seemed no
surprise; it was the Way, and it was opening before her because the
talisman lay in her trunk.

So at last it came to Easter morning. The world was golden with jasmine,
and crimson with azalea; down in the darker places gleamed the misty
glory of the dogwood; new cotton shook, glimmered, and blossomed in the
black fields, and over all the soft Southern sun poured its awakening
light of life. There was happiness and hope again in the cabins, and
hope and--if not happiness, ambition, in the mansions.

Zora, almost forgetting the wedding, stood before the mirror. Laying
aside her dress, she draped her shimmering cloth about her, dragging her
hair down in a heavy mass over ears and neck until she seemed herself a
bride. And as she stood there, awed with the mystical union of a dead
love and a living new born self, there came drifting in at the window,
faintly, the soft sound of far-off marriage music.

"'Tis thy marriage morning, shining in the sun!"

Two white and white-swathed brides were coming slowly down the great
staircase of Cresswell Oaks, and two white and black-clothed bridegrooms
awaited them. Either bridegroom looked gladly at the flow of his
sister's garments and almost darkly at his bride's. For Helen was decked
in Parisian splendor, while Mary was gowned in the Fleece.

"'Tis thy marriage morning, shining in the sun!"

Up floated the song of the little dark-faced children, and Zora
listened.

_Twenty-two_

MISS CAROLINE WYNN

Bles Alwyn was seated in the anteroom of Senator Smith's office in
Washington. The Senator had not come in yet, and there were others
waiting, too.

The young man sat in a corner, dreaming. Washington was his first great
city, and it seemed a never-ending delight--the streets, the buildings,
the crowds; the shops, and lights, and noise; the kaleidoscopic panorama
of a world's doing, the myriad forms and faces, the talk and laughter of
men. It was all wonderful magic to the country boy, and he stretched his
arms and filled his lungs and cried: "Here I shall live!"

Especially was he attracted by his own people. They seemed transformed,
revivified, changed. Some might be mistaken for field hands on a
holiday--but not many. Others he did not recognize--they seemed strange
and alien--sharper, quicker, and at once more overbearing and more
unscrupulous.

There were yet others--and at the sight of these Bles stood straighter
and breathed like a man. They were well dressed, and well appearing men
and women, who walked upright and looked one in the eye, and seemed like
persons of affairs and money. They had arrived--they were men--they
filled his mind's ideal--he felt like going up to them and grasping
their hands and saying, "At last, brother!" Ah, it was good to find
one's dreams, walking in the light, in flesh and blood. Continually such
thoughts were surging through his brain, and they were rioting through
it again as he sat waiting in Senator Smith's office.

The Senator was late this morning; when he came in he glanced at the
morning paper before looking over his mail and the list of his callers.
"Do fools like the American people deserve salvation?" he sneered,
holding off the headlines and glancing at them.

"'League Beats Trust.' ... 'Farmers of South Smash Effort to Bear Market
... Send Cotton to Twelve Cents ... Common People Triumph.'

"A man is induced to bite off his own nose and then to sing a paean of
victory. It's nauseating--senseless. There is no earthly use striving
for such blockheads; they'd crucify any Saviour." Thus half consciously
Senator Smith salved his conscience, while he extracted a certificate of
deposit for fifty thousand dollars from his New York mail. He thrust it
aside from his secretary's view and looked at his list as he rang the
bell: there was Representative Todd, and somebody named Alwyn--nobody of
importance. Easterly was due in a half-hour. He would get rid of Todd
meantime.

"Poor Todd," he mused; "a lamb for the slaughter."

But he patiently listened to him plead for party support and influence
for his bill to prohibit gambling in futures.

"I was warned that it was useless to see you, Senator Smith, but I would
come. I believe in you. Frankly, there is a strong group of your old
friends and followers forming against you; they met only last night, but
I did not go. Won't you take a stand on some of these progressive
matters--this bill, or the Child Labor movement, or Low Tariff
legislation?"

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