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

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Saturday dawned cool and clear. She had dinner prepared for cooking in
the yard: sweet potatoes, hoe-cake, and buttermilk, and a hog to be
barbecued. Everything was ready by eight o'clock in the morning. Emma
and two other girl helpers were on the tip-toe of expectancy. Nine
o'clock came and no one with it. Ten o'clock came, and eleven. High
noon found Zora peering down the highway under her shading hand, but no
soul in sight. She tried to think it out: what could have happened? Her
people were slow, tardy, but they would not thus forget her and
disappoint her without some great cause. She sent the girls home at dusk
and then seated herself miserably under the great oak; then at last one
half-grown boy hurried by.

"I wanted to come, Miss Zora, but I was afeared. Preacher Jones has been
talking everywhere against you. He says that your mother was a voodoo
woman and that you don't believe in God, and the deacons voted that the
members mustn't help you."

"And do the people believe that?" she asked in consternation.

"They just don't know what to say. They don't 'zactly believe it, but
they has to 'low that you didn't say much 'bout religion when you
talked. You ain't been near Big Meetin'--and--and--you ain't saved." He
hurried on.

Zora leaned her head back wearily, watching the laced black branches
where the star-light flickered through--as coldly still and immovable as
she had watched them from those gnarled roots all her life--and she
murmured bitterly the world-old question of despair: "What's the use?"
It seemed to her that every breeze and branch was instinct with
sympathy, and murmuring, "What's the use?" She wondered vaguely why, and
as she wondered, she knew.

For yonder where the black earth of the swamp heaved in a formless mound
she felt the black arms of Elspeth rising from the sod--gigantic,
mighty. They stole toward her with stealthy hands and claw-like talons.
They clutched at her skirts. She froze and could not move. Down, down
she slipped toward the black slime of the swamp, and the air about was
horror--down, down, till the chilly waters stung her knees; and then
with one grip she seized the oak, while the great hand of Elspeth
twisted and tore her soul. Faint, afar, nearer and nearer and ever
mightier, rose a song of mystic melody. She heard its human voice and
sought to cry aloud. She strove again and again with that gripping,
twisting pain--that awful hand--until the shriek came and she awoke.

She lay panting and sweating across the bent and broken roots of the
oak. The hand of Elspeth was gone but the song was still there. She rose
trembling and listened. It was the singing of the Big Meeting in the
church far away. She had forgotten this religious revival in her days of
hurried preparation, and the preacher had used her absence and apparent
indifference against her and her work. The hand of Elspeth was reaching
from the grave to pull her back; but she was no longer dreaming now.
Drawing her shawl about her, she hurried down the highway.

The meeting had overflowed the church and spread to the edge of the
swamp. The tops of young trees had been bent down and interlaced to form
a covering and benches twined to their trunks. Thus a low and wide
cathedral, all green and silver in the star-light, lay packed with a
living mass of black folk. Flaming pine torches burned above the
devotees; the rhythm of their stamping, the shout of their voices, and
the wild music of their singing shook the night. Four hundred people
fell upon their knees when the huge black preacher, uncoated, red-eyed,
frenzied, stretched his long arms to heaven. Zora saw the throng from
afar, and hesitated. After all, she knew little of this strange faith of
theirs--had little belief in its mummery. She herself had been brought
up almost without religion save some few mystic remnants of a
half-forgotten heathen cult. The little she had seen of religious
observance had not moved her greatly, save once yonder in Washington.
There she found God after a searching that had seared her soul; but He
had simply pointed the Way, and the way was human.

Humanity was near and real. She loved it. But if she talked again of
mere men would these devotees listen? Already the minister had spied her
tall form and feared her power. He set his powerful voice and the frenzy
of his hearers to crush her.

"Who is dis what talks of doing the Lord's work for Him? What does de
good Book say? Take no thought 'bout de morrow. Why is you trying to
make dis ole world better? I spits on the world! Come out from it. Seek
Jesus. Heaven is my home! Is it yo's?" "Yes," groaned the multitude. His
arm shot out and he pointed straight at Zora.

"Beware the ebil one!" he shouted, and the multitude moaned. "Beware of
dem dat calls ebil good. Beware of dem dat worships debbils; the debbils
dat crawl; de debbils what forgits God."

"Help him, Lord!" cried the multitude.

Zora stepped into the circle of light. A hush fell on the throng; the
preacher paused a moment, then started boldly forward with upraised
hands. Then a curious thing happened. A sharp cry arose far off down
toward the swamp and the sound of great footsteps coming, coming as from
the end of the world; there swelled a rhythmical chanting, wilder and
more primitive than song. On, on it came, until it swung into sight. An
old man led the band--tall, massive, with tufted gray hair and wrinkled
leathery skin, and his eyes were the eyes of death. He reached the
circle of light, and Zora started: once before she had seen that old
man. The singing stopped but he came straight on till he reached Zora's
side and then he whirled and spoke.

The words leaped and flew from his lips as he lashed the throng with
bitter fury. He said what Zora wanted to say with two great differences:
first, he spoke their religious language and spoke it with absolute
confidence and authority; and secondly, he seemed to know each one there
personally and intimately so that he spoke to no inchoate throng--he
spoke to them individually, and they listened awestruck and fearsome.

"God is done sent me," he declared in passionate tones, "to preach His
acceptable time. Faith without works is dead; who is you that dares to
set and wait for the Lord to do your work?" Then in sudden fury, "Ye
generation of vipers--who kin save you?" He bent forward and pointed his
long finger. "Yes," he cried, "pray, Sam Collins, you black devil; pray,
for the corn you stole Thursday." The black figure moved. "Moan, Sister
Maxwell, for the backbiting you did today. Yell, Jack Tolliver, you
sneaking scamp, t'wil the Lord tell Uncle Bill who ruined his daughter.
Weep, May Haynes, for that baby--"

But the woman's shriek drowned his words, and he whirled full on the
preacher, stamping his feet and waving his hands. His anger choked him;
the fat preacher cowered gray and trembling. The gaunt fanatic towered
over him.

"You--you--ornery hound of Hell! God never knowed you and the devil owns
your soul!" There leapt from his lips a denunciation so livid, specific,
and impassioned that the preacher squatted and bowed, then finally fell
upon his face and moaned.

The gaunt speaker turned again to the people. He talked of little
children; he pictured their sin and neglect. "God is done sent me to
offer you all salvation," he cried, while the people wept and wailed;
"not in praying, but in works. Follow me!" The hour was halfway between
midnight and dawn, but nevertheless the people leapt frenziedly to their
feet.

"Follow me!" he shouted.

And, singing and chanting, the throng poured out upon the black highway,
waving their torches. Zora knew his intention. With a half-dozen of
younger onlookers she unhitched teams and rode across the land, calling
at the cabins. Before sunrise, tools were in the swamp, axes and saws
and hammers. The noise of prayer and singing filled the Sabbath dawn.
The news of the great revival spread, and men and women came pouring in.
Then of a sudden the uproar stopped, and the ringing of axes and grating
of saws and tugging of mules was heard. The forest trembled as by some
mighty magic, swaying and falling with crash on crash. Huge bonfires
blazed and crackled, until at last a wide black scar appeared in the
thick south side of the swamp, which widened and widened to full twenty
acres.

The sun rose higher and higher till it blazed at high noon. The workers
dropped their tools. The aroma of coffee and roasting meat rose in the
dim cool shade. With ravenous appetites the dark, half-famished throng
fell upon the food, and then in utter weariness stretched themselves and
slept: lying along the earth like huge bronze earth-spirits, sitting
against trees, curled in dense bushes.

And Zora sat above them on a high rich-scented pile of logs. Her senses
slept save her sleepless eyes. Amid a silence she saw in the little
grove that still stood, the cabin of Elspeth tremble, sigh, and
disappear, and with it flew some spirit of evil.

Then she looked down to the new edge of the swamp, by the old lagoon,
and saw Bles Alwyn standing there. It seemed very natural; and closing
her eyes, she fell asleep.

_Thirty-four_

THE RETURN OF ALWYN

Bles Alwyn stared at Mrs. Harry Cresswell in surprise. He had not seen
her since that moment at the ball, and he was startled at the change.
Her abundant hair was gone; her face was pale and drawn, and there were
little wrinkles below her sunken eyes. In those eyes lurked the tired
look of the bewildered and the disappointed. It was in the lofty
waiting-room of the Washington station where Alwyn had come to meet a
friend. Mrs. Cresswell turned and recognized him with genuine pleasure.
He seemed somehow a part of the few things in the world--little and
unimportant perhaps--that counted and stood firm, and she shook his hand
cordially, not minding the staring of the people about. He took her bag
and carried it towards the gate, which made the observers breathe
easier, seeing him in servile duty. Someway, she knew not just how, she
found herself telling him of the crisis in her life before she realized;
not everything, of course, but a great deal. It was much as though she
were talking to some one from another world--an outsider; but one she
had known long, one who understood. Both from what she recounted and
what she could not tell he gathered the substance of the story, and it
bewildered him. He had not thought that white people had such troubles;
yet, he reflected, why not? They, too, were human.

"I suppose you hear from the school?" he ventured after a pause.

"Why, yes--not directly--but Zora used to speak of it."

Bles looked up quickly.

"Zora?"

"Yes. Didn't you see her while she was here? She has gone back now."

Then the gate opened, the crowd surged through, sweeping them apart, and
next moment he was alone.

Alwyn turned slowly away. He forgot the friend he was to meet. He forgot
everything but the field of the Silver Fleece. It rose shadowy there in
the pale concourse, swaying in ghostly breezes. The purple of its
flowers mingled with the silver radiance of tendrils that trembled
across the hurrying throng, like threads of mists along low hills. In
its midst rose a dark, slim, and quivering form. She had been here--here
in Washington! Why had he not known? What was she doing? "She has gone
back now"--back to the Sun and the Swamp, back to the Burden.

Why should not he go back, too? He walked on thinking. He had failed.
His apparent success had been too sudden, too overwhelming, and when he
had faced the crisis his hand had trembled. He had chosen the Right--but
the Right was ineffective, impotent, almost ludicrous. It left him
shorn, powerless, and in moral revolt. The world had suddenly left him,
as the vision of Carrie Wynn had left him, alone, a mere clerk, an
insignificant cog in the great grinding wheel of humdrum drudgery. His
chance to do and thereby to be had not come.

He thought of Zora again. Why not go back to the South where she had
gone? He shuddered as one who sees before him a cold black pool whither
his path leads. To face the proscription, the insult, the lawless hate
of the South again--never! And yet he went home and sat down and wrote a
long letter to Miss Smith.

The reply that came after some delay was almost curt. It answered few of
his questions, argued with none of his doubts, and made no mention of
Zora. Yes, there was need of a manager for the new farm and settlement.
She was not sure whether Alwyn could do the work or not. The salary was
meagre and the work hard. If he wished it, he must decide immediately.

Two weeks later found Alwyn on the train facing Southward in the Jim
Crow car. How he had decided to go back South he did not know. In fact,
he had not decided. He had sat helpless and inactive in the grip of
great and shadowed hands, and the thing was as yet incomprehensible. And
so it was that the vision Zora saw in the swamp had been real enough,
and Alwyn felt strangely disappointed that she had given no sign of
greeting on recognition.

In other ways, too, Zora, when he met her, was to him a new creature.
She came to him frankly and greeted him, her gladness shining in her
eyes, yet looking nothing more than gladness and saying nothing more.
Just what he had expected was hard to say; but he had left her on her
knees in the dirt with outstretched hands, and somehow he had expected
to return to some corresponding mental attitude. The physical change of
these three years was marvellous. The girl was a woman, well-rounded and
poised, tall, straight, and quick. And with this went mental change: a
self-mastery; a veiling of the self even in intimate talk; a subtle air
as of one looking from great and unreachable heights down on the dawn of
the world. Perhaps no one who had not known the child and the girl as he
had would have noted all this; but he saw and realized the
transformation with a pang--something had gone; the innocence and wonder
of the child, and in their place had grown up something to him
incomprehensible and occult.

Miss Smith was not to be easily questioned on the subject. She took no
hints and gave no information, and when once he hazarded some pointed
questions she turned on him abruptly, observing acidly: "If I were you
I'd think less of Zora and more of her work."

Gradually, in his spiritual perplexity, Alwyn turned to Mary Cresswell.
She was staying with the Colonel at Cresswell Oaks. Her coming South was
supposed to be solely for reasons of health, and her appearance made
this excuse plausible. She was lonely and restless, and naturally drawn
toward the school. Her intercourse with Miss Smith was only formal, but
her interest in Zora's work grew. Down in the swamp, at the edge of the
cleared space, had risen a log cabin; long, low, spacious, overhung with
oak and pine. It was Zora's centre for her settlement-work. There she
lived, and with her a half-dozen orphan girls and children too young for
the boarding department of the school. Mrs. Cresswell easily fell into
the habit of walking by here each day, coming down the avenue of oaks
across the road and into the swamp. She saw little of Zora personally
but she saw her girls and learned much of her plans.

The rooms of the cottage were clean and light, supplied with books and
pictures, simple toys, and a phonograph. The yard was one wide green and
golden play-ground, and all day the music of children's glad crooning
and the singing of girls went echoing and trembling through the trees,
as they played and sewed and washed and worked.

From the Cresswells and the Maxwells and others came loads of clothes
for washing and mending. The Tolliver girls had simple dresses made,
embroidery was ordered from town, and soon there would be the gardens
and cotton fields. Mrs. Cresswell would saunter down of mornings.
Sometimes she would talk to the big girls and play with the children;
sometimes she would sit hidden in the forest, listening and glimpsing
and thinking, thinking, till her head whirled and the world danced red
before her eyes, today she rose wearily, for it was near noon, and
started home. She saw Alwyn swing along the road to the school
dining-room where he had charge of the students at the noonday meal.

Alwyn wanted Mrs. Cresswell's judgment and advice. He was growing
doubtful of his own estimate of women. Evidently something about his
standards was wrong; consequently he made opportunities to talk with
Mrs. Cresswell when she was about, hoping she would bring up the subject
of Zora of her own accord. But she did not. She was too full of her own
cares and troubles, and she was only too glad of willing and sympathetic
ears into which to pour her thoughts. Miss Smith soon began to look on
these conversations with some uneasiness. Black men and white women
cannot talk together casually in the South and she did not know how far
the North had put notions in Alwyn's head.

Today both met each other almost eagerly.

Mrs. Cresswell had just had a bit of news which only he would fully
appreciate.

"Have you heard of the Vanderpools?" she asked.

"No--except that he was appointed and confirmed at last."

"Well, they had only arrived in France when he died of apoplexy. I do
not know," added Mrs. Cresswell, "I may be wrong and--I hope I'm not
glad." Then there leapt to her mind a hypothetical question which had to
do with her own curious situation. It was characteristic of her to brood
and then restlessly to seek relief in consulting the one person near who
knew her story. She started to open the subject again today.

But Alwyn, his own mind full, spoke first and rapidly. He, too, had
turned to her as he saw her come from Zora's home. He must know more
about the girl. He could no longer endure this silence. Zora beneath her
apparent frankness was impenetrable, and he felt that she carefully
avoided him, although she did it so deftly that he felt rather than
observed it. Miss Smith still systematically snubbed him when he
broached the subject of Zora. With others he did not speak; the matter
seemed too delicate and sacred, and he always had an awful dread lest
sometime, somewhere, a chance and fatal word would be dropped, a breath
of evil gossip which would shatter all. He had hated to obtrude his
troubles on Mrs. Cresswell, who seemed so torn in soul. But today he
must speak, although time pressed.

"Mrs. Cresswell," he began hurriedly, "there's a matter--a personal
matter of which I have wanted to speak--a long time--I--" The
dinner-bell rang, and he stopped, vexed.

"Come up to the house this afternoon," she said; "Colonel Cresswell will
be away--" Then she paused abruptly. A strange startling thought flashed
through her brain. Alwyn noticed nothing. He thanked her cordially and
hurried toward the dining-hall, meeting Colonel Cresswell on horseback
just as he turned into the school gate.

Mary Cresswell walked slowly on, flushing and paling by turns. Could it
be that this Negro had dared to misunderstand her--had presumed? She
reviewed her conduct. Perhaps she had been indiscreet in thus making a
confidant of him in her trouble. She had thought of him as a boy--an old
student, a sort of confidential servant; but what had he thought? She
remembered Miss Smith's warning of years before--and he had been North
since and acquired Northern notions of freedom and equality. She bit her
lip cruelly.

Yet, she mused, she was herself to blame. She had unwittingly made the
intimacy and he was but a Negro, looking on every white woman as a
goddess and ready to fawn at the slightest encouragement. There had been
no one else here to confide in. She could not tell Miss Smith her
troubles, although she knew Miss Smith must suspect. Harry Cresswell,
apparently, had written nothing home of their quarrel. All the neighbors
behaved as if her excuse of ill-health were sufficient to account for
her return South to escape the rigors of a Northern winter. Alwyn, and
Alwyn alone, really knew. Well, it was her blindness, and she must right
it quietly and quickly with hard ruthless plainness. She blushed again
at the shame of it; then she began to excuse.

After all, which was worse--a Cresswell or an Alwyn? It was no sin that
Alwyn had done; it was simply ignorant presumption, and she must correct
him firmly, but gently, like a child. What a crazy muddle the world was!
She thought of Harry Cresswell and the tale he told her in the swamp.
She thought of the flitting ghosts that awful night in Washington. She
thought of Miss Wynn who had jilted Alwyn and given her herself a very
bad quarter of an hour. What a world it was, and after all how far was
this black boy wrong? Just then Colonel Cresswell rode up behind and
greeted her.

She started almost guiltily, and again a sense of the awkwardness of her
position reddened her face and neck. The Colonel dismounted, despite her
protest, and walked beside her. They chatted along indifferently, of the
crops, her brother's new baby, the proposed mill.

"Mary," his voice abruptly struck a new note. "I don't like the way you
talk with that Alwyn nigger."

She was silent.

"Of course," he continued, "you're Northern born and you have been a
teacher in this school and feel differently from us in some ways; but
mark what I say, a nigger will presume on the slightest pretext, and you
must keep them in their place. Then, too, you are a Cresswell now--"

She smiled bitterly; he noticed it, but went on:

"You are a Cresswell, even if you have caught Harry up to some of his
deviltry,"--she started,--"and got miffed about it. It'll all come out
right. You're a Cresswell, and you must hold yourself too high to
'Mister' a nigger or let him dream of any sort of equality."

He spoke pleasantly, but with a certain sharp insistence that struck a
note of fear in Mary's heart. For a moment she thought of writing Alwyn
not to call. But, no; a note would be unwise. She and Colonel Cresswell
lunched rather silently.

"Well, I must get to town," he finally announced. "The mill directors
meet today. If Maxwell calls by about that lumber tell him I'll see him
in town." And away he went.

He had scarcely reached the highway and ridden a quarter of a mile or
so when he spied Bles Alwyn hurrying across the field toward the
Cresswell Oaks. He frowned and rode on. Then reining in his horse, he
stopped in the shadow of the trees and watched Alwyn.

It was here that Zora saw him as she came up from her house. She, too,
stopped, and soon saw whom he was watching. She had been planning to see
Mr. Cresswell about the cut timber on her land. By legal right it was
hers but she knew he would claim half, treating her like a mere tenant.
Seeing him watching Alwyn she paused in the shadow and waited, fearing
trouble. She, too, had felt that the continued conversations of Alwyn
and Mrs. Cresswell were indiscreet, but she hoped that they had
attracted no one else's attention. Now she feared the Colonel was
suspicious and her heart sank. Alwyn went straight toward the house and
disappeared in the oak avenue. Still Colonel Cresswell waited but Zora
waited no longer. Alwyn must be warned. She must reach Cresswell's
mansion before Cresswell did and without him seeing her. This meant a
long detour of the swamp to approach the Oaks from the west. She
silently gathered up her skirts and walked quickly and carefully away.

She was a strong woman, lithe and vigorous, living in the open air and
used to walking. Once out of hearing she threw away her hat and bending
forward ran through the swamp. For a while she ran easily and swiftly.
Then for a moment she grew dizzy and it seemed as though she was
standing still and the swamp in solemn grandeur marching past--in solemn
mocking grandeur. She loosened her dress at the neck and flew on.

She sped at last through the oaks, up the terraces, and slowing down to
an unsteady walk, staggered into the house. No one would wonder at her
being there. She came up now and then and sorted the linen and piled the
baskets for her girls. She entered a side door and listened. The
Colonel's voice sounded impatiently in the front hall.

"Mary! Mary?"

A pause, then an answer:

"Yes, father!"

He started up the front stairway and Zora hurried up the narrow back
stairs, almost overturning a servant.

"I'm after the clothes," she explained. She reached the back landing
just in time to see Colonel Cresswell's head rising up the front
staircase. With a quick bound she almost fell into the first room at the
top of the stairs.

Bles Alwyn had hurried through his dinner duties and hastened to the
Oaks. The questions, the doubts, the uncertainty within him were
clamoring for utterance. How much had Mrs. Cresswell ever known of Zora?
What kind of a woman was Zora now? Mrs. Cresswell had seen her and had
talked to her and watched her. What did she think? Thus he formulated
his questions as he went, half timid, and fearful in putting them and
yet determined to know.

Mrs. Cresswell, waiting for him, was almost panic-stricken. Probably he
would beat round the bush seeking further encouragement; but at the
slightest indication she must crush him ruthlessly and at the same time
point the path of duty. He ought to marry some good girl--not Zora, but
some one. Somehow Zora seemed too unusual and strange for him--too
inhuman, as Mary Cresswell judged humanity. She glanced out from her
seat on the upper verandah over the front porch and saw Alwyn coming.
Where should she receive him? On the porch and have Mr. Maxwell ride up?
In the parlor and have the servants astounded and talking? If she took
him up to her own sitting-room the servants would think he was doing
some work or fetching something for the school. She greeted him briefly
and asked him in.

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