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

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25

"Can't possibly--must catch that next train back."

"But we must talk further," the Colonel insisted. "And then, there's
your sister."

"By Jove! Forgot all about Mary." John Taylor after a little desultory
talk, followed his host up-stairs.

The next afternoon John Taylor was sitting beside Helen Cresswell on the
porch which overlooked the terrace, and was, on the whole, thinking less
of cotton than he had for several years. To be sure, he was talking
cotton; but he was doing it mechanically and from long habit, and was
really thinking how charming a girl Helen Cresswell was. She fascinated
him. For his sister Taylor had a feeling of superiority that was almost
contempt. The idea of a woman trying to understand and argue about
things men knew! He admired the dashing and handsome Miss Easterly, but
she scared him and made him angrily awkward. This girl, on the other
hand, just lounged and listened with an amused smile, or asked the most
child-like questions. She required him to wait on her quite as a matter
of course--to adjust her pillows, hand her the bon-bons, and hunt for
her lost fan. Mr. Taylor, who had not waited on anybody since his mother
died, and not much before, found a quite inexplicable pleasure in these
little domesticities. Several times he took out his watch and frowned;
yet he managed to stay with her quite happily.

On her part Miss Cresswell was vastly amused. Her acquaintance with men
was not wide, but it was thorough so far as her own class was concerned.
They were all well-dressed and leisurely, fairly good looking, and they
said the same words and did the same things in the same way. They paid
her compliments which she did not believe, and they did not expect her
to believe. They were charmingly deferential in the matter of dropped
handkerchiefs, but tyrannical of opinion. They were thoughtful about
candy and flowers, but thoughtless about feelings and income. Altogether
they were delightful, but cloying. This man was startlingly different;
ungainly and always in a desperate, unaccountable hurry. He knew no
pretty speeches, he certainly did not measure up to her standard of
breeding, and yet somehow he was a gentleman. All this was new to Helen
Cresswell, and she liked it.

Meanwhile the men above-stairs lingered in the Colonel's office--the
older one perturbed and sputtering, the younger insistent and
imperturbable.

"The fact is, father," he was saying, "as you yourself have said, one
bad crop of cotton would almost ruin us."

"But the prospects are good."

"What are prospects in March? No, father, this is the situation--three
good crops in succession will wipe off our indebtedness and leave us
facing only low prices and a scarcity of niggers; on the other hand--"
The father interrupted impatiently.

"Yes, on the other hand, if we plunge deeper in debt and betray our
friends we may come out millionaires or--paupers."

"Precisely," said Harry Cresswell, calmly. "Now, our plan is to take no
chances; I propose going North and looking into this matter thoroughly.
If he represents money and has money, and if the trust has really got
the grip he says it has, why, it's a case of crush or get crushed, and
we'll have to join them on their own terms. If he's bluffing, or the
thing looks weak, we'll wait."

It all ended as matters usually did end, in Harry's having his way. He
came downstairs, expecting, indeed, rather hoping, to find Taylor
impatiently striding to and fro, watch in hand; but here he was,
ungainly, it might be, but quite docile, drawing the picture of a
power-loom for Miss Cresswell, who seemed really interested. Harry
silently surveyed them from the door, and his face lighted with a new
thought.

Taylor, espying him, leapt to his feet and hauled out his watch.

"Well--I--" he began lamely.

"No, you weren't either," interrupted Harry, with a laugh that was
unmistakably cordial and friendly. "You had quite forgotten what you
were waiting for--isn't that so, Sis?"

Helen regarded her brother through her veiling lashes: what meant this
sudden assumption of warmth and amiability?

"No, indeed; he was raging with impatience," she returned.

"Why, Miss Cresswell, I--I--" John Taylor forsook social amenities and
pulled himself together. "Well," shortly, "now for that talk--ready?"
And quite forgetting Miss Cresswell, he bolted into the parlor.

"The decision we have come to is this," said Harry Cresswell. "We are in
debt, as you know."

"Forty-nine thousand, seven hundred and forty-two dollars and twelve
cents," responded Taylor; "in three notes, due in twelve, twenty-four,
and thirty-six months, interest at eight per cent, held by--"

The Colonel snorted his amazement, and Harry Cresswell cut in:

"Yes," he calmly admitted; "and with good crops for three years we'd be
all right; good crops even for two years would leave us fairly well
off."

"You mean it would relieve you of the present stringency and put you
face to face with the falling price of cotton and rising wages," was
John Taylor's dry addendum.

"Rising price of cotton, you mean," Harry corrected.

"Oh, temporarily," John Taylor admitted.

"Precisely, and thus postpone the decision."

"No, Mr. Cresswell. I'm offering to let you in on the ground
floor--_now_--not next year, or year after."

"Mr. Taylor, have you any money in this?"

"Everything I've got."

"Well, the thing is this way: if you can prove to us that conditions are
as you say, we're in for it."

"Good! Meet me in New York, say--let's see, this is March tenth--well,
May third."

Young Cresswell was thinking rapidly. This man without doubt represented
money. He was anxious for an alliance. Why? Was it all straight, or did
the whole move conceal a trick?

His eyes strayed to the porch where his pretty sister sat languidly, and
then toward the school where the other sister lived. John Taylor looked
out on the porch, too. They glanced quickly at each other, and each
wondered if the other had shared his thought. Harry Cresswell did not
voice his mind for he was not wholly disposed to welcome what was there;
but he could not refrain from saying in tones almost confidential:

"You could recommend this deal, then, could you--to your own friends?"

"To my own family," asserted John Taylor, looking at Harry Cresswell
with sudden interest. But Mr. Cresswell was staring at the end of his
cigar.

_Eleven_

THE FLOWERING OF THE FLEECE

"Zora," observed Miss Smith, "it's a great blessing not to need
spectacles, isn't it?"

Zora thought that it was; but she was wondering just what spectacles had
to do with the complaint she had brought to the office from Miss Taylor.

"I'm always losing my glasses and they get dirty and--Oh, dear! now
where is that paper?"

Zora pointed silently to the complaint.

"No, not that--another paper. It must be in my room. Don't you want to
come up and help me look?"

They went up to the clean, bare room, with its white iron bed, its cool,
spotless shades and shining windows. Zora walked about softly and
looked, while Miss Smith quietly searched on desk and bureau, paying no
attention to the girl. For the time being she was silent.

"I sometimes wish," she began at length, "I had a bright-eyed girl like
you to help me find and place things."

Zora made no comment.

"Sometimes Bles helps me," added Miss Smith, guilefully.

Zora looked sharply at her. "Could I help?" she asked, almost timidly.

"Why, I don't know,"--the answer was deliberate. "There are one or two
little things perhaps--"

Placing a hand gently upon Zora's shoulder, she pointed out a few odd
tasks, and left the girl busily doing them; then she returned to the
office, and threw Miss Taylor's complaint into the waste-basket.

For a week or more Zora slipped in every day and performed the little
tasks that Miss Smith laid out: she sorted papers, dusted the bureau,
hung a curtain; she did not do the things very well, and she broke some
china, but she worked earnestly and quickly, and there was no thought of
pay. Then, too, did not Bles praise her with a happy smile, as together,
day after day, they stood and watched the black dirt where the Silver
Fleece lay planted? She dreamed and sang over that dark field, and again
and again appealed to him: "S'pose it shouldn't come up after all?" And
he would laugh and say that of course it would come up.

One day, when Zora was helping Miss Smith in the bedroom, she paused
with her arms full of clothes fresh from the laundry.

"Where shall I put these?"

Miss Smith looked around. "They might go in there," she said, pointing
to a door. Zora opened it. A tiny bedroom was disclosed, with one broad
window looking toward the swamp; white curtains adorned it, and white
hangings draped the plain bureau and wash-stand and the little bed.
There was a study table, and a small bookshelf holding a few books, all
simple and clean. Zora paused uncertainly, and surveyed the room.

"Sometimes when you're tired and want to be alone you can come up here,
Zora," said Miss Smith carelessly. "No one uses this room."

Zora caught her breath sharply, but said nothing. The next day Miss
Smith said to her when she came in:

"I'm busy now, dear, but you go up to your little room and read and I'll
call."

Zora quietly obeyed. An hour later Miss Smith looked in, then she closed
the door lightly and left. Another hour flew by before Zora hurried
down.

"I was reading, and I forgot," she said.

"It's all right," returned Miss Smith. "I didn't need you. And any day,
after you get all your lessons, I think Miss Taylor will excuse you and
let you go to your room and read." Miss Taylor, it transpired, was more
than glad.

Day after day Bles and Zora visited the field; but ever the ground lay
an unrelieved black beneath the bright sun, and they would go
reluctantly home again, today there was much work to be done, and Zora
labored steadily and eagerly, never pausing, and gaining in deftness and
care.

In the afternoon Bles went to town with the school wagon. A light shower
flew up from the south, lingered a while and fled, leaving a fragrance
in the air. For a moment Zora paused, and her nostrils quivered; then
without a word she slipped down-stairs, glided into the swamp, and sped
away to the island. She swung across the tree and a low, delighted cry
bubbled on her lips. All the rich, black ground was sprinkled with
tender green. She bent above the verdant tenderness and kissed it; then
she rushed back, bursting into the room.

"_It's come! It's come!--the Silver Fleece!_"

Miss Smith was startled.

"The Silver Fleece!" she echoed in bewilderment.

Zora hesitated. It came over her all at once that this one great
all-absorbing thing meant nothing to the gaunt tired-look woman before
her.

"Would Bles care if I told?" she asked doubtfully.

"No," Miss Smith ventured.

And then the girl crouched at her feet and told the dream and the
story. Many factors were involved that were quite foreign to the older
woman's nature and training. The recital brought to her New England mind
many questions of policy and propriety. And yet, as she looked down upon
the dark face, hot with enthusiasm, it all seemed somehow more than
right. Slowly and lightly Miss Smith slipped her arm about Zora, and
nodded and smiled a perfect understanding. They looked out together into
the darkening twilight.

"It is so late and wet and you're tired tonight--don't you think you'd
better sleep in your little room?"

Zora sat still. She thought of the noisy flaming cabin and the dark
swamp; but a contrasting thought of the white bed made her timid, and
slowly she shook her head. Nevertheless Miss Smith led her to the room.

"Here are things for you to wear," she pointed out, opening the bureau,
"and here is the bath-room." She left the girl standing in the middle of
the floor.

In time Zora came to stay often at Miss Smith's cottage, and to learn
new and unknown ways of living and dressing. She still refused to board,
for that would cost more than she could pay yet, and she would accept no
charity. Gradually an undemonstrative friendship sprang up between the
pale old gray-haired teacher and the dark young black-haired girl.
Delicately, too, but gradually, the companionship of Bles and Zora was
guided and regulated. Of mornings Zora would hurry through her lessons
and get excused to fly to the swamp, to work and dream alone. At noon
Bles would run down, and they would linger until he must hurry back to
dinner. After school he would go again, working while she was busy in
Miss Smith's office, and returning later, would linger awhile to tell
Zora of his day while she busied herself with her little tasks. Saturday
mornings they would go to the swamp and work together, and sometimes
Miss Smith, stealing away from curious eyes, would come and sit and talk
with them as they toiled.

In those days, for these two souls, earth came very near to heaven.
Both were in the midst of that mighty change from youth to womanhood and
manhood. Their manner toward each other by degrees grew shyer and more
thoughtful. There was less of comradeship, but the little meant more.
The rough good fellowship was silently put aside; they no longer lightly
clasped hands; and each at times wondered, in painful
self-consciousness, if the other cared.

Then began, too, that long and subtle change wherein a soul, until now
unmindful of its wrappings, comes suddenly to consciousness of body and
clothes; when it gropes and tries to adjust one with the other, and
through them to give to the inner deeper self, finer and fuller
expression. One saw it easily, almost suddenly, in Alwyn's Sunday suit,
vivid neckties, and awkward fads.

Slower, subtler, but more striking was the change in Zora, as she began
to earn bits of pin money in the office and to learn to sew. Dresses
hung straighter; belts served a better purpose; stockings were smoother;
underwear was daintier. Then her hair--that great dark mass of immovable
infinitely curled hair--began to be subdued and twisted and combed
until, with steady pains and study, it lay in thick twisted braids about
her velvet forehead, like some shadowed halo. All this came much more
slowly and spasmodically than one tells it. Few noticed the change much;
none noticed all; and yet there came a night--a student's social--when
with a certain suddenness the whole school, teachers and pupils,
realized the newness of the girl, and even Bles was startled.

He had bought her in town, at Christmas time, a pair of white satin
slippers, partly to test the smallness of her feet on which in younger
days he had rallied her, and partly because she had mentioned a possible
white dress. They were a cheap, plain pair but dainty, and they fitted
well.

When the evening came and the students were marching and the teachers,
save Miss Smith, were sitting rather primly apart and commenting, she
entered the room. She was a little late, and a hush greeted her. One
boy, with the inimitable drawl of the race, pushed back his ice-cream
and addressed it with a mournful head-shake:

"Go way, honey, yo' los' yo' tas'e!"

The dress was plain and fitted every curving of a healthy girlish form.
She paused a moment white-bodied and white-limbed but dark and
velvet-armed, her full neck and oval head rising rich and almost black
above, with its deep-lighted eyes and crown of silent darkling hair.

To some, such a revelation of grace and womanliness in this hoyden, the
gentle swelling of lankness to beauty, of lowliness to shy self-poise,
was a sudden joy, to others a mere blindness. Mary Taylor was perplexed
and in some indefinite way amazed; and many of the other teachers saw no
beauty, only a strangeness that brought a smile. They were such as know
beauty by convention only, and find it lip-ringed, hoop-skirted,
tattooed, or corsetted, as time and place decree.

The change in Zora, however, had been neither cataclysmic nor
revolutionary and it was yet far--very far--from complete. She still ran
and romped in the woods, and dreamed her dreams; she still was
passionately independent and "queer." Tendencies merely had become
manifest, some dominant. She would, unhindered, develop to a brilliant,
sumptuous womanhood; proud, conquering, full-blooded, and deep
bosomed--a passionate mother of men. Herein lay all her early wildness
and strangeness. Herein lay, as yet half hidden, dimly sensed and all
unspoken, the power of a mighty all-compelling love for one human soul,
and, through it, for all the souls of men. All this lay growing and
developing; but as yet she was still a girl, with a new shyness and
comeliness and a bold, searching heart.

In the field of the Silver Fleece all her possibilities were beginning
to find expression. These new-born green things hidden far down in the
swamp, begotten in want and mystery, were to her a living wonderful
fairy tale come true. All the latent mother in her brooded over them;
all her brilliant fancy wove itself about them. They were her
dream-children, and she tended them jealously; they were her Hope, and
she worshipped them. When the rabbits tried the tender plants she
watched hours to drive them off, and catching now and then a pulsing
pink-eyed invader, she talked to it earnestly:

"Brer Rabbit--poor little Brer Rabbit, don't you know you mustn't eat
Zora's cotton? Naughty, naughty Brer Rabbit." And then she would show it
where she had gathered piles of fragrant weeds for it and its fellows.

The golden green of the first leaves darkened, and the plants sprang
forward steadily. Never before was such a magnificent beginning, a full
month ahead of other cotton. The rain swept down in laughing, bubbling
showers, and laved their thirsty souls, and Zora held her beating breast
day by day lest it rain too long or too heavily. The sun burned fiercely
upon the young cotton plants as the spring hastened, and they lifted
their heads in darker, wilder luxuriance; for the time of hoeing was at
hand.

These days were days of alternate hope and doubt with Bles Alwyn.
Strength and ambition and inarticulate love were fighting within him. He
felt, in the dark thousands of his kind about him, a mighty calling to
deeds. He was becoming conscious of the narrowness and straightness of
his black world, and red anger flashed in him ever and again as he felt
his bonds. His mental horizon was broadening as he prepared for the
college of next year; he was faintly grasping the wider, fuller world,
and its thoughts and aspirations.

But beside and around and above all this, like subtle, permeating ether,
was--Zora. His feelings for her were not as yet definite, expressed, or
grasped; they were rather the atmosphere in which all things occurred
and were felt and judged. From an amusing pastime she had come to be a
companion and thought-mate; and now, beyond this, insensibly they were
drifting to a silenter, mightier mingling of souls. But drifting,
merely--not arrived; going gently, irresistibly, but not yet at the
realized goal.

He felt all this as the stirring of a mighty force, but knew not what
he felt. The teasing of his fellows, the common love-gossip of the
school yard, seemed far different from his plight. He laughed at it and
indignantly denied it. Yet he was uncomfortable, restless, unhappy. He
fancied Zora cared less for his company, and he gave her less, and then
was puzzled to find time hanging so empty, so wretchedly empty, on his
hands. When they were together in these days they found less to talk
about, and had it not been for the Silver Fleece which in magic
wilfulness opened both their mouths, they would have found their
companionship little more than a series of awkward silences. Yet in
their silences, their walks, and their sittings there was a
companionship, a glow, a satisfaction, as came to them nowhere else on
earth, and they wondered at it.

They were both wondering at it this morning as they watched their
cotton. It had seemingly bounded forward in a night and it must be hoed
forthwith. Yet, hoeing was murder--the ruthless cutting away of tenderer
plants that the sturdier might thrive the more and grow.

"I hate it, Bles, don't you?"

"Hate what?"

"Killing any of it; it's all so pretty."

"But it must be, so that what's left will be prettier, or at least more
useful."

"But it shouldn't be so; everything ought to have a chance to be
beautiful and useful."

"Perhaps it ought to be so," admitted Bles, "but it isn't."

"Isn't it so--anywhere?"

"I reckon not. Death and pain pay for all good things."

She hoed away silently, hesitating over the choice of the plants,
pondering this world-old truth, saddened by its ruthless cruelty.

"Death and pain," she murmured; "what a price!"

Bles leaned on his hoe and considered. It had not occurred to him till
now that Zora was speaking better and better English: the idioms and
errors were dropping away; they had not utterly departed, however, but
came crowding back in moments of excitement. At other times she clothed
Miss Smith's clear-cut, correct speech in softer Southern accents. She
was drifting away from him in some intangible way to an upper world of
dress and language and deportment, and the new thought was pain to him.

So it was that the Fleece rose and spread and grew to its wonderful
flowering; and so these two children grew with it into theirs. Zora
never forgot how they found the first white flower in that green and
billowing sea, nor her low cry of pleasure and his gay shout of joy.
Slowly, wonderfully the flowers spread--white, blue, and purple bells,
hiding timidly, blazing luxuriantly amid the velvet leaves; until one
day--it was after a southern rain and the sunlight was twinkling through
the morning--all the Fleece was in flower--a mighty swaying sea,
darkling rich and waving, and upon it flecks and stars of white and
purple foam. The joy of the two so madly craved expression that they
burst into singing; not the wild light song of dancing feet, but a low,
sweet melody of her fathers' fathers, whereunto Alwyn's own deep voice
fell fitly in minor cadence.

Miss Smith and Miss Taylor, who were sorting the mail, heard them
singing as they came up out of the swamp. Miss Taylor looked at them,
then at Miss Smith.

But Miss Smith sat white and rigid with the first opened letter in her
hand.

_Twelve_

THE PROMISE

Miss Smith sat with her face buried in her hands while the tears
trickled silently through her thin fingers. Before her lay the letter,
read a dozen times:

"Old Mrs. Grey has been to see me, and she has announced her intention
of endowing five colored schools, yours being one. She asked if $500,000
would do it. She has plenty of money, so I told her $750,000 would be
better--$150,000 apiece. She's arranging for a Board of Trust, etc.
You'll probably hear from her soon. You've been so worried about
expenses that I thought I'd send this word on; I knew you'd be glad."

Glad? Dear God, how flat the word fell! For thirty years she had sown
the seed, planting her life-blood in this work, that had become the
marrow of her soul.

Successful? No, it had not been successful; but it had been human.
Through yonder doorway had trooped an army of hundreds upon hundreds of
bright and dull, light and dark, eager and sullen faces. There had been
good and bad, honest and deceptive, frank and furtive. Some had caught,
kindled and flashed to ambition and achievement; some, glowing dimly,
had plodded on in a slow, dumb faithful work worth while; and yet others
had suddenly exploded, hurtling human fragments to heaven and to hell.
Around this school home, as around the centre of some little universe,
had whirled the sorrowful, sordid, laughing, pulsing drama of a world:
birth pains, and the stupor of death; hunger and pale murder; the riot
of thirst and the orgies of such red and black cabins as Elspeth's,
crouching in the swamp.

She groaned as she read of the extravagances of the world and saw her
own vanishing revenues; but the funds continued to dwindle until Sarah
Smith asked herself: "What will become of this school when I die?" With
trembling fingers she had sat down to figure how many teachers must be
dropped next year, when her brother's letter came, and she slipped to
her knees and prayed.

Mrs. Grey's decision was due in no little way to Mary Taylor's reports.
Slowly but surely the girl had begun to think that she had found herself
in this new world. She would never be attuned to it thoroughly, for she
was set for different music. The veil of color and race still hung
thickly between her and her pupils; and yet she seemed to see some
points of penetration. No one could meet daily a hundred or more of
these light-hearted, good-natured children without feeling drawn to
them. No one could cross the thresholds of the cabins and not see the
old and well-known problems of life and striving. More and more,
therefore, the work met Miss Taylor's approval and she told Mrs. Grey
so.

At the same time Mary Taylor had come to some other definite
conclusions: she believed it wrong to encourage the ambitions of these
children to any great extent; she believed they should be servants and
farmers, content to work under present conditions until those conditions
could be changed; and she believed that the local white aristocracy,
helped by Northern philanthropy, should take charge of such gradual
changes.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25