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

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And today, after he had taken Miss Taylor home and supped, he came out
in the twilight under the new moon and whistled the tremulous note that
always brought her.

"Why did you speak so to Miss Taylor?" he asked, reproachfully. She
considered the matter a moment.

"You don't understand," she said. "You can't never understand. I can see
right through people. You can't. You never had a witch for a mammy--did
you?"

"No."

"Well, then, you see I have to take care of you and see things for you."

"Zora," he said thoughtfully, "you must learn to read."

"What for?"

"So that you can read books and know lots of things."

"Don't white folks make books?"

"Yes--most of the books."

"Pooh! I knows more than they do now--a heap more."

"In some ways you do; but they know things that give them power and
wealth and make them rule."

"No, no. They don't really rule; they just thinks they rule. They just
got things--heavy, dead things. We black folks is got the _spirit_.
We'se lighter and cunninger; we fly right through them; we go and come
again just as we wants to. Black folks is wonderful."

He did not understand what she meant; but he knew what he wanted and he
tried again.

"Even if white folks don't know everything they know different things
from us, and we ought to know what they know."

This appealed to her somewhat.

"I don't believe they know much," she concluded; "but I'll learn to read
and just see."

"It will be hard work," he warned. But he had come prepared for
acquiescence. He took a primer from his pocket and, lighting a match,
showed her the alphabet.

"Learn those," he said.

"What for?" she asked, looking at the letters disdainfully.

"Because that's the way," he said, as the light flared and went out.

"I don't believe it," she disputed, disappearing in the wood and
returning with a pine-knot. They lighted it and its smoky flame threw
wavering shadows about. She turned the leaves till she came to a picture
which she studied intently.

"Is this about this?" she asked, pointing alternately to reading and
picture.

"Yes. And if you learn--"

"Read it," she commanded. He read the page.

"Again," she said, making him point out each word. Then she read it
after him, accurately, with more perfect expression. He stared at her.
She took the book, and with a nod was gone.

It was Saturday and dark. She never asked Bles to her home--to that
mysterious black cabin in mid-swamp. He thought her ashamed of it, and
delicately refrained from going. So tonight she slipped away, stopped
and listened till she heard his footsteps on the pike, and then flew
homeward. Presently the old black cabin loomed before her with its wide
flapping door. The old woman was bending over the fire, stirring some
savory mess, and a yellow girl with a white baby on one arm was placing
dishes on a rickety wooden table when Zora suddenly and noiselessly
entered the door.

"Come, is you? I 'lowed victuals would fetch you," grumbled the hag.

But Zora deigned no answer. She walked placidly to the table, where she
took up a handful of cold corn-bread and meat, and then went over and
curled up by the fire.

Elspeth and the girl talked and laughed coarsely, and the night wore
on.

By and by loud laughter and tramping came from the road--a sound of
numerous footsteps. Zora listened, leapt to her feet and started to the
door. The old crone threw an epithet after her; but she flashed through
the lighted doorway and was gone, followed by the oath and shouts from
the approaching men. In the hut night fled with wild song and revel, and
day dawned again. Out from some fastness of the wood crept Zora. She
stopped and bathed in a pool, and combed her close-clung hair, then
entered silently to breakfast.

Thus began in the dark swamp that primal battle with the Word. She hated
it and despised it, but her pride was in arms and her one great life
friendship in the balance. She fought her way with a dogged persistence
that brought word after word of praise and interest from Bles. Then,
once well begun, her busy, eager mind flew with a rapidity that
startled; the stories especially she devoured--tales of strange things
and countries and men gripped her imagination and clung to her memory.

"Didn't I tell you there was lots to learn?" he asked once.

"I knew it all," she retorted; "every bit. I'se thought it all before;
only the little things is different--and I like the little, strange
things."

Spring ripened to summer. She was reading well and writing some.

"Zora," he announced one morning under their forest oak, "you must go to
school."

She eyed him, surprised.

"Why?"

"You've found some things worth knowing in this world, haven't you,
Zora?"

"Yes," she admitted.

"But there are more--many, many more--worlds on worlds of things--you
have not dreamed of."

She stared at him, open-eyed, and a wonder crept upon her face battling
with the old assurance. Then she looked down at her bare brown feet and
torn gown.

"I've got a little money, Zora," he said quickly.

But she lifted her head.

"I'll earn mine," she said.

"How?" he asked doubtfully.

"I'll pick cotton."

"Can you?"

"Course I can."

"It's hard work."

She hesitated.

"I don't like to work," she mused. "You see, mammy's pappy was a king's
son, and kings don't work. I don't work; mostly I dreams. But I can
work, and I will--for the wonder things--and for you."

So the summer yellowed and silvered into fall. All the vacation days
Bles worked on the farm, and Zora read and dreamed and studied in the
wood, until the land lay white with harvest. Then, without warning, she
appeared in the cotton-field beside Bles, and picked.

It was hot, sore work. The sun blazed; her bent and untrained back
pained, and the soft little hands bled. But no complaint passed her
lips; her hands never wavered, and her eyes met his steadily and
gravely. She bade him good-night, cheerily, and then stole away to the
wood, crouching beneath the great oak, and biting back the groans that
trembled on her lips. Often, she fell supperless to sleep, with two
great tears creeping down her tired cheeks.

When school-time came there was not yet money enough, for cotton-picking
was not far advanced. Yet Zora would take no money from Bles, and worked
earnestly away.

Meantime there occurred to the boy the momentous question of clothes.
Had Zora thought of them? He feared not. She knew little of clothes and
cared less. So one day in town he dropped into Caldwell's "Emporium"
and glanced hesitantly at certain ready-made dresses. One caught his
eye. It came from the great Easterly mills in New England and was red--a
vivid red. The glowing warmth of this cloth of cotton caught the eye of
Bles, and he bought the gown for a dollar and a half.

He carried it to Zora in the wood, and unrolled it before her eyes that
danced with glad tears. Of course, it was long and wide; but he fetched
needle and thread and scissors, too. It was a full month after school
had begun when they, together back in the swamp, shadowed by the
foliage, began to fashion the wonderful garment. At the same time she
laid ten dollars of her first hard-earned money in his hands.

"You can finish the first year with this money," Bles assured her,
delighted, "and then next year you must come in to board; because, you
see, when you're educated you won't want to live in the swamp."

"I wants to live here always."

"But not at Elspeth's."

"No-o--not there, not there." And a troubled questioning trembled in her
eyes, but brought no answering thought in his, for he was busy with his
plans.

"Then, you see, Zora, if you stay here you'll need a new house, and
you'll want to learn how to make it beautiful."

"Yes, a beautiful, great castle here in the swamp," she dreamed; "but,"
and her face fell, "I can't get money enough to board in; and I don't
want to board in--I wants to be free."

He looked at her, curled down so earnestly at her puzzling task, and a
pity for the more than motherless child swept over him. He bent over
her, nervously, eagerly, and she laid down her sewing and sat silent and
passive with dark, burning eyes.

"Zora," he said, "I want you to do all this--for me."

"I will, if you wants me to," she said quietly, but with something in
her voice that made him look half startled into her beautiful eyes and
feel a queer flushing in his face. He stretched his hand out and taking
hers held it lightly till she quivered and drew away, bending again
over her sewing.

Then a nameless exaltation rose within his heart.

"Zora," he whispered, "I've got a plan."

"What is it?" she asked, still with bowed head.

"Listen, till I tell you of the Golden Fleece."

Then she too heard the story of Jason. Breathless she listened, dropping
her sewing and leaning forward, eager-eyed. Then her face clouded.

"Do you s'pose mammy's the witch?" she asked dubiously.

"No; she wouldn't give her own flesh and blood to help the thieving
Jason."

She looked at him searchingly.

"Yes, she would, too," affirmed the girl, and then she paused, still
intently watching him. She was troubled, and again a question eagerly
hovered on her lips. But he continued:

"Then we must escape her," he said gayly. "See! yonder lies the Silver
Fleece spread across the brown back of the world; let's get a bit of it,
and hide it here in the swamp, and comb it, and tend it, and make it the
beautifullest bit of all. Then we can sell it, and send you to school."

She sat silently bent forward, turning the picture in her mind. Suddenly
forgetting her trouble, she bubbled with laughter, and leaping up
clapped her hands.

"And I knows just the place!" she cried eagerly, looking at him with a
flash of the old teasing mischief--"down in the heart of the
swamp--where dreams and devils lives."

* * * * *

Up at the school-house Miss Taylor was musing. She had been invited to
spend the summer with Mrs. Grey at Lake George, and such a
summer!--silken clothes and dainty food, motoring and golf, well-groomed
men and elegant women. She would not have put it in just that way, but
the vision came very close to spelling heaven to her mind. Not that she
would come to it vacant-minded, but rather as a trained woman, starved
for companionship and wanting something of the beauty and ease of life.
She sat dreaming of it here with rows of dark faces before her, and the
singsong wail of a little black reader with his head aslant and his
patched kneepants.

The day was warm and languorous, and the last pale mist of the Silver
Fleece peeped in at the windows. She tried to follow the third-reader
lesson with her finger, but persistently off she went, dreaming, to some
exquisite little parlor with its green and gold, the clink of dainty
china and hum of low voices, and the blue lake in the window; she would
glance up, the door would open softly and--

Just here she did glance up, and all the school glanced with her. The
drone of the reader hushed. The door opened softly, and upon the
threshold stood Zora. Her small feet and slender ankles were black and
bare; her dark, round, and broad-browed head and strangely beautiful
face were poised almost defiantly, crowned with a misty mass of waveless
hair, and lit by the velvet radiance of two wonderful eyes. And hanging
from shoulder to ankle, in formless, clinging folds, blazed the scarlet
gown.

_Six_

COTTON

The cry of the naked was sweeping the world. From the peasant toiling in
Russia, the lady lolling in London, the chieftain burning in Africa, and
the Esquimaux freezing in Alaska; from long lines of hungry men, from
patient sad-eyed women, from old folk and creeping children went up the
cry, "Clothes, clothes!" Far away the wide black land that belts the
South, where Miss Smith worked and Miss Taylor drudged and Bles and Zora
dreamed, the dense black land sensed the cry and heard the bound of
answering life within the vast dark breast. All that dark earth heaved
in mighty travail with the bursting bolls of the cotton while black
attendant earth spirits swarmed above, sweating and crooning to its
birth pains.

After the miracle of the bursting bolls, when the land was brightest
with the piled mist of the Fleece, and when the cry of the naked was
loudest in the mouths of men, a sudden cloud of workers swarmed between
the Cotton and the Naked, spinning and weaving and sewing and carrying
the Fleece and mining and minting and bringing the Silver till the Song
of Service filled the world and the poetry of Toil was in the souls of
the laborers. Yet ever and always there were tense silent white-faced
men moving in that swarm who felt no poetry and heard no song, and one
of these was John Taylor.

He was tall, thin, cold, and tireless and he moved among the Watchers of
this World of Trade. In the rich Wall Street offices of Grey and
Easterly, Brokers, Mr. Taylor, as chief and confidential clerk surveyed
the world's nakedness and the supply of cotton to clothe it. The object
of his watching was frankly stated to himself and to his world. He
purposed going into business neither for his own health nor for the
healing or clothing of the peoples but to apply his knowledge of the
world's nakedness and of black men's toil in such a way as to bring
himself wealth. In this he was but following the teaching of his highest
ideal, lately deceased, Mr. Job Grey. Mr. Grey had so successfully
manipulated the cotton market that while black men who made the cotton
starved in Alabama and white men who bought it froze in Siberia, he
himself sat--

_"High on a throne of royal state
That far outshone the wealth
Of Ormuz or of Ind._"

Notwithstanding this he died eventually, leaving the burden of his
wealth to his bewildered wife, and his business to the astute Mr.
Easterly; not simply to Mr. Easterly, but in a sense to his spiritual
heir, John Taylor.

To be sure Mr. Taylor had but a modest salary and no financial interest
in the business, but he had knowledge and business daring--effrontery
even--and the determination was fixed in his mind to be a millionaire at
no distant date. Some cautious fliers on the market gave him enough
surplus to send his sister Mary through the high school of his country
home in New Hampshire, and afterward through Wellesley College; although
just why a woman should want to go through college was inexplicable to
John Taylor, and he was still uncertain as to the wisdom of his charity.

When she had an offer to teach in the South, John Taylor hurried her off
for two reasons: he was profoundly interested in the cotton-belt, and
there she might be of service to him; and secondly, he had spent all the
money on her that he intended to at present, and he wanted her to go to
work. As an investment he did not consider Mary a success. Her letters
intimated very strongly her intention not to return to Miss Smith's
School; but they also brought information--disjointed and incomplete, to
be sure--which mightily interested Mr. Taylor and sent him to atlases,
encyclopaedias, and census-reports. When he went to that little lunch
with old Mrs. Grey he was not sure that he wanted his sister to leave
the cotton-belt just yet. After lunch he was sure that he did not want
her to leave.

The rich Mrs. Grey was at the crisis of her fortunes. She was an elderly
lady, in those uncertain years beyond fifty, and had been left suddenly
with more millions than she could easily count. Personally she was
inclined to spend her money in bettering the world right off, in such
ways as might from time to time seem attractive. This course, to her
husband's former partner and present executor, Mr. Edward Easterly, was
not only foolish but wicked, and, incidentally, distinctly unprofitable
to him. He had expressed himself strongly to Mrs. Grey last night at
dinner and had reinforced his argument by a pointed letter written this
morning.

To John Taylor Mrs. Grey's disposal of the income was unbelievable
blasphemy against the memory of a mighty man. He did not put this in
words to Mrs. Grey--he was only head clerk in her late husband's
office--but he became watchful and thoughtful. He ate his soup in
silence when she descanted on various benevolent schemes.

"Now, what do you know," she asked finally, "about Negroes--about
educating them?" Mr. Taylor over his fish was about to deny all
knowledge of any sort on the subject, but all at once he recollected his
sister, and a sudden gleam of light radiated his mental gloom.

"Have a sister who is--er--devoting herself to teaching them," he said.

"Is that so!" cried Mrs. Grey, joyfully. "Where is she?"

"In Tooms County, Alabama--in--" Mr. Taylor consulted a remote mental
pocket--"in Miss Sara Smith's school."

"Why, how fortunate! I'm so glad I mentioned the matter. You see, Miss
Smith is a sister of a friend of ours, Congressman Smith of New Jersey,
and she has just written to me for help; a very touching letter, too,
about the poor blacks. My father set great store by blacks and was a
leading abolitionist before he died."

Mr. Taylor was thinking fast. Yes, the name of Congressman Peter Smith
was quite familiar. Mr. Easterly, as chairman of the Republican State
Committee of New Jersey, had been compelled to discipline Mr. Smith
pretty severely for certain socialistic votes in the House, and
consequently his future career was uncertain. It was important that such
a man should not have too much to do with Mrs. Grey's philanthropies--at
least, in his present position.

"Should like to have you meet and talk with my sister, Mrs. Grey; she's
a Wellesley graduate," said Taylor, finally.

Mrs. Grey was delighted. It was a combination which she felt she needed.
Here was a college-girl who could direct her philanthropies and her
etiquette during the summer. Forthwith Mary Taylor received an
intimation from her brother that vast interests depended on her summer
vacation.

Thus it had happened that Miss Taylor came to Lake George for her
vacation after the first year at the Smith School, and she and Miss
Smith had silently agreed as she left that it would be better for her
not to return. But the gods of lower Broadway thought otherwise. Not
that Mary Taylor did not believe in Miss Smith's work, she was too
honest not to believe in education; but she was sure that this was not
her work, and she had not as yet perfected in her own mind any theory of
the world into which black folk fitted. She was rather taken back,
therefore, to be regarded as an expert on the problem. First her brother
attacked her, not simply on cotton, but, to her great surprise, on Negro
education; and after listening to her halting uncertain remarks, he
suggested to her certain matters which it would be better for her to
believe when Mrs. Grey talked to her.

"Interested in darkies, you see," he concluded, "and looks to you to
tell things. Better go easy and suggest a waiting-game before she goes
in heavy."

"But Miss Smith needs money--" the New England conscience prompted. John
Taylor cut in sharply:

"We all need money, and I know people who need Mrs. Grey's more than
Miss Smith does at present."

Miss Taylor found the Lake George colony charming. It was not
ultra-fashionable, but it had wealth and leisure and some breeding.
Especially was this true of a circumscribed, rather exclusive, set which
centred around the Vanderpools of New York and Boston. They, or rather
Mr. Vanderpool's connections, were of Old Dutch New York stock; his
father it was who had built the Lake George cottage.

Mrs. Vanderpool was a Wells of Boston, and endured Lake George now and
then during the summer for her husband's sake, although she regarded it
all as rather a joke. This summer promised to be unusually lonesome for
her, and she was meditating a retreat to the Massachusetts north shore
when she chanced to meet Mary Taylor, at a miscellaneous dinner, and
found her interesting. She discovered that this young woman knew things,
that she could talk books, and that she was rather pretty. To be sure
she knew no people, but Mrs. Vanderpool knew enough to even things.

"By the bye, I met some charming Alabama people last winter, in
Montgomery--the Cresswells; do you know them?" she asked one day, as
they were lounging in wicker chairs on the Vanderpool porch. Then she
answered the query herself: "No, of course you could not. It is too bad
that your work deprives you of the society of people of your class. Now
my ideal is a set of Negro schools where the white teachers _could_ know
the Cresswells."

"Why, yes--" faltered Miss Taylor; "but--wouldn't that be difficult?"

"Why should it be?"

"I mean, would the Cresswells approve of educating Negroes?"

"Oh, 'educating'! The word conceals so much. Now, I take it the
Cresswells would object to instructing them in French and in dinner
etiquette and tea-gowns, and so, in fact, would I; but teach them how to
handle a hoe and to sew and cook. I have reason to know that people like
the Cresswells would be delighted."

"And with the teachers of it?"

"Why not?--provided, of course, they were--well, gentlefolk and
associated accordingly."

"But one must associate with one's pupils."

"Oh, certainly, certainly; just as one must associate with one's maids
and chauffeurs and dressmakers--cordially and kindly, but with a
difference."

"But--but, dear Mrs. Vanderpool, you wouldn't want your children trained
that way, would you?"

"Certainly not, my dear. But these are not my children, they are the
children of Negroes; we can't quite forget that, can we?"

"No, I suppose not," Miss Taylor admitted, a little helplessly. "But--it
seems to me--that's the modern idea of taking culture to the masses."

"Frankly, then, the modern idea is not my idea; it is too socialistic.
And as for culture applied to the masses, you utter a paradox. The
masses and work is the truth one must face."

"And culture and work?"

"Quite incompatible, I assure you, my dear." She stretched her silken
limbs, lazily, while Miss Taylor sat silently staring at the waters.

Just then Mrs. Grey drove up in her new red motor.

Up to the time of Mary Taylor's arrival the acquaintance of the
Vanderpools and Mrs. Grey had been a matter chiefly of smiling bows.
After Miss Taylor came there had been calls and casual intercourse, to
Mrs. Grey's great gratification and Mrs. Vanderpool's mingled amusement
and annoyance. Mrs. Grey announced the arrival of the Easterlys and John
Taylor for the week-end. As Mrs. Vanderpool could think of nothing less
boring, she consented to dine.

The atmosphere of Mrs. Grey's ornate cottage was different from that of
the Vanderpools. The display of wealth and splendor had a touch of the
barbaric. Mary Taylor liked it, although she found the Vanderpool
atmosphere more subtly satisfying. There was a certain grim power
beneath the Greys' mahogany and velvets that thrilled while it appalled.
Precisely that side of the thing appealed to her brother. He would have
seen little or nothing in the plain elegance yonder, while here he saw a
Japanese vase that cost no cent less than a thousand dollars. He meant
to be able to duplicate it some day. He knew that Grey was poor and less
knowing than he sixty years ago.

The dead millionaire had begun his fortune by buying and selling
cotton--travelling in the South in reconstruction times, and sending his
agents. In this way he made his thousands. Then he took a step forward,
and instead of following the prices induced the prices to follow him.
Two or three small cotton corners brought him his tens of thousands.
About this time Easterly joined him and pointed out a new road--the
buying and selling of stock in various cotton-mills and other industrial
enterprises. Grey hesitated, but Easterly pushed him on and he made his
hundreds of thousands. Then Easterly proposed buying controlling
interests in certain large mills and gradually consolidating them. The
plan grew and succeeded, and Grey made his millions.

Then Grey stopped; he had money enough, and he would venture no farther.
He "was going to retire and eat peanuts," he said with a chuckle.

Easterly was disgusted. He, too, had made millions--not as many as Grey,
but a few. It was not, however, simply money that he wanted, but power.
The lust of financial dominion had gripped his soul, and he had a vision
of a vast trust of cotton manufacturing covering the land. He talked
this incessantly into Grey, but Grey continued to shake his head; the
thing was too big for his imagination. He was bent on retiring, and just
as he had set the date a year hence he inadvertently died. On the whole,
Mr. Easterly was glad of his partner's definite withdrawal, since he
left his capital behind him, until he found his vast plans about to be
circumvented by Mrs. Grey withdrawing this capital from his control. "To
give to the niggers and Chinamen," he snorted to John Taylor, and strode
up and down the veranda. John Taylor removed his coat, lighted a black
cigar, and elevated his heels. The ladies were in the parlor, where the
female Easterlys were prostrating themselves before Mrs. Vanderpool.

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