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

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"Come in," he invited her.

She did not stop at the outstretched arm of the cloakman, but glided
quickly up the stairs toward a vision of handsome women and strains of
music. Harry Cresswell was sitting opposite and bending over an impudent
blue-and-blonde beauty. Mary slipped straight across to him and leaned
across the table. The hat fell off, but she let it go.

"Harry!" she tried to say as he looked up.

Then the table swayed gently to and fro; the room bowed and whirled
about; the voices grew fainter and fainter--all the world receded
suddenly far away. She extended her hands languidly, then, feeling so
utterly tired, let her eyelids drop and fell asleep.

She awoke with a start, in her own bed. She was physically exhausted but
her mind was clear. She must go down and meet him at breakfast and talk
frankly with him. She would let bygones be bygones. She would explain
that she had followed him to save him, not to betray him. She would
point out the greater career before him if only he would be a man; she
would show him that they had not failed. For herself she asked nothing,
only his word, his confidence, his promise to try.

After his first start of surprise at seeing her at the table, Cresswell
uttered nothing immediately save the commonplaces of greeting. He
mentioned one or two bits of news from the paper, upon which she
commented while dawdling over her egg. When the servant went out and
closed the door, she paused a moment considering whether to open by
appeal or explanation. His smooth tones startled her:

"Of course, after your art exhibit and the scene of last night, Mary, it
will be impossible for us to live longer together."

She stared at him, utterly aghast--voiceless and numb.

"I have seen the crisis approaching for some time, and the Negro
business settles it," he continued. "I have now decided to send you to
my home in Alabama, to my father or your brother. I am sure you will be
happier there."

He rose. Bowing courteously, he waited, coldly and calmly, for her to
go.

All at once she hated him and hated his aristocratic repression; this
cold calm that hid hell and its fires. She looked at him, wide-eyed, and
said in a voice hoarse with horror and loathing:

"You brute! You nasty brute!"

_Thirty-two_

ZORA'S WAY

Zora was looking on her world with the keener vision of one who, blind
from very seeing, closes the eyes a space and looks again with wider
clearer vision. Out of a nebulous cloudland she seemed to step; a land
where all things floated in strange confusion, but where one thing stood
steadfast, and that was love. When love was shaken all things moved, but
now, at last, for the first time she seemed to know the real and mighty
world that stood behind that old and shaken dream.

So she looked on the world about her with new eyes. These men and women
of her childhood had hitherto walked by her like shadows; today they
lived for her in flesh and blood. She saw hundreds and thousands of
black men and women: crushed, half-spirited, and blind. She saw how high
and clear a light Sarah Smith, for thirty years and more, had carried
before them. She saw, too, how that the light had not simply shone in
darkness, but had lighted answering beacons here and there in these dull
souls.

There were thoughts and vague stirrings of unrest in this mass of black
folk. They talked long about their firesides, and here Zora began to sit
and listen, often speaking a word herself. All through the countryside
she flitted, till gradually the black folk came to know her and, in
silent deference to some subtle difference, they gave her the title of
white folk, calling her "Miss" Zora.

Today, more than ever before, Zora sensed the vast unorganized power in
this mass, and her mind was leaping here and there, scheming and
testing, when voices arrested her.

It was a desolate bit of the Cresswell manor, a tiny cabin, new-boarded
and bare, in front of it a blazing bonfire. A white man was tossing into
the flames different household articles--a feather bed, a bedstead, two
rickety chairs. A young, boyish fellow, golden-faced and curly, stood
with clenched fists, while a woman with tear-stained eyes clung to him.
The white man raised a cradle to dash it into the flames; the woman
cried, and the yellow man raised his arm threateningly. But Zora's hand
was on his shoulder.

"What's the matter, Rob?" she asked.

"They're selling us out," he muttered savagely. "Millie's been sick
since the last baby died, and I had to neglect my crop to tend her and
the other little ones--I didn't make much. They've took my mule, now
they're burning my things to make me sign a contract and be a slave. But
by--"

"There, Rob, let Millie come with me--we'll see Miss Smith. We must get
land to rent and arrange somehow."

The mother sobbed, "The cradle--was baby's!"

With an oath the white man dashed the cradle into the fire, and the red
flame spurted aloft.

The crimson fire flashed in Zora's eyes as she passed the overseer.

"Well, nigger, what are you going to do about it?" he growled
insolently.

Zora's eyelids drooped, her upper lip quivered.

"Nothing," she answered softly. "But I hope your soul will burn in hell
forever and forever."

They proceeded down the plantation road, but Zora could not speak. She
pushed them slowly on, and turned aside to let the anger, the impotent,
futile anger, rage itself out. Alone in the great broad spaces, she knew
she could fight it down, and come back again, cool and in calm and
deadly earnest, to lead these children to the light.

The sorrow in her heart was new and strange; not sorrow for herself, for
of that she had tasted the uttermost; but the vast vicarious suffering
for the evil of the world. The tumult and war within her fled, and a
sense of helplessness sent the hot tears streaming down her cheeks. She
longed for rest; but the last plantation was yet to be passed. Far off
she heard the yodle of the gangs of peons. She hesitated, looking for
some way of escape: if she passed them she would see something--she
always saw something--that would send the red blood whirling madly.

"Here, you!--loafing again, damn you!" She saw the black whip writhe and
curl across the shoulders of the plough-boy. The boy crouched and
snarled, and again the whip hissed and cracked.

Zora stood rigid and gray.

"My God!" her silent soul was shrieking within, "why doesn't the
coward--"

And then the "coward" did. The whip was whirring in the air again; but
it never fell. A jagged stone in the boy's hand struck true, and the
overseer plunged with a grunt into the black furrow. In blank dismay,
Zora came back to her senses.

"Poor child!" she gasped, as she saw the boy flying in wild terror over
the fields, with hue and cry behind him.

"Poor child!--running to the penitentiary--to shame and hunger and
damnation!"

She remembered the rector in Mrs. Vanderpool's library, and his
question that revealed unfathomable depths of ignorance: "Really, now,
how do you account for the distressing increase in crime among your
people?"

She swung into the great road trembling with the woe of the world in her
eyes. Cruelty, poverty, and crime she had looked in the face that
morning, and the hurt of it held her heart pinched and quivering. A
moment the mists in her eyes shut out the shadows of the swamp, and the
roaring in her ears made a silence of the world.

Before she found herself again she dimly saw a couple sauntering along
the road, but she hardly noticed their white faces until the little
voice of the girl, raised timidly, greeted her.

"Howdy, Zora."

Zora looked. The girl was Emma, and beside her, smiling, stood a
half-grown white man. It was Emma, Bertie's child; and yet it was not,
for in the child of other days Zora saw for the first time the dawning
woman.

And she saw, too, the white man. Suddenly the horror of the swamp was
upon her. She swept between the couple like a gust, gripping the child's
arm till she paled and almost whimpered.

"I--I was just going on an errand for Miss Smith!" she cried.

Looking down into her soul, Zora discerned its innocence and the fright
shining in the child's eyes. Her own eyes softened, her grip became a
caress, but her heart was hard.

The young man laughed awkwardly and strolled away. Zora looked back at
him and the paramount mission of her life formed itself in her mind. She
would protect this girl; she would protect all black girls. She would
make it possible for these poor beasts of burden to be decent in their
toil. Out of protection of womanhood as the central thought, she must
build ramparts against cruelty, poverty, and crime. All this in
turn--but now and first, the innocent girlhood of this daughter of shame
must be rescued from the devil. It was her duty, her heritage. She must
offer this unsullied soul up unto God in mighty atonement--but how? Here
now was no protection. Already lustful eyes were in wait, and the child
was too ignorant to protect herself. She must be sent to
boarding-school, somewhere far away; but the money? God! it was money,
money, always money. Then she stopped suddenly, thrilled with the
recollection of Mrs. Vanderpool's check.

She dismissed the girl with a kiss, and stood still a moment
considering. Money to send Emma off to school; money to buy a school
farm; money to "buy" tenants to live on it; money to furnish them
rations; money--

She went straight to Miss Smith.

"Miss Smith, how much money have you?" Miss Smith's hand trembled a bit.
Ah, that splendid strength of young womanhood--if only she herself had
it! But perhaps Zora was the chosen one. She reached up and took down a
well-worn book.

"Zora," she said slowly, "I've been going to tell you ever since you
came, but I hadn't the courage. Zora," Miss Smith hesitated and gripped
the book with thin white fingers, "I'm afraid--I almost know that this
school is doomed."

There lay a silence in the room while the two women stared into each
other's souls with startled eyes. Swallowing hard, Miss Smith spoke.

"When I thought the endowment sure, I mortgaged the school in order to
buy Tolliver's land. The endowment failed, as you know, because--perhaps
I was too stubborn."

But Zora's eyes snapped "No!" and Miss Smith continued:

"I borrowed ten thousand dollars. Then I tried to get the land, but
Tolliver kept putting me off, and finally I learned that Colonel
Cresswell had bought it. It seems that Tolliver got caught tight in the
cotton corner, and that Cresswell, through John Taylor, offered him
twice what he had agreed to sell to me for, and he took it. I don't
suppose Taylor knew what he was doing; I hope he didn't.

"Well, there I was with ten thousand dollars idle on my hands, paying
ten per cent on it and getting less than three per cent. I tried to get
the bank to take the money back, but they refused. Then I was
tempted--and fell." She paused, and Zora took both her hands in her own.

"You see," continued Miss Smith, "just as soon as the announcement of
the prospective endowment was sent broadcast by the press, the donations
from the North fell off. Letter after letter came from old friends of
the school full of congratulations, but no money. I ought to have cut
down the teaching force to the barest minimum, and gone North
begging--but I couldn't. I guess my courage was gone. I knew how I'd
have to explain and plead, and I just could not. So I used the ten
thousand dollars to pay its own interest and help run the school.
Already it's half gone, and when the rest goes then will come the end."

Without, the great red sun paused a moment over the edge of the swamp,
and the long, low cry of night birds broke sadly on the twilight
silence. Zora sat stroking the lined hands.

"Not the end," she spoke confidently. "It cannot end like this. I've got
a little money that Mrs. Vanderpool gave me, and somehow we must get
more. Perhaps I might go North and--beg." She shivered. Then she sat up
resolutely and turned to the book.

"Let's go over matters carefully," she proposed.

Together they counted and calculated.

"The balance is four thousand seven hundred and ninety-eight dollars,"
said Miss Smith.

"Yes, and then there's Mrs. Vanderpool's check."

"How much is that?"

Zora paused; she did not know. In her world there was little calculation
of money. Credit and not cash is the currency of the Black Belt. She had
been pleased to receive the check, but she had not examined it.

"I really don't know," she presently confessed. "I think it was one
thousand dollars; but I was so hurried in leaving that I didn't look
carefully," and the wild thought surged in her, suppose it was more!

She ran into the other room and plunged into her trunk; beneath the
clothes, beneath the beauty of the Silver Fleece, till her fingers
clutched and tore the envelope. A little choking cry burst from her
throat, her knees trembled so that she was obliged to sit down.

In her fingers fluttered a check for--_ten thousand dollars!_

It was not until the next day that the two women were sufficiently
composed to talk matters over sanely.

"What is your plan?" asked Zora.

"To put the money in a Northern savings bank at three per cent interest;
to supply the rest of the interest, and the deficit in the running
expenses, from our balance, and to send you North to beg."

Zora shook her head. "It won't do," she objected. "I'd make a poor
beggar; I don't know human nature well enough, and I can't talk to rich
white folks the way they expect us to talk."

"It wouldn't be hypocrisy, Zora; you would be serving in a great cause.
If you don't go, I--"

"Wait! You sha'n't go. If any one goes it must be me. But let's think it
out: we pay off the mortgage, we get enough to run the school as it has
been run. Then what? There will still be slavery and oppression all
around us. The children will be kept in the cotton fields; the men will
be cheated, and the women--" Zora paused and her eyes grew hard.

She began again rapidly: "We must have land--our own farm with our own
tenants--to be the beginning of a free community."

Miss Smith threw up her hands impatiently.

"But sakes alive! Where, Zora? Where can we get land, with Cresswell
owning every inch and bound to destroy us?"

Zora sat hugging her knees and staring out the window toward the sombre
ramparts of the swamp. In her eyes lay slumbering the madness of long
ago; in her brain danced all the dreams and visions of childhood.

"I'm thinking," she murmured, "of buying the swamp."

_Thirty-three_

THE BUYING OF THE SWAMP

"It's a shame," asserted John Taylor with something like real feeling.
He was spending Sunday with his father-in-law, and both, over their
after-dinner cigars, were gazing thoughtfully at the swamp.

"What's a shame?" asked Colonel Cresswell.

"To see all that timber and prime cotton-land going to waste. Don't you
remember those fine bales of cotton that came out of there several
seasons ago?"

The Colonel smoked placidly. "You can't get it cleared," he said.

"But couldn't you hire some good workers?"

"Niggers won't work. Now if we had Italians we might do it."

"Yes, and in a few years they'd own the country."

"That's right; so there we are. There's only one way to get that swamp
cleared."

"How?"

"Sell it to some fool darkey."

"Sell it? It's too valuable to sell."

"That's just it. You don't understand. The only way to get decent work
out of some niggers is to let them believe they're buying land. In nine
cases out of ten he works hard a while and then throws up the job. We
get back our land and he makes good wages for his work."

"But in the tenth case--suppose he should stick to it?"

"Oh,"--easily, "we could get rid of him when we want to. White people
rule here."

John Taylor frowned and looked a little puzzled. He was no moralist, but
he had his code and he did not understand Colonel Cresswell. As a matter
of fact, Colonel Cresswell was an honest man. In most matters of
commerce between men he was punctilious to a degree almost annoying to
Taylor. But there was one part of the world which his code of honor did
not cover, and he saw no incongruity in the omission. The uninitiated
cannot easily picture to himself the mental attitude of a former
slaveholder toward property in the hands of a Negro. Such property
belonged of right to the master, if the master needed it; and since
ridiculous laws safeguarded the property, it was perfectly permissible
to circumvent such laws. No Negro starved on the Cresswell place,
neither did any accumulate property. Colonel Cresswell saw to both
matters.

As the Colonel and John Taylor were thus conferring, Zora appeared,
coming up the walk.

"Who's that?" asked the Colonel shading his eyes.

"It's Zora--the girl who went North with Mrs. Vanderpool," Taylor
enlightened him.

"Back, is she? Too trifling to stick to a job, and full of Northern
nonsense," growled the Colonel. "Even got a Northern walk--I thought for
a moment she was a lady."

Neither of the gentlemen ever dreamed how long, how hard, how
heart-wringing was that walk from the gate up the winding way beneath
their careless gaze. It was not the coming of the thoughtless, careless
girl of five years ago who had marched a dozen times unthinking before
the faces of white men. It was the approach of a woman who knew how the
world treated women whom it respected; who knew that no such treatment
would be thought of in her case: neither the bow, the lifted hat, nor
even the conventional title of decency. Yet she must go on naturally and
easily, boldly but circumspectly, and play a daring game with two
powerful men.

"Can I speak with you a moment, Colonel?" she asked.

The Colonel did not stir or remove his cigar; he even injected a little
gruffness into his tone.

"Well, what is it?"

Of course, she was not asked to sit, but she stood with her hands
clasped loosely before her and her eyes half veiled.

"Colonel, I've got a thousand dollars." She did not mention the other
nine.

The Colonel sat up.

"Where did you get it?" he asked.

"Mrs. Vanderpool gave it to me to use in helping the colored people."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Well, that's just what I came to see you about. You see, I might give
it to the school, but I've been thinking that I'd like to buy some land
for some of the tenants."

"I've got no land to sell," said the Colonel.

"I was thinking you might sell a bit of the swamp."

Cresswell and Taylor glanced at each other and the Colonel re-lit his
cigar.

"How much of it?" he asked finally.

"I don't know; I thought perhaps two hundred acres."

"Two hundred acres? Do you expect to buy that land for five dollars an
acre?"

"Oh, no, sir. I thought it might cost as much as twenty-five dollars."

"But you've only got a thousand dollars."

"Yes, sir; I thought I might pay that down and then pay the rest from
the crops."

"Who's going to work on the place?"

Zora named a number of the steadiest tenants to whom she had spoken.

"They owe me a lot of money," said the Colonel.

"We'd try to pay that, too."

Colonel Cresswell considered. There was absolutely no risk. The cost of
the land, the back debts of the tenants--no possible crops could pay for
them. Then there was the chance of getting the swamp cleared for almost
nothing.

"How's the school getting on?" he asked suddenly.

"Very poorly," answered Zora sadly. "You know it's mortgaged, and Miss
Smith has had to use the mortgage money for yearly expenses."

The Colonel smiled grimly.

"It will cost you fifty dollars an acre," he said finally. Zora looked
disappointed and figured out the matter slowly.

"That would be one thousand down and nine thousand to pay--"

"With interest," said Cresswell.

Zora shook her head doubtfully.

"What would the interest be?" she asked.

"Ten per cent."

She stood silent a moment and Colonel Cresswell spoke up:

"It's the best land about here and about the only land you can buy--I
wouldn't sell it to anybody else."

She still hesitated.

"The trouble is, you see, Colonel Cresswell, the price is high and the
interest heavy. And after all I may not be able to get as many tenants
as I'd need. I think though, I'd try it if--if I could be sure you'd
treat me fairly, and that I'd get the land if I paid for it."

Colonel Cresswell reddened a little, and John Taylor looked away.

"Well, if you don't want to undertake it, all right."

Zora looked thoughtfully across the field--

"Mr. Maxwell has a bit of land," she began meditatively.

"Worked out, and not worth five dollars an acre!" snapped the Colonel.
But he did not propose to hand Maxwell a thousand dollars. "Now, see
here, I'll treat you as well as anybody, and you know it."

"I believe so, sir," acknowledged Zora in a tone that brought a sudden
keen glance from Taylor; but her face was a mask. "I reckon I'll make
the bargain."

"All right. Bring the money and we'll fix the thing up."

"The money is here," said Zora, taking an envelope out of her bosom.

"Well, leave it here, and I'll see to it."

"But you see, sir, Miss Smith is so methodical; she expects some papers
or receipts."

"Well, it's too late tonight."

"Possibly you could sign a sort of receipt and later--"

Cresswell laughed. "Well, write one," he indulgently assented. And Zora
wrote.

When Zora left Colonel Cresswell's about noon that Sunday she knew her
work had just begun, and she walked swiftly along the country roads,
calling here and there. Would Uncle Isaac help her build a log home?
Would the boys help her some time to clear some swamp land? Would Rob
become a tenant when she asked? For this was the idle time of the year.
Crops were laid by and planting had not yet begun.

This too was the time of big church meetings. She knew that in her part
of the country on that day the black population, man, woman, and child,
were gathered in great groups; all day they had been gathering,
streaming in snake-like lines along the country roads, in well-brushed,
brilliant attire, half fantastic, half crude. Down where the
Toomsville-Montgomery highway dipped to the stream that fed the
Cresswell swamp squatted a square barn that slept through day and weeks
in dull indifference. But on the First Sunday it woke to sudden mighty
life. The voices of men and children mingled with the snorting of
animals and the cracking of whips. Then came the long drone and
sing-song of the preacher with its sharp wilder climaxes and the
answering "amens" and screams of the worshippers. This was the shrine of
the Baptists--shrine and oracle, centre and source of inspiration--and
hither Zora hurried.

The preacher was Jones, a big man, fat, black, and greasy, with little
eyes, unctuous voice, and three manners: his white folks manner, soft,
humble, wheedling; his black folks manner, voluble, important,
condescending; and above all, his pulpit manner, loud, wild, and strong.
He was about to don this latter cloak when Zora approached with a
request briefly to address the congregation. Remembering some former
snubs, his manner was lordly.

"I doesn't see," he returned reflectively, wiping his brows, "as how I
can rightly spare you any time; the brethren is a-gettin' mighty
onpatient to hear me." He pulled down his cuffs, regarding her
doubtfully.

"I might speak after you're through," she suggested. But he objected
that there was the regular collection and two or three other
collections, a baptism, a meeting of the trustees; there was no time, in
short; but--he eyed her again.

"Does you want--a collection?" he questioned suspiciously, for he could
imagine few other reasons for talking. Then, too, he did not want to be
too inflexible, for all of his people knew Zora and liked her.

"Oh, no, I want no collection at all. I only want a little voluntary
work on their part." He looked relieved, frowned through the door at the
audience, and looked at his bright gold watch. The whole crowd was not
there yet--perhaps--

"You kin say just a word before the sermont," he finally yielded; "but
not long--not long. They'se just a-dying to hear me."

So Zora spoke simply but clearly: of neglect and suffering, of the sins
of others that bowed young shoulders, of the great hope of the
children's future. Then she told something of what she had seen and read
of the world's newer ways of helping men and women. She talked of
cooperation and refuges and other efforts; she praised their way of
adopting children into their own homes; and then finally she told them
of the land she was buying for new tenants and the helping hands she
needed. The preacher fidgeted and coughed but dared not actually
interrupt, for the people were listening breathless to a kind of
straightforward talk which they seldom heard and for which they were
hungering.

And Zora forgot time and occasion. The moments flew; the crowd increased
until the wonderful spell of those dark and upturned faces pulsed in her
blood. She felt the wild yearning to help them beating in her ears and
blinding her eyes.

"Oh, my people!" she almost sobbed. "My own people, I am not asking you
to help others; I am pleading with you to help yourselves. Rescue your
own flesh and blood--free yourselves--free yourselves!" And from the
swaying sobbing hundreds burst a great "Amen!" The minister's dusky face
grew more and more sombre, and the angry sweat started on his brow. He
felt himself hoaxed and cheated, and he meant to have his revenge. Two
hundred men and women rose and pledged themselves to help Zora; and when
she turned with overflowing heart to thank the preacher he had left the
platform, and she found him in the yard whispering darkly with two
deacons. She realized her mistake, and promised to retrieve it during
the week; but the week was full of planning and journeying and talking.

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