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

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"Cotton!"

She paused. She remembered with what interest she had always read of
this little thread of the world. She had almost forgotten that it was
here within touch and sight. For a moment something of the vision of
Cotton was mirrored in her mind. The glimmering sea of delicate leaves
whispered and murmured before her, stretching away to the Northward.
She remembered that beyond this little world it stretched on and on--how
far she did not know--but on and on in a great trembling sea, and the
foam of its mighty waters would one time flood the ends of the earth.

She glimpsed all this with parted lips, and then sighed impatiently.
There might be a bit of poetry here and there, but most of this place
was such desperate prose.

She glanced absently at the boys.

One was Bles Alwyn, a tall black lad. (Bles, she mused,--now who would
think of naming a boy "Blessed," save these incomprehensible creatures!)
Her regard shifted to the green stalks and leaves again, and she started
to move away. Then her New England conscience stepped in. She ought not
to pass these students without a word of encouragement or instruction.

"Cotton is a wonderful thing, is it not, boys?" she said rather primly.
The boys touched their hats and murmured something indistinctly. Miss
Taylor did not know much about cotton, but at least one more remark
seemed called for.

"How long before the stalks will be ready to cut?" she asked carelessly.
The farther boy coughed and Bles raised his eyes and looked at her; then
after a pause he answered slowly. (Oh! these people were so slow--now a
New England boy would have answered and asked a half-dozen questions in
the time.)

"I--I don't know," he faltered.

"Don't know! Well, of all things!" inwardly commented Miss
Taylor--"literally born in cotton, and--Oh, well," as much as to ask,
"What's the use?" She turned again to go.

"What is planted over there?" she asked, although she really didn't
care.

"Goobers," answered the smaller boy.

"Goobers?" uncomprehendingly.

"Peanuts," Bles specified.

"Oh!" murmured Miss Taylor. "I see there are none on the vines yet. I
suppose, though, it's too early for them."

Then came the explosion. The smaller boy just snorted with irrepressible
laughter and bolted across the fields. And Bles--was Miss Taylor
deceived?--or was he chuckling? She reddened, drew herself up, and then,
dropping her primness, rippled with laughter.

"What is the matter, Bles?" she asked.

He looked at her with twinkling eyes.

"Well, you see, Miss Taylor, it's like this: farming don't seem to be
your specialty."

The word was often on Miss Taylor's lips, and she recognized it. Despite
herself she smiled again.

"Of course, it isn't--I don't know anything about farming. But what did
I say so funny?"

Bles was now laughing outright.

"Why, Miss Taylor! I declare! Goobers don't grow on the tops of vines,
but underground on the roots--like yams."

"Is that so?"

"Yes, and we--we don't pick cotton stalks except for kindling."

"I must have been thinking of hemp. But tell me more about cotton."

His eyes lighted, for cotton was to him a very real and beautiful thing,
and a life-long companion, yet not one whose friendship had been
coarsened and killed by heavy toil. He leaned against his hoe and talked
half dreamily--where had he learned so well that dream-talk?

"We turn up the earth and sow it soon after Christmas. Then pretty soon
there comes a sort of greenness on the black land and it swells and
grows and, and--shivers. Then stalks shoot up with three or four leaves.
That's the way it is now, see? After that we chop out the weak stalks,
and the strong ones grow tall and dark, till I think it must be like the
ocean--all green and billowy; then come little flecks here and there
and the sea is all filled with flowers--flowers like little bells, blue
and purple and white."

"Ah! that must be beautiful," sighed Miss Taylor, wistfully, sinking to
the ground and clasping her hands about her knees.

"Yes, ma'am. But it's prettiest when the bolls come and swell and burst,
and the cotton covers the field like foam, all misty--"

She bent wondering over the pale plants. The poetry of the thing began
to sing within her, awakening her unpoetic imagination, and she
murmured:

"The Golden Fleece--it's the Silver Fleece!"

He harkened.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Have you never heard of the Golden Fleece, Bles?"

"No, ma'am," he said eagerly; then glancing up toward the Cresswell
fields, he saw two white men watching them. He grasped his hoe and
started briskly to work.

"Some time you'll tell me, please, won't you?"

She glanced at her watch in surprise and arose hastily.

"Yes, with pleasure," she said moving away--at first very fast, and then
more and more slowly up the lane, with a puzzled look on her face.

She began to realize that in this pleasant little chat the fact of the
boy's color had quite escaped her; and what especially puzzled her was
that this had not happened before. She had been here four months, and
yet every moment up to now she seemed to have been vividly, almost
painfully conscious, that she was a white woman talking to black folk.
Now, for one little half-hour she had been a woman talking to a boy--no,
not even that: she had been talking--just talking; there were no persons
in the conversation, just things--one thing: Cotton.

She started thinking of cotton--but at once she pulled herself back to
the other aspect. Always before she had been veiled from these folk: who
had put the veil there? Had she herself hung it before her soul, or had
they hidden timidly behind its other side? Or was it simply a brute
fact, regardless of both of them?

The longer she thought, the more bewildered she grew. There seemed no
analogy that she knew. Here was a unique thing, and she climbed to her
bedroom and stared at the stars.

_Four_

TOWN

John Taylor had written to his sister. He wanted information, very
definite information, about Tooms County cotton; about its stores, its
people--especially its people. He propounded a dozen questions, sharp,
searching questions, and he wanted the answers tomorrow. Impossible!
thought Miss Taylor. He had calculated on her getting this letter
yesterday, forgetting that their mail was fetched once a day from the
town, four miles away. Then, too, she did not know all these matters and
knew no one who did. Did John think she had nothing else to do? And
sighing at the thought of to-morrow's drudgery, she determined to
consult Miss Smith in the morning.

Miss Smith suggested a drive to town--Bles could take her in the
top-buggy after school--and she could consult some of the merchants and
business men. She could then write her letter and mail it there; it
would be but a day or so late getting to New York.

"Of course," said Miss Smith drily, slowly folding her napkin, "of
course, the only people here are the Cresswells."

"Oh, yes," said Miss Taylor invitingly. There was an allurement about
this all-pervasive name; it held her by a growing fascination and she
was anxious for the older woman to amplify. Miss Smith, however,
remained provokingly silent, so Miss Taylor essayed further.

"What sort of people are the Cresswells?" she asked.

"The old man's a fool; the young one a rascal; the girl a ninny," was
Miss Smith's succinct and acid classification of the county's first
family; adding, as she rose, "but they own us body and soul." She
hurried out of the dining-room without further remark. Miss Smith was
more patient with black folk than with white.

The sun was hanging just above the tallest trees of the swamp when Miss
Taylor, weary with the day's work, climbed into the buggy beside Bles.
They wheeled comfortably down the road, leaving the sombre swamp, with
its black-green, to the right, and heading toward the golden-green of
waving cotton fields. Miss Taylor lay back, listlessly, and drank the
soft warm air of the languorous Spring. She thought of the golden sheen
of the cotton, and the cold March winds of New England; of her brother
who apparently noted nothing of leaves and winds and seasons; and of the
mighty Cresswells whom Miss Smith so evidently disliked. Suddenly she
became aware of her long silence and the silence of the boy.

"Bles," she began didactically, "where are you from?"

He glanced across at her and answered shortly:

"Georgia, ma'am," and was silent.

The girl tried again.

"Georgia is a large State,"--tentatively.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Are you going back there when you finish?"

"I don't know."

"I think you ought to--and work for your people."

"Yes, ma'am."

She stopped, puzzled, and looked about. The old horse jogged lazily on,
and Bles switched him unavailingly. Somehow she had missed the way
today. The Veil hung thick, sombre, impenetrable. Well, she had done her
duty, and slowly she nestled back and watched the far-off green and
golden radiance of the cotton.

"Bles," she said impulsively, "shall I tell you of the Golden Fleece?"

He glanced at her again.

"Yes'm, please," he said.

She settled herself almost luxuriously, and began the story of Jason and
the Argonauts.

The boy remained silent. And when she had finished, he still sat silent,
elbow on knee, absently flicking the jogging horse and staring ahead at
the horizon. She looked at him doubtfully with some disappointment that
his hearing had apparently shared so little of the joy of her telling;
and, too, there was mingled a vague sense of having lowered herself to
too familiar fellowship with this--this boy. She straightened herself
instinctively and thought of some remark that would restore proper
relations. She had not found it before he said, slowly:

"All yon is Jason's."

"What?" she asked, puzzled.

He pointed with one sweep of his long arm to the quivering mass of
green-gold foliage that swept from swamp to horizon.

"All yon golden fleece is Jason's now," he repeated.

"I thought it was--Cresswell's," she said.

"That's what I mean."

She suddenly understood that the story had sunk deeply.

"I am glad to hear you say that," she said methodically, "for Jason was
a brave adventurer--"

"I thought he was a thief."

"Oh, well--those were other times."

"The Cresswells are thieves now."

Miss Taylor answered sharply.

"Bles, I am ashamed to hear you talk so of your neighbors simply because
they are white."

But Bles continued.

"This is the Black Sea," he said, pointing to the dull cabins that
crouched here and there upon the earth, with the dark twinkling of their
black folk darting out to see the strangers ride by.

Despite herself Miss Taylor caught the allegory and half whispered, "Lo!
the King himself!" as a black man almost rose from the tangled earth at
their side. He was tall and thin and sombre-hued, with a carven face and
thick gray hair.

"Your servant, mistress," he said, with a sweeping bow as he strode
toward the swamp. Miss Taylor stopped him, for he looked interesting,
and might answer some of her brother's questions. He turned back and
stood regarding her with sorrowful eyes and ugly mouth.

"Do you live about here?" she asked.

"I'se lived here a hundred years," he answered. She did not believe it;
he might be seventy, eighty, or even ninety--indeed, there was about him
that indefinable sense of age--some shadow of endless living; but a
hundred seemed absurd.

"You know the people pretty well, then?"

"I knows dem all. I knows most of 'em better dan dey knows demselves. I
knows a heap of tings in dis world and in de next."

"This is a great cotton country?"

"Dey don't raise no cotton now to what dey used to when old Gen'rel
Cresswell fust come from Carolina; den it was a bale and a half to the
acre on stalks dat looked like young brushwood. Dat was cotton."

"You know the Cresswells, then?"

"Know dem? I knowed dem afore dey was born."

"They are--wealthy people?"

"Dey rolls in money and dey'se quality, too. No shoddy upstarts dem,
but born to purple, lady, born to purple. Old Gen'ral Cresswell had
niggers and acres no end back dere in Carolina. He brung a part of dem
here and here his son, de father of dis Colonel Cresswell, was born. De
son--I knowed him well--he had a tousand niggers and ten tousand acres
afore de war."

"Were they kind to their slaves?"

"Oh, yaas, yaas, ma'am, dey was careful of de're niggers and wouldn't
let de drivers whip 'em much."

"And these Cresswells today?"

"Oh, dey're quality--high-blooded folks--dey'se lost some land and
niggers, but, lordy, nuttin' can buy de Cresswells, dey naturally owns
de world."

"Are they honest and kind?"

"Oh, yaas, ma'am--dey'se good white folks."

"Good white folk?"

"Oh, yaas, ma'am--course you knows white folks will be white
folks--white folks will be white folks. Your servant, ma'am." And the
swamp swallowed him.

The boy's eyes followed him as he whipped up the horse.

"He's going to Elspeth's," he said.

"Who is he?"

"We just call him Old Pappy--he's a preacher, and some folks say a
conjure man, too."

"And who is Elspeth?"

"She lives in the swamp--she's a kind of witch, I reckon, like--like--"

"Like Medea?"

"Yes--only--I don't know--" and he grew thoughtful.

The road turned now and far away to the eastward rose the first
straggling cabins of the town. Creeping toward them down the road rolled
a dark squat figure. It grew and spread slowly on the horizon until it
became a fat old black woman, hooded and aproned, with great round hips
and massive bosom. Her face was heavy and homely until she looked up and
lifted the drooping cheeks, and then kindly old eyes beamed on the young
teacher, as she curtsied and cried:

"Good-evening, honey! Good-evening! You sure is pretty dis evening."

"Why, Aunt Rachel, how are you?" There was genuine pleasure in the
girl's tone.

"Just tolerable, honey, bless de Lord! Rumatiz is kind o' bad and Aunt
Rachel ain't so young as she use ter be."

"And what brings you to town afoot this time of day?"

The face fell again to dull care and the old eyes crept away. She
fumbled with her cane.

"It's de boys again, honey," she returned solemnly; "dey'se good boys,
dey is good to de're old mammy, but dey'se high strung and dey gits
fighting and drinking and--and--last Saturday night dey got took up
again. I'se been to Jedge Grey--I use to tote him on my knee,
honey--I'se been to him to plead him not to let 'em go on de gang,
'cause you see, honey," and she stroked the girl's sleeve as if pleading
with her, too, "you see it done ruins boys to put 'em on de gang."

Miss Taylor tried hard to think of something comforting to say, but
words seemed inadequate to cheer the old soul; but after a few moments
they rode on, leaving the kind face again beaming and dimpling.

And now the country town of Toomsville lifted itself above the cotton
and corn, fringed with dirty straggling cabins of black folk. The road
swung past the iron watering trough, turned sharply and, after passing
two or three pert cottages and a stately house, old and faded, opened
into the wide square. Here pulsed the very life and being of the land.
Yonder great bales of cotton, yellow-white in its soiled sacking, piled
in lofty, dusty mountains, lay listening for the train that, twice a
day, ran out to the greater world. Round about, tied to the well-gnawed
hitching rails, were rows of mules--mules with back cloths; mules with
saddles; mules hitched to long wagons, buggies, and rickety gigs; mules
munching golden ears of corn, and mules drooping their heads in
sorrowful memory of better days.

Beyond the cotton warehouse smoked the chimneys of the seed-mill and the
cotton-gin; a red livery-stable faced them and all about three sides of
the square ran stores; big stores and small wide-windowed, narrow
stores. Some had old steps above the worn clay side-walks, and some were
flush with the ground. All had a general sense of dilapidation--save
one, the largest and most imposing, a three-story brick. This was
Caldwell's "Emporium"; and here Bles stopped and Miss Taylor entered.

Mr. Caldwell himself hurried forward; and the whole store, clerks and
customers, stood at attention, for Miss Taylor was yet new to the
county.

She bought a few trifles and then approached her main business.

"My brother wants some information about the county, Mr. Caldwell, and I
am only a teacher, and do not know much about conditions here."

"Ah! where do you teach?" asked Mr. Caldwell. He was certain he knew the
teachers of all the white schools in the county. Miss Taylor told him.
He stiffened slightly but perceptibly, like a man clicking the buckles
of his ready armor, and two townswomen who listened gradually turned
their backs, but remained near.

"Yes--yes," he said, with uncomfortable haste. "Any--er--information--of
course--" Miss Taylor got out her notes.

"The leading land-owners," she began, sorting the notes searchingly, "I
should like to know something about them."

"Well, Colonel Cresswell is, of course, our greatest landlord--a
high-bred gentleman of the old school. He and his son--a worthy
successor to the name--hold some fifty thousand acres. They may be
considered representative types. Then, Mr. Maxwell has ten thousand
acres and Mr. Tolliver a thousand."

Miss Taylor wrote rapidly. "And cotton?" she asked.

"We raise considerable cotton, but not nearly what we ought to; nigger
labor is too worthless."

"Oh! The Negroes are not, then, very efficient?"

"Efficient!" snorted Mr. Caldwell; at last she had broached a phase of
the problem upon which he could dilate with fervor. "They're the
lowest-down, ornriest--begging your pardon--good-for-nothing loafers you
ever heard of. Why, we just have to carry them and care for them like
children. Look yonder," he pointed across the square to the court-house.
It was an old square brick-and-stucco building, sombre and stilted and
very dirty. Out of it filed a stream of men--some black and shackled;
some white and swaggering and liberal with tobacco-juice; some white and
shaven and stiff. "Court's just out," pursued Mr. Caldwell, "and them
niggers have just been sent to the gang--young ones, too; educated but
good for nothing. They're all that way."

Miss Taylor looked up a little puzzled, and became aware of a battery of
eyes and ears. Everybody seemed craning and listening, and she felt a
sudden embarrassment and a sense of half-veiled hostility in the air.
With one or two further perfunctory questions, and a hasty expression of
thanks, she escaped into the air.

The whole square seemed loafing and lolling--the white world perched on
stoops and chairs, in doorways and windows; the black world filtering
down from doorways to side-walk and curb. The hot, dusty quadrangle
stretched in dreary deadness toward the temple of the town, as if doing
obeisance to the court-house. Down the courthouse steps the sheriff,
with Winchester on shoulder, was bringing the last prisoner--a
curly-headed boy with golden face and big brown frightened eyes.

"It's one of Dunn's boys," said Bles. "He's drunk again, and they say
he's been stealing. I expect he was hungry." And they wheeled out of the
square.

Miss Taylor was tired, and the hastily scribbled letter which she
dropped into the post in passing was not as clearly expressed as she
could wish.

A great-voiced giant, brown and bearded, drove past them, roaring a
hymn. He greeted Bles with a comprehensive wave of the hand.

"I guess Tylor has been paid off," said Bles, but Miss Taylor was too
disgusted to answer. Further on they overtook a tall young yellow boy
walking awkwardly beside a handsome, bold-faced girl. Two white men came
riding by. One leered at the girl, and she laughed back, while the
yellow boy strode sullenly ahead. As the two white riders approached the
buggy one said to the other:

"Who's that nigger with?"

"One of them nigger teachers."

"Well, they'll stop this damn riding around or they'll hear something,"
and they rode slowly by.

Miss Taylor felt rather than heard their words, and she was
uncomfortable. The sun fell fast; the long shadows of the swamp swept
soft coolness on the red road. Then afar in front a curled cloud of
white dust arose and out of it came the sound of galloping horses.

"Who's this?" asked Miss Taylor.

"The Cresswells, I think; they usually ride to town about this time."
But already Miss Taylor had descried the brown and tawny sides of the
speeding horses.

"Good gracious!" she thought. "The Cresswells!" And with it came a
sudden desire not to meet them--just then. She glanced toward the swamp.
The sun was sifting blood-red lances through the trees. A little
wagon-road entered the wood and disappeared. Miss Taylor saw it.

"Let's see the sunset in the swamp," she said suddenly. On came the
galloping horses. Bles looked up in surprise, then silently turned into
the swamp. The horses flew by, their hoof-beats dying in the distance. A
dark green silence lay about them lit by mighty crimson glories beyond.
Miss Taylor leaned back and watched it dreamily till a sense of
oppression grew on her. The sun was sinking fast.

"Where does this road come out?" she asked at last.

"It doesn't come out."

"Where does it go?"

"It goes to Elspeth's."

"Why, we must turn back immediately. I thought--" But Bles was already
turning. They were approaching the main road again when there came a
fluttering as of a great bird beating its wings amid the forest. Then a
girl, lithe, dark brown, and tall, leaped lightly into the path with
greetings on her lips for Bles. At the sight of the lady she drew
suddenly back and stood motionless regarding Miss Taylor, searching her
with wide black liquid eyes. Miss Taylor was a little startled.

"Good--good-evening," she said, straightening herself.

The girl was still silent and the horse stopped. One tense moment pulsed
through all the swamp. Then the girl, still motionless--still looking
Miss Taylor through and through--said with slow deliberateness:

"I hates you."

The teacher in Miss Taylor strove to rebuke this unconventional greeting
but the woman in her spoke first and asked almost before she knew it--

"Why?"

_Five_

ZORA

Zora, child of the swamp, was a heathen hoyden of twelve wayward,
untrained years. Slight, straight, strong, full-blooded, she had dreamed
her life away in wilful wandering through her dark and sombre kingdom
until she was one with it in all its moods; mischievous, secretive,
brooding; full of great and awful visions, steeped body and soul in
wood-lore. Her home was out of doors, the cabin of Elspeth her port of
call for talking and eating. She had not known, she had scarcely seen, a
child of her own age until Bles Alwyn had fled from her dancing in the
night, and she had searched and found him sleeping in the misty morning
light. It was to her a strange new thing to see a fellow of like years
with herself, and she gripped him to her soul in wild interest and new
curiosity. Yet this childish friendship was so new and incomprehensible
a thing to her that she did not know how to express it. At first she
pounced upon him in mirthful, almost impish glee, teasing and mocking
and half scaring him, despite his fifteen years of young manhood.

"Yes, they is devils down yonder behind the swamp," she would whisper,
warningly, when, after the first meeting, he had crept back again and
again, half fascinated, half amused to greet her; "I'se seen 'em, I'se
heard 'em, 'cause my mammy is a witch."

The boy would sit and watch her wonderingly as she lay curled along the
low branch of the mighty oak, clinging with little curved limbs and
flying fingers. Possessed by the spirit of her vision, she would chant,
low-voiced, tremulous, mischievous:

"One night a devil come to me on blue fire out of a big red flower that
grows in the south swamp; he was tall and big and strong as anything,
and when he spoke the trees shook and the stars fell. Even mammy was
afeared; and it takes a lot to make mammy afeared, 'cause she's a witch
and can conjure. He said, 'I'll come when you die--I'll come when you
die, and take the conjure off you,' and then he went away on a big
fire."

"Shucks!" the boy would say, trying to express scornful disbelief when,
in truth, he was awed and doubtful. Always he would glance involuntarily
back along the path behind him. Then her low birdlike laughter would
rise and ring through the trees.

So passed a year, and there came the time when her wayward teasing and
the almost painful thrill of her tale-telling nettled him and drove him
away. For long months he did not meet her, until one day he saw her deep
eyes fixed longingly upon him from a thicket in the swamp. He went and
greeted her. But she said no word, sitting nested among the greenwood
with passionate, proud silence, until he had sued long for peace; then
in sudden new friendship she had taken his hand and led him through the
swamp, showing him all the beauty of her swamp-world--great shadowy oaks
and limpid pools, lone, naked trees and sweet flowers; the whispering
and flitting of wild things, and the winging of furtive birds. She had
dropped the impish mischief of her way, and up from beneath it rose a
wistful, visionary tenderness; a mighty half-confessed, half-concealed,
striving for unknown things. He seemed to have found a new friend.

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